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Glass: the most underrated medieval technology? (threadreader) - "Venice sought desperately to keep its monopoly. If a glassmaker left without permission, he would be asked to return. If he refused, his family would be imprisoned, and if he still persisted, an assassin would be hired to kill him off."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:32 PM PST - 21 comments

The Rolling Stones & Boston Dynamics (slyt)
posted by Gorgik at 6:49 PM PST - 49 comments

"Aline", a delightful animated music video directed by Wes Anderson as part of The French Dispatch (Fanfare), featuring Christophe's Aline sung by Jarvis Cocker, and illustrated by Javi Aznarez.
posted by adrianhon at 3:39 PM PST - 10 comments

Three short speculative stories about love, yearning, and relationships beyond the human boundary. "Cold Wind" by Nicola Griffith: "From the park on Puget Sound I watched the sun go down on the shortest day of the year." "Traveling Mercies" by Rachael K. Jones: "Sometimes you have to let people take care of you. That's the contract, the covenant of friendship." "First Dates" by Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers: "In retrospect, 'I’m dying' was a bad pick-up line."
posted by brainwane at 2:06 PM PST - 5 comments

In a pop world ruled by Harry Styles, some hard rockers are going Trumpy. Politico spends a medium-length read examining the evolution of the image of men in the music world and what it might imply for politics. It's an interesting prism through which to view the present moment, certainly. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:52 PM PST - 100 comments

Tim Curry explains why Halloween is great in “The Halloween Song” from the 1986 film adaptation of The Worst Witch.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:43 PM PST - 16 comments

Some of the most frightening monsters in the Jewish imagination. Deuteronomy mentions that a prediluvian king named Og was the last of the giants, a species that thrived before the flood... but wasn’t all life not in Noah's ark destroyed during the torrent? How did Og survive? The answer is scarily simple. He hung onto the side of the ark for the entire storm, eating scraps Noah fed him through a hole in the wall.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:29 AM PST - 10 comments

Broken Peach - Tainted Love (Halloween Special) (2021) [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:35 AM PST - 8 comments

Christine Riding, "Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime": Being "a subject that encourages the spectator to imagine 'pain and danger' and 'self-preservation,' 'without being actually in such circumstances' may well be why shipwreck ... was suited to the sublime." Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator [PDF; chapter summaries: 1 + 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]: "Humans live their lives and build their institutions on dry land. Nevertheless, they seek to grasp the movement of their existence above all through a metaphorics of the perilous sea voyage." Supplementing many previouslies, a number of shipwreck narratives offer further occasions for reflection. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:09 AM PST - 3 comments

After already serving 2 years house-arrest for a misdemeanor contempt of court charge, Donziger will now serve 6 months in prison. The charge stems from his refusal to hand over his cell phone and computer when Chevron demanded access to all of his confidential client communications. Donziger refused while appealing the request, and was charged with contempt of court. His term is by far the harshest sentence ever served by someone facing the same charge. Donziger explains his decisions and the events that occurred in his prior interview with Democracy Now from April 2021. [more inside]
posted by unid41 at 2:00 PM PST - 40 comments

Three speculative stories about the logistical and emotional side effects of time travel and related phenomena. "Paradox" by Naomi Kritzer is heavier: "If you need to know you matter, don’t ask history, ask the people you matter to." "Cyclical" by Tanya Breshears (previously) is bittersweet and domestic: "A human's life is a rushing river: a moment, once lived, is rendered forever inaccessible, except by the poor substitute of human memory." "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel: A Syllabus" by David DeGraff is humorous: "Students will devise and perform experiments to test the nature of reality as long as there is minimal chance the experiment will destroy the universe. And no one dies. 3 credits."
posted by brainwane at 11:11 AM PST - 6 comments

What Biden Can’t Do on Student Debt—and What He Won’t Do (New Yorker, web archive version): "The Debt Collective activists developed a theory: that the lawyers at the Department of Education had already written their memo, that they had advised Biden that he did have the authority to cancel debt [...] So Gokey, one of the organizers, submitted a request through the Freedom of Information Act. If a memo had already been drafted, then he asked the Department of Education to send it to him. On August 20th, he got the results: dozens of pages of e-mails among Department of Education officials, including a seven-page memo called 'The Secretary’s Legal Authority for Broad-Based Debt Cancellation.' The memo’s contents were redacted—in hot pink, for some reason—but it was proof that a memo existed."
posted by mittens at 10:23 AM PST - 153 comments

My Analog Journal's Youtube channel features guest mixes by DJs as well as those by its host Zag Erlat, a London based music producer. Usually shot from above to showcase the turntables and the record albums, Season 2's guests include Krishna Villar's set of Psychedelic Cumbia, Norsicaa's mix of Latin-influenced Southeast Asian singers, Westside MuzeeQ's exploration of 70s Indonesian Psych, Funk & Disco, Poly-Ritmo's deep dive into music from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti, and Dona Carla's selection of funky Brazilian samba grooves from 1969 to 1984. All tracks time-stamped and labeled. Or if you prefer, go to the Soundcloud for just the audio. Submissions for guest mix slots are open at My Analog Journal.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:21 AM PST - 2 comments

A small dairy has been part of the first successful commercial trial for a novel way to reduce methane in cow burps by mixing seaweed into the cattle's feed. [more inside]
posted by agatha_magatha at 9:58 AM PST - 16 comments

Spiders are much smarter than you think – Cognition researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids , Betsy Mason, Knowable, 10/30/2021. Jumping spiders, champs of cognition whose brains fit on the head of a pin, exhibit signs of intelligence like dogs or human toddlers. “Jumping spiders are remarkably clever animals,” says visual ecologist Nathan Morehouse, who studies the spiders at the University of Cincinnati. “I always find it delightful when something like a humble jumping spider punctures our sense of biological superiority.”
posted by cenoxo at 6:53 AM PST - 38 comments

münecat takes on Gary Vee: The Youth Pastor of Capitalism, Why the UK’s "Fox News" Didn’t Work, How Tabloid Culture Vilifies Women & Gaslights Everyone, and the Sales Funnel of a TikTok Pick-Up Artist with humour, anger, and music.
posted by clawsoon at 6:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Stephen Sondheim was about to launch his Broadway career! Just out of college, he wrote three songs on spec for Lemuel Ayers who was producing a script by Jules J. Epstein (Casablanca), adapted into a musical. Ayers liked what Sondheim wrote, hired him to complete the score, and the show Saturday Night was headed to Broadway in 1955! Except that Ayers died of cancer shortly after auditions, and the production folded. It received an Off-Broadway premiere, finally, in 2000, and it is from this we get this YouTube playlist of the Off-Broadway Cast. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:25 AM PST - 3 comments

How BOFA Became the Most Delightful Political Protest of Our Times [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:03 AM PST - 29 comments

The US Library of Congress hosts many images tagged, Animals in Human Situations. Similar, sometimes overlapping collections include those of the New York Public Library, Massachusetts' Digital Commonwealth, and Wikimedia Commons. [Includes as much old-timey racist imagery as you'd expect.]
posted by eotvos at 11:20 PM PST - 7 comments

'Ladybirds' and 'Dark Eros'. Two poems by Larissa Szporluk. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 7:42 PM PST - 2 comments

Amal El-Mohtar (co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time-War, and other delightful things, and a Houston Spies blaseball *redacted*) recently posted a photo on Twitter of a nuthatch feeding from her hand. She posted on her blog today about the story behind the photo and ended with a request: "I'd love for you to tell me, if you want, whether you've ever nourished a hope in your heart you know to be vanishingly unlikely, but then found it fulfilled; whether, while you felt yourself dull and undeserving, you've ever felt a small, joyous grace light on you like a bird. I wish this for you with all my heart. "
posted by curious nu at 7:01 PM PST - 10 comments

Rigged is an online archive and podcast documenting the history and evolution of disinformation in America researched and curated by investigative journalist Amy Westervelt. Westervelt, a longtime and award-winning environmental journalist, is the host of the climate disinformation podcast Drilled and the founder of the women-run podcast network Critical Frequency. It contains new articles, profiles of many key villains, an excellent glossary, and over 1,000 deeply researched archival images documenting the history of disinformation in the US right up to today.
posted by Roach at 1:15 PM PST - 7 comments

The FDA has authorized Pfizer vaccines for kids age 5-11.
posted by heyitsgogi at 12:33 PM PST - 72 comments

A LIST OF OLD PEOPLE WHO I BELIEVE DO AND DO NOT KNOW WHO MARIO IS (Ben Jenkins, Gawker)
"This isn’t a question of whether or not the person has played a Super Mario game or even watched someone play a Super Mario game. The only test is whether, if shown a picture of Mario, the person would be able to say something like 'That’s Mario.' They can’t say 'That’s a computer game guy' or 'That’s the little jumping fellow from the whatsit.' They have to know his name, but that’s it. Let’s begin."
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:59 AM PST - 73 comments

Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm. A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” 97-year-old billionaire and amateur architect Charles Munger donated $200 million toward the project - an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms - with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly.
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:42 AM PST - 167 comments

Chainsaw Bunny [6min.] [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:03 AM PST - 4 comments

#CriticalAxis is a community driven project from The Disabled List that collects and analyzes disability representation in media, including ads from companies such as Toyota and IKEA. All too many are "Inspiration Exploitation" or focus on the "charity" bestowed upon the recipient. The project also highlights examples of "crip humor" and media informed by the social model of disability. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:00 AM PST - 4 comments

Two speculative stories about young people escaping bad situations (bullying, homophobia, sizeism, etc.). "How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade" by Nick Poniatowski: "But the worst thing about it was that I didn't help him." "Riparian" by Seanan McGuire: "Molly begged her mother to let her start mermaid lessons for five years before she finally received her starter tail, a glorious confection of silicon and spandex..."
posted by brainwane at 9:23 AM PST - 5 comments

What if, for example, you aimed to work 20% less than you had time to reasonably handle? "If you worked deeply and regularly on a reasonable portfolio of initiatives that move the needle, and were sufficiently organized to keep administrative necessities from dropping through the cracks, your business probably wouldn’t implode, and your job roles would likely still be fulfilled. This shift from a state of slightly too much work to not quite enough, in other words, might be less consequential than we fear." [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 7:46 AM PST - 29 comments

yeule is the name used by 23-year-old Nat Ćmiel, a Singapore-born, London-based musician and artist who identifies as a nonbinary cyborg entity. They make ethereal, digital dreampop, often with themes of self, (dis)embodiment, alienation and intimacy in the online world. they also have a Twitch stream, which covers topics from gaming to makeup, and a Discord server shared with their fan community. There's an interview with yeule in MusicTech, discussing their background in online culture, their ideas (Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto comes up), the recurring idea of “glitch” their upcoming album Glitch Princess, and a 4-hour ambient track they recently made in collaboration with the hyperpop producer Danny L. Harle.
posted by acb at 6:37 AM PST - 2 comments

A couple of creepy/scary/uncanny classical pieces that don't tend to make it to the mainstream classical music halloween lists. The finale from Salome where Salome kisses and and sings to the the head of John the Baptist. From the Richard Strauss opera based on the Oscar Wilde play. Some stagings get grosser than others - this one's a bit bloody but not too gory. (YT, 14:38. Text on screen) (CW: nudity) [more inside]
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 7:30 PM PST - 9 comments

"I still can't believe the U.S. entered a naval war in 1941-42 without working torpedoes, and didn't even realize that they didn't work until 1943." U. S. Torpedo Troubles During World War II, a 1998 article by Douglas Shireman. Via Noah Smith.
posted by russilwvong at 5:31 PM PST - 35 comments

“Tony’s true friends, not interested in profiting from Tony’s condition, became increasingly concerned about Tony’s health and many were looking for ways to get Tony professional help,” court documents said. “Unfortunately, in the months since Tony had left the rehabilitation facility, several less scrupulous people prominently occupied Tony’s attention and were living large, all at Tony’s expense.” The last months of Tony Hsieh, former Zappos CEO, who died in November 2020. (TW: self-harm, drug abuse) Previously.
posted by meowzilla at 12:21 PM PST - 39 comments

Facebook renames itself Meta
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:31 AM PST - 363 comments

Those currently enthralled with Netflix’s hit competitive glass blowing show Blown Away may be justifiably curious about the presence on the program of “glory holes.” For most of the culture, this terms refers very specifically to a public, quasi-anonymous sex act involving gay men, bathroom stalls, and a handily placed hole. For glass blowers, the glory hole is a high-powered furnace burning at over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit—hardly suitable for sex acts of any kind. So why do they call it that? Which glory hole came first? Which group owns the term “glory hole”? Would a glory hole by any other name smell as sweet? How did we get to me asking these questions? Let’s start at the beginning.
posted by sciatrix at 9:46 AM PST - 37 comments

