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The Oscar for Costume Design 1987! Starring...... Lauren Bacall, a fashion montage, wild inexplicable dancing, and Jenny Beavan winning an Oscar (and not giving a rip * about award show fashion conventions.)

*this is the article that lead me to look up Beavan's speech for her prior Best Costume Design win for A Room with A View. I prefer these theories over what is likely the reality.
posted by vespabelle at 10:16 PM PST - 34 comments

The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, The Jewish Mark Twain. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Incubating a supermarket quail egg. [more inside]
posted by casarkos at 8:08 PM PST - 27 comments

You're walking on art in France , Seattle [1, 2, 3], Minneapolis, Moscow, Brisbane, Japan [previously], and elsewhere all over the world [1, 2]. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:11 PM PST - 15 comments

Star Trek + Hamilton = MY SPOCK -- a parody of "My Shot" retelling the story of a bastard, orphan, son of a Vulcan and a human, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Alpha Quadrant. (apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda) (SLYT, via Birth. Movies. Death.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:55 PM PST - 16 comments

Inside America's worst train station: What makes New York's Penn Station suck so bad? Today, Penn Station is more like a polished turd, except it’s not really polished... I called up James Ramsey, founder of Raad Studio, former NASA engineer, co-creator of the Lowline project, and all-around keen architectural eye, and asked him to give us an expert's look at why exactly this place sucks so much — to play Virgil to our Dante as we descend into the hellish circles of New York's Pennsylvania Station. [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous at 5:33 PM PST - 100 comments

Passed away at age 91. Sandy-haired, tall and burly George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born in New York City, to Helen A. (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. He has German, Irish, and English ancestry. A World War II veteran, Kennedy at one stage in his career cornered the market at playing tough, no-nonsense characters who were either quite crooked or possessed hearts of gold. Kennedy has notched up an impressive 200+ appearances in both TV and film, and is well respected within the Hollywood community [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 2:41 PM PST - 51 comments

Kelly Clarkson's incredibly moving performance of "Piece by Piece" on American idol. [more inside]
posted by yawper at 1:18 PM PST - 32 comments

This is the scariest toilet in the world [more photos]. Or maybe this is. This one lets you adjust your level of scary. More contenders.
posted by Mchelly at 10:44 AM PST - 113 comments

Matthieu Aikins on Hikmatullah Shadman, a young military contractor who amassed a fortune. But was it profit or profiteering? (slNewYorker)
posted by crazy with stars at 10:19 AM PST - 21 comments

The scene that helped The Revenant earn an oscar nomination for VFX is hard to watch. It's also disturbingly realistic, even though a stunt man substituted for an actual bear. How'd they do that? By consulting bear experts and studying videos of actual attacks. [Warning: last link is brutal]
posted by gottabefunky at 10:18 AM PST - 21 comments

Reddit 3016 is the result of 4 years of work by Blair Erickson, who built a very detailed parody of what Reddit 1,000 years from now might look like; including alternate sites like HoloTube and Huffington Planet to make the experience complete. Although most of the posts are satire of au courant Reddit trends, it is at least worth admiring the amount of detail, including fake comments on fake Imgur (sorry, Hologur) posts.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:13 AM PST - 17 comments

Kate McKinnon and Kumail Nanjiani (joined by Wanda Sykes and Jane Lynch) parody Carol for the Independent Spirit Awards. They also took on Room.
posted by Artw at 9:17 AM PST - 14 comments

On Friday, Netflix released Season One of Fuller House, and the reviews are in. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM PST - 175 comments

It’s an experience that may not appeal to everyone—a seven-day cruise at sea, with the aim of “taking back power from corrupt and greedy institutions, attain true self-authority, and realize our genuine Self behind the masks … discovering the truth, taking command of our lives, and attaining genuine inner realization” —with every odd belief you can think of listed as entertainment: GMOs, Monsanto, bee colony collapse, ecology, global warming, climate change, fracking, HIV, autism, Big Pharma, medical suppression, vaccinations, fluoridation,… electoral fraud, identity chips, 2nd amendment, and so much more. Anna Merlan writes charitably yet unflinchingly for Jezebel about her experience joining them [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 7:35 AM PST - 119 comments

The Surprising History Behind Leap Year by Brian Handwerk [National Geographic]

The ancient Egyptians did it, and so do we. Here's how a leap day—which occurs Februrary 29—helps keep our calendars and societies in sync. It's that time again: This Monday, February 29, is a leap day, the calendar oddity that occurs (almost) every four years. For centuries, trying to sync calendars with the length of the natural year caused confusion—until the concept of leap year provided a way to make up for lost time.

