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Jason Bailey explains why you should love generative art , which uses computers to introduce random elements to the work but is still under the artist's control. With roots in the 1960s and many women artists, it now includes various machine-learning elements too. The article has many examples and links to even more, but you can also try to make some yourself. If you already know how to code, Tim Holman explains the process in Generative Art Speedrun (captions available) and has tutorials for nearly-recreating famous works using JavaScript at Generative Artistry. If you don't know how to code, you can play with Heydon Pickering's Mutable Gallery to calibrate and download pieces for yourself.
posted by harriet vane at 11:43 PM PST - 9 comments

"Released in the year 2000, BGM 1980-2000 was a compilation of all the background music MUJI had commissioned a select bunch of Japanese musicians (and a wayward Penguin Cafe Orchestra violinist) to soundtrack their stores, all the way to the year of its release." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:06 PM PST - 9 comments

kids were asked to create 500,000 scale aircraft models Following the 1941 aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics put out a call to action, aimed not at recruiting adult volunteers or teen enlistees but schoolchildren. For training purposes, models were especially important — per the U.S. Army-Navy Journal of Recognition, it was critical that observers be able to see an “object as a whole” and be “able, through constant practice, to recognize that object (plane, tank, ship, etc…) from any angle.”
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:26 PM PST - 7 comments

CALEXIT GOES NATIONWIDE: In 1869, the Supreme Court ruled that a state may secede "through consent of the states". Therefore, modeling the successful strategy of the Convention of States campaign, Yes California is announcing its new mission to pass a "Consent to Secede" resolution in a majority of the Nation's state legislatures. [more inside]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 8:20 PM PST - 58 comments

Parasitic Vines That Feed on Parasitic Wasps That Feed on Trees "Scientists studying wasps that target oak leaves found that a second parasite, a vine, can get its tendrils into the homes set up by the wasps, called galls, subverting their diversion of the host’s resources. After that, things don’t go so well for the wasp."
posted by dhruva at 5:53 PM PST - 25 comments

Beat Saber, the VR game that has players slashing colored blocks in time to music, has reinvigorated both the VR gaming scene and the music/rhythm genre, quickly spawning 3rd-party modifications that allow players to create their own custom notetracks. While the large majority are based on existing songs, some enterprising modders are applying the game's choreographed swordplay to more unusual types of audio. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 5:35 PM PST - 5 comments

Politically fired up, more musically aggressive than ever, Indigo Girls' 1999 album [Discogs, lists musicians by track] Come On Now Social [YT playlist] is a call to action and reflection of society that perhaps resonates even more nearly 20 years later. Cassette Side A: Go [background], Soon To Be Nothing, Gone Again, Trouble [Bonus Live Performance -- official video of 2000 Fillmore performance] [background], Sister, Peace Tonight, Ozilline [background] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:28 PM PST - 10 comments

wideNES: Peeking Past the Edge of NES Games by Daniel Prilik “The NES was one of the flagship consoles of the glorious era that was the 1980s. Many of the most popular games on the platform involved some sort of adventure through scrolling screens — Metroid, Super Mario, and Zelda all used this common technique. For many games, keeping track of the map was a huge chore and meant mapping by hand on graph paper or using the screenshots published in Nintendo Power magazine. These day’s there’s a better way. [Daniel] set out to automatically map these huge two-dimensional worlds, developing software he calls WideNES to do it. WideNES is an add-on to [Daniel]’s own NES emulator, ANESE [GitHub]. As part of the emulator, WideNES can easily read the various registers of the NES’s Picture Processing Unit, or PPU. The registers of the PPU are used to control the display of the background and sprite layers of NES graphics, and by monitoring these, it is possible to detect and map out the display of levels in various NES games.” [via: HACKADAY]
posted by Fizz at 4:27 PM PST - 19 comments

A series of photos created by workers at Home Depot: The Sun God - The Mata Hari - Tree on a hill - Sunset - Groovy, man - This Pineapple - Supernova - Mushroom Cloud - Toxic Mitosis... Courtesy of the r/unstirredpaint subreddit [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 3:54 PM PST - 9 comments

The Village Voice has been shut down — The loss of the legendary New York publication is a tragedy for local media, alt-weeklies, and criticism. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 2:07 PM PST - 61 comments

It was printed with a repeating image that might have been a rustic barn with a wagon wheel perched outside or an old mill with a water wheel, surrounded by reddish orange and gold flowers, and possibly wild fowl like pheasants or turkeys. The fabric also had a fuzzy velour-type texture, but it was scratchy against the skin. And the arms, made out of scrolling dark wood covered in more of that fabric, were hard and unfriendly for leaning against.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:06 PM PST - 85 comments

Two takes on why and how it feels like we all end up at the same coffee shop wherever we go. The first, the danger of planning a trip online where we see what the numbers lead us to: The Algorithmic Trap. On the same side of the coin, the proliferation of the places that all feel the same anyway: The Unbearable Sameness of Cities
posted by moogs at 11:34 AM PST - 58 comments

Lyrical Ladies, Writing Women, and the Legend of Lauryn Hill: Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 11:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Rocky, do you love trash? Are you eating? Say you'll never ever leave us. Amy Dempsey of The Toronto Star talked with a researcher weighing this year's racoonsicles, baited her neighbourhood's green bins with rotisserie chicken, painstakingly set up surveillance cameras, and got into prolonged discussions with city employees about the definitions of "raccoon-resistant" versus "raccoon-proof". Result? "Toronto built a better green bin and — oops — maybe a smarter raccoon." [more inside]
posted by maudlin at 10:01 AM PST - 31 comments

A Mormon Bishop faces excommunication for wanting to stop sexual interviews of children. Starting at the age of 7 years old, youth in the Mormon Church begin worthiness interviews. These interviews happen behind closed doors and include questions of a sexual nature about masturbation, sexual thoughts, and chastity. [more inside]
posted by ShakeyJake at 9:42 AM PST - 39 comments

On the British Columbia coast, the Heiltsuk First Nation asserts its rights to manage its resources, and who has access to them, through the seasonal herring harvest. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:29 AM PST - 8 comments

In 2007 a quirky animated short appeared on the Internet and went viral. It led to one of the greatest TV shows of all time. [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:04 AM PST - 19 comments

“At the time of its publication, it was widely denounced. Writing from the depths of the Great Depression, and amidst a burgeoning black communist internationalism, Black Reconstruction was Du Bois at his finest. By deftly applying classical Marxist analysis to a population so often overlooked by its orthodoxies, Du Bois’s general strike thesis emerged not only as a historical corrective, but as a stark critique of Western philosophy and modern academic inquiry itself.” When Slaves Go on Strike: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction 80 Years Later. (Black Perspectives) ”As Du Bois argued, Reconstruction and the history of slavery in the United States had been shaped by “one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings” through the use of public education and public memory.” The Legacy of Black Reconstruction. (Jacobin) The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction: The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled. (Dissent).
posted by The Whelk at 8:58 AM PST - 4 comments

The US Education Department reported that nearly 240 schools had at least one school shooting in 2015-16. NPR found that only 11 incidents could be verified. This seems to be a matter of incompetence-- designing a good questionnaire and checking on the results is harder than it sounds. [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:44 AM PST - 27 comments

Making the baseball sequence of "The Naked Gun."
posted by Chrysostom at 8:27 AM PST - 15 comments

In 1983, Amos Barkai performed an experiment to see if he could determine why lobsters were plentiful around Malgas Island but literally nonexistent around Marcus Island, only four kilometers away. He took about a thousand lobsters from Malgas and moved them to Marcus to see how they would fare. The results were horrifying, and provided strong evidence for alternative stable states—the idea that an ecosystem can exist in very different yet completely stable configurations.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:58 AM PST - 50 comments

From IFC Films, Pick of the Litter is like Survivor With Puppies: out of 800 dogs every year, who will be good enough to become a guide dog for the blind? NYT review. Description from the Guide Dogs for the Blind web site.
posted by Melismata at 7:55 AM PST - 16 comments

NBC News reports that "Cheese and yogurt were found to protect against DEATH FROM ANY CAUSE, and also against death from cerebrovascular causes, like stroke". The Washington Post gives a fair and considered opinion of the piece. Previously on MetaFilter.
posted by Wordshore at 7:52 AM PST - 59 comments

A small museum attempts to slow down the visitor and encourage contemplation. (SLWAPO) In doing so, it finds itself at the center of the debate about museums, access, Instagram, and the "Mona Lisa Moment."
posted by PussKillian at 7:40 AM PST - 10 comments

The site also has ambitions beyond introducing a few strange, old movies every few months. Taken as a whole, byNWR makes a case for several lost or dying institutions at once: the low-budget exploitation film, of course, but also the obsessively focused zine, the Web 1.0-era online magazine, and the video-store clerk willing to recommend something truly unusual to jaded viewers who think they've seen it all. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 7:39 AM PST - 2 comments

Cody Johnston has an incredibly funny and intelligent youtube show called "Some More News". His video on the straw ban is fact-filled and nuanced (and funny) as are his other videos . Here's the Straw Ban video:
posted by bearette at 7:04 AM PST - 37 comments

Why Technology Favors Tyranny - "Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don't take steps to stop it." (via)
posted by kliuless at 6:36 AM PST - 8 comments

The first trailer for HBO's adaptation of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend has been released. [more inside]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:19 AM PST - 17 comments

With zero warning, Eminem dropped a new album last night titled Kamikaze, with thirteen tracks (two of which are skits rather than songs) including music from the Venom soundtrack.

Bonus: wholesome video of rapper Hopsin after noticing that he was name-dropped on the album
posted by 256 at 5:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Orson Welles' last movie is finally finished and comes out in November and the very '70s trailer is out today. Welles largely completed filming forty years ago but never got the funding to complete the edit and it was snarled in legal battles until recently when Netflix stepped in to pay to complete the film. (previously)
posted by octothorpe at 4:58 AM PST - 34 comments

“There was no assumption that the news would convey the truth or would be worthy of their trust,” the study reported. Teenagers, in particular, appear to be increasingly questioning the credibility and value of traditional media organizations.
posted by storytam at 10:38 PM PST - 56 comments

...no one compares to Lau Kar-leung (1937–2013) as a purist of the genre and the Kung Fu form What makes a true kung fu film? Many directors and actors have been associated with the Kung Fu genre, Hong Kong cinema’s most unique creation, but no one compares to Lau Kar-leung (1937–2013) as a purist of the genre and the Kung Fu form. Associate curator La Frances Hui explores the history of the Kung Fu films, the actors and filmmakers associated with the genre like Bruce Lee, Gordon Liu, and Jackie Chan, and why Lau Kar-leung has been hailed as the grandmaster of kung fu films.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Electric scooters’ sudden invasion of American cities, explained
posted by aniola at 6:44 PM PST - 86 comments

On July 23, 2018, Palestine's first aquarium opened. Schools of fish and creatures in every colour of the rainbow dart across the tanks or sit motionless. Some have travelled from as far as Southeast Asia to grace the Palestinian public, such as the Giant Gourami. Even the Iguana, a reptile native to Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, greets curious visitors with its solemn stare. Sofia Qawasmeh believes everyone should be able to see these types of creatures. [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 4:54 PM PST - 4 comments

“Hello! I'm Hello Kitty!” [YouTube] Hello Kitty finally makes her long-awaited debut as a vlogger.
posted by Fizz at 3:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Tom Clancy’s Jim Ryan: Up-and-coming CIA analyst and paper salesman Jim Ryan (John Krasinski) is thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time...
posted by not_the_water at 1:47 PM PST - 41 comments

Earlier this year, the Aquarium in Bergen, Norway hosted "Fish To Mars," a "metal science opera" with story by [MeFi's Own] Peter Watts, score by Arild Brakstad, and libretto by Karin Pittman. Much more at the Fish To Mars website. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:35 PM PST - 3 comments

Allen would be a gestational surrogate, carrying a baby made from the egg and sperm of a couple from China, the intended parents....DNA tests soon showed that one of the babies was not in fact related to the Chinese parents at all.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:56 PM PST - 85 comments

Opinion: Never cook at home. Trust me, I know it’s a drag. (NYT) Deb Perelman, author of the cooking blog Smitten Kitchen says it's cheaper and easier to let someone else do the cooking, at least when talking about NYC. Counter-argument: here is the fast food worth making at home (GQ), in which Drew Magary shares his experiences, and recipes, from catering to his three children. Bonus: 22* more fast food favorites to make at home (Buzzfeed).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:37 AM PST - 94 comments

Actually, now that I think about it, forget everything I just wrote. “Summertime” is perfect and unassailable. I Know It’s Been 27 Years, but I Have Some Notes on DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” by John Gonzalez [SLTR]
posted by chavenet at 10:47 AM PST - 23 comments

A collection of sinkholes. Via Kottke.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:24 AM PST - 26 comments

Book covers are art, and the designs are influenced by not only the story's content but also the trending styles of our days. Is that influence today pushed by social media? "For a time, it seemed that eBooks and kindles would displace their physical counterparts, but this didn’t quite come to pass... Part of this has been in direct response to eBooks; a tactic to boost the sales of physical books is to remake them as desirable objects, and a way to make objects desirable is, of course, to make them aesthetically appealing. But social media – specifically Instagram, which promotes the coveting of beautiful covers on hashtags such as #bookstagram – is putting a new emphasis on cover aesthetics. We no longer need to go home with someone in order to see their bookcase." -Holly Connolly, for The Guardian. [more inside]
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 10:20 AM PST - 8 comments

Operation Delirium: Cold War Experiments in Chemical Warfare The soldiers were never told what they were given, or what the specific effects might be, and the Army made no effort to track how they did afterward. "At an Army research facility, a soldier given a powerful mind-altering drug said, “I feel like my life is not worth a nickel here." (SL New Yorker) [more inside]
posted by JamesBay at 9:35 AM PST - 22 comments

“It is one thing to play dress-up, to imitate pronunciations and understanding; it is another thing to think or dream or live in a language not your own.” [content warning: domestic violence, child abuse] [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:22 AM PST - 4 comments

From HBO to ‘Star Wars’ to Shakespeare, he has discovered how to excel beyond tidy genres. [slNYT]
posted by ellieBOA at 9:18 AM PST - 10 comments

The Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie-Boulder, 600km east of Perth in Western Australia, was once considered the richest square mile on Earth. 60 million ounces later, this week marks 125 years of gold extraction, from the first lease registered in 1893 to the current Super Pit mine. This year the centuries collided when old tunnels and shafts caused a million tonnes of rockfall down the mine's eastern wall.
posted by valetta at 8:37 AM PST - 3 comments

LEGO builds a drivable Bugatti out of 1,000,000+ Technic elements The LEGO Group unveils their latest creation - a drivable full-scale model of the Chiron supercar. The model took 13,438 man-hours to build, includes a 5.3 horsepower motor made from 2,304 Power Function motors and has a top speed of just over 20 km/h. (Top speed of the Chiron is 420 km/h)
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:11 AM PST - 36 comments

Speculation late last year implied Episode IX could be the final installment of the famed Skywalker saga, meaning it would have to feature the ultimate destruction of the First Order. It's already been established that Jar Jar is haunted by personal demons, and there's something undeniably appealing about the infamous clown exorcising them by proving his worth once more. How A Star Wars Movie Cameo Can Redeem Jar Jar Binks.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 8:09 AM PST - 32 comments

"The Doors:" every single shot of a door opening and/or closing in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983) in sequential order. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 8:06 AM PST - 5 comments

Wil Wheaton writes about why he left Twitter, and why he’s leaving social media altogether. [more inside]
posted by mrbeefy at 8:05 AM PST - 255 comments

Here’s a bit of good news for today.
posted by Slinga at 6:38 AM PST - 7 comments

Not A Single Origin takes demographic data from suburbs in Sydney and turns it into chocolate - each box representing the different dominant cultures in each suburb.
posted by divabat at 5:41 AM PST - 24 comments

The big idea that could make democratic socialism a reality - "An ambitious proposal to create an Alaska-style social wealth fund that could transform the global economy." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM PST - 24 comments

Extreme Vespas in Indonesia. Hundreds of Indonesians gather in Java each year to celebrate their love of the world-renowned Italian scooter – and many customise their rides to resemble punk mutants straight out of Mad Max.
posted by hawthorne at 5:32 AM PST - 6 comments

The conventional wisdom is that morning people are high achievers, go-getters, while late risers are lazy. But what if going to bed in the wee hours is actually an advantage? [SLNYT]
posted by hippybear at 3:47 AM PST - 47 comments

Dutch photographer Albert Dros shares stunning images from a recent trip.
posted by smoke at 1:35 AM PST - 12 comments

This man has decided, in the wake of Charlottesville, to sue his trolls. After sharing video of the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Brennan Gilmore had his life upended by online tormentors. Now he's testing whether you can bring them to justice. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:52 PM PST - 26 comments

Stan Brock, the co-host of the TV program Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, left Hollywood to found Remote Area Medical in 1985. In 2017 they offered free medical, dental and vision care to over 40,000 underserved and uninsured individuals who do not have access to or cannot afford a doctor. Sixty percent of the people served are via mobile medical clinics in the US heartlands. Brock donated his entire monthly social security check to the organization, which runs thanks to 120,000 volunteers. He passed away today at the age of 82. [previously]
posted by jessamyn at 5:36 PM PST - 38 comments

“Every day a word surprises me,” he once commented, beaming, apropos of nothing other than that a word had suddenly popped into his head. Often this happened while swimming — “ideas and paragraphs” would develop as he backstroked, after which he’d rush to the dock or pool’s edge to get the words down on paper"--Oliver Sacks, recounted by his partner, Bill Hayes. Also, Hayes shares Sacks' marginalia. Silberman tweets about one. And an upcoming film.
posted by Stanczyk at 5:00 PM PST - 3 comments

A far right riot in Germany has lead to suspicions about links within the Police Force and shows how much the far right is becoming a challenge for all of Europe.
They are being aided and encouraged by Steve Bannon.
An entry guide to European Nationalist parties which have full intention of taking over the European Union.
From Austrian Far right hipsters to Italians and Hungarians unifying to halt immigration these populist parties excel at stoking fears that aren't necessarily connected to reality.
posted by adamvasco at 2:55 PM PST - 39 comments

While scam e-mails from deposed princes and long-lost heirs are almost a punchline at this point, the scam itself has been around for hundreds of years. Known as the Spanish Prisoner scheme in centuries past, swindlers promised untold fortunes through the mail as they impersonated incarcerated royalty or wealthy businessmen. [more inside]
posted by mike_honcho at 2:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Governor Cuomo debates primary challenger Cynthia Nixon tonight at 7pm EST. How to watch the Cuomo-Nixon debate. What to look for in the first and only Cuomo-NIxon debate. Maybe they'll ask about the $25,000 donation Cuomo received from the same lawyers who paid off Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance in the Weinstein case just days before dropping the probe into, uh, the Weinstein case.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:39 PM PST - 335 comments

Share houses as a business. Possible take: Domestic labor, and even emotional labor, get paid for if capital does them?
posted by clew at 1:04 PM PST - 49 comments

Meet the Hunters, Vermont’s modernist-house pioneers [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:54 PM PST - 3 comments

Twitterer @instantsunrise decided to drag every U.S. President, in order (and Grover Cleveland twice). It breaks after Madison ("Went to war with Canada and lost."), continuing here with Monroe ("Expansionist imperialist."). CW: genocide, slavery, and other evils; swearing (via Kottke.org) [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 12:40 PM PST - 67 comments

Incredible new map designs from around the world, in pictures. And interesting vintage city maps from around the world, in pictures: Forbidden City to Convict's Landing maps
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:32 AM PST - 4 comments

Welcome to one of the most isolated cities on Earth. A photo essay by Elena Chernyshova (2015)
posted by growabrain at 11:19 AM PST - 17 comments

Weeks advocates for direct action against metal fascists, and encourages others to “to hold them over the fire and push against them. Shut down their shows, write music, call out people in Burzum shirts. Be relentless.” Neckbeard Deathcamp have a song about drowning Richard Spencer in piss. It’s over-the-top, and gory, and a bit absurd—in other words, it’s very much in line with “regular” extreme metal, which, for all its flaws and foibles, is also very good at being very silly.