Romano Santos (Vice, 10/27/2021), "Remembering the Thrill of Reading 'True Philippine Ghost Stories'": "'Very chilling stories, indeed. I can't imagine ever seeing someone's doppelgänger. But for sure, I am not looking forward to seeing mine,' Mendoza said. As gripping as these stories are, she believes the books offer something much deeper than an easy scare." True Philippine Ghost Stories #1 [Internet Archive].
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:34 AM PST - 6 comments

Two speculative stories in which girls and women disagree about how to cope with change, both published this year. "A Stone’s Throw from You" by Jenn Reese in Mermaids Monthly: "And then I told you I was leaving. That I’d been called to the sea." "For Future Generations" by Rachel Gutin in khōréō ("a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction and migration"): "Of all the Jewish holidays, Sukkot was the hardest to celebrate in space."
posted by brainwane at 8:59 AM PST - 7 comments

"Like any good dumpster behind a GameStop, Cyberpunk 2077 features and glorifies molecules of the entire history of videogames. It contains at least a little bit of everything good and bad about the best, big modern games. Reviewing it allows me to review every modern videogame of the past three console generations and predict most future videogames of the current generation, all at the same time." Action Button [Tim Rogers] presents a Cyberpunk 2077 review with branching paths. (playlist)
posted by simmering octagon at 4:28 AM PST - 13 comments

La Campagne is a newsletter about the upcoming French presidential election by French economist Manu Saadia (best known for his book Trekonomics). He was fed up with the inaccuracies of English language coverage of French politics, and decided to remedy that. He started with the basics, explaining voting procedures and why it is that French politics are so dominated by the office of the presidency. He's also written about the legacy of French defeat in Algeria, Covid's effect on the campaign and the rise of far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. The newsletter will continue until the election and its immediate aftermath.
posted by Kattullus at 4:08 AM PST - 18 comments

That's right... the USPS has no official motto! But it does host an official website full of Postal Facts—Fun facts! Facts and Figures! Postal History! STAMPS STAMPS STAMPS! Sustainability, size and scope, diversity facts, and more!
As an added bonus, here's a twitterbot that posts a picture of a different post office every thirty minutes.
posted by not_on_display at 10:03 PM PST - 18 comments

How one of the biggest pop groups in the world secretly reunited to make a new album and a high-tech stage show featuring digital avatars of themselves — from 1979. Elisabeth Vincentelli writing in the NYT. [Archive link] We just discussed this album [with links to the previous two released songs], but it is now more imminent and we have another new song, Just A Notion.
posted by hippybear at 9:54 PM PST - 12 comments

Really. Pennsylvania's Historical and Museum Commission and PennDOT have a collection of historic steel truss bridges lovely described, photographed, and available for sale to appropriate homes. Link is to Issue 7 of the Bridge to Success newsletter; more eligible bridges in the archives on the site.
posted by sepviva at 7:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Bob's 8-Track Garage Sale is, according to Bob, the only live 8-track radio show on earth. The show has a narrow focus. Bob only plays music directly from 8-track tapes that he finds locally in central Iowa. If you're in the central Iowa area, you can catch new shows every Thursday morning on 89.1 KHOI FM. The rest of us can stream them from the KHOI Archive for a couple weeks after their air date. [more inside]
posted by Lirp at 6:53 PM PST - 34 comments

"I knew how crazy people were long before the internet made it crystal clear." Having worked in the L.A. Central Branch Library for 42 years, Glen Creason muses about the time he's spent in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles and says goodbye.
posted by starscream at 5:02 PM PST - 6 comments

From the Projects page: The Worst House On The Internet by missjenny, Ha-Ha-Haunted House... of Comedy by under_petticoat_rule, and two short horror/gothic stories by Countess Elena.
posted by mpark at 4:52 PM PST - 6 comments

"There are witch-hunting narratives, and pagan community narratives—there are all kinds of them!” Kier-La Janisse (Wikipedia, IMDB), director of Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, describes her 24-hour, international folk horror film festival to the Onion's A.V. Club. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Short Story Filter: Grace Paley's "A Conversation with My Father" read by Ali Smith. Followed by a brief interview with Smith: "It's the life force right up against the brutality of life" Consider also George Saunders' tribute - Grace Paley: The Saint of Seeing.
posted by storybored at 9:54 AM PST - 6 comments

Two scifi stories about literary professions in uncertain futures. "The Bookstore at the End of America" by Charlie Jane Anders, about a bookseller at the border between California and America: "Some of those screaming people were old enough to have grown up in the United States of America, but they acted as though these two lands had always been enemies." "Apologia" by Vajra Chandrasekera, about a poet visiting "the committee’s carefully Chosen Moments of history": "This guilty poet, this raging poet, he could retroactively make the apologies that we had never made the first time around. It was, or would be, never too late for the big sorry."
posted by brainwane at 8:51 AM PST - 6 comments

The Chicago Blackhawks chose chasing a tarnished Cup instead of doing what’s right. (CW: sexual assault) In the wake of an independent investigation that determined that the Chicago Blackhawks covered up allegations of sexual assault by one of their coaches in 2010, president of hockey operations Stan Bowman resigned. Other executives who knew about the allegations are employed with other teams. [more inside]
posted by goatdog at 8:01 AM PST - 29 comments

Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment is an article by Taras Grescoe about recent attempts to recreate the Roman Empire’s most beloved sauce, garum (previouslies on MeFi). In Spain and Portugal, you can now buy it in stores, but the problem is that it’s “liquamen”, one of two different garum sauces, while the other, “garum sociorum”, remains a mystery. Grescoe posted a Twitter thread on how to make homemade liquamen. [via Cheryl Morgan]
posted by Kattullus at 3:08 AM PST - 46 comments

No Children, a 2002 song by The Mountain Goats is having a moment on TikTok. TV's Wonder Woman approves and other long time Mountain Goats fans are working through their feelings. John Darnielle, singer and songwriter in the band, seems to be letting it all wash over him.
posted by Foaf at 1:35 AM PST - 60 comments

The Student Body Is Deaf and Diverse. The School’s Leadership Is Neither. Student protests over the hiring of a white hearing superintendent have roiled a school for the deaf that serves mostly Black and Hispanic students in the Atlanta area and have focused attention on whether school leaders should better reflect the identities of their students. (non-paywall link available here) [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:33 PM PST - 8 comments

It might Break Your Pinky Heart is a a playful, innuendo-laden mockery of China’s unappeasable, triumphalist and xenophobic ‘Pink Culture’ and its champions, known as ‘pinkies’ by Namewee 黃明志Ft.Kimberley Chen 陳芳語 . Here's some context.
posted by FungusCassetteBicker at 8:18 PM PST - 22 comments

The Facebook Papers: In the wake of last week's Congressional testimony, "[j]ournalists from a variety of newsrooms, large and small, worked together to gain access to thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances Haugen [@FrancesHaugen], the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower." [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:30 PM PST - 113 comments

Laura Kampf, previously and previously, gets a really good deal on some mysterious storage boxes.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:16 PM PST - 24 comments

How to Turn Any Vague Concept Into a Sexy Halloween Costume. Step 1: Pick a decidedly unsexy concept.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:34 AM PST - 66 comments

From Scientists to Salesmen - A Review of Noah Hutton’s In Silico.

Pervasive corporate managerialism has made it such that the number and prestige of publications in prestigious for-profit journals has become the key metric of one’s value, and the critical currency through which stable, managerial-class jobs are procured. Meanwhile, the deliberate ballooning of for-profit student programs in STEM, coupled to an ever-shrinking job market, keep the labor pool highly skilled, oversaturated, and ever more desperate to compete. Taken together, these conditions have helped precipitate a euphemistically named “replication crisis” that, seen as the natural outcome of competitive social credit-seeking behaviors within a corporate system, is less a crisis of statistical power than it is a crisis of social disempowerment: negative results, however truthful, simply do not sell.

[more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 9:56 AM PST - 22 comments

The Red Diet, a halloween comic by Sarah Hopkins. [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 9:36 AM PST - 7 comments

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping Documentary trailer has dropped. [CW: Giuliani]
posted by chavenet at 9:11 AM PST - 16 comments

After sexual misconduct allegations, mounting unpaid royalties, one of its founding partners resigning and another "walking away," Chicago independent music label Bloodshot Records seemed to be shutting down. Independent music company Exceleration Music announced it has struck an agreement with label founders Rob Miller and Nan Warshaw to acquire Bloodshot Records and to assume full operational control of its catalog. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:09 AM PST - 9 comments

Two scifi stories of underdog revenge in an unfair future. "The Last of the Redmond Billionaires" by Peter Watts is a very dark vignette in a climate refugee future. "The Stillness of the Stars" by Jessica Snell (formerly McAdams) is a happier space thriller on a generation ship, about escaping past the steerage-class wall.
posted by brainwane at 8:46 AM PST - 4 comments

Sometimes it's obvious when you need to break your own rules. [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:39 AM PST - 40 comments

Everything is Fine [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:52 AM PST - 14 comments

"I'm staying up extra late tonight to see a test train pull into Brighton Station." Francis Bourgeois is unapologetically joyful about trains.
posted by clawsoon at 10:31 PM PST - 21 comments

Over the course of a week (and a 2 hour video), musician, guitar YouTuber, and weird instrument aficionado Rob Scallon builds a guitar from scratch with professional luthier Marshall Bruné. [more inside]
posted by redct at 10:15 PM PST - 4 comments

The Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles was one of the worst atrocities to happen in the city. In the end, as a result of an accidental shooting, five hundred local white men killed 19 Chinese men and boys. Only a plaque currently memorializes the terrible event that occurred. Although some men stood trial, their charges were overturned and they were never retried. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 9:49 PM PST - 8 comments

Music writer Brad Shoup explains why he makes exhaustive year-specific music mixes on Spotify: "With each new mix, my research methods improved - as did the source databases - and now, any playlist from 1969 on routinely features 1500 tracks, minimum." [more inside]
posted by filmvisuality at 6:47 PM PST - 21 comments

'Obchod na korze' y/t. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 6:12 PM PST - 4 comments

Bike trials legend Danny MacAskill (previously, previouslier) visits a wind turbine factory, while content creator Danny MacAskill shows the youths how much energy is generated by renewable sources.
posted by box at 3:03 PM PST - 15 comments

Former cast and crew of Michigan's Purple Rose Theater are coming forward to share their experiences under long-time artistic director Guy Sanville. Among their personal stories are claims of abuse, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and more. Is time up for Guy Sanville at Jeff Daniels's home theater?
posted by custardfairy at 2:52 PM PST - 14 comments

If Monday is grinding to an end and you need energy, dogs, and a little boost to your day More about Caribou/Dan Snaith, and one more sample of something very good from Caribou.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Just thirty years ago, we could only speculate what planets might exist around other stars. That changed in 1992, with the first confirmed detection of an extrasolar planet. Since then, progress has been rapid: there are now 4,843 confirmed exoplanets in 3,579 planetary systems. So far, all of these have been relatively nearby. But a new paper, published today in Nature Astronomy, reports the first evidence of a planet in a whole other galaxy. The potential planet, 28 million light years away, was detected as it passed in front of a bright X-ray binary star in the M51 galaxy, causing a three-hour blip in its X-ray emissions. BBC article and link to the paper itself.
posted by automatronic at 2:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Please listen to, enjoy and maybe discuss Flux.
Poppy —singer, songwriter, musician, youtube performance artist and serial bible reader — has followed up last year's neo-nu-grindcore-metal masterpiece I Disagree with a less nu- and more alt- album, which NME calls: "determined, fun-filled and perception-defying alt-rock". [more inside]
posted by signal at 2:15 PM PST - 10 comments

1000 MSCHF ARTWORKS FOR SALE: One original Andy Warhol (worth $20K) mixed at random into a stack of 999 exact MSCHF forgeries. "By forging Fairies en masse, we obliterate the trail of provenance for the artwork. Though physically undamaged, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work. By burying a needle in a needlestack, we render the original as much a forgery as any of our replications." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 1:42 PM PST - 26 comments

Noah Smith: The Econ Nobel we were all waiting for. "David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens have made economics a more scientific field." David Card is best-known for his research with Alan Krueger showing that a minimum-wage increase in New Jersey caused employment to rise rather than fall. A profile from the Globe and Mail. Bonus: This year's econ critics make a few good points.
posted by russilwvong at 11:22 AM PST - 40 comments

