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Austin McConnell's wife has been reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and she's just gotten to the huge spoilers!
posted by colin.jaquiery at 10:21 PM PST - 40 comments

She arrived in Iowa in 1917, aged 47, newly married, and pregnant. For the next 51 years, Emma Big Bear, lived a traditional indigenous lifestyle on the banks of the Mississippi. [more inside]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 9:09 PM PST - 8 comments

In the latest trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet, Vanellope meets a bunch of other Disney Princesses, including Brave's Merida, who recounts her movie's story almost unintelligibly... to American ears, that is. The image was immediately memefied, with various jokes riffing on what people think Scottish people and the Scots language sound like. Harry Josephine Giles says "The best example of how Scotland is both colonised and colonising is that it's impossible to complain about Americans' poorly-written Scots Merida memes without sounding like a twat.", and then takes the opportunity to "explain" their joke and educate Twitter about Scots.
posted by Etrigan at 7:56 PM PST - 46 comments

Owen Guo, a Chinese reporter in China working for the Financial Times, writes: "Today, I’m exiting journalism bearing no illusions that press freedom in this country will get any better. The forces that constrained reporting when I entered are as robust as ever."
posted by gen at 5:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Guy meets lady on Tinder; they chat and exchange details. A few weeks later, she texts him, asking him out on a date the following day, and suggesting that they meet in front of a stage in Union Square, Manhattan, where a friend of hers is DJing. He shows up, hanging off to the side; and then the DJ stops and she walks on stage and addresses the hundred-strong, predominantly male crowd (SLTwitterThread)
posted by acb at 5:19 PM PST - 94 comments

Ninja explains his choice not to stream with female gamers [Polygon] ““I don’t play with female gamers,” says Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Twitch’s biggest streamer and one of the faces of the Fortnite fandom. This edict may be surprising to hear, especially as emphatically as Blevins said it when we spoke at a recent Samsung event. Though Blevins isn’t shy about being married, and his more than 10 million subscribers include people of every gender identity, the internet’s love of gossip has convinced the Twitch star not to invite women to participate in his Fortnite Battle Royale livestreams. With fame comes scrutiny of every thing you say or do, he suggested, and that can sometimes lead to questions about who you’re sleeping or flirting with on the sly. “If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever,” Blevins told Polygon.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:01 PM PST - 101 comments

Krantz decided that any person who could fake that footprint would have to be as educated as he was, something Krantz highly doubted. [ . . . ] “He had to outclass me in those areas, and I don’t think anybody outclasses me in those areas. At least not since Leonardo Da Vinci, and I’d say such a person is impossible and therefore the tracks were real.”

The Man, The Myth, and The Legend of Grover Krantz. A Legend In The Making: The Early Years of Grover Krantz. Does Science Benefit From the Search for Sasquatch? So, Why Do People Believe In Bigfoot Anyway? A linked series of articles on Professor Grover Krantz, Anthropologist and Sasquatch enthusiast, by Krissy Elliot. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 1:16 PM PST - 13 comments

An Investigation: Do men enter the bathtub on their hands and knees in order to ensure their balls hit the water last?
posted by rewil at 1:02 PM PST - 101 comments

The million-dollar brownstone that no one owned
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:59 PM PST - 15 comments

Sidewalks are a last shred of safe public space. No wonder we’re fighting over them.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:10 AM PST - 74 comments

Whether you want to browse some vintage recipies, get a feel for what was popular in a particular decade, or maybe revisit the top trends from your graduation year, ClickAmericana is an extensive online archive of vintage ads, magazine articles, and popular culture spanning a surprisingly large swath of American history.
posted by anastasiav at 11:03 AM PST - 7 comments

What the coining of new native words reveals about modern America. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:00 AM PST - 10 comments

The biggest policy mistake of the last decade? Austerity. (The Week) Don’t blame academic economists for austerity, basically no one listens to us. The Greece Bailout’s Legacy of Immiseration: “ 2010 to 2018 will go down in Greek history as an epic period of colonization; of asset-stripping and privatization; of unfunded health and education; of bankruptcies, foreclosures, homelessness, impoverishment; of unemployment, emigration, and suicide.“ (The Atlantic) 2018: the year the failure of privatisation and austerity became undisguisable “The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council” (New Statesmen) When Bosses Threatened To Close This Plant, Greek Workers Took It Over ( The Nation)
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 AM PST - 52 comments

Here Are the Most Metal Items From Black Sabbath Frontman Ronnie James Dio’s Estate Sale, Ranked. Ronnie James Dio passed in 2010.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:31 AM PST - 25 comments

On the last night before the start of classes at UNC Chapel Hill, protestors finally topppled Silent Sam, the statue on campus commemorating Confederate soldiers. (University's response here.) The protests started to show solidarity for Maya Little, the UNC history graduate student who was arrested in the spring for splashing red ink mixed with her own blood on the statue after she read the statue's dedication speech by Ku Klux Klan supporter Julian Carr.
posted by astapasta24 at 7:32 AM PST - 102 comments

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. The highest intensity rating possible. "The average speed is almost a hundred times higher than the maximum speed, which shouldn't really be possible."
posted by mr_bovis at 5:56 AM PST - 33 comments

The Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong guy has the cutest horrible example of a juvenile sauropodlet: Sauropodlets: YDAW Synapisode #2
posted by zengargoyle at 12:47 AM PST - 7 comments