October 2017 Archives

October 31

“We now appreciate good things more,”

The True Twisted Story of the Amityville Horror
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:44 PM PST - 29 comments

Locker Room Talk

Jordon Klepper brings three of his correspondents onto his show The Opposition* to discuss sexual harassment. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Jan 5, 1967 was not a good day for things flying in the skies of Nevada

Tom Mahood - known for his investigation into what happened to the Death Valley Germans - searches for a lost spy plane.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:48 PM PST - 9 comments

You never said anything about choreography

Yes, yes, it's just Halloween, too early for Christmas music. But if you hope to play this arrangement of the Hallelujah Chorus for handbell quartet before the end of the year, you'd better get to rehearsing.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:21 PM PST - 11 comments

Escalade ‘Monster’ Killed

The proposed Escalade tourist development in Grand Canyon is defeated. The Navajo Nation Council, tonight, put an end to a years-long battle to kill a controversial proposal to build a tourist development at the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers. [more inside]
posted by Long Way To Go at 8:21 PM PST - 16 comments

Underneath the beautiful green meadows of peace are mountains of bones

The First Time I Met Americans. "The first time I ever saw Americans was when I was 12 years old. It wasn’t actually blond-haired, blue-eyed Americans that I was seeing up close. The Americans I saw that day were F-4 Phantom bombers, brutally attacking small towns on the shore of Ha Long Bay. It was Aug. 5, 1964, and I was at the beach on a school trip, swimming with my classmates. That was right after the Tonkin Gulf incident, the day President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his decision to expand the war throughout Vietnam." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 7:24 PM PST - 4 comments

Қазақстан/Kazakhstan/Qazaqstan

On October 26, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree that Kazakhstan would transition from the Cyrillic script to Latin by 2025 [more inside]
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 5:02 PM PST - 21 comments

Bring Up the Bodies

Pretty sure you know where a body might be buried? Call NecroSearch.
posted by MovableBookLady at 4:16 PM PST - 10 comments

“I’m full of crucial information you can’t get anywhere else.”

Ignorance really is bliss: Video games are better when they tell us less [Digital Trends] “Communication is one of the biggest challenges of video game design. How much information do players need before they go where you want them to go? Looking back, the games we think of as “retro” were often vague in telegraphing what players should do. In the modern era, the pendulum has swung the other way, and now many developers seem to err on the side of caution, guiding players through even large, open-ended experiences. But it doesn’t have to be that way. While it is important to make sure gamers can find out what to do and where to go at any given moment, those mechanics increasingly come at the expense of discovery, diluting some of the greatest joys to be found in exploring virtual worlds. Fortunately, in the last few months, we’ve seen a wave of games experimenting with ways to look past the clutter of in-game UI, using everything from photo-modes to minimalist maps, to put their games worlds’ in the spotlight.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:07 PM PST - 56 comments

Half Vampires are bullshit

Fright Night vs The Lost Boys - which 80s teen vampire flick rules the night?
posted by Artw at 3:08 PM PST - 101 comments

Fusebead pixelart

Johan Karlgren (aka Pappas Pärlor) and his kids Zelda and Kai love fusebeads and old videogames! Together they create pixel street art and pictures. Want to try it yourself? He has tips and tricks on his website.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:52 PM PST - 2 comments

The United States Of American Media, Inc.

At Popbitch, the story of American Media, Inc. (publishers of National Enquirer) in four parts: (i) The Tabloid Triangle; (ii) Angels And Un-American Activity; (iii) Suburban Decay; and (iv) Electile Dysfunction.
posted by misteraitch at 2:45 PM PST - 7 comments

My measurements are: 13,000 girls suffer sexual abuse in our country

On Sunday, Miss Peru 2018 contestants declined to give their measurements during the introductions and instead each shared a statistic on violence against women and girls in their country. Pageant organizers prominently displayed newspaper clippings of cases murdered and assaulted women behind the catwalk, and the final segment featured contestants answering questions on what laws they would change to combat gender-based violence. [more inside]
posted by chaoticgood at 2:14 PM PST - 15 comments

Abuses within Florida's juvenile justice system

On October 15th, the Miami Herald published a six-part investigation into Florida's juvenile justice system. It uncovered what the paper referred to as a "Fight Club" culture of pervasive violence (between residents at facilities for juvenile delinquents) that was encouraged by officers, youth workers and staff. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:36 PM PST - 8 comments

"End the scourge"

A couple of Halloweens ago, Tristin Hopper, a columnist for the National Post, recorded a video condemning Kerr's Molasses Kisses, a Halloween candy that is fairly ubiquitous - and controversial - in Canada. This year, just in time for Halloween, the Post republished the video alongside a column by Hopper, entitled "End the scourge: This Halloween, only the righteous can stop the Kerr’s Molasses Kiss." A war of words has ensued between Hopper and Kerr's Candy, which has refused to take the criticism of their confection lying down, taking to social media to defend their product. It may be an uphill battle. In 2016, the CBC surveyed viewers on Halloween candy, with the molasses kiss ranking dead last.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:29 PM PST - 64 comments

Happy Samhuinn!

The Samhuinn Fire Festival of 2015. Every year on October 31 the Beltane Fire Society (previously) celebrates the Celtic holiday Samhuinn (aka Samhain, aka Halloween) with a fire festival performance in Edinburgh’s Old Town. [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 1:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Mo' Wax + Nike = downtempo beats for shoe geeks, shoe worms

It's the mid-to-late 1990s, and you're a big shoe company, how do you get in with the kids to push more kicks? Team up with an underground-ish music label to make some laidback beats then get various sports celebrities talking about your shoes, and mix the two together, of course. This actually happened two decades ago, when back in 1997, James Lavelle's Mo' Wax label (previously) teamed up with Nike to make a CD to promote shoes. The result was seven tracks of uncredited vintage '97 trip-hop tracks (likely to be Rich File and Ils) accompanying by the chopped-up chatter of sports celebrities of the day Andre Agassi, David Robinson, Monica Seles, Robbie Fowler, Giacomo Leone, Anita Weyermann and Jason Kidd.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:46 PM PST - 3 comments

"Most drug dealers had a Hell of a story to tell"

In the late 80s and early 90s crack cocaine brings violence and tragedy to the streets of America. For the generation of kids coming up in The Struggle, it brings prison time, destruction or death. But for some of the survivors, there is a way out: Hip-hop. This is the story that's never been told; Planet Rock: The Story of Crack & the Hip-Hop Generation
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 12:42 PM PST - 3 comments

The delay doubled every time a wrong PIN was entered.

"In January 2016, I spent $3,000 to buy 7.4 bitcoins. At the time, it seemed an entirely worthwhile thing to do." - Thus begins an Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 In Bitcoin.
posted by bondcliff at 10:37 AM PST - 108 comments

Three survived...

Dead of Night was a British 1970s supernatural anthology tv series. Sadly only three episodes now exist... but one of those is claimed by some to be one of the most horrific dramas ever to be broadcast. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:28 AM PST - 8 comments

Beyond the Monster Mash

Looking for something to listen to today? How about this three-hour Halloween music show from WFMU? When you’re done with that, how about last year's, or the year before that, or the year before that? (The DJ's name may be a problem for UK readers, more below the fold) [more inside]
posted by thursdaystoo at 6:47 AM PST - 18 comments

Thou surly fat-kidneyed pignut!

The random Shakespeare insult generator.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:24 AM PST - 12 comments

What Would Sarah Polley Do?

Sarah Polley's 20-Year Journey to Adapt Atwood's Alias Grace (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:55 AM PST - 12 comments

Drone spotted near Gatwick Airport

On Sunday 2 July, a drone was spotted on the approach path to London's Gatwick Airport. This video shows the disruption it caused.
posted by jontyjago at 3:26 AM PST - 98 comments

October 30

the uncovering

Patreon moves to restrict adult content on its crowdfunding site. Patreon’s Discriminatory Porn Policy Hurts Creators Who Need the Most Protection. The real consequences of Patreon's adult content crackdown. So what now? [LINKS MAY HAVE NSFW CONTENT FROM THIS POINT ON] Patreon Hears The Hoofbeats Of #Pornocalypse. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:29 PM PST - 77 comments

"They always know where I’m hiding."

Atlas Obscura asked readers to send in their nightmares. Here is a small sampling.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:03 PM PST - 32 comments

Tattooing, very simply put, is blood magic

Two interviews with Noel'le Longhaul, trans tattoo artist and witch.
"For me, learning tattooing was really wrapped up in my process of learning to be trans and what that meant for me. It was a way to take a fraught, complicated, and largely unaided relationship with my body and try to have it more on my terms."
"I also think that tattooing, very simply put, is blood magic and I think that it’s something that is inherently very intense to do... any time we intentionally change our bodies, we’re doing magic, and I think that doing that in a way that feels intentional and feels respectful and consensual is also the ways in which those things overlap." [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 8:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Please note that he's saying "jive" not "die"

Because some things you just can't un-see, so you might as well share - Top of the Pops, 1973: Wizzard, "See My Baby Jive" (SLYT)
posted by e-man at 7:45 PM PST - 30 comments

Mapping race and segregation

How Is Digital Mapping Changing The Way We Visualize Racism and Segregation? A new project from the University of Iowa uses interactive maps to show segregation patterns in Washington, D.C., Omaha, and Nashville in the late 19th century. [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 5:49 PM PST - 7 comments

The Seven Whistlers

The Ellensburgh Capital, 1904: “In some parts of England peculiar whistling or yelping noises are heard in the air after dusk and early in the morning before daylight in the winter months.” The Leicester Chronicle (quoted), 1853: “Strange, mysterious sounds are heard in the air at night, sometimes like the distant singing of a flock of birds, and at other times resembling the smothered wailings of children chanting a funeral dirge.” The Gentleman's Magazine, July 1782, page 338: “Some months ago, I and all my neighbours, as I heard afterwards, late in an evening, were alarmed with a whistling, which, on going out of doors, seemed to be in the air, and at such a height, that everyone thought it just over his head." [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 5:09 PM PST - 6 comments

Spooky Stories To Read In The Dark

It’s that time of year again! Jezebel asks readers to share thier scariest (mostly) true stories to keep you up all night this Halloween Eve. 8 more. 2016 winners (bonus) (previously).
posted by The Whelk at 4:47 PM PST - 26 comments

Serious Music and Two Music Fillips

Just for fun, here's a lot of music by women composers, AND two fun bagpipe performances. Powerpuff Girls themebagpipe one Godfather themebagpipe two
posted by MovableBookLady at 3:45 PM PST - 2 comments

DATE YOUR WEAPONS! EQUIP THEIR LOVE!

Boyfriend Dungeon: Date Your Weapons [YouTube][Game Trailer] A dungeon crawler from indie team Kitfox Games (Moon Hunters, The Shrouded Isle), which combines hack-and-slash gameplay with very, very cute guys and girls.
posted by Fizz at 2:56 PM PST - 14 comments

On Moving; or, The Story of a Little Old House

McMansion Hell writes about the history of a small row house in Baltimore, built around 1901, asking how the people living there might have managed the logistics of moving house and what sort of furniture they might have had. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 2:45 PM PST - 23 comments

Three Minutes Of The Condor

Michael McKean wonders: how can you ruin old movies with cellphone technology?
posted by Chrysostom at 1:59 PM PST - 70 comments

🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Pumpkins! 🎃 Facts! 🎃 Recipes! 🎃 More! 🎃

All About Pumpkins is just that - a site that is all about pumpkins, from a brief history of the squash and general facts, to brief descriptions of 46 varieties of cucurbits or Cucurbitaceae plus 33 other winter squashand tips on growing and storing winter squash. Then there's cooking, carving, and picking the perfect pumpkin. TMI? Jump to the Q & A. And that's just one website, so let's go on for more pumpkiny goodness! [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:34 PM PST - 16 comments

Move over, Harvey Weinstein: It's Kevin Spacey's Turn

In the continuing saga of powerful men in Hollywood all being incredibly horrible, a Buzzfeed story has dropped in which Star Trek: Discovery's own Anthony Rapp accused actor and former closet case Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him when Rapp was 14. Spacey, of course, used this opportunity to finally come out publically as a gay man, which many people, including British journalist Owen Jones, had no time for.
posted by Automocar at 11:12 AM PST - 286 comments

Chicago from the air, 1914

The Chicago Tribune has recently rediscovered 1914 aerial footage of Chicago. Filmed by aviation pioneer Roy Knabenshue from his craft 'The White City' (reportedly the first passenger dirigible, which offered regular flights from the city's White City Amusement Park) it's thought to be either the first or second filmed aerial tour of the city. To show how the city has changed (and how it hasn't) over the past century, they've paired this vintage footage with modern footage of the same locations.
posted by orthicon halo at 5:44 AM PST - 8 comments

Home babies

There was a time when Catherine wanted only to have a plaque erected in memory of these forgotten children. But now she felt that she owed them much more. “No one cared,” she said. “And that’s my driving force all the time: No one cared.”
The New York Times tells the story of Catherine Corless and the lost children of Tuam. (Note: this is a distressing story of child abuse, neglect and death, and mothers forcibly separated from their children, among other elements.) [more inside]
posted by Catseye at 3:59 AM PST - 31 comments

🍔

Do you have strong feelings about cheeseburgers? Google's CEO promises to fix their hamburger emoji first thing Monday, after receiving Twitter complaint.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:28 AM PST - 109 comments

I think therefore I am .. better?

Inadequacy and Modesty - “When should I think that I may be able to do something unusually well?”
posted by Gyan at 2:07 AM PST - 25 comments

October 29

"...and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!"

Day 284: Over the weekend, it was revealed that an indictment resulting from the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller is expected to be made public today.

[this is your U.S. politics thread] [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 10:19 PM PST - 2640 comments

ha-ha-ha-HA ha...

The Bird Who Came to Dinner, The latest shot-for-shot Reanimation project (multipreviously), isn't as random as you'd think. Most if not all of the animators were Brazilian (hence the lips being synched to the Portuguese dub), and Woody Woodpecker is massive there, even getting a CGI movie over there earlier this month. (Content warning: violence, nudity and aesthetic.) As always, if you know of any reanimation projects not listed here or in the 'multipreviously' link, please mention them in the comments.
posted by BiggerJ at 10:11 PM PST - 4 comments

On The Perpetuation Of Varieties and Species

On The Origin Of Theses following the The Academic Family Tree, a nonprofit, user content-driven web database that aims to accurately document and publicly share the academic genealogy of current and historical researchers across all fields of academia. Started with Neurotree. See also the Mathematics Geneaology Project and the Philosophy Family Tree [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:28 PM PST - 18 comments

Digging the Reno

"This is our history, culture, heritage. We are using our voices to change our future." The Reno, a legendary club in Moss Side, has been excavated by former regulars working with Salford University's Applied Archaeology Department. Opened on the corner of Moss Lane East and Princess Road in 1962, its heyday was from 1971 to 1981 when it became a haven for Manchester's mixed-race community who often weren't welcome elsewhere. [more inside]
posted by Helga-woo at 2:59 PM PST - 4 comments

We can't watch black women die

The maternal death rate in the US more than doubled between 1987 and 2013, and black women are dying at the highest rates of all. A 2016 joint report by the Texas Department of State Health Services’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force found that black mothers accounted for 11.4% of Texas births in 2011 and 2012, but 28.8% of pregnancy-related deaths. There are various theories why — persistent poverty, large numbers of women without adequate health insurance, risk factors related to stress and discrimination. All come together in Texas, with a twist that has become one of America’s most confounding public health problems: African American women are dying of pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes here at stunningly high rates.
posted by stillmoving at 12:38 PM PST - 31 comments

“Can the player open every door in the game?”

“The Door Problem” by Liz England [Theory & Design] “Game design is one of those nebulous terms to people outside the game industry that’s about as clear as the “astrophysicist” job title is to me. It’s also my job, so I find myself explaining what game design means to a lot of people from different backgrounds, some of whom don’t know anything about games. [...] One of the reasons I like this example is because it’s so mundane. There’s an impression that game design is flashy and cool and about crazy ideas and fun all the time. But when I start off with, “Let me tell you about doors…” it cuts straight to the everyday practical considerations.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:07 AM PST - 54 comments

I need you to knead me

To help you wind down after a long week, here’s a soothing video of Maru The Cat kneading bread. (recent previouslies) [SLYT]
posted by Room 641-A at 10:42 AM PST - 26 comments

Life is a Rock

Life is a Rock (and the Radio Rolled Me) is a song by a group named Reunion. If you want to know what was going on in 1974 in rock radio music world, you'll get a good idea if you listen to the lyrics. Better yet, read the lyrics.  [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 9:42 AM PST - 41 comments

“Hey, Dad, there’s one of your signs.”

Robert Blakeley, who unwittingly became one of the most ubiquitous graphic designers of the 20th century, has died at 95. In 1961, he created the orange-yellow and black fallout shelter sign.
posted by How the runs scored at 9:02 AM PST - 19 comments

The best antidote to fear of the new is looking back at fear of the old

Pessimists Archive is an annotated podcast examining historical examples of technophobia, alarmism, protectionism, and puritanism. For example: the Walkman, recorded music, horseless carriages, umbrellas, bicycles, and chess. [more inside]
posted by carter at 8:36 AM PST - 21 comments

Māori Myths & Legends

[more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 3:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Looking for Surprises in Senegal

On his first visit to Senegal, Jake Michaels was inspired by the “curated” looks of many of his subjects. As he took portraits on streets, in cafes and at beachside nightclubs, he sought to make the people shine, while also spotlighting the action in the background. (SLNYT, Really terrific pics with understated flair and nice explanations alongside)
posted by smoke at 2:28 AM PST - 21 comments

‘Tiny House Hunters’ and the shrinking American dream

It all started with House Hunters, an HGTV franchise where couples, generally in terrible marriages, pretend to look for a new home even though to appear on the show, the participants must have already purchased a new home. When I am sitting on my couch, probably pretending to work, there is something soothing about the implausible yet aspirational sheen of this show where everyone wants an open floorplan and ground-floor master bedroom with en suite bathroom and ceiling fans they can swing from or whatever. Roxane Gay for Curbed.
posted by ellieBOA at 2:02 AM PST - 113 comments

October 28

Hack More Nazis

Hacking the Holocaust: Remembering the data pirates, forgers, and social engineers who saved thousands.
...Adolfo recalls when he stayed awake for two nights straight to fill an enormous rush order. “It’s a simple calculation: In one hour I can make 30 blank documents; if I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die.”
posted by Buntix at 10:00 PM PST - 17 comments

Everything You Need

Ten minutes to midnight on Tuesday, Jeremy J. Van Ert stepped into a walk-in beer cooler at a Kwik Trip convenience store in Marshfield, Wis. When the doors locked behind him at midnight, he decided that rather than shout for help, he would just camp out, police say. “He just decided to run it out for the night. It had everything that he needed.”
posted by Literaryhero at 8:31 PM PST - 40 comments

Tattúínárdǿla saga

Finally, a complete translation of the Saga of the People of the Tattúín River Valley [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:56 PM PST - 15 comments

You know who ELSE was a VP with insatiable ambition?

Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own dangers. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:55 PM PST - 137 comments

cheese + tea = cheese tea

Apparently "macchiato-like in form", cheese tea is a beverage topped with frothy, whipped cheese. Currently popular in China and Singapore, known as zhi shì chá in Mandarin, and now available in London at Asian tea chain Happy Lemon, this style of tea comes in flavours such as matcha, oolong, jasmine and black tea. Apparently the original Taiwanese recipe used powdered cheese, but adapted over time to use fresh cream cheese for a richer taste. In Los Angeles, options include creme brûlée cream and crushed Oreos over black milk tea. Refinery29: "'The rich cheese foam makes the tea taste even better.'" How best to drink? "When you drink this way, you can feel two layers of taste - cheese followed by tea". Not recommended to make in your Teforia.
posted by Wordshore at 4:33 PM PST - 54 comments

"I think people will look at growing and killing an animal as bizarre"

The business case for clean meat, as the fledgling industry's progenitors prefer to call it, could hardly be plainer. As emerging middle classes in places like China and India adopt Western-style diets, global consumption of animal protein skyrockets. […] But the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 90 percent of the world's fish stocks are now fully exploited or dangerously overfished. More than 25 percent of Earth's available landmass and fresh water is used for raising livestock. Only one of every 25 calories a cow ingests becomes edible beef. And meat processors often must pay disposal companies to haul away their inedible tonnage--hooves, beaks, fur, cartilage.
[more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:45 PM PST - 35 comments

We added ten people without hiring anyone.

How do you solve a noise problem in an open floor plan? [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:31 PM PST - 71 comments

''Dr. Smith," she interrupted.

"What!" he gasped, "the Lee Hopkins prizeman! You!" He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly. "I am sorry to disappoint you," said the lady drily. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes on Women In STEM.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:17 PM PST - 14 comments

Animals With Balls

Bird plays bounce with golf ball. Crow plays balance with golf ball. Baby bear plays with golf flag. Eagle steals golf ball. Squirrels too.
posted by The Whelk at 11:37 AM PST - 9 comments

They weren't ready for this jelly

A team of scientists studying algae in sea ice were using a remotely operated vehicle to look for a dropped ice pick on the bottom of the Chukchi Sea when they caught a good look at a jellyfish dragging its oral tentacles along the bottom (Quirks and Quarks audio interview here). These sightings have been surprising, since scientists had assumed that the species survived winter only in a life stage called polyps–formless masses that cling to rocks and release little baby medusae in the spring. Abstract: Overwintering of gelatinous zooplankton in the coastal Arctic Ocean.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:29 AM PST - 6 comments

May the best Bot win

Halite is an open source artificial intelligence programming challenge where players build bots using the coding language of their choice to battle on a two-dimensional virtual board. [more inside]
posted by garlic at 10:20 AM PST - 6 comments

Carpark cuisine

A tatty car park under a railway line is squeezed between a busy road, an industrial site and a semi-derelict pub covered in graffiti. It’s one of the grittiest parts of east London and probably the last place you would imagine some of the trendiest eateries in the country to be preparing meals. But the grimy spot is just a short moped ride from the gleaming office towers of Canary Wharf and upmarket docklands apartments, and is therefore the perfect location for the latest idea from Deliveroo, the food courier service. It is setting up dozens of “dark kitchens” in prefabricated structures for restaurants that want to expand their businesses without opening expensive high street premises.
Sarah Butler, How Deliveroo's 'dark kitchens' are catering from car parks, The Guardian (28 October 2017). [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 10:18 AM PST - 14 comments

“...combat system is incredibly satisfying and strategic.”

Absolver: A martial arts-focused take on the Dark Souls formula that more than hits its mark [Polygon] “Absolver is a game about martial arts, but it also follows many of the philosophies inherent to martial arts [YouTube][Trailer]— especially the concept of focus. Developed by Sloclap, a team composed of former Ubisoft Paris developers, Absolver has received early comparisons to recent popular action role-playing games, such as the Dark Souls series. While there’s no denying some shared DNA in Absolver, it also has a feel and a tone that are very much all its own. That tone is, above all else, focused. Directed. Though ambitious, Absolver doesn’t let itself get caught up in trying to shove in too many details or make things too complicated. It’s about one thing — proving your hand-to-hand skills by beating up other “prospects” — and it does that one thing incredibly well.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:48 AM PST - 3 comments

First Female Video Game Designer

In 1976, Joyce Weisbecker programmed games for an RCA PC and console based on technology created by her dad–a significant achievement that went undocumented until now.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Who Was Harvey?

A mysterious artist who signed his art "Harvey" painted almost 200 album covers for Savoy Records and its subsidiaries in the 1960s. Most were gospel, but some jazz and blues covers have turned up. Producers at Savoy never knew his identity; they sent concepts to an address in New York, he sent his painting, and they paid him in cash. If you know who Harvey was, please contact site administrators.
posted by goatdog at 7:22 AM PST - 12 comments

October 27

The torment of our powerlessness

On the anniversary of the Uluru land handback, the Australian government formally rejected the Uluru Statement (previously). [more inside]
posted by lollusc at 11:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Animation Supervisor Asleep At The Wheel

Sometimes, a 15 minute long Flash animation ostensibly for children goes places where you wouldn't expect.
Ch. 1. Head Shoulders Knees and Toes ♫ (Mad Scientist Edition)
Ch. 2. If You’re Happy and You Know It ♪ (Demonic Monster Truck With Magic Hands Edition)
Ch. 3. Five Little Skeletons Jumping on the Bed ♬
Ch. 4. A Demon of Pestilence In The Form of A Monster Truck Corrupts the Fair Lands and Causes Mortal Monster Trucks To Tremble
Ch. 5. A Noble Police Truck Attempts to Rid the Lands of the Four Wheeled Demon
Ch. 6. The Foul Realms of the Pestilence Truck concluded by
Ch. 7. Hello! It’s Halloween! ♪ (Post Monster Truck Chaser Edition)
posted by benzenedream at 11:20 PM PST - 9 comments

"How large will the subcontrabassoon be?"