Florence Farr was a muse and lover of George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats
She was an English actress, occultist, and an important member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and a writer whose ''The Dancing Fawn'' had a cover by Aubrey Beardsley
posted by adamvasco at 10:42 AM PST - 3 comments

Many years ago, Brian David Gilbert made a shocking realization about a famous Swedish pop group. Their melodies were impeccable. Their lyrics remarkable. Their style? Divine. And yet, just below the surface, a sinister truth lay hiding. With very little alteration, nearly all of their hits could be performed by Halloween villains. Frightened of what he learned, Brian buried his discovery in the dark recesses of his mind and swore to never share it with the world. Until now. [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 9:33 AM PST - 16 comments

From Vu Le at Nonprofit AF: "it’s time for this year’s crop of spooky stories set in our sector"! (Previously.)
posted by brainwane at 8:42 AM PST - 8 comments

The Story of Native American Metal Band Winterhawk. “The way we would get in the door at these boarding schools—and it would take some time for the faculty to grasp the idea—was [that] we used the tool of music, mainly heavy metal, because at the time, that was the music of choice,” Kolb continues. “Through that key, we opened the door to access the children to get them to open up to us. And [Nik] would tell me, ‘You’ve gotta be good at your stuff. You’ve gotta practice, because when we go there, they’re going to be amazed at the way you drum and the way I play guitar. That’s what’s gonna take down the walls, and they’re gonna wanna talk to us, and that’s when we’ll get to hear their problems, because no one else is listening to them.’”
posted by Alex404 at 6:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Boji spends his days traveling Istanbul's subway trains, ferries, buses, and historic trams. His calming presence is infectuous. Boji sometimes travels 30 kilometers a day. Most days he passes through at least 29 Metro stations and take at least two ferry rides. He has learned how and where to get on and off of trains and ferries. He is A Good Boy.
posted by dancestoblue at 8:59 PM PST - 18 comments

SL Jezebel from 2019. "I don’t believe in ghosts, but maybe I do, just a little. I certainly believe in the power of haunted tales, and the Lady in White is one of the most common structures for ghost stories... she’s often cast as a thin woman with long flowing hair, wearing a Victorian-style nightdress and wandering along roadsides, through cemeteries and churches, under bridges, and through the woods. She exists in contrast to the Woman in Black and the Woman in Red, two other ghostly types that flit through our history. They are always mysterious, dressed in monochrome, lacking distinguishing features— blurred non-people—reeking of sadness. Even in death, what a woman wears is important. Even after death, her outfit still matters." [more inside]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:45 PM PST - 10 comments

Liberty University, an Evangelical college in central Virginia, requires all students to adhere to the Liberty Way, an honor code that forbids, among many other things, alcohol consumption and pre-marital sex. Pro Publica investigates how the college has used threats of disciplinary action for violations of the Liberty Way, as well as other practices that violate Federal law, to discourage sexual assault survivors from coming forward and to punish survivors who pursue justice. [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:50 PM PST - 29 comments

The comedian and political satirist Ahmed Albasheer is the most popular media figure in Iraq —half of the country regularly tunes into his show. An outspoken critic of government corruption, Albasheer has also lamented the failure of the 2003 U.S. invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein to bring democracy to the country. [Reason/Youtube 50:41]
posted by riruro at 3:05 PM PST - 2 comments

Finally, a questionable sixteen-year journey comes to an end: the finale of Charlie the Unicorn, in which they finally explain what the hell is up with those two other obnoxious unicorns. Previously and again. Here are the previous parts, in one video.
posted by JHarris at 1:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Conservationists See Rare Nature Sanctuaries. Black Farmers See a Legacy Bought Out From Under Them.
Tony Briscoe, photography by Rashod Taylor, special to ProPublica (Oct. 14, 2021) [more inside]
posted by Not A Thing at 11:00 AM PST - 15 comments

The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism Michael Hobbes (of You're Wrong About fame) shows how stories about 'left-wing illiberalism' are the latest moral-panic stories.
posted by box at 10:50 AM PST - 70 comments

The point is that longtermism might be one of the most influential ideologies that few people outside of elite universities and Silicon Valley have ever heard about. I believe this needs to change because, as a former longtermist who published an entire book four years ago in defence of the general idea, I have come to see this worldview as quite possibly the most dangerous secular belief system in the world today.

–Against longtermism by Phil Torres, an essay about the dangers of a philosophical movement that prioritizes all future potential humans over actual living ones.
posted by Kattullus at 10:06 AM PST - 56 comments

In ways both large and small, American society still assumes that the default adult has a partner and that the default household contains multiple people. Many who live by themselves are effectively penalized at work too. “Lots of people I interviewed complained that their managers presumed they had extra time to stay at the office or take on extra projects because they don’t have family at home,” Eric Klinenberg, the author of the 2012 book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone and a sociologist at NYU, told me. “Some said that they were not compensated fairly either, because managers gave raises to people based on the impression that they had more expenses, for child care and so on.”
posted by folklore724 at 9:32 AM PST - 146 comments

Historiansplaining is a history podcast by Samuel Biagetti, a historian (and antique dealer) with a Phd in early American history. [more inside]
posted by dmh at 8:53 AM PST - 5 comments

Mainland Chinese Horror & Censorship [11:11]
Thai Horror Is So Underrated [13:35]
A Brief Overview on J-Horror (Part 1) [15:08] (Part 2) [13:18] [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Don’t take candy from strangers and don’t feed your personal information to bots. If you spend any time on Facebook you’ve probably noticed a blizzard of question memes coming from clickbait accounts. You’ve likely either commented on them yourself or seen comments from close friends. Many of these posts look like they’re probing for answers to security/verification questions, but the ugly reality is that your passwords are nearly worthless. Chances are your passwords are already circulating on the dark web, sold in batches of millions for as little as a few thousand dollars. Unless you hold the password to something wildly valuable, like major corporate or government assets, nobody cares except kids playing around.
posted by mecran01 at 7:29 AM PST - 51 comments

A video-series about two Dutch guys building a Celtic Roundhouse in Ireland. They're trying to keep the use of modern tech to a minimum.
posted by Kosmob0t at 1:20 AM PST - 4 comments

What is spirtual bypassing. "Wellness culture, which often perpetuates ideas of toxic positivity and permanent optimism, is sometimes a driving force behind spiritual bypassing. It teaches people that they cannot be well or healthy unless they are able to rise above any negativity." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:29 PM PST - 34 comments

The 3Blue1Brown Summer of Math challenge (previously) is now wrapped up. Let's see the results! [more inside]
posted by sjswitzer at 2:16 PM PST - 4 comments

Why Margaret Atwood’s defense of the word ‘woman’ is misguided – and why it’s so important to get it right (Independent) [more inside]
posted by fight or flight at 12:34 PM PST - 108 comments

Poetry Filter: The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer "...I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts, and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing, and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor, in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught so often laughing at funerals, that was because I knew the dead were already slipping away, preparing a comeback, and can I help it? And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not be resurrected by a piece of cake..." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:18 AM PST - 17 comments

No time to die: An in-depth analysis of James Bond's exposure to infectious agents. "Global travelers, whether tourists or secret agents, are exposed to a smörgåsbord of infectious agents. We hypothesized that agents pre-occupied with espionage and counterterrorism may, at their peril, fail to correctly prioritize travel medicine. To examine our hypothesis, we examined adherence to international travel advice during the 86 international journeys that James Bond was observed to undertake in feature films spanning 1962–2021."
posted by GenericUser at 6:12 AM PST - 30 comments

Stephen Sondheim's seven decade career has long invited examination. One of the best I've seen is the documentary Six By Sondheim [1h26m] which examines his work through six songs: Something's Coming, Opening Doors, Send In The Clowns, I'm Still Here, Being Alive, and Sunday. Worth a watch for the new or the experienced.
posted by hippybear at 5:49 AM PST - 4 comments

Fantastically Wrong: The Inventor of the Airliner Also Invented This Hilariously Absurd 'Science'. Alfred Lawson and 'Manlife' Documentary Explores Lawsonomy & Its Last Crusader
posted by clavdivs at 7:42 PM PST - 20 comments

ConcernedApe, creator of Stardew Valley, has released the name of his new game: Haunted Chocolatier (article) and some early gameplay footage (direct to youtube). [more inside]
posted by snerson at 1:12 PM PST - 21 comments

Trump Plans to Regain Social Media Presence with New Company (Bloomberg) [more inside]
posted by box at 11:59 AM PST - 62 comments

She allges that there were dangerous working conditions on the set. Other articles on this topic here and here. Rose discusses their neck injury and being pressured to come back to work, witnessing a crew member being burned, filing during Covid, watching someone's pants being steamed while wearing them(!), Dougray Scott's yelling at others, and the PA who was paralyzed due to an on-set injury. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:52 AM PST - 10 comments

Nils Berglund creates beautiful physics simulations of simple particle and wave simulations. (Multiple links to YouTube) [more inside]
posted by biogeo at 10:16 AM PST - 5 comments

This delightful blog summarizes and reviews (mostly) YA lit spanning (roughly) five decades, from the well-known to the obscure. Judy Blume is here, and so is Beverly Cleary’s Leave it to Beaver tie-in, V.C. Andrews’ “second-most infamous book”, Barthe DeClements, Paul Zindel, and Stephen King. Celebrate the holidays with the Wakefield Twins of Sweet Valley High, learn how to babysit from the Baby-Sitters Club, and browse vintage issues of Seventeen. The entire sagas of Ginny Gordon and Polly French are covered here, as is a fair chunk of Silhouette's First Love series and some Nancy Drew, sort of. What about that book that you read when you were younger which you just can’t remember the title of? Maybe Molly or her readers can help!
posted by May Kasahara at 9:46 AM PST - 24 comments

Quartz Weekly Obsession: CAPTCHA . A newsletter full of fascinating facts about CAPTCHA. "The demise of the CAPTCHA is mainly the result of rapid improvements in the field of AI. CAPTCHA’s research mission has succeeded so thoroughly that machines are now as good or better than humans at every task we’ve turned into a CAPTCHA test. We’re running out of challenges that humans are universally good at, but machines can’t handle." [more inside]
posted by carolr at 9:33 AM PST - 20 comments

Breaking Britain: With growing rifts between its regions, how much longer can the UK survive? From the economic to the constitutional, Novara Media explores the divisions and contradictions within the union today. [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 9:16 AM PST - 16 comments

A Reuters photographer was the only journalist invited to the funeral of Xingu Chief Aritana of the Yawalapiti people whose death was a result of COVID-19.
In related news a Brazilian Senate Panel urges Pres. Bolsonaro be Charged with Crimes against Humanity for killing 150K by worsening Pandemic.
An earlier draft had called for Bolsonaro to be indicted for homicide and genocide as well, given how the ravages of the coronavirus have disproportionately hit Brazil’s Indigenous groups.
The Xingu river basin has had a rate of deforestation 40% higher than in the same period last year. Rolling Stone has called Bolsonaro the most dangerous climate denier in the world.
posted by adamvasco at 6:23 AM PST - 13 comments

The Intersection is a short film (YouTube, 16:25) (also Vimeo) that journeys from a violent present to a cooperative future. Commissioned by the Omidyar Network, produced by Superflux, screenplay by Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 2:44 AM PST - 5 comments

Because, sadly, no one has yet stepped up, it seems it falls to me *AHEM* SOMETHING ABOUT SOME SALMON AND TOAST/ SOMETHING ABOUT A CROCKETY BLOAT/ SOMETHING ABOUT A DRUNK ON THE DOCK/ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME TURN ON YOUR CAPS LOCK [more inside]
posted by provoliminal at 2:10 AM PST - 97 comments

Human History Gets a Rewrite (SLAtlantic) William Deresiewicz reviews the forthcoming The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity , by David Graeber and David Wengrow. [more inside]
posted by clark at 10:07 PM PST - 27 comments

The Two Envelope Problem - a Mystifying Probability Paradox (YouTube, 28m23s) presents and analyzes a paradox that the kind of person who likes to argue about the Monty Hall Problem (previously) will probably enjoy.
posted by flabdablet at 9:52 PM PST - 40 comments

Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun while filming a scene in New Mexico on Thursday, causing the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. An on-set tragedy ends in the death of the DP and and an injured director. Too soon to place blame, but in the face of IATSE labor issues and intense focus on dangerous work conditions, is it time to reconsider real guns on movie sets. Sincere condolences to all . . .
posted by pt68 at 9:36 PM PST - 222 comments

Kindness, Acts of
posted by storybored at 5:39 PM PST - 5 comments

The animals that may exist in a million years, imagined by biologists.
posted by Lyme Drop at 4:55 PM PST - 13 comments

