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Palestinian books shared this week by their publishers. These are free to read at the publisher sites, and cover a diverse array of genres, ideas and languages, with more activities planned and shared from over 400 publishers. As Kazuo Isiguro said: "But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?"
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:08 PM PST - 4 comments

Tonight at 9PM Eastern: California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis face off in an unusual debate moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity. DeSantis, an early star in the Republican primary, has mounted a dysfunctional campaign that is struggling to gain traction against frontrunner Donald Trump, while Newsom has emerged as a top Biden surrogate and possible contender for 2028 (if not 2024). Indulge if you can, since it might be the last national bipartisan debate in a while. Free live streams with minimal commentary: Brian Tyler Cohen - David Pakman
posted by Rhaomi at 5:30 PM PST - 37 comments

Over a century ago, Austria-Hungary collapsed and a generation of writers wrote about what it was like to have your whole world melt away.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:06 PM PST - 41 comments

It's time to go back to the sublime madness of George Miller. The "Furiosa" trailer is here.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:45 PM PST - 45 comments

Hopes CO2-infused recycled concrete will help builders cut emissions. A Western Sydney University professor says her invention is as strong as new concrete, cheaper, and has the potential to help the construction sector become significantly greener.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:23 PM PST - 12 comments

She invigorated a staid if not stodgy arts scene as one of the city’s first and most prominent champions of the avant-garde With only minimal formal training in the arts, she became an impresario of the experimental in a city where, as a writer for The Washington Post once put it, “a sculpture with a naked derrière is still considered terribly avant.” She looked beyond the classically beautiful and politically bland, challenging curators, collectors, donors and the public to embrace art that was new, daring and at times provocative.
posted by wicked_sassy at 12:35 PM PST - 4 comments

Brids, Sfish and other Amals [via mefi projects]
posted by curious nu at 12:19 PM PST - 8 comments

"People who are blind from birth will gesture when they speak. I always like pointing out this fact when I teach classes on gesture, because it gives us an an interesting perspective on how we learn and use gestures. [...] Not only do blind people gesture, but the frequency and types of gestures they use does not appear to differ greatly from how sighted people gesture. If people learn gesture without ever seeing a gesture (and, most likely, never being shown), then there must be something about learning a language that means you get gestures as a bonus." [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 8:47 AM PST - 35 comments

Here he is at his peak, both as a songwriter and a performer. Here's another side to his songwriting. And here's today's Guardian obituary by Alex Petridis, which gets it about right. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 6:36 AM PST - 135 comments

"New York and London are known for being blanketed with government-run CCTV coverage, but surveillance here is different: It is as privatized as it is pervasive" (slWired) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:30 AM PST - 17 comments

Racist, white supremacist, and far-right violence is on the rise. But while far-right actors often try to maintain a public image of normalcy, it is sometimes useful to look into their private spaces in an attempt to understand how their hate festers, evolves, and breeds when no one is looking. HowHateSleeps seeks to peek behind the curtain to look into these private sanctums. All images have been pulled from public court records except where otherwise indicated [CW: evil]
posted by chavenet at 2:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Hannah Waddingham & Brendan Hunt cover Love Shack at a charity event for Steps of Faith
posted by Gorgik at 10:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Of water, time, creativity and connectedness. [SL Substack, via]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:03 PM PST - 3 comments

In his ongoing attempt to to destroy Xitter, Mr Musk suggests former advertisers indulge in auto-copulation. (slyt)
posted by Marky at 7:05 PM PST - 341 comments

In the world of sexual fetishes, crossing the political aisle is a kink. Does a forced ‘vote’ for the other side get your pulse racing? There’s a dominatrix for that. (wapo)
posted by adept256 at 6:47 PM PST - 14 comments

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies
posted by signal at 5:58 PM PST - 250 comments

As amazing as it sounds. The Isley Brothers, featuring Jimi Hendrix.
posted by dfm500 at 4:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Be free from annoying your friends with eating noises while gaming! The future is now.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:31 PM PST - 17 comments

Divers uncovering secrets of Australia's megafauna past, concealed deep in underwater caves. Hidden in watery chambers around South Australia's Limestone Coast are fossils telling the story of a prehistoric Australian world. Researchers are determined to find them.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:21 PM PST - 3 comments

What America can learn from Canada’s new ‘$10 a Day’ child care system [The Hechinger Report] Canada’s launch of a national child care system shows what it takes to improve child care across a country [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:57 PM PST - 30 comments

=== This is a free online edition of
Bruce Sterling's anthology Mirrorshades. ===
via boingboing. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:34 PM PST - 23 comments

Kristine Vike, PhD in Environmental Analytical Chemistry, has got you covered. Get started with The Surprisingly Dangerous Story of Viscose, Hidden Chemicals in your Clothes, or Why So-Called Textile Recycling Is An Absolute Disgrace. (On a lighter note: Making Batwings For My Cat Didn’t Quite Go As Planned.) You can also read her academic papers or visit her website, where she describes herself as a "history, sewing, and sustainability enthusiast."
posted by clawsoon at 10:00 AM PST - 10 comments

A relaxing and interesting video showing a method of making powder blush with safflower. Facebook algorithm showed this to me (stolen & reposted without context natch) but this is the original. The account is the work of "a cameraman record[ing] his nephew producing handicrafts with traditional methods in the countryside." [more inside]
posted by Baethan at 9:39 AM PST - 7 comments

McDonald's New Terms and Conditions Have People Deleting the App (Mashed, Daily Meal, Daily Dot, Parade) The latest terms and conditions for using the McDonald's app contain many customer-affecting changes: updates to McDonald's liability in cases of injury, third-party errors, and app malfunction; waivers for a customer's right to a jury trial or class action lawsuit; and an agreement to solve disputes through a strict arbitration process.
posted by box at 8:00 AM PST - 64 comments

The Red State Brain Drain Isn't Coming. It's Happening Right Now. [archive] - "As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:28 AM PST - 86 comments

Meg-John Barker has moved on from being an academic psychologist and practicing psychotherapist after publishing books and papers on bisexuality, consensual non-monogamy, sadomasochism, non-binary gender, and Buddhist mindfulness. Now they make graphic guides and zines to reach a much wider audience. Wondering what a queer relationship looks like? Or how you actually talk about consent in a relationship? Or maybe how to stay grounded when you are full of scary feelings? They also just published an anti-self-help guide to love, sex and relationships called Rewriting the Rules. [more inside]
posted by jebs at 6:46 AM PST - 4 comments

High-quality video of Rush's Neil Peart practicing the drums for half an hour. Nothing more, nothing less.
posted by swift at 6:27 AM PST - 14 comments

A perfectly executed Bananas Foster takes about three to four minutes to prepare. But a restaurant flambé requires additional time to allow the person who orders it to overshare about the one other time they ordered a flambé at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the south of France. Someone at the table will also invariably ask, “Have you ever burned anyone before?” (Thankfully, I have not — but I’ve definitely sent errant chunks of flaming banana out of the pan a couple of times like rogue fruit meteors, causing momentary bouts of panic and a few singed linens.) Every time a pan spiked with sugar and alcohol combusts, flambé sales go viral. One order and the entire restaurant goes up in flames. from Confessions of a Tableside Flambéur
posted by chavenet at 1:22 AM PST - 37 comments

"Adventures in Imagination": The 1948 Model Plane contest in Detroit, Mi. (slyt) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 8:46 PM PST - 3 comments

New spider discovered: a nocturnal, fast-moving toad hunter. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:59 PM PST - 12 comments

The Mystery of VelmaDinkley.com [25m] is an internet mystery posted earlier this year. YouTuber CHUPPL has lost countless hours of sleep trying to answer the questions surrounding this subject. Ruh-Roh! Does a community of Scooby Doo fans have something to hide? The ensuing investigation is entirely human and the end is entirely satisfactory.
posted by hippybear at 4:01 PM PST - 11 comments

An Ask a Manager themed dinner complete with bribery cupcakes Try Bob's Guacamole. Duck Club Sandwiches and Cheap Ass rolls.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 2:16 PM PST - 13 comments

The industry side of the game is called the Company, but I came very, very close to calling it Capitalism because the tobacco industry isn't exceptional. The way it pursued profits at the expense of human lives wasn't some kind of mustache-twirling villainy. It is the consequence of capitalism and its incentives. And even if I ultimately decided to swerve from the name, I did want to reflect those incentives – the unsustainable and amoral pursuit of maximum profits, of infinite growth. from Doubt Is Our Product, or A Game About Tobacco Disinformation by Amabel Holland
posted by chavenet at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

This year's U.S. 5th National Climate Assessment Report opens with a poem by Ada Limón, features an Art + Climate Gallery and an Atlas with 15 national maps that show changes in extreme heat & precipitation. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:29 AM PST - 8 comments

Chris Lewicki recounts a story about how he almost killed a half-billion-dollar Mars rover. Turns out cables are hard.
posted by rikschell at 11:07 AM PST - 30 comments

NYT: Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace - Even a conservative assessment of the reported Gaza casualty figures shows that the rate of death during Israel’s assault has few precedents in this century, experts say.[ungated] [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 8:08 AM PST - 649 comments

The beer garden’s family-friendliness helped to promote beer as a temperance beverage and a “healthy” alternative to spirits. Over the course of the 19th century, the temperance movement had come a long way from promoting moderation to calling for total abstinence of all alcoholic beverages. To German Americans, temperance was more than a mere political issue; it symbolized cultural conflict that threatened their lifestyle and value system. For the brewers, their ethnic interest was greatly reinforced by their economic interest. from A Lager Beer Revolution: The History of Beer and German American Immigration
posted by chavenet at 2:22 AM PST - 13 comments

“Strange Days in Cupertino” by Christine Gerardi for Blood Knife. [more inside]
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 2:22 AM PST - 31 comments

In 2017, Malaysian artist Fishball began a thrice-weekly autobiographical webcomic about her and her (much taller) boyfriend: My Giant Nerd Boyfriend. Seven years, 2.3 million subscribers, 786 million views, and 912 strips later, this month they officially tied the knot.
posted by Paragon at 1:22 AM PST - 8 comments

How China is tearing down Islam [ungated; viz. cf.] - "Thousands of mosques have been altered or destroyed as Beijing's suppression of Islamic culture spreads."[1,2] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM PST - 12 comments

Language, Culture, Identity, and... Star Wars in Navajo (slyt)
posted by dfm500 at 6:44 PM PST - 5 comments

Using goats to reduce fire risk by removing weeds. A herd of goats has removed weeds posing a fire risk in inaccessible terrain in a third of the time they were given to get the job done. Now the landowners have bigger ideas.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:38 PM PST - 30 comments

This is pronouns.page. This is a thread for everyone who feels like they need a place to expand their pronoun usage. Y'all can come here and maybe even feel a little awkward while pretending it's perfectly normal. And then it will BE perfectly normal because you have helped build the future. Need a place to start? Try using new pronouns to talk about your pets: they/them or ki/kin. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 3:31 PM PST - 54 comments

A World Science Festival youtube vid with Brian Greene, Sébastien Bubeck, Tristan Harris, and Yann LeCun. It's worth watching to hear the protestations, especially from Yann LeCun about how A.I. is the answer to problems. He...seems to not really be hearing the concerns expressed. Video does contain some AI generated content, as an example.
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 3:28 PM PST - 2 comments

There are a zillion videos like this on the internet. And even this same YouTuber has a bunch of videos labeled some variation of The Hardest Rug Ever. But this 43m epic $1 vs $100,000 Black Carpet! | The Hardest Rug of My Life! is one of those things where you wonder, is it ever going to come clean? What will it finally look like? Completely satisfying at the end, and a testament to how a truly well-made carpet can withstand nearly anything.
posted by hippybear at 3:24 PM PST - 40 comments

Good (non-Hollywood-ish) movies coming down the pipe. Vulture magazine lists over a dozen top movies from the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals.
posted by storybored at 12:38 PM PST - 16 comments

Web 3 is Going Just Great creator Molly White writes in her Citation Needed newsletter on effective altruism and effective accelerationism: As Sam Bankman-Fried rose and fell, people outside of Silicon Valley began to hear about “effective altruism” (EA) for the first time. Then rifts emerged within OpenAI with the ouster and then reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman, and the newer phrase “effective accelerationism” (often abbreviated to “e/acc” on Twitter) began to enter the mainstream. Both ideologies ostensibly center on improving the fate of humanity, offering anyone who adopts the label an easy way to brand themselves as a deep-thinking do-gooder. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 11:36 AM PST - 59 comments

It is often taken for granted that the Green Revolution, which introduced new high yield monoculture crops together with chemical fertilisers, was a huge boost to global food production from which there is no going back. This article in the National Academies of Science ISSUES in Science and Technology by environmental scientists Marci Baranski and Mary Ollenburger discusses and critiques that assumption, in particular discussing both how the increased yields were overstated and fragile, and how the narrative and accompanying policies served and continue to serve USA and multinational corporate dominance and centralisation.
posted by Rhedyn at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments

The Amazing Digital Circus (Youtube, 26 minutes) is a computer-animated Youtube cartoon about a group of whimsical characters stuck in a whimsical VR world. They're all hugely dismayed by this fact and want to leave it please. In that way it feels a bit like social media. In a month it has gotten 147 million views. Meet the characters (1 minute). It was made by the talented Gooseworx, who also made Little Runmo (16 minutes, previously), a cartoon about a video game character who learns a little too much about the world they live in. CW: general disquietingness. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 10:05 AM PST - 14 comments