Kim Kelly looks at the New Wave of Anti-Fascist Black Metal. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 10:47 AM PST - 27 comments

The Messenger: A Blissful Platformer [Screen Rant] “The Golden Era of 8-bit gaming is an embarrassment of riches, and modern titles have duly plunged it for inspirational guidance, homage, and cheap grabs for nostalgia. Despite that, there are always certain classics whose graves stand relatively undisturbed, like the historic run of the Ninja Gaiden franchise on the original NES, a trilogy of tricky platformers which represents the jumping-off point for The Messenger, a hybrid 8- and 16-bit homage to Ryu Hayabusa, but resplendent with an immaculate sense of movement and an infectiously irreverent sense of humor.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:37 AM PST - 15 comments

The lost civilization of California wine -- A California cult unwittingly created one of the country’s great wineries — and then lost it. The haunting story of a vineyard’s rise, collapse and refusal to die. Esther Mobley, The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic, writes of Renaissance Winery, a part of an expansive complex in Yuba County, California (Google maps), which supports and is supported by The Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton's esoteric Christian group that is widely regarded as a doomsday religious cult. Though the religion once boasted a membership that exceeded 2,500, today it has just 585 members worldwide, and Burton is still making doomsday prophecies, despite past proclamations not panning out as predicted. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:48 AM PST - 13 comments

Baseball's maple bat revolution.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:40 AM PST - 21 comments

“This is a qualitatively different phenomenon from television entertainers of the past like Mr. Rogers or Bill Nye—instead of appealing to human producers or an audience of children, YouTubers are bending to the whims of an algorithm. In order to sustain their livelihood, these creators are forced to endlessly churn out the same content on a rigorous schedule—desperately chasing views and flirting with an algorithm to survive.” How YouTube Makes Childrens’ Entertainers Behave Like Machines
posted by The Whelk at 9:33 AM PST - 32 comments

Widely used before colonization, Indigenous sign languages likely formed much of what became American Sign Language. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 AM PST - 4 comments

and we will not be silenced. A twitter thread by Natalie Weiner of sbnation, who was just trying to sign up for a website. With contributions from James Butts, Steve Suconcock, Matt Cummings, and many others.
posted by Hypatia at 9:05 AM PST - 131 comments

The first known person with parents of two different species (Neanderthal and Denisovian) has been found. [more inside]
posted by jeather at 8:11 AM PST - 31 comments

Skimming has led, I believe, to a tendency to go to the sources that seem the simplest, most reduced, most familiar, and least cognitively challenging. I think that leads people to accept truly false news without examining it, without being analytical. One of my major worries is that when you lose the novel, you lose the ability to go into another person’s perspective. My biggest worry now is that a lot of what we’re seeing in society today — this vulnerability to demagoguery in all its forms — of one unanticipated and never intended consequence of a mode of reading that doesn’t allow critical analysis and empathy. A neuroscientist explains what tech does to the reading brain (SL Verge).
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 6:42 AM PST - 60 comments

Nazi Sex Dolls in Space (nsfw, slyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:46 AM PST - 19 comments

Mr. Plinkett examines Star Wars Episode 8 The Last Jedi and argues that the movie is actually a comedy of errors, like National Lampoon's Vacation (minus the actual comedy), where nothing make sense and everyone is disturbingly stupid.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:23 PM PST - 254 comments

Essay examining the history and impact of the humble plastic bag. They catch in the wind, gather on the street, and clog our trash cans. How plastic bags came to rule our lives, and why we can’t quit them.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:52 PM PST - 85 comments

The first sign, pointing us off the asphalt and down the dirt road, is riddled with bullet holes. We knew to expect this, but it’s still shocking. A spray of perforations, haphazard and angry. One took out the last letter in body. One hit just above the a in black. One pierced right between the first and last names, severing Emmett from Till. This is where it ended, somewhere near here on unincorporated land in Tallahatchie County, a few miles north of the village of Glendora, Mississippi. Siddhartha Mitter on Emmett Till for Popula.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:31 PM PST - 18 comments

While the #MeToo movement has had success with unveiling abusers in the media, there has been a question about the long term, with the individuals involved looking to return to public life. Writing forJezebel, Anna Merlan reports on the wave of trial balloons being floated by those that had been named as abusers and the pressure being placed on the movement to "move forward". (SLJezebel)
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:36 AM PST - 267 comments

When you discover, as an adult, that you might have autism
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:33 AM PST - 153 comments

The Woman Behind The Presidential Curtain A charming and fascinating story about the Office of Presidential Correspondence during the Obama Administration.
posted by Shohn at 10:20 AM PST - 10 comments

Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong’s The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 but has since gone out of print. After a year on The Verge’s staff as a senior writer, Sarah recently joined The New York Times Editorial Board to write about technology issues. The move kicked off a wave of outrage and controversy as a group of trolls selectively took Sarah’s old tweets out of context to inaccurately claim that she is a racist. This prompted a further wave of unrelenting racist harassment directed at Sarah, a wave of coverage examining her tweets, and a final wave of coverage about the state of outrage generally. This is all deeply ironic because Sarah laid out exactly how these bad-faith tactics work in The Internet of Garbage.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 10:10 AM PST - 15 comments

The current literary canon for high school is wrong and should be fixed. The whole concept of the “canon” is less essential to our culture, especially as we see how many people were kept out of this canon, and how many were prematurely thrust into it. There are more good writers publishing more good books now, and they’re being disrespected by our obsession with a narrow set of “timeless” stories that are in fact showing their age.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:52 AM PST - 134 comments

The New Yorker on 25 years of Magic: the Gathering.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:19 AM PST - 40 comments

"The oral history of how a scientist found a rainforest on top of a mountain, then led a team of 28 scientists, logistics experts, climbers, and others to a place where humans had not set foot for a century or more."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:18 AM PST - 17 comments

“The hearings in 1935 that were held before the Labor subcommittee on the Lundeen Bill are a remarkable historical document, “probably the most unique document ever to appear in the Congressional record,” at least according to the executive secretary of the IPA. Eighty witnesses testified: industrial workers, farmers, veterans, professional workers, African-Americans, women, the foreign-born, and youth. “Probably never in American history,” an editor of the Nation wrote, “have the underprivileged had a better opportunity to present their case before Congress.” The aggregate of the testimonies amounted to a systematic indictment of American capitalism and the New Deal, and an impassioned defense of the radical alternative under consideration.” Are American Workers Really Opposed to Socialism? The lost history of the Worker’s Bill, a radical 1930s era attempt to change Americans’ relationship to work.
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 AM PST - 5 comments

Hopi-less: How Kachina Became Donut County [Rock Paper Shotgun] “Five Two years ago, GDC 2013’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop featured a game that had the crowd cheering and applauding in delight. It was Ben Esposito (The Unfinished Swan) with Kachina. This year’s GDC revived an old favourite of the show, the Failure Workshop. This was a chance for developers to share the stories of their disasters, and the good or bad that came from them. And during it, Esposito generously and honestly told an engrossing and humbling tale of how Kachina became Donut County [Official Site], and the hard cultural lessons he learned along the way.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:09 AM PST - 10 comments

Brands need to do more to prove they're using this imagery in a respectful way—and hiring Indigenous people to design it [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:53 AM PST - 10 comments

As Autumn arrives, British supermarkets fill with Christmas foods and distant cousins in the thirteen colonies drink their pumpkin spice lattes, everyday is so wonderful. The Great British Bake Off, a show famous for baking and infamous for scandal - not forgetting the biggest controversy of 2016 - returns tonight [series 9 on Wikipedia]. While past winners watch, twelve bakers will do battle, with Manon Lagreve tipped by some to win. The first week is biscuit week; a future episode will be a vegan week (and here's a brownie recipe), plus a Danish week. In the UK, it's on Channel Four at 8pm. Turn on your ovens, MeFites... [FanFare]
posted by Wordshore at 8:47 AM PST - 20 comments

The Indian Filmmaker Who Made His Dad’s Village Cooking a YouTube Sensation (Priya Krishna for The New Yorker). Jaymukh Gopinath cooks huge meals -- everything from 100 chicken legs to huge Prawn Masala and 15 KG Butter Chicken Recipe, and entertains millions around the world, as Village Food Factory on YouTube. Because he makes so much, leftover food is donated to local ashrams. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:40 AM PST - 10 comments

Superlative feats have always thrilled average mortals, in part, perhaps, because they register as a victory for Team Homo Sapiens: they redefine the humanly possible. If the ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes can run three hundred and fifty miles without sleep, he may inspire you to jog around the block. If Rojas-Berscia can speak twenty-two languages, perhaps you can crank up your high-school Spanish or bat-mitzvah Hebrew, or learn enough of your grandma’s Korean to understand her stories. What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?
posted by zeptoweasel at 8:06 AM PST - 12 comments

The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine. "Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?"
posted by homunculus at 7:38 AM PST - 29 comments

Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom - "Minimal government doesn't remove power from our lives." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM PST - 27 comments

The Dover Boys ReAnimated Collab has been releCONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! CONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! CONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! Hey, we're getting in a rut!
posted by BiggerJ at 2:43 AM PST - 12 comments

John Koblin writes the puffiest of puff-pieces for the NYT: “Conan O’Brien’s Unrequited Fanboy Love for Robert Caro”

For years Mr. O’Brien has tried to book the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Power Broker” and the multivolume epic “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.” And for years Mr. Caro has said no.

posted by Going To Maine at 10:46 PM PST - 17 comments

Johny.
—Yes, papa?
Eating sugar?
—No, papa.
Telling lies?
—No, papa.
Open your mouth.
—Ha ha ha!
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:22 PM PST - 69 comments

In a year of extreme wildfires, it is interesting to recall the story of Firestorm 1991 in Eastern Washington and North Idaho (by Jess Walter).
posted by jjray at 7:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Though McCain's farewell statement asked his fellow Americans to "give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country", Trump rejected initial plans for a White House statement praising his rival (Washington Post). Earlier today, ABC's Karen Travers (@karentravers) noted, "Flags at the White House were lowered to half staff this weekend for the passing of John McCain but this morning they are back to full staff.", while CBS's Mark Knoller (@markknoller) reported that Trump "[w]as asked to reflect on the legacy of Sen. McCain, but declined. Sat silent and cross-armed as press pool herded out of the Oval Office." But late this afternoon, the White House issued a statement that Trump "signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of [McCain's] interment". However, CNBC's Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) observed that although "the White House flag is now at half staff, [the f]lag atop the White House’s Executive Office Building is still fully raised now[….]" Trump will not attend McCain's funeral, as per the late senator's request (NY Daily News). [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:50 PM PST - 1403 comments

"A robot as gardener, a flower bed as international meeting place in the World Wide Web. You can control a robotic arm via WWW in order to observe and tend the garden. Sow and water the plants, or simply get together in the Chat Channel with other telegardeners from all over the world." [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 4:18 PM PST - 5 comments

Survivors of Vermont orphanage abuse come forward. Christine Kenneally investigates horrific stories of child abuse by nuns at a Burlington orphanage and the subsequent legal struggles. Content warning: violence against, torture, rape, murder of children. (SLBuzzfeed)
posted by doctornemo at 4:04 PM PST - 35 comments

"So this is it. This is going to be the thing." That’s what I remember thinking as I left the room where I had just finished a conversation with two female mentees. I had wondered for some time when there would be an incident serious enough that I had to talk to leadership about unacceptable behavior in the workplace, and here it was.
posted by bashism at 3:47 PM PST - 67 comments

Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time. Inspired by indigenous views of nature, a movement to grant a form of legal “personhood” to rivers is gaining some ground — a key step, advocates say, in reversing centuries of damage inflicted upon the world’s waterways.
posted by Lyme Drop at 3:27 PM PST - 14 comments

Just a little fluff for your Monday afternoon/evening. As it were.
posted by drlith at 3:04 PM PST - 12 comments

Having trouble articulating your thoughts lately? Not quite up to snuff, intellectually — or at least not the whipsmart organizer of ideas you're sure you used to be? Maybe you're just breathing bad air. [more inside]
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:30 PM PST - 34 comments

When I was 14 years old and an aspiring writer, my best friend was a 28-year-old drag queen and performance artist named Stephen Varble.
posted by terooot at 10:57 AM PST - 10 comments

Miriam Toews' new novel, Women Talking has been described by some as Mennonite #MeToo. It was inspired by the horrific sexual assaults in the closed, ultra conservative Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia: men in the community drugged and raped over 100 women and girls in the community nightly over a period of years. Initially, the community's male elders dismissed the women's reports as either fantasy or the work of Satan, but eventually eight men were caught and convicted (previously on Metafilter). “I’ve always been trying to challenge the patriarchy, specifically of my Mennonite community, but I’m concerned with the suppression of girls and women especially, and any place in the world that falls under fundamentalist, authoritarian thinking,” says Toews. “I think in my work, and in my life, I’ve always been attempting to, as they used to say, stick it to the man.” [Content warning: descriptions of sexual assault, mention of suicide.] [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:03 AM PST - 9 comments

“Gentrification is not quite the right word for what’s happening here. Midtown is no derelict precinct primed for an influx of the affluent. What’s emerging instead is a vision of where development is headed next: toward a culture of the secessionist city. The techno-libertarians, machine fanatics, and psychopaths of Silicon Valley have long dreamed of an exit from regular society, through colonization of the seas and the stars. In the form of the supertall, they may have found, for themselves and others like them, an elegant solution: one that gives them a society apart, a realm of perfect exclusion and perfect control, but nevertheless leeches off the encircling polity while entrenching the political influence of the rich.” The Needles and the Damage Done (The Baffler)
posted by The Whelk at 8:54 AM PST - 81 comments

Pioneers, the government, even John Muir helped kick out Native Americans from their homes on national parks. But in Yosemite, the Miwuk Tribe is getting its village back. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Back in 2005, Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast got its first Front Page Post on Metafilter. In the late 2000s, he was working at WNYC (previously). Then he had a show on WFMU (previously), which he left to restart the ToE podcast for PRX's Radiotopia network. [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 8:09 AM PST - 5 comments

In 1973, when photographers Beuford Smith and Joe Crawford began working on The Black Photographers Annual, black photographers had few outlets for publishing work about ordinary black life that didn’t fit the news cycle of the day. For their first issue, Smith and Crawford gathered images from well-established photographers such as Roy DeCarava and photos the legendary James Van DerZee had made during the Harlem Renaissance. But what made The Black Photographers Annual so influential is that it gave a platform for members of the Kamoinge collective and numerous other photographers who had photographed a variety of stories and subjects. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:58 AM PST - 3 comments

The "Hello Girls" forged a path for women soldiers and are now getting recognized for their service. The bilingual team of women served on the front lines of battle, connecting 26 million calls for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. They served at military headquarters and outposts in the field alongside the American Expeditionary Forces in France, connecting the front lines with supply depots and military commands. They became known as the ‘Hello Girls” Yet despite this service — and despite taking a military oath —the Hello Girls were denied veteran status and benefits when they returned home.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:55 AM PST - 1 comment

Making Peace With the Age-Old Practice of Eating White Dirt, Chuck Reece for The Bitter Southerner
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:51 AM PST - 28 comments

Against The Stream, a Buddhist meditation society founded by punk rocker Noah Levine, is shutting down its meditation centers after multiple women came forward with allegations of assault, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct by Levine. An internal investigation concluded that with multiple women, Levine violated the Third Precept of the Teacher’s Code of Ethics, namely, "to avoid creating harm through sexuality." Levine is the author of the best-selling memoir Dharma Punx, as well as the founder of a for-profit drug and alcohol treatment center called Refuge Recovery. [more inside]
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 7:44 AM PST - 29 comments

True Detective Season 3 [YouTube][Teaser Trailer] “The teaser focuses on Wayne Hays, played by Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), who is trying to figure out something from his past. Much like the first season, the third looks like it will use fragmented memories and multiple timelines to tell a twisty story. Ali’s Hays is a detective from Northwest Arkansas, but the show is set in the Ozarks — a region that is spread over four different states: Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto will be credited with writing the entire season, much like the series’ first season.” [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz at 6:33 AM PST - 65 comments

This year's 10 Best Joke competition winners. (Previously.) And this year's Comedy Award winners. Comedians at the Fringe voted for their own favourite comics. [more inside]
posted by Shark Hat at 3:43 AM PST - 21 comments

The man from the rugby union is resolute. If he lets us in, the floodgates will open. You’ll want fancy stuff to drink, he says. But, he says, moist-eyed with magnanimity, if you’d like to help out in the kitchen with the other ladies, you’re more than welcome. [more inside]
posted by Pink Frost at 2:06 AM PST - 6 comments

Based off of what we know right now, the Moon and Mars are devoid of life, so this colonizing language is not actually putting other beings at risk. But, there is the risk that the same racist mythology used to justify violence and inequality on earth — such as the use of frontier, “cowboy” mythology to condone and promote the murder and displacement of indigenous people in the American West — will be used to justify missions to space. In a future where humans potentially do live on non-earth planets, that same racist mythology would carry through to who is allowed to exist on, and benefit from, extraterrestrial spaces. The racist language of space exploration by Caroline Haskins [via Katexic]
posted by chavenet at 1:55 AM PST - 39 comments

Stage 9, named after the Paramount location used to film episodes of several Star Trek shows, is a Unreal Engine 4-powered recreation of the USS Enterprise D, inside and out. You can download it now!
posted by selfnoise at 3:07 PM PST - 55 comments

The stirring story of how Alberta became the first place in the world to banish the rat (and the twelve thousand page Wikipedia edit war about it)
posted by Etrigan at 1:51 PM PST - 61 comments

Context in courtship: how do singing mice decide when to sing? [via mefi projects]
posted by sardonyx at 1:23 PM PST - 6 comments

In honor of National Dog Day (previously), here's a heartwarming story of hunger and determination. [h/t joycehealy]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:57 PM PST - 25 comments

The ‘double empathy problem’ The author asks other authors and their readers to realize that most portrayals of this minority are from the outside and "research" done on characters use the equivalent of the orientalist gaze. Never allowed to speak for themselves, their behaviours are itemised, but not actually understood. The observer, meanwhile, is assumed to be neutral, authoritative and wise. This creates a simulacrum of the Orient, packaged for the consumption of the West. If it happened only once, it would barely be a problem; but reproduced endlessly, each skewed representation gives life and context to the next. The literary trope of autism has that same kind of memetic contagion. [more inside]
posted by RuvaBlue at 12:40 PM PST - 44 comments

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is the best place on the internet.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Neil Simon well known for excellent comedy works passed away.
posted by CRESTA at 10:15 AM PST - 61 comments

If Social Media is a part of your life but you're also sickened by nazis you've probably considered Mastodon as an alternative. But rather than a straight-up Twitter clone based on the open standards Mastodon has some real and significant differences that may be confusing at first. Fortunately this video should help get you up to speed: Intro to Mastodon 101
posted by Artw at 8:28 AM PST - 124 comments

Many of the show’s guests came from the Tri-State area of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, she told me, and they had had success with hiring PAs from that area. ... In short, the guests were my people, and I would be able to communicate with them effectively. I knew their ways. They would trust me, and I would betray them, as I had been betraying them for years.

At the AV Club, Katie Rife recalls her time working on the Jerry Springer Show.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Yehuda Poliker is an Israeli musician. Here he is singing Zinguala. This is his website. Here is a collection of some of his songs on Youtube.
posted by growabrain at 7:13 PM PST - 11 comments

John Sidney McCain III, who served as a Senator for Arizona for over 30 years, died at his home today with his family at his side at the age of 81 after battling an aggressive form of brain cancer. [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 6:56 PM PST - 240 comments

The foal that came in from the cold after 40,000 years [The Siberian Times] “This is the first picture of an ancient foal dug out of the permafrost in the Batagai depression - also known as the ‘Mouth of Hell’ - in the Yakutia region of Siberia. Head of the world famous Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, Semyon Grigoryev, said: ‘The foal was approximately three months old (when it died). ‘The unique find was made in the permafrost of Batagai depression. The foal was completely preserved by permafrost. ‘The extra value of the unique find is that we obtained samples of soil layers where it was preserved, which means we will be able to restore a picture of the foal’s environment.’ The Ice Age foal lived up to 40,000 years ago, it is understood. It was buried at a level of around 30 metres in the tadpole-shaped depression, which is a ‘megaslump’ one kilometre long and around 800 metres wide.” [Photos via Motherboard]
posted by Fizz at 6:30 PM PST - 11 comments

"Come Out" , Steve Reich's Civil Rights era phase change piece as choreographed by Anne Teresa, Baroness De Keersmaeker. Danced by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Tale Dolven. Voice by Daniel Hamm. (SLYT,1982). [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:30 PM PST - 11 comments

The Menace of Enormous Fortunes Income inequality, 1906. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 5:14 PM PST - 15 comments

Many paleontologists today are part of the 'Jurassic Park' generation (NPR, July 10, 2018), 30-somethings coming out of PhD programs and feeding into a Golden Age of Paleontology, where some 50 new species of dinosaurs are discovered every year. And according to another Jurassic Park-inspired paleontologist, Steve Brusatte, this has been the rate of discovery for the past decade, thanks also to new investigations in China, Brazil, and Argentina, which "have opened up, and they’re training their own young scientists." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:29 PM PST - 13 comments

A huge startline pile-up. One team's first win. The leader gets taken out in the most dramatic way. Almost fisticuffs! Controversial team orders. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix, possibly the most dramatic race ever held. Relive the drama, with some added comedy [slightly NSFW]. [more inside]
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 1:51 PM PST - 18 comments

VICE interviews @dril
posted by Going To Maine at 1:26 PM PST - 34 comments

And down in the mines themselves there was nudity! Quite apart from the children who labored in dangerous conditions, men and women worked side-by-side, stripped to the waist and sweating furiously in the heat. There was “something truly hideous and Satanic about it,” Scriven said—not least because some of the women, if they weren’t completely naked, were wearing trousers.
posted by MovableBookLady at 1:00 PM PST - 20 comments

The Hounds of Hackney Downs is the latest work by the Hackney Mosaic Project, an east London community project. Instagram. [more inside]
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:01 PM PST - 5 comments

“This is lifestyle drift in action. We know what really determines health - the deep and vicious inequalities that taint developed societies. But instead of trying to address these things, we imagine that if we impose the dietary choices of the privileged on those who are suffering, they will be transformed. And so every diet followed by a member of a privileged elite is touted as the solution, but none of them are. The only real solution is giving everyone a better life. “ Large nutrimental studies often come out in conflict with each other, so maybe we’re missing the point : It’s not diet, it’s inequality.
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 AM PST - 25 comments

Stevie Nicks And ABBA’s Frida Star In This Women’s Self Defense Manual. In 1983 Stevie Nicks starred in Hands Off!: A Unique New System of Self Defence Against Assault for the Women of Today. Written by Bob Jones, an Australian martial arts expert who worked security for Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and other big names, Stevie Nicks was on hand to showcase Bob’s nine “mnemonic movements”. Witty insults can also help fend off a sex attacker. Bob offers one line: “I’ve seen better knobs on toilet doors.” (Trigger warning for sexual assault as subject matter.)
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:16 AM PST - 10 comments

Lindsay Kemp , who studied under Hilde Holger and Marcel Marceau and taught David Bowie and Kate Bush, is dead. Or is holding very still for very long.
posted by pracowity at 9:11 AM PST - 5 comments

The Wonder Plant That Could Slash Fertilizer Use - "An indigenous Mexican corn gets its nitrogen from the air."
posted by kliuless at 8:08 AM PST - 20 comments

Public Bathroom Design and Disability: "When the issues become too big, when finding a bathroom in public just becomes too much of a gamble, people stop going out. It’s then that they go from being merely unseen to being invisible. The problem isn’t solved. It’s shelved."
posted by AFABulous at 7:26 AM PST - 21 comments

Baba Ramdev built a business empire out of mass yoga camps and ayurvedic products. He is also promoting nationalism (along with himself and his business empire) and is a supporting figure behind Narendra Modi. SLNYT
posted by blue shadows at 12:50 AM PST - 10 comments

