March 14

Netanyahu has 'lost his way'

In a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the U.S.’s highest ranking politician of Jewish descent, offered the greatest departure from support of Israel’s Netanyahu government to date. Full speech (DoubleLYT).
posted by rubatan at 4:33 PM - 213 comments

Takin' It To The Streets

If, like me, you saw the recent Rick Beato interview with Michael McDonald and thought "I could use more Doobie Brothers in my life right now," then you could do worse than this 1982 outdoor concert in Santa Barbara, California during the band's "farewell" tour. Apparently ripped directly from SelectaVision VideoDisc, the concert is presented in glorious 480p and has excellent sound. Bonus: footage of McDonald on a Christopher Cross session. [more inside]
posted by swift at 3:06 PM - 28 comments

Echidnas caught eating the eggs of endangered turtles

Echidnas caught eating the eggs of Queensland's bum-breathing turtles, potentially endangering the reptile's future. Echidnas are known for laying eggs and eating ants, but it turns out a few have developed a hunger for the eggs of endangered turtles. There are six different species of freshwater turtle found in the Fitzroy, Burnett and Mary catchments. But it's the two threatened species that breathe oxygen underwater through their bums, whose eggs have been most predated by echidnas. Ms Robinson said the the difference in depredation might be because the Fitzroy River turtles' burrows are shallower. The distance from the burrow opening to the top egg is just 14.2 centimetres (5.5 inches) which is about the same length as an echidna beak.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:56 PM - 13 comments

At least Ru told us her plan, which was also her mistake

RuPaul is building a bunker, and Kate Middleton has gone missing. One of these things is definitely confirmed. RuPaul is taking things to a place of societal collapse. He said so while promoting his forthcoming memoir “The House of Hidden Meanings.” He’s fortifying his compound in Wyoming for him and his hot rancher husband with morally ambiguous wealth to ride out the civil war he believes is imminent.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:52 AM - 127 comments

Big rocket go up

In about 24 minutes from, Space X will attempt the third launch of its Starship rocket. YouTube Live, Space X live feed
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:01 AM - 74 comments

Solidarity and strategy

In 1977 in San Francisco, about 150 disabled radicals occupied the fourth floor of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 25 days. “Blind people, deaf people, wheelchair users, disabled veterans, people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities and many others, all came together,” leader Judith Heumann later recalled. “We overcame years of parochialism.” A long read published in The Guardian, adapted from Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:58 AM - 5 comments

Rodeo Clowns of the Sky

The aircraft they are following, the one they have been looking for, is not like the others in the group. She wears a paint scheme any other Liberator would think humiliating—white from chin turret to trailing edge, covered in a pox of bright red and blue polka dots about 18 inches in diameter. Aft of the trailing wing edge, she is army green, but the pox extends down her flanks in garish red and yellow dots. And she has a face... perhaps it was meant to be that of a shark, but it grins like a dim-witted dachshund. It seems to pant in the heat of the turbulent air. The spotted markings make her look like a massive flying bag of Wonderbread. from Polka Dot Warriors – The Assembly Ships of the Mighty Eighth
posted by chavenet at 2:43 AM - 18 comments

March 13

The strange world of crocodile hairballs

The strange world of crocodile hairballs and the Queenslanders who collect them. Anyone with a pet cat will have borne witness to the nauseating process of hairball expulsion, but it is also necessary for crocodiles. (The fur that they are expelling is from furry creatures that they have eaten, like wallabies or kangaroos.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:03 PM - 16 comments

"Polio Paul" Has Died

"Polio" Paul Alexander spent 70 of his 78 years alive inside of an iron lung. He was paralysed from the neck down due to complications from Polio. Despite this he became an author and lawyer.
posted by robotmachine at 8:58 PM - 29 comments

The Colorblind Campaign to Undo Civil Rights Progress

Colorblindness was the goal, color-consciousness the remedy. Nikole Hannah-Jones (previously) examines the historic and present-day use of colorblindness to oppose Black progress. (SLNYT) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 8:39 PM - 9 comments

Whereas square snack evolves into square stack snack (SLYT)

Vihart is back with a meditation on the discovery of folded circle snack (and more)
posted by Gorgik at 8:10 PM - 8 comments

“To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it.”

After Mrs. Dalloway and before To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf wrote her first essay for The Yale Review. Nine more followed.
TYR republished them online today, with an introductory essay by Claire Messud.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:08 PM - 6 comments

Insurance inflating

Insurance costs to customers are going up, maybe because costs of damage are going up; which is inflationary. [more inside]
posted by clew at 5:34 PM - 19 comments

An observer with a curious intellect

"The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the generations later." Earth Abides, perennial MeFi favorite (DuckDuckGo search ), is slated to begin production in April. [more inside]
posted by Conceptual Nomad at 3:52 PM - 15 comments

RIP Karl Wallinger

RIP Karl Wallinger. [NYT, ungated] Keyboardist for The Waterboys [Wikipedia] and creative force behind World Party [Wikipedia], he passed of undisclosed reasons this past Sunday at 66. He was well known for Put The Message In The Box, Private Revolution, and Ship Of Fools. The Guardian has a truly lovely write-up about Wallinger. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:16 PM - 39 comments

Did the IRA meet its climate goals?

