MetaFilter

Amazed beachgoer videos endangered cassowary emerging from ocean off Far North Queensland [text article with embedded video]. "From a distance it resembled a mythic monster but as it came closer in the tropical Queensland waters a stunned onlooker realised the struggling creature was a large bird — and not a seabird." Both cassowaries and emus are well known to enjoy a dip in shallow water (where their feet still touch the bottom) in hot weather, but it is very unusual to see them swimming in deep water.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:49 PM PST - 25 comments

There's a whole community of professionals online who trade tips about juggling jobs on the sly. They describe themselves as "overemployed" — and, they seem to be getting away with it. At its core, overemployment represents a new social contract being forged in an era that has left the old, unspoken agreement around work — "stick with us for life and we'll treat you like family" — in tatters.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:48 PM PST - 72 comments

What David Cameron’s return says about British politics - A man who caused many of Britain’s problems is now offering to fix them (Economist; ungated)
posted by cendawanita at 6:16 PM PST - 59 comments

“I don’t want to lie, it wasn’t like I saw God,” Fialka said, of reaching the book’s end. “It wasn’t a big deal.” “When people hear you’ve been a member of a book club that reads the same book every time you meet, most people go, ‘Why would you do that?’” said Bruce Woodside, a 74-year-old retired Disney animator who joined Fialka’s reading group in the 1990s. Though “it’s 628 pages of things that look like typographic errors”, said Woodside, who has been reading and re-reading Finnegans Wake since his late teens. “There’s a kind of visionary quality to it.”
posted by j.r at 5:55 PM PST - 14 comments

Looking back on the choir rehearsal that was early evidence in the U.S. that covid-19 spread through aerosols (Single Link 60 Minutes). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:01 PM PST - 33 comments

A toxic work environment at the FDIC, one of the nation’s top banking regulators, has for years caused employees to flee from an agency they say enabled and failed to punish bad behavior, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation based on interviews with FDIC employees as well as legal filings, union grievances, Equal Employment Opportunity complaints, emails, text messages and other internal documents. from Strip Clubs, Lewd Photos and a Boozy Hotel: The Toxic Atmosphere at Bank Regulator FDIC [WSJ; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:28 PM PST - 23 comments

Gimlet on the Rocks After Spotify shut down two subsidiary podcast studios, n+1 considers the legacy of Gimlet Media.
posted by box at 9:22 AM PST - 39 comments

...it's time for your weekly Free Thread where you can talk about wtf, or that the Christmas season has officially started, or news reporting of places to socially visit in Worcestershire, or that Easter Eggs will be in the shops in 8 weeks, or just anything.
posted by Wordshore at 8:15 AM PST - 127 comments

Erin Kissane has some criticisms of Mastodon's culture and technology Since Elon Musk's enshittification of twitter, many new social platforms have sprung up. Mastodon, Bluesky, Cohost, Threads; to name a few. Even Metafilter got in on it by spinning up a MeFi Mastodon instance. Do you agree with the author's assessment of the state of Mastodon? Have you joined one of the new social media sites? How do your experiences stack up next to the author's?
posted by signsofrain at 7:55 AM PST - 109 comments

Fighting back against coastal erosion with innovative and environmentally friendly solutions. Residents along Victoria's coast are fighting back against coastal erosion with innovative and environmentally friendly solutions.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:54 AM PST - 8 comments

Bitter but true; her writing is not much taught or studied. A couple dozen dissertations center on her work, about a tenth as many as those analyzing Roth. “‘Fear of Flying’ had seemed an apprentice work to me when I wrote it,” Jong recalled, “and now it was to be my tombstone.” from Fear of Flying at 50 [NY Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:05 AM PST - 16 comments