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All life travels the ribbon of asphalt that cuts through Mokong, Cameroon. The women carrying their onions to market atop their heads step aside when a car approaches. The occasional stray cow ambles down the center, chased by local herders. The men with logs balance jerkily, while an entire family wobbles precariously by on one bicycle. And children — so many children — dart across the pavement, keeping an eye on the cattle while kicking soccer balls back and forth. Vehicle in convoy of US Ambassador to UN kills boy in Cameroon. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 5:23 PM PST - 23 comments

We’re going back to the kind of dangers we had during the Cold War. At 89, former U.S. secretary of Defense Bill Perry finds himself an unexpected prophet of doom: “Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”
posted by bitmage at 3:48 PM PST - 76 comments

Cuttlefish are cute except when they're feeding [silent]. Seriously, that is some scary-ass shit there [music]. Want to know more about this terrifying creature? Of course you do! [voiceover, captions] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:11 PM PST - 40 comments

for the next two hours I'm going to be playing a lot of music - a lot of electronica, techno, drone, weird, soundtracky soundscape, ambient kinda stuff. Some of it's quite scary, so I apologize in advanced. [more inside]
posted by rebent at 3:06 PM PST - 1 comments

It’s become cliché that unusually many prominent people died in 2016. Is this true? Jason Crease says yes, using Science! (well, statistics).
posted by chavenet at 1:51 PM PST - 27 comments

Two Google Home assistants are talking to each other on Twitch. (Direct Twitch link.)
posted by kmz at 1:25 PM PST - 140 comments

Lucky Peach ranks instant ramen - "after 17 packages of ramen, I couldn’t eat anymore. My feet were swollen like they’d been on a transcontinental flight. It had to stop somewhere."
posted by needled at 1:25 PM PST - 59 comments

Reverberation time of a balloon pop: reverb room vs. anechoic chamber (SLYT, 17 seconds) [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 12:57 PM PST - 11 comments

billy barr (who doesn't capitalize his name) has lived in a cabin in the Colorado woods for 40 years, and has been recording the snow levels twice a day, every day, all winter long. [more inside]
posted by brainmouse at 12:34 PM PST - 14 comments

The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship [PDF] by Micaela di Leonardo: "The kin-work lens brought into focus new perspectives on my informants' family lives. First, life histories revealed that often the very existence of kin contact and holiday celebration depended on the presence of an adult woman in the household... Kin work, then, is like housework and child care: men in the aggregate do not do it. " (Originally published in Signs, Spring 1987.)
posted by amnesia and magnets at 12:32 PM PST - 5 comments

Almost six months after she was hired, the shop had an opening for a full-time mechanic. Layton wasn’t moved into the position, as she’d been promised. Instead, the store hired a young man who hadn’t gone to bike school, and whose experience came from volunteering at the same bike shop where Layton had previously worked. “On his first day,” she says, “he overtightened a seatcollar on a carbon seatpost and cracked it, smashed it. I fucking would have known not to do that.”
posted by Atreides at 12:26 PM PST - 38 comments

Last week, we had our 2016 report on what people stuffed up their bums, and what sorts of medical attention they needed to help fish those items out. This week, Pornhub.com is out with their annual deep data dive into the many ways that Pornhub content was accessed by Pornhub users, and what sorts of things those users preferred (and/or did not prefer). And say what you will about 2016: despite many, many other worthy distractions, people streamed an unbelievable amount of porn from Pornhub last year. [more inside]
posted by mosk at 9:50 AM PST - 183 comments

Feed Your Kids Peanuts, Early and Often, New Guidelines Urge [The New York Times] “Peanuts are back on the menu. In a significant reversal from past advice, new national health guidelines call for parents to give their children foods containing peanuts early and often, starting when they’re infants, as a way to help avoid life-threatening peanut allergies. The new guidelines, issued by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [Full Text] on Thursday, recommend giving babies puréed food or finger food containing peanut powder or extract before they are 6 months old, and even earlier if a child is prone to allergies and doctors say it is safe to do so. One should never give a baby whole peanuts or peanut bits, experts say, because they can be a choking hazard. If broadly implemented, the new guidelines have the potential to dramatically lower the number of children who develop one of the most common and lethal food allergies, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the institute’s director, who called the new approach “game changing.””
posted by Fizz at 9:18 AM PST - 82 comments

The owners of a convenience store in Toronto have been plagued by a rash of thefts. Local squirrels have been stealing chocolate bars from the store, and have been caught on video. This wouldn’t be the first time squirrels have been fingered as thieves. In 2013, residents of Kentish Town in Greater London were puzzled when soap and shower gel began going missing from their bathrooms. The culprit was squirrels. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:05 AM PST - 35 comments

Jill Saward, campaigner against sexual assault, has died aged 51. Saward was the first woman to waive her right to automatic anonymity and campaigned for the rights of rape victims. [CN: rape, sexual violence] [more inside]
posted by threetwentytwo at 8:57 AM PST - 6 comments

danah boyd discusses how a wide spread way of media literacy was probably more harmful than helpful. "[T]oo many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research. As a result, the message that many had taken home was to turn to Google and use whatever came up first. They heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not."
posted by katta at 7:49 AM PST - 117 comments

I remember specifically, when I created the intro to “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” I’d done it with a technique that I’d long been hoping to try out, which was basically just to sort of build yourself a Mellotron by recording a sustained note on each track of the multi-track and manipulating them in a wave to create combinations of harmonies. I’d been longing to do that for years, and I actually got to do that one night at Electric Lady and put it on the intro of “Waiting for a Girl Like You.” The band came in in the morning and I played it for them, and there was sort of a silence and then the bass player said, “It’s a bit like massage music, isn’t it?”
posted by josher71 at 6:16 AM PST - 32 comments

What is aluminium? It a silvery-white metal which is abundant in the Earth's crust. The Wright Brothers were early adopters of aluminium in engine construction. Now, aluminium is used to make cans, window frames, aircraft, fireworks and foil. Controversially, aluminium has also been used to make cricket bats. The ease of use of aluminium, and the flexibility properties especially when alloyed for strength or security for use in items such as coins, has helped make it the most widely used non-ferrous metal. Also, aluminium is often used to make kitchen utensils such as pots and pans. Finally, the sounds made by the manipulation of thin aluminium surfaces can have pleasing ASMR characteristics.
posted by Wordshore at 6:04 AM PST - 73 comments

Micro-dosing: The Drug Habit Your Boss Is Gonna Love The small brown vial came to me via a chain of custody that shall not be discussed and with the assurance that the clear liquid therein was, according to some guy who told the guy who gave it to me, a precise dilution of LSD. If the stories I'd heard were true, taking a tiny bit of it, a micro-dose, had the potential to make my workday more productive than ever... I squeezed the dropper gently, putting a clear drop into a mug of water on my desk, and drank it all in a single gulp. Then I began to worry that I was about to trip balls.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:30 AM PST - 128 comments