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A mystery is unfolding in Carstairs, and its become the talk of the town. It seems key fobs for some cars have stopped working in the parking lot of a local grocery store. People in town are trying to figure out why its happening.
comment posted at 3:18 AM on Feb-1-19

@girlziplocked asks, "What's a dirty secret that everybody in your industry knows about but anyone outside of your line of work would be scandalized to hear?" Twitter responds with dozens of reports of systemic fraud, abuse, prejudice, corruption, incompetence, and precarity from restaurants, heavy industry, non-profits, technology, theatre, shipping, customer service, flower arranging, medicine, law, art, education, government, senior care, agriculture, telecommunications, and virtually every other sphere of modern economic activity.
comment posted at 12:52 PM on Jan-18-19
comment posted at 1:26 PM on Jan-18-19

Amazon now accounts for just shy of half of all online sales in the US and Santa’s not so little helper is expected to have another bumper Christmas this year. But there are a growing number of people whose front steps won’t be graced by Amazon packages this festive season – consumers boycotting the online retailer. (Guardian)
comment posted at 9:00 AM on Dec-23-18

Peppa pig big in China? I'm clever because I use my middle initial. Vice's audience is middle-aged. Fortune cookies sell us things for a reason. Thermal breadboxes are the bomb. Medium gives us the hits.
comment posted at 6:49 AM on Dec-17-18

Rapper 2 Milly is suing Epic Games for including his signature dance moves in Fortnite without his permission.
comment posted at 4:04 PM on Dec-6-18

99% Off Sale from the folks behind Cards Against Humanity. Literally 99% off items, new items posted every 10 minutes.
comment posted at 12:00 PM on Nov-23-18
comment posted at 12:13 PM on Nov-23-18
comment posted at 12:19 PM on Nov-23-18
comment posted at 1:24 PM on Nov-23-18
comment posted at 9:49 PM on Nov-23-18

Demand growing in Canada for Indigenous food, eateries
comment posted at 6:40 PM on Nov-5-18

Western Canada Is Still Struggling to Replace Cancelled Greyhound Service. Here’s what that means for remote First Nations communities who rely on buses for medical travel.
comment posted at 12:41 PM on Nov-2-18

After thoroughly studying Action movies, year by year, in his "A History of Violence" series (previously) for AV Club, Tom Breihan began a weekly study of superhero movies called "Age of Heroes" earlier this year starting, naturally, with 1978's "Superman". This week he arrived at the fulcrum year of 2008 where both "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" both reside.
comment posted at 6:54 AM on Nov-2-18

Voldemorting: The act of never speaking the name of someone truly terrible. E.g. ‘Don’t bother sending me those links, I’m Voldemorting those losers!’

Wired's Resident Linguist Gretchen McCulloch writes about the "anti-SEO" practice of using different names for entities whose attention you don't want to attract.
comment posted at 11:25 AM on Oct-22-18

The bells ringing out at 6 AM signal the final tuna auction at Tokyo's famed Tsukiji market. Many merchants are in mourning. Some have decided to retire. Others are migrating at dawn [video] to new facilities in Toyosu, still skeptical that tourists and old customers will follow.
comment posted at 9:17 PM on Oct-7-18

Everyone talks about the country falling apart in November 2016, but maybe it fell apart in November 1996, when America went to see The English Patient. What if we had all turned to each other and said, “This garbage is our idea of rave-worthy cinema? Anyone else see a big problem here?”, and then there had been a massive riot?
comment posted at 6:27 PM on Sep-30-18

(Circa 2038) The Future of Money (also btw Europe Finally Has an Excuse to Challenge the Dollar)
comment posted at 5:06 PM on Sep-29-18

The story of an asteroid, one space probe, and two robot rovers. About 200 million miles from Earth the JAXA space probe Hayabusa2 (Japanese language site; English language site; Wikipedia) has landed two tiny rovers on top of a very small asteroid, 162173 Ryugu. The rovers (named 1A and 1B) are now hopping on Ryugu's surface, taking photos, and sending them back to Earth via Hayabusa2 in orbit.
comment posted at 3:26 PM on Sep-22-18

Culinary innovator and podcast host Georgia Hardstark asked the Internet "What’s a weird thing your family did that you thought was normal till you moved out?"
comment posted at 5:31 PM on Sep-17-18

The 50 Best Final Shots in Movie History
comment posted at 11:04 PM on Sep-7-18

kids were asked to create 500,000 scale aircraft models Following the 1941 aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics put out a call to action, aimed not at recruiting adult volunteers or teen enlistees but schoolchildren. For training purposes, models were especially important — per the U.S. Army-Navy Journal of Recognition, it was critical that observers be able to see an “object as a whole” and be “able, through constant practice, to recognize that object (plane, tank, ship, etc…) from any angle.”
comment posted at 7:10 AM on Sep-1-18