John Muir's terrifying experience on a glacier, in a storm, with a remarkable dog (c. 1880)

I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my fellow mortals.

posted by Transl3y at 11:11 PM PST - 17 comments

Battle of the Bulge: Why We’re So Fascinated by Superhero Codpieces If you're into this topic, then you're probably REALLY into this topic. If not, then...not.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:40 PM PST - 34 comments

Spoons 🥄 Chris Rodriquez and Abby the Spoon Lady. A simple diversion for a Friday night.
posted by HuronBob at 10:16 PM PST - 4 comments

Robin Leach, famed host of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", has died just before his 77th birthday.
posted by hanov3r at 10:12 PM PST - 15 comments

A House for Mr. Soyinka If the estate's location deep in the bush inconvenienced his visitors, he clearly delighted in their discomfort. Evocative interview with a robust 84-year-old Wole Soyinka that coincides with news of the death of his fellow Nobel in lit recipient, V S Naipaul. Soyinka gives Naipaul the credit he deserves for Biswas and the tribute he merits for his lifelong reprehension of everything, especially Africa.
posted by Mickiann at 9:17 PM PST - 3 comments

The first drought marked on the stone was in 1417.
posted by clew at 7:17 PM PST - 9 comments

The Story Behind DOOM's Cheat Codes [YouTube][Mini-Documentary][15:08] “A look at the story behind DOOM's cheat codes, and the person responsible for making them a (virtual) reality.”
posted by Fizz at 5:29 PM PST - 18 comments

Eric Klinenberg writes about Philadelphia and their quest to improve places in order to reduce crime.
posted by soelo at 4:39 PM PST - 3 comments

The RISO-Graph, a machine that duplicates like a mimeograph but dispels ink like a screen printer, turns 60 this year. The copier has come a long way from its humble 1958 beginnings in a small home in Tokyo, where it was a home-grown alternative to expensive emulsion ink imports, thriving until offset-laser-screen-printer hybrids came on the market in the late 1980s. Risographs have found a new, vibrant life as fast, inexpensive art production machines, documented on the Stencil site, a RISO wiki for artists, designers, and printers. With non-standard soy-based ink colors, the Atlas of Modern Risography includes details about which machines and inks each shop carries. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:52 PM PST - 14 comments

The New York Times called dozens of the Queens party machine’s nominees for county committee. The candidates for 21 seats were running without their consent. Only four candidates The Times spoke to said they were running on purpose. Some no longer even live in New York. Meanwhile, more than 60 members of the progressive New Queens Democrats sought nomination but were disqualified for paperwork technicalities by the Board of Elections - whose commissioners are chosen by county political bosses.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:25 PM PST - 18 comments

A former Tesla employee, who worked on their IT infrastructure, is posting in a subforum of a subforum, a little-known place for funy computer forgotten by time. His NDA has expired. A single link Twitter thread with screenshots of text.
posted by Artw at 11:38 AM PST - 135 comments

Tom Gran is an illustrator, animator, writer, and director who started 2018 with a little challenge to himself: "every day I add another character to a giant fight scene until it gets so giant I probably won't even be able to upload it to Twitter anymore."
posted by Etrigan at 11:09 AM PST - 10 comments

Yukon Native Language Centre scans books, course materials and more to publish online [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:24 AM PST - 5 comments

“Parents are worried that, unless their kids accumulate extraordinary amounts of skills and accomplishments, they’ll be stuck as mere workers. Based on the way this country treats workers, that is a legitimate concern. But the more that families take on this work, the more competing they all have to do to keep pace.” When did parenting become so fearful? (The Outline)
posted by The Whelk at 9:38 AM PST - 44 comments

Regular Expressions 101 is an online sandbox for writing and testing regular expressions. It supports PCRE, Javascript, Python, and Go syntax and has a well-designed visualization, explanation, and performance evaluation interface.
posted by jedicus at 9:14 AM PST - 32 comments

Why Do We Continue To Be Surprised By Gentrification? "Part of what many people find so irritating—or dangerous, depending on how much you have at stake—about upwardly mobile young people moving to working-class city neighborhoods is the sense of frivolity, of flightiness, they carry with them." (SL article in Belt Magazine by Daniel Kay Hertz)
posted by crazy with stars at 9:03 AM PST - 31 comments

IS IT JUST ME, OR DID I JUST PULL OFF THE GREATEST TWITTER SCHEME OF ALL TIME????? Read the first word of my tweets to find out....
posted by straight at 8:53 AM PST - 427 comments

The abuse already common in many women’s everyday lives can be amplified in political campaigns, especially if the candidate is also a member of a minority group. Four days before the 2016 congressional primary in her Northern California district, Erin Schrode woke up to tens of thousands of messages. They were everywhere: in her email, on her cellphone, on her Facebook and her Twitter and her Instagram...
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:51 AM PST - 8 comments

People have been proclaiming the imminent extinction of the humanities for decades. A best-selling volume in 1964 warned that a science-focused world left no room for humane pursuits, even as Baby Boomers began to flood the English and history departments of new universities. Allan Bloom warned about academics putting liberal ideology before scholarship in 1987; humanities degrees quickly rose. While coverage of individual academic disciplines like musicology, history, or comparative literature often deals with the substance of scholarship, talk of the humanities in general always seems to focus on their imminent extinction. In 2010, Wayne Bivens-Tatum provided a useful walk through the first 50 years of the humanities crisis, until about 1980. Because of this long history, I’ve always been skeptical of claims that the humanities are in retreat. But something different has been happening with the humanities since the 2008 financial crisis. Students are abandoning humanities majors, turning to degrees they think yield far better job prospects. But they’re wrong.
posted by Blasdelb at 4:47 AM PST - 175 comments

How the Amtrak Dining Car Could Heal the Nation, a NYT article by Gabriel Kahane (you might remember his piece Empire Liquor Mart, which was chatted about here a while back) whose train trip inspired a live show [NewYorker] and has culminated in the release of his latest album, Book Of Travelers. Five tracks have had official videos released: November, Baltimore, Model Trains, Little Love, What If I Told You [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:41 AM PST - 16 comments

The new full trailer for the Suspiria remake has dropped... but what about this previously unknown actor, Lutz Ebersdorf, playing Dr Jozef Klemperer? Could there be more than meets the eyes here... or not? (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:30 AM PST - 18 comments

IRC has been used for 30 years. Did you know that it was developed at the University of Oulu? Simple link FPP for us olds.
posted by infini at 12:41 AM PST - 52 comments

For four years, a disused slate quarry in a remote mountain in North Wales became home to some of the world’s greatest artistic masterpieces. In specially constructed air-conditioned underground chambers the priceless treasures in the collection of London’s National Gallery sat out the days of the Second World War safe from Luftwaffe bombers and Nazi art hunters.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:24 AM PST - 11 comments

The study of the human-centered microbiome is accelerating day by day. 583 people had a test kit and instructions sent to them so they could have the microbiome in their showerhead sampled and investigated. All across the US citizen science is becoming more and more popular. The same lab that did the showerhead sampling is investigating via citizen science the human-centered microbiome. There are ~20 current projects: Rob Dunn and the scientists, communicators and volunteers in his lab aim to tell the stories of the small species–whether on our bodies, under our beds or in our backyards–humans interact with every day but tend to ignore. The ecology and evolution of these species in our private places has barely begun to be explored. [more inside]
posted by RuvaBlue at 8:24 PM PST - 15 comments

As it turns out, there is a company that makes coffee especially for enemas called Premier Coffee Organics. It’s a Costa Rican blend grown by third-generation coffee farmers that’s not over-roasted so as to protect its healthy phytochemicals. I asked Elena if it tastes good. She said it does, but it’s really for anal use only. Hearing the sound of the coffee grinder from the other room made it all very real. In a few moments, I was going to have two cups of coffee poured into me. (Jeremy Glass, Extra Crispy)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:12 PM PST - 117 comments

Clive Barker: Presented for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this... The Tale of the Horny Ghost who liked to Fuck.

A convocation of horror writers delivering their best boo stories, by Mike Rosen of Guttersnipe Comics. [Twitter thread] [cw: sexually violent language]
posted by Countess Elena at 6:33 PM PST - 58 comments

“Over the next several months Twitch.tv will stream the first 932 episodes of the Pokemon anime series [wiki], as well as every movie. The livestream will begin August 27 and last into 2019, the company announced today, making it not only the longest TV-like marathon Twitch done to date but also a perfect test of the human will to endure.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:24 PM PST - 14 comments

The Myth of the Bored Transporter Chief: A speculative fan-analysis rebuttal of the popular conception that Chief O'Brien had the most mind-numbing, soul-crushing job on the Enterprise-D. Courtesy of the Daystrom Institute subreddit, where they could overthink a food replicator full of beans. [more inside]
posted by radwolf76 at 4:19 PM PST - 43 comments

The Vanishing City -

White, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), has brought me out to the Black Rock Desert to see what she describes as “an archaeologist’s worst nightmare.” But it’s one that might help her field reconsider “the ways that archaeology works,” she says. Her decade-long project has entailed close observation of the temporary settlement from construction to dismantling, as well as the analysis of any artifacts that get left behind by accident. Her work has yielded insights about Burning Man as a cultural phenomenon and the organizing principles of urban habitats. It’s even shedding light on possible “unknown unknowns” in the ancient archaeological record.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:44 PM PST - 5 comments

"The waters of the Nieuwe Maas snake through the city of Rotterdam, giving way to sandy beaches, bustling harbors, and, soon, a small herd of floating cows. It may sound like science fiction, but the world’s first floating dairy farm, the brainchild of Dutch property development company Beladon, is well on its way to becoming a reality." [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 12:07 PM PST - 18 comments

ESPN's Sam Miller analyzed 200 players' nicknames, as used in MLB clubhouses, and codified 20 rules for determining how they're created.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:04 PM PST - 38 comments

6 photographers went out into remote regions of the world where indigenous communities are waging unseen battles against governments & commercial interests to remain on their ancestral lands
posted by poffin boffin at 10:10 AM PST - 5 comments

The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History (Andy Greenberg, Wired) Crippled ports. Paralyzed corporations. Frozen government agencies. How a single piece of code crashed the world. [more inside]
posted by ltl at 10:00 AM PST - 10 comments

“Pullman was designed to keep workers content enough to avoid unrest. The buildings were magnificent, everything was inordinately clean, homes had personal yard space in addition to expansive public parks, with maintenance and sanitation covered by the company. By building an appealing environment that seemed to focus on the health and contentment of its inhabitants, Pullman hoped to entice a skilled workforce to join him—and to avoid strikes. Though workers had access to libraries, churches, parks, shopping, and a man-made lake, there were also strongly enforced prohibitions against newspapers, town meetings led by workers, public speeches, and even taverns. Residents had to adhere to cleanliness standards, which largely existed only to give inspectors an excuse to invade their homes. A Pullman pastor explained: “It is a civilized relic of European serfdom.” It was a company town controlled by a paranoid baron who felt insecure about his power and did all he could to keep his employees placated enough to stay quiet—and it worked, until it didn’t.” How (or How Not) To Build A Labor Movement.
posted by The Whelk at 9:19 AM PST - 22 comments

Try your hand at Bloomberg's Pick your Own Brexit, an 8 bit adventure game with truly horrible consequences.
posted by nerdfish at 8:32 AM PST - 33 comments

Simone Biles is a very good gymnast. You can tell because she's won 14 World and Olympic gold medals, and because she has a move named after her (that she invented because she was injured), and because she took a year off and then came back to win all four events (and, of course, the all-around title) at the U.S. National Championships -- the first woman to do that since Dominique Dawes in 1994. At regular speed, her power and grace are amazing; in slow motion, she is downright unbelievable.
posted by Etrigan at 8:12 AM PST - 29 comments

After a sideswipe from Hector earlier this month, Hurricane Lane is threatening to be the first major hurricane to make landfall in Hawaii since Iniki in 1992. Prior to that, there are minimal English language accounts of a major storm that hit in 1871 but Hawaiian-language newspapers illuminate that hurricane. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 8:00 AM PST - 13 comments

CROWBOX! How do you stop Crows just stealing all your sausages? Sell the food to them! The crowbox is an opensource vending machine for crows, exchanging found coins for food.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:45 AM PST - 103 comments

Want to watch the latest film/book/Video Game release but need to know if particular squick will be present? Then "Does the Dog Die?" is the site for you! [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 4:36 AM PST - 46 comments

As California firefighters battled the state's largest wildfire, Verizon throttled their data [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:53 PM PST - 82 comments

After the Late Late Show Football Club's previous upsetting defeat against the Los Angeles Football Club, James Corden took a different tactic and invited three of Manchester United's team, Juan Mata, Ander Herrera and Chris Smalling, to play against 100 kids. Good game, good game.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 PM PST - 15 comments

Meet the Profanity Embroidery Group: How a sweary stitching group is helping women through loss, loneliness, and rage (metro.co.uk). But is it safe for work? NOPE. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:57 PM PST - 12 comments

“After two years of waiting, Overwatch hero D.Va finally has her own animated short. The seven-minute clip, called “Shooting Star,” [YouTube][Animated Short] stars pro-gamer-turned-mech-pilot D.Va, and it delves into her backstory, revealing how she went from Korean e-sports star to Overwatch hero. Like the rest of the shorts — which include the backstories of everyone from Mei to Bastion — it’s an absolutely gorgeous, glittering, colorful film that’s surprisingly emotional and full of wonderful Easter eggs for fans. It’s enough to make you wish Blizzard would just go ahead and make a feature-length Overwatch movie already.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:41 PM PST - 28 comments

The newatlass link has research from University of Utah System has poor resolution now but is supposed to be good for "industrial applications". The light passes through the pane of glass and "about 1 percent of it is scattered" out to the edges of the pane, effectively sampling the light going through. There it's bounced off reflective tape to a sensor and algorith crunches data to produce image of what passed through glass. Hopefully algorithm/crunching gets better. Ref(s): A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Optics Express. University of Utah link with Video
posted by aleph at 1:47 PM PST - 25 comments

An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64 [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:36 PM PST - 30 comments

1998, the year of Korn and Kid Rock: When rap-rock and nü-metal seemed like the future
posted by Artw at 1:25 PM PST - 71 comments

Maxine McCormick is only 14 but she's scything the competition in this sport. Maxine McCormick began fly casting when she was 9 years old. At 14, she has back-to-back world titles.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:34 AM PST - 16 comments

After a five year investigation, SB Nation has put together a four part documentary series on the corruption in the NCAA, specifically revolving around Hugh Freeze's tenure at Ole Miss that ultimately ended in disgrace. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:04 AM PST - 7 comments

What do numbers look like? When you factorize every number from two to one million, some pairs of numbers will have similar factorizations. This visualization attempts to place each number such that its closeness to any other number is proportional to how similar their factorizations are, using a technique called UMAP.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:02 AM PST - 31 comments

How tabloid photos throw new light on old masters [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:04 AM PST - 18 comments

How do you tell a thirsty elephant not to take a drink? When DC Water, the Washington, DC water authority, announced possible contamination of the city’s water supply last month, it was an irritating nuisance for residents who had to boil cooking and drinking water for 48 hours. At the National Zoo, where staff are responsible for rare and endangered animals who require thousands of gallons of water each day, the alert was a dangerous emergency. This is how they coped.
posted by gudrun at 9:46 AM PST - 15 comments

Who are the anti-fascists? What motivates them to risk their lives to fight the far right? What is the history of militant anti-fascism and why is it relevant again today? How is anti-fascism connected to a larger political vision that can stop the rise of fascism and offer us visions of a future worth fighting for? Through interviews with anti-fascist organizers, historians, and political theorists in the US and Germany, we explore the broader meaning of this political moment while taking the viewer to the scene of street battles from Washington to Berkeley and Charlottesville. ANTIFA (Vimeo 30:11, cw: harsh language, hate speech, violence, Nazi imagery.)
posted by The Whelk at 9:10 AM PST - 32 comments

The trouble with living in a parody of a parody is that it won't last long past the end of its meme. Your only hope is to escape into another, like, say, Harry Potter and the Nice Bit of Battenberg Trim. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:57 AM PST - 8 comments

Debussy "Clair de Lune" on Piano for 80 Year Old Elephant [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 6:02 AM PST - 22 comments

The full scale of the criminality is impossible to pinpoint, because many heists never make the headlines ... But the thefts that were made public bear striking similarities. The criminals are careful and professional. They often seem to be working from a shopping list—and appear content to leave behind high-value objects that aren't on it. In each case, the robbers focused their efforts on art and antiquities from China, especially items that had been looted by foreign armies. Many of these objects are well documented and publicly known, making them very hard to sell and difficult to display. In most cases the pieces have not been recovered; they seem to simply vanish. The Great Chinese Art Heist by Alex W. Palmer [SLGQ]
posted by chavenet at 6:01 AM PST - 58 comments

The competing narratives of scientific revolution - "Scientific revolutions occur on all scales, but here let's talk about some of the biggies: [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:45 AM PST - 20 comments

The Gandini Juggling company combine juggling, modern dance, pantomime, and a sense of wonder into something different and new. The company revels in creating patterns [8m]. They create jokes and minimalist music out of thin air (and balls). [Vimeo, 9m30s] The explore metaphors for modern society. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:24 AM PST - 6 comments

There have been several posts/comments about Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket launch from a technological and economic point of view. My interest is sound. This video is about as close as one will come to actually being at the launch and does not merely have a stereo like sound, but instead, is a full immersion sound experience. Sound Traveler posted this wonderful soundscape and video of the launch. Should be of interest to sound junkies as well as photographers. This video had the added benefit of piquing my interest in binaural or sound immersion recordings to wit. [more inside]
posted by WinstonJulia at 12:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Austin McConnell's wife has been reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and she's just gotten to the huge spoilers!
posted by colin.jaquiery at 10:21 PM PST - 39 comments

She arrived in Iowa in 1917, aged 47, newly married, and pregnant. For the next 51 years, Emma Big Bear, lived a traditional indigenous lifestyle on the banks of the Mississippi. [more inside]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 9:09 PM PST - 7 comments

In the latest trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet, Vanellope meets a bunch of other Disney Princesses, including Brave's Merida, who recounts her movie's story almost unintelligibly... to American ears, that is. The image was immediately memefied, with various jokes riffing on what people think Scottish people and the Scots language sound like. Harry Josephine Giles says "The best example of how Scotland is both colonised and colonising is that it's impossible to complain about Americans' poorly-written Scots Merida memes without sounding like a twat.", and then takes the opportunity to "explain" their joke and educate Twitter about Scots.
posted by Etrigan at 7:56 PM PST - 46 comments

Owen Guo, a Chinese reporter in China working for the Financial Times, writes: "Today, I’m exiting journalism bearing no illusions that press freedom in this country will get any better. The forces that constrained reporting when I entered are as robust as ever."
posted by gen at 5:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Guy meets lady on Tinder; they chat and exchange details. A few weeks later, she texts him, asking him out on a date the following day, and suggesting that they meet in front of a stage in Union Square, Manhattan, where a friend of hers is DJing. He shows up, hanging off to the side; and then the DJ stops and she walks on stage and addresses the hundred-strong, predominantly male crowd (SLTwitterThread)
posted by acb at 5:19 PM PST - 92 comments

Ninja explains his choice not to stream with female gamers [Polygon] ““I don’t play with female gamers,” says Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Twitch’s biggest streamer and one of the faces of the Fortnite fandom. This edict may be surprising to hear, especially as emphatically as Blevins said it when we spoke at a recent Samsung event. Though Blevins isn’t shy about being married, and his more than 10 million subscribers include people of every gender identity, the internet’s love of gossip has convinced the Twitch star not to invite women to participate in his Fortnite Battle Royale livestreams. With fame comes scrutiny of every thing you say or do, he suggested, and that can sometimes lead to questions about who you’re sleeping or flirting with on the sly. “If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” Blevins told Polygon.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:01 PM PST - 95 comments

Krantz decided that any person who could fake that footprint would have to be as educated as he was, something Krantz highly doubted. [ . . . ] “He had to outclass me in those areas, and I don’t think anybody outclasses me in those areas. At least not since Leonardo Da Vinci, and I’d say such a person is impossible and therefore the tracks were real.”