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:27 AM PST - 39 comments

Grace's Guide to British Industrial History ‘is a free-content not-for-profit project dedicated to publishing the history of industry in the UK and elsewhere. Its aim is to provide a brief history of the companies, products and people who were instrumental in industry, commencing with the birth of the Industrial Revolution and continuing up to recent times.’ It ‘contains 115,164 pages of information and 163,140 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.’ Browse by Archived Publications, Biographies (‘over 35,000 pages of biographical notes on individuals’), Industries, Locations or Timelines. There is also a blog.
posted by misteraitch at 2:06 AM PST - 5 comments

It's time again for one of our favorite* literary awards, the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year (previously here) and this year we've found it in time for YOU to vote on it. So, what's your published poison? Behind the Binoculars: Interviews with Acclaimed Birdwatchers or Paper Folding with Children** or Reading from Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus or Reading the Liver: Papyrological Texts on Ancient Greek Extispicy*** or Soviet Bus Stops or Too Naked for the Nazis or Transvestite Vampire Biker Nuns from Outer Space: A Consideration of Cult Film ? [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:14 AM PST - 16 comments

Grand theft auto and the airbrushing of history.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:53 AM PST - 34 comments

The Kurdish key - "Kurds are key to a Middle East solution as they hold the balance of power in Iraq and Syria, as well as being in the midst of an insurrection in Turkey. The US needs the Kurds as much as it needs the Turks in its efforts to defeat Isis." (also btw /r/Kurdistan: Who Exactly Are 'the Kurds'?; End Times for the Caliphate?)
posted by kliuless at 12:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Seventy years ago this month, U.S. Army Sergeant Isaac Woodard, recently discharged after having served in the Pacific during World War II, boarded a Greyhound bus in Georgia. What happened during his trip outraged the country. [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:45 PM PST - 16 comments

The best link on wikipedia. Better on mobile. (non-mobile link here)
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:54 PM PST - 95 comments

The internet is full of interesting ebbs and flows, and a current push-pull started with Beyoncé's video for 'Formation' (previously), which she also featured in her Super Bowl show. Then came the much-derided acoustic covers. Those covers inspired Nathan Zed to do a trap cover of 'Hey Jude', and the #TrapCovers really took off from there (more on Twitter)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:03 PM PST - 57 comments

The state of the Illinois Budget. The current Illinois Budget Crisis started almost 8 months ago. While talks continue services are slowly falling part without funding. [more inside]
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:33 PM PST - 97 comments

Play ColonelQuest, the 8-bit, "historically accurate" video game based on Colonel Harlan Sanders' mythological life, that is part of its hipster makeover to improve flagging sales.
posted by MoonOrb at 6:30 PM PST - 25 comments

An exhaustive list of acts of defecation and encounters with feces in motion pictures. Via -- of course -- PoopReport.
posted by escabeche at 6:24 PM PST - 17 comments

Photographer Mehrdad Rasoulifard is taking viewers on a visual journey through the history of ancient (and modern!) Iranian architecture and design. He captures the structural and artistic intricacies of iran’s most significant places of worship and cultural complexes, including the tessellated and tiled ceilings of historic mosques. [via designboom]
posted by Room 641-A at 5:54 PM PST - 6 comments

Vsauce's take on Zipf's Law (SLVS). With some useful links in the video description. [more inside]
posted by carter at 5:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Many cities have either thinking about or have been upping their minimum wages as their residents have struggled to keep up with the inflated cost of living that living near large urban centers. Birmingham, AL was the latest city to plan to up its minimum wage to $10.10 last week.

The Alabama state legislature immediately stripped away the ability for Alabama cities to set their own minimum wages.
posted by Talez at 5:31 PM PST - 62 comments

Markus Fuller dissects a battery pack for some high end Swiss stereo equipment. There are some pretty generic materials inside some pretty high priced electronic goods. A nerdy but strangely mesmerizing video. Follow up post.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:22 PM PST - 37 comments

Saga Thing is a podcast [iTunes link] about the Sagas of the Icelanders by Professors Andrew Pfrenger and John P. Sexton. The format is simple, the two of them discuss a single saga over the course of one or more episodes. Then they render judgment at the end, on such issues as the quality of its nicknames, witticisms, characters and bloodshed. If you need a refresher on the medieval literature and history of Iceland, Saga Thing has you covered with three introductory episodes (1, 2, 3), or you could listen to the BBC's In Our Time episode about the sagas. Andy and John also have a few short episodes on related topics, such as the gruesome blood eagle, dueling and Norse remains in Newfoundland.
posted by Kattullus at 3:04 PM PST - 15 comments

Sawyer DeVuyst began his project "Mine" in October 2014. [more inside]
posted by Deoridhe at 2:29 PM PST - 1 comment

The Boston Globe's Alyssa Giacobbe looks at the science behind picky eating.
posted by zeusianfog at 2:26 PM PST - 86 comments

Couples Project: “As author Junot Diaz once wrote, if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves,” photographer Substantia Jones explains. [more inside]
posted by Salamandrous at 2:22 PM PST - 10 comments

How U.S. Immigration Law Fueled A Chinese Restaurant Boom
posted by infini at 2:18 PM PST - 11 comments

The Fierce Courage of Nina Simone by Adam Shatz
posted by thetortoise at 1:53 PM PST - 10 comments

The People Who Believe Electricity Rules the Universe
. . . “Science is returned to the people—the garage tinkerer, the practical engineer, and the natural philosopher,” Thornhill told Motherboard.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:25 PM PST - 40 comments

Devo creates an interactive 360 music video, What We Do. To watch 360 degree videos, you'll need the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, or Internet Explorer on your computer. On mobile, use the latest version of the YouTube app for Android or iOS. Devo also created a non-interactive version of the same video (but it's really not the same).
posted by hippybear at 11:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Female friendship was not a consolation prize, some romance also-ran. Women who find affinity with one another are not settling. In fact, they may be doing the opposite, finding something vital that is lacking in their romantic entanglements, and thus setting their standards healthily higher. (SLNYT)
posted by quiet coyote at 11:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Yesterday, a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim, CA left three people stabbed and over a dozen arrested. Unfortunately, Orange County is no stranger to white supremacist groups, though headlines like this aren't common. Photographer Heather Davini Boucher offers an up-close photographic account of the confrontation from start to finish.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:29 AM PST - 185 comments