A conversation between environmental modeler Trevor House and journalist David Roberts. TLDR: did what it said on the tin Economic and environment models have come a long way and can now provide real- time assessment and predictions for proposed legislation.
posted by Dashy at 1:54 PM - 14 comments

'Yeah, that's my mosaic.'

"Last of all comes the pavement trodden by imperial feet, made of disks of porphyry and serpentine, not thicker than a silver dollar, framed in in segments and lines of enamel, white and gold, white and red, or white, red, and green. The colors are perfectly brilliant. Fancy the deck of a modern yacht inlayed in enamel." from Roman Emperor Caligula's coffee table [CBS]
posted by chavenet at 1:01 PM - 7 comments

A Native Solution To Vancouver's Housing Woes

Vancouver, BC has been dealing with a major housing crunch for years due to a number of factors. But the Squamish First Nation has an answer - Sen̓áḵw, a major urban mixed use development on Squamish land in the Vancouver metro area - which means that it can be developed bigger and denser than Vancouver regulations would allow...and without NIMBY interference. (SLMacLean's)
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:23 AM - 81 comments

"new perspective on things by looking at your fundamental assumptions"

Continuing my series curating work by finance expert Daniel Davies, some of his commentary on travel, Ezra Pound, coffee, and the culture of the Internet and how to manage one's equanimity while writing for strangers. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 10:10 AM - 10 comments

"When will I lose all of this?"

In Gaza, death seems to be closer than water - Maha Hussaini: 'During one of the relatively ‘safe’ times in Gaza, around the summer of 2022, I sat on a comfy couch, soft music playing in the background, a cup of cold fresh orange juice in my hand, and I thought: "When will I lose all of this?"' || Gaza as Twilight of Israel Exceptionalism (by Raz Segal & Luigi Daniele) - The very different ways in which Holocaust scholars, on the one hand, and those working in Genocide Studies, on the other, have responded to the unfolding mass violence in Israel and Palestine after 7 October point to an unprecedented crisis in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. We argue that the crisis stems from the significant evidence for genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has exposed the exceptional status accorded to Israel as a foundational element in the field, that is, the idea that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide || Killed in Gaza database (you can search either in English or in Arabic) || CNN visual presentation of dead children [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 7:28 AM - 46 comments

TikTok... DOOM!

The seemingly dormant push to target ultrapopular video platform TikTok on national security grounds roared back to life this week as the House teed up a surprise bipartisan vote on forced divestment of the app's US operations. An attempt by Chinese parent company ByteDance to mobilize users against the legislation clearly backfired, angering lawmakers into delivering a unanimous vote to proceed. Critics warn the app offers the increasingly authoritarian CCP government reams of sensitive data and an unprecedented insight into the American psyche (along with a potent avenue for propaganda and influence operations), while defenders cite the company's diversified ownership and ongoing efforts at re-shoring US data operations. Bolstered by support from the White House (and a troubling intelligence report on election interference), the bill sees likely passage in the House today and an uncertain path in the Senate, as well as a long legal battle after that. The biggest twist: former president Trump, a longtime Sinophobe who signed a failed executive order banning the app, has suddenly flipped in favor of it as a counterweight to Facebook -- a move many insiders see as calculated to undercut Biden's already precarious support from young voters. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:45 AM - 145 comments

Conservatives, on average, trust everything less

What changed since 2008 is a vivid example of a larger upheaval in American politics. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still say raw milk is dangerous and the state dairy lobby sent lobbyists to the Iowa Capitol to defeat Schultz’s bill. But Iowa has flipped — it’s a Republican state now, from the presidential vote to the governor’s office to the near-supermajority Legislature — and that flip has occurred alongside even larger shifts in national politics, spurred on by the rise of Donald Trump. With Trump has come a new GOP electorate, one more rural, more working class, less ideological and generally more distrustful of lobbyists, big business and “the experts.” And that has been a big help for a cause that is bucking just about every one of those groups. from How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal [Politico]
posted by chavenet at 1:50 AM - 67 comments

March 12

Spanish police uncover syndicate allegedly selling fake Banksy pieces

Spanish police uncover syndicate allegedly selling fake Banksy pieces for up to $2480 each. Four people have been arrested as part of the syndicate suspected of selling up to 25 pieces world wide.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:59 PM - 11 comments

From Aardvark to Zyzzyva you don't know SHIT

From TED To PERNOCTATED, Scrabble’s Best Player Knows No Limits by Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak
posted by lalochezia at 8:28 PM - 6 comments

What if generative AI, but nucular?

