April 8
Vortex rings rise from Italy's Mount Etna volcano
Vortex rings rise from Italy's Mount Etna volcano.
Mount Etna has released volcanic vortex rings, a rare phenomenon caused by a constant release of vapours and gases. [more inside]
More D&D Info Cartoons
Six years ago (really? wow) I posted about Zee Bashew's terrific D&D explainer videos. Well he's still making them, and is trying to do one a week for the next few months! Here are some he's made since I last told you all about them: What is a grognard? - Ceremony - Encumbrance in 5E - The Awful Way I Ran 5E Survival - Magic Mouth - Oops! All Wizards - 5E Players Try 1E (AD&D) - Healer Feat - The Problem With The Awaken Spell (sad/funny) - Dangers of Metagaming - Option: Quantum Inventory - Grappling in 1E. If you enjoy D&D, or just learning or watching videos about it, Zee Bashew's Channel is great.
Lost Boomer Classic "The Space Explorers" - Rediscovered after 70 years!
"The Space Explorers" was a series of animated, educational Sci-Fi shorts shown on morning kids' TV in the US, around 1961. Astronomy enthusiast Jimmy Perry stows away on the Polaris II, flying to rescue his Dad who crashed on the moon on his way to Mars, in the Polaris 1. Set in 1978, each episode had little bits of this story padded out with educational lessons about astronomy. A very few sequences from the show are available at the Internet Archive, but there's much [more inside]
A very particular and ugly recent history
When Candace Owens, the far-right political commentator, parted ways with conservative media company the Daily Wire in late March, the news unleashed something strange on the internet. Factions emerged to yell at each other about theology, censorship, and bigotry. Extremists chatted with establishment right-wingers in audio chatrooms on social media. Content creators wrote blog posts and produced YouTube videos with their take on one particular phrase: “Christ Is King.” That phrase gripped the right for days, leaving movement leaders struggling with layers of infighting that proved difficult to parse for all but the most egregiously online people. It was also, for those tracking the right’s strange coalition-building, a warning sign: The establishment conservatives’ pragmatic alliance with hateful white supremacist groups may finally be breaking under the awkwardness of having avowed antisemites in a pro-Israel movement. from The Establishment Right’s Alliance With Open Bigots Is Under a New Kind of Pressure [Slate]
You can opt out any time you like. But you can never leave.
The USENIX Association have published a Report (PDF) Analysing Cookie Notice Compliance.
We show that 56.7% of cookie notices do not include an option to opt out of consent, that more than 65.4% of websites with an opt-out option collect users’ data despite explicit negative consent, and that 73.4% of websites do so even when users do not interact with the cookie notice.
Olivia Newton-John Television Special 1978
This is a particularly interesting find -- a full television special from 1978 focussed on Olivia Newton -John called Olivia [50m]. The guest starts are Andy Gibb and ABBA! The first 33 minutes are high-quality standard fare Seventies variety show material, but the last bit of the show has six people sitting stage having a little hootenanny, improvising sing-a-longs, and we eve get to hear Frida sing in her opera voice a bit! It's entirely charming that turns transcendent at the end.
Neither a good shield nor a good shovel: The Hughes Shield Shovel
The MacAdam Shield Shovel, also known as the Hughes Shovel, was designed and patented by Sam Hughes, the Canadian minister for the Department of Militia and Defence in 1913, to be staked in the ground for alternate use as cover. It was thicker and heavier than normal spades but failed to stop even small caliber bullets. It also had a large sight hole in the shovel blade for a rifle to poke through, making it a poor shovel. In 1914, 25,000 shield-shovels were ordered and shipped to Europe for use by the 1st Canadian Division, and then later scrapped. Sam Hughes had a string of failed inventions: "Hughes equated masculinity with toughness, and argued that militia service would toughen up Canadian men who might otherwise go soft living in an urban environment full of labor-saving devices."
