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Rick Beetham on Mastodon asked a local food bank for the best items to donate to them, and came up with a list of 20 tips. The comments also has useful info, including that it's better to donate directly to the food bank instead of through the grocery store (and that way you might even get a receipt for writing it off on your taxes), and that giving money is usually best, because food banks often can get discounts that are unavailable to donators.
posted by JHarris at 11:09 PM PST - 31 comments

The fact that it obscures the actual political conflict is the feature, not the bug of the “polarization” narrative. (Thomas Zimmer on Substack)
posted by blue shadows at 10:29 PM PST - 53 comments

Scientists rush to save Australia's loneliest tree from extinction. The Mongarlowe mallee – which had its heyday in the last ice age – now has just six known survivors, but ecologists say it could be rescued in a plan reminiscent of the Wollemi pine.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:55 PM PST - 1 comments

The denizens of Dimension Apple love the following things: Punctuation, trips, sharing photographs, using emoji, taking photographs, surprise parties. You might be inclined to say that they hate roasts, bits, gossip, cynicism, text abbreviations like “LOL,” and other standard features of texting in our dimension--but it is not at all clear to me that any of these things even exist in Dimension Apple to be hated. Like Android users, irony simply does not occur in Dimension Apple. A literary history of fake texts in Apple's marketing materials [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:51 PM PST - 11 comments

This is why I will be using the term “upfront carbon” (instead of embodied carbon) because it is emitted upfront before a building is occupied, e.g. energy consumed in construction, including the entire life cycle of the materials (see concrete) used, from the extraction of raw materials to the manufacture, transportation, and installation of products at the building site. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:31 PM PST - 8 comments

Anil Prasad's online music magazine Innerviews "delivers in-depth, uncompromising interviews that enable artists to speak at length about topics that matter to them." He's interviewed several hundred musicians over the years, including Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson, Adrian Belew, Björk, Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, Keith Emerson, Béla Fleck, Robert Fripp (sort of), Jean-Michel Jarre, Kronos Quartet, Bill Laswell, Massive Attack, Public Enemy, Marc Ribot, Terry Riley, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Talking Heads (previously), Tanya Tagaq, and McCoy Tyner.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 6:59 AM PST - 11 comments

Although the history of LARP as a legal defense is narrow, the authors share the concern that it may soon become commonplace. Early attempts at such a strategy have been made by a defendant acting alone6 or in loose cooperation with members of a fantasy group who knew each other only in the virtual world,7 claiming “artistic expression” to excuse threatening language. from LARPing and Violent Extremism [FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin]
posted by chavenet at 6:55 AM PST - 19 comments

"One of the world’s most prestigious general science journals, Nature, was the target of a two-year-long sustained and virulent secret attack by a conspiratorial group of extreme Brexit lobbyists with high-level political, commercial and intelligence connections, according to documents and correspondence examined by Computer Weekly and Byline Times."
posted by brundlefly at 5:48 AM PST - 34 comments

“They embroider what they would not or cannot put into words,” says French artist and activist Pascal Goldenberg of the Afghan women using craft to tell their story. Women such as Feroza, whose latest embroideries show a member of the Taliban beating a woman because her tshadri (face veil) is too short, and a mother selling her daughter so that she can afford to feed her other children. While Bechta’s calligraphic embroidery begins with ‘Afghanistan is a very dangerous land for women.’ From Service95, Embroidered Tales: The Women Voicing Resistance Through Craftivism by Simon Coates. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:54 AM PST - 3 comments