The Man, The Myth, and The Legend of Grover Krantz. A Legend In The Making: The Early Years of Grover Krantz. Does Science Benefit From the Search for Sasquatch? So, Why Do People Believe In Bigfoot Anyway? A linked series of articles on Professor Grover Krantz, Anthropologist and Sasquatch enthusiast, by Krissy Elliot. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 1:16 PM PST - 13 comments

An Investigation: Do men enter the bathtub on their hands and knees in order to ensure their balls hit the water last?
posted by rewil at 1:02 PM PST - 100 comments

The million-dollar brownstone that no one owned
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:59 PM PST - 15 comments

Sidewalks are a last shred of safe public space. No wonder we’re fighting over them.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:10 AM PST - 67 comments

Whether you want to browse some vintage recipies, get a feel for what was popular in a particular decade, or maybe revisit the top trends from your graduation year, ClickAmericana is an extensive online archive of vintage ads, magazine articles, and popular culture spanning a surprisingly large swath of American history.
posted by anastasiav at 11:03 AM PST - 7 comments

What the coining of new native words reveals about modern America. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:00 AM PST - 10 comments

The biggest policy mistake of the last decade? Austerity. (The Week) Don’t blame academic economists for austerity, basically no one listens to us. The Greece Bailout’s Legacy of Immiseration: “ 2010 to 2018 will go down in Greek history as an epic period of colonization; of asset-stripping and privatization; of unfunded health and education; of bankruptcies, foreclosures, homelessness, impoverishment; of unemployment, emigration, and suicide.“ (The Atlantic) 2018: the year the failure of privatisation and austerity became undisguisable “The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council” (New Statesmen) When Bosses Threatened To Close This Plant, Greek Workers Took It Over ( The Nation)
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 AM PST - 51 comments

Here Are the Most Metal Items From Black Sabbath Frontman Ronnie James Dio’s Estate Sale, Ranked. Ronnie James Dio passed in 2010.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:31 AM PST - 25 comments

On the last night before the start of classes at UNC Chapel Hill, protestors finally topppled Silent Sam, the statue on campus commemorating Confederate soldiers. (University's response here.) The protests started to show solidarity for Maya Little, the UNC history graduate student who was arrested in the spring for splashing red ink mixed with her own blood on the statue after she read the statue's dedication speech by Ku Klux Klan supporter Julian Carr.
posted by astapasta24 at 7:32 AM PST - 96 comments

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. The highest intensity rating possible. "The average speed is almost a hundred times higher than the maximum speed, which shouldn't really be possible."
posted by mr_bovis at 5:56 AM PST - 33 comments

The Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong guy has the cutest horrible example of a juvenile sauropodlet: Sauropodlets: YDAW Synapisode #2
posted by zengargoyle at 12:47 AM PST - 7 comments

Danny Hillis recalled spending hours breaking spaghetti with Richard Feynman to figure out why dry spaghetti, when bent, usually broke into three pieces (see a high-speed recording; related r/Physics thread). Feynman and Hillis were stumped, and the phenomenon was finally explained in 2005. Recently, MIT scientists crack the case of breaking spaghetti in two: Controlling fracture cascades through twisting and quenching (PNAS; public abstract only).
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 PM PST - 30 comments

Last night, N.K. Jemisin made history by becoming the first author ever to win three consecutive Hugo awards for best novel for the final installment of her Broken Earth trilogy. Her acceptance speech [transcript here] is a "shining, rocket-shaped middle finger" at all the naysayers who claim her success is unearned because of political correctness or identity politics.
posted by j.r at 10:19 PM PST - 84 comments

Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care—In 12 Charts - "Prices are hidden behind insurance deals, hospital consolidation pushes up costs and the health sector is a growing power in the economy." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:57 PM PST - 46 comments

The Pacific Northwest is blanketed in smoke. Again. Topping even 2017's historically bad fire season, the past week has seen air quality at the worst levels ever recorded in the Puget Sound region. Conditions are currently unhealthy to very unhealthy in much of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, and will likely remain poor at least until Wednesday. [more inside]
posted by mbrubeck at 5:57 PM PST - 111 comments

After days of speculation, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called a leadership spill today, offering the governing Liberal Party the opportunity to elect a new leader (and therefore, a new Prime Minister). It was all over in a matter of minutes, but Turnbull fended off a leadership challenge from Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton, winning the party room poll 48 to 35. Dutton has now resigned from Cabinet. He may not even be eligible to sit in Parliament.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:19 PM PST - 261 comments

The New York Times breaks new details of how White House Counsel, Don McGahn, has cooperated extensively in Mueller inquiry and follows up on Trump lawyers’ sudden realization that they don’t know what he told Mueller’s team (@realDonaldTrump strenuously denied their implication his "Councel" was "a John Dean type ‘RAT’"). Writing for the Lawfare blog, Obama's White House Counsel Bob Bauer points out the issues how McGahn is handling his duties. And national security blogger Marcy Wheeler tears into his possible motives for leaking to the NYT. Meanwhile, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani may have coined the definitive meme for his defense on Sunday's Meet the Press: "Truth Isn't Truth" (NBC follows up, Team Trump still isn't telling the truth about that 2016 Trump Tower meeting.) [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:36 PM PST - 1659 comments

deadmau5 dared me to circuit bend a bible The wonder wonder bible. Nothing against the bible here. I showed it to a couple of christian friends before and they seemed to like it. for what thats worth! Im Just #circuitbending a cold blooded machine, for the more avantgarde inclined [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 3:23 PM PST - 10 comments

During this year’s long heatwave in Britain and Ireland, many people’s imaginations have been captured by the images of archaeological sites revealed in parchmarks (previously in Wales and also in Ireland). As the summer draws to an end, archaeologists are beginning to take stock of dozens of new sites that have been uncovered. You may think that archaeologists mainly dig, but getting up in the air is one of the most important methods for identifying archaeological sites. [more inside]
posted by Helga-woo at 2:17 PM PST - 6 comments

A Man Fell Into Anish Kapoor’s Installation of a Bottomless Pit at a Portugal Museum. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:33 PM PST - 60 comments

Cristóbal Valenzuela has made an AI-based text-to-image generator.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:40 PM PST - 28 comments

The “neuropolitics” consultants who hack voters’ brains: These experts say they can divine political preferences you can’t express from signals you don’t know you’re producing (Elizabeth Svoboda, MIT Technology Review).
posted by sapagan at 12:38 PM PST - 17 comments

Imagine two girls who grew up as friends on the same street, in the same rural town, where they attended the same church and schools, and generally shared the same cultural experiences through high school. Eventually, these two girls become adults and end up living in different places, perhaps hundreds of miles apart. Now imagine two other adult women who live in the same place but who were raised in different places. What type of life experiences will these women have in terms of the work they do and the wages they earn? Will they get married and, if so, how young? If they have children, when will they start to raise a family? How many children will they have? According to the authors of the new BFI working paper, “The Effects of Sexism on American Women: The Role of Norms vs. Discrimination,” the answers to those questions depend crucially on where women are born and where they choose to live their adult lives. [more inside]
posted by melissasaurus at 11:49 AM PST - 27 comments

In December, footage of UFOs taken from US military planes, officially declassified and approved for release by the US government, was published online by an organisation called To The Stars Academy. [...] The release of the footage may be strange, but the mechanism of its release is stranger still. To The Stars was founded by Tom DeLonge, who used to be the singer in the pop-punk band Blink-182. [more inside]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:21 AM PST - 19 comments

Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s most prominent journalists and a seminal peace activist who was among the first Israelis to advocate for a sovereign Palestinian state, died in Tel Aviv on Monday morning. He was 94 years old.
posted by growabrain at 10:54 AM PST - 17 comments

Sabercats were magnificent, powerful predators – what does their extinction tell us about the future of life on Earth? [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 10:00 AM PST - 26 comments

The trouble with solar power generator is that it's hard to store electricity. Batteries are expensive. Flywheels are cool but expensive and have undesirable failure modes. Near San Diego, water authority officials want to create a pumped hydro storage facility that could store up to 500 MW. But what if you don't already have a huge reservoir? A Swiss startup wants to use a crane to lift concrete blocks as a storage mechanism.
posted by GuyZero at 9:57 AM PST - 58 comments

A conversation on the politics of colonial languages in Quebec [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Eurotrip barely made a dent in theaters in 2004, but the song that initiated the titular trip somehow made it onto the Billboard charts two years later, and remains a cult favorite more than a decade later. "Scotty Doesn't Know", a pop-punk anthem to cheating, remains Matt Damon's most enduring cultural legacy.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM PST - 38 comments

A lesson on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock gone wrong, and right.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:26 AM PST - 16 comments

The People In The Trees. Lynne Feeley reviews Richard Powers' novel The Overstory [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Prison Architect: once you're in, you can't get out [The Guardian] “Prison Architect is a simulation in which players take on the design and running of a major US correctional facility. On first loading the game you’re tasked with taking over an existing prison. The current CEO wants you to build an execution facility for a double murderer, known simply as Edward. It is through this rather macabre tutorial that you’re shown the basics of prison architecture, creating foundations, building walls and adding power and water utilities. You’re also shown how to escort the non-playable characters around the prison. It’s an introduction that makes two things clear: that the prison system is effectively a business, and that it’s a business that involves death.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:52 AM PST - 29 comments

For your listening pleasure: The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio live. Why yes old timer, it does remind one of the wonderful Jimmy Smith, doesn't it? Happy Monday, y'all.
posted by gwint at 6:35 AM PST - 27 comments

Nevertheless, it seems that up until 1960 or so, it was quite rare to call Richthofen the Red Baron. Conversely, from 1970 or so, it was almost impossible not to: I don't think I've found a single book about him from the last half-century which does not also have 'Red Baron' somewhere in the title.

Brett Holman asks the question: when was the Red Baron?
posted by MartinWisse at 3:30 AM PST - 50 comments

10 Amazing Life Hacks with Hydraulic Press [more inside]
posted by Mizu at 2:23 AM PST - 22 comments

Literary prizes have been in the news, with the Nobel taking (at least) a year off, and with a graphic novel having been longlisted for the upcoming Man Booker prize (previously). Meanwhile, the UK's longest-established literary prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prize, has, with relatively little fanfare, announced the winners of its 99th annual awards, with Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams taking the fiction prize, and Craig Brown's Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret winning the prize for the best biography. Peruse a list of past winners at Wikipedia. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 2:05 AM PST - 1 comment

Alex Jones, the First Amendment, and the Digital Public Square - "How should we challenge hate-mongering in the age of social media?" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:43 PM PST - 92 comments

Chris Bolin expanded upon his "little experiment" of his offline-only webpage (discussed previously) and developed The Disconnect. When you first try to read an issue, you are greeted by what looks like the cover of a regular online magazine, but over top of it is a pink banner that says: “Please disconnect from the Internet. This is an offline-only magazine of commentary, fiction, and poetry.” The request to disconnect is mostly designed to make a point (Columbia Journalism Review). “I guess it’s kind of like a paywall,” Bolin says. “But it’s more of a pay-attention wall.” [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:00 PM PST - 10 comments

BlackKklansman (previously, fanfare) is the story of the black cop who infiltrated the KKK and the latest success of director Spike Lee. The film has earned frequent comparisons to Sorry to Bother You, "the most shocking anti-capitalist film ever?", but Boots Riley, frontman of The Coup and director of that movie might have a thing or too to say about that. Lee, meanwhile, very much sees his film as a response to the Trump presidency, which has "given the green light to the Klan".
posted by Artw at 6:35 PM PST - 27 comments

Headis: what you get when you combine the terrain of table tennis with the head-skill of soccer. Lots of great rallies on Youtube. For instance.
posted by dobbs at 4:09 PM PST - 9 comments

Weed'em and Reap is the vlog channel of an Arizona family that turned their home on an acre in the middle of Phoenix into a small goat farm. [more inside]
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 12:33 PM PST - 21 comments

Twenty years ago, the earth faced down it's own destruction, twice. Deep Impact was a movie about a comet heading straight for earth. Released only two months later, Armageddon was a movie about an asteroid heading straight for earth, this time with a theme song. [more inside]
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:20 PM PST - 95 comments

"The beginner's guide to the greatest pastimes: Crokinole," written by D. Mark for the CBC. "From Start to Finish," a short documentary by Brittney Ince about Crokinole and the "renowned board maker" mentioned in the article, Willard Martin. Brief time-lapse video of "Crokicurl" also mentioned in the article. Crokinole previously on Metafilter. Relevant entries at BoardGameGeek: Crokinole, Carrom games, and finger flicking games. Other beginner's guides to the greatest pastimes by D. Mark: Cribbage, Euchre, Knitting, Mahjong, Singalongs, Skateboarding, Soccer, and Softball.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:14 PM PST - 22 comments

“Second home. Second home. That one’s a second home. Second home. Second home. That’s a holiday let. Second home. These people live here all the time. Second home.” St Ives is a lovely seaside town in Cornwall in the UK, home for years to artists because of the quality of its light, and where Virginia Woolf was inspired to write To The Lighthouse. It's still home to thriving culture like the iconic Tate St Ives (one of only four Tate galleries in the world) with its programme of international modern and contemporary art, theatres, museums and art spaces, pubs and restaurants - but Cornwall is one of the most deprived areas in western Europe, and the average house price in St Ives is 18 times the typical local salary. [more inside]
posted by reynir at 10:36 AM PST - 50 comments

Small talk is dreadfully boring. Let's jump right into the truly interesting parts of the new people we meet. Small talk is wonderfully interesting. Let's take a moment and appreciate the joys of lightweight conversation. [more inside]
posted by perplexion at 10:17 PM PST - 147 comments

Edward Teller and the 10 gigaton bomb.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:34 PM PST - 54 comments

23 Prince Albums, New Anthology Come to Streaming Services [Rolling Stone] [Pepsi Blue Purple] “Until now, a limited slice of Prince’s catalog was available on most streaming services. Luckily, that slice included his indispensable Eighties LPs like Dirty Mind, Purple Rain and Sign o’ the Times. But on streaming services, the latter half of Prince’s career effectively disappeared. That started to change in June, when Prince’s estate reached a deal with Sony to acquire the distribution rights to 35 of the singer’s albums. 23 of those titles are now available on services like Apple Music and Spotify, including several LPs stocked with late-period Prince gems like Crystal Ball (“So Dark”), Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (“Man o’ War”), Musicology (“Call My Name”), Planet Earth (“Chelsea Rodgers”), 20Ten (“Sticky Like Glue”) and more.”
posted by Fizz at 7:17 PM PST - 19 comments

Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism - "She's unveiling a bill to make corporate governance great again." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 PM PST - 71 comments

"A physicist-turned-farmer left L.A. for a mountain getaway. You can visit for goat cheese and cajeta." A mile high in the San Gabriels, on the far northern edge of the Angeles National Forest — about 1,000 square miles of looming mountains that fill the horizon northeast of downtown Los Angeles — a herd of Nubian goats forages amid the chaparral. It’s a small herd, as herds go, about 60 goats rustling through sagebrush and desert almond, buckwheat and scrub oak trees. Gloria Putnam is the goatherd of this motley tribe, and she walks among them, picking mistletoe tangled in an oak to feed the matriarch of the herd, an 11-year-old named Rosie. Piñon Ridge rises above them, bandaged with clouds. A trim red barn in the distance is the only spot of color.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Stephen Colbert in conversation with Sopan Deb of The New York Times. Previous TimesTalks.
posted by growabrain at 2:28 PM PST - 3 comments

A solid list. The list takes in some of the early entries in the popular sub-genres (zombies, werewolves, vampires) but also includes cosmic horror, short story collections and others.
posted by Werod at 2:24 PM PST - 35 comments

On this day three years ago, webcomic author Ryan North and his dog got stuck in a hole. (previously)
posted by queen anne's remorse at 2:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Pete Tong looks back at classic dance hits with from decades past with History of House, talking with the musicians behind those timeless tracks. There are currently 12 segments online: Kings of Tomorrow - "Finally" ֍ The Shapeshifters - "Lola's Theme" ֍ Inner City - "Good Life" ֍ Josh Wink - "Higher State of Consciousness" ֍ Roger Sanchez - "Another Chance" ֍ David Morales - "Needin' U"* ֍ Reel 2 Real - "I Like To Move It" ֍ Mylo - "Drop the Pressure" ֍ MJ Cole - "Sincere" ֍ Felix Da Housecat - "Silver Screen (Shower Scene)" ֍ Candi Staton - "You Got The Love"* ֍ Ultra Naté - "Free" ֍ Bonus links inside [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:44 PM PST - 12 comments

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed a discrimination complaint against Facebook today for letting landlords target protected attributes for ads on the Facebook platform. Should we let Facebook slide by on this one? Tarleton Gillespie wants us to take a closer look at what we're really expecting out of platforms. His thesis: by letting platforms turn moderation into a commodity, we've let that conversation shift away from duties and responsibilities. [more inside]
posted by redct at 12:49 PM PST - 15 comments

There’s something fascinating about an actress who has made her name not through sex appeal, but the way she moves, punches, and scorpion kicks. Hollywood rarely allows women to be powerful like this. To be taken seriously, they must be EMOTIONAL and FRAGILE. Instead, Michelle Yeoh is STRONG and PLACID and GOOD AT BEATING PEOPLE UP. Michelle Lhooq interviewed Michelle Yeoh for GQ.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:51 AM PST - 16 comments

3D character artist Miguel Vasquez brings fairly innocuous-looking cartoon characters into disturbing 3D "life," like he did with Homer Simpson, here. (SLBoingBoing)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:35 AM PST - 5 comments

In the 1930s and 40s, jazz pianist Hazel Scott was a child prodigy, the star of Cafe’ Society, a fighter for civil rights, Hollywood strike leader, and the first African-American woman to solo host her own TV show. So what ever happened to The Queen of Jazz?
posted by The Whelk at 9:51 AM PST - 5 comments

Harvard's James Mickens (previously) recently gave the keynote address at the 27th USENIX Security Symposium. The title? Q: Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible? A: Because Keynote Speakers Make Bad Life Decisions and Are Poor Role Models [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:34 AM PST - 13 comments

Geoscientist Mika McKinnon felt hurt by the viral tweet mocking rock licking for science, so she explained (threadreader) why you might lick rocks, noted which rocks will kill you, and judged pop culture rock-licking technique. Bonus Last Jedi content (threadreader).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:25 AM PST - 20 comments

Scooby Dos and Scooby Don'ts is a podcast that aims to review every single episode, special, movie and other narrative-based product in the Scooby Doo franchise (including stat counts and property damage tallies). Currently, they're up to the chaotic and nostalgic 'wilderness years' of the 90's and early 00's, but still have many movies/special and four (going on five) entire TV series to go, and plan to pick up the podcast whenever new media is released thereafter.
posted by BiggerJ at 2:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Williamsport, Pennsylvania was once a booming lumber town that claimed to have more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world. The city is now primarily known as the home of the Little League Baseball World Series, but a pro team also calls Williamsport home. The town's minor league baseball history, which includes the infamous "potato incident", traces back to the late 19th century.

Nowadays, the New York-Penn League's Crosscutters, a Phillies minor league affiliate at the Class A Short Season level, play ball in Williamsport between June and September. With the Phillies and Mets coming to town to play in Major League Baseball's second annual Little League Classic, Phillies blogger Justin Klugh tells the story of a small town minor league franchise looking to add its own chapter to Williamsport's proud baseball history.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:02 PM PST - 4 comments

WWE, the company that dominates professional wrestling in the U.S. (and most of the world), mostly hasn’t allowed men and women to face off in the ring for more than a decade. But intergender wrestling is thriving on the independent scene, 170 fans at a time.
posted by Etrigan at 7:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: “C’mon, kid.” She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.
posted by octothorpe at 7:11 PM PST - 60 comments

"With the bases loaded and no outs in the top of the fourth, David Fletcher scorched a ground ball to Jurickson Profar at third base, setting off one of the quickest, oddest triple plays you’ll ever see."
posted by bondcliff at 5:02 PM PST - 39 comments

Why did Laurence Olivier return so often to Shakespeare's Othello? Why did Ansel Adams keep photographing the Grand Canyon? Cellist Yo-Yo Ma brought his great inspiration, and in turn part of his own life story, to an enthusiastic audience packed around the Tiny Desk on a hot summer day... [NPR]
posted by jim in austin at 3:45 PM PST - 16 comments

The wasp nest was seemingly out of the reach of the invading army ants... but the ants would not be denied. [twitter] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:50 PM PST - 52 comments

What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?
posted by not_the_water at 1:29 PM PST - 23 comments

“He went home and composed an email to Mr. Odo. “I love your food, I respect you and I love this restaurant, but I hate the music,” he remembered writing. “Who chose this? Whose decision of mixing this terrible roundup? Let me do it. Because your food is as good as the beauty of Katsura Rikyu.” (He meant the thousand-year-old palatial villa in Kyoto, built to some degree on the aesthetic principles of imperfections and natural circumstances known as wabi-sabi.) “But the music in your restaurant is like Trump Tower.””
posted by brokeaspoke at 11:59 AM PST - 27 comments

Film Dialogue from 2,000 screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age. "...we Googled our way to 8,000 screenplays and matched each character’s lines to an actor. From there, we compiled the number of words spoken by male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever." Besides presenting aggregate stats, the article allows you to drill down into individual movies. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:30 AM PST - 13 comments

Where even Walmart won't go: how Dollar General took over rural America (The Guardian). As the chain opens stores at the rate of three a day across the US, often in the heart of ‘food deserts’, some see Dollar General as an admission that a town is failing. There are more Dollar General locations than McDonalds locations in the United States, and the company's growth doesn't show any sign of slowing down (Retail Dive). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM PST - 66 comments

The statue of Baphomet... is seated and accompanied by two smiling children. The Satanic Temple (previously) has deployed a statue of "a goat-headed, winged creature" in Little Rock, Arkansas, right near the Capitol building. The idea is to challenge the government for recently erecting a Ten Commandments statue. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:37 AM PST - 46 comments

• David Lee Roth as microwave popcorn.
• Ozzy Osbourne as windshield wipers.
• Michael Stipe getting a friend’s attention in a busy restaurant.
• Prince sips a cup of really bad coffee.
• Stevie Nicks as a VCR, rewinding a tape.
• John Mellencamp enjoying a summertime snack. [potentially NSFW]

More at Show Bits: "Animated Nonsense. Literally (and lovingly) objectifying celebrities."
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Crypto developers and investors are moving to Puerto Rico , attracted by lucrative tax regimes They plan to regenerate the island using blockchain technology. But not all of the locals support their bold plans. SLGuardian, leading to SLYT.
posted by carter at 10:23 AM PST - 20 comments

One tribe caught up in Colombia’s armed conflict [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:21 AM PST - 1 comment

Here's the First Trailer for the Next Star Wars Animated Series, Resistance [YouTube] Take to the skies.
posted by Fizz at 10:20 AM PST - 22 comments

The spirit of the dead must live its life one more time in an accelerated fashion before departing to the realm of the ancestors. . . . It is believed that doing what was once done frees the living from the dead and vice versa.

Ancestor Work In Street Basketball, an excerpt from Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball by African-American scholar Dr. Onaje X.O. Woodbine (interview).
posted by Rumple at 10:02 AM PST - 1 comment

“The prison organizing has coincided with a movement that has taken hold across the country as teachers go on strike and protest slashed education budgets in their states. The hope is that the prisoners may eventually be able to build a coalition with the teachers and potentially even coordinate their strikes.” - LOUISIANA PRISONERS DEMAND AN END TO ‘MODERN-DAY SLAVERY’. Another nationwide Prison Labor strike planned for August 21st.
posted by The Whelk at 9:20 AM PST - 26 comments

Classic: I’ll take the polls, plus all the "fundamentals": fundraising, past voting in the district, historical trends and more."

