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In a story broke in the Manual Redeye the school paper for duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky by the two teenage children of a lawyer involved in an officer involved shooting and picked up by the New York Times we get a taste of the kind of classes that have been (and may still be) given to police academy cadets. [more inside]
posted by Ignorantsavage at 8:59 PM PST - 69 comments

...By standard intelligence tests, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast, that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool... How savvy we are in dogs’ eyes! It’s a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed: dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we’re not around.

Forget Everything You Know About Your Dog [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:14 PM PST - 30 comments

Happy Halloween, New York City! If you miss the madness that is the annual Halloween parade in nyc, these puppets are here to help. [more inside]
posted by vrakatar at 6:48 PM PST - 3 comments

"A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters" by A.T. Greenblatt (previously mentioned in a list of recommended sf/f from 2017) is a light adventure tale of a sidekick-turned-blogger/entrepreneur. "So why do I bother running a business like this? Because monsters are remarkable, unexpected, and totally worth the wait." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 6:43 PM PST - 7 comments

Old Dog: Ann Marie Fleming who lives in Vancouver makes award-winning animated films. Ann-Marie Fleming who lives in 100 Mile House runs Dog Quality, which sells wheelchairs she has designed and other assistive products for dogs. After a case of mistaken identity, the two met up last year, and the idea for this three-minute animated short was born: The result is the charming and touching Old Dog that tells the story of an aging pug who needs a lift on a long walk and can't see very well anymore. It features the clever gadgets from 100 Mile House Fleming and the filmmaker's own experience of watching her father age.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Things fall apart in the United States — and Canada takes a hard look in the mirror. The United States has offered the world a demonstration of how things can fall apart — not in one cataclysmic moment, but slowly and steadily over a long period of time as institutions and ideas erode and crumble. Every other country on earth has to deal with the ramifications of what's happening now in the U.S. But beyond those consequences, there's another question for every other democracy: how do you make sure your own country doesn't end up like that? [slCBC]
posted by heatherlogan at 11:49 AM PST - 56 comments

Do you need a to-do list, but sticky notes, ordinary pieces of paper, daily planners, and physical calendars seem too darn straightforward?
Do Remember The Milk, ToDoist, TickTick, Microsoft ToDo, EverNote, 2Do, Google Keep and your smartphone’s note-taking app have too many fancy graphics?
Does paying for a program like Things or OmniFocus really grind your gears?
Would using the free option from some project management startup like Notion, ClickUp, Clubhouse, Trello, Quire, BaseCamp, or Asana take your household in a disturbingly corporate direction?
Are online bug trackers like Pivotal Tracker, JetBrains YouTrack, GitHub Issues, or Jira just silly?
Is org-mode for emacs too laughably old school, powerful, and arcane?
Well then, you might be be in the market for TaskWarrior! It’s a command line to-do list management tool, that’s as easy as task add "Use TaskWarrior"; task 1 done. It can even sync your tasks across devices, although that will take some work unless you’re willing to trust Inthe.am and some guy named Adam Coddington who runs it.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:46 AM PST - 53 comments

The remotely operated vehicle SuBastian being deployed in waters off Australia’s north coast by the Research Vessel Falkor. When Dr. Vecchione got a good look at the image, he knew exactly what it was: Spirula spirula, or the ram’s horn squid. Spirula is the only living squid to have an internal coiled shell, which it tucks under the fleshy flaps of its rear end, according to Jay C. Hunt, a biologist at East Stroudsburg University. The squid can also emit lime-green light from a large photophore, also located on its behind. Dr. Vecchione and other experts were astonished. For ages, biologists and beachgoers had stumbled upon the thumbnail-white shells of Spirula stranded on shores around the world. But no one had ever seen the animal alive in its natural habitat.
posted by PixieS at 11:18 AM PST - 10 comments

“Watching all the nasty political ads has been a soul-crushing experience.” New York State Assemblyman Al Stirpe has released a new campaign ad and it is refreshingly different. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 10:39 AM PST - 12 comments

OH HELL YEAH: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE SHARKNADO FRANCHISE I had no idea how weird this got over the six films until I saw this kill count of the series. Involves sharks, chainsaws, laser chainsaws, going into space, chainsaw swords, laser chainsaws with built in death blossom, and time travel, and running over Bret Michaels.
posted by zabuni at 8:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Kind of perfect for Halloween, Pokey LaFarge's Fuck Me Up off his new album Rock Bottom Rhapsody is wicked good (but the video is a wee bit intense, so if you're feeling like everything is too much, you may want to wait until a time you just need something to eff you up, ... because hell, eventually everyone feels like it). [more inside]
posted by taz at 8:21 AM PST - 2 comments

On the Halloween chapter of William Gaddis’s novel Carpenter’s Gothic from Biblioklept [includes NSFW prose]
posted by chavenet at 6:29 AM PST - 1 comments

Sir Sean Connery passed on at 90.
posted by hearthpig at 5:40 AM PST - 159 comments

The first Russian edition of George R. R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows included two chapters featuring Brienne based on an earlier draft. A translation reveals significant changes from the final draft, illustrating Martin’s process and the improvements his rewrites provide (Reddit).
posted by adrianhon at 4:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Meanwhile, on a small European island, as stormy weather, Halloween and a blue moon all coincide, different nations are under different systems/tier structures, while different regions of England are under different tiers of lockdown, with some local variations within tiers, and schools and universities open (though with some students quarantined). Cases of Covid19 are generally rising, and hospitals filling or full, possibly due to taxpayer-subsidised restaurant schemes last summer. (Speaking of food, subsidised meals for MPs but not for children). Leaks and speculation point to a possible England lockdown (minus schools), or perhaps Tier 4, next week. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 3:26 AM PST - 100 comments