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Shockingly, the 20th Anniversary of Marillion's album Misplaced Childhood is over twenty years ago! Anyway, FISH - Return To Childhood 20th anniversary tour of misplaced childhood [3h12m] is an odyssey, with Fish's solo career dominating the front half and a full playthrough of Misplaced Childhood and a rundown of other Marillion songs in the second half. It's a really delicious feast of this particular style of prog rock. If you're a fan of early eighties Genesis and don't know about Marillion/Fish, check this out. It's what you're looking for. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:46 PM PST - 17 comments

Hundreds of properties bought after Queensland floods start new life as green space. The collective size of the new green space being added to Brisbane's suburbs in the wake of 2022 floods is the equivalent of about 25 rugby league fields.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:13 PM PST - 13 comments

The long, strange, ridiculous saga of the NHL team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes. Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski of ESPN chronicle the poor decisions, bad luck, and outright chicanery that led to the NHL forcing the owner of the Coyotes to sell the team, which is moving to Utah.
posted by goatdog at 5:17 PM PST - 36 comments

The California man who hid for 6 months in a secret room inside Circuit City
posted by brundlefly at 12:43 PM PST - 38 comments

You might call this kind of defiantly ahistorical setting the Magical Multiracial Past. The bones of the world are familiar. There is only one change: Every race exists, cheerfully and seemingly as equals, in the same place at the same time. History becomes an emoji, its flesh tone changing as needed. [more inside]
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 12:23 PM PST - 98 comments

A New York State forest ranger who worked in the Adirondacks, she died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. (SLNYT gift link) [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 11:51 AM PST - 24 comments

Ken Klippenstein resigns from The Intercept. In his announcement released through his newsletter, Ken details some of the machinations between the management class controlling journalism, and the journalists out there trying to do the work. Klippenstein will continue publishing his work independently along with legendary editor and national security researcher William Arkin, as well as FOIA specialist Beth Bourdon.
posted by slogger at 11:04 AM PST - 27 comments

"So when you say judging, it’s not, this soil is great. This soil is bad. It’s classification and analysis, right?" (scroll to bottom for transcript). To prepare for the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest, they spent three intensive practice days describing soils derived from glacial till, outwash, lacustrine sediments, and loess. They braved freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, high winds, pits partially filled with water, and muddy conditions before the weather finally cleared up for the two competition days.
By the way, did you know there are state soils? (folder of pdfs for all states & PR & VI) and New Jersey’s is named Downer. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:24 AM PST - 14 comments

The Jazz Lincoln Center Orchestra feat. Wynton Marsalis [1h43m] "The South African Songbook is a musical celebration of South African democracy, 25 years after apartheid's end. With special guests Nonhlanhla Kheswa, Melanie Scholtz, Vuyo Sotashe, McCoy Mrubata, Nduduzo Makhathini and Thandi Ntuli." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:35 AM PST - 3 comments

The Top Six Lessons I Had to Learn From Reality TV Because Chabon Said No About the Couch Thing
posted by BWA at 9:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Keep truth human - take this short quiz from the Canadian Journalism Foundation to find out if you recognize AI generated, false news content.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:46 AM PST - 27 comments

A discovery about how a circular trough filled with lighter fluid can create looping mini-flames leads to a fascinating set of experiments and an explanation of excitable media. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 8:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Jerry Seinfeld is a Lazy Hack Out of Touch with the Real World - and Who Can Blame Him? Paste Magazine's brief riposte to the New Yorker's Jerry Seinfeld interview in which Mr. It's About Nothing feels that comedy has been killed by "the extreme left" and "P.C. crap."
posted by Kitteh at 8:19 AM PST - 94 comments

JZD Slušovice was a collective farm established in 1952 in the village of Slušovice in the south east of Czechia, at the time in central Czechoslovakia. When 27 year old František Čuba was appointed chairman of the coöperative in 1963, he decided to use the pretext that the farmland wasn't productive as a reason to branch out into alternative. And so, over the next 25 years the small village turned into an industrial powerhouse, developing amongst other things, a holiday resort and the first Czechoslovak Personal Computer. [more inside]
posted by ambrosen at 8:19 AM PST - 3 comments

A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Nurses in the Phillipines are doing the initial reviews, and making major mistakes. Cigna wants their reviewing doctors to take about four minutes to check the reviews and decide if warranted, or if it should be approved, and penalizing doctors who do the work to know what's really going on. [more inside]
posted by mephron at 6:41 AM PST - 36 comments

Kiwi takes a nap in Far North woman's chicken coop (New Zealand/Aotearoa).
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:07 AM PST - 22 comments

Even as stars among her contemporaries have faded into relative obscurity, Niedecker's poetry pitched resolutely between — between avant-garde experimentalism and ethnopoetics, between the gnomic and the manifest — has sustained, across the decades, stalwart devotion. Her position within the canon of twentieth-century American modernism may seem to be in flux, shifting between various contexts — Objectivism and ecopoetics, white settler colonialism, geological and geopolitical history, the artistic legacies of the New Deal and the Popular Front, midcentury feminism, Thoreauvian hermeticism transplanted to the Midwest. Her work can feel both elusive and profusive, her poetic evolution traced across fugitive volumes produced by tiny presses and now appearing in Selecteds and Collecteds rife with textual variations. In our attempts to locate Lorine Niedecker, we do not seek to pin her down but rather to let loose the frustrating delights and joyful contradictions of her art. from Locating Lorine Niedecker by Brandon Menke and Sarah Dimick [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 AM PST - 2 comments

WDR BIG BAND - The Prince Experience | Konzert [1h40m] "The WDR BIG BAND plays the music of PRINCE together with internationally renowned guests Liv Warfield (vocals), Cassandra O'Neal (vocals, keyboard), Ricky Peterson (Hammond B3), Paul Peterson (vocals, bass), Mike Scott (E -guitar), Kirk Johnson (drums) and Luis Ribeiro (percussion). Vince Mendoza, Composer in Residence of the WDR BIG BAND since 2016, has specially arranged PRINCE's compositions for the WDR BIG BAND. The concert was recorded live during the Bonn Jazz Festival (August 2023)." Song list in video description." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:54 PM PST - 13 comments

The Book of Miracles unfolds in chronological order divine wonders and horrors, from Noah’s Ark and the Flood at the beginning to the fall of Babylon the Great Harlot at the end; in between this grand narrative of providence lavish pages illustrate meteorological events of the sixteenth century. In 123 folios with 23 inserts, each page fully illuminated, one astonishing, delicious, supersaturated picture follows another. Vivid with cobalt, aquamarine, verdigris, orpiment, and scarlet pigment, they depict numerous phantasmagoria: clouds of warriors and angels, showers of giant locusts, cities toppling in earthquakes, thunder and lightning. Against dense, richly painted backgrounds, the artist or artists’ delicate brushwork touches in fleecy clouds and the fiery streaming tails of comets. There are monstrous births, plagues, fire and brimstone, stars falling from heaven, double suns, multiple rainbows, meteor showers, rains of blood, snow in summer. [...] Its existence was hitherto unknown, and silence wraps its discovery; apart from the attribution to Augsburg, little is certain about the possible workshop, or the patron for whom such a splendid sequence of pictures might have been created.

The Augsburg Book of Miracles: a uniquely entrancing and enigmatic work of Renaissance art, available as a 13-minute video essay, a bound art book with hundreds of pages of trilingual commentary, or a snazzy Wikimedia slideshow of high-resolution scans.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:53 AM PST - 15 comments

A team of cavers helped rescue a 50,000-year-old kangaroo fossil.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:35 AM PST - 13 comments

A Series of Headaches is a video from the London Review of Books following printer Nick Hand as he prints a page from the magazine using methods as close as he can get to those used to print the First Folio of Shakespeare plays. The page selected is an old LRB article about the First Folio by Michael Dobson [archive link]. The video is made in conjunction with Folio400, a website with lots of information about the First Folio, as well as a series of articles on it.
posted by Kattullus at 8:29 AM PST - 11 comments

After WB's success with Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, there was Freakazoid!. Originally conceived by Bruce Timm as a straight laced superhero gig, Steven Spielberg kept pressing it to be more and more zany. How zany? Get your freak on with every episode at the Internet Archive, or talk about anything you like, it's your Monday morning FREE THREAD. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:50 AM PST - 88 comments

By all appearances, Widell certainly seemed to be thriving. She took business lunches at Mahogany Prime Steakhouse, a leading Tulsa destination. She was a member of the Summit Club — "Downtown Tulsa's Only Private Social Club" — perched atop the Bank of America Center, with its panoramic views of the Arkansas River. She hobnobbed with the local elite and claimed to have more Airbnb listings than anyone else in the city. She cut her hair short and, to her husband's annoyance, swapped out her conservative style for big sunglasses and more "flamboyant" fashions. Widell, who hadn't had much growing up, also projected an image of benevolence. She made a point of hiring people with criminal records to work in her warehouse, and she talked about buying a church that had just come on the market and turning it into a women's shelter. But then investors started asking questions. And soon enough, Widell would be turning on the very people she'd promised a second chance. from The fall of the Queen of Airbnb
posted by chavenet at 1:44 AM PST - 29 comments

Strippers' bill of rights bill signed into law in Washington state. The new law requires training for employees in establishments to prevent sexual harassment, identify and report human trafficking, de-escalate conflict and provide first aid. It also mandates security workers on site, keypad codes on dressing rooms and panic buttons in places where entertainers may be alone with customers. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:22 PM PST - 30 comments

The Crucial Role of Herbaria in Science by Dr. Cassandra Quave. Podcast episode (on Youtube) includes Dr. Quave's WaPo opinion piece. In February, Duke University announced that it was shuttering its herbarium, to widespread dismay from scientists across the globe. With one of the nation's largest collections of algae, lichens, fungi, and mosses, Duke's herbarium is "highly unusual" for its depth and variety. It's also where the Lady Gaga Fern is held, named for the artist's outfit at the 2010 Grammys which looked exactly like the sexual stage of a fern gametophyte.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:42 PM PST - 6 comments

Entertainment Made By North Korea [5h30m] is an overview of... entertainment made by North Korea. It begins well before the founding of the country to give the cultural background, and then gets into post-Korean War entertainment. It's an interesting history lesson combined with a fascinating glimpse into a world not seen much outside it's own borders. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Enty’s Hollywood was a dark and messy world, uglier and more menacing than the glamorous town imagined by outsiders. The authenticity of this vision — and, in turn, the authenticity of his scoops — was bolstered by how pathetic he came across in his own accounts. Enty described himself as a 300-pound heavy-drinking entertainment lawyer who had been married six times, lived in his parents’ basement in L.A., and was bullied by his famous clientele — a zhlub with the right connections and a nose for dirt. In reality, Nelson didn’t live in his parents’ basement, and he hasn’t been married six times — only three. from The Man Who Gossiped Too Much [Vulture; ungated] [CW: well, almost everything]
posted by chavenet at 12:56 PM PST - 6 comments

For more than two years, the world of lost media has been flummoxed by 17 seconds of grainy audio uploaded to a small name-that-song site. Tentatively titled "Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)" based on the apparent lyrics, the clip's energetic retro 80s vibes defied all attempts by music ID apps and various hive-minds to track it down, soon becoming the holy grail of the "lostwave" community of enthusiasts for obscure unidentified "rare grooves." The search inspired articles, video essays, Youtube and TikTok memes, ambitious reconstructions (including multiple music videos), and whole wikis, but the song itself remained unsolved... until now. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:52 PM PST - 24 comments

Yangyang Cheng explores the historical evolution of how we think about science, its capitalization, politicization, and securitization, & how the US' competition with China is restricting the future of scientific research:

"To understand the present woes in scientific collaboration between the United States and China and to conceive of a better future, one must go back in time to trace the evolution of this transpacific relationship."

posted by ndr at 3:59 AM PST - 4 comments

For generations of science fiction and fantasy aficionados, saying the name Harlan Ellison is like uttering a dark spell. Ellison’s writing — primarily in short story format — is fantastic and provocative, but his reputation for contentiousness was equally potent, often overshadowing the art itself. And for younger genre fans, the name Harlan Ellison might not mean anything at all. If you’re into science fiction and fantasy and came of age in the new millennium (and his 2014 Simpsons cameo went over your head), there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Ellison. from The Unexpected Resurrection of Harlan Ellison [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:50 AM PST - 92 comments

Extensive Desert Lava Tubes Sheltered Humans for 7000 Years, Archaeologists Find. Formed after volcanic activity, the underground caves periodically hosted early humans and their livestock in Saudi Arabia, facilitating cultural exchange.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Bryats Band. 'Vesnyanka' українська Інді-фолк (slyt. 3:44)
posted by clavdivs at 5:49 PM PST - 3 comments

Synthony is apparently an EDM orchestra. I mean, like, that's what it is. It's a DJ mix being played live by an orchestra. With singers and other things. Like, I can't describe this adequately, here: SYNTHONY - World Premiere - Full Length Show [1h55m] Performed by Auckland Philharmonia.
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.” [...] “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said [last October], after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts.

TNR: The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco: "If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay." [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:12 PM PST - 94 comments

The World's Largest Wildlife Crossing Will Help Animals Walk Safely Over Eight Lanes of California Traffic. The 210-foot-long bridge across a busy freeway in Los Angeles County is expected to be finished in 2025.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:13 AM PST - 7 comments

The Millennial CAPTCHA [SLMcSweeneey's]
posted by May Kasahara at 6:49 AM PST - 63 comments

The RIGHT Way to Pronounce "GHIBLI" Finally Clarified!
posted by ShooBoo at 6:45 AM PST - 28 comments

The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV "Mid TV, on the other hand, almost can’t be bad for some of the same reasons that keep it from being great. It’s often an echo of the last generation of breakthrough TV... Or it’s made by professionals who know how to make TV too well, and therefore miss a prerequisite of making great art, which is training yourself to forget how the thing was ever done and thus coming up with your own way of doing it... Mid is not a strict genre with a universal definition. But it’s what you get when you raise TV’s production values and lower its ambitions. It reminds you a little of something you once liked a lot. It substitutes great casting for great ideas."
posted by gwint at 6:04 AM PST - 38 comments

Wallace was Black. The men who helped him were white. One might imagine that such a scene would have been jaw-dropping in Depression-era Texas, where white hostility toward people of color was common. But the West Texas cowboy culture of the time was distinctive. Men of different races often supported and respected one another. And no cowboy was more respected than Wallace. In fact he was one of the most remarkable figures in our history. from The Former Slave Who Became a Cowboy, a Rancher, and a Texas Legend [Texas Monthly; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:58 AM PST - 8 comments

The global transition to LED lighting seems to be having some concerning impacts on the natural world and human health.
posted by blue shadows at 10:43 PM PST - 18 comments

Think snakes are scary? These lizards have evolved to make snakes the snack. Snakes and lizards in the Australian outback are locked in a battle of survival. Which is predator and which is prey comes down to strategies they've evolved to resist deadly venom, a study suggests.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Brutalist Churches. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 7:52 PM PST - 48 comments

Pulp Fiction cast on meeting Quentin Tarantino and changing film history | TCMFF 2024 [30m] "John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel reunited at the TCM Classic Film Festival to celebrate the 30th anniversary of PULP FICTION."
posted by hippybear at 4:28 PM PST - 44 comments

Happy Belated Flash Friday! Sort of! If you’ve been around the internet long enough, you might remember There She Is, a Korean Flash animation by Sambakza about a bunny girl smitten with a reluctant cat boy. The whole series has been remastered in HD and uploaded to YouTube as one long video (previously), but the real reason for this post is that, years later, there’s now actually a brand new installment in the series!
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:54 PM PST - 10 comments

“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.” "It was 2017, and a YIMBY activist invited me to talk about my book Nixonland with his book club, which also happened to be Marc Andreessen’s book club." [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 3:06 PM PST - 16 comments

Is The Tortured Poets Department actually poetry? Experts weigh in
posted by chavenet at 1:11 PM PST - 72 comments

Mark Chrisler's podcast "The Constant" just concluded a 3 part series, "Comfortably Numb". Part 1 is about the horror and trauma due to the pain of surgery before anesthesia started being used in the 1840s, and ends with the question of why no one thought of using anesthetics before then despite their existence for decade(s) (nitrous oxide, chloroform) or centuries (ether) and their recreational use. Part 2 is about how anesthesia was introduced for surgery. Part 3 is about the fight between the men claiming to invent anesthesia led to their ruination. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 12:50 PM PST - 6 comments

At this point I think that Passkeys will fail in the hands of the general consumer population. We missed our golden chance to eliminate passwords through a desire to capture markets and promote hype. Corporate interests have overruled good user experience once again. Just like ad-blockers, I predict that Passkeys will only be used by a small subset of the technical population, and consumers will generally reject them. To reiterate - my partner, who is extremely intelligent, an avid computer gamer and veterinary surgeon has sworn off Passkeys because the user experience is so shit. She wants to go back to passwords. And I'm starting to agree - a password manager gives a better experience than passkeys. That's right. I'm here saying passwords are a better experience than passkeys. Do you know how much it pains me to write this sentence?

