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Consider yourself warned. Australia, right now, feels a little biblical. There was a terrible drought, then the worst bush fires ever recorded. A flood came next. Now it’s the turn of the mice.. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:01 PM PST - 33 comments

World’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge Arouca 516 opens in Portugal. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:51 PM PST - 46 comments

Alasdair Becket-King and James Shakeshaft are the Loremen! Every week they unearth some aspect of UK folklore and discourse on it in a very rambling fashion, then they rate the story according to absurdly arbitrary criteria. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:40 PM PST - 10 comments

Photographs (scroll down). Billionaire entrepreneur, art connoisseur, social innovator, lunar enthusiast (application link to join his 2023 SpaceX voyage), and author of the most re-tweeted tweet, Yusaku Maezawa collects 16th-century Oribe ware; the car he commissioned has a green and cream color scheme inspired by the Japanese pottery. Per R-R p.r.: The upper part is finished in Oribe Green, a fully Bespoke colour created exclusively for the client; in an unusual move, Rolls-Royce has made the paint available for use on the client’s private jet. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:55 AM PST - 36 comments

After working non-stop for months, a Dallas-based pen-tester/infosec guy suddenly... couldn't, anymore. And he's finally found out why. (SLTwitter, Threadreader version is here)
posted by hanov3r at 10:10 AM PST - 104 comments

"Meta-creators (creators who create about creating) say the answer is in their [product and/or service]" "If meta-creators were good, it would show in the long-term success of their followers. They could point to specific cases where followers increased their quantity and quality of work by applying what they learned. Their followers would credit the meta-creators as the source of their success. This rarely happens. Instead, meta-creators “prove” their success through the metrics of money, subscribers, followers, and attention, none of which help you create more." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 8:50 AM PST - 35 comments

The addiction researcher [and heroin user] Carl Hart argues against the distinction between hard and soft drugs. He describes using heroin in carefully managed doses, with product he trusts, in the company of friends, at times when being in an altered state does not interfere with his life, and achieving “a dreamy light sedation, free of stress.” [more inside]
posted by craniac at 8:24 AM PST - 65 comments

Before he was Philip Roth’s biographer, Blake Bailey taught the eighth grade. His students say he made them feel special. They worshipped him. They trusted him. He used it all against them. [Content Warning: Mentions of rape, sexual manipulation]
posted by chinese_fashion at 6:39 AM PST - 83 comments

For all his fancy education Boris Johnson is among those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 30 years ago, 450km NW of London a sketchy politician got his home re-decorated as a nixxer. Sometime later [2005] when the story broke "The Taoiseach then insisted Mr Callely had opted not to exercise his right to make a personal statement to the house." And two years after that [2007], the same Taoiseach appointed Callely to the Senate after the latter was rejected by the electorate. Senator Callely continued to finagle his finances and [2014] was eventually jailed.
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:18 AM PST - 21 comments

Offsetting emissions is hot right now. The carbon capture market is expected to grow to $6bn by 2026. The industry’s fast-accelerating growth has attracted a number of new climate organisations to the field — but not all of them are in the business for the right reasons. In a recent expose, Disney, BlackRock and J.P. Morgan were all found to have invested in carbon offset projects that in reality had no additional positive impact on the climate. What these firms didn’t know was that one of their chosen offsetting climate organisations, Nature Conservancy Group, claimed to be preserving forests that were in fact never threatened to begin with.
posted by folklore724 at 12:39 AM PST - 27 comments

The Daily Beast has obtained a confession letter that Joel Greenberg wrote after asking Roger Stone to help him obtain a pardon.

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”

[more inside]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 8:37 PM PST - 99 comments

How and why we talk about it, though, needs to change. The modern nation of Lebanon might be only 100 years old, but the wine trade here has been around for more than 5,000 years, thanks to a longitudinal coastline that runs the entire length of the country.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:56 PM PST - 19 comments

In 2004, George Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - but Prince TOTALLY stole the show with an epic solo during a performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". 17 years later, the original RRHOF broadcast director for that night has released a directors' cut of that performance, which puts the spotlight right smack on Prince, where it belongs. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:06 PM PST - 93 comments

No, the beauty of the televised version is simple. It’s because you can pluck out that existing final punchline, endlessly used over the years, and give it to Bernard. What was just a bit of satire, becomes that same bit of satire… and something greater. That line reflects as much of Bernard as a character than any original line given to him ever did. The genius of Jay & Lynn is clearly evident, and that genius wasn’t in swiping a piece of material. It was swiping a piece of material… and using it in an extraordinarily precise way. From What The Papers Say by John Hoare
posted by chavenet at 3:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Beyond the Beyond was Bruce Sterling's blog at Wired Magazine. If you search for Wired + Bruce Sterling, you'll get an index of some of his traditional pieces for the magazine. But you have to dig around to find this stuff, which Sterling describes as "more of a novelist's "commonplace book," sometimes almost a designer mood board." The blog was discontinued in July, 2020, after eighteen years, or as BS put it, "old enough to vote." [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 1:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Actor Noel Clarke accused of groping, harassment and bullying by 20 women. Extremely uncomfortable and important reading. It's not for me to comment on anything in the article, the words of the victims speak for themselves.
posted by feelinglistless at 1:32 PM PST - 26 comments

This is Love (slyt) is one of just about every clip Miss PJ Harvey has made through her career, remastered (YT play). From Maria Mochnacz's Man-Size and 50 Foot Queenie to Sophie Muller's Stories from the City clips (all slyt). [more inside]
posted by kfholy at 12:21 PM PST - 20 comments

The US Post was the underlying circuitry of western expansion. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 11:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Businesses in Christiansburg, Virginia, are embroiled in a sign war. [Roanoake Times] [more inside]
posted by invokeuse at 11:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Fastest PB&J winner? (SLTwitter) She saw a record to be broken, and she figured out how to break it.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 11:02 AM PST - 62 comments

Arundhati Roy reflects on India's COVID-19 catastrophe. About one year after her description of the pandemic as a portal. CW for suffering, death, disease. (SLGuardian) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 9:35 AM PST - 13 comments

Three years ago, John stole a monkey from Wellington Zoo. He did his time. And now, New Zealand Today follows up. John is out and doing ok. Warning: contains profanity, and strong New Zealand accents.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:20 AM PST - 37 comments

A thoughtful discussion of American nomadism/vanlife in the context of the success of Nomadland.
posted by domdib at 1:14 AM PST - 30 comments

Neglected by art history for decades, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the painter’s sister-in-law, is finally being recognized as the force who opened the world’s eyes to his genius. NYT (Paywall)/Archive.org
posted by ellieBOA at 11:48 PM PST - 6 comments

Wellington-based graphic designer Tim Denee (previously) posted his play-through of Thousand Year Old Vampire (previously) [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 7:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Astronaut has died.
posted by clavdivs at 7:20 PM PST - 68 comments

Buying a PC with Dell: My Journey Into Hell by EyePatchWolf [ThreadReader]
posted by chavenet at 3:06 PM PST - 243 comments

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told BI he has an unfindable Instagram account.
This instantly summoned Ashley Feinberg, and the inevitable occurred.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:43 PM PST - 25 comments

Solo acoustic guitar is changing. It's about time. [more inside]
posted by blob at 2:40 PM PST - 29 comments

“The fear of libel costs can have a chilling effect on freelancers with no legal protection." In the previous five years, between five hundred and one thousand public interest stories had failed to reach the public because of constraints on freelancers. In June 2020, Danielle Kurin, an archaeologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sued Michael Balter, a science journalist, for defamation after he published a series of blog posts about allegations of Title IX violations and sexual misconduct against her and her former husband, respectively. She’s asking for $18 million in damages. Balter has no libel insurance, despite the contentious nature of his work. This is not for lack of trying. His application for specialized media insurance through the Authors Guild was declined due to the controversial content of his reporting. Balter is being represented pro bono by lawyers and has the backing of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Still, at seventy-three years old, he stands to lose his home and savings.
posted by folklore724 at 2:06 PM PST - 3 comments

The joy on this TikToker's face after creating this mashup is matched only by the joy of the mashup itself. (SLTT)
posted by secretdark at 12:35 PM PST - 13 comments

A live slow tv nature stream from the depths of the wilderness in northern Sweden. A 24/7 marathon live stream that runs from 18/4 - 9/5 [4/18 - 5/9]. Using 30 remote controlled cameras and nightvision we follow the Swedish moose as they try to cross the great Ångermanälven river. [more inside]
posted by mimo at 11:53 AM PST - 6 comments

How Pfizer makes its Covid-19 vaccine
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:17 AM PST - 27 comments

Daniel Lavery asks you to consider second dog. [more inside]
posted by tclark at 10:21 AM PST - 52 comments

Basecamp bars political talk at work. Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well. And we're done with it on our company Basecamp's public announcement [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 9:37 AM PST - 132 comments

How To Have Better Arguments Online. Low context vs high context cultures. One-down parties. What we can learn from hostage negotiators. The truth about social media users and "echo chambers". Identity stakes. The overdog error. What we can learn from de-escalators. Ocasio-Cortez on "golden gates". [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:55 AM PST - 26 comments

After six years, Gareth Wild of Bromley, England, has finally completed his quest to park in every single space in his local supermarket car park. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:42 AM PST - 47 comments

Jealous, the latest from SouthSider Mahalia and the inimitable Rico Nasty gets a little nuts as the pressures of life elevate and release. [more inside]
posted by kfholy at 6:32 AM PST - 1 comment

Today marks 10 years since the very first Ed Balls Day. Though some say the national celebration has become too commercialised, there are still opportunities to observe the many fine traditions associated with the day.
posted by fight or flight at 5:53 AM PST - 18 comments

How To Live In Wonder by Caitlin Johnstone "This fixation on mental constructs causes us to lead dull, habitual lives devoid of awe, devoid of wonder. The way interest and attention remains wrapped up in lifeless labels and predictable thought patterns keeps us from elevating our minds into the open space where inspiration, spontaneity and agility become possible. It makes us dull, unhappy, rigid, and stupid." [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 5:25 AM PST - 28 comments

Liisa Vääriskoski is an artist, performer and filmmaker with an extraordinary, colourful and playful style, responsible for social media campaigns, music videos and adverts, largely in her native Finland. She has just made the glorious video for Your Fandango, the new record by Sparks and Todd Rundgren.
posted by Grangousier at 4:06 AM PST - 2 comments

Physicists Prove That the Imaginary Part of Quantum Mechanics Really Exists! - "A Polish-Chinese-Canadian research team has proven that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics can be observed in action in the real world." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:11 AM PST - 30 comments

In an effort to encourage more sustainable cooking, Epicurious is no longer publishing new beef recipes – in fact, they already pulled the plug on beef over a year ago. What about dairy, or pork, or chicken, or seafood? Answers to these questions and more, along with resources on sustainable cooking.
posted by adrianhon at 2:35 AM PST - 60 comments

The tragedy at Port Arthur 25 years ago today prompted the National Firearms Program Implementation Act. Statistics compiled by the University of Sydney show the results. School of Public Health panel discussion.
posted by adept256 at 2:23 AM PST - 10 comments

The secrets of the world's greatest jailbreak artist. Master criminal Rédoine Faïd loved the movies, and his greatest crimes were laced with tributes: to Point Break, Heat, and Reservoir Dogs. When he landed in a maximum-security prison, cinema provided inspiration once again.
posted by goatdog at 4:46 PM PST - 16 comments

A seedbank-testing experiment that started in 1879 has decades to run. It's a simple experiment, but the simple things are hard: neither losing the seeds nor digging them up too early. From the point of view of the *seeds* the simple thing -- don't germinate until you can grow -- is also getting pretty hard. [more inside]
posted by clew at 2:29 PM PST - 8 comments

When the Pentagon spokesman gets asked about Polish strippers and geopolitics: "Bravo Zulu to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, a retired admiral, who calmly and professionally responded to the most bizarre question posed to a defense official in recent memory." [more inside]
posted by gemmy at 2:29 PM PST - 21 comments

or maybe "not a real dog, but more like a vessel for a traumatized Victorian child that now haunts our home", needed a very specific type of adopter. His desperate foster mother took to the internet with an adoption post that went viral on Twitter and, soon, everywhere. But could anyone provide a home for such a demonic creature? [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 11:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Voices From The Dawn I was looking at places to visit this summer and came across this fantastic collection of Ireland's prehistoric monuments.
posted by twistedonion at 9:00 AM PST - 7 comments

