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Q: Are we immortal? A. If you trust the mathematics, yes. But it is not an immortality in the sense that after death you will wake up sitting in hell or heaven, both of which – let’s be honest – are very earthly ideas. It is more that, since the information about you cannot be destroyed, it is in principle possible that a higher being someday, somehow re-assembles you and brings you back to life. And since you would have no memory of the time passing in between – which could be 10¹⁰⁰ billion years! – you would just find yourself in the very far future. from Sabine Hossenfelder, physicist: ‘If you trust the mathematics, we are immortal’ [El Pais] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Oct 19 at 1:21 AM - 19 comments

They may look like ant hills, but Western Australia's Pinnacles are 100,000 years old, study suggests. Western science has long debated when the towering pillars of the Pinnacles came to be. A new study suggests most of the spires formed when a particularly wet period dissolved the surrounding rock.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Oct 18 at 8:39 PM - 4 comments

British Columbia goes to the polls [Global]. A rather complicated situation in BC: the old opposition party, BC United, quit (or at least its leader did)[CBC], and handed things over to the Conservatives. A bunch of BC United's candidates are running as independents [CBC]-- this includes five incumbents. So the Right-wing vote is split. Meanwhile, the Green Party seems to be doing okay (14% in the polls, leader doing well in her riding [Pollara]). The governing party right now is the New Democratic Party, which is social democratic. [more inside]
posted by CCBC on Oct 18 at 5:43 PM - 11 comments

“Andy Capp is often dismissed as nothing but the exploits of a wife-beating drunk,” Paul Slade says. “It deserves better." ... The Redemption of Andy Capp is an appreciation of Andy Capp’s creator, Reg Smythe and his skills as a world-class cartoonist. There was far more to the strip than people realise today.” [via mefi projects]
posted by chavenet on Oct 18 at 1:18 PM - 29 comments

On the University of Michigan's DEI initiative. Nicholas Confessore (previously) reports on UM's diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. (Gift link; X/Twitter thread introduction) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo on Oct 18 at 12:38 PM - 16 comments

Earlier this week, Paramotorist Alex Lang was flying around the Giza plateau when he spotted an unexpected sight - a dog frolicking on of the Great Pyramid barking at birds. Don't worry, the dog proved they knew what they were doing!
posted by drewbage1847 on Oct 18 at 9:32 AM - 23 comments

How future-proofing Victoria's forests could help save the state's iconic emblem. A Victorian emblem — the lowland Leadbeater's possum — is dangerously close to extinction, with only a few dozen left in the wild in a small forest patch in the Yarra Ranges.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Oct 18 at 9:07 AM - 1 comments

Mitzi Gaynor, song-and-dance queen with razzle-dazzle flair, dies at 93
posted by robbyrobs on Oct 18 at 8:44 AM - 18 comments

The update offered some improvements! I appreciated the vertical orientation of its scientific mode, because turning your phone sideways is so 2009; the continuing display of each operation (e.g., 217 ÷ 4 + 8) on the screen until I asked for the result; the unit-conversion mode, because I will never know what a centimeter is. But there also was a startling omission: The calculator’s “C” button—the one that clears input—was gone. The “C” itself had been cleared [atlantic]
posted by HearHere on Oct 18 at 7:03 AM - 43 comments

A Blood Moon (YT 16:29) - A Legend of Zelda short film about the war from the point of view of a bokoblin soldier, by Dan Weller. [trailer (YT 1:54)]
posted by lucidium on Oct 18 at 5:48 AM - 10 comments

What happens when a 16thC manuscript page from the diary of Philip Henslowe (~1550 – 1616) is pushed in front of a math-wonk who a) recognises a problem in modulo arithmetic b) finds an error in the protocol? A card trick that stitches together Arts, STEM and edutainment. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist on Oct 18 at 4:46 AM - 5 comments

The History of Red Hot, the Pioneering Social Change Organization, in 8 Great Songs Ahead of Transa, a new project for trans charities featuring Sade and André 3000, Red Hot founder John Carlin talks about wrangling Nirvana through Kurt Cobain’s babysitter and accidentally releasing the first-ever Wilco song.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs on Oct 18 at 3:56 AM - 5 comments

Ontario premier Doug Ford--who is really just a series of corporations in a skin suit--to send out $200 cheques to ALL Ontarians. The issue? Looks like he's planning to call an early provincial election not long after the cheques are sent out. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh on Oct 18 at 3:46 AM - 33 comments

Was Saizeriya really designed by a lost Italian who got trapped in a Japanese convenience store for days, subsisted on a highly modified Italian diet, then came out the other side with low cost yet tasty Italian food? Sadly the truth is much more mundane. from Saizeriya's Secret to Survival [Hidden Japan] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Oct 18 at 2:09 AM - 10 comments

Doctor Fukushi Masaichi And The Art Of Preserving Tattooed Skin. Tattoos have different meanings across cultures, ranging from sacred symbols to marks of rebellion. In Japan, tattoos are part of a broader subculture called irezumi, an intricate form of body art with its own set of unique designs, imagery, and symbolism.
posted by blue_beetle on Oct 17 at 11:51 PM - 7 comments

Queensland to trial koala doggy doors to reduce roadkill rates. A unique collaboration in south-east Queensland will introduce one-way escape hatches so the marsupials can travel to their breeding spots without doubling back into traffic.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Oct 17 at 9:35 PM - 5 comments

Robert Roberson Will be Executed Because It's Legal to Execute Innocent People in the U.S. Tonight, Texas was scheduled to execute Robert Roberson, who would have been (will be?) the first person executed based on the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis. [more inside]
posted by likeatoaster on Oct 17 at 6:50 PM - 31 comments

Simon Stålenhag is a Swedish visual artist renowned for his beautiful, unsettling works combining pastoral landscapes and neglected, nostalgic locales with the striking presence of massive retro-futuristic technology. While most of his works come in the form of concept art, vignette series like Tales From the Loop (adapted into an underrated Amazon Prime anthology), and the occasional music video [previously], his most narratively compelling title is surely The Electric State -- a melancholy, apocalyptic vision of an alternate-history 1990s California Pacifica littered with spaceship hulks and rotting androids, in which a young girl searching for her brother journeys with her mute robot across a rapidly disintegrating society consumed from within by an addictive neural-VR craze that's birthing a race of ominous Lovecraftian machines. The tale inspired video essays, animations, and even roleplaying games, and fans took note when Netflix optioned the book for a big-budget adaptation. But though the project nails the imagery and has a stacked cast, the first look and teaser trailer suggests the Russo-directed blockbuster may be more in the vein of "Fallout + Marvel with an endearing team of ragtag robots" than "unspeakable horrors slithering through your headset."
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 17 at 1:30 PM - 26 comments

Toni Vaz, stuntwoman who started the NAACP Image Awards, dies at 101 [more inside]
posted by Ideefixe on Oct 17 at 1:27 PM - 15 comments

Constructed entirely of archival footage, the short documentary Balloon Boy tracks the news story via the breathless hours of coverage news channels across the world gave to the peculiar spectacle, both during the flight and long after the balloon had landed. Directed by the US filmmakers Arlin Golden and Brian Gersten, and produced by the US filmmaker Nathan Truesdell, who is known for tragicomic archival documentaries tackling institutional dysfunction, the work forms a withering criticism of profit-driven news media. And, in the process of gawking at the surreal spectacle all over again, viewers may even find themselves a tad implicated in the systems of ‘news coverage’ that are rewarded for entertaining rather than informing. [Aeon]
posted by chavenet on Oct 17 at 12:43 PM - 25 comments