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The White House logo currently has a bat flying around in anticipation of Halloween. What delightful and unexpected little nods to Halloween have you noticed - on the web or off? [more inside]
posted by kristi at 11:07 PM PST - 22 comments

'Halloween' Main theme by banjo guy ollie
posted by clavdivs at 8:02 PM PST - 4 comments

K-Pop in the time of Covid, an appreciation zine by comics artist Maia Kobabe (author of Gender Queer). E also drew every outfit e wore to K-pop shows.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:10 PM PST - 2 comments

Crypto winter had just started when software engineer Molly White launched her blog, Web3 is going just great. She’s now one of the most influential blockchain skeptics. Wherein Molly White explains, among other things, that, no, she does not think it's all a scam. But: “It felt like suddenly people were marketing crypto to the average person,” she told Protocol. “People were getting sucked into these schemes that they really did not know much about or understand properly.”
posted by Ayn Marx at 3:09 PM PST - 31 comments

“I don’t rail against PC culture and all that because I think when somebody is accused of being politically correct, that usually just means they’re being sensitive to other people’s feelings.” -- ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic: The Great American Novelty
posted by bondcliff at 2:24 PM PST - 44 comments

Blaseball, the Absurdist Horror Fantasy Sport That Won a Cult Fanbase, Is Back After a Year-Long Siesta (IGN) Most critically, Blaseball remains at the mercy of its fans. The year-long siesta has enabled The Game Band to play out what Clark calls the “possibility space” much further in advance than before. The team is moving away from the grand, overarching storylines that characterized the first two eras in favor of more of a “monster of the week” format that allows fans to dip in and out without reading pages of wiki articles about what happened months ago. But the stories told week to week will remain in the hands of the sim and the fans. [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 10:39 AM PST - 11 comments

The mission of BigPumpkins.com is to provide an interactive web site to the giant pumpkin growing community! We would also like to promote the exciting sport/hobby of giant pumpkin and giant squash growing by helping new comers get started.
Want to see some World Records?!
Giant Pumpkin: 2702.9 Cutrupi Giant Squash: 2164 Skinner Watermelon: 350.5 Kent Master Gardener: Tobeck 2021
Field Pumpkin: 211 MacKinnon Tomato: 10.8 Sutherland Long Gourd: 173.75 Eaton Bushel Gourd: 470.5 Connolly
posted by Going To Maine at 10:27 AM PST - 15 comments

A lot of artists know the feeling; we’re belatedly learning how factory workers felt half a century ago, watching themselves be replaced by robots. Tim Kreider's review of the the last stop-motion film: Mad God by Phil Tippett, over thirty years in the making, and an exploration of what it means to be obsolete. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:14 AM PST - 30 comments

'Where did the Tweeters Go?' (Reuters) These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document.
posted by box at 5:25 AM PST - 120 comments

The Only Crypto Story You Need, by Matt Levine - "Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters." (archive; also btw What Is Code?[*] by Paul Ford, earlier)
posted by kliuless at 1:01 AM PST - 93 comments

FRONTLINE - Putin's Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes

CW: War crimes documented via incredibly detailed FRONTLINE footage of interviews of survivors, captured Russian footage, Ukrainian footage and detailed analysis by Ukrainian war crimes investigators. It is harrowing to view but well worth watching. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:49 AM PST - 15 comments