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StudioBinder is a film production company in Santa Monica. Their YouTube channel is chock-full with interesting video essays. Like Directing Styles, The Director's Chair, Advanced Filmmaking Techniques, and many more.
posted by growabrain at 7:35 AM - 3 comments

Robin Houston explains the history of a tweet (Threadreader) which contains all the letters of the alphabet while also describing itself. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 2:29 AM - 12 comments

A list of Sumerian proverbs [more inside]
posted by gkhan at 1:34 AM - 38 comments

My mother had green eyes. Black hair. Her name was Marie Augustine Adeline Legrand. She was born a peasant, daughter of farmers, near Dunkirk. She had one sister and seven brothers. She went to teachers college, on a scholarship, and she taught in Dunkirk. The day after an inspection, the inspector who had visited her class asked for her hand in marriage. Love at first sight. [more inside]
posted by flug at 11:49 PM - 6 comments

That’s it. That’s the thread. Like The Whelk ranking menswear, but government buildings. [SLTT, and wonderful]
posted by ersatzkat at 9:54 PM - 44 comments

There was a time when almost every rural British family who kept bees followed a strange tradition. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go out to the hives and tell the bees of the terrible loss that had befallen the family. Failing to do so often resulted in further losses such as the bees leaving the hive, or not producing enough honey or even dying. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of not only deaths but all important family matters including births, marriages, and long absence due to journeys. If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. This peculiar custom is known as “telling the bees”.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:49 PM - 27 comments

My heart jumped when I saw the kids — they reminded me of my cousins. It was a strange feeling because the pictures also reminded me of aid campaigns for Africa

Kiwi-Tongan poet Simone Kaho writes on the politics, ethics and impact of her time with The Floating Foundation which provided volotourism medical training in Tonga, closed over kidnapping and rape charges against the founder Craig Koning. (Note: palangi is Samoan usually used for foreigner/white, akin to pakeha in NZ)
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:57 PM - 9 comments

Summer part two has come to most of Alabama, which like the rest of the Southeast US, has mostly escaped global warming until now. The current heat wave has gone on for several weeks, and is setting records at quite a pace. Echos of the European heat waves in June and July. So far, 2019 is neck and neck with 2016 for hottest year ever.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 8:35 PM - 44 comments

October Baseball is here for 10 lucky teams. The wildcard games start tonight, 10/1 at 5:08 pm pacific time between the Milwaukee Brewers at the Washington Nationals, followed by tomorrow's game between the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Oakland Athletics. [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 2:28 PM - 91 comments

What the Golf [YouTube][Launch Trailer] “What The Golf? is self-admittedly a game for people who hate golf. It takes a very simple concept: whack a ball, into a hole, with a club – and goes absolutely wild with it. [...] What The Golf? is excessive nonsense. At every turn, it questions what a ball, hole or course could even look like. Golf arenas become cities, wars, racetracks and guitar fretboards. What The Golf? asks the important questions only games can answer. Can golf be football? Can golf be cars? Can golf be love? Can golf be Super Hot?” [via: Rock Paper Shotgun] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:31 PM - 28 comments

HighwayWiki is a work-in-progress collection of "facts and pictures about each and every known traffic signal and accessory, including their respective companies, dates produced, and related brands and models."
posted by cortex at 12:50 PM - 10 comments

A Mouse is on the Loose in the White House, and the Press Corps Scrambles to Chase it Down (Charlie Nash, Mediaite)
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:29 PM - 44 comments

Groupthink and Other Painful Reflections on ​Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth "The current conversation, a slow-burn hagiography through and through, frames TOPY as a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware "anti-cult"—half esoteric art project, half culture-jamming prankster pagans who struck fear in the hearts of the Thatcher and Reagan regimes through parody of a radical youth crusade. But the primary sources—many long available for those willing to look, and others just now surfacing—reveal Thee Temple to have been far from puckish liberators. TOPY and P-Orridge's knowing adoption of cult iconography and organizing principles quickly slid from satiric emulation to full embrace, and many Temple apostates describe years of escalating exploitation: a guru with a sycophantic following; the systematic breakdown of individuality and autonomy; rigid hierarchies, disciplinary regimens, and incessant bullying; preying on the suggestible and vulnerable; explosive, tyrannical outbursts; and the appropriation of others' creative voices and ideas." [more inside]
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 12:00 PM - 22 comments