"May the Lord Watch is the definitive story (1:40:06) of Little Brother, the North Carolina rap group composed of rappers Phonte, Big Pooh, and (formerly) producer 9th Wonder, the underground legends that bridged the gap between The Roots and Kendrick, Tribe and Cole, De La and Drake. The film follows the rise, breakup, and reunion of the preeminent 2000s rap group"
posted by cashman at 8:44 AM PST - 4 comments

"ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis" "In a paper published in JAMA Ophthalmology on 9 November1, the authors used GPT-4 — the latest version of the large language model on which ChatGPT runs — paired with Advanced Data Analysis (ADA), a model that incorporates the programming language Python and can perform statistical analysis and create data visualizations. The AI-generated data compared the outcomes of two surgical procedures and indicated — wrongly — that one treatment is better than the other." [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:45 AM PST - 34 comments

...to give you more 'room' to write in the weekly FREE THREAD. What's the point of 'intentionally blank pages' anyway? [previously, previouslyer]
posted by Wordshore at 2:50 AM PST - 131 comments

Among seasteading enthusiasts, the excitement about the crypto ship was intense. A slew of promotional videos and a marketing website promised it would be for “everyone from digital nomads to YouTube influencers, start-up teams and established businesses”. Friedman took to Facebook, boosting Ocean Builders by name and adding: “So glad liberty activism has advanced from Guy Fawkes violence to peaceful exit!” He posted too soon. from The fake hitman, the crypto king and a wild revenge plan gone bad [Financial Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:22 AM PST - 28 comments

The disappearance of the sex scene in American cinema, the suppression of the body under the moral imperative of commodities in neoliberal capitalism, and Verhoeven as antagonizer.
posted by brundlefly at 11:29 PM PST - 139 comments

"What would have happened if ChatGPT was invented in the 17th century? MonadGPT is a possible answer. MonadGPT is a finetune of Mistral-Hermes 2 on 11,000 early modern texts in English, French and Latin, mostly coming from EEBO and Gallica. Like the original Mistral-Hermes, MonadGPT can be used in conversation mode. It will not only answer in an historical language and style but will use historical and dated references. This is especially visible for science questions (astronomy, medecine). Obviously, it's not recommended to follow any advice from Monad-GPT." Available to install and run locally -- or you can try it out for free online. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:17 PM PST - 32 comments

Channel 9 Perth Community Service Announcements from the 1970s/1980s: Monsters.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:31 PM PST - 7 comments

The Periodic Table of Tools. (via Kevin Kelly)
posted by storybored at 10:05 AM PST - 36 comments

Catherine Christer Hennix (1948–2023) was a composer of minimalist, electronic, and drone music. Grounded in maths and sciences, her music adapted ideas from Indian ragas, Arabic music, jazz, and blues. She had a a wide ranging career across academia, writing, painting and sculpture, and intellectual movements from Fluxus to Lacan to Sufi Islam. She studied with Stockhausen, took inspiration from La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, but had a modest commercial showing unlike her contemporaries Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Her music is astonishing. [more inside]
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Every David Fincher Movie, Ranked (SLVulture, updated to include The Killer)
posted by box at 6:46 AM PST - 25 comments

"Picture seeing this turkey. He's, like, magnificent. Like, he's huge. And there's a tranq dart sticking out of him, and he's just walking around with it." [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 4:57 AM PST - 31 comments

For 30 years, writers have been using blogs, social media, and email to do things with words that are difficult or impossible to do inside books. They have immersed us in stories still unfolding, created personas that interact with readers, woven their writing into inboxes and feeds, and used code to write at a distance. The public record of literature in the 21st century is full of gaping holes where these things should be. The missing material is right there on our screens, but it slides past with little formal acknowledgement. While it’s become banal to observe that online life is fully enmeshed with the rest of the world, an imaginary curtain separates online writing from the rest of U.S. literature. It’s time to take that curtain down. from Poets in the Machine
posted by chavenet at 1:45 AM PST - 7 comments

50,000 years ago, Australia had vultures. When the megafauna went extinct, so did the vultures.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Alan "Draknek" Hazelden is an industrious creator of charming, handcrafted, fiendishly difficult puzzle games with a retro 8-bit feel (most using the open-source, HTML5-compliant Puzzlescript engine). Highlights: Sticky Candy Puzzle Saga - Spikes 'n' Stuff - Spooky Pumpkin Game - Boxes Love Boxing Gloves - Frog Wizard Gem Quest - Train Braining - A Sneeze a Day Keeps the Crates Away - Cyber-Lasso - Mirror Isles - Slime Swap - A Good Tunnel is Hard to Dig - Mouse Wants Cheese - You're Pulley-ing My Leg - I Have No Mouth, And I Must Create Blocks On All Sides Of Me - More? Check out a list of all games (older ones may break), all Puzzlescript games, iOS and Android games. Also check out the homepage for gamedev partnerships, contact info, and more commercial offerings.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:46 PM PST - 8 comments

It began with robots made to throw up in the air to do stunt work. How Disney Designed a Robotic Spider-Man [7m] Then came free-standing, walking, controlled character actors. Disney Imagineers Develop Cutting-edge, Free-roaming Robotic Actor [1m15s] They began to integrate some self-learning AI features and more real movement. Disney Imagineers Demo New Relatable Robotic Character [1m] But just last month came fully autonomous, self-learning completely adorable little robots. A New Approach to Disney’s Robotic Character Pipeline [1m] Imagineers Test BD-1 Style ROAMING DROIDS in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland [3m30s] A pet AT-ST walking around my house? TAKE MY MONEY!
posted by hippybear at 12:28 PM PST - 31 comments

Joseff Gnagbo is a journalist, academic, and political activist from Cote d'Ivoire who was granted political asylum in the UK and placed in Cardiff, where he learned Welsh and quickly became involved with the Welsh language movement. Now he is the new Chair of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the pressure group that fought via direct action, including serving prison terms, to get legal protection for the Welsh language. Siôn Jobbins interviews him (in English) to discuss his experiences and commonalities he sees between Cote d'Ivoire and Wales.
posted by Rhedyn at 11:30 AM PST - 5 comments

Al-Nakba A four part video series on the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures. Scroll down for the videos (4X 45 min) First aired in 2008.
posted by Lanark at 9:21 AM PST - 14 comments

The rise and fall of AppHarvest, a startup promising to gainfully employ blue-collar Appalachians, provide sustainable produce, and address the problems of agriculture in a changing climate. In the end, it did none of those things, employing contract migrant workers, letting the work environment reach unsafe temperatures, using considerable amounts of power to control the grow environment, and training their workers so poorly that yields of usable produce were low. (slGrist) [more inside]
posted by jackbishop at 8:23 AM PST - 53 comments

Nor does it take a transformative life event to provoke feelings of loneliness. As time passes, it often happens that friends and family who used to understand us quite well eventually fail to understand us as they once did, failing to really see us as they used to before. This, too, will tend to lead to feelings of loneliness – though the loneliness may creep in more gradually, more surreptitiously. Loneliness, it seems, is an existential hazard, something to which human beings are always vulnerable – and not just when they are alone. from Loved, yet lonely
posted by chavenet at 2:36 AM PST - 35 comments

When John Watson was bitten by a crocodile, he knew exactly which plant would help his wound. Scientists now think that plant could lead to a powerful pain relief gel [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:14 PM PST - 17 comments

Tomorrow (Saturday November 25) starting at 3pm PT (6pm ET/11pm GMT) and running for approximately 24 hours, Laser Webber of the Doubleclicks (several previouslies, dating back to 2011) and Becca McGlynn (with some special guests) will be participating in a charity livestream that watches Doctor Who in chronological order -- but NOT chronological order of the airdates. This chronology is presented in order of when each event took place, from the perspective of the show's internal universe. [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:43 PM PST - 43 comments

Precision formation dancing is one of my favorite things. And I was astonished to see Avantgardey's performances from America's Got Talent and Japan's Got Talent. [22m, performances include judging segments, video is chapter marked for convenient skipping]. This 9m video gave me some background about this thrilling dance troupe. And from Taiwan News just a couple of days ago, Japanese dance troupe Avantgardey's Taipei performance goes viral has an embedded Instagram video of another dance.
posted by hippybear at 12:19 PM PST - 10 comments

Hear 'n Aid (previously) was a 1986 hard rock/heavy metal charity album that raised $3 million for famine relief in Africa. [more inside]
posted by box at 10:05 AM PST - 8 comments

For 7 years, Cercle has been livestreaming DJs and other musicians playing sets from impressive locations around the world: Icelandic Wilderness (Ólafur Arnalds), Hot air balloon above Cappadocia (Ben Böhmer), Guatape Colombia (Above and Beyond), Lapland (Sofiane Pamart) , The Eiffel Tower (Nina Kraviz), Brighton i360 (Fatboy Slim) or Bali (Lee Burridge)... [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 9:30 AM PST - 13 comments

100 years ago this month Buster Keaton released his groundbreaking silent film "Our Hospitality", described as his "...first feature as auteur and his first masterpiece." [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 9:28 AM PST - 11 comments

Bringing up the Bodies: The forensic anthropologists who redress migrant death in Texas, by Caroline Tracey. Related: Archaeologist Jason de León's interdisciplinary Undocumented Migrant Project.
posted by Rumple at 8:29 AM PST - 3 comments

Loneliness is not only a feeling of a gap between oneself and others—it is a feeling of an active separation. The world pulls away and I turn from it, from the feeling of rejection, and step into open space. Arguably, if indeed we are born into loneliness, then one measure of what we call living is the ongoing attempt to overcome that isolation. That’s how we develop intimacy and its profound resolve in the face of that impossible distance. The risk lies in the fact that we might fail. The reward is that we all do, at times, succeed in our attempts to throw bridges out to the unseen shores deep in the hearts of others. from So Fierce Is the World: On Loneliness and Philip Seymour Hoffman [The Paris Review; ungated] CW: loneliness, depression, drugs, alcohol, suicide
posted by chavenet at 7:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Compared to the drastic style and aesthetic changes between decades like the 1960s and 80s, looking back on 2003 it doesn’t seem so different.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:32 AM PST - 106 comments

From the Guardian: In what has been portrayed as the largest fight in decades to save Sweden’s union model from global labour practices, the powerful trade union IF Metall has been leading a strike across eight Tesla workplaces in Sweden for five weeks. It is the first time workers for the US carmaker have gone on strike. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 3:10 AM PST - 18 comments

JW Lown was the unlikely, beloved former mayor of conservative San Angelo, Texas. [Archive]. Last week, he passed away one day before his 47th birthday [archive].
posted by goo at 12:10 AM PST - 9 comments

A 300-Million-Year-Old Fossil Discovered in Utah Could Be a New Species. Fossilized remains of aquatic creatures are commonly found in Canyonlands National Park, but discovering a land-dwelling vertebrate is incredibly rare.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:42 PM PST - 11 comments

ambassador Daniel von der Craig trying to decide if the EU is "concerned" or "deeply concerned" [nitter] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Today Pet Shop Boys posted the last in their series of Classic Performances [YT playlist, 15 videos], a list which covers performances from 1989 [It's a sin] to 2019 [Go west] and many in between. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:04 PM PST - 14 comments

Although it's first release was a version by Roberta Flack in February of that year, that summer saw Les McCann & Eddie Harris -- Compared to What (Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1969) and that performance put the Montreux Jazz Festival on the map and calender and in history forever. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:46 PM PST - 14 comments

that's it, that's the post.
posted by wowenthusiast at 11:35 AM PST - 19 comments

How to cook a turkey by slapping it. This is much safer than dropping it from orbit, letting the atmosphere fry it and trying to catch it with a butterfly net.
posted by pyramid termite at 10:13 AM PST - 12 comments

Tenant activism is flaring across the country as renters face skyrocketing rents and deteriorating living conditions in the most brutal housing market in memory. (slMacLean's)
posted by Kitteh at 7:35 AM PST - 141 comments

Cowboy Kent Rollins makes the best Aizeean fried rice ever in the tent. Uncle Roger is skeptical, but has no hate for it like he has for Jamie Oliver. So what happens next in the Cowboy Kent Rollins and Uncle Roger Youtube beef? Well, Chinese sausage in a fried rice happens.
posted by NoMich at 7:33 AM PST - 9 comments

Unraveling One of Rock’s Deepest Mysteries: Les Rallizes Dénudés [NYT, archive link] by Ben Sisario, is a good, short introduction in English to the Japanese underground rock band, who never released a studio album. Bandleader Takashi Mizutani passed away late in 2019, and since then his former bandmate Makoto Kubota has been restoring existing recordings. Now there is an official website, with an oral history, photos and more. The latest release, of a performance at Kawasaki's Club Citta' in 1993, has been remastered in high fidelity, a process Kubota likened to, according to a Pitchfork review, "restoring an ancient Buddhist statue". A good introduction to the band, Citta' '93 is available on various streaming services, and also YouTube and Bandcamp.
posted by Kattullus at 6:10 AM PST - 12 comments

One day is there of the series [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:39 AM PST - 7 comments

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is going a bit overboard for Turkey Day 2023, with 48 straight hours of episodes from both the classic era and recently-concluded Season 13! Starting November 23 at 9 AM Eastern time, and watchable for free on the show's official Youtube channel, on their official Pluto TV channel, on their Twitch channel, and on their bespoke streaming solution the Gizmoplex. Two full days of cheesy movies and humorous commentary from a human test subject and their automated mocking contraptions. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 9:50 PM PST - 58 comments

