November 5

The Wish for Kings

King Of America is the sound of Elvis Costello growing up. It’s full of melody. The lyrics are more direct but remain clever, witty and literate. His singing is superb, possibly the best of his career. He is emotionally invested in these songs. Dropping the smart-alex sneer helps them carry more weight. As time goes by, the musicianship suits the ear more, little details revealing themselves. When the likes of T-Bone Burnett, Jim Keltner, Mitchell Froom and members of Elvis Presley’s TCB band are involved, the result is bound to ooze class. It is an album of inner turmoil, presented in best bib and tucker. It was a lot to digest in 1986, and quickly superseded by its caustic follow-up the same year, Blood & Chocolate. It was easy to move on, but, if you kept coming back, you would find a lot to cherish in King Of America. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:20 AM - 2 comments

November 4

The Present is Female and Heavy #7

We're branching out to stuff that's more rock than metal but boundaries are for posers, anyway. We start out with intense, and undeniable Rolo Tomasi - To resist Forgetting. [more inside]
posted by signal at 11:48 PM - 1 comment

Are you not entertained?

The damage gridiron football does to the brains and bodies of its participants hasn't gone way. But the public's concern about that damage – to the extent it ever existed – appears to have evaporated.
Tagovailoa’s third NFL concussion — or was it his fourth? And should we count the one he suffered in college? — provoked more pointed questions, but pretty much all of them were directed at him: “Isn’t it time to retire? Don’t you need to think of your wife and kids?” No one was asking what the NFL needed to do, or whether football had a future. “Those who said all this awareness would kill football were wrong,” Chris Nowinski, who has been a leading advocate on the issue of brain injuries in sports for nearly two decades, told me recently. “Football continues to be more popular in just about every measurable way.”
posted by non canadian guy at 8:00 PM - 8 comments

Virtual fences

These GPS cow collars are allowing producers to farm without physical fences. Farmers can create virtual fences using a solar-powered, GPS-enabled collar to track and move their livestock around the farm from a remote device.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:58 PM - 1 comment

The Five Boxing Wizards Jump Quickly

Every day, the online game Letroso picks a secret word of up to 10 letters Your task is to guess the secret word. Letroso will tell if your guess has any letters in common with the secret word, and if those letters within the secret word are adjacent, non adjacent, or are in the same order. Letroso will also tell you if you've correctly matched the beginning or ending letter of the word. Settings include Português, English, and Español. What games will you be playing during the New York Times strike?
posted by otherchaz at 7:12 PM - 9 comments

Miku Earth: cultural self-portrayal

Local artists, local clothing. For every culture, there's a Miku.
posted by one for the books at 2:20 PM - 6 comments

My grandmother would probably have hated the idea of a sea burial

This is the world I grew up in, a world in which I could be anything I dreamed and do whatever I dreamed of doing, as long as I had the skill. A world in which there were no real consequences; an ahistorical world, where things could be easily reset for the building of new dreams. My grandmother, I suspect, had never suffered from this ahistorical delusion. from Remembered Coast by Mok Zining [Longreads]
posted by chavenet at 12:18 PM - 3 comments

Break Your Streak, Not the Strike

After two and a half years of negotiations, The New York Times Tech Guild has gone on strike (NYT Gift Link). "The guild said it was asking readers to honor its digital picket line by not playing Times Games products, such as Wordle, and not using the Cooking app." "Nearly 750 New York Times journalists and Times Guild members signed a new pledge pressing the Times’s management to bargain and reach a contract deal with the Times Tech Guild by Election Day." More coverage: The Verge, The Washington Post, NBC News.
posted by fedward at 11:14 AM - 48 comments

"We'll fix it in post..."

Between 1980 and 2021, Cinefex magazine was the quarterly journal of the visual effects industry covering mostly big budget movies, but also TV shows, commercials and even interactive experiences. It ended publication in 2021 due to the effect of the pandemic on film production, however the content remained available through their iOS app... until iOS 17 killed it... or did it?. Regardless, Don Shay, original editor of the periodical, has made the entire back catalogue available on archive.org [more inside]
posted by Molesome at 9:53 AM - 8 comments

Regarding the Secret Life of Rabbits

Regarding the Secret Life of Rabbits is a webcomic about life with rabbits that has been running for about a decade. Those with house rabbits will see much that is familiar in individual strips. The comic has a homepage with links to various content, from strips to a blog to merch. The strip is the creation of That Lady, as she styles herself in the comic. Latest strip. Generally a fine alternative to watching the news, the strip does have its hard moments, as when one of the cast rotates out. Believe it or don't!
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:34 AM - 4 comments

I Will Be Away from My Desk on November 6

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Thank you for your email. This is an automated response to let you know that I will be away from my desk on Wednesday, November 6.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:23 AM - 80 comments