Richard Bobo, professional contrabassoonist, aims to build the subcontrabassoon. If you have questions, such as "Didn't they already build one?" (they did not) and "Why do we need a bassoon in the subcontra range?" (church organs, basically), here are some detailed answers. Here is an interview with more answers. [more inside]
posted by solarion at 10:44 PM PST - 31 comments

Women Who Run As the Wolves

Why Are There No Great Female Werewolves? Lycanthropy has clearly been stolen from women over the years, and yet, while the condition is indeed connected to many supposedly “masculine” traits, the state of werewolfism is also very similar to menstruation. According to most werewolf narratives, the wolf cycle follows the lunar month, and is characterized by behavioral and physical changes caused by chemical fluctuations, much like the menstrual cycle. An Artsy editorial by Julia Oldham [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 9:57 PM PST - 38 comments

Less "Me Time," more "We Time"

"Self-reflection, introspection and some degree of solitude are important parts of a psychologically healthy life. But somewhere along the line we seem to have gotten the balance wrong. Because far from confirming our insistence that 'happiness comes from within,' a wide body of research tells us almost the exact opposite....if there is one point on which virtually every piece of research into the nature and causes of human happiness agrees, it is this: our happiness depends on other people."
posted by drlith at 6:45 PM PST - 50 comments

The end of tea

In distressing news from the Western Colonies, the journey to elevate the tea experience has come to an end. According to Techcrunch, Teforia’s main product was an internet-connected tea infuser that could brew the pre-packaged teas from the startup, which it called “Sips.” Previously, a British person had naturally reviewed the infuser. It is unclear how it will now be possible to brew the perfect cup of tea.
posted by Wordshore at 4:27 PM PST - 94 comments

Loüm

Post/black/drone/avant metallers Krallice collaborate with the mighty Dave Edwardson of Neurosis (vocals, synths) on new record Loüm. Synthesizers recorded at the very cool Vintage Synthesizer Museum.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:40 PM PST - 7 comments

what's up?

Fun with your friend's Facebook and Tinder sessions, Robert Heaton. More:
Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
A tale of love, betrayal, social engineering and Whatsapp [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:06 PM PST - 18 comments

Sex and the Latter-day Saint

The Missionary Positions (NSFW-ish) [more inside]
posted by bonehead at 1:00 PM PST - 20 comments

FRANCIS ALBERT CROSBIE, 2000-2017

An obituary for a very good boy, Francis "Frank" Albert Crosbie, by poet, author and bereaved Lynn Crosbie. [more inside]
posted by OrangeDisk at 12:38 PM PST - 11 comments

Pls Enjoy Jeff Goldblum Enjoying Life

Let Jeff Goldblum Make Your Day With His Creative Compliments of the Thor: Ragnarok Cast [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 12:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Elect Me If You Can

A husband and wife are running for Senate. Against each other.
They also might not be married? Or who they say they are? And nobody in their small town seems to know them? But they have a plan for a “whole new financial system.”
Meet the Deans.
posted by Grandysaur at 12:22 PM PST - 17 comments

The Spongebog, Dancing Bellyfish, or Space Batman?

What happens when you throw a neural network at a list of Hallowe'en costume ideas? Exactly as much awesomeness as you expect.
posted by hanov3r at 12:01 PM PST - 35 comments

Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round

Fidget Spinners .....IN SPACE!!
posted by The Whelk at 11:26 AM PST - 9 comments

“You can sew almost anything into the canvas of a coat.”

First Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Phantom Thread' [YouTube] “Set in the glamour of 1950’s post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:35 AM PST - 40 comments

maybe we should throw an exception here??

ProPublica sought and got access to the source code for the Forensic Statistical Tool, or FST, that NYC's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner created and used till early 2017 to analyze complex DNA evidence in "about 1,350 cases over about 5 1/2 years." Now that a judge has unsealed the codebase, ProPublica's put it on GitHub, and "two newly unredacted defense expert affidavits are also available." From Exhibit C, October 2016: "I have seen no code indicating that any test code has been written for, or automated software testing has been performed on, FST." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 5:31 AM PST - 89 comments

Jackie Chan’s Plan to Keep Kicking Forever

When Chan says, "I know I'm not young anymore. I cannot continue to make Rush Hour 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. How can I continue [to] do this kind of funny face," he pretends to throw a punch and then makes a face like Holy shit, that hurt, because it can hurt to punch somebody, often as much as being punched—a truth about human frailty that Jackie made into a comic trademark, as befits the Tom Hanks of kung fu movies.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:30 AM PST - 44 comments

"I've been asked to say a few words to you Earth people about the stars"

In 1967, Leonard Nimoy released a space synth-lounge album as Mr Spock. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:17 AM PST - 20 comments

City state island nation

Reports of its death were greatly exaggerated, and the end-of-the-nation-state theory itself died at the turn of the millennium. But now it’s back, and this time it might be right.
posted by infini at 3:03 AM PST - 35 comments

October 26

Raging narcissism and paralyzing hatred toward the world OR....

The Ultimate Survival Guide to Not Fitting In.
posted by storybored at 9:32 PM PST - 98 comments

Citizenship 7

Citizenship Seven: High Court due to decide fate of dual-citizen MPs - Live update. Follow up to The ultimate revenge of Pistol & Boo.
posted by unliteral at 8:05 PM PST - 90 comments

He is, incidentally, two years older than the Appalachian Trail

An 82-year-old man hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. Then he danced a jig. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 6:24 PM PST - 16 comments

The captivating horror of category violation

Philosopher Stephen Asma asks, "Why are so many monsters hybrids?"
posted by Rumple at 5:30 PM PST - 28 comments

No Loitering. Loiterers will be made painfully unwanted.

How Hostile Architecture Conquered Los Angeles (Jonny Coleman, LAist) ~ How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away (Robert Rosenberger, The Atlantic ~ Anti-homeless spikes are part of a wider phenomenon of 'hostile architecture' (Ben Quinn, The Guardian) ~ More on the politics of architecture at Failed Architecture. [Hostile architecture previously]
posted by Room 641-A at 5:00 PM PST - 52 comments

No, not that Linus

Linus Åkesson is a fascinating and versatile fellow. I follow his work chiefly because of his chiptunes (most with mp3 downloads), but there's a lot more on his 10+ year old site: cryptic crosswords and deep dives into obscure bugs in obsolete computer systems (or even modern ones). Or, if computers aren't your speed, you can find a claw designed to pull debris from a chimney and a sliding chandelier. There's more, perhaps you'd like to just visit a random page from linusakesson.net
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 3:26 PM PST - 4 comments

…and baby makes "Boo!"

Tauntaun and Luke | Pregnant Zombie | Baker and Cupcake | More Costumes Made Better With Babies
Not quite there yet? Costumes For Pregnant People
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:00 PM PST - 21 comments

There are only 59 shopping days until Christmas

"There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map." The Gift of Death explores the consequences of the useless gift economy. [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 3:00 PM PST - 77 comments

The Date Between Wolf Girl And James Spader's Lonely Doppleganger

In Which Sarah Gailey Witnesses A Conversation Between Not James Spader And A Bedraggled Young Lady
posted by dannyboybell at 1:53 PM PST - 22 comments

Not Every Shape Can Be a Comrade to Sauce

If you missed celebrating World Pasta Day this year, you can still get into the spirit with this Twitter thread ranking 23 less-common pasta shapes.
posted by Copronymus at 1:09 PM PST - 91 comments

A short history of Japanese horror movies

A 15-minute video on Japanese horror from One Hundred Years of Cinema.
posted by sapagan at 12:55 PM PST - 4 comments

"We have to look at those things that cover millions of acres."

The Grain That Tastes Like Wheat, but Grows Like a Prairie Grass
Thinopyrum intermedium, aka intermediate wheatgrass, was developed into a crop Kernza by The Land Institute. General Mills is interested, and so are microbreweries. Is Kernza The Magical Grain That Will Save Us All? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:49 PM PST - 32 comments

World Series time

It's World Series time! The LA Dodgers are playing the Houston Astros, and for the undecided, there are good reasons to root for each. For the Dodgers, I submit the ever-entertaining comparative veteran Yasiel Puig, whose bat-licking ways are memorialized with a colorful design shaved into his hair (with a matching one for his baby omg), and who's fun to watch even when he's declining to swing at a pitch. For the Astros, how about all-star hitter and fielder Jose Altuve, who's also super fun to watch and who might be the best hitter in baseball this season, despite being -- at 5'5" -- the shortest player in the game.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:00 PM PST - 32 comments

Because we don’t know what soup is, and neither do you!

SOMETHING SOMETHING SOUP SOMETHING could be defined as a videogame. We prefer to think of it as an interactive thought experiment: a piece of technology that discloses situations and presents notions in ways that are interactive and negotiable (and maybe even playful).
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:44 AM PST - 24 comments

The rediscovery of Leonardo's Salvator Mundi

Murky provenance, poor restorations, and sold for £45 at Sotheby’s in 1958 -- Leonardo's lost painting, Salvator Mundi, was rediscovered by Dianne Dwyer Modestini when she was trying to undo the damage of of the past and past restoration attempts in 2005. This was remarkable not only as a discovery of a lost work, but also because Leonardo da Vinci has such a small number of surviving paintings, and some are still disputed. Authenticated in 2011, it has made some rounds to international museums, and has again been traveling as an extended pre-sale exhibition by Christie's. Given what is expected to be a remarkably high final sales price, da Vinci's last privately owned painting will probably go back into private hands because no museum can afford the price. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:25 AM PST - 26 comments

Maybe newspapers aren't dead after all

What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake? "...the circulation of the supposedly dying print product may be in decline, but it still reaches many more readers than the supposedly promising digital product in home markets, and this trend holds across all age groups. For all the expense of building, programming and hosting them, online editions haven't added much in the way of revenue, either."
posted by COD at 10:15 AM PST - 55 comments

Trouble In Whitetopia

“And like so many others currently involved in North Idaho politics, Regan’s a California transplant: one of thousands of ex–LAPD officers, doomsday preppers, “traditionalist” Catholics, and far-right evangelicals who’ve flocked to the white, conservative utopia of North Idaho over the last 20 years, working to remake the Republican Party in their own image. Before, they were called libertarians and constitutionalists, or called nothing at all, because there was no political group conservative enough to represent their beliefs.” - Welcome To Idaho, Now Go Home - Anne Helen Petersen tracks how an ultra right wing faction of the GOP look over the state’s politics, and why they’re at war with each other.
posted by The Whelk at 9:11 AM PST - 66 comments

No punks, steam for cooking purposes only

The Brief, Wondrous, High-Flying Era of Zeppelin Dining
posted by Artw at 9:05 AM PST - 40 comments

20 years is arbitrary nonsense. A blip.

“Our software is bullshit, our literary essays are too long, the good editors all quit or got fired, hardly anyone is experimenting with form in a way that wakes me up, the IDEs haven't caught up with the 1970s, the R&D budgets are weak, the little zines are badly edited, the tweets are poor, the short stories make no sense, people still care too much about magazines, the Facebook posts are nightmares, LinkedIn has ruined capitalism, and the big tech companies that have arisen are exhausting, lumbering gold-thirsty kraken that swim around with sour looks on their face wondering why we won't just give them all our gold and save the time.” MeFi's own Paul Ford (previously 1, 2, 3) meditates on 20 years of the internet.
posted by Maecenas at 8:48 AM PST - 62 comments

it's like Vine for old-school console games

Back to Bits is a curated collection of short, small animation loops based on classic video games. Here's the whole Level 2 collection as a video; see also the (maybe slower-loading?) Level 1 archive and corresponding video montage.
posted by cortex at 8:37 AM PST - 2 comments

“Crunch trades short-term gains for long-term suffering,”

Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them by Jason Schreier [The New York Times] “Among video game developers, it’s called “crunch”: a sudden spike in work hours, as many as 20 a day, that can last for days or weeks on end. During this time, they sleep at work, limit bathroom breaks and cut out anything that pulls their attention away from their screens, including family and even food. Crunch makes the industry roll — but it’s taking a serious toll on its workers.” [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:58 AM PST - 96 comments

Shack

Shaq Shack Shacked Shadrach Shellaque
posted by stinkfoot at 7:11 AM PST - 64 comments

But, what are we to wear?

Have you been invited to a glamorous Gilded Age costume party? Looking to upstage the lady wearing the dress made of dead cats? Turn to the 1887 publication Fancy Dresses Described: or, What to Wear at Fancy Balls for some costume inspiration, and its companion volume, Gentlemen's Fancy Dress: How to Choose It for that time when "buckling shoes, gartering, combing, powdering, silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies come under the consideration of the Lords of the Creation."
posted by ChuraChura at 6:07 AM PST - 13 comments

Heavy-petting on a stranger’s stoop.

New York Magazine's "Love Map" project New York Magazine collected stories of love, lust and missed connections in the city and mapped them out for your time-wasting pleasure. [more inside]
posted by Sweetie Darling at 3:40 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The bear who will not sleep alone tonight

Grumly, a toy bear talking in squeaky grunts, was the star of 12-second commercials aired on French TV in 1999, that ended with the "The bear who..." followed by a deadpan anti-joke. Translations under the fold. [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 1:29 AM PST - 5 comments

October 25

American History with Folk Music

How an alternative American history is entwined with folk music.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:31 PM PST - 9 comments

and I have one last nightmare about my last dream.

Telling Halloween stories with an AI. Shelley.ai is an MIT project training software to help write scary stories for Halloween inspired by r/NoSleep. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:42 PM PST - 9 comments

Just shut up I need to craft this park bench for the owl ok?

Nintendo releases details of the new Animal Crossing game, which has soft-launched in Australia (for others). This is the first time the series, which started on the Nintendo 64, has officially appeared on non-Nintendo devices. In Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, you are a camp manager for some familiar animals and maybe others? Players - with customizable skin color (previously) - now live in a camper van. But there's still a big loan to repay, owing thousands of bells to three penguin brothers. Subtle humor appears to have been retained, as has fishing, and connecting with friends. Initial reaction has been positive, though the freemium feature for accelerating progression has drawn critique from e.g. the Nookerati and the designer of Tempest. [Post title and wallpaper] [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 3:46 PM PST - 93 comments

Whisper "Don't pop!"

Soap bubbles can freeze. Who knew?
posted by SLC Mom at 2:51 PM PST - 17 comments

Resistance is possible and beautiful

There are times in human history — and this is surely one of them — when there comes a sort of collective holding of the breath, an unwilling suspension of belief (to mangle Coleridge) in our leaders, our institutions, and the very idea that we might have some sort of shared purpose in this mess-making we call living.
Ian Gill writes on resistances and victories in Skeena River country, British Columbia.
posted by Rumple at 1:25 PM PST - 3 comments

The Canonical Artifact and proof of intelligent life

Bell Labs scientist Gerard Foschini proposed that the chance of intelligent life emerging in our universe was 10^264, meaning that either we are very unlikely to exist or something besides the normal laws of physics predicts life. His derived these odds by speculating about the The Canonical Artifact [pdf], the smallest thing a being could make that could not reasonably be created by chance alone, but that intelligent societies would be drawn to create. He proposed that the Canonical Artifact would be a sculpture demonstrating the 26 sporadic groups (read more if you want to learn about The Monster, Moonshine, and group theory). Now the definitive indicator of intelligence in the galaxy now exists! (though it is not that impressive to look at)
posted by blahblahblah at 12:32 PM PST - 74 comments

The body broker industry

In the market for human bodies, almost anyone can sell the dead, a Reuters special report: "Each year, thousands of Americans donate their bodies in the belief they are contributing to science. In fact, many are also unwittingly contributing to commerce, their bodies traded as raw material in a largely unregulated national market." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:12 PM PST - 46 comments

"[T]his audience exists, and it's not going anywhere."

Barstool. Hates. Women. Lindsay Gibbs examines how ESPN's partnership with Barstool Sports to court the "PC-phobic 18- to 34-year-old man" blew up. Content warning for misogynistic language and humor.
posted by gladly at 11:38 AM PST - 40 comments

Ghost Hunters, 1803

Assault, Robbery, and Murder: The Dark History of "Bedsheet Ghosts" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Kill List

The Unseen – A Guide to Recent Lesser-Known Horror Films
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:12 AM PST - 98 comments

The Domino has Fallen

Fats Domino, rock pioneer, dead at 89.
posted by pt68 at 8:02 AM PST - 75 comments

Is that you dear?

The just announced Amazon Key will let delivery people go into your house to deliver packages for you.
The service relies on a Amazon’s new Cloud Cam and compatible smart lock. The camera is the hub, connected to the internet via your home Wi-Fi. The camera talks to the lock over Zigbee, a wireless protocol utilized by many smart home devices.
[more inside]
posted by octothorpe at 7:58 AM PST - 215 comments

FCC Votes To End 77-Year-Old “Main Studio Rule”

The FCC voted 3 to 2 yesterday to eliminate the "Main Studio Rule," which requires local TV and radio broadcasters to maintain studios in the communities where they are licensed. [more inside]
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:12 AM PST - 79 comments

Truly not just a river in Egypt

Struggle Over the Nile The history and politics of the Nile, a river that is a source of sustenance but also one of potential conflict.
posted by infini at 7:00 AM PST - 2 comments

Dynatron Radio

The beautiful radios of the Dynatron company, founded in 1927 by the Hacker brothers, are preserved at the Dynatron Museum
posted by clawsoon at 5:45 AM PST - 19 comments

The Taika Waititi Fan Post

Taika Waititi is a New Zealand film director, writer, actor, painter, and comedian. While you may soon be watching Waititi's latest film - Thor: Ragnarok - it's worth checking out what convinced Hollywood to bank on him. [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 5:15 AM PST - 54 comments

Memory, forgetting, and jerks

Origin of society looks very different from social science and anthropology; origin of consciousness looks very different from psychology; origin of life looks very different from biology.
posted by clew at 12:03 AM PST - 28 comments

October 24

The clouds part. The sky cracks open.

AHHHHH. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:03 PM PST - 31 comments

The unexpected challenges of sleepovers, ouija games, and thumbsucking

For your Halloween season viewing pleasure, or otherwise, here are eight horror movie shorts: One Last Dive; The Sleepover; Don't Move; The Little Mermaid; Suckablood; Perished; So Pretty; and the sequel to So Pretty, So Dark.
posted by orange swan at 10:50 PM PST - 6 comments

The Ultimate Spontaneous Involvement in a Natural Medium

October thus far has been a very, very good month for surfers the world over. From CT super-jocks in Europe, to early-bird arrivals on the North Shore, to everyone and their dog in California – everywhere has been getting waves. And it’s not stopping anytime soon; next stop, Jaws. The Pe’ahi Challenge has been green lit to run from Friday through Saturday, with peak wave heights potentially hitting the 40 to 50-foot range, courtesy of a storm brewing in the Pacific’s northwest corner. As of now, the apex of the swell is projected to unload upon Jaws on Friday afternoon, and continue into Saturday morning. [more inside]
posted by stinkfoot at 10:02 PM PST - 4 comments

“Complex women, interesting women, women who defy stereotypes...”

There is One Good Thing About 2017: Lots of Queer Women In Games [Waypoint] “2017 has been an infuriating, sad, disgusting year, politically. But it has also been a great year for games, and maybe the greatest year so far for games starring or about queer women. Prey (my GOTY pick thus far) was amazing for so many reasons, not the least of which was a very cute and well-done relationship between two women in a main quest storyline (and, again, the protagonist if you picked a woman character). Life is Strange: Before the Storm leans heavily into the gay. Butterfly Soup, which I wrote about a bit a few weeks ago is a hilarious visual novel about four young queer Asian-American women who play baseball. At least, from what I've played, that seems like a higher-than-usual percentage of mainstream games featuring queer women front and center. In all of these instances—outside of Life is Strange—we're talking about queer women of color.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:12 PM PST - 13 comments

Classically, Resurrection is a 7th level cleric spell

The uncanny resurrection of Dungeons & Dragons. [SLNewYorker]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:07 PM PST - 107 comments

Remoteness, clean air, cameraderie, and making money

An Acclaimed War Photographer Turns Her Lens on Canada’s Tree Planters
posted by jacquilynne at 6:45 PM PST - 17 comments

Several hours and 17 unrecognizable courses later...

Pete Wells writes up his preliminary impressions of Vespertine. [more inside]
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 5:56 PM PST - 47 comments

"Have a ROTTEN DAY! Pfffft! Pffffffttbbtt!"

Charles Martinet, the well-known voice of Mario, Luigi and Wario, has an Instagram account where he sometimes posts charming little videos of toys of the characters with improvised voices. There is a YouTube compilation of them....
posted by JHarris at 5:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Furniture for cats

Here is some miniature furniture for your cat to sit on.
posted by Wordshore at 3:08 PM PST - 36 comments

RIP Benson.

Robert Guillaume, forever known as Benson, has died. A versatile performer, he stole the show in an episode of Good Times and appeared in an all African-American revival of Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit. He once replaced Michael Crawford in a production of Phantom of the Opera; here he sings The Music of the Night.
posted by Melismata at 3:06 PM PST - 88 comments

"Mr. President, I rise today to say: Enough."

Day 278: Alert the daycare staff. [this is the U.S. politics thread] [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 1:46 PM PST - 1710 comments

“Ethiopia,” I venture. - “Which Ethiopia?”

Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street . Theodore Gioia, on contemporary coffee culture: ‘Historically, the coffee house was a center of learning and knowledge, the birthplace of the newspaper and the encyclopedia. “A sort of democratic club,” mused author Stefan Zweig [...] The death of the cafe signals a larger shift in values; the contemporary consumer does not seek space for their inner life but their outer persona. So through the gradual tides of gentrification, neighborhoods slowly evict the old-fashioned cafe and renovate the democratic club as a playground for plutocrats.‘ [more inside]
posted by The Toad at 1:44 PM PST - 40 comments

Unclear as to whether the cat pictured is named Delilah

Rarely Seen Photos of Freddie Mercury with His Long-Time Love Jim Hutton: Mercury was a famously private person, but Hutton shared photographs from his personal collection; they appear in his memoir titled Mercury and Me. The pictures are a candid and intimate chronicle of their loving relationship during this time. They also showcase the normalcy of the couple as they celebrated holidays, took vacations, and cuddle with their cat.
posted by Existential Dread at 1:16 PM PST - 17 comments

The Suffix That Tells the Story of Modern Science

Why did words that end in “tron” once sound so futuristic? By David Munns at The Atlantic. Defeated it might be, but like victory, tron has many fathers.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:04 PM PST - 65 comments

I predict this post is correlated with excellent comments.

A common (and often misleading) internet retort is "correlation does not equal causation" - but than how do we identify causes? And what does correlation equal? The answer can be interesting and complicated, but if you want to understand how modern social science identifies when correlative effects are causal, Alex Edmans' Layman's Guide to Separating Correlation and Causation is a great place to start. Also, posting about correlation is itself strongly correlated (likely causally) with the following two links being posted in the comments, so I preempt them here: the inevitable xkcd comic and the Spurious Correlation site.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:47 AM PST - 25 comments

This post is so sew.

Sometimes I find a thing that is not in my wheelhouse but I think will be of interest to my fellow mefites. This is one of those posts. Open Culture has compiled an Online Trove of Historic Sewing Patterns & Costumes. They all appear to be free to download, including the very cool looking Custom Corset Pattern Generator. Enjoy!
posted by Room 641-A at 11:36 AM PST - 14 comments

But you knew that, right?

Bicycle Suspension is Evil and why said suspension may be among the last traces of our existence on the planet.
posted by colinprince at 11:16 AM PST - 92 comments

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through

What the Hell Is Mel Gibson Doing in the Family Comedy ‘Daddy’s Home 2? The film co-stars past hate crime enthusiast Mark Wahlberg
posted by coffee and minarets at 10:00 AM PST - 148 comments

"that tremendous cataclysm which almost ruined Italy"

"It was a Caporetto." On this day 100 years ago, an Italian byword for disaster was born. Advancing through mist, a combined German/Austria-Hungarian attack surprised and shattered the Italian 2nd army, driving deeply into the Veneto Plain. Italian suffered almost 300,000 casualties, retreated nearly one hundred miles, and almost lost Venice. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 8:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Black hole

You can now read Stephen Hawking's PhD thesis online. Or perhaps not. Though apparently even the mighty Hawkings can make a mistake.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:10 AM PST - 14 comments

"They are texting to wear the wrong shoes."