By James H. Burns: Recently, a television mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel, Childhood’s End, debuted internationally. But if the vagaries and fortunes of Hollywood had been just a bit different, there could have been such a production, or a theatrical feature film, far sooner, from Universal Studios - The Lost Childhood’s End: A Tale of Phil DeGuere, The Late 1970s, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Classic Novel
posted by Artw at 9:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Optimal stopping is a math theory that can be used to solve real world decision problems. In the real world, it is often applied to help decide when to stop dating and get married.
posted by reenum at 8:27 AM PST - 60 comments

Ya Momma So Black... [more inside]
posted by cashman at 7:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Every year for the last 50+ years the BC Ministry of Transportation has had a instrumented truck drive every mile of every highway in the province to record highway conditions. Part of the instrumentation is millions of pictures (one every 10-30 metres). The Ministry has compiled selected sets of those pictures from 1966 into video photolog trips of selected highways. Highway 1 from Lytton to Revelstoke; The Island's Malahat; Highway 99 from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish; [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 7:26 AM PST - 17 comments

"That's what Life Magazine calls GALAXY!" The Internet Archive presents the complete run of classic sf magazine Galaxy, from 1950 to 1980.

Previously on MetaFilter. (via HackerNews)
posted by doctornemo at 6:39 AM PST - 10 comments

RIP Frank Kelly, Irish actor best known for playing Father Jack in the UK Channel 4 comedy series Father Ted. He died 18 years, to the day, after his co-star Dermot Morgan.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:21 AM PST - 47 comments

"I felt sick when I signed the paper, when I signed away all my rights. It looked so horrific when it was all there. I can't help but think about the time I was getting a scan and the man said 'You're cut asunder, turn around and I'll show you what they've done to you'. I just didn't want to see it. I knew what happened was so awful." [more inside]
posted by hollyholly at 5:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Matchstick Puzzles - I've always been intrigued by these little sticks with their rounded heads. There are just so many fun things you can do with them... I started collecting matchstick puzzles a long time ago and have decided to display them all on this blog.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:51 AM PST - 5 comments

A sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 classic sci-fi "Blade Runner" has finally been assigned a release date in early 2018. The movie will be directed by Denis Villeneuve (most recently, "Sicario" and "Enemy"). But - who should score the new film? FACT Magazine presents who they would want to hear soundtracking Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford’s adventures with the replicants. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 12:57 AM PST - 100 comments

“The programming community has been opening up over the past few years about mental health issues, so, I want to take this opportunity to open up about my own.” Kenneth Reitz, developer of the famed Python requests module (as well as tablib, records, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Python) has written an essay about suffering a mental health crisis and discovering that he has bipolar affective disorder.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:39 PM PST - 35 comments

The GOP is freaking out about the ever-increasing likelihood of Trump as their nominee. The New York Times talks to GOP leaders and consultants, who talk of a Republican National Convention floor fight and an effort to save the rest of the party's candidates. And Lindsey Graham roasts the whole party.
posted by lunasol at 10:31 PM PST - 671 comments

An excellent short video from the British Geological Survey about Siccar Point. In the spring of 1788 James Hutton set off with John Playfair to the Berwickshire coast. They took a boat trip from Dunglass Burn east along the coast with the geologist Sir James Hall of Dunglass. In the cliff below St. Helens, then just to the east at Siccar Point they found what Hutton called "a beautiful picture of this junction washed bare by the sea", now known as Hutton's Unconformity, the birthplace of modern geology.
posted by Long Way To Go at 7:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Mental Waste Collection and Disposal Service
The MWCDS turns psychic garbage into physical trash. A telephone landline (AT&T) and cassette tape answering machine (Panasonic KX-T 1920 EASA PHONE) is available 24/7 for waste drop off. All calls are confidential. All cassette tapes are sealed in concrete after recording. After the cassette tapes are sealed in concrete a site is determined for burial or storage. The placement into this site involves a ritual administered by the GROUNDSKEEPER.
Spoilers below the fold. [more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 7:07 PM PST - 17 comments

Data broker Acxiom has released a tool About The Data to let you see (some of) the data they have and sell on you. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:02 PM PST - 21 comments

Santigold is back with her third album, 99¢ (YT playlist), omnivorous pop in a post-genre age. She's been promoting the album throughout 2015, and enjoying the process this time around, trying to incorporate some of the joy from her son, Radek. She's been bending genres since her self-titled debut album, but this time around she's in a different place from her prior album, Master of My Make-Believe, which was fit for the dystopian end of the Age of Aquarius ... crackling with discontent, with a powerful cover designed by Kehinde Wiley (previously). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:30 PM PST - 8 comments

In some ways, it is hard to imagine two paths more different than being a writer and being a spy. It is certainly hard to imagine two careers with more wildly disparate stakes. And yet there are parallels in the underlying qualities of their practitioners: an interest in psychology, a facility with narrative, a tendency to position oneself as an observer, and a willingness to lie and call it something else.--writer Jennifer DuBois explains what it was like to be hired by the CIA.
posted by MoonOrb at 6:17 PM PST - 18 comments