Unexpected coral reefs discovered in Western Australia's turbid waters surprise researchers. In September 2023, the turbid waters in Exmouth Gulf cleared to reveal a wonderland of undamaged black corals and healthy reefs, but marine scientists are worried the area will miss out on protection. The turbid nature of the Exmouth Gulf is affected by a mix of currents, tides and even the El Niño-Southern Oscillation which means that on an average day, the water is murky and visibility is poor. And some parts of the 2600 square kilometre water body have only gotten more turbid in the past two decades. But in September 2023, an extended window of vaunted "glass out" conditions, where the ocean is flat and reflective like a mirror, lifted the murky veil. What was revealed — in a survey by independent marine research firm Oceanwise over two weeks in September — was a diverse range of hard and soft corals including species usually found in much deeper waters like the colourful fan-like gorgonians. The researchers also discovered slow-growing black corals, so named because of the dark skeletons they leave in death.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:07 PM PST - 5 comments

An hour of incredibly beautiful music
posted by Sebmojo at 6:13 PM PST - 11 comments

As part of their investigative journalism on the social media platform once known as Twitter, Media Matters For America reported that ads were being served by the platform next to hateful, bigoted, antisemitic, and white supremacist content on the platform, resulting in advertisers such as IBM pulling their ads from the platform. Which led to the service filing a defamation lawsuit against MMFA over their reporting. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:47 PM PST - 106 comments

Everyone is giving him things. This, to me, seems crazy. Why would you give something to the pope? He has like four things, and one of them is God. Imagine if I kneeled down in front of him and presented him with a critical essay about his 2015 prog rock album titled ‘Notions of Sleep and Alertness in Bergoglio’s Wake Up!’ Actually, one guy does get down on his knees and then sets off a wave of other people all getting down on their knees. I guess that’s how the whole thing started in the first place. from When I Met the Pope by Patricia Lockwood [London Review of Books; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:30 PM PST - 15 comments

While incomes in the top 1% went up in 2021, incomes in the bottom half of the distribution decreased, according to tax filing data reported by Statistics Canada. [more inside]
posted by narcissus_and_ambrosia at 12:16 PM PST - 34 comments

“Almost every family has a secret they never discuss. Ours is this: We were taste testers for Pop-Tarts.” (SLNYTimes, archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 11:44 AM PST - 41 comments

While you may know something about the history of nonpareil corn, what does Big Popcorn have to say? People study it, write books about it, and produce documentaries [SLYT] about it. Heck, some folks even grow it at home.
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:57 AM PST - 5 comments

The Oral History of Magnitude His name isn't Pop-Pop, that's just the gorgeous catchphrase for Magnitude, the annoying, no make that compelling minor character on Community.
posted by stevil at 9:13 AM PST - 9 comments

The Corn Popper toy, a stick with a plastic dome filled with gumball-sized balls, popped into the Strong Museum’s (USA) National Toy Hall of Fame this year. Introduced in 1957, the Corn Popper followed the principles of Good Design established by the Museum of Modern Art just a few years earlier. As a child (or adult, ahem) pushes the Corn Popper, colorful balls go flying and hit the dome with a fun popping noise. [more inside]
posted by evilmomlady at 6:44 AM PST - 31 comments

Okay, maybe use the popcorn button. (Technology Connections, 14 minutes. Previously.)
posted by JHarris at 2:52 AM PST - 47 comments

Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.
posted by chavenet at 1:24 AM PST - 64 comments

Bandcamp Just Trying To ‘Keep The Lights On’ Following Epic Sale, Layoffs
posted by creatrixtiara at 11:54 PM PST - 48 comments

A shrimp that dwells in trees in the Cyclops Mountains, in the Indonesian province of Papua, on the island of New Guinea. In a patch of forest toward the top of the Cyclops Mountains, the researchers found an unusual type of shrimp, slightly larger than grains of rice. These crustaceans were all over the place, including in trees, moss, rotting logs and even under rocks, said Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, the expedition's lead entomologist who works at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. "It's a very weird creature," Davranoglou said, adding that it's able to leap three or four feet in the air to escape predators. "We were quite awe-struck, really." There are about nine other species of terrestrial shrimp, all of which live by the shore and are known as beach hoppers. "Our species definitely hops, but it lives nowhere near a beach," Davranoglou quipped.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:35 PM PST - 13 comments

Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers. (slyt)
posted by clavdivs at 9:14 PM PST - 1 comment

The YouTube channel catw is full of videos under 10 minutes in length that are compilations of cell phone videos of cats being cats. Cats did what they shouldn't do [8m25s], I wish cats were real [10m], and Why you should have a cat [7m30s] were all posted in the past month, but there are only 21 total so far.
posted by hippybear at 1:37 PM PST - 9 comments

Why the 50-over Cricket World Cup is more vital than ever in modern era. In the moments after Australia’s historic victory over India on Sunday, a euphoric Pat Cummins described how this Cricket World Cup had made him “fall in love with ODI cricket again”. Going by the numbers at least, it appears he wasn’t alone. [more inside]
posted by NoMich at 11:16 AM PST - 22 comments

Move aside raw water antediluvianistas, water sommeliers are quenching their thirst in luxury. [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 9:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Vaporwave goodbye to the waking world in dreamcore95.exe, a chill, short idle game with impeccable vibes and, if that's not enough inducement, also a defragging widget.
posted by cortex at 8:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Cassie Chadwick was an early 20th century fraudster who conned banks, shopkeepers and gullible men out of about 20 million in today's dollars. Claiming to be the illegitimate child of tycoon Andrew Carnegie, she used fake securities in his name as collateral on a series of further loans. She lived a lavish lifestyle buying trays of gems, solid gold picture frames, a pipe organ and giving 8 grand pianos as gifts one Christmas.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:58 AM PST - 18 comments

This is where Harvey lives as a fully realized artist: on her own artistic plane, inviting listeners to take their time to fully join her. Harvey keeps her gestures minimal as she sets her scenes and speaks through them. Matching her voice to those of her trusted collaborators John Parish and James Johnston as they invoke the forest's ghosts — the "chalky children of evermore" — she lets the fecund imagery of her lyrics resonate.
posted by h00py at 3:32 AM PST - 7 comments

Roger Langridge is a cartoonist. Every morning, he draws a four panel strip about whatever happens to be on his mind and posts it online. Some are about the everyday trials and delights of family life, some are about his dog and others simply rif on what the medium can do. I like them a lot.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Regardless of how we understand “timelessness,” that vague but irreplaceable quality we take to inhere in any classic, a good joke comes as close as possible to embodying its reality in the written word. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:45 AM PST - 27 comments

I just stumbled across this recent recipe video by lifelong friend of Julia Child, Jacques Pépin, who seems to be quite passionate about continuing her legacy of making cooking accessible to home chefs who don't have the time or resources to be really high-brow and fancy. Here he introduces us to a humble onion sandwich. I feel like Pépin deserves a gigantic post that I don't have the resources to make at the moment, but I thought I'd share this thing that I found unexpectedly delightful and unexpectedly delicious
posted by treepour at 11:06 PM PST - 81 comments

A living shoreline of saltmarsh and oyster beds is working to protect this town naturally. In low-lying Narooma on the New South Wales south coast, an award-winning initiative is creating a self-healing barrier against erosion and rising sea levels.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:39 PM PST - 9 comments

After a tumultuous campaign, Argentina has shocked the world by electing the far-right economist Javier Milei as its next president. In an echo of previous victories by populist outsiders with weird hair, the anarcho-capitalist firebrand waged an unorthodox campaign against a ruling class beset by inflation, wielding chainsaws, leather jackets, and Trumpian fraud claims to defeat hapless economy minister Sergio Massa by a wide margin powered by younger voters. Milei has promised to set the nation on a radical new course, dispensing with the social welfare programs of the longstanding Peronist government in order to pursue dollarization, privatization, deregulation, dismantlement of government, and anti-choice/vax/climate politics, along with an uncompromising "shock therapy" libertarianism that supports (among other things) selling organs and children. But beyond his extreme policies, many are disturbed by Milei's, uh, eccentric personality -- from his bizarre rants about the internet and establishment leftists to his telepathic consultation with mediums, God, and a dead dog that he has since cloned and converted into his political counsel.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:43 PM PST - 54 comments

“There’s not enough gold in my golden years." (slTheWalrus) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:53 AM PST - 130 comments

Modern writers make different claims about who destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Some blame Julius Caesar while others blame a Christian mob or the invading Arabs. But who is really responsible for the Library's demise? The boring truth according to @premodernist_history.
posted by dmh at 8:00 AM PST - 39 comments

As the World Cup concludes, the Christmas season reaches its peak, 2024 is almost upon us, and the prospect of Easter eggs draws near, so it is time for another FREE THREAD. Meanwhile, a Brit attempts to be champion in Australia, how to make cheese fondue, horses have the right to freedom (alarming last sentence), the best of 4,502 cheeses (who would have predicted that?), and any surface is useful when the mood strikes. Please wear PJs, MeFites.
posted by Wordshore at 2:38 AM PST - 134 comments

Increasingly, it becomes clear that no one really knew Joyce. In all the versions people had of her, there seemed to be so little room left for who she really was. Whether it was self-preservation or sheer lack of genuine care that kept Joyce from opening up to anyone in her life, it seemed like loneliness was always bound to catch her. from Why Did Joyce Carol Vincent Die Alone? [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:04 AM PST - 4 comments

Carsized: Compare the sizes of different cars from different angles [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:55 PM PST - 27 comments

Todd in the Shadows' Trainwreckords on Nickelback's 2014 album No Fixed Address, with some analysis on their hatedom, artistry and their gradual decline, leading to the baffling experiment that was well, this.
posted by Pachylad at 7:38 PM PST - 37 comments

The Interstitium

Invisible Landscapes [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 6:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Meet the Australians who made the Darth Vader suit and your favourite monsters. In a workshop in Marrickville, this Australian team has worked on creating the monsters and practical effects on films including Star Wars, Alien and Mad Max. Their latest challenge is a pregnant werewolf.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:34 PM PST - 5 comments

Continuing on with his line of documentaries on the history of the Disney parks and their operations, Kevin Perjurer of Defunctland (previously) has released an ambitious new piece - a history of the tumultuous history of EPCOT Center from Walt's death to the park's opening, done through a synesthesic presentation built on music, visuals, and historical footage. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:57 PM PST - 7 comments

A coder considers the waning days of the craft (archive link) - the pleasures of coding, the rise of GPT-4 and the future of hacking.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:30 PM PST - 57 comments

Rosalynn Carter, mental health activist, humanitarian and former first lady, dies at 96. Before her passing, "At the (Carter) Center, she leads a program to diminish stigma against mental illness and to promote greater access to mental health care. She also is a partner with the ex-president in projects to resolve conflict, promote human rights, improve global health, and build democracy in some 65 countries.
posted by clavdivs at 3:41 PM PST - 102 comments

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
posted by dfm500 at 2:46 PM PST - 47 comments

How Denmark Destroyed Greenland: Brief History of Denmark's Colonialism in Greenland is a 25 minute video by Norwegian history YouTuber Fredda. The Danish colonial legacy has been in the news lately, as 67 Kalaallit women have sued the Danish government [NYT, archive link] for having run a program where Kalaallit women had intrauterine devices inserted without their consent in the 1960s and 70s, which possibly continued for long afterwards. About a year ago, the BBC's Elaine Jung made a 25 minute documentary about the Kalaallit women affected by the program, called Greenland's Lost Generation which focuses on psychologist and campaigner Naja Lyberth, who was one of those who had an IUD inserted as a teenager.
posted by Kattullus at 2:32 PM PST - 20 comments

POV of Head Chef during a busy Friday lunch service. Fallow restaurant in London (Michelin) has a number of raw GoPro videos of chefs practicing their art. More POVs inside. [more inside]
posted by swift at 10:12 AM PST - 24 comments

Cat Scans is one of the strangest instagram pages I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats onto their scanners, or why. (via boing boing) [more inside]
posted by vernondalhart at 8:47 AM PST - 25 comments

"The year is 1998. A private jet belonging to the Roottree Corporation has crashed. On it were The Roottree Sisters and their parents. Combined, they were worth over a billion dollars. Now, due to the eccentricities of their great, great grandfather, Elias their money must be redistributed to the rest of the family. But who's actually a BLOOD RELATIVE? Armed only with the power of your mighty dial-up modem, you'll scour for photos, books, articles, and other evidence. Then, you'll make connections and deductions based on the family relationships you uncover."
The Roottrees are Dead is a free deduction game playable on your desktop browser.(dev blog post)
posted by simmering octagon at 6:12 AM PST - 27 comments

Perhaps an even larger issue than the problems that self-checkout directly creates is the set of behaviors its presence can enable—from executives, from employees, and from customers. Retail executives, looking for any available corner to cut in order to juice short-term profitability, took self-checkout’s proliferation as a license to trim store staffing to the bone. Many stores are now messier, their shelves go unstocked for longer, and customers have a harder time finding the products they’re looking for or employees to answer their questions. Retail jobs, which have long been low-paying, precarious, and unpleasant, are now even worse. from Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:59 AM PST - 247 comments