In September 2016, Bethany Barnes -- a new K-12 education beat reporter at The Oregonian -- published a story that revealed a long history of student complaints against Mitch Whitehurst, a veteran teacher in Portland. For the next year, 'she combed through public records and yearbooks, reached out to victims, cold-called district officials and even showed up at their homes to stitch together a decades-long timeline that tracked how the school district had repeatedly opted to protect a powerful male teacher accused of abuse at the expense of children.' Her 4,000-word investigation, Benefit of The Doubt, was published in August 2017. She’s since written a series of follow-ups that continue to prod at the district’s handling of the case.

Some links in this post contain discussions of sexual harassment and assault that some may find disturbing. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:58 AM PST - 28 comments

NOT "most famous"

The Best Band From Every State , Dan Jackson and Anthony Schneck, Thrillist - "The Neptunes aren't a band!" you yell at your computer, before realizing it's an inanimate object and we can't hear you. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:19 AM PST - 120 comments

Catholics opted for the poor, but the poor opted for the markets

The death and life of liberation theology.
Liberation Theology is a very Latin American movement.
The right considers it all a communist plot
Liberation theology, once reviled by the church, is embraced by Pope Francis
The Catholic vs. Libertarian debate continues. Is it just coincidence that the Koch brothers are pouring money into Catholic University's new business school.
posted by adamvasco at 4:11 AM PST - 30 comments

“Doctors ordered her to lie on her side in bed and not move”

‘Reality shrivels. This is your life now’: 88 days trapped in bed to save a pregnancy by Katherine Heiny.
posted by Kattullus at 4:01 AM PST - 31 comments

October 23

you can be sad and bubbly at the same time lol

Crushing on your bff's crush! Staying home from school to work on an anime fansite! Having your dad pull out your console during a boss battle in a fit of rage! Relive all of your favorite middle school memories in lost memories dot net, a browser game in the tradition of Emily Is Away.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:49 PM PST - 2 comments

¿Qué es 'kicksplode' en español?

Michael Bay is producing a live-action Dora the Explorer movie. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Samurai Baby Names & Cop Tactics

Lots of rules about samurai behavior, tips, and names. As usual with such old books, the author and the dates are debatable, but it has lots of interesting tidbits about samurai education, behavior, and even what to name your baby samurai. The second translation is of a tactical manual for policemen in the late 1880s. Samurai Secrets. One basic necessity, for instance, is rope for tying guys up, and if you don't have rope, paper-wrapped twine will do.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:06 PM PST - 8 comments

2017 Municipal Equality Index

In partnership with the Equality Federation Institute, HRC released its sixth annual Municipal Equality Index, the only nationwide rating system of LGBTQ inclusion in municipal law, policy and services, ranking cities on five metrics:
  • Non-Discrimination Laws
  • Municipality as an Employer
  • Municipal Services
  • Law Enforcement
  • Relationship with LGBTQ community
Find your city here. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 8:38 PM PST - 26 comments

Give the drummers some

On 07/07/07, at 7:07PM, Boredoms constricted themselves in the coils of a 77-drummer boa. 77 BOADRUM was performed under the Brooklyn Bridge, at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park by the East River.Full Audio via Egg City Radio. • The full lineup of drummers is available above the comments section and under the fold on this recording.In Japan, the packaged recording sells for ¥7777
posted by not_on_display at 8:22 PM PST - 8 comments

“You were almost a Jill Sandwich.”

The Best Horror Games [PC Gamer] “So you're looking to spook yourself with the best horror games you can play on PC, are you? Whether you're into jump scares, interactive fiction, thematically interesting stories or just large men running after you with a chainsaw, we've included a wide variety of games that'll hopefully freak you the hell out. Like our lists of best strategy games or best FPS games, we tried to focus on a variety of horror experiences that still hold up well today, though we've expanded the remit slightly to include a few retro curios as well.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:11 PM PST - 50 comments

Corvus oculum corvi non eruit

Latin phrases translated into British football terms, for your defense against upperclass bullying.*
* interesting and useful for non fans too.
posted by Artw at 5:33 PM PST - 26 comments

Nationalize The Pubs!

A hundred years ago Britain experimented with state-run drinking establishments to turn rowdy bars into community hubs.
posted by The Whelk at 12:20 PM PST - 26 comments

When an AI tries writing Slashdot headlines

Slashdot wanted to see what machine-generated headlines would look like. So they asked research scientist Janelle Shane to train an open source neural network on the site's 20 years of tech news headlines -- over 162,000. Shane writes that some "appeared to come from an alternate, much more advanced, somewhat terrifying timeline." [more inside]
posted by destinyland at 11:59 AM PST - 40 comments

A thousand fonts, quantified

Anatomy of a Thousand Typefaces is a nifty online tool that helps you find fonts to use by implementing some of the ideas in Cole's Anatomy of Type book. As explained in this post, it uses objective ways to classify fonts by things like the height of the "x" character and the proportions of letters, which make it easier to find similar (or different) fonts. Turn on advanced filters to see the cool area charts.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:58 AM PST - 12 comments

“Bow down, bitches” is a lie

"There is still no occupation in which a woman who works full time earns a lot more than a man, and few in which women have parity. Women have less savings than men, and are less likely to qualify for a mortgage. The cost of living, for everyone, has risen in urban areas. These are the parameters of the psychic vise, for growing numbers of women are the main or sole breadwinners for their families. When a woman delays children and partnership into her 30s to earn money and establish independence and then sees how her paths are blocked, it is perhaps no wonder that something like anguish is the result."
posted by Lycaste at 10:51 AM PST - 46 comments

Please, my cat Pierogi, she’s very missing

Grace Spelman has a new apartment, and a small white cat who likes to explore and hide. Can you help her find Pierogi? [more inside]
posted by figurant at 10:42 AM PST - 67 comments

Pollution kills 9 million people a year

Study finds pollution is deadlier than war, disaster, hunger. "Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 10:05 AM PST - 32 comments

Bite-size horror

Halloween, when even the candy ads (well, sort of) are scary. Viewers watching various Fox networks over the past week have been visited by some strange and chilling advertising just in time for Halloween. For this, they can thank Fox and Mars candy brands, which teamed up to get up-and-coming horror directors to make disturbing short films, which have been running in their entirety during commercial breaks. Original story in AdWeek, with an interview of the directors of "Floor 9.5."
posted by holborne at 9:03 AM PST - 7 comments

"Any questions???" An Oral History of David S. Pumpkins

“Gentlemen, I swear I will figure out who this David Pumpkins is by the time it’s on television.” He thought it was insane. When you say it out loud, it’s insane. “Hey Tom, so you play a guy. His name’s David Pumpkins. He’s in a haunted elevator. No one knows who he is and you’re just super confident and cool.”
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:28 AM PST - 67 comments

"Displacement is not beautiful": Vancouver and artwashing

Major Vancouver real estate developer Westbank Corporation has come under fire for its free downtown art exhibit, Fight for Beauty, which contains works by renowned Vancouver artists Fred Herzog, Stan Douglas, Shane Koyczan and Douglas Coupland. Vancouver activist Melanie Ma, however, calls the Westbank exhibit "artwashing," or using "arts and culture as a facade or Trojan horse to go into neighbourhoods and claim it as revitalisation, when in fact it's a profit-driven motive that results in displacement and gentrification of the residents in those neighbourhoods." Ma and other critics in Vancouver's art and activist community have launched their own satirical website, The Real Fight for Beauty. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:06 AM PST - 10 comments

The Taylor Compressor

The Taylor Compressor relies solely on the energy inherent in falling water. It is a machine that uses no moving parts, does not require any fuel to operate, and is completely self perpetuating as long as there’s an adequate supply of water. The hydraulic compressor at Victoria was able to supply enough compressed air to run the entire operation, including the hoists, rock crushers, drills, and even the mine’s short line railroad.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:29 AM PST - 32 comments

October 22

Smartphones Are Killing Americans

In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade. Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking. ... Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks don’t explain the surge in road deaths. There are however three big clues, and they don’t rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 11:29 PM PST - 266 comments

An elegy for Odeon Panton Street

An elegy for Odeon Panton Street [via mefi projects]
posted by ellieBOA at 11:17 PM PST - 6 comments

It ain’t high art but it helps to be high

Wiley Wallace’s art is what you’d get if you tried to create a Spielbergian “kids in peril” classic on mescaline. Interestingly, Wallace says that he uses his own children as models for the characters in his paintings. A press release states that “at times realistic depictions deliquesce into abstract blurs of bright colors, while at others subtle apparitions make their way into otherwise unassuming everyday scenes.” Yeah, they “deliquesce”…
Website and Instagram
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Wer einen menschen rettet, rettet die ganze welt.

On this day in 1907, Emilie Pelzl was born in Alt-Moletein, a tiny Moravian village in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1928, at the age of 20, Emile married a traveling salesman from Zwittau. [more inside]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:09 PM PST - 7 comments

Lost Mothers

“The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world. Yet these deaths of women from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth are almost invisible.
We were struck by how many perished in the postpartum period, by the number of heart-related deaths, by the contributing role sometimes played by severe depression and mood disorders — and by the many missed opportunities to save lives.”
ProPublica and NPR have spent the last few months searching social media and other sources for mothers who died, trying to understand what happened to them and why.
posted by Grandysaur at 7:56 PM PST - 27 comments

The bloody rise and frightful fall of Fangoria

With no new print issues since 2015, most readers and contributors have concluded that classic horror movie magazine Fangoria will be an internet-only phenomenon going forward. EW delves into how Fangoria got to where it was, and what went wrong. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:46 PM PST - 12 comments

School’s out forever

Schools Without Rules: An Orlando Sentinel Investigation (Leslie Postal, Beth Kassab and Annie Martin, Orlando Sentinel): The Orlando Sentinel spent months reporting on Florida’s scholarship programs, which will send nearly $1 billion to private schools this year. The Sentinel also reviewed thousands of pages of Florida Department of Education documents, court records and other materials in addition to interviewing dozens of people, including parents, students, school operators and policy experts. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 6:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Lick your own cat

As featured on Mashable, the successfully Kickstarter-funded LICKI Brush allows the cat owner to "realistically" simulate licking their cat.
posted by Wordshore at 4:39 PM PST - 48 comments

The Golden Age of Animation

Mild-Mannered Superman "A weekly project to make the best, most complete version of the classic 1941-1943 Fleischer Studios Superman short films possible."
[All 17 remastered episodes in a single playlist] [A short history of the cartoon] [Previously]
posted by Sibrax at 4:26 PM PST - 13 comments

They who are falling

The mechanics of history, one of a series of kinetic sculptures with acrobats by circus artist Yoann Bourgeois.
posted by Rumple at 2:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Here, Have a Skull or Two

Skull carving was his way of rehabilitating himself. Victor Seiche was a hard-core drug addict. He kicked all the drugs at once and to save his sanity, he taught himself how to carve skulls (animal, not human). The main link gives a lot of information about him and how he got started, with some photos. But here's his Instagram page Victor's Skulls which has a lot more skulls and an occasional price. He works to commission, too. I think they're beautiful.
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:29 PM PST - 6 comments

“For every joke that lands, another one makes me feel uncomfortable,”

'The Fractured But Whole' Has the Same Identity Crisis as Modern South Park [Waypoint] “Nostalgia and references were enough to propel me through The Stick of Truth, but while playing the sequel, The Fractured But Whole [YouTube][Trailer], rose-tinted glasses haven't been enough, my nervous chuckles replaced with sighs. This is a game where one of the main characters, Cartman, dresses up as a Racoon-themed superhero and calls himself The Coon. The joke, of course, is "coon" is also a racial slur for black people. Pretty funny stuff. It gets even better when one of the main missions has players invading the homes of innocent black people and helping the police arrest them. The punchline is that the police are racist! The Fractured But Whole, much like modern South Park, often feels like "well-meaning" people desperately holding onto an ability to laugh at shitty jokes made at the expense of people who don't deserve it, even though they know better.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:18 PM PST - 59 comments

“Do not take anything for granted. Not even words.”

In February, Toronto imam Ayman Elkasrawy was accused of hate-preaching against Jews. He was condemned by many, including members of his own faith. In the aftermath, he reached out to the local Jewish community to educate himself and learn from his mistakes. Still, a key question remained unanswered: did he really say what he was accused of saying?
posted by zarq at 2:07 PM PST - 20 comments

THE PROTECTION RACKET OF SEXISM

Caroline Orrr writes for Playboy: Why Do Women Point Fingers? The Rise of Victim-Blaming in a Country Under Assault
The tendency to blame women for men’s transgressions is nothing new, nor is the inclination to shift blame from the perpetrators of sexual assault to the victims of it. Many of the responses to other recent sexual assault scandals, like those involving Bill Cosby and President Donald Trump, mirror what we’ve seen over the past weeks in response to the allegations against Weinstein. And like we saw with those scandals, the tendency to blame victims of sexual assault and excuse or justify the behavior of the perpetrator is not limited to men. In fact, some of the most intense and vitriolic victim-blaming responses came from those most likely to be victimized themselves: women. At first glance, this seems entirely counterintuitive. Why would women attack other women who are victims of sexual violence, a crime that overwhelmingly affects women?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:05 PM PST - 18 comments

To complain is to be truly alive

Being a person is terrible. And complaining about it is the purest, most soothing form of protest there is. Complaining feels so good. (Samantha Irby on complaining, SL NYT)
posted by stillmoving at 1:04 PM PST - 22 comments

Brexit Decision Tree

Brexit: deals and no deals from Flip Chart Fairy Tales, the post has a picture of 3 yes/no questions and a description of the various consequences that may follow for the UK and the EU. Sometimes I need a picture and words that describe it.
posted by kingless at 12:57 PM PST - 34 comments

The World is Dead. Long Live the World!

Has the World Already Ended? Or Just History? [more inside]
posted by Glibpaxman at 12:36 PM PST - 19 comments

“You, along with DEVO, were guinea pigs for a really stupid idea..."

October 30th will mark the 35th anniversary of DEVO's tour Oh, No! Its DEVO tour, launched with a televised concert broadcast to college campuses and via Pay-Per-View. In 3-D. After a 30 minute opening set by Wall of Voodoo. DEVO showcased their new stage show, with synchronized video for the first seven songs, projected on a 12 foot high screen behind the band. The second act of the show would be the worlds first live, 3-D broadcast. Unfortunately, things went off the rails, and quick. [more inside]
posted by SansPoint at 10:02 AM PST - 19 comments

YADKCOLSPAC

EVERY YEAR WE GET TOGETHER AND MAKE SALMON FOR TOAST, EVERY YEAR WE GET A CROCKETY BLOAT, EVERY YEAR WE GET DRUNK ON THE DOCKS, AND EVERY YEAR WE HAVE SEX WITH OUR CAPS LOCKS!!!! RELATED AT LEAST FOR THE FIRST PART
posted by kenko at 8:31 AM PST - 135 comments

An Argument is Not a Fight

EQUAL MEANS EQUAL et al. v. US Department of Education and Betsy DeVos is a lawsuit filed filed four weeks after Devos replaced Obama adminstration guidance for campus sexual assault or abuse investigations with new instructions that permit universities to require criminal standards of evidence in adjudicating civil rights complaints. The federal complaint is here. Plaintiffs argue facts of law that show Ms DeVos not only exceeded authorities vested in the DoE, the new instructions to university administrators violate MA and federal constitutional protections. [previously]
posted by marycatherine at 8:07 AM PST - 16 comments

Inflatable Hairy Bits

Recently posted on YouTube was a video of a Creatonotos Gangis moth from Southeast Asia. Consider it your Sunday morning dose of NOPE.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:45 AM PST - 20 comments

There was no toilet paper in the bathroom.

“Eater’s own list of essential Paris restaurants includes its vegetarian tasting menu as a when-in-Paris must. Earlier this year, the restaurant’s three-Michelin-star status was reaffirmed for the twentieth year in a row, an accolade that means its cuisine is "worth a special journey."

“I was in Paris for the briefest of vacations, and L’Arpège is where I wanted to spend one of my two fleeting afternoons. In exchange, at one of France’s best restaurants, I had one of my worst meals of the year.” Ryan Sutton for Eater.
posted by The Whelk at 4:24 AM PST - 66 comments

October 21

On today's episode of Long Attention Span Theatre: Essays on Directors

Cameron Beyl, creator of The Directors Series has developed an impressive and epic (yet accessable) ongoing series of video essays examing the careers of the Coen Brothers (3.5 hrs in 7 parts), Stanley Kubrick (3 hrs in 5 parts), David Fincher (4 hrs in 5 parts), Paul Thomas Anderson (2.5 hrs in 5 parts), and Christopher Nolan (3.5 hrs in 4 parts.) In addition to the video essays there are many (too many to count) short articles covering everything from Captain Eo to Rob Zombie's CSI: Miami episode, "L.A." (h/t Open Culture)
posted by Room 641-A at 5:40 PM PST - 12 comments

A Friendship Story

Sriracha is a rescue kitty with cerebellar hypoplasia. She soon met Batman, a rescue piglet who also lived at Rancho Relaxo [FB]. Batman comforted Sriracha during her occasional seizures. They became best friends. Unfortunately, Batman died from a congenital condition. Fortunately, Rancho Relaxo soon rescued Batman’s big brother Dragonlord. It was True Love. Sriracha was recently adopted [Instagram], but Dragonlord soon found another Best Feline Forever: Raisin. [via]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Some days you are the moose, some days you are the wolf

Northern Ontario Moose vs Wolf. It begins with a serene autumn scene of a Moose standing alone in a still Northern Lake.
posted by saucysault at 1:10 PM PST - 59 comments

You are nowhere

One night, early in the season, I asked Jamie how long he thought I could last. “Out there,” I said, gesturing toward the TV. “Alone.”
A short memoir by Emily Lackey.
posted by Rumple at 1:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Julian May (1931-2017)

Science fiction author Julian May has passed away at age 86: "In Memoriam: Julian May" from the SFWA; "May the Force Be With Her," a profile related to her First Fandom Hall of Fame Award; Chicon II / TASFIC entry at Fancyclopedia 3 ("Julian May was the first female chairman of a Worldcon"); "Julian May," her entry in The Encyclopedia of SF; her ISFDB entry; interviews with May from 1982 and 2015. Perhaps best known for her Saga of Pliocene Exile (a brief appreciation; B&N retrospective; TVTropes entry), May's first SF story sales are available online ("Dune Roller" Astounding, Dec. 1951, with illustrations by May; "Star of Wonder," Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb. 1953) along with several letters to Astounding: 1, 2, and 3.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:09 AM PST - 51 comments

“...closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace.”

Big-budget, single-player gaming isn’t dead (yet) [Ars Technica] “Yesterday's news that EA is shutting down Visceral Games is bad news for fans of franchises like Dead Space and for the studio's unnamed Star Wars project. But the abrupt shutdown has also caused a bit of an existential crisis to creep into the game industry chatter regarding the future of big-budget, single-player, story-driven gaming in general. [...] Looking around at the most popular games these days, it's not hard to see the market shift Söderlund is talking about. From Hearthstone and Overwatch, to Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Rocket League, to Dota 2 and League of Legends, to Clash of Clans and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, and on and on, the games getting the most player attention (and money) today tend to be never-ending online competitions.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:46 AM PST - 76 comments

Welcome to the Literature Club!

It's October, month of horror! Unrelatedly, Doki Doki Literature Club! (steam) is a cute (and free) Visual Novel, roughly 2-4 hours long, where you can join a Literature Club, write poetry and make new friends! Some tips: it's much better played blind, it has a somewhat slow start, and it's not over until you've seen the credits. Oh, and it's definitely not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.
posted by Memo at 8:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Midwestern Girl would very much like to be excluded from this narrative

A man travels from New York to Florida. There’s no reason for Midwestern Girl to be in this story, but there she is in Virginia at a rest stop, gas pump in her hand. Iowa, the man says, looking at her car’s tags. You’re a long way from home.
Am I? she wonders.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:46 AM PST - 62 comments

Doll's Eyes: Fatal if consumed by humans.

Cat Whitney posts a collection of photos and brief descriptions [twitter thread] of her favorite spooooooky plants and fungi.
posted by moonmilk at 7:43 AM PST - 18 comments

Sticky wicket

Cricket is rotting away. Everything worthwhile about it is being destroyed
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:48 AM PST - 53 comments

October 20

Life Is Peachy: Nü Metal And America

Invisible Oranges on the rise of nü metal and its reflection of the emptiness of Clinton-era suburbia.
So you have a mass a teens growing up in pointless “towns” with no discernable industry or economy in a nation that had declared itself to have reached the “end of history,” in which no big dreams ought be strived, run by parents dedicated to the fiction that life is a non-event bereft of hardship. Who wouldn’t be miserable? Who wouldn’t be angry?
posted by Existential Dread at 10:02 PM PST - 83 comments

You make me so happy it turns back to sad

Taylor has a new song out. I find it more appealing than LWYMMD. In fact, it's Gorgeous.
posted by hippybear at 7:56 PM PST - 81 comments

The whisper network

“[The] news has brought to the surface the private conversations women have been having — the warnings whispered to each other to avoid getting hurt. As women have written in the past few days, these whisper networks are a lifeline...
They have helped keep me safe. But a concern keeps gnawing at my conscience, and I don’t have an answer: What about the women who don’t get this information?
Relying on a whisper network isn’t enough; the current situation is unacceptable, and we need to think about what we can do to change it.”

It’s time to weaponize the "whisper network”
posted by Grandysaur at 7:39 PM PST - 103 comments

Fornasetti Small-Scale Archtecture

He's been called a surrealist but he seems more of a classicist with a touch of surrealism. Back in the 1950s Fornasetti, along with Gio Ponti, started making limited editions of architecturally interesting furniture. Most of them are in museums now but here's one went that went to auction, having once been owned by Henry Bernard, the French architect and Fornasetti's friend: Sinai & Sons Auction (be sure to click on "Read More") [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:24 PM PST - 8 comments

A national seance

“I wanted the whole nation to be terrified,” he continues. “And yet they would be creating the very thing they’re terrified of. What if they wanted to see a ghost to the extent that they actually created it? What if they supernaturally held hands in the dark, millions of people all wanting the same thing to happen at the same time?” - 25 years later the cast and creators tell tell the story of Ghostwatch, the one of the BBC's most spooky and controversial shows. (Previously)
posted by Artw at 3:58 PM PST - 46 comments

Funny Girl

"There was an expectation that girls would be quieter. And wouldn't ruin their dresses and wouldn't be roughhousing and cracking jokes in church," she says. "And I was very often doing a lot of those things," thanks in part to her father's encouragement to let her be what she was: funny. Today we encourage our daughters to be ambitious and athletic, opinionated and outspoken. We want them focused on STEM and outfitted in T-shirts that read, "Who runs the world? Girls." But what if raising truly empowered girls also means raising funny ones? What if we teach our daughters that humor is their turf — just as much as any boy's? -- Want to raise an empowered girl? Then let her be funny. (By Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post)
posted by Room 641-A at 3:34 PM PST - 9 comments

The judge who codes

Profile by Sarah Jeong of U.S. District Court Judge for Northern California William Alsup, 72, the presiding judge in Oracle v. Google (about Android and Java APIs) and also will preside in Waymo v. Uber (previously.) Judge Alsup is a long-time ham radio operator and programs in BASIC.
posted by larrybob at 2:46 PM PST - 26 comments

Not your average felines

Adventure cats! They climb rock walls, they swim in the ocean (don't miss the instagram), they ride bicycles and motorcycles and skateboards and surfboards! But don't make them walk. [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 2:16 PM PST - 20 comments

Beating on someone else’s drum is a big no-no. It’s a big dis …

An oral history of the 2002 movie Drumline. Nick Cannon's greatest gift to popular culture (and arguably the 'most sports movie ever' despite not featuring any actual sports) was inspired by superstar music producer Dallas Austin's years in his high school band, but it ended up becoming about the culture of halftime events at HBCUs. [more inside]
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:56 PM PST - 18 comments

Am successfully passing as a cat. No one suspects a thing. Woof.

This is Nathan the Beach Cat, and she loves the beach. Video evidence [Facebook, cheery music]. Instagram
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:43 PM PST - 11 comments

A Mortician's Tale: “What would a mortician’s private emails look like?”