What did common fruits and vegetables look like before domestication? [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:31 PM PST - 25 comments

"Not everyone who wants to sing can. This is the choir for those who can't." If the BBC link inspires you, you can start your own Tuneless Choir wherever you are. Or you can just follow along with the fun on their Facebook Page. (Here's their version of Living on a Prayer.) The Nottingham Post reports the initiative has been a great success so far.
posted by frumiousb at 5:31 PM PST - 10 comments

"The Evolution Of Webdesign is a collection and imitation of Webdesign Trends from 1991 to 2015." with a slider. and Neil Armstrong.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:05 PM PST - 13 comments

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the first Pokemon games releasing in Japan. 20 years ago today, a set of unsuspecting video games would be released that would end up spawning so many sequels, a long running anime series, a collectible card game and numerous spin offs. [more inside]
posted by Twain Device at 3:00 PM PST - 53 comments

a 6 minuute spin (slyt) A top is a toy designed to be spun rapidly on the ground, the motion of which causes it to remain precisely balanced on its tip because of inertia. Such toys have existed since antiquity. Traditionally tops were constructed of wood, sometimes with an iron tip, and would be set in motion by aid of a string or rope coiled around its axis which, when pulled quickly, caused a rapid unwinding that would set the top in motion. Today they are often built of plastic, and modern materials and manufacturing processes allow tops to be constructed with such precise balance that they can be set in motion by a simple twist of the fingers and twirl of the wrist without need for string or rope. (wiki) [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 2:45 PM PST - 20 comments

An entrepreneur tries to start a company and raise venture capital in Silicon Valley — and then finds out she is pregnant.
posted by four panels at 2:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Meet The Witch's breakout star, Black Phillip - a goat with his own Twitter account.
posted by Neely O'Hara at 1:24 PM PST - 22 comments

A 12-minute compilation of British drivers swearing. NSFW. SLYT.
posted by jontyjago at 12:55 PM PST - 86 comments

How do you quantify the effects of things that don't happen to you? "The whole point of living in a culture is that much of the labor of perception and judgment is done for you, spread through media, and absorbed through an imperceptible process that has no single author." (previously; via)
posted by kliuless at 12:34 PM PST - 2 comments

Devil Daggers is an irresistible Sisyphean nightmare. [The A.V. Club]

It’s an endless first-person shooter where you run around a floating arena and try to kill everything that moves before they kill you, which usually happens in under 60 seconds until you get the hang of things—and even then, you’re lucky to last much longer than that. The only weapons at your disposal are your wits, your agility, and the infinite daggers you can shoot from your hand in either a concentrated shotgun blast or a machine-gun-like hose of death.

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Melissa Harris-Perry (previously) published this letter to her staff yesterday, announcing her decision not to appear as part of MSNBC's weekend election coverage, after several instances in which MSNBC bumped her weekend morning show.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:39 AM PST - 64 comments

"There’s a conventional narrative of how [1986 World Champion figure skater Debi] Thomas went from where she was to where she is — that of a talented figure undone by internal struggles and left penniless. But nothing is ever that simple with Thomas. "
posted by drlith at 9:51 AM PST - 21 comments

How to lose weight in 4 easy steps! (SLYT)
posted by numaner at 8:31 AM PST - 32 comments

Viceland comes screaming out of the gate with Gaycation. A series by Ellen Page and Ian James Daniel, they visit locales and investigate how it is to be gay in foreign countries compared to the United States; the first episode taking place in Japan.
posted by Talez at 8:06 AM PST - 17 comments

Odetta sings The Foggy Dew

Odetta recorded a haunting version of ‘Foggy Dew’ for her third album My Eyes Have Seen (Vanguard records, 1959). Often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”, the African-American Civil Rights activist, actress and singer’s debut album ‘Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues‘ was released on Tradition Records whose president and director was Paddy Clancy of the Clancy Brothers.

[more inside]
posted by Fence at 6:12 AM PST - 10 comments

One of the Internet's core building blocks has a vulnerability that leaves hundreds or thousands of apps and hardware devices vulnerable to attacks that can take complete control over them. There is a patch available for Linux-based devices that do domain-name lookups, but it will take time to patch them all.
posted by Sleeper at 3:34 AM PST - 66 comments

Fyfe, Meehl, England, Mann et al. (2016) Nature climate change article: A lot of ink has been spilt about global warming. A big and recent argument has been on the last 10-15 years and whether (or not) we have had a substantial reduction or change in the warming rate, sometimes called "the pause". A major development: some of the top IPCC authors (including Michael Mann) have just published a commentary suggesting it's real... [more inside]
posted by soylent00FF00 at 7:51 PM PST - 44 comments

"Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, said on Friday that he had sold the magazine to Win McCormack, a publisher and editor based in New York and Portland, Ore., who founded the literary quarterly Tin House. Mr. McCormack will appoint Hamilton Fish, the publisher of The Washington Spectator and a former publisher of The Nation, to be publisher and editorial director, The New Republic said."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:50 PM PST - 55 comments

The modern adventures of the Solo family. Spoilers if you've been living under a rock since December.
posted by phunniemee at 2:04 PM PST - 23 comments