A few short fantasy stories about serving other people during times of death and peril. A daycare worker at the end of the world, and a restaurant server at a different end. A mountain guide who always finds what is lost. And the funniest one: a necromancer who doesn't realize they're a necromancer, and thinks they're just a really good paramedic.
posted by brainwane at 7:46 AM PST - 26 comments

Diamond Geezer helpfully summarises the London Fire Brigade's animal rescues.
posted by Stark at 6:46 AM PST - 10 comments

Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old man from Vladivostok, was working as a Russian translator for the Chinese reality/talent show Produce Camp, in which a cast of young contestants are selected to form a boy band, when the directors invited him to sign up. He regretted doing so pretty much immediately, and attempted to sabotage his chances at winning by performing half-heartedly and pleading with the audience to vote him out, but to no avail, as he became a firm fan favourite, his miserable demeanour appealing to a generation of young people sympathetic to the ironic, defeatist Sang culture. [more inside]
posted by acb at 5:01 AM PST - 50 comments

To understand how risky it may be to board a flight now, start with how air circulates in a plane...
posted by Toddles at 7:26 PM PST - 135 comments

“Once I was in quarantine, I was just stuck in my own head with my own thoughts and I had to face it.” [more inside]
posted by catcafe at 5:08 PM PST - 4 comments

The flush toilet may be the world’s gold standard for sanitation, but the sewer infrastructure it demands is inefficient, costly and outdated. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 3:25 PM PST - 85 comments

“I felt hurt. And I felt alone – as a woman and as a European. Because it is not about seating arrangements or protocol,” Von der Leyen said. “This goes to the core of who we are. This is what our union stands for. And this shows how far we still have to go before women are treated as equals, always and everywhere.” ‘Sofagate’ snub would not have happened to a man [Grauniad] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:09 PM PST - 28 comments

“I mean, I didn’t try to deceive anyone over Samantha the Teenage Witch. I swear.” Felony embezzlement charges for 20-year-old overdue VHS tape rental. And you thought libraries were harsh.
posted by JanetLand at 1:08 PM PST - 46 comments

Investigators, family, and friends are still trying to close the case of Paul Fugate, a naturalist at Arizona’s Chiricahua National Monument who vanished without a trace in 1980. In the garage sat a Ford pickup, the tires flat, which Dody and her husband, Paul, had driven home from the dealership in 1971. No pictures of Paul were anywhere that I could see, but his presence was all around. There was the old nameplate from his desk: “Paul B. Fugate, Park Ranger.” And pinned to the wall was a bumper sticker, white letters on a forest green background. “Where is Paul Fugate,” it read. The absence of a question mark suggested less an inquiry than a demand. [more inside]
posted by jquinby at 11:40 AM PST - 13 comments

Somewhere in Japan, in a dimly-lit, sparsely-furnished efficiency apartment, an egg lies sleeping under a slice of bacon. You watch through the eye of a camera wandering aimlessly around the room. It takes in in the old-fashioned portable TV, balanced atop a cardboard box, showing a popularity ranking show being watched by nobody. And the empty bed, empty kitchenette, and empty sofa. And the boombox on the floor playing a mixtape of the sort of 'luuded-out lofi being streamed by hundreds of channels on Youtube. This is the Gudetama LiveCam & Chill Out BGM Radio stream and Sanrio wants you to suggest (in Japanese) what to furnish the apartment with next. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 11:32 AM PST - 3 comments

Here is the gorgeous video to his song Again. After 89 song posts, longtime mefi music contributor Seth Thomas aka Corduroy has a legit record out, and posted to mefi projects this video, which is a collaboration with Jon David Russell featuring impeccably rendered puppets and miniatures. [more inside]
posted by umbú at 11:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Maslow borrowed and misrepresented Siksika (Blackfeet Nation) teachings without providing due credit for their influence on his developmental model.
posted by COD at 10:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Delightful vine robots are happy to explore tight, pointy, unstable, and otherwise challenging spaces, and you can build your own simple version! [more inside]
posted by cnidaria at 9:25 AM PST - 10 comments

It’s Spring 2021, and here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! They may help you spend time while self-isolating, waiting for vaccination, or doing chores to take you away from the endless online meetings. Notably, we can all take a moment to admire the completion of The Magnus Archives, the 200-episode horror extravaganza. Or, if you prefer, Alasdair Beckett-King’s not entirely unfair take down of the genre. As usual, I am focusing on paranormal ongoing stories as opposed to Science Fiction or Fantasy dramas or series of short stories, with or without framing elements. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:25 AM PST - 15 comments

[Aesthetics Wiki] is a comprehensive encyclopedia of online and offline aesthetics! We are an online community dedicated to the identification, observation, and documentation of visual schema. … Enjoy your stay!
posted by zamboni at 7:48 AM PST - 18 comments

At the time, O’Neill writes, it was ‘impossible to imagine’ just how unrealisable the idea of a dissident, fan-owned club sounded. Brady, a bricklayer and editor of the socialist United fanzine A Fine Lung, had no illusions about the graft required, writing that ‘the work ahead was going to break up marriages… Form a football club? Form a fucking football club? How? By going to the magic wand shop and wishing one?’

Even if you can't stand Manchester United, you have to love FC United of Manchester, as Marcus Barnett explains for The Tribune.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:29 AM PST - 11 comments

How do you better communicate with your Yaya? It's easy - you build a Yayagram.
posted by secretdark at 12:43 AM PST - 18 comments

San Francisco journalist Paul W. Lovinger takes a hard look at the general failure of American presidents, since World War II, to get Congressional approval for military adventures including but not limited to Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Grenada, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. "While not king, [the President] has become a ruler with more war power than George III had." The power to declare war, Constitutionally vested solely in Congress, has effectively lost all meaning. "Do we elect a chief executive—or a chief executioner? No president is likely to maliciously shoot someone to death point-blank. That’s murder. But no president seems to mind ordering many people shot or bombed in a distant land. That’s war."
posted by beagle at 3:14 PM PST - 53 comments

New Aviation Spokesperson. LeVar Burton's new gig, almost. [YT 0:48] [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 3:07 PM PST - 14 comments

“Fending” is our household’s word for picking around the kitchen, seeing what’s there, and making a meal of it… I might have leftover chicken fried rice, some lox and cream cheese on Triscuits, and the end of a jar of pickles. He might use up the chicken salad, Tuesday’s chili, and the last of the roasted cauliflower, which, by the way, is still good.
Writing in The New Yorker, cartoonist Roz Chast describes how she asked around on Instagram about what other people call this practice and collected a moderately long list of vernacular.
Since people might not want to burn their clicks on this tiny li’l article, a list of many of the entries is inside. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 2:31 PM PST - 125 comments

The Girl in the Kent State Photo — In 1970, an image of a dead protester immediately became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him? (alternate links: 1, 2, 3) [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 10:11 AM PST - 33 comments

Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes and artist/singer/violinist Wendy Bevin are releasing their Lockdown Project across the next year. [Variety] Astronomia [YT overview video with artists, ~9m] is a 52-song, 4-volume project being released as 4 albums. Astronomia I: The Fall Of Saturn [YT audio playlist] came out on March 20, 2021. It can be heard (or purchased) on these online services. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:47 AM PST - 12 comments

Meet Aerospace Engineer Judith Love Cohen | Judith was, at various times in her fascinating life, an engineer who worked on the Pioneer, Apollo, and Hubble missions, an author & publisher of books about women in STEM and environmentalism in the 90s, a ballet dancer with the New York Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, an advocate for better treatment of women in the workplace, and actor Jack Black’s mother. [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:42 AM PST - 14 comments

After being called out for having problematic names for many years, and a change.org petition, Gearslutz -- named "to poke fun at some people’s pro audio shopping habits" -- changed its name to Gearspace at the beginning of April. Followed 3 weeks later by modular synth forum Muffwiggler -- named by its late founder as a combination of the names of two Electro-Harmonix guitar pedals, the "Big Muff Pi" and "The Wiggler" -- changing its name to Modwiggler.
posted by Catblack at 10:27 PM PST - 41 comments

The meme appeared a year ago, when Josh sent a Facebook group message to Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh.... and a lot more Joshes. Josh provided coordinates and a date. The purpose? To combat to see who gets to be Josh, with all losers having to change their name. The coordinates? Some place in Nebraska. The date? April 24, 2021. And now, after a year of anticipation, it's finally happened: The Josh Fight. [more inside]
posted by meese at 4:35 PM PST - 115 comments

How to calculate fractions. Tanya Zakowich runs TikTok channel pinkpencilmath offering quick math tips!
posted by storybored at 4:32 PM PST - 36 comments

The gentlemen Foxe and Boxe welcome you to their new home. [more inside]
posted by blnkfrnk at 3:41 PM PST - 9 comments

Man drives to pick up food and eats it SLYT [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 1:39 PM PST - 30 comments

As work subsumes leisure time, worldwide anxieties mount, and a pandemic reshapes comfort and togetherness, meditation has been touted as a panacea. There has been little mention of potential negative side effects, but a report in Harpers investigates the possible psychological risks. [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 1:17 PM PST - 49 comments

Billionaire Took Psychedelics, Got Bitcoin and Is Now Into SPACs [Bloomberg, archive version] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:07 PM PST - 14 comments

Tomer Hanuka asked his 3rd year illustration students at the School Of Visual Arts to come up with a post-pandemic New Yorker magazine cover. Here is what they sent in [Twitter thread with images]
posted by bitteschoen at 12:36 PM PST - 31 comments

Rina Sawayama: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
posted by ellieBOA at 11:50 AM PST - 6 comments

”When she premiered, the tradional bottle of champagne bounced right off the side instead of smashing. A bad omen, but... Nothing could go wrong on Friday the 13th of January 2012, on the 100th year anniversary of The Titanic, on a ship that is also only safety rated for two-compartment flooding. Especially when you have a five-star, max-level-rated captain like Francesco Schettino, a man who mysteriously rose from Head of Security to the position of Captain in just a couple of years... He knows exactly what to do in an emergency.”

The Cost of Concordia (SLYT)
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Jersey Girl Homemade Guitars have been making hand-crafted guitars for thirty years and are based in Hokkaido in Japan. A collaboration between the luthier Kaz Goto, his wife Eiko and Akiko Oda, each guitar is unique, with elaborate and beautiful wood inlays, and comes with a matching strap and (often) a matching pedal, each designed along with the guitar. Here is an interview with Kaz Goto. Here is a direct link to a gallery of JGHG's archive of guitars. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier at 9:03 AM PST - 7 comments

This listing has my emotions in a shamble. Long private drive leads to this unparalleled modern riverfront glass barn designed & engineered on skyscraper principles. Newly renovated top to bottom in 2018 with no detail overlooked
posted by bluesky43 at 8:54 AM PST - 84 comments

Sorting Hat Chats, a character taxonomy by writers Emily and Kat: podcast, blog, Tumblr, and the guided tour of the system via quiz.
Primary Houses are about moralities and motivations... it's important to understand all characters have the capacity to feel compelled by any and all of these motivations: their gut, logic, their community, the protection of their loved ones; the distinction rests on which of these sources of morality is prioritized.... Mal of Firefly is a Hufflepuff Primary, while Simon is a Slytherin Primary deeply (and, initially, solely) loyal to his baby sister, River. While the two men begin the show at odds, when Mal fully adopts River into his Hufflepuff loyalties and Simon becomes loyal to more members of Mal’s crew, he and Simon suddenly have very parallel priorities. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:37 AM PST - 10 comments

For the past 20 years, UK Post Office employees have been dealing with a software called Horizon, which had a fatal flaw: bugs that made it look like employees stole tens of thousands of British pounds. This led to some local postmasters being convicted of crimes, even being sent to prison, because the Post Office doggedly insisted the software could be trusted. After fighting for decades, 39 people are having their convictions overturned. More than 2,400 claims for damages have been filed so far. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:34 AM PST - 28 comments

Apple’s Ransomware Mess Is the Future of Online Extortion — This week, hackers stole confidential schematics from a third-party supplier and demanded $50 million not to release them. WIRED, 4/23/2021 [alternate Ars Technica link]: After years of refining their mass data encryption techniques to lock victims out of their own systems, criminal gangs are increasingly focusing on data theft and extortion as the centerpiece of their attacks — and making eye-popping demands in the process. “Our team is negotiating the sale of large quantities of confidential drawings and gigabytes of personal data with several major brands,” REvil [WP] wrote in its post of the stolen data. “We recommend that Apple buy back the available data by May 1.” Related: DOJ Forms Ransomware Task Force as REvil Demands $50M, SDX Central, 4/22/2021.
posted by cenoxo at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