Video games have never really gotten death.... Death in games is a punishment, a roadblock, a temporary setback, an opportunity. It's not a real end; it's mechanical, never philosophical.... A Mortician's Tale ... takes death—the real thing, that universal human experience of being divorced from all sensation, from existence itself—and handles it in direct, even quotidian ways. It makes the end of life visible, and in doing so crafts one of the only meditations on death in videogames that feels authentic.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:36 PM PST - 7 comments

The head of a fool on the neck of an ass

JP Koning presents a pictorial history of the Spanish dollar and its legacy around the world.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Playboy to Feature Its First Transgender Centerfold

When French model Ines Rau heard the news she would be centerfold, she cried from happiness. “It was a compliment like I’ve never had,” she said. (SL NYT)
posted by stillmoving at 12:20 PM PST - 27 comments

...where the reckoning of self happens.

What Miyazaki’s Heroines Taught Me About My Mixed-Race Identity, by writer and poet Nina Li Coomes. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 11:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Human Extinction

Kids? Just say no is an essay wherein the author propounds risk aversion, wrapped in a moral imperative to do no harm, or "anti-natalism". In Tropical Depressions the authors circumvent an idea of "human utilitarianism" in order to survey affective disorders and ecological expressions of morbidity. Bookmark this apocrypha between streams of "Electric Dreams" and Blade Runner 2049 in your First World Problems folder.
posted by marycatherine at 11:30 AM PST - 55 comments

Alternate histories and the "Mournful Dowry"

The Guns of the South and C.S.A. strike radically different tones, but both begin with the same ambitious objective: to venture an answer to the question of whether, given a change in historical course, America’s original sin might be redeemable. The black filmmaker answers a resounding “no,” while the white science-fiction writer a hopeful “maybe,” but they both exemplify the genre of alternate history at its best and most compelling: savvy, thoughtful, entertaining, and provocative. They do more than speculate about history as it might have been: they challenge their audience to think about history as it is, and history as it is told.
Renee de Groot examines some of the more than 150 American Civil War alternate histories which have been written since 1900.
posted by Rumple at 10:03 AM PST - 51 comments

Stuck

If you hold one mental image of [mathematician] Andrew Wiles, he wants it to be this: not the triumphant scholar with the medal around his neck, but the child learning to glory in the state of being stuck. Wiles is famous for cracking Fermat's Last Theorem. He was asked by blogger Ben Orlin what themes he would like to share with a broad public audience. So he talked about being stuck. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:51 AM PST - 22 comments

“It’s so complicated,”

Rupi Kaur Is Kicking Down the Doors of Publishing [The New York Times] “In the three years since her blockbuster “Milk and Honey” was first self-published and later picked up by Andrews McMeel Publishing, she has dealt with all the issues other women face on Instagram and off: comparisons, aggression, bullying. But she has also built a community and an audience there in particular, with 1.6 million followers. Daunted by the tough stuff, she remained, because “it came back to the accessibility,” she said. “Instagram makes my work so accessible and I was able to build a readership,” Ms. Kaur said recently in a cafe in SoHo. “But then I always feel like within the literary world there’s of course downsides, because you have that label attached to your work and then, for some reason, that means you aren’t a credible literary source.”” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:35 AM PST - 19 comments

The Colonel Rocks Social Media

Just last night, someone on Twitter noticed that the official account for KFC was actually following some people - eleven, to be precise. He took a closer look to find out why.... [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:26 AM PST - 40 comments

A Catfishing With a Happy Ending

Pretty much your run of the mill "lonely old man deceives lonely young woman on the internet" story, but with a nice (and heart-warming) twist.
posted by Hartster at 7:00 AM PST - 30 comments

You're a quack smudge on these lockers called life

Hello. We trained predictive keyboards on 'Scrubs' scripts and wrote the exact average episode of 'Scrubs' (single link to a tweet)
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:23 AM PST - 44 comments

San Marino wants YOU ... to compete at Eurovision

After limited success since joining the contest in 2008 -- one Grand Final appearance in eight tries -- San Marino's national broadcaster, RTV, is teaming up with 1in360.com to find "The Internet Candidate" for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Ten finalists will have the opportunity to compete to represent the country in Lisbon; keeping in line with Eurovision's mission to promote technological innovation, "parts of the [final round] will be filmed and broadcast in 360 and virtual reality." If you wanna be seen by everyone, wanna be in the dream and have some fun ... if you wanna be on the hook, simply take a look! [more inside]
posted by zebra at 6:01 AM PST - 8 comments

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch

Cosmic Crisp is the next thing in apples -- 12 million cloned offsets to be planted, their apples in stores maybe in 2019. Higher prices for sweeter crisper fruit. [more inside]
posted by clew at 1:33 AM PST - 112 comments

October 19

all-sequined sheath dresses, ridiculous ruffles, giant fake rhinestones

Tacky is also a way of saying, “That is too much.” It’s a way to say, “Hush.” You’re too loud, too bright, too attention-seeking. You take up too much space. You’re too costume-y. You’re too dramatic. Your excesses are not welcome here. Its antithesis is that old chestnut “flattering,” which, in my experience, applies to any item of clothing that makes you seem smaller than you are, both in personality and in physical size. (See also “tasteful,” which assumes a hell of a lot about whose taste you are trying to please.) An essay on tackiness, by Margaret Eby.
posted by Grandysaur at 6:27 PM PST - 39 comments

An Anatomy of the Worst Game in ‘Jeopardy!’ History

"...yet still nothing could have prepared us for Tuesday night: the worst game in Jeopardy! history. That, my friends, is the moment that then–two-day winner Manny Abell became a three-day winner with a sum of one (1) dollar, besting his opponents’ combined total of zero (0) dollars. ... Our boy Manny, who entered Final Jeopardy in third, is responsible for the greatest abomination in the long history of Jeopardy!dom. And he will get to come back for more."
posted by Evilspork at 5:41 PM PST - 42 comments

California bans salary history requirements

The new law, banning employers from asking about salary history, goes into effect Jan 1, 2018. AB 168 also requires employers to provide the pay scale on request - no more, "tell us what you made before, and we'll tell you if you might be a candidate for the position." [more inside]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:27 PM PST - 108 comments

The Ad Man and the Opiate

How the Sacklers, especially Arthur, helped create the current opiod crisis.
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:27 PM PST - 46 comments

critters of youtube

dogs trying on halloween costumes | cats trying on halloween costumes
posted by phunniemee at 2:01 PM PST - 6 comments

I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference

While Google Street View may have made it easy to see the world from a roadway (also, also), as well as other selected locations, allowing some people to curate artistic and fascinating vistas from the automated panoramas, since 1999 Untraveled road allows travelers to document scenic views themselves and identify must-see locations for fellow travelers. While focused on the United States and more specifically National Parks and Monuments, as well as US highways, Canada, England and Italy are also represented. If you don't know where to start, check out locations popular today.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:18 PM PST - 6 comments

Crash crash crash, but not for real REALS

DestructionNation posted a series of videos where they drive virtual vehicles over 100 consecutive speed bumps at high speeds in the simulation video game, BeamNG.drive. Oddly relaxing and hypnotic.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:40 PM PST - 48 comments

I think it is our national sin.

Gregg Popovich is head coach of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs. At a time when black athletes and even black sports reporters are being targeted by Trump, Popovich has spent much of the past year stepping outside of his normally reserved role to use his white privilege in ways perhaps no white man in sports ever has.
posted by Bob Regular at 12:28 PM PST - 36 comments

Enstamp

So you want to make a stamp? This letterboxer will walk you through every step - from choosing your rubber to carving tips & tricks. If you want reclaimed materials, try corks or styrofoam. Or you can use paper strips infused with glue. The versatile potato may also be your friend.
posted by sibilatorix at 12:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Marmaduke is no longer a suspect

The strip in question shows Jon grabbing a cup on the counter and taking a big swig, apparently in the belief that it's filled with coffee. "Congratulations, Mr. Arbuckle," says Liz. "You are going to give birth to a fine, healthy litter of puppies." That Jon drinks dog semen has become an article of faith among many Garfield fans.

Was this interpretation right or was it wrong? For years the debate has raged, but we may finally have received a definitive answer:

Garfield Creator Jim Davis Denies That Jon Drinks Dog Semen In A 1990 Comic Strip
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:43 AM PST - 140 comments

Manipulative bastard, your name is C̸a̸t̸ Dog

Dogs really do turn on the puppy eyes when humans look at them, according to researchers studying canine facial expressions. Scientists have discovered that dogs produce more facial movements when a human is paying attention to them – including raising their eyebrows, making their eyes appear bigger – than when they are being ignored or presented with a tasty morsel (study).
[more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:25 AM PST - 19 comments

Even k9 failures are good dogs, Brent

They just don't care to sniff for bombs (slWaPo)
posted by k5.user at 11:18 AM PST - 22 comments

So pure even my mom couldn't find anything negative to say

The cutest cockatiel sneezes you will ever see

Supplemental material:
Cockatiel sings to baby (sample comment: Magical moment caught on video. "Welcome to earth little one, may your journey be blessed" the cockatiel sings.)
Cockatiel sings Totoro theme
Cockatiel sings dubstep
Cockatiel plays the drum

posted by sunset in snow country at 10:01 AM PST - 14 comments

museum camouflage

Photographer Stefan Draschan haunts the art museums, waiting to capture photos of People Matching Artworks. Other projects include People Sleeping in Museums and Couples Matching.
posted by moonmilk at 8:58 AM PST - 6 comments

I think I may sneeze.

The complete (so far) Gazorra TNG Edits. Returning to the internet thanks to the deniably plausible youtuber Byron Hussie. A fresh new shelf for a mefi fave (Previously. Very Previously.) Because unceasing suffering needs some laugh breaks. [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:49 AM PST - 22 comments

The Players' Tunnel

The players' tunnel at Stadion Rajko Mitić in Belgrade is infamous. Why? Experience the walk for yourself (loud volume!) on the day of the Eternal Derby.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:31 AM PST - 16 comments

'Tis the no'

“Look, I don't mean to be hyperbolic (I do), but trust me when I say that candy corn is quite possibly the biggest possible affront to the world's best food group. (No disrespect meant if you're one of those people who love the controversial kernels, but let's talk because I have a lot of questions for you.) Whatever your opinions on the waxy pellets of sugary doom, I'm pretty sure that we can agree on this: candy corn most certainly does not belong on pizza.” [via: Teen Vogue]
posted by Fizz at 7:37 AM PST - 95 comments

Good morning! Ecological Armageddon is Here

Three-quarters of flying insects in nature reserves across Germany have vanished FROM The Guardian: “Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.” [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 7:06 AM PST - 45 comments

All in the game

Davon Mayer was a smalltime dealer in west Baltimore who made an illicit deal with local police. When they turned on him, he decided to get out – but escaping that life would not prove as easy as falling into it
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:29 AM PST - 5 comments

We did this.

After almost a month of coalition negotiations, 37 year old Jacinda Ardern will be New Zealand’s second-youngest Prime Minister ever. [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 5:21 AM PST - 43 comments

Blackcurrant cordial with hot water

‘Just let her do the album by herself’: An oral history of Bic Runga’s Drive
posted by Sebmojo at 2:41 AM PST - 5 comments

October 18

beyond the trailers

After the runaway success of his music for the Inception trailer (Mind Heist) Zack Hemsey talks about his process and how he moved from hip-hop to orchestral compositions and the equipment he uses. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:17 PM PST - 2 comments

She had become the unwanted mad

Culture profoundly shapes our ideas about mental illness, which is something psychologist Nev Jones knows all too well. David Dobbs writes about her experience at the intersection of culture, mental health, and academia. [more inside]
posted by Rumple at 10:01 PM PST - 9 comments

Powerless Posing

When the Revolution came for Amy Cuddy. Amy Cuddy's 2012 TED Talk on power posing is the site's second most popular, viewed 43 million times. But after the reproducibility of her research was questioned, things have gone south in a complicated fashion. This NYT article discusses the controversy, the main players and the background behind the reproducibility problems (previously) in social psychology. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:24 PM PST - 85 comments

It was the early days of the graphic novel

The Bayeux Tapestry - all of it, from start to finish. (SLYT)
posted by 445supermag at 9:07 PM PST - 10 comments

The diary of Alex Case, researcher.

Xi is happier now. She opened up to me about how much she hates the life here. She said she dreams about The Sick Land. Although her academic career has been mal anthropology, she's planning to leave the field. She doesn't want to think about it for the rest of her life.

I can relate to her view. There's something different about being here. It makes you look at the research with new eyes. A lot of the stuff they've found out is horrible. When it was just pages in a book, I don't think I even noticed. [more inside]
posted by anthy at 7:32 PM PST - 17 comments

Garth Greenwell on escape, and finding himself...

"I became an opera singer because I failed ninth-grade English..."
posted by dfm500 at 2:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination.

"...And so it was with a familiar disappointment that Somalis watched as details of the attack failed to headline broadcast news or resonate globally on social media. There was no impromptu hashtag of solidarity, no deluge of television coverage. It was as if the bombing were just another incident in the daily life of Somalis—a burst of violence that would fade into all the other bursts of violence. The lack of public empathy was startling but not surprising." [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 1:51 PM PST - 37 comments

Always look for the helpers

California wildfires continue to rage but one doctor managed to rescue several newborn babies on his motorcycle. Devastating fires have been burning counties in Northern California for weeks now, leading to massive property destruction, death, and a healthcare crisis. New fires are cropping up in Santa Cruz County and Sausalito and Dublin. Fires have been worsened by a perfect storm of fire-favorable conditions. In addition to paid firefighters, incarcerated women are being paid $1/hour for fighting on the front lines.
posted by stillmoving at 1:02 PM PST - 42 comments

rage

Rageaholic has matched over 200,000 YouTube videos to the last 20 years of ABC1's rage playlists in an easy to use interface. (They also have a free app: Google Play / Apple). The videos are a diverse mix of mainstream and rare music across many genres, including many little-known Australian, alternative and independent bands. (Via.) Also see: The The 30 Best 'Rage' Guest Playlists Ever. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:58 PM PST - 24 comments

The confusion (and history) of Catalonia's efforts towards autonomy

The Catalonian desire for independence goes back almost 400 years, though the siege and ultimate surrender of Barcelona to Philip V, king of Spain was a key turning point. In fact, the Eleventh of September in Catalonia has been synonymous with large demonstrations in support of Catalan independence since 1714, when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip of Bourbon. Since then, Catalonia has been a part of Spain, but with varying levels of regional independence. It is now facing a very real deadline: Carles Puigdemont, the region’s president, must clarify if the region declared independence by Thursday, October 19, 2017, as Spain is ready to impose direct rule on Catalonia on eve of this deadline. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:32 PM PST - 67 comments

"You’re gonna show up naked sometimes."

Lin-Manuel Miranda interviews and writes about Stephen Sondheim (slnyt) for the New York Times Style Magazine's 2017 Greats Issue (slnyt).
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 12:16 PM PST - 17 comments

I, for one, welcome our new robot Go masters

Deep Mind reports a new Go-playing neural net. In 100 games against its predecessor — which defeated the human world champion — it won every game. It's vastly more efficient than its predecessor, because it uses a neural net to predict who's going to win instead of playing out a quick game from each possible lookahead. The network learned without access to expert human Go knowledge. It was trained entirely from self-play, and no knowledge of the game beyond board structure, legal moves and turn-taking built into the architecture and training schedule. [more inside]
posted by Coventry at 11:19 AM PST - 51 comments

What can brown and furry do for you?

Sean McCarren has been working for UPS for 17 years now and is a proud "driver of the big brown truck," he told BuzzFeed News. One of the greatest perks of his job, he said, is the dogs he meets on his routes. "I wish we could just hang out with the families and their dogs all day, but it's just not feasible," McCarren said. He explained that he and other UPS drivers will often take their work breaks to play with these dogs who run up to their trucks or greet them when they come to people's front doors. Five years ago, McCarren was inspired to start a Facebook group — a community of sorts — for him and other UPS drivers to share photos and videos of their pup friends. He named it UPS Dogs. (Tanya Chen, BuzzFeed News Reporter) [Links to FB but should be viewable w/o an account]
posted by Room 641-A at 11:01 AM PST - 20 comments

An Important Question Answered

WHAT DOES THE HAMBURGER HELPER’S SKELETON LOOK LIKE?
posted by jenkinsEar at 10:25 AM PST - 86 comments

"We need the novel because paradise is always a lie"

the novel matters because it's fiction, and fiction, like truth, profoundly matters to the human species. In the age of Trump, when truth is so blatantly revealed as something dismissible, somehow simply no longer relevant, the novel matters even more, because to some extent we all live by fictions, we have all along survived by using them.
The novel in the age of Trump by Ali Smith.
posted by Kattullus at 10:21 AM PST - 14 comments

"I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs."

The US International Trade Commission has voted to proceed with a complaint filed by bankrupt solar manufacturer Suniva, joined by SolarWorld, under Section 201 of the 1974 Trade Act claiming imported cells and modules "caused significant harm" to US solar manufacturing. If ITC finds in Suniva's favor, they could vote to impose tariffs of $0.25/watt on cells , along with a floor price on modules of $0.74/watt. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 9:11 AM PST - 41 comments

The Future is Nothing but a Robot Punch

The long-awaited duel between America's Megabots and Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industry has finally arrived (YT). [more inside]
posted by Krazor at 8:04 AM PST - 36 comments

Gord Downie 1964-2017

Promise me, promise me,
They bury me some place I don't want to be,
You'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously,
Away from the swollen city-breeze, garbage bag trees,
Whispers of disease and the acts of enormity
And lower me slowly, sadly and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy

Gord Downie, lead singer of the Tragically Hip, has died.
posted by GuyZero at 7:10 AM PST - 157 comments

She made it sound like a bad-ass bitch boot camp

Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded
Content warning for abuse of all sorts, please tread carefully. [more inside]
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:03 AM PST - 33 comments

Mama

Jan van Hooff visits chimpanzee "Mama", 59 yrs old and very sick [Youtube] [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 4:29 AM PST - 14 comments

I think punk did save me, and that music sounded like I felt

“My name is Chris Packham. What you probably don’t know about me, because I’ve been hiding it most of my life, is that my brain is different than yours because I’m autistic. I’ve spent 30 years on the telly, trying my best to act normal, when really I’m anything but.”

On October 17th, The National Autistic Society announced television presenter, photographer, naturalist, and campaigner Chris Packham as its new ambassador. On the same day, the BBC broadcast a documentary about his life with Aspergers: Asperger's and Me.
posted by popcassady at 4:23 AM PST - 8 comments

How To Get Covered in London Parakeets

You will need an Oyster card, an apple, a sturdy constitution, and this Londonist guide to London's iconic feral parakeets.
posted by nerdfish at 4:18 AM PST - 23 comments

Vulcan, you are Cleared for Take-off

On 18th October 2007 G-VLCN, better known as XH558 took to the air for the first time in 14 1/2 years. [more inside]
posted by Z303 at 12:14 AM PST - 32 comments

October 17

He did the mash, he did the Markov mash

Wikipedia Markov Masher takes your two topics and Markov-ily mixes their Wikipedia articles to generate simulated silliness. [more inside]
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:47 PM PST - 40 comments

Getting Buffett's number

Warren Buffett, Oracle or Orangutan? A statistical analysis of the Sage of Omaha's investing aptitude.
posted by storybored at 8:56 PM PST - 18 comments

New Atheism's Idiot Heirs or 2nd Wave Internet Skepticism

In the heydey of the internet messageboard, let’s say in the 1990s, a certain species of idiot materialized. He was male, aggressively pedantic, self-professedly logical, committed to the hard sciences, prone to starting sentences with “actually,” and almost always devoted to the notion that his disbelief in God imbued him with intellectual superiority. This archetype’s golden years were the 2000s, a decade that saw George W. Bush’s politicized creationism and the use of web forums peak in unison. [more inside]
posted by Telf at 7:52 PM PST - 152 comments

“Unimpressed women who don’t give a shit about you”

When you queef and he says it’s not that funny but you definitely aren’t going to be mature about it. (all links NSFW!)

When you can’t reconcile your need for independance with your fear of being alone.

When you’re leaving the motherfucking office.

When he can’t find the condoms.

When your friend promises there will be food at this party so you skip dinner and when you arrive there isn’t one fucking charcuterie plate in sight. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 7:46 PM PST - 19 comments

Lord , Carry Him Now 🙏🏾

Celtics’ Gordon Hayward Suffers Gruesome Ankle Fracture in Opener [WARNING: Graphic Video of Injury of Fractured Ankle] [YouTube] “Less than six minutes into his first game as a member of the Boston Celtics on Tuesday, Gordon Hayward badly fractured his left ankle on a failed alley-oop attempt. The injury is a crushing blow to the Celtics in their quest for Eastern Conference superiority. Hayward, a forward who signed a four-year, $128 million contract with the Celtics in July, was to pair with Al Horford and Kyrie Irving in a new Big Three for a team that has been on the rise for the last several seasons. On the play, Hayward was leaping toward the basket to receive a pass from Irving when he became entangled with LeBron James and Jae Crowder of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Hayward landed on his left foot, which twisted in gruesome fashion under him as he crumbled to the floor.” [via: The New York Times]
posted by Fizz at 7:38 PM PST - 22 comments

"performance claims without benchmarks probably aren't true"

A scientific test of keyboard latency. "Gaming" keyboards are middle-of-the-road, while the lowest-latency keyboard tested is about the last thing you'd think of for computer gaming.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:59 PM PST - 73 comments

...watching a wounded antelope trying to bring down a wounded antelope

Frankie Boyle in The Guardian: "Perhaps the next leader will be Boris Johnson, a man who sees genocide as the first stage of a planning application. Boris, a malevolent baked Alaska, is living out in public the great dramatic sweep of a life that asks what if a hero, instead of a single tragic flaw, had all of them. Or perhaps it will be David Davis, a man who seems to suffer from the same lack of imagination as his parents. Or Jacob Rees-Mogg (a man who has taken the phrase “stalking horse” rather too anthropomorphically), who, when he’s not on the run from Westworld: Victorian Britain, seems to be one of those people who flicks through the Old Testament looking for the sexy bits." (Contains very dark humor)
posted by Wordshore at 3:53 PM PST - 27 comments

She remains in command of the beat.

Roxane Gay interviewed Nicki Minaj for the NY Times Magazine. "Minaj does not temper her swagger or sexuality. Sometimes, when I am daydreaming, I marvel at the phrases “dick bicycle” and “If you wanna ménage I got a tricycle” from “Side to Side,” which are so damn clever and funny and vulgar but also accurate as hell for a song Grande once described as being “about riding leading to soreness.”
posted by ChuraChura at 1:18 PM PST - 32 comments

You don't have to be millionaires to dance to good dance music in the US

"I'm an American. The Immigration and Naturalization Service of the United States, in cooperation the National Broadcasting Company, has invited a number of naturalized citizens to talk about the American citizenship which they have recently acquired, a possession which we ourselves take for granted, but which is still new and thrilling to them. Today, we are delighted to have with us as [a] guest with us on this program, the distinguished scientist, Doctor Albert Einstein, who has this very morning, just a few hours ago, taken his citizenship examination." In 1940, on the eve of the United States' entrance into World War II, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Immigration and Naturalization Service wanted to promote tolerance toward immigrants. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:09 PM PST - 7 comments

Mate he's obsessed with toilets

I worry it seems patronising to praise a famous 59-year-old man for doing as little as managing not to be a politically incorrect arsehole (again, a sadly surprising rarity), but I feel there’s something more than that with Big Nev, something genuinely quite affecting and inspiring.
Tristan Cross explains why former Wales & Everton keeper Neville Southall is such a mensch on and off Twitter.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:58 AM PST - 15 comments

That's no bull!

There is an escaped cow in Prospect Park in Brooklyn! (FB video). [more inside]
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 10:19 AM PST - 36 comments

Transcribing decades-old science fiction fanzines

The James L. "Rusty" Hevelin Collection contains over ten thousand science fiction fanzines. The library of the University of Iowa is scanning them and has done more than 800 so far. It has set up a page on its DIY History site where people can transcribe old zines to make the computer searchable. For more about Rusty Hevelin, read his obituary, and for more about the collection read these two articles by Jacob Brogan from 2015 and 2017.
posted by Kattullus at 10:17 AM PST - 5 comments

Playing with FIRE

The internet subculture of FIRE (Financial Independence and Retiring Early) is a community of people working to retire (or achieve financial independence) at aggressively young ages using some unconventional methods. [more inside]
posted by mosst at 9:38 AM PST - 69 comments

Loyal citizens who stand for Americanism

A Night at the Garden - a short archival documentary of a pro-America rally held at NYC's Madison Square Garden, in 1939. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 9:27 AM PST - 21 comments

The Secret History of Fruit Leather

Also known as Amardeen, it all started in Syria.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:04 AM PST - 17 comments

The Potato Metaphor for Emotional Labor

In some relationships, the person needing support shows up in the kitchen with potatoes at the ready. They are saying, “Here. These are my potatoes. Cleaned and ready for your pan.” In other relationships and situations, the person seeking support makes it harder to find their potatoes... The potato metaphor is useful because it highlights how the person being supported has an active role in how laborious the emotional labor involved really is... Lopsided potato-handling can be damaging to ease, equity, and harmony in relationships.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:59 AM PST - 42 comments

Think Daft Punk meets Deep Forest with the fearlessness of Nina Simone.