Aussie software engineer William "Firstyear" Brown pours one out for the "shattered dream" of passkeys. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:40 AM PST - 45 comments

The short science fiction story "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones (published March 2024 in Clarkesworld) begins:

I express greetings and most joyful salutations!

I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your movement has been aimless, and I express concern!

posted by brainwane at 9:21 AM PST - 32 comments

Adorable footage of mother bear and tiny cubs emerging from den after hibernation. It’s spring time in Canada! (Video by Serge Wolf.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Ultimately, cultural preferences are subject to generational relativism, heavily rooted in the media of our adolescence. It's strange how much your 13-year-old self defines your lifelong artistic tastes. At this age, we're unable to drive, vote, drink alcohol, or pay taxes, yet we're old enough to cultivate enduring musical preferences. The pervasive nature of music paralysis across generations suggests that the phenomenon's roots go beyond technology, likely stemming from developmental factors. So what changes as we age, and when does open-eardness decline? from When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis
posted by chavenet at 2:05 AM PST - 184 comments

Helen Vendler, perhaps the preeminent contemporary American poetry critic, has passed away at 90. [more inside]
posted by whir at 9:44 PM PST - 13 comments

'An evening with Pet Shop Boys' 22-04-2024 [Guardian Live, 1h23m] "To celebrate the launch of their highly anticipated new studio album, Nonetheless [Wikipedia], join Pet Shop Boys in conversation with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis - live in London, with an exclusive album playback, and livestreamed globally." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:26 PM PST - 9 comments

SLYT
posted by CarrotAdventure at 8:17 PM PST - 22 comments

Researchers in WA's north have discovered that northern quolls, thought to be nocturnal, take regular midnight naps. Researchers believe the naps may be related to digestion. Northern quolls in captivity are set to be studied further to understand more about why they take regular naps.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:02 PM PST - 6 comments

G/O Media, the much-reviled owner of such internet landmarks as Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and The Root, has been selling off their assets recently, including ClickHole (sold to Cards Against Humanity), Lifehacker (Ziff Davis), Deadspin (gutted), Jezebel and the AV Club (Paste). Latest on the auction block is The Onion... who ended up with a surprising buyer: Global Tetrahedron, a name that might ring a few bells for longtime readers. But what does the advent of this ominous conglomerate mean for America's Finest News Source?™ [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:59 PM PST - 47 comments

The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness , signed by 88 researchers, asks us to consider more non-human creatures as capable of subjective experiences. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 4:42 PM PST - 33 comments

3 new tracks: Die Spitz - I HATE WHEN GIRLS DIE | The Warning - S!CK | [XG TAPE #4] Million Cash (MAYA)
posted by signal at 4:33 PM PST - 4 comments

“ So my editor, and I, would like me to bring Garak into this.” - “ That’s interesting. There is an interesting angle for that.” - Star Trek’s Alexander Siddig interviewed for Arab-American Heritage Month
posted by Artw at 1:34 PM PST - 25 comments

The Coddling of the American Parent by Mike Masnick (TechDirt) debunks Jonathan Haidt's panicky new book on teens & the internet. Developmental psychologist & scholar Candice Odgers' article for Nature: The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:58 PM PST - 39 comments

The act of trying to keep things the way they are is insanity. It’s an illusion. Trying something new means touching the unknown. It can be frightening and cause you to either fight or flee, rather than say yes. It takes courage to change. Then again, why change when you don’t have to? But when you don’t change, everything appears to stay the same. And this is the antithesis of life. Life is change. Life is always changing. [more inside]
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Akira Toriyama's first published work • Akira Toriyama's last published work [more inside]
posted by May Kasahara at 9:26 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Minneapolis Land Use Reforms Offer a Blueprint for Housing Affordability: Rents stayed flat as more apartments were built, even as the rest of Minnesota saw increases. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:35 AM PST - 12 comments

When you often notice people "why-don't-they-just"-ing their way into a proposed solution to a gnarly problem, you might turn your criticisms into a checklist. "Your post advocates a [( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante] approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work." These templates often offer a summary of the problem space and a glimpse of experts' frustrations. Solution rejection checklists exist for fixing the housing crisis, beating the CAP Theorem, protecting against DDOS attacks, improving pharmaceutical drug discovery success rates, creating new programming languages and distributed social networks, and (MeFi comment!) saving journalism. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 7:30 AM PST - 69 comments

I am a professor of medicine and public health who researches the government’s response to addiction. I also spent more than two decades as a police officer. If cities expect to help reduce our nation’s overdose crisis and not simply ride a policy pendulum back and forth between election cycles, their leaders need to enact compassionate, effective drug policies and ensure fair access to public space at the same time.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:38 AM PST - 30 comments

From groceries to pharmacies to financial services, the Loblaw kingdom is hard to escape for Canadians. (slTheWalrus) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:09 AM PST - 37 comments

Grândola, vila morena [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:03 AM PST - 4 comments

An Alphabet of Heptagons: Seven-sided Coins [See also: Polygonal coins]
posted by dhruva at 12:02 AM PST - 7 comments

Venomous snake brought into hospital in lunchbox prompts plea from doctors — "please don't do this." Hospital staff came face-to-face with one of the world's most deadly snakes after a patient brought it to the emergency department in a snap-lock lunch container. Snake catcher Jonas Murphy has relocated several snakes brought into the Bundaberg Hospital. Mr Murphy said the snakes were in plastic containers or bags and posed a big danger if they had escaped. "You are risking a follow-up bite and you're putting everyone around you in danger as well," Mr Murphy said. "Snakes are one of those things that scare a lot of people, we definitely don't want them in the hospital." [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:41 PM PST - 43 comments

Or Nixon? Shirley Chisholm? Thanks to Brian Foo, the data driven dj, wonder no longer! [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 9:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Making Real Music for a Fake Band [43m] is from Slate's Decoder Ring podcast that digs pretty deep into a particular Broadway play that is the current Hot Ticket In Town [Playbill, Stereophonic]. It also digs into making real things for fake things. The episode looks at a multitude of excellent fake things you already know, and then the playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler formerly of Arcade Fire get into the show itself... A fictional Fleetwood Mac-esque band in the studio struggling to record an album of songs like this [1m45s] in the mid-Seventies. Here's a "retrospective trailer" looking back at its developmental run at Playwrights Horizons. [43s] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:50 PM PST - 5 comments

Writing for Defector, Asher Elbein talks about the evolution of the character of Magneto, who is (yet again) back from the dead and the shift of meaning in "Never Again," from inclusive aspiration to its violent modern application. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 4:13 PM PST - 100 comments

'Seagull Boy', nine, wins European screeching competition
posted by pipeski at 2:29 PM PST - 16 comments

The backside of the moon as it transits across Earth. That is all.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:32 PM PST - 38 comments

Emil Dziewanowski is a technical artist in the gaming industry who excels at using inventive techniques to create compelling visual effects. His latest blog post, Flowfields, walks you through the process of animating the complex whorls and vortices of Jupiter without using traditional fluid dynamics, using lessons learned from such prior art as Contra's color-cycling, frame-by-frame animation, and the trippy lava effect in Quake, ultimately using a combination of clever tricks to design a "universal" flow simulator that can render appealing fluid effects in just half a millisecond.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:04 PM PST - 4 comments

Experts left scratching their heads as wombat wanders into ocean. A couple holidaying in Tasmania's remote north-west have captured a wombat foraging in the ocean. The footage has surprised wombat experts, who say the behaviour is highly unusual.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:49 AM PST - 30 comments

The Mary Sue joins me in welcoming actor Dan Stevens' sleazier weirder side. (slTheMarySue) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 4:50 AM PST - 27 comments

Life After Running Athletes are often defined by their physical strength. Who are they when they lose it?

It is not a replacement for running, but to live with a chronic condition is to become an expert at negotiating between one’s wants and one’s capacities. It means constantly hacking away at the richness of one’s life—there is nothing casual about it.

posted by hydropsyche at 3:57 AM PST - 48 comments

Ophelia’s life, as much as we see of it within the boundaries of five acts, has been one of enforced silence, climaxing in a desperate call—answered too late by Gertrude—for a chance to unpack her heart with words. She comes in a full and terrible circle from her playful rebuke to Laertes for pontificating about how women should behave, but she never saw what was coming. “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” Only in her madness, when language tumbles out uninhibitedly, does Ophelia make a direct and profound charge about masculinist privilege and culpability. “Young men will do’t if they come to’t, / By Cock, they are to blame.” Unlike Hamlet with his words, words, words, Ophelia never speaks of taking her own life. And then she does. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune strike more than one target in this play. Among its many wonders, Hamlet depicts a young woman set on a lonely path, leading to an abyss, in a lethal world of male verbal license. from The Silencing of Ophelia by Robert Crossley [Hudson Review]
posted by chavenet at 12:19 AM PST - 11 comments

Large-scale listening: To ensure that DSS-43 can still place the longest of long-distance calls, the antenna underwent a round of updates in 2020. A new X-band cone was installed. DSS-43 transmits radio signals in the X (8 to 12 gigahertz) and S (2 to 4 GHz) bands; it can receive signals in the X, S, L (1 to 2 GHz), and K (12 to 40 GHz) bands. The dish’s pointing accuracy also was tested and recertified. 1200 words from Willie D. Jones for IEEE Spectrum. Small-scale listening: The sounds being produced are within the lower range of human hearing, so it’s possible there are sounds in the soil we haven’t heard yet. Early research from Switzerland shows soils were producing the most complex sounds in spring and summer, which declined in autumn and winter. Phoebe Weston writes 1000 words for The Guardian.
posted by cgc373 at 10:20 PM PST - 2 comments

On Steam right now is a game that lets you play Mini Golf in four dimensions, called, naturally, 4D Golf (Steam, $20). I don't mean in the sense that time is a fourth dimension, it's set in a fully 4D world: you decide which slice of it is revealed in the visible 3D world at any time. Here's a trailer. (1 1/2 minutes) Here's Youtuber Icely Puzzles playing the beginning of it. (43 minutes) Here's the video devlog. It's from CodeParade, who also made the hyperbolic plane exploration game Hyperbolica. At the end of the release announcement video, its creator mentioned that there is a secret feature in 4D Golf that makes it even more bizarre, but telling its existence is a pretty major spoiler.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 9:56 PM PST - 15 comments

Outback cattle property to expand national park after environmentally significant government purchase. An anonymous $21 million ($13.68 million US) donation has helped with the purchase of the 352,589-hectare (871,266 acre) Vergemont Station near Longreach to create a 1.5 million-hectare (3,706,580 acre) protected corridor in outback Queensland.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:40 PM PST - 3 comments

So I was out yesterday and listening to the NPR show World Cafe, as I do if/when I'm out at that time, and the host starts going on and on about the voice of the featured artist that day, about how stunning it is, and I'm thinking, come on, don't oversell it. They weren't overselling it. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments

Edward Zitron has been reading all of google's internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ's antitrust case against google.

Zitron concludes that Google Search died on February 5th, 2019 [more inside]
posted by zenon at 11:40 AM PST - 155 comments

Little Workshop is an award-winning French studio specializing in high-quality immersive 3D experiences for the web. Their portfolio contains many charming and fun projects you can try out yourself, including endless city generator Infinitown, cute procedural dungeon crawler Keep Out!, pulsing geometric music visualizer TRACK, and Arde Madrid, a multi-scene recreation of Ava Gardner's home in Francoist Spain. Their latest and most ambitious project: EQUINOX, a slick, stylized adventure game set in a failing starship in deep space, complete with a full soundtrack and voice acting in a mobile-friendly interface. Read the case study on their website, or check out their other projects (including the dearly-departed Mozilla MMORPG BrowserQuest).
posted by Rhaomi at 9:57 AM PST - 5 comments

New ant species discovered recently in Western Australia's Pilbara region, now named after Voldemort due to visual similarities
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:47 AM PST - 25 comments

The Caesar’s mission creep toward absurdity began long before the tequila and the fava beans. In fact, it has been going on for decades—first slowly, then quickly, swept along by and reflective of many of the biggest shifts in American dining. from Something Weird Is Happening With Caesar Salads [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:53 AM PST - 86 comments

"To be online today is to constantly walk a tight-rope between the longing to be known and the dread of being perceived." [more inside]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:37 AM PST - 13 comments

For a generation of British people, it represents the vanishing landscape of their childhoods, tied into ideas of nostalgia and even hauntology.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:35 PM PST - 18 comments

By our count there are 29 tunnels you can drive through in New Zealand, and we have ranked them all, so if a shit one is on your route, you can take the other way around.
posted by Sebmojo at 8:28 PM PST - 22 comments

Elle Griffin's report on the testimony from the Justice Department's 2021 antitrust lawsuit to block the merger of Penguin Random House with Simon and Schuster reveals a disheartening truth: practically nobody buys books. [more inside]
posted by dis_integration at 8:10 PM PST - 91 comments

Genesis -- The Last Domino? PBS documentary [55m], about their final tour from a few years ago. Genesis The Last Domino? tour previously, which wasn't the end, I saw them in November of 2022.
posted by hippybear at 7:52 PM PST - 3 comments

Junna's drumcover of Babymetal's Doki Doki Morning (It's your weekly free thread!)
posted by Gorgik at 6:59 PM PST - 52 comments

The Poetry of Actor William Smith. You may be familiar with William Smith as a "that guy" from hundreds and hundreds of movie performances, usually the heavy, such as bare-knuckle brawler Jack Wilson in 1980's Any Which Way You Can. But his poetic contributions have gone largely unnoticed, and courtesy of his still-up website -- Williams passed in 2021 -- you can read poems like The Reaper or thrill to these poems read in Williams' own roadworn voice.
posted by Shepherd at 3:01 PM PST - 9 comments

Brightline West is ready to start breaking ground this week, according to The Washington Post. The southwest endpoint will be in Rancho Cucamonga, where it will connect to Metrolink. (Which is definitely better than Victorville, which had been suggested a few years ago.) Connecting to the existing lines here will make it simpler to build than trying to connect all the way to Los Angeles proper. (gift link) [more inside]
posted by KelsonV at 12:44 PM PST - 60 comments

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth reports NASA. After pinpointing the issue with the space probe, the mission team have devised a workaround. Previously, previouslier, many more previouslies.
posted by Kattullus at 12:24 PM PST - 36 comments

H5N1 bird flu has begun spreading between mammals, leaving coastlines dotted with the bodies of birds, seals, and sea lions. Agriculture increases human- animal contact. On the bright side, the human history of infection with other flu viruses may confer some resistance to H5N1. (Gift NYT article)
posted by Sleeper at 12:09 PM PST - 32 comments

Previously: the official New York City tree map. Earlier this year: Kieran Healy created visualizations of "the relationship between the median diameter of street-trees (i.e., trees not in parks) and median household income for New York City neighborhoods" (for example, Park Slope versus Bushwick), dendograms of "New York City’s street tree species clustered by similarity of neighborhood profiles" (and, conversely, "the neighborhoods clustered by tree profile similarity"), and "a Principal Coordinates Analysis of New York City NTA neighborhoods and their street tree species". (NTA means Neighborhood Tabulation Area.) "I don’t really know anything about trees. I do know how to draw pictures, though."
posted by brainwane at 10:44 AM PST - 3 comments

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's introduction of Bill 18 is ostensibly meant as a corrective against federal overreach. The bill is widely described by observers and critics as unnecessary. It will result in the addition of a layer of bureaucracy and oversight between federal monies and programs, and the Albertan municipalities and public institutions that stand to benefit. [more inside]
posted by elkevelvet at 8:05 AM PST - 12 comments

Pro-Palestinian orgs at universities across the world protest in support of "Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment" Columbia Spectator, the newspaper run by undergrad Columbia University students, published an editorial asking if Columbia University is in crisis, stating: Columbia’s crisis is not as the committee has attempted to define it—a characterization stemming from the belief that the University has become a hotbed of antisemitic thought and behavior. Rather, the crisis is rooted in a lack of genuine community engagement on the part of the administration, as well as a failure to fulfill its duty of care to all affiliates. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 7:20 AM PST - 736 comments

As Congress has finally passed the Ukraine aid bill, hope is returning to the frontline, where Ukrainian troops are increasingly struggling to hold out against a numerically superior Russian force that also has a lot more ammunition to spend. This post has some status updates and commentary on the war at present. [more inside]
posted by Harald74 at 6:32 AM PST - 119 comments

17-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju has become the youngest challenger for the world championship title in history by winning the open section of the FIDE Candidates 2024 (previously). Other highlights of the tournament including Tan Zhongyi steamrolling the women's section, and Vaishali Rameshbabu winning five games in a row to lift herself from last place to shared second. The saddest moments came after the draw between Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi that gave Gukesh his historic victory: "I'm very sorry." "My fault."
posted by clawsoon at 6:21 AM PST - 8 comments

Exactly as it says on the tin (50ish min). Jo Brand, an English standup comedian, talks psychiatry, comedy and what swear word is her favourite with Jamie Laing, ex-Made in Chelsea star.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:18 AM PST - 6 comments

Writer Andrew Chapman on having Crohn's and how food connects us to being human. (slLongreads)
posted by Kitteh at 5:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Jeremy Parish, dedicated game journalist and Retronaut, and creator of design deep dives, has been covering Gameboy (1989, gaiden), Game Boy Color (1998), Game Boy Advance (2001), NES (1985, 1986, 1987, 1998, 1999, gaiden), SNES (1991, extra, gaiden), N64 (1996), Sega, Virtual Boy and Metroidvania games now for ten years! His terrific and scholarly videos don't get nearly the views that much less worthy series get, so please give them a try if you have any interest in this area.
posted by JHarris at 1:08 AM PST - 15 comments

Flying aircraft carriers show up in steampunk, dieselpunk and atompunk fiction so often, we can consider them a genre trope. From Castle Wulfenbach in Girl Genius to the British aircraft carriers in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to the helicarriers of S.H.I.E.L.D., here is a look at these behemoths of the sky. from Flying Aircraft Carriers [Previously]
posted by chavenet at 12:28 AM PST - 18 comments

Scientists discover extinct marsupial double the size of the red kangaroo. (Male red kangaroos grow up to a head-and-body length of 1.3–1.6 m (4 ft 3 in – 5 ft 3 in) with a tail that adds a further 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) to the total length.) Researchers from Flinders University have described three new species of extinct kangaroo, helping to solve a nearly 150-year-long scientific mystery.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:05 PM PST - 2 comments

QWANJI is a fun, minimalist little webtoy for converting the patterns drawn on QWERTY-based swipe keyboards like Swype (RIP) and Gboard into visible glyphs reminiscent of handwritten kanji (hence the name). Experiment by typing text (using spaces to break up glyphs) to see instant results, and share by copying either the resulting URL or the gibberish text, which you can drop into the text field to see them sketched out. No word on when DVORAK support is coming (or T9, for that matter -- but there's a simulator for that).
posted by Rhaomi at 9:45 PM PST - 8 comments

Willie Nelson Outlaw Tour 2024

I would have posted this to IRL if I knew how. Considering the principals and the age of some, this presents a last chance opportunity to see them. And as someone here I've already notified said about the front row tickets, those are stupid cheap prices.