Lyn Hejinian, 1941-2024
Excerpts from Lyn Hejinian's My Life: "A name trimmed with colored ribbons"; "Reason looks for two, then arranges it from there"; "As for we who 'love to be astonished'"; "Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance"; "One begins as a student but becomes a friend of clouds." Lisa Samuels, "Eight justifications for canonizing Lyn Hejinian's My Life." "The Rejection of Closure," "Continuing Against Closure," and other work online. Obits: NYT (ungated / archived), Jacket2, and The Nation. Remembrances: Berkeley English, LARB, and The Paris Review. Colin Vanderburg (n+1, Apr. 5), "Tree, Chair, Cone, Dog, Bishop, Piano, Vineyard, Door, or Penny: On Lyn Hejinian": "There is no better way to end, or to begin, or to continue. The facts are finished, but the life is still open."
For Linguistics Influencer Adam Aleksic, Language is Political
One of the Internet’s first and only “linguistics influencers,” Adam Aleksic, who works under the handle @etymologynerd, [Instagram / TikTok / YouTube] spends his time post-graduation traveling the world and creating videos about etymology for an audience of over 1.3 million across TikTok and Instagram. [more inside]
The long night had come again.
Imagine a planet in a system with six suns where total darkness, in the form of a solar eclipse, comes only once every 2,049 years. This is the setting of "Nightfall," a short story that appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. An immediate sensation, it sealed the reputation of its author, a little-known 21-year-old graduate student at Columbia University named Isaac Asimov. [more inside]
Once thought locally extinct, rare rock rat found
Once thought locally extinct, rare central rock rat found on remote desert cattle station. The habitat of the critically endangered central rock rat was thought to have shrunk to a speck on the map but now it's been found at two new Northern Territory sites — and researchers say there may be more populations out there.
From now on, this is the only soundtrack I will use for NASA posts
Seeing the eclipse is Free. Getting there, not so much.
North America is just hours away from its second major total solar eclipse in seven years, with the path of totality tracing a long arc from Mexico and Texas northeast through Ohio, New England, and Canada. Eager eclipse watchers have snapped up hotels and rentals and embarked on epic road trips, scrutinizing cloud forecasting models and taking an anti-stormchaser attitude to avoid a late-breaking spate of bad weather. How many MeFites are among the madding crowd? Where are you based, and what's your plan for seeing the spectacle? Have you witnessed any eclipses in the past, or do you have plans to see more in the future? What are your tips and fun facts for making the most of the experience? You're welcome too discuss these topics and more in your Monday Free Thread!
"We have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint."
Not wanting to be overshadowed by other events, Trump says abortion law should be left to the states (NYT gift, WaPo gift, Reuters, NPR, NBC, Politico, Axios)
A mindset fundamentally at odds with intellectual rigor and complexity
Three years in the making, the exhibition was scheduled to open in early July 2024. Kahng and her team had secured a total of sixty-two loans. A catalogue containing an introduction and four essays was about to go into print, distributed by Yale University Press. As Kahng was putting the final touches on the show, however, the sbma brought in a new director: Amada Cruz, who had previously served as the director of the Seattle Art Museum (2019–23) and the director of the Phoenix Art Museum (2015–19). Within a month of her assuming the position in Santa Barbara, Cruz instructed Kahng to halt work on the show because, according to the Hyperallergic article, “it was under consideration for its lack of diversity.” In mid-January, Cruz fired Kahng, terminating her for “redundancy,” before promptly stepping into the role herself. from Cruz control [The New Criterion] [more inside]
April 7
SpotPass Archival Project for 3DS and Wii U
Help preserve SpotPass content by uploading your database dump of your 2DS, 3DS and Wii U! All online communication services for the Nintendo 3DS, 2DS and Wii U, including the distribution of SpotPass data will be discontinued on April 8th, 2024, at 4pm PDT. After this date, features using SpotPass in games will stop working once this change has taken effect. [more inside]
Cattle property bought to protect malleefowl and other rare species
Bird-loving professors instrumental in $390,000 (US $255,994) purchase of cattle property to protect endangered native species. A Nature Foundation fundraising campaign that received two donations of $100,000 (US $65,639) from generous professors enables it to buy a 200-hectare (494-acre) property home to malleefowl and other rare species in south-east South Australia.
