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Juan Carlos, former King of Spain, is now elsewhere. Seems like he was doing some corruption and personal enrichment behind the scenes. Now he has left Spain. This tarnishes his role in the restoration of democracy after Franco in '75 and resistance to the coup in '81. Current King Felipe VI, his son, has taken steps to distance himself from his father's financial dirt.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:55 PM PST - 28 comments

Despite years (previously) of warnings (previously) to not use Excel for bioinformatics, it seems that it is a habit which cannot be broken. So, instead, over the past year or so, some 27 human genes have been renamed, all because Microsoft Excel kept misreading their symbols as dates.
posted by clawsoon at 2:27 PM PST - 132 comments

AllArts is streaming several short plays from The Fire This Time Festival, which provides a platform for early career playwrights of African and African American descent. Plays should be available through August 8 (or later?); they may not be available in all parts of the world, but the pages do include transcripts. The plays were filmed at the Kraine Theater in early 2020. Also available at the PBS site. [more inside]
posted by kristi at 1:08 PM PST - 2 comments

Building on Alicia Kennedy’s On Restaurants and The Death of the Chef and Tien Nguyen’s What would a food media that de-centers employers look like?, Tejal Rao says it’s time to move away from the chef-auteur (NYT). “White male chefs who already fit neatly into the stereotype of the auteur are overrepresented, praised for a highly specific approach to fine dining, then rewarded with more investment and opportunities to replicate that same approach. So many alternative kinds of food businesses are never considered for awards or investments. They don’t fit into the chef-auteur framework, and in some cases have no desire to do so.”
posted by adrianhon at 12:34 PM PST - 29 comments

From Nagasaki Biopark in 2014, “Beaver baby wants to swim and worried family”
posted by Going To Maine at 12:01 PM PST - 22 comments

After several years of bloody internal fights that had shown self-dealing and corruption throughout the structure of the National Rifle Association, NYS AG Letitia James has filed suit to dissolve the organization under state laws regarding fraud in charitable organizations. (SLTPM) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:30 AM PST - 141 comments

The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study on mental health in popular storytelling (pdf) examined 100 top-grossing films and 50 popular TV series to understand the prevalence and depiction of mental health conditions in entertainment. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:43 AM PST - 19 comments

The Russian duo filmed an interview with Dude (English subtitiles). Topics include opposition, radicalism, feminism, working together, hiring people to cry at funerals, and more. [more inside]
posted by WeekendJen at 7:27 AM PST - 1 comments

Making fun of Trump — who has long existed as outright self-parody — was never easy. Two parodies of the Axios interview from yesterday deserve mention:
1. Study Hall
2. Do you like me, Jonathan? (By TrumpDraws!). (Via)
Extra: The Curb Your Enthusiasm version
And Extra/Extra: Why Your Boomer Parents Are Obsessed With Sarah Cooper:... “For your parents, at least — the pleasure of seeing Cooper or anyone else simulate Trump’s idiocy is directly tied to the hope that he’ll see it and be very, very mad. That’s their little revenge, and they’re addicted to it. Harmless in the short-term, no doubt; the worry is that over time, the schtick folds fascism, hate and violence into simple clownery. With Trump, that’s a mistake we’ve repeated since the start”.
posted by growabrain at 6:48 AM PST - 46 comments