Indeed, indeed.
posted by y2karl at 1:29 PM PST - 59 comments

Image without metaphor in Dune 2: Because in 2024, I don't find it hard to believe that people are incredibly excited by the vision of an anti-colonial guerilla movement driven by Islamic faith defeating a massive and technologically dominant empire... I do find it hard to believe that more people in 2024 aren't outraged that Dune Part Two literally features a talking embryo.

Civil War, a piece of radical-centrist, middle brow bothsideism is not only sure to be the most successful film he has made, it is also by some margin the worst. But to my pleasant surprise, it's not a completely terrible and evil film. It is just a deeply mediocre one. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:53 PM PST - 123 comments

Jenny Livingstone has cystic fibrosis. She was not supposed to live beyond her mid thirties. But a new treatment is adding decades onto her life and she's having to consider the future in a new way now. Here's an interview with Jenny and Max Fisher from Pod Save America [~45m] about her life and her treatment and what this new extended lifespan means to her.
posted by hippybear at 11:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Enclosed within its rugged mud brick walls the temple precincts at Dendera seem to be an island left untouched by time. Particularly in the early hours of the morning, when foxes roam around the ruins of the birth house or venture down the steep stairs leading to the Sacred Lake. Stepping into the actual temple is like entering an ancient time machine, especially if you look up to the recently cleaned astronomical ceiling. This is a vast cosmos filled with stars, hour-goddesses and zodiac signs, many of which are personified by weird creatures like snakes walking on long legs and birds with human arms and jackal heads. On the columns just below the ceiling you encounter the mysterious gaze of the patron deity of the temple: Hathor.

It might not have the iconic status of Giza or the Valley of the Kings, but the Dendera temple complex north of Luxor boasts some of the most superbly-preserved ancient Egyptian art known, ranging from early Roman times back to the Middle Kingdom period over 4,000 years ago. Most breathtaking is the ceiling of the temple's grand pronaos, which is richly decorated with intricate astrological iconography. But you don't have to travel to Egypt to see it -- thanks to photographer and programmer José María Barrera [site], you can now peruse an ultra-HD scan of the fully-restored masterpiece in a slick zoomable scroller. Overwhelmed? See the captions in this gallery for a deep-dive into the symbolism, or click inside for even more. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:52 AM PST - 10 comments

Negative Space - "a short film by Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter, was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film." [more inside]
posted by pracowity at 4:37 AM PST - 4 comments

Implicit in the art of noise is a promise of resistance. For millennia, music has been a medium of control; noise, it follows, is a liberation. from What is Noise? by Alex Ross [The New Yorker; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:04 AM PST - 23 comments

Researchers train goannas not to eat cane toads in Western Australia's Kimberley region. The cane toad is spreading in northern Australia, but researchers have found a way to protect predators from the toxic pest and it's all a matter of taste.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:07 PM PST - 3 comments

'Small pizza delivery shop.' (slyt. 4:12)
posted by clavdivs at 6:40 PM PST - 19 comments

‘We went from naive, hippyish protesters to hardcore anarchists’: the criminal justice bill protests, 30 years on. The criminal justice and public order bill aimed to criminalise “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. “It was almost like a surrealist prank,” Harry Harrison, co-founder of DiY sound system, says now. “I said: ‘Is this real?’ It was a crazy mixture of the sinister and the absurd.” [from The Guardian]
posted by goo at 2:38 PM PST - 12 comments

A century ago saw the premiere of Jean Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony, the culmination of decades of experimentation and refinement of the form, as Alex Ross explains (with musical examples). A few years later, he started work on an eighth symphony, which he never completed to his satisfaction, and eventually he burned his manuscripts of it. In 2011, after sifting through the Sibelius manuscript archive, it was possible to record roughly two and half minutes of the thirty minute work. Despite some subsequent hints from correspondence with Sibelius’ copyist, no further fragments have been uncovered, and the Eighth Symphony remains lost.
posted by Kattullus at 1:55 PM PST - 13 comments

Over on gRubiks.com, they've come up with an interesting puzzle solving guide:

If you have an old scrambled [Rubik's] cube just lying around the house, if you’re trying to learn how to solve it on your own and just need a “reset”, if you're looking for algorithms for patterns, or even if you just want to impress your friends—this solver is perfect for you.

Just take your scrambled Rubik's Cube, place it in front of you, and color the squares on the screen as you see them on your cube. Then press "solve", and it will walk you through the solution.
posted by not_on_display at 12:50 PM PST - 26 comments

Over on Mathstodon.xyz, Alexandre Muñiz comes up with an interesting puzzle game:

I call it Reverse the List of Integers. How it works is, you start with a list of positive integers, (e.g. [7, 5, 3]) and your goal is to make the same list, in reverse ([3, 5, 7]). You have two moves you can make:
     1) Split an integer into two smaller integers. (e.g. [7, 5, 3] → [6, 1, 5, 3])
     2) Combine (add) two integers into a larger one. (e.g. reverse the last e.g.)
There are two restrictions that seem natural for making this into an interesting game:
     1) You can never make an integer greater than the largest integer in the original list.
     2) You can never make a move that results in the same integer appearing in the list more than once.

User @ch33zer chimes in with a basic web implementation (followed by other attempts, including a visual version), and @GistNoesis offers some code for exploring the problem space to brute-force solutions. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:19 AM PST - 3 comments

How Phish turned Las Vegas’ Sphere into the ultimate music visualizer "Some moments last night felt like you were seeing enormous versions of the old visualizers from Winamp or iTunes. Others brought the crowd into intricate, dazzling scenes."
posted by dhruva at 3:15 AM PST - 59 comments

It’s 2008. Though a San Francisco resident, I crave “Girl in New York” stories. Felicity Porter, Lena Dunham, Eileen Myles—in books and TV shows, I’ve watched them come of age in their frothy version of Brooklyn. As a black man, I have to tell myself this fascination isn’t me idolizing whiteness. No, this must be, like Venus Xtravanganza before me, a rational envy for those society deems valuable. A desire to chase my dreams through a maze of hangovers and strange lovers and suffer mere embarrassment for my mistakes. It seems I’ve found another such fantasy in this Reagan-era relic about itinerant artists—provided I steal it. Bohemian behavior for a bohemian book. So, Slaves in hand, I keep walking. from The Time I Stole Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York and Couldn’t Stop Reading It by Elwin Cotman
posted by chavenet at 12:17 AM PST - 6 comments

Unlikely friendship between cockatoo and lorikeet bamboozles wildlife sanctuary visitors. A red-tailed black cockatoo and a musk lorikeet have become inseparable, with the smaller bird often found under the wing of the cockatoo at Tasmania's Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:13 AM PST - 18 comments

A short fantasy story about a beastkeeper and what happens after the royal palace lets them go. By bixbythemartian.
posted by brainwane at 7:49 PM PST - 5 comments

A database of 589 math problems posed by Paul Erdős, mostly in combinatorial geometry and number theory, only 159 of which have been solved. Get to work!
posted by escabeche at 7:34 PM PST - 15 comments

The NLRB announced tonight that UAW won a historic union election at Volkswagen in Chattanooga Tennessee. The union won by a margin of more than 70% as votes [continued] to be counted. With labor shortages throughout the manufacturing sector, many of the workers hired by Volkswagen were much younger and more diverse. Some had even moved from more pro-union parts of the country to work there. “It’s a totally different ball game,” [Renee Berry] said. “The atmosphere is different. You see more pro-union than anti-union [workers]. A whole lot of people who were anti-union in the past have switched.”
posted by 2N2222 at 7:22 PM PST - 19 comments

The materialist world view is often associated with despair. In “Anna Karenina,” Konstantin Levin, the novel’s hero, stares into the night sky, reflects upon his brief, bubblelike existence in an infinite and indifferent universe, and contemplates suicide. For Dennett, however, materialism is spiritually satisfying. [...] “Darwin’s dangerous idea,” Dennett writes, is that Bach’s music, Christianity, human culture, the human mind, and Homo sapiens “all exist as fruits of a single tree, the Tree of Life,” which “created itself, not in a miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly.” He asks, “Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not.” But, he says, it is “greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. . . . I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.”

Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, Dies at 82 [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:29 PM PST - 39 comments

The maker of a "Fuck the LAPD" t-shirt received a takedown notice from the Los Angeles Police Foundation on the grounds that the shirt infringed its trademark on "LAPD". Their lawyer's response was nothing if not concise. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:14 PM PST - 27 comments

K-pop fans organized by KPOP4PLANET pressure Hyundai into ending a greenwashed dirty energy aluminum deal in Indonesia. Will the collective action of snackers and ramen slurpers end PepsiCo's reliance on palm oil from deforested areas? PalmWatch is a brand new tool to trace palm oil supplies from the ground level (% of tree cover area lost by country), to the processing mills, to middleman parent corporations, and to the consumer brands that use the oil in their products. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Heliophysics Big Year [24m] is a video from NASA Edge about, well, apparently a big year for heliophysics, or the study of the Sun. The Solar Observatory at Sunspot NM is a pretty interesting place to visit. If you're ever in the vicinity of White Sands National Park, you're only a couple of hours' drive from Sunspot, in a completely different environment from the desert floor below. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:39 AM PST - 12 comments

In “A Proposal for the Unification of Psychotherapeutic Action Understood as Memory Modification Processes”, Bruce Ecker lays out the case for a unifying account of therapeutic processes, and why that matters. (Link is to a publicly available pre-print copy of the article.) [more inside]
posted by concinnity at 10:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Claire Rousay has gained prominence [NYT, archive link] as an experimental, ambient musician, but her most recent album, Sentiment, [Bandcamp, Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music] is closer to lo-fi indie pop. Her website has links to her whole discography.
posted by Kattullus at 8:32 AM PST - 6 comments

"The writers are losing out. The middle layer of craftsmen are losing out. The top end of the talent are making more money than they ever have, but the nuts-and-bolts people who make the industry go round are losing out dramatically.” (slHarper's) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:11 AM PST - 26 comments

It is the late 1800s. You are an innovative fireworks manufacturer in Yokohama, Japan, with an increasingly international audience (including, on at least one occasion, Ulysses S. Grant). But how to demonstrate to your worldwide customers what, exactly, you have on offer? Introducing the beautifully minimalist Hirayama Fireworks' Illustrated Catalog of Night Bomb Shells. [more inside]
posted by nobody at 5:33 AM PST - 24 comments

In an internal memo Wednesday, Google announced the firing of 28 employees in connection to a protest of Project Nimbus. The previous day inside Google offices in New York and California, a couple dozen employees staged a sit-in to bring awareness to the $1.2 billion Israeli government contract. It began in 2021 and provides cloud computing services to Israel—specifically, we’ve recently learned, to the Israeli Ministry of Defense—and though it has faced internal criticism since its inception, efforts against it have naturally intensified since October 7th. The memo from Google’s global head of security Chris Rackow was ominous. “If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies,” he wrote to the company’s thousands of employees, “think again.” From Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:13 AM PST - 75 comments

Forestry England has built rope bridges for hazel dormice in the Forest of Dean, so that the mice can get from tree to tree, their routes having been interrupted by felling caused by ash dieback. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 2:39 AM PST - 13 comments

One Minute Park allows you to visit parks from around the world for one minute each. These are just one minute videos, not webcams. Eventually the project will fill in all the minutes (1440) in a day. You can create your own One Minute Park to help achieve this goal.
posted by chavenet at 12:32 AM PST - 5 comments

Neltris is a small in-browser game by Hempuli, creator of Baba is You, Environmental Station Alpha, and scores of tiny indie games as seen on that itch.io page. It's just Tetris, but with additional Tetris.
posted by wanderingmind at 12:03 AM PST - 12 comments

First we got the title track, Dark Matter thick and meaty, grown out of a drum riff. Something was a'brewin'. Something more powerful than in the recent past, with a blistering guitar solo. Running was the second single, maybe even more intense than the first. Then the miracle review: Pearl Jam Dig Deep and Find a New Light on ‘Dark Matter’ [Rolling Stone] But the band is also excited: [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:51 PM PST - 18 comments

Adult Swim is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Space Ghost: Coast To Coast by showing all the episodes in no particular order on YouTube right this very moment. Relive the early days of Cartoon Network's dimwitted dadaist superhero insanity, or become enthralled for the first time.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:45 PM PST - 26 comments

The two flat “blades” of a feather on either side of the main shaft are called vanes. In living birds that fly, the feathers that arise from the hand, known as the primaries, have asymmetrical vanes: the leading vane is narrower than the trailing one. It stood to reason that vane asymmetry was important for flight. And because fossils of Microraptor and its kin show asymmetrical feathers, some researchers argued, these animals must have been able to fly.

Recent work by flight biomechanics experts, including me, has overturned this received wisdom about feather vane asymmetry. Our research shows that feather shape is largely optimized to allow the feather to twist and bend in sophisticated ways that greatly enhance flight performance. Merely being anatomically asymmetrical doesn’t mean much. What matters is that the feather is aerodynamically asymmetrical, and for this to be the case, the vane asymmetry must be at least three to one—that is, the trailing blade needs to be three times wider than the leading one. Below this ratio, the feather twists in a destabilizing rather than stabilizing way during flight.