Tjitji tjurta (translation ‘all you kids’) inma-ku a pakala (translation ‘get up and dance’) tjitji tjurta Tjitji tjurta inma-ku a pakala tjitji tjurta [more inside]
posted by Thella at 6:00 AM PST - 8 comments

October 16

NZ’s Experience with Deregulation & Privatisation

The US had Reagonomics, the UK had Thatcherism, while New Zealand had Rogernomics and Ruthanasia.... [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 9:43 PM PST - 12 comments

A Shit Leopard Can't Change its Spots.

John Dunsworth, who played park supervisor Jim Lahey in the long running Canadian series The Trailer Park Boys, has died at the age of 71.
posted by lkc at 7:00 PM PST - 56 comments

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

How we feel about Freud: Susie Orbach and Frederick Crews debate his legacy [The Guardian] “For a century or more, Sigmund Freud has cast a long shadow not just over the field of psychoanalysis but over the entire way we think of ourselves as human beings. His theory of the unconscious and his work on dreams, in particular, retain a firm grip on the western imagination, shaping the realms of literature and art, politics and everyday conversation, as well as the way patients are analysed in the consulting room. Since Freud’s death in 1939, however, a growing number of dissenting voices have questioned his legacy and distanced themselves from his ideas. Now Freud is viewed less as a great medical scientist than as a powerful storyteller of the human mind whose texts, though lacking in empirical evidence, should be celebrated for their literary value. The following debate, conducted through emails, was prompted by the forthcoming publication of Frederick Crews’s book Freud: The Making of an Illusion, which draws on new research materials to raise fresh questions about Freud’s competence and integrity.” [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:01 PM PST - 51 comments

"I could have made something empowering."

Bennett Foddy, he who made exquisite torture games QWOP (MeFi), CLOP (MeFi) and GIRP (MeFi), released a new game as part of the October Humble Monthly, called Getting Over It. It'll be available on Steam on December 6, but in the meantime you can watch this trailer. It is a surprisingly realistic model of a guy in a cauldron with a pick trying to climb a mountain.
posted by JHarris at 4:24 PM PST - 20 comments

"He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation"

Day 270: Season of war. [this is the U.S. politics thread.] [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 3:32 PM PST - 2209 comments

How Much More Are You Hiding?

The new trailer for Marvel's "Black Panther" is here (SLYT).
posted by Ipsifendus at 3:30 PM PST - 73 comments

Grace and Measure

Richard Wilbur, poet, translator, and lyricist, has died. He was 96. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:18 PM PST - 14 comments

My kid could do that! Oh, wait, no. Never mind.

Callum Donovan-Grujicich is an twelve year-old artist who lives in Whitby, Ontario with his parents, his younger brother and his beloved dog Jiggs. From about the time he was learning to walk, Callum showed a strong inclination towards expressing himself through art, preferably in three dimensions. At the age of ten he began experimenting with the creation of art dolls and has been passionately constructing them ever since. They are made from a variety of materials, including paper clay, wire armature, acrylic paint, fabric, stuffing and various found objects. He hand sews all the clothes.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:13 PM PST - 22 comments

A Fire Story

When cartoonist Brian Fies's house burned down, he started drawing. [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 12:22 PM PST - 15 comments

VIRTUE AND DEVOTION

What Sewing Samplers Tell Us About Women’s Lives from the 17th to 19th Centuries.
The Fitzwilliam Museum's exhibit Sampled Lives exhibition shows how samplers (needlework training and practice) hold hidden messages in symbolism and contain clues of the lives of women and girls who made them. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:24 AM PST - 11 comments

me too

If every person who has been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Me too is sweeping across facebook and Twitter. Note: this is a post about sexual harassment and assault.
posted by theora55 at 8:30 AM PST - 234 comments

'Twitter today is a cesspool of hate. A plague of frogs.'

Designer and man-about-Internet shares his personal history of Twitter.
posted by nerdfish at 6:50 AM PST - 221 comments

Some days you are the dog and others you are the fire-plug.

Surviving a 15,000-feet fall. One very bad day over, in, and on the Pacific Ocean. (via) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:42 AM PST - 22 comments

Welcome to CORE

Economics for a changing world - "An open-access platform for anyone who wants to understand the economics of innovation, inequality, environmental sustainability, and more..." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:43 AM PST - 5 comments

Where techno meets Giphy

Inward.Audio Real time streaming video mashups paired with the Fnoob techno stream. (Warnings: Blinking, flashing lights, potentially NSFW imagery, widely varying loud techno.)
posted by loquacious at 5:23 AM PST - 1 comment

Roses are red, violets are blue, omae wa mou shindeiru

Another merrily morbid meme for your Monday: you are already dead. What started with a ridiculous anime/ kung fu trope-tastic delayed death from various attacks by Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star (previously) expanded online, as memes tend to do, mostly in silly sorts of ways. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:28 AM PST - 18 comments

The End of WPA2?

Apparently there is a new, valid nonce reuse attack for WPA2... Well, it looks like one of the last reasonable bastions of IT security is breached. It appears you can bypass WPA2 using an attack forcing key reinstallation by manipulating modding and replaying crypto packets to get WPA2 to reset keys. [more inside]
posted by Samizdata at 3:23 AM PST - 72 comments

October 15

They were just drug dealers in lab coats.

THE DRUG INDUSTRY’S TRIUMPH OVER THE DEA Amid a targeted lobbying effort, Congress weakened the DEA’s ability to go after drug distributors, even as opioid-related deaths continue to rise, a Washington Post and ‘60 Minutes’ investigation finds. [more inside]
posted by zabuni at 9:24 PM PST - 47 comments

Assorted cuteness

22 Dogs Who Just Want To Say Hello
20 Totally Random Animal Photos That Will Make You Pee Yourself
22 Photos That Prove It's Easier With A Second Dog
28 Bizarre Photoshopped Hybrid Animals We Wish Existed IRL
20 Dogs Who Are Doing Us A Kindness
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:09 PM PST - 7 comments

Be a Planetarium and Explore

Kelli Anderson has a new interactive pop-up The Planetarium that works. Not only do things pop-up but there are tools to use. If I still collected movable books, this one would already be in my collection. And she has a fabulous website to explore, among which is a pop-up with a working pinhole camera. Here's the link to the website blog. She does a lot more than just pop-ups, as you'll see. Enjoy!
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:29 PM PST - 5 comments

*mufled EDM beats in the distance*

Alex the Kid and Butch Callinan: They're a couple of lonesome cowboys with dusty pasts. But perhaps, with the help of Molly Lewis and Ol' Jim Barnes, they might be able to find a place...for both of us.
posted by KChasm at 4:57 PM PST - 7 comments

Hi, my name is Emily. I am 9 years old and this is my seventeenth video

Emily's drum cover of "Be Yourself" by Audioslave (check out the subtle sideways glance at 4:05). Emily posts videos of her drum covers of rock songs, and has been doing so for a while. The drum only audio track for the linked Audioslave song. [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 4:23 PM PST - 14 comments

I paint the way I do because I’m just plain scared.

Known in Chicago as the Queen of the Bohemian Artists ; in her papers is an elegy from Studs Terkel who had interviewed her for radio - “To Queen Gertrude, You are regal—And we love you—Studs.”
Mainly self taught, Gertrude Stein in 1935 advised her to ‘draw better'.
She lived and moved in the Chicago Jazz scene inspiring Richie Powell to write Gertrude's Bounce as she walked "just like the way the rhythm sounds in the Introduction". Her home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago became a salon of sorts for such writers and musicians as Dizzy Gilespie, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday, among others.
posted by adamvasco at 4:03 PM PST - 5 comments

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → Ⓑ Ⓐ START

The Quest To Make A Better Video Game Controller [Kotaku] “Next time you play a video game, look down at the controller in your hand. Is it comfortable? Does it work well with the game you're playing? Are your fingers all being used efficiently? If you could change one thing, what would it be? About 10 years ago, after permutations ranging from Atari 2600 joysticks to Sega Genesis "C" buttons, console game controllers arrived at something resembling a standard. A modern console controller must have: Two clickable sticks and a D-pad, four face buttons, a pair of triggers, a start and options button, and a pair of shoulder buttons. That configuration has held steady for at least one full console generation. The modern PS4 controller, Xbox One controller, and Nintendo Switch Pro controller all have more or less the same functionality as their predecessors. Of course, some people still think it's time for new ideas.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:40 PM PST - 74 comments

"That's a man who doesn't know what to do with a horse."

Conan O'Brien Didn't Ask David Letterman For A Horse After Conan O'Brien wrote a loving farewell tribute article to David Letterman, Letterman repaid the gesture with a most unusual gift. [SLYT]
posted by Servo5678 at 2:28 PM PST - 23 comments

#asymmetryissexy #imnotyourinspiration

When Vasu Sojitra was only nine months old, he was diagnosed with septicemia, resulting in the amputation of one of his legs.
Today, he is:
a back country skier “Skiing down isn’t hard, but it’s just constantly pulling myself up the mountain that is.”
a mountaineer “On the climb itself, I just strapped my crutches to my backpack and just climbed with my hands and foot. Nothing too crazy.”
and Tony Hawk’s recent inspiration. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 2:13 PM PST - 2 comments

There’s No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

A discourse on the potential of AI, with air-planes and alarms. An interesting essay on the difficulty of predicting technological advances, with a focus on whether a clear signal of imminent A.I. will be apparent even to those in the field.
posted by bitmage at 2:07 PM PST - 37 comments

Alternative twitter feed

A livestream of hummingbirds, along with wasps and the occasional woodpecker, coming and going from a feeder somewhere in West Texas.
posted by daisystomper at 1:48 PM PST - 9 comments

She's a good girl, loves her mama

8 European kids living with disabilities experience zero gravity. The experience was made possible by the European Space Agency, and Novespace, a subsidiary of French CNES. The kids rode a converted Airbus A310 which flew in repeated parabolic arcs to simulate the effects of zero-gravity without having to visit space.
posted by growabrain at 12:06 PM PST - 14 comments

"we should not expect the first NS-NS GWs to be accompanied by a GRB"

20 months after announcing the first gravitational wave detection, and two weeks after winning the Nobel Prize, the LIGO-Virgo collaboration returns to the National Press Club on Monday morning at 10 am to reveal "groundbreaking observations" relating to "an astronomical phenomenon that has never been witnessed before." (live stream links: 1 2) [more inside]
posted by pjenks at 10:18 AM PST - 38 comments

Fish's famous foul-up

30 years ago the UK was battered by hurricane strength winds in the Great Storm of 1987, following a now notorious weather forecast by Micheal Fish. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:29 AM PST - 37 comments

a small win against 'just trash it' attitude

Monsieur Pep has been repairing umbrellas in Paris for nearly fifty years. (2:20 SLYoutube) It is the only umbrella repair shop in France.
posted by freethefeet at 3:16 AM PST - 17 comments

14 Links Definitely Not Intended as Free Promotion for Another Country

Erin Chack (senior editor at Buzzfeed) tells how "I Accidentally Became Famous In Another Country" in a video summarized as "One BuzzFeed article leads to a country-wide campaign involving newspapers, fundraising, and the highest level of government." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:04 AM PST - 19 comments

October 14

a watercolor sci-fi comic about a boy robot in a dangerous world

Descender is a comic book printed by Image Comics, publisher of many sweet creator-owned titles. It's written by Jeff Lemire of Old Man Logan, Black Hammer, and Essex County. The artist is the inimitable Dustin Nguyen, whose work (mostly in watercolor) graces such titles as Streets of Gotham, Manifest Eternity, Secret Hero Society, and Lil Gotham. It's a sci-fi story about Tim-21, a boy robot designed to be a child's companion, and his adventures in a world where robots are hunted. There are four volumes out so far in trade paperback, collecting the first 21 issues. It's very pretty-- this Kotaku Australia review has some pictures.
posted by 4th number at 9:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Bishop's Hat, Fan, Bird of Paradise, Crown

Napkin folding is an old art, which reached its height between 1600 and 1850. But you probably just want to know how to fold fancy napkins, in which case check Buzzfeed, Bumblebee Linens, or the Napkin Folding Guide. (Previously)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:02 PM PST - 14 comments

"the transmutation of information into common myth."

Some Early Facebook Employees Regret The Monster They Created. Not among them, says Max Read, is Mark Zuckerberg, who may not even know what Facebook is
In late September, Zuckerberg apologized for being initially “dismissive” about the problem of misinformation but insisted Facebook’s “broader impact” on politics was more important. He’s probably right, but I’m not sure he should want to be. What happens to politics when what he calls our “social infrastructure” is refashioned by Facebook?
Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook into a behemoth whose power he underestimates [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:33 PM PST - 145 comments

Ellison and Parks on Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison and Gordon Parks and their collaboration on what "invisible Man" means.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:01 PM PST - 4 comments

The snids (snail kids) are all right

Jeremy the left-coiled snail has died but his life was an inspiration to science. An international volunteer effort to find him a left-coiled (sinistral) mate even inspired a song. [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 7:47 PM PST - 18 comments

It should be called 'correctile dysfunction'

Where do mansplainers get their water? From a well, actually 🗣️
posted by Thella at 6:07 PM PST - 77 comments

Breast cancer death rates decreased by 39 percent since 1989

Washington Post: "Breast cancer death rates increased by 0.4 percent per year from 1975 to 1989, according to the study. After that, mortality rates decreased rapidly, for a 39 percent drop overall through 2015. The report, the latest to document a long-term reduction in breast-cancer mortality, attributed the declines to both improvements in treatments and to early detection by mammography."
posted by jazzbaby at 5:55 PM PST - 7 comments

The magnificent 139

Bill Wyman (no, the other one) ranks every song the Clash ever recorded. I am happy to report that #139 is "We Are the Clash," off Cut the Crap. I'm pretty sure we can all agree on that, at least.
posted by scratch at 3:08 PM PST - 81 comments

Mr. Vampire (and kin) - experience the adventure! Embrace the darkness!

Clear some time for kung fu comedy with spooks and spirits, because here comes Mr. Vampire (YT, trailer)! While the Sammo Hung production isn't the first Hong Kong comedy horror fighting film to feature a jiangshi, or hopping corpses or vampires of Chinese folklore, it's the one that created a franchise and inspired numerous sequels and tributes. As a successful special effects driven 80’s comedy, it is often compared to Ghostbusters, but, you know, with martial arts. Let's dive into the world of Chinese folklore in HK comedy horror! [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:28 PM PST - 12 comments

“It is not noble men we are dominating, but savage orcs.”

Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War can’t decide if it thinks orcs are people too [The A.V. Club] “There’s a horrible reality underneath all the blood and bombast of Shadow Of War: When you “dominate” an orc, you are erasing its agency and enslaving it. There’s really no two ways around it. The notion that this entire game is built upon the act of removing another living thing’s will and using them as an object is an unsettling truth that you’re forced to confront over and over again. Sometimes it’s not enough to brainwash your enemy. Sometimes you also have to explode your allies’ heads or steal their life like the miserable vampire you are. Sometimes the people around you will question your methods, pointing out that the Ring Of Power enabling your domination has been used time and again to deceive and corrupt others and that its use never ends well for the wearer. [...] The game clearly wants you to think about what you’ve spent dozens of hours doing, or at the very least, it’s finally accepted the fact that there’s really no escaping the hypocrisy and ugliness of its entire conceit.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:56 PM PST - 84 comments

We don't need no interwebz

How Amish produce gets to Whole Foods—without the internet, tractors, or phones
posted by infini at 10:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Baby Pong

No, not that kind—the smelly kind! Skunk babies are irresistible and adorable. Even mama cats like them. And no post is complete without a puppy. Bonus: 15 Skunk Facts. (Cute skunks previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:33 AM PST - 21 comments

We offer them neither our empathy nor our respect

America Can't Fix Poverty Until It Stops Hating Poor People (SL CityLab) [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 7:57 AM PST - 98 comments

uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ǝɥʇ oʇ ʞɔɐq ǝɯoɔlǝʍ

Stranger Things series 2 final trailer. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:52 AM PST - 28 comments

Float like a butterfly, sting like a moth

Mothing is generally a fairly low-key hobby. But even in the UK, it can get a bit lively; and in some parts of the world, it can be really quite intense. [more inside]
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 4:29 AM PST - 14 comments

In Telepathic Society, One Who Can Hide Thoughts Is King

Hugh Howey: How to Build a Self-Conscious Machine - "Unlike the direction most autonomous vehicle research is going—where engineers want to teach their car how to do certain things safely—our team will instead be teaching an array of sensors all over a city grid to watch other cars and guess what they're doing." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 26 comments

October 13

Two recent short stories by Jess Zimmerman

"Never Quiet Again" (Catapult, May 12, 2017): "It's not that we don't remember what it was like before the sound. If you asked us, we could tell you." "All the Ways He Won't Die" (Catapult, Feb. 17, 2017): "Someday he'll meet a fate I didn't think of, and that will be my fault, too." Jess Zimmerman has several notable previouslies, e.g 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:54 PM PST - 3 comments

Kosovo's First Ever Pride Parade

On October 10th, a couple of hundred LGBT people marched in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, for that country's first ever Pride parade. Oddly, the coverage is only in the German press: blu.fm [Google Translate], Mannschaft Magazin [Google Translate]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:59 PM PST - 4 comments

From boiling lead and black art: Eddie Smith on math typography

What makes Knuth’s role in typographical history so special was just how much he cared about the appearance of typography in the 1970s—and the fact that he used his technical abilities to emulate the art he so appreciated from the Monotype era. Eddie Smith at Practically Efficient essays some 6000 words on the history of mathematical typography.
posted by cgc373 at 7:48 PM PST - 33 comments

Happy Friday the 13th

Simon's Cat: Spider Cat Edition (slyt) (previously)
posted by aniola at 7:15 PM PST - 12 comments

Marie Curie in WW I with Doughnuts

Curie built traveling x-ray vehicles for battlefield use. She had been told to take a break from radium for her health's sake, and she did. During the break, she designed and had built these traveling x-ray vehicles to take triage and diagnoses to the front line. Meanwhile, to help morale, the Doughnut Dollies were making and handing out hot fresh doughnuts to the troops. doughnut heroines
posted by MovableBookLady at 4:26 PM PST - 16 comments

“If it's not broken, don't fix it,”

Humble Bundle has been acquired by media giant IGN. [Gamasutra] “Media giant IGN announced today that it has acquired Humble Bundle, the company best known for selling packs of indie games at pay-what-you-want prices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. This is potentially a big deal for game developers, since Humble has expanded beyond its bundling business to publish games, pay devs to make games for its subscription-based monthly game club, maintain a subscription-based online game trove, and operate an online game storefront. However, a press release confirming the deal also noted that Humble will continue to operate independently in the wake of the acquisition, with no significant business or staffing changes.”
posted by Fizz at 1:50 PM PST - 31 comments

“I told you so. You damned fools.”

As part of writing a literary biography of H.G. Wells, SF author and critic Adam Roberts is reading and blogging about everything Wells wrote.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:44 PM PST - 8 comments

"Puerto Rico’s colonial reality"

The Way We Talk About Puerto Rico Is Bullshit
The Media Really Has Neglected Puerto Rico [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:30 PM PST - 39 comments

PURPLE GRIZZLY BEAR

Director Barry Jenkins, in partnership with The Chopstars has released a chopped and screwed version of the Grizzly Bear albums Veckatimest and Painted Ruins. [more inside]
posted by sleeping bear at 11:40 AM PST - 3 comments

Don't call them X-babies!

A trailer for The New Mutants has creeped outta the shadows. Bear with it, there's a different feel to it, the breakdown is here, with plenty of potential spoilers. What are The New Mutants? Only one of the best comic books you've probably never read.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:12 AM PST - 54 comments

Criminalizing a Boycott

The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit arguing a Kansas law requiring all state contractors to certify that they aren’t boycotting Israel violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Text of the complaint, Koontz v. Watson, is here. [more inside]
posted by marycatherine at 10:05 AM PST - 25 comments

They survived six hours in a pool as their neighborhood burned

"Jan Pascoe and her husband, John, were trapped. The world was on fire, and Jan was hyperventilating from fear. Then they remembered their neighbors’ pool."
posted by the turtle's teeth at 8:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Random Ties that Bind

Match.com went live in 1995. A new wave of dating websites, such as OKCupid, emerged in the early 2000s. And the 2012 arrival of Tinder changed dating even further. Today, more than one-third of marriages start online. Clearly, these sites have had a huge impact on dating behavior. But now the first evidence is emerging that their effect is much more profound.

Online dating may be enhancing racial integration and building stronger marriages. MIT Technology Review writes about a recent study.
posted by polywomp at 8:31 AM PST - 56 comments

All the colors, see the colors, feel the colors ... do you feel alive?

If you're looking to be properly un-spoopy in October, specifically on today, Friday the 13th, Beck's 13th studio album Colors might be the thing for you, if you want some solid, generally upbeat dance-rock. "It's like if the Clash decided to bring in some disco and hip-hop beats," he explains. "I wanted the songs to sound great in the car or at a party." (Sydney Morning Herald interview with Andrew Murfett, with a long look at Beck's life and musical career) If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can stream it on YouTube, Apple Music or Spotify via Pitchfork, and Soundcloud Go+. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:50 AM PST - 17 comments

#WomenBoycottTwitter

After the banning of Rose McGowan showed that nothing's changed at Twitter, a flood of users have decided to boycott Twitter today. The tweets that got McGowan temporarily banned were part of the conversation about sexual harassment in the film industry prompted by allegations against Harvey Weinstein (previously).
posted by clawsoon at 4:11 AM PST - 280 comments

October 12

"I think that such ‘ambivalent’ emotions can be embodied"

Yoshitoshi Kanemaki’s sculptures include large intricate skeletal memento mori which achieve just what their titles describe—figures gripped by the bones beneath the skin. He also carves strange figures with multiple heads [making-of] which depict human indecision, ambiguity, the swinging change of mood daily wrought by life like an unmoored boat upon torturous seas. And then we have the split personalities or “glitches,” the two-head figures that capture “the hesitations or inconsistencies” that we can never answer.
[more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:44 PM PST - 5 comments

The angry sea will kill us all

"The respondents were asked to rate various statements that echoed their thoughts about climate change. A common reply was 'the angry sea will kill us all,' the line from the popular song which tapped into the national sense of futility. Many of the i-Kiribati have accepted migration may be necessary. Where do they go, when the sea rises?" [more inside]
posted by Paragon at 8:23 PM PST - 6 comments

For decades, that open-endedness has brought players back to the table

At FiveThirtyEight, Gus Wezerek asks, "Is Your D&D Character Rare?": "We got a peek at what kind of characters everyone is building, and a lot of players are sticking close to reality." Going beyond basic descriptors, Neal Litherland at Improved Initiative explores uncommon ways to think about Pathfinder characters in a regular feature: "Unusual Character Concepts," e.g. "The Farmer Ranger," "The Heretic," and "The Pill-Popping Paladin." And in an interview about the podcast Tell Me About Your Character, Steve Keller praises "that off-the-cuff, excited meander" exemplified in his first interview about someone's favorite character.
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:24 PM PST - 76 comments

Prototyping Tools Roundup

Decent roundup of tools to help designers create interactive prototypes and wireframes. The prototyping and interactive design space has been changing rapidly. Sitepoint has provided thumbnail sketches of 15 of the top ones, as well as videos showing them in action.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:10 PM PST - 8 comments

"He has the posture of a warrior. Brash. Worldly. Fearless."

On This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Mark Critch presents an erotic reading of longtime Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente's column on the New Democrat Party's new leader, Jagmeet Singh, with the help of an actor resembling Jagmeet Singh, moody lighting, strawberries and wine, and at least a litre of maple syrup.
posted by orange swan at 4:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Bowling Architecture & Culture, Old & New

These extravagant alleys in Germany might be found in a Wes Anderson movie. Though the bowling culture has declined precipitously in Germany, several of these alleys are still pristine. Here in the US, there's a mostly forgotten set of alleys in the basement of churches, many also forgotten church alleys. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:31 PM PST - 30 comments

This is how many women practice self-preservation: we vanish.

