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The Canary. If you haven't heard about Chris Mark, that's natural because he recently won a Sammie, an award for unsung public service heroes. Chris Mark toiled away unsupervised for decades in an obscure government agency investigating the causes of coal mining collapses. His work resulted in the setting of practical standards that would eliminate mine-collapse deaths in the US and internationally. This essay is a tribute but it is also a wonderful construction in its own right. Author Michael Lewis is at the top of his form. We learn about the structural secrets of Gothic cathedrals, how coal mines are like chocolate sponge cakes, the role of the ball peen hammer in saving lives, the path of a son who ends up following his father and the son all but denies it. Hat tip to Long Reads (30 min read) [more inside]
posted by storybored at 3:14 PM - 7 comments

I know this upsets people and there is “gut reaction” to push back on this view and point out that despite the performance of Open AI’s new o1 model on logic and reasoning tests, it still makes dumb mistakes at times. That’s true, but so do most humans. Probably all humans. I also hear people say that LLMs use “pattern matching” and “memorization” to solve many problems. Again, very true, but so do humans. Does this mean we will reach Peak Human in 2024? Yes and no. from Have we reached Peak Human? by Louis Rosenberg
posted by chavenet at 12:57 PM - 16 comments

The Three Sisters are a set of plants that some Native American tribes have historically grown together to great agricultural benefit. Corn, beans, and squash nurture each other to produce a bountiful harvest: the corn provides a trellis for the beans, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil, and the squash provides ground cover to prevent weeds and hold in moisture. This is a type of companion planting that saves space and improves garden health. Cornell University has instructions for planting a Three Sisters garden here. [more inside]
posted by brook horse at 12:41 PM - 1 comment

Sixteen years after their last album, five years after Robert Smith said "I feel intent on it being a 2019 release and would be extremely bitter if it isn’t," and three years after long-time bassist Simon Gallup "appeared" to have quit the band because he "got fed up of betrayal," The Cure is releasing Songs of a Lost World. And they seem to be having fun doing it. [more inside]
posted by SafetyPirate at 11:13 AM - 7 comments

This is the first exhibition in the world based on Frida Kahlo's diaries combining the physical and digital world [fridakahlo.it, also see g arts&culture (previously)] [more inside]
posted by HearHere at 3:23 AM - 5 comments

Thirty years ago, on 28 September 1994, the MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea claiming 852 lives. MS Estonia was a ro-ro cruiseferry that sank on Wednesday, 28 September 1994, between about 00:50 and 01:50 (UTC+2) as the ship was crossing the Baltic Sea, en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden. "The sinking was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It is one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a European ship, after the Titanic in 1912 and the Empress of Ireland in 1914, and the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have occurred in European waters, with 852 (out of 989) lives lost." wikipedia [more inside]
posted by fridgebuzz at 1:54 AM - 18 comments

These pursuits certainly aren’t what you ought to do — much less post about — and yet I find that it’s when we dwell on our secret enjoyments that we learn the most about ourselves. Sexual and aggressive feelings, veering self-destructive, are finally confronted without the veneer of rationalization. Limits cannot hold when it comes to pleasure. What is too much one day is not enough on another. What is too much for one person is just enough for another. And so on. from I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You. [The New York Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:28 AM - 33 comments

Sea robins have "the body of a fish, wings of a bird, legs of a crab." They can also taste with their "feet." Imagine wading in the shallows at the beach and tasting mussels and clams hidden under the sand — with your feet. A new study shows a fish species evolved to do just that.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:36 PM - 10 comments

Neuroscientist Dr. Eliezer Masliah was prolific, publishing around 800 papers on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. His work good enough for long enough that in 2016, he was appointed director of the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging.

Yesterday, Science published a report casting substantial credible doubt on 132 of those papers, and on Masliah specifically, as the sole common author among the papers cited. [more inside]
posted by pwnguin at 5:17 PM - 26 comments

Is it possible to pinpoint the moment when readers stopped being able to keep up with their favorite genres? [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:35 PM - 24 comments

In the decades since Hanson’s death, the United States has invested ever more in deportation and border militarization in pursuit of an illusory “security.” This criminalization generates black markets—“smuggling networks are the clearest products of efforts at border control,” Weber writes—which systematically beckon border agents toward corruption. The racial politics of border enforcement, now as ever, engender abuse. If Donald Trump is reelected in November, an unshackled immigration police force may lead us into new atrocities, and a breakdown of law in the name of law enforcement, that we have yet to imagine. from The Banality of Border Evil [Texas Observer] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:25 PM - 4 comments