The project aiming to make sure this tree species doesn't go the way of the Tasmanian tiger. The Tasmanian tiger was driven to extinction, as was the Tasmanian emu and a myriad of plants — but it is hoped a bold move will save another iconic Tasmanian species, the Morrisby's gum. "The Morrisby gum, or eucalyptus morrisbyi, is one of the rarest eucalypts in Australia and a few years back, one of the main populations of that species suffered this catastrophic decline," plant sciences lecturer Dr Bec Jones, from the University of Tasmania, said. Rising temperatures, drying soils and heavy wildlife browsing saw one of the biggest healthy populations of eucalyptus morrisbyi in Tasmania plummet from 2,000 to just six adult trees in seven years. "A colleague at the University of Tasmania, Peter Harrison used climate modelling to predict areas that eucalyptus morrisbyi could inhabit under climate change," Dr Jones said. A couple of east coast property owners offered land, including Tom Whitehead, who manages the Okehampton property on Tasmania's east coast. "The chance of having a mature population here would be great to see in the future and going forward for future generations to enjoy as well," Mr Whitehead said. A stand of 1000 young trees was planted on the Okehampton property.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:00 PM PST - 3 comments

Is My Toddler a Stochastic Parrot? “The world is racing to develop ever more sophisticated large language models while a small language model unfurls itself in my home. It’s funny to observe the similarities between the two models.” (Single Link New Yorker, via Kottke)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 5:26 PM PST - 28 comments

"When the elevator dings open on the ninth floor of a high-rise in drab West Shinjuku, Tokyo, I don’t know quite what to expect. As the doors to the lift shut behind me, I find myself standing on a rickety outdoor staircase—solo—in the pitch black, fumbling for the handle to a heavy, lacquered wooden door. If this were a fairy tale, I think, I’d be in trouble." Modern Alchemy at Tokyo’s Most Radical Bar. Meet Hiroyasu Kayama bartender extraordinaire of Ben Fiddich in Tokyo. His 'Award-winning alchemical delights' are simply amazing. Take a look. (slyt) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 4:57 PM PST - 7 comments

I'M FROM THE FUTURE [1h6m] is David's 2021 comedy special, recorded in Brooklyn, NY right in the middle of COVID.
posted by hippybear at 4:35 PM PST - 6 comments

One April morning in 2019, Spencer LeGros was making himself a sandwich when he realized half his face wasn't working. When he went to the ER he was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy, a mysterious form of facial paralysis with no known cause or cure. For the next year he struggled to speak and he had to tape his eye shut to sleep. It was a difficult time, but it inspired him to write a sad, funny and incredibly catchy rock ballad entitled The Man With a Broken Face. [more inside]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Woman who died of Ovarian Cancer's last wish: wipe out medical debt... Previously on MetaFilter: Toledo wipes out medical debt, Predatory Givers
posted by dfm500 at 10:07 AM PST - 16 comments

One minute and ten seconds of relief from your obsessive doomscrolling (on this site and elsewhere). [YT, CW: Baby Chipmunks] (Quiet, natural sounds only.) [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 9:25 AM PST - 14 comments

Italian Divers Revive Centuries-Old Tradition to Help Save European Perch. Nurseries built from bundles of tree branches may help conserve the freshwater fish in the age of climate change. Beginning in the 17th century, fishermen on Lake Maggiore facilitated the reproduction of the perch by creating underwater fish incubators. These colorful fish reproduce by depositing gelatinous filaments full of eggs along aquatic plants, as detailed in a dissertation on European perch reproduction by wildlife manager Riccardo Lattuada. The 60,000 to 120,000 eggs on each of these jellyfish-like strings, reaching up to 7 feet long, have the best chance of hatching if they are hanging on aquatic plants. “Eggs that are suspended have better access to oxygen compared with eggs on the lake bottom,” says Pietro Volta, a senior researcher in fish ecology at Italy’s National Research Council. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:03 AM PST - 5 comments

25 years ago, on November 19th 1998, a small game studio called Valve Corporation launched their debut game: a zombie shooter and puzzle platformer called Half-Life. Yesterday, Valve published their 25 year anniversary update to the game (complete with restored multiplayer maps, bug fixes, patch notes and a usable crowbar), leading to a new all time high of 14 thousand concurrent players (xitter link). [more inside]
posted by fight or flight at 4:24 AM PST - 43 comments

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who and the temporary return of David Tennant (pending the arrival of Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor) the BBC aired a short skit as part of its annual Children In Need TV fundraiser. Although comedic in tone, it introduced a major retcon for one long-standing - or more specifically, hitherto long-sitting - character. [more inside]
posted by Major Clanger at 3:01 AM PST - 43 comments

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with relying on praise from authors and notable figures to decide which books are worthy of industry attention, most authors secure blurbs not based on the merit of their work alone, but rather who they know. And as is the case in all walks of life, who you know is often directly linked to the level of privilege you carry within that community. In this way, blurbs can demonstrate which authors are the most connected within the industry, perhaps more than whether or not a book is actually “luminous.” from 'A Plague on the Industry': Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System [Esquire; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:36 AM PST - 27 comments

“I can’t believe I’m writing these words but it is with a shattered heart that I say we lost a fan earlier tonight before my show,” Swift wrote in a handwritten statement Swift’s show coincided with a heat wave in Brazil, with Folha reporting that the “feels-like” temperature on site was 140°F. Firefighters unofficially recorded one thousand people fainting at the show, according to Folha.
posted by folklore724 at 11:44 PM PST - 7 comments

How bison are restoring US grasslands. Plains bison co-evolved with the short-grass prairie. In the 12,000 years since the end of the Pleistocene, they have proven themselves to be potent ecosystem engineers. An adult bison eats about 25lb (11kg) of grass a day. The grasses adapted to their foraging. Vegetation across the plains uses the nutrients in their dung. Birds pluck their fur from bushes to insulate their nests. Bison also shape the land literally. They roll in the dust and create indentations known as "wallows" that hold water after rainstorms. After the bison move on, insects flourish in these pools and become a feast for birds and small mammals. Pronghorn antelope survive by following their tracks through deep winter snows.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:45 PM PST - 16 comments

How lawyers from one giant DC firm influenced Trump's Supreme Court picks: NPR interviews David Enrich about his book Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice; review by the Guardian.
posted by blue shadows at 7:42 PM PST - 1 comment

Sam Altman abruptly fired as CEO of OpenAI by the company's board, which cited a lack of confidence due to inconsistent candor, hindering his ability to fulfill the company's charter. Altman, a multimillionaire tech entrepreneur, ex-president of Y Combinator, and the public face of development for breakthroughs like DALL-E and ChatGPT, had hosted a major keynote for the company just last week; the surprise move has reportedly blindsided primary investor Microsoft. Rumors abound, primarily focusing on the company's uncertain business model, Altman's other ventures, and allegations of abuse by his sister, though the simultaneous departure of cofounder Greg Brockman suggests the issue could be more than just bad behavior by the CEO.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:58 PM PST - 220 comments

Proposed census changes would greatly decrease count (archive) [more inside]
posted by aniola at 10:26 AM PST - 28 comments

According to The Guardian's Steven Morris, "It began with a grumble from a retired teacher passionate about punctuation. He was dismayed to spot that an apostrophe had vanished from the road sign of a tree-lined lane in the Hampshire village of Twyford. The complaint led to intricate discussions at the local city council, during which the sometimes erratic punctuation of Jane Austen, the area’s most famous writer, was cited. But after a 12-month battle, the status quo ante was restored and an apostrophe has been added back in to the sign for St Mary’s Terrace, to the delight not only of villagers but to a growing number of enthusiasts battling against the loss of the punctuation mark across the UK." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:51 AM PST - 76 comments

The Machine Breaker. Christopher Ketcham profiles Stephen McRae, who briefly conducted a one-person campaign against industrial civilization. (via) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 7:14 AM PST - 6 comments

Chaucer goes digital as British Library makes works available online. British Library photographs and uploads its entire collection of manuscripts by the author of The Canterbury Tales
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:08 AM PST - 17 comments

In a nondescript warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain over 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of the recording capital of the world. (40 min. SLYT)
posted by 2N2222 at 5:01 AM PST - 31 comments

Why Do Cops Keep Lying?, an excerpt from Canadian journalist Cecil Rosner's upcoming book Manipulating the Message.
posted by clawsoon at 4:43 AM PST - 26 comments

In North America, nearly all songbirds feed insects to their young. But since 1970, the number of birds in the United States and Canada has fallen by 29%, or roughly 2.9 billion, which scientists theorize is tied to having fewer insects in the world. Some research also has linked insecticide use with declines in barn swallows, house martins, and swifts .... “Nature is just eroding away very slowly,” Wagner said. As insects disappear, “we’re losing the limbs and the twigs of the tree of life. We’re tearing it apart. And we’re leaving behind a very simplified and ugly tree.” from The collapse of insects [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:02 AM PST - 36 comments

Dolphins caught on film raiding crab pots in fascinating world-first footage. The video shows the dolphins using their eyes, rostrum and teeth to retrieve bait off the coast of Western Australia, in what researchers say is an opportunity to learn more about how the animals learn and transmit new behaviours.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Arctic Entries gives 7 people 7 minutes each to tell a story. [more inside]
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:53 PM PST - 3 comments

According to Nolan Gasser, a musician and musicologist, sociology plays a tremendous role behind our musical tastes. What we hear when we were babies and throughout our formative years become the home base of our musical sensibilities. But as we grow older, our taste in music evolves and expands as we become exposed to different music. For a deeper dive into musical taste, you may check out Nolan Gasser's Why You Like It: The Science & Culture of Musical Taste.
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 1:38 PM PST - 24 comments

"It may comfort you to know that, yes, viruses can actually get sick. Even better, as karmic justice would have it, the culprits turn out to be other viruses. [...] We frequently run into 'viruses of viruses,' but we recently discovered something new: a virus that latches onto the neck of another virus." Ivan Erill, Vampire viruses prey on other viruses to replicate themselves − and may hold the key to new antiviral therapies.
posted by mittens at 12:47 PM PST - 13 comments

MLB owners approve Athletics' planned move to Las Vegas [more inside]
posted by smcdow at 11:20 AM PST - 69 comments

“I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.” (slGQ)
posted by Kitteh at 11:11 AM PST - 30 comments

Ivan Miranda decides to use a lot of 3D printing and a lot of hand tooling to, both figuratively and literally, roll his own seven-segment digital clock: Building a Marble Clock - part 1 and part 2.
posted by cortex at 9:44 AM PST - 12 comments

Hey lead foot, get off the gas! If your car knows where you are because of GPS, and knows the speed limit because of on-board maps, and the speed limit is a legal mandate, why doesn't your car keep you from breaking the law by preventing you from driving too fast? The NTSB thinks it's well past time for this to be the case.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:17 AM PST - 119 comments

Terror on Repeat: A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings
[Caution: disturbing photos with lots of blood; no bodies; Washington Post share link]

"...drawing on an extensive review of photographs, videos and police investigative files from 11 mass killings between 2012 and 2023, The Washington Post is publishing the most comprehensive account to date of the repeating pattern of destruction wrought by the AR-15 — a weapon that was originally designed for military combat but has in recent years become one of the best-selling firearms on the U.S. market." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 7:44 AM PST - 135 comments

Some of us may view these options as exciting. Others may recoil. Still others may simply shrug. No matter your reaction, though, you will almost certainly leave behind digital traces. Almost everyone who uses technology today is subject to “datafication”: the recording, analysis, and archiving of our everyday activities as digital data. And the intended or unintended consequences of how we use data while we’re living has implications for every one of us after we die. from The Creepy New Digital Afterlife Industry
posted by chavenet at 2:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Conservationists are working to protect the creature behind bunyip folklore. One night well over a century ago three miners headed to Hexham Swamp, between Newcastle (in Australia) and Maitland, for an evening of wild duck hunting. But instead of finding ducks, they came across a terrifying creature with a tremendous roar "like that of a lion" and two eyes like "golden orbs in the night". And so, the legend of the Hexham bunyip was born. That infamous night in 1879 may have become a local legend, but today this swamp creature is now rarer than ever and residents are trying to save it from extinction. It turns out the mysterious creature that scared the three miners in 1879 was a bird; the endangered Australasian bittern, also known as the 'bunyip bird'. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:16 AM PST - 9 comments

We All Love "Anne of Green Gables". What About "Emily of New Moon"? (SL NYT)
posted by toastyk at 9:37 PM PST - 20 comments

"no matter how hard you try to implement these discriminatory policies in the right way, you are never going to find a right way to do the wrong thing" Man gives truly inspiring speech at Virginia Beach school board meeting [DailyKos, includes transcript] "And Gov. Youngkin’s policies are wrong. One of the ways you could tell is because you have speakers from groups like Moms for Liberty here to support them. And I'll be real simple in case you aren’t paying attention—they're not the good guys. How can you tell? I can help. The good guys don't get declared extremist groups by human rights organizations." Direct Link To Video Of Speech [2m10s]
posted by hippybear at 7:59 PM PST - 21 comments

Bobby Fingers goes large scale and builds a headboat* of Jeff Bezos. Of course the build is completely over the top, utilizing a giant CNC robot, large hand crafted eyeballs, several musical numbers and they even travel abroad to get a hair transplant. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 6:28 PM PST - 34 comments

These Birds Got a Little Too Comfortable in Birdhouses. Purple martins may have been saved by human-built nest boxes. What happens when our hospitality runs out?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:08 PM PST - 11 comments

How Do the World’s Largest Flags Actually Fly? ... Massive flagpoles are all the rage, and hugely divisive ... The Big Flag ... Flags as big as football fields: The story of giant American flags ... Why do they need such a big flag? [MeTa]
posted by chavenet at 1:42 PM PST - 33 comments

Published in The Autopian by an adjuster who agreed to write on the condition of anonymity. "In short, modern cars have so many complex components that they are very expensive to repair even with what looks like light damage. As the adjuster, you are under pressure to lock up as many claims as possible in the day to meet the company’s expectations. Does it look broken? Replace. Is it likely to be broken behind that part? Replace. When the software tells you you’ve hit the 75% or higher threshold of the value for the car, you wrap it up. Bam, the car is now deemed totaled by the insurance company."
posted by AlSweigart at 11:55 AM PST - 65 comments