538's new forecasting models for the 2018 House elections are out. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 9:07 AM PST - 92 comments

Sean T. Collins writes: ALL HAIL THE MONUMENTAL-HORROR IMAGE - "How striking scenes from ‘The Shining,’ ‘The Wicker Man,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ and other iconic horror movies make an indelible mark on us." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:57 AM PST - 38 comments

25 years ago this month, Ian Murdock announced a brand new Linux release. Today, it's one of the most important projects in the free software movement. That's right, Debian/GNU Linux is 25 years old! [more inside]
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 7:58 AM PST - 47 comments

Among aficionados of the music of Jonathan Round there is some debate over where his particular genius is best exemplified by his transformation of already popular songs into his unique style, or through his own songwriting where his own lyrical gift is given full voice. Either way, Round's music is something not to be missed. [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 1:38 AM PST - 5 comments

How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex.

Use pop culture as a springboard for talking about your values... Is there any better song for talking about toxic masculinity than “Grenade” by Bruno Mars? My son and I had an interesting talk about the song “Tell Me You Love Me” by Demi Lovato: Why are girls taught “you ain’t somebody ‘till you got somebody” and is that really true?

[more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:54 PM PST - 39 comments

Our measurements confirmed what every woman already knows to be true: women’s pockets are ridiculous. [slThePudding] [more inside]
posted by atlantica at 2:46 PM PST - 164 comments

The Northeast Document Conservation Center recently conserved an 1848 Mathew Brady daguerreotype image of Dolley Madison found in a trunk in 1956. [via] [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 1:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Scientists Calculate the Speed of Death in Cells, and It's Surprisingly Slow: A new study [abstract] shows that death travels in unremitting waves through a cell, moving at a rate of 30 micrometers (one-thousandth of an inch) every minute. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 1:21 PM PST - 17 comments

The technology of tomorrow is being used by insects today. Wired has a summary of six scientific investigations into biomimicry that may make their way into the phones of the future: sugar-powered batteries, wide-angle camera (and more!), waterproof coating, exoskeletal body, anti-glare screen, and directional mic (CES 2018 demo story). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:56 AM PST - 12 comments

The conversation of murdered and missing native women is not one North America wants to have - but it must [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:14 AM PST - 17 comments

This nose hair ripper-outer I bought in Tokyo works great. (SLBoingBoing)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:14 AM PST - 62 comments

“Despite their many shapes and forms, these different anticompetitive plots have one thing in common: a commitment to strengthen the firm’s hold over market, consumers, and workers. Consumers pay for this concentration of power at the checkout line. This is because firms tend to decrease production numbers after merging. Having few to no competitors gives them even less reason to lower their prices. Market power also stymies innovation and quality, as competitors are thwarted from supplying better, affordable products. Sometimes, the outcome is mere inconvenience. In others, it’s the difference between life and death. “ THE RULES OF MONOPOLY by Vanessa A. Bee - mergers, stock buybacks, market control, price fixing and other strategies of anti-competitive behavior. (Current Affairs)
posted by The Whelk at 9:10 AM PST - 16 comments

Elon Musk's Boring Company is "proposing to build Dugout Loop, a zero-emissions, high-speed, underground public transportation system from the Los Feliz, East Hollywood, or Rampart Village neighborhoods ("western terminus") to Dodger Stadium in the City of Los Angeles." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:51 AM PST - 108 comments

Ruby Rose (Orange is the New Black, John Wick: Chapter 2, The Meg) has been cast as Batwoman in an upcoming crossover event in the CW's "Arrowverse." [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM PST - 56 comments

My father's death spurred a reflection on growing up Asian Australian. [slLennyLetter]
posted by ellieBOA at 5:10 AM PST - 10 comments

A four-part BBC World Service documentary series based on listening to four different environments around the world. The first half-hour is The Sounds Of The Maasai Mara, in which wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson explores the sounds of the African Plains. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:58 AM PST - 6 comments

National Geographic: At 18, Katie Stubblefield lost her face. At 21, she became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo the still experimental surgery. Follow her incredible story. [CW: Extremely graphic images and descriptions of facial injuries and reconstruction; suicide; overdose]
posted by reductiondesign at 7:59 PM PST - 33 comments

Blessed redeemer! It's the piebald moose. Friends Nancy Andrews and Roxanne Rowsell captured a piebald (ghostly white) moose on video. The footage of the rare moose is interesting, but it's the women's Newfoundland accents and their charmingly goofy commentary that have sent it viral.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Does what it says on the tin. SLYT
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:07 PM PST - 32 comments

In Pennsylvania, a state with 500 school districts, the funding crisis of public education is not a breaking news story. It's been the reality for years. Students study in decaying buildings, can only dream about art classes and fight the stigma of being from "that school." The crisis of funding public education is imminent as the court is set to look into how Pennsylvania funds public education and if it violates the State Constitution. In this series, we explore deepening inequities across school districts and ask: Will the school funding crisis in Pa. ever be solved? [more inside]
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:19 PM PST - 27 comments

When my mom cooked sambal from scratch, she moved with controlled haste. Her eyebrows would furrow as she used her index finger to mix belacan, a pungent shrimp paste, with water. “Open all the windows!” she would suddenly yell, her warning to my brother, father and me that fiery chiles would be hitting her oiled wok in a few minutes.

Sambal, a Pungent Reminder of Home and Hardship (SLNYT)
posted by Lexica at 5:15 PM PST - 13 comments

www.enhance.computer lets you experience what until now you've only dreamed of. [more inside]
posted by gwint at 4:31 PM PST - 17 comments

Voltron: Legendary Defender Had a Gay Character All Along [Vulture] [SPOILERS] “For those who grew up on the classic ’80s cartoon Voltron, Netflix’s remake, Voltron: Legendary Defender, will seem quite different. Yes, five mechanical lions still combine to form a giant robot that kicks ass in space, but the show has been modernized in ways large and small.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:42 PM PST - 49 comments

I think that the stars have really aligned. I think that it’s my team, it’s the fact that we were all so dedicated to telling honest stories and to just fighting and fighting to get this material through and make it so entertaining that you could never deny how sweet and thoughtful and entertaining it is that there’s just no way to say no. Rebecca Sugar on Steven Universe and LGBTQ representation. Stephen Universe just had a history making same sex marriage in a kids cartoon and has recently had a movie announced.
posted by Artw at 3:41 PM PST - 30 comments

"Your body is yours and yours alone. " Don’t let it be dictated or moulded into something you don’t want. Dress it how you want. Wear what you think feels good and looks good, but trust me some bandwagons aren’t worth jumping on. Your body’s going to change and then change some more and then when you think it’s finally stopped, it changes again. Keep your body hair, shave your body hair, do what you want it’s up to you, but do it for you.” (Niellah Arboine) [more inside]
posted by jojo and the benjamins at 3:35 PM PST - 8 comments

For most of my life, there has been a Rihanna single — or multiple Rihanna singles, or multiple songs defined by a Rihanna hook — playing prominently on Top 40 radio. So it's not enough to say Rihanna is the air. Rihanna shaped the texture and taste of the air by consistently doing what pop, at its very best, is supposed to do: taking disparate genres — rock, EDM, dancehall, trap and even dubstep — and turning them into something that makes sense to us, to everyone. If she's not seen as taking musical risks, it's only because so many of them paid off. Jenny Gathright argues for Rihanna as the most influential musician of the 21st century.
posted by ChuraChura at 2:58 PM PST - 39 comments

If the only way to enjoy something is to turn your brain off, then it probably isn’t very good.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:54 AM PST - 180 comments

Hilary Woods carries a range of influences into her music, from her education in dance, to growing up surrounded by music -- her father was a pianist, and in her house there was "a huge mix of folk music and Irish ballads very heavy metal." You can hear all these influences on her debut album, Colt (Bandcamp) Although it is lithe and warm, there is an austerity to its texture that harkens back to the forbidding tones of heavier music. (FACT Rated interview + review). If Grouper’s stark, intense minimalism (Bandcamp) is best visualized as the darkest corner of the coldest house, then Colt ... is the desolate, cinematic landscape outside it (London in Stereo). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:25 AM PST - 5 comments

"If power can be held through atomic bombs, colonial peoples may never be free." (pdf link) [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Facebook and Google made billions mining personal data, and fought off anyone who threatened to stop them. Then came a challenge in their own backyard... Silicon Valley [had been offered] a take-it-or-leave-it privacy policy — the same kind that Silicon Valley usually offered everyone else. Nick Confessore writes in the NYT Magazine about The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won. "Political power is a malleable thing, an elaborate calculation of artifice and argument, votes and money. People and institutions can seem all-powerful right up to the moment they are not. And sometimes, a thing that can’t possibly happen suddenly becomes a thing that cannot be stopped." (SLNYTMag long read.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:47 AM PST - 24 comments

The efforts by Green Watch from Edmonton station to charm the misbehaving bird went smoothly at first, and she responded positively, telling her would-be rescuer that she loved him back. But, Jessie soon launched a foul-mouthed tirade against the fire crew, telling the fire fighters to “f*** off”.
posted by like_neon at 7:34 AM PST - 18 comments

Harberger Taxation and Open Source - "A novel approach to creating a self-sustainable digital commons" (via)
posted by kliuless at 6:36 AM PST - 32 comments

Everything is Alive is an unscripted interview show / podcast in which all the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells us its life story--and everything it says is true." There have been three episodes so far: 1. Louis, can of soda; 2. Maeve, lamppost; 3. Dennis, pillow. They're not "sequential," but I do suggest listening to them in order.
posted by dobbs at 6:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Paddy Cosgrave, founder and CEO of Web Summit, announced today that the invitation to speak extended to Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far right party Rassemblement National will be rescinded by the Lisbon tech conference. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 5:32 AM PST - 36 comments

"The oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director, Within Our Gates is a searing account of the US racial situation during the early twentieth century, including the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of Southern blacks to cities in the North, and the emergence of the “New Negro”. Directed by Oscar Micheaux, the film is one of the earliest and finest examples in the genre of “race films”. Produced outside the main Hollywood machine, these films were purposefully made for an all-black audience, featured black actors, and became important arenas through which representations of African-Americans in mass culture were contested." (Within Our Gates YouTube) - Industrious African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux designed a cunning film that is in so many ways an inversion of The Birth of a Nation. Where Griffith simplifies history, Within Our Gates complicates it. - This movie is very much the antithesis of Birth. The black characters are given a depth and humanity that would have been denied them in standard Hollywood productions. Sylvia in particular is amazing considering the period: she is a female character who manages to be independent and intelligent, - Restored 'Race Films' Find New Audiences (NPR)
posted by The Whelk at 1:32 AM PST - 7 comments

i do not have a boyfriend so I made one out of boxes of wine. i took my boyfriend i made out of boxes of wine to his first #pride and he loved it. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT my boyfriend i made out of boxes of wine and i are moving in 2gether. my boyfriend i made out of boxes of wine took me to the garden and surprised me...guys i said YES!!! [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:15 PM PST - 42 comments

Do you have a problem? Do you want a book to help you solve it? Book Therapist is Rosalie Knecht, LMSW, a licensed therapist and author of the novels Relief Map and Who is Vera Kelly? (Tin House, June 2018). She will be taking questions monthly for Lit Hub at booktherapy@lithub.com. [more inside]
posted by eirias at 8:09 PM PST - 6 comments

I am not kidding at all. [REALLY, REALLY NOISY] LAST ONE WAS CHEATING IMO
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:50 PM PST - 7 comments

What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused? After a year long Title IX investigation, NYU Philosophy professor suspended Avitall Ronnell for the coming academic year for sexually harassing a male graduate student. A number of feminist scholars, including Judith Butler, have announced their support for Professor Ronell in a letter. The letter cites the "international standing and reputation" of Professor Ronell, and accused the victim of waging "a malicious campaign against her." Zizek also signed the letter. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:39 PM PST - 129 comments

According to the New York Times (and the curator of an exhibition of her work), Donna Gottschalk is the most famous lesbian photographer you've never heard of (NYT Link) [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 7:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Anna Coleman Ladd, a sculptor, made lifelike masks for soldiers of WW I. World War I caused the death of millions of combatants and civilians, while countless soldiers suffered from injury and disfigurement. Perhaps the most disheartening were facial injuries, as soldiers had to not only deal with the physical loss, but also the constant psychological stress of wondering how people would react to their changed appearance.
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:51 PM PST - 16 comments

Based on the 2017 US Census Bureau Population Estimates, Overflow Data compiled this handy chart to answer the question above. You can sort the columns, and even break up each generation into smaller age ranges. [more inside]
posted by numaner at 1:57 PM PST - 14 comments

You’ve seen rankings of superhero movies, of Netflix originals, of various Hollywood Chrises. But there’s one ranking you haven’t seen: CAPES. The 60 Greatest Capes in Movie History.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:42 PM PST - 50 comments

Somewhere along the way a rosé company might realize your restaurant is popular or has some buzz, particularly around the wine program. They might stop by, drop off a business card, send an email, and hint that they’d make it worth your while to add their wine to the list. A lot of these deals span the gray area of ethics, from direct cash incentives to trips, dinners, sporting game tickets, complimentary product, etc. Anything to get an edge. There are only so many slots on a wine list and oh-so-many wines out in the world. (Bon Appetit) [more inside]
posted by gauche at 10:21 AM PST - 48 comments

How do you like to find your own fun after putting hundreds of hours into a game? by Danielle Riendeau [Waypoint] “It’s funny to me, just how much I love this game and feel like it’s part of my life. I think about it in idle moments, craving the feeling of a great turn, scrambling the enemy bugs across the map so they destroy each other. It’s fascinating to me that I keep setting goals for myself, long after the marathon of the game’s own achievement system (no cakewalk) has been completed. I guess I just like Into the Breach this much. How about you, dear readers? Is there a game out there that you love so much, that you’ve played half to death, that you’ve made your own increasingly ridiculous goals for, to keep things interesting?”
posted by Fizz at 9:40 AM PST - 97 comments

Black cooks created the feasts that gave the South its reputation for hospitality [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:31 AM PST - 11 comments

When Homer envisioned Achilles, did he see a Black man? This question is posed by Tim Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek culture, discusses the trouble of applying modern notions of race on historic figures, looking specifically at the trouble of defining "xanthos hair", and notes many of the Greek statues that seem white to us now were in antiquity painted in colour. "The differences [in descriptions of race, and color] are instructive – and, indeed, clearly point up the oddity of the modern, western obsession with classification by pigmentation." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:30 AM PST - 32 comments

...as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people." Frederick Law Olmstead, most well-known for designing Central Park, also designed many other parks across the U.S. And now the Library of Congress has digitized his papers. [more inside]
posted by brookeb at 8:50 AM PST - 8 comments

The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5

Emanating from smokestacks, vehicle engines, construction projects, and fires large and small, airborne pollution – sometimes smaller than the width of a human hair, and very often the product of human activity – is not just contributing to climate change. It is a leading driver of heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, and respiratory infections the world over. Exposure to such pollution, the most deadly of which scientists call PM2.5, is the sixth highest risk factor for death around the world, claiming more than 4 million lives annually, according to recent global morbidity data. Add in household pollutants from indoor cooking fires and other combustion sources, and the tally approaches 7 million lives lost each year.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:09 AM PST - 13 comments

After years of painstaking acoustic measurements, Hempton identified this spot on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula as the quietest place in the U.S.—the spot most free of our man-made noise pollution. He has nurtured this square inch, guided people to it, and protected it from encroaching cacophony of our modern world. But now it faces its biggest threat yet.
posted by ellieBOA at 7:34 AM PST - 20 comments

Why Public Banks Are Suddenly Popular (Why Are Banks Special?)
posted by kliuless at 6:33 AM PST - 35 comments

Sumerian goddess Ninkasi, Hildegarde von Bingen, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg stir the cauldron in this history of brewing by Heather Hogan at Autostraddle [more inside]
posted by prewar lemonade at 5:38 AM PST - 7 comments

I watched Nicolas Cage movies for 14 hours straight, and I'm sold [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:29 AM PST - 69 comments

Mars Rover Opportunity was put to sleep by a planet-wide dust storm that didn't allow her solar panels to recharge her batteries. The dust storm has died down, and as the engineers wait for her to wake back up, they've been greeting her every day with a different wake up song. Space.com has the article, and the article has a Spotify playlist.
posted by hippybear at 2:37 AM PST - 21 comments

Cities of the World Where You Don’t Need AC or Heat - lookup available at Guardian
posted by Gyan at 1:23 AM PST - 82 comments

What's a scientific study that strongly affected the way you think, but which later turned out to probably be wrong? From Zach Weinersmith on Twitter.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:22 AM PST - 52 comments

"The sheer invisibility of Native people leads to some very warped perspectives about contemporary Native life. Forty percent of respondents did not think that Native people still exist. While 59 percent agree that 'the United States is guilty of committing genocide against Native Americans,' only 36 percent agree that Native Americans experience significant discrimination today — meaning nearly two-thirds of the public perceive Native Americans as experiencing little to no oppression or structural racism... ." Reclaiming Native Truth's report on how the American public views Native Americans. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 9:37 PM PST - 21 comments

Half a billion years ago, Habelia optata lived and hunted prey at the bottom of a warm shallow Cambrian sea. Protected by its thick, hard, spiny armor, it walked on five pairs of articulated legs. Only 2 to 3 centimeters long, it detected and grasped smaller less fortunate animals. With its many comparatively large jaws, it cracked through the hard shells of its prey.

How Art Makes Better Science: a short case study of the 2-D and 3-D interpretations by Joanna Liang of one of the many weird creatures of the Burgess Shale. via [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 7:31 PM PST - 6 comments

The last of San Francisco's series of now-defunct amusement parks was Playland at the Beach, which closed in 1972. in 2008, Playland Not-At-The-Beach opened to the public across the Bay in El Cerrito. It contains memorabilia related to Playland, Sutro Baths, a miniature version of the Sells-Floto Circus created by Isaac and Donald Marcks, a variety of pinball machines and other amusements, and even a room devoted to Eartha Kitt. Unfortunately, the building is slated to be demolished and like its predecessor, replaced with condos, so Playland Not-At-The-Beach is closing Labor Day 2018, and its contents will be auctioned.
posted by larrybob at 5:49 PM PST - 17 comments

This week is National Afternoon Tea (not High Tea) Week. But what is Afternoon Tea? It can be simple (scones, jam, cream, tea) or elegant or expensive. There are do's and dont's. It's not this, or this, and just c'mon, but is found in Yorkshire or Bolton or Liverpool or London or Belfast or (suspended reality) Harrogate or the Falklands or far from Britain. Some options, and more and some more - and one to reignite the English class war. The tea can be red and the food can be based around chocolate or a Dundee cake or dim sum or fish or of course gin or fruit or Harry Potter, or be for dogs, or be oh not again served by hipsters. Or, you could make your own, perhaps a healthy option, or construct one at Ikea. May attract criminals or Her Majesty. Clothing optional.
posted by Wordshore at 3:02 PM PST - 33 comments

Advert for cat caring job on Greek isle brings deluge of candidates. “From experience, the job is most suitable for someone 45+ years of age, who’s responsible, reliable, honest, practically inclined – and really with a heart of gold! You will at times be expected to trap or handle a feral or non-sociable cat … so cat whispering skills should come natural to you.”
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:39 PM PST - 25 comments

In Kirk Wallace Johnson's new book, The Feather Thief, he writes about a 2009 theft of almost 300 rare and exotic birds from the British Natural History Museum at Tring, and the then 20-year-old flautist who stole them. National Geographic has an excerpt from the book, and This American Life presents the story in this week's episode.
posted by noneuclidean at 1:35 PM PST - 13 comments

Michaeleen Doucleff for NRP: Maybe the problem, when it comes to back pain, isn't how much Americans are sitting, but the way we're sitting. If we change the way we sit, it will help to decrease back problems. Take a look at people who are sitting down – not face-on but rather from the side, in profile, so you can see the shape of their spine. There's a high probability their back is curving like the letter C. To straighten out the C shape, [Jenn] Sherer says, "we need to position the pelvis in a way that this tail could wag." In other words, we need to untuck our tails. To do that, Sherer says, you need to bend over properly when you go to sit down.
posted by numaner at 1:03 PM PST - 54 comments

Today is the 10th day of the United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III (PDF). The dramatic courtroom events so far include secretive conferences between Judge T.S. Ellis, the federal prosecutors, and Manafort's defense lawyers, the judge repeatedly snapping at Mueller's team, mounting evidence of Manafort's financial fraud and corruption from government experts and immunized witnesses, and stunning plea-bargain testimony from Manafort's former partner and protégé, the newly clean-shaven Rick Gates. The Prosecution's case in Paul Manafort trial is close to wrapping up (CNN), and the New York Times has begun to write his political obituary: The Rise and Fall of Paul Manafort: Greed, Deception and Ego. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is winding up his "working vacation", during which he's stumped at rallies for GOP mid-term candidates, stirred up his trade wars, explored shutting down the government to get his border wall, and obsessed over the Manafort trial. (Politico) [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:42 PM PST - 1119 comments

NandGame.com will take you though building a working computer, starting from the most basic components. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 12:37 PM PST - 46 comments

An oral history of the original Death and Return of Superman, 25 years later
posted by Artw at 10:54 AM PST - 32 comments

“When radicals attack each other in the game of good politics, it is due at least in part to the fact that this is a place where people can exercise some power. Even if one is unable to challenge capitalism and other oppressive structures, even if one is unable to participate in the creation of alternative forms of life, one can always attack others for their complicity, and tell oneself that these attacks are radical in and of themselves.” The stifling air of rigid radicalism, an excerpt from Joyful Militancy.
posted by The Whelk at 9:23 AM PST - 38 comments

Endangered Languages [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:35 AM PST - 16 comments

The Beloved Characters We Have to Leave Behind [Waypoint] “My favorite musical of all time, one of the few that I will happily just sit down and watch, is George Cukor’s 1964 adaptation of My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. Itself an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, it tells the story of a Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle, who is taken under the instruction of professor of language and phonetics, Professor Henry Higgins. [...] I realized, watching the play, that I’ve only partially outgrown Higgins, or characters like him. It’s rather far more accurate to say that I’ve grown into the characters that surround him.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:31 AM PST - 116 comments

