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How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet. "Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:51 PM PST - 100 comments

Forza Motorsport accessibility is shaping up to be some of the most comprehensive of any game this year, and is available for early access now. Particularly intriguing is a variety of assistance for blind drivers, which is a first in its genre. [more inside]
posted by Alensin at 4:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Sleep With Me has put me to sleep for 10 years and 1200 episodes, entertaining me and helping me feel better about the brain bots that keep my mind busy at night. Northwoods Baseball announces games for a made-up league in northern Michigan. Everything Is Alive is back for another season, this time exclusively interviewing animals. And EIA's sister-show In The Scenes Behind Plain Sight rewatches a fictional show about a nudist colony, as an homage to rewatch podcasts (and it drives my husband up the walls).
posted by rebent at 2:40 PM PST - 47 comments

Broken Zipper? France Will Pay to Get It Fixed Starting this month, anyone in France who has shoes resoled or clothing repaired will receive a subsidy. The repair bonus of between six and 25 euros is intended to encourage consumers to visit cobblers and tailors instead of throwing away old shoes and clothes. Some 154 million euros are available for the program until 2028, according to Klaus Sieg writing in Reasons to be Cheerful. ...In this way, the French government is responding to an ecological problem that is only gradually coming to the public’s attention. Ever shorter life cycles for clothing are consuming resources and growing mountains of waste. Hardly any other flow of goods has grown so dramatically in recent years, and with so little regulation, as the ballooning textile industry. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 11:53 AM PST - 67 comments

Alex, an art student, dreams of joining Eve, the "Elite’s Visual School". Together with her best friend Kimmy, they train hard to pass the notoriously impossible entrance exam. Alex’s training turns into an obsession, compromising her friendship with Kimmy.

Try Hard is the first of the graduation animations (teaser) made by the class of 2023 at Gobelins, a French school of "visual creation", with each new animation released weekly on Wednesday. English subtitles are available via Youtube's closed captions functionality.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:52 AM PST - 8 comments

Tyson and Perdue directly under investigation for 'illegal' child labor. [more inside]
posted by paimapi at 9:45 AM PST - 15 comments

Born This Way? (Radiolab) - "Today, the story of an idea. An idea that some people need, others reject, and one that will, ultimately, be hard to let go of." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:18 AM PST - 75 comments

You may have seen this 84 Duster ad that, in 90 second form, premiered during the first MTV music awards but did you ever wonder how a brand associated at the time with stodgy old white people came to have such an ad on MTV? The Autopian tracked down early 80s Chrysler-Plymouth Car Advertising Manager Glenn Northrupp to get the story behind the ad.
posted by Mitheral at 6:40 AM PST - 30 comments

“No one makes aged pickles any more. Around 35 years ago, they were common, but now, the lack of time, space and several other factors have led to a decline in their making. Customers who buy my black lemon pickle speak of their childhood memories of it and how its taste transports them back in time,” Rummy said. from India’s pickle people: Decades-old culinary heirlooms, nostalgia [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 6:26 AM PST - 9 comments

The interesting, or maybe confronting thing about considering the dog person personality is that, truthfully, I still think of it as just being human. I accept that cat people exist, but not in the way I accept, say, that introverts exist: I find introversion fascinating and mysterious. Objectively, there’s something admirable and maybe profound in having something better to do than show off and chat all the time. Whereas cat people, I think are kidding themselves. They’ve met dogs, right? [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:10 AM PST - 158 comments

Manitoba has elected Canada's first ever Indigenous provincial premier, Wab Kinew. Kinew's father was not allowed to vote as a young man under Canadian law at the time. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 6:02 AM PST - 27 comments

In the mid-1930s, Harry Beck, of London Underground 'Tube' Map fame (previously), created a similar map showing air routes from London, England, to destinations across the globe. [more inside]
posted by atlantica at 4:02 AM PST - 13 comments