Alta ski area this year retired its military howitzers used for avalanche control over the last 75 years. They have produced a short 7 min movie - "The Last Gunners" - on the history of using military artillery for avalanche control at Alta - where it was pioneered in the US. [more inside]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 10:12 AM PST - 15 comments

So Thieves Nabbed Your Catalytic Converter. Here’s Where It Ended Up. The NYTimes takes a look at the underground platinum group metals market, from thieves who steal catalytic converters or "cats", to refiners that buy up stolen cats and retrieve the rare metals, to the banks that financially underwrite the illicit trade.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:33 AM PST - 8 comments

Behind the Curtain: Trump allies pre-screen loyalists for unprecedented power grab - "Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:35 AM PST - 172 comments

... and I'm already a huge fan. Seems to me they've got all the tight riffs, humour and attitude of the best early punk bands. Here's some of their videos so you can judge for yourself: Meal Deal; I Don't Really Like It: Jiu Jit You. Finally, here's The Ick again, this time as the band's official video. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 7:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Restaurants in Peace is a simple website for memorializing your favorite, departed eateries. Scroll through the submittals so far or add your own. [via mefi projects]
posted by curious nu at 7:13 AM PST - 33 comments

"[Kathleen Sully's] name appears in no encyclopaedia, in no dictionary of biography, in no other survey of the English novel. One reason for her critical neglect is that she didn’t fit in—a reflection of the institutional prejudices of the English literary world. She was a woman writing when writing was a man’s game—not just a man’s game, but a public school/university-educated man’s game. [more inside]
posted by BenAstrea at 6:20 AM PST - 7 comments

From STAT: UnitedHealth pushed employees to follow an algorithm to cut off Medicare patients’ rehab care. (Archive link) "The nation’s largest health insurance company pressured its medical staff to cut off payments for seriously ill patients in lockstep with a computer algorithm’s calculations, denying rehabilitation care for older and disabled Americans as profits soared, a STAT investigation has found. [...] Its strategy is integral to a growing national business at UnitedHealth to deliver more care in patients’ homes using a network of providers it has spent billions of dollars acquiring in recent years."
posted by mittens at 5:38 AM PST - 29 comments

Toby "Tibees²" Hendy, explainer of science, has posted a beautiful 15m tribute to "The book biologists hate to read but love to cite". No, not The Origin of Species but On Growth and Form (1917) [Gutenberg Full text] by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. MetaPrev 2008. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:18 AM PST - 8 comments

The list is as much a cultural signifier as it is an accurate index of what the public is reading. The tagline makes it easier for readers to find a book within today’s info glut and makes it easier for an author to convince a publisher to let them write another one ... “It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says. “It has a cumulative, rich-get-richer effect, if you’ve managed it successfully.” Sales come and go, but a NYT bestseller bio line is forever. from The murky math of the New York Times bestsellers list
posted by chavenet at 2:18 AM PST - 6 comments

Tasmanian woman tells office she can't come in as 600 kilogram (1322 pounds) seal is blocking her car. (Text article, video, photographs. Cute, no seals or people were harmed.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:59 PM PST - 28 comments

She introduced pizza to Canadian television in 1957. She's still around! The adorable story of a dietitian who filmed a TV pilot about pizza. Come for the nippy cheese, stay for her delightful family.
posted by humbug at 7:26 PM PST - 23 comments

Recent micro-fiction An Obituary to Birdsong at speculative fiction/science fiction purveyor If There's Anyone Left. From Issue 2: Travel Guide to Spaceport Rest Stops. From Issue 1: It Is a Beautiful Day on the Internet, and You Are a Horrible Bot. And previously (in 2021) on MeFi.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:54 PM PST - 4 comments

Imagine if you can an intro that lasts 1 minute and 18 seconds long that has a whole world in it comprised in part 1 of thrilling runs, wah wah effects, gospel-style ooohhhh's, drums that are keeping up in kind and then in part 2 some long notes, more ooohhhh's and plenty of feeling. This bit of magic is in a song called Evil by Upchurch/Tennyson. Interested? There's a bit... [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 6:34 PM PST - 6 comments

In-jokes among friends, ill-advised Jackass audition tapes, a friend's unintentionally hilarious grandpa - it's the 00's-style musical animated series D00dbuffet, now with FOUR episodes! Waiting For My Dad, Brekfest, Tyler's Jackass Audition, and now, an episode entirely about watching TV. Keep an ear out for the particularly awesome songs by Sherby's voice actress Niachené. (previous mention - the show has also been featured on Channel 101, which is somehow still going! Next screening in January - they have an Instagram and Discord)
posted by BiggerJ at 6:04 PM PST - 2 comments

Masters of the Air Trailer Teaser, Combat Clip Historical Accuracy review and Explanation [8:25] [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:04 PM PST - 16 comments

"...The deeper I got into this particular subject, the more I came to realize that the government’s UFO cover-up has primarily been a cover-up motivated not by knowledge but of ignorance. It’s not that the government knows something it doesn’t want to tell us; it’s that the government is uncomfortable telling us it doesn’t know anything at all."

UFOs and the U.S. government: The push towards greater transparency
Transcript included [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:55 PM PST - 66 comments

I think he's only done two of these so far, but they're fascinating. Adam Savage has friends who have a CT scanner, and they're looking inside USB cables and EarPods to see what's going on in there. Also, looking at cheaper versions or even true fakes to see how they are different. Why Is Apple's USB-C Cable $130? [22m] and Fake Apple AirPod Pros Exposed! [31m] are a celebration of micro-electronics engineering AND an interesting glimpse into why you might want to pay more for what seems so inconsequential.
posted by hippybear at 12:45 PM PST - 49 comments

The Smile (the surprise pandemic side project of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and drummer Tom Skinner) have announced a new album to follow last year's auspicious debut. The title: Wall of Eyes -- a name that echoes a mysterious chapter in Radiohead lore and with an album cover that features imagery straight out of Kid A-era "blips". While the album isn't due until January (with a tour in March), enjoy a sneak peek with the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed video for the eponymous lead single, along with the achingly beautiful track "Bending Hectic" that was released last year (lyrics, live version). See also: "Teleharmonic", "Read the Room", "Under Our Pillows", "Friend of a Friend"
posted by Rhaomi at 11:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Dom DeLuise in "Eat This! The Video"
In the late 1980s, actor/comedian Dom DeLuise produced a series of cooking videos to promote Eat This…It’ll Make You Feel Better!—a book of Italian home cooking dishes inspired by his mother’s recipes. The food all looks delicious, but the real draw is Dom himself—a bottomless fount of ebullience, laughter, and generous good humor—whether preparing a recipe alongside his adoring (and adorable) wife, helping his 80-year-old “mamma” select a nice pork sausage at the neighborhood meat market, or just clowning around with the local workers and residents of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (the very streets where he was born and raised.) A lighthearted, nostalgia-inducing snapshot of a bygone era. [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:22 AM PST - 25 comments

"When History Happens: Lyta Gold reflects on the writings of Connie Willis and the heroes of history". Gold writes in Current Affairs magazine three years ago about the Blitz, COVID-19, pandemics, choices, systems, power and powerlessness, grief, trauma, advertising, war and progress. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 8:37 AM PST - 6 comments

This adds another layer: Beyond just being financially dominated, the user is further made lesser by the fact that they’re being dominated by something that isn’t even trying to seem human ... “A lot of kink and submission also has to do with ‘depersonalization.’ I think that being dominated by AI is just a way to feel further separated from one’s human identity,” Witt-Eden explained. “By interacting with an inanimate computer program, one also becomes an inferior object.” from Welcome to the Kinky World of AI Financial Domination [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:10 AM PST - 27 comments

Amazed beachgoer videos endangered cassowary emerging from ocean off Far North Queensland [text article with embedded video]. "From a distance it resembled a mythic monster but as it came closer in the tropical Queensland waters a stunned onlooker realised the struggling creature was a large bird — and not a seabird." Both cassowaries and emus are well known to enjoy a dip in shallow water (where their feet still touch the bottom) in hot weather, but it is very unusual to see them swimming in deep water.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:49 PM PST - 25 comments

There's a whole community of professionals online who trade tips about juggling jobs on the sly. They describe themselves as "overemployed" — and, they seem to be getting away with it. At its core, overemployment represents a new social contract being forged in an era that has left the old, unspoken agreement around work — "stick with us for life and we'll treat you like family" — in tatters.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:48 PM PST - 72 comments

What David Cameron’s return says about British politics - A man who caused many of Britain’s problems is now offering to fix them (Economist; ungated)
posted by cendawanita at 6:16 PM PST - 59 comments

“I don’t want to lie, it wasn’t like I saw God,” Fialka said, of reaching the book’s end. “It wasn’t a big deal.” “When people hear you’ve been a member of a book club that reads the same book every time you meet, most people go, ‘Why would you do that?’” said Bruce Woodside, a 74-year-old retired Disney animator who joined Fialka’s reading group in the 1990s. Though “it’s 628 pages of things that look like typographic errors”, said Woodside, who has been reading and re-reading Finnegans Wake since his late teens. “There’s a kind of visionary quality to it.”
posted by j.r at 5:55 PM PST - 14 comments

Looking back on the choir rehearsal that was early evidence in the U.S. that covid-19 spread through aerosols (Single Link 60 Minutes). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:01 PM PST - 33 comments

A toxic work environment at the FDIC, one of the nation’s top banking regulators, has for years caused employees to flee from an agency they say enabled and failed to punish bad behavior, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation based on interviews with FDIC employees as well as legal filings, union grievances, Equal Employment Opportunity complaints, emails, text messages and other internal documents. from Strip Clubs, Lewd Photos and a Boozy Hotel: The Toxic Atmosphere at Bank Regulator FDIC [WSJ; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:28 PM PST - 23 comments

How TwoSet Violin is shaking up classical music | Brett Yang + Eddy Chen | Australian Story [31m] is the story of two young immigrants who took their ambitions for classical performance careers and forged their own path together to global fame, pulling new fans into the genre along the way.
posted by hippybear at 10:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Gimlet on the Rocks After Spotify shut down two subsidiary podcast studios, n+1 considers the legacy of Gimlet Media.
posted by box at 9:22 AM PST - 39 comments

...it's time for your weekly Free Thread where you can talk about wtf, or that the Christmas season has officially started, or news reporting of places to socially visit in Worcestershire, or that Easter Eggs will be in the shops in 8 weeks, or just anything.
posted by Wordshore at 8:15 AM PST - 127 comments

Erin Kissane has some criticisms of Mastodon's culture and technology Since Elon Musk's enshittification of twitter, many new social platforms have sprung up. Mastodon, Bluesky, Cohost, Threads; to name a few. Even Metafilter got in on it by spinning up a MeFi Mastodon instance. Do you agree with the author's assessment of the state of Mastodon? Have you joined one of the new social media sites? How do your experiences stack up next to the author's?
posted by signsofrain at 7:55 AM PST - 109 comments

Fighting back against coastal erosion with innovative and environmentally friendly solutions. Residents along Victoria's coast are fighting back against coastal erosion with innovative and environmentally friendly solutions.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:54 AM PST - 8 comments

Bitter but true; her writing is not much taught or studied. A couple dozen dissertations center on her work, about a tenth as many as those analyzing Roth. “‘Fear of Flying’ had seemed an apprentice work to me when I wrote it,” Jong recalled, “and now it was to be my tombstone.” from Fear of Flying at 50 [NY Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:05 AM PST - 16 comments

Artist David Bull creates wonderful things. A Canadian wood block carver and printer based in Japan writes in an introduction page: "The prints you see around me in this photograph are from my 'Hyakunin Isshu' series - a set of 100 prints depicting poets of old Japan. The delightful. 'Easter eggs in Japanese woodblock prints' (yt) Previous post on Bull details his journal. Bulls YouTube channel is worth a gander.
posted by clavdivs at 9:56 PM PST - 14 comments

Detroit is the prime example but land speculation has been a blight for a very long time. SLNYT gift link - Detroit is now under 700 thousand people but it was built to handle 2 million so it really sprawls. It's a huge challenge to provide services and several asshole billionaires are sitting on hundreds (nope - many thousands) of empty buildings and vacant land. I don't know that Georgism is the answer but it's certainly interesting.
posted by leslies at 2:30 PM PST - 42 comments

Therein lies the overlap between NoFap and neo-Nazism—a hydraulic worldview that combines the self-help semen-retention ethos with the conspiracy theorizing of the Far Right, pushing an age-old “technology of the self” into the realm of the political fringe. This paranoid model of NoFap interlaces two modes of thought with distinct historical origins, combining a vision of self-improvement with infiltration anxiety: “they” are meeting in dimly lit rooms, plotting how to get your “precious bodily fluids” out of you. from No Fap: A Cultural History of Anti-Masturbation [LARB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:58 PM PST - 111 comments

"Blood flow in the jugular veins of six of the eleven ISS crew members they monitored had either stagnated or reversed direction" and "major surgery could result in the patient’s insides floating out," but, at least, “ there are good indications that erection and lubrication are not inhibited in space.”