In the depths of Pornhub, buried beneath a mountain of hardcore erotica, a 34-year-old Taiwanese man named Changhsu (張旭) taps away at a green chalkboard while speaking a steady stream of Mandarin. In nearly all of his 226 videos, he wears a gray hoodie and black-rimmed glasses, and he never once does anything even remotely pornographic — no blow jobs, no 69s, no anal. He’s on Pornhub for a different reason: To teach calculus. From The Determined Math Tutor Teaching Calculus on Pornhub [Mel Magazine] [CW: calculus]
posted by chavenet at 3:09 PM PST - 43 comments

In the midst of the pandemic Sam Sutherland is back and exploring online subcultures and communities. The second five episode season just finished with Angry Queer Gloom Cult: How Queer Metal Bands Built Their Own Scene [YT ~15min]. [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:01 PM PST - 3 comments

Two short, triumphant fantasy stories about well-worn prophecies and magical customs that take a left turn. "Another End of the Empire" by Tim Pratt (audio version): "The probability witches hit an impasse." A short story by Dyce (a.k.a. Sarah Blackwell): "No, I was resigned to death. I was only angry that my death would be so meaningless."
posted by brainwane at 9:53 AM PST - 4 comments

While just published evidence based on the rings of trees felled by Norse people in Canada has largely confirmed what we already know about medieval sailing in the North Atlantic, two recent finds have changed what we thought we knew. A recently published paper by medievalist Paulo Chiesa shows that knowledge of Labrador had reached as far south as Genoa and Milan in the 14th Century. And in a recent paper by ecologist Pedro Raposeira, evidence has been found of human habitation in the Azores before the archipelago’s discovery by the Portuguese in 1427, backing up findings from 2015 of Norse visitations of the Azores and Madeira from an unlikely source, mouse DNA. Biologist Jeremy Searle talked about the biological evidence with archaeologist Cat Jarman on the Gone Medieval podcast.
posted by Kattullus at 5:32 AM PST - 48 comments

Realists of a larger reality wanted: Ursula K Le Guin prize for fiction to launch in 2022
posted by domdib at 12:25 AM PST - 13 comments

"We feel as if we've succeeded in poisoning ourselves, and the word is that we have. The word "toxic" hides in the midddle of intoxication, like a rat in a gift box." Mark Edmundson, English Professor at the University of Virginia, goes beyond just the gruesome hangovers from drinking, and considers hangovers of all sorts, the downsides of intoxications of all sorts. re The Hedgehog Review
posted by dancestoblue at 7:39 PM PST - 52 comments

Merlin Tuttle studies bats! You can read about his conservation efforts, or just browse his 2000+ image photo collection which encompasses 19 families, 125 genera, and 298 species from 38 countries. You can also listen to a two-part interview with him with Alie Ward on Ologies (or just read transcripts).
posted by curious nu at 7:20 PM PST - 11 comments

r/VintageObscura is a subreddit for crate diggers. Since Halloween 2014, u/kaptain_carbon has celebrated shocktober by compiling spooky obscurities and campy exotica submitted by fellow redditors into virtual HellPs, most of which are handily located in this youtube playlist. (Most recent reddit FPP). Consider putting one on before your next screaming of a Vincent Price film!
2014 ᄽὁȍ ̪ őὀᄿ 2015 (ᅇ) 2016 Side A, Side B (˼●̙̂ ̟ ̟̎ ̟ ̘●̂˻) 2017 (((༼•̫͡•༽))) 2018 ヘ(◕。◕ヘ) 2019 Side C ↜(͛ ꒪͒৫͏̈́꒪͒)͛⌰ 2020 Side A, Side B, Side C, Side D /╲/\ºo;88;oº/\╱\ 2021 Side A, Side B, Side C, Side D
posted by Going To Maine at 6:03 PM PST - 3 comments

The Ideological Battlefield of the "Mamasphere." Anne Helen Petersen interviews Kathryn Jezer-Morton - currently writing her PhD dissertation on the topic - about "momfluencers" and the rise, growth, and transmogrification of mommy-blogging. "I’m not a mom but I like to know what the moms are up to. You should too, regardless of your identity, because “the moms” — meaning, the moms embodying and directing ideals of femininity and domesticity and parenting — have a lot of power, and power demands attention." [more inside]
posted by soundguy99 at 4:34 PM PST - 27 comments

Meta? Horizon? Facebook Renaming Report Sparks Speculation [Bloomberg] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:05 PM PST - 142 comments

In 2018, tech blog The Verge posted How to Build a $2000 Gaming PC. The video; rife with terminology, editing, performance, and safety errors; was heavily criticized and mocked by other Youtubers and internet commenters and then eventually removed. Three years later, the original Verge host Stefan Etienne explains what went wrong and rebuilds the original PC with tech blogger LinusTechTips.
posted by meowzilla at 12:44 PM PST - 37 comments

On Youtube, animator David James Armsby has been creating the Dinosauria series (preview), extraordinary, quiet films about the daily struggles and rewards of the lives of dinosaurs. (cw: violent animal combat, death)
Our Frozen Past (6:36): In a bleak winter landscape, a mother troodon must use her wits to protect her chicks from nanuqsaurs.
Old Buck (4:29): An aging bull styracosaurus must defend his position from a rival or be left for dead among the scavengers.
An earlier dinosaur film, with narration: Sharp Teeth (3:21). Predators and prey, mothers and young. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 10:08 AM PST - 9 comments

Three short, eerie fantasy stories about water and beasts. "Hokkaido Green" by by Aidan Doyle (2010) is bittersweet fantasy about emotions, grief, and tradeoffs. "Talisman" by Tracina Jackson-Adams (2002): Horses, a family feud, dark ceremonies in the wood, high stakes and slow-burn reveals. "Riverine" by Danielle Jorgensen Murray (March 2021): the river man, his bride, permission, respect and care. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 9:53 AM PST - 4 comments

According to Clayton Crockett, postsecularism indicates the breakdown of the modern divide within liberalism that assigns religion to a private sphere of belief that is separate from political-civil reason. Postsecularism attends to the ways that what we call religion exceed their modern frames and become deprivatized and politicized. In this process, spiritual-political forces are liberated from the modern framework of religion. Recent movements called New Materialism and New Animism can be seen as attempts to conceptualize this development. [more inside]
posted by No Robots at 9:42 AM PST - 12 comments

How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary Some U.S. conservatives are taking a cue from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — how to use the power of the state to win the culture wars (NYT Magazine, October 19, 2021).
posted by box at 9:32 AM PST - 19 comments

[Spoilers in links] Squid Game is a popular Netflix series (really popular), themed around socio-economic inequality and nostalgia, where contestants play six (adapted) childhood games for money, there being somewhat negative consequences for the losers. Like Battle Royale, classical music is often used. Some criticism has been levelled, for the acting and the subtitles. In England, councils are urging parents to stop children watching and copying it. Why Squid Game? Comparisons are drawn with Battle Royale, the Hunger Games, Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, and erm Mario Party. Inevitably there are Halloween costumes, or play it in a cafe. [Squid Game on Fanfare]
posted by Wordshore at 9:12 AM PST - 85 comments

The Limits Of Dave Chappelle And Kyrie Irving’s Free-Thinking (Defector, alternate link from archive.org) [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 8:57 AM PST - 102 comments

There's something in the air, your food, your fuel, your lipstick... Most of this will not surprise many of you, but it is shocking that Colombia mandates patented corn and their agricultural institute has destroyed thousands of native seeds.
posted by kozad at 7:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Looking for non-Spotify/whatever other streaming service you use Halloween playlists? Let ole Jack Fear over at PopDose give you the trick AND treat of FOURTEEN downloadable mixtapes. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:11 AM PST - 10 comments

The website Electrek brings you news from the electric vehicle industry, but even if you aren't in the market for a new vehicle, you might just enjoy a closer look at the bizarre and at times deeply cursed world of electric vehicles available on Alibaba, including such favorites as a standing scooter with an alleged top speed of 60 MPH (100 km/h) or a racing motorcycle clearly designed by Dr. Seuss. [more inside]
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:59 AM PST - 33 comments

The full concert footage of Kate Bush's 1st & only tour has surfaced (SLYT)
posted by CarrotAdventure at 11:00 PM PST - 30 comments

Nearly 20 years after winning an Oscar and staking his claim as one of his generation’s most serious actors, Adrien Brody is finding a glorious new gear. After the Oscar, every interaction with other people was somehow different. “It was as if a storm rolled in,” he says. “Everything started blowing away—the life I knew.” Don't change, people kept telling him. Don't change. So he didn't. But then they went off and changed. They talked to him differently. Friends wanted to go into business with him. Photographers wanted to take his picture. Directors wanted him for their movies. None of it quite felt right. “It feels like it was a decade of finding out who and where I was. A lot of living and losing and winning and losing,” he says.
posted by folklore724 at 9:02 PM PST - 14 comments

Inque Magazine will launch next month. It will be a printed literary magazine with a limited run of 6000 copies issued once a year for 10 years. It will feature no advertising, no web-equivalent, and will not be reprinted. In addition to a wonderful list of contributors and a hell of a masthead, Jonathan Lethem will publish a 10-chapter novel in the mag, one chapter per issue for the decade. [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 7:37 PM PST - 42 comments

Why The Wire is the greatest TV series of the 21st Century out of The 100 greatest TV series of the 21st Century [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:01 PM PST - 155 comments

A thread (reader, original tweets) on the Authoritarian disposition -- 33% of the population take the stance and there's little benefit to reasoning with them, "how do you manage a democracy containing them?"
posted by k3ninho at 1:17 PM PST - 95 comments

#striketober isn't just for the US. Half a million workers in South Korea are prepared to stage a one-day general strike. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 12:54 PM PST - 4 comments

The Birdability Map is a crowdsourced map that describes in detail the accessibility features of birding locations all over the world. It is a work-in-progress, and anyone can contribute to it by submitting a Birdability Site Review. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 10:03 AM PST - 16 comments

"But no matter: you can be made perfect; you can put on the immerser and become someone else, someone pale-skinned and tall and beautiful." "Immersion" is a short science fiction story by French-Vietnamese author Aliette de Bodard that won the 2012 Nebula Award and Locus Award for Best Short Story. It never explicitly uses the word "assimilation," or "immigrant."
posted by brainwane at 9:46 AM PST - 6 comments

The collection of Ricky Jay, actor, sleight-of-hand master, and scholar of magic history, is going to auction. [more inside]
posted by PussKillian at 9:46 AM PST - 27 comments

You must construct additional antibodies.
posted by alby at 8:03 AM PST - 2 comments

Are you lost in the world like me? CW: Images of Suicide [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 9:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Just in time for the holidays, a camp horror stage musical about a guy who didn't like musicals [1h52m]. NSFW for adult words and adult humor. Find your personal apotheosis.
posted by hippybear at 8:24 PM PST - 18 comments

After a big race, professional athletes and amateurs often face the same challenge: how to react when the run doesn’t go according to Plan A, B or C. “I think there is a really powerful shift that we need to make between outcome goals and performance standards,” Ross said. Outcome goals are usually time or place goals. Performance goals can be much more about mentality. “When the day is not your day, we get lost and upset because we are able to recognize that the outcome goal is out of reach. That’s when falling on performance standards is so important. It’s less about the outcome. It’s how you show up.” It’s a concept that Sara Hall took to heart in the days after the Chicago Marathon. She loves being process focused, looking to little victories and identifying the next goal. “Out there, you have to do whatever you can to stay positive, and I did stay positive the whole time,” she said. “That was a win in itself. I told myself I was still in it. I focused on how good my stride felt and how grateful I was to be in the race.”
posted by folklore724 at 8:09 PM PST - 5 comments

You do know what's been missing in your life, right? Yep, that's right. A skipping-stone storage belt from Japan.
posted by slater at 6:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Dr. Sarah Taber explains why gun-toting military robot dogs will be disabled by water balloons full of pickle juice.
posted by meowzilla at 1:53 PM PST - 139 comments

Harriet Parry Flowers recreates artwork and photographs using flowers. [more inside]
posted by carolr at 1:19 PM PST - 9 comments

“Speak of the devil and he appears” and parallel idioms in Chinese and English.
Things Confucius Never Said. "When you are about to make a major decision, your family or friends may cite Confucius and advise you to act prudently and 'think three times before acting.'" In fact, Confucius said to stop waffling and that thinking twice is enough. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:50 PM PST - 27 comments

Amid mounting pressure from players and advocacy groups, Major League Baseball said on Sunday it will require teams to provide housing for minor league players starting in 2022. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:10 AM PST - 24 comments

Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state and military leader, dies at 84 [Washington Post]

Mr. Powell was a path breaker serving as the country’s first African American national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state. [New York Times] [more inside]
posted by riruro at 6:53 AM PST - 149 comments

Are you daring enough to take a look at Vienna laid bare on OnlyFans? Vienna and its art institutions are among the casualties of this new wave of prudishness – with nude statues and famous artworks blacklisted under social media guidelines, and repeat offenders even finding their accounts temporarily suspended. [more inside]
posted by 15L06 at 12:58 AM PST - 24 comments

In this interview in Jacobin, Calvin University's historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez address the conundrum of evangelical support for Donald Trump. She points outs that much of modern liberalism (feminism, acceptance of alternatives to heterosexuality, etc.) threatens White male authority. Trump's morality (or lack thereof) can be handily overlooked given his male dominance displays and his ability stoke the fear that "they" (non-evangelicals) are out to get "us" (real Americans). In her book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, she connects the historical dots and shows the dark underbelly of misogyny and toxic agression has always been present.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:43 PM PST - 55 comments

Weaves of India Journey across India, as Live History India takes you to stories behind the most famous and historic textiles of India. Eg. Kanchipuram saris
posted by dhruva at 4:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Develop your film: with coffee, red wine, Croatian rosé, drain cleaner and acetaminophen, beetroot, ajvar (capsicum chutney), or gas station beer. [more inside]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:31 PM PST - 20 comments

Hint: it’s not the money. [more inside]
posted by No Robots at 12:35 PM PST - 87 comments

My Guinea Pig Reviews Halloween Costumes Costume expert Bernadette Banner tries costumes on her guinea pig, Lord Cesario, "a highly opinionated 4-legged potato."
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:57 AM PST - 12 comments

Short Storyfllter: The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier "...Occasionally, one of the dead, someone who had just completed the crossing, would mistake the city for Heaven. It was a misunderstanding that never persisted for long. What kind of Heaven had the blasting sound of garbage trucks in the morning, and chewing gum on the pavement, and the smell of fish rotting by the river? What kind of Hell, for that matter, had bakeries and dogwood trees and perfect blue days that made the hairs on the back of your neck rise on end? No, the city was not Heaven, and it was not Hell, and it certainly was not the world. It stood to reason, then, that it had to be something else. More and more people came to adopt the theory that it was an extension of life itself—a sort of outer room—and that they would remain there only so long as they endured in living memory. When the last person who had actually known them died, they would pass over into whatever came next." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:32 AM PST - 17 comments

From Rolling Stone: On fighting stage fright, staying true to your inspiration, and the mysteries of songwriting " “I’ve thought about you a lot,” [Lorde] tells him as they sit down to talk. “I don’t even know where to start, David. I just have so much to ask you.” Byrne smiles courteously: “Ah, thank you.” And they’re off."
posted by hippybear at 9:07 AM PST - 15 comments

The Unreleased Anime That Almost Changed History (CW: Discussion of sex in media) [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Should I run the blender at 3am in the morning when my family is sleeping?
Ask Delphi lets you try out a computational model for descriptive ethics, i.e., people’s moral judgments on a variety of everyday situations.
Relevant paper.
posted by signal at 7:47 AM PST - 104 comments

Your Undivided Attention. A podcast from the Center for Humane Technology.
Ep. 39 features philosopher L.A. Paul on social media technology as transformative. (pdf).
Ep. 40 asks "What is the goal of our digital information environment? Is it simply to inform, or also to empower us to act?" (pdf).
Ep. 24 features Julie Owono of Internet Without Borders on Facebook’s “2Africa” subsea cable project and the risks of “digital colonialism.” (pdf). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:56 PM PST - 4 comments

The West Virginia Senator reaps big financial rewards from a network of coal companies with grim records of pollution, safety violations, and death.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:06 PM PST - 27 comments

Satellite, by The Hooters, was a minor and underrated 1987 hit, reaching #61 on the US Billboard Hot 100, #22 on the UK Singles Chart, and charting in several European countries [lyrics][live on Top of the Pops]. The song was written by Eric Bazilian, Rick Chertoff, and Rob Hyman, and was used on an episode of Miami Vice called "Amen... Send Money".
posted by Wordshore at 3:26 PM PST - 15 comments

Politics have always been in health care.It's just when it's finally affecting you, you give a damn. TikTok's Nurse Nya goes down the rabbit hole of antivax nurses so you don't have to... and gets results. (Post title from here.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:11 PM PST - 60 comments

Stephen Sondheim was having another go. After his first show as lyricist/composer collapsed through no fault of his own, he retreated to lyrics-only for a while... West Side Story and Gypsy... I mean, ya know, as one does. But in 1962, one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time, with a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Here's Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, John Carradine, and others in the Original Broadway Cast Recording. [Archive.org link, streaming and download links] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:42 AM PST - 25 comments

Everything We Know About the Maryland Zebras On the Run | On Aug. 31 three zebras somehow escaped from an 80-acre farm owned by Jerry Holly in Upper Marlboro, a city that is about 21 miles from the White House [Previously]. At first it was believed that five zebras escaped—a trio and a duo—but that turned out to be wrong. Let's get into it: [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:44 AM PST - 21 comments

The coolest man on the planet won’t be shaken from his master plan. But after a bruising 18 months, the multitalented Englishman, who acts, deejays, and podcasts, and this month stars in the all-Black Western, The Harder They Fall, wants to clear up a few things. [Esquire/Pandemic related/]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:28 AM PST - 16 comments

The killing of Conservative MP Sir David Amess has been declared a terrorist incident by police. [BBC]

Sir David, 69, who represented Southend West, was holding a constituency surgery - where voters can meet their MP and discuss concerns - at Belfairs Methodist Church on Friday when he was attacked at 12:05 BST.

Sir David had been an MP since 1983 and was married with five children. He is the second serving MP to be killed in the past five years, following the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016. [more inside]
posted by riruro at 7:57 PM PST - 54 comments

Deep Purple - Burn / YOYOKA's 12th Birthday Session. Previously. More Previously.
posted by Gorgik at 7:47 PM PST - 14 comments

How I learned to hide the bomb and hate it. Werner Heisenberg and the story to stop him. Involved was Moe Berg, spy extraordinaire. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 7:25 PM PST - 15 comments

The Art Institute of Chicago has let go of its roughly 150 highly-trained volunteer docents, and says it will eventually replace them with a "limited number of paid educators." The Chicago Tribune disapproves, and the chair of the museum's Board of Trustees responds.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:28 PM PST - 36 comments

HACKENBUSH: a window to a new world of math (SLYT) An absorbing video book review of Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays (1982) by Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy. [more inside]
posted by tss at 5:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Paizo workers have unionized. In the wake of serious accusations made against senior management, workers at Paizo, known for their Pathfinder and Starfinder tabletop RPGs, have unionized, citing poor pay, crunch, and unsafe working conditions. This union is the first in an increasingly-popular industry. (Further coverage: ScreenRant | TechRaptor | Kotaku | Polygon)
posted by sigma7 at 3:23 PM PST - 13 comments

The Unvaccinated May Not Be Who You Think. "Almost 95 percent of those over 65 in the United States have received at least one dose. This is a remarkable number, given that polling has shown that this age group is prone to online misinformation, is heavily represented among Fox News viewers and is more likely to vote Republican. Clearly, misinformation is not destiny." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 2:38 PM PST - 82 comments

"one of my co-workers had a tortoise called Pietro who could supposedly predict the weather ... I pondered how one might go about rigorously evaluating this claim". Conner Jackson collects and analyses data on the accuracy of weather prediction by Pietro the tortoise. The Royal Statistical Society explains why the article won their early-career writing award. Pietro's Instagram account. Other weather-forecasting tortoises include Herman in New Zealand.
posted by paduasoy at 2:09 PM PST - 6 comments

Sprinklegate : British bakery Get Baked was forced to shut down for a day after an anonymous customer reported it for using "illegal" U.S. sprinkles. [more inside]
posted by carolr at 12:40 PM PST - 83 comments

The real tragedy of purity culture, authoritarian parenting and the culture war ethos is not that we failed, but that we succeeded. This unholy Roman trinity may not have produced culture warriors or even prevented us from losing our faith, but it nevertheless worked as designed. Raised on war, we came to see all the world as a threat. Our birthright was not holiness, but hyper-vigilance and crippling anxiety.

Author KucingNoir talks about how the evangelical christianity movement (and authoritarianism in general) of the 80s and 90s has created a generation of people who are terrified of something bad happening all the time.
posted by rebent at 12:21 PM PST - 31 comments

“There's a sense of urgency and desperation that I’ve never seen before." At least 70 prospective tenants wrapped around an Upper East Side building earlier this month, financial documents in hand, shouting numbers at a real estate agent as if at an auction. A few blocks uptown, another broker fielded close to a dozen offers above asking price on a fourth floor walk-up. In Prospect Heights, a two-bedroom, originally listed for $3,750 per month, leased for $4,500. Janna Raskopf, a rental agent at Douglas Elliman, said she’d never rented an apartment to a tenant for more than it was listed. Since Labor Day, she said, more than half of the units she’d leased were being bid up, often as much as 20% more than their asking price.
posted by folklore724 at 10:17 AM PST - 62 comments

"The story of Veles being a fake news hub is real. The story of the Book of Veles’ discovery and forgery is real. But all the actual content is fake." The story of how a respected photo journalist took a deep dive into deep fakes and people's occasional lapse in judgment in giving news from a respected source a pass. Seen in this context it is hard to imagine how we wouldn't see these people (AND BEARS) as fake, but that is hind sight speaking. More here from Washington Post.
posted by stormygrey at 9:55 AM PST - 12 comments

Russ Kick, author, anthologist, and "investigative archivist", has died. Perhaps best-known for taking on the US government's suppression of photos of flag-draped coffins, Kick had a reputation for using the FOIA process to great effect. He was also the author of several books of subversive knowledge, editor of The Graphic Canon anthologies, and operated AltGov2.org and The Memory Hole, in addition to his personal website. More recently, he was active on Twitter as @russkick, @thememoryhole2, @thegraphiccanon, and @kicklit. [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:46 AM PST - 16 comments

shh. (puts a soft finger on your lips) just watch this movie trailer without knowing the title and let the feeling move you
posted by saladin at 6:56 AM PST - 163 comments

Bizarro Bavaria: The author of Southbound finds the town of Helen, Georgia, attractive and troubling — but she isn’t giving it up by Anjali Enjeti for The Bitter Southerner and The troubled triangle of Scottish heritage, Southern racial politics, and Stone Mountain by Jim Galloway for Atlanta Magazine
posted by hydropsyche at 5:17 AM PST - 15 comments

The official wizard of New Zealand, perhaps the only state-appointed wizard in the world, has been cast from the public payroll, spelling the end to a 23-year legacy. Post title from Terry Pratchett, of course.
posted by jjderooy at 10:41 PM PST - 24 comments

Victoria News reports "On Oct. 4, many were treated to the sight of a fireball lighting up the night sky, with images of a meteor sailing above Lake Louise striking awe. Longtime Golden resident Ruth Hamilton, however, was fast asleep. Or at least she was until she was roughly awoken by the sound of a crash through her ceiling and the sensation of debris on her face." The caption below the picture at the top is "The hole left in the ceiling, and the space rock that created it. (Ruth Hamilton photo)"
posted by hippybear at 6:54 PM PST - 64 comments

If you only have room in your life for one Twitter account where an SNL host announces the musical guest,
@CraigWeekend will have Daniel Craig welcome you to the best part of the week.
If you have space for another,
@snlhostsintro will give you a near endless supply of ten second time capsules in which a then-famous celebrity introduces a then-popular band.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Rosalie the cheetah has given birth to a litter of five cubs! And of course, there's a live webcam where you can view mama cheater and her cubs.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:07 PM PST - 22 comments

Two short speculative stories about growing up in a powerful family. "Horangi", fantasy by Thomas Ha (reminds me a little of Ursula Vernon's Grandma Harken stories): “I’m sorry to hear that,” my grandfather responded politely, and he gave a smile that I’d often seen him give to the customers in his shoe repair shop, respectful, but with a little firmness to it. “I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. My family doesn’t work for yours anymore, Mr. Yong.” "Urban Fanfare", science fiction by Jared Oliver Adams: It was a cool idea. One of Mom’s best, really. But the problem with it was the music the committee chose.
posted by brainwane at 3:00 PM PST - 5 comments

