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Rudolfo Anaya, grandfather of Chicano literature, New Mexico treasure and author of Bless Me, Ultima has passed away.
posted by jabo at 6:38 PM PST - 14 comments

Australian study finds links between aphantasia & autobiographic memory deficiencies. 26 per cent of aphantasic study participants reported a broader lack of multi-sensory imagery – including imagining sound, touch, motion, taste, smell and emotion. “This is the first scientific data we have showing that potential subtypes of aphantasia exist,” says Professor Joel Pearson, senior author on the paper and Director of UNSW Science’s Future Minds Lab.
Interestingly, spatial imagery – the ability to imagine distance or locational relationship between things – was the only form of sensory imagery that had no significant changes across aphantasics and people who could visualise. [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 5:55 PM PST - 31 comments

Here's a continuous-shot video of a surprisingly complicated backyard Rube Goldberg mechanism. [SLYouTube]
posted by eotvos at 4:54 PM PST - 39 comments

Indigo Girls' latest album includes the song Country Radio, a paean to being a queer kid listening to straight songs. In an article in The Bluegrass Situation, Amy and Emily engage in perhaps the most outspoken discussion of politics and race I've ever seen from them and provide a playlist of country and Americana songs that address diversity, heteronormitivy, race, and gender. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:31 PM PST - 3 comments

A yt playlist of 1902-1919 films by Segundo de Chomón. Also, here's a list of his films, ranked. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 2:31 PM PST - 2 comments

macroinvertebrates.org is an interdisciplinary research and development effort to create an innovative resource for aquatic insect identification to support citizen science activities. [more inside]
posted by hydropsyche at 2:30 PM PST - 14 comments

Antoine d'Agata has been using a thermal imaging camera to document people, in isolation and interacting, during the pandemic in France, with eerie and striking results. More images at his Instagram.
posted by Kat Allison at 1:50 PM PST - 5 comments

Schwa (Never Stressed). In Episode 44 of the Lingthusiasm podcast, Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about the schwa (see blog for resources). The most recent, Episode 45 is on languages before recorded history. Episode 43 focuses on the singular they.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Catnip’s chemical attractant is new twist on old family tradition (Florida Museum): Catnip is most famous for its ability to launch felines into a euphoric frenzy, but the origin of its cat-attracting chemical is a remarkable example of evolutionary innovation. [...] Many of catnip’s relatives in the mint family use iridoids as chemical armor. But an international team of researchers (Science Advances) found the ancient ancestor of catnip lost a key iridoid-making gene. Descendants in this lineage – herbs such as basil, oregano, rosemary, lemon balm and mint – had to lean on other defenses, with one notable exception: catnip, which revived the family tradition by evolving a new iridoid production line from scratch.
posted by not_the_water at 11:41 AM PST - 21 comments

Carl Reiner dead at 98, natural causes. Carl Reiner, the quintessential straight man for Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks who based the beloved sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show on his own life and jump-started Steve Martin’s big-screen career, has died, his assistant Judy Nagy confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 98. The influential writer, director, actor, author and 12-time Emmy Award winner died Monday night at his Beverly Hills home of natural causes, Nagy said. Son Rob Reiner, the actor, writer, director and Oscar-nominated producer, said in a tweet Tuesday morning: "Last night my dad passed away. As I write this my heart is hurting. He was my guiding light."
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:44 AM PST - 111 comments

Fired over zoom. There’s no good way to be fired, but this new way sucks.
posted by w0mbat at 7:01 AM PST - 83 comments