March 19

Whale grandmas

Menopause has evolved only once in terrestrial animals - in humans - but at least four times in toothed whales. in a paper published last week in Nature, The evolution of menopause in toothed whales, a team of researchers examined whale life histories to evaluate five different hypotheses for menopause: Live-long vs. stop-short, and the grandmother hypothesis (previously) vs. reduced reproductive conflict vs. extended male lifespan. University summary, NYT summary, NYT archive. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 4:06 AM - 0 comments

Who wants to be a lithographer?

Using only aluminum foil, vinegar and a brayer, oh, and a printing press you too can become a lithographer. This is quite fun. I've actually done this. The kids will enjoy this too. Make your own greeting cards, etc.
posted by Czjewel at 3:33 AM - 0 comments

Kith and Kin-fluencers

There is only one state in the entire country—Illinois—where child influencers are legally entitled to a percentage of the money they help earn by being featured in monetized content. Although similar legislation has been introduced in several states this year, the fact remains: As of publication time, the vast majority of children who generate profits for their influencer parents—whether through brand deals, sponsorships, or direct payment from platforms—are legally unprotected and could be left with nothing in an industry valued at $21 billion in 2023. In the teeming, controversial world of family content creators, what happened to Vanessa is not uncommon. She spent the majority of her life up through her teenage years working on and being featured in her mother’s profitable blog and social media accounts, and she never saw a dime for her labor. from What’s the Price of a Childhood Turned Into Content? [Cosmopolitan]
posted by chavenet at 2:14 AM - 2 comments

March 18

Remember that one episode of DS9 with the tribbles?

The Making of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Trials And Tribble-ations [32m, complete with commercials] was a documentary which was broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US on November 4th, 1996. The documentary looks at the writing and production of the episode [Wikipedia] and features footage filmed during production of the episode.
posted by hippybear at 9:17 PM - 6 comments

Growing native shrubs to help an endangered butterfly

This endangered butterfly is a fussy eater, so a nursery is helping grow its food. A Victorian plant nursery is growing a native shrub to help expand the habitat of the golden-rayed blue butterfly, found exclusively in western Victoria.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:20 PM - 2 comments

Russian Disinformation: Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Ukraine, the Border

Disinformation has one goal: To change the perception of reality of every American....[F]ake news ... [is] actually an old term used by the Soviet Union as a reference to disinformation campaigns that the Soviets and now the Russians have long used to destabilize the West.... The Kremlin’s messaging has an extraordinary reach: In the first year of the Ukraine war alone, posts by Kremlin-linked accounts were viewed at least 16 billion times by Westerners."Bots, trolls, targeted ad campaigns, fake news organizations, and doppelganger accounts of real Western politicians and pundits spread stories concocted in Moscow." The purpose of the propaganda is to further Putin's policy goals: to recolonize Ukraine, to destabilize the West and to power the rise of fascist-friendly governments. How does Putin expect to achieve that? Through conventional warfare, indoctrination, and covert anti-semitic and anti-migrant propaganda.
[more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 3:20 PM - 32 comments

Reality has a surprising amount of detail

Surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality. You can see this everywhere if you look. For example, you’ve probably had the experience of doing something for the first time, maybe growing vegetables or using a Haskell package for the first time, and being frustrated by how many annoying snags there were. Then you got more practice and then you told yourself ‘man, it was so simple all along, I don’t know why I had so much trouble’. We run into a fundamental property of the universe and mistake it for a personal failing.
Blogger John Salvatier talks stair carpentry, boiling water, the difference between invisible and transparent detail, and how paying closer attention to the beguiling complexity of everyday life can help you open your mind and break out of mental ruts and blind spots. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 1:28 PM - 32 comments

Glassdoor will add your info to older accounts if they can

As seen on perennial MetaFilter favourite Ask A Manager, one user shares their experience having an old Glassdoor account linked to their name due to an email. [more inside]
posted by warriorqueen at 7:13 AM - 16 comments

Free Thread -- Two or Three kisses?