Scientific American: Why Feathers Are One of Evolution’s Cleverest Inventions [includes helpful illustrations -- and some truly stunning 4K+ photography] [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:43 PM PST - 18 comments

Singer, song writer, guitarist Dickey Betts has died. A driving force and original member of the Allman Brothers Band, Dickey Betts was an early pioneer of two part guitar harmonies in rock music.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 3:04 PM PST - 43 comments

These dramatically-coloured bright yellow and dark black frogs were thought close to extinction, but they've reappeared in a park blackened during Black Summer. (Black Summer was the massive and far reaching 2019-2020 Australian Bushfires/Forest Fires that were on a previously unprecedented scale, size, and scope.) For the first time in five years, northern corroboree frogs have been detected in Namadgi National Park. Almost 40 of the critically endangered species were spotted across the park by government ecologists. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:10 PM PST - 1 comment

Being early investors in tech wasn’t something that had historically been available to the average person in Turkey. The instant millionaires and billionaires and unicorns pretty much lived elsewhere. Now, Faruk Özer saw a possibility. People in Turkey could shelter their money in what was clearly going to be the next big tech boom. But the biggest opportunity wasn’t in trading coins—it was in running a cryptocurrency exchange. Exchanges collect people’s money and, for a commission, invest it; that gives people who don’t have the time or skills to invest directly into the blockchain a pathway to crypto. from He Emptied an Entire Crypto Exchange Onto a Thumb Drive. Then He Disappeared [Wired; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:44 AM PST - 13 comments

The Kiffness x Cala - I Go Meow [3m]
posted by hippybear at 9:50 AM PST - 9 comments

The Deaths of Effective Altruism [archive] by Leif Wenar is a critical assessment of the effective altruism movement, taking in Sam Bankman-Fried and billionaires, Peter Singer and other philosophers, and GiveWell and the wider network of charities working off effective altruistic ideas.
posted by Kattullus at 8:11 AM PST - 84 comments

His real name appears to have been John McCarthy. And he was the con man who sold the Brooklyn Bridge. By Dean Jobb. (Previously on selling landmarks)
posted by bq at 7:38 AM PST - 13 comments

Want to see the "Devil Comet" at its brightest? If you miss it, you’ll have to wait another 71 years. Australians will be able to see comet 12P/Pons-Brooks aka the "Devil Comet" this week even without a telescope or binoculars. Here's how to spot it and snap a photo.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:49 AM PST - 10 comments

It seems there is only one model for today’s ‘man of action’, and that is Shock and Awe. Overwhelming force deployed suddenly and overwhelmingly. A theatrical performance with no audience as such, only a houseful of victims. The lions eat the circus and then tweet about it. Ask no questions, tell only lies, and double down, triple down, quadruple down. The ineffably stupid ‘move fast and break things’ that has so much to answer for in our time. Our new ‘Innovation Hub’ has an asinine three-word slogan: ‘Grow Ignite Disrupt’. It would make just as much sense to have ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ for a motto. And rather more to have ‘Smash Grab Run’. from In Florida by Michael Hofmann [London Review of Books] [CW: DeSantis]
posted by chavenet at 12:35 AM PST - 53 comments

'on the Tories' (slyt. 1:00)
posted by clavdivs at 8:55 PM PST - 6 comments

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Real or Cake? [37s, CW]
posted by hippybear at 7:56 PM PST - 46 comments

Jacob Collier, Laufey and dodie perform a stunning rendition of the Scottish/Irish folk song "Wild Mountain Thyme" together with the National Symphony Orchestra and some delightful audience participation, for the series Next at the Kennedy Center, in an episode presented by Ben Folds.
posted by yasaman at 2:09 PM PST - 32 comments

Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
posted by JHarris at 1:24 PM PST - 72 comments

Klay Thompson Accused in Bizarre Brick-Vandalism Spree. "In a bizarre turn of events, NBA star Klay Thompson has been accused of vandalizing multiple houses with bricks in Sacramento. Authorities are investigating the claims after several individuals reported their houses being damaged, with windows shattered by bricks. Klay Thompson has not yet issued a statement regarding the accusations. The incidents have left the community shaken, but no injuries were reported. The motive behind the alleged vandalism remains unclear."
posted by clawsoon at 1:16 PM PST - 48 comments

On Monday, I described Facebook as a “data holding pen for advertisers to harvest,” but it’s not just Facebook and it’s not just advertisers. Every social network — Reddit, Tumblr, X/Twitter, TikTok — is now primarily an AI training pool. Though, I’ve reached the point where I don’t even really care about that anymore. The real issue with Airchat is that it’s boring as hell. Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day critiques Airchat, a new “audio-first social network.” [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 12:16 PM PST - 17 comments

They come here for the promise of a good education and a better future. Then they discover the target on their backs. (slTorontoLife) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 11:25 AM PST - 20 comments

The Problem with Adam Savage's Favorite Pencil: Former Mythbuster and MeFi's Own asavage goes on a surprisingly emotional tear about tool acquisition in the maker space, Blackwing 602s, Jeff Tweedy's pencil nerdery (🔔), and the "encheapening the product to increasening the profit" that has befallen his beloved PaperMate Sharpwriter #2. (It's not really about pencils.) [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:21 AM PST - 72 comments

A Reddit poster finds an ancient jaw in his parents' new travertine
posted by ShooBoo at 10:59 AM PST - 9 comments

I pray you're born with gills, a short climate change comic by Ren Galeno.
posted by simmering octagon at 9:58 AM PST - 7 comments

New regulations around the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) went into effect earlier this year. Some institutions are scrambling to comply by removing and rethinking exhibits (The American Museum of Natural History to Close Exhibits Displaying Native American Belongings) - others already had solid processes in place to comply with the spirit of the law, enacted in 1990 (Some Museums Scrambled to Remove Native American Items From Display. These Museums Didn’t Need to). Others drag their feet (Alaskan tribes came to Denver to reclaim their cultural heritage. They left empty-handed). Meanwhile, in addition to sacred artifacts, hundreds of institutions still inappropriately hold thousands of human remains.. All of this occurs in the context of such scandals as the theft of human remains by a National Park Service employee who stored them in his garage for thirty years explicitly to avoid complying with the law.
posted by bq at 8:16 AM PST - 5 comments

"Before 2024, the FAFSA was a Frankenstein’s monster, with all kinds of different forms grafted together to create a confusing and demoralizing process that left far too many eligible students unable to access their aid. This year, the Department of Education rolled out major revisions that are, in fact, much better — but only if they work. Right now, they don’t." David M. Perry (co-author of the wonderful The Bright Ages) with an opinion piece on the ongoing problems with FAFSA, incrementalism, and the suspicion around giving students money for school.
posted by mittens at 6:44 AM PST - 46 comments

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has confirmed that Victoria’s (in Canada) favourite stair-climbing, beach-lounging elephant seal is back in town, less than a week after he was relocated. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:10 AM PST - 17 comments

Great video of Tom Francis singing "Sunset Boulevard" as he makes his way into the Royal Albert Hall for the 2024 Olivier Awards show.
posted by Czjewel at 2:24 AM PST - 7 comments

Hosting a lavish banquet or ordering lobster is no longer a sufficient signifier of status; today, a sign of true wealth is the ability to forgo food entirely. Eating essentially betrays a person’s most basic human needs; in an era obsessed with ‘self-optimisation’, not eating suggests that a person is somehow ‘beyond’ needs and has achieved total mastery of their body with a heightened capacity for efficiency and focus. from Why don’t rich people eat anymore?
posted by chavenet at 12:28 AM PST - 47 comments

NPR, the great bastion of old-school audio journalism, is a mess. But as someone who loves NPR, built my career there, and once aspired to stay forever, I say with sadness that it has been for a long time.

Alicia Montgomery talks about the history of NPR and how things came here, especially regarding her former NPR colleague Uri Berliner's commentary blaming 'wokeness' and Democratic partisanship for the apparent loss of confidence in the once-unimpeachable institution and similar conversations around this issue.

And that story is that NPR has been both a beacon of thoughtful, engaging, and fair journalism for decades, and a rickety organizational shit show for almost as long. If former CEO John Lansing—the big bad of Uri’s piece—failed to fix it, or somehow made it worse, that’s a failure he shared with almost every NPR leader before him. But if, as Uri charges (albeit in a negative way), Lansing genuinely managed to break the network loose from the grasp of self-righteous white liberal identity politics, even in an imperfect way, that would surprise the hell out of me. Especially given the well-reported exodus of top journalists of color, and the loss of a diverse group of journalists during last year’s podcast layoffs.

posted by Pachylad at 12:15 AM PST - 99 comments

69 percent of the global diet is "foreign," says a study that pinpoints the origin of 151 food crops (interactive map) Since the mid-20th century, diets around the world have become more diverse and more homogenous, with supermarkets and other retail outlets the world over increasingly offering a similar range of food options. [more inside]
posted by winesong at 7:45 PM PST - 22 comments

PannenKoek2012: "If you’ve wondered where I’ve been for the past 10 months, it was working day and night on this one video." (YouTube, 3hours, 45 minutes) [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:18 PM PST - 8 comments

They're made out of meat.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:02 PM PST - 11 comments

The world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose. There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography. The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data. If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function. [more inside]
posted by the duck by the oboe at 5:48 PM PST - 20 comments

“anyone from a landlord to a laundromat – could be required to help the government spy.” (Guardian) The Guardian covers the Houses expansion of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Although presented as a re-authorization, “The Turner-Himes amendment – so named for its champions Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes – would permit federal law enforcement to also force “any other service provider” with access to communications equipment to hand over data.” [disclaimer: I am related to the author of this article.] [more inside]
posted by CMcG at 5:40 PM PST - 6 comments

Lovingly known as Mr Wine, the world's oldest-known wombat about to turn 35. Found as an orphan in Tasmania in 1989, Wain the wombat — also known as Mr Wine — is shuffling toward his mid-30s at a zoo in Japan, exceeding the average age of his wild counterparts by an estimated 20 years.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Oklahoman Cal Clifford asked for a pet octopus at every birthday, Christmas and major holiday. For his ninth birthday, Cal's parents made his dream come true. Then the eggs started to appear... [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:55 PM PST - 22 comments

What's in your prenatal vitamin? Dr. Gunter on the recent U.S. Government Accountability Office's report: Only one product contained everything listed on the label (within the accepted deviation).
What's really in that sports supplement? 23 of the 57 products (40%) did not contain any detectable amount of the labeled ingredient. 7 of the 57 products were found to contain at least one FDA-prohibited ingredient.
Revealing the hidden dangers of dietary supplements (and archive version): Since 2005, when he found his patients were being sickened by a Brazilian weight loss supplement containing anti-depressants and thyroid hormones, Cohen has become something of a mix of Indiana Jones and Sherlock Holmes in the supplement world. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Librarians have never been a quiet bunch: Information, after all, is power. To mark National Library Week—typically celebrated the second full week of April—Atlas Obscura, fittingly, went into the archives to find our favorite stories of librarians who have fostered cultural movements, protected national secrets, and fought criminals. 6 Badass Librarians Who Changed History: How German Librarians Finally Caught an Elusive Book Thief 📚 The Librarian at the Nexus of the Harlem Renaissance 📚 The Radical Reference Librarians Who Use Info to Challenge Authority 📚 The Women Who Rode Miles on Horseback to Deliver Library Books 📚 A Day in the Life of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Librarian 📚 The Librarian Who Guarded the Manhattan Project’s Secrets
posted by Rhaomi at 12:39 PM PST - 11 comments

And why did it take over a century for the collection to return home? "A testament not only to our resilience, but to other people’s acknowledgment of basic humanity." A story about a collection of artifacts returning to its appropriate home with a surprisingly heartwarming coda. Video interviews about the collection and its voyage, and breathtaking images from the Wetxuuwíitin’ collection. [more inside]
posted by bq at 10:07 AM PST - 5 comments

'So, I hope CLOCKSS does have a complete digital copy of the journal, but the question is: will CLOCKSS make it available? This all depends on CLOCKSS assessment of whether a “trigger event” has occurred here.' Ross Mounce, commenting on the disappearance of recently-concluded chemistry journal Heterocycles from the web more than four months ago, raises questions about nonprofit digital archive CLOCKSS ("Controlled LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)"), and similar "dark archives" that preserve research journals in a kind of escrow. (CLOCKSS has, so far, released "66 journals comprising 13,000 articles" into Open Access.)
posted by brainwane at 9:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Blue Man Group & Andrew Huang 🥁🌵 DESERT PORTAL Music Video [5m, Blue Man Group YT channel] Getting weird with Blue Man Group [11m15s Andrew Huang YT channel]
posted by hippybear at 6:40 AM PST - 11 comments

There are clear continuities between the two German genocides. Many of the key elements of the Nazi system – the systematic extermination of peoples seen as racially inferior, racial laws, the concept of Lebensraum, the transportation of people in cattle trucks for forced labour in concentration camps – had been employed half a century earlier in South-West Africa. Heinrich Göring, the colonial governor of South-West Africa who tried to negotiate with Hendrik Witbooi, was Hermann Göring’s father.

–From the essay Three Genocides by forensic architect Eyal Weizman.
posted by Kattullus at 5:35 AM PST - 23 comments

Old Stock Exchange Building from 17th Century burns Yet another building renovation gone wrong.
posted by palnatoke at 2:39 AM PST - 13 comments

Rest of World shadowed workers in São Paulo, Lagos, Dhaka, and Jakarta to get an intimate look at how they spend their breaks between orders. from Portraits of gig workers in rare moments off the clock [Rest of World]
posted by chavenet at 2:01 AM PST - 9 comments

The strangest new sport in the Netherlands: tegelwippen, "tile whipping", or "whipping away" the paving stones. "A lot of people think that tiles are easier, but actually when you have larger trees, you get very few weeds underneath them and you can make it really easy," she says. "When I had paving I would never sit here, but now it’s a garden, it’s cooler in summer and in the spring, it’s lovely." [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:39 PM PST - 20 comments

The Etak Navigator "Today, I’d like to tell you about the Etak Navigator, a truly revolutionary product and the world’s first practical vehicle navigation system."[via]
posted by dhruva at 9:48 PM PST - 27 comments

Rico Wade of the Organized Noize production team has died. Operating from Wade's mom's dirt-floor basement in the early 90s, Organized Noize convened a group of artists that came to call itself the Dungeon Family. That group gave the world the first couple Outkast albums, the first Goodie Mob album, and several great singles. It's not an exaggeration to say that Rico Wade made some of the greatest American music of the last 50 years. It's an incredibly sad loss. [more inside]
posted by kensington314 at 1:04 PM PST - 16 comments

I believe it was a mistake to give away journalism for free in the 1990s. Information is not and never has been free. I devoutly believe that news organizations need to survive and figure out a revenue model that allows them to do so. But the most important mission of a news organization is to provide the public with information that allows citizens to make the best decisions in a constitutional democracy. Our government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and that consent is arrived at through the free flow of information—reliable, fact-based information. To that end, news organizations should put their election content in front of their paywall. The Constitution protects the press so that the press can protect constitutional democracy. Now the press must fulfill its end of the bargain. from Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:49 PM PST - 64 comments

A rather large drama unfolded a couple of weeks ago when it was discovered that someone had installed a backdoor into an installation utility used by much of the Open Source community. Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility targets encrypted SSH connections [Ars Technica] This was found by accident, a worker was maintaining his own code and found discrepancies in computer performance and investigated. How one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide [The Verge] This seems to have been largely the work of one online account that spent years gaining trust in the group that maintain this tool. THE OTHER PLAYERS WHO HELPED (ALMOST) MAKE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BACKDOOR HACK [The Intercept] The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind [WIRED] Today, Fedora announced its own systems all clear of this thwarted backdoor attempt. CVE-2024-3094: All Clear
posted by hippybear at 10:58 AM PST - 53 comments

Interviews with the author of Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, Neil J. Young, on the podcast Conspirituality & at the Culture Study newsletter: The handful of lesbian Republicans contended that supporting reproductive freedom was consistent with gay Republicans’ belief in personal autonomy and limited government, “when we say the government should stay out of our wallets and out of our bedrooms, this is what that means!” However, even though a slight majority of Log Cabin members consistently called themselves pro-choice, more didn’t want the organization to take a public position because they thought that abortion wasn’t a “gay issue.” [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:17 AM PST - 21 comments

The prevailing philosophy about public facilities of all kinds is that they must be indestructible and require minimal upkeep, since that is what they will get. Fighting the forces of disintegration is too costly and requires too much vigilance. These are the arguments of a society driven by self-disgust. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 9:30 AM PST - 61 comments

“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is now available as a free download! Written by Christopher Schwarz and first published in June 2011, “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is revered by many as a philosophical tome as well as a how-to book. The book includes instructions for building your own tool chest, as demonstrated here by MetaFilter's Own™ and JimCoin™ creator bondcliff!
posted by slogger at 8:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Faith Ringgold passed over the weekend. A crafter, an artist, a thinker, a mentor. I am maybe not the best person to eulogize her, but her life and work have touched so many and deeply influenced generations of Black artists. Her passing is a loss, her memory will be a blessing. [more inside]
posted by Lawn Beaver at 8:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Sheep are much cannier than we give them credit for. These ovine facts may surprise you. The humble sheep might be considered by some as the perfect embodiment of docility. But they are not mundane mindless mammals — not in the slightest.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:27 AM PST - 22 comments

In her article Th'infernal Drone: In Praise Of The Hurdy-Gurdy Jennifer Lucy Allan notes that in "Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights the soundtrack to hell is a giant and infernal hurdy-gurdy". She discusses, among others, Stevie Wishart, who can be seen here giving a quick introduction to the hurdy-gurdy, and performing her composition Vespers for St. Hildegard and duoing with daegeum player Hyelim Kim. Corinna de Fonseca-Wollheim profiled Matthias Loibner in the New York Times [archive link] and his performance with Nataša Mirković of Schubert's Winter's Journey. For an overview of the history of the instrument, hurdy-gurdy player Fredrik Knudsen made a half-hour video or you can read A Brief History of the Hurdy-Gurdy by Graham Whyte.
posted by Kattullus at 5:35 AM PST - 24 comments

What does free will / autonomy / self agency mean to you? The right to choose your own destiny, to make your own mistakes, and to feel the consequences of your actions? Or talk about anything you like, it's your weekly Free Thread!
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:25 AM PST - 92 comments

20 Minutes of Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts [via Kottke.org]
posted by chavenet at 1:35 AM PST - 11 comments

Muptown Funk (previously) keeps rolling along, recently with two longer videos concerning Sesame Street: ranking every Waiter Grover sketch (50 minutes), and a deep dive into the stomach history of ^the Cookie Monster (20 minutes)!
posted by JHarris at 9:27 PM PST - 8 comments

It's now loved all over the world, but who really invented the flat white? This is the little-known story of how Italian sugar growers in the Sunshine State are said to have inspired the invention of the flat white (a type of coffee) — a drink that would go on to become a global sensation
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:22 PM PST - 52 comments

In the wake of SPD shutting down (previously), here is a books roundup focusing this time on recent releases from small presses. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 8:20 PM PST - 5 comments

The first criminal trial of a former US president is set to begin on April 15. Attorney Teri Kanefield lays out the timeline of events and provides extensive background, with a special focus on Michael Cohen. [more inside]
posted by kristi at 8:11 PM PST - 138 comments