Short, optimistic scifi/fantasy fiction stories: "It’s not a bad boarding house, as these things go." "If your suit watch is correct, you should have ran out of air… three weeks ago?" "The first time the humans told us they sang their way through subspace, we thought it a translation error." "A human. On Captain Diii’s ship." "'May you have a life of safety and peace', said the witch, cursing the bloodthirsty warrior." "What is the harm in one more lie?" All self-published by the authors on Tumblr.
posted by brainwane at 8:17 AM PST - 16 comments

Back in 2017, Johnny Wallflower posted a story about the radioactive puppies of Chernobyl. Now, there's an update of sorts. "The descendants of pets abandoned by those fleeing the Chernobyl disaster are now striking up a curious relationship with humans charged with guarding the contaminated area." By Chris Baraniuk writing for BBC Future.
posted by bryon at 4:17 AM PST - 8 comments

Philip Roth and the sympathetic biographer: This is how misogyny gets cemented in our culture This is how a misogynistic culture is conceptualized, created, cultivated and codified. It doesn’t happen because one dude does a bad thing. It happens when like-minded dudes are allowed to be one another’s gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers of broader culture, when faults are allowed to go unexamined, and so they instead spread: Harvey Weinstein dictated the content of movie theaters for decades; it turns out he was abusing women all along. Roger Ailes, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer shaped coverage and discussion of sexual misconduct scandals throughout the 1990s and 2000s; they were later accused of sexual misconduct themselves.
posted by Toddles at 8:22 PM PST - 72 comments

From the NYTimes: Scientists "say that excessive hygiene practices, inappropriate antibiotic use and lifestyle changes such as distancing may weaken those communities going forward in ways that promote sickness and imperil our immune systems. By sterilizing our bodies and spaces, they argue, we may be doing more harm than good."
posted by coffeecat at 1:52 PM PST - 96 comments

High-speed bike tour of the Paris catacombs, via a helmet-mounted go-pro. Featuring: a lot of graffiti. Not for the claustrophobic.
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:19 PM PST - 16 comments

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new ultra-white paint that reflects 98.1 percent of sunlight and can keep surfaces up to 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings. This new paint, which may become available for purchase in the next year or two, could someday help combat global warming and reduce our reliance on air conditioners. [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 12:56 PM PST - 48 comments

The Truth about Lying. "Police thought that 17-year-old Marty Tankleff seemed too calm after finding his mother stabbed to death and his father mortally bludgeoned in the family’s sprawling Long Island home. Authorities didn’t believe his claims of innocence, and he spent 17 years in prison for the murders. Yet in another case, detectives thought that 16-year-old Jeffrey Deskovic seemed too distraught and too eager to help detectives after his high school classmate was found strangled. He, too, was judged to be lying and served nearly 16 years for the crime. One man was not upset enough. The other was too upset. How can such opposite feelings both be telltale clues of hidden guilt?" [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:00 AM PST - 40 comments

The Endless Acid Banger is a website that will generate an endless and surprisingly-danceable 1990s PC game soundtrack.
posted by schmod at 10:50 AM PST - 22 comments

It’s Friday. Take a break with an excellent vid for Pygmalion (1938) set to a cover of “No Scrubs” by Bastille ft. Ella Eyre. (SLYT)
posted by Quasirandom at 8:42 AM PST - 24 comments

A 6th-grader tackles the age-old question. With lipstick.
posted by mpark at 7:03 AM PST - 69 comments

Greg “Shock G” Jacobs, founder of 90s rap group Digital Underground, passed away aged 57 in a hotel room in Tampa, Florida. Digital Underground started in the late 80s; their sound leaned heavily on P-Funk, while their lyrics often dealt with fanciful themes, such as Sex Packets, a concept album about a drug that induces sexual hallucinations. [more inside]
posted by acb at 6:01 AM PST - 60 comments

“I walked into this lounge full of women,” she remembers, “and someone up in the front of the room was talking about the clitoris, orgasm and masturbation, and I was just so embarrassed. I just sank down to the floor and listened really hard. This was stuff that I had never heard said out loud before.” At one point, Sanford remembers, the speaker held up a lifesize picture of a woman, with legs apart, to show the location of the clitoris, and to explain how, contrary to Freudian thinking, it is the major organ of female sexual pleasure. “Who knew this before?” she asked the group, who sat largely blank-faced. “That’s my point,” she told them. “We should know these things. These are our bodies.” The clitoris, pain and pap smears: how Our Bodies, Ourselves redefined women’s health, a long read from The Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:23 AM PST - 25 comments

Autism and Emotional Labour
posted by aniola at 10:38 PM PST - 33 comments

From Frutiger Aero to Global Village Coffeehouse to Wacky Pomo, the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is committed to cataloging the design trends of turn of the century, referred to broadly as Y2K.
posted by subocoyne at 10:29 PM PST - 28 comments

Aaron Reed's 50 Years of Text Games (intro) so far covers 1971-1986, e.g. Oregon Trail, ROCKET, Hunt the Wumpus, Super Star Trek, dnd, Adventure, Zork, Pirate Adventure, CYOA novels, MUDs, and HHGTTG. But dissertations by Carra Glatt on "... Counterfactual Plotting in the Victorian Novel" [PDF], Alex Solomon on "The Rhetoric of Probability" [PDF] in 17th-18th C. lit (including proto-science fiction by Kepler and Godwin), Jessica Saxon on "... Paratexts, Narrative Interventions, and the Queering of Possible Worlds ..." [PDF] in "illicit" 19th C. narratives, and Peter Sorrell on "Narrative Worlds and Fictional Worlds" [PDF] in novels by Queneau, Simon, and Robbe-Grillet take up Meinong's Jungle, "Truth in Fiction" [PDF], and especially "Possible Worlds" narratological theory to reconsider texts from the further past in similar terms: "machine[s] for producing possible worlds" [PDF]. Incidentally, Reed's uniquely-generated horror novel Subcutanean is a current finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:03 PM PST - 26 comments

I'm a part time employee halfway through a two week notice [SLTwitter video]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 2:29 PM PST - 98 comments

Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman reacted to the discovery that researchers at the University of Minnesota had been submitting bogus patches by banning all code submissions from UMN. The University's CS&E has since put a halt to the research. [more inside]
posted by axiom at 1:20 PM PST - 102 comments

You may have heard that one should be very careful about opening files from untrusted sources; there’s always the possibility that they could pose a risk to the integrity of your computer. When you’re in the business of providing your law-enforcement customers with software whose whole point it is to handle data from extremely untrusted sources, you might think that this is particularly salient advice. If you don’t heed it, your customers might have to immediately stop scanning mobile phones of suspects who may be using the popular Signal instant-messaging app. Indeed you would be giving them, and defenders and courts, very good reasons to doubt this kind of evidence altogether. Moxie Marlinspike (previously) first broke the news about the hack of Cellebrite’s digital forensics software in an entertaining post on the Signal blog.
posted by wachhundfisch at 11:25 AM PST - 71 comments

A clear, attractive guide to caring for all your many plants. via Laura Olin
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:12 AM PST - 24 comments

Post-kill, two thirsty lions encounter a brazen turtle. (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:05 AM PST - 25 comments

Alan Lomax's field recordings are available on a newly-redesigned site. Alan Lomax started making recordings for the Library of Congress in 1933, with his father John, and recorded folk music and interviews from around the United States and the world on reel-to-reel tape between 1946 and 1991. These field recordings are the source material that sparked the American folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s. [more inside]
posted by goingonit at 8:42 AM PST - 13 comments

The Antikythera Cosmos "The UCL Antikythera Research Team struggle to solve the front of the Antikythera Mechanism—a fragmentary ancient Greek astronomical calculator—revealing a dazzling display of the ancient Greek Cosmos" [previously]
posted by dhruva at 8:23 AM PST - 11 comments

Defund the Police? An Abolition Curriculum. "In the wake of continued high profile police shootings across the United States, many people in the [Mennonite] church pushed for an Anabaptist-oriented response and resources that helped us to move as a church into solidarity with the pain and brutality being felt and witnessed on Black, brown and Indigenous people. This curriculum is our response...This curriculum is an initial guide for congregations who are desiring to begin or continue their reflection on what it means to engage the forces of state, their commitments to non-violence and how to act to end policing and police brutality." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:20 AM PST - 4 comments

“The history of photography is based on the experiments of amateurs,” Samuel Trachsel, photographer. The wheel has never been reinvented because the design is simple enough to preclude it. Not so the camera. Here are 15 photographers/tinkerers who do just that.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:28 AM PST - 9 comments

The opening seven minutes of the new Mortal Kombat.
posted by sapagan at 1:59 AM PST - 35 comments

Known for playing villains in the U.S. and more nuanced roles in Denmark, he takes everything and nothing seriously. [Vulture] Bonus: Mads Mikkelsen being himself for 3 straight minutes
posted by ellieBOA at 1:23 AM PST - 33 comments

How to Name Your Black Son in a Racist Country, an essay by Tyrone Fleurizard, from Roxane Gay's emerging writer series. [more inside]
posted by miles per flower at 9:15 PM PST - 21 comments

sailor mercury is a software engineer but eschews the grim dark computers and peripherals that so many coders use. They created the froggy computer for fun, cute computing. They also created ComputeCuter.com, a single serving site to inspire you to make your workspace cuter with software and hardware. via Lobsters, sailorhg previously
posted by Monochrome at 1:47 PM PST - 42 comments

Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out. [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:16 PM PST - 68 comments

‘The system has collapsed’: India’s descent into Covid hell
posted by hadjiboy at 1:13 PM PST - 81 comments

After the street sweeper comes and goes, who comes by to pick up what's left over? The hokey. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 1:08 PM PST - 19 comments

Most of the rising generation of classic-Tetris players have already watched hours of the best performances, hard-wiring beautiful stacking strategies. As they begin practicing, they often join one of many classic-Tetris servers on Discord, where hundreds of people are online all the time, ready to discuss any aspect of the game. It’s there that they often learn the most common hyper-tapping grip—holding the controller sideways, with the directional pad facing up—and how to properly tense the right arm so that it shakes quickly and consistently. They study the principles of developing a relatively even stack with a built-out left side, and discuss how dropping a pair of tetrominoes in a complementary orientation can reduce the need for a timely T-piece. From The Revolution in Classic Tetris [The New Yorker; archived version] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:11 PM PST - 32 comments

"Within 'interactive entertainment', there actually exist a number of forms – patterns of design that work in a certain way. Only by understanding these forms can we proceed with guidelines for better interactive system design." MeFi's own Keith Burgun, a game designer and game design instructor, discusses mapping, solving, evaluation, and understanding in four categories of interactive entertainment.
posted by brainwane at 7:44 AM PST - 14 comments

Ted Lasso. Season 2. July 23.
posted by ellieBOA at 12:29 AM PST - 83 comments

Derek Chauvin is found guilty on all charges. [NYT] Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted of killing George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on Floyd’s neck. [more inside]
posted by NotLost at 10:19 PM PST - 190 comments

Jim Steinman has died at the age of 73. He's best known for writing and producing a string of hits for artists including Meatloaf (Albums "Bat Out of Hell" and "Bat Out of Hell II"), Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero"), Air Supply (Making Love out of Nothing at All), among many others. [more inside]
posted by rmd1023 at 4:38 PM PST - 84 comments

The time for Hollywood’s "White Male Genius" is over. "Well, ma’am, I wanted to say, he’s a grown-ass man in his 40s who puts more salad on the floor than in his mouth. And me, a woman half his age, getting paid less hourly than what she made as an intern out of college, shouldn’t have to be living proof of how society silently bends around white men with no protest."
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:00 PM PST - 65 comments

Stephen Curry, point guard for the Golden State Warriors, along with his wife Ayesha, have helped serve 16,000,000 meals to Oakland kids this year. In November he bought a new food truck for Homies Empowerment, after theirs was stolen and trashed. In early April, he worked with the Bruce Lee Foundation to raise money to show solidarity with the Asian community. He's also found time to set the record for the most 3 point buckets in any 11 game stretch in NBA history for players 33 and older. [more inside]
posted by oneirodynia at 2:18 PM PST - 32 comments

That anxiety you're feeling, it's a habit you can unlearn. An interview with researcher/psychiatrist Jud Brewer on anxiety as an addiction. Transcript. "...we like to think that our thinking mind is in control. But if you look at how behavior is driven, thinking really doesn’t hold a candle to the feeling body. The feeling body — those urges are much stronger. And in the same way we can’t stop our thoughts. I often get people coming to me in a seminar or if I’m teaching a class where they say, oh, how do I just turn off my mind? How do I just stop my thoughts?" [more inside]
posted by storybored at 2:07 PM PST - 27 comments

Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021. (SLNYT)
posted by treepour at 11:46 AM PST - 25 comments

"It’s hard for people who have never experienced it to truly grasp what it means to lack proper documents." --From On Being an Outsider: Words by Charles Simic, Photos by Romeo Alaeff [excerpted by LitHub from the book In Der Fremde]
posted by chavenet at 10:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Night in Paradise is recent to Netflix, and if you like your revenge flicks served in the Korean style this one is pretty great. I am definitely in the shallow end of the pool when it comes to Korean cinema, but so much of what I have seen has been so great.. "Space Sweepers" would have been a groaner if produced in Hollywood, but somehow it was just darn entertaining.. and put Kang-Ho Song in any film and it cannot be a bad film.. Exhibit A: The Drug King. I imagine some of you have additional recommendations? Please share. And no, I am not a Netflix shill but what is up with their Korean content? I am not complaining!
posted by elkevelvet at 8:57 AM PST - 31 comments

Scientists Create Simple Synthetic Cell That Grows and Divides Normally - "New findings shed light on mechanisms controlling the most basic processes of life."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:43 AM PST - 33 comments

"To me, honestly, genre is just a vehicle I use to cross the story terrain. So depending on what story I want to tell, I use the appropriate genre." Author Nicola Griffith, author of scifi, historical fiction, detective fiction, nonfiction, and more, discusses her books and writing journey in an interview from late 2020. She learned more about how her own fiction works while writing a PhD thesis a few years ago. Griffith's blog has tons of interesting musings, on topics including the phenomenon of marginalized readers feeling "momentarily flummoxed by fiction that doesn't push us down" and identity and science fiction. "Reading SF, the over-riding value of which is the new, keeps our reticular activating systems primed: we expect everything and anything."
posted by brainwane at 4:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Earliest known recording of Joni Mitchell, thought lost forever, found in B.C. basement. Summer 1963. Joni Mitchell. The House Of The Rising Sun.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka "Bad Bunny" the Puerto Rican singer, has been taking the world by storm. Featured on Cardi B's I like it (Like that), Bad Bunny has been grinding and climbing sin parar.. [more inside]
posted by Dressed to Kill at 9:01 PM PST - 11 comments

“We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.” Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale was remembered Monday as a towering figure in Minnesota's public life and a leading influence on Democratic politics in the final decades of the last century. Tributes poured in on social media and in press releases from politicians of both parties in the hours following the announcement from Mondale's family that he had died at age 93.
posted by ichomp at 7:55 PM PST - 66 comments

Today is the last day to ask or answer a question on Yahoo! Answers. Tomorrow (April 20), it will be in read-only mode, and on May 4 it will be shut down by its parent company Verizon. Users will have until June 30 to request access to copies of their data. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 5:42 PM PST - 32 comments

The FIDE Candidates Tournament resumed today in Yekaterinburg, Russia after a 1 year pause(previously). Chess.com has good background article for those needing a rundown on the players and the event. Watch the event live on various twitch channels such as: chess24, chess.com, and FIDE channels. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 5:15 PM PST - 7 comments

How to use OpenAI's API to turn task descriptions into command-line instructions [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:49 PM PST - 12 comments

We now have an idea of what a kung fu movie in the MCU looks like, as Marvel has premiered the first trailer for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
posted by mightygodking at 3:02 PM PST - 81 comments

The Teletubbies, set to "The Rite of Spring". That is all.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:47 PM PST - 21 comments

Deffrwch Cymry cysgld gwlad y gan (Wake up, sleepy Wales, land of song!) The Welsh music scene is so vibrant and full of talent. Croeso! Come in and listen to some new (and new-ish) Welsh music. [more inside]
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 12:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Vitalik Buterin in conversation with Julia Galef (Rationally Speaking podcast). Julia and guest Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum) explore a wide range of topics, including: Vitalik's intellectually honest approach to leadership, why prediction markets appeared to be biased in favor of Trump, whether it was rational to invest in Bitcoin ten years ago, the ethics of life extension, convex vs concave thinking, effective altruism and so on. (2hr interview, transcript). [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:00 PM PST - 4 comments

It was a phone call from an acquaintance in Tokyo who often travels to Oregon for business that started it all. He told me there were two people from Oregon roaming around the northeast with what sounded like an impossible mission: they were in possession of what appeared to be parts of Torii gates that had washed up in their state in 2013, presumably the result of the tsunami two years earlier, and they wanted to find out where the wreckage came from. "Can you help?" he asked.

For NHK Ebara Miki tells the story of how parts of Torii gates washed away with the 2011 tsunami were found in Oregon in 2013 and returned to their rightful place.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Japanese biker uses FaceApp to trick internet into thinking he is a young woman A TV show revealed the star of popular 19,000-follower motorbike enthusiast Twitter user @azusagakuyuki was actually a 50-year-old man named Soya. Fans seem more supportive than betrayed. Biker fans educated on the fluidity of sexual attraction. A new acronym describing this phenomenon: UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG. This also illustrates how patriarchy picks winners and losers. TV program Getsuyou Kara Yofukashi unmasking segment. Originally reported on the BBC.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:12 AM PST - 21 comments

While it may have been the first to be described as such, the well-known "easter egg" hidden in Atari's Adventure is not only not the first example of hidden content in a game, but is also not the first time a programmer hid their name in a game. Video game historian “Critical Kate” Willært of A Critical Hit hunts down the earliest examples in her Hardboiled History essay and video. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 9:55 AM PST - 13 comments

"Looking beyond the narrative of creative difficulties and studio interference, the story of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is also one of resilience, creativity, dedication, and, of course, humor. To celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary, several of those involved in the creation of this beloved TV-show-turned-movie were interviewed—Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl, Frank Conniff, and Joel Hodgson—and current host Jonah Ray also discussed the film’s legacy and influence." -- Adam Carston @ AVClub
posted by valkane at 7:59 AM PST - 56 comments

"We can say human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet." On April 19th the Ingenuity copter, part of the Perseverance rover mission, took off from the Martian surface, hovered, took a photo of its shadow, then safely landed. It is the first time a human-built craft has flown on another world. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:23 AM PST - 36 comments

Recent research suggests that when you’re feeling burned out, the best person to help you recover may be yourself. Burnout is not a monolithic phenomenon, but rather, it can present as any combination of three distinct symptoms: exhaustion (a depletion of mental or physical resources), cynical detachment (a depletion of social connectedness), and a reduced sense of efficacy (a depletion of value for oneself). To recover from burnout, you must identify which of these resources has been depleted and take action to replenish those resources.
posted by folklore724 at 2:02 AM PST - 40 comments

Twelve European football clubs have announced the formation of a new European Super League. Founding members include Milan, Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham, with three more members expected to be announced and a further five teams qualifying annually. Commentators are not happy; supporters are even unhappier. FIFA, UEFA, the English Premier League, and other organisations have all promised to do what they can to stop the new league.
posted by adrianhon at 1:09 AM PST - 117 comments

The City as a Survival Mechanism: Kim Stanley Robinson - "A future with far more cities, and cities that are asked to do far more." (Bloomberg) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 17 comments

One person reminisced about, as a child, writing capital letter Es with several redundant horizontal lines so that it looked like a ladder. Other Tumblr users yes-anded with sentiments like "All capital letters should have a leveled-up form" and "Please add your own unsettling godtier capitals!" as well as calligraphy and a font (.otf) file for an "Anxiety" font.
posted by brainwane at 1:36 PM PST - 29 comments

A first-ever study of homeless encampments finds that cities are paying millions in clearance costs — only to shuffle unhoused people from one camp to another.
posted by aniola at 12:37 PM PST - 77 comments

YouTuber Sarah Z has posted A Brief History of Homestuck, clocking in at a bit over 2 hours. The official version of the webcomic is here, although you may want to use the unofficial version with Flash support if you intend to read back through it. The sequel is here. Previously on MeFi.
posted by graymouser at 11:01 AM PST - 10 comments

“I’ve got a very weird hobby, which is I love taking a look at photos and figuring out where they’re taken,” Mr. Kuo said. (NYT link) [more inside]
posted by medusa at 8:24 AM PST - 13 comments

Bakamonotako Like all stupid little girls who believe they can best become themselves by becoming unlike themselves, she eventually came to miss her lost limbs. At times, fully tattooed people feel so about their lost original skin. But B’s sense of regret ran deeper. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 7:49 AM PST - 34 comments

“[T]hrough some mistranslation or misapprehension of its Mexican namesake, the French tacos is always plural, even when there’s only one, pronounced with a voiced ‘S.’ … [A] flour tortilla, slathered with condiments, piled with meat (usually halal) and other things (usually French fries), doused in cheese sauce, folded into a rectangular packet, and then toasted on a grill.”
In The New Yorker, Lauren Collins tells a complicated story of “France’s own junk food”: “The Unlikely Rise of the French Tacos”
Still hungry? Try the documentary Tacos Origins: Phénomène; Révolution; Génération
Want to see them in action? See this French YouTuber eat two five pound gigatacos from O’Tacos.
Previously, in 2019
posted by Going To Maine at 10:22 PM PST - 82 comments

Meow meow meow meow. One of the best known songs ever has gotten updated for the Now with Meow ReMix, an LP of 5 songs from feline artists such as Lupa [Meow], Gatocito [Meow], Sweet Teddy Pepperpaw [Meow], Hearts & Paws [Meow], and Endless Hiss [Meow]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:02 PM PST - 15 comments

"Ships so big they get stuck in the Suez Canal literally define 'chokepoint' but other waterways will play much more serious roles as the rivalry between China and the U.S. heats up." A Twitter thread by David Fickling of Bloomberg on the strategic importance of ocean straits throughout history, including the Trojan War, the British Empire, and China's Belt and Road Initiative. Article by Fickling and Anjani Trivedi. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 7:53 AM PST - 37 comments

Abir Haronni, newcomer to the international scene has since 2018 made, quietly, nine great clips (YT playlist). Her latest, Yacht (YT) is an auto-fetishist fantasy. She was signed to Atlantic in '18 and is just getting started in what seems to be a very promising music career, if you count youtube statistics (all slyt).
posted by kfholy at 7:44 AM PST - 2 comments

"One could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat (“Huron”) confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion." [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Kiran Sidhu talks to Wilf Davies, a Welsh farmer who’s had the same supper for 10 years and only left Wales to visit a farm in England 30 years ago (The Guardian). “People might think I’m not experiencing new things, but I think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible – people living on top of one another in great tower blocks. I could never do it. Walking around the farm fills me with wonder.”
posted by adrianhon at 5:23 AM PST - 59 comments

"What I can tell you is Amazon is going to spend about $650 million in season one alone," Stuart Nash, New Zealand minister for economic development and tourism, told Morning Report. Amazon's spending will trigger a tax rebate of NZ$160 million ($114 million U.S). This is somewhat controversial in New Zealand as the government could end up on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to help subsidize Amazon's elves-and-hobbits drama series. Stuff reported that the country's treasury has labeled the show a "significant fiscal risk" given there is no capped upside to how much Amazon — and therefore the government — might spend. But others point out that the boost in local spending by the production plus the potential tourism surge from Lord of the Rings fans far outweighs the taxpayer-funded kickbacks.
posted by folklore724 at 3:08 AM PST - 84 comments

Hathi: a token gift from India of a baby elephant for the Kabul Zoo "It was the latest expression of the centuries-old cultural and historical ties between the two nations... The diplomatic relationship was built on a bedrock of shared culture, and the gift of Hathi was an act in which history, regional bonhomie, pop culture and diplomacy merrily coalesced."
posted by dhruva at 6:08 PM PST - 2 comments

How Cold Water Swimming Cured my Broken Heart. "When I am in the sea I am a mystery to myself. I have no idea how I got here, or why or what I am doing. I am only swimming and I am amazed." After a breakup and the death of her father a writer ended up living on the coast of Brittany in winter where she went for a daily swim in the icy sea.
posted by storybored at 6:04 PM PST - 26 comments

Biden keeps Trump’s record-low cap on refugees — President Joe Biden on Friday stuck with his predecessor’s historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year and instead moved to accelerate admissions, triggering an outcry from resettlement agencies and even Biden allies that he was backpedaling on a key promise. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 2:10 PM PST - 45 comments

Conservative commentator David Brooks is the latest to make this declaration. He was proceeded in recent times by people like Howard Jacobson and Schmuley Boteach. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler have even published The Jewish Annotated New Testament. The roots of this discussion are, however, fraught. [more inside]
posted by No Robots at 12:30 PM PST - 146 comments

