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Elle Griffin's report on the testimony from the Justice Department's 2021 antitrust lawsuit to block the merger of Penguin Random House with Simon and Schuster reveals a disheartening truth: practically nobody buys books.
comment posted at 12:49 AM on Apr-23-24

Image without metaphor in Dune 2: Because in 2024, I don't find it hard to believe that people are incredibly excited by the vision of an anti-colonial guerilla movement driven by Islamic faith defeating a massive and technologically dominant empire... I do find it hard to believe that more people in 2024 aren't outraged that Dune Part Two literally features a talking embryo.

Civil War, a piece of radical-centrist, middle brow bothsideism is not only sure to be the most successful film he has made, it is also by some margin the worst. But to my pleasant surprise, it's not a completely terrible and evil film. It is just a deeply mediocre one.
comment posted at 2:28 PM on Apr-21-24
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comment posted at 12:37 AM on Apr-24-24

It's now loved all over the world, but who really invented the flat white? This is the little-known story of how Italian sugar growers in the Sunshine State are said to have inspired the invention of the flat white (a type of coffee) — a drink that would go on to become a global sensation
comment posted at 12:00 AM on Apr-15-24

Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city A wide residential and commercial block, known as "Region 9", is being cleared of several metres of overlying pumice and ash thrown out by Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.(Pompeii previously)
comment posted at 11:06 PM on Apr-11-24

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.
comment posted at 11:25 PM on Apr-11-24

"Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple and profound way." [...] "His prediction of the existence of the particle that bears his name was a deep insight, and its discovery at Cern in 2012 was a crowning moment that confirmed his understanding of the way the Universe works." "Even though he didn’t much enjoy it, he felt a responsibility to use the public profile his achievements brought him for the good of science, and he did so many times. The particle that carries his name is perhaps the single most stunning example of how seemingly abstract mathematical ideas can make predictions which turn out to have huge physical consequences."

Peter Higgs, physicist who proposed Higgs boson, dies aged 94
comment posted at 2:51 AM on Apr-10-24

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]
comment posted at 2:25 AM on Apr-6-24

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.
comment posted at 12:17 AM on Apr-6-24
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comment posted at 8:08 AM on Apr-7-24

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.
comment posted at 1:11 PM on Apr-5-24
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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.
comment posted at 7:13 PM on Apr-4-24

"The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal."
comment posted at 10:08 AM on Apr-4-24
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comment posted at 9:36 AM on Apr-6-24

As part of their regular updates to the English lexicon, the Oxford English Dictionary has added a number of Japanese loan words, most notably the term for a notorious genre of anime and manga - isekai, or "portal fantasy".
comment posted at 12:46 PM on Mar-30-24
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Mar-30-24

The forgotten history of Australia's convicts - Radio National, from the Australian ABC.
comment posted at 6:29 AM on Mar-30-24

Woman mistakes bobble for baby hedgehog and rushes it to Cheshire animal hospital. "Volunteer Danielle Peberdy, 36, said the kind-hearted woman had done the right thing in not ignoring a hedgehog out in the day. She said: "Hedgehogs shouldn't be out in the day so she did the right thing; the only problem was that it was a bobble.""
comment posted at 5:09 PM on Mar-25-24
comment posted at 3:48 AM on Mar-27-24

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".
comment posted at 6:08 AM on Mar-21-24

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.
comment posted at 6:20 AM on Mar-18-24
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Which animals cause the most deaths in Australia? Horses: 172 total deaths between 2001 and 2017, many of them from falling off a horse.
comment posted at 8:06 AM on Mar-16-24

Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world's first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan. He was 100 years old.
comment posted at 5:58 AM on Mar-16-24

This list includes 45 debut novels, nine winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three children’s books. Twelve were published before the introduction of the mass-market paperback to America, and 24 after the release of the Kindle. At least 60 have been banned by schools or libraries. Together, they represent the best of what novels can do: challenge us, delight us, pull us in and then release us, a little smarter and a little more alive than we were before. from The Great American Novels [The Atlantic; ungated] [CW: a list which almost by definition lacks your favorite American author or novel]
comment posted at 7:16 AM on Mar-16-24
comment posted at 7:23 AM on Mar-16-24

Mexican artist crushes Tesla under giant stone head
comment posted at 3:29 PM on Mar-17-24

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.
comment posted at 3:25 PM on Mar-13-24

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.
comment posted at 10:17 AM on Mar-12-24
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"For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us." (slCBC)
comment posted at 7:06 AM on Mar-12-24

One of the most dreaded diseases in early modern London was plague. Starting in 1603, government officials published weekly plague mortality statistics in a broadside series known as the Bills of Mortality. The bills grew to include not just plague deaths but also dozens of other causes of death, ensuring their continued publication for decades after the final outbreak of plague in England. Between 1603 and 1752, almost 8,000 different weekly bills were published. Death by Numbers aims to transcribe and publish the information in these bills in a dataset suitable for computational analysis.
comment posted at 6:55 AM on Mar-4-24

Things Unexpectedly Named After People. For example: Main Street in San Francisco is named after Charles Main. By Roland Crosby. Via.
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New satellite-based research reveals how land along the coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise. An interactive map with analysis (previously)
comment posted at 8:55 AM on Feb-29-24
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comment posted at 3:51 AM on Mar-3-24