The name “Chicago” derives from a word in the language spoken by the Miami and Illinois peoples meaning “striped skunk, ” a word they also applied to the wild leek (known to later botanists as Allium tricoccum). This became the Indian name for the Chicago River, in recognition of the presence of wild leeks in the watershed. You probably wouldn't want to eat any if you did come across any growing on the banks of the Chicago River now, but there are efforts to turn a mile of the river "wild" again. By 2020, Urban Rivers wants the canal to house birds, fish, trees, and mussels. To do that, it has to build a habitat almost from scratch.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 AM PST - 15 comments

A research team from the British Museum is excavating and recording a site at Amara West in Sudan, along the Nile, in what was ancient Nubia. But can people save and Rediscover Ancient Nubia Before It Is Too Late? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:41 AM PST - 2 comments

Doja Cat's dairy-themed bop could well be the song of the summer Semi NSFW.
posted by nerdfish at 6:25 AM PST - 11 comments

The Afterlife of Otis Redding (The Up Rising of Otis Redding)
posted by kliuless at 6:24 AM PST - 8 comments

One day in a Dublin library, by Patrick Freyne in the Irish Times (~3000 words)
posted by rollick at 4:15 AM PST - 9 comments

The English poet and artist William Blake has received a new gravestone at the exact place he was buried. How amateur sleuths finally tracked down the burial place of William Blake Singer Bruce Dickinson speaking at the unveiling.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:23 AM PST - 23 comments

Cats can be remarkably tolerant of babies, allowing the tiny humans to play with them and laugh at them. They will even protect them. (Cats and babies previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:16 PM PST - 32 comments

Pearl Jam just played its first two shows in five years in its hometown of Seattle this past week, pulling together something like a combined 90,000 in its audience at Safeco Field. But the band used this event as a publicity beacon to pull together a coalition to work to solve Seattle's homelessness crisis, raising over $11million from a myriad of sources, a sum which continues to grow. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:32 PM PST - 17 comments

My son Jake, who’s 25, eats mayo. He’s a practical young man who works in computers and adores macaroni salad. He’s a good son. I also have a daughter. She was a women’s and gender studies major in college. Naturally, she loathes mayonnaise.
posted by chaoticgood at 7:41 PM PST - 178 comments

We thought we’d heard it all when it came to imposters. Clearly, we hadn’t met Pierre Louÿs. [Note: artistic nudity.]
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:37 PM PST - 8 comments

"World's Most Wanted": "One day last November, I dropped my dad’s fountain pen on the floor. Actually it’s been my fountain pen since my dad died half a century ago, but I still think of it as my dad’s pen." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Ian Bogost appealed to the world to put more words between buns. So he made a thing where you just type and the words appear (recognises return, backspace). Lots of people then put words between buns (also on Facebook).
posted by Wordshore at 2:22 PM PST - 29 comments

The JPEG Committee is “exploring Blockchain” — to put DRM into JPEG [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:05 PM PST - 42 comments

Washington DC Braces for White Supremacist Rally Outside White House—Thousands of counter-protesters expected to outnumber those at ‘white civil rights’ rally on anniversary of violence in Charlottesville (Guardian). On the ground, DCist is updating their article Here's What Is Happening With 'Unite The Right 2' and Counterprotests. Live coverage can be found on Twitter, such as the feeds of the Washington Post's Marissa J. Lang (@Marissa_Jae), WUSA9's Mike Valerio (@MikevWUSA), and American University Radio (@WAMU). [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:32 PM PST - 118 comments

Little Big City takes a map location and turns it into an adorable 3D globe: NYC, Hong Kong, Versailles, Chicago, Angkor Wat. Created by programmer Yi Shen [more inside]
posted by gwint at 8:07 AM PST - 7 comments

In this essay we investigate personal memory systems, that is, systems designed to improve the long-term memory of a single person. In the first part of the essay I describe my personal experience using such a system, named Anki ... The second part of the essay discusses personal memory systems in general. Many people treat memory ambivalently or even disparagingly as a cognitive skill: for instance, people often talk of “rote memory” as though it's inferior to more advanced kinds of understanding. I'll argue against this point of view, and make a case that memory is central to problem solving and creativity. A detailed long read from Michael Nielsen including a discussion of how he prepared himself to write an article on AlphaGo for Quanta Magazine.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:57 AM PST - 27 comments

"Foli" is the word used for rhythm by the Malinke tribe in West Africa. But Foli is not only found in Malinke music, but in all parts of their daily lives. Directed by Thomas Roebers, this short film portrays the people of Baro, a small town in eastern-central Guinea, and gives you a glimpse inside their culture of rhythm.
posted by HuronBob at 7:24 AM PST - 8 comments

VS Naipaul, Nobel prize-winning British author, dies aged 85 [The Guardian] “The writer VS Naipaul, who explored questions of place and identity for more than half a century, has died aged 85.” [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Interactive (non)fiction from the Los Angeles Times: You’ve been arrested by a dishonest cop. Can you win in a system set up to protect officers? By Swetha Kannan, Corina Knoll, Maya Lau, Ben Poston, Joel Rubin, Aug. 9, 2018. Read more about this: An L.A. County deputy faked evidence. Here's how his misconduct was kept secret in court for years, by Corina Knoll , Ben Poston and Maya Lau. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 5:32 AM PST - 13 comments

The team at Vancouver East Veterinary are back with scientific advice for Cat Names That Get Your Cat's Attention. Dr. Uri Burstyn & Vancouver East Veterinary previously on MeFi. (Cat naming is a popular topic on AskMeFi.)
posted by wheek wheek wheek at 4:50 AM PST - 40 comments

I am John Galt (SLTwitterThread)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:22 AM PST - 38 comments

An educator's take on her brother and boys like him. First person essay. [CW: DV, animal cruelty]
posted by k8t at 10:52 PM PST - 22 comments

Medina Dugger's "Chroma: An Ode to J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, is an on-going series which celebrates women’s hair Styles in Nigeria through a fanciful, contemporary lens. The images are inspired by hair color trends in Lagos and by the late Nigerian photographer J.D. Ojeikere."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Following a previous installation at the The Standard in NYC, Lucy Sparrow's felt bodega 8 'till Late will be featured at the Standard in LA through the end of August 2018. Can't go in person? Take a tour, or venture into her studio.
posted by sacrifix at 10:05 PM PST - 3 comments

Bowling vs Pool Trick Shots [SLYT]
posted by axiom at 7:13 PM PST - 10 comments

It’s Easier to Leave the Solar System Than to Reach the Sun. The center of the solar system is a tricky destination, but NASA is going. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 5:41 PM PST - 34 comments

If Monday Was a Video... Also, The Most Unsatisfying Video in the World ever made - pt. 1 and then pt. 2
posted by Gorgik at 5:12 PM PST - 30 comments

There's Waldo is a robot built to find Waldo and point at him. The Verge: "If you’re totally stumped on a page of Where’s Waldo and ready to file a missing persons report, you’re in luck. Now there’s a robot called There’s Waldo that’ll find him for you, complete with a silicone hand that points him out."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Through paper mâché maskes made by traditional artists in west-central India, Gauri Gill creates a series of stunning photographs. "Acts of Appearance" is on display at MoMA PS1 (22–25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, Queens) until September 3.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:18 PM PST - 2 comments

Q Lazzarus scored a minor hit in 1990, when Jonathan Demme used her song “Goodbye Horses” in a pivotal scene in Silence of the Lambs. The singer seemed to disappear from the face of the earth in the mid-1990s. When Quitters drummer Kelsey Zimmerman put out a call on Twitter for the singer, she got a surprising response.
posted by pxe2000 at 11:54 AM PST - 22 comments

As the gig economy grows, so too does the danger that engineers, in attempting to build the most efficient systems, will chop and dice jobs into pieces so dehumanized that our legal system will no longer recognize them. And along with this comes an even more sinister possibility: jobs that would and should be recognizable—especially supervisory and management positions—will disappear altogether.

Short read: Susan Fowler in Vanity Fair notes that the labor problems Uber created market disruptions Uber innovated are becoming permanent. (Susan Fowler previously.)
posted by postcommunism at 10:51 AM PST - 28 comments

Britain’s Populist Revolt More than two years have passed since Britain voted for Brexit. Ever since that moment, the vote to leave the European Union has routinely been framed as an aberration; a radical departure from ‘normal’ life... Today, looking back, I see that most people never really had an interest in exploring what underpinned Brexit. To many on the liberal Left, Brexit is to be opposed, not understood.
A scholarly analysis of Why Britain Voted for Brexit, written by Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent. [research paper, 2017]
posted by Lanark at 9:47 AM PST - 89 comments

I’ve never doubted that humanity is a privilege, even if we, as the animals who think, are also the creatures who agitate, plot and fantasize.
posted by standardasparagus at 9:43 AM PST - 3 comments

Nintendo is well-known for starting out (in 1889) as a playing card company, but did you know that they first printed cards for a fiercely competitive, lightning-fast game that is little known outside Japan? [more inside]
posted by wnissen at 8:52 AM PST - 19 comments

So we been opening cans the wrong way our whole lives?
posted by griphus at 8:48 AM PST - 72 comments

SOPHIE (wiki, official, previously) recently dropped her first full length album, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES -- full album stream. Reviews: Pitchfork, The Line of Best Fit, exclaim. Interviews: Vice I-D, PAPER. Official videos: Faceshopping, It's Okay To Cry, Ponyboy. (some links may be nsfw) Enjoy.
posted by HumanComplex at 8:46 AM PST - 2 comments

In 1986, 18-year-old cartoonist Ben Edlund created The Tick as a mock-hero mascot for a newsletter for New England Comics, where he was a customer. A few pages of The Tick were included in the New England Comics Newsletter in '86, and two years later, NEC published the first of the black-and-white comic book series, featuring wacky superheroes and bizarre super villains. From there, The Tick and his compatriots has been in a three-season cartoon series on Fox Kids, a live-action series on Fox in 2001, and again as live-action in an Amazon exclusive production. One of the many things that makes The Tick’s situation unique is that Edlund has been centrally involved with every version since the ’80s, including the most recent live-action series. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:54 PM PST - 66 comments

WHAT CATS KNOW ABOUT HUMANS: A THREAD A short Twitter thread that may resonate if you live with a cat.
posted by Lexica at 8:49 PM PST - 46 comments

A Princeton geologist has endured decades of ridicule for arguing that the fifth extinction was caused not by an asteroid but by a series of colossal volcanic eruptions.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:24 PM PST - 42 comments

"Supply chains are highly modular by design. Think of the shipping container. It wasn’t revolutionary because it was a box; it was revolutionary because it was a standardized, interchangeable box that could be locked in and transported. It makes globalization possible—it makes global scale possible—because of what it obscures...It sometimes seems as though there’s a psychological way in which we’ve absorbed the lessons of modularity—although the world is more connected than ever, we seem to have trouble imagining and articulating how we’re linked to the other denizens of global manufacturing networks." Logic: See No Evil, by Miriam Posner (via kottke).
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:33 PM PST - 11 comments

Netflix’s Insatiable Is an Utter Disaster [Vulture] “Well, I’ve seen all twelve — twelve, I tell you, twelve! — episodes of Insatiable, and it turns out the show is not as bad as you imagined. It’s actually worse. Like, worse in ways that you can’t even anticipate. Insatiable is an equal-opportunity train wreck. It doesn’t merely traffic in stereotypes about fat people; it does the same thing with regard to the LGBTQ community, Southerners, women, Christians, conservatives, African-Americans, and probably some other groups I’ve neglected to mention. It makes jokes about pedophilia and statutory rape that made my skin crawl so severely, it physically slid off of my body, got in my car, and drove straight to the beach so it could take a vacation from this show.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:49 PM PST - 54 comments

[…] the mavens of under-fashion still mostly align along the original poles: boxers versus briefs; feral versus domestic; low-rider comfort versus high-ball style. In recent years, that divide has gained an existential edge, with various studies suggesting that wearing tight-fitting underwear may be bad for the underwearer. Semen worsens in quality when exposed to higher-than-normal temperatures for too long. Could tighty-whities be a threat to humankind? This week, a team of researchers at Harvard published the largest and most definitive study of the subject to date, and the findings are compelling. “Men who wore non-boxers”—that is, briefs and their confining kin—“have significantly lower concentrations of sperm and lower sperm counts. […] It’s a numbers issue.”

(Alan Burdick, New Yorker)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:22 PM PST - 43 comments

Ido Portal is a "movement teacher" who works with professional athletes, most notably MMA star Connor MacGregor. His new fitness fad offers a new kind of athletic training that purports to combine "the most potent" aspects of all fitness disciplines, including martial arts, gymnastics, and dance.
posted by chrchr at 1:25 PM PST - 22 comments

If you (a centaur) or a centaur you know are having a heart attack, don't fret: Drs. Wu, Lang and friends are on the case.
posted by Shepherd at 12:17 PM PST - 32 comments

"Bullshit jobs are ones where the person doing them secretly believes that if the job (or even sometimes the entire industry) were to disappear, it would make no difference [to society] — or perhaps, as in the case of say telemarketers, lobbyists, or many corporate law firms, the world would be a better place." Imagining a World With No Bullshit Jobs
posted by AFABulous at 11:53 AM PST - 98 comments

Officers in the south-western city of Karlsruhe responded to the call for help and arrived to see the creature still terrorising the caller.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:23 AM PST - 56 comments

Native Americans push schools to include their story in California history classes [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:29 AM PST - 16 comments

The New Progressive Agenda Project gives policymakers and advocates reliable congressional district and state-level polling data that would normally be out of reach for even the best-funded campaign. In the coming weeks, we’ll be periodically releasing new data on progressive proposals that are message-tested and ready to be introduced in the 116th Congress. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand makes the case for family leave - Senator Tammy Baldwin makes the case for employee governance (also known as worker co-determination) - Senator Cory Booker makes the case for a federal investment in fair housing - State Senate candidate Zellnor Myrie looks at public housing from a state perspective - State Senator Kevin de León makes the case for free college - Political scientist David Faris makes the case for DC, Puerto Rico and territory statehood. Polling The Left Agenda: numbers show support for broad leftist policy among rural, urban, and suburban voters.
posted by The Whelk at 8:47 AM PST - 6 comments

It may be from little Spruce Pine, North Carolina. There's lots of mineral wealth in the southern Appalachians, and the best and purest quartz sand is found in a tiny town in Mitchell County NC. Without it, you don't get your fancy phones and the like.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:39 AM PST - 9 comments

On this day in 1966, William Shatner recorded the opening narration to Star Trek. You know it best by its opening words, "Space ... the final frontier." But it didn't start out that way. [more inside]
posted by zooropa at 7:38 AM PST - 42 comments

Maeve Higgins writes on Irishness, immigration, and race: Being white in America is so potent, so seductive, it can blind a person without them knowing it. Being white can make a whole community forget who they are and where they came from. The year Frederick Douglass visited Ireland was the year the country began its terrible spiral into a famine that ultimately killed a million people. There had been food shortages before, and the extent of the disaster was not yet clear, but he writes in a letter of the horror of leaving his house and being confronted with the sight of hungry children begging on the street. It’s painful to look through that lens at the present and see so many powerful Irish-Americans, like Paul Ryan, whose great-great-grandfather survived the famine and fled to America in 1851, doing everything they can to stop today’s refugees from entering the very country that gave their family sanctuary when they most needed it. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 7:34 AM PST - 35 comments

Universal basic income hasn't made me rich. But my life is more enriching: "The Finnish basic income trial, of which I am part, finishes at the end of the year. Having been interviewed by nearly 70 separate media outlets, from the BBC to Le Figaro, the question I have been asked most often has been: how has the basic income trial changed my life? My answer is simple. In money terms, my life has not changed at all. However, the psychological effects of this human experiment have been transformative. I vastly prefer basic income to a benefits system fraught with complicated forms, mandatory courses and pointless obligations... it gives you security to chase other opportunities. It pushes you to seek fulfilling work – and isn't that what unemployment benefits should do?" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 AM PST - 36 comments

I interviewed the oldest people I know. Their responses contradict popular research about aging and happiness [slMedium]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:16 AM PST - 40 comments

Japanese fart scrolls. In European medieval marginalia you get a lot of dick jokes, as well as weird sex and people sticking things up bums but farts are a bit less common. Of course fart jokes exist, because monks and scribes are only human and farts are hilarious (don't ask me why so many people are fighting snails though). [more inside]
posted by auntie-matter at 4:14 AM PST - 17 comments

As Beyonce takes over Vogue Magazine, she has some stuff to say. Beyoncé In Her Own Words. (SL Vogue)
posted by hippybear at 4:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Calgary becomes the latest city to add artfully designed manhole covers to their sewage system. Three artists have been selected to depict the various part of the water treatment system. [more inside]
posted by arcticseal at 2:55 AM PST - 7 comments

Why Adults Can't Develop Perfect Pitch, Or How to teach your infants to learn perfect pitch. (slyt)
posted by tresbizzare at 9:59 PM PST - 49 comments

Resusci Anne would likely take issue with his technique, but it's hard to argue with success (slyt, annoying background music). An expert at National Geographic weighs in on the question regarding whether or not the rescuer knows that shaking the rescuee and dropping it in puddled water can reanimate it. Answer: It's difficult to say.
posted by she's not there at 8:50 PM PST - 7 comments

Where Have South Africa’s Great Whites Gone? "The world’s most famous sharks are the great whites off Cape Town, featured in the popular “Air Jaws” series. But now these sharks have mostly gone missing, and some experts blame a fishery for depleting the smaller sharks that the great whites feed on."
posted by brundlefly at 5:15 PM PST - 12 comments

What Does Nintendo's Shutdown Of ROM-Sharing Sites Mean For Video Game Preservation? [Nintendo Life] “The recent news that Nintendo is taking legal action against two sites which illegally distributed ROMs has been met with an overwhelmingly positive response, and rightly so. The individuals sharing these files online care little for the intellectual property rights of the developers who slave away to make the games we get hours of enjoyment out of, and instead leverage the growing interest in retro gaming purely to plaster their sites with garish advertisements for mail-order girlfriends and other dubious businesses. Nintendo – a company traditionally very protective of its IP – has struck a blow which will hopefully have long-term ramifications for the entire industry.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:38 PM PST - 67 comments

A rule in Australia's parliamentary rulebook states that constituents may request a portrait of the Queen from their federal MP, which they are entitled to receive free of charge. (The rule also includes portraits of the royal consort, Prince Phillip, as well as flags, recordings of the National Anthem and other “nationhood materials”.) This rule, which dates back to 1990, is unique to Australia: citizens in the UK may request portraits of the Queen but have to pay for them. Since the hitherto obscure rule was publicised in a story in VICE Magazine a few days ago, Australians have been exercising their rights, inundating their MPs with requests for monarchic merch, though not everyone is happy with this. [more inside]
posted by acb at 3:27 PM PST - 33 comments

If you want to be like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, adopt their voracious reading habits (Quartz) -- it's a story line that comes back every few years. "From Mark Zuckerberg to Bill Gates, all of the most successful leaders are avid readers" -- Why You Should Read 50 Books This Year (And How To Do It) (Fast Company). Is that target too low? How to read 100 books a year (Observer). But if a specific number of books is a daunting target, instead focus on the fact that It's Never Too Late to Be a Reader Again (Wired). Still looking for inspiration to grab a book? There's a video for that! Make that many videos! Behold BookTube! (Wikipedia) Here's A Beginner’s Guide to BookTube (Bookriot), and Meet the YouTube Stars Turning Viewers Into Readers (NYT).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:36 PM PST - 58 comments

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced they will be adding a new award category for "popular film.". Critical reaction is not mixed: The Oscars' New 'Popular Film' Award Is An Awful Idea [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:24 PM PST - 77 comments

Animals interrupting wildlife photographers
posted by gwint at 1:57 PM PST - 20 comments

Inside the 20 year journey of The Meg, from a novel pretty much explicitly designed to be the basis of a movie to a movie starring Jasom Statham with a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Previously. Science and stuff.
posted by Artw at 12:52 PM PST - 96 comments

Is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Actually About Coming Out? An excerpt from My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum, of Pop Rocket and Talk Show: The Game Show fame.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:41 AM PST - 42 comments

Stop me if you've heard this one: seven Dave Grohls walk into a studio... and record a 23-minute instrumental track. Be sure to watch the lead-in mini-documentary featuring kids talking about their experiences learning an instrument, then check out the charts, multi-track audio (and video), and a list of organizations supporting and providing music education.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:13 AM PST - 24 comments

Point: Salad is overrated (Tamar Haspel, Washington Post). Counterpoint: Iceberg lettuce is superior (Helen Rosner, New Yorker). [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 11:06 AM PST - 73 comments

One day, Lacy conducted an experiment... [more inside]
posted by haemanu at 10:32 AM PST - 29 comments

First Nations people don’t believe in crossing the border, but the imaginary boundaries we’re forced to move between can create very real divides. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 AM PST - 31 comments

Keeping Trials Honest by keeping them short and sensible America has a legal system which makes trials so long and expensive that plea bargaining and the conviction of innocent people is inevitable. Germany does it better. [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:14 AM PST - 30 comments

Pop Culture Critic Extraordinaire Lindsay Ellis (many previouslies) takes on the new Star Wars films with the question: What is the Ideology of the First Order?
posted by Navelgazer at 8:43 AM PST - 32 comments

Why Portland? And will it ever stop? "Last weekend, 400 people, mostly men, met in a parking lot along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash., girded for battle. They carried helmets and shields. They wore full suits of futuristic combat armor, Boba Fett helmets and homemade Pepe the Frog costumes. They clambered onto private school buses and drove into enemy territory: Portland. Within hours, the streets of the Rose City were filled with strange sights that have recently become common in Portland: neon chemical smoke, men in costumes throwing punches, and riot cops charging into battle." [more inside]
posted by A. Davey at 7:17 AM PST - 82 comments

Something Digs Intricate Tunnels in Garnets. Is It Alive? "Furthermore, the tunnels branch and connect with each other in a very unusual pattern, looking a bit like the structures made by some kinds of single-celled fungus colonies. "
posted by dhruva at 5:53 AM PST - 21 comments

25 words we only use to describe women (SLTelegraph.co.uk)
posted by Caduceus at 5:45 AM PST - 62 comments