If you were a kid in New York City's broadcast area during the late 80s and early 90s, you may recall WPIX, or simply "Channel 11". A subsidiary of Tribune Media (which also owned the New York Daily News) since it's founding in the late 40s, WPIX resisted joining the major networks for a while and instead positioned itself as a home for local programming and movies shown during primetime nearly every night. Many years later, the network -- now Warner-Brothers-affiliated and called Pix11 -- were constantly fielding requests for one single movie promo... [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:50 AM - 30 comments

It is that time of year again: Katmai National Park is hosting its 5th annual Fat Bear Tournament. [more inside]
posted by charmedimsure at 11:39 AM - 16 comments

After a slew of recent cases in the United States and Europe, the momentum toward a crackdown on illicit art and antiquities deals is growing. The legitimate art market is itself enormous—estimated at $67.4 billion worldwide at the end of 2018. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the underground art market, which includes thefts, fakes, illegal imports, and organized looting, may bring in as much as $6 billion annually. The portion attributed to money laundering and other financial crimes is in the $3 billion range. The Art of Money Laundering by Tom Mashberg for the IMF
posted by chavenet at 11:23 AM - 9 comments

“Solidarity is the opposite of bad vibes. It warms you up with the trust of those around you, and it can spread beyond your immediate community. Here, we have Haley Mlotek from the Freelance Media League; Dana Kopel of New Museum Union; Crystal Stella Becerril, member of the Freelance Media League and former community organizer for Study Hall and other community and labor efforts; and Kaitlyn Chandler from the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s newest union. Writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers are constantly pitted against each other in the name of innovation and entertainment value. If we are able to come together regardless of the rapacious and manipulative practices of capitalism, then we will be able to set a precedent against the alienating forces of competition to build a new and engaging art.” So Many Secrets : A roundtable on cultural organizing in New York City Moderated by the hosts of the Arts And Labor Podcast.
posted by The Whelk at 8:42 AM - 1 comment

Grieving in the internet age is weird. Despite what many make out, millennials are actually reticent to get real on social media. Instead of being emotionally candid we’re perpetually sarcastic, self-deprecating and deliberately unpolished. Being “too online” or oversharing too readily is uncool. There’s a saying that you get one sincere online post a year; use it well. So then what do you do when someone has died? Grieving in the internet age: would posting photos of my dead friend look performative? (Katie Cunningham for The Guardian)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM - 49 comments

The motivation for using video review in sports is obvious: to get more calls right. This seems like an easy enough mission to fulfill, but anyone who has spent even a little time watching sports on TV can attest to the fact that the application of video review is not so simple. In most sports where it is applied, video review has actually created more confusion and less clarity. Why is this the case? Follow me into an examination of thousands of years of philosophical discourse, and we will find the answer together, my friends.
posted by Etrigan at 8:28 AM - 28 comments

Opera singer Jessye Norman dead at 74. Norman was celebrated many times over throughout her career, including receiving five Grammys and a Kennedy Center Honor. Among her most well known performances were the title roles in Aida and Ariadne auf Naxos, a rendition of "La Marseillaise" on the 200th anniversary of Bastille Day in France, and Strauss' Four Last Songs.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:05 AM - 37 comments

Watching a sleeping octopus cycle through various camouflage colors, as she appears to dream of hunting, captured on video for the first time. From PBS Nature's Octopus: Making Contact, premiering tomorrow.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:23 AM - 24 comments