On the night of November 22, 1987, when the television broadcasts of two stations in Chicago, Illinois were hijacked in an act of broadcast piracy by a video of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, accompanied by distorted audio and with a corrugated metal panel swiveling in the background to mimic Max Headroom's geometric background effect. [more inside]
posted by ambulocetus at 2:23 PM PST - 27 comments

After 38 straight wins, Jeopardy champion Matt Amodio run finally comes to an end. Matt's run of 38 wins puts him in second place all-time behind Ken Jennings' 74 and ahead of James Holzhauer's 32. Matt's $1.5 million in winnings is third behind the previously mentioned Jennings and Holzhauer. One record Matt holds, unlikely to ever be broken, is having won with 6 different hosts. [more inside]
posted by AugustWest at 9:11 AM PST - 42 comments

If working in the spreadsheet mines is getting you down, here's a Spotify radio station based on the Mass Effect map music that will make you feel more... Legendary (SLSpotify) [more inside]
posted by rebent at 7:08 AM PST - 10 comments

Banana Craze is a virtual exhibition that brings together almost 100 pieces of contemporary Latin American art that explore the way the banana has shaped identities, ecosystems, and violence in the Americas.
posted by eotvos at 5:04 AM PST - 2 comments

Gary Paulsen, author of wilderness-centered young adult fiction, has died at the age of 82. [more inside]
posted by egregious theorem at 7:14 PM PST - 54 comments

Woman finds 50 year old cans of food and… eats them. On tiktok. This may be a potential datapoint for the perennial askmefi question- can I eat it?
posted by slateyness at 6:21 PM PST - 33 comments

Harry Potter fanfic marks dialogue with "said" less often than Harry Potter books do. A bit of quantitative analysis of Harry Potter fanfiction, by Suzanne R Black. Another post with more analysis.
posted by escabeche at 4:18 PM PST - 54 comments

Two scifi stories about people finding tendrils of human connection while confronting modern grief. "A Glut of Nothing, and Yet… Something" by Monte Lin: ""The Singularity had come, but not the one people wanted.... the Glut: a grayed-out area that evaded vision, comprehension, and perception..." "Love at the End" by Deborah Germaine Augustin: "I woke up hungover the day after Kuala Lumpur was supposed to end.... Eddie poured water from our last six-litre bottle into the kettle." Both published this year.
posted by brainwane at 1:28 PM PST - 3 comments

Have you ever wanted to give your friend or lover a Voight-Kampff test? Then you should probably consider trying Inhuman Conditions (BGG), a free (cards, rules, thematic form) two-player RPG/Quiz in which an interrogator has five minutes to try to determine if an interviewee is a human or a replicant robot.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:26 PM PST - 15 comments

Canada's Navy Absolutely Furious Over Sailor's Parody of Mid-Tier Mötley Crüe Song: "The Ottawa Citizen first reported on the Navy’s failed investigation of the crooner of the navy-tinged Crüe hit. An email chain obtained via an access to information request was posted online and it chronicles how unhappy navy brass were with the mystery man's performance, and how they threatened their sailors with punishment if they shared the video." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:10 PM PST - 28 comments

Peter Staley, an HIV/AIDS activist who'd been featured in the documentary How to Survive a Plague [FanFare thread], was offered a small part in the (eventually-Oscar-winning) film Dallas Buyers Club. Staley agreed, but then he read the original script... [Vanity Fair] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:41 AM PST - 12 comments

Paleofeces reveal diet of ancient salt miners (links to article on cell.com) Paleofeces material displays an archaeological information source that provides insights into the diet and gut microbiome composition of ancestors. Here, we had access to four paleofeces samples from the Hallstatt salt mines dating from the Bronze Age to the Baroque period. The constant low annual temperature and high salt concentrations inside the mine preserved both plant macro-remains and biomolecules (DNA and protein) in the paleofeces. [more inside]
posted by 15L06 at 11:36 AM PST - 35 comments

"The reintroduction of endangered species comes from the heart, a good place, but we have a lot to learn about the species we are reintroducing and the habitat where we want to reintroduce them before we do so..."

Butterflies released in Finland contained parasitic wasps – with more wasps inside [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:24 AM PST - 33 comments

A new trailer has been released for "The Beatles: Get Back", directed by Peter Jackson and premiering on Disney+ November 25th.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:01 AM PST - 50 comments

I want a prominent media home that reflects our size and heterogeneity. I want stories about wealth as opposed to income inequality and its effect on intergenerational and social mobility. I want stories that aren’t just about our problems, but that are also told by, for, and with us. We are civic participants who matter. I want us to set the terms of debate. What could the political effects be of a media that actually served working-class Americans?
posted by sciatrix at 9:33 AM PST - 29 comments

Tetris is not just a fun diversion, but also has remarkable trauma-fighting properties. Playing Tetris within 24 hours of a traumatic event has been found to significantly reduce the likelihood of intrusive memories, and the game has also been used as a behavioural intervention for treating established PTSD. [more inside]
posted by acb at 9:10 AM PST - 33 comments

Rod of Iron Ministries has purchased a 130-acre property in eastern Tennessee to be used as a training center and spiritual retreat.
posted by box at 7:59 AM PST - 64 comments

I waited a day respectfully to see if President Biden, a big fan, would post here first but Pádraig Ó Maoldomhnaigh Paddy Maloney, founder of The Chieftains and Claddagh Records died on Monday. The Chieftains put Irish Trad on the world stage not least by listening to music from outside Ireland and riffing on that. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Let's talk about and listen to Ethel Cain. Her music has been described as an unforgiving portrait of Southern Baptist America and it's been said she fears no darkness. You might enjoy the videos for Crush, God's Country and The God (might be NSFW in some jurisdictions, caveat clicker) and her Soundcloud. [more inside]
posted by signal at 8:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Eleven Poetry Recommendations for Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month. To highlight just three... Raquel Salas Rivera reads "dejaqueveas / waitilyousee." Valerie Martínez reads from the just published Count, a book-length poem on the heartbreaking reality of climate change. Urayoán Noel reads the beginning of “hear me out human.” [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:49 PM PST - 1 comment

“She’s the soul of Carnegie Hall,” the cellist Yo-Yo Ma said in a phone interview. “She enables the transition that takes place between a person backstage getting ready to perform and then going onstage to share everything that is important to them. That transition for an artist is often when they’re at their most vulnerable.” Debby King, 71, Backstage Aide Known as ‘Soul of Carnegie Hall,’ Dies (SY NYTIMES) A short video from Today's A Life Well Lived segment
posted by beisny at 4:36 PM PST - 10 comments

"We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming. With Scorpion’s spear, it started with “You know what would be a cool ass move?”. From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details." How Scorpion got an iconic move: Twitter thread (and threadreader)
posted by curious nu at 2:48 PM PST - 18 comments

Anne Saxelby, champion of U.S. cheesemakers and owner of Saxelby Cheesemongers, has died. Inspired by Neal’s Yard Dairy, which helped revive the British cheese industry in the 70s and 80s by forging relationships with small cheesemakers, Saxelby opened her first stall in New York’s Essex Street Market in 2006. [more inside]
posted by theory at 2:27 PM PST - 18 comments

A Very Long Baguette [SLIO] is a game involving a very long baguette. A 16ft baguette to be precise. You, or you and a friend, must deliver it from the kitchen to the customer, going through the necessarily unnecessarily maze-like restaurant. [more inside]
posted by motty at 2:11 PM PST - 17 comments

A New Link to an Old Model Could Crack the Mystery of Deep Learning. But a number of researchers are showing that idealized versions of these powerful networks are mathematically equivalent to older, simpler machine learning models called kernel machines. If this equivalence can be extended beyond idealized neural networks, it may explain how practical ANNs achieve their astonishing results. [more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 9:39 AM PST - 13 comments

What useful unknown website do you wish more people knew about? This Reddit Thread Of The Most Useful Websites That Most People Might Not Know About Will Make You Fall Down The Ultimate Internet Rabbit Hole. via digg [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 7:40 AM PST - 75 comments

The Dilletant Army issue, Mission Accomplished, presents essays and poetry on the topic of hollow and premature declarations of victory, largely involving US government officials.
posted by eotvos at 7:28 AM PST - 2 comments

“First of all Daisy, fuck off,” you’re thinking. “Second of all, hundreds of years of literary criticism wasn’t actually criticism of Gutenberg’s press!” To which I say: who said it wasn’t?
posted by sammyo at 7:23 AM PST - 3 comments

"[Y]ou’re basically crapping yourself constantly and you lose 5 pounds" “Noom claims that if you can just change your thoughts, you’ll be able to resist the urge to eat certain foods. But that doesn’t acknowledge how human biology works. We are not supposed to try to override our hunger drive. That’s the major nuance that Noom is missing.” (CW: eating disorders) [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 6:17 AM PST - 94 comments

I have started volunteering once a week at a local farm stand. This is for many reasons — not least of which is I get a box of free vegetables in exchange for my time, which I will admit is what drew me to the gig in the first place — but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t mostly because it’s reminding me how to exist as a person in the world. [Pandemic related/via]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:28 AM PST - 25 comments

"While driving recently, Cliff Morrison suddenly found himself lost in a forest. He pulled over, looked around and realized he was actually on a tree-lined street half a mile from his home in the Oakland hills, heading to the post office. Morrison, 70, did not have dementia. He had COVID-19." Nanette Asimov writing in the San Francisco Chronicle. [Link is archive.org link]
posted by hippybear at 8:42 PM PST - 51 comments

"Something happened earlier this year where [Bryan] got on a run making checkbox animations and just couldn’t stop." Frontend developer Bryan Braun writes 650 words with lots of pictures and animations and links.
posted by cgc373 at 4:02 PM PST - 11 comments

"A perfect egg is a slash of light on a gray day." "The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes" by Siobhan Carroll is a bittersweet short fantasy story about cooking, grief, beauty in the midst of war, and teaching the next generation. (Previously.) "On the Feeding Habits of Humans: A Firsthand Account" by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Rachael K. Jones is a short and bittersweet, but mostly hopeful, science fiction story about foodways: Feeder TikTik approaches the [human] Feeder with their haustellums extended and extrudes the greeting-scent. Also available as a one-hour audio recording. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 1:27 PM PST - 7 comments

Synodus Horrenda is a podcast about death, dying, and the dead. [CW] [more inside]
posted by TinyChicken at 12:07 PM PST - 9 comments

Aleksandra Goryachkina is the first woman to qualify and play for the Russian Chess Championship and she's playing well. She won her first game, drew her second and was briefly in first place. There is a common misconception that chess is separated by gender like other sports. However while there are events that are only open to women, there are no events that are only open to men. National Championships in Russia and the United States are restricted to a handful of top players who qualify based on their Elo Rating or performance in qualifying events.
posted by interogative mood at 11:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Failing companies are ditching vessels deemed too expensive to repair or too difficult to sell, stranding their former crews as cargo-ship castaways trapped in ports or offshore without their back pay, food, or a way home. (SLWSJ-amp)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:10 AM PST - 54 comments

Prisoners die from lack of precautions, Democratic administrations almost entirely ignore the issue. "I kept calling the jail to no avail. Then on March 29, when Nick started exhibiting symptoms, I also started calling Cermak, the hospital on the jail compound. I left voicemail after voicemail with my contact information. I explained how people were crammed in close quarters, how my husband was going hungry because the only food available was served by symptomatic people who were coughing on the trays, and how there was no medical treatment on his tier. " [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:39 AM PST - 23 comments

KinoCult is the new website from Kino-Lorber -- offering free films to stream, including works from Mario Bava, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, and more. Horror, occult, exploitation, shorts, sci-fi, documentaries.... Who'll be the first to put How to Take a Bath on FanFare?
posted by dobbs at 6:23 AM PST - 20 comments

James Tilly Matthews is one of the first well-documented cases of someone suffering from what was probably paranoid schizophrenia. His delusions featured an influencing machine, the Air Loom. Visitors to the Bethlem Museum of the Mind may have seen a physical recreation of the device.
posted by eotvos at 4:16 PM PST - 24 comments

The venue will save an estimated 70 tonnes of carbon per year
posted by folklore724 at 10:28 AM PST - 54 comments

Roundtable on Academic Ableism. A discussion from Kayden, Krystal, Cait, Nicole of Disabled in Grad School (Oct 2020). Transcript.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:56 AM PST - 13 comments

Once you see a seagull swallowing a rabbit, you can't unsee it. Gulls gulp down squirrels, rats, puffins, goslings, pigeons, fish, sharks, and starfish, and hunt yet more pigeons and even octopuses. [more inside]
posted by rory at 8:12 AM PST - 52 comments