The most recent episode of BBC World Service's series In The Studio [iPlayer link, 27m] (half-hour profiles of artists of various flavors) featured Anna Meredith and Richard Slaney who created a musical and visual performance piece for the BBC Proms for the centenary of the First World War. It's worth a listen (details under the fold) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:10 AM PST - 3 comments

"On October 15, 1910, Kiddo the cat became the first of his kind to attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean by airship—and he wasn’t very happy about it." [more inside]
posted by Rob Rockets at 9:36 PM PST - 21 comments

"The last thing you want is to get blindsided by a future YOU helped create. The Ethical OS is here to help you see more clearly." [more inside]
posted by Paragon at 4:15 PM PST - 47 comments

The Allies started the final offensive on the Western Front. On August 8, 1918 began what history would call the Hundred Days Offensive; it would end WWI's terrible Western Front before the year was out. In front of Amiens a Canadian, Australian, British, American, and French attack used tanks and air power to drive deeply into German lines, winning surprise, causing panic, and capturing many prisoners. Shortly afterward the German command realized the war was over. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 2:34 PM PST - 23 comments

Stack Overflow, and by extension Stack Exchange, has released its new Code of Conduct, guiding user behavior. It looks like it has potential to make the site better and more welcoming for the many who need programming help.
posted by Quackles at 2:32 PM PST - 23 comments

You may have seen those metal fitness ... things in your local park, found around the world from Brisbane to New York City, but how do you use them? San Antonio Parks has tutorial videos on YouTube and Fit Trail provides (smallish) illustrations for 20 stations, including some that don't require installed features. And if you're not sure which to use, Shape has the best and worst of fitness playground equipment. Don't have any of that gear? Benches and tire swings can be used. Find a sturdy beam and you're on your way to doing 25 pull ups. Or skip the gear and get started towards 100 push ups, 150 dips, 200 squats, 200 lunges and 200 sit-ups. Or mix it up and check out Darebee's workout routines and challenges.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:06 PM PST - 16 comments

How Europe Learnt to Swim [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:02 PM PST - 17 comments

Abortion is banned in Argentina except for cases of rape or risk to a woman’s health. That could change today if the country’s Senate votes to legalize abortion up to 14 weeks. A bill passed the country's lower house of Congress nearly two months ago by a slim margin. "Senators will now decide whether to send the bill on to President Mauricio Macri — who, despite his personal misgivings, has said he would sign it into law." This would make Argentina the most populous country in Latin America to legalize abortion. Hundreds of thousands of pro-choice activists (wearing green) and anti-choice activists (wearing sky blue) are now protesting in the capitol, Buenos Aires. Many are young women. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:26 PM PST - 11 comments

Right now: A live video feed of bears trying to catch fish (and occasionally fighting each other or snapping at gulls) at Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park, Alaska. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 1:13 PM PST - 46 comments

They made ammo and noxious chemicals turned them yellow. The Act also forced factories to employ women because of the shortage of able-bodied men, most of which were fighting the war. By the end of the war, the British government had more than four thousand munitions factories under its control, employing nearly a million female workers. While women who worked the assembly lines were spared the horrors of the trenches, their jobs were no less dangerous. Munitions factories were often the enemy’s prime target with sites routinely flattened by bombing. There was also the risk of explosions.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:34 PM PST - 12 comments

Wired: Captive Audience: How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send An Email
posted by axiom at 12:16 PM PST - 25 comments

Brooke Bolander proves she can write non-depressing things with The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat, a wonderful and inspiring fairy tale for young raptor chicks and also witches.
posted by jeather at 12:04 PM PST - 15 comments

Laetitia Sadier, former frontwoman of outspokenly Marxist lounge-pop groop Stereolab, has distanced herself from a statement she made in February in support of the right-wing firebrand and self-help author Jordan Peterson. Sadier's statements, posted to Twitter in response to a Guardian article, was brought to light recently following Peterson being photographed with popular faux-folk combo Mumford & Sons. [more inside]
posted by acb at 10:00 AM PST - 117 comments

Watching the flicker of my own thoughts, I became convinced that, as the poet Elizabeth Bishop put it, “nothing stranger could ever happen” than to wake up and find oneself a human being.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:34 AM PST - 24 comments

For a couple of years now, a Twitter account dedicated to unappetizing stills from cookbooks dating from my childhood has ranked as one of my favorites—I refer of course to 70s Dinner Party. This may have been inevitable but that account has recently been one-upped by a new arrival, the hilarious and eternally puzzling account 70s Adult Titles ("mostly safe-for-work").

[NSFW] (via Dangerous Minds)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:15 AM PST - 66 comments

“There are bigger allegations. Over several months, in speaking with 21 people who know Ross, Forbes uncovered a pattern: Many of those who worked directly with him claim that Ross wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there, huge amounts for most but not necessarily for the commerce secretary. At least if you consider them individually. But all told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 million. If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history.” New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Business Point To Pattern Of Grifting (Forbes)
posted by The Whelk at 8:53 AM PST - 25 comments

Indigenous Asylum Seekers Face Language Barriers and a Legacy of Oppression at the Border [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:32 AM PST - 2 comments

“I Can’t Stop Laughing” in which living legend and EGOT winner Rita Moreno tells the story of her memorable performance of “Fever” accompanied by Animal and the Electric Mayhen on “The Muppet Show”.
posted by chrchr at 6:55 AM PST - 50 comments

"It is beyond honest dispute that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action." This is the story of one of the survivors of America's seventeen years and counting in Afghanistan, Specialist Robert Soto of Bravo Company, First Battalion, 26th Infantry, and the year he spent at a remote outpost in the Korengal Valley. [more inside]
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:29 AM PST - 27 comments

"I really wanted to like @NathanielRich's @NYTmag piece about 70's & 80's climate politics. It does put AGW front-and-center for once. But I'm crushed to say that Rich suppresses important facts, covering up how organized climate denial created our current predicament. [Thread]" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM PST - 20 comments

Teased with a series of street art pieces and a warped press release from, ahem, Warp Records, Aphex Twin has announced a new forthcoming EP, Collapse, with the release of track 'T69 Collapse' (warning: may trigger epilepsy.)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:12 AM PST - 15 comments

The Choice of Whether to Hear We interviewed 14 of Dr. Madell’s former [Cochlear Implant] patients, those young enough to be born after cochlear implantation was viable yet old enough to have insight into the experience. They had navigated the frontiers of deafness, disability and the human experience. They spoke to us about identity, sexual intimacy and coming of age somewhere between sound and silence. And they talked about the sometimes wrenching decision of whether to hear or not. That’s a choice most of us will never make.
posted by Toddles at 7:57 PM PST - 7 comments

You can now buy a pair of Nintendo-themed Air Jordans for $1250 [Moneyish] [Pepsi Nintendo Blue] “Only ten pairs of the Jordan “NES” IVs will be made, but at $1,250 each, they aren’t cheap (FreakerSneaks is selling an “NBA Jam”-themed pair of kicks at a similar price.) That said, though the shoes weren’t made with the imprimatur of Nintendo, FreakerSneaks knows there’s a market of now wealthy Gen Xers who grew up playing NES that will be willing to shell out.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:06 PM PST - 22 comments

Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields (SLDeadspin) — Baseball consensus holds that umpires only get noticed when they make a bad call. Steve Fields’ career as a major league ump was bookended by two calls that put him in the spotlight. But he went to his grave insisting both were right.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:05 PM PST - 26 comments

It's been a thing lately, fake bot scripts created after said bot has endured 1,000 hours of various media, and the fake bot version of a Sarah Sanders press briefing by comedian Keaton Patti has some choice lines. A page devoted to such is I Forced A Bot.
posted by Mr.Pointy at 2:16 PM PST - 30 comments

Solving The 'Wage Puzzle': Why Aren't Paychecks Growing? With the national unemployment rate in the US at 3.9% in July, and parts of the country nearing full employment, if The Economy Is This Good why Aren't Wages Rising Faster? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:46 PM PST - 135 comments

The unimaginability of sexual or romantic desire between women that gives intimacy its alibi works in tandem with that other thing: the way in which we all grow up knowing not just that women can be used, but how to use them. We internalize both. We learn—we all learn—that we can lean on women in ways that we can’t lean on men, and, at the same time, that that leaning, the bodily closeness of it, is elevated, more pure, more innocent for its lack of want. We’re all complicit, and we’re all suffering.

But some of us do want, too. -- Sadie Graham: how our cultural obsession with platonic 'girlfriends' sidelines queer women
posted by MartinWisse at 11:44 AM PST - 83 comments

New Manhattan Projects. Ian Hogarth (Twitter) explores how increasingly important AI can play a role in a new geopolitics. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 11:03 AM PST - 6 comments

Workplace Wellness Programs Don’t Work Well. Why Some Studies Show Otherwise. Randomized controlled trials, despite their flaws, remain a powerful tool. (SLNYT by Aaron E. Carroll)
posted by crazy with stars at 10:14 AM PST - 48 comments

Matt Tomasello AKA "Rodney Mullen on Bath Salts" (SLYT skate video). Gets interesting around 0:40. [more inside]
posted by mullacc at 9:48 AM PST - 16 comments

You didn’t think any of the press about your being “difficult” or your drinking or your illness was cynical?
The “difficult” thing was pure gender crap. If a man comes on set and says, “Here’s how I see this being done,” people go, “He’s decisive.” If a woman does it, they say, “Oh, fuck. There she goes.”

What’s an example of that happening to you?
Here’s one that was very nicely resolved with [Coppola]: [...] I had dreamed a scene where my character was coming down the stairs [...] In my dream the camera was there. When I got on set, the camera was here. I was disoriented. I said to Francis, “The camera’s supposed to be over there” [...] and he went, “No, it’s not.” I said, “I’m telling you it should be over there.” He goes, “Well, it’s over here.” So we made a deal [...] He said that if I gave him as many takes as he wanted from where he had set the camera, he would give me two takes from where I wanted the camera. And guess what happened?

The take he used was from your spot?
Damn right.

Kathleen Turner, In Conversation
posted by griphus at 9:41 AM PST - 58 comments

These oldest buildings in each state are surprising, some by date, some by history.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:15 AM PST - 30 comments

Rich Francis is reclaiming and reinventing an erased food culture. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:22 AM PST - 20 comments

Gina Wohlsdorf writes for CrimeReads: Jean Harris was in a seriously embattled position at work, she was addicted to prescription meth, and her boyfriend of a decade and a half was slo-mo dumping her for a twinkie he had on the side. If she’d just outlined all that for the jury (the humiliation, the stress, the drugs) and followed it by saying, very simply, “Then I lost it and shot him,” she’d have been a free woman in a couple of years. This is not even debated, anywhere, in the ridiculously plentiful literature on Jean Harris’s case. But here’s what she said instead... [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 8:12 AM PST - 8 comments

Land of the Strays is a short documentary about Lya Battle and her dog sanctuary in Costa Rica. (Previously)
posted by dobbs at 7:37 AM PST - 3 comments

Is that her?? Fiction author Joe Hill describes his interest in a 1974 unsolved murder and the possibility that the victim was an extra in the filming of JAWS. Full disclosure: Joe Hill's dad is a pretty good writer too.
posted by JanetLand at 7:14 AM PST - 9 comments

How to catch meteors! NASA has tips for those of you who live where you can see the meteor showers and have a camera handy!! Perseid Meteor Shower is Coming up!!!
posted by Yellow at 7:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Premier Doug Ford breaks a campaign promise and discontinues a basic income project begun by the Liberals, but hey, he's unveiling his Buck a Beer plan today. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 6:55 AM PST - 57 comments

Social media isn't always a disaster; sometimes good things come out it as well. For example, at Lollapalooza this year, somebody gave Carly Rae Jepsen a sword. [more inside]
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:17 AM PST - 46 comments

All Reproduction Is Assisted (Merve Emre, Boston Review).
posted by sapagan at 6:00 AM PST - 4 comments

William Shatner’s ‘Has Been’: The Album That Broke Indie Rock for Good -- Dan Ozzi puts Shatner's first album since the 1970s* in context, in "a powerhouse [year] for indie rock" and the last year physical album sales trended up** in any serious way, then evaluates the album itself. "Has Been (YT Playlist; Wiki) is such an odd record—even the premise seems absurd: a then 73-year-old self-admitted past-his-prime C-list celebrity doing his. Trademark. Style of. Shattneresque break-talking. Over a. Pensive and… artful soundtrack? Composed. By. Respected musician... Ben Folds? ... [Pitchfork] praised Shatner as “the ultimate icon for Generation Irony” and noted that the album’s “humor and candor give it a fair amount of staying power.” " [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:28 PM PST - 57 comments

There are multitudinous reasons why Sturgeon deserves to be better remembered than he already is, and we would probably require several conferences just to begin discussing them. [T]he strange beauty of Sturgeon’s stories has something to do with the weird incongruity they share with their own generic intentions; the technophilic logic of his plots never quite jives with Sturgeon’s compassion for his most fallible, messy and illogical characters. [more inside]
posted by craniac at 9:08 PM PST - 29 comments

Ancient Greek music: now we finally know what it sounded like by [The Conversation] “...the sense and sound of ancient Greek music has proved incredibly elusive. This is because the terms and notions found in ancient sources – mode, enharmonic, diesis, and so on – are complicated and unfamiliar. And while notated music exists and can be reliably interpreted, it is scarce and fragmentary. What could be reconstructed in practice has often sounded quite strange and unappealing – so ancient Greek music had by many been deemed a lost art. But recent developments have excitingly overturned this gloomy assessment. A project to investigate ancient Greek music that I have been working on since 2013 has generated stunning insights into how ancient Greeks made music.” [YouTube][Documentary][15:39] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:29 PM PST - 39 comments

In some sense, Vim is only the latest iteration of a piece of software—call it the “wq text editor”—that has been continuously developed and improved since the dawn of the Unix epoch. 2500 words from TwoBitHistory.
posted by cgc373 at 4:34 PM PST - 74 comments

Dick Cavett, at 81, is killing it on Twitter but won't speculate on who might be the "next Cavett" on late-night TV. Most likely there never will be another one quite like Cavett, who was advised by Jack Paar not to interview his guests but to have a conversation with them. Cavett's tweet about Trump shows he can still pierce with the old dry wit. Oh, and even though a guest did die on his show, you never actually saw it on TV.
posted by briank at 3:03 PM PST - 16 comments

18 Cartons of Ted Nelson's Junk Mail. Preserved. [more inside]
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 2:08 PM PST - 16 comments

Jean Shepard's short (3 mins) interview about the plane crash that killed her husband and Patsy Cline. Shepard had a 15 month old baby and was eight months pregnant when her husband died. Four Opry stars died in the crash, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, Randy Hughes, and Patsy Cline. Here is the front page article in the Nashville Banner just after the crash. Here is a previous post about Cline.
posted by OmieWise at 1:56 PM PST - 2 comments

As more and more online accounts are breached, two factor authentication or multi-factor authentication (also shorthanded by 2FA or MFA) is becoming the next stop in account security. [more inside]
posted by deezil at 1:04 PM PST - 78 comments

The California Review of Images and Mark Zuckerberg is out with its 2^nd edition documenting the perpetually apologetic mogul's visual culture. [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 12:33 PM PST - 5 comments

From Merriam-Webster: 8 insults made up of a noun and a verb [more inside]
posted by numaner at 10:29 AM PST - 55 comments

Law and Sausages is a new project launched by the excellent Zach Weinersmith, of SMBC, SMBC theater, Soonish and the BAH fest. It's about American civics and law.
posted by es_de_bah at 10:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Alex Jones has been banned by Facebook, Apple, and Spotify Companies have started to target conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show more broadly, rather than pulling specific episodes.
posted by hippybear at 9:07 AM PST - 240 comments

These robotic limbs could someday help people work together when they’re far apart. Still very early, and obviously clunky, but an interesting story and prototype.
posted by RickLiebling at 8:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Native Land highlights territories, treaties, and languages across the U.S., Canada, and beyond. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Abdul El-Sayed, The 32-year-old charismatic Muslim doctor is running for governor of Michigan and in the process trying to change US politics (The Guardian) his speech : The Epidemic Of Poverty and the Goverment Imperative . Abdul El-Sayed’s State level single payer plan everyone should be talking about (Current Affairs) One thing that immediately stands out is that, from Abdul on down, this is an undeniably youthful campaign. Almost everyone with a lanyard appears to be between twenty-three and thirty-five years old—an augur of the kind of voter that the El-Sayed team needs to turn out in droves to reverse the usual geriatric composition of the mid-term primary electorate. (The Baffler) Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are joining forces to elect an underdog but potentially history-making candidate on the ballot in Michigan (Politico) Abdul El-Sayed’s Policy Platform. The first-ever political endorsement from the Current Affairs editorial board The Michigan gubatoral debate (YouTube) [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 8:00 AM PST - 87 comments

In "Broken Time: 'Nardis' and the Curious History of a Jazz Obsession", MeFi's own Steve "digaman" Silberman brings us the story of the "Pale, bespectacled, and soft-spoken" jazz pianist Bill Evans and his obsession with Miles Davis's modal composition "Nardis". Evans recorded more than a dozen versions over the next twenty-plus years and played it countless times live. Davis never recorded the song himself, and said that only Evans played it "the way it was meant to be played".
posted by Etrigan at 6:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Film critic and Metafilter fave Lindsay Ellis (previously on Metafilter) on That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast. [more inside]
posted by Ziggy500 at 6:15 AM PST - 29 comments

"Sugar is survival. It is a respite for palates swept clean of childish joy for too long. It is sexual desire and pleasure, and also temptation and sin. And it is a commodity, one historically produced with some of the most brutal labor practices on the planet. In the Western imagination, sugar is pleasure, temptation, and vice — and in modern history, it is original sin." Sugartime, by food writer and 2013 Great British Bake Off contestant Ruby Tandoh
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:14 AM PST - 6 comments

My mission to ruin a $250 Wagyu steak nearly destroyed my family -- Over the course of three days, I prepared this steak five different ways and, in the process, I developed a relationship with the steak. It became my secret lover. It even caused legitimate tension between my wife and me. Drew Magary for The Takeout
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:33 AM PST - 46 comments

The latest Oglaf is not one, not two, but twenty-four pages long. It depicts the struggle of Kronar, wrathful eagle of blood, against the sorcery of scented candles. I’m still hoping for more Son of Kronar one day. (Some pages probably nsfw, others on the site radically so) Previously. Previouslier.
posted by Segundus at 11:16 PM PST - 34 comments

Barry Elliott, professionally known as Barry Chuckle one half of the Chuckle Brothers has died. I'm at a loss quite how to describe it, it's a little like if Sooty or Sweep died. That the brothers worked together successfully for so many years and managed to make themselves a positive part of so many generations' childhood memories is a testament to the man. The BBC site has a selection of photos of his career, going back to early success in iconic '60s and '70s talent shows. Tellingly many of the pictures show both Barry and Paul together, who were not only brothers, but also comedy partners for most of their lives.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 10:29 PM PST - 22 comments

The great Charlotte Rae who will always be remembered as Mrs. Garrett from Diff'rent Strokes and the Facts of Life has passed away at 92. I "reconnected" with her recently after spotting her in the first season of Sesame Street, as the postwoman. A quick search brought me to this wonderful long-form interview with her on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation's website (which has hundreds of in-depth interviews with TV legends).
posted by thirdring at 9:24 PM PST - 39 comments

Seven castaways found on remote island in Canada. “Two men fishing near Cross Lake in Manitoba, Canada, came across a small island with some peculiar castaways on Monday. JR Cook and his friend, Leon, were boating by the island when they heard what sounded like crying. They weren't sure who – or what – it was, and it was getting too dark to investigate.”
posted by darkstar at 7:12 PM PST - 42 comments

This Coder Fit a Bootable CD and Video Game Into a Tweet [Motherboard] “A few weeks ago, Alok Menghrajani, a security engineer at Square, set out to challenge himself. He wanted to fit a bootable CD-ROM, and a retro video game inside it, into a tweet.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:17 PM PST - 29 comments

“This country has beautiful highways, it has beautiful malls. All of you with the means have cars. Lights don’t go out. Phones don’t cut out. Water doesn’t get shut off,” he said of the United States. “So why is it that via Viber, via Facebook, via YouTube, you all spend every night in Ethiopia?” Hannah Giorgios writes about how the Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora are responding to Ethiopia's new prime minister. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 2:12 PM PST - 7 comments

Discovering the Archaeologists of Africa is a project to identify how many archaeologists work in Africa, what they do, what their skills and qualifications are and then to use these data to help build capacity across the continent. [more inside]
posted by Panjandrum at 1:24 PM PST - 5 comments

"The web’s largest and most diversified private collection of antiques & collectibles"
posted by growabrain at 10:13 AM PST - 6 comments

More than 3,000 geese died what were surely horrible deaths—some of them washed to shore dead, others sunk into the Pit, while still others took off and were found dead days later in parking lots and other places around the region. And yet right now, before us, the Pit shimmers like a Tahitian lagoon, and I am fully seduced by its aural glow. “Isn’t it something?” whispers Barb.

