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We were here to “Make friends, not art!” Well, that sounds fun. But what if your friends’ art sucks? Documenta was always a pacesetter — and this year’s edition certainly put its finger on a larger shift, seen too in our museums, our art schools and our magazines, away from aesthetic ambition and intellectual seriousness and toward the easier comforts of togetherness, advocacy and fun. If your friends’ art sucks, that’s actually no big deal — because being together matters more than doing something well. And if the German press say your friends’ art sucks, that’s OK, too — reassuring, actually, as evidence that this rotten colonizers’ world has no place for us. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:30 PM PST - 6 comments

Björk (wiki) has a podcast: "In the conversations on this podcast me and my friends try to capture which moods, timbres, and tempos were vibrating during each of my ten albums...I hope you enjoy it." -from the trailer to Sonic Symbolism. [more inside]
posted by msbrauer at 2:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Women in Comics [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by aniola at 12:58 PM PST - 9 comments

Vultures get a bad reputation for their carrion-scavenging ways, but their dietary habits prevent the release of greenhouse gases
posted by Etrigan at 12:05 PM PST - 34 comments

San Francisco’s Famous Sourdough Was Once Really Gross
posted by meowzilla at 12:03 PM PST - 37 comments

Why does Adam Sandler's 'Click' make men cry? Despite being widely recognized as a bad movie, Adam Sandler's Click apparently makes a lot of men cry. Even men who acknowledge the movie's many failings still admit to weeping at the end. Some go so far as to mention crying at the end of Click on their dating profiles. [more inside]
posted by asnider at 11:14 AM PST - 72 comments

Russia has been on the receiving end of the Ukrainian counter offensive for about four weeks now, and things have not been going well for them. During the retreat from the Kharkiv area, the 1st Guards Tank Army, the most prestigious major unit of the Russian Army, was for all intents and purposes routed. Russia's major reinforcement unit, the 3rd Army Corps, was moved into theater and practically melted away. In reaction to these events, the Duma has pushed through a new conscription law, and the Kremlin has announced a partial mobilization. How many people will be called in is unclear, as one clause of the order is secret. Russian industry has also been urged to ramp up production. [more inside]
posted by Harald74 at 9:43 AM PST - 884 comments

Can I offer you a fully operable web implementation of the Roland TR-909 drum machine in this trying time?
posted by cortex at 9:29 AM PST - 10 comments

With Brazil's Presidential election first round on October 2nd. The Department for Making Brazil '64 Again has authorised a tourism ad which is surprisingly honest and informative!
UOL who first printed the story of Jair Bolsonaro’s murky family finances claiming the Brazilian president and close relatives used cash to pay for more than 50 properties worth millions of dollars have just had a judicial order to remove the stories.
posted by adamvasco at 9:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Trombones. Hot dogs. Baboons. Collectible cards. Lore. Trombone Champ has it all. [PC Gamer] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:26 AM PST - 39 comments

Dame Hilary Mantel, author of (among others) the Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, has died of a stroke at age 70. Among previous appearances on Metafilter: discussing historical fiction, describing life in the court of Henry VIII, and recounting her own history with endometriosis. [more inside]
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 5:22 AM PST - 66 comments

Content warning: emotional abuse. The parentified child who supports the parent often incurs a cost to her own psychic stability and development. The phenomenon has little to do with parental love, and much more to do with the personal and structural circumstances that stop parents from attending to the immense anxiety and burden that a child may be experiencing on their behalf. The parent is often unable to see that their child is taking responsibility for maintaining the peace in the family, for protecting one parent from the other, for being their friend and therapist, for mediating between the parents and the outside world, for parenting the siblings, and sometimes for the medical, social and economic stability of the household. A long read from Nivida Chandra, a psychologist and research scholar specializing in the emotional abuse of children in India. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 3:58 AM PST - 26 comments

Systems such as OpenAI's DALL·E 2 have shown impressive progress recently in generating images from text-based descriptions. Composer David Bruce looks at how these trends are starting to impact the world of music composition. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 1:28 AM PST - 18 comments