The Bodily Indignities of the Space Life (NYT guest link; archive), by Kim Tingley.
posted by Rumple at 11:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Lost Doctor Who episodes found – but owner is reluctant to hand them to BBC. As Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary nears, a collector pleads for BBC to offer amnesty to those with recordings discarded by the corporation.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:55 AM PST - 12 comments

I just yesterday discovered that all three seasons of James Burke's history series Connections [Wikipedia] are available on the Internet Archive. That's 40 episodes for streaming or download. This comes along with news [ArsTechnica] that Curiosity Stream has a new short series Connections With James Burke [Trailer] now on their platform. Previously, from 2010.
posted by hippybear at 8:25 AM PST - 39 comments

“Bitcoin was always shot through with irony,” Popper said. “Yes, there was something ironic about a bitcoin proponent stealing bitcoin from another bitcoin proponent. But I think that was also in some ways a part of what defined bitcoin.” from The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:57 AM PST - 27 comments

Novelists and poets Bernardine Evaristo, Jeanette Winterson, Adam Roberts, YZ Chin, Harry Josephine Giles, Louisa Hall, Stephen Marche, Will Eaves, Nick Harkaway, Jo Callaghan, Philip Terry and Nathan Filer on how AI could rewrite the future (Guardian)
posted by protorp at 12:15 AM PST - 14 comments

What the world can learn from childcare in Finland [yt] - "Finland is a world leader when it comes to early years education. Childcare is affordable and nursery places are universally available in a system that puts children's rights at the centre of decision-making. Now the country is applying the same child-first thinking to paternity-leave policies in an attempt to tackle gender inequality in parenting."[1,2,3] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:49 PM PST - 40 comments

"Every square inch is covered in life": the ageing oil rigs that became marine oases. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:46 PM PST - 10 comments

WaPo: Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack that shocked and mystified the West [archive.is]

Roman Chervinsky, a decorated 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, people familiar with his role said, managing logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep-sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines.[...] Chervinsky did not act alone, and he did not plan the operation, according to the people familiar with his role, which has not been previously reported. The officer took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, said people familiar with how the operation was carried out. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about the bombing, which has strained diplomatic relations with Ukraine and drawn objections from U.S. officials.

Notably claims that President Zelensky was kept out of the loop, especially since Chervinsky is currently behind bars for an unrelated rogue operation. As with any anonymously-sourced story, to be taken with a grain of salt, though the Washington Post is somewhat more reliable than Seymour Hersh's Substack theorizing [previously].
posted by Rhaomi at 6:26 PM PST - 41 comments

A meta-analysis of stability and change in gender discrimination over time. How widespread is gender discrimination in hiring and selection, and have at least some human societies experienced meaningful change towards greater equality of opportunity? These intertwined questions represent two of the most theoretically rich, practically important, and politically controversial scientific issues of our time.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:23 AM PST - 19 comments

CW: Suicide
Texas Monthly brings you a story of human tragedy, turtle smuggling, and one U. S. Fish and Wildlife special agent trying to bring down a poaching dynasty.
posted by Hypatia at 6:12 AM PST - 8 comments

Do sentiment analysis on all the words in a novel, poem or play and plot the results against time, and it’s possible to see how the mood changes over the course of the text, revealing a kind of emotional narrative. While not a perfect tool – it looks at words in isolation, ignoring context – it can be surprisingly insightful when applied to larger chunks of text... from Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:43 AM PST - 95 comments

Welcome, new grill trainee, to the Waffle House family! Today in this training video, recorded by Area Vice President Greg Hall, you will be introduced to the "Magic Marker System," the only approved method of "marking" orders at Waffle House, and is absolutely used in all of its restaurants really honest. It isn't at all what those heathens at Huddle House and IHOP would call "batshit insane." Ready? Let's begin! [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 12:41 AM PST - 151 comments

The 50 Best RPGs of All Time . [alt link for anyone who may be blocked]
posted by Artw at 10:09 PM PST - 81 comments

Over the summer, comedian, musician, and voice actor Kate Micucci of Garfunkel & Oates (NSFW... also an ancient previously), Steven Universe, and one of my personal PBS Kids favs, Nature Cat, committed some light vandalism on what she thought was a temporary fence around a construction site. As it turns out, she had marked up the walls of what was to become a restaurant. She chronicled her attempt to square her trespass with the establishment on her TikTok, and as with most things she does, it is extremely adorable.
posted by Maaik at 9:19 PM PST - 8 comments

Long-beaked echidna rediscovered in remote Papua mountains after 60 years. Scientists rediscover a long-lost species of mammal described as having the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole, in Papua's Cyclops Mountains more than 60 years after it was last recorded.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:32 PM PST - 13 comments

The Secrets of the JFK Assassination (single link New York Magazine's Intelligencer). A dogged journalist finds evidence relating to Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement with intelligence agencies has been hidden, and public disclosure purposefully stymied. But some question if he goes too far theorizing beyond the new facts.
posted by Schmucko at 5:28 PM PST - 89 comments

Rushad Eggleston aka "The Cello Goblin" aaka Rushadicus has for no good reason escaped attention on the blue ...but just until today! Ear to the Ground: Rushad Eggleston —part mad-scientist, part musical genius. This mini-documentary explores the creative inspirations of a mind-boggling, genre-bending talent. [more inside]
posted by Fupped Duck at 2:59 PM PST - 18 comments

The latest video (YT) from Kurzgesagt, "We’ve scaled the complete timeline of our Earth’s life into our first animated movie! Every second shows about a million years of the planet’s evolution. Hop on a musical train ride and experience how long a billion years really is." Animation and music with occasional narration. [more inside]
posted by indexy at 1:23 PM PST - 30 comments

The Year Without Sunshine is a new story by Naomi Kritzer. It's about what happens after the really big disaster. Kritzer is perhaps best known for Cat Pictures Please, but her other works have been lauded on MetaFilter previously (previously; previously; previously - So Much Cooking; previously - Better Living Through Algorithms, plus her election guide); previously - Paradox; previously; all the previouslies).
posted by kristi at 12:49 PM PST - 20 comments

"Inside the small world of simulating other worlds" by Sarah Scoles examines the challenges for analog astronauts of emulating space habitats as well as the difficulty of re-entering society after their artificial isolation.
posted by autopilot at 7:21 AM PST - 4 comments

It's that rare thing - a New Yorker humour piece that's actually funny!
posted by Paul Slade at 6:54 AM PST - 54 comments

We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus . By Mefi's own Charles Stross [more inside]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:29 AM PST - 68 comments

Seen through devices such as ground-penetrating radar or magnetometry, it is preservation, not ruin, that is the rule. Even the most temporary village or house—even the briefest of human lives—leaves a signature behind in the soil. The unexpected lesson of these new instruments is that none of us ever fully disappear. from Scientists Have an Audacious Plan to Map the Ancient World Before It Disappears [Wired; ungated] See also: Agency of the Subsurface [Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG]
posted by chavenet at 12:23 AM PST - 7 comments

How Scientists Tracked the Movements of a 17,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth [Smithsonian magazine online]. Isotopes tell the epic tale of one ancient mammal’s odyssey across Alaska.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Between 1980 and 2005, Boston music journalist Larry Katz recorded over one thousand twenty-four interviews with established rock stars, local favorites, and industry pioneers. This article from Atlas Obscura, "Unearthing Gems in a Massive Archive of Rock Star Interviews", gives an overview of the vast cache, which is now hosted and searchable on Northeastern University's Digital Repository Service. Giordana Mecagni, head of special collections at Northeastern: “The most important part of these tapes is that they’re just really raw . . . they are unpolished and unvarnished.” [via jessamyn]
posted by not_on_display at 7:49 PM PST - 6 comments

Between 1909 and 1979, California ran the most active eugenics program in the United States. California passed a law in 2021 creating a program to compensate survivors of forced and involuntary sterilization. [more inside]
posted by arachnidette at 6:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Wisconsin couple has tens of thousands of old phones — and nobody to buy them. From the Wisconsin State Journal, the story of Ron and Mary Klappen, who've been selling vintage phone and phone equipment since 1971. But their business may now be at the end of the line.
posted by escabeche at 5:01 PM PST - 48 comments

We’re going to the movies. It’s going to be so fetch! [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:40 PM PST - 22 comments

Omegle founder Leif K-Brooks announces that he's shutting the site down, citing attacks on the service "based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users".
posted by hanov3r at 3:18 PM PST - 24 comments

Jezebel, the pioneering feminist website (previously, plus another 300-plus posts), will be shut down (NYT gift). [more inside]
posted by box at 2:24 PM PST - 56 comments

"Grand Royal" editor + 90s tastemaker Bob Mack has died. [more inside]
posted by ryanshepard at 1:12 PM PST - 8 comments

I know, I say, that you are a wholesaler who purchased this list of numbers. Yes, one says genially, that’s right. But I’m only on there because my younger brother died. Suddenly exposed, I blurt, The house is not for sale, then end the call. My name is on there, I tell the next wholesaler, because my younger brother died of an overdose at twenty-seven. Silence. (slGuernica)
posted by Kitteh at 1:01 PM PST - 11 comments

TLDR: Pulling off an advanced scam on Wikipedia and got blocked, made a new account and spent five years of pretending to be an indie singer, emotionally traumatizing the person who revealed their fake(!) identity, disappeared off the face of the earth. [X thread from depthsofwikipedia; nitter thread; wikisignpost summary: Admin bewilderingly unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was extremely banned in 2015]
posted by chavenet at 12:42 PM PST - 9 comments

More than 400 years ago, Galileo showed that many everyday phenomena—such as a ball rolling down an incline or a chandelier gently swinging from a church ceiling—obey precise mathematical laws. For this insight, he is often hailed as the founder of modern science. But Galileo recognized that not everything was amenable to a quantitative approach. Such things as colors, tastes and smells “are no more than mere names,” Galileo declared, for “they reside only in consciousness.”

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe? [Archive]

[more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:42 PM PST - 100 comments

"It turns out that Bradley Cooper is one of those all in, passionate, driven, focused people, not unlike Leonard Bernstein. And we didn’t know it at the beginning at all" Interview with Bernstein's daughter about the new film Maestro
posted by Seekerofsplendor at 12:12 PM PST - 9 comments

One article I read about the forthcoming release of a book based on Mal Evans archives (namesake of MAL, the software that Peter Jackson used to extract John Lennon’s vocals for Now and Then) mentions the papers “languishing in a publishing house basement.” Another article goes more in depth on how Leena Kutti, a temp was assigned to clear out a publisher’s basement storage area. She discovered the Beatles memorabilia, manuscript and diaries of Beatles gofer Mal Evans. To save what she found, she dropped a note to Yoko Ono. [more inside]
posted by larrybob at 11:49 AM PST - 6 comments

YouTube video game music analyst, 8-Bit Music Theory (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4), returns to Hyrule to discuss The Music of Zelda's Best Ending. (Contains major spoilers for the ending of Tears of the Kingdom.)
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 10:08 AM PST - 2 comments

Chef Jean-Pierre Bréhier shows us how to cut the most common vegetables.
posted by swift at 5:13 AM PST - 58 comments

Megan Thee Stallion - Cobra (Rock Remix) [feat. Spiritbox]
posted by signal at 3:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Guardian Long Reads profiles literary agent Andrew Wylie. "Wylie’s favourite spot is the chain restaurant Joe and the Juice, and he relished his own description of the cardboard bread and desiccated tomatoes in its turkey sandwich. 'You feel right next door to extreme poverty when you eat at Joe and the Juice, which is a comfortable place to be,' he said. First, though, he wanted to smoke, so we strolled through Midtown as he puffed away on one of the Cuban cigars he buys from a shop on St James’s Street in London’s Piccadilly. By habit or design, our walk brought us to the sleek glass exterior of the Penguin Random House headquarters, where we stood for a moment in front of a digital display advertising a novel called Loathe to Love You, the latest instalment of a bestselling series of romances about Silicon Valley types. Wylie was exuberantly disgusted. 'I mean, that speaks for itself,' he exclaimed."
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 1:41 AM PST - 21 comments

Upon entering the show, the consistent orange and golden hues of her paintings set the room aglow. A few of her subjects’ faces, inlayed with mother-of-pearl, catch the light like flecks of the moon. The paintings beckon us to plunge into their vaporous worlds while challenging us to decode intricate scenarios. from Remedios Varo in a Sphere of Her Own [hyperallergic] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Today, Minnesota's State Emblems Redesign Commission published 2,123 state flag designs and 398 state seal designs that have been submitted by the public for consideration by the commission. Earlier this year, Minnesota's legislature passed a bill to replace the state's current (racist and boring) flag and seal. The redesign commission is tasked with presenting a new flag and seal design to the legislature by January 1, 2024. [more inside]
posted by Lirp at 12:13 AM PST - 45 comments

Last month USA President Biden, following in the footsteps of Carter and Bush Jr., confused two European Sw* countries. Visit Sweden, Sweden’s National Tourism Organisation, put out an ELI5: Sweden is not Switzerland [2m] Jacques Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador to the USA, responded with Switzerland is not Sweden [3½m] [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:04 AM PST - 37 comments

Scientists at Deakin University discover how to mulch down old clothing into a pigment as part of an going project looking at textile waste solutions.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Camera Viewfinder Simulator. So you've got your fancy camera out of the box. Yay! Wait, you can now adjust focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and distance from your subject. How do those variables affect the picture? This website gives you sliders to wiggle all those variables and see the result.
posted by storybored at 6:40 PM PST - 8 comments

The long history of weather observation and prediction in the US (National Endowment for the Humanities)
posted by moonmilk at 5:12 PM PST - 13 comments