Rejection letters written by Toni Morrison when she was working at Random House.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:14 PM PST - 5 comments

Aphex Twin's 2001 double album drukQs is an unusual blend of Richard James' characteristically intricate, intense, and chaotic electronic soundscapes and a smaller set of more subdued neoclassical pieces performed on prepared pianos -- performed, that is, by computer. One piece in particular, Avril 14th, became a breakout hit for James -- at barely two minutes, its gorgeous, evocative rendition of a delicate Satie-esque melody in the clicking, lushly analog tones of a real Disklavier piano struck the perfect balance between human soul and machine precision, and remains to this day his best-known and most-beloved track. Explore the beauty and melancholy of this lovely piece with a wide variety of innovative covers, backstory theories, and a charming deep dive into the music theory behind it by YouTuber ixi.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:13 PM PST - 20 comments

56 Cheeses, 56 Grilled Cheeses: Which One is Best? [25m] sounds like a stunt post from some random YouTuber, but it's actually from Epicurious, and is by a professional cheesemonger. It's more educational and entertaining than you might expect when you first start.
posted by hippybear at 4:44 PM PST - 52 comments

What if your Wordle strategy was to always start with the same 4 words, all with unique letters? That would use 20 letters, with the exception, of J, K, Q, V, X, Z. Slate's "The Fastest Wordle Winning Strategy Ever" (archive). [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 12:51 PM PST - 74 comments

Why do some people always get lost? "While it’s easy to show that people differ in navigational ability, it has proved much harder for scientists to explain why. There’s new excitement brewing in the navigation research world, though. By leveraging technologies such as virtual reality and GPS tracking, scientists have been able to watch hundreds, sometimes even millions, of people trying to find their way through complex spaces, and to measure how well they do. Though there’s still much to learn, the research suggests that to some extent, navigation skills are shaped by upbringing."
posted by dhruva at 9:15 AM PST - 76 comments

Cool suburban dads can ask for nothing more: Adam Granduciel, genius frontman of The War on Drugs is touring with The National this fall and really loves to golf (registration-free version).
posted by MattD at 7:35 AM PST - 17 comments

"The History of Sci-Fi Film from 1900 to the Present." Under the title Robots and Rayguns, Mars Wants Movies [YT channel] is methodically reviewing the history of sci-fi on film – the classics along with the forgotten. (At the time of posting, it is at Episode 16, for the year 1936.) From Episode 1: "In this ongoing series, I will delve into the history of science fiction cinema. …This introductory episode sets the stage for the history of the genre that dominates Hollywood today. But in the early 20th Century, the genre was a mix of science fiction, fantasy, adventure, and experimentation that evolved with the technology of the 20th Century." The series also looks at other contemporary milestones in movies, plus the scientific, cultural, and historical events of the times. "From interstellar adventures to dystopian futures, the genre has captivated audiences, allowing them to contemplate the possibilities of technological advancements, extraterrestrial life, and the consequence of our own scientific pursuits."
posted by McLir at 7:05 AM PST - 7 comments

“The toughest reservation in France, it turns out, is not at a Michelin-starred destination like Mirazur or Septime. It’s at an all-you-can-eat buffet situated in a municipal rec center in the smallish city of Narbonne.” Not exclusive, but exclusively serving French cuisine, it served 380,000 people last year for €52.90 each (plus drinks, sold at retail price), but there are 9 types of foie gras, a pâté en croûte made with 7 different meats, and a record breaking 111 varieties of cheese on the cheeseboard. The place settings and silverware and gilt and chandeliers deserve to be seen – they are not of your ordinary buffet restaurant. (New Yorker, archive)
posted by ambrosen at 5:43 AM PST - 24 comments

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name A review by Maria Popova on her blog The Marginalian.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:41 AM PST - 8 comments

Five Canoes Discovered Northwest of Rome Are the Oldest Boats Ever Found in the Mediterranean. The 7000-year-old vessels offer evidence of advanced seafaring technology and an extensive regional trade network, a new study suggests. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:40 AM PST - 12 comments

As further argued by the authors in a forthcoming Berggruen Press volume, “the Planetary as a scientific concept focuses on the Earth as an intricate web of ecosystems, with myriad layers of integration between various biogeochemical systems and living beings — both human and non-human. Drawing on earth system science and systems biology, this holistic understanding is being enabled by new planetary-scale technologies of perception – a rapidly maturing technosphere of sensors, networks, and supercomputers that collectively are rendering the planetary system increasingly visible, comprehensible and foreseeable. This recently-evolved smart exoskeleton — in essence a distributed sensory organ and cognitive layer — is fostering an unprecedented form of planetary sapience.” The open question is how, and if, human governance in the late-stage Anthropocene can align with the knowledge we are now attaining. from The Third Great Decentering [Noema]
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM PST - 7 comments

How Meta Nuked A Climate Story, And What It Means For Democracy, David Vetter, Forbes, April 11 2024 [more inside]
posted by MrVisible at 5:37 PM PST - 60 comments

Dune the Broadway Musical [Showtunes] - Baby On Board [Barbershop] - Carolina-O [Indie Country] - Sabrosito Amor [Latin] - Rising Sun Gospel [Soul] - Allegro Consort in C [Classical] - You Spilt a Coffee on my Dog [R&B] - Potion Seller [60s Folk] - I'm Not Your Star [Screamo] - SNES Greensleeves [Chiptune] - Syncopated Rhythms [Jazz] - Tavern Serenades [Fiddle] - My Tamagotchi died in '98 [Country Pop] - Senna Tea Blues [Bluegrass] - Unexpected Item in Bagging Area (A Cowboy's Lament) [Americana] - Herb's Whisper [Hip-hop] - Metropolis Pt. 3 [Prog metal] - F**k You Elmo [Acoustic Guitar] - Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet [Orchestral] - ムーンライト【.】【3】【1】[Vaporwave] - Dreaming Miku [Vocaloid] - The Deku Tree’s Decree [Broadway] - Website on the Internet [50s A Capella] // Meet Udio — the most realistic AI music creation tool I’ve ever tried [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:17 PM PST - 33 comments

Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web [46m] "Patreon CEO Jack Conte explains how the current internet algorithms are killing the traditional "follower" for creators, threatening their creative freedom and livelihoods." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM PST - 10 comments

A documentary (40m youtube video) from 2014 covers some of the life of the enigmatic singer/songwriter Connie Converse. Interviews with some of her closest relatives, and animator Gene Deitch, all of whom kept many of her letters and recordings. previously: 2016, 2009 (cw: depression, probable suicide)
posted by 2N2222 at 2:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Conan O’Brien Needs a Doctor While Eating Spicy Wings is the season 23 finale of Hot Ones [previously], where Sean Evans asks Conan O’Brien questions while they eat chicken wings with increasingly spicy hot sauce. It goes off the rails pretty quickly.
posted by Kattullus at 1:59 PM PST - 37 comments

Autonomous car racing is a rapidly advancing field that combines cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), fast mobility stacks, innovative sensor technologies and edge computing to create high-performance vehicles that can perceive their surroundings, make decisions, and race competitively without human intervention. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Blue whales seen engaging in full-on combat during spectacular courtship ritual. In a sight not seen in the area for more than two decades, male whales have been spotted racing and fighting to capture the attention of a female off South Australia's south-east coast.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:28 AM PST - 2 comments

"I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it," said one of Bennett Braun's patients, later in life. Braun, a psychiatrist specializing in repressed memories, was a leading figure in the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, and now he is dead (NYT obit; archive link here).
posted by mittens at 10:32 AM PST - 58 comments

ACLU files a suit for religious exemption based on Judaism, Islam, and Paganism. ACLU: "On September 8, we filed suit to stop SB 1 on the grounds that it violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Our class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice, and five women who, like many Hoosiers, have sincere religious beliefs that they must be able to obtain an abortion under circumstances prohibited by Indiana’s abortion ban. Our plaintiffs are at risk of needing an abortion in the future that are allowed by their religious beliefs." [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:34 AM PST - 31 comments

Gaza in a Million Pieces - Arwa Damon, founder and president of the charity INARA, writes for New Lines Magazine of her observations now that she's able to enter Gaza || Le Monde: Despite promises, Israel still restricts aid to Gaza (ungated) || Washington Post: Crutches and chocolate croissants: Gaza aid items Israel has rejected (ungated) || New Yorker (Isaac Chotiner interview with Yuval Abraham): Inside Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza || Haaretz: Israel Has Declared Record Amount of West Bank Land as State-owned in 2024 || Mondoweiss: ‘Come out, you animals’: how the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital happened || Sydney Morning Herald (12 April): Australian former reporter, now aid worker, shot at in Gaza [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 9:25 AM PST - 389 comments

Landmark Vote for Trans Rights Law (Human Rights Watch) – "Germany’s parliament on April 12, 2024, passed a landmark law that allows transgender and non-binary people to modify their legal documents to reflect their gender identity through an administrative procedure based on self-identification …" [more inside]
posted by the_dreamwriter at 9:04 AM PST - 3 comments

In 1971, three student teachers in Minneapolis, MN created a little computer game about westward expansion in the United States. Over 50 years later, The Oregon Trail series has sold more than 65 million copies and has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. But the original creators never made a penny off the game. This is a lovely, slow-placed documentary about how the game was made and spread, with background information about the state of the computer industry and education in MN at the time. [more inside]
posted by bq at 8:32 AM PST - 13 comments

On mapping olfaction, neuroscientist Jason Castro writes:

Our noses may turn out to be geometers not of the world’s fixed and invariant properties, but of its evolved and Earthly processes.

posted by criticalyeast at 6:32 AM PST - 3 comments

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is arguably one of the oldest continuously functioning democracies in the world, and greatly influenced the thinking of the founders of the United States. This post is about the argument over just how old it is, why that matters, and what eclipses have to do with it. [more inside]
posted by evilmomlady at 5:29 AM PST - 11 comments

Na Cailleacha, from the Irish word ‘cailleach’ meaning a witch or a divine hag, want to explore what it means to be women who are getting older and arguably becoming invisible and to devise strategies to overcome the challenges of ageing. Their latest project is the School of Hibernia: a tableau vivant of Raphael's School of Athens with all the roles modelled by women. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:18 AM PST - 1 comment

And that Northern strength, to many, looked like the Wide Awakes. The Republicans, after all, had performed best in states where the movement was largest, among exactly the kind of young, laboring moderates the Wide Awakes mobilized. In the final assessment of the New York Tribune, the most popular Republican newspaper, the election was decided by the Democratic Party’s internal divisions and by the massive Wide Awake movement. That organization “embodied” the Republican cause, the Tribune argued, becoming a concise symbol for millions who hated the Slave Power. from The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln—and Spark the Civil War [Smithsonian]
posted by chavenet at 1:01 AM PST - 8 comments

26-year-old researcher just helped identify 12 new dinosaurs. Samantha Beeston spent endless hours in outback Queensland scanning hundreds of dinosaur bones that had been dug up over more than 15 years.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:31 PM PST - 4 comments

“So when I started working on the story that turned into All Systems Red, I realized right away I wanted to write an AI that didn't want to be human…I was thinking a lot about what an AI would actually want, as opposed to what a human might think an AI would want…. I think it would want that connection to other systems, that vast, astonishing, multiplicity of vision.”—Martha Wells, from her keynote speech at the annual Jack Williamson Lecture at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:28 PM PST - 41 comments

I'm the Draft List at This Brewery, and No, You Can't Have a Light Beer "Sure, we made a 'normal' IPA once. But then we were like, why make a beer that's enjoyable to drink when we could make a beer that's not?" [McSweeneys]
posted by cozenedindigo at 4:25 PM PST - 76 comments

Here's a summary of various studies that look at dogs and language. A couple of videos are included, one of them is this video: Dogs understand words as we do [2m20s] which is a summary of this paper, one of several linked in the first link in this post. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:14 PM PST - 40 comments

44 seconds of procrastination by Philippa Rice, cartoonist and maker of whatever this thing is
posted by moonmilk at 12:19 PM PST - 10 comments

A timeline that displays famous historical figures who lived concurrently in a given year [via]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:26 AM PST - 29 comments

Lost Tapes From Major Musicians Are Out There. These Guys Find Them.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:01 AM PST - 9 comments

Voices of Mourning by Hannah Gold. An interesting personal essay on the book About Ed by Robert Glück, exploring grief and mourning. It also raises the question - whose life is allowed to be remembered for the person they were rather than their surrounding political context?
posted by colourlesssleep at 9:08 AM PST - 3 comments

Learning to milk wild camels is just one challenge for this dromedary dairy. When you think of camels, you probably imagine them in a desert. But in lush, green Hunter Valley paddocks, Michelle Phillips keeps 50 — and their milk is in high demand.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:27 AM PST - 10 comments

OpenAI Training Bot Crawls 'World's Lamest Content Farm' 3 Million Times in One Day “If you were wondering what they're using to train GPT-5, well, now you know,” Levine wrote in his post.
posted by bq at 8:13 AM PST - 46 comments

meow.camera lets you watch live feeds from hundreds (thousands?) of cozy and custom-decorated cat feeders set up throughout various cities in China. [more inside]
posted by nobody at 7:32 AM PST - 14 comments

“I was 25,” she says. “I’d go for my mouth and nothing would come out. It started when I was pregnant with my eldest daughter, and I just put it down to the pregnancy, but it wasn’t a happy time in my life. I think my then-husband wasn’t that keen on having a baby, blah blah blah, it was a difficult time, which we got through, but I think it impacted on me a bit.”

Folk legend Linda Thompson has been suffering from dysphonia since the early seventies, making it harder and harder for her to record new albums. For her latest, she got other people to sing her songs, called it Proxy Music and recreated the album cover from Roxy Music's eponymous debut. Alexis Petridis interviews her for The Guardian on the album and her personal history in folk.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Marine worm with extraordinary vision "The wide-eyed sea worm Vanadis has long interested the world's vision scientists. But the worm has been difficult to study because it lives in the open sea and is only active at night. Now a research team has managed to locate an Italian worm colony and can establish that the worm has a completely unique sight." [paper]
posted by dhruva at 1:41 AM PST - 18 comments

Rejection isn’t the same as heartbreak, which entails a past acceptance. A rejection implies that you don’t even warrant a try. From the reject’s perspective, the reciprocity of heartbreak looks pretty appealing. And if you’re going to suffer, it may as well be exciting. Who would choose the flat desolation of rejection over rough-and-tumble drama, especially if they end the same way? The cliché—tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all—is comforting to the heartbroken, but damning to the rejected. No matter how unpleasant or unequal, a breakup is at least something you share with someone else. Rejection makes only one reject. from The Rejection Plot by Tony Tulathimutte [The Paris Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:37 AM PST - 33 comments

Finding independence in a perfectly cooked egg I found it while walking through the home-goods section of T.J. Maxx, the American retail equivalent of the Garden of Earthly Delights, at 8:00 on a Tuesday night in 2015.... Somewhere among these novelties I spotted a carelessly abandoned gadget calling itself the Dash Rapid Egg Cooker. The cashier who rang me up did not share my enthusiasm for the cheery cockiness of its packaging, which proclaimed that it “Perfectly Cooks 6 Eggs at a Time!” Baffled, she asked me a question, the answer to which would have embarrassed anyone but me: “Don’t you know how to boil water?” [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:19 PM PST - 103 comments

These rare turtles are making a comeback after a virus almost wiped them out. Nearly 100 captive-bred Bellinger River snapping turtles have been released into the wild, the biggest number yet for the breeding program after a virus nearly wiped them out in 2015.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:09 PM PST - 2 comments

blog post from molly soda. a really interesting collection of links: some abstract, some avant garde, some silly; all exploring concepts of girlhood from different angles. there's been a lot of talk online about "girls". what can that mean? maybe some of this will help! [more inside]
posted by _earwig_ at 6:26 PM PST - 1 comment

The 30-year hunt to find the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert bus
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city A wide residential and commercial block, known as "Region 9", is being cleared of several metres of overlying pumice and ash thrown out by Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.(Pompeii previously)
posted by bq at 11:59 AM PST - 22 comments

"Notes on sleep" by Jed Hartman: "For many years, I had various forms of insomnia, and I still occasionally have trouble falling asleep and/or wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep. This page covers some of the things that have and haven’t helped me with that." And: "2024 sleep masterpost" by Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz for short): "Occasionally people on the internet ask for the community's collected wisdom about sleep. This is what I can think of for my own sleep routines, tips, and tricks, plus what I do about various confounding factors.... I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, primary insomnia, sleep maintenance insomnia, and ADHD." The latter has people sharing their experiences in the comments. (Disclaimer: I know both these people.)
posted by brainwane at 9:54 AM PST - 48 comments

See how demographic swings could impact the 2024 election: 538's new Swing-O-Matic shows which states could flip under different scenarios. [ABC News]. 538's Swing-O-Matic page gets interactive under the bold headline Create your own scenario with a bunch of sliders you can push back and forth to see how minor demographic shifts might have major implications for the 2024 US Presidential election.
posted by hippybear at 8:51 AM PST - 173 comments

Most columnists are mediocre. This is not their fault. Almost no one on earth is capable of having two good ideas per week... [more inside]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:12 AM PST - 43 comments