Tech firms and Silicon Valley billionaires have been pouring money into nuclear energy for years, pitching the sustainable power source as crucial to the green transition. Now they have another incentive to promote it: artificial intelligence.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:38 PM - 49 comments

Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in US

Reported by the BBC. "The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday. It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating. [...] At the time of his death, Mr Barnett had been in Charleston for legal interviews linked to that case. Last week, he gave a formal deposition in which he was questioned by Boeing's lawyers, before being cross-examined by his own counsel. He had been due to undergo further questioning on Saturday. When he did not appear, enquiries were made at his hotel. He was subsequently found dead in his truck in the hotel car park."
posted by AlSweigart at 4:45 PM - 107 comments

"try to analogise these great matters of state to your daily life"

Daniel Davies is a finance expert, journalist, and former investment banker whose writing I've been reading for over 20 years on Crooked Timber and on his own blog as well as elsewhere. Sometimes he writes analogies, games, or flights of fancy to help readers think about complex issues more clearly. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 12:58 PM - 16 comments

Yo La Tengo 2024 WFMU All-Request Marathon TODAY

Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges beginning at 9pm US EDT TODAY (Sat March 9) on WFMU. Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. This year is no exception. They will begin playing at 9pm US EDT Tuesday March 12, and will be playing listener requests for several more hours.
posted by trashflow at 12:23 PM - 20 comments

Champlain Towers South Condo collapse investigation update

They're still working on figuring out what caused the Champlain Towers South Condo to collapse in Miami in 2021 [Wikipedia]. There was an update of the NIST engineering investigation earlier this month, and Jeff Ostroff will take a half-hour to explain everything they've learned so far. Photos, video, deep analysis... It's a fascinating update to a recent tragedy that is still getting resolved.
posted by hippybear at 11:30 AM - 12 comments

Is Super Mario Maker Beaten Yet?

Is Super Mario Marker beaten yet? Back in 2015, Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, which allowed users to create their own Mario levels and upload them for others to play. Over 8 million levels were created for the game. On March 31, 2021 Nintendo "discontinued" the game, which meant no new levels could be uploaded. Then the second shoe dropped: Nintendo announced the Wii U servers would be turned off forever on April 8, 2024, effectively removing all of these user levels from existence. Upon hearing this news, the Super Mario Maker community began to rally around a single goal: clear every single level uploaded to the servers before the shutdown date. [more inside]
posted by lubujackson at 10:55 AM - 40 comments

"You can't get rid of me that easily"

Zeteo is a new media venture from news personality Mehdi Hasan, who was previously host of the long-running MSNBC/Peacock show The Mehdi Hasan Show. Zeteo is currently a Substack newsletter, YouTube channel, and on TikTok as well. Hasan plans to evenually offer a weekly news program and a podcast. He promises: content anchored by Mehdi Hasan and his sharp-edged journalism, the kind that takes the power of the media as a public service seriously. You’ll also see original content from an array of high-profile contributors: award-winning journalists, New York Times best-selling authors, Hollywood celebrities, and others. He began the debut with Debunked! The Top 7 Lies About Gaza. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 9:44 AM - 12 comments

Dead Guy lives!

“It’s not quite the same fun festival if I don’t protect Grandpa.” The Frozen Dead Guy and his quirky eponymous festival have been moved to Estes Park, Colorado after troubles keeping the freezer on 40 miles south in Nederland, establishing the world’s first cryonics museum. [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 9:32 AM - 7 comments

The Squatters of Beverly Hills

This Place has Everything!!!! (SL NYMag) No spoilers. Just a rolicking California real estate story. ungated
posted by wowenthusiast at 7:17 AM - 25 comments

How COVID contributes to heart attacks and strokes

How SARS-CoV-2 contributes to heart attacks and strokes. The virus that causes COVID-19 can infect coronary arteries and increase inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques. An NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. Chiara Giannarelli at New York University School of Medicine, analyzed coronary artery tissue samples from people who died of COVID-19 between May 2020 and May 2021. Results appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research on September 28, 2023.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:46 AM - 20 comments

possibly why your car insurance costs jumped

Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip some G.M. drivers had taken in their cars, including when they sped, braked too hard or accelerated rapidly.
posted by spork at 6:15 AM - 128 comments

Quelle surprise that the ultra-rich are prepping for The Big One

"For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us." (slCBC)
posted by Kitteh at 5:20 AM - 59 comments

This is the story of the Theranos of marshmallows

Maybe you've heard of Smashmallow; maybe you even bought some. In the couple of years before the pandemic, they were everywhere. Now? Pfft. The problem wasn't the marshmallows — they were, by all accounts, delicious. The problem was scale. Smashmallows were designed to look like an artisanal, boutique product, but that wasn't enough for Sebastiani: He wanted to manufacture billions of them, to build a company that would bestride Candyland like a squishy colossus. That meant he had to grow fast and figure out the engineering on the fly — the classic entrepreneurial strategy of Silicon Valley. When it works, you get Tesla; when it doesn't, you get Theranos. from Silicon Valley tried to mass produce fancy marshmallows. It got messy, fast. [Business Insider]
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM - 28 comments

March 11

Where's Kate? There she is! Oh, wait....

Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge/Princess of Wales, hasn't been seen since Christmas. Kate was announced as having "planned" abdominal surgery in January, with a two week period of time in the hospital and resuming her royal duties has so far been postponed to at least Easter (a notice saying she'd be at an event in June was forcibly recalled). Kate has not wanted her medical issues disclosed (fair, since the most likely medical issues that take that long might be TMI), but after over two months of her not being seen in public, people started to get concerned. Kensington Palace refused to say much of anything on the topic and nobody seems to know anything. Finally, "proof of life" photographs were produced, BUT.... [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:31 PM - 296 comments

"Making things with light bright"

'Novae.' A supernova's vision.' by Thomas Vanz. (slyt. 3:09)
posted by clavdivs at 8:11 PM - 3 comments

Researchers use CT scans to peer inside 100-million-year-old jaws

Researchers use CT scans to peer inside the 100-million-year-old jaws of an ancient marine reptile. The rare Australian elasmosaur fossil gained global attention when it was discovered on an outback Queensland property in 2022.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:37 PM - 2 comments

Disabled Users vs Jakob Nielsen’s “Accessibility has failed”

Jakob Nielsen has a very long history in web UX design. His most recent post claims Accessibility Has Failed: Try Generative UI = Individualized UX. Accessibility pioneer Adrian Roselli summarizes the responses from many disabled web designers with equally long histories at Jakob Has Jumped the Shark. [more inside]
posted by Jesse the K at 3:51 PM - 29 comments

Ghosting

"Ghosting" by Kelly Lagor (2023) is an uncomfortable science fiction novella involving reinvention, memory, betrayal, drugs, sex, and a drier, hotter Southern California. She thought of her trunk, covered in stickers from places she could only confirm she’d been to by looking at entries she had no memory of putting in her diary. But these people were fellow like-minded misfits. They felt like a kind of home. She didn’t want to lie. Author's commentary.
posted by brainwane at 1:15 PM - 5 comments

Tintreach (AC/DC in Gaeilge)

It's your weekly free thread!
posted by Gorgik at 12:29 PM - 68 comments

"We're at the end of a vast, multi-faceted con of internet users"

Are We Watching the Internet Die? (Edward Zitron's 'Where's Your Ed At' newsletter)
posted by box at 11:52 AM - 67 comments

Political demands at the level of biology itself

Andrea Long Chu, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism and recently interviewed on the new podcast The Critic and Her Publics, argues the moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies. [more inside]
posted by overglow at 10:27 AM - 79 comments

Hangboarding pays off.

Pro-climber Emil Abrahamsson tries a strongman grip strength competition [more inside]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:05 AM - 16 comments

Detroit's Music Scene

Motor City's Burning: Detroit from Motown to the Stooges [1h, 2008, BBC] Is a look at the history of Detroit through the lens of music, from John Lee Hooker to Eminem. It's a really interesting scope through which to view this city.
posted by hippybear at 8:52 AM - 15 comments

Huntsville, Alabama: the legacy of Operation Paperclip

Alabama's Biggest Secret - Operation Paperclip Video description posted to the YT channel: In the north of Alabama is the city of Huntsville. It's here where German scientists built NASA in secrecy after World War II. Operation Paperclip is still somewhat not talked about today in Huntsville. And for those who know, there are mixed feelings about it. Today we meet up with the grandson of one of the original German scientists to get an inside look at Operation Paperclip and how it left its permanent mark on the city of Huntsville. [more inside]
posted by elkevelvet at 7:24 AM - 33 comments

When is sea glass not sea glass?

"Bizarre BEACHCOMBER war erupts over marbles deliberately tipped into ocean to be 'frosted', with purists saying its destroyed novelty value of finding one of the glass balls." A longer, more nuanced take from 2017 in Beachcombing Magazine. Also from 2017, "Is Seeded Glass Sea Glass?" Sea glass in the NYT back in 2010 [Archive]. Note that beachcombing is different when robots do it. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:49 AM - 79 comments

To claim that science is impartial and bloodless is incorrect

To know a tree best, it’s important to move beyond biology and to the emotions and sensations it stirs. Beauty as a branch of biology is underrated. from The Extraordinary Lives Of Coast Redwoods [Noema]
posted by chavenet at 2:32 AM - 5 comments

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