The Balloon Boy Hoax—Solved (?) "Ten years ago this month, the country was captivated by a bizarre spectacle in Fort Collins that was colloquially dubbed the Balloon Boy Hoax. Although Richard Heene, the so-called Balloon Boy’s father, pleaded guilty to charges related to the prank, it was never fully clear whether it was the scam that police made it out to be." [more inside]
posted by The Blue Olly at 5:53 AM - 35 comments

This game is deceptively simple: name as many US cities as you can. They show up on the blank map, and you also get a bunch of statistics to motivate you. Be warned: this WILL suck up many hours of your life and can be extremely addictive. Via Sasha Trubetskoy
posted by KTamas at 4:59 AM - 235 comments

Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change? - "Eating meat creates huge environmental costs. Impossible Foods thinks it has a solution." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM - 69 comments

Depictions of death on TV and in the movies are unrealistic; the characters are awake and carry on meaningful conversations, then suddenly close their eyes and die. That’s not how it works. In the days when deaths occurred at home, most people had seen a relative die. And today we have a lot of knowledge about what happens in the body as it begins shutting down. It’s a gradual process.

Harriet Hall, MD, reviews What Does It Feel Like To Die?: Inspiring New Insights Into The Experience Of Dying by Jennie Dear.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:02 PM - 50 comments

"My first inkling that kale was in trouble came from the New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt’s recent account of his attempt to love takeout-lunch salad, the purveyors of which dot seemingly every street corner in Manhattan...During Platt’s experiment, someone from Sweetgreen told him that kale sales had waned at its stores, even as its menu had expanded to include grain bowls and warm dishes."

Amanda Mull writes in The Atlantic that maybe America never really liked kale.
posted by noneuclidean at 3:44 PM - 146 comments

"These feel like such dire times, times of violence and dislocation, schism, paranoia, and the earth-scorching politics of fear. Babies have iPads, the ice caps are melting, and your smart refrigerator is eavesdropping on your lovemaking (and, frankly, it’s not impressed).

It has all seemed to fall apart so quickly. Looking around, it’s hard not to wonder who or what is to blame. I think it might be me. No, hear me out...." [more inside]
posted by dnash at 2:22 PM - 34 comments

1917 [YouTube][Official Trailer] [Behind the Scenes Featurette]“James Bond director Sam Mendes wants to put audiences right in the center of World War I with his new war movie 1917. To do that, he shot the movie in one long, perfectly choreographed shot. In a behind-the-scenes featurette released on Monday morning, Mendes and some of the cast and crew go into detail on the challenge of shooting a movie this way, and why it was worth it.1917 follows two soldiers in WWI on a mission to deliver a message that could save thousands of lives. However, to do so, they have to carry that message across some of the war’s most harrowing battlefields. And Mendes wanted to make sure that the audience got to see every single step of that journey. “From the very beginning I felt this movie should be told in real time,” Mendes says in the featurette. “Every step of the journey, breathing every breath with these men, felt integral.”” [Via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz at 1:07 PM - 47 comments

Domino’s Wants to Slice Away at the Americans With Disabilities Act The potential consequences of this fill me with genuine terror because the consequences extend far beyond pizza. I’m legally blind, and the internet, phone apps, and e-commerce are more integral parts of my daily life than shopping malls or brick-and-mortar stores have ever been. If the Supreme Court were to eventually rule in the company’s favor, the blind, visually impaired, and others who rely on accessibility tools to use the web could be locked out of the modern economy—and much of modern life. If companies and other organizations are not required to make their websites and apps accessible, people like me would be unable to access our bank accounts, look up or pay our utility bills, or buy household essentials from Amazon or other retailers.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:32 AM - 80 comments

Writing for The Cut, Rebecca Traister seeks to talk about the cost of #MeToo - not for the accused, but for those who came forward, as a foreword to the experience of 25 people who came forward to expose their abusers, and the experience in their own words.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM - 5 comments

Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino talk movie obsessions, director heroes, process and violence as catharsis.
posted by sapagan at 10:38 AM - 27 comments

