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WARNING WARNING: Scientist discovers puppy-sized spider in rainforest
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:58 PM PST - 116 comments

Chuck Berry was born in 1926. Here he is performing Johnny B Goode: The date is April 14, 2014.
posted by growabrain at 8:48 PM PST - 21 comments

Why self driving cars MUST be programmed to kill. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 6:42 PM PST - 138 comments

Maureen O'Hara, Irish-born star of The Quiet Man and more, dies aged 95. [The Guardian] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:10 PM PST - 39 comments

An owl and his robot friend sing and dance to The Monster Mash. SLYT
posted by howfar at 6:05 PM PST - 9 comments

To support their latest album the band Dawes recently held a competition in Paris where fans uploaded videos lip synching the lyrics to the song “All Your Favorite Bands"” for a chance to cover his/her favorite classic rock song with the group. The winner was a woman named Paloma, and her favorite classic rock song is Lay Lady Lay and here is their version.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:47 PM PST - 6 comments

This week, in an article for The Nation, Bill McKibben reports the story of how two separate teams of reporters at Inside Climate News and The Los Angeles Times have, “reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.”
posted by ob1quixote at 5:02 PM PST - 71 comments

In early 2010, experimental multi-instrumentalist and headgear innovator Buckethead (previously) released It's Alive, the first of a series of albums called "Buckethead Pikes" sold directly to fans "from a small kiosk inside the Bucketheadland park." While things started out slowly, with a release now and then squeezed in between other commitments, by 2014 Buckethead had left most of the bands he'd been playing with, and was releasing on average one pike per week. And he has kept going; earlier today, Buckethead released pike album #199 8 Days Til Halloween: Flare Up, with #200 not very far away. [more inside]
posted by effbot at 4:05 PM PST - 10 comments

Bill Keith, creator of melodic bluegrass and the mechanical wonders that are Keith Banjo D-Tuners (used here), has left us.
posted by scruss at 3:22 PM PST - 8 comments

On Friday, South African university students achieved a historic victory; after a week's protest they ensured there would be no fee increases at universities in 2016. This has been led by women. [more inside]
posted by infini at 12:29 PM PST - 9 comments

A house overlooking the Sunset Strip played host to a generation of comics like Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, & Robin Williams, launching dozens of careers and about as many drug problems
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:46 AM PST - 12 comments

Hello Kitty's newest friend is an egg named Gudetama, who is unmotivated because he realizes he only exists to be eaten. He has a twitter account (really, he does). Each episode ends with the gudetama song and dance, and there is a handy playlist of 18 short shorts with English subtitles. If you want some more talking food, try some KogePan, or burned bread (unofficial fansite), which also has a handy playlist of the 10 episodes, but organized in reverse order. (KogePan previously, but the links are dead.)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:15 AM PST - 55 comments

The Hot Dog Report: Everyone makes jokes about chicken lips in their hot dogs but someone finally tested a wide variety of brands to see what they're really made of. [more inside]
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:01 AM PST - 120 comments

Reversed video of a backwards running competition. (SLYT - h/t reddit)
posted by benito.strauss at 8:14 AM PST - 37 comments

Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900) - "In 1840, Aivazovsky traveled to Rome, where he became friendly with Nikolai Gogol. He also received high praise from the Roman critics, newspapers, and even Pope Gregory XVI. The pope purchased Aivazovsky's 'Chaos' and hung it in the Vatican... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:59 AM PST - 10 comments

As Valve prepares for the general release of a divisive PC gaming controller (and Microsoft readies their "Elite" version of the popular-on-PC Xbox One Controller), perhaps it's time to revisit the strange history of our attempts to make the ideal dedicated controller for PC games. [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 5:04 AM PST - 71 comments

Amazon Reviewer #1, Harriet Klausner (previously) has passed away at age 63. At the time of her death she had over 31,000 reviews to her name, none of them negative.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:02 AM PST - 43 comments