The Incredible Machine
SLYT Cigarbox Oud blues number
Thirty-eight minutes in for the impatient. yet another best kind of fusion.
When things break
As art, as practical application, as metaphor, the delicate and profound craft of beautifully repairing beloved items resonates both aesthetically and emotionally. In a different sort of celebration and honoring of the broken thing, artist Helena Hafemann captures the moment of its would-be demise and spins it into a moment of beauty. [more inside]
Mary Poppins had more magic than you know
The folks at Corridor Crew recently reached back sixty years to recreate a truly wonderous piece of special effects technology that was thought to be long lost.
The comics legend lurking in a Sunderland basement
The BBC profiles comic artist and writer Bryan Talbot, following the recent announcement that he will be inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame. [more inside]
Excitement as rare marsupial mole sighted in Australian desert region
Excitement as rare, golden-furred, marsupial mole sighted in Australian desert region rich with wildlife. The animals — known locally as kakarratul — are only seen about five to ten times in a decade, due to their tendency to burrow underground and the minimal human presence in their desert habitat. The moles are small and covered in silky golden hair. They do not have eyes, but boast large, strong forearms and claws that allow them to quickly dive under the sand and "swim" deep into the sand dunes.
When will society expect me to adhere to the laws of grammar?
Some realize it’s time to turn on auto-capitalization when they begin texting with bosses and colleagues for work, given lowercase letters can be susceptible to misinterpretation. This is especially the case when communicating with older generations who didn’t grow up DMing their BFFs. But shunning the Shift key helps others cling to their youth. To them, a lowercase letter isn’t just a lowercase letter. Instead, it’s a way to forever remain cool and casual in texts. Even some CEOs do it. from time to start typing like a grownup [WSJ; ungated]
The Art of the Benshi: "Full-fledged artists in their own right"
The Art of the Benshi: World Tour trailer. Tour dates (Brooklyn, this afternoon; DC, Apr. 12-14; Chicago, Apr. 16-17--sold out?; LA, Apr. 19 and 20-21; Tokyo, Apr. 26): "During the silent film era in Japan ... film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi ... [who] enlivened the cinema experience." Films include The Dull Sword (1917; animated); Jiraiya the Hero (1921; see fights at 3:48, 11:37 to see frog magic, and 14:09 for frog vs. snake); A Page of Madness (1926; one of "The 100 Best Horror Movies"; helpful screenplay [PDF] co-authored by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata); and The Golden Flower (1929; animated). Previously. See also Jess Nevins's 2020 Twitter thread on Japanese horror movies, 1898-1949.
April 6
Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas
Gary Shteyngart on assignment from The Atlantic engages in a supposedly fun thing that he'll never do again, cruising from Florida to St. Kitts and CocoCay on board Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas. [more inside]
How are crayons made?
Cassowaries under threat from feral pigs
Australia has a feral pig problem and it is affecting the habitat of the cassowary (three minute video from BBC Earth.) There are only 2000 cassowaries left in Australia. There are 24 million feral pigs in Australia - for context, Australia only has 27.1 million people. Feral pigs compete with cassowaries for food. Feral pigs also eat cassowary eggs and cassowary chicks. Over 100 plant species depend on the cassowary to spread their seeds - if cassowaries disappear, it is disastrous for the rainforest and the other animals who rely on the rainforest.
Literally 30 years ago, Dionne Farris did the thing
Dionne Farris recorded an album released in 1994 that, if you're grooving on Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album, might feel like it's a similar vibe. Wild Seed – Wild Flower [YT Playlist] comes from the vocalist of the band Arrested Development's song Tennessee, and Beyoncé's new album had been giving me whiplash in a lot of ways. Maybe, if you like Bey's new album, you'll like this older example of the same musical genre. Previously.
What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?
