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Can your best friends be books?
posted by invisible ink at 11:33 PM PST - 16 comments

Seattle artist Briar Bates had one final wish before her death from cancer; for her friends to perform a water ballet entitled "Ankle Deep" in the wading pool at Volunteer Park.
posted by ActionPopulated at 8:40 PM PST - 12 comments

"Venezuelan women stripped off their pants and threw them at riot police, taunting the already demoralized young men to “man up” and put them on. Jeering crowds laughed at the confused paramilitary forces, chanting for them to “wear some pants” and side with the people against the tottering Maduro dictatorship. Suddenly, the truncheon-wielding, helmeted police and their armored vehicles didn’t seem quite so menacing." An essay on the potential military uses of ridicule.
posted by clawsoon at 7:57 PM PST - 25 comments

Little Horribles were a series of collectible porcelain statues produced by the figurine producer Hagen Renaker. Although more famed for their animal statuary, the horribles were a line of grotesque (but endearing) monsters, often with surreal and cartoony looks. Designed by the artist Nell Bortells (a brief memorial here), you can take a look at the creatures at a number of online galleries from collectors. One blogger does a deeper dive on a specific figurine, showing how it's a direct reference to Salvador Dali's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War).
posted by codacorolla at 5:38 PM PST - 7 comments

A Team of Women is Unearthing the Forgotten Legacy of Harvard’s Women 'Computers' by Alex Newman. From 1885 to 1927 over 80 women computed and analyzed astronomical data for Harvard University. Said data, mostly in the form of glass plate photographs, is in the process of being digitized by the Harvard Observatory as part of the DASCH Project. If you would like to know more about pioneering female astronomers such as Williamina Fleming or Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the Harvard Observatory has compiled some links. If you would like to take part in making their work available to the public, take part in Project PHaEDRA and transcribe their logbooks.
posted by Kattullus at 5:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Oncologists have to give bad news. But we can’t help it when our imaginations are held captive by a particular patient.
posted by smoke at 3:42 PM PST - 10 comments

How much more creepy can you get than a wasp nest built around a baby doll? Bonus: toddlerpedes! (Jon Beinart previously, previouslier)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:38 PM PST - 24 comments

Doot! Doot! The One and Literally Only Nardwuar: He calls himself the Human Serviette. We call him one of the brightest, weirdest stars in the world of CanCon. His show, Nardwuar the Human Serviette (previously), has been airing on CiTR 101.9 FM since 1987. To mark the show's 30th anniversary, the station will be broadcasting a 20-hour marathon of Nardwuar’s interviews ("ranging from Jay-Z to Michael Gorbachev, from Destiny's Child to Wesley Willis to everything in between") starting at 9:00 p.m. on September 21 until 5:00 p.m. on September 22. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:54 PM PST - 22 comments

"In the early morning hours of June 30, 1995, a fire sparked to life in Kristine Bunch’s mobile home. It fanned out across the floor and climbed up the walls, then formed an impassable barrier across the middle of the trailer. Bunch, 21, snapped awake in the living room. Her three-year-old son, Tony, shrieked for her on the other side of the flames." (Mother Jones) [more inside]
posted by strelitzia at 2:39 PM PST - 6 comments

55 of the best free fonts for designers. Sometimes in the world of free fonts, you get what you pay for. But Tom May (at art and design blog Creativebloq.com) has found the best free fonts by professional designers from a range of countries including Spain, Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Latvia, the UK, Uruguay, Finland, the US, Ireland, and Canada. The fonts are arranged into eight categories: serif, sans serif, handwriting, vintage and retro, brush, tattoo, graffiti and "unusual". [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:17 PM PST - 12 comments

Teaching white students showed me the difference between power and privilege. Southern black boys like me were more likely to end up incarcerated than working beside white faculty at so-called elite liberal arts colleges. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 10:24 AM PST - 10 comments

"Even after World War II, a conflict we typically characterize as an unambiguous moral necessity, veterans disrupted an emerging nationalist, anti-communist consensus. Robert Saxe, the author of Settling Down: World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Post-War Consensus, told the New Republic, “A lot of World War II veterans came back and had some pretty significant critiques of America.” Those critiques ranged from dissatisfaction with the military itself, where the divide between officers and enlisted men reflected broader class tensions, and with civilians, who benefited from a wartime economic boom without risking their lives in battle." The Invisible Veterans Of The Left [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 10:10 AM PST - 6 comments

