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Lessons from camels
A ten-day camel trek through the South Australian outback. With your parents.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:40 PM PST - 12 comments

If you take a stroll around Redwood City, California, you might get the sense that something isn't quite right. Pay particular attention to the shadows. Notice how they seem to misbehave? Flowers sprout from the shadows of bike racks, mailboxes turn into shadow monsters, and shady monkeys hang around atop parking meters. What's going on?

Damon Belanger: Art — Design — Instagram
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:58 PM PST - 15 comments

cats ringing bell for treats
posted by cjorgensen at 7:30 PM PST - 33 comments

Back in May, it was announced that Netflix would be producing a limited series prequel to the classic Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. And in keeping with the spirit of the original, the new series will feature all new puppetry and animatronic characters. For fans of the original film who also have an artistic bent, the filmmakers have decided to hold a very unique contest: Design your own creature for the series and Jim Henson's Creature Shop will bring it to life.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:31 PM PST - 25 comments

Long-haul trucking, forensic investigation, innovative cooking, endurance racing—by women. Even though women have been in the haulage industry for a long time, people are still surprised when a woman drops out of a semi's cab. In a university, there's a club whose members study and investigate real crime cases; there's only one young man in the group Girl Detectives. In Nashville, there's a restaurant owner who's been confounding the local food style for quite a while A Woman's Kitchen. And there an all-woman endurance race in the desert Rebelle Rally.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:19 PM PST - 5 comments

Poet John Ashbery has died. [more inside]
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:30 PM PST - 41 comments

IT’S BEEN M0RE THAN 13 YEARS SINCE A P0ST AB0UT Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
(IT WAS AB0UT THEM MENTI0NING US! MENTI0NING THEM HYP0THESIZING AB0UT THE DPRK ATTACKING THE ROK!)
SINCE THEN, THEY’VE PERSISTED IN THEIR L0VE 0F M0NAC0 & FLASH ANIMATI0NS 0F TEXT 0VER SWEET, RHYTHMIC JAZZ. NEW WORKS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:
BACK IN THE R.0.K • AH • SUPER SMILE • THE AXIS 0F THE UNIVERSE RUNS THR0UGH Y0U • WANT T0 D0 G00D? KN0W H0W T0 SH00T A SEMIAUT0MATIC HANDGUN? • LET A HUNDRED ARTW0RKS BL00M, WILT, AND DIE • SUBJECT: HELL0 • AOMARI AMORI
posted by Going To Maine at 1:15 PM PST - 13 comments

"I don't really [portray] many people who I don't think are abusing their power. I chart these guys... My mercury is rising and when it gets to a certain point, I'll start drawing." -- Robbie Conal: Meet the Godfather of Guerrilla Street Art (Sarah Linn, KCET) [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 12:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Raise your hand if you suffer from Seasonal School Supply Shopping related depression. You are not alone.
posted by pjsky at 11:59 AM PST - 71 comments

• Why Does Everyone Hate Mercy? by Apple Cider [Medium] Despite Mercy being posed as the angelic medic of the popular team shooter Overwatch, she, or the people who play her, might as well be the Devil with the way that many complain about her at every opportunity. Their ire covers a multitude of sins but a lot of it centers around her being a female character, a popular support hero, as well as one that exemplifies peacefulness and collaborative team effort. However, these same design choices, as well as the playerbase that have followed her in, have made Mercy a lightning rod for the obvious derision in the competitive gaming community about who plays support, as well as what we assume about their abilities. It is incredibly gendered at times, and that’s not a coincidence.

A thread on the official Overwatch forums [Blizzard] reads with a giant headline in the familiar font face of the game, “Why aren’t there more female eSports (sic) players?” A forum-goer could believe that it is a serious question and would be further explored with nuanced, respectful discussion. Instead, the first post is the dry fart of a punchline: “because they are all Mercy mains.”

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:48 AM PST - 46 comments

An update to an old tech of just using high pressure. They've known that high pressure (hundreds of MPa) can inactivate a number of microorganisms (through some Bacterial spores survive) since the late 1800s. Also called Pacalization. New tech called Microwave Assisted Thermal Stabilization (MATS) was developed at Washington State University for the Military. Benefits is it only takes minutes at an elevated temp with the pressure where current pressure cooker method takes an hour which severely degrades the taste, texture, and nutritional content. They're talking about things like Beef Stew in a sealed pouch that lasts for a year with a taste/texture worth eating. Another link states that Europe has a project called "HIPSTER" that is examining the same tech.
posted by aleph at 10:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Magnitude 6.3 Seismic Event in North Korea from largest nuclear weapon tested by DPRK to date. Experts suggest the nuclear detonation may be as high as 120 kilotons, possibly a boosted atomic (fission) bomb or a small hydrogen (fusion) device (as reported by the DPRK). Seismic data suggest a cave-in related to the explosion, raising fears of a release of radioactive material. Most global leaders have been responding to the nuclearization of the DPRK with sober caution. Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump have not been among them.
posted by darkstar at 9:25 AM PST - 178 comments

Things are a bit rough these days. Do you need some exceedingly happy music? Then The Happiest Guys In The World may be a cure for what ails, with their 1999 summer jam Hey Hey It's The Vegetable Man. Come inside for further info and highly unique synthesizers! [more inside]
posted by Frobenius Twist at 9:20 AM PST - 2 comments

Steely Dan’s Walter Becker Dead at 67 | Becker was born Feb. 20, 1950 in Queens, N.Y., and was raised in the borough community. Initially a saxophonist, he took up the guitar as a teen. He encountered his future partner Donald Fagen as a student at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, while playing a gig at the local club the Red Balloon. [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:19 AM PST - 150 comments

A road trip through west USA - This is the remembering of 3,500km journey in west United States in 2013. This [movie] is made of 344,118 Google StreetView images, fetched with some home made scripts and a lot of patience. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 4:51 AM PST - 9 comments

"... The Joker’s catchphrase was the most common response to BBC Culture’s poll of 177 critics last year to determine the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century. Very few comedies made that list, apart from Wes Anderson’s confections and a few Pixar romps. That canon of modern classics showed how very often ‘what makes us laugh’ is neglected when assessing cinematic greatness. [...] So this year BBC Culture decided to get serious about comedy. We asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries and six continents a simple: “What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?”" The result: The 100 greatest comedies of all time. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 4:49 AM PST - 131 comments