"The Dude"

Remembering Quincy Jones, 1933-2024 (Discogs, NYT, GQ, Vulture, previously)
posted by box at 9:13 AM - 50 comments

unusual small curses and powers

Two fantasy stories in which characters notice and respond to little spells. "That seemed like a… a manageable amount of divinity." Sarah Blackwell (Dyce) (previously) writes a fun short piece in which Jenna gets something that, deep down, she's always wanted. "The possibility of danger overrides my manners, and my hand shoots out to grab her wrist.... She notices too much, and she thinks too fast." In the suspenseful, romantic "Useful and Beautiful Things", available in text and audio, E. Saxey (previously) depicts an antiques specialist with a few secrets, and the intriguing books expert they can't get away from.
posted by brainwane at 8:23 AM - 2 comments

A Place for Strongly-Held Candy Optinions

Halloween has come and gone as has the bonus weekend after we claim when the actual holiday falls mid-week. In most homes though, candy remains. What are your favorite/least favorite candies? What are the ones you scour the bowl to claim for yourself? What are the horrible things that end up ignored? What treats from your culture would surprise, horrify, and/or delight people from elsewhere? Or talk about anything you like*. It's a free thread. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:09 AM - 129 comments

Saving tens of thousands of dollars for helping the planet

These farmers are saving tens of thousands of dollars for helping the planet. More than 40 per cent of Gary Kadwell's property is dedicated to revegetation after he planted tens of thousands of trees across his property. It is a move that has seen him save thousands of dollars and improve production levels.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:08 AM - 2 comments

Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator: A Tool for Making More Ethical Decision

Adam Smith, ya know the father of Capitalism, introduced a concept called the Impartial Spectator in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This idea is about an internal, invisible judge that helps us evaluate our thoughts and emotions. Smith uses the metaphor of “the man within the breast” to describe this inner observer, which helps us figure out if our actions are moral from a neutral standpoint. [more inside]
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 6:06 AM - 12 comments

The Red Mirage, then the Blue Shift.

Early voting results in the US tilt Republican, and later voting results tilt Democratic. Part of the reason is Red precincts are less populated, thus faster to count. [more inside]
posted by otherchaz at 5:40 AM - 114 comments

This song still pleases me.

From the movie, not the stage musical of "Hair". Flesh Failures has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Can't really put [more inside]
posted by Czjewel at 4:23 AM - 7 comments

A relative of the bygone nut

Down the street, the owner of Vale das Freiras bottles sweet chestnut liqueur, its own kind of mountain hooch. From the café’s second floor, I accessed a small chestnut museum with artifacts of a working life: baskets into which men thrashed off chestnut skins, millstones for grinding chestnut flour, a chestnut roaster. Madeira’s earliest settlers brought the Castanea sativa variety with them to the island. It shares a common ancestor with the American chestnut, whose genetics split off soon before the two landmasses ripped apart. from On the Island of Madeira, a Tiny Town Celebrates the Chestnut
posted by chavenet at 1:03 AM - 3 comments

November 3

Darwin's waste helps power 1200 houses a year

Darwin's waste helps power 1200 houses a year as council creates circular economy. For the past 20 years, an energy project on the outskirts of Darwin has been quietly generating renewable electricity 24 hours a day and abating tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:46 PM - 7 comments

Some Horrors to Take Your Mind off the US Election

We are leaving Spooky Season 2024 and entering the Horrifying last days of the US Elections, so here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! They may help distract you from the stress of the season (but please vote). Most of the series are audio dramas with paranormal elements, but anthologies, fantasy, science fiction, and the occasional thriller or mystery are included. I’m excoted because the second season of The Phosphene Catalogue has started! [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:12 PM - 11 comments

How Concerned Citizens Ran a Neo-Nazi Out of Rural Maine

The Crash of the Hammer by Mira Ptacin is a long article about how a handful of Mainers shone the light on a noxious Nazi who’d bought property in their state, and ran him out of town, focusing on anti-fascist podcaster Crash Barry. That wasn’t an isolated incident because, as reported last year by Eric Russell and John Terhune for the Portland Press-Herald, he wasn’t the only fascist to move recently to the Pine Tree State.
posted by Kattullus at 2:10 PM - 8 comments

Small ways to improve life without the need for sustained willpower

A collection of one-off actions that improve your life continuously — however marginally.
posted by chavenet at 1:35 PM - 42 comments

An Elephant Never Forgets

Over the Garden Wall Tenth Anniversary stop-motion short [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 10:15 AM - 18 comments

Community group launches legal action to protect Murray River

Community group launches legal action to protect Murray River flood plains in Kakadu of the south. A Victorian landcare group has filed legal proceedings against the Australian Federal government, challenging the approval of the Nyah flood plain project, alleging it is a dodgy water offset project that is environmentally damaging.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:41 AM - 0 comments

"... with a crush on [Paul] Williams' suave, satanic character..."