We've been enjoying Eugene Levy's The Reluctant Traveler on Apple TV+ -- this week's episode saw him in the South of France, where we delighted in his confusion about two (Provencal) or three (St Tropez) cheek kisses on greeting someone. How many would you give? (Or talk about anything you want!)
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:38 AM - 60 comments

How Britain got done by Getting Brexit Done

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. [more inside]
posted by rory at 6:16 AM - 57 comments

Out Of Thin Air

"Enjoy an evening of tap dancing and jazz music celebrating the art of improvisation. Watch as dancers and musicians improvise together and pull rhythm and melody “Out of Thin Air.” [56m] The program will feature Colburn School's talented faculty and musicians as well as an array of guest artists including tap legends Sam Weber and Josette Wiggan."
posted by hippybear at 6:14 AM - 2 comments

Fran Lebowitz interview in Sydney Australia...witty and erudite as usual

Fran discusses the joy of revenge, holding grudges, and why Men shouldn't dye their hair.
posted by Czjewel at 5:01 AM - 2 comments

Everyone has an anecdote about García Márquez

I decided, last year, to turn on my recorder again and ask about these past ten years since Gabo died. As I’ve continued to follow his story, Gabo, always a prankster, continues to surprise. from Ten Years without Gabriel García Márquez: An Oral History [The Paris Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM - 3 comments

March 17

Caught 22

22 of the funniest novels since Catch-22 (SLNYT)
posted by storybored at 10:27 PM - 27 comments

Baleen whale fossil dated to 19 million years

Whale fossil in river sheds light on how pre-historic beasts morphed into today's giants of the sea. A fossil from the distant past is rewriting the narrative of how, when, and where baleen whales — such as the blue whale — became some of the largest animals to have ever lived on the planet.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:23 PM - 1 comment

Neither of them really need any introduction....

Classicist Mary Beard [Wikipedia] is apparently well known for studying Ancient Rome. Comedian David Mitchell has read a lot about the British monarchy. Between them they can cover Julius Caesar to Elizabeth I, and they sat down together for a conversation for How To Academy in Rulers and Power | Mary Beard and David Mitchell [1h13m].
posted by hippybear at 6:26 PM - 11 comments

Sunday Scaries

there's laundry to do and a genocide to stop. A short prose poem by Vinay Krishnan. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:56 PM - 17 comments

There's truly no such thing as a bad mini egg

Move Over Cadbury, We Have A New Favourite Mini Egg (Canadian edition)
posted by sardonyx at 2:49 PM - 56 comments

Building an ancient robot from scratch with handtools

"Revisiting Greek Automata: Clockwork Robots from the Ancient World" is a video from @fraserbuilds, in which John Fraser makes one of 1st century Greco-Roman engineer Hero of Alexandria's self-driving cars self-propelled automata, with some help from a hand made blow-torch powered by olive oil and pit fired pottery.
posted by gwint at 2:05 PM - 3 comments

"A strange Thing written upon a Glass Window in Queen Elizabeth's Time"

Madeleine Pelling (The Telegraph, 3/17/2024), "Seriously scandalous and surprisingly sexy: how the Georgians redefined graffiti" -- archived: "In October 1731, ... 'Hurlothrumbo' set out into the freezing streets of London. Armed only with a pencil and paper, he was on a most peculiar hunt. His quarry? The graffiti that lined the city's many surfaces, left behind by its inhabitants." The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, part 1 and 2, 3, & 4. The play Hurlothrumbo. Pelling on women archaeologists in the 1780s via the Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Pelling's Writing on the Wall, reviewed (archived) and at Goodreads / StoryGraph. Pelling's podcast, most recently discussing St Patrick.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:26 AM - 14 comments

Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth

After 4 nail-biting months of gibberish, Voyager 1 is making sense again. Since November 2023, the almost-50-year-old spacecraft has been experiencing trouble with its onboard computers. Although Voyager 1, one of NASA's longest-lived space missions, has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, it hasn't contained any usable data. Now, there may be hope for recovery.
posted by signsofrain at 9:05 AM - 46 comments

Phreaking the memory care unit

Dementia Patients Used Morse Code Training to Escape From a Senior Living Facility
posted by latkes at 8:22 AM - 37 comments

Geddy Lee's Effin' Life live on stage

In Live at Massey Hall: Geddy Lee [55m, CBC], Geddy spends some time talking to his old friend Alex, and then reads a bit from his book. If you like this kind of thing, maybe you'll like this example of this kind of thing.
posted by hippybear at 7:19 AM - 12 comments

Their Toeses Are Roses

Trevor Tordjman & Jordan Clark get drawn into the greatness of Moses Supposes [via TMN] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:01 AM - 32 comments

