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Breeding Improved Honey Bees was originally printed in 1951, in The American Bee Journal. It is an informative and often dryly amusing introduction to the history and arts of bee breeding. "The honey bee has a definite place in our modern world. Its products of honey and wax are useful to man, although perhaps not essential to all men." Those histories and arts are, as you might expect, covered in bees.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:29 PM PST - 7 comments

Thursday was a banner day for Bernie Sanders, whose campaign reached two million donations and won two key endorsements. So it came as a shock Friday when Sanders was hamstrung by, of all things, a Clinton data scandal. NGP VAN, the Democratic Party's main vendor for data services, mistakenly lowered the firewalls isolating each campaign's voter info -- and one Sanders staffer peeked. While the (now-fired) staffer claims they were just trying to gauge the scope of the exposure, the Clinton camp accused their rival of downloading valuable data. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz agreed, barring the entire campaign from NGP VAN in response -- potentially crippling their sprint to Iowa. Already dinged for shielding Clinton with favorable debate schedules, the DNC dropped the ban following outcry and a Sanders lawsuit (which Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said might expose collusion). Crisis averted, though not without adding some potential fireworks to tonight's Democratic debate on ABC.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:02 PM PST - 430 comments

Over the past 15 years drum & bass has become a sort of black sheep in the dance music family — too hard for the uninitiated while converts seem content with the smug satisfaction of ‘getting it.’

“Outsiders to drum & bass need something interesting to make them have a look and dig,” he explains. “I’m not sure what that could be these days."
posted by four panels at 12:37 PM PST - 42 comments

someone is attacking DNS root servers. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:26 AM PST - 33 comments

For your minute of zen, baby bunnies dozing in glasses. The noses! The pawses! The chinses!! [more inside]
posted by fraula at 10:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Netflix's first true-crime series is a 10-part documentary series called Making a Murderer. It follows the life and trials of a man named Steven Avery who, in 1985, was wrongfully convicted for a crime he did not commit. After serving 18 years in prison, he was exonerated by DNA evidence. Two years after his release, and in the midst of a $36 million settlement with local law enforcement, Steven was arrested for another, even more heinous crime. The series is being compared to other serialized true-crime nonfiction like Serial, the Jinx, and the Staircase. You may also remember Avery's story from an episode of Radiolab.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:26 AM PST - 36 comments

The largest Jewish gay conversion therapy organization, JONAH, was effectively shut down by the SPLC this week. Southern Poverty Law Center attorneys helped establish legal precedent that can be used to successfully sue any conversion therapy practice or organization in the US: as the judge ruled in the case, “the theory that homosexuality is a disorder is not novel but—like the notion that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it—instead is outdated and refuted.” Thus, organizations that offer therapy for something that is not a disorder are visiting fraud upon the public.
posted by batbat at 9:28 AM PST - 32 comments

"Despite Trump’s apparent strength in national polls, Cruz’s targeting of Iowa focuses on the most logical schwerpunkt for defeating Trump (puncturing his air of being a winner) by using the sequential nature of primaries to hand him a defeat in the first state to actually vote." Applying the theories of military strategist John Boyd to explain why Donald Trump has proven so successful in the primary so far, and why he will fail. Also, schwerpunkt! [more inside]
posted by macross city flaneur at 9:12 AM PST - 106 comments

Joining in on the frenzy of Star Wars Week, the folks at Bad Lip Reading have teamed up with Jack Black, Bill Hader, and Maya Rudolph to punch up the dry, boring dialogue of the original trilogy: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi.
posted by dgaicun at 9:06 AM PST - 14 comments

BBC: "Former Match of the Day presenter Jimmy Hill, one of English football's most influential figures, died on Saturday at the age of 87. As chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, he led the campaign for the scrapping of maximum wages for professional footballers. He played 297 games for Fulham and was later manager and chairman at Coventry. Hill - diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2008 - made more than 600 appearances as presenter of Match of the Day." Guardian Report - Guardian Obituary.
posted by marienbad at 8:25 AM PST - 7 comments

Metafilter's until-recently-own Jessamyn West recently did an AMA on Reddit, and the post was subsequently chosen as a starting point by the /r/SubredditSimulator (previously), which is a "fully-automated subreddit that generates random submissions and comments using markov chains, with each bot account creating text based on comments from a different subreddit." I'd say a good 90% of the post titles on /r/SubredditSimulator are obviously gibberish, but every now and then, it will generate one that is close enough to plausible that it fools me. This was one of them.
posted by kcds at 8:25 AM PST - 7 comments

What Ever Happened To Kevin McCallister? Macaulay Culkin returns to the role that made him famous in first episode of the web series DRYVRS from Jack Dishel. (5:12)
posted by The Whelk at 7:50 AM PST - 23 comments

A brief history of the frozen rutabaga scandal in Ithaca. "About five years ago, a man found the perfect rutabaga for the International Rutabaga Curling World Championship at the Ithaca Farmers Market. It was huge. It was oblong. It "tumbled" instead of rolling. Steve Paisley, a first time rutabaga curler, won a silver medal that year." [more inside]
posted by waitingtoderail at 6:31 AM PST - 62 comments

RIP Nigel Buxton, journalist, who found fame in later years as 'BaaadDad' on The Adam and Joe Show. As ever, the Telegraphy has an interesting obituary [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:21 AM PST - 11 comments

Have you played Mega Man 11? Yoshi's Island 2? The SNES Earthbound sequel? No? Well, while you wait to get your hands on them, you can listen to the soundtracks online. [more inside]
posted by brett at 6:08 AM PST - 3 comments

Hitler really did have only one testicle, German researcher claims. [The Guardian]

The song sung in schoolyards by generations of British children mocking Adolf Hitler for only having “one ball” might be accurate after all. A German historian has unearthed the Nazi leader’s long-lost medical records, which seem to confirm the urban legend that he only had one testicle. The records, taken during a medical exam following Hitler’s arrest over the failed Beer hall putsch in 1923, show that he suffered from “right-side cryptorchidism”, or an undescended right testicle. Notes written by Dr Josef Steiner Brin, the medical officer at Landsberg prison, state “Adolf Hitler, artist, recently writer” was otherwise “healthy and strong”.

posted by Fizz at 5:33 AM PST - 52 comments

At Philosop-her, Meena Krishnamurthy invites women in philosophy to introduce themselves and their work. For example, Elizabeth Barnes, "Confessions of a Bitter Cripple": "I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island ... I have been told that, while it isn't bad for me to exist, it would've been better if my mother could've had a non-disabled child instead ... And these things weren't said as the conclusions of careful, extended argument ... They were the kind of thing you skip over without pause because it's the uncontroversial part of your talk." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:10 AM PST - 15 comments