MetaFilter

"When I began making baskets in the 1980s, I made very useful baskets. Now I make very useless baskets." Lois Russell is a basketweaver, but this is definitely not basket weaving 101. [more inside]
posted by jacquilynne at 8:20 AM - 0 comments

Strike! How 80s post-punk band Lining Time crystallised a moment in feminist protest history by Tayyab Amin is a profile of the early 80s all-woman band from Totnes in Devon, whose only album, Strike!, has been reissued on Bandcamp and is available in full on streaming services, including YouTube Music. The reissue of the album was at the behest of Les Amis de Cathy Josefowitz, an organization devoted to safeguarding the artistic legacy of one of Lining Time's founding members, the others being Claire Bushe, Cathy Frost, Lisa Halse and Mara de Wit.
posted by Kattullus at 5:05 AM - 0 comments

Attention, please! There will be absolutely no smoking, dirty joking, or whistling in this thread. And furthermore, if you should choose to chew, you'll be pursued. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:41 AM - 44 comments

A megaflood that threatens California and the West Coast, could be the most expensive natural disaster in history. It has happened before, The Great Flood of 1862, caused by an atmospheric river from the Pacific Ocean, first loading the coastal mountains with snow that was then melted by heavy warm rains. [more inside]
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:12 AM - 16 comments

Opplopolis (Twitter, previously) has begun updating again. It is a comic about a weird anachronistic city in which the fates of multiple people - and a completely different science-fiction setting - become entwined with something called Marvedyne. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:23 PM - 4 comments

R.I.P. Ann Shulgin: Radiant Nexus of Psychedelic Community ... matriarch of psychedelic-assisted therapy, widow of and co-conspirator with legendary chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, and anchor of an extended community of therapists, scientists, scholars, and explorers of the worlds opened by psychedelic substances, died at home in the company of people who loved her on July 9, 2022. She was 91.
posted by protorp at 2:16 PM - 20 comments

Venture capitalists invest in union organizing [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 12:47 PM - 31 comments

City officials hired a Bay Area industrial firm to custom-design the pricey trash can along with two other prototypes that cost taxpayers $19,000 and $11,000 each.
posted by folklore724 at 10:19 AM - 67 comments

Is There a Way Out of Hawaii's Housing Crisis? - "The Aloha State is drowning in a flood of the same factors creating a housing crisis all over America. It will either become a model for solutions or a cautionary tale." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:21 AM - 17 comments

“Earth, I love ya! Thanks for letting me stay a while.” This was Kate McKinnon’s way of saying good-bye to SNL during her final episode in May 2022, dressed up as her recurring character and alien abductee Colleen Rafferty. With an 11-season stint that makes her one of the five longest-tenured SNL cast members and nine straight Emmy nominations for her work on the show (including two wins), it’s hard to argue that McKinnon didn’t have one of the most tremendous runs in SNL history. Vulture interview / Archive - Good One podcast on Spotify / Apple Podcasts / anywhere. [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:36 AM - 16 comments

PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf: Why the ‘nuclear’ strike option for players might be a bad idea. PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf: Why the ‘nuclear’ strike option for players might be a bad idea. (Archive)
posted by geoff. at 3:53 AM - 31 comments

Not your typical plate of beans [SLYT]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 10:27 PM - 31 comments

Taking Out Trash That Was Someone Else’s Treasure [SLNYT] “The majority of hoarders have lived in the same place for decades, in some cases their whole lives. For the most part they’re very smart, successful, well traveled, with degrees from elite universities. No one knows what they’re like at home, and in some cases alcohol plays a major role.” [more inside]
posted by bendy at 6:47 PM - 26 comments

How many apples? [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by aniola at 5:03 PM - 30 comments

University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Extension educator and fair judge John Porter gives tips on entering horticultural competitions, including why correct preparation matters with links to pdf guides on how to harvest and prepare vegetables/fruits and flowers, e.g. "leave a ¼ inch piece of stem on cucumbers." Porter also plugs UNL's television show Backyard Farmer which first aired in 1952 in black and white (Youtube channel, Apple Podcast).
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:32 PM - 1 comment

Jean-Jacques Sempé, Cartoonist of Droll Whimsy, Dies at 89 [NYT] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:59 PM - 18 comments