March 16

Tiny ants are changing the diet of Kenya's lions

Tiny ants are changing the diet of Kenya's lions. Invasive ants are affecting how lions hunt. The insect invasion has led to the loss of cover for lions to ambush zebra from and forcing them to target buffalo instead. An army of big-headed ants is changing the food chains of the savannah. Though they’re little, these ants are fierce. Their arrival in parts of Kenya has decimated populations of local ants which usually live in and protect the whistling-thorn tree. Without the insects’ protection, these trees are increasingly being eaten by elephants, providing less shelter for a range of species. One animal this has had a particular impact on is the African lion. These big cats usually use the shelter of trees to sneak up on zebras. But with fewer trees, this strategy becomes increasingly risky.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:32 PM - 7 comments

Thoughts and prayers to Ted Cruz in this trying time

As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk. [...] We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification. We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.
Ars Technica: Pornhub blocks all of Texas to protest state law—Paxton says “good riddance” [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:58 PM - 72 comments

Sucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson Duped By YouTubers Into Interviewing Fake Kate Middleton Whistleblower
posted by chavenet at 1:33 PM - 32 comments

Stairway to CG Heaven

Top 100 CG animations of an Eternal Ascent from 2800 submissions [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 12:34 PM - 16 comments

Daniels: How We Pulled Off Everything Everywhere All at Once | SXSW 2024

"We should tell you that we've run out of new things to say about Everything Everywhere All At Once, so although we’ll try our best to stay on topic, we'll most likely go on a bunch of tangents about the state of the world, the impending climate crisis, the collapse of consensus truth, the rise of AI, the importance and impossibility of self care, and our collective responsibility as storytellers to confront the issues of our time, because that's probably going to be what's on our mind, but we can't make any promises, but at times we don’t feel qualified to talk about any of that stuff, anyway we hope you enjoy our SXSW keynote!" [1h] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:16 AM - 4 comments

Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart

Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart by Artist, Designer and Educator Nela Dunato: "Behold: the most detailed free art mediums compatibility reference! The chart shows how different art mediums interact together and whether they can be safely layered on top of each other." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 9:43 AM - 14 comments

Which animals cause the most deaths in Australia? Horses

Which animals cause the most deaths in Australia? Horses: 172 total deaths between 2001 and 2017, many of them from falling off a horse. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:53 AM - 81 comments

His invention was instrumental

Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world's first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan. He was 100 years old. [more inside]
posted by snofoam at 4:06 AM - 23 comments

Toward a New Ameri-canon

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]
posted by chavenet at 2:19 AM - 72 comments

March 15

The Sphinx

Solving for the feminist roots of crossword puzzles in a fun article by Sophia Stewart and what looks like a great book by Anna Shechtman on how crossword puzzles, those traditional cultural touchstones in Western English media that are becoming more diverse and contemporary.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:46 PM - 12 comments

Mirror Universe Evil Katsucon

Trans Person Infiltrates CPAC 2024 Part 1, Part 2. Dead Domain, a nonbinary creator who often talks about game design and who you may have seen go undercover at a hate church, decided to create the persona of vaguely right-wing podcaster Keith to attend CPAC, and gifts us with three and a half hours of troubling content and commentary. [more inside]
posted by Mizu at 11:04 PM - 6 comments

Low-End of Market Rental Housing Monitor (LEMR)

About the LEMR Housing Monitor

The Low-End of Market Rental (LEMR) Housing Monitor is a centralized data mapping tool that presents critical information on the location and characteristics of the affordable “low-end” of market rental housing stock in six urban regions across Canada: Calgary, Halifax, Greater Montreal Area, Greater Toronto Area, Metro Vancouver Area, and Winnipeg.” [more inside]
posted by eviemath at 9:54 PM - 38 comments

A matter concerning a square and a circle

Snif & Snüf (five minutes), a cartoon about two friends who find a couple of mysterious shapes, by Michael Ruocco, an animator who's worked on New Looney Tunes, the Cuphead Show and Bojack Horseman.
posted by JHarris at 9:30 PM - 8 comments

In a shocking twist, it wasn't aliens

AARO Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I, February 2024 (PDF): AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence. AARO notes that although claims that the USG has recovered and hidden spacecraft date back to the 1940s and 1950s, more modern instances of these claims largely stem from a consistent group of individuals who have been involved in various UAP-related endeavors since at least 2009.
posted by flabdablet at 9:23 PM - 25 comments

