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Gephyrophobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of bridges. No not those bridges. If you suffer from this disorder (as I do) you may not want to read this list of bridge collapses. You may also not want to read that the US Department of Transportation rates 1 out of 9 bridges in the country as deficient. Even worse, here's an awesome interactive map showing your local bridge evaluation scores from the USDOT.
comment posted at 11:45 AM on Oct-3-15

Why are little kids in Japan so independent? - 'If we had a nonviolent society, kids could walk around on their own, unafraid, like they do in Japan'. (via)
comment posted at 3:41 PM on Oct-3-15

"The famous festival in Nevada has a policy of ‘inclusion’ yet you won’t see many ‘burners’ who are black. Is it unwelcoming, or are there other matters in play?" [Slightly NSFW]
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Oct-2-15

After a pair of baseball announcers roasted a group of selfie-taking women, members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority at Arizona State University, in the stands at an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game, SBNation fires back: Taking photos at sporting events isn't worthy of ridicule. It's simply how fans in the 21st century document moments of their lives.
comment posted at 8:48 AM on Oct-2-15

Photographs of crumbling modernist architecture in Paris. This is a sampling of the photography in Laurent Kronental's "Souvenir d'un Futur" exhibit, showing the crumbling majesty of Paris' architectural experiments during a period of great growth.
comment posted at 8:10 AM on Oct-2-15

President Obama says mass murder has become routine, and prayers just aren't enough. Since the Sandy Hook massacre in December of 2012, there have been 142 school shootings in the United States, including today's murder of 10 students. In total, there have been been nearly 1,000 mass shootings in less than three years, "with shooters killing at least 1,234 people and wounding 3,565 more."
comment posted at 6:51 AM on Oct-2-15

"The way to kill a complex city is to chase out all the poor people – and their food" "When greed makes a place like New York, London or San Francisco unaffordable, the non-wealthy leave, and the city loses the smells and tastes that made it great." [SLGuardian]
comment posted at 7:10 PM on Oct-1-15

From Guernica: At the end, when he was already hiding in his wet and dark Fuhrerbunker and his beloved Eukodal was no longer available, the dictator was in a frail state. He had lost his teeth, he was drooling and he was hallucinating. Hitler, the man who believed in what he called the “Aryan master race,” had ended up a junkie...
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Oct-1-15

"Why, if my neighbor sees me looking sad and asks me if I am okay, is it perfectly acceptable to tell her my aunt passed away, or I lost my job, or I had to put my dog down -- but if I tell her I experienced a miscarriage, I am somehow inappropriately oversharing?" (by Laura Benanti)
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Sep-30-15

What the American people are angry about is they understand that they did not cause this recession. Teachers did not cause this recession. Firefighters and police officers who are being attacked daily by governors all over this country did not cause this recession. Construction workers did not cause this recession. This recession was caused by a few so-called punk and hardcore bands who charged obscene door cover and priced their merch like it was goddamned Prada—Bernie Sanders (I–VT).

Bernie is hardcore.
comment posted at 5:20 AM on Sep-29-15

Conservative Christian communities are split between doubling down on their advocacy, or walling themselves off from mainstream culture. - Laura Turner, Atlantic
comment posted at 11:59 AM on Sep-28-15

The New York Times is reporting that NASA is about to announce the discovery of "definitive signs of liquid water on the surface of present-day Mars."
comment posted at 1:16 PM on Sep-28-15

One of the strangest months in British politics is capped by a anti-gentrification anarchist march through the streets of Shoreditch culminating in an attack on the Cereal Killer Cafe. Take it away, Nigel.
comment posted at 8:23 AM on Sep-28-15

Fresh from The Intercept (that fearless vanguard of journalism helmed by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras): disturbing documents exposing the unfathomable reach of the United Kingdom's GCHQ in its quest for total awareness of global internet traffic. A hundred billion user actions logged per day. A "Black Hole" database of 1.1 trillion logs. Frightening programs like KARMA POLICE, MEMORY HOLE, and MUTANT BROTH that correlate the kilo-crore corpus -- IP addresses, cookies, forum posts, search histories, emails, and passwords all compiled and cross-referenced into a real-time "diary" that gives penetrating insight into the relationships, beliefs, and desires of every web user on the planet. Internal documents suggest only widespread encryption can threaten the regime -- a movement the UK is determined to subdue (previously).
comment posted at 12:01 PM on Sep-26-15

Syrian Refugees: Who is leaving for Europe and Why.
comment posted at 11:14 AM on Sep-25-15