OJ Simpson dead at 76 Remember the slow white suv LA chase?
posted by robbyrobs at 7:44 AM PST - 107 comments

Exploring the Wallowas with the modern-day "Horsewomen of the Hen Party" The descendants of Jean Birnie, founder of the Oregon Hen Party previously, follow her journeys into the Wallowas on horseback, surmounting challenges, deepening bonds, and absorbing the beauty of nature, in this documentary short from OPB.
posted by calamari kid at 7:24 AM PST - 1 comment

Two tennis balls surgically removed from scrub python. A Far North Queensland wildlife carer says he has seen just about everything in his 20 years on the job until he was called about a surprise find in a Cooktown backyard.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:13 AM PST - 10 comments

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism
In short, this corporatism – in all its iterations including the regulatory state and the patent war chest that maintains and enforces monopoly – is the core source of all the current despotism.
posted by adamvasco at 6:25 AM PST - 48 comments

Hawai'ian born sumo legend Chadwick Haheo Rowan, better known worldwide as Akebono, the first non-Japanese-born wrestler to reach grand master / yokozuna has died of heart failure. He was 54.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:42 AM PST - 26 comments

For years, a mysterious figure preyed on gay men in Atlanta. People on the streets called him the Handcuff Man--but the police knew his real name. (CW: homophobia, violence) slTheAtavist
posted by Kitteh at 5:17 AM PST - 14 comments

Philosopher Ben Ware has been giving some thought to the politics of the end of the world, and has written a new book, On Extinction (Verso), to talk about it. But the end is coming fast and maybe you don't have time for a whole book, so let's read some essays instead! "Nothing but the End to Come" brings together Walter Benjamin, Kafka, de Sade and Extinction Rebellion to suggest that all our language about the end feeds "into a politics of passive annihilation." [more inside]
posted by mittens at 5:17 AM PST - 4 comments

It was clear to Nyborg that apps such as Tinder were failing their users: designed to keep them coming back, rather than to find a partner and never return. In that moment, it wasn’t fear she felt but empathy. Through letters like this one she had learnt a lot about a particular group of Tinder’s users: those who were “incredibly lonely” ... When she quit, several investors reached out to Nyborg, asking if she planned to start another dating app. Instead Nyborg took a different turn. She began researching loneliness. The new app she came up with looked very different from Tinder. from The loneliness cure [Financial Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:58 AM PST - 51 comments

A fascinating glimpse of what was going on in the science world 38 years ago in the November 1986 issue of Scientific American and what has changed and what has remained the same: Voyager 2's visit to Uranus cover story and how a fix had to be made from Earth • Affordable housing problems - "The Shadow Market in Housing" • Learn about the Higgs boson long before it was found (RIP Peter Higgs) • Galileo, Bruno and the Inquisition • Computer Recreations - "Star Trek emerges from the underground to a place in the home-computer arcade" • The Amateur Scientist - "... experiments on three-dimensional vision" • All the 1986 ads, including "Texas Instruments brings the practical applications of AI to your business. Now." (p 15) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 12:11 AM PST - 25 comments

The Sun is entering its solar maximum. For aurora hunters in Antarctica, there's nothing quite like it. The Sun is putting on a show for Earth, with the highest level of geomagnetic activity in six years. Mawson Station chef Justin Chambers photographed a recent aurora and explains what it's like to watch the spectacle from about as far south as you can go. As the sun enters the solar maximum — the period of greatest solar activity during its 11-year solar cycle — Mr Chambers said he has witnessed the best aurora of his life, and managed to get it on camera.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:49 PM PST - 6 comments

In September 2022, the first season of animated science fiction series Pantheon debuted on AMC+. By January of the following year, the series was cancelled and wiped from the streaming service, despite the completion of a season 2. [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 5:30 PM PST - 13 comments

The USPS declared April to be National Card and Letter Writing Month… 23 years ago. American Library Association has some ideas on epistolary fun within games. The Chicago Public Library has suggestions for epistolary novels. The Universal Postal Union has a letter writing competition for writers aged 9 to 15 on the theme: "Write a letter to future generations about the world you hope they inherit." The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has an epistolary fiction project which includes an extensive if not exhaustive list of novels, starting with Xenophon of Ephesus. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:02 PM PST - 8 comments

The Function of Colour in Schools & Hospitals, 1930. Just some wonderful illustrations of those things. via.
posted by swift at 4:36 PM PST - 11 comments

Super Cute Please Like is a long, fascinating essay by Nicole Lipman in N+1 about fast fashion giant SHEIN, examining its clothes, business practices and history, but touching on fashion blogs, Sinophobia, the origins of fast fashion and gamification.
posted by Kattullus at 2:30 PM PST - 34 comments

In this story, we'll follow hundreds of teenagers for the next 24 years, when they’ll be in their late-30s. They're among the thousands of kids who are part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This means researchers have followed them since their teenage years to the present day – and beyond. from this is a teenager [The Pudding] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:19 PM PST - 8 comments

The extraordinary stories of survivors of the Rwandan genocide who forgave their attackers (SL Guardian) How do people overcome such trauma, especially in poor nations with minimal mental healthcare? In 2005, Dutch sociotherapist Cora Dekker developed an affordable, effective method in collaboration with the diocese of Byumba of the Anglican church. This approach, originally used by qualified staff in western clinics to treat military personnel and asylum seekers, was transformed into volunteer work involving trained therapists from local African communities. In Rwanda it is known as Mvura Nkuvure: “I heal you, you heal me.” More than 64,000 Rwandans have completed the therapy.
posted by toastyk at 8:15 AM PST - 8 comments

To self-censor, he says, would mean “I start second-guessing myself and don’t trust my own instincts.” (slTheWalrus) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:11 AM PST - 115 comments

The Eurasian Wren, the Barn Swallow, the Northern Goshawk, the Little Owl, the Great Tit. Artist Roy Scholten has created prints of 50 different birds using LEGO bricks as the printing matter. The exhibit opens April 14 at the Grafisch Atelier Hilversum in Hilversum, Netherlands.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:00 AM PST - 11 comments

Nick Brandt is a photographer working with themes of climate apocalypse. Sink / Rise is chapter 3 of his series The Day May Break.
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:55 AM PST - 10 comments

Videos from The Dodo are usually a bit sappy but always heartwarming. However, Bulldog Obsessed With Bowls Gets A Special Delivery [3m20s] is full of exactly the kind of WTF that leads me to post it here.
posted by hippybear at 6:27 AM PST - 36 comments

From Andrew Gregory in the Guardian: Swapping red meat for forage fish such as herring, sardines and anchovies could save 750,000 lives a year and help tackle the climate crisis, a study suggests. Mounting evidence links red meat consumption with a higher risk of disease in humans as well as significant harm to the environment. In contrast, forage fish are highly nutritious, environmentally friendly and the most abundant fish species in the world’s oceans. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 5:36 AM PST - 56 comments

a webcomic by max graves. tumblr softboy cancelled for involvement in "heavenly creatures" style murder. darkly hilarious exploration of internet fame, isolation, transness and trauma. goes deep into various kinds of internet damage. really can't recommend this enough. [more inside]
posted by _earwig_ at 5:10 AM PST - 20 comments

Now, the Boys are in Greece. It’s antiquity, but the emotions are American high school: The golden Boy is Achilles, essentially a Harvard-bound football senior, good at everything. He has curly hair and nice feet. He’s popular, in mythic proportions. He is a god training to be a killing machine in an epic war. The other Boy, Patroclus, averts his gaze when Achilles comes around. Patroclus is the narrator, and he is just a human, a curly-haired, olive-skinned boy (Achilles is, of course, blonde; the two genders of gay romance). He sees himself as weak and mortal. An exile with no family and no name. This is you, Patroclus, you worthless piece of shit. from Boy Meets Boy Meets Boys’ Love by Simon Wu [Spike]
posted by chavenet at 12:28 AM PST - 27 comments

"The invention of the dunk tank clown shows just how far the line of what is considered appropriate for a society has moved over the decades." 'The Last of the Dunk Tank Clowns.'. (archiveorg) "This attraction is now virtually obsolete. Outdoor Amusement Business Association president Greg Chiecko was quoted as claiming he polled his members about dunk tank clowns and that “most say they don’t know of any that still exist today.” (medium) 'Chicago’s Riverview Park and the Racist Dunk Tank'. {CW: Racism. Clowns.}
posted by clavdivs at 11:34 PM PST - 11 comments

"Davis doesn’t doubt that the housewife’s lifestyle is desirable; she merely regrets that it has been made inaccessible." Moira Donegan reviews Housewife by Lisa Selin Davis in Bookforum
posted by Lycaste at 9:47 PM PST - 31 comments

"The thesis of HAVE YOU EATEN, at the start, was "here's how community actually works," & in the process of making this thing happen, I've felt it in my bones. We show up for each other & frustrate each other & make things together & let each other down & mend each other's hearts. We feed each other." Author Sarah Gailey wrote a 4-part novella at Reactor (fka tordotcom) about queer community in a too-possible future USA. [more inside]
posted by curious nu at 7:57 PM PST - 6 comments

A post-pandemic fight about racism, the respectful treatment of trans kids, and the role of teachers’ unions has divided Amherst, Massachusetts. [The New Yorker]
posted by riruro at 7:14 PM PST - 28 comments

"Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple and profound way." [...] "His prediction of the existence of the particle that bears his name was a deep insight, and its discovery at Cern in 2012 was a crowning moment that confirmed his understanding of the way the Universe works." "Even though he didn’t much enjoy it, he felt a responsibility to use the public profile his achievements brought him for the good of science, and he did so many times. The particle that carries his name is perhaps the single most stunning example of how seemingly abstract mathematical ideas can make predictions which turn out to have huge physical consequences."

Peter Higgs, physicist who proposed Higgs boson, dies aged 94 [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:53 PM PST - 25 comments

Female Hummingbirds Masquerade as Males to Avoid Harassment. One-fifth of female white-necked jacobins sport flashy male-like plumage, which may help them access more food.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:45 PM PST - 5 comments

A detailed, yet accessible, take on the history of book distribution (mainly but not wholly by small presses), written by Julie Schaper in 2022.
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:46 PM PST - 2 comments

As part of a defamation lawsuit against the owner of Twitter for his tweets, Mark Bankston - whom you may recall was the lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Texas lawsuit against Alex Jones, where he told the conspiracy theorist that he had recieved a full copy of his phone's contents from his lawyer while cross examining him - has deposed Elon Musk under oath, in a deposition that is a sight to behold. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 AM PST - 99 comments

Jennifer and James Crumbley, parents of Michigan school shooter, sentenced to 10 to 15 years for manslaughter "Parents are not expected to be psychic, but these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train -- about repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of their neck" (Judge) Matthews said.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:01 AM PST - 86 comments

What is a cow magnet? Have you ever heard of this type of magnet? Actually, cow magnets are very popular with farmers, ranchers, and veterinarians since they are a well-known method of preventing hardware disease in cattle. So what’s hardware disease? An informational page from Stanford Magnets.
posted by hippybear at 10:36 AM PST - 51 comments

The cashier at Sansan Chicken East Village in NYC is a woman from the Philippines who logs on via Zoom. A photo of this odd arrangement went viral on Twitter this weekend via a post by Brett Goldstein.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:00 AM PST - 106 comments

Arizona's Split Reality (Olivia Nuzzi for New York, archive.is), on the trail with Senate candidates Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake
posted by box at 5:34 AM PST - 10 comments

That well is classical Greek tragedy, understood as a dramatic portrayal of a character who, while navigating the inevitable contingencies of an embodied, time-bound life, is suddenly brought low by extreme suffering unrelieved by God, the gods, or any other transcendent source of meaning. The key to tragedy is the degree to which that character bears the torment without succumbing to despair. From that crucible emerges the steel of virtue. from The Character of Tragedy by [Hedgehog Review]
posted by chavenet at 2:06 AM PST - 2 comments

'I’ve never seen ...The Searchers.' "I’ve always imagined John Wayne as the epitome of gun-toting American racism. And I didn’t expect this white-supremacy parable to change my mind …" "(John) Ford is likely the best American historian when it comes to narrative filmmaking 'Printing the Legend: 'The Searchers and a journey into the heart of America’s darkness.' " Scores of film students and enthusiasts have wondered and wrote about what does this last scene of the film mean." Cinemas Greatest Scenes: The Searchers Doorway Scene. { CW: racism in film.}
posted by clavdivs at 9:35 PM PST - 26 comments

Vortex rings rise from Italy's Mount Etna volcano. Mount Etna has released volcanic vortex rings, a rare phenomenon caused by a constant release of vapours and gases. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:18 PM PST - 22 comments

Six years ago (really? wow) I posted about Zee Bashew's terrific D&D explainer videos. Well he's still making them, and is trying to do one a week for the next few months! Here are some he's made since I last told you all about them: What is a grognard? - Ceremony - Encumbrance in 5E - The Awful Way I Ran 5E Survival - Magic Mouth - Oops! All Wizards - 5E Players Try 1E (AD&D) - Healer Feat - The Problem With The Awaken Spell (sad/funny) - Dangers of Metagaming - Option: Quantum Inventory - Grappling in 1E. If you enjoy D&D, or just learning or watching videos about it, Zee Bashew's Channel is great.
posted by JHarris at 2:36 PM PST - 8 comments

"The Space Explorers" was a series of animated, educational Sci-Fi shorts shown on morning kids' TV in the US, around 1961. Astronomy enthusiast Jimmy Perry stows away on the Polaris II, flying to rescue his Dad who crashed on the moon on his way to Mars, in the Polaris 1. Set in 1978, each episode had little bits of this story padded out with educational lessons about astronomy. A very few sequences from the show are available at the Internet Archive, but there's much [more inside]
posted by Rash at 2:09 PM PST - 2 comments

When Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, parted ways with conservative media company the Daily Wire in late March, the news unleashed something strange on the internet. Factions emerged to yell at each other about theology, censorship, and bigotry. Extremists chatted with establishment right-wingers in audio chatrooms on social media. Content creators wrote blog posts and produced YouTube videos with their take on one particular phrase: “Christ Is King.” That phrase gripped the right for days, leaving movement leaders struggling with layers of infighting that proved difficult to parse for all but the most egregiously online people. It was also, for those tracking the right’s strange coalition-building, a warning sign: The establishment conservatives’ pragmatic alliance with hateful white supremacist groups may finally be breaking under the awkwardness of having avowed antisemites in a pro-Israel movement. from The Establishment Right’s Alliance With Open Bigots Is Under a New Kind of Pressure [Slate]
posted by chavenet at 1:08 PM PST - 35 comments

The USENIX Association have published a Report (PDF) Analysing Cookie Notice Compliance. We show that 56.7% of cookie notices do not include an option to opt out of consent, that more than 65.4% of websites with an opt-out option collect users’ data despite explicit negative consent, and that 73.4% of websites do so even when users do not interact with the cookie notice.
posted by Lanark at 12:50 PM PST - 28 comments

This is a particularly interesting find -- a full television special from 1978 focussed on Olivia Newton -John called Olivia [50m]. The guest starts are Andy Gibb and ABBA! The first 33 minutes are high-quality standard fare Seventies variety show material, but the last bit of the show has six people sitting stage having a little hootenanny, improvising sing-a-longs, and we eve get to hear Frida sing in her opera voice a bit! It's entirely charming that turns transcendent at the end.
posted by hippybear at 10:36 AM PST - 15 comments

The MacAdam Shield Shovel, also known as the Hughes Shovel, was designed and patented by Sam Hughes, the Canadian minister for the Department of Militia and Defence in 1913, to be staked in the ground for alternate use as cover. It was thicker and heavier than normal spades but failed to stop even small caliber bullets. It also had a large sight hole in the shovel blade for a rifle to poke through, making it a poor shovel. In 1914, 25,000 shield-shovels were ordered and shipped to Europe for use by the 1st Canadian Division, and then later scrapped. Sam Hughes had a string of failed inventions: "Hughes equated masculinity with toughness, and argued that militia service would toughen up Canadian men who might otherwise go soft living in an urban environment full of labor-saving devices."
posted by AlSweigart at 10:29 AM PST - 19 comments

Excerpts from Lyn Hejinian's My Life: "A name trimmed with colored ribbons"; "Reason looks for two, then arranges it from there"; "As for we who 'love to be astonished'"; "Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance"; "One begins as a student but becomes a friend of clouds." Lisa Samuels, "Eight justifications for canonizing Lyn Hejinian's My Life." "The Rejection of Closure," "Continuing Against Closure," and other work online. Obits: NYT (ungated / archived), Jacket2, and The Nation. Remembrances: Berkeley English, LARB, and The Paris Review. Colin Vanderburg (n+1, Apr. 5), "Tree, Chair, Cone, Dog, Bishop, Piano, Vineyard, Door, or Penny: On Lyn Hejinian": "There is no better way to end, or to begin, or to continue. The facts are finished, but the life is still open."
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:26 AM PST - 8 comments

One of the Internet’s first and only “linguistics influencers,” Adam Aleksic, who works under the handle @etymologynerd, [Instagram / TikTok / YouTube] spends his time post-graduation traveling the world and creating videos about etymology for an audience of over 1.3 million across TikTok and Instagram. [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 9:13 AM PST - 6 comments