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a contemporary visual artist that bridges Haida, Asian, and Canadian cultures and identities with his art. In this video interview [YT] he discusses his mural, Orcinus Orca SKAAnaa. The mural is part of a new exhibition from the Royal BC Museum called Orcas: Our Shared Future. [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 12:08 PM PST - 3 comments

Mind the Gap, a handbook of clinical signs and symptoms in black and brown skin, is available to be downloaded online at no cost. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:50 AM PST - 6 comments

The “Red Ibérica en Defensa del Patrimonio Gráfico” is a Spanish/Portuguese collective that collects images of commercial signs as well as physical examples. Their site has a treasure trove of links to related Instagram accounts. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:31 AM PST - 4 comments

Just posting some blue on the blue, as you do "That's the surreal hue of Indonesia's Kawah Ijen Volcano, which glows with an otherworldly 'blue lava' at night. The mountain contains large amounts of pure sulfur, which emits an icy violet color as it burns, turning the rocky slopes into a hot (at least 239 degrees Fahrenheit), highly toxic environment." Some pretty stunning photos here!
posted by CarrotAdventure at 9:30 AM PST - 24 comments

Julia Evans (previously) is making interactive in-browser text puzzles to help people learn how to debug computer networking issues, and asking for feedback as she tries stuff out. "The Case of the Slow Websites" and "The Case of the Connection Timeout" are already up (source code using Twine), and she's thinking of making several more. "I'd love to know what folks think of this approach to learning debugging! One of my favourite ways to learn is by debugging weird problems, so my idea with this style of game is to sort of share the experience of past bugs I've run into so that other people can learn from them too." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 8:53 AM PST - 24 comments

Craig Murray ex British Ambassador to Uzbekistan 2002 - 2004 : The real story of the occupation of Afghanistan has hardly been aired in the mainstream media.
Caitlin Johnstone: US Intelligence Warns Withdrawal Could Lead To Afghanistan Being Controlled By Afghans.
Juan Cole: No, Biden ending the Afghanistan War isn’t a Disaster: The disaster was Dropping 7,400 Bombs on the Country Annually and Biden: ''Our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan have become increasingly unclear.'' As the US plans its Afghan troop withdrawal, what was it all for?
A view from the India and from Pakistan.
The withdrawal is only the solution to America's problem. The Taliban have different ideas.
With 18,000 contractors currently in the country is this just moving from Endless War to Endless Operations?
China sees an opportunity. Afghanistan previously on Metafilter.
posted by adamvasco at 6:49 AM PST - 84 comments

Mystery tree beast turns out to be croissant. BBC News has the story from the Krakow Animal Welfare Society: "People aren't opening their windows because they're afraid it will go into their house," the woman reportedly said. [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:02 AM PST - 22 comments

In her quest to master a quintessential cool-kid trick, Outside contributor Kim Cross found the sweet spot at the crossroads of work and play. A wheelie is the bicycling equivalent of hanging ten on a surfboard or spinning a basketball on your finger—a skill as profoundly cool as it is functionally irrelevant. [Outside Online]
posted by ellieBOA at 3:29 AM PST - 21 comments

The Penobscot language was spoken by almost no one when Frank Siebert set about trying to preserve it. The people of Indian Island are still reckoning with his legacy (Alice Gregory, The New Yorker)
posted by adrianhon at 2:00 AM PST - 9 comments

The violence is occurring daily while Derek Chauvin’s trial tries to convince us that we did not see what we saw. Veterans of color say video of police pepper-spraying a Black Army officer shows that not even a military uniform is protection from police violence. Meanwhile, mass shootings are happening as frequently as ever. [more inside]
posted by ichomp at 12:51 AM PST - 72 comments

Sentinel Playground - a massive resource for anyone interested in Earth’s changing surface, natural or manmade
posted by Gyan at 11:31 PM PST - 1 comment

A few weeks ago, Lindsay Ellis got canceled for making a tweet comparing two similar movies. Here's her very long response to pissing people off on this level. Brief recaps of the topics covered in it (after I watched the whole thing) are below. There's also a discussion of the video over here. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:35 PM PST - 161 comments

The NYT reports on the current global semiconductor shortage.
posted by Catblack at 8:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Horn Honk Depot: these honks will change your life.
One of 21 absurd comedy sketches by Joe Kwaczala, formerly of Clickhole and the Onion, posted to Youtube in a single day to raise money for East Hollywood Mutual Aid. (general strong-language cw for the sketches) [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 7:09 PM PST - 2 comments

The 2002 publication of The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy introduced a new, definitive taxonomy of "socially aversive" or "dark" personality traits common to all people. The idea of a "Dark Triad" was well-met and provocative, spawning hundreds of research papers in the ensuing decade, as summarized in The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review. See for yourself how you measure up when it comes to narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy via the Dark Triad Personality Test as well as The Dirty Dozen: A Concise Measure of the Dark Triad
posted by BadgerDoctor at 4:58 PM PST - 43 comments

50-ish words you can use to show that you care without incriminating yourself. AI researchers often say good machine learning is really more art than science. The same could be said for effective public relations. Selecting the right words to strike a positive tone or reframe the conversation about AI is a delicate task: done well, it can strengthen one’s brand image, but done poorly, it can trigger an even greater backlash.
posted by StarkRoads at 3:35 PM PST - 6 comments

Vosto is a Romanian musician making excellent synthwave. [more inside]
posted by ropeladder at 2:59 PM PST - 6 comments

A Forgotten Chapter in U.S. History: When Women Had To Choose Between Mortgages and Motherhood By Clare Trapasso for Realtor.com
posted by jacquilynne at 1:33 PM PST - 15 comments

On April 23rd, 1974, DEVO performed their second ever concert at the 2nd Kent State Creative Arts festival. DEVO Co-Founder Bob Lewis has uploaded the (almost) complete audio recording to YouTube. [more inside]
posted by SansPoint at 1:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Fix the lead pipes. Matthew Yglesias on Biden's $45 billion plan to replace all the lead pipes in the United States.
posted by russilwvong at 12:40 PM PST - 36 comments

Tarik Khan has 10 vials of leftover COVID vaccine and six hours before they expire. Can he get them all to his list of homebound residents while crisscrossing Philadelphia, dodging rush hour traffic, and observing them for 15 minutes each before returning home to his cat Theodore? Text, photo, and video from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
posted by Hypatia at 11:37 AM PST - 10 comments

This body of songwriters will not give publishing or songwriting credit to anyone who did not create or change the lyric or melody or otherwise contribute to the composition without a reasonably equivalent/meaningful exchange for all the writers on the song. Meet the songwriters who told pop stars: 'Don't steal from us' [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:18 AM PST - 10 comments

White nationalists sure don't think Tucker Carlson's "replacement" segment is about voting rights. Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and popular media personality among young white extremists, responded to Carlson’s Monday night segment by tweeting, “This week Tucker redpilled 4 million people and there is nothing liberals can do about it.” He then listed the white nationalist talking points he believes Carlson got right: “Demographic replacement, ADL, Israel, it’s all there... a full redpill. On primetime Fox News for 4 million mainstream conservatives,” he wrote. “Can you feel it? We are inevitable.” CW: ugly hate speech, anti-semitism, stupidity [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 8:51 AM PST - 92 comments

Hisham H. Muhammad writes "A love letter to bands, in music and code", reminiscing on the feeling of being in a team that is, or feels like, a band: "work done in a collective yields results of a different nature....When I’m in a collective environment — and by that I mean any setting where my work is presented to and discussed by others as it is developed — even when I’m doing work completely on my own, even before I’ve had my first piece of feedback, I feel a sort of mind game playing in my head where I 'play the part' of my peers and imagine what their feedback would be, be it consciously or subconsciously. I’m doing the work not only for myself, but for others too, whose opinions I care about."
posted by brainwane at 7:53 AM PST - 1 comment

Charles and Christopher are friends who review horror movies through a gay lens. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:36 AM PST - 6 comments

It started with a dream and ended with a brand new pasta shape. Follow Dan Pashman of The Sporkful on his three-year journey documented in a five-part series, "Mission: ImPASTAble", as he tries to develop the perfect pasta. [more inside]
posted by stripesandplaid at 6:44 AM PST - 47 comments

Jonathan Jones reviews artist Rachel Whiteread's show Internal Objects in The Guardian. "This has been the strangest year for art. We have been physically closed off from it – and now have the ludicrous situation of such commercial galleries as the Gagosian reopening, while public museums must wait until at least 17 May. In the absence of art, we have argued about it, over public statues and what museums were left by previous generations. But what’s got lost is any sense of art as mystery, as poetry, as the inexplicable. Here it is. ...This, finally, is great lockdown art." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:48 AM PST - 4 comments

An true and accurate analysis of one of Star Trek's most important pieces of technology.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:08 AM PST - 39 comments

The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the James Franco–Anne Hathaway Oscars Debacle
posted by sundaydriver at 2:52 AM PST - 55 comments

Best known of late by its TikTok remix -- upon further examination, research and algorithms lead to 2015 Jazz Roots - the Teachers Battle outro -- and thence to Vernacular Jazz Dance. Which was a wonder: who knew the span of the art form's complexity or the amount of scholarship devoted to its technique? Or that it has become so international a phenomenom? Not me. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:57 AM PST - 16 comments

Glasgow Subway expansion animated 1896-2021
posted by clawsoon at 3:02 PM PST - 23 comments

Modern urban jazz + tap dance = RB Dance Company (France): Human (Rag’n’Bone Man); Don’t Stop Me Now (Queen); *I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor); *Papaoutai (Stromae). RB Dance Company were *finalists on La France a un Incroyable Talent in 2018 and again in the show’s 2020 *battle of the judges. (Warning, videos with * feature flashing lights/flickering)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:56 AM PST - 12 comments

"Good ol' Charlie B" is a sad-and-sweet, talky comic by Marina Kittaka taking place years after the events of Peanuts: "half essay, half tribute to visiting old friends". A text-only version is available. "Yeah. I've been having a hard time, just. Figuring out where to go from here. Trying to piece something together that actually... feels like a life." Kittaka has also written about art and community and co-option, noting, "to practice my philosophy I must learn to be okay with people not getting it, to stop fighting to stay legible and correct-feeling in everybody's mind."
posted by brainwane at 7:46 AM PST - 44 comments

Top Republicans Want to Rebrand GOP as Party of Working Class (slNPR, includes link to six-page memo from Rep. Jim Banks* (R-IN)) [more inside]
posted by box at 6:13 AM PST - 163 comments

A highlights reel from the 1978 disaster movie The Swarm.
posted by Iridic at 5:32 AM PST - 42 comments

In the summer of 2001, before the ruination of modern times had become apparent to most of us, Gillian Welch released her album Time (the Revelator). In addition to her breakout song "Everything is Free," it included two tracks about April 14. [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 5:30 AM PST - 36 comments

'Avril 14th' arranged for harp; for banjo; for pedal steel; for two vibraphones {MLYT}. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 4:08 AM PST - 20 comments

The J. W. Westcott II is the only boat contracted by the US Postal service to deliver mail and packages to Great Lakes freighters and others as they navigate the Detroit River. [more inside]
posted by TedW at 6:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Documenting China’s U.S. Capitol-inspired buildings - a time capsule photography series by Hubei native Wú Guóyǒng. Extract: Although “the West” comprises many countries, for people of Wu’s generation, the artist believes the word implied one country above all else: Měiguó 美国 — the Beautiful Country, as the U.S.A. is known in Chinese. “We all thought about the U.S. Everything from the movies to music was feeding our collective imaginations.”
posted by cendawanita at 6:06 PM PST - 2 comments

Low Poly Videogame Foods is a twitter account that aggregates images of low polygon-count food objects in videogames.
posted by cortex at 2:38 PM PST - 14 comments

Jenkem: On behalf of us skaters, we consider you a skateboarder.
Herzog: I accept
posted by Uncle at 1:52 PM PST - 28 comments

September 1990. Judas Priest, the world's biggest heavy metal band, had released some patchy albums since their peak years of 1976-84, with a turn to pop metal and a follow-up anchored by a drum machine. The previous month, they'd been embroiled in a trial claiming that subliminal messages on an old album had driven two youths to suicide. A week after the judge threw out that case, the band released one of their finest albums, and in its title track, arguably their finest song: Painkiller. Now, thirty years later, it's the subject of a delightful YouTube reaction video by vocal coach and opera singer Elizabeth Zharoff, who says, "This will be my very first time hearing Judas Priest and Rob Halford, so I'm quite excited." If you haven't heard either yet, why not make it yours? [more inside]
posted by rory at 12:18 PM PST - 54 comments