An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Aug-22-18

What Does Nintendo's Shutdown Of ROM-Sharing Sites Mean For Video Game Preservation? [Nintendo Life] “The recent news that Nintendo is taking legal action against two sites which illegally distributed ROMs has been met with an overwhelmingly positive response, and rightly so. The individuals sharing these files online care little for the intellectual property rights of the developers who slave away to make the games we get hours of enjoyment out of, and instead leverage the growing interest in retro gaming purely to plaster their sites with garish advertisements for mail-order girlfriends and other dubious businesses. Nintendo – a company traditionally very protective of its IP – has struck a blow which will hopefully have long-term ramifications for the entire industry.”
comment posted at 8:58 PM on Aug-9-18

'November Rain' is the oldest music video with a billion YouTube views. What does that mean?
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Jul-19-18

A day after the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the former American colonies of the British Empire now see its executive branch headed by a figure reminiscent of the king they overthrew. And the British aren't looking forward to his approaching visit, either.
comment posted at 9:35 AM on Jul-11-18

1 July is Canada Day. But in Quebec, which has twice had referendums on independence, it’s when tenancies traditionally end – leading to mayhem on the streets.
comment posted at 7:21 AM on Jul-2-18

In celebration of its 30th anniversary, KEXP presents the latest in our series of album breakdowns, dissecting the classic platinum-selling Public Enemy record It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Over the course of 12 hours for this live radio event, the station will play every discernable recording sampled on the album, along with exclusive interviews with Public Enemy co-founder Chuck D, the producer of the record Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad, Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets, former KEXP DJ Larry Mizell, Jr., professor, writer, and historian Dr. Daudi Abe, and more. It’s a celebration of Public Enemy, Thursday June 21st, only on KEXP, where Public Enemy really matters.
comment posted at 7:31 PM on Jun-21-18

Canada's senators have voted to legalize recreational marijuana. It'll be about 8-12 weeks before you'll be able to walk into your local licensed retailler to buy, though.
comment posted at 7:28 PM on Jun-19-18

Before the youth of America fooled around at drive-ins and necked on Lover’s Lane, they coupled in canoes. It didn't last very long, because automobiles started showing up everywhere, but while the craze was on, it was cra-a-a-zy.
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Jun-9-18

Voters in Canada's largest province go to the polls on Thursday. Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne followed her sorry-not sorry campaign with the surprising-not surprising admission that she won't win. PC leader Doug Ford has been light on official policy statements, but it hasn't been difficult to figure out where he stands. Andrea Horwath's left-wing NDP rose dramatically in the polls during the first part of May, but the better spread of votes across ridings for the PCs means that the NDP has only a slim chance of winning. Voters are asking how best to vote strategically. Ontari-ari-ari-o.
comment posted at 10:07 PM on Jun-7-18

The President's lawyers claimed in a secret memo that he's immune from subpoena and on national TV that he can literally murder anyone. Many people are saying this is already a Constitutional Crisis. Then he claimed the power to pardon himself. Others say Trump is speaking from a position of weakness. It's week 71 of the Trump Presidency.
comment posted at 10:49 AM on Jun-8-18

"A lot of us were middle-aged women so, it's like, who was going to listen to us?" An auditor general's report has concluded that the billion-dollar Canadian federal Phoenix payroll fiasco (previously), which has underpaid or overpaid more than half of Canadian civil servants, arose from a "culture that makes people believe they can't bring forward those problems."
comment posted at 11:34 AM on Jun-2-18

As part of a joint campaign with the Shinjuku police department to warn pedestrians of the dangers of inattentiveness when using smartphones, the Final Fantasy XIV dev team has put together a pair of PSAs to be aired on the screens overlooking Shinjuku's famous "scramble" crossings.
comment posted at 11:35 AM on Jun-2-18

Electric scooter charger culture is out of control.
comment posted at 9:23 AM on May-21-18

txt.fyi
- About
comment posted at 1:03 PM on May-15-18

The United States of Japan "Japan made itself rich in its industrial era by selling things like cars, TVs, and VCRs, but it made itself loved in those Lost Decades by selling fantasies. Hello Kitty, comics, anime, and Nintendo games were the first wave—'the big can-opener,' as the game designer Keiichi Yano put it. Now those childhood dreams haven given way to a more sophisticated vision of a Japanese life style, exemplified in the detached cool of Haruki Murakami novels, the defiantly girly pink feminism of kawaii culture, the stripped-down simplicity of Uniqlo, the 'unbranded' products of Muji, and the Japanese “life-changing magic” of Marie Kondo." - Matt Alt
comment posted at 10:39 PM on May-5-18