Imagine a planet in a system with six suns where total darkness, in the form of a solar eclipse, comes only once every 2,049 years. This is the setting of "Nightfall," a short story that appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. An immediate sensation, it sealed the reputation of its author, a little-known 21-year-old graduate student at Columbia University named Isaac Asimov. [more inside]
posted by How the runs scored at 7:32 AM PST - 34 comments

Once thought locally extinct, rare central rock rat found on remote desert cattle station. The habitat of the critically endangered central rock rat was thought to have shrunk to a speck on the map but now it's been found at two new Northern Territory sites — and researchers say there may be more populations out there.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:29 AM PST - 3 comments

Come rock out with The Angry Astronaut as they discuss the three possible lunar rover designs for the Artemis missions, while going completely metal.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:46 AM PST - 6 comments

North America is just hours away from its second major total solar eclipse in seven years, with the path of totality tracing a long arc from Mexico and Texas northeast through Ohio, New England, and Canada. Eager eclipse watchers have snapped up hotels and rentals and embarked on epic road trips, scrutinizing cloud forecasting models and taking an anti-stormchaser attitude to avoid a late-breaking spate of bad weather. How many MeFites are among the madding crowd? Where are you based, and what's your plan for seeing the spectacle? Have you witnessed any eclipses in the past, or do you have plans to see more in the future? What are your tips and fun facts for making the most of the experience? You're welcome too discuss these topics and more in your Monday Free Thread!
posted by Rhaomi at 5:43 AM PST - 253 comments

Not wanting to be overshadowed by other events, Trump says abortion law should be left to the states (NYT gift, WaPo gift, Reuters, NPR, NBC, Politico, Axios)
posted by box at 5:30 AM PST - 41 comments

Three years in the making, the exhibition was scheduled to open in early July 2024. Kahng and her team had secured a total of sixty-two loans. A catalogue containing an introduction and four essays was about to go into print, distributed by Yale University Press. As Kahng was putting the final touches on the show, however, the sbma brought in a new director: Amada Cruz, who had previously served as the director of the Seattle Art Museum (2019–23) and the director of the Phoenix Art Museum (2015–19). Within a month of her assuming the position in Santa Barbara, Cruz instructed Kahng to halt work on the show because, according to the Hyperallergic article, “it was under consideration for its lack of diversity.” In mid-January, Cruz fired Kahng, terminating her for “redundancy,” before promptly stepping into the role herself. from Cruz control [The New Criterion] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:35 AM PST - 55 comments

Help preserve SpotPass content by uploading your database dump of your 2DS, 3DS and Wii U! All online communication services for the Nintendo 3DS, 2DS and Wii U, including the distribution of SpotPass data will be discontinued on April 8th, 2024, at 4pm PDT. After this date, features using SpotPass in games will stop working once this change has taken effect. [more inside]
posted by QueenHawkeye at 7:36 PM PST - 2 comments

Bird-loving professors instrumental in $390,000 (US $255,994) purchase of cattle property to protect endangered native species. A Nature Foundation fundraising campaign that received two donations of $100,000 (US $65,639) from generous professors enables it to buy a 200-hectare (494-acre) property home to malleefowl and other rare species in south-east South Australia.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:57 PM PST - 2 comments

xkcd #2916: Machine [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 2:37 PM PST - 25 comments

Thirty-eight minutes in for the impatient. yet another best kind of fusion.
posted by wmo at 9:29 AM PST - 4 comments

As art, as practical application, as metaphor, the delicate and profound craft of beautifully repairing beloved items resonates both aesthetically and emotionally. In a different sort of celebration and honoring of the broken thing, artist Helena Hafemann captures the moment of its would-be demise and spins it into a moment of beauty. [more inside]
posted by taz at 9:28 AM PST - 6 comments

The folks at Corridor Crew recently reached back sixty years to recreate a truly wonderous piece of special effects technology that was thought to be long lost.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:22 AM PST - 28 comments

The BBC profiles comic artist and writer Bryan Talbot, following the recent announcement that he will be inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame. [more inside]
posted by Major Clanger at 8:41 AM PST - 7 comments

Excitement as rare, golden-furred, marsupial mole sighted in Australian desert region rich with wildlife. The animals — known locally as kakarratul — are only seen about five to ten times in a decade, due to their tendency to burrow underground and the minimal human presence in their desert habitat. The moles are small and covered in silky golden hair. They do not have eyes, but boast large, strong forearms and claws that allow them to quickly dive under the sand and "swim" deep into the sand dunes.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:51 AM PST - 10 comments

Some realize it’s time to turn on auto-capitalization when they begin texting with bosses and colleagues for work, given lowercase letters can be susceptible to misinterpretation. This is especially the case when communicating with older generations who didn’t grow up DMing their BFFs. But shunning the Shift key helps others cling to their youth. To them, a lowercase letter isn’t just a lowercase letter. Instead, it’s a way to forever remain cool and casual in texts. Even some CEOs do it. from time to start typing like a grownup [WSJ; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:48 AM PST - 169 comments

The Art of the Benshi: World Tour trailer. Tour dates (Brooklyn, this afternoon; DC, Apr. 12-14; Chicago, Apr. 16-17--sold out?; LA, Apr. 19 and 20-21; Tokyo, Apr. 26): "During the silent film era in Japan ... film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi ... [who] enlivened the cinema experience." Films include The Dull Sword (1917; animated); Jiraiya the Hero (1921; see fights at 3:48, 11:37 to see frog magic, and 14:09 for frog vs. snake); A Page of Madness (1926; one of "The 100 Best Horror Movies"; helpful screenplay [PDF] co-authored by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata); and The Golden Flower (1929; animated). Previously. See also Jess Nevins's 2020 Twitter thread on Japanese horror movies, 1898-1949.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:44 AM PST - 1 comment

Gary Shteyngart on assignment from The Atlantic engages in a supposedly fun thing that he'll never do again, cruising from Florida to St. Kitts and CocoCay on board Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas. [more inside]
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:56 PM PST - 57 comments

Here’s a moment of zen with Fred Rogers.
posted by bq at 9:43 PM PST - 22 comments

Australia has a feral pig problem and it is affecting the habitat of the cassowary (three minute video from BBC Earth.) There are only 2000 cassowaries left in Australia. There are 24 million feral pigs in Australia - for context, Australia only has 27.1 million people. Feral pigs compete with cassowaries for food. Feral pigs also eat cassowary eggs and cassowary chicks. Over 100 plant species depend on the cassowary to spread their seeds - if cassowaries disappear, it is disastrous for the rainforest and the other animals who rely on the rainforest.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:57 PM PST - 15 comments

Dionne Farris recorded an album released in 1994 that, if you're grooving on Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album, might feel like it's a similar vibe. Wild Seed – Wild Flower [YT Playlist] comes from the vocalist of the band Arrested Development's song Tennessee, and Beyoncé's new album had been giving me whiplash in a lot of ways. Maybe, if you like Bey's new album, you'll like this older example of the same musical genre. Previously.
posted by hippybear at 6:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Orville Peck & Willie Nelson - Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other (slyt) [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 5:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Adam Moss (Vulture, 04/04/2024), "How'd You Make That? Three masterpieces from glimmer through struggle to breakthrough": "So I began talking to creators ... here are three of those conversations with the artists Cheryl Pope and Kara Walker and the poet Louise Glück." Of related interest: Dungeons & Dragons (early draft; see the upcoming book). A first draft of Finnegans Wake. The first page of 1984. Story Synopsis and Rough Draft [PDF] for Star Wars. The Creative Process: A Symposium. For checkout, The Making of The Pré. Plus "Work in Progress: Notes, Drafts, Revision, Publication," "... Check Out These Drafts From Famous Authors," "Surprising secrets of writers' first book drafts," and "First drafts of famous novels."
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:41 PM PST - 6 comments

The English language is famous for its large number of drunkonyms, i.e. words that can be used to refer to the state of drunkenness – from blind and hammered to pissed, smashed and wasted. Various lists of words have been compiled in the past (e.g. Levine 1981). However, most of the terms seem to be relatively infrequent, and they also appear to fall out of use relatively quickly. In view of Michael McIntyre’s (2009) claim that it is possible to use any word to mean ‘drunk’ in English, this contribution therefore approaches the issue from a constructionist perspective. In a corpus-based study, we tested whether it is possible to model the expression of drunkenness in English as a more or less schematic (set of) construction(s). Our study shows that while corpus evidence for truly creative uses is scarce, we can nonetheless identify constructional and collostructional properties shared by certain patterns that are used to express drunkenness in English. For instance, the pattern be/get + ADV + drunkonym is strongly associated with premodifying (and often strongly intensifying) adverbs such as completely, totally and absolutely. A manual analysis of a large wordlist of English drunkonyms reveals further interesting patterns that can be modelled constructionally.

“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness, a spirited academic paper from the Yearbook of the GCLA [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:20 AM PST - 49 comments

One does not need to be a scholar of late antiquity to notice how often Jesus speaks of trials, of officers dragging the insolvent to jail. The Lord's Prayer, quite explicitly, requests — in order — adequate nourishment, debt relief, avoidance of arraignment before the courts, and rescue from the depredations of powerful but unprincipled men. [Note: The first 3 paragraphs are rather opaque and ornate but from the 4th paragraph, which begins "Christians are quite accustomed to thinking of Christianity as a fairly commonsensical creed," biblical scholar David Bentley Hart really starts cooking, albeit with academic vocabulary.] [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:08 AM PST - 16 comments

Flat oysters growing in Botany Bay after more than a century of local extinction. Australian flat oysters went extinct in Botany Bay during the late 1800s. A conservation project has been working to bring them back.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:19 AM PST - 11 comments

“So as a baseline, what needs to happen before I will publicly recommend something as “fountain pen friendly paper”? My standard is fairly simple: No bleed-through or feathering with any fountain pen nib that can be reasonably used for everyday writing. (Because I mainly use my paper for drafting and notetaking, as opposed to drawing, wet ink samples, or flex-nib calligraphy, my standards may be more lenient than some.)” [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:30 AM PST - 26 comments

Previously played by children, Japan’s adult population first went ballistic for pachinko after the Second World War, when the first commercial pachinko parlor opened in Nagoya. Popularity peaked during the 1990s, with an estimated 30 million people in approximately 18,244 pachinko parlors across the country. Today, however, according to the National Police Agency, the number of pachinko parlors has fallen to 7,655 — a 9.3% decline from the previous year. from Is Japan’s Pachinko Industry in Decline? [Tokyo Weekender] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:20 AM PST - 38 comments

Well, this is fun. Prince - United States Of Division (Official Audio) is a 6m20s funk jam with New Power Generation. Not quite sure WHEN this was recorded, but it feels appropriate to release right now. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:55 PM PST - 12 comments

Native fish spotted swimming across remote desert highway after flooding rains. An Alice Springs photographer thought moving objects on a flooded outback highway were frogs, until he captured a spectacular video of fish crossing the road. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:34 PM PST - 7 comments

In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous. Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.

Dark Matter: For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:53 PM PST - 16 comments

For the 50th anniversary of Stephen King's debut novel Carrie (original review), the New York Times Book Review offers: an appreciation by Margaret Atwood; an essay by Amanda Jayatissa; a collection of reflections from various luminaries; a King reading guide; and a podcast with Grady Hendrix and Damon Lindelof about King's works and influence (NYT gift links throughout).
posted by box at 2:29 PM PST - 42 comments

After an announcement at the Tesla January earnings call introducing the Model 2 as an upcoming mass market priced model (that would require workers to sleep at the factory), reports are that the new model is being cancelled in light of increasing competition in the Chinese EV market. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:23 PM PST - 94 comments

4.8 Shaker Strikes Whitehouse Station, NJ. Tri-State residents were surprised this morning by a rare earthquake. Although earthquakes are rare in the North East, they are not unheard of. The Ramapo Fault may be the culprit here. [more inside]
posted by supermedusa at 10:45 AM PST - 83 comments

Jared Shurin on Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, a "heart-warming/breaking portrayal of lost-and-found geeks captured the zeitgeist of a new [tech] subculture," from casual coding to its Silicon Valley extremes:

Looking back. . . we can see the first seeds of a spin-off culture, one that is not only aware of its incompatibility with the rest of society, but also revels in it. . . thirty years on, it now feels a lot less quaint, and a lot more frightening.

posted by criticalyeast at 9:03 AM PST - 22 comments

"According to these sources, Trader Joe’s commonly solicits product samples and even asks for potential recipe adjustments—a revealing and time-consuming exercise for bootstrapped founders—before inexplicably abandoning the negotiations and releasing its own private-label versions of similar products at lower prices." How Trader Joe's engages in shady tactics to copy products from independent, minority-owned brands.
posted by swift at 8:34 AM PST - 93 comments

They pooled their money to buy an ugly hill. Twenty years later, they're calling it paradise. A group of friends, dismayed about climate change, bought the most degraded piece of farmland they could find. Not to live on, or to make money from, but to transform into the bushland it once was. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:03 AM PST - 14 comments

I used to want to be a part of the media party circuit so bad. As a young person aspiring to be a writer, I would zoom into certain Instagram Stories of interest, wondering how everyone there got to go. Now, as a person attending them, I am pissed off! I was lied to. Bamboozled. Swindled. Hoodwinked
posted by sammyo at 3:52 AM PST - 49 comments

“This was a catch-and-kill,” I told Alpert. “What’s a catch-and-kill?” he asked. I went on to explain the tabloid practice of buying stories to bury them. Alpert already had the outline of the story, I learned, and I filled him in on more: how Howard had flown out to Los Angeles that summer to buy McDougal’s story for $150,000, with the direction from Pecker to kill it to protect Trump. I stressed to him the importance of the term “catch and kill” and told him that if The Journal included it, it would give me some breathing room. I went back to my office and closed the door. My heart was racing, and I was sweating. from What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise by Lachlan Cartwright [NY Times; ungated] [CW: Trumpland]
posted by chavenet at 2:05 AM PST - 14 comments

So this is unexpectedly delightful! Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsey Mendez, Katie Rose Clark, Krystal Joy Brown, and Reg Rogers sit down with Seth Rudetsky to discuss the release of the Broadway Cast Album for Merrily We Roll Along [YT Playlist] in SiriusXM Cast Album Town Hall | Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway [52m]. Campy, joyous and full of laughter and some delightful theater stories! Merrily We Roll Along previously.
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM PST - 8 comments

[CW: transphobia, suicide] Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a website exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn’t the only thing that was destroyed. [Esquire]
posted by riruro at 7:23 PM PST - 32 comments

In this picturesque Tasmanian bay, marine scientists are bringing a once-lost habitat back to life. Tucked away in a picturesque bay on the Tasman Peninsula is a precious underwater field of giant kelp that's thriving thanks to a team of determined scientists.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:58 PM PST - 2 comments

Kinky Friedman song with real heart covered well by Lee Roy Parnell [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 12:46 PM PST - 3 comments

What’s the Cloud Forecast for Eclipse Day? (New York Times gift link) "If you have an eclipse viewing destination in mind, enter it in the box below to see the latest cloud cover forecast. We expect the forecast to become more accurate closer to the day of the eclipse, and The Times will update this map as fresh forecasts become available."
posted by JonathanB at 12:31 PM PST - 82 comments

The MLB season is just a week old and there's already major team news in Oakland [more inside]
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:36 AM PST - 47 comments

Kyra Dempsey (Admiral Cloudberg) looks at plane crashes, recent and historical, and presents their analysis on their blog in a format that contains enough to be interesting while still being accessible to the layperson. Recent posts include The ditching of ALM Antillean Airlines flight 980 one of the few commercial airlines to ditch into the sea, the absolutely insane series of events that lead to The crash of Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303, and the series of oversights, missed warning and that lead to The 2019 Alaska mid-air collision. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 9:56 AM PST - 17 comments

A high ranking Iowa hospital systems administrator has plead guilty to identity theft after stealing his former coworker's identity - for thirty years. (SLArs Technica) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:50 AM PST - 36 comments

Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, and Conspiracy theories (FLICC) and a Denial101 video trilogy (Part 1, 2, 3). From climate science communication researcher John Cook of Skeptical Science (with old school website layout!). See also the Cranky Uncle game based on the theory of inoculation: There may be no way to cure existing zombies, but we can reduce the number of people who are infectable by zombies. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:44 AM PST - 7 comments

The Bees of Wrath by James D. Walsh is the story of Rorie Woods, who released a hive of bees onto sheriff’s deputies who had arrived to evict a 79-year-old friend of hers. When informed that several deputies might be allergic, she allegedly replied: “Oh you’re allergic, good”.
posted by Kattullus at 9:10 AM PST - 49 comments

The fine art of human prompt engineering: How to talk to a person like ChatGPT. "To maximize the value of interactions with human language models, much like optimizing prompts for AI (prompt engineering), consciously crafting prompts to fit a particular HLM can be crucial. Here are several prompting strategies that we have found useful when interacting with humans." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:38 AM PST - 13 comments

A recently added setting on iPhones and iPads makes the devices less complicated. When activated, it switches to a bare-bones home screen that shows one or more apps as larger-than-usual icons. It makes smartphones and tablets easier to navigate by minimizing the number of options and adding more visual-based controls. WaPost gift link to article
posted by hydra77 at 8:24 AM PST - 16 comments