Orville Peck & Willie Nelson - Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other (slyt) [more inside]
"No meaning, no magic, just the work of it: the work of art"
Adam Moss (Vulture, 04/04/2024), "How'd You Make That? Three masterpieces from glimmer through struggle to breakthrough": "So I began talking to creators ... here are three of those conversations with the artists Cheryl Pope and Kara Walker and the poet Louise Glück." Of related interest: Dungeons & Dragons (early draft; see the upcoming book). A first draft of Finnegans Wake. The first page of 1984. Story Synopsis and Rough Draft [PDF] for Star Wars. The Creative Process: A Symposium. For checkout, The Making of The Pré. Plus "Work in Progress: Notes, Drafts, Revision, Publication," "... Check Out These Drafts From Famous Authors," "Surprising secrets of writers' first book drafts," and "First drafts of famous novels."
Gonna get downright MetaFiltered tonight
The English language is famous for its large number of drunkonyms, i.e. words that can be used to refer to the state of drunkenness – from blind and hammered to pissed, smashed and wasted. Various lists of words have been compiled in the past (e.g. Levine 1981). However, most of the terms seem to be relatively infrequent, and they also appear to fall out of use relatively quickly. In view of Michael McIntyre’s (2009) claim that it is possible to use any word to mean ‘drunk’ in English, this contribution therefore approaches the issue from a constructionist perspective. In a corpus-based study, we tested whether it is possible to model the expression of drunkenness in English as a more or less schematic (set of) construction(s). Our study shows that while corpus evidence for truly creative uses is scarce, we can nonetheless identify constructional and collostructional properties shared by certain patterns that are used to express drunkenness in English. For instance, the pattern be/get + ADV + drunkonym is strongly associated with premodifying (and often strongly intensifying) adverbs such as completely, totally and absolutely. A manual analysis of a large wordlist of English drunkonyms reveals further interesting patterns that can be modelled constructionally.“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness, a spirited academic paper from the Yearbook of the GCLA [more inside]
ὀφειλήματα are not “transgressions” but “debts”
One does not need to be a scholar of late antiquity to notice how often Jesus speaks of trials, of officers dragging the insolvent to jail. The Lord's Prayer, quite explicitly, requests — in order — adequate nourishment, debt relief, avoidance of arraignment before the courts, and rescue from the depredations of powerful but unprincipled men. [Note: The first 3 paragraphs are rather opaque and ornate but from the 4th paragraph, which begins "Christians are quite accustomed to thinking of Christianity as a fairly commonsensical creed," biblical scholar David Bentley Hart really starts cooking, albeit with academic vocabulary.] [more inside]
Flat oysters growing in Botany Bay again after more than 100 years
Flat oysters growing in Botany Bay after more than a century of local extinction.
Australian flat oysters went extinct in Botany Bay during the late 1800s. A conservation project has been working to bring them back.
Hierarchies of Fountain Pen Friendly Paper
“So as a baseline, what needs to happen before I will publicly recommend something as “fountain pen friendly paper”? My standard is fairly simple: No bleed-through or feathering with any fountain pen nib that can be reasonably used for everyday writing. (Because I mainly use my paper for drafting and notetaking, as opposed to drawing, wet ink samples, or flex-nib calligraphy, my standards may be more lenient than some.)” [more inside]
Many young people today see the game as the preserve of older people
Previously played by children, Japan’s adult population first went ballistic for pachinko after the Second World War, when the first commercial pachinko parlor opened in Nagoya. Popularity peaked during the 1990s, with an estimated 30 million people in approximately 18,244 pachinko parlors across the country. Today, however, according to the National Police Agency, the number of pachinko parlors has fallen to 7,655 — a 9.3% decline from the previous year. from Is Japan’s Pachinko Industry in Decline? [Tokyo Weekender] [more inside]
April 5
New Prince Song Dropped April 5 2024
Well, this is fun. Prince - United States Of Division (Official Audio) is a 6m20s funk jam with New Power Generation. Not quite sure WHEN this was recorded, but it feels appropriate to release right now. [more inside]
Native fish spotted swimming across desert highway after flooding rains
Native fish spotted swimming across remote desert highway after flooding rains. An Alice Springs photographer thought moving objects on a flooded outback highway were frogs, until he captured a spectacular video of fish crossing the road. [more inside]
What is a secret?
