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Cannabis has been legalized in New York State, and legal dispensaries could have opened starting nearly a year ago. Yet there are only five legal dispensaries in the whole state. "Meanwhile, about 1,500 smoke shops are selling cannabis illegally in New York City alone, city officials estimate." "Why Can’t Legal Cannabis Sellers Open Shops?" asks the nonprofit news org THE CITY. (Slow, confusing bureaucracy is the short answer.) More coverage.
posted by brainwane at 4:34 PM PST - 33 comments

... this book is explicitly about being an insufferable, solipsistic teenager: a key part of its effect is that we’re locked inside Charles’s mind, just as Charles is. So it seems perverse to arraign Amis for not spending enough time on the other characters (a bit like complaining that Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is overly concerned with Stephen Dedalus). What surprised me, third time through, is how much we actually do find out about Rachel. from Teenage kicks by Claire Lowdon [TLS; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:05 PM PST - 14 comments

Wil Wheaton talks about trauma, trust and the librarian who helped him
posted by jacquilynne at 8:12 AM PST - 58 comments

Dan Olson (aka Folding Ideas) on Decentraland, the Metaverse, and the shitty grift at the center of the (meta)universe. A long, excellent YouTube video that is also something of a spiritual sequel to Olson's Line Goes Up, also featured on the blue. [more inside]
posted by Kybard at 7:20 AM PST - 64 comments

The Texas Observer, a liberal newsmagazine in a state that has grown increasingly hostile to its point of view since its founding in 1954, is closing. The news apparently came as a surprise to Observer staff, but the well-researched story in the Texas Tribune about the closure, like an obituary written before a person's death, suggests that perhaps it shouldn't have.
posted by adamrice at 6:19 AM PST - 22 comments

Slappy the frog lives in a shoe. (Instagram) (multi-link reddit below the fold.) [more inside]
posted by freethefeet at 3:51 AM PST - 2 comments

Welcome to Monday, time travelers (wasn't it just Monday a few minutes ago?). For today's free thread, I'd like pass over a bit o' free association I had re the Wee Free Men, and ... the Fremen. And Dune and Discworld more generally. Now, I quickly got in well over my head when contemplating the possibilities of this wyrd alternative universe, but I bet Mefite fans have thoughts. [more inside]
posted by taz at 3:23 AM PST - 68 comments

The oldest DNA ever found reveals a snapshot of a vanished world. DNA frozen for 2 million years paints a picture of an extinct ecosystem. At the icy northern tip of Greenland, far into the Arctic Circle, a deep bed of sediment beneath the mouth of a fjord has lain frozen and undisturbed for 2 million years.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:48 AM PST - 8 comments