September 5, 2023

Feeding fat balls to coral could combat damage from climate change

How feeding little fat balls to coral could combat damage from climate change. A team of scientists are getting creative about how to provide these underwater gardens with the best chance of survival against global warming, starting with coral found in Sydney Harbour. (Note that this is not a perfect solution: it's more like applying firm pressure to a bleeding wound while you wait for the-ambulance-of-reduced-carbon-emissions.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:28 PM PST - 3 comments

Bond Age

So deep are American cities’ reliance on bonds that without access to them, most would simply be unable to provide even the most rudimentary social services. When lockdowns spread in the spring of 2020, slowing cities’ revenues from sales taxes and user fees to a trickle, the Federal Reserve stepped in almost immediately to offer $500 billion in short-term municipal debt financing. The measure, called the Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF), backstopped the market as it “imploded in real time.” from Bond Villains
posted by chavenet at 4:32 PM PST - 35 comments

Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison

Our only source of music was a borrowed pocket radio, hooked up to earbuds that cost three dollars at the commissary. At night, we’d crank up the volume and lay the earbuds on the desk in our cell. Those tiny speakers radiated crickety renditions of Top Forty hits. During that time, I heard tracks from “Red,” Swift’s fourth studio album, virtually every hour. I was starting to enjoy them. [The New Yorker]
posted by DarlingBri at 1:41 PM PST - 14 comments

Micro Mages: How we fit an NES game into 40 Kilobytes

In 2018, retro indie studio Morphcat Games create Micro Mages for the 8-bit Nintendo. Playable as a Windows PC game or on an NES emulator, they discuss how they fit an entire game into 40 kilobytes. [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 1:23 PM PST - 8 comments

On this day in 1977, Voyager 1 launched.

Space.com looks back on the historic launch Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space in 2012. The spacecraft’s next big encounter will take place in about 40,000 years, when it will fly by another star system. [more inside]
posted by zooropa at 11:35 AM PST - 33 comments

Keith Moon sings 'When I'm Sixty-Four'

'All This and World War II': The Beatles Movie Nobody Asked For, Nobody Saw, and Nobody Remembers
posted by box at 10:41 AM PST - 27 comments

Cops are not your friends. Prosecutors are not your friends.

60+ people indicted on RICO, other charges over allegations tied to protesting of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center [more inside]
posted by hydropsyche at 10:35 AM PST - 82 comments

I hope that someone gets my

72 years ago in Iowa, a worker named Mary Foss wrote a message onto an egg. She put the egg into a carton and sent the carton out for distribution. Last month, someone responded.
posted by gauche at 7:34 AM PST - 34 comments

Unsung Heroes of Illustration

Pete Beard is a British historian of illustration and illustrators. In an age of clipart and ML-generated content, it is worthwhile to look back and celebrate the forgotten artists of the past. Pete Beard has just published his 100th episode of 'Unsung Heroes of Illustration', a series which covers illustrators born between 1850 and 1910. CW: Whilst all the illustrations are skilfully rendered, there might be the odd one that does not conform to modern sensibilities.
posted by bouvin at 7:13 AM PST - 9 comments

Antarctic worker rescued

Australia has rescued their sick team member from Antarctica. [more inside]
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:59 AM PST - 19 comments

“How did you learn to build this way?”

Start With Creation by Simon Sarris [Substack] [The Map Is Mostly Water] “In fact, when you stop waiting for others—for either their permission or instruction—and instead begin on your own, fumbling through, regardless of how ready you are, this could be considered one of the true beginnings of adulthood. I think there is value in pushing learning and doing as close together as possible. I wish to learn like an apprentice with no fixed master, instead with repeated trial and sharing the results. If no teacher is found along the way, then the mistakes will be my teacher. Every undertaking is a series of questions and experiments. I believe every hard thing you do, for that matter, acts as a multiplier on the rest of your knowledge. Failure is something you want to tempt. You should court it the way the bullfighter courts the bull. When I wish to learn something, I begin with this in mind.”
posted by Fizz at 5:05 AM PST - 19 comments

“My heart, my mind, is in England”

The Albanian town that TikTok emptied Since the fall of communism in 1991, Kukes has lost roughly half of its population. In recent years, thousands of young people — mostly boys and men — have rolled the dice and journeyed to England, often on small boats and without proper paperwork.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:40 AM PST - 8 comments

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