"On the way out, I demanded he never touch or speak to me again or I would address his behavior publicly. Then, the demoralizing introspections: Should I voice this now—potentially putting a wedge in their marriage and positioning myself for backlash and ostracism? Should I do as I said and await a future transgression—again, knowing ostracism would be almost certain? How important to me is my inclusion in this community? This group helped me climb free of my divorce-induced depression, gifted me a network of peers, offered encouragement, but now this—and it would most certainly land in the murk of he-said/she-said. More specifically, he stays or I stay. And why? Why is this litany of concerns mine to bear—not his? All I did was eat a goddamn salad. " A Dossier of Red Flags: Literary Encounters with (White, Straight, Cis) Men by Jeanann Verlee
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:55 PM PST - 23 comments

"like carpet"

John Carpenter - Christine music video for a track off the soon to be released Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 album. Interview. Another interview. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:03 AM PST - 26 comments

"And the food was always phenomenal"

The Untold Story Of America's Southern Chinese "There's a rather unknown community of Chinese-Americans who've lived in the Mississippi Delta for more than a hundred years. They played an important role in the segregated South in the middle of the 20th century. Join us as we get a taste of Southern Chinese food and learn about the unique history of the Delta Chinese." [more inside]
posted by TheGoodBlood at 10:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet

The Frizzle Fry/Seas of Cheese/Pork Soda era lineup of Primus - Larry Lalonde, Les Claypool, and Tim 'Herb' Alexander - return with The Desaturating Seven. A concept album based on Ul De Rico’s colorfully illustrated children’s book The Rainbow Goblins and accompanied by a porcine narration of that book, "...in addition to being unsettling, it’s a vibrant, knotted work of screwball fun." (AV Club)
posted by Existential Dread at 10:18 AM PST - 21 comments

“Swashbuckling adventure crossed with literary criticism...”

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the Monster Mashup We Need [The Verge] “Goss introduces us to Mary Jekyll, whose well-regarded scientist father died when she was a child. While cleaning up her recently deceased mother’s affairs, she learns of an account in her name supporting someone named Hyde. With the death of her mother, her first priority is to get her household back in order, and to figure out how to pay off old debts. She enlists the services of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to investigate, believing the person to be a notorious and brutal associate of her father’s, Edward Hyde, who is wanted for murder. Mary hopes the money from a long-offered reward would help set her house in order. Instead of the wanted criminal, she discovers that the money is supporting a feisty young woman named Diana Hyde, left in the care of a charitable organization.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:13 AM PST - 29 comments

“When will you bring back socialism?”

“In some cases – as with Greece’s Syriza, Spain’s Podemos and France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the leftist explosion took place outside the political mainstream. In Britain, it happened within the venerable Labour Party. Young recruits were joined by older returners who had left the party during the Blair years. The membership swelled from 200,000 in May 2015 to 299,755, with a further 189,703 affiliated supporters and 121,295 registered supporters (at more than 600,000, Labour’s membership is now among the highest in western Europe).“ - How the Labour left triumphed: the inside story, George Eaton (New Statesmen)
posted by The Whelk at 9:40 AM PST - 49 comments

land, money, labor, and stains

The Forgotten Kingpins Who Conspired to Save California Wine [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:39 AM PST - 3 comments

Culture is a very complicated and hard thing to understand and get right

A father and a daughter driving after baseball practice. A momentary glimpse of a peacock. An ignored phone call from Mom. The Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now.” All of these are part of Toyota’s marketing campaign for its new Camry. But which commercial you get to see may depend, in part, on what ethnicity you are.
Different Ads, Different Ethnicities, Same Car
posted by timshel at 6:16 AM PST - 72 comments

V (not) for Veracity

(Musical) Interpretation: A Case for a Broad Perspective
posted by Gyan at 12:22 AM PST - 13 comments

October 11

Canoe odysseys

Nine rivers. Lake of the Woods to Arctic Ocean. Gulf of Mexico to Arctic Ocean. Pacific Ocean to Atlantic Ocean. 28,000 miles around and across North America. Highlights: "Our first big river, the kind that we dream about in wintertime." A bear and a wolf, playing. Maps. "Beautiful glass days on the lake." Lowlights: Bugs. Bugs. Ice. So many bugs.
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 PM PST - 12 comments

Go home baby pandas / you are drunk

In 2003, scientists from Zoo Atlanta, Chengdu, and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding published a study that described trends in the behavior of giant panda cubs. Among other findings, this study confirmed that falling was a normal and expected part of the play of the giant panda cubs being reared by their mother. [...] In celebration of our giant panda cubs second birthday on October 13, we at the Toronto Zoo wanted to show you just how promising the development of Canada’s first giant panda cubs has been over the last 24 months. It’s a bunch of baby pandas falling on their little baby panda baby butts! [SLYT]
posted by Room 641-A at 10:29 PM PST - 33 comments

Two legs are better than none

Move over, Duncan Lou Who, and make room for a couple of feline bipeds. Rocket was born without hind legs and lives in Berlin. Anakin, a feral cat like Rocket, has no pelvis or hind legs: he lives in Pensacola. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:54 PM PST - 5 comments

Undiscovered Classic PS1: Petscop

Despite the first generation of 3D consoles being long since dead, intrepid archivists, thrifters, and antiquarians are still uncovering before unknown alphas, betas, and demos (e.g. The Cutting Room Floor). Recently an anonymous YouTube Let's Player found a demo for an unfinished Pokemon style game called "Petscop" for the PS1 from the unknown developer Garalina. They have been playing through the game, which is much longer than it seems like it should be, and reporting on their progress: starting with the first video here. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:35 PM PST - 17 comments

"Perfect in so many ways"

The Jonny Greenwood-approved short film, Each Radiohead album described with Spongebob
posted by palindromic at 4:18 PM PST - 5 comments

What walks down stairs, alone or in OH MY GOD

I have been using slinkys all wrong (SLYT)
posted by smoke at 3:29 PM PST - 59 comments

羅宋湯

Why Do Hong Kong Restaurants Serve Borscht? (The Overlooked History of Russian Hong Kong.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 3:07 PM PST - 34 comments

LA Metro raises the bar on transit etiquette campaigns

LA Metro has a new Japanese-inspired etiquette campaign staring You Tube personality Anna Akana. (Autoplay video on her page). They are fun and silly and we need more fun and silly.
posted by agatha_magatha at 1:42 PM PST - 22 comments

SKVLL CVLTS, where the dead are not gone or forgotten

"Skull cult" is a term for rituals of human skull decoration and transformation during the Neolithic in the west between 9,000-4,000 years ago. In several archaeological sites, we find skulls that have been painted, perforated, and used for...something. In the first episode of Ars Technica's video short series Ancient People Did Stuff, Annalee Newitz summarizes what is known about the skull cults at Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, where some skulls were plastered and painted and painted red, though the reason or purpose is still unclear. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:13 PM PST - 10 comments

“Do you know what happened to me on Dizengoff Street?"

I Have a Message for You (NYT Op-Docs) is a short video documentary by Matan Rochlitz about holocaust survivor Klara Prowisor. "To escape Auschwitz, she left her father to die. Decades later, she got a message from him."
posted by amf at 11:42 AM PST - 30 comments

"We'll call it, 'The Bloody Awful'"

"We bought a small bottle of Jamesons Irish Whiskey and a tub of single cream and hurried back. It was a lovely May morning. 1973. Underdogs Sunderland had just won the FA Cup. We mixed the two ingredients in our kitchen, tasted the result and it was certainly intriguing, but in reality bloody awful. Undaunted, we threw in some sugar and it got better, but it still missed something."
In 1973, I invented a ‘girly drink’ called Baileys (David Gluckman for The Irish Times)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:17 AM PST - 59 comments

This will go over well...

Today, the Boy Scouts of America Board of Directors unanimously approved to welcome girls into its iconic Cub Scout program and to deliver a Scouting program for older girls that will enable them to advance and earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout.
posted by ShawnString at 10:59 AM PST - 100 comments

Hip Hop and the Man

This is a story of a man who was a rapper and had to find himself again among aged Jews. Absolutely fascinating. He was an up and coming rapper, just becoming a star, got beaten and lost himself, and found himself again after years in an old folks home. The difference between his former self and his new self and what it meant to recapture or relive or recreate memory illuminates what being human is.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:43 AM PST - 11 comments

California reduces penalty for knowingly transmitting HIV

Previously a felony, knowing transmission of HIV is now a misdemeanor in California. (Single link WaPo). Critics of the previous law note that few cases were knowing or malicious and the law unfairly targeted those engaging in sex work, women, and minorities.
posted by stillmoving at 10:24 AM PST - 45 comments

Like The Settling Of Oklahoma, But With Catgirls

On October 10th, Square Enix released patch 4.1 for Final Fantasy XIV, The Legend Returns. While there were many long awaited features released in the path, such as the first part of the Final Fantasy Tactics themed 24 man raid Return to Ivalice, one part of the patch stood above all else: The fourth player housing area, Shirogane, would finally be opened for sales of land. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:11 AM PST - 14 comments

Yes, I said. It’s real.

The title refers to the extra stitch sometimes given to a woman after the area between her vagina and anus is either torn or cut during childbirth. The purpose of the extra stitch is to make the vagina tighter than it was before childbirth in order to increase the husband’s pleasure during sex.
Jane Dykema: What I Don’t Tell My Students About ‘The Husband Stitch’.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:05 AM PST - 89 comments

You have given us confidence to go out and fight the fight

Ninja Theory releases a very special "accolades" trailer for Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and promises a donation to celebrate World Mental Health Day. The trailer highlights some of the many touching messages received by Ninja Theory since the launch of the game. Hellbladehelp.info connects players to local mental health support organizations. [more inside]
posted by adept256 at 9:09 AM PST - 13 comments

Nothing about her can rightly be called a small detail

Melanie Gillman's #24HourComic "SWEETROCK" about a Giantess that visits a town once a year. [more inside]
posted by jillithd at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments

Delivering medical supplies by drone

The company Zipline have built a drone delivery system for medical supplies. For areas of the world where road infrastructure is limited, this service can cut delivery times from four hours to fifteen minutes. They have been running in Rwanda for over a year and are about to launch in Tanzania.
posted by Stark at 6:58 AM PST - 20 comments

October 10

Dean Pitchford Is Footloose

You've probably never heard of Dean Pitchford, but if you are of a certain age, you've definitely witnessed and listened to Dean Pitchford. He wrote the screenplay for 1984's Footloose, and he also co-wrote every song on the soundtrack. Beginning co-writing with Kenny Loggins the title track, a chart topper and Academy Award nominee, performed by Loggins, Footloose. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:38 PM PST - 57 comments

The Storm

“And any fan of mine who’s a supporter of his/ I’m drawing in the sand a line/ You’re either for or against/ And if you can’t decide who you like more and you’re split/ On who you should stand beside/ I’ll do it for you with this.” Eminem's cypher rips into Trump at the BET Hip-Hop Awards. (text)
posted by mysticreferee at 9:48 PM PST - 66 comments

an oily paper plate and a small tomato-stained Styrofoam cup

Garlic knots are, quite simply, a perfect food.
posted by moonmilk at 7:52 PM PST - 64 comments

The sadness of Saturn

Sam Kriss writes for The Outline.
People have always distrusted Saturn. For 5,000 years it’s been a symbol of age and death and misery. But the present-day theorists of its evil have proof. In its 13-year orbit of the planet (it took seven years for the spacecraft to reach Saturn's orbit, although it made some stops at other planets along the way), the Cassini mission, a collaboration between NASA and the space agencies of Italy and the European Union, saw incredible things.
[more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 7:51 PM PST - 20 comments

"Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated!"

The Internet Archive today announced that, thanks to "a little known, and perhaps never used, provision of US copyright law," they're now able to offer many books published from 1923 to 1941: the Sonny Bono Memorial Collection. Among the 67 texts currently available, two are famous portrayals of American social life: the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos (including 1919, selected by Robert McCrum as #58 in The Guardian's 100 Best Novels) and Middletown: A Study in American Culture by Robert and Helen Lynd (a controversial and influential ethnographic study of Muncie, IN, referenced over 100 times in the Indiana Magazine of History). [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:17 PM PST - 16 comments

Please remember to return your library books before then.

We have a pretty good idea when humans will go extinct.
posted by storybored at 7:12 PM PST - 64 comments

“SCARY!”

The Fright for the Future Returns | Overwatch’s Halloween Terror 2017 skins [YouTube] [Pepsi Blizzard Blue] “This Halloween, explore the haunted streets of Eichenwalde and Hollywood, expand your collection of spooky seasonal cosmetics, and team up to fight the forces of evil once more in not one, but two Junkenstein’s Revenge-themed brawls! We’re also re-opening our crypt so players can unlock their favorite Halloween-themed items from last year along with over 50 new tantalizing treats, including legendary skins like Corsair Ana, Van Helsing McCree, Dragon Symmetra, Cultist Zenyatta, Jiangshi Mei, Dracula Reaper, Viking Torbjörn, & Totally 80s Zarya.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:20 PM PST - 36 comments

Works every time, 100% of the time

The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don’t Want To Be Accused of Sexual Harassment | Are you a man confused on how to treat the women you work with? Do you feel like if you can’t say or do *anything* you don’t know what to say or do at all? Well stress no more! This life hack will have you treating women like people in no time!!
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:51 PM PST - 111 comments

knowledge devouring itself

How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World - "“We have been so clever at learning to play with atoms and molecules without ever thinking about what they do once they are out,” she told me. “Put a complex molecule into the environment,” said Costner, “and it is going to undergo any number of transitions in hard-to-predict ways.”" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Adorable, hackable NES and Super NES Classic

If you're stymied by the limited number of games on the NES Classic and Super NES Classic (both prior posts), the hacker community has your back. For the original NES Classic, it’s not as simple as drag-and-drop, but no screwdriver or hardware mods needed to load ROMs of almost any of the official NES catalog, and Super NES Classic hack is similar, plus you can load custom backgrounds and tweak the "scanline" feature via telnet operations. But because of more custom chips and other irregularities, to play all your SNES backups, you will have to increase the versatility of the SNES model by loading a different emulator, like RetroArch. And yes, these run on Linux builds that you can download for free, and as such, you can load your own (custom) distro. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:36 PM PST - 41 comments

The problem is that "technically" isn’t good enough.

The first thing you need to understand about consent is that consent is not, strictly speaking, a thing. Not in the same way that teleportation isn’t a thing. Consent is not a thing because it is not an item, nor a possession. Consent is not an object you can hold in your hand. It is not a gift that can be given and then rudely requisitioned. Consent is a state of being. Giving someone your consent — sexually, politically, socially — is a little like giving them your attention. It’s a continuous process. It’s an interaction between two human creatures. I believe that a great many men and boys don’t understand this. I believe that lack of understanding is causing unspeakable trauma for women, men, and everyone else who is sick of how much human sexuality still hurts.
The Horizon of Desire: Laurie Penny wants a new conversation about women, men, consent, desire, and autonomy. [slLongreads] [more inside]
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 11:34 AM PST - 19 comments

I’m not allowed to tell you that your dog is dead

So, Your Kid Found Out About Death: Nicole Cliffe (previously) on how parents can explain (more likely fail to explain) the fact of death to their children.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:58 AM PST - 76 comments

Evolution and male mass murderers

A new study of mass murderers in North America reveals some interesting patterns, and could support an evolutionary theory of mass shootings by older men (and younger men).
posted by John Cohen at 9:45 AM PST - 89 comments

History is a comfort in times of doubt.

Kaitlyn Greenedge and her sisters take a road trip. "The art historian Moyo Okediji notes that in Yoruban concepts of history, the community must assure children that they are not physically alone and that a series of road maps exists, made by great and talented ancestors who as individuals have beaten a track for succeeding generations. That is why history is a comfort to me, in times of doubt. And this is, of course, why the past is a battleground." [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 9:24 AM PST - 4 comments

Operation Brain Drain

How the CIA staged sham scientific conferences to thwart Iran's nuclear program.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:41 AM PST - 18 comments

A-ha - Take On Me

A-ha - Take On Me (2017 Unplugged). Time carries on and none of us are as young as we used to be. But it's not all bad. A-ha gives us a contemplative version of the old pop hit. [more inside]
posted by severiina at 7:57 AM PST - 80 comments

bump bump bump bump-bump-bump

In the Line of the Riding King.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:07 AM PST - 12 comments

How to Be a Know-It-All

What you learn from the Very Short Introduction series: Like its subject, “Teeth” is both a freestanding entity and part of a larger body: the Very Short Introduction series, a project of Oxford University Press. At present, that series consists of five hundred and twenty-six books; “Teeth” clocks in at No. 384. If you are so inclined, you can also read a Very Short Introduction to, among a great many other things, Rivers, Mountains, Metaphysics, the Mongols, Chaos, Cryptography, Forensic Psychology, Hinduism, Autism, Puritanism, Fascism, Free Will, Drugs, Nutrition, Crime Fiction, Madness, Malthus, Medical Ethics, Hieroglyphics, the Russian Revolution, the Reagan Revolution, Dinosaurs, Druids, Plague, Populism, and the Devil. (SL New Yorker).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:52 AM PST - 23 comments

from hell's heart, I STaB at thee

Stephanie Kelton: How We Think About the Deficit Is Mostly Wrong - "Unfortunately, budgetary effects are the sun around which everything revolves in Washington. Should we invest a trillion dollars in our crumbling infrastructure, offer Medicare for All or pass the biggest tax cut in the country's history? ... In a more rational world, lawmakers would abandon the crude C.B.O. scoring model and recognize that the risk of overspending is inflation, not bankruptcy. They would avoid fruitless battles over the debt ceiling, and they would acknowledge that the deficit itself could be deployed as a potent weapon in the fights against inequality, poverty and economic stagnation." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:11 AM PST - 30 comments

Play as an AI who makes paperclips

Universal Paperclips is an incremental browser game (like Cookie Clicker etc.) by Frank Lantz, Director of the NYU Game Center, perhaps based loosely on the paperclip maximizer thought experiment. It has additional programming by Bennet Foddy of QWOP/GIRP fame (though to be clear, it is nothing like his games, so don't go in expecting that). [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 12:20 AM PST - 228 comments

October 9

Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen.’

Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’ In light of flooding in major cities in the US, the NY Times covers Tokyo's Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (首都圏外郭放水路 shutoken gaikaku hōsuiro), the world's largest underground flood water diversion facility. [more inside]
posted by gen at 10:09 PM PST - 15 comments

"Save your favourite dildo, but throw away the other 15!"

Let’s get it out of the way right now: Swedish death cleaning is a little bit morbid. The idea is that when people die they leave stuff. Lots of stuff. Reams and reams of it, piles and piles of it. And it’s friends and family that are left to dealt with this stuff surfeit, this surplus of minutae. That’s where Döstädning comes in. In Sweden, people start the process as early as their ‘50s, slowly but steadily decluttering as the years roll by.
[more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:40 PM PST - 68 comments

“I’ve seen this raw strength only once before”

The second trailer for “The Last Jedi” has been released.
posted by New Frontier at 7:40 PM PST - 258 comments

When Workers Aren't Even Involved in the Means of Production

"This is the real danger of a universal basic income – it makes the citizens unnecessary to the government." We have discussed unemployment, economic surpluses, and UBI here before, but I hadn't seen this thought-provoking concern. (A year or so of earlier, earlier, and earlier.
posted by twsf at 7:28 PM PST - 55 comments

“Where are you from?”

Native or Invasive "Like India, lantana as it is today in the Indian wild did not exist back in the seventeenth century. The plant has hybridized, many times. From its hybridity comes a kind of strength—the ability to thrive in a wide range of harsh environments. In Hindi there is a word corresponding to that kind of adaptability: jugaad, roughly translated as “making do.” Take the resources that you have and transform them into whatever it is you need. Improvise, adapt, and grow. In its capacity for jugaad, if nothing else, lantana is actually very Indian." [via]
posted by dhruva at 6:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Gonzo Oobah

How far can you take the notion of an all you can eat buffet? And other questions you never knew you had. Oobah Butler will go to great lengths for the sake of journalism. Real gonzo stuff here. Inserting himself into his stories gives him one of the freshest perspectives on the web. [more inside]
posted by holmesian at 5:29 PM PST - 29 comments

“Its charming inoffensiveness is at the root of its insidious politics.”

Why does Hollywood keep churning out racist fantasies like ‘Victoria & Abdul’? by Bilal Qureshi [The Washington Post] ““Victoria & Abdul,” [YouTube][Trailer] is keenly aware of that history and yet intentionally chooses to keep its audience entertained on the lush grounds of Victoria’s palaces, parlors and gardens. We see the empire as she did: a confection, a distant dream, a realm of personal prizes. For a film about the legacy of a global empire, that is intentionally and unforgivably narrow. Abdul’s world is shown through hazy and cliched scenes of exotic marketplaces and in the distant tourist views of a glimmering Taj Mahal. There is no real conversation or parity between Victoria and Abdul. In the screenplay, his character is simply there to serve as her Manic Pixie Dream Brownie. There are several scenes of him simply collapsing to the ground to kiss her feet. Abdul joins a long line of South Asian male characters relegated to prop status in Hollywood features. Once they were silent servants in black and white adventure films a la “Gunga Din,” then accented comedic sidekicks or exotic freak shows, and in recent years, terrorist villains in newsy thrillers. In “Victoria & Abdul,” he is an object of exotic eroticism.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:51 PM PST - 50 comments

Inside the CIA's black site torture room

There were twenty cells inside the prison, each a stand-alone concrete box. In sixteen, prisoners were shackled to a metal ring in the wall. [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 1:47 PM PST - 33 comments

Two Dream Jobs

Manager of the Magic Castle in Hollywood is the first one. And the second one is an Angler/Archer/Woodsman who is a sage at heart.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain

In Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany, Super Bunnyhop discusses the parallel development of technology and video games in East Germany during the cold war.
posted by lkc at 11:16 AM PST - 20 comments

"You guys have some sort of rallying cry?" ... "Try not to die."

The first trailer for Marvel's Runaways on Hulu is here. [more inside]
posted by skycrashesdown at 11:02 AM PST - 29 comments

The literal sound came to be used figuratively as a rhetorical interrupt

*Record scratch*

Freeze Frame.

Yep, that's the introduction to this post. You're probably wondering why I started with this cliche, but it all began with Merriam-Webster... *wavey flashback motion*
posted by MartinWisse at 10:44 AM PST - 15 comments

Googly Eyes

Hilarious Kinetic Eye Sculptures by Lucas Zanotto via This Is Colossal [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 10:08 AM PST - 5 comments

Why celebrate Columbus, and who else to celebrate instead

On October 12, 1492, Columbus made landfall in the "New World," reaching the Bahamian island that he named San Salvador (called Guanahaní by the native Taíno people). Why did the U.S. start to celebrate Columbus? To celebrate Italian heritage, and respond to anti-Italian sentiments. But why celebrate Columbus now? That's just history, and history is told by those currently in power. What else to celebrate today? Many cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, especially in states that still call it Columbus Day, while some celebrate specific individuals, like Standing Bear in Nebraska and Po'Pay and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:37 AM PST - 45 comments

State of state

Dexter Filkins profiles Rex Tillerson, United States Secretary of State, for the New Yorker : The Breaking Point - "In an interview with a conservative Web site, Tillerson alluded to his ambivalence. “I didn’t want this job,” he said. “My wife told me I’m supposed to do this.”" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:27 AM PST - 90 comments

You're a Wizard, Morgan!

On Friday night in Montreal, 16-year-old Morgan Hurd won the women’s all-around title at the World Gymnastics Championship. Miss Hurd wasn’t expected to be the United States’ top contender. She finished sixth in this year’s U.S. championships and until this weekend had no “career highlights” listed in her official USA Gymnastics biography. But now, thanks to her own breakthrough performances and injuries sustained by other gymnasts, she is champion of the world. The feat also earned her high praise from her favorite author. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:52 AM PST - 16 comments

From Lorne and Gwendoline to Zainab and Linden

The most Canadian names, decade-by-decade. Bonus: The most loved Canadian books. The most loved Canadian movies. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 4:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Closer to Perfect Smile

Here's a fan edit of the legendary Smile album by the Beach Boys. As there have been lots of fan edits of this album this doesn't seem very special on it's own, were it not that this one is particulary well done. In my ears the album sounds more coherent and like a finished product than ever before. [more inside]
posted by Kosmob0t at 3:57 AM PST - 13 comments

October 8

Goodnight MetaFilter, goodnight moon.