Christina Tosi makes yummy looking food. Including: Crack Pie, ice cream that tastes "just like the milk at the bottom of a bowl of cornflakes!", and "transparent" birthday cake (whose sides are not frosted so you can see inside). The always excellent Chef's Table opened their new season with a spotlight on Christina and her Brooklyn-based Momofuku Milk Bar.
comment posted at 7:13 PM on May-2-18

Bob Dorough has died, and with him an essential part of the early education of tens of millions of children in math, grammar, and United States civics. Here he is in 2011, doing an extended version of "Three is a Magic Number"...
comment posted at 7:04 PM on Apr-24-18

Three years ago, the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) achieved a shocking victory in Alberta (previously). One year ago, the NDP won in British Columbia and formed a government with the support of the Greens. But now the two provinces, united by party, find themselves divided by the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
comment posted at 10:12 AM on Apr-17-18
comment posted at 10:50 AM on Apr-17-18

Day 248: Trump has, after much whining and the threat of a veto, signed the House spending bill, keeping the US government open until September. Early reports (because, of course, it was put together and shoved through in a rush) are that it's not great, with way too much irresponsible spending on the military, but it's much better than could be expected given this administration. A policy solution for DREAMers is not included, which Trump tried to blame on Democrats, leading to Trump supporters confusingly calling for American residents who aren't citizens to be looked after by the government. [This is an American politics thread: to keep it manageable for mods, please read and abide by these instructions.]
comment posted at 5:39 PM on Mar-25-18

Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our age, has passed on to the stars today at the age of 76.
comment posted at 9:33 PM on Mar-13-18

Shock of the Mundane:

Conventional wisdom focuses on technological superiority as the key source of American dominance on the battlefield. Even though the United States is clearly still struggling at the strategic level in its fight against terrorists and insurgents, it is supremely confident in its ability to defeat these groups in combat at the tactical level, due in no small part to technological advantages such as total air superiority, remote surveillance, command-and-control systems, precision munitions, and night-vision capabilities. Observers are largely focused on these technologies – such as drones and night-vision goggles – and their potential diffusion to violent non-state actors. What has been overlooked in the debate over the combat potential of violent extremists is the diffusion of something much more rudimentary and potentially more lethal: basic infantry skills.

comment posted at 6:40 PM on Mar-3-18

The real scandal of bacon, however, is that it didn’t have to be anything like so damaging to our health. The part of the story we haven’t been told – including by the WHO – is that there were always other ways to manufacture these products that would make them significantly less carcinogenic. The fact that this is so little known is tribute to the power of the meat industry, which has for the past 40 years been engaged in a campaign of cover-ups and misdirection to rival the dirty tricks of Big Tobacco.
comment posted at 2:56 PM on Mar-3-18

Paula Abdul parlayed her experience choreographing music videos for a lot of 80s powerhouses into putting out an album of her own which was a giant hit in 1988: Forever Your Girl [~44m]. Side A: The Way That You Love Me [video], Knocked Out [video], Opposites Attract [video], State Of Attraction, I Need You
comment posted at 3:42 PM on Feb-25-18

Smash Mouth All Star • Smash Mouth All Star But Every Word Is Somebody • Smash Mouth All Star But I Take a Bite of an Onion Every Time He Says "Star" • Smash Mouth But Recreated From Windows XP Sounds • Smash Mouth All Star But Every Word Is Sung By Google Translate • Smash Mouth All Star But It's 24 Cartoon Impressions • Smash Mouth All Star but it's Vintage Reggae Style Cover ft. Vonzell Solomon • Smash Mouth All Star But It's a Spontaneous Piano Duet in Public • Smash Mouth All Star But I Add A Clothes Pin To My Beard Every Time He Says "The" • Smash Mouth All Star But Composed In Mario Paint Composer • Smash Mouth All Star But All Notes Are In C • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Even More Beautiful • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Chiptune • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Metal • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Jazz
comment posted at 6:56 PM on Feb-21-18

Electronic pop duo Tanlines have released a record of children's standards.
comment posted at 10:57 AM on Feb-16-18

SpaceX will attempt to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time today. The launch window is from 1:30 to 4:00 PM Eastern. You can watch it live here. An animation on Youtube depicts how the launch will work if everything goes according to plan. The payload is Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster carrying a space suit-clad dummy. David Bowie's "Space Oddity" will play in the vehicle during the launch. The car is destined for an elliptical orbit around the Sun, taking it into the vicinity of Mars.
comment posted at 9:36 AM on Feb-6-18

The new advert from the HSBC UK bank stars Richard Ayoade, features Nimrod by Elgar, and "contains products and brands that have become integral staples of British culture and lifestyle". Devised by J. Walter Thompson, "the 60-second spot positions the affable Ayoade as its Global Citizen." The ad is "entirely free from misguided jingoism", does not mention the B word and any comparisons to contemporary UK political trauma are totally and completely coincidental.
comment posted at 10:27 AM on Jan-27-18