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The Simpsons Is Good Again - after 34 seasons, 750 episodesm and a decades-long funk, the show innovated its way back to popularity and relevance

Every person I spoke to for the story - from Broti Gupta, one of the first writers on The Simpsons to have been born after the show's premiere, to James L. Brooks, one of the series' founders, to the former members of the No Homers Club fan community, infamous for compaining about the decline of the show - agrees that The Simpsons, in 2023, is undergoing a renaissance. The staff, working in the shadow of a looming writers strike when I visited, are putting out some of the most ambitious, poignant, and funny episodes in the show's history - episodes that, after all these years, have managed to broaden our understanding of these familiar characters and why they remain so important to so many people. And thanks to the streaming era, a whole new generation is growing up bingeing The Simpsons, bolstering the sense that the show, once left for dead by critics, may really go on forever.

posted by Pachylad at 11:13 PM PST - 56 comments

After a traumatic experience in college, April Burrell was catatonic for twenty years. She was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia which did not respond to treatment. “She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:17 PM PST - 31 comments

Trump indicted in classified docs probe.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:15 PM PST - 496 comments

OK Blue J-----OH SWEET LORD WHAT IS GOING ON [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 4:56 PM PST - 49 comments

What it’s like to wear the Dyson Zone around an NYC covered in wildfire smoke "A quick note: I don’t recommend anyone strap on a futuristic pair of headphones that double as a wearable air purifier and stride out into hazardous conditions."
posted by KelsonV at 3:19 PM PST - 29 comments

“If you had no head, no heart, no center of operations,” he began. “If you could taste with your whole body. If you could take a fragment of your toe or your hair and it would grow into a new you — and hundreds of these new yous could fuse together into some impossibly large togetherness. And when you wanted to get around, you would produce spores, this little condensed part of you that could travel in the air.”

Merlin Sheldrake, The Man Who Turned the World on to the Genius of Fungi. (NYT Guest Link, Archive Link)
posted by Rumple at 11:33 AM PST - 22 comments

Why don’t websites hire service people to write about food? How do ‘restaurant journalists’ exist, when servers who are also artists are standing right here? A book critic once told me, “a website could never be staffed by service people, the quality of the writing would be too low,” and I wanted to laugh. I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter.
posted by HeroZero at 11:26 AM PST - 23 comments

Evangelist preacher, architect of the Religious Right, political gadfly, broadcaster, and bigot Pat Robertson has died at 93. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:19 AM PST - 121 comments

How do I feel about Apple’s brand spanking new Vision Pro starting at $3499? I’m conflicted. Part of me hates it, while another, perhaps younger, more tender part thinks its really stupid Apple released a nine minute ‘wow lookie’ video touting their high-end welding masks. And yes it's insane and amazing and great. It’s got gadgets and gizmos galore, sure, and yes its, as Today in Tabs’ Rusty Foster put perfectly, “the most technologically advanced product ever created for viewing and annotating PDF documents.”
posted by SituationNormal at 10:58 AM PST - 134 comments

Supreme Court rejects voting map that diluted Black voters' power (NYT gift) [more inside]
posted by box at 10:39 AM PST - 32 comments

According to the annual Slice of the Union report from independent pizzeria delivery app Slice, a new pizza topping is set to conquer pies in 2023: pickles. 🥒 This year's pizza trends: Fewer pineapples, more pickles. Why you should seriously consider making pickles your go-to pizza topping. Pizza Hut is launching a pickle pizza and I’m furious. How to make Ranch and Dill Pickle Pizza. Pickle pizza started as a novelty, but now it’s a big dill.
posted by Fizz at 9:26 AM PST - 83 comments

[SLYT, Repost] One Day Like This, by Elbow, eventually reached #4 in the UK singles chart in 2012. Their 2011 Glastonbury performance of this song, and at the same festival six years later. [title from comment in original post]
posted by Wordshore at 9:22 AM PST - 4 comments

The encounter, and much of the text of Working Girl, suggests the appeal or even the revolutionary potential of relating in such an upfront, contractual manner: that there might even be a cleansing element to addressing things in such blatant terms, equity in considering one’s time worth good money, and asking for it, especially in the contexts of the art world and sex industry, when participants often harbor vast wealth. from Working It by Kate Wolf [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:57 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Agriculture slurps 80% of the Colorado River in the U.S. each year, and a single forage crop, alfalfa hay, is responsible for over a third of that drain. You've probably read about the drought in the southwestern US and how Lake Powell hit historic lows (though this winter has improved things somewhat). But the real problem is not the drought, but overuse. The classic analysis, Cadillac Desert, first published in 1986, is no less true now than it was 40 years ago. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:49 AM PST - 24 comments

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live” "In the past, moments of national trauma had provided an opportunity for unity and cohesion. But Ms. Didion found herself confronted with a fractured version of America that’s not too different from the one we’ve come to recognize today. " Fascinating thought piece (NYT) about Joan Didion and Gregory Dunne's reaction to RFK's assasination while in Hawaii.
posted by j810c at 7:38 AM PST - 16 comments

Some languages start arrays at 0, which can be unintuitive for beginners. Some languages start arrays at 1, which isn't representative of how the code actually works. DreamBerd does the best of both worlds: Arrays start at -1.
posted by MetaFilter World Peace at 5:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Happy Pride Month! Liniker [Wikipedia] is changing the way trans people are seen in Brazil [Paper, 2018]. Agnes Nunes visited with her for conversation and a duet. [Portuguese with optional English captions] For the 2022 Rock In Rio festival, Liniker was joined by Luedji Luna for an hour-long set. Thank you to umbú for suggesting her! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:14 AM PST - 1 comments

Arnold Schwarzenegger sits down with Danny DeVito for a conversation about life and death. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 4:46 AM PST - 18 comments

The Girl From Ipanema. Astrud Giberto, best known as the voice of Bossa Nova, died June 5th at her home in Philadelphia, PA. [more inside]
posted by From Bklyn at 2:24 AM PST - 37 comments