Rebecca Giggs (Emergence Magazine, 06/27/2022), "Noiseless Messengers": "THE MOTHS, when they came, were said to appear first like sea fog massing above the ocean." ABC News - Australia (12/11/2022), "Why bogong moths are now being classified as an endangered species." ABC Indigenous (07/04/2019), "This Place: The Journey of the Bogong Moths." Birgitta Stephenson, et al., (2020), "2000 Year-old Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) Aboriginal food remains, Australia." Eric Warrant, et al., (2016), "The Australian Bogong Moth Agrotis infusa: A Long-Distance Nocturnal Navigator." David Dreyer, et al. (2018), "The Earth's Magnetic Field and Visual Landmarks Steer Migratory Flight Behavior in the Nocturnal Australian Bogong Moth." Ken Green, et al. (2021), "Australian Bogong moths Agrotis infusa (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), 1951–2020: decline and crash" [PDF].
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:53 AM - 2 comments

How the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid Became a Memphis Icon
posted by box at 10:46 AM - 30 comments

A therapist and a filmmaker examine narcissism via The LEGO® Batman Movie. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:04 AM - 3 comments

At last! After a weird series of issues finding a streaming home that resulted in it almost being a VRV exclusive before they backed out (they're still listed as its home on the show's website), Bee and Puppycat: Lazy in Space will be airing as a Netflix series on September 6, 2022. Here's the trailer. it seems to also include remakes of the original episodes with updated animation! Previously: 2013, 2014, 2018, Fanfare
posted by JHarris at 9:04 AM - 10 comments

Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies. Many former FBI officials hold influential roles within Twitter. For instance, in 2020, Matthew W. left a 15-year career as an intelligence program manager at the FBI to take up the post of senior director of product trust at Twitter. [more inside]
posted by sammyo at 8:04 AM - 29 comments

A sharp rise in the number of encounters with great whites and other predators is being blamed, in part, on climate change
posted by folklore724 at 10:34 PM - 37 comments

"This is a big problem, that no one person understands all of. But in this video you're going to go from understanding more than like, 80 or 90% of people, to understanding this more than 99% of people. And it's only going to take you like 15 minutes". (SLYT 22:23) [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 7:54 PM - 20 comments

Have you ever wondered what's happening when the pilot comes on the intercom and says they're being held by the tower? The US FAA's National Airspace System status dashboard provides a behind-the-scenes peek at the factors* and policies that drive flight delays, cancellations, and other traveler annoyances as controllers manage the nation's vast and complex airspace. [more inside]
posted by redct at 7:39 PM - 11 comments

A New Weight-Loss Drug Really Works - Raising Huge Questions. "Wegovy, made by Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, is the first in what is shaping up to be a new generation of obesity treatments, which use a hormone to regulate appetite....The average patient in the study in which Robillard participated lost 15 per cent of their body weight, about three times more than on previous drugs. Nearly a third of them lost almost as much as they would after weight-loss surgery. Robillard lost 57 pounds. The US Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy for general use in June 2021." This is big and it's coming fast. Other pharma companies have taken notice and a stream of incretin drugs will soon hit the market. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 6:45 PM - 55 comments

There are people out there who have never watched LOST, who have LOST once, and who have LOST way too many times. YouTube's Billiam falls into the third camp, and he's bringing us recap episodes of the series. These aren't normal recaps, these get into the entire web of interconnections and intrigue and even the details of the production of the show, and give you the most complete picture of the series you might ever find. Season one is covered in LOST Was Weird: A Show No One Wanted To Make [3h], and seasons two and three in LOST: TV'S GREATEST MESS [6h20m]. I assume the remaining three seasons will be covered over the next year or two. 9 hours of YouTube recap is way shorter than three seasons! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:07 PM - 49 comments

A photograph of schoolchildren, taken at sea, their pinched faces registering the roll and pitch of the Harmony as she makes her way between the mission stations. Settler children. Inuit children. Dual-heritage children with fathers from Scotland or Norway or Nova Scotia. Hybrid lifeways. Seal children sewn into the sleek dappled skins of harbour seal and harp seal, the fur running down the body, gut sewn, shedding all the waters of the world. The seal’s gift to the hunter. The mother’s gift to the child.