Cheating Hangman [via mefi projects] Avapoet has created an app that perfectly recreates the infuriating feeling of playing hangman with your older sibling who was *definitely* cheating and also knew way more words than you. It is rage-inducing and tremendously fun.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:31 AM - 16 comments

"In 1996, singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan was tipping from alternative icon into something more like traditional pop success. At 26 she had garnered serious momentum—and 2.8 million albums sold in the United States—after her 1993 crossover Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. But as she ascended through the music industry, she kept hearing “no.” No, we can’t play your song—we already have another woman artist in rotation. No, you can’t put two women on the same concert bill—it’s box office poison. Sexism was passed off as age-old industry logic—logic that forced her into competition with other women artists to be the sole exceptional woman allowed opportunity. McLachlan was not alone. So she presented a challenge to her team—let’s prove them wrong" An Oral History of Lilith Fair
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:25 AM - 21 comments

A girl hears a bump in the night .... From Now On by Worakls - a charming low-budget interpretation of an epically cinematic piece of music. You have to have the sound on for it to make any sense. SLYT
posted by memebake at 9:49 AM - 1 comment

Yet another woman comes forward to accuse Al Franken of groping her. The military veteran, who is now a senior staffer at a major progressive organization, says that while working for U.S. Senator Patty Murray and posing for a picture at an event with Franken, he “puts his hand on my ass,” asks the photographer to take another picture to prolong the experience, and “gives me a little squeeze on my buttock.” She is the ninth woman to accuse Franken of inappropriate conduct and the fourth to accuse him specifically of groping her buttocks. [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 9:37 AM - 16 comments

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies. An article in the Guardian by Catherine Fieschi. Populist lying... is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. ... Above all, though, the lies are about taking one of representative democracy’s creeds – authenticity – and turning it on its head.
posted by tavegyl at 9:33 AM - 6 comments

“Every few months, after I’d dismissed it in my mind as an obvious fraud, someone new would bring the tape up to me. Usually they’d just seen it and wanted to see what I thought. I would retread my initial suspicions and explain that, while it must be a fake, it’s certainly a very good fake. And each time, I’d walk away a little less convinced.” The Pee Tape Is Real, but It’s Fake: There’s a video going around that no one’s really talking about. What makes it most unreal is how believable it is. (Slate) (cw: blurry nudity, possible pee)
posted by The Whelk at 8:31 AM - 23 comments

Podunk was a place name (Wikipedia) long before it became a punchline. The word has Algonquian roots, but Ives Goddard, senior linguist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading expert on Algonquian languages, notes that "you'll be able to find guesses in the sources if you look around. Don't believe any of it." (NPR Codeswitch) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:18 AM - 4 comments

Can You Microwave? is a helpful blog answering questions about what can and cannot be microwaved.
posted by adept256 at 8:17 AM - 14 comments

Thirty years ago, Wally Conron was asked to breed a non-shedding guide dog. Looking back, he worries that he created a monster.
posted by Etrigan at 7:36 AM - 52 comments

Pejac's drawings clarify the destructive absurdity of the Anthropocene [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:12 AM - 3 comments

Out in September 2020, Clarke’s Piranesi will follow the story of its eponymous hero, who lives in the House, a building with 'hundreds if not thousands of rooms and corridors'.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:08 AM - 39 comments

Andrew Ridgely and his friend George Michael enjoyed quite a bit of success as pop stars with their 80s band Wham!. Across two albums and some compilation releases, they changed popular music and launched a defining career. Their first album, 1983's Fantastic, came across both as satirical social satire and an expression of the attitude of a generation - parties, dancing, and living on the dole: Bad Boys [video], A Ray Of Sunshine, Love Machine, Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) [video, substantially different rhymes from the LP version], Club Tropicana [video], Nothing Looks The Same In The Light [George's first experiment in "I played everything" production], Come On, Young Guns (Go For It!) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:00 PM - 22 comments