University of Copenhagen makes low noise breakthrough They make a micro-membrane (with deposited aluminum) that is one side of a capacitor in a resonant circuit. So radio signals at that resonance are *much* larger than the noise floor. They then pick up the radio signal by bouncing a laser off the membrane => radio signal turned into optical "The numbers are impressive. The new device has a room temperature sensitivity of 5 picoVolts per (Hz)^1/2 at a frequency of 1 Mhz. In other words, it does the same job at room temperature that physicists could only dream of doing at the temperature of liquid helium."
posted by aleph at 10:01 AM PST - 14 comments

Kaitlyn Tiffany read her first Stephen King novel, IT, this summer... she kept a diary. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:03 AM PST - 94 comments

New Millennium Falcon is Lego’s biggest set ever [Polygon] [Star Wars Lego Blue] “Lego has revealed a new Millennium Falcon set for their Ultimate Collector’s Series line. Tipping the scales at 7,541 pieces, it’s Lego’s largest set ever released. When built, the new set is eight inches high, 33 inches long and 22 inches wide. That’s really big. Don’t believe us? Here’s Lego designer Hans Burkhard Schlömer cradling it in his arms.” [image gallery: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
posted by Fizz at 8:52 AM PST - 39 comments

Glue is at least 200,000 years old. That's before ceramic pottery existed to make it in. So how did humanish folks that far back do it? A team from the University of Leiden decided to take a crack at making their own batch of Neanderthal tar. Working with the resources available to Neanderthals, experimental archaeologists figured out ways to create useable amounts of tar from birch-bark—no sophisticated ceramic pots or controlled temperatures needed. [more inside]
posted by lucasgonze at 8:36 AM PST - 9 comments

The Definitive Sandwich Family Tree - a taxonomy by MeFi's own The Whelk.
posted by Artw at 7:40 AM PST - 55 comments

Martin a short documentary by Donal Moloney "Martin has not slept in a bed for many years. He doesn't consider himself homeless. He is one of the most content and happiest individuals I have ever met. This short documentary explores the development of our relationship over the last few years but more importantly the search for happiness and what it means to different people." [more inside]
posted by Fence at 7:19 AM PST - 6 comments

The last couple of months have seen two new entries in the growing genre of Reanimations - shot-for-shot fan-remakes of cartoons set to the original soundtracks. In late July, 164 animators came together to reanimate an episode of Steven Universe. And just a few days ago, after over a year, over 227 artists re-animated the one, the only: MAMA LUIGI. More reanimations inside - if you know of any not listed here, please link to them in the comments! [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 5:23 AM PST - 4 comments

"Navigating the steep staircase and walking down to the rocks that guard the harbour of St. John’s, it is still possible to see the rusted remnants of the vast wire anti-submarine nets that once guarded the narrows. Its a small reminder of the vital battle that once stretched across the Atlantic, that kept Britain from being forced into starvation, and would eventually bring supplies for D-Day. And overlooking the entrance to the harbour, is an anonymous brick building with a German periscope on the roof, that might be the most remarkable, secret bar you might hope to find."
posted by bryon at 4:59 AM PST - 6 comments

The Big Bang Theory provides a perfect lens through which to deconstruct a popular media trope I like to call the Adorkable Misogynist. Adorkable Misogynists are male characters whose geeky version of masculinity is framed as comically pathetic yet still endearing. Their status as nerdy “nice guys” then lets them off the hook for a wide range of creepy, entitled, and sexist behaviors.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:49 AM PST - 98 comments

On Friday, a University of Utah Burn Unit nurse, Alex Wubbels, found herself in a precarious legal position: trapped between a police detective and his watch commander insisting upon taking an illegal blood sample of one of her patients on the one hand, and the clearly stated (and constitutionally legal) policy of denying them their request as a violation of her unconscious patient's 4th Amendment rights. She was professional and respectful throughout, and maintained her composure admirably. Then they arrested her. Bodycam videos from a second officer shows the event. [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 1:57 AM PST - 97 comments