December 13

Peter Brooks’ production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

We were told by our English teacher at school that we would remember it for the rest of our lives. Almost 50 years on, I can still recall it vividly. The play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production was Peter Brook’s groundbreaking staging, which premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon in August 1970 and transferred to London’s West End, where I saw a matinee performance as a 16-year-old. It remains one of the defining postwar productions of Shakespeare in Britain. Brook and his designer Sally Jacobs stripped away the historical traditions of presentation and conjured a production that felt contemporary, illuminating and joyous. - John Wyver [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:29 AM - 8 comments

The manifesto of the MeFite

@edithcharles.bsky.social‬ asked “What bizarre shit are they finding in your manifesto after you're finally apprehended?” Responses included “Mostly an exhaustive list of how to behave and move correctly in a supermarket” and “Stop bunting” and “5-page digression about how LED headlights are too fucking bright” and “Pics of my cats and 'I did it for them'” and “First of all, IT’S A MISSION STATEMENT”. But what's in your manifesto? Some more responses... [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 3:32 AM - 125 comments

bupkis

Terry Carmen has been diagnosed with incurable brain cancer. Before he goes, he wants to share his favourite recipes with the world. You can find Terry's recipes on his website, as well as some thoughts about life and photos of his pets. Add the recipes to your bookmarks and, as Terry says: "Go home make yummy food and have your friends and family over. Actual happy memories are all that matters, money, power, status, everything else is mostly all nonsense."
posted by fight or flight at 3:23 AM - 3 comments

Crash landings, stuck squirrels and smooching owlets

One of the most popular wildlife photography awards, the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards, has announced its winners for 2024.. [more inside]
posted by waving at 2:35 AM - 7 comments

spamhowie

Today, someone tried to pull a scam on me, and it had some notable approaches I haven't seen or heard about before so I figure I'll write it up in case someone else someday is searching for a strange bunch of behaviors that hit their credit cards and their inboxes at the same time. from Spamalanche [A Whole Lotta Nothing]
posted by chavenet at 2:10 AM - 11 comments

December 12

"A Covert Arrangement: The CIA and Time Inc."

Simon Willmetts (Diplomatic History, 08/19/2024), "The CIA and Time Magazine: Journalistic Ethics and Newsroom Dissent": "This article provides evidence for the first time of a systematic policy of direct collusion between the Time Inc. media empire and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency" ca. 1945-1965, adding much to stories like Carl Bernstein's "The CIA and the Media," published in Rolling Stone in 1977. Related: Matthew Jones (History, 2015), "Journalism, intelligence and The New York Times: Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Harrison E. Salisbury and the CIA" [PDF].
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:00 PM - 0 comments

0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣

'Chernobyl Accident-simulatation only (no talk)' (slyt, 3:31) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 8:03 PM - 6 comments

Pre-internet this was the only way people could get cute cat videos

Mining Accident Theater is a sequence of fan-made tributes to Mystery Science Theater 3000, all available on Youtube. Bogdan, Catherine and Tom are stuck down in a mine, waiting for rescue, and in the meantime they watch old film reels they find in the mine and comment on them. Most are between 8 and 30 minutes. The newest one is the delightful What Is A Cat? (15m). A few others (there are currently 12 in all) are the one full-length movie so far, Italian sci-fi film War of the Robots (1h42m), for the holiday season the sloooow-paced, but short, Legend of Mary (9m), a kinescope of the early anthology series Lights Out entitled The Angry Birds (25m), and Leonard Nimoy Presents Magnavision (13m). [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:38 PM - 3 comments

Joey sightings a welcome sign for this endangered WA marsupial

Joey sightings a welcome sign for this endangered WA marsupial. Conservation scientists credit the curbing of introduced predators with a rebound in the population of endangered iconic numbats in Western Australia. (Joeys are baby marsupials, in this case, baby numbats.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:01 PM - 6 comments

Remember when you wanted to?