Renters Will Continue to Struggle for the Next Decade
comment posted at 4:29 AM on Sep-25-15

'You worry they could take your kids' Teachers [in the UK] now have a statutory duty to spot signs of 'non-violent extremism', with children as young as three being referred for anti-radicalisation. Does the policy safeguard vulnerable pupils – or discriminate against Muslims?
comment posted at 1:13 PM on Sep-24-15

(Pictures of pieces of skin) We preserve books, games, images, videos, memories, so why not tattoos? NAPSA, the National Association for the Preservation of Skin Art, are offering such a service. (website currently down)
comment posted at 9:04 AM on Sep-24-15

In London, the coffeehouse offered the threat not of male homosexuality but rather of a different kind of dangerous male-on-male behavior, namely "wasting time." Coffee itself was often thought to be disgusting — a few of the names used by detractors were "syrup of soot," "a foreign fart," "a sister of the common sewer," "resembling the river Styx," "Pluto's diet-drink," "horsepond liquor" — but even for those who thought coffee led to medical problems, especially impotence, it was not as threatening as the spaces where it was drunk. Some perceived the coffeehouse as pure waste, a corrupting influence on London society, while others celebrated it with a strange enthusiasm.

– Writing in Cafés: A Personal History by food historian Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft.
comment posted at 10:48 AM on Sep-23-15

Not one of these hippies looks dirty, or stoned, or tuned out; and they all apparently were a lot happier then I was led to believe. Or maybe this is not representative. Neat pictures though.
comment posted at 2:36 PM on Sep-18-15

the "lolita" covers. Tubmlr user gowns (reposted by Hark! A Vagrant's Kate Beaton) examines the subject matter, history, and implications of official book covers for Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 Lolita. (some NSFW book images)
comment posted at 6:36 AM on Sep-17-15

The Mystery of ISIS

The problem, however, lies not in chronicling the successes of the movement, but in explaining how something so improbable became possible. The explanations so often given for its rise—the anger of Sunni communities, the logistical support provided by other states and groups, the movement’s social media campaigns, its leadership, its tactics, its governance, its revenue streams, and its ability to attract tens of thousands of foreign fighters—fall far short of a convincing theory of the movement’s success.

comment posted at 11:12 AM on Sep-16-15

“Head trainer Teri Turner Bolton presses her palms together over her head, the signal to innovate, and then puts her fists together, the sign for “tandem.” Comparative psychologist Stan Kuczaj records several seconds of audible chirping between [the dolphins] Hector and Han, then his camera captures them both slowly rolling over in unison and flapping their tails three times simultaneously. [...] Either one dolphin is mimicking the other [...] or it’s not an illusion at all: When they whistle back and forth beneath the surface, they’re literally discussing a plan.”
comment posted at 2:21 PM on Sep-15-15

My husband is honest enough to say he's never found my body sexually attractive. And yet, we have a happy marriage.
comment posted at 12:32 PM on Sep-15-15

"As long as 'feminine' is treated as a synonym for 'weak,' girls are going to continue to be underestimated and boys are going to continue to be bullied when they step out of the gender box they've been put in." Why does gender neutral clothing always mean 'boy' clothes for girls?
comment posted at 10:01 AM on Sep-15-15

"OVER the last year Private Eye has revealed the extent of ownership of British land by offshore companies, generally for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth. Now the Eye has created an easily searchable online map of these properties, revealing for the first time the British property interests of companies based in tax havens from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue. Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking more than 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has tracked all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014."
comment posted at 6:25 AM on Sep-15-15

How Bespectacled Doofus Rick Perry Fooled Every Dumb Pundit in America
So why is it that after Perry’s embarrassing 2012 campaign, and before his embarrassing 2016 campaign, it became hip, in the political press, to declare that Rick Perry was now a serious man with a legitimate shot at the presidency?
comment posted at 3:52 PM on Sep-14-15

"It is simply easier for some people to believe that the United States government has concocted a vast conspiracy to take away all of our guns than it is to believe that it is too easy for a mentally ill person to acquire one and shoot anyone they want. And now those same people are taking it out on the families of the victims of gun violence after a tragedy." What Do You Say To A Roanoke Truther? Ben Collins, The Daily Beast
comment posted at 10:23 AM on Sep-13-15

Felix Salmon reports on the continuing saga of Cooper Union (previously on MetaFilter). With NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's recent intervention, the school appears ready to stop digging its financial grave, but blocks away, faculty, staff, and students believe a similar story is playing out with New York University's NYU 2031 initiative. The plan, described as "a real estate deal" in a private conversation with an NYU trustee, is the brainchild of controversial NYU president John Sexton.
comment posted at 3:08 PM on Sep-7-15
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Sep-7-15