Jared Cowan is a photographer and cameraman who also writes and podcasts specifically about film locations for a variety of publications. His latest traces how East L.A. became the unheralded star of the classic hip-hop movie Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Previously Cowan has covered the locations of: Falling Down, The Big Lebowski, Heat, Jackie Brown, L.A. Story, and many more. [more inside]
posted by chaz at 11:27 AM PST - 9 comments

Activist and author Breai Michele Mason-Campbell writes a long (5,000+ word) secular sermon on race, grief, accountability, and change in the inaugural issue of Pipe Wrench Magazine. Content warning for acknowledgment of the abuse and murder of Black people, primarily women. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:08 AM PST - 7 comments

The knackerman - an affecting portrait of a man and his job of removing the farm animals who didn't make it. (Trigger warning: animal death)
posted by Stark at 5:57 AM PST - 34 comments

A longer blog post from Microsoft Research announcing the availability of =LAMBDA in Excel. [more inside]
posted by kmt at 3:45 AM PST - 100 comments

New Mexico becomes the 16th state to legalize pot. [more inside]
posted by jabo at 9:30 PM PST - 59 comments

Many Americans increased their alcohol intake during the pandemic, with women and parents of young children disproportionately affected. [slNYT]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:51 PM PST - 111 comments

After 50+ years of touring, Arlo Guthrie has gone fishing.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:32 PM PST - 39 comments

"This website shows a map of reddit. Each dot is a subreddit." A web page presents a map (Github) of part of the internet. There is, appropriately, a subreddit. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 3:47 PM PST - 25 comments

"An ancient prohibition has kept Orthodox Jewish women from pursuing careers in music. Thanks to YouTube and Instagram, some are finding an audience. "
posted by DarlingBri at 1:00 PM PST - 19 comments

Making Music Visible: Singing in Sign "...that when you do hear, not hearing may seem to separate us. But what is your relationship to music, to dance, to beauty? What do you see that I may learn from? These are conversations people need to get accustomed to having.” The article begins with Brandon Kazen-Maddox's 10-song series of American Sign Language covers of seminal works by Black female artists. And then examines other signing music projects from around the world. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Klutz Press (link to wikipedia page) published the most informative books I ever read as a child. A December 1996 Stanford Magazine article about one of the founders of Klutz contains gems like this.. [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 11:20 AM PST - 41 comments

On the Twitter account @foundgoodoutfit, Brady O'Callahan shows how you can dress like classic characters from TV, movies, books, video games, and (sure, why not) consumer products.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:23 AM PST - 9 comments

A couple years ago, after a long time of pretending to have read Raymond Carver, I decided that I probably should actually read him. Writer Brandon Taylor, the author of Real Life and a new collection of short stories, Filthy Animals, writes about reading Raymond Carver for the first time. I looked up from having read my first Carver stories and felt the whole world changed. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 8:18 AM PST - 52 comments

MeFi's own The Wrong Kind of Cheese covers five methods for getting accountability, including partners, groups, professionals, apps/gadgets, and events, then discusses flow and distractibility and and links to several ambient noise and faux sounds-of-colleagues websites. Also, the BBC covers Focusmate, Caveday, RemoteWorkmates, and the general phenomenon of sites to facilitate remote videocalls with strangers. Author Courtney Milan has been finding Focusmate extremely useful -- and it reconnected her with an old friend!
posted by brainwane at 7:36 AM PST - 7 comments

The Guardian describes how you can manipulate the conversation on Facebook by commenting from Page accounts, courtesy of former employee Sophie Zhang who describes how this technique is used to distort political discourse around the world.
posted by Stark at 5:34 AM PST - 41 comments

Shellcheck developer Vidar Holen asks and answers a question about arcane command-line syntax in about 1000 words.
posted by cgc373 at 1:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Introducing the Prime Minister of India… most westerners probably wouldn't have known of the man if they hadn't heard about him on John Oliver (his snafu being hinted at in the show, here); others might have picked up the latest edition of Time magazine, a year or so back, where once he had been hailed as a hero, almost, and now was being put into a different box; and yet, there was more-to-come... [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy at 12:03 AM PST - 15 comments

The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 11:12 PM PST - 41 comments

Michael Reeves teaches his Spot Mini to serve beer.
posted by adept256 at 11:08 PM PST - 5 comments

"I had been haunted by a question to the past, a mystery of feminist history: How did the radical suffragists come to their vision, a vision not of Band-Aid reform but of a reconstituted world completely transformed?" [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 3:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Sam Green’s intimate portrait of composer Annea Lockwood shares with us a glimpse into the enthralling world of sound that she has been exploring and creating for many years. It is a touching and personal story of imagination and love. [more inside]
posted by Balthamos at 10:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Learn to Juggle 3 Balls.
posted by storybored at 9:42 AM PST - 32 comments

a natural history of the film maudit.
posted by sapagan at 4:43 AM PST - 40 comments

This is an old one, about even older stuff (2006-2008 ish?), but here's John Ficarra talking about providing stunt cars for TV and other productions, and one of them was for the TV Show "What Would You Do?". The results are pretty interesting. [more inside]
posted by kschang at 4:28 AM PST - 9 comments

"Retriever" by Stephen Kearse is a short science fiction story about an employee of the United States Federal Gun Retrieval Agency: "I’m an agent of the 28th Amendment, the abolition of the 2nd." Published October 2020.
posted by brainwane at 8:59 PM PST - 37 comments

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been named as the recipients of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 8:41 PM PST - 9 comments

I Spent My Life Consenting to Touch I Didn’t Want SLNYT, by Melissa Febos. Content warning: sexual assault. "A year of isolation made me consider all the casual, unwanted touch women endure — and why it’s so hard to refuse it."
posted by medusa at 7:32 PM PST - 48 comments

Behold: the Iceberg of Cursed Computer Facts.
posted by theodolite at 2:32 PM PST - 73 comments

Professor André K. Isaacs' lab members spend most of their time solving problems in organic chemistry. They also make short dance videos and sometimes make other short films. There's also a recent short text interview.
posted by eotvos at 1:50 PM PST - 4 comments

I think this is all a result of a complete detachment from authenticity by these tech founders. They present a version of themselves that isn’t real, and then, when they look in the mirror, they see how inauthentic they really are, and the only way they can handle the illusion they’ve created is through drugs,” said one Silicon Valley insider who often spends time with the biohacking-obsessed ultrarich. “It’s all synthetic and it’s all an illusion.” The pandemic only heightened this, with people slipping into more extreme activities in their quest for control. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 11:47 AM PST - 45 comments

LeVar Burton steps up his Jeopardy! campaign.
posted by Alex404 at 11:35 AM PST - 52 comments

"Everything feels so close that I fear I’ll miss the instant when this is over...one day I’ll look around and find the moment of catharsis never happened because life isn’t a movie and it just chugs along with its assortment of thrills and sorrows and longueurs and I’ll have to wrest that big moment from looking at lines on a graph, lines I yearn for with all my soul but can’t actually feel in my body. What if the pandemic ends and I’m just my same little garbage self?" (Lydia Kiesling, The Cut; part of the Wild Speculation series.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:14 AM PST - 56 comments

City simulators like SimCity are serious games — the kind that gets coverage well beyond the video game press. The kind of game that appears in school curriculums. The kind of game your non-gaming uncle has probably spent hundreds of hours in. On the surface, they appear to be exactly what they say: a simulation of a city. But any simulation is only as good as the model it’s built on, and the model underpinning SimCity has quite the history. In the video above, I unboxed the secret ideology hiding in the formula that built SimCity, and how that’s reflected in one of the most popular gaming series of all time.
posted by octothorpe at 5:30 AM PST - 45 comments

That thing you heard about Africans not having Neanderthal DNA wasn't the conclusion of any studies. It was an assumption used in studies to calculate how much Neanderthal DNA was in European genomes. Now that researchers have directly compared Neanderthal and African DNA, they've found that Africans carry surprising amount of Neanderthal DNA. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:27 AM PST - 10 comments

In 2010, the language still hadn’t caught up. “Homo,” the term in popular usage, was the same word bullies used. “Gay,” although foreign and new to me, felt more welcoming and safe. After I came out, I moved to London and then New York and lived in English. I discovered that “gay” also means “happy”; that “queerness” denotes so much more than just sexual orientation. The vagueness is there by design: These words encompass all forms of queer life and recast them in a more positive light. In English, I found more room to breathe, to evolve. Part of the reason for this has to do with history: The gay rights movement originated in the United States; English is the movement’s de facto mother tongue. Unlike elsewhere in the world, where silence has done a lot of the talking for gay people, in the Anglo-American world, queer life has been vocal for a long time.
posted by folklore724 at 3:05 AM PST - 5 comments

Earl Simmons, better known by his stage name DMX, has died at the age of 50. The Yonkers rapper's trademark growl dominated the turn-of-the-millenium scene with hits including Get At Me Dog, X Gon' Give It To Ya, Party Up (Up In Here), Ruff Ryder's Anthem and Where The Hood At? His gruff delivery and tough persona emphasized street authenticity and he leaves a catalog of great club bangers, but he was also in turns candid, vulnerable and spiritual. [more inside]
posted by Superilla at 11:16 PM PST - 29 comments

A Spanish chef is cultivating a grain that needs neither irrigation nor fertilizer to grow: It comes from the sea.
posted by Leeway at 1:14 PM PST - 28 comments

You would think that nowadays, this charming Japanese ad for bottled water would make extensive use of CG effects, but you would be wrong (via @cabel)
posted by gwint at 12:36 PM PST - 29 comments

Meatposting is word I made up just now. It refers to the practice of posting pictures of meat on social media with captions that glorify its consumption. ... meat is basically fossil fuels, except more delicious. It is a thing society uses every day but that is fueling a climate crisis causing massive human suffering, particularly among vulnerable populations. Climate-concerned meatposters forget this because meat culture is powerful. Independent climate journalist Emily Atkin writes about the damage done by memes and social media images that promote meat. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 11:54 AM PST - 180 comments

The human eye webcam. [SLYP]
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:25 AM PST - 28 comments

"The demands of the trans community have advanced from medical transition, to depathologization, to the institutional recognition of the possibility of trans happiness. But the question of what dysphoria actually is—a market preference, a neuroanatomical difference, an ontological mismatch between soul and body, a structure of desire—still lacks a satisfying answer. " [more inside]
posted by Amberlyza at 10:07 AM PST - 20 comments

Tiny Desk Meets SXSW: Clipping "Leave it to clipping. to innovate around the central notion of the Tiny Desk; to take the series' emphasis on close-up intimacy and transport it to new heights of, well, tininess. This is, after all, a band that contains multitudes. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes craft a bed of hip-hop, industrial music and noisy experimentalism, then set loose rapper Daveed Diggs, whose violent imagery summons '90s horrorcore and a thousand bloody movies." [more inside]
posted by gladly at 6:18 AM PST - 20 comments

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, dies aged 99 [Grauniad] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:24 AM PST - 212 comments

Safety is fatal: dynamics of social trust in human cultures
posted by daksya at 9:59 PM PST - 12 comments

Writing in an editorial for the New York Times software engineer and former Google employee Emi Nietfeld recounts how she bought into the sense of community espoused by Google - and how that wound up harming her when she was sexually harassed by her technical lead. (SLNYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:03 PM PST - 96 comments

Margaret Atwood reflects on hearing Laurie Anderson for the first time.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:19 PM PST - 54 comments

Bringing more data and analysis to the question of "is it economics or race," University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, analyzed the demographics and home county characteristics of the 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection. He found that counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges. "Put another way, the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest." [more inside]
posted by PhineasGage at 11:00 AM PST - 23 comments

Its existence has been marked by turbulent periods when it was in danger or at serious risk of being damaged. After being rescued many times, the Tapestry has survived and continues to reveal its secrets today. The full Bayeux Tapestry is now accessible on every computer screen and tablet. For the first time, you will be able to freely explore the entire Tapestry with a never seen quality of images. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:58 AM PST - 36 comments

"Between a pandemic, climate change, and advances in technology that continue to reshape almost every way of life, the past year has been a bellwether for work in the US. At WIRED, we believe some of the people best situated to cover this rapid evolution—from growing pains to genius pivots and everything in between—are the people who know those industries from the inside. That’s why we’re launching a new program called the WIRED Resilience Residency." Last month Wired magazine announced that it is "looking for new voices to provide an insider perspective on rapidly changing industries." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:02 AM PST - 13 comments

What would happen if I tried to explain what's happening now to the January 2020 version of myself? Julie Nolke is back, doing "one year later." Most recent video discussion here.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:50 AM PST - 55 comments

