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Unveiling Ravenchord: A Radical Piano Redesign from Dan Harden. I'm pretty sure based on the page that this instrument is just a design prototype that hasn't been built. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at; I'd love to hear it played.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:35 PM PST - 54 comments

John D. Clare of 'Facts and the teaching of History' posits: "EH Carr's What is History?...Carr - very correctly - argues that 'the belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively independent of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy." Then it unravels into historiographical relevance of fact. Nearly 20 years later, the methodology of History/ historiography is changing. 'How AI is helping historians better understand our past' and 'Digital doping for Historians: Can history, memory, and historical theory be rendered artificially intelligent'
posted by clavdivs at 9:59 PM PST - 6 comments

Bram Moolenaar, the Dutch software engineer, creator and maintainer of long-lived text editor Vim, has died.
posted by cgc373 at 7:21 PM PST - 70 comments

In today's special episode, we're looking back at the CRAZIEST TOTK builds from July. (SLYT)
posted by rebent at 6:48 PM PST - 8 comments

The Rotten Science Behind the MSG Scare by Sam Kean is a brief history of the MSG scare, when a single letter by Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, led to a racist reaction that touched off decades of panic around the seasoning monosodium glutamate. Over the decades, two men claimed to be the authors of the letter, Dr. Kwok and a Dr. Howard Steel. The latter even told his story to a professor at his alma mater, Dr. Jennifer LeMesurier, who had written a detailed journal article tracing the history of the racist myth. However, Dr. Steel’s story fell apart when reporter Lilly Sullivan looked into it for This American Life.
posted by Kattullus at 4:32 PM PST - 72 comments

The 20 Year Evolution of Fast and Furious Car Chases [1h11m, CineFix/IGN] was released before Fast X, but there's still plenty of material there. If you like this kind of thing, you'll like this.
posted by hippybear at 2:54 PM PST - 13 comments

At a GameStop store on Launch Day of PS2 in 2000 [YouTube] ““There was a sense that video games were toys. And Sony is not a toy company.” That’s how a new mini-oral history about PlayStation revolutionizing console gaming begins over at IGN. The words belong to former head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, and they ring true for anyone who grew up with an NES or SNES. The Nintendo consoles built for angular cartridges could take a beating like children’s building blocks, and the games often revolved around colorful worlds full of knights, dragons, and magic mushrooms. In the ‘90s, PlayStation felt like something entirely different. [...] In addition to the pitch of bringing arcade-level graphics into the home, there was the idea of a video game console that could channel the same feeling of cool imbued in the Sony Walkman and your older sibling’s collection of grunge and hip-hop CDs.” [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz at 12:41 PM PST - 15 comments

Most people struggling through cannabis prohibition wanted legalization or at least decriminalization, and to empty the prisons. But the way legalization was implemented in California, it remained unclear if the crop was a drug or an agricultural product; stuck in limbo with the worst of both options proved in time to be the worst way to go. Overregulating certain aspects, treating cannabis as a drug, and under-regulating other aspects led to an economy-of-scale agricultural consolidation... We are left in a situation where the rich history of California cannabis is being eliminated one farm at a time. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 11:54 AM PST - 47 comments

They had no grand design on establishing a baseball association, though: The two simply loved baseball -- DeSantis learning the game back in America, while Dorji fell in love while attending the World Children's Baseball Fair in Japan -- and wanted to offer it to the children who lived nearby the military barracks in Thimphu. from In the mountains of the world's most remote country, baseball takes hold
posted by chavenet at 9:27 AM PST - 14 comments

The World’s Last Internet Cafes.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:33 AM PST - 33 comments

TikTok users in Europe will be able to see recommended ‘For You’ videos that don’t rely on tracking their online activity. “These changes relate to DSA rules that require very large online platforms to allow their users to opt out of receiving personalized content — which typically relies on tracking and profiling user activity — when viewing content recommendations. To comply, TikTok’s search feature will also show content that’s popular in the user’s region, and videos under the “Following” and “Friends” feeds will be displayed in chronological order when a non-personalized view is selected.” [more inside]
posted by Bottlecap at 3:09 AM PST - 8 comments

It is not okay for men to "help" women who they don't know without asking consent/permission first. "A man tried to help me fix my bike despite me asking him not to. Time for men to learn that this shit is not helpful, it's control."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:23 AM PST - 123 comments