NotebookLM is a deceptively simple tool from Google that at first glance looks like a fairly straightforward demo of their Gemini AI platform. Upload pasted text, a link (including YouTube), audio files, or up to 50 documents/500k words (which aren't used for training) and after a brief analysis it will produce various text interpretations -- summaries, tables of contents, timelines, study guides. It even has a chat window so you can pose suggested questions about the source material or ask your own. Useful, if a bit dull. 🥱 ...until you open the "Notebook Guide" panel and see the unassuming "Audio Overview" feature. Hit the "Generate" button and (after a few minutes of processing) the results astonish: an utterly lifelike, minutes-long "deep dive" conversation about your documents between two nameless podcast hosts. Examples [transcribed non-Google versions inside]: Harris-Trump debate transcript - Folding Ideas "Line Goes Up" video essay - Jabberwocky - MetaFilter - The text of this FPP itself (how meta) [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:48 PM - 88 comments

The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress.
posted by brundlefly at 12:16 PM - 44 comments

Two very different short stories about romantic relationships and change. "The Manifesto" by Ilse Eskelsen, published in Lunch Ticket Summer/Fall 2024: "Elizabeth sucked her bottom lip. She sprinkled cheese over another pizza. Eventually, she asked, 'How do you make guys think you’re smart?'" A girl reads The Communist Manifesto to impress a boy; it works, at first. "Transmogrification" by R.M. Pérez-Padilla, fantasy, published in July 2024 in The Future Fire: "It speaks to how freaked out I am that I told her about it at all." A trans person starts to notice changes in how other people look, especially when they're transphobic. (Content note: transphobic language/behavior, bodyhorror.) Interview with the author and the illustrator.
posted by brainwane at 12:16 PM - 3 comments

Anti-trans laws are hurting kids: Nature (commentary from Erin in the Morning and Parker Molloy)
posted by box at 12:16 PM - 7 comments

Passes away at the age of 89. With a career starting in the 1950's until just recently, Dame Maggie Smith roles understandably spanned the gamut from her first Oscar win for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" to more recent years as the acerbic Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey and of course, the stern, but winking Professor McGonagall. A NYT piece of roles to stream (archive)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:12 AM - 76 comments

A short description of the types of segmented Roman armor. In Latin. If you'd like to learn more, there is an english-langauge wikipedia page.
posted by bq at 8:52 AM - 12 comments

Meredith Whitraker of Signal talks about the AI economy with FT. A brief profile and interview of one of the few voices within tech willing to speak out about the relationship of surveillance technologies and AI. “I was just trying to figure out how do we support the community that is effectively building prophylactics to the business model I’m beginning to understand?” [more inside]
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 8:23 AM - 12 comments

Access the library here. From thequietus.com: "The extensive archive was initially opened to the public in 2018, with around 16,000 sounds initially made available online. It has now more than doubled in size to stock over 33,000 samples, which are available to download for free as a WAV or MP3 file. The BBC’s library features recordings dating back to the 1920s, and comprises sounds made in the broadcaster’s dedicated studio for use in specific BBC programmes, as well as field recordings captured out in the world. It’s divided into categories such as ‘Nature’, ‘Transport’, ‘Sport’, ‘Crowds’, ‘Footsteps’ and more." Previously on the blue.
posted by AlSweigart at 8:02 AM - 10 comments

Bridgerton Ball said to the Willy Wonka Experience, "Hold my port." (archive link for NYT) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:44 AM - 22 comments

Joshua Idehen - Mum Does The Washing (sl YouTube) Mums explain the world one article of clothing at a time (via Web Curios).
posted by atlantica at 7:06 AM - 11 comments

Peanut butter bacon balls could be the best hope for these tiny endangered marsupials. When researchers aren't in the field, they roll "hundreds and hundreds" of bait balls with the secret ingredient of bacon to lure the endangered marsupial into traps.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:47 AM - 10 comments

SOPHIE (yt) Is Gone. Her Music Lives On - "The artist's posthumous album is less an expression of her journey than a guide for the rest of us—a last gift." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:56 AM - 4 comments

Japanese singer-songwriter Sayuri has passed away at the age of 28. She had been on indefinite hiatus as of July this year due to vocal dysphonia. For those unfamiliar with her work, she left behind two wonderful performances on the YouTube channel The First Take, Koukai no Uta (About a Voyage) and Mikazuki (Crescent Moon) (English captions are available for both songs). [more inside]
posted by C^3 at 4:05 AM - 7 comments