Last night at Madison Square Green: The Rangers and Devils started an all-out line brawl the second the puck dropped, resulting in 8 ejections. The fight has roots in violent encounters last month when Rangers’ Rempe concussed Devils player Siegenthaler. Trigger warning for self-harm and sexual assault. [more inside]
posted by bq at 7:45 AM PST - 94 comments

Differing opinions over whether a world-first cassowary bridge in Far North Queensland may be too steep for the endangered birds to use. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:44 AM PST - 7 comments

The beds are covered with a mass of pure white, like bubbling foam: thousands of white button mushrooms. These are the mushrooms — along with other strains of this same species, the brown and portobello mushrooms — that account for the vast majority of all mushrooms that Americans eat.
posted by signsofrain at 6:42 AM PST - 16 comments

"The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal."
posted by brundlefly at 6:37 AM PST - 64 comments

On April 3 and 4, 1974, thunderstorms spawned more than 100 tornadoes, killing more than 300 and injuring another 6000. Most fatalities occurred in small towns from Guin and Tanner, Alabama to Monticello, Indiana and the small city of Xenia, Ohio. The Super Outbreak became the impetus for improved weather forecasting, improved emergency notification, and comprehensive federal response. [more inside]
posted by backwoods at 5:21 AM PST - 16 comments

"What does a queer family look like? How do you define one without capitulating to heteronormative ideas of the 'nuclear family'? And how do those dynamics play out with families in the horror genre?" Laura Riordan on queer family in recent horror films.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:39 AM PST - 4 comments

The High Highs and Low Lows of Alan Ritchson [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 4:39 AM PST - 6 comments

Cat bonds investors are gambling on nature. If a disaster they’ve bet on occurs, their money is used to settle insurance claims. If it doesn’t, they get handsome returns. For decades, the instruments were a last resort reserved for super-rare events, such as a cataclysmic storm on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. But multibillion-dollar calamities have become alarmingly frequent on a warmer planet. “The insurance market is on edge,” says Seo. “It’s freaked out about risk and wants as little as possible.” from How a Physics Whiz Made a Killing Betting on Nature’s Catastrophes [Bloomberg; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 AM PST - 12 comments

Happy World Rat Day! 🐀 Australia’s native rodent species are incredibly diverse - from the Rakali, an otter-like rodent with webbed feet, to tiny desert-dwelling Hopping Mice that weigh no more than a golf ball. Discovering Australia's remarkable rodents [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:30 PM PST - 5 comments

Christopher Durang, TONY award-winning playwright, has died at the age of 75. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:30 PM PST - 20 comments

Former Rep. Jim McDermott is the rare lawmaker who has been able to live out all the policies he worked for during his decades in Washington. He just had to move to another country to do it. From a quaint French village about 90 minutes outside of Bordeaux, the longtime liberal lawmaker enjoys free health care and a safe community where he doesn’t need to lock his doors at night. He loves that kids in the neighborhood don’t worry about gun violence and that women have access to reproductive care, specifically abortion. He reads the news every day but says he doesn’t miss America all that much. (archive) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 4:53 PM PST - 64 comments

April 4th at 2:30 Eastern time is the start of the FIDE Candidates (Open) and Women's Candidates Tournaments in Toronto Canada. You can follow the games live on Chess.com and Lichess (open, women's). The month long events will determine which players will get to challenge current World Champion Ding Liren, and Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun. Last year players around the world competed in a series of events to qualify for an invitation to a Candidates tournament. The winners will get a chance to play in a World Championship match (open or women's). There are two events. The Women's Candidates and the Open. Chess holds women only events as a means to encourage more women to participate in the game. Chess does not hold men's only events; although in many cases only male players have qualified in recent years. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 2:30 PM PST - 26 comments

The 2024 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Malmö, Sweden this year after Loreen secured a second victory with her song Tattoo, last year in Liverpool. Sweden has won the Contest seven times, tied with Ireland for the most victories ever by a single country. Thirty-seven countries are competing in this 68th edition of Eurovision. This year, it consists of two semifinals on May 7th and 9th, with the Grand Final on May 11th. Get ready for an introduction of all the submissions from the Class of 2024! [more inside]
posted by PearlRose at 12:48 PM PST - 34 comments

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? by Sam Knight in The New Yorker [more inside]
posted by rhymedirective at 12:33 PM PST - 61 comments

The children's counting book, Hippos Go Berserk!, over 45 years after its original publication, now has a sequel, Hippos Remain Calm. In an interview with Slate, author Sandra Boynton reveals hitherto unknown details of hippo psychology and muses on the literary merits of board books.
posted by jackbishop at 11:42 AM PST - 33 comments

The tale behind a new museum of children’s literature is equal parts imagination, chutzpah and “The Little Engine That Could.” (by Elizabeth Egan for the NYT)
posted by bq at 11:36 AM PST - 5 comments

The Hat Historian provides short histories of various hats in English (et en français,) from the Top Hat (le Haut-de-Forme) to the Bowler (le chapeau melon,) from the Tricorn (le Tricorne) to the Picklehaube (le Casque à pointe,) from the Custodian Helmet (le Casque de Bobby) to the Hard Hat (le Casque de Chantier,) and, of course, the Beret (le béret.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Falcon that crashed Taylor Swift concert set-up released back at Stadium Australia. A peregrine falcon that came to ground during the set-up for Taylor Swift's concert has recovered in the care of wildlife professionals and has been released back into his habitat at Stadium Australia.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:21 AM PST - 10 comments

Invisible - Workers from Eastern Europe Eastern Europeans migrating west in the hope of better salaries are often exploited and underpaid. Czech journalist Sasa Uhlová goes undercover to find out what conditions are like for these invisible workers in Germany, France and Great Britain. (Documentary, available with English subtitles until 17th of April)
posted by kmt at 5:33 AM PST - 3 comments

John Barth, author of books like Sot-Weed Factor, Lost in the Funhouse, Letters and Tidewater Tales, has died in a Florida hospice facility. He was 93. [more inside]
posted by Fritz Langwedge at 5:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Last year, a massive blaze consumed several illegal Airbnb units in Montreal and killed seven people. The tragedy shone a harsh light on the Wild West of Airbnb in Canadian cities—and the battle to regulate it has just begun. (slMacLean's) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 4:50 AM PST - 66 comments

"Epicurus, who taught philosophy in Athens in a large backyard garden purchased around 306 BC, like other philosophers at the end of the Classical era and the beginning of Hellenistic times, gave priority to ethical thought in his teaching, treating physics and logic as auxiliary disciplines to facilitate understanding of the human behaviour, attitudes and aspirations he postulated.According to him, the aim of all human actions was to strive for ataraxia (ἀταραξία), that is, a state of inner peace, indifferent to pain and suffering, and to strive for freedom from fear, especially the fear of death and wrath of the gods." Krystyna Bartol on Epicurus. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:25 AM PST - 8 comments

It's easy, just call and leave a message after the beep. Do not wait. CALL NOW!!! (Please note that messages may take a short while to appear. Thank you for your patience!)
posted by Klipspringer at 4:25 AM PST - 10 comments

The long and short of it is that Swisher is not a good journalist—or, framed more generously, that she thrived in an industry with remarkably low standards for which we are still paying the price. from The Miseducation of Kara Swisher, a review of Burn Book by Edward Ongweso Jr. [The Baffler; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:06 AM PST - 29 comments

American-born Canadian comedy legend Joe Flaherty has died after a short illness. He was 82 years old. American audiences might know him best as Happy Gilmore’s heckler, or Big Bird’s co-kidnapper, or as Mr. Weir from “Freaks and Geeks.” Canadian viewers and comedy nerds will more likely recognize him from SCTV, or as Jennifer Tilly’s long-suffering dad in the cult classic The Wrong Guy. [more inside]
posted by armeowda at 10:35 PM PST - 51 comments

How NOT to behave around a crocodile. In areas where it's possible that there are crocodiles, authorities say that you should stay at least 5 metres (16 feet) from the water’s edge. This man is standing IN the water and fishing with a fishing rod, with his back to a crocodile that is on a sandbank right behind him. Incidents like this frustrate wildlife management authorities, who would prefer humans not get injured or killed, but would also prefer not to have to kill crocodiles that could have been left alone if humans had behaved safely around them. There has been some talk of making deliberately dangerous behaviour around crocodiles a fine-able offence.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:36 PM PST - 22 comments

Smiting! Odin's Skull Mead! And...uuhhh...kids (not that kind) Let's let Tasting History with Max Miller teach us what bellying up at a medieval tavern was really like. Unfortunately, it probably wasn't like this, which makes me sad.
posted by NoMich at 7:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Most of us know how to make a proper cup of tea. But perhaps you'd like to test yourself with this wonderful tea making simulation game. Exquisite! (other delicious and refreshing games made on the same platform here).
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:21 PM PST - 36 comments

Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs. CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had “overvalued experience and undervalued leadership” before he purged the veterans into early retirement. “Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company.

Suicide Mission: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane [The American Prospect] [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:15 PM PST - 76 comments

According to a recent study, reusable water bottles contain twice as many germs as the kitchen sink. “You should be cleaning these every day, or after every use,” says Natasha Blythe, a food hygiene expert at online training provider High Speed Training. “For a daily clean, wash in hot, soapy water. If you use a dishwasher, handwash the smaller parts,” says Blythe. “Take extra care with built-in straws; these are the perfect place for bacteria to grow.” Blythe recommends a bristle brush to clean the straw, or leave it to soak in hot water with a tablespoon of vinegar added. Daisy Schofield consults with experts on household cleaning for The Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:39 PM PST - 70 comments

✨There he is, ✨he's a magical cat, ✨everybody loves him ✨he's a ＭＡＧＩＣＡＬ  ＣＡＴ!✨✨✨🧚🦄🧜‍♀️🧝🐈
(5 1/2 minute video, claymation animation compilation, silly, meow)
posted by JHarris at 1:41 PM PST - 16 comments

I've been struggling with making this post for a long time, but I think the video The GREATEST Band I EVER Joined | The STORY of TOY MATINEE [~30m] is the best inroad I can find. It's a guitarist who talks to many who were also involved in the band, and everyone who was involved completely adores the project. Here's the Toy Matinee album in question. [YT playlist] It's prog pop, unlike anything I've really heard much before or since. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:05 AM PST - 23 comments

Metro Vancouver-founded T&T Supermarket to open 1st U.S. store in 2024 [more inside]
posted by elkevelvet at 7:50 AM PST - 50 comments

Iowa faced off against LSU again to decide which team would make it to the Final Four this year and it was everything that people were hoping for!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:35 AM PST - 27 comments

Developer looking to merge homes, farming into agrihoods to ease food, housing pressures. Ever wanted to quit the city and run away to start a farm? Welcome to the agrihood, where you can have town living in a rural setting.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:19 AM PST - 56 comments

Small Press Distribution, one of the last remaining independent book distributors in the United States, has closed. In an announcement made March 28, SPD executive director Kent Watson said that the closure is effective immediately, and that the staff is in the process of winding down the business. Founded in 1969, SPD was the only nonprofit literary distributor in the U.S. What the closure of SPD means for readers. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:01 AM PST - 21 comments

Who's the worst fast food mascot ever created? The Burger King? Phil A. O'Fish? Some would offer another possibility. Meet Mr. Delicious, the attempted post-modern deconstructionist mascot believed by some to be at least partly why the Rax restaurant chain only mostly died. You can watch a short video about the campaign, watch a longer video (mirror) about it from the company itself, read an article, or actually watch and listen to ads starring a balding, unhappy middle aged mascot for The Fast-Food Restaurant For Grown-Ups.
posted by BiggerJ at 3:10 AM PST - 46 comments

The collection is also a physical manifestation of his famously omnivorous appetite for visual media. Scorsese has frequently spoken about growing up asthmatic in a New York City household that lacked books but was one of the first on the block to get a television set in 1948, when he was six years old. For young Marty, who wasn’t able to play in the streets as frequently or vigorously as other kids, the 16-inch screen of the black-and-white RCA Victor in the living room became his window to the world – and, critically, his first exposure to great cinema. from ‘He was always voraciously watching’: Scorsese’s secret life as an obsessive VHS archivist [Grauniad; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:28 AM PST - 3 comments

Culled from a cancelled FMV 3DO game from 1996, you may never have seen anything so incrediculous as the 7 1/2 minute trailer Duelin' Firemen. While the trailer has been bouncing around the internet for 16 years (previously from 2007 by hypocritical ross), a higher resolution version has turned up that's almost watchable. It contains Rudy Ray Moore, the Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Dr. Timothy Leary and Tony Hawk. The Youtube channel of a documentary about the game's making has some other obscure clips from it. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 1:14 AM PST - 17 comments

[CW: Suicide, exploitation] Cartoonist Ed Piskor, creator of Hip Hop Family Tree and co-host of comics YouTube channel Cartoonist Kayfabe, was accused last week of grooming by a cartoonist who posted screenshots of a conversation she had with Piskor when she was 17 and he was 38. Two women soon came forward with their own experiences. This morning Piskor posted a response on his Facebook (Currently unavailable) denying any ill intent and expressing suicidal feelings. Shortly after, his family confirmed that he was dead. Ed Piskor was 41. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:47 PM PST - 52 comments

Here’s why Americans under 40 are so disillusioned with capitalism Millennials have had such a tumultuous start in the workforce, they have been nicknamed the “unluckiest generation.” They are struggling to navigate the most unaffordable housing market since the early 1980s. And that’s before anyone talks about the larger challenges of climate change, wars and political partisanship and paralysis. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 6:20 PM PST - 92 comments

'A Grand Day Out'. Landing on the Moon with Wallace & Gromit. (slyt. 2:52)
posted by clavdivs at 5:20 PM PST - 10 comments

Titan’s Massive Dunes May Be a Comet and Moon Graveyard From the Early Solar System. A new modeling study suggests the dark dunes on Saturn’s largest moon are made of tiny particles created by crashing comets and moonlets billions of years ago.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:46 PM PST - 4 comments

Rocketdyne is notable among the space exploration set for developing a number of NASA's workhorse chemical rocket engines, such as the main thrusters of the Shuttle. But during the Space Race, they created a monster of such an engine, built around a tripropellant mix of molten lithium, liquid hydrogen, and liquid fluorine - an engine where the safest component was the asbestos cladding. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:18 PM PST - 26 comments

Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion [14m] has performances by the orchestrion plus background facts about its construction. It's charming and really nerdy.
posted by hippybear at 12:57 PM PST - 7 comments

User Complaint About Existing Services Leads Google to Create Search-Based Webmail; Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; "Heck, Yeah," Say Google Founders: Gmail's 20th anniversary: Technology's best April Fool's prank yet
posted by chavenet at 12:37 PM PST - 28 comments

Fingers and Toes: Spotting Deepfakes
posted by simmering octagon at 10:47 AM PST - 23 comments

Dr. Who Titles Prisoner Style (SLYT)
posted by wittgenstein at 9:15 AM PST - 19 comments

"I Made a Graph of Wikipedia... This Is What I Found." Learn about communities of articles, articles that are popular in other articles, orphans and dead ends, the 6 degrees of Wikipedia, the longest path on Wikipedia, and Fanta Cake.
posted by clawsoon at 7:11 AM PST - 9 comments

A yearlong investigation by The Insider, in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana Syndrome, may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons wielded by members of Russian GRU Unit 29155. Members of the Kremlin’s infamous military intelligence sabotage squad have been placed at the scene of suspected attacks on overseas U.S. government personnel and their family members, leading victims to question what Washington knows about the origins of Havana Syndrome, and what an appropriate Western response might entail.

Unraveling Havana Syndrome: New evidence links the GRU's assassination Unit 29155 to mysterious attacks on Americans, at home and abroad [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:30 AM PST - 85 comments

Large old trees are vital for Australian birds. Their long branches and hollows can’t be replaced by saplings.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:43 AM PST - 1 comment

FreeCell is a solitaire card game included with every release of Microsoft Windows since 1995 -- nearly 30 years. Unlike crosswords, sudoku and many other pastimes, solitaire is a game whose starting condition is purely random. Do you play games / solve puzzles to pass the time? Or talk about anything you like! It's your free thread!
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:16 AM PST - 114 comments

10 Major Awards for Fantasy Literature (2018) hits the SFF high points. There is, however, a long list of contenders for awards of varying sizes (2019). Another perspective (2016), from around the time of the last major Hugos fracas. If you haven't heard of them, maybe check out the Ignyte Awards, the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (or see the overall database of Lambda winners), or the Prix Jacques Brossard. For more information, visit the Science Fiction Awards Database. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:42 AM PST - 10 comments

The mere notion of Madonna going on any talk show was rare. She didn’t need the publicity. The relentless tabloids took care of that for her. Nor did she have anything to promote. Someone of her magnitude would seldom go on without a reason. But on March 31st, 1994, she did it anyway. She went on David Letterman’s Late Show for her first visit with the host in 6 years. Everybody would be tuning in no matter what. But what we got was something so bizarre that we cannot help but marvel that it was ever really a thing 30 years later. from An Oral History of Madonna’s Infamous 1994 David Letterman Appearance [Latenighter]
posted by chavenet at 1:33 AM PST - 61 comments