The Plant Food Tree of Life leads you through the major plant foods and their evolutionary relationships. It is a complement to the list view of the same information, in which each link takes you to a related article at the excellent blog, The Botanist in the Kitchen.
posted by Rumple at 1:57 PM PST - 17 comments

Trains in distress. (slyt)
posted by brennen at 1:54 PM PST - 24 comments

The Deactivation of the American Worker with the creepiest GIF illustartions ever.
(semi-ironically, the same day this piece was published, The Awl announced its "current editors are departing and it is looking for a new editor(s)-in-chief." The editors' Slacks are still reportedly working, so it isn't too sudden.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:49 PM PST - 122 comments

New York Times Magazine's The Work Issue: Reimagining the Office presents longform articles on questions regarding hiring, teamwork, meetings, automation, and more. Semi-permeable paywall. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 12:43 PM PST - 20 comments

Selfies, Dating, and the American 14-Year-Old. "As crushes go from real-life likes to digital “likes,” the typical American teenage girl is confronted with a set of social anxieties never before seen in human history. Nancy Jo Sales observes one 14-year-old as she gets ready to embark on her first I.R.L. date."
posted by zarq at 12:04 PM PST - 53 comments

How Randy Newman and His Family Have Shaped Movie Music for Generations by David Kamp [Vanity Fair] Sure, you know of the Oscar-winning composer behind Toy Story and his endearingly offbeat songwriting, but Newman, 72, is also the patriarch of a clan that has helped shape movie music since the talkies. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:11 AM PST - 46 comments

Screen Junkies have released their Honest Trailers Oscar Clip. They are also having an Oscar party at their YouTube channel. (previously)
posted by valkane at 10:47 AM PST - 11 comments

The bombshell accusations left anyone who'd ever worked with Thompson wondering if he'd scammed them too. It's a tricky question to untangle, noted Josh Marshall, the editor and publisher of the liberal online publication Talking Points Memo, which had published one of his essays. "One of the dirty little secrets of fact-checking," Marshall wrote in an editor's note, "is that it is quite difficult to uncover a determined effort to deceive." Juan Thompson Wrote About St. Louis for the National Media. But Were Any of His Stories True? [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Spoons (feat. Ryan Bedard) (SLYT)
posted by josher71 at 10:29 AM PST - 64 comments

#TheDress one year on – eight things we learned from the viral phenomenon (Guardian)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:47 AM PST - 45 comments

Controversial prof booted by University of Missouri Board of Curators. Communication faculty member Click rose to fame and notoriety for her role in recent protests against Missouri's administration, where she called for two journalists, one a student, to be blocked or removed from a protest site. Images and video of her circulated widely.

Recently Click was suspended by Mizzou, and also charged with assault by local prosecutors. She ended her appointment with the university's journalism department. A group of state legislators wanted her gone. A similarly-sized group of faculty publicly supported Click. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 9:05 AM PST - 155 comments

Rebecca Solnit: 80 Books No Woman Should Read.
posted by sunset in snow country at 8:47 AM PST - 139 comments

The family of Justina Pelletier has filed a lawsuit against Boston Children's Hospital; in 2013, while being treated for a suspected mitochondrial disease, the physicians at Boston Children's intercepted the teen's care, believing her issues were psychosomatic. When her parents attempted to get her discharged, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Family Services stepped in, and Justina was placed in a psychiatric unit. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:41 AM PST - 22 comments

The current crop of 28-34 year old Canadians is the wealthiest ever , according to an internal Finance Canada study obtained by the CBC. This group averaged a net worth of $93k, compared to previous 28-34 year olds' more typical $60K. Most of this wealth is concentrated in the top 10%, whose net worth doubled to $500k, while most others saw a gain of only $1500 (CBC video). But efforts to narrow the gap are underway, in some corners: Ontario announced that students with family incomes under $50K will be getting free tuition for college or university.
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:35 AM PST - 39 comments

Face Swap Live is an app for iOS and Android phones that lets you swap faces with someone (or some thing, like your cat) using your phone's camera. It garnered some attention last year for the horrific nightmare fuel that can result from a swap. Now, Rhett LeCompte has recorded a video of himself singing "We Are The World" using Face Swap to play all the original singers.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:06 AM PST - 18 comments

The New York State attorney general’s office accused four major retailers on Monday of selling fraudulent and potentially dangerous herbal supplements and demanded that they remove the products from their shelves. The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies. [NYTimes], [WaPo] [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 5:27 AM PST - 97 comments

The University of Washington has developed Passive Wi-Fi. A method of generating 802.11b transmissions using backscatter communication, while consuming 10000 times less power than existing Wi-Fi chipsets (and 1000 times less power than Bluetooth or Zigbee) Passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on any Wi-Fi device including routers, mobile phones and tablets. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:55 AM PST - 40 comments

Y2K Futurism - An investigation into the futurism/aesthetic of the period 1996-02 (SLImgur)
posted by timshel at 3:14 AM PST - 45 comments

A new study suggests that there are around 700 quintillion planets in the universe, but only one like Earth. It’s a revelation that’s both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
posted by veedubya at 2:55 AM PST - 73 comments

In California, as well as many other states, even if a prisoner is exonerated of the crime for which they were imprisoned, they are not automatically compensated for prison time. They may have to wait years before receiving payments, if they receive any at all.
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 1:06 AM PST - 26 comments

