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Human History Gets a Rewrite (SLAtlantic) William Deresiewicz reviews the forthcoming The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity , by David Graeber and David Wengrow. [more inside]
posted by clark at 10:07 PM PST - 27 comments

The Two Envelope Problem - a Mystifying Probability Paradox (YouTube, 28m23s) presents and analyzes a paradox that the kind of person who likes to argue about the Monty Hall Problem (previously) will probably enjoy.
posted by flabdablet at 9:52 PM PST - 40 comments

Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun while filming a scene in New Mexico on Thursday, causing the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. An on-set tragedy ends in the death of the DP and and an injured director. Too soon to place blame, but in the face of IATSE labor issues and intense focus on dangerous work conditions, is it time to reconsider real guns on movie sets. Sincere condolences to all . . .
posted by pt68 at 9:36 PM PST - 235 comments

Kindness, Acts of
posted by storybored at 5:39 PM PST - 5 comments

The animals that may exist in a million years, imagined by biologists.
posted by Lyme Drop at 4:55 PM PST - 13 comments

In the depths of Pornhub, buried beneath a mountain of hardcore erotica, a 34-year-old Taiwanese man named Changhsu (張旭) taps away at a green chalkboard while speaking a steady stream of Mandarin. In nearly all of his 226 videos, he wears a gray hoodie and black-rimmed glasses, and he never once does anything even remotely pornographic — no blow jobs, no 69s, no anal. He’s on Pornhub for a different reason: To teach calculus. From The Determined Math Tutor Teaching Calculus on Pornhub [Mel Magazine] [CW: calculus]
posted by chavenet at 3:09 PM PST - 43 comments

In the midst of the pandemic Sam Sutherland is back and exploring online subcultures and communities. The second five episode season just finished with Angry Queer Gloom Cult: How Queer Metal Bands Built Their Own Scene [YT ~15min]. [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Two short, triumphant fantasy stories about well-worn prophecies and magical customs that take a left turn. "Another End of the Empire" by Tim Pratt (audio version): "The probability witches hit an impasse." A short story by Dyce (a.k.a. Sarah Blackwell): "No, I was resigned to death. I was only angry that my death would be so meaningless."
posted by brainwane at 9:53 AM PST - 4 comments

While just published evidence based on the rings of trees felled by Norse people in Canada has largely confirmed what we already know about medieval sailing in the North Atlantic, two recent finds have changed what we thought we knew. A recently published paper by medievalist Paulo Chiesa shows that knowledge of Labrador had reached as far south as Genoa and Milan in the 14th Century. And in a recent paper by ecologist Pedro Raposeira, evidence has been found of human habitation in the Azores before the archipelago’s discovery by the Portuguese in 1427, backing up findings from 2015 of Norse visitations of the Azores and Madeira from an unlikely source, mouse DNA. Biologist Jeremy Searle talked about the biological evidence with archaeologist Cat Jarman on the Gone Medieval podcast.
posted by Kattullus at 5:32 AM PST - 48 comments

Realists of a larger reality wanted: Ursula K Le Guin prize for fiction to launch in 2022
posted by domdib at 12:25 AM PST - 13 comments