Scientist busts five common arachnid myths

Scientist busts five common arachnid myths. Animal behaviouralist James O'Hanlon is debunking five long-held myths about spiders.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:49 PM - 18 comments

Max's South Seas Hideaway, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Is This The Greatest Tiki Bar In The World? [46m] It probably is because the guy who created it spent YEARS purchasing tiki from all over the history of tiki bars, having some custom made, and designing a space that is a living museum as well as a thriving party joint. Here's NPR from 2016 discussing Let's Talk Tiki Bars: Harmless Fun Or Exploitation? because this is a loaded topic. But I hope we can discuss the amazing bar in Michigan most of all! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM - 25 comments

I Spy 🗿

moai.games is a list of 954 examples (and counting) of moai seen in video games, compiled by MeFi's Own game designer gingerbeardman. Why? "Moai are cool. And video games are cool. Oh, and lists are cool too." Read the NintendoLife interview for background on the project, get educated on the history of the grand sculptures (and real-life efforts to preserve them), or if you crave mo' moai, check out MoaiCulture.com's "Popular Culture" page for a comprehensive illustrated guide to 500+ moai in television, film, animation, comic books, literature, poetry, music, board games, magazines, advertising, and more. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:20 PM - 9 comments

Stand In Pride

"A while ago my wife introduced me to Stand In Pride, where queer people can find stand-in family members for support and indeed often for big life events — when their biological families don’t show up. And so it came to pass that a couple of weeks ago I had the singular honour of walking Taylor down the aisle to marry Ruth. Family is what you make it. Love endures." (via @chrisphin on Mastodon, with their permission and featuring lovely pictures of the wedding.) [more inside]
posted by chococat at 2:48 PM - 15 comments

New paper claims that Othello / Reversi is solved

A serendipitous follow up from my previous Othello post, this new paper from Hiroki Takizawa claims that Othello is solved: "It is computationally proved that perfect play by both players lead to a draw. Strong Othello software has long been built using heuristically designed search techniques. Solving a game provides a solution that enables the software to play the game perfectly." GitHub link to C source code included (it's a modified form of Edax.) [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 1:16 PM - 18 comments

The head on the car is a dream

Mexican artist crushes Tesla under giant stone head [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:52 PM - 38 comments

Live Long And Syndicate

Rare Footage Of Leonard Nimoy Hosting 1975 Special Presentation Of Star Trek’s “The Menagerie” In 1975, Paramount produced a special movie presentation for syndication of the two-part Star Trek episode “The Menagerie,” hosted by TOS star Leonard Nimoy. The original Spock recorded introductions for each part of the episode as well as closing remarks for the special presentation. In the special, Nimoy explains how “The Menagerie” uses footage from the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage” and more. Originally recorded February 6, 1983 from KAUT in Oklahoma City.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:15 PM - 12 comments

Time travel movies ranked by scientific logic and entertainment value

The Ars guide to time travel in the movies: a non-comprehensive list and ranking of 20 time travel movies, exploring the plausibility of their time travel mechanics, and also, how entertaining they are.
posted by toastyk at 9:25 AM - 81 comments

Never mind what the fox says.

More importantly, what does the person feeding the fox wear? A wildlife center in Richmond, VA makes the news for an inventive way of preventing human imprinting on a fox kit. Associated Press story and video
posted by emelenjr at 8:00 AM - 7 comments

The Gender Refugees

Escaping Hostile States for Transgender Community (slElle)
posted by Kitteh at 7:07 AM - 29 comments

Safety is no accident

The IATA officially announced: “In a significant achievement, 2023 saw no fatal accidents or hull losses for jet aircraft, leading to a record-low fatality risk rate of 0.03 rate per million sectors.” [more inside]
posted by fairmettle at 2:18 AM - 23 comments

Magnets for fantasists, plutocrats, oddballs, and corrupt businesspeople

The society’s traditions extended to what historian Holger Hoock describes as “an elaborate set of pseudo-Masonic ceremonies and symbolism.” Membership, strictly capped at 24 men, was a coveted privilege, even for George IV, the Prince of Wales, who had to wait his turn. New members underwent highly theatrical initiations, pledging their oath with a kiss on the beef bone of the day, blindfolded and led by a mitre-wearing guide while other members, as Arnold describes in his account, were “all decked out in incongruous and absurd dresses.” from A Rare Look Inside Britain’s ‘Sublime Society of Beefsteaks’ [Atlas Obscura]
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM - 6 comments

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