Burly and middle-aged with a mop of brown hair, Jessop spent more than a decade as security chief and spokesman for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous sect that split from the mainstream Mormon church at the turn of the last century. As head of the "God Squad," he was perhaps the highest profile FLDS member -- with the exception of its prophet, Warren Jeffs. 'Thug Willie' spills secrets of FLDS and its 'prophet' [autoplay video -- stop that and read the article] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:05 AM PST - 7 comments

The Library of Congress has digitized thousands of items from Rosa Parks's personal papers collection. The collection includes materials ranging from handwritten reflections on her arrest to books she owned to family photographs and even birthday cards.
posted by HonoriaGlossop at 8:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Irshad Karim, creator of /r/ArtFundamentals on Reddit, has compiled a series of drawing lessons for free for all beginners and anyone looking to refresh their artistic skills. [more inside]
posted by chrono_rabbit at 7:43 PM PST - 13 comments

What started as an April Fool's joke on the Ju-On website is now becoming an actual movie. Two of the biggest Japanese horror franchises (リング / Ringu and じゅおん / Ju-On) are combining forces to make Sadako vs Kayako. [more inside]
posted by thefoxgod at 5:15 PM PST - 33 comments

A four part documentary, each of 15 mins, about Jan Švankmajer probably the greatest living surrealist. Pt. I. | Pt. II. | Pt. III | Pt. IV.
An interview from 2012 - Freedom is becoming the only theme, and a previous incredibly thorough post.
posted by adamvasco at 4:04 PM PST - 7 comments

Iran goes to the polls on Friday to elect members to two bodies: Parliament and the Assembly of Experts. Moderate President Hassan Rouhani is not facing a ballot test directly, but his agenda - in particular, last summer's landmark nuclear deal, and the economic benefits that were supposed to follow - will be. Moderates face an uphill battle, however, since the Guardian Council disqualified almost half of the more than 12,000 candidates who signed up to participate in these elections, many — if not most — of them reformists. The Assembly of Experts chooses the next Supreme Leader, and considering the age of the current supreme leader, this contest may determine the fate of the country for the foreseeable future. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 3:57 PM PST - 22 comments

Last month NPR reported a story about Bob Ebeling, one of the NASA engineers who tried, and failed, to stop the Challenger launch thirty years ago. His guilt and depression touched the hearts of many listeners, who wrote Mr. Ebeling, telling him he did all he could and wasn't to blame. Those letters have finally helped him move past the guilt.
posted by blurker at 3:47 PM PST - 37 comments

The USA Yoga National Championship is coming up in a few months. Competitors will execute six poses (four mandatory, two of their own choice) for points based on asana (physical movement), balance, stillness, breathing, and concentration. Before you roll your eyes at America making an ancient form of spiritual exercise into a competition, there have been such competitions in India for at least the last two centuries, and possibly thousands of years. Chavie Lieber takes a look at "Champions of Zen".
posted by Etrigan at 3:44 PM PST - 29 comments

Behold the Candela Vibrophase, the world's first candle powered guitar effect. More details here. Brought to you by Metafilter's own (well, sort of) Zachary Vex.
posted by gamera at 3:10 PM PST - 32 comments

It started with Snapchat videos that got reposted to twitter 10 days ago. And then it went viral. Of course Daniel and Josh went on Ellen. But when you finally make it to the New York Times ("We Should Probably Have a Conversation About ‘Damn, Daniel’") the meme has probably run its course.
posted by GuyZero at 2:50 PM PST - 46 comments

How do you make a secure record of a debt or exchange if you can't read or write? Cut a number of notches across a stick to symbolize the assets involved, then split the wood lengthwise: you now have two tamper-proof receipts, one for each party to the transaction. The split tally method formed the basis for much of European bookkeeping between medieval times and the modern era. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:12 PM PST - 20 comments

You’re George Lucas In 1975. Can You Create ‘Star Wars’?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:09 PM PST - 25 comments

Randy is 27, one of 3.5 million Americans on the autism spectrum. He suffers from what is officially called PDD, or pervasive developmental disorder. "My brother has always wanted what most of us do: love. Someone to care about. Someone who will care in return. Someone other than our mother." A loving sister chronicles her brother's search for a lasting relationship.
posted by narancia at 1:42 PM PST - 12 comments

MeFi fave Tony Zhou (now with co-writer Taylor Ramos) examines how the Coen Brothers use Shot / Reverse Shot.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Newspaper Snippets from August 28 - September 2, 1859 This is a series of excerpts from newspapers describing the largest solar storm on record in essentially real time for the era. The Aurora Borealis it caused was visible in the Carribean, and it shorted out telegraph lines across Europe. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 12:33 PM PST - 6 comments

Bon Appétit looks for Brooklyn in the Midwest. The Midwest is not impressed. In his survey of restaurants and chefs in Indianapolis with hipster credentials, John Birdsall looks for evidence of cultural Brooklynization of the Midwest, and he finds it. Eater contributing editor Sarah Freeman would beg to differ, or at least demand some more analysis, and certain chefs take her side. All of which raises some interesting questions about cultural migration and appropriation and "authenticity" that can't be answered in a pair of articles (the first of which is really more of a travelogue than a fleshed-out thesis), but the questions they raise are FUN.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 12:15 PM PST - 116 comments