Photographs from the Moravian Church Mission Ship to Labrador "Harmony" in the early 1900s and the global epidemic of 1918-1919, a visual essay by Jonathan Westaway. First in a series Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North from the Network in Canadian History and Environment's (NiCHE) diverse blog.
posted by Rumple at 2:09 PM - 4 comments

A wonderfully surreal dune sea shanty. If you don’t know the backstory, just accept that the universe is a strange and wonderful place. If you do, this just ups it a notch. [more inside]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:09 PM - 8 comments

Author Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York [AP] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:08 PM - 45 comments

(Thread posted by Ned - @ned_potter - on Twitter) OBIT 🧵 “Daisy Boo Biscuit Potter today departed for the great litter tray in the sky, aged 18. Daisy was voted ‘objectively worst cat in the world’ 3 years running, and her hobbies included vomiting and ignoring us...” [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 9:28 AM - 24 comments

This is a story about my wife
My sweet wife, her name is Grace
I met her in 1953,
she had freckles on her face
a poodle skirt: it was navy blue
saddle shoes: they were black and white

posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:33 AM - 5 comments

It may come as a surprise, but the song "You'll Be Back" is not actually about Jesus
posted by Etrigan at 8:19 AM - 54 comments

Ancient Animals. A fun way to learn how to work with clay. [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 8:12 AM - 7 comments

The Falconer

‘You care for birds, and they heal you’: film profiles world of a Black falconer

Rodney Stotts Used to Hustle Drugs in Southeast DC. Now He’s One of the Few Black Master Falconers in America.8

Hunting with Falcons: How One City Man Found His Calling in the Wild

Game Hawker: A Wild Journey to Falconry

Facebook: Shawn Hayes Falconry [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:55 PM - 9 comments

Will splitting monkeypox vaccines in five work out? And yet the FDA has charged ahead “completely based on” that 2015 study, says Alexandra Yonts, a pediatric infectious-disease physician at Children’s National Hospital. In a statement, the agency explained that it had “determined that the known and potential benefits of Jynneos outweigh the known and potential risks” for green-lighting the intradermal route. Delivering vaccines into skin leaves little room for error. The tuberculosis skin test is also administered intradermally; Marrazzo has seen “dozens of those messed up.” People have bled or been bruised. Needles have gone too deep—a mistake that can slash effectiveness—or too shallow, letting liquid ooze back out. Intradermal injections are an uncommon and difficult procedure, requiring additional training and specialized needles. “There is going to be some degree of error,” says Kenneth Cruz, a community-health worker in New York. “People are going to wonder if they’re protected, and it’s going to be difficult to check.”
posted by folklore724 at 10:31 PM - 13 comments

How do you solve a problem like an Ezra? As The Flash star Ezra Miller continues on their multi-state crime spree (which includes assault, burglary, weapons, grooming of teenagers and a cult), what on earth is it going to take for DC to realize they need to do something about The Flash movie? Will a recent arrest for burglary finally be the last straw, or does worse have to happen? Hollywood Reporter reports three possible plans for how to handle the star of their movie likely being in jail long before the movie comes out in (supposedly) June 2023. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:52 PM - 71 comments

"Shy little frog singing along to this fun tune." The full song by @sushisingz and a reaction video for shy little frog TikTok additive video as new musicians join the original frog. #FrogTikTok hashtag has 1 billion views including over 6 million views for this frog getting a shower. TikTok also has terrible frog-related ideas too.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:32 PM - 5 comments

The co-host of “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” talks about the best Girl Scout cookies and adulting at Disneyland. I started off like a lot of people do in television where I was like, “I’m going to take over the TV world,” you know, become an executive with a suit with shoulder pads, and walk around the hall wearing heels. Then, sometime in my time working for Conan, someone was like, “What are you going to do after you’re done with Conan?”, and I was like, “You know what? I just really like it here.” It sounds weird, but it was really liberating for me to get to that point. If we’re going to talk about the downfall of my ambition, I think it really was rooted to a point where I was like, “Hey, I like where I am right now. I don’t need to go anywhere else,” and that’s pretty much it. [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 10:58 AM - 15 comments

