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Can you resist? Step right up and sample the latest Internet inanity. Someone over on Reddit has created a button that you can either click or not click, according to your own personal inclinations. As I was, before learning of the button, not clicking it, I chose to click it, so that I could experience the full breadth of the system.
posted by rankfreudlite at 8:45 PM PST - 89 comments

Part of a famous lineage of racehorses, Potoooooooo was allegedly named by a witty stablehand after Ireland's most famous crop. After a successful career, he was retired to breed offspring, two which were appropriately named Waxy and Mealy.
posted by bismol at 8:10 PM PST - 25 comments

What is Twitter? One perspective provided in the animated music video Carmen (SLYT) by Stromae
posted by Wolfster at 7:58 PM PST - 14 comments

Dear everywhere else: This is how to do a detour.
posted by aniola at 7:51 PM PST - 13 comments

If you're seeing things
sleepin' in your bed...
yeah yeah yeah

An invisible man,
sleepin' in your bed...
Lemme tell you somethin' —
yeah yeah yeah

Bustin' makes me feel good! [slyt]
posted by rorgy at 5:51 PM PST - 43 comments

The oldest company in the world has been operated by the same family for more than 1300 years and 52 generations. Natasha Lampard looks at Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan and wonders: "What if our 'exits' were bestowing upon someone you love, the thing you have created and crafted with love? What if, instead of focusing on exits, we focused on sticking around?"
posted by DarlingBri at 4:29 PM PST - 26 comments

Toxic, Oxygen-Depleted Oceans May Have Caused a Mass Extinction Event Changes in the ocean may have pushed some species over the edge 200 million years ago. Scientists have discovered that oxygen-depleted toxic oceans had a key role in a mass extinction event during that time. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 4:15 PM PST - 11 comments

The definitive oral history of Max Headroom
posted by figurant at 3:48 PM PST - 55 comments

Tired of video games with soundtracks full of butt rock, gloomy dirges and electronic haze? You're in luck! Games also have a proud tradition of whimsical, charming, jazzy, funky, jaunty, zany, serene, uplifting, and even joyous tunes! [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 3:27 PM PST - 33 comments

On The Island - Brian Wilson, featuring She & Him
posted by nadawi at 3:12 PM PST - 3 comments

Transgender teen comes out in emotional ceremony at Tehiyah Day School

In the middle of the school day on March 13, the community at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito gathered to give a boy his name. The boy in question was a bit older than is typical in a naming ceremony. Wearing a white button-down shirt, gray slacks and red sneakers — with red and blue patches dyed into the sides of his buzzed hair — teenager Tom Sosnik stood at the front of the room and explained to his 26 eighth-grade classmates why he was receiving a new name. "I am no longer Mia. I never really was. And now I finally stand before you in my true and authentic gender identity as Tom," he said. "I stand before you as a 13-year-old boy."

[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 2:51 PM PST - 18 comments

The Writer Will Do Something is choose-your-own adventure game set in the world of project planning. Stuck in a board meeting regarding the second sequel to the fictional Shattergate series, you will face horrors and insanity that only software development could provide. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:42 PM PST - 12 comments

There is crying in science. That’s okay. People cry. Scientists are people. Therefore, scientists cry. So why is it that scientists and academics can get so freaked out by a colleague or student crying?
posted by sciatrix at 1:26 PM PST - 89 comments

Gluten-Free Museum
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:14 PM PST - 25 comments

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone... (full audio on YT) (transcript)

With Major League Baseball season starting its season this Sunday, now is a good time to revisit Bart Giamatti's lyrical ode to the game, "The Green Fields of the Mind." [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:56 AM PST - 31 comments

The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany [New York Times]

In portraying a horde of clones on ‘Orphan Black,’ the actress has created TV’s strangest — and most sophisticated — meditation on femininity.

Previously. Previously. Previously.
posted by Fizz at 11:14 AM PST - 53 comments

70-pound costumes. A major studio pulling out at the last moment. Rejection from every corner. Most of the industry asking its producers, "Are you guys out of your minds?" 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles': The Untold Story of the Movie "Every Studio in Hollywood" Rejected.
posted by zarq at 11:10 AM PST - 42 comments

The Tyranny of the Ill-Fitting, Foul-Smelling, Passion-Deflating, No-Fun Latex Condom
We Should Have a Better Condom by Now. Here’s Why We Don’t.
posted by andoatnp at 11:00 AM PST - 40 comments

Why Frogs Have Taken Over Passover: a comprehensive and captivating survey of frogs in legend and literature, just in time for everybody's plague-ridden holiday remembrance. [via mefi projects]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Recently, my sister forwarded me a picture taken of me in the summer of 1986. I'm standing in front of my parents' pool, holding out a fish I had caught earlier that day. I have one hand on my hip and I'm leaning to the side so as to keep the fish up. What most struck me about the picture were my socks. They cover my entire calf, ending just below my knee. Later that evening, I would sell those same socks for $10 to a guy who lived around the corner. (SLGawker)
posted by josher71 at 10:08 AM PST - 39 comments

Instagrammer louiebaton photographs beer and Lego. [more inside]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:04 AM PST - 7 comments

José Manuel Ballester removes the people from classical paintings, turning da Vinci's Last Supper into a still life, Goya's Third of May into a landscape, Géricault's Raft of the Medusa into a study of flotsam on an empty sea.
posted by Iridic at 8:49 AM PST - 21 comments

In 1940, Albert Einstein was rejected by the US Army for wartime work. He didn't help the war effort until 1943, when he worked part-time for the Navy. The proof? his timecards. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:44 AM PST - 18 comments