"Hermann Göring’s personal art log is a twisted treasure map, a guide to looting and pillaging and gift-giving among the Nazi brass, and a tracking mechanism for the Nazi occupation of Europe."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:12 PM PST - 2 comments

"Coming from a background in Political Science, I find the rapid changes in social structure unique to this country an abundant source for creating pictures that stand as visually and historically interesting." [more inside]
posted by entropone at 10:43 AM PST - 4 comments

The Eddie (Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational) is a GO. The competition, held in honor of Eddie Aikau, is held only when open-ocean swells at Waimea Bay, HI reach a minimum height of 20 feet between December and February -- conditions that have occurred only 8 other times since the competition began in 1984. Eddie's brother, and past competition winner, Clyde Aikau called today's conditions "one of the best days I've seen in 40 years." You can watch live here or follow #EddieWouldGo on Twitter. The Eddie, previously.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:41 AM PST - 31 comments

The rats who sniff out tuberculosis. by Emma Young [The Guardian] The African giant pouched rat can be trained to sniff out tuberculosis more accurately than most lab tests. So why is the medical profession still sceptical? [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:03 AM PST - 24 comments

"If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn. The magazine was moderately successful, though it was never regarded as one of the first rank of science fiction magazines. It achieved its greatest success under editor Frederik Pohl, winning the Hugo Award for best professional magazine three years running from 1966 to 1968." The Internet Archive hosts 176 issues of If, as part of its pulp magazine archive. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Season 2 of Marvel's "Daredevil" is nearly upon us. Here's are two glimpses of what's in store, one featuring the Punisher, and the other spotlighting Elektra.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:39 AM PST - 76 comments

He built Marvel Comics and laid the foundation for today’s blockbuster superhero movies. So why, at 93, is his legacy in question?
posted by Artw at 9:16 AM PST - 65 comments

The other KKK: how the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift tried to craft a new world. They were hippies from 1920's Britain started by a pacifist who liked the outdoors activities of the Boy Scouts, John Hargrave. Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift was published in November 2015. If you ever wondered about where Ramsey Dukes (Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians) came from, his parents met in the Kibbo Kift. He talks about that and other things in a new hour 42 minute interview with Gordon White on the Rune Soup podcast.
posted by bukvich at 8:39 AM PST - 8 comments

Southern correspondent Matthew Teague and photographer David Levene profile six US states – Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia – in the run-up to the vital Super Tuesday primary elections. A series of long-ish reads and photos from The Guardian.
posted by Kitteh at 8:06 AM PST - 12 comments

Let’s not kid ourselves, we ain’t young. We have pretty big ideas garnered from many years of listening to shitty records, splendid records, and albums that are supposed to be influential. Each time we notice our name getting mentioned on certain genre specific internet forums we get the fear. Who in their right minds wants to get stuck playing one sort of thing for seven years and beyond?

London/Somerset/Watford band Hey Colossus, "the most exciting guitar band on the planet" according to Artrocker Magazine, have spent 12 years producing noisy/doom/stoner-influenced/experimental/riff-rock. Near the end of 2015, however, they declared that "it is more subversive for us to compose songs with rigid song structures than it is to absentmindedly clang off another riff-athon." The result, the Radio Static High LP, can now be streamed at The Guardian or via Spotify. [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 6:13 AM PST - 21 comments

Is Miller Wilson the next Steve Irwin? Watch him dive off his kayak, wrestle stingrays and help a pregnant stingray give birth. All while maintaining a Wildlife Documentary commentary.
posted by greenhornet at 1:23 AM PST - 14 comments

"It's not just about knowing the rides; it's about knowing manufacturers, plans, build spends. Everything. There are geeks who know how many bolts are in any Disneyland ride. Others have spreadsheets charting their top ten rides and what dates that order changed. It's very, very serious." [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:38 PM PST - 22 comments

Jesse Owens usually gets all the attention when people talk about the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, but the documentary Olympic Pride, American Prejudice looks at the other black athletes who traveled with Owens to Hitler’s Berlin 80 years ago, including Jackie Robinson’s big brother Mack, and Tidye Ann Pickett-Phillips, first black American woman to compete in the Olympics.
posted by LeLiLo at 10:31 PM PST - 7 comments

A photograph of the petite secretary was sent to every Oregon newspaper - Her image appeared to be that of a teenage schoolgirl. Could she confront a ruthless and lawless town and shut it down? - A tale of the Old West and the New America.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:21 PM PST - 21 comments

Lush returns with a new song: "Out of Control." Lush's return, previously.
posted by 4ster at 6:43 PM PST - 23 comments

"Jo, having devotedly fulfilled her readers’ expectations for years, confounds our hopes by ending up not with the dashing, boyish Laurie but with Professor Bhaer, a somewhat older, less glamorous, rather didactic German tutor. To anyone steeped in the conventions of romance—not to mention conventional plotting—the gesture has for generations felt almost vindictive on Alcott’s part." Who is Professor Bhaer? Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:57 PM PST - 49 comments

"Liberals generally love quirky comedies like Community, Parks and Recreation, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Mindy Project; conservatives tend to prefer reality shows and crime dramas including NCIS, Duck Dynasty, The Bachelor, and Top Gear. But for 13 years there was a show that drew laughs from viewers of all political persuasions." King of the Hill: The Last Bipartisan TV Comedy (SLAtlantic)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:48 PM PST - 128 comments

Meet Piper, wildlife control specialist at Cherry Capital Airport. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 2:51 PM PST - 30 comments

Ramen, despite its reputation as a cheap fast food, is a complex pillar of modern Japanese society, one loaded with political, cultural and culinary importance that stretches far beyond the circumference of the bowl.