Indigo Girls' recording of Closer To Fine is not on Barbie: The Album. Given its prominence in the plot of the film, this is odd. Included as a bonus track on a special version of Barbie is Closer To Fine by Brandi & Catherine Carlile. And I will say, I was not expecting to be moved to tears by a song I've known for nearly 40 years. But here we are. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:26 PM PST - 17 comments

Lina Khan, US Federal Trade Commission Chair, sits down for an interview with Adam Conover (podcast version) to talk about anti-trust reform and her high-profile battles against monopoly power in America. They discuss her influential article, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox", the New Brandeis movement, the FTC's new merger guidelines, and how monopolies affect everything from insulin prices to non-compete clauses to anesthesiology to big tech and more.
posted by ourobouros at 12:00 PM PST - 18 comments

Hovercrafts! A short excerpt on their history from a longer documentary. They can rescue people and dogs. There's a museum. You can buy a hovercraft or build one. How about the science? Ride one from Portsmouth to Ryde (more and a documentary). The US Navy uses them as landing craft. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 10:30 AM PST - 33 comments

Society has goals which conflict with banks being good at banking “ Plausibly, we should decide to stop doing the thing that no one wants us to do. And, as a particular thing which could help unlock that: if one cares a lot about the experience of people at the socioeconomic margins, one should perhaps spend less time fulminating about greedy capitalists and spend more time reading Requests For Public Comment by relatively obscure parts of the administrative state.” [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 5:08 AM PST - 88 comments

Standing in the shade of the old Copper Kettle, the full force of what I experienced as a child suddenly returned. Something had never felt quite right about Ocean City: I could never really be a part of it, however much I wanted to. There was nowhere for someone like me, with my queer desires, to go in America’s Greatest Family Resort, except under or out. from Who Killed the Fudge King? [Atavist; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Composer, David Bruce - who's prior instinctive answer to this question would be "no!" - spends a week trying to challenge himself to like it and understand the appeal. As part of the process he wrote "Field".
posted by rongorongo at 1:22 AM PST - 41 comments

Website game. Exactly what it says on the tin. [more inside]
posted by zaixfeep at 11:28 PM PST - 52 comments

Completely new fish species found in plain sight on Great Barrier Reef. The Lady Elliot shrimp goby is the first new fish species discovered on the reef since 2019, much to the delight of the researchers who stumbled across it by chance.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:53 PM PST - 6 comments

Q: "What was that romance book with the Nazi hero?" A: "Which one?" In 2021, the Vivian Awards, the romance world’s biggest honour, came under fire for giving one of its awards to a historical inspirational romance about a Confederate officer who participated in the massacre at Wounded Knee. In 2015, a finalist for the Best Inspirational Romance featured a Nazi concentration camp commandment falling for a Jewish prisoner, with both converting to Christianity as part of their happy-ever-after. Title from the comments section.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:19 PM PST - 38 comments

Election Day 2023 (NYT gift) Key races include the KY governorship, with D incumbent Andy Beshear taking on Trump-endorsed David Cameron, elections to control the VA legislature, and issues to protect abortion rights and legalize marijuana in Ohio. There are other statewide elections in CO, ME, MS, and PA, and local elections including the mayor of Houston, a RI House seat, and the entire NJ state legislature.
posted by box at 5:04 PM PST - 115 comments

On New Year’s Day 2022, more than 200 miles off the north-west coast of Scotland, Roman Titov's 33ft Colin Archer-type cutter Vperyod was pitchpoled and dismasted in atrocious conditions. In this account, translated from the Russian by singlehanded sailor Roger Taylor, Roman describes how he spent 17 days under jury rig bringing Vperyod to safety at Ullapool.
posted by ambrosen at 4:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Chamberlain, who makes the MyQ garage door remote control software, is locking out free tools.

The Chamberlain Group — owners of the MyQ smart garage door controller tech — has announced it’s shut off all “unauthorized access” to its APIs. The move breaks the smart home integrations of thousands of users who relied on platforms such as Homebridge and Home Assistant to do things like shut the garage door when they lock their front door or flash a light if they leave their door open for 10 minutes, or whatever other control or automation they wanted to do with the device they bought and paid for.

--from The Verge [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 12:13 PM PST - 111 comments

Gorgeous...
posted by dfm500 at 10:10 AM PST - 25 comments

If you got in a taxi in New York City between 1997 and 2003, you were greeted with the recorded voice of a celebrity reminding you to buckle up. David ‘Ironic Sans’ Friedman tells the story of NYC’s talking taxi program [23:35]. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:07 AM PST - 3 comments

The interactive Medieval Murder Maps give unique insight into violence, and justice in late medieval London, York, and Oxford.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:46 AM PST - 5 comments

A very special property in British Columbia's Agricultural Land Reserve.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:26 AM PST - 20 comments

In a move reminiscent of the collapse of Deadspin, gaming website The Escapist has seen a mass departure of the video creation team after the firing of EIC Nick Calandra, including Zero Punctuation host and creator Yahtzee Croshaw. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:45 AM PST - 38 comments

Aveline and Michio were not businesspeople; they were ideologues. They taught that their diet could cure basically any malady, cancer in particular. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:19 AM PST - 52 comments

“We were hearing how successful .tk was. We were bigger than China,” says Vitale. “We were surprised, but we didn’t know what it meant for Tokelau. What was more meaningful at the time was that we were getting money to help the villages. We didn’t know about the other side of it then.” from How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime [MIT Technology Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:50 AM PST - 6 comments

Ding A Lings Do Stupid Things: Australian Public Service Announcements of the 1970s and 1980s with catchy songs created by a commercial TV station. Other Public Service Announcements in this series include Vitamins; Why We Eat; and Dirt and Germs.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:32 PM PST - 13 comments

Any movie scene, rewritten like a Michael Bay movie [via mefi projects] Do you feel like most movies have a serious lack of explosions? A troubling shortage of Blackhawk helicopters? Who among us hasn't watched Titanic and thought, "What this movie really needs is a mechanical shark with a machine gun on it"? Don't worry, we got you. Just enter your favorite movie scene and our team of tiny transformers will re-direct it like Michael Bay.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:54 PM PST - 78 comments

Devo, 1977 It's your Monday free thread!
posted by Gorgik at 8:12 PM PST - 57 comments

The peninsula of Reykjanes, which is home to the town of Keflavik as well as the famous "Blue Lagoon" geothermal spa, has seen a number of recent earthquakes as well as a measurable movement of ground level centered on the mountain known as Þorbjörn. The lava ledge growing below the peninsula is estimated to be one metre thick and six million cubic metres large. Evacuation plans have already been circulated for the towns nearest Þorbjörn, however experts fear that fast moving magma could isolate the residents of the peninsula without power or clear escape routes. [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:09 PM PST - 37 comments

"The Web Revival is about reclaiming the technology in our lives and asking what we really want from the tools we use, and the digital experiences we share....The goal is to find what was best about the early web and what is best about new technologies and merge the two into a model for tomorrow; while kicking all the Zuckerberg's and Musk's to the curb so we can get on with our lives. The citizens of the web deserve more respect than to be boxed into cubicles, limited to 280 characters, studied and rebranded." (Melon's Thoughts, on melonking.net, via Web Curios.) [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:32 PM PST - 34 comments

The celebration at the Bored Ape Yacht Club Conference for owners of the NFT left a number of attendees with significant eye injuries from the lasers and black lights used at the dance party. [Edit: non-paywalled report at Variety]
posted by interogative mood at 3:24 PM PST - 63 comments

"It’s true. I’ve been working on this blog post for ten years.

You see, I’ve been slowly buying up nearly seventy super rare issues of a 80s/90s gadget catalog that meant the world to me growing up. And in the process, I’ve uncovered the secret history of this lost copywriting art.

PLUS, as a bonus, I’ve scanned every single issue — so you can read them all." Cabel Sasser has written a blog post that showcases many many fine nerdy gadgets, the things that dreams were made of for people of a certain age: The DAK Catalog.
posted by jessamyn at 3:13 PM PST - 41 comments

Good penguin, naughty penguin: Inside the incredible drama at the National Aquarium
posted by Sebmojo at 2:53 PM PST - 10 comments

This is Europe's JFK Mystery is a half-hour documentary by Harry Clennon and Philip Brain about the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. It gives context for who Palme was, sets out the events as clearly as is possible, and presents the three leading theories for who killed him.
posted by Kattullus at 11:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Word's spell-checker and grammar features have become subtle arbiters of language, too. Although seemingly trivial, these tools "promote a sense of consistency and correctness", says Wolf, and this uniformity comes at the cost of writing diversity. "Writers, when prompted by the software's automated norms, might unintentionally forsake their unique voices and expressions." This becomes even more invasive when you look at the role and impact of autocorrect and predictive text. from The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed how we use language [BBC]
posted by chavenet at 11:45 AM PST - 47 comments

New book analyzes the United State's response to the COVID pandemic. Why did so many countries follow China's lead in strict lockdowns? Were lockdowns helpful in averting excess deaths during the COVID pandemic? What can this teach us about reacting to new public health emergencies? The Big Fail, by Vanity Fair's Beth McLean and the New York Times Joe Nocera. As suggested by the title, they think things could have gone better.
posted by hermanubis at 10:53 AM PST - 151 comments

Some recent comics by naturalist and illustrator Rosemary Mosco (previously on MeFi). Types of mushrooms: creepy but tasty. Yellow-rumped warbler poem. The Sailor Moon version of bird molts. Canada Goose, a role model for our times. Molting Northern Cardinal aka the frightful molt-demon of the Cursed Abyss (photos of an actual cardinal in molt).
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Drunk Grizzlies Keep Getting Hit By Trains in Montana (Cowboy State Daily)
posted by box at 7:27 AM PST - 19 comments

Do rats have an imagination? An intriguing new study suggests that they are able to hold memories of places in their minds, and navigate through them mentally, by way of training them in a VR arena while attached to a brain-machine interface. (Bonus Humanities Moment: Rats Live On No Evil Star by Anne Sexton.)
posted by mittens at 6:12 AM PST - 16 comments

There was a 2012 MetaFlap about privatizing car parking in NYC and Chicago. Turns out that it has been a great deal [ExecSumm] - [Fuller Story from Jalopnik] for investors Morgan-Stanley and the Sheik of Abu Dhabi. Hanlon's Razor applies? [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:25 AM PST - 24 comments

The saga of the LCS is a vivid illustration of how Congress, the Pentagon and defense contractors can work in concert — and often against the good of the taxpayers and America’s security — to spawn what President Dwight D. Eisenhower described in his farewell address as the “military industrial complex.” from The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship” [ProPublica]
posted by chavenet at 12:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Meet 5 of Australia’s tiniest mammals. One mammal, the long-tailed planigale, can weigh less than a 10-cent coin. But it’s ferocious, bringing down far larger prey with persistent, savage biting to the head and neck.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:24 PM PST - 10 comments

Puzzmo is webgame site that I came across somewhere on the Internet. I was delighted at the prospect of having to solve a puzzle in order to get access to the site at this time! Turns out I'm really bad at Really Bad Chess but got in anyway. [more inside]
posted by juliebug at 5:09 PM PST - 49 comments

Twenty Minutes of Adorable Puppies

Need I say more? [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:20 PM PST - 14 comments

I had to know more about how this rustic wonder was created, so I reached out to Logan Bench, CTO of the MAiZE, a firm out of Utah ... that designs sophisticated custom mazes for over 300 farmer clients across the U.S. and Canada. We talked about the art and science of maze creation, the future of the “agritainment” industry, Bench’s personal design Holy Grail, and just how a blank, tasseled canvas of corn makes him feel. (Slate - archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 3:24 PM PST - 16 comments

On November 15, 1966, five police officers entered the Psychedelic Shop, in San Francisco, and purchased a thin volume of poetry, “The Love Book,” for a dollar. This sequence of erotic poems celebrating a woman’s sexual pleasure was by the Beat poet Lenore Kandel. As soon as the money exchanged hands, the deputy arrested the clerk for selling obscene material.

–The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial by Joy Lanzendorfer. A poem, and another, and some poems and prose. Here are videos of Kandel reading a poem and being interviewed.
posted by Kattullus at 1:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Two years ago, a kayaker saw a sheep on a beach at the bottom of cliffs on the north-east coast of Scotland. Jillian Turner said "She saw us coming and was calling to us along the length of the beach following our progress until she could go no further". Turner kayaked the route again recently, saw the sheep again and went to the media for help. The sheep has been rescued by a group of farmers, including The Hoof GP and TheSheepGame. They posted a video about it. Since then, the sheep (Fiona), has been moved to a secret location after activists protested. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 12:46 PM PST - 30 comments

CBN, RBS, and not really the BBC Mockumentary or pseudodocumentary Nuclear Confrontation between Russia and NATO (2018) uses fake/semiplausible BBC news programs and archival footage to tell the story of how such a conflict might occur.