We expect language to function in a very linear sense. One word comes after the other. One sentence after the other. But the moment – let's say even in language, right? – when you start using parentheses, you start hyphenating, you are interrupting the flow. Even just referring back to an earlier moment in the text, you can go back to the text. All of these things make you realize like it's not linear. You realize that linear is just how we are taught to experience things. It's not really how we experience things. from Sequential Bodies by Helen Chazan [The Comics Journal] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:17 AM - 6 comments

At least 1 in 6 men have been sexually abused or assaulted. "Baby Reindeer" is helping many finally start talking about it. (Trigger warnings: rape, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, prison, stalking, suicide.) [more inside]
posted by Jacqueline at 9:07 PM - 19 comments

What once looked like a slippery slope to the hyperinflation of wages is now openly embraced as a policy pathway to the hyperinflation of financial assets. [more inside]
posted by agentofselection at 8:07 PM - 9 comments

Men "borrowing" free time from women is driving the gender exercise gap. As family demands increase, women's physical activity becomes more limited, but the same doesn't happen for men.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:41 PM - 15 comments

September 26, 2024 is World Cassowary Day: Why the ‘world’s most dangerous bird’ is itself in danger. [more inside]
posted by logicpunk at 7:03 PM - 7 comments

Body Count - "Comfortably Numb" feat. David Gilmour | The situation changed once Ice-T’s team circumvented the publishers and took the proposed track directly to Waters and Gilmour via their managers. “Once we got to David, he was like, ‘Fuck, yeah. I love this song. I approve it,'” says Ice-T. “And then Roger listened to it and his only comment was, ‘Who’s singing?’ When he heard it was Ice-T, he approved it.’ To have two people who sit on two opposite sides of the fence agree on a song, that means it must be good.” (Via Mojo Magazine & a Rolling Stone article)
posted by not_on_display at 6:56 PM - 8 comments

Spiritbox - Soft Spine [more inside]
posted by signal at 6:27 PM - 6 comments

AI smackdown: How a new FTC ruling just protected the free press by fighting back against AI-generated fake reviews. Every time someone gets caught posting phony AI-generated “best lists,” Uncle Sam is free to slap them with a bill for $51,744 per violation ... "with the rise in online reviews we have seen that bad actors can manipulate or fake reviews to deceive consumers for their own benefit." The ruling also bars product review suppression, compensation or incentives for creating customer reviews, and organizations that supposedly provide "independent" reviews - for their own products or services. [more inside]
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:57 PM - 17 comments

So, I'm excited to share some music with y'all. [1h30m] André 3000 shared a listening experience for fans, for his flute music album, New Blue Sun. I don't really know how to describe this, so maybe just put it on and find your zen.
posted by hippybear at 3:41 PM - 11 comments

All of that is just scene-setting for my real concern: the public understanding of fiction itself is changing, and with it, the types of fiction which are commercially (or even socially) viable going forward. Three fictive seeds germinated during the 1970s, and we're now living in the fifty year old forest they gave rise to. Forests coevolve with ecosystems, and now we're seeing the consequences. from They don't make readers like they used to by (MetaFilter's own) Charlie Stross
posted by chavenet at 1:09 PM - 25 comments

"Still, she was enjoying the class, and it was probably why she’d dreamed of a Jvichoru song, even if she couldn’t figure out how her brain had produced it." "Maghda's Song" is a short fantasy story by Eleanor Glewwe, published in 2022 in Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Glewwe is a linguist and musician, and notes, "There is also a cat, if you need that in your life." I was born in the US to Indian immigrant parents (now dead) who spoke Kannada, which I only speak a tiny bit of myself, so the linguistic position Maghda's in felt familiar to me -- diasporic alienation both from the familial tongue, and from the dominant language(s) spoken by people in/from the family's home country. And this story made me cry with wish-fulfillment.
posted by brainwane at 9:43 AM - 4 comments

Highbrow horror cinema has won respectability—but sold its soul. (slTheBaffler) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:59 AM - 85 comments

“Broadway intersects 59th Street and Central Park West. This was formally called Grand Circle and also just The Circle. [ ] Broadway has actually been a thoroughfare in New York City long before Central Park existed. In fact, it goes back to before the city was called New York, and even before it was called New Amsterdam. The native Lenape people living on this island traveled this very same route for generations making this one of the busiest paths on the island for around 13,000 years. When early Dutch colonizers learned about it, they called it the Wecquaesgeek Trail [harlem + bespoke] in reference to the tribe of Wappinger people who lived on the bank of the Hudson River.” [AD] [more inside]
posted by HearHere at 7:44 AM - 28 comments