In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous. Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.Dark Matter: For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure. [more inside]
"High school isn't a very important place."
For the 50th anniversary of Stephen King's debut novel Carrie (original review), the New York Times Book Review offers: an appreciation by Margaret Atwood; an essay by Amanda Jayatissa; a collection of reflections from various luminaries; a King reading guide; and a podcast with Grady Hendrix and Damon Lindelof about King's works and influence (NYT gift links throughout).
Not 2S3XY
After an announcement at the Tesla January earnings call introducing the Model 2 as an upcoming mass market priced model (that would require workers to sleep at the factory), reports are that the new model is being cancelled in light of increasing competition in the Chinese EV market. [more inside]
Freak Earthquake Shakes the East Coast
4.8 Shaker Strikes Whitehouse Station, NJ. Tri-State residents were surprised this morning by a rare earthquake. Although earthquakes are rare in the North East, they are not unheard of. The Ramapo Fault may be the culprit here. [more inside]
When quaint becomes cult
Jared Shurin on Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, a "heart-warming/breaking portrayal of lost-and-found geeks captured the zeitgeist of a new [tech] subculture," from casual coding to its Silicon Valley extremes:
Looking back. . . we can see the first seeds of a spin-off culture, one that is not only aware of its incompatibility with the rest of society, but also revels in it. . . thirty years on, it now feels a lot less quaint, and a lot more frightening.
We Need To Talk About Trader Joe's
"According to these sources, Trader Joe’s commonly solicits product samples and even asks for potential recipe adjustments—a revealing and time-consuming exercise for bootstrapped founders—before inexplicably abandoning the negotiations and releasing its own private-label versions of similar products at lower prices." How Trader Joe's engages in shady tactics to copy products from independent, minority-owned brands.
Restoring an ugly hill into an ecosystem
They pooled their money to buy an ugly hill. Twenty years later, they're calling it paradise. A group of friends, dismayed about climate change, bought the most degraded piece of farmland they could find. Not to live on, or to make money from, but to transform into the bushland it once was. [more inside]
Well, I for one, really really wanna go
I used to want to be a part of the media party circuit so bad. As a young person aspiring to be a writer, I would zoom into certain Instagram Stories of interest, wondering how everyone there got to go. Now, as a person attending them, I am pissed off! I was lied to. Bamboozled. Swindled. Hoodwinked
I feared that being near all of this would mean the end of my career
“This was a catch-and-kill,” I told Alpert. “What’s a catch-and-kill?” he asked.
I went on to explain the tabloid practice of buying stories to bury them. Alpert already had the outline of the story, I learned, and I filled him in on more: how Howard had flown out to Los Angeles that summer to buy McDougal’s story for $150,000, with the direction from Pecker to kill it to protect Trump. I stressed to him the importance of the term “catch and kill” and told him that if The Journal included it, it would give me some breathing room. I went back to my office and closed the door. My heart was racing, and I was sweating. from What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise by Lachlan Cartwright [NY Times; ungated] [CW: Trumpland]
April 4
The Cast Rolls Merrily Along Discussing Their Cast Album
So this is unexpectedly delightful! Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsey Mendez, Katie Rose Clark, Krystal Joy Brown, and Reg Rogers sit down with Seth Rudetsky to discuss the release of the Broadway Cast Album for Merrily We Roll Along [YT Playlist] in SiriusXM Cast Album Town Hall | Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway [52m]. Campy, joyous and full of laughter and some delightful theater stories! Merrily We Roll Along previously.
Bubba Copeland
[CW: transphobia, suicide] Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a website exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn’t the only thing that was destroyed. [Esquire]
Marine scientists are bringing a once-lost habitat back to life
In this picturesque Tasmanian bay, marine scientists are bringing a once-lost habitat back to life. Tucked away in a picturesque bay on the Tasman Peninsula is a precious underwater field of giant kelp that's thriving thanks to a team of determined scientists.
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