Winnipeggers recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of a Brian De Palma comedy/horror/rock opera movie spectacle that was a hit in the city (and in Paris) and a flop everywhere else in the world.
posted by sardonyx at 5:46 AM - 34 comments

The major currents of political and ethical debate within sf

"The article illuminates ways in which sf functions as a resource for thinking concretely about multiple coming futures, in ways that can often eclipse so-called realist literature." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:52 AM - 8 comments

You wake up on a beach except it's a mountaintop it's underwater it's

What if Minecraft except it's being generated in realtime and it's like those dreams where everything changes all the time and when you try to get close to a wall it becomes a fish. Oasis.
posted by signal at 2:31 AM - 33 comments

A portrait of human folly, bias, humiliation, and desire for connection

This literary subgenre has arguably been around since the dawn of written material but didn’t emerge as a distinct sector of scholarship and pedagogy until roughly the 1980s. Remaining contested as a classifiable writing mode, it straddles the boundaries of personal essay, memoir, journalism, cultural criticism, food writing, nature writing, and more dominant umbrellas like fiction and poetry. All that said and done, it would be remiss to claim that this reading list is comprehensive or authoritative; even for a writing scholar and critic who regularly teaches travel writing at the college level, the subgenre and its accompanying breadth of scholarship eludes definitive contours. Simply put, it has its tendrils in too many places. from All Travelers are Infiltrators: An Introduction to the Study of Travel Writing [Jstor]
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM - 3 comments

November 2

Using straw panels to protect against bushfire

Why using straw panels to protect against bushfire was a no-brainer for this couple. Straw might seem like the last product you'd use if you wanted to protect your house from fire, but these straw panels, made from waste material, are a secret weapon against flames.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:34 PM - 14 comments

The Predator and the President (who is also a predator)

Jeffrey Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimate knowledge of his proclivity for sex, including cuckolding his best friends, according to recordings obtained exclusively by the Daily Beast. [...] Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. [...] On the tape Epstein can be heard saying, “He’s a horrible human being. He does nasty things to his best friends, best friends’ wives, anyone who he first tries to gain their trust and uses it to do bad things to them.” [...] Startlingly for a man who became one of the world’s most notorious sex offenders, Epstein on the tapes offers a damning judgment of Trump, telling Wollf, “The moral compass just does not exist.”
Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes [The Daily Beast]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:05 PM - 43 comments

A novel idea they hope will catch on

Tired of having his fence ripped apart, a man builds a "doggie door" for bears.
posted by sardonyx at 11:13 AM - 19 comments

Aboriginal Australia's pre-colonial trade with Asia

Documentary explores evidence of Aboriginal Australia's pre-colonial trade with Asia. The Wangany Mala documentary delves into how Yolŋu people from north-east Arnhem Land and Macassans from modern-day Indonesia traded before colonisation.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:01 AM - 4 comments

3 hours of The Cure

The Cure live in London at Troxy, recorded November 1st, marking the release of the new album Songs Of A Lost World.
posted by ShooBoo at 7:04 AM - 10 comments

Nearly 200 Percent Surge in School Book Bans (2023-2024 School Year)

"PEN America today released new documentation of public school book bans for the full 2023-2024 school year, recording 10,046 instances of books banned nationwide, a dramatic 200 percent rise over the previous school year. Since 2021, the free expression organization has counted close to 16,000 instances of book bans in public schools." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:39 AM - 12 comments

An ecstatic, emergent complexity

Japan’s clutter tells a different story. It’s one that reveals a far more complex and nuanced relationship with stuff, one that suggests minimalism and clutter aren’t opposites, but two sides of the same coin. For the nation of Japan is filled with spaces that are as meticulously cluttered as minimalist ones are meticulously simplified. These packed places, which are every bit as charming as the emptied ones, force us to question our assumptions and worldviews. What if we’ve all been wrong about clutter? from The joy of clutter [Aeon; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:36 AM - 33 comments

"The translator is author and artist and it's their words we're reading"

Why You Should Read Literature in Translation is a video essay about what is gained in translation. There is a transcript, but you need to click on "show transcript" all the way at the bottom of the episode notes. The essay ends with recommendations of books in translation and they're all interesting, and so are a lot of other books discussed.
posted by Kattullus at 1:38 AM - 6 comments

