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Space juggling "The first rule of Space Juggling is that thrown balls move in straight lines." Interview with Adam Dipert
posted by dhruva at 7:49 PM PST - 16 comments

Pitchfork reviews Peppa Pig's Peppa's Adventures: The Album
posted by box at 2:16 PM PST - 14 comments

Barrett Moore had ordered 2 million N95 masks, held enough freeze-dried food to feed families hiding from global Armageddon for decades, owned a small arsenal of guns, and fortified a pole barn in which to wait out the collapse of civilization. But he had something no one else could buy: knowledge that the end was coming and that the supply chains would snap; the best hope your family had was holing up in his northern Michigan compound while things fell apart.
posted by darkstar at 12:38 PM PST - 196 comments

Stephen Sondheim's 1964 musical Anyone Can Whistle [Wikipedia] was a genuine flop. It's rarely produced, and the original production was never filmed. But in 1995, a concert version was mounted at Carnegie Hall as an AIDS fundraiser, starring Bernadette Peters, Madeline Kahn, and Scott Bakula. Presented in glorious single-camera VHSovision, that performance is on YouTube. [2h9m] Here is a half-hour lecture on the background of the show. [Vimeo] Here is the Broadway libretto [PDF] if you want to follow along. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:16 AM PST - 14 comments

Jookin' Buckin' Choppin' Footworkin' Boogie Jiggin' Swag and Krumping are just some of the dances you can watch and enjoy in this twitter thread.
posted by vespabelle at 8:49 AM PST - 3 comments

A two part series from Criminal, the podcast. Hear directly from these real life victims of a robbery/kidnapping/rape/extortion scheme and how the Vallejo police turned on them in a surreally horrifying twist. [more inside]
posted by amanda at 8:05 AM PST - 20 comments

It’s quite astonishing to learn that Pac-Man was allotted 14-pages in a porn mag whose format was dedicated to nudity, dirty jokes and cigarette ads. Even more surprising is no one complained that he was. Writer, historical researcher and self-confessed vidiot Cat DeSpira unpacks an odd feature from the April 1982 issue of Oui Magazine in this blog post for her site Retro Bitch. [CW boobs and butts] [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 8:03 AM PST - 24 comments

jan Misali, amateur linguist, asks a seemingly simple question: how many of the Mario games are "Super Mario" (or 'mainline') Mario games? It turns out to be surprisingly complex, because of the dozens of Mario games released over the years, there's only universal consensus on three. [more inside]
posted by Merus at 5:47 AM PST - 25 comments

These norms in the literacy of English speakers today are so well entrenched that simple adjustments are very jarring. If ai trai tu repreezent mai akshuel pronownseeayshun in raiteeng, yu kan reed it, but its difikelt and disterbeeng tu du soh. It just looks wrong, and that feeling of wrongness interrupts the flow of reading.

–Typos, tricks and misprints is an essay by linguist Arika Okrent about why English spelling is so damn weird.
posted by Kattullus at 1:49 AM PST - 58 comments