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WeWork’s founder is back with a billion-dollar venture. Neumann’s new company Flow wants to transform the residential rental real estate market. Notably, it has the financial support of Andreessen Horowitz, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in everything from Facebook to Airbnb. The backing of Andreessen Horowitz, considered royalty among early-stage investors, is a powerful sign of support, and perhaps a rebuke to Neumann’s critics, who have described his leadership of WeWork as a cautionary tale of corporate hubris.
posted by geoff. at 11:18 PM PST - 57 comments

Australia's former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, famous for saying "that's not my job" about everything that a Prime Minister was supposed to do, and running away to Hawaii for a holiday when Australia was on fire, has just been caught awarding himself FIVE additional portfolios while he was in office. The way in which he did so may have been illegal - portfolios are supposed to be public knowledge, and he kept it secret.
posted by carriage pulled by cassowaries at 8:25 PM PST - 59 comments

Saul Goodman started as a joke -- a sleazy, motormouthed "two-and-a-half-dimensional" take on TV lawyers, a bit of comic relief brought on for a four-episode stint to help guide Breaking Bad protagonists Walter White and Jesse Pinkman into the criminal underworld. Brought to life by Bob Odenkirk, Saul proved to be one of the show's most popular characters, and in the wake of the show's blockbuster ending AMC announced a prequel spinoff series: Better Call Saul. But what was conceived as a 30-minute case-of-the-week sitcom quickly developed into a compelling legal drama and deep character study of Goodman's past as "Slippin'" Jimmy McGill, his evolution, and bleak future at an Omaha Cinnabon -- "we don’t want to get to Saul Goodman … and that’s the tragedy." Supported by vice-tight writing, masterful cinematography, and impeccable performances by Michael McKean, Patrick Fabian, Jonathan Banks, Michael Mando, Tony Dalton, Giancarlo Esposito, and especially breakout star Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler, the series has only grown more acclaimed as it progressed and, with its last batch of astonishing episodes, arguably surpassed its predecessor to become one of the greatest dramas in television history. Now, after seven years, six seasons, 62 episodes, one Peabody Award, multiple hiatuses, a COVID pause, and a brush with death, Better Call Saul is set to air its long-awaited series finale tonight at 9PM Eastern. It's showtime, folks. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:31 PM PST - 72 comments

Accordionist extraordinaire and revered costumed street performer Frank Lima, AKA The Great Morgani, is hanging up the squeezebox and spandex after decades of busking. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 1:17 PM PST - 7 comments

In this light-hearted vein, let’s discard conventional games as the relics of the past that they are. If we really want to equip ourselves for competition with other great powers (an imperfect framework to understand twenty-first-century geopolitics but probably the least imperfect of all the contenders), then the type of game to play is “real-time strategy,” and the name of the game is StarCraft. from StarCraft as Statecraft
posted by chavenet at 11:22 AM PST - 18 comments

🗳Hey there!🗳 Voting has begun for the inaugural Steering Committee (SC) for Metafilter! Come on over to MeTaTalk for a list of candidates and explanation of the voting process and help determine the future of the site!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:33 AM PST - 4 comments

The gender binary is holding us back from truly great hair. The gender binary too often limits what people imagine possible for themselves, or for their clients. Hairrari, which opened its first location in Williamsburg in 2011 and now operates three shops across New York City and one in L.A. (with another one on the way for Portland, Oregon), was among the first barber-salons to formally challenge the gender binary. “We’re not just looking at hair, we’re looking at the whole person when they come in,” says Granberger. A lot of it has to do with gauging feeling too, Ryczko adds. “When some people come in, they say, ‘what do you think, what do you think?’ And I always kind of ask them, ‘how do you feel? Do you feel you like it’s better longer? Or do you feel better with shorter here in the back or longer on your neck?’” Ryczko says. “I think that has a lot to do with it, how we feel. The better we feel, the stronger and more confident we are.”
posted by folklore724 at 10:32 AM PST - 57 comments

The treasure trove of Birds Online videos and projects is available online at birdsonline.cz. Since developing the Smart Nest Box, which furtively films its tenants, ecologist Markéta Zárybnická has had a front seat to the daily dramas of avian families...for example, a Eurasian Blue Tit removing a fecal pellet from a nestling’s bottom. One female Boreal Owl had a particular interior design aesthetic; she arranged dead mice and voles in neat rows, placing the heads in the corners of the nest box. In contrast, a European Starling spruced up a bed of grass with a buttercup.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:07 AM PST - 2 comments

"When I began making baskets in the 1980s, I made very useful baskets. Now I make very useless baskets." Lois Russell is a basketweaver, but this is definitely not basket weaving 101. [more inside]
posted by jacquilynne at 8:20 AM PST - 11 comments

Strike! How 80s post-punk band Lining Time crystallised a moment in feminist protest history by Tayyab Amin is a profile of the early 80s all-woman band from Totnes in Devon, whose only album, Strike!, has been reissued on Bandcamp and is available in full on streaming services, including YouTube Music. The reissue of the album was at the behest of Les Amis de Cathy Josefowitz, an organization devoted to safeguarding the artistic legacy of one of Lining Time's founding members, the others being Claire Bushe, Cathy Frost, Lisa Halse and Mara de Wit.
posted by Kattullus at 5:05 AM PST - 3 comments

Attention, please! There will be absolutely no smoking, dirty joking, or whistling in this thread. And furthermore, if you should choose to chew, you'll be pursued. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:41 AM PST - 126 comments

A megaflood that threatens California and the West Coast, could be the most expensive natural disaster in history. It has happened before, The Great Flood of 1862, caused by an atmospheric river from the Pacific Ocean, first loading the coastal mountains with snow that was then melted by heavy warm rains. [more inside]
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:12 AM PST - 53 comments