"What I learned going from prison to Python" by Shadeed "Sha" Wallace-Stepter: "Total strangers with a very different background and life from my own had connected the dots in a way that led to me learning to code." One of those strangers was engineering leader Jessica McKellar, who speaks at tech conferences to ask: "Mass Decarceration: If We Don’t Hire People With Felony Convictions, Who Will?" [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 7:25 AM PST - 9 comments

Want other scientists to cite you? Drop the jargon. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 6:14 AM PST - 23 comments

“Every time I heard ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ by Blue Öyster Cult, I would hear the faint cowbell in the background and wonder, ‘What’s THAT guy’s life like??’” — Will Ferrell

Twenty-one years ago today, "More Cowbell" aired on SNL.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:40 AM PST - 79 comments

A geologist summarizes the legends and science of bottomless pits, bogs, and lakes at Spooky Geology. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 10:55 PM PST - 22 comments

"Everyone Just Knows He's an Absolute Monster" Scott Rudin's ex-staffers speak out on abusive behavior. [more inside]
posted by chinese_fashion at 6:09 PM PST - 61 comments

Remi Wolf's new clip (yt) has all the makings of a summer hit. This is the track's second vid (yt) though, and is probably worth your time.
posted by kfholy at 2:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Exuberant composer Guy Michelmore demonstrates how to write a tune using dogs, how to use inversions to improve your chord progressions (featuring an impressively impractical visual aid), how to write music while trapped in the boot of a VW Polo. Or if you you're in a hurry, how about music theory in 16 minutes? Bonus: Guy introduces the people of Britain to Cabbage Patch dolls in 1983. [more inside]
posted by tomcooke at 2:16 PM PST - 2 comments

When Clar told her his age, Tracey’s next words came tumbling out: “Where were you born?” “Come By Chance Cottage Hospital,” Clar said. Tracey stood stock still for a second, her mouth agape. Then she ran, leaving her mop and cart behind. Clar shivered. In that moment, a secret began to worm its way into the light.

Two women gave birth on the same day in a place called Come By Chance. They didn’t know each other, and never would. Half a century later, their children made a shocking discovery. A long read about serial baby mixups, "Nurse Tiger", and mid-century life in rural Newfoundland, written by Lindsay Jones.
posted by Rumple at 12:59 PM PST - 27 comments

A Very 90s Death: The Tamagotchi Cemetery (Burials And Beyond): While many parents bought their offspring Tamagotchis as toys, others thought that a child taking responsibility for a digital creature would be an ideal pre-pet investment, to see if they were mature enough to understand the needs of another living thing. While this is an ideal moralistic exercise, what occurred in reality was a pocket of brief generational trauma where young children woke up to find that, after sleeping though muted midi cries of hunger at 3am, their new toy had perished overnight. You killed your first pet. This culpability for death is one of the strangest qualities in toy history; even the death of shoals of Sea Monkeys failed to elicit such a primal reaction of grief and blame from the very young. In the new world of portable digital pets, they were expected to entertain, but not truly die. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 8:37 AM PST - 30 comments

A Christian “purity” movement in the 90s promoted a biblical view of abstinence before marriage. But two decades later, followers are grappling with unforeseen aftershocks. RetroReport has the story.
posted by Toddles at 8:51 PM PST - 172 comments

The Internet K-Hole is back: A vast amount of very amateur snapshots taken from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, with absolutely no other context provided or needed. Mostly a whole bunch of people I've never seen before... but if I scroll long enough—hours maybe—I will see an image of myself somewhere, I am sure of it. NSFW warning: a minute amount of lite smut compared to the gargantuan size of the collection; however, the second picture in the latest post happens to be of a butt. The one after that it is Lemmy in a hotel room. Then comes the panopoly of randos. [ previously | via ]
posted by not_on_display at 8:45 PM PST - 106 comments

Dionne Warwick asked twitter earlier today, "Do you have an unusual pet? Send me a picture with my hash tag #dionnewarwick. I want to see how strange this can get." Twitter responded, which is why she's trending. The replies are full of ALL kinds of pets!
posted by hippybear at 6:36 PM PST - 10 comments

"I want a chisel, not a sledgehammer, with which to delete what I no longer need. I don’t want to have to empty my photo albums just because tech companies decided to make them “smart” and create an infinite loop of grief." I Called Off My Wedding. The Internet Will Never Forget (Lauren Goode, Wired). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:33 PM PST - 62 comments

The trailer for Zola was released recently. If you’re missing some context, check out MetaFilter’s previous coverage on the original viral tweetstorm.
posted by Monochrome at 3:22 PM PST - 6 comments

In the summer of 2018, Austrian Stephan Regensburger went on a 13,000-kilometre journey from Ulaanbataar - where he had shipped his Puch Maxi a few months earlier - back home to Innsbruck. This journey, documented in this 14-video YouTube playlist, took 92 days across Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia. The next year, Stephan's wanderlust took him on a 3000-km trip from Austria to Tunisia on the same valiant little bike. Read more about his adventures on his blog here.
posted by mdonley at 10:36 AM PST - 16 comments

Forbes’ 35th Annual World’s Billionaires List: Facts And Figures 2021 — Despite the pandemic, it was a record-setting year for the world’s wealthiest with a $5 trillion surge in wealth and an unprecedented number of new billionaires. The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual list of the world’s wealthiest exploded to an unprecedented 2,755 (660 more than a year ago). Altogether they are worth $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion on the 2020 list. Forbes, April 6, 2021.
posted by cenoxo at 9:47 AM PST - 64 comments

"I keep coming back to the detail in CNN’s report that this wasn’t something Matt Gaetz did a single time, but repeatedly. Because if it happened more than once — if it happened twice, even — that is because the first time went better than it should have." Metafilter fave Alexandra Petri turns down the humor and sharpens her scalpel for a column on Matt Gaetz and, more importantly, his enablers. (SL Washington Post)
posted by martin q blank at 9:06 AM PST - 37 comments

NPR Ranks the top 25 Muppets. Who will win, the answer may surprise you! [more inside]
posted by GnomePrime at 8:20 AM PST - 157 comments

Even a pandemic couldn't hold them back: it's time to honor the 2021 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team. [more inside]
posted by Gray Duck at 7:50 AM PST - 12 comments

44 self-reported journeys to neo-Nazism, mapped.
posted by clawsoon at 5:17 AM PST - 99 comments

Academia is often a family business.

A new study quantifies how underrepresented people like Flake are in academia, at least in the United States, finding that tenure-track faculty come from homes wealthier than the average population and are 25 times more likely than the general population to have a parent with a Ph.D. Compared with the wider population of their Ph.D.-holding peers, tenure-track faculty are also nearly twice as likely to have Ph.D.-holding parents.

[more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 3:54 AM PST - 71 comments

Described as the greatest Holocaust in History, the systematic slaughter of the Indigenous People of the Americas, over centuries, finally culminating in the eradication of their youth. (pdf 1, 2)
posted by hadjiboy at 2:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Two melancholy short scifi and fantasy stories, new this year, about grieving the loss of parents. "Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core" is by Wole Talabi: "So you’ve been using the money they left us to develop this thing?" "All Worlds Left Behind" is by Iona Datt Sharma: "I, uh, used to come here with my dad? I don't speak the language as well as he did."
posted by brainwane at 11:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Guardian: Soviet TV version of Lord of the Rings rediscovered after 30 years. Parts one and two of the 1991 TV movie are now available on Youtube. Although there are no English subtitles, the visuals are not to be missed. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 8:23 PM PST - 35 comments

Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986), the infamous classic short underground documentary by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, has an hour-long prequel! Shot in 1985 in the woods somewhere in Maryland, released in 2010, and free on youtube since August 2020—HEAVY METAL PICNIC! Trailer | Full Documentary | Krulik documentaries previously on MeFi
posted by not_on_display at 5:55 PM PST - 9 comments

But what if I’m yelling and I want to show the proper regard for your humanity by capitalizing the first letter of your name? Then I want the [first letter of your name] to be upper-er case, even more upper case than before. Similarly, I might want to be super casual and disregard your humanity with a lower-er case letter. So that’s what this video is about… Now I’m definitely not going to blow you away with the results here, but they’re kind of interesting - and I think some of the story of we get there is fun and interesting as well. But this will be an example of derp (sic) learning.
tom7 previously
posted by Going To Maine at 3:39 PM PST - 27 comments

Money manager bigwigs are ironically complaining that government may need to rein in passive, low-fee or no-fee index funds. [more inside]
posted by wibari at 3:08 PM PST - 54 comments

Yahoo Answers, [previously], is shutting down on May 4.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:49 PM PST - 41 comments

An AI writes songs by musicians who died at 27 to raise awareness of mental health in the music industry "As long as there’s been popular music, musicians and crews have struggled with mental health at a rate far exceeding the general adult population. And this issue hasn’t just been ignored. It’s been romanticized, by things like the 27 Club—a group of musicians whose lives were all lost at just 27 years old." New? Tracks from Amy Winehouse, Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison written by an AI.
posted by burningyrboats at 12:13 PM PST - 40 comments

A recent article examines the use of advertising tactics in Sesame Street. (Via Daniel Willingham).
posted by eotvos at 9:14 AM PST - 34 comments

Love the *idea* of Blaseball, but can't quite be arsed to actually follow the mutant-surreal fantasy baseball process in real time? Quinns from Shut Up and Sit Down has you covered! A quick and jaunty recap of the last 14 seasons, with illustrations. Part 1 (The Discipline Era) and Part 2 (Peace and Prosperity) [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 8:04 AM PST - 19 comments

The United States Supreme Court has decided in favor of Google [pdf] in the case of Google v. Oracle, essentially resolving a case begun 11 years ago. The 6-2 majority* avoided deciding whether or not the Java API was copyrightable. Rather, it held that, even if the API is copyrightable, Google's use of the API for Android was fair use. SCOTUSblog has more. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 7:38 AM PST - 61 comments

Anne Helen Petersen's latest piece for Vox, in her series on "the hollow middle class," is April 2's One weird trick to fix our broken child care system. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:09 AM PST - 33 comments

MARCH (PARKING) MADNESS: Welcome to the Finals — the 114th vs. the 34th
posted by aniola at 9:57 PM PST - 25 comments

“We’ve had people locked up for well over half of the year without a preliminary hearing,” ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) – A group of detainees rioted at the Justice Center in downtown St. Louis Sunday night, the second time such an uprising has occurred in recent months. Videos from the scene show detainees breaking windows, throwing items out of the windows, and setting items on fire on the third floor of the building. [more inside]
posted by robbyrobs at 9:27 PM PST - 12 comments

Hitoshi Yasui makes music as "chair house", and is currently working on the "Piano Ten Thousand Leaves Project" (Soundcloud). Each day, chair house improvises, records, and uploads an original piano composition. They're generally quiet and gentle pieces. He started the project in 2014, and aims to create 4,536 songs in total to match an 8th century anthology of Japanese poetry. If he stays on track, he will finish in mid-2026.
posted by brainwane at 7:11 PM PST - 8 comments

아카펠라 나린_Narin are a Korean acapella group with a focus on cover versions plus the occasional original. IU(아이유) - LILAC X COIN. ITZY(있지) - Not Shy. Somewhere Over The Rainbow (IZ ver.). Lil Nas X - Old Town Road. Billie Eilish - bad guy. Charlie Puth Medley l 찰리푸스 메들리. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 1:44 PM PST - 4 comments

Danny Stewart, 34, was late for dinner with his partner, Pete Mercurio, 32. The couple had met three years earlier through a friend in Pete's softball team. Later Danny had moved in with Pete and his flatmate, but on this summer evening he had been back to his sublet apartment in Harlem to pick up the post. As Danny was hurrying out of the station something caught his eye. "I noticed on the floor tucked up against the wall, what I thought was a baby doll," he says.