Letter of Recommendation: Fanny Packs by Jaime Lowe [New York Times]

“For too long, the fanny pack’s cultural baggage has prevented potential adoptees from embracing its sheer practicality. To the unenlightened, fanny packs are synony­mous with the ugly American: the perfect accessory for extra-large, convenience-obsessed people. But to me they promote the greatest of our nation’s ideals: freedom.”

comment posted at 11:51 AM on Sep-4-15

Here's What We Found Inside The Tenement Museum Walls
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Sep-4-15

From rotten meat to startup porn sites to a solicitous Snickers bar, what I saw inside the prison-industrial complex—and what it taught me about our criminal justice crisis. Former Missouri state senator Jeff Smith writes about his time in prison.
comment posted at 3:53 PM on Sep-3-15

The dangerous idea that life is a story.
comment posted at 11:33 AM on Sep-3-15

Nuance is revered in higher education. That’s especially true in sociology, where scholars spend their lives digging into the fine grain of human social behavior, often finding even finer grain underneath. Which is why it came as such a surprise — and perhaps a relief — when Kieran Healy, an associate professor of sociology at Duke University, last week brought a blunt message to the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting: "Fuck Nuance."

comment posted at 12:40 PM on Sep-1-15

Workers in a World of Continuous Partial Employment.
comment posted at 11:32 AM on Aug-31-15

Also known as "Polite White Supremacy."
comment posted at 1:00 PM on Aug-30-15

How the ballpoint pen killed cursive.
comment posted at 10:00 AM on Aug-30-15

Dateonomics: What two religions tell us about the modern dating crisis.
comment posted at 10:28 AM on Aug-27-15

"how did curating, a highly specialized line of museum work involving the care, accessioning, and exhibition of artworks, come to mean, as cultural policy scholar Amanda Coles puts it, “just picking stuff?”" - Miya Tokumitsu
comment posted at 9:39 AM on Aug-27-15
comment posted at 11:34 AM on Aug-27-15

"What of those grammar rules that were entirely dreamt up in an age of moral prescriptivism, reflecting nothing of historical or literary usage, to encourage the poor English language to be more like an entirely different (and entirely dead) language, namely Latin? Wait, which rules are those? It seems pretty crazy but the popular grammar rules familiar to most of us may in fact be completely fake and have no basis in linguistic reality. The English language didn't change to make those rules obsolete, they were simply fictional from the start." || Dear Pedants: Your Fave Grammar Rule is Probably Fake, by Chi Luu.
comment posted at 8:40 AM on Aug-25-15
comment posted at 9:43 AM on Aug-25-15
comment posted at 11:44 AM on Aug-25-15

Dinner and Deception by Edward Frame
comment posted at 11:30 AM on Aug-24-15

Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean 'migrants'.
comment posted at 2:27 PM on Aug-23-15

There is this profound dissonance between what the administration is saying about its desire to close Guantanamo and what it is actually doing.
In an extremely rare legal manoeuvre, the Obama administration has challenged a legal request to free a hunger-striking Guantánamo Bay detainee entirely in secret.
Meanwhile the Guardian reveals that it is the The Pentagon that is blocking the return of UK permanent resident Shaker Aamer and two other longtime Guantánamo Bay detainees for whom the US Department of State has completed diplomatic deals to transfer home.
The contravention of the president’s orders indicates that there is a profound problem with the state of democracy in America.
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Aug-15-15

First you had changing the Australian migration zone, then the Pacific Solution, and then boat turnbacks (and paying people smugglers for the same - a policy supported by both major parties), and then a murder in custody on Manus Island, and then allegations of rape, trafficking and traumatising children (some of whom try to hang themselves at 6yo) and spying on parliamentary oversight, and now a whistleblower says staff members at the Australian detention centre on Nauru - "a diverse workforce and provides continuing cultural awareness training" - employed waterboarding on asylum-seekers.
comment posted at 7:15 AM on Aug-14-15

With Celebrity Lifestyle Sites proliferating like an algal bloom as of late, actress and neuroscientist PhD Mayim Bialik raises the bar with Grok Nation.
comment posted at 10:49 AM on Aug-13-15

Last month, Pearson sold the Financial Times to Nikkei (the media corp, not stock market), as reported in the Economist. Today, Pearson sold its 50% stake in the Economist to its other owners, as reported in the Financial Times. Thoughts from Slate Money, Quartz, The Week UK, and the New York Times.
comment posted at 2:07 PM on Aug-12-15