There is nothing so niche, so unimaginable, so good or bad that you can’t do it on Beyoncé’s country internet in 2024. But the most enduring thing you can be on the internet—the thing that has withstood every technological advancement, every new wave of virality—is annoying. With each new year and each new online platform, we stray further from the light of the simpler, more anonymous internet we once knew: eBaum’s World, Club Penguin, Facebook before your aunt got on it, Old Gregg. Now, as technological advancement pushes the internet to grow and morph into something ever more Byzantine, there are so many more opportunities to be annoying. from The New Commandments of the Modern Internet [The Ringer]
posted by chavenet at 3:08 PM - 13 comments

"This was a country ... where 'daily life was a fire hazard'"

Daniel Immerwahr (03/2024), "All That Is Solid Bursts into Flame: Capitalism and Fire in the Nineteenth-Century United States": "The hot capitalism story is one of speculation, calamities, collapses, deadbeats, dubious currencies, get-rich-quick schemes, manias, frauds and panics ... In the combustible United States, fire was a conspicuous sign of economic volatility." Related: "The American Museum in Ruins" by P.T. Barnum. "An oral history of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871." Steam fire engines (1893). Chicago's Awful Theater Horror (1904). Recollections of a Fire Insurance Man (1909). And a history of the National Board of Fire Underwriters (1916). Previouslies: Sanborn Maps. Disaster Capitalism. And Immerwahr. Tangents: Black firefighters. "The Great Chelsea Fire of 1973," in which two fires are explained in economic and 19th C. history terms. And "A Political Economy of Wildfire in the Western United States" [PDF].
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:29 AM - 12 comments

I wouldn't start here

There's an (apparently) Irish joke that goes something like this: a tourist asks a local for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’. In this conversation, hosted by Alex Forrester, Bayo Akomolafe and Paul Hawken explore climate change as a dialogue between ways of seeing and thinking about it - western and non-western. [more inside]
posted by kneecapped at 8:11 AM - 4 comments

How do we appeal to Taiwanese tastes, and how do we make Italians angry?

The best-selling pizza from Pizza Hut Taiwan: a scalloped pizza with Oreos around the edge, deep-fried chicken and calamari
posted by Pitachu at 7:11 AM - 71 comments

Riot-hit Liverpool library is back - and it's better than ever!

"We will NOT let hate win" (SLYouTube). Four months ago, Spellow library was wrecked by a bunch of idiot racist thugs. The community there responded magnificently.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:41 AM - 9 comments

BIOTA

How To Sound Design Ecosystems [YouTube, 31 minutes] - Biota is a completely synthesized, procedural / generative alien soundscape that I sound designed in Ableton Live. In this video I'll break down how I created various geophysical and wildlife sounds generatively, and discuss other factors that go into creating a soundscape.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:02 AM - 3 comments

Trainspoffing

Overall rail operators do not deliver satisfactory services. But differences between them show that strong improvements are possible. The sector has not managed to sort things out on its own, which is why policy change is urgently needed. from Mind the gap! Europe’s Rail Operators: a Comparative Ranking [Transport & Environment]
posted by chavenet at 3:11 AM - 12 comments

Kafka's Screwball Tragedy

Investigations of a Philosophical Dog. "Investigations of a Dog" is a funny and deeply philosophical tale of a lone, maladjusted dog who defies scientific dogma and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world. (by Aaron Schuster, adapted from his book How to Research Like a Dog)
posted by sapagan at 1:47 AM - 5 comments

ancient roos

one painting of a kangaroo is securely dated to between 17,500 and 17,100 years on the basis of the ages of three overlying and three underlying wasp nests. This is the oldest radiometrically dated in situ rock painting so far reported in Australia [nature, via artark] [more inside]
posted by HearHere at 12:28 AM - 9 comments

December 11

Fossilised faeces hold clues to how dinosaurs ruled the planet

Fossilised faeces hold clues to how dinosaurs ruled the planet. Using hundreds of samples of fossilised faeces, vomit and intestinal contents, alongside bones and footprints, researchers traced the rise of the dinosaurs over millions of years.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:11 PM - 8 comments

Rugby League Diplomacy

From 2028, there will be a Papua New Guinea team in the National Rugby League (NRL). Introduced by Australian soldiers in the 1940s, rugby league is the national sport in the country. It also has diplomatic ramifications, since a clause in the agreement Australia has negotiated ensures PNG will not sign new security agreements with China.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:39 PM - 11 comments

Suddenly, a character says out of nowhere: “What the fuck is going on?"