After a summer of ER closures across Ontario and the rest of Canada with no end in sight, the Ford government's Health Minister Sylvia Jones has not ruled out the possibility of privatizing some services, saying "all options are on the table." (Except for paying healthcare staff--especially nurses--what they're worth.) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:05 AM - 44 comments

1st synthetic mouse embryos — complete with beating hearts and brains — created with no sperm, eggs or womb - "For the first time, scientists have created mouse embryos in the lab without using any eggs or sperm and watched them grow outside the womb. To achieve this feat, the researchers used only stem cells and a spinning device filled with shiny glass vials." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:32 AM - 37 comments

Who Was the First Person Ever to Die in a Car Crash? (Medium) [more inside]
posted by aniola at 12:32 AM - 29 comments

The 2022 American Sociology Association Conference has had some drama, between podium tipping, security calls for gang affiliation, and most notably, a presentation about The Paper. What is The Paper? Which to be precise was a 'Research Note'. Content note: masturbation, depictions of CSA in fiction, CSA and CSEM [more inside]
posted by geek anachronism at 7:01 PM - 28 comments

Wisconsin primary wins set up key fall confrontation over democracy

Who controls the election machinery in deeply polarized Wisconsin could help determine who wins the White House in 2024—Democratic President Joe Biden or a successor versus Republican predecessor Donald Trump or a clone—and in turn whether democracy nationwide survives Republican perversion and destruction.

[more inside]
posted by brook horse at 6:47 PM - 13 comments

An old thing, but a good thing.
CommonMark [is a] strongly defined, highly compatible specification of Markdown[, …] a plain text format for writing structured documents, based on formatting conventions from email and usenet… the following sites and projects have adopted CommonMark: Discourse, GitHub, GitLab, Reddit, Qt, Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange, Swift (Markdown for MeFi)
Reference Card and Interactive Tutorial
posted by Going To Maine at 1:22 PM - 62 comments

Tom Cardy wants to make it clear: he doesn't work here (SLYT). Tom Cardy previously.
posted by fight or flight at 12:01 PM - 13 comments

I’ve been reluctant to admit that I have to move on from playing tennis. It’s like a taboo topic. It comes up, and I start to cry. I think the only person I’ve really gone there with is my therapist
posted by Etrigan at 10:32 AM - 12 comments

"Someone hears you work on films, so they ask you, 'What movie made you cry?' The artist will respond, 'In theaters or in the office?'" Linda Codega does a deep dive into how the visual effects industry has become a late-stage capitalist hellscape, as studios constantly underbid each other, cater to outlandish last-minute demands from production houses (especially Marvel), and put the squeeze on the VFX artists who are burning out on the front lines. [more inside]
posted by j.r at 9:52 AM - 45 comments

What this means is that the door a writer could step through to make a career 50 or even 20 years ago, the one opening onto a life where someone who works hard and does well could buy a house on the strength of that work alone, has been slammed shut. Defector's Kelsey McKinney writing about the uproar directed at Sydney Sweeney's interview with the Hollywood Reporter on how difficult it is to make a living as an actor (or musician, or model) without wealth, connections, or both. (DefectorFilter) [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 8:41 AM - 48 comments

HERE IS WHAT DOESN’T GO VIRAL: Ángel worked as a housepainter for decades but had a stroke three years ago that paralyzed the left side of his body. Now, his favorite spot is the recliner in his living room. From his perch, he can reach some essential items that he stores on a table to his right: a power screwdriver, painter’s tape, and a clipboard with paper and pen. ... Here is what does go viral: braille decoder rings, sign-language-translating gloves, “haptic footwear” for blind folks, stair-climbing wheelchairs. In other words, a preponderance of innovations, unveiled to great fanfare, that purport to solve disability-related problems. ... In contrast to what gets churned out in glossy promotional materials for corporations and tech start-ups, disabled people find creative ways to make their worlds accessible every day. Laura Mauldin writes on disability hacks for The Baffler.
posted by Bella Donna at 5:50 AM - 29 comments

Today marks the 90th anniversary of Danish toymaker Ole Kirk Kristiansen founding a small manufacturer that would, after the development of a system of interlocking plastic bricks, become an iconic brand shaping the childhoods of millions of people - LEGO. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:14 AM - 83 comments