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The 2020 Hugo Award Finalists were announced on April 7th, including a ‘Best Related Work’ Nomination for Jeanette Ng’s acceptance speech for the 2019 John W. Campbell Award, which has been renamed this year as the Astounding Award because of her speech. [more inside]
posted by dinty_moore at 9:19 PM PST - 47 comments

Turnsole became a mainstay of medieval manuscript illuminators starting with the development of the technique for extracting it in the thirteenth century, when it joined the vegetable-based woad and indigo in the illuminator's repertory. [Wikipedia] For the better part of the last century, however, the recipe for the vivid blue hue has been lost—until the publication of a new study in the journal Science Advances. While it was long known that Chrozophora tinctoria was the source of the ink’s sole ingredient, how folium was synthesized has eluded modern science. [Atlas Obscura] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:15 PM PST - 13 comments

Appearing live via glorious VHS quality, and with a healthy dose of Jerome, The Time, Houston TX, 12/29/1982. 45 minutes pro-shot multicam of the most glorious bands-man-ship ever seen. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:03 PM PST - 10 comments

Lately, one of the voices of reason coming from Twitter has surprisingly been Steak-umm. After their epic Twitter thread about critical thinking went viral, Washington Post tracked down and spoke to Nathan Allebach, their social media manager responsible for the feed. [more inside]
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:53 PM PST - 55 comments

Last week, venerable improv troupe The Second City premiered a new weekly Internet variety show, The Last Show Left on Earth. The first episode features host Jack McBrayer, Fred Willard, Mike O'Brien, and musical guest Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, among others; its theme song is by Andrew Bird. New episodes premiere Thursday at 9PM ET/6PM PT on YouTube.
posted by carrienation at 5:18 PM PST - 1 comments

The comedy troupe The State reunites to perform the classic musical number "Porcupine Racetrack" to mark its 25th anniversary. On Zoom, of course, times being what they are.
posted by Cash4Lead at 4:47 PM PST - 22 comments

Dr Jenny Clack, FRS, vertebrate palaeontologist, died on 26 March, aged 72. [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:22 PM PST - 13 comments

"I've been craving an escape hatch from Twitter. So some friends and I made this. A live network of 20 streams dedicated to nature, music, and things that fascinate.Say hello to http://surf.city." [warning: strobing / light sensitivity] [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 3:40 PM PST - 21 comments

Sophie Ellis-Bexter and her family remind you to Stay At Home [more inside]
posted by WhackyparseThis at 3:20 PM PST - 14 comments

Treachery In Beatdown City [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Treachery in Beatdown City looks like a new take on Double Dragon for the NES, but it actually plays a lot more like Bravely Default II or another high-level strategy turn-based RPG. That's what's going on under the hood. In terms of the body, it's a story of underdogs who aspire to upturn the system. That's just one of the ways it reminds me of Undertale, another game that looks like one thing but is something else entirely, that boldly wore its outsider status on its sleeve. Treachery ticks all the same boxes while delivering an entirely different message: sometimes, violence is good.” [via: Destructoid] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Eleven short animated films from Pacific Northwest filmmakers in a 25-minute program, available from Earth Day (today!) until 4/26. [more inside]
posted by janell at 2:02 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Yosemite webcams, among others...

What it says on the tin.

Scroll down below the Novel Coronavirus warning and behold. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 2:00 PM PST - 4 comments

Henry Phillips conducts a masterclass on making authentic New York bagels. Perfect for these pandemic times when we're looking for distractions like baking things.
posted by NoMich at 12:57 PM PST - 49 comments

For centuries, even millenia, the wealthy and powerful have been able invest in one of the most treasured and lucrative financial products in human history: fine art. Conniseurs and patrons as diverse as oil barons, land barons and actual barons have reaped the rewards of taste, judgement and immense amounts of capital. But now, thanks to the power of blockchain technology (specifically, Ethereum), you too can own a (virtual) (fractional share of) some of the most impressive and valuable works of fine art in the world. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:56 AM PST - 17 comments

I've recently been seeing this video of a dancing costumed man set to an electronic soundtrack reposted again and again on Facebook. Curious, I dug deeper... [more inside]
posted by Catblack at 11:17 AM PST - 7 comments

"Such ancient feces can hang around for thousands of years, even retaining their original shape and color. And archaeologists can typically differentiate human from animal poop, based on size and other attributes. But doggy dung, it turns out, is remarkably hard to distinguish from the human kind -- something that can stump researchers trying to reconstruct what ancient people ate. [...] Now, Warinner and colleagues have developed a tool based on artificial intelligence that they claim can accurately tell human and dog "paleofeces" apart. And after analyzing more than a dozen samples spanning thousands of years, they've come to a surprising conclusion: The archaeological record is full of dog poop." (Science) [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:00 AM PST - 7 comments

I find myself increasingly obsessed with the rise of the so-called “COVID influencer” or armchair epidemiologist. These men — and they are, largely, men — are legitimate experts in other fields. They are lawyers, former reporters and thriller writers, Silicon Valley technologists, newspaper columnists, economists and doctors who specialize in different parts of medicine. Their utter belief in their own cognitive abilities gives them the false sense that their speculation, and predictive powers, are more informed than the rest of ours.
posted by latkes at 9:07 AM PST - 159 comments

I don’t spend much time thinking about boats or marine research these days, as I gave up on the marine biologist dream when I was 9 years old and found out the plesiosaur was extinct. But when I run across a boat as weird as the RP FLIP, as happened to me today, my brain goes into overdrive and it’s all I can think about. I’ve fallen into an information hole, so won’t you join me? (SLJalopnik)
posted by Etrigan at 7:28 AM PST - 41 comments

12 Classic Chinese Films are Now Available for Free on YouTube with English Subtitles - Youtube playlist. (via Film Comment)
posted by sapagan at 5:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Famous performers review clips and walk through the timeline of their careers: Kristen Bell, Richard E. Grant, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Freeman, Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Kumail Nanjiani, Terry Crews, Jude Law, Michael B. Jordan, Kathy Bates, Jamie Lee, Scarlett Johansson, Rob Lowe, Willem Dafoe, Miranda Lambert, Kerry Washington, Jessica Lange, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Richard Linklater, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Billy Eichner, Kristen Stewart, Richard Dreyfuss, John Turturro, Natalie Portman, Drew Barrymore, Jason Bateman, Michael Douglas, Jada Pinkett, Hank Azaria, Jodie Foster, Jeff Goldblum, and Hans Zimmer.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:56 AM PST - 9 comments