It's the latest example of the genre. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM PST - 35 comments

What it says on the tin This BBC video clip is from Spy in the Ocean, narrated by David Tennant. Thanks to hidden cameras and robotic “spy creatures,” the four-part nature series can explore animal intelligence up close. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 3:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Equally refreshing is the fact that le Carré's protagonists are not the dashing heroes of typical spy narratives; instead, they grapple with ethical dilemmas, are haunted by personal sacrifices, and left run down and poverty-stricken by the relentless psychological toll of their work. Leamas is genuinely one of British fiction's most hopeless and pessimistic characters. from Why John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the ultimate spy novel [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:18 AM PST - 37 comments

... by The Guardian. With YouTube links to let you see and/or hear the performances for yourself. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 AM PST - 32 comments

125-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins. Paleontologists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather evolution. Previous studies suggested that ancient feathers had a different composition to the feathers of birds today. The new research, however, reveals that the protein composition of modern-day feathers was also present in the feathers of dinosaurs and early birds, confirming that the chemistry of feathers originated much earlier than previously thought.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:18 PM PST - 2 comments

‘Heat-proofing’ coral: Aussie discovery throws a lifeline to world’s dying reefs. Australian biologists are using "assisted evolution" to breed heat tolerant algae in an attempt to make coral reefs more resistant to bleaching.
posted by neonamber at 6:16 PM PST - 10 comments

One of the recurring motifs of Obi Zulol’s brand mythology is that it helped build modern Tajikistan. In the country’s journey from post-Soviet disarray and violence to the ostensible stability of today (NB: it scores poorly on the Democracy Index), this company brought economic might, jobs, and a sense of national pride that you could literally taste in the water. In contrast to Coke’s many efforts to get involved in local economies, RC Cola’s role in Tajikistan this—as an international corporation—appears to be minimal. from Why is RC Cola popular in Tajikistan? [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:18 PM PST - 17 comments

Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce. (Gift link)
posted by girlmightlive at 12:31 PM PST - 63 comments

A Winter of Low COVID Vaccination Will Probably Seem Fine – Until we start to see the longer-term consequences of missed shots Missed vaccinations still translate into more days spent suffering, more chronic illnesses, more total lives lost—an enormous burden to put on an already stressed health-care system
posted by folklore724 at 11:20 AM PST - 129 comments

Hundreds of bands you have never heard of...
"San Francisco Public Library’s Bay Beats is a brand-new local music collection that celebrates and supports the Bay Area music community. This online showcase features the exciting musical talent in our own Bay Area backyard." [more inside]
posted by dfm500 at 10:46 AM PST - 3 comments

VFTTD is an acronym for Villains Falling To Their Deaths. And it's a Youtube playlist (thirty strong and counting) of, you guessed it, villains falling to their deaths in horrific yet somehow mesmerizing and stress relieving ways. WARNING: completely concerned with villains falling to their deaths, often including some preliminary violence, also actual landings. SPOILER ALERT: shows how many movies you may not have already seen more or less resolve themselves with their villains falling to their deaths.
posted by philip-random at 8:37 AM PST - 41 comments

By the end of the 1990s, capital had triumphed and consolidated a new neoliberal spirit of the laws. But, as Maier makes clear, neoliberalism was not about expanding the reach of the market, the rallying cry of its advocates, per se. Rather, it was about shifting the income distribution from labor to capital. This was to be done by any means necessary. While it sometimes required deregulation and the removal of the state, it just as frequently required the use of state power – especially American power – and the legitimacy conferred by recommendations from Harvard experts. from The Evolution of Modern Political Power [Project Syndicate; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:17 AM PST - 10 comments

Galápagos Giant Tortoises Are Ecosystem Engineers. A decades-long project shows how the reptiles are changing the island of Española.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:13 PM PST - 5 comments

Artists Seek Removal of Sculpture from National Gallery Show in Protest of US Funding to Israel Artists Nicholas Galanin and Merritt Johnson said on Friday night that they had asked the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to remove a sculpture from its galleries as a protest against the US’s plans to provide funding to Israel. The sculpture, titled Creation with her Children (2017), is one of the biggest artworks in “The Land Carries Our Ancestors,” a survey of contemporary Native American art curated by artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. It marks the first time in 30 years that the National Gallery of Art has devoted a show to Indigenous art. [more inside]
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 8:45 PM PST - 32 comments

Notable Sandwiches #75: Grilled Cheese
posted by Artw at 4:27 PM PST - 82 comments

A really brief instruction manual, kept up to date with phone numbers and quick scripts. Let your US politicians know you care. Click here to get started. Ready to start making calls? Find an issue
posted by aniola at 3:43 PM PST - 16 comments

Big news from the world of birding. The American Ornithological Society has announced that it will start changing the names of birds named after humans. Related to the desire of many birding groups to get rid of the Audubon name, this was driven by the need to stop honoring Confederate generals, enslavers, and other racists. The AOS decided to remove all eponyms rather than argue the merits of each individual person and will be rolling these changes out over time. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 12:46 PM PST - 78 comments

I'll confess to not having watched Saturday Night Live at all this season but this sketch—Washington's Dream—is damn funny. The host was Nate Bargatze, who is a comedian I've never heard of, and he also had a funny opening monologue.
posted by bbrown at 11:24 AM PST - 135 comments

Canadian metal quartet, Spiritbox, released The Fear of Fear today—a mix of metalcore, progressive metal, alternative metal, and electronic music—to very positive reviews from KillYourStereo, Boolin Tunes, Crypticrock, and Distorted Sound Magazine. [more inside]
posted by signal at 11:07 AM PST - 2 comments

World Origami Days (every year from Oct 24 through Nov 11). Title from a winner of @peacecraneproject's smallest crane contest. On the other end of the size spectrum, via British Origami, how many people do you need to fold a giant crane? The entries so far for this year's theme: dragon. I like Jo Nakashima's dragon design. WOD archives from 2022. #MyWOD on social media (note that WOD also stands for workout for the day?; third party IG viewer for those not logged into IG). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Evolutionary scholars might be surprised to see sexist worldviews reinforced by the ‘dual mating strategy’ and ‘sexy son’ hypotheses, or by the latest research on the ovulatory cycle. The manosphere has its own version of evolutionary psychology, mingling cutting-edge scientific theories and hypotheses with personal narratives, sexual double standards and misogynistic beliefs.

After analysing this phenomenon, this article suggests ways to mitigate it.
posted by Rumple at 9:51 AM PST - 18 comments

"He presented himself as an enlightened humanist, offering the option of a dignified death to those who had no other recourse." (slToronto life) CW: suicide
posted by Kitteh at 8:15 AM PST - 36 comments

The dreams of Gaza's kids (NYT SL)
posted by bluesky43 at 7:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Anne Keast-Butler, the director of GCHQ, tells the BBC that the risks from AI are unknown; Elon Musk tells Rishi Sunak that AI will put an end to work.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 5:45 AM PST - 48 comments

Literary It Girls may have the standard markers of what we think of when we think of an It Girl: they’re beautiful, stylish, and social, with a certain je ne sais quoi. But what really makes them influential is the creative ways they stage and elevate their work — both on the page and in persona. from The Makings of a Literary It Girl
posted by chavenet at 12:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Sharks on a plane: An ambitious international project is helping save this endangered species. A world-first shark rewilding project is helping the endangered zebra shark, but it could also provide a template to help save other threatened marine species.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:44 PM PST - 1 comment

Jury finds Sam Bankman-Fried guilty. Not a big surprise for anybody who has been casually following the whole crypto "industry" or trial. For newcomers, FTX is (was?) a cryptocurrency exchange well known for their explosive growth and valuation and Sam Bankman-Fried (commonly abbreviated as SBF) was hailed as the genius CEO. A lot of people wondered how they managed it, and unsurprisingly, it turns out the magic ingredient was fraud. Some previous hits involving FTX include SBF describing their business model as essentially a ponzi scheme and being hailed as a visionary by Sequoia Capital for hit pitch while playing League of Legends. His inability to shut up and dig himself into a deeper hole can't have helped.
posted by ndr at 5:27 PM PST - 113 comments

Bob Dylan with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Orchard Park NY July 4 1986
What it says on the tin. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:32 PM PST - 19 comments

The Beatles have released their final single, Now And Then [4m]. With posthumous contributions from two departed members, the surviving duo got together with AI-based audio processing technology to bring out this final track from The Fab Four, only a few months shy of the 60th anniversary of their appearances on Ed Sullivan. Here's a short film from The Beatles about how this track was created. [12m30s] Previously.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 PM PST - 76 comments

Legendary drummer Bill Bruford has an official YouTube channel , and it features 140+ archival videos covering his 40-year career as a rock and jazz musician. You can start with a 1972 BBC look at Yes in their prime, watch a 1976 clip from his time in Genesis, enjoy a 1982 King Crimson concert from Munich, listen to ABWH play Close to the Edge in 1989, and finish with his jazz group Earthworks from Chile in 2002. Most videos feature personal descriptions from Bruford that provide additional context for each performance. [more inside]
posted by JZig at 2:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is suing RealPage and 14 of the city's biggest landlords, which he dubbed a "cartel," for allegedly inflating rent costs based on calculations from RealPage Revenue Management Software. Big landlords are colluding to raise rents, D.C. lawsuit alleges, April Rubin, Axios. Previously. [more inside]
posted by kristi at 11:41 AM PST - 23 comments

Investigative journalist David Forbes (previously) writes on the US gun control debate: "As a journalist I've investigated police departments for over 20 years. The reality is that they will not enforce gun laws against white supremacists, the far-right or the kind of abusive guy that makes up 95 percent of mass shooters on any scale that matters. They do not do so now and they won't in the future." Her post "A reality check on cops and gun laws", published June 5, 2022, aims to rebut assumptions "often held unconsciously by people who are in good faith trying to find an answer to appalling violence." Content warning: police and gun violence, hate crimes, domestic abuse. Disclaimer: I know David Forbes and she is a friend of mine. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 11:37 AM PST - 25 comments

But the ensuing tsunami of spandex proved to be too much of a good thing, and the demands of churning out so much programming taxed the Marvel apparatus. (slVariety Magazine) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 11:15 AM PST - 68 comments

"Perhaps the inner life of these patients tells us something more universal about the search for meaning: For most of us, self-worth depends on being useful to others. And we, like Harry, are always struggling to find human connection—but he and others with psychosis might get that need met more easily by communicating telepathically with fictional strangers than in person with family or friends. As Isham said, “This is a very misunderstood group of people.”"
posted by Tehhund at 10:13 AM PST - 22 comments

Healthcare activist Ady Barkan has died of complications of ALS at the age of 39. [more inside]
posted by Lyn Never at 7:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Slate.com reveals how talk show writers formulate each night's topical jokes. "When you have to write more than 100 topical jokes each day, there’s no time to wait for inspiration to strike. You need a reliable algorithm." (SLYT)
posted by zaixfeep at 7:48 AM PST - 31 comments

"More than 1.5 billion years ago, a momentous thing happened: Two small, primitive cells became one. Perhaps more than any event — barring the origin of life itself — this merger radically changed the course of evolution on our planet. One cell ended up inside the other and evolved into a structure that schoolkids learn to refer to as the 'powerhouse of the cell': the mitochondrion. This new structure provided a tremendous energetic advantage to its host — a precondition for the later evolution of complex, multicellular life. But that’s only part of the story." Where the heck did all those structures inside complex cells come from? by Viviane Callier, in Knowable Magazine.
posted by mittens at 6:20 AM PST - 30 comments

The home movies served as a stern reminder to conceal the parts of myself that seemed to bother people. I lived under the assumption that I’d make Dad and others explode in anger if I wasn’t careful. So I tiptoed through life, aware that my obsessive enthusiasm could set people off like a bomb. from Off Camera
posted by chavenet at 1:43 AM PST - 45 comments

Executive Function Theft. The concept of executive function theft, where one entity offloads things they consider unimportant onto some other entity they consider unimportant, freeing up their own time at the expense of loading someone else down with having to do more, and expend more of their own executive function to deal with the increased workload that has been thrust upon them.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:27 PM PST - 56 comments

The process to award the 2034 World Cup will have only a single bidder: Saudi Arabia. Morocco, Portugal and Spain as the only bidders for the 2030 edition, were awarded the tournament, but with games also to be played in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. This will create a “unique global footprint” for football (G. Infantino, head of FIFA) as well as substantial global climate footprint. Does this represent an example of football’s potential to unite a divided world? Or does the addition of South American sites allow FIFA to tick off not just two but three continents against its commitment to cycling through the world’s major landmasses? [more inside]
posted by biffa at 3:59 PM PST - 40 comments

All 243 of Taylor Swift’s Songs, Ranked [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:40 PM PST - 90 comments

Decoding Saqqara, the Secret Hieroglyphs of the Pyramids [50m] is a documentary that sort of takes its time. It starts with describing Egypt and pyramids, and then various burial sites, and then it gets into its meat. Cutting edge technology that are used to create views of the necropolis and many other technologies including a lot of human effort, and suddenly they're rebuilding a wall destroyed millennia ago and reading the text off of it. It's a pretty astounding use of technology to recover lost history.
posted by hippybear at 2:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Generate your own knuckle tattoos. Made by Kat Michaela.
posted by Cash4Lead at 1:23 PM PST - 89 comments

The hidden culprit behind America’s boarded-up storefronts
posted by Artw at 11:46 AM PST - 81 comments

Beautiful Mind [slyt] is about that moment when you find someone who really understands you. The shock of recognition. Or perhaps the schemes that become possible? [more inside]
posted by otherchaz at 11:43 AM PST - 5 comments

"What is magic for me is ... it's so hard to say ... but it's the feeling that my own heartbeat, my own breathing, is as a response to and in parallel with a heartbeat and a breath that is already out there." Poet Harry Owen on finding magic in the natural world, and in the seasons of our lives. (SLYT)
posted by swift at 5:37 AM PST - 2 comments

Everything was going as it had to and therefore as it should. What could I do about it? I got into bed and watched the sleet strike my window, grateful to be inside for a while longer. Then I thought some more about Jesse’s blanket. That way I could add another paragraph to this essay, and maybe earn an extra fifty cents. from Four Men by William T Vollman, about homelessness, alcoholism and the death of his daughter. [Harper’s; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:39 AM PST - 11 comments