You, too, can strengthen English and write good. "...First, we must not allow new verbs to enter the language in a weak state. We must ensure, for example, that to clone is established as clone, clewn, clown, as in: Future generations of booksellers may reproach us for not having clown Joyce Carol Oates and Isaac Asimov."
posted by storybored at 6:36 AM - 16 comments

Social Communication is a site dedicated to helping people improve their ability to communicate with others. We hope to provide straight talk about talk, tone, and other ways humans form and maintain social relationships, for people with social communication challenges. We recommend you start by reading more about social communication in general, but you might also be interested in how this site is organized and may be used by different audiences, the authors, sources, and inspirations, or just dive in by selecting a module. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:04 AM - 27 comments

Meet Johnathan, the AI-powered camera, just one type of new technology saving the ocean's endangered animals. It is often said AI will take the jobs humans should be doing — but in this case, the human researchers are happy enough to pass on the job of scanning thousands of hours of recordings made deep in the Southern Ocean, freeing them up for the pursuit of scientific breakthroughs.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:27 PM - 8 comments

André Malraux's Theory of Art - Challenges to Traditional Aesthetics A brief essay on André Malraux's answers to the 20th century transformation of aesthetics and what qualifies as art. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston at 9:14 PM - 2 comments

Laurie Anderson has a new work out. Amelia [YT Playlist] explores the life of Amelia Earhart. She discusses it here for about a half hour, if you're so inclined.
posted by hippybear at 8:53 PM - 11 comments

Eric Adams Is Indicted in New York [archive] "The indictment is sealed, and it was unclear what charge or charges Mr. Adams, a Democrat, will face or when he will surrender to the authorities. Federal prosecutors are expected to announce the details of the indictment on Thursday."
posted by AlSweigart at 7:45 PM - 111 comments

Tara Dower Sets The Appalachian Trail Speed Record On a southbound run from Maine to Georgia, a new FKT trail record has been set by Tara Dower of Virginia Beach. She breaks Karel Sabbe's record by 13 hours, all while raising money for the non-profit Girls on the Run.
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:38 PM - 23 comments

via Neatorama

Smithsonian Images
posted by falsedmitri at 2:00 PM - 20 comments

“We would like to butcher a full seal in Walker Court,” I said. I leaned back from the boardroom table at the Art Gallery of Ontario and made eye contact with my fellow Inuit co-curators, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, and Kuzy Curley. We all nodded, and the others affirmed, “Yes, we would like to butcher a seal.” [more inside]
posted by Senescence at 1:04 PM - 12 comments

Although Americans say they remain wary of autonomous driving, boosters insist there is nothing to fear. In fact, they foresee roads full of self-driving cars that are both safer and cleaner than the status quo, a tantalizing prospect in a country where transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and residents are several times more likely to die in a crash than those living in other rich nations. Enticing though they are, such arguments conceal a logical flaw. As a classic 19th-century theory known as a Jevons paradox explains, even if autonomous vehicles eventually work perfectly — an enormous “if” — they are likely to increase total emissions and crash deaths, simply because people will use them so much. from What a 160-year-old theory about coal predicts about our self-driving future [The Verge; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:45 AM - 96 comments

A horror exposed. Content warning so much goddamn rape. By making her ordeal public, Gisèle Pelicot forces men to confront the fact that ordinary men, shaped by the same culture, are capable of extraordinary harm. Some men literally get off on secretly hating and sabotaging their wives. See also: Misogyny’s disparate pieces; influencers driving misogyny.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:24 AM - 111 comments

Mark Robinson is the future of the GOP (The American Prospect, Sept. 2024, content warning: hate speech). [more inside]
posted by box at 10:09 AM - 48 comments

In case you're in the mood for two short super-grim scifi stories in which the future is very bad, here you go. "Human Trials" by Madeleine Vigneron, published September 5, 2024 in khōréō: "After the last ship left Earth, Rowan .... returned to what used to be a research lab operated by the government of Canada and was now an escape effort operated by Mariana." "Federal School Safety Act 2029" by Sage Tyrtle, published in the Summer/Fall 2023 issue of Lunch Ticket: "On the first day back at school, when we were waiting for the classroom door to be opened, Emmeline was showing off her Build-A-Gun." For both stories, mind the content notes at the top.
posted by brainwane at 8:59 AM - 8 comments