November 1

A Brief History of Trumpism

Trumpism Has Deep Roots in American History, and It Will Outlast Trump [ungated] - "He's said he wants the Justice Department to target people and institutions he regards as opponents, and would unleash the military to round up American citizens he's labeled as the 'enemy from within.' He wants to deport more than 10 million immigrants. He plans to lock down trade channels with massive tariffs and turn his back on European and Asian allies. He's prepared to continue stocking the courts with jurists who allow legal precedent to be voided — at the expense of women's health and autonomy — and make presidents largely immune from the rule of law. He has called for the 'termination' of the Constitution to overturn election results that don't satisfy him (and has already fomented one insurrection). Some of this is cultural, economic and diplomatic warfare. Much of it — as many voters, historians, analysts, Republicans, former Trump White House advisers and military leaders like John Kelly and Mark Milley have noted — is fascism. All of it, collectively, is Trumpism." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:59 PM - 46 comments

Technology sucks liquid out of the air to provide safe drinking water

Technology sucks liquid out of the air to provide safe drinking water for an entire remote town. Children living in a remote, desert-like town in north-western NSW can fill their drink bottles with safe, chilled water sucked out of the air by hydropanels at their school.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:18 PM - 13 comments

The X Factor: How Group Labels Shape Politics

The X Factor: How Group Labels Shape Politics (PDF) By scholars Amanda Sahar d’Urso and Marcel F. Roman, a recent paper posits a "Identity-Expansion-Backlash Theory," explored through the partisan consequences of the term "Latinx" through seven experiments. They find a decrease in support for Democrats who use "Latinx" among Latino voters who might otherwise support Democrats, but who are resistant to LGBTQ+ inclusion in Latino identity. The authors further discuss their findings here in the Washington Post. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston at 6:32 PM - 40 comments

choices that hint at stories

"fifty decisions", such as: "...They sell the plane. She taps him on the shoulder. She writes her name on the list. He lies. They buy the tickets anyway...." An evocative list by Andrew Willett (disclaimer: a friend).
posted by brainwane at 5:14 PM - 3 comments

Stay out of MOIDA MANSION!

Lucas Pope, creator of Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, has just released Moida Mansion, a new game playable for free on itch.io. Moida Mansion, an ELECTRONIC LIQUID CRYSTAL GAME, throws back to handheld electronic games of yore.
posted by Rinku at 3:23 PM - 13 comments

“Are you Judd Nelson?” I asked. A ridiculous question!

I first started to read In Search of Lost Time in the fall of 2003. I was 29, unemployed, had recently finished graduate school, was still traumatized by a frightening experience in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (and deeply in denial of that trauma), and had picked up, semi-randomly, a copy of Swann’s Way. In a dim sense I was aware that the novel was part of a vaster work that was considered “difficult,” and featured a scene where a guy dunked . . . something into a beverage and then remembered things. But I knew nothing else about the book. from On Proust, Judd Nelson, and Some Other Things [The Millions]
posted by chavenet at 1:04 PM - 15 comments

"Excuse me, I'm trying to do my job!"

A very silly 0:59 compilation of cats interrupting reporters. (From Glinn)
posted by JHarris at 11:44 AM - 15 comments

Land of Linkin'

LinkMe, November 2024: Come across an interesting link recently that you'd like to share, but don't want to work it up into a full post? Share it here for our perusal, nbd. And if you'd like to post something but need some inspiration, check out the links here to see what other members have found interesting and would like to read more about! Just tag the resulting post "LinkMe" and include a nod back to the original suggestion. No self-linking and usual site rules apply, but otherwise feel free to post whatever you like! Eerie, creepy, and horror-themed links encouraged but not required. Look inside for a round-up from last month! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 8:31 AM - 31 comments

When Golf Courses Go Wild

How non-profits, trusts and cities are converting manicured greens into places where wildlife, plants and people flourish. (slTheTyee)
posted by Kitteh at 8:24 AM - 16 comments

The Opalized Fossils Of Lightning Ridge

This fossil collector may have just hit the jackpot. The only question is whether to sell or save it. In a fossil-rich pocket of northern New South Wales, two pioneering palaeontologists have spent decades digging up rare relics of the past, striking deals with collectors and opal miners, and unlocking our understanding of deep geological history.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:23 AM - 5 comments

You used to be able to make a living playing in a band.

The decline of the working musician. New Yorker article reviewing the book Band People. Ungated [more inside]
posted by Ayn Marx at 6:13 AM - 30 comments

"Lead the way, Vilja!"

That Time Sir Terry Pratchett Modded Oblivion is a surprisingly moving 12 minute video essay by YouTuber ShadesOfSlay about how the author of the Discworld series and other books contributed to the Vilja Mod for the computer role playing game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. He contributed lines of dialog and suggested features that could help him keep exploring the game even as Alzheimer's affected his short term memory. The video is based on a 2019 article by Cian Maher, who interviewed the creators of the mod, Emma, who also voiced the character, and Charles "CD" Cooley.
posted by Kattullus at 4:38 AM - 6 comments

The Power of God and Anime

The Vatican has unveiled an official anime mascot, Luce. [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 4:37 AM - 60 comments

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