Toxic Tourism in Montana.
posted by Rumple at 10:08 AM PST - 22 comments

10 of the best words in the world (that don't translate into English)
posted by Memo at 9:31 AM PST - 102 comments

Your lede: President Trump today confessed that his son, son-in-law, and campaign chair met in June 2016 with Russian agents in hope of obtaining Russian intelligence to sway the 2016 election. Trump - who denies advance knowledge of the meeting - defends it as "totally legal." [more inside]
posted by box at 8:06 AM PST - 1597 comments

Fighting Erasure is a series by writer and critic James Davis Nicoll where he recommends books by female science fiction and fantasy writers who debuted in the 1970s. It's in ten parts: A-F, G, H, I-J, K, L, M, N-P, R-S, and T-Z. Some writers Nicoll hasn't read, or has missed, are discussed in comments. He was inspired to start the series by Jeanne Gomoll's classic 1987 essay An Open Letter to Joanna Russ, which noted that erasure of the previous decade's women writers and fans had already begun, and Susan Schwartz' 1982 article in the New York Times about women and science fiction.
posted by Kattullus at 3:49 AM PST - 37 comments

In which Jay Rayner struggles to travel through England on public transport - “One train is cancelled. Another sits outside Swindon for an hour, unwilling to enter, as if it’s been there before and is in no hurry to repeat the experience” - but reaches The Painswick and enjoys a splendid lunch. Other recent positive reviews include the crab chip butty and the fried cheese sandwich. [Some previous Jay Rayner]
posted by Wordshore at 2:40 AM PST - 17 comments

What “M*A*S*H” Taught Us

Lost among this year’s observances of the paradigm-shifting cultural events of 1968 is the fiftieth anniversary of the book “MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors,” a little-remembered shaggy-dog volume by Richard Hooker that engendered fourteen more novels; a feature-film adaptation (directed by the then up-and-coming Robert Altman); and one of the highest-rated television series of all time.

posted by infini at 2:02 AM PST - 53 comments

L’Aviatrice, a short animated film inspired by Jacqueline Auriol, France's first female test pilot. (SLVimeo, French with English subtitles)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:03 AM PST - 6 comments

It's a category violation: both mod and game, both goal-based and open-ended, both scripted and procedurally-generated. It's a boundary violation: a dimensional tram takes players to randomly selected GMod maps. It's a CRIMINAL violation: one of the main goals is to commit larceny and steal every prop and (after an equipment upgrade) solid surface in the joint at the behest of four adorable talking cats. From the creators of Elevator: Source (previously) comes the most unique GMod game mode ever made, for 1 to 16 players: JAZZTRONAUTS! (Reading the entire FAQ is a super-must. There's even more info at their Twitter account. Game has received patches, and more are forthcoming after a short break.)
posted by BiggerJ at 10:55 PM PST - 1 comment

Fox Amoore (previously) and Pepper Coyote [previously] team up to create a song about wanting a fursuit in a truly furry way. And it is glorious.
posted by hippybear at 9:19 PM PST - 2 comments

The booming business of luxury chicken diapers [The Outline] “Then Baker started getting orders. Lots of them. Though at first she was mainly selling to her friends who attended poultry shows — to the true chicken die-hards who also like to enter their birds into pseudo-relay-races — in the last few years she’s noticed a shift in her customer base. Even people without deep connections to the poultry world want her diapers so they can take their chickens indoors (and post stylish photos on Instagram). Baker currently sells 500 to 1,000 diapers, which retail for $18 apiece, each month. “There's not a single state that I don't ship to,” Baker said.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:51 PM PST - 65 comments

During my tenure doing sex toy retail, I saw thousands of people attempt to wallpaper over their discomfort by buying the “right” toy to solve their problems. People dropped hundreds of dollars trying to make their partners listen to them, or find them desirable, or care about their pleasure. That’s how afraid they were to communicate. [more inside]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Announced today at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention, Patrick Stewart will reprise his role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new CBS All Access series. [more inside]
posted by Automocar at 2:40 PM PST - 161 comments

Choreographer Chloe Arnold's Emmy Nomination Is a Win for Black Womanhood. Many dream of being nominated for an entertainment award like an Emmy, but few find out exactly how surreal the experience is. Dancer and choreographer Chloe Arnold was so unprepared for the honor, she initially suspected the worst when she began receiving dozens of missed calls and text messages in the middle of the night. [...] After the requisite freakout, Arnold’s next call was to friend and longtime mentor Debbie Allen. And as it turned out, the multi-hyphenate legend was already celebrating her protege’s success. “She was just so proud and she said, “We’re always connected.” [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:13 PM PST - 3 comments

Sent to a Hospital, But Locked in Prison Andrew Butler’s hallucinations and paranoia began last summer. When they persisted into the fall, his father agreed to have him civilly committed — involuntarily sent to the state psychiatric hospital to receive treatment. A few months into his stay at New Hampshire Hospital, Butler was transferred. To a prison.
posted by strelitzia at 12:59 PM PST - 13 comments

To say Lola Dupré makes collages is like saying Neil Cicierega makes music videos. It's true, but not what you're expecting. (h/t madamjujujive)

tumblr | instagram | behance
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:52 PM PST - 3 comments

Cruising Blues and Their Cure By Robert Pirsig (originally published in Esquire, May 1977) "This is the understanding that whether you are bored or excited, depressed or elated, successful or unsuccessful, even whether you are alive or dead, all this is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. The sea keeps telling you this with every sweep of every wave."
posted by JohnR at 12:34 PM PST - 4 comments

"R2-D2 was chosen to have its likeness placed onto collection boxes because his shape is so similar to that of the mailboxes. Additionally, the little droid was selected because it 'embodies the trust and dependability for which the Postal Service is renowned' according to the USPS press release announcing the mailboxes' arrival." The associated Flickr group. via (via)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:23 AM PST - 10 comments

"Eight participants felt sorry for the robot, because it told them about its fears of the darkness." Scientists asked subjects to interact with a robot, then turn it off. Some of the robots protested, and people responded in different ways. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:23 AM PST - 43 comments

After Jerry and Rita Alter passed away, a painting that hung in their bedroom was discovered to be a stolen De Kooning, worth over $100 million. They were a quiet couple that kept to themselves, and friends and family have a hard time believing they could be the thieves. But others aren't so sure.
posted by helloknitty at 6:50 AM PST - 55 comments

The story behind Antoine Dangerfield's viral video of a solidarity wildcat strike of Latino construction workers at a new UPS facility. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 6:49 AM PST - 9 comments

Affordable housing is in crisis. We need trailers now.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:19 PM PST - 62 comments

On the corner couch of a spacious room, a woman wearing a brightly patterned robe sits expectantly. The red hijab that covers her hair is reflected in a glass-fronted cabinet; inside, a framed photograph of her firstborn son takes pride of place between family heirlooms and valuables. A smiling, bearded figure wearing a military jacket, he features in photographs around the room: propped against the wall at her feet, resting on a mantlepiece. A supper of Saudi meze and a lemon cheesecake has been spread out on a large wooden dining table.
posted by standardasparagus at 6:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Nintendo Finally Confirms The Correct Pronunciation For 'NES' [Nintendo Life] “The answer to this age-old conundrum comes from WarioWare Gold of all places, the latest entry to the mischievous Mario villain's series on Nintendo 3DS.

In the museum section of the Japanese version of Wario Ware Gold, you can unlock some slides showcasing the Famicom. Also included is a picture of the NES. Within the description, Nintendo themselves says that “NES” is pronounced “Ness”. ~ 05:42 - 3 Aug 2018 @Farmboyjapan

As you can see, according to Nintendo - via the Japanese version of the game's museum area - the true pronunciation is 'Ness'. The Japanese characters on screen suggest that it should have a soft 's' sound, as opposed to a harsher 'z' sound, and the idea of saying each individual letter is nowhere to be seen.”
posted by Fizz at 4:35 PM PST - 65 comments

About six years ago, there was a Wikipedia edit-a-thon (MetaFilter) for Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating women in STEM by improving the visibility of women in Wikipedia, and there's a commemorative Wikiprojects page. Stemming from another recent edit-a-thon aimed at improving entries on women scientists to address the long-standing gender bias on Wikipedia (MetaFilter, Sept. 18, 2012), folks at Primer, a machine intelligence company, developed Quicksilver to help automate identification of missing scientists, and specifically used at three recent edit-a-thons for improving coverage of women of science (Wired coverage, with additional recognition to 500 Women Scientists for collaborating and inspiring them). You can access a Quicksilver-produced dataset on Github.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:01 PM PST - 8 comments

"They kind of just like took over this neighborhood this morning." The employees of WeRentGoats.com were working on a patch of land in West Boise, Idaho this morning when a few of them found a break in the fence... [more inside]
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:09 PM PST - 63 comments

Today NASA announced the 9 men and women who will take part in the test flights and first missions of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing's CST-100 Starliner. [more inside]
posted by lharmon at 1:00 PM PST - 13 comments

This is etymology. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. In her years of managing the email inbox at Merriam Webster, lexicographer Kory Stamper often had occasion to draft responses that a due respect for the gravitas of that august institution would not allow her to send, so instead she collected them on her blog. [more inside]
posted by firechicago at 12:34 PM PST - 19 comments

The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’. [more inside]
posted by mephron at 12:32 PM PST - 98 comments

"Given how common fire ant stings are, I was surprised at how hard it was to find detailed videos of stinging behaviors... so I decided to see if I (Dr. Adrian Smith) could capture the details of fire ant stings and other behaviors on film."
posted by ChuraChura at 11:58 AM PST - 10 comments

In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir Small Fry, Lisa Brennan-Jobs shares what it felt like to be the daughter of the revered tech leader. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:51 AM PST - 34 comments

Wand Erection? Bone Thugs n' Hermione? The You Know Who? Sirius Black Sabbath? Sugar Rayvenclaw? Nine and 3/4 Inch Nails? What's your favorite #HarryPotterABand?
posted by uncleozzy at 10:57 AM PST - 25 comments

Scientists have discovered a new shape [Nature]. Matt Parker, with some help from Laura Taalman and Clara Grima, is here to explain [YouTube]. [more inside]
posted by noneuclidean at 10:49 AM PST - 7 comments

Two-time WNBA championship winner Devereaux Peters in an Washington Post op-ed: I’m a WNBA player. Men won’t stop challenging me to play one-on-one.
posted by palindromic at 5:17 AM PST - 98 comments

Classical pianist and composer, Nahre Sol has produced a series of videos in which she reacts to music from various other genres and users them as a starting point for her own "pocket piece" compositions: the blues, funk, retro game music, bossa nova, minimalism [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 4:53 AM PST - 2 comments

How we made Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:38 AM PST - 21 comments

Why are there so few queer female coming-of-age movies? [slGuardian] / 14 Feel-Good Summery Lesbian Movies for Summer Lesbianing [slAutostraddle] [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 12:29 AM PST - 25 comments

12 people in Alamance County, NC, have been charged with voting illegally. (SL NYT) All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison. The case began after North Carolina elections officials ran an audit that found 441 felons had voted improperly in the 2016 election. While most local prosecutors did not pursue these cases, the Almance County DA decided to file felony charges.
posted by stillmoving at 11:22 PM PST - 24 comments

It can be argued that Amka’s story doesn’t completely avoid potentially problematic stereotypes. Her transformation from a normal Inuk teenager into a magical shape-shifter is reminiscent of what Michael A. Sheyahshe, in his 2008 book Native Americans in Comic Books, calls the stereotype of the “instant shaman.” This stereotype, writes Sheyahshe, imagines all Indigenous peoples as inherently magical, while ignoring the fact that, within real Indigenous cultures, becoming a shaman “requires a lifetime of knowledge, learning, and practice.”

Anna F. Peppard on How Marvel Created Its New Inuk Superhero
posted by Rumple at 7:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Medical university rigged exams against women: Informed sources say Tokyo Medical University has for years rigged entrance exams to limit its intake of women students, slashing their scores by well over 10 percent across-the-board. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious at 6:21 PM PST - 34 comments

For nine days now, a grieving mother has refused to part with the body of her infant. Her people have been suffering from want, now that the salmon are failing them; one of her relatives is starving to death. Nonetheless, her family members are helping her to carry her burden. This was the first newborn among them in three years.
The mother, an orca called J35 or Tahlequah, has captured sympathy and attention across the world, and inspired a poem: "How to Swim an Elegy."
posted by Countess Elena at 6:03 PM PST - 29 comments

Webzine Perfect Sound Forever takes a look at The Fall's post-2000 studio LPs (all 11 of 'em - previous releases are reviewed here), plus an interview with the final Fall lineup (minus their frontman) and an Mark E Smith tribute from earlier this year. Previously.
posted by porn in the woods at 4:17 PM PST - 8 comments

The Trader Who Made a Massive Short Bet Against Nintendo [Bloomberg] [Autoplay Video] “There’s a new villain in the world of Nintendo Co. Gabriel Plotkin, head of New York hedge fund Melvin Capital Management, has accumulated a $400 million short bet against the Japanese game maker, according to regulatory filings. The former star trader at SAC Capital Advisors accounted for as much as 7 percent of Nintendo’s daily volume in recent weeks, contributing to stock declines since May that have stunned analysts. Investors have been baffled by the sudden swoon and Plotkin’s position may add to their concerns.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Pope Francis has changed the Catechism on the death penalty, declaring it 'inadmissible' in all cases. This represents a change for the church where past popes presided over executions when they governed the Papal States. Today, much media coverage has focused on prominent Catholic politicians, religious leaders, and the Catholic public where their work and/or opinions support the death penalty in at least some cases. More than two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the practice. [more inside]
posted by mosst at 3:57 PM PST - 23 comments

"Why was it so difficult to stream or rent a thirty-year old movie with four major stars?" In Search of the Last Great Video Store -- what started as Kate Hagen's search for a favorite film from the late 1980s turned into an investigation into what streaming platforms don't offer and why, then finding that the few remaining video rental businesses are more often curators and libraries for rare materials, and how the last stores standing are surviving in the age of instant-access streaming content, such as the Vidiot Foundation's Harry Dean Stanton Award, with the first award being given (by David Lynch, naturally) to its namesake. Also, Hagen started a Google Map collection of video stores around the world. (via I'm always feeling, Blue)
posted by filthy light thief at 1:58 PM PST - 65 comments

Last summer (and previously discussed here), the NPR music team put forward a "correction of the historical record" and a new canon, with the top 150 albums by women. It was awesome, and we had a great time mentioning all the other women that they could have mentioned. For an encore, this summer, they have produced The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+, a new list focusing on work by women and non-binary artists whose debut albums or most substantial contributions came after January 1, 2000. The series includes an introduction by Marissa Lorusso as well as additional articles/interviews on curating the list, the stylistic diversity on the list, the foundations laid in the late 1990s, the importance of black and latina artists. You can stream the playlist on your service of choice with the links here. The full list is below the fold. [more inside]
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 12:19 PM PST - 47 comments

"This is a colour that pretends to transcend the vulgar vagaries of this world, all the while remaining mired in its muck." This piece by Kelly Grovier stood out for me, because of his lyrical writing, and artfully-composed phrases, like: "Though purple may have symbolised a higher order, it reeked of a lower ordure."
posted by rbanerjee at 12:01 PM PST - 11 comments

Meet the brave men and women standing up for their land and our environment in the face of violence and threats [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:52 AM PST - 3 comments

If you’ve never had a bean pie, you’re missing out on a lot more than a dessert. Made from navy beans, it was developed by black Muslims in the Nation of Islam in the 1930s. The history of why they created it, and what it represents, tells one of the most essential stories about Muslims in America. And as you’ll see, it is extremely delicious. [more inside]
posted by TheGoodBlood at 11:25 AM PST - 18 comments

San Francisco's Officer Edith (previously) tweets

This is my dog. Her name is Batfink. Her named has evolved from Batfink to batfinger>fingers>fingerling potato>fangers>fang fang and forever onwards to more ridiculous names. Show me your pets and their name evolutions because we need a little respite.

(Pet name evolution previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:10 AM PST - 69 comments

look at this telephone-inventing-ass dude with his tetrahedral kites, all flying Sierpinski pyramids around like he owns the place
posted by cortex at 9:51 AM PST - 27 comments

It's Basically Just Immoral to be Rich. "Because every dollar you have is a dollar you’re not giving to somebody else, the decision to retain wealth is a decision to deprive others."
posted by AFABulous at 9:50 AM PST - 206 comments

Burberry has destroyed more than £28m of its fashion and cosmetic products over the past year. How does the company justify it? (The Guardian) Clothing companies are trashing unsold merchandise instead of donating it. 26 billion pounds of clothing ends up in US landfills each year. (The Outline) Multiple studies have shown synthetic fibers to make up the lion’s share of microplastics found in oceans, rivers and lakes, and clothes made from synthetics (polyester, nylon, and so on) are widely implicated as the source of that pollution. Seabirds are pooping out plastic. (Hakai)
posted by The Whelk at 9:10 AM PST - 42 comments

Professional services company Grant Thornton unveils the Jargon Index It’s easy to fall into the status quo trap of relying on business jargon to make your case. These buzzwords are so prevalent that we decided to track them in our new Jargon Index to help you avoid the most overused corporate-speak. Are you tired of smoke and mirrors and looking to reinvent the wheel? We guarantee paying attention to this index will help you move the needle the next time you’re in a meeting. [more inside]
posted by zooropa at 6:52 AM PST - 133 comments

The Ringer has come out with their 100 Best TV Episodes of the Century. The list is all encompassing, including not just the usual subjects, but genres like animation and reality/competition shows. You can join the conversation on Twitter with #100BestEps.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:23 AM PST - 102 comments

Trompe l'oeil wombat graffito expertly preserved by former graffito removal tech in coastal Victorian town. The local Warnambool Council is happy for it to stay.
posted by hawthorne at 6:20 AM PST - 18 comments

... Todd Carty, Mark Fowler from EastEnders, Ali Campbell, Marty Stuart, General Ratko Mladic, 1930s Tarzan, and Morrisey again, have let themselves go. After being ditched by the BBC, Stewart Lee took a new show, Content Provider on the road. Slightly ironically a filmed version of the show has been broadcast by the BBC and is now available on IPlayer (and no doubt elsewhere). Lee also published a collection of this newspaper columns, slightly confusingly also called, Content Provider. As part of his mandatory digital marketing he talks about it with, Gandalf, Father Christmas, 'a wizard' etc have let themselves go etc... Alan Moore.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:20 AM PST - 19 comments

Looking at art like an artist, we see that Every Painter Paints Himself. Art's Masterpieces, Explained, by Simon Abrahams [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:34 PM PST - 4 comments

John Egerton was more than a Tennessee journalist who crusaded for civil rights. He also foresaw the potential of black and white Southerners coming together over one thing we all have in common: the fact that we eat. He said: The time has come for all of us — traditional and nouvelle cooks and diners, up-scale and down-home devotees, meat-eaters and vegetarians, drinkers and abstainers, growers and processors, scholars and foodlorists, gourmands and the health-conscious, women and men, blacks and whites and other identity groups, one and all — to sit down and break bread together around one great Southern table.”
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:14 PM PST - 3 comments

Chances are that you’ve never heard of General Magic, but in Silicon Valley the company is the stuff of legend. Magic spun out of Apple in 1990 with much of the original Mac team on board and a bold new product idea: a handheld gadget that they called a “personal communicator.” [more inside]
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:02 PM PST - 44 comments

A story at the Hill took over nine seconds to load; at Politico, seventeen seconds; at CNN, over thirty seconds. This is the bullshit web.
posted by ericost at 7:07 PM PST - 68 comments

What color is your car?
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 6:42 PM PST - 40 comments

The World’s Largest Speedo Collection Almost Oozed Away. In 2012, Australia’s Powerhouse Museum discovered that something strange was happening with some of their swimsuits: The Inherent Vice of Speedos.
posted by Hypatia at 2:40 PM PST - 34 comments

What Is QAnon? The Craziest Theory of the Trump Era, Explained (Will Sommer, Daily Beast). "From celebrities to the grassroots, the right is obsessed with the idea there is a secret conspiracy where Hillary is headed for Gitmo. Here’s everything you need to know." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:37 PM PST - 271 comments

No, you probably don’t have a book in you [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:37 PM PST - 82 comments

Bottled, filtered or straight from the tap? With or without additives? When picking a water, even "healthy" water, it's largely a matter of taste (NPR). In most of the U.S., municipal water is as healthy as other commercial water sources, and the biggest concern is due to lead pipes, and NPR has an app a step-by-step guide for that. This is all very focused on municipal water in the United States, so let's turn to the CDC to learn more about other water contaminants, how to identify and mitigate them, with a focus on private wells.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:53 PM PST - 28 comments

What does it take to understand spiders? False eyelashes, capes and face paint "By covering up or adding stripes to the live spiders, then observing interactions between them, Taylor and her students get clues to coloration’s influence. That requires putting makeup on a tiny spider, ... (and) then watches what happens"
posted by dhruva at 10:18 AM PST - 11 comments

"The vast majority of women in America give birth without incident. But each year, more than 50,000 are severely injured. About 700 mothers die. The best estimates say that half of these deaths could be prevented and half the injuries reduced or eliminated with better care."
posted by Lycaste at 9:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “What Is Socialist Feminism?” From 1976 with a new introduction from the author. (Jacobin) [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 8:58 AM PST - 7 comments

If, God forbid, we say something too obscene, Apple is there to remind us that we didn’t really want to say it. [more inside]
posted by Caduceus at 8:58 AM PST - 92 comments

The arrival of European settlers in Ecuador had a profound effect on the country's population and environment. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:35 AM PST - 3 comments

Thieves steal Sweden’s crown jewels and escape in a speedboat
posted by Chrysostom at 8:26 AM PST - 44 comments

The newly formed U.S. Department of Reproductive Control's vision is simple: A reproductive health care system that reflects traditional American values and religious beliefs. And with the current administration's help, they're making great strides. They're putting doctor-patient relationships back where they belong, offering birth control for real Americans, and restoring order to your choices. But some folks, it seems, just can't be pleased.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 7:19 AM PST - 16 comments

Behind the scenes at "The World's Most Peculiar Company"
posted by Bron at 7:13 AM PST - 41 comments

"Nothing makes me happier than a 5-year-old boy laughing at a grown woman acting like a 5-year-old." An excerpt from Parker Posey's Memoir, You're On an Airplane.
posted by like_neon at 6:33 AM PST - 13 comments

Want to move your online data? New service could simplify the transfer to a rival site - "The Data Transfer Project, announced Friday by Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter, would make taking your business elsewhere much easier. If a company hosting your music, photos, calendars, contacts or other important personal data killed a feature, altered a privacy policy, hiked a fee or otherwise made you question why you gave it your time, you could use the tools the 'DTP' is developing to move that information right over to a competing service."
posted by kliuless at 6:30 AM PST - 15 comments

The world's most beautiful libraries - in pictures [more inside]
posted by Thella at 1:23 AM PST - 34 comments

With controversy surrounding the latest edition of the table top rpg Vampire: The Masquerade a new forward in the game book will explicitly condemn fascism and white supremacist ideology and an appendix will give advice on playing a game with mature themes.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:02 AM PST - 37 comments