At 1:00pm on May 17th, 2017, Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that he occasionally longed for someone to read "Good Night Moon" to him as he falls asleep. Six minutes later, LeVar Burton tweeted "I got you... Let's do this!" And do it they did. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 9:40 PM PST - 41 comments

That Time Kottke Was on Halt and Catch Fire

Now, I don’t know if you know this about me or not, but I love the web. (Oh, you could tell? I let that slip at some point?) And I am so very nostalgic for the early days of the web in the 90s — the Mosaic days, the Altavista days, the Bobaweb days, the Entropy8 days, the Suck days, the CSotD days, the alt.culture.days, the 0sil8 days, the Yahoo on the akebono server at Stanford days.
posted by cgc373 at 9:39 PM PST - 20 comments

Dissect is a serialized music podcast

Now in its 2nd season, Dissect uses "long-form musical analysis, broken into short, digestible episodes" to explore Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in depth. Enjoy the 1st season's 23 episodes dedicated to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. Dissect is created by Cole Cuchna.
posted by klausman at 9:14 PM PST - 7 comments

A Visit to the Synthetic Cadaver Factory

Inside this otherwise unassuming facility, workers are creating what may be the world’s most advanced surgical and anatomical models out of little more than salt and water. Fully synthetic corpses like these, complete with skin, muscle, organs, and bone, might one day eliminate our need to test many new technologies on humans or animals. And it’s not just SynDaver’s materials that make their cadavers unique. It’s their visceral realism.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:28 PM PST - 17 comments

But I do. I really believe in it.

A story about David Bowie, as recounted to Paul Magrs via Neil Gaiman
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:45 PM PST - 52 comments

Three recent texts from alternate timelines

"The Primordial Gound" by Justin E. H. Smith (The Public Domain Review, October 2017; but reworked from earlier articles): "Klopp records that in May of 1777 Kant's ship suffered heavy damages in a storm in the South China Sea." "From The New Ecyclopedia" by Byron Landry (Conjunctions, April 2017): "Little is known about the pre-Socratic philosopher Polycyathus, and that little unlikeable: ... he believed that, of all the forms of governance, tyranny was best, because 'it breeds monuments.'" "The Doctor is Who?" by Heavy (alternatehistory.com, July 2017): "Several actors were considered to play the Second Doctor ... Peter Jeffrey, Valentine Dyall and Patrick Troughton were all approached but each declined the role."
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:34 PM PST - 11 comments

At the heart of all international post is ... a spreadsheet

Christmas is only eleven weeks away. But how will your card, letter or present get to you from your relative or partner or MeFite crush in distant lands, and who pays who? These questions are periodically asked [1] [2] by MeFites. As explained by Josh Urich, the answer lies in the Universal Postal Union, a Switzerland-based agency of the United Nations, and their lovely spreadsheet you can download and play with.
posted by Wordshore at 3:47 PM PST - 9 comments

“Then comes the Turbo Tunnel speeder level...”

Battletoads: The Strange History of a Nigh-Impossible Franchise by Gavin Jasper [Den of Geek] “In the early 90s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the kings of children’s entertainment. They were everywhere and like all successful concepts, they were followed by copycats. Over the years we’d see attempts to piggyback on their success with such concepts as Street Sharks, Biker Mice from Mars, and the Country Cuckoo Clock Codpiece Zulu Warriors. There was one pretender to the throne that appeared as a cheap Turtles knockoff at first glance, but had more than enough uniqueness to stand on its own. To a point, at least. I want to talk to you about Battletoads. Battletoads is one of those game franchises that had so much personality and quality that it should have survived for years. Unfortunately, it’s become a relic of semi-obscurity...” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:46 PM PST - 35 comments

You can't take the sky from me (or me) (or me)

A collaborative project with almost 90 artists and one instruction: look up.
posted by queen anne's remorse at 11:52 AM PST - 5 comments

The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets

On the last day of August, a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests, armed with search warrants, descended upon two small shelters for abandoned farm animals: Ching Farm Rescue in Riverton, Utah, and Luvin Arms in Erie, Colorado. Why two particular piglets have become an issue of great importance for the factory-farm industry and the federal administration. [Warning, graphic photos.]
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:16 AM PST - 19 comments

Probably the best thing that happened in my college career

20 years ago today, Cornell students, faculty, and staff woke up to find someone had speared a giant pumpkin on the McGraw clock tower spire. [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 10:42 AM PST - 24 comments

How Animated Cartoons Are Made (back in 1919)

How they made cartoons before Disney: an instructional silent movie from 1919.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Nom nom ... crunch?

Giant Lego ice cream. A giant disposable razor. A giant toothbrush. Film projector, office chair, stapler, matches, and many others ... [more inside]
posted by carter at 7:03 AM PST - 5 comments

Sex abuse in the marijuana industry

In secretive marijuana industry, whispers of abuse and trafficking [TW for sex abuse and rape]
posted by OmieWise at 7:01 AM PST - 20 comments

A cartoon about new motherhood

A female French cartoonist writes about new motherhood, maternity leave, and postpartum depression. Cartoon is in English.
posted by colfax at 6:15 AM PST - 14 comments

The art, science, and math of gerrymandering

"Politics, they say, is a game where whoever’s ahead gets to change the rules on the fly. It’s about winning, not being fair. But this isn’t just a politics story; it’s also a technology story. Gerrymandering used to be an art, but advanced computation has made it a science." MeFi's own Jordan Ellenberg pens an op-ed for the New York Times.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:10 AM PST - 22 comments

Dockless bike shares are here. Are cities ready for them?

Dockless bike shares have arrived. Cities from Seattle to DC to London now host competing bikeshare systems with no set parking areas or dock spaces. Between bad user behavior and a growing backlash from San Francisco to Singapore to Sydney the future looks bright for #DocklessBikeFails.
posted by peeedro at 5:50 AM PST - 91 comments

Your life is written on your face

Frances McDormand’s Difficult Women (NYT Magazine).
posted by sapagan at 2:11 AM PST - 19 comments

October 7

......when the baby's asleep.

Justin Kuritzkes, best known for being the Potion Seller, writes sad, dark, funny songs, with excellent music videos. The name of his album, Songs About My Wife, maybe says it all, and so do the titles of his songs: Fuck Your Blood, I Slept With A Man, All I Want is a Fucking Bride, Even Though We Got A Baby, and—perhaps my favorite—Dance You Back To Life. Meanwhile, if you want another side to the Potion Seller, watch Dolores.
posted by rorgy at 8:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Singin' in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things

The Personal Property Auction of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is happening now. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Includes an incredible treasure trove of Golden Age Hollywood costumes, movie posters, and memorabilia. [more inside]
posted by hampanda at 8:00 PM PST - 19 comments

Dear catcallers,

20 years old dutch student Noa Jansma documented one month of street harassment on her @dearcatcallers Instagram account, taking selfies on the street with the harassers, to which they were happy to oblige, without the faintest clue of the situation, bar one. [more inside]
posted by _dario at 7:01 PM PST - 66 comments

Are Clothes Modern?

Bernard Rudofsky is not so well known for his social critiques. But in 1944, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) put on an exhibition based on his book, Are Clothes Modern?. The museum didn't do another exhibition on this subject for 73 years. In the second link Exhibition Info, you will see info about the out-of-print book and link to "View the Publication" which will give a download pdf for the entire book. Below that is a link to "View the Checklist" which will give you a download of the list of all garments shown in the exhibition. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Mean Girls: The Forbidden Lesbian Romance

Is what it says on the tin. (A few days late for Mean Girls Day, October 3rd) TwoLYT
posted by Grandysaur at 5:37 PM PST - 3 comments

What am I hiding ffff....?

Exciting new trailer for what appears to be an iconic Star Trek film! Editing courtesy The Alloy Foundation.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:14 PM PST - 16 comments

The Energy East pipeline is dead

The planned tarsands-transporting pipeline was canceled on Thursday after the National Energy Board of Canada insisted on "assessment of greenhouse gases generated by the fossil fuels to be transported in the pipeline".
posted by clawsoon at 4:19 PM PST - 33 comments

What is this "doot" thing, with the skeletons?

Every October, this disembodied skull emerges from its slumber to doot across the internet with its trusty brass trumpet. Actually, skull trumpet never sleeps, and is kept alive by Le Doot Generation on Reddit and folks on Tumblr (and specifically The Skull Trumpet), as well as mashup makers, re-mixers and even live covers. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:08 PM PST - 17 comments

As the Nights Get Longer, What Is Better Than Weird Audio Dramas?

A couple of years ago, it seemed like there were only a few paranormal podcast audio dramas (with Welcome to Nightvale Website Previously FanFare, the most visible), but more and more creators have decided to share their visions. Here’s a round up of audio dramas with paranormal elements for the spooky fall season. Most aim for chills, sometimes leavened with humor. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:05 PM PST - 46 comments

Step 1. Acquire a corpse.

The Gruesome History of Making Human Skeletons
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:48 PM PST - 13 comments

Eliminating the profit motive in health care,

Down with Copay. The history of copays in the American health system, and why they shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:46 PM PST - 30 comments

👣

Historical Body Mechanics: Walk Medieval! [YouTube] “Before structured shoes became prevalent in the 16th century (and apparently in those places where they never have) people walked with a different gait, pushing onto the balls of our feet instead of rocking forward on our heels. It looks a little affected -- like a gymnast or ballet dancer -- but is apparently much healthier.” [via: Boing Boing]
posted by Fizz at 11:45 AM PST - 45 comments

Euromyths A-Z

A-Z Index of Euromyths 1992 to 2016.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:43 AM PST - 7 comments

”Do what you want with my music but don't make me boring."

Watching Brazilian artist Juliana Lepine sculpt an 18 cm/7.5 inch figure of Freddie Mercury is anything but boring.
posted by Lexica at 11:01 AM PST - 4 comments

The swinging piano sound of Ms. Cleo Brown

Lookie Lookie Lookie, here comes Cleo Brown, an accomplished stride/boogie woogie pianist, singer and composer active during the late 1920s to the 1950s. The Stuff Is Here and it swings: Brown recorded mainly for Decca and Capitol Records with the backing of such notable cats as Gene Krupa. She was a contemporary of Fats Waller, replacing him on WABC New York in 1935. (Think Your Feet's Too Big? Nope, you're just Breakin' In A Pair of Shoes.) [more inside]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:32 AM PST - 3 comments

Gen-X Women at Midlife: Fear, Anxiety, Anger

Generation X...They're smart. They're grateful for what they have. They're also exhausted. Some of them are terrified. A few of them are wondering what the point is. I called my best friend, a reporter a few years older than me who grew up in the Midwest...: "[D]o you know anyone having a midlife crisis I could talk to?" The phone was silent for a second. Finally, she said, "I'm trying to think of any woman I know who's not."
posted by drlith at 8:00 AM PST - 133 comments

A post of a good sort

Sorting Visualizations - via HN
posted by Gyan at 7:03 AM PST - 10 comments

This was how, for the first time in my life, I began to feel European

Before coming to Britain I had always thought that the tabloids were like a misanthropic counterpoint to Monty Python. Like many Europeans, I saw these newspapers as a kind of English folklore, laying it on thick in the way that theatrical British politicians conduct their debates in the House of Commons. Newspapers in the Netherlands would carry on their opinion pages articles by commentators such as Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash—giving the impression that such voices represented the mainstream in Britain. Watching QI before coming to the UK, I remember seeing Stephen Fry banter with Jeremy Clarkson and imagining the former was the rule, and the latter the exception. Living in London taught me that it is the other way around. George Orwell is still correct: England is a family with the wrong members in charge.
How I Learned To Loathe England; the Dutch journalist, former British resident and former Anglophile Joris Luyendijk diagnoses a neurosis at the core of English society—an entrenched acceptance of arbitrary inequality as the very definition of fairness, a pathologically adversarial, zero-sum world-view with a contempt for compromise, and a hostility to the idea of trying to see the point of views of foreigners—and how, in light of it, something like Brexit was inevitable.
posted by acb at 5:07 AM PST - 71 comments

"As a young footballer, everybody is selling the same dream to you"

Of the boys who make it into football's elite scholarship programme at 16, past PFA research has found that five out of six are not playing professional football at 21. The Guardian takes a look at the damaging outcomes for boys who wash out of the system. [CN: mental health, suicide]
posted by threetwentytwo at 3:22 AM PST - 9 comments

the most important part of learning is actually forgetting

New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning - "A new idea called the 'information bottleneck' is helping to explain the puzzling success of today's artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn."
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 52 comments

October 6

"None of it was cool."

The Legendary Roots Crew Presents: "I Am Slave" (SLYT). Slavery history meets Schoolhouse Rock. From an episode of black-ish.
posted by josephtate at 11:29 PM PST - 8 comments

Frank, still my hero

Frank has a new hat. He's also helped Opus through a bad day. I *heart* Frank. Frank, previously.
posted by hippybear at 9:47 PM PST - 9 comments

"Wrap your penis in cold steel" said no doctor, ever.

In 2014, the American College of Physicians went so far as to recommend against pelvic exams, citing the "harms, fear, anxiety, embarrassment, pain, and discomfort" associated with speculum examinations. -- The Speculum Finally Gets a Modern Redesign (Arielle Pardes, Wired)
posted by Room 641-A at 7:46 PM PST - 35 comments

A weekend with the Order of Tents

Founded in 1867 by two ex-slaves, the Order of Tents is a semi-covert fraternal sororal benefit organization founded and managed by Black women. They do good works but keep a low profile. Author Kaitlyn Greenidge spent a weekend with them.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:16 PM PST - 6 comments

Death at a Penn State Fraternity

Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, reporting on the death of Tim Piazza, a Beta Theta Pi pledge at Penn State. A story of abuse, gas-lighting, and perverse incentives in the Greek system that has led to at least one death. [more inside]
posted by suelac at 4:05 PM PST - 51 comments

smells like a 4th grade scholastic bookfair on a chilly tuesday in 2007

"[T]the Scholastic Book Fair? That week where your elementary school was packed full of books and pens and erasers and you could just wade right on in and go wild? Oh, man, that’s the good stuff." Constance Grady, for Vox: The nostalgic joys of the Scholastic Book Fair, explained.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:39 PM PST - 53 comments

Spot the toothbrush

Why We Miss Objects That Are Right in Front of Us. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 3:34 PM PST - 42 comments

Perspective (as in Rashomon) in Short Films

Six short films illustrating perspective and its influence, as with Rashomon. 6 films | 1 hr 3 min Experiencing the world from other points of view is a crucial component of cinema (and any sort of creative endeavor, really). For this month’s Mixtape, we’ve chosen a selection of shorts that play with perspective. You’ll see a son’s attempt to re-create video footage from his mother’s last day on Earth, a married couple living very different lives, a bystander’s view of a bank robbery, and more.
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:54 PM PST - 2 comments

an informal inquiry

The Informal Inquiry Into Gender and Sexuality Differences is a detailed attempt to inquire about intra-LGBTQ attitudes, beliefs, and identities on online communities. Released initially in June, it has currently amassed over 4,000 responses and will continue to collect responses until August 1, 2018. Interestingly, the survey's curators are happy to answer any and all questions about the data collected to date and provides the raw (and anonymized) dataset for anyone to view every 500 responses. While the survey team is not a university-affiliated unit, it is particularly interesting in the broad flexibility and diversity of identity terms available to respondents.
posted by sciatrix at 2:06 PM PST - 17 comments

y-life

Okay, let’s begin. Every story needs to begin somewhere, so it makes sense to start with how I got embroiled in the “Y-life”. So, in this first instalment, I will tell you how I was reeled in like a carp on a fisherman’s hook, in… Chapter 1 – Getting Reeled In
- Elle Beau writes on getting sucked in to Younique, a multi-level marketing scheme for makeup. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:18 PM PST - 39 comments

Away message: RIP AIM 1997-2017

AOL Instant Messenger is shutting down December 15. Launched in 1997 as an instant messaging service that broke down the wall between AOL and the wider internet, but somehow unable to make the transition to today's ubiquitous messaging environment, AOL has announced that AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) will cease operations in two months. Time to take one last spin through your Buddy List before signing off for good.
posted by stopgap at 11:36 AM PST - 81 comments

Pick a month, guys. Every month of 2017 has been a treat.

MeFi's own, John Scalzi, writes about writing and the inability to focus, in this era of Trump. [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 11:28 AM PST - 72 comments

“THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!”

PACIFIC RIM 2: UPRISING [YouTube][Trailer]
posted by Fizz at 11:25 AM PST - 98 comments

"Molson's stock price fell sharply on the news of Bill Eves' passing"

Perhaps most important to Bill was educating people on the dangers of holding in your farts. Sadly, he was unable to attain his life-long goal of catching his beloved wife Judy 'cutting the cheese' or 'playing the bum trumpet'—which he likened to a mythical rarity like spotting Bigfoot or a unicorn.
Silly obituaries. More silly obituaries. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:40 AM PST - 5 comments

This Is Your Brain With A Yeerk

40 of the Creepiest Book Covers of All Time selected & riffed on by Emily Temple, Associate Editor at Literary Hub
posted by chavenet at 8:45 AM PST - 40 comments

De burgemeester van Amsterdam is overleden.

Eberhard van der Laan, the mayor of Amsterdam, has, not unexpectedly passed away. A well like man who, in the fashion of the Dutch, did not mince words.. Recently thousands gathered outside the official residence to applaud for almost 20 minutes.
posted by humboldt32 at 8:30 AM PST - 16 comments

Why didn't they ask Evans?

The tragic death of Scott of the Antarctic and four companions on the return of his scientific expedition to the South Pole in 1912, has long been blamed on poor planning by Scott. But the discovery of new documents by University of New South Wales researcher Prof Chris Turney revealed today in the journal Polar Record show how the actions of another expedition member brought about their deaths and why it has been covered-up for over a century. [more inside]
posted by orrnyereg at 8:14 AM PST - 26 comments

I am vengeance! I am the night! I AM BATMAN!

An Oral History of Batman: The Animated Series from Vulture.
posted by zabuni at 7:47 AM PST - 33 comments

A big house, a big big house

Lost Heritage is a website that examines, in greater or lesser depth, English country houses that have been burned down, demolished, abandoned or otherwise lost.
posted by Dim Siawns at 6:50 AM PST - 7 comments

The Confession of a Funeral Home Batman

"It was a gig I had for about two weeks in October of 1989. I was broke, ready to take any job. And I ended up dressing in a Keaton Batman-like suit and attending wakes and funerals in a suburb South of Chicago." (scroll down)
posted by MrJM at 6:07 AM PST - 13 comments

Here comes the fun!

Trailer for Happy! A tv series based on the graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson, produced, written and directed by Brian 'Crank' Taylor (SLYT, NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:20 AM PST - 16 comments

"I love the monster that the artist creates."

Nick Pinkerton interviews Gérard Depardieu: "When I met with Depardieu on the patio of The Mark Hotel in New York on an overcast morning in mid-September, he was markedly disinterested in talking about any of his movies, in town as he was for a talk at the French Institute Alliance Française to promote his slender new book, Innocent. The book is more scattershot manifesto than autobiography, its title a double meaning—its author both describes his personal philosophy, of which a doctrine of innocence is an essential element, and protests his own innocence before an imagined jury of the media, who have made tabloid fodder of him."
posted by sapagan at 5:08 AM PST - 5 comments

The Nazis were not lefty socialists...

The Nazis were not lefty socialists...(Extreme language warning. Probably appalling to Americans. You've been warned about the language. [more inside]
posted by taff at 4:00 AM PST - 75 comments

In the loop

The Academic use Facebook Live's video delay to make a mesmerising music video for their song Bear Claws. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 1:45 AM PST - 4 comments

You are the byproduct

All of it, [former Apple engineer Chris Marcellino] says, is reward-based behaviour that activates the brain’s dopamine pathways. He sometimes finds himself clicking on the red icons beside his apps “to make them go away”, but is conflicted about the ethics of exploiting people’s psychological vulnerabilities. “It is not inherently evil to bring people back to your product,” he says. “It’s capitalism.” [Paul Lewis, SLGuardian] [more inside]
posted by runcifex at 1:08 AM PST - 56 comments

October 5

Hanging coffins in China, Indonesia and the Philippines

Longhu (Dragon and Tiger) Mountain is famous for being one of the birthplaces of Taoism, as well as a scenic region, including Danxia rock peaks and cliffs, where you can find numerous hanging coffins from the almost eradicated Bo people. For a longer look at the few remains of the Bo, here's a documentary on the mysterious hanging coffins of China (DocuWiki), which have undergone some preservation and additional studies in recent years. The Bo weren't the only ones to practice this sort of "sky burial," as noted in this article with more information on the Bo and other hanging coffins, which can also be found in the Philippines (CNN tour short) and Indonesia, where the practices live on.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:09 PM PST - 6 comments

1,858 artworks of Adora

1,858 artworks of Adora [via mefi projects]
It started over 7 years ago as a 365-photo-a-day-type tumblr for my baby daughter, and it keeps propagating. Right now, the best way to see (most of) the 1,858 different artworks of Adora (with a new one coming every day) is on instagram, a massive cache of original illustrations.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:42 PM PST - 4 comments

Bobson Dugnutt of the Cleveland Queens

Fighting Baseball , the Japanese version of MLBPA Baseball (1994), had some . . . interesting player names.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:21 PM PST - 28 comments

Community and Connection - Diversity in Bluegrass

Rhiannon Giddens (previously winner of the Steve Martin prize for excellence in banjo and bluegrass) gave the keynote address at this year's IBMA. The speech explored the creole history of bluegrass and asks "how do we get more diversity in bluegrass? Which of course, behind the hand, is really, why is bluegrass so white??? But the answer doesn't lie in right now. Before we can look to the future, we need to understand the past."
posted by Arbac at 3:43 PM PST - 30 comments

Only the best people

BuzzFeed's Joseph Bernstein tells the story of Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream. Reporting from a cache of Breitbart documents, the story depicts in exhaustive detail how white supremacist thought was laundered through Milo Yiannopoulos and repackaged for Breitbart's audience, with stops along the way to discuss the hidden support Milo received from tech workers and media figures, the role of the Mercer family in backing the entire operation, Nazi-themed passwords, and Steve Bannon, who emails Yiannopoulos to describe mosques as "ALL ‘factories of hate.'" Not to mention the video of Yiannopoulos performing a karaoke version of "America the Beautiful" for well known white supremacists doing Nazi salutes.
posted by zachlipton at 2:59 PM PST - 216 comments

kill yr idols

Kill! Your! Idols! is a project by Ashley Blewer about abuse and celebrity featuring simple facts in beading, paint, embroidery, and glitter.
posted by maryr at 2:09 PM PST - 29 comments

Slashdot Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

20 years ago today Slashdot.org appeared on the internet for the first time. As it enters its third decade, the editors are celebrating their 162,000+ technology news stories with a special anniversary post looking back at their all-time most popular stories. Great moments include the time Slashdot readers leaked the launch of Google Maps and the 2002 posting where 25-year-old Slashdot founder Rob Malda proposed to his fiance. (Its headline? "Kathleen Fent Read This Story.") [more inside]
posted by destinyland at 1:38 PM PST - 88 comments

draining the swamps

Richard L. Hindle writes for Boom California:
California’s Legacy of Swamplands - "The consecutive Swamp Land Acts (1849, 1850, and 1860) were among the first federal water policies to reach newly minted western and southern states, designed ostensibly to encourage reclamation and settlement of wet and inundated areas. They are known today to have displaced indigenous cultures, retooled ecological systems, incentivized risky prospecting, and left California and large swaths of America with aging flood infrastructure projected to cost billions." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:13 PM PST - 5 comments

Decades of Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein

"An investigation by The New York Times [has] found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, emails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company."
posted by brundlefly at 11:27 AM PST - 242 comments

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he's dead.

Santa's dead.
posted by rikschell at 10:02 AM PST - 58 comments

A History of American Protest Songs, Parts 1 & 2

Who was that steel-drivin' man, John Henry? In the folktale, a powerful black steel-driving man named John Henry challenges the steam drill to a race, beats it, and dies. In some versions, John Henry is almost seven feet tall. In others, he wears fine clothes and commands any price for his work. In our national consciousness, he stands for the common man, beaten by industrialization, but unbowed. [part 1] [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Awesome Tapes

Maghrebi Mix #1 A great mix of jajouka & beyond. If you like it, you can also check out Moroccan Tape Stash. Beyond the Maghreb? Awesome Tapes from Africa. If you're willing to leave the continent, and cop to vinyl as a format, Global Groove is the place.
posted by OmieWise at 9:31 AM PST - 3 comments

Incredible Doom

Incredible Doom: It’s about teenagers in the '90s getting into life & death situations over the early Internet. [via mefi projects]
posted by holmesian at 9:06 AM PST - 40 comments

The 2017 Nobel Laureate in Literature is Kazuo Ishiguro

English novelist Kazuo Ishiguro perhaps best known for The Remains of the Day has been given this year's Nobel Prize in literature. If you want to know more about Ishiguro, the British Council has a good profile on him, but it might also be a good idea to read these two dialogues, one between him and fellow Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe and another with Neil Gaiman [previously] or the Paris Review interview in the Art of Fiction series. For live updates, analysis and reaction, head to The Guardian's liveblog and The Comlete Review's Literary Saloon blog.
posted by Kattullus at 4:16 AM PST - 62 comments

Give me ketchup in a corner

When your language is too small for Google Translate, you've got to take things into your own hands. [more inside]
posted by Iteki at 2:54 AM PST - 36 comments

Birds Do It, Bees Do It, But How Does The NYT Review It?