A group of tabletop wargamers fight the Napoleonic battle of Austerlitz. At a crucial point in the action, you have to decide: left or center? [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:00 AM PST - 14 comments

Inappropriate Questions is a podcast from the CBC where they talk to guests who discuss the inappropriate questions they have been asked. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:04 PM PST - 43 comments

"Only by remembering xenophobia’s first instantiation do we bring these broader battles into focus." Uncovering the origins of a word: stenography, kooky linguistic debates, Romanian ultra-nationalism, the Boxer rebellion, and the stranger-as-enemy relationship. (SLARB)
posted by doctornemo at 7:55 PM PST - 8 comments

From Muncy, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the Lady Lifers by way of Ted Talks.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:51 PM PST - 1 comment

Bo Burnham + Queen. Therese Curatolo and the Scary Pockets crew (featured previously on the blue) bring you an incredibly satisfying mash-up of Bo Burnham's All Eyes On Me and Queen's Under Pressure. (earworm warning?)
posted by kmkrebs at 5:22 PM PST - 2 comments

Still looking for a song of the summer? Allow me to recommend Wet Leg's debut single Chaise Longue, which a commenter describes as "like if Anne of Green Gables invented punk." And if you're still looking for fashion inspiration after that, their follow-up suggests... dressing like an Amish lobster? Sexy silly fun stuff all around.
posted by rorgy at 4:56 PM PST - 34 comments

Tears For Fears announce first album in 17 years: ‘The Tipping Point', out in February. The eponymous first single is quite good.
posted by signal at 1:32 PM PST - 29 comments

When NBA News Breakers Start Breaking Teams [more inside]
posted by Groundhog Week at 8:32 AM PST - 26 comments

Three years ago, Canadian musician Jessica Stuart tried again to find a lost friend in Japan. The resulting twenty-minute short film about her quest is a touching story of brief childhood friendships that echo through a lifetime, the experience of being an outsider, memories meeting the present, how and why we fall out of touch, and what that means for us. Last year Stuart and the filmmakers came together remotely to reflect on the film and its reception.
posted by rory at 7:53 AM PST - 7 comments

Stephen Sondheim was riding high on a wave of his own creation. After the artistic success of Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music, he chose as a follow-up to reunite with Burt Shevelove, with whom he had visited Ancient Rome, this time Ancient Greece. 1974's The Frogs was "freely adapted" from Aristophanes, ran for a week, and was staged in the Yale Swimming Pool [1h30m audio audience recording, acoustics what you'd expect], which is why you've probably never heard of it. Here's Nathan Lane and Brian Stokes Mitchell from 2001, recording the original score, with attaching dialogue and material to sketch out the plot. [Enjoy the bonus Evening Primrose songs (with NPH!)] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:12 AM PST - 11 comments

Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge. ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio's extraordinary deep dive into the juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, which has "a staggering history of jailing children" under Judge Donna Scott Davenport — and where a group of black girls as young as 8 were arrested (with handcuffs, at their elementary school) simply for being present during a scrap between some other kids. [more inside]
posted by retrograde at 5:34 PM PST - 58 comments

In today's news, China's dancing grannies: 'stun gun' claims to solve square dancing dilemma by sabotaging the music. A month ago, the same source reported China considers legal changes to curb noise pollution from the country's notorious dancing grannies. But that isn't the news -‌- back in 2017, CNN reported that Beijing gets tough on dancing grannies. No, it's this small device which can allegedly disable a loud-speaker at a distance. I've wanted one of these in my car forever, but I'm skeptical of its efficacy. Details from Business Insider: This is the $40 speaker-silencing gadget people are using to shut down China's crowds of dancing grandmas. [more inside]
posted by Rash at 3:51 PM PST - 60 comments

"for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." The award celebrated Ressa and Muratov's years of work in the Philippines and Russia, respectively. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 12:47 PM PST - 6 comments

Facebook Banned Me for Life Because I Help People Use It Less This summer, Facebook sent me a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action. It permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts. And it demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services.
posted by mecran01 at 12:21 PM PST - 51 comments

Bill McClintock (previously 1, 2, 3) presents "I Can't Get Closer for That" by Hall and Nails (NSFW).
posted by carrienation at 11:30 AM PST - 25 comments

Just the Punctuation is an online tool that strips everything except punctuation from plain text and arranges the result.
posted by eotvos at 10:25 AM PST - 32 comments

Taking a Look Inside the Steam Deck Valve gets in front of the DIY folks with a short tutorial on replacing components in the Steam Deck. [previously]
posted by kanuck at 8:46 AM PST - 26 comments

Director of videos for Red Velvet and MAMAMOO (and brother of world-famous BoA), Kwon Soon-wook passed away 5th Sept 2021. He was 39. [more inside]
posted by kfholy at 6:57 AM PST - 9 comments

The term lexithymia describes a dimensional personality trait characterised, at the high end, by an extreme and potentially problematic tendency to think about one’s own emotional state and to describe these states to others … Lexithymic patients often do not respond well to, and may grow frustrated by, traditional somatotherapies (see ‘Somatotherapy with the Garrulous Patient’, Rolyat, 1980). Although local epidemiological studies suggest that high levels of lexithymia are relatively rare, there are some intriguing cultural variations. Mounting evidence suggests that lexithymia is much more common in so-called ‘WEIRD [Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic] people’, who tend to live in societies where an independent model of self-construal predominates … Rather than aiming to treat lexithymia, WEIRD societies have developed many indigenous approaches that encourage patients with various health problems to talk at great length about their feelings.

Quoting a paper by Yulia E. Chentsova-Dutton, Elitsa Dermendzhiyska writes in Aeon on the subject of emotions: is there a set of innate and universal basic emotions, as one prevalent anglophone model would have it? Or would that be WEIRD? [more inside]
posted by rd45 at 6:28 AM PST - 23 comments

Two scifi stories about tech inventions that don't work out as their designers planned. Ken Liu's "Quality Time" (from last year) looks into "unsolved problems in home automation" and a friendship at a startup. "Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterhoeven, with Personal Notes" by Jane Espenson (published this month) is an epistolary piece by an unreliable narrator: "My problem was the subjectivity of pain." (Yes, this is the Jane Espenson who wrote the "I Was Made to Love You" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the "Dirty Hands" episode of Battlestar Galactica.)
posted by brainwane at 5:47 AM PST - 9 comments

That is all.
posted by domdib at 1:00 AM PST - 38 comments

Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans: For half a century, she has taken the things we know best— our bodies, our rituals, our nation — and shown us how strange they really are. Sam Anderson writes a NYT longread profile of the venerated multi-faceted performance artist. Archive link. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:47 PM PST - 20 comments

“Offering new products and services that are affordable, convenient and secure aligns with the Postal Service’s Delivering for America 10-year plan to achieve financial sustainability and service excellence,” said USPS spokesperson [Tatiana] Roy in a statement to the Prospect. “This pilot, which is in collaboration with the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), is an example of how the Postal Service is leveraging its vast retail footprint and resources to innovate.” Executive editor David Dayen writes 1800 words for The American Prospect.
posted by cgc373 at 5:26 PM PST - 62 comments

[SL Guardian] with a review of domestic bliss meets intersectional oppression in American interior design. [more inside]
posted by ec2y at 1:43 PM PST - 24 comments

From her Nairobi studio, artist Wangechi Mutu considers her relationship with the natural world and the ways in which it has influenced her variegated artistic practice. A self-described "city girl with a nature brain," Mutu recounts her upbringing in Kenya, memories of playing in her family’s garden, and attending an all-girls Catholic school. These experiences instilled a profound respect for both nature and the feminine in Mutu, alongside a curiosity about the African history, heritage, and culture that was omitted from her studies. Today, Mutu’s monumental sculptures of hybrid female, animal, and plant forms assert "how incredibly important every single plant and animal and human is in keeping us all alive and afloat."

Wangechi Mutu: Between the Earth and the Sky [Vimeo, 14:42] [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 12:20 PM PST - 3 comments

You may have heard of Doc Savage, Sexton Blade or Arsene Lupin, but how many other pulp characters do you know from Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes, an attempt to document pulp series and heroes from over fifty countries, published between 1902 and 1945. Caution: some of these stories could be very racist indeed.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:18 AM PST - 11 comments

New York Magazine provides a recounting of the 1992 New York City police riot and its aftermath - an event that both reshaped the politics of the city while slipping into the cultural memory hole. (SLNew York) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:34 AM PST - 18 comments

Justin Trudeau announces federal vaccination mandate for travel, RCMP, & federal employees [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:40 AM PST - 101 comments

Abdulrazak Gurnah is a novelist from Zanzibar who lives in Brighton, England. He is best known for his novel Paradise, but has published several novels. Anders Olsson, chairman of the Swedish Academy's Nobel committee has written an essay about Gurnah, which has a good overview of his work. You can also read about him on the British Council's website, watch a long on-stage interview with him from 2013 at Writers Make Worlds, or read an essay about Gurnah as a post-colonial writer by Samir Jeraj.
posted by Kattullus at 4:33 AM PST - 18 comments

Why so many of us are casual spider-murderers - "The moment we sense the pitter-patter of their tiny feet across the living room floor, or catch a glimpse of movement in the corner of an eye as they abseil down from the ceiling, they're likely to end up squashed, poisoned, vacuumed up or simply flushed away from our homes. Why do many of us kill spiders so casually, swatting out their lives with our god-like power, almost like it's a reflex?" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM PST - 112 comments

A neighbor is blaring racist slurs and monkey sounds at a Black family’s home. Why isn’t it a hate crime? [archive.today] “Whenever we would step out of our house, the monkey noises would start,” Martinez told WAVY. “It’s so racist, and it’s disgusting. … I don’t even know how else to explain it.” [more inside]
posted by bendy at 10:23 PM PST - 98 comments

The Jazz Butcher, Pat Fish has died. Born Patrick Huntrods in 1957, Pat Fish put out records under variations of The Jazz Butcher name since the mid-’80s. As the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, he collaborated with David J, members of The Woodentops, Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, and of course, Max Eider. He was known as quick wit, a generous soul, and a fantastic songwriter. Fans are sharing memories over at jazzbutcher.com. Never heard of him? Links to some classics are below the fold. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by Otherwise at 6:26 PM PST - 32 comments

This month marks the 29th anniversary of Ice Cube's second solo album, Death Certificate. [more inside]
posted by box at 3:57 PM PST - 6 comments

A Reuters special report is out detailing AT&T's involvement in the creation of the far right news outlet OAN.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:17 PM PST - 34 comments

Omniglot, a continuously updated online encyclopedia of languages that's even older than Metafilter (and a fave on the blue). Yet to be featured here is the weekly language quiz. Do you know or can you guess the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:07 AM PST - 16 comments

First reported anonymously at Video Games Chronicle, and then confirmed by Kotaku and by Engadget, a major data breach at Twitch has put over 125 GB of data into the wild. [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:03 AM PST - 55 comments

The History Guy presents a Brief History of Coffee [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:56 AM PST - 9 comments

Emily Graslie, a science communicator known for The Brain Scoop who has formerly worked with the University of Montana and the Chicago Field Museum, has a new YouTube show! ART LAB employs Graslie's trademark mix of hands-on field work and artifact analysis and explores connections between art, history, and science. As part of producing the series Graslie is partnering with the Described and Captioned Media Program to include captions, descriptive audio, and full episode transcripts. DCMP is an accessibility group dedicated to providing described and captioned educational media to students who are deaf, blind, hard of hearing, visually impaired, or deaf-blind. [more inside]
posted by Wretch729 at 10:12 AM PST - 6 comments

piratefsh wrote a short series of blog posts about allowing herself to become a perfume aficionado, starting with "Every month or so, about two weeks before my period starts, my nose gets hypersensitive." (Content note for vomiting.) Part two: "Sales assistants at department stores are terrifying." "But there I was, at the cosmetics section in the glitziest department stores of Kuala Lumpur, every other weekend with my feet and flip flops sweaty from trekking across the street from the nearest light rail train station." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 10:06 AM PST - 9 comments

James Gingell describes walking London's Capital Ring. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 8:42 AM PST - 18 comments

More Than Honey - "In 2013 Markus Imhoof used mini-helicopters and high-speed cameras to capture an extraordinary video of the inflight mating of a queen bee. The ejaculation of a drone bee is so powerful that his endophallus ruptures and he quickly dies." [full video] (via)
posted by kliuless at 11:54 PM PST - 29 comments

Susan Gerbic, Mark Edward, and a volunteer cadre of guerilla skeptics attempt to catch fraudulent psychics engaged in hot-reading, often in double-blinded stings such as Operation Onion Ring, Operation Pizza Roll, and less successful Operation Bumblebee and Operation Ice Cream Cone. Those who prefer to listen can find two detailed interviews at the Oh No Ross and Cary podcast. (previously) [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 6:46 PM PST - 9 comments

