MetaFilter

OJ Simpson dead at 76 Remember the slow white suv LA chase?
posted by robbyrobs on Apr 11 at 7:44 AM - 107 comments

Exploring the Wallowas with the modern-day "Horsewomen of the Hen Party" The descendants of Jean Birnie, founder of the Oregon Hen Party previously, follow her journeys into the Wallowas on horseback, surmounting challenges, deepening bonds, and absorbing the beauty of nature, in this documentary short from OPB.
posted by calamari kid on Apr 11 at 7:24 AM - 1 comments

Two tennis balls surgically removed from scrub python. A Far North Queensland wildlife carer says he has seen just about everything in his 20 years on the job until he was called about a surprise find in a Cooktown backyard.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Apr 11 at 7:13 AM - 10 comments

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism
In short, this corporatism – in all its iterations including the regulatory state and the patent war chest that maintains and enforces monopoly – is the core source of all the current despotism.
posted by adamvasco on Apr 11 at 6:25 AM - 48 comments

Hawai'ian born sumo legend Chadwick Haheo Rowan, better known worldwide as Akebono, the first non-Japanese-born wrestler to reach grand master / yokozuna has died of heart failure. He was 54.
posted by seanmpuckett on Apr 11 at 5:42 AM - 26 comments

For years, a mysterious figure preyed on gay men in Atlanta. People on the streets called him the Handcuff Man--but the police knew his real name. (CW: homophobia, violence) slTheAtavist
posted by Kitteh on Apr 11 at 5:17 AM - 14 comments

Philosopher Ben Ware has been giving some thought to the politics of the end of the world, and has written a new book, On Extinction (Verso), to talk about it. But the end is coming fast and maybe you don't have time for a whole book, so let's read some essays instead! "Nothing but the End to Come" brings together Walter Benjamin, Kafka, de Sade and Extinction Rebellion to suggest that all our language about the end feeds "into a politics of passive annihilation." [more inside]
posted by mittens on Apr 11 at 5:17 AM - 4 comments

It was clear to Nyborg that apps such as Tinder were failing their users: designed to keep them coming back, rather than to find a partner and never return. In that moment, it wasn’t fear she felt but empathy. Through letters like this one she had learnt a lot about a particular group of Tinder’s users: those who were “incredibly lonely” ... When she quit, several investors reached out to Nyborg, asking if she planned to start another dating app. Instead Nyborg took a different turn. She began researching loneliness. The new app she came up with looked very different from Tinder. from The loneliness cure [Financial Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet on Apr 11 at 1:58 AM - 51 comments

A fascinating glimpse of what was going on in the science world 38 years ago in the November 1986 issue of Scientific American and what has changed and what has remained the same: Voyager 2's visit to Uranus cover story and how a fix had to be made from Earth • Affordable housing problems - "The Shadow Market in Housing" • Learn about the Higgs boson long before it was found (RIP Peter Higgs) • Galileo, Bruno and the Inquisition • Computer Recreations - "Star Trek emerges from the underground to a place in the home-computer arcade" • The Amateur Scientist - "... experiments on three-dimensional vision" • All the 1986 ads, including "Texas Instruments brings the practical applications of AI to your business. Now." (p 15) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo on Apr 11 at 12:11 AM - 25 comments

The Sun is entering its solar maximum. For aurora hunters in Antarctica, there's nothing quite like it. The Sun is putting on a show for Earth, with the highest level of geomagnetic activity in six years. Mawson Station chef Justin Chambers photographed a recent aurora and explains what it's like to watch the spectacle from about as far south as you can go. As the sun enters the solar maximum — the period of greatest solar activity during its 11-year solar cycle — Mr Chambers said he has witnessed the best aurora of his life, and managed to get it on camera.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Apr 10 at 7:49 PM - 6 comments

In September 2022, the first season of animated science fiction series Pantheon debuted on AMC+. By January of the following year, the series was cancelled and wiped from the streaming service, despite the completion of a season 2. [more inside]
posted by rikschell on Apr 10 at 5:30 PM - 13 comments

The USPS declared April to be National Card and Letter Writing Month… 23 years ago. American Library Association has some ideas on epistolary fun within games. The Chicago Public Library has suggestions for epistolary novels. The Universal Postal Union has a letter writing competition for writers aged 9 to 15 on the theme: "Write a letter to future generations about the world you hope they inherit." The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has an epistolary fiction project which includes an extensive if not exhaustive list of novels, starting with Xenophon of Ephesus. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi on Apr 10 at 5:02 PM - 8 comments

The Function of Colour in Schools & Hospitals, 1930. Just some wonderful illustrations of those things. via.
posted by swift on Apr 10 at 4:36 PM - 11 comments

Super Cute Please Like is a long, fascinating essay by Nicole Lipman in N+1 about fast fashion giant SHEIN, examining its clothes, business practices and history, but touching on fashion blogs, Sinophobia, the origins of fast fashion and gamification.
posted by Kattullus on Apr 10 at 2:30 PM - 34 comments

In this story, we'll follow hundreds of teenagers for the next 24 years, when they’ll be in their late-30s. They're among the thousands of kids who are part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. This means researchers have followed them since their teenage years to the present day – and beyond. from this is a teenager [The Pudding] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Apr 10 at 2:19 PM - 8 comments

The extraordinary stories of survivors of the Rwandan genocide who forgave their attackers (SL Guardian) How do people overcome such trauma, especially in poor nations with minimal mental healthcare? In 2005, Dutch sociotherapist Cora Dekker developed an affordable, effective method in collaboration with the diocese of Byumba of the Anglican church. This approach, originally used by qualified staff in western clinics to treat military personnel and asylum seekers, was transformed into volunteer work involving trained therapists from local African communities. In Rwanda it is known as Mvura Nkuvure: “I heal you, you heal me.” More than 64,000 Rwandans have completed the therapy.
posted by toastyk on Apr 10 at 8:15 AM - 8 comments

To self-censor, he says, would mean “I start second-guessing myself and don’t trust my own instincts.” (slTheWalrus) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh on Apr 10 at 7:11 AM - 115 comments

The Eurasian Wren, the Barn Swallow, the Northern Goshawk, the Little Owl, the Great Tit. Artist Roy Scholten has created prints of 50 different birds using LEGO bricks as the printing matter. The exhibit opens April 14 at the Grafisch Atelier Hilversum in Hilversum, Netherlands.
posted by AlSweigart on Apr 10 at 7:00 AM - 11 comments

Nick Brandt is a photographer working with themes of climate apocalypse. Sink / Rise is chapter 3 of his series The Day May Break.
posted by mygothlaundry on Apr 10 at 6:55 AM - 10 comments

Videos from The Dodo are usually a bit sappy but always heartwarming. However, Bulldog Obsessed With Bowls Gets A Special Delivery [3m20s] is full of exactly the kind of WTF that leads me to post it here.
posted by hippybear on Apr 10 at 6:27 AM - 36 comments