I went to the premiere of the first commercially streaming AI-generated movies. (SL 404Media)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:27 PM - 87 comments

Fun with Flags, Land of Lincoln Edition

The Illinois Flag Commission has released the 10 finalists [PDF] for the new state flag design contest. Voting for the new flag design will begin in January 2025.
posted by Cash4Lead at 2:04 PM - 40 comments

🤘🏽 The Twelfth Hour is at Hand 🤘🏽

For our one-dozenth outing, feast your ears on this absolute gem of French female-fronted metalcore: NOVELISTS - Coda. [more inside]
posted by signal at 1:40 PM - 2 comments

One of the largest contributors to the overall aesthetic

Inspired heavily by the concepts behind American pop art and the styles of British pop artists such as David Hockney, Nagai focused on imaginations of a 1950s Americana landscape. Adapting the deep blue skies, relaxed ocean side settings and sleepy nighttime cityscapes from previous pop artists, Nagai developed his own style throughout the late 1970s. His work finally began to gain traction in Japan around the turn of the 1980’s and this coincided fortuitously with the rise of City Pop. from Hiroshi Nagai: Japan’s Sun-drenched Americana [Tokyo Cowboy]
posted by chavenet at 12:18 PM - 11 comments

please take me home with you and brush my tear away

"Once upon a time in the whimsical world of toys, Hasbro introduced an unconventional doll named Little Miss No Name in 1965. This eerie creation, inspired by the paintings of Margaret Keane and designed by Deet D’Andrade, was intended to be the antithesis of the glamorous Barbie, embodying a stark departure from the glitz and fashion. With its haunting features, Little Miss No Name quickly became a toy anomaly of the 1960s." She doesn’t have a pretty dress. She doesn’t have any shoes. She doesn’t even have a home. All she has is love. [more inside]
posted by mittens at 11:48 AM - 24 comments

The Greatest Showman: Richard Feynman

Physicist Angela Collier has a new video the sham legacy of Richard Feynman. After reading every book on Feynman, she covers the cottage industry of Feynman media, the Feynman bros in this cult of personality, how he did not write "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" or any other book, and how the stories that Feynman tells about himself are almost certainly made up. [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 9:09 AM - 174 comments

Home Alone for the holidays

Patrick Explains HOME ALONE (And Why It's Great). Single link YouTube by Patrick Willems (previously) that's pretty great about a pretty great movie.
posted by skynxnex at 8:24 AM - 28 comments

You're gonna get what you deserve. Ho ho ho!

Nine Inch Noels, a medley of Christmas(?) songs with lyrics from Trent Reznor's thing, from Lore Sjöberg. (NSFW lyrics) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 5:29 AM - 15 comments

The Hawk Tuah Memecoin Rug Pull is the Apotheosis of Bag Culture

You might win if you gamble, but the real money is in being the house. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:22 AM - 69 comments

Stoner Cats

Stoner Cats Stoner Cats (2021) is a cartoon that stars Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher and Chris Rock as cats that use medical marijuana. (on youtube) [more inside]
posted by jouke at 2:46 AM - 4 comments

In the rasp of today

Hence, we end up with a deadly conflict born of misinterpretations/colliding realities, and of course power imbalances, and so much history one poem or answer to a question can’t answer. I appreciate Adeena’s scholarly, poly-lingual investigation of a subject, and her exploratory and exploded use of language. As much as This Page reveals empathy for the complex realities and narratives of both sides, in the end, this poem is not neutral. It comes down against occupation and the horrors of a grossly lopsided war. from A New Visualized Poem Covers ‘Occupied Territory’ [Print]
posted by chavenet at 12:31 AM - 2 comments