– 'We found a baby on the subway - now he's our son' by Lucy Wallis. BBC Outlook episode on this story.
posted by Kattullus at 12:34 PM PST - 30 comments

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might just be a pension fund. Yield-chasing investors are snapping up single-family homes, competing with ordinary Americans and driving up prices. This bubble might be different due to the expansion of rents as opposed to mortgages, but the effects mirror the growth rates seen in 2005.
posted by Philipschall at 10:35 AM PST - 169 comments

The world was rocked this week – not by the Space Jam 2 trailer but the release of Psynwav's Slamilton mashup album (Bandcamp/YouTube/Soundcloud) featuring such instant classics as Alexander Slamilton and The Court Where It Happened (Previously)
posted by adrianhon at 10:21 AM PST - 5 comments

10 recipes for non-bakers with flour and time on their hands. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:18 AM PST - 43 comments

Lego in real life Like Lego? Like cake? This video is for you.
posted by kathrynm at 6:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Celui Qui Tombe -- six people on a rotating platform.
posted by dobbs at 8:36 PM PST - 33 comments

Jemaine Clement turned up on his bicycle for his interview with Moana Maniapoto, for this week’s Te Ao with Moana (19'11). And no one at Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand Drama School in Wellington, where the interview took place, seemed to recognise him. Or maybe they just didn’t want to make a fuss, this being New Zealand and all. Extended transcript.
posted by Start with Dessert at 6:19 PM PST - 13 comments

The The Pharaohs Royal Golden Parade happened in Egypt yesterday.
posted by eotvos at 3:07 PM PST - 11 comments

A delightful conversation between the Stoner Brain, the Sober Brain, and the Tree Person
posted by wowenthusiast at 9:52 AM PST - 7 comments

The US's two-party system has many faults. But what can be done about it? The proposed Fair Representation Act in the US congress: fewer congressional districts, but with multiple congress members per district elected by ranked-choice voting. [SLWaPo]
posted by ShooBoo at 9:00 AM PST - 63 comments

YouTube: 'Limbo' and 'Typhoons' (YT) two latest singles from England's Royal Blood, see them returning (YT) to really ambitious clips after remaining quiet during the pandemic. (Previously)
posted by kfholy at 5:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Trio Mandili are three Georgian polyphonic singers - Tatuli Mgeladze, Tako Tsiklauri, and Mariam Kurasbediani - creators of weapons-grade cute music videos, including videos with a reluctant co-star, a sassy chef , and what might be the best day a grandmother's had in a long time. [more inside]
posted by Mogur at 5:20 AM PST - 14 comments

Ted Chiang (previously) on why computers won’t make themselves smarter (The New Yorker) and on why most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism (NY Times/Archive.is)
posted by adrianhon at 4:22 AM PST - 106 comments

We all know it, but nonetheless it’s shocking to discover that the people we watched in our youth don’t stay that age forever — they keep getting older, like everyone does. But for fans of [Emilio] Estevez, that realization may be even more poignant. For years, he seemed permanently young, part of the Brat Pack, a very Gen X thing that, in retrospect, was truly a stupid thing — and, besides, none of them liked being lumped in that group, anyway. But despite the family he was born in and the younger brother he came of age with, Estevez always seemed hard to define or pin down. And because of that, he never could fully shed the Brat Pack straightjacket. In the process, he has aged before our eyes without us really taking it in. from Emilio Estevez and the Scourge of the ‘Brat Pack’ Straitjacket [Mel Magazine] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:50 AM PST - 37 comments

Doug Dillaman has put together a list of a list of Gentle Cinema, which he describes as "pleasant people doing pleasant things and there's not much drama and you just kind of feel lovely about the world".
posted by Harald74 at 11:23 PM PST - 49 comments

The co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the world's first efficient blue light-emitting diode, has died aged 92. From the article: "In 2014, Isamu Akasaki shared the Nobel Prize with physicist Hiroshi Amano, a professor at the University of Nagoya, and Japan-born American Shuji Nakamura, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara." Akasaki, when he was a professor at Nagoya University, worked with Amano to produce gallium nitride crystals, and succeeded in 1989 in creating the world’s first blue LED. Blue LEDs have since radically transformed the displays we use everyday in laptops, cell phones and most other lighting and backlit devices. [more inside]
posted by bolix at 9:53 PM PST - 31 comments

Panic Rooms, Birth Certificates, and the Birth of GOP Paranoia [more inside]
posted by box at 3:56 PM PST - 59 comments

Just a few decades after the discovery of the Charon Relay, and the ensuing First Contact War, relatively little is known about the population of planets linked by the Prothean mass relays. Understanding the nature of these systems and how they may differ from the broader population of planetary systems in our galaxy is key to both continued human habitation across the broader Galaxy, as well as to our understanding of the Prothean civilization. What factors motivated their choices of planetary systems?

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite paper on the arXiv. (via)
posted by MartinWisse at 2:58 PM PST - 5 comments

It’s spring so that means it’s once again time for Velvet Sparrow of Something Awful’s live stream of chicks hatching! Enjoy the peeping all weekend long.
Here’s the official SA thread if you’d like to track name nominations and all that.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Beth Andres-Beck writes about hir experiences as a dyslexic programmer. (This post is from 2014.) Zie says: "I believe that in some ways dyslexia makes me a better programmer." and "It is hard to explain my intuitive, aesthetic sense of good code, such as when polymorphism would simplify a method. The heuristics I can substitute are incomplete, flawed reflections of the generative principles that motivate them and people who like rules tend to reject them when they can think of counter-examples. I rely on metaphor and examples a lot, because they have proven more effective at translating my thoughts into something other people can understand."
posted by brainwane at 1:25 PM PST - 13 comments

Why yes, yes we did. Here are our favorite shots featuring chicks from last year's Audubon Photography Awards.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 12:52 PM PST - 3 comments

...She could also be impatient if things weren’t moving fast enough. If Geoff began to digress during a demonstration, she’d nip his earlobe to get him back on track. If an audience member brought any kind of food to the arena, Tina would steal it and eat it on the spot, whether it was a hamburger or an ice cream cone. (Once, to Geoff’s horror, she landed on a stroller and snatched a pacifier from a baby’s mouth.)...

The Life and Times of “The Most Intelligent Bird in the World” [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:01 AM PST - 13 comments

Haretopia is an ‘Eden’ with pure air, crystal clear waters and wild landscapes where hare-people and others rub along very well. [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:09 AM PST - 2 comments

Seven hours of a live gnawa lila via Moroccan Tape Stash which says of this recording: "You can't hear all of the lyrics, the guinbri is a bit buried, the qarqabas are pretty loud, and there's a fair bit of discussion going on among the assembled. In other words, this is what it sounds like to be at a lila."
posted by OmieWise at 10:01 AM PST - 3 comments

Dr. Chuck Tingle does another Reddit AMA and it is extremely enjoyable.
posted by bq at 9:49 AM PST - 25 comments

"Bruce Springsteen is one of this country’s greatest living artists, one who built his success by enshrining the stories of the working-class lives of the people he grew up with in songs that have become foundational parts of the popular music canon. His commitment to seeking justice in the real world has made Springsteen a liberal hero and a cult figure to many on the left. What to make then of the recent news that he was releasing a podcast with Barack Obama, just weeks after appearing in a Super Bowl commercial urging Americans to find “the middle”?"
posted by latkes at 8:15 AM PST - 30 comments

There are long running programs in many US prisons that allow inmates to adopt cats either formally or informally. Cats in Bangkwang Prison, Indiana. Eddyville Cats in Kentucky State. Cuddly Catz in Larch Corrections Center near Yacolt, Washington. Lock Up Raw report Youtube. HLN report on Youtube. Cats that Rule the World youtube episode (cats start at 3:48) [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 7:07 AM PST - 6 comments

A Man Found 15,000 Bees in His Car After Grocery Shopping. SLNYT
posted by medusa at 6:35 AM PST - 38 comments

I've Been Sleeping With A Shovel Under The Bed an excerpt from Luke O'Neil's book Lockdown in Hell World [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 5:43 AM PST - 11 comments

Rediet Abebe uses the tools of theoretical computer science to understand pressing social problems — and try to fix them. Today, Abebe uses the tools of theoretical computer science to help design algorithms and artificial intelligence systems that address real-world problems. She has modeled the role played by income shocks, like losing a job or government benefits, in leading people into poverty, and she’s looked at ways of optimizing the allocation of government financial assistance. She’s also working with the Ethiopian government to better account for the needs of a diverse population by improving the algorithm the country uses to match high school students with colleges. [more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 1:53 AM PST - 7 comments

Highland Threads -- The Exhibition: "14 key pieces from museums from all over the Highlands of Scotland, brought to you online via film and photography with supporting stories and archive images from each museum." Trailer at Vimeo. Nicola Henderson (Museums and Heritage Highland, 2/12/2021), "Introducing ... Highland Threads": "it was agreed that plans for an online exhibition focusing on a costume from each museum's collection would be developed and funding sought to support the work." BBC News (4/1/2021), "Historical clothing from 14 museums displayed online." #HighlandThreads. Upcoming events. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:55 PM PST - 4 comments

A raise or a four-day week; biggest German union seals new deal - "Germany's largest trade union, IG Metall, agreed a 2.3% wage increase, to be paid either in full or as part of a switch to a four-day week, in a key industrial region, setting the benchmark for 3.9 million metal and engineering workers nationwide."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:29 PM PST - 23 comments

How to Pronounce Lilac [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 6:32 PM PST - 29 comments

Continuing tonight's theme of retro at the movies....The King of the Geezer Teasers: Inside Randall Emmett’s direct-to-video empire, where many Hollywood stars have found lucrative early retirement (Joshua Hunt, Vulture). Starring: Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Steven Seagal's advisory committee. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:14 PM PST - 34 comments

The interior design of movie theaters in the nineties could be chalked up to the general aesthetic that tends to be slapped on that decade, but it turns out that there was a bit more thought put into it than that. [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:17 PM PST - 17 comments

Transgender & Non-Binary Visibility In Japanese Media and EVEN MORE Transgender and Non-Binary Characters in Japanese Media: Andrea Ritsu looks at trans and non-binary characters in anime, manga and video games. BONUS: more in depth looks at the misgendering of Kino from Kino's Journey and why trans zombie girl Lily from Sombie Land Saga was not a Crunchyroll invention.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:35 PM PST - 1 comment

Massive security breach reported at US universities [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:06 PM PST - 24 comments

The quiet horrors of Cally Gingrich by Ashley Feinberg [CW: Gringriches]
posted by chavenet at 2:00 PM PST - 20 comments

A poll conducted during the second lockdown found that 52 percent of the population considered bookshops essential businesses. In France, the price of a baguette is protected by French law, and so is the price of a book. This says a lot about the place of reading in French life. In 1981, the loi Lang, named for then-president François Mitterand’s flamboyant minister of culture, Jack Lang, mandated that all booksellers, whether chains or independent (the law now also applies to online retailers), charge the same price as their competitors. The maximum discount allowed for books is 5 percent. The law not only protects independent bookshops from larger chain outlets, it ensures cultural diversity, guaranteeing that a wide range of titles can be published, including books that have cultural value but won’t become bestsellers.
posted by folklore724 at 1:54 PM PST - 11 comments

Type Your Jazz Here.... edit until you're happy with it, and send it to someone who might like it.
posted by storybored at 12:51 PM PST - 19 comments

The sixtyforgan by Linus Åkesson combines a Commodore 64 and a spring reverb to make the 8 bit computer sound like a church organ. [more inside]
posted by rpn at 11:18 AM PST - 12 comments

In honor of this first day of April, Frantone announces a new product (YouTube).
posted by biogeo at 11:14 AM PST - 7 comments

WE RECEIVED WORD FROM OUR ALLIES THAT THE FEDERATED POLEIS OF AMERIKA PRODUCED A FILM ABOUT OUR BATTLE AT THERMOPYLAI! I HAVE WATCHED THIS FILM CALLED "300" AND IT IS NOTHING BUT RECKLESS SLANDER OF OUR LAWS, OF OUR CITIZENS, AND OF MYSELF! AND ALSO WHERE ARE ALL THE COLOURS!?

This April Fools Day the venerable r/askhistorians becomes r/HistoriansAskTheMovies. [more inside]
posted by smartyboots at 9:36 AM PST - 9 comments

Audiophiles spend countless hours deciding on the right loudspeaker, amps, stands, cables, and layout for their listening room. But what about plants? Audio equipment critic John Darko walks his viewers through which houseplants are best for listening room placement, and how different plants can affect the listening experience.
posted by thecjm at 8:53 AM PST - 28 comments

Gastrointestinal adventures in food poisoning aside, Cho is doing well. She is sober, after more than a decade addicted to opiates and alcohol. ... Cho loved the aesthetics of opium smoking. “It’s a terrible drug, it is a really big part of the difficulties that Koreans and Chinese people have had, it’s a big black mark on our history,” Cho says, pausing for effect, a comedian to her bones. “But the stuff is really cool!” Content warning: The Guardian's profile of the amazing comic Margaret Cho includes references to suicide, sexual abuse, addiction, and hate crimes against Asian Americans.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:33 AM PST - 13 comments

Here's George Will's Opening Day quiz.
posted by JanetLand at 5:36 AM PST - 32 comments