Robert Gottlieb's Roundup of the Season’s Romance Novels. [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 1:55 AM PST - 51 comments

But what do we need to know for the exam?

At Literary Hub, Emily Temple has gathered up "10 College Classes to Read Along with This Semester" and "The Classes 25 Famous Writers Teach." Syllabuses on other media suggest how Richard Lemarchand (designer on Uncharted) teaches video game design [PDF], how David Isaacs (consultant on M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, etc.) teaches comedy, or how video/performance artist Patty Chang teaches video/time-based art [PDF]. Syllabuses related to current events suggest how Noam Chomsky (who has joined the U. of Arizona) co-teaches politics [PDF], how Chris Holmes teaches about gun violence, or how Jacob Remes (interviewed this week about Puerto Rico) teaches critical disaster studies [PDF]. [Previously: 1M+ syllabuses / autodidact course catalog.]
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:08 AM PST - 11 comments

October 4

Fowl play

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants.
posted by retrograde at 11:10 PM PST - 47 comments

The Right To Bear Arms Against Slave Revolts

It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:14 PM PST - 59 comments

Out of the gate, and off for a walk

New Zealand author Lynley Dodd, creator of the beloved Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy describes the real-life inspirations for her stories and the secret lives of pets, as well as her favourite books for children.
posted by prismatic7 at 10:02 PM PST - 19 comments

PepperCoyote/LookLeft/JaredClark, looping master

I've posted before about PepperCoyote in a live band performance, but here he is a bit earlier in a solo performance [58m45s] that demonstrates his skill with looping. Watch him build songs layer by layer right before your eyes ears! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Think you used enough dynamite there, Caitlin?

On the night of January 17, 1881, a would-be body snatcher by the name of Dipper was killed by a blast in a Mount Vernon, Ohio cemetery. The attempted grave-robbery was a three-man operation, according to the Stark County Democrat. The explosion broke the leg of the second thief. The third—tasked with keeping watch—was allegedly left unscathed and hoisted his wounded friend into a sleigh.

Another win for the coffin torpedo.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:59 PM PST - 21 comments

To this day I’ve never met a scarier human being

Videographer Loren Kantor was hired to videotape a Black Flag/Fear/Circle Jerks show in 1981. It did not go well.
posted by larrybob at 6:00 PM PST - 57 comments

“Hooray for people being allowed to enjoy a game in a different way...”

Now Ubi’s opened the door, can we have our “Skip Boss Fight” button? by John Walker [Rock Paper Shotgun] “Ubisoft made a fascinating announcement this week. They revealed that the latest Assassin’s Creed [official site] is to add a “Discovery Tour” mode, removing all the combat and challenges from the game, to let players just freely experience their in-depth recreation of Ancient Egypt. It’s fascinating, to me, because it’s a big deal. And goodness me, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Because games should be delighted to include modes that remove all their difficulty and challenge, and players should cheer when they hear about it. Oddly enough, a lot of players don’t cheer. In fact, people can get awfully angry about it. Since the announcement I’ve seen on Twitter a combination of people declaring, “Hooray! I’m interested in playing Assassin’s Creed for the first time in years!”, alongside others pointing toward those utterly furious that it demeans their hobby, cheapens games, and most heinous of all, lets in the riff-raff.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:45 PM PST - 220 comments

F off

You are the Prime Minister. You unexpectedly call an election but won't debate and lose seats because you weren't prepared. The more-popular opposition leader draws large crowds wherever he goes. No-one likes you. The EU doesn't think much of you or your negotiators, and your Europe minister has gone rogue. Your foreign secretary, while continuing to be offensive, keeps pitching for your job. The extreme right-wing and arguably hypocritical aristocrat continues to gain popularity. It's problem after problem. But don't worry! Your big conference speech will work out fine and you won't be given your P45 (redundancy notice) during the highly-secure event and ... oh. Oh no! Though social media loved it. What now? Post title, and the six words of Ten (related ethics, US politics).
posted by Wordshore at 2:57 PM PST - 68 comments

The dog jumped over the moon

"Husband pretended to throw a white ball for her. When she went looking for it, she looked up and thought the ball was stuck in the sky." [SLT48SOPOYT (Single Link To 48 Seconds Of Purity On YouTube)]
posted by Room 641-A at 2:34 PM PST - 29 comments

Let This Sin Be Upon My Neck: Yezidi Songs, Genocide, & Scripture

"The Yezidis kept their hymns secret for centuries, so scholars have barely analyzed them as music. ... the holiest of hymns is a qewl. The form is often cryptic: “Four lamps with one wick! / There are seven doorways for one Word. / Eleven are a deep ditch: / Seven are dark, four are luminous.” ... No one knows for sure why the qewls are sung and not just spoken. ... A memorizer, though, knows who taught him every piece in his repertoire. Each hymn is the product of a unique line of transmission, so the stanzas vary from region to region, generation to generation, person to person. ... One qewl, sung in Yezidi communities as far-flung as Germany and the Caucasus, has thirty known variations. It could be no other way in a game of telephone that has lasted centuries. ... A talented memorizer will intersperse sung stanzas with sections from prose narratives known as chiroks. Some chiroks serve mainly to illuminate the most enigmatic verses of a qewl, while others recount myths that are not in the hymns at all. They are just as important to the religion but even more flexible, with much room for individual flourishes and interpretations. Different versions can even contradict each other." (Lapham's Quarterly, longread) With this rich tradition of orality in danger from modernity, genocide, and diaspora, Yezidi leaders have decided to allow qewls to written down (beginning in the late 1970s) and are now in the process of forming, for the first time, a written canon. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Whatever It Takes

“The transformation of the Finns’ education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellent of the country’s economic recovery plan. Educators had little idea it was so successful until 2000, when the first results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues, revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science. In the 2009 PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide. ” — Why Are Finland’s Schools So Successful? The Smithsonian
posted by The Whelk at 12:33 PM PST - 41 comments

In Nethack, kraken releases you

The dev team thinks of everything (SLYT). Because it's been a while since anyone's mentioned Nethack, here's a short, fun video explaining why its multiplicity of options is as freeing to the player as it is confusing — and why there's nothing else quite like it.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:17 PM PST - 28 comments

"the silhouette of an RV in motion, with the corporation’s 'smile' logo"

The story of Amazon's Camper­Force. Jessica Bruder describes a cadre of workers who are older, nomadic, and coping with financial disaster. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 12:05 PM PST - 35 comments

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

A monument to America's 4,384 known victims of lynching is being built in Montgomery, Alabama. (Background, with videos.) The America's Black Holocaust Museum is being rebuilt in Milwaukee. The Brooklyn Museum's display The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America ends October 8th. [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 11:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Every case file is a story

In late 2005, an Archives staff member was pulling a file from the Civil War Widows Certificate Approved Pension Case Files for a researcher. The file seemed unusually bulky, so he opened it. Inside the folder, tucked between sheets of a letter was one of the most unusual items found in the records of the National Archives: the preserved skin of a mole.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:20 AM PST - 10 comments

Preventing Computerpocalypse

More and more, critical systems that were once controlled mechanically, or by people, are coming to depend on code. The attempts now underway to change how we make software all seem to start with the same premise: Code is too hard to think about. Before trying to understand the attempts themselves, then, it’s worth understanding why this might be: what it is about code that makes it so foreign to the mind, and so unlike anything that came before it. Although code has increasingly become the tool of choice for creating dynamic behavior, it remains one of the worst tools for understanding it. The point of “Inventing on Principle” is to show that you can mitigate that problem by making the connection between a system’s behavior and its code immediate.
posted by blue shadows at 10:58 AM PST - 27 comments

Time to renovate the Nobels ?

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait lays out problems of modern science and the Nobel awards.
posted by k5.user at 10:43 AM PST - 14 comments

Christ in the Garden of Endless Breadsticks

There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors.
posted by rewil at 10:25 AM PST - 40 comments

internet of things that screw you over

Cory Doctorow wriotes for Locus: The Demon Haunted World
Wannacry was a precursor to a new kind of cheating: cheating the independent investigator, rather than the government. Imagine that the next Dieselgate doesn’t attempt to trick the almighty pollution regulator (who has the power to visit billions in fines upon the cheater): instead, it tries to trick the reviewers, attempting to determine if it’s landed on a Car and Driver test-lot, and then switching into a high-pollution, high-fuel-efficiency mode. The rest of the time, it switches back to its default state: polluting less, burning more diesel. This is already happening.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:53 AM PST - 21 comments

Untitled Goose Project

It's a lovely weekday morning in the village and you are a horrible goose in an upcoming game from House House, the makers of Push Me Pull You.
posted by JHarris at 9:01 AM PST - 29 comments

A Mongol without a horse is like a bird without the wings

Horse culture in Mongolia is extensive, but much of its history is not well known. Take, for example, the intricately carved deer stone pillars that are often accompanied by horse skulls and few other clues to this ancient culture, and the fairly intact burial of a possible seamstress from 1,100 years ago, with a sacrificed horse. The last truly wild horses still live in Mongolia, where monuments to Mongolian history feature horses and tribute is still paid to dead horses. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 AM PST - 9 comments

Music vlogger The Needle Drop's side gig as an alt-right edgelord

Music vlogger Anthony Fantano's outspoken opinions and early support for acts like Death Grips have brought his YouTube channel The Needle Drop a staggering 260,000,000 views. It turns out that until yesterday, Fantano had another booming YouTube channel, this one offering videos like “pepe the frog triggers hillary clinton,” “I CHANGED MY GENDER CUZ DONALD TRUMP,” and “MEGA-CUCK SAYS POKEMON GO IS LIKE DOGFIGHTING.” The Fader has the story.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:16 AM PST - 99 comments

Crack Pipe Stadium

Remember Rob Ford? Toronto's former crack smoking, drunk driving Mayor who, in 2008, was charged with assaulting and threatening to kill his wife? The current Mayor of Toronto, John Tory, thinks it's a good idea to name a city stadium after Ford. Ford was a volunteer football coach who was fired not once but twice for, among other things, making his high school players roll in goose crap, showing up drunk for practice and threatening to beat up a teacher. There has been an outcry, but so far John Tory is sticking to his guns.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:11 AM PST - 35 comments

Cantcon

The Canadian government has announced a new cultural policy, of which the centrepiece is Netflix. The policy has been attacked as being only a sweet deal for Netflix and - in its call "for developing the business, technology and entrepreneurial skills of Canadian artists and creators" - a profound misunderstanding of the place of art and culture in our society.
posted by clawsoon at 5:53 AM PST - 21 comments

It’s not so very strange to me.

There is a whole class of slaves. It is illegal for them to escape slavery. The cops are supposed to murder the slaves if they escape, because there is a risk that they will start to think they’re people. But the cops know that the slaves are not people, so it’s okay to murder them. The greatest danger, the thing the cops are supposed to prevent, is that the slaves will try to assimilate into the society that relies on their labor. Sarah Gailey watches Blade Runner for the first time and finds it entirely familiar.
posted by automatronic at 2:43 AM PST - 225 comments

Quite gay

New Zealand's Rainbow Youth have a new video ad targeting homophobic slurs and it's quite good.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:56 AM PST - 20 comments

October 3

Fat Possum's Blues Treasure Trove

A collection of rediscovered blues musicians. Some are still well known, some hadn't recorded in decades, but now they're available again.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:20 PM PST - 6 comments

Strange Æons in Æstivation

"That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi's paradox" , by Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Ćirković, is a cosmic horror journal article hypothesizing that the Old Ones are sleeping until the stars come right and the universe is cooler - "this occurs at time t = H ln(T0/TdS), in about 1.4·1012 years." Outline and FAQ.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:02 PM PST - 35 comments

"My family and I can't live in good intentions, Marge!"

As America reels from the mass shooting in Las Vegas (the third such shooting regarded as the deadliest ever in a decade), Puerto Rico citizens have gone nearly two weeks without power, with reports that already ageing infrastructure has been irretrievably destroyed. (Puerto Rico's infrastructure status page reports only 5% of the network is operational.) [more inside]
posted by Merus at 6:27 PM PST - 3091 comments

No, that's a 55 you stupid [bleep]!

Is this Australia's worst apprentice? (SLReddit)
posted by Pinback at 6:16 PM PST - 15 comments

Five Ghost Stories

"Taiya" by Vanessa Fogg (The Future Fire, 2017): "Surprisingly, Patrick doesn't seem annoyed when he hears about the ghost. He's washing dishes, his sleeves rolled up and a dishtowel draped over one shoulder. 'A taiya you said?' He doesn't look up from the suds. 'Those things don't cause any harm.'" [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:35 PM PST - 4 comments

"For me, that’s like a final spa treatment."

For decades, most people arranging a funeral have faced a simple choice - burial or cremation? But in parts of the US and Canada a third option is now available - dissolving bodies in an alkaline solution. It will arrive in the UK soon. Its technical name is alkaline hydrolysis, but it is being marketed as "green cremation:" Dissolving the dead—A radical alternative to burial and cremation.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:19 PM PST - 81 comments

This little light

This little light: On fathers, sons and that little lamp in the Pixar logo. Once upon a time in the Pixar offices my dad played ball with me, and “Luxo Jr.” was born. via kottke
posted by not_the_water at 4:30 PM PST - 6 comments

display: block

BlocktoberLD collects tweets to #blocktober - wherein video game level designers post their blocked out designs as they were prior to an art pass.
posted by Sparx at 4:20 PM PST - 2 comments

To Feed the Soul

"My name is Leah Chase. I run this kitchen at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. Been here for what? Sixty-eight years." Meet the amazing woman behind a New Orleans culinary institution in this 2014 interview with the Southern Foodways Alliance. And then take a few moments to appreciate her taste in African-American art. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:23 PM PST - 6 comments

EU English

When everyone's using it as a second language and very few as a first, some odd usages crop up, to wit: "The Committee urges the Commission ... to precise which period before confinement is meant. Without further precisions, this could lead to support for poorly justified financial instruments." Mental Floss has 11 examples from EU documents, including to precise (meaning: to make precise), dispose of (to use), important (significant), opportunity (opportuneness), punctual (periodic), actual (current), eventual (possible), expertises (expertise), planification (planning), comitology (having to do with committees), and actorness (the quality of being a party which is taking an action). If that's not enough for you, the European Court of Auditors has prepared a glossary (PDF) with explanations that will assist you in translating EU English to standard English and vice versa.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:32 PM PST - 50 comments

How the Elderly Lose Their Rights

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 1:32 PM PST - 57 comments

Let's get small

The Big World of Teeny-Tiny Things
Miniacs are the makers, collectors, and fans of diminutive versions of, well, everything: dime-size dentures or tarot cards as small as pencil shavings. Miniature-making has long been viewed as an oddballish hobby akin to clockmaking, relegated to trade shows and obscure publications like the Nutshell News. But in the past few years, the miniac demographic has shifted to young artists and aesthetes who just happen to like objects more when they perch on the tip of a finger.
posted by Lexica at 12:51 PM PST - 15 comments

“...like a perfume or a caress”.

Virtuoso sisters claim to have solved Proust’s musical puzzle [The Guardian] “It was just a “little phrase” from a sonata for piano and violin in F sharp, but it triggered a tumult of emotion for Swann, and prompted a musical puzzle that has intrigued Proust’s fans since the publication of his epic work in 1913. It is often argued the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns must be the real musician behind the mystery piece that haunts the pages of the revered seven-volume novel, but since Proust invented a composer called Vinteuil in the first book, a succession of favourite candidates have been put forward down the years, including César Franck, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Richard Wagner and even the comparatively obscure Belgian Guillaume Lekeu. Now two leading concert musicians and sisters, the violinist Maria and the pianist Nathalia Milstein, have a compelling new theory.”
posted by Fizz at 12:06 PM PST - 14 comments

Like Uber for vegan food

How did Josh Tetrick’s vegan-mayo company become a Silicon Valley darling—and what is he really selling? Mayonnaise, Disrupted. [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 4:14 AM PST - 147 comments

Paintings in Sikhism

Although mostly a music review site, the Quietus has posted an interesting short essay by Gurmeet Singh on the development of painted representations of Sikh gurus and religious subjects.
posted by Dim Siawns at 2:26 AM PST - 4 comments

October 2

said, and left unsaid. done, and left undone.

In The Baffler, Siddartha Deb asks us Stranger than Fiction - Why won’t novelists reckon with climate change? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:46 PM PST - 126 comments

Music Machine Mondays

Wintergatan's Marble Machine (previously) was originally inspired by a visit to the Speelklok Museum in Utrecht. As work on a new machine proceeds, Martin Molin is hosting a series of videos with the museum explaining and demonstrating various machines in their collection. [more inside]
posted by ckape at 7:52 PM PST - 8 comments

The Haunting of Netflix House 5: The Netflix Dimension

What’s up Octobocops, it’s Halloweason. Let’s get spooked. Here are some movies of the horror and horror-adjacent genres that you might watch by yourself or with a party of friends or with the spirit of a long-deceased duke who lives in inhabits your house. This is part five; you know the goddamn drill by now.
posted by Artw at 5:54 PM PST - 66 comments

Life goes on

The International Association of Professional Birth Photographers is proud to announce the winners of the 2017 Image of the Year Competition [NSFW].
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Into the Great Wide Open

Tom Petty has died at the age of 66 after suffering cardiac arrest. [more inside]
posted by Elly Vortex at 1:16 PM PST - 364 comments

football politics

(FC)Barcelona in the strange and symbolic eye of a storm over Catalonia "That identification with Catalonia, while nuanced, shifting, unevenly embraced, sometimes vague and often problematic, is part of what gives Barça an explicitly socio-political dimension. It comes together, of course, in the slogan: mes que un club, more than a club. And that meant this was always going to be more than a match even if in the end it was less than one.'
posted by dhruva at 12:05 PM PST - 33 comments

Black Farmers and Changing Times

The African American farmers of Covert, MI Shifting market forces, immigration reform, and a lack of interest from younger generations mean that black farmers in the small town of Covert, Michigan, are at a crossroads.
posted by OmieWise at 11:35 AM PST - 2 comments

It's hard to understand a brain injury until you have one.

I noticed someone moving above me, and asked her what was happening. I was about to get a CT scan, she told me. She is the first person whose appearance I remember, even in part. She had Shirley Temple curls. I’m not sure what her face looked like, but I remember I liked her hair. I was a science journalist and had written about CT scans but I’d never had one before, I told her. So this was exciting. But as they moved me into the scanner, I wondered: was I a science journalist? I had spoken without thinking. My entire life before the ambulance felt dim and far off. I might as well have been born on the pavement, with the neck brace half on.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:21 AM PST - 42 comments

“... games that encourage players to take a moment and breathe.”

Treat Yourself with Self-Care Jam Games “There's… kind of a lot to be scared of. I'm grateful for the efforts of the Self-Care Jam creators, who all made small games in early December 2016, with the theme of self-care. Self-care is a pretty self-explanatory concept: these are things meant to give you a moment to breathe, reflect, literally take care of yourself. There are many games, zines, and interactive vignettes, all available on the Self-Care Jam page. I'd encourage you to check them all out when you need a breather.” [via: Waypoint]
posted by Fizz at 8:52 AM PST - 37 comments

50 plus dead in Las Vegas mass shooting

More than 50 people have been killed and 200 injured in a mass shooting at the Route 91 Music Festival near the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This is the worst mass shooting in United States history, exceeding the 49 in the Orlando Nightclub Shooting. [more inside]
posted by MattWPBS at 5:25 AM PST - 1137 comments

How about that much anticipated sports match last night?

A potentially humorous take on being an introvert from non-introverts.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:22 AM PST - 48 comments

October 1

The real reasons you procrastinate — and how to stop

Have you ever sat down to complete an important task — and then suddenly discovered you were up loading the dishwasher or engrossed in the Wikipedia entry about Chernobyl? ...But the best thing that Pychyl recommends is to recognize that you don’t have to be in the mood to do a certain task — just ignore how you feel and get started. [more inside]
posted by whitelotus at 9:38 PM PST - 76 comments

"I mean... eating each other. That's unamerican."

This album tells the story of the 2020 presidential election. The voice you hear is Dan Carlin, but he didn't say any of this stuff. Hardcore Prophecy: the Trump of Doom is an astonishing, hallucinogenic video telling the imaginary and heavily cannibalistic apotheosis of Donald Trump. Music and story by Dan Warren, images from SA goons. CW: cannibalism, descriptions of orgies in breach of both House and Senate rules
posted by Sebmojo at 9:22 PM PST - 12 comments

Raddle is a leftist alternative to Reddit

Raddle is a leftist alternative to Reddit, created after the organisers were banned. FAQ, Q & A.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:14 PM PST - 35 comments

Maori Modernism

How the advertising and travel posters changed in New Zealand. The subtitle of this article is "The New Zealand Artist Who Put the Islands' Native People First."
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:48 PM PST - 12 comments

Recent SF/F about Machine-Assisted Therapy

Xia Jia's story "The Psychology Game" (Clarkesworld, 10/17) contemplates a familiar sort of Turing test in a new venue: "This is a globally popular reality TV show ... The patient and the therapist are not in the same room." But she mentions Hector Levesque's "On Our Best Behaviour" / "The Winograd Schema Challenge" [PDFs] as a greater hurdle for AI. Recent news from Apple and Google suggests more near-term realities for automation. Meanwhile, David Burr Gerrard's "The Epiphany Machine" (Guernica, 2017; standalone excerpt from the novel) imagines machine-based insight from a magical realist perspective: "1. The epiphany machine will not discover anything about you that you do not, in some way, already know." [Siri, previously.]
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:41 PM PST - 2 comments

Not Safe For Work But Safe For Lunch

Ms Yeah is often hungry at work but her office lacks a kitchen, so she makes do with office supplies. When she craves for jianbing (煎饼), she turns her computer into a pan. Fried fish? A butane cartridge, some liquid soap and her hand will do (note the FBI warning at the beginning). Ice cream rolls? Computers fans. Barbecue? Neon lamps or electric warming fan. Fancy an espresso? Lightbulbs. And because ’Tis the Season, mooncakes. [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 2:39 PM PST - 56 comments

Local Prepper Makes Good

Joseph Badame spent four decades outfitting his home for the day when, he believes, an economic collapse will make it necessary for survival. But his many barrels of food couldn't stave off bank foreclosure. Rather than sending those supplies to the dump, a chance encounter has inspired him to ship it all to Puerto Rico. (SLnj.com)
posted by waninggibbon at 10:14 AM PST - 46 comments

Pythagoras on Pizza

Surprising Uses of the Pythagorean Theorem. A nice intuitive exploration of the old mathematical chestnut. With just a little bit of simple logic, we find that the Theorem doesn't just apply to triangles. From this we learn for instance, that the energy used to accelerate one bullet to 500 mph can accelerate two others to 400 and 300 mph. And whether that large pizza is better than two mediums. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:30 AM PST - 25 comments

Deaf Music Fans Are Finally Starting To Be Heard

Thanks to a concerted push from DHH advocates and a growing cohort of employees plugged in to the DHH community, festival organizers have been prioritizing access for DHH fans. At Lollapalooza this year, a fifth of the 170 performances scheduled had ASL interpreters. [slBuzzfeed]
posted by ellieBOA at 9:01 AM PST - 11 comments

All Night Long

"I missed my connecting flight in Charlotte, and I didn't want to sit in anger all night long, so instead I did what makes me happiest..." (SLYT)
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:32 AM PST - 27 comments

“That's too bad," Mr. Hall said, opening Door 1. "You've won a goat."

"But you didn't open another door yet or give me a chance to switch." "Where does it say I have to let you switch every time? I'm the master of the show.”

Monty Hall, the famous host of the television game show Let's Make a Deal, passed away yesterday at the age of 96. [more inside]
posted by mystyk at 6:51 AM PST - 52 comments

I want to believe

The curious case of the alien in the photo and the mystery that took years to solve
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:27 AM PST - 22 comments

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID

Move over, Comic Sans... the font that haunts our dreams is now.... PAPYRUUUUUS!!!!!! (SLYT)
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:48 AM PST - 43 comments