December 10

“obedézcase, pero no se cumpla.”/obeyed, but not fulfilled

[Mexico] city’s metro hosts—and authorities unofficially sanction—a queer institution unlike any other.
“There are more intensities on the margins than in the center, where everyone is homogenized.” And the train connects these marginal intensities.
[Introduction probably NSFW] [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 10:39 PM - 11 comments

[00:01] or gtfo

Some mid-week silliness: Open the microwave as close as possible to 00:00 [SLMW?] via kottke
posted by slater at 9:01 PM - 24 comments

Get surreal, man, with Goethepunk

Get surreal, man, with Goethepunk

Scroll down endlessly, pick a favorite, come back and share [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:13 PM - 3 comments

Thylacoleo replica skeleton posed pouncing on tourists

Model of what may have been a real-life drop bear now on display in South Australia. A complete replica skeleton of Australia's largest mammalian predator [the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo, which went extinct around around 40,000 years ago] can now be seen pouncing at tourists visiting South Australia's World Heritage-listed Naracoorte Caves.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:44 PM - 11 comments

The Waiting

The Waiting : "Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth. Mysterious deaths occur all over the planet and have a similar pattern. Why have so many species vanished? And what does it all have to do with us? "
posted by dhruva at 5:18 PM - 8 comments

These are gorgeous machines

A Fabulous Collection of Antique Espresso Coffee Machines [Flashbak]
posted by chavenet at 11:43 AM - 24 comments

"Dumas began his Dr. Death radio show on KLSU in December of 1983"

"A small but influential independent record label ... C'est la Mort specialized in ethereal, ambient, dream pop, & darkwave bands." Ca. 1990, an interest in 4AD groups like His Name is Alive (2024 boxset; eponym for a quiescent MeFite) may have led you to early work by The Magnetic Fields (2024 Tiny Desk previously) on "Doctor Death's" compilations from C'est La Mort, also introducing artists like Area, The Millions, Orange, Collection d'Arnell-Andréa, Ivory Library, and The Arms of Someone New. A mainstay of the series was "a somewhat obscure post-punk band from San Francisco ... Often paired [live] with ... bands like Necropolis of Love." Contributing songs like "Market," "Rousseau's Rainbow," "Dilemma," etc., M-1 Alternative also had albums less available now, but their early work is available on Bandcamp. And KLSU is still going.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:28 AM - 6 comments

Eat What You Kill

ProPublica, in conjunction with the Montana Free Press, has published a detailed expose into Helena oncologist Dr. Tom Weiner - detailing a history of questionable diagnoses and patient harm. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:57 AM - 39 comments

Ghost Rivers

Baltimore Buried These Streams. Now an Artist Is Bringing One Back. The new “Ghost Rivers” installation is a reminder of Baltimore’s hidden streams — and the visible costs of trying to control our urban waterways. Also: Daylighting: A Case Study of the Jones Falls River and How ‘Daylighting’ Buried Waterways Is Revitalizing Cities Across America.
posted by HumanComplex at 6:45 AM - 17 comments

It's maptacular!

The fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company beginning in the 1860s are a rich and exceptionally detailed resource about American urban history. But they're also a beautiful collection of design and typography of the period. A new site brings together collections of digitized Sanborn Maps from libraries around the country to highlight the effusive design of the cover pages for each city. (via Kottke.)
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:08 AM - 27 comments

"The United States’ wealthiest citizens...do not appear in the document"

As it was previously noted by people on Metafilter, the Pandora Papers and the Panama Papers had a strange lack of dirt on US oligarchs. Ever wonder why? [more inside]
posted by kmt at 5:28 AM - 22 comments

Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?

