Posts with Recent Comments

Like a grid, but for movies

moviegrid.io - "Select a movie for each cell using the clues that correspond to that cell's rows and columns... Each game, you have nine movie guesses to fill out the grid. Each movie, whether correct or incorrect, will count as one of your nine guesses. If a movie poster pops up, congratulations -- you got it right you little cinephile." [more inside]
posted by quintessence on Mar 21 at 6:30 AM - 10 comments

Whale grandmas

Menopause has evolved only once in terrestrial animals - in humans - but at least four times in toothed whales. in a paper published last week in Nature, The evolution of menopause in toothed whales, a team of researchers examined whale life histories to evaluate five different hypotheses for menopause: Live-long vs. stop-short, and the grandmother hypothesis (previously) vs. reduced reproductive conflict vs. extended male lifespan. University summary, NYT summary, NYT archive. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon on Mar 19 at 4:06 AM - 9 comments

Hotel Fred's back - but Luna's not well.

Roger Langridge's wonderful Hotel Fred diary strips have been away for a few weeks while he got on with other projects. A new sequence of ten strips appeared this week about the recent illness of Luna, his family's much-loved dog. I think you'll like them. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade on Mar 21 at 11:00 AM - 4 comments

When artificial intelligence goes wrong

Well isn't this a fine kettle of fish. Is the orchestra the audience? What's in her lap?lap? Is it the latest Birkin bag, or a camera case...Queensland Orchestra said they wanted to use artificial intelligence to be "innovative".
posted by Czjewel on Mar 20 at 2:32 PM - 35 comments

Don't Tell America the Babysitter's Dead

For decades, babysitting was both a job and a rite of passage. Now it feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era. (SL Atlantic / Archive)
posted by DirtyOldTown on Mar 19 at 2:40 PM - 59 comments

Since we're all going in the same direction, might as well go together.

Ambigram(Wiki): a calligraphic composition of glyphs that can yield different meanings depending on the orientation of observation. MakeAmbigrams will take a word or pair of words and generate an ambigram that reads the same right side up or upside down (or mirrored).
posted by Mitheral on Mar 21 at 7:13 AM - 7 comments

It doesn’t have those "standard validity and reliability things"

An Expert Who Has Testified in Foster Care Cases Across Colorado Admits Her Evaluations Are Unscientific Diane Baird labeled her method for assessing families the "Kempe Protocol" after the renowned University of Colorado institute where she worked for decades. The school has yet to publicly disavow it. [ProPublica]
posted by readinghippo on Mar 20 at 1:18 PM - 29 comments

“After hydrogen, there’s nothing.”

Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go (Samantha Schuyler in MIT Technology Review)
"They weren’t there to exceed 245 meters—a depth they’d reached three years earlier. Nor were they there to set a depth record—that would mean going past 308 meters. They were there to test what they saw as a possible key to unlocking depths beyond even 310 meters: breathing hydrogen."
posted by thatwhichfalls on Mar 20 at 10:51 AM - 20 comments

"There is only one highest place on Earth"

Mountaineer and Cinematographer David Breashears dies at 68 [more inside]
posted by Kangaroo on Mar 20 at 10:16 AM - 10 comments

How to Draw Webcomics

Korean webtoon platform Bomtoon has made available a guide on creating webcomics as a series of 5 YouTube videos. Videos are in Korean with English subtitles. [more inside]
posted by needled on Mar 21 at 10:53 AM - 2 comments

How Britain got done by Getting Brexit Done

Four years on from Britain's exit from the EU, how's it going? Swimmingly, say its supporters, who argue that we should stop blaming Brexit for our economic ills. Most people in the UK have more of a sinking feeling about it, but the prospects for repairing or reversing the damage are unclear. [more inside]
posted by rory on Mar 18 at 6:16 AM - 63 comments

Still vast, no longer trunkless

Massive Missing Head of Ancient Ramesses II Statue Uncovered. "Egyptian and American researchers recently uncovered the top half of an ancient statue depicting the pharaoh Ramesses II, completing a puzzle that has remained unsolved since 1930, when German archaeologist Günther Roeder initially uncovered the bottom half." [more inside]
posted by moonmilk on Mar 20 at 12:16 PM - 19 comments

—You got the wrong guy, pal.

If Minute 9 is the first time we hear the names Deckard and Blade Runner, it’s also the first time we meet the plainclothes cop who will play a key role in LAPD surveillance of Deckard — and in the changed emphasis of four subsequent versions of Blade Runner released over the next twenty-five years. from Minute 9: Blade Runner [3 am magazine] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Mar 20 at 3:59 PM - 30 comments

Recycling ceramic waste into new ceramics

IKEA's recently introduced SILVERSIDA line of blue-speckled white ceramic dinnerware are made with ~60% post-firing ceramic waste. Broken pottery is ground up into powder then mixed with a portion of raw clay and water and used to make these new pieces. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett on Mar 20 at 7:35 AM - 20 comments

"nobody has really considered what they might look like to an outsider"

More in my series curating work by finance expert Daniel Davies, this time focusing on academia and on the cultures and norms of research in general. In "why i am (still after all) an economist" (2023), he asks, "Is there anything that is actually definitional, something that you have to believe or you’re not an economist?" and offers his answer, which is that (I'd summarize) economics treats historical facts as descriptive but not necessarily prescriptive. [more inside]
posted by brainwane on Mar 20 at 9:23 AM - 5 comments

Neither of them really need any introduction....

Classicist Mary Beard [Wikipedia] is apparently well known for studying Ancient Rome. Comedian David Mitchell has read a lot about the British monarchy. Between them they can cover Julius Caesar to Elizabeth I, and they sat down together for a conversation for How To Academy in Rulers and Power | Mary Beard and David Mitchell [1h13m].
posted by hippybear on Mar 17 at 6:26 PM - 13 comments

Ewe wouldn’t believe it’s shear size

Ewe might not expect 8000 year old technology to undergo a revolution, but in the 1990s Australian scientists invented BioClip, a way for sheep to practically shear themselves (tiktok). [more inside]
posted by rubatan on Mar 19 at 11:03 AM - 17 comments

Context Collapse and Face-Work

"...[W]hile both context collusion and context collision are examples of collapsed contexts, they are conceptually and consequentially distinct from each other. The intentionality of the individual and their role in either allowing new information to come forth—as in the case of context collusion—or if it is unbeknownst that this information will be introduced—as in the case of context collision—is crucial. We also contend that context collapse is linked to an individual’s perception of face." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja on Mar 20 at 5:27 AM - 13 comments

Make TrueType fonts for free on the web

Long ago, back in 2008, Dave Faris posted a link to FontStruct, a simple, yet deceptively versatile, free system for constructing fonts on the web, which you can then download as TrueType fonts for yourself, or even allow others to use. This is to inform you that FontStruct is still operational after 16 years at a different address! And it hasn't stood still during that time, it has steadily been updated with new features! [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 20 at 2:52 AM - 6 comments

Ottawa Impact, you so crazy

You may remember Ottawa County for the national headlines it made when Jamestown Township defunded (and then re-funded its library.  or perhaps you remember reading about the takeover of the County Board by a slate of ultraconservative political newcomers.  Since they've come to power 'Ottawa Impact' has both flailed and failed, alienating community groups and provoking numerous lawsuits. See inside for the latest updates. [more inside]
posted by bq on Mar 5 at 10:50 AM - 16 comments

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