!שנה טובה Genie Milgrom was raised Catholic in Cuba, but the family recipes passed down to her had a few oddities. They never mixed meat and milk. Her Spanish-born grandmother always insisted she pull off a bit of bread and throw it in the oven to burn. They used potato and corn starch where most kitchens used wheat flour. Genealogical research led her to discover that her ancestors were Converso Jews, who converted to Catholicism (often just on the surface) to avoid the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:05 PM - 7 comments

In its reporting the New York Times "reviewed over 10,000 pages of police and court documents; conducted software tests to assess the availability of the imagery through search engines; accompanied detectives on raids; and spoke with investigators, lawmakers, tech executives and government officials. The reporting included conversations with an admitted pedophile who concealed his identity using encryption software and who runs a site that has hosted as many as 17,000 such images." Their shorter "What You Need To Know" article summarizes: reports are increasing, victims are younger and the abuse is worse, the Justice Department has neglected its duties for years, the police and non-profits are overwhelmed, and tech companies are often slow to react if they do at all. Almost 66% of reports were from Facebook Messenger. [more inside]
posted by reductiondesign at 1:35 PM - 47 comments

The rise of the virtual sidekick, and what it says about the shift in video game storytelling. [Slate] “That “alone” part of the equation for video games has been changing in recent years. Yes, long ago there was an explosion of online gaming’s popularity, giving players the ability to join up with or hunt strangers, friends, and (occasionally) new friends you’d meet through a game. But there’s also a newer, largely unarticulated trend: the end of being alone in video games. Now, even on single-player outings, you’re typically teamed up with a computer sidekick for the duration of the adventure. [...] But this is an interesting and new experiment for video games, one that raises a lot of questions. Or, at least, one question: Why? I have a hunch. The most ambitious examples of the computer sidekick are always plot-critical characters who grow and change and have actual personalities and points of view. They accompany a shift in the sorts of stories told in video games, and how the player takes part in them. ” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:17 PM - 55 comments

The Hanes family felt they had reached the limits of established medical practice and found no cure to Micah’s sleep and breathing problems. So Hanes did what any modern parent would: she turned to Google. There, she discovered a whole community of researchers and medical professionals who point to abundant evidence that Micah’s experience is increasingly commonplace. To them, Micah represents a perfect case study of an alarming trend in human development with far-reaching implications: over the last 250 years, our skulls have morphed in dangerous and troubling ways.. The problem with Micah, they say, is his face. (Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Medium OneZero)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:16 PM - 52 comments

2019 Association of Food Journalists award-winning coverage. Best Food Travel story: Gustavo Arellano at Eater, “The Central Valley Is the Heart and Soul of California”; Best Newspaper Food Feature: Chris Malloy, Phoenix New Times, “A Journey to the Heart of New Arizonan Cuisine”.

Started in 1986, AFJ’s awards competition is the oldest contest for food journalists and recognizes excellence in 15 categories of food journalism including audio journalism, photography, and restaurant criticism. Check out their Awards archive. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:29 AM - 4 comments

How Senator Charles Sumner’s speeches condemning slavery and exposing its connection to rape spurred a pro-slavery gang of Senators called the “F Street Mess” to plotting, leading to the near-fatal caning of Sumner by “deeply insecure screw-up” Senator Preston Brooks and “creating the opening for Lincoln’s rise.” Ryan Grim of The Intercept reviews the new volume in Sidney Blumenthal’s extended biography of Lincoln and his times, which explodes the myth that Brooks “chivalrously” beat Sumner for insulting Brooks’ cousin.
posted by sallybrown at 9:24 AM - 17 comments

“Facebook Broke Democracy in Many Countries around the World, Including in Mine” In a Q&A, the Manila-based journalist discusses how Silicon Valley has “forever changed” our societies — and what can be done to stop hate spreading faster than facts
posted by Mrs Potato at 7:54 AM - 34 comments