More than two decades after the original film popularized the "fast zombie" craze, we finally have our first look at Danny Boyle's long-awaited return to horror, and one of the best trailers in years: 28 YEARS LATER. Though the trailer's terrifying, cultlike atmosphere and snatches of atavistic violence are intriguing, the real star is the soundtrack: a tinny, 110-year-old poetry reading whose hypnotically repetitive words tromp relentlessly from prim recitation to jangling nerves to a hysterical, nightmarish climax. The poem, Rudyard Kipling's "Boots", was originally written to memorialize (and echo) the wretched forced marches of the Second Boer War (as former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink recites/explains), its grim refrain a verse from Ecclesiastes on the inevitability of death. The howling rendition from the trailer, made by early film star Taylor Holmes in 1915, has long been used by elite SERE training schools to psychologically break recruits. 2spooky4u? There are plenty of alternatives: pioneering composer Kay Swift at age 14 (1911) - the sonorous Peter Dawson (1930) - the melodramatic Eric Woodburn (1935) - the operatic Leonard Warren (1951) - folksy anarchist Leslie Fish (1991) - or cleanse the palette with the goofy Red Skelton parody, "Frogs."
posted by Rhaomi at 5:12 AM - 88 comments

World's most expensive dinosaur fossil goes on display at New York

The most expensive dinosaur fossil ever discovered will be on display in New York at the American Museum of Natural History. The giant stegosaurus fossil, dubbed "Apex", is 3.3 metres tall and 8.2 metres nose to tail and is one of the most complete fossils of this type of dinosaur in existence.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:13 AM - 13 comments

Diaspora dishes are strange in how they take on an identity of their own

The hankering for mulukhiyah is a unique hunger. When I lived in Europe for graduate school, it was the first meal I’d eat on my short visits home, texting my request before my plane even landed. It’s the food I crave when I haven’t been to my parents’ for supper in a while. I can call its garlicky taste to my mouth as readily as I can trick my ears into filling with the timbre of my dad’s voice when I’m miles away from him, traveling restlessly as we both love to do. Though my mom excels at every dish in her repertoire, the exhilaration of the roughly monthly cycle culminating in mulukhiyah makes me clap my palms and cheer like I’m 4. from The Kitchen with Two Doors by Kristina Kasparian [Longreads]
posted by chavenet at 12:35 AM - 9 comments

December 9

A Good Cry

Nikki Giovanni, poet, author, and thinker, has died aged 81.
posted by biogeo at 9:44 PM - 25 comments

Call for end to draconian police cautions for sex workers

Call for end to draconian police cautions for sex workers that last until age of 100. Police in England and Wales should be banned from issuing a draconian caution that exclusively targets sex workers, both politicians and campaigners have said. A "prostitute’s caution," unlike other police cautions, does not require a person to admit to an offence or agree to accept it. Police can issue them to anyone they have "reasonable cause" to believe has broken prostitution laws, meaning little evidence is required. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:07 PM - 21 comments

“I could promise it is indeed possible to slip on a banana peel…”

The History of Slipping on Banana Peels is a half hour documentary video essay by Jon Bois about the non-metaphorical act of slipping on a banana peel, as recorded throughout history by American newspapers.
posted by Kattullus at 1:47 PM - 25 comments

Inescapable around the world

‘Last Christmas’ was not about flash and musicianship, more framing the vocal sentiment of George Michael’s heartbreak and yearning. It’s a prime example of the HappySad nature of the best pop – sounding jolly and at odds to the mourning of a buggered-up relationship. He’s telling himself the series of lies that often accompany dealing with betrayal – does he want them back? Can he muster a full on ‘fuck you’? There’s more than a touch of obsessive behaviour about it. The “this year to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special”, is utter shade, and yet sung like he’s gently stroking your hair. from Transcendental Cheap Magic: Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ At 40 [The Quietus]
posted by chavenet at 11:44 AM - 46 comments

The 2024 Best-Ofs! - LP edition

Following are the "Best Albums of 2024" picks from a variety of media outlets. In most cases, these were a rank-ordered "Best 25" or "Best 50," although a few outlets simply did a best-of with no "winner" at no.1. I extracted the top 10 from those longer than 10 out of space considerations and listed them nos. 10 to 1, top to bottom. In a few cases, however, the albums were unranked and just over 10 in number, so I included all of them. Many of the following plus others are listed at AlbumOfTheYear.org. One thing I learned in compiling this: Boy, do media outlets hate consistency in capitalization (see: Billie Eilish/Beyoncé/Charli xcx LPs). And, so, in no particular order: [more inside]
posted by the sobsister at 9:58 AM - 44 comments

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