The truth is we are always litigating how we feel about a piece of music, revising opinions based on context, culture, who we’ve become, who we once were. We can’t change what we said, but we are almost always changing how we feel about it in ways both small and large. Pitchfork Reviews: Rescored. In which Pitchfork goes backs and revises 19 album review scores... [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 5:02 PM PST - 83 comments

Hashtag started by the AFL-CIO. The strike wave in the US has only just begun. From workers at HelloFresh to steelworkers to John Deere to crew workers in the film industry, all are fed up with the status quo. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 12:10 PM PST - 68 comments

Who Will Win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature? by Alex Shephard who has a terrible track record with these predictions [The New Republic; Ungated Version]
posted by chavenet at 11:43 AM PST - 18 comments

"i am assuming for these purposes that wayne enterprises is a privately held conglomerate..." Kitty Unpretty (previously) lays out a plausible corporate structure for Wayne Enterprises (the fictional company owned by Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman). Highlights include the health division: "Anyone who tries to make anything brain-related gets the side-eye these days. They’ve been burned too many times before. 'And it’s definitely not supposed to be used to read or control minds?' any engineer working on a brain-related project will be asked, repeatedly, forever." and "Spite: A Valid Way To Run A Business Since 1864". [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 10:02 AM PST - 47 comments

Dawn Dorland donated her kidney, but her story, she feels, was stolen. In the New York Times Magazine, Robert Kolker details a years-long grudge, and ensuing legal battle, between writers Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson. Dorland gave a kidney in a non-directed donation (i.e. to a stranger), in what she saw as an act of righteous and praiseworthy moral clarity. Larson then wrote and published a story in which a character donates a kidney in an act of... well. The portrayal was not a flattering one—and, to Dorland's mind, it got worse. [more inside]
posted by babelfish at 9:56 AM PST - 650 comments

Nayanjyoti's roundup of proletarian TikTok in India for the political webzine Raiot includes videos of rural workers, workers on the long walk home, workers goofing off, construction workers goofing off, reaction videos, lipsynched labor, and synchronized solidarity between dancers in Korea and dancers in south India. The Indian government banned Tiktok along with 58 other Chinese apps on 29th June 2020 in the name of ‘national security’.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:06 AM PST - 3 comments

The Fart Pedal
posted by Stark at 8:16 AM PST - 29 comments

Seattle Votes to Decriminalize Psilocybin and Similar Substances [ungated] - "Seattle's city council voted unanimously to relax its rules against naturally occurring drugs, joining a handful of other cities that have decriminalized psilocybin and similar substances since Denver kicked off a wave of such changes three years ago." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:04 PM PST - 17 comments

The Ship that Became a Bomb Stranded in Yemen’s war zone, a decaying supertanker has more than a million barrels of oil aboard. If—or when—it explodes or sinks, thousands may die. SL NewYorker. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 5:22 PM PST - 28 comments

Armando Iannucci wrote an epic poem about COVID-19. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 4:58 PM PST - 12 comments

Facebook is down, along with Whatsapp and Instagram. Post your conspiracy theories here. [more inside]
posted by mpark at 2:40 PM PST - 176 comments

William Shatner is still alive, and he's heading for the final frontier.
posted by chavenet at 9:45 AM PST - 60 comments

The four members of Korean pop group BLACKPINK have released some of the hottest videos in history, by viewership standards. JENNIE released SOLO 2018. JISOO had HABITS (Stay High). Other videos include ROSÉ's On the Ground 2021, and LISA's LALISA hit 242M in 3 weeks.
posted by kfholy at 9:13 AM PST - 23 comments

Whistleblower Frances Haugen will give congressional testimony later this week about internal Facebook research and communications she gave to the SEC, in the form of tens of thousands of pages that document the company's deliberate and deceitful amplification of hate, violence, and disinformation to maintain ad revenue and profits, across all its social media network properties. A former product manager at Facebook, Haugen gave an interview with CBS News 60 Minutes that was broadcast last night. [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:42 AM PST - 366 comments

A woman had a hard time making friends -- until she built a group based on arranged marriage. "What makes it work are key elements borrowed from arranged marriages: commit first, lean on structure, and allow for fun and intimacy to emerge and sustain the relationship." Most of the group has now been together almost 10 years. [more inside]
posted by NotLost at 9:57 PM PST - 49 comments

A human plays a harmonica for two geese The geese honk appreciatively Another harmonica performance. As posted on the Instagram account of 奇奇 and 凡凡: "We are a family of ducks and geese living in Daan Forest Park." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:50 PM PST - 15 comments

The Pandora Papers are a gigantic set of data about offshore finance that details hidden wealth, tax avoidance, and money laundering. [more inside]
posted by box at 11:04 AM PST - 42 comments

For [Felicia D.] Henderson, working on Family Matters offered an introduction to a defining feature of her long career in Hollywood. Negotiated authenticity is the phrase she uses to describe what many Black screenwriters are tasked with producing—Blackness, sure, but only of a kind that is acceptable to white showrunners, studio executives, and viewers. Not Enough Has Changed Since Sanford and Son, by Hannah Giorgis.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:33 AM PST - 9 comments

Seawind Saga: Pilot who crashed in Lake Michigan had 7 crashes in 7 days. A pilot buys a used homebuilt Seawind and does not succeed in getting it home (luckily, without injury).
posted by ShooBoo at 10:07 AM PST - 47 comments

It's the last scheduled day of the regular season in Major League Baseball and every game will be played starting simultaneously at 3 pm Eastern. The AL Wild Card and the NL West are still up for grabs and a bewildering array of two, three, and even four way ties and resulting tiebreaker games is on the table. Root for your favorite team, or just root for chaos.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:54 AM PST - 52 comments

Did you enjoy the movie That Thing You Do? Then you might also enjoy this oral history of That Thing You Do. Find out things you've always wanted to know, such as: Who got dysentery? Who went on a date with Madonna? Is Tom Hanks an awful person? And what's the bass player's name?
posted by amarynth at 7:45 AM PST - 42 comments

Beeple and Mohrbacher and others in other words took their works and completely removed them from the one place in which they shine as the art of the present: completely unbounded meme distribution, aesthetic experiences without Aura, without original, without a set history or place. They made art designed for that sphere, and locked it behind a trading mechanism powered by burning rainforests.

Why is all this nft art so, you know? Storming the Ivory Tower tries to explain.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:45 AM PST - 64 comments

Mick Jagger went to a dive bar in Charlotte and literally everybody missed him.
posted by bonefish at 6:06 PM PST - 171 comments

Armed with only a solar charger, a vibrator and some marijuana gummy bears, I rode out the pandemic – and my fear of spiders – in a California commune.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:02 PM PST - 12 comments

Scientific American's round-up and run-down of what's up with Ivermectin. Despite what fringe physicians' groups recommend -- “twice a week for as long as [COVID] risk is elevated" -- ivermectin is usually given as a one-time dose when it is used as a parasite treatment for humans. Cases of severe poisoning and even death are on the rise. At the same time, clinical trials of Ivermectin as well as Fluvoxamine (serotonin uptake inhibitor), Metformin (glucose/insulin regulator), and Fluticasone (steroid) continue as researchers explore the possibility that drugs "known to decrease inflammatory proteins (cytokines) in the body" will treat covid. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:25 PM PST - 122 comments

"Graduate school application season is upon us and so I wanted to take this as an opportunity to talk about it. Every year, I talk with undergraduate students who are considering pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities, who mostly come to me because they know that my graduate school experience was relatively more recent and so they hope I can offer some useful advice beyond what they might get from a more senior academic who attended graduate school decades ago. So this week I am going to give all of you a version of the advice I offer those students." [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 12:16 PM PST - 86 comments

A history of and my first go at MEDIEVAL TENNIS [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:11 AM PST - 23 comments

Stephen Sondheim writes more songs than he uses, many cut from shows during development. An aspiring Sweeney Todd chorus member (Craig Lucas, who later wrote Prelude To A Kiss amongst other things) approached him about developing a show from this discarded material. Sondheim sat down with him and went through 77 songs before giving him the songs that form 1980's revue Marry Me A Little. One set, two apartments, two people, one lonely Saturday night... No official filming or audience bootleg for this one: here are Suzanne Henry and Craig Lucas and E. Martin Perry on the Original Off-Broadway Cast album. [Archive.org link, streaming and download links] Two Fairy Tales (cut from A Little Night Music) is really clever, and Pour Le Sport is delightfully biting. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:06 AM PST - 7 comments

The most important device in the universe. The second-most important device in the universe. Both created by John Zabrucky, iconic prop maker, who closed up shop last year.
posted by BungaDunga at 7:38 PM PST - 32 comments

The Sound Aquatic. Hakai Magazine's 5-part podcast invites us to explore the ocean and its noisy inhabitants is. Episode 1 Can You Hear Me Now?: Eavesdropping on marine motormouths during the world’s most expensive experiment (aka the sudden drop in shipping and ship noise triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic).
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:04 PM PST - 3 comments

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows, MIT Technology Review, Karen Hao, September 16, 2021 [alternate link]. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages reached nearly half of all Americans through Facebook’s platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm.
posted by cenoxo at 1:09 PM PST - 62 comments

I really can’t think of a more perfect encapsulation of the last 10 stupid and wasteful years of bloated VC-funded digital media than a constantly-pivoting digital publisher launched by two Goldman Sachs employees abusing underpaid staffers, dangling useless stock options in front of them, and possibly committing fraud to help prop up a weird and wildly unpopular YouTube talk show hosted by the site’s founder. Internet guy Ryan Broderick dives into the rapidly disintegrating world of OZY Media, recently in the news for impersonating a Youtube executive at an investor meeting and lying about basic facts regarding their flagship "Carlos Watson Show."
posted by theodolite at 11:52 AM PST - 62 comments

"The popular narrative after 2012 that Obama won due to historic mobilization of young and non-white voters was completely wrong and the resulting consequences of that narrative have led to massive strategic errors that have put American democracy at risk." Nate Cohn of the NYT's Upshot on how erroneous data from the 2012 exit polls created a powerful narrative - that white working-class voters were no longer a major part of the Democratic coalition - which was completely wrong. "You know how the story ends. The real Obama coalition - an alliance of northern white working class voters and high Black turnout - evaporated in 2016." Via David Shor.
posted by russilwvong at 11:49 AM PST - 60 comments

Luke Davis waits for the muse to strike [16 mins] sitting on a lawn-chair in the sun on the South Bank in London: paper loaded in a Brother de Luxe manual typewriter, ready for someone, anyone, to ask for a poem on a pay-what-you-will contract.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:29 AM PST - 11 comments

High drama on Capitol Hill this week as the slim Democratic majority struggles over President Biden's "Build Back Better" plan. On one side: the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF!), exhaustively hashed out this summer by a cross-party cadre of moderate senators. On the other: a $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" package containing the rest of Biden's sweeping agenda: climate, education, social care, and so much more, all packed into a single reconciliation bill that needs only 50 Senate votes. Dem centrists (led by the inscrutable Manchin and Sinema) demand passing infrastructure first, while House progressives, doubtful of centrist support for reconciliation, insist both bills pass together. After a progressive rebellion derailed an infrastructure vote late last night, and a leaked memo shed some light on Manchin's positions, the path is open to a perilous negotiation that could make or break Biden's domestic policy. Spookiest of all: the specter of a catastrophic debt default just weeks away as Republican stonewalling blocks all attempts to lift the debt ceiling.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:16 AM PST - 113 comments

"Mortality management solutions" It doesn’t get easier than this. Load the system, and the process is 100% complete in less than a day. "First, be smart from the very beginning" is complicated, compared to this. [more inside]
posted by mightshould at 4:08 AM PST - 35 comments

They call it the Indiepocalypse - the oversaturation of indie, outsider and hobbyist video games that results in poor sales for the vast majority of them. Strategies have been suggested, such as those from gamedev Jason Rohrer, but Andrew aka PIZZAPRANKS has another solution: convenient bundles of diverse, disparate games. Hence his $15 USD bundle-slash-zine series, INDIEPOCALYPSE (itch.io store - always updated first), which is literally hours away (if that) from posting Issue #21. All devs and zine writers are paid, both up front and per sale. At least ten games included with each issue. Stuff besides game info in the zine from #5 onwards. One exclusive game with each issue from #13 onwards. Anyone can submit games, comics, and mini-zines. More info and important tips after the jump. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 3:11 AM PST - 12 comments