Dive in with one of Japan's top ramen bloggers.
posted by infini at 2:16 PM PST - 86 comments

RIP character actor George Gaynes, known as Police's Academy's Cmndt. Eric Lassard in the Police Academy series, the father in Punky Brewster, and also General Hospital's original mob boss, Frank Smith who tortured Luke and Laura. He was 98. Variety obit
posted by Melismata at 1:14 PM PST - 20 comments

Candide Thovex is back for another one of those days. [more inside]
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 1:06 PM PST - 9 comments

President Obama announces his intent to nominate Dr. Carla Hayden as the next Librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden would be the first-ever professional librarian in the position. She is currently CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, served as President of the American Library Association from 2003-2004, and she was the first African-American to receive the Library Journal's Librarian of the Year Award. She began her career with the Chicago Public Library in 1973. [more inside]
posted by aabbbiee at 11:02 AM PST - 52 comments

"Political correctness makes comedy better" -- Paul F. Tompkins
posted by Shepherd at 10:57 AM PST - 88 comments

Metal's appeal has gone global, and is deepening. Leading nations emitting potent metal sounds now include some in southeast Asia, South America, and the Middle East. (SLWSJ)
posted by doctornemo at 10:43 AM PST - 43 comments

To Black Girls Everywhere by Linda Chavers
posted by Fizz at 9:57 AM PST - 5 comments

Whatever happened to the animators who worked on Akira? (NSFW) Find out with over 30 minutes of clips that start with a scene from 1988's masterpiece of Japanese animation, Akira, and follow each animator's career across the decades. [more inside]
posted by GameDesignerBen at 8:40 AM PST - 17 comments

What It’s Really Like to Work in Hollywood* (*If you’re not a straight white man.) (SLNYTimes, Interactive)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:18 AM PST - 28 comments

So, over the next few months, if you pay attention to the trades, you'll see Hollywood misunderstanding the lesson they should be learning with Deadpool. They'll be green lighting films "like Deadpool" - but, by that, they won't mean "good and original" but "a raunchy superhero film" or "it breaks the fourth wall." They'll treat you like you're stupid, which is the one thing Deadpool didn't do. - Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn on the success of Deadpool. And indeed the film prompted much speculation as to what R-Rated superhero movies could be made. Warner Bros, about fifteen minutes later: "Here's an R-rated superman movie!"
posted by Artw at 7:34 AM PST - 197 comments

A mental coffee break, so to speak. I quite like Rimbshot and Dogs and Cats, among others. Oh, and Reasons, because he is describing our cat.
posted by BWA at 7:23 AM PST - 4 comments

Web pages are ghosts: they’re like images projected onto a wall. They aren’t durable. Contrast this with hard-copies—things written on paper or printed in books. We can still read books and pamphlets printed five hundred years ago, even though the presses that made them have long since been destroyed. How can we give the average independent web writer that kind of permanence? Joel Dueck on building a website with Matthew Butterick's Pollen, allowing it to also be published as a printed book.
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:00 AM PST - 45 comments

Let’s face it: Soviet jets are ugly, and MiGs are some of the worst offenders. The Vietnam-era MiG-17 and MiG-19 represented a utilitarian tube-with-wings-on-it trend; they were followed by the deadly MiG‑21, a rational sculpture of angles and cone. This one is different. The fluidly beautiful MiG-29 looks like its larger twin-tail contemporary, the slab-sided F-15 Eagle, to the degree that a Bolshoi ballerina resembles a roller derby star. [more inside]
posted by veedubya at 2:02 AM PST - 77 comments

Helicopter drops might not be far away - "Central banks could be given the power to send money, ideally in electronic form, to every adult citizen. Would this add to demand? Absolutely."
posted by kliuless at 1:01 AM PST - 36 comments

The Race to Alaska: the rules are simple: captain a boat from Port Townsend to Ketchikan along the Inside Passage of British Columbia, with no motors and no support. Don’t get eaten by a bear. The first boat wins $10,000 cash. The runner-up gets a set of steak knives. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Electronic music couple Matmos have continued their career-defining run of making music by sampling weird and/or thematic sounds
(various stuff, “western” instruments, medical devices and procedures, martial instruments, things related to the lives of famous gays and lesbians)
by recording Ultimate Care II, a single piece of music made entirely of samples recorded from the selfsame Whirlpool washing machine.
A Pitchfork interview on the process. Music videos for excerpts three, five, and nine. A live performance on their own washer.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:36 PM PST - 16 comments

A short story by Shrilal Shukla, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Wherein a politician enters the real world of his constituents.
posted by bardophile at 10:25 PM PST - 3 comments

PBS newsmagazine Frontline devotes two hours to exploring the massive rise in the abuse of street opiates like heroin, how the United States started prescribing more and more legal opiates, and how programs like drug courts and diversion programs are being used to treat the problem in Seattle. Chasing Heroin. (slfl)
posted by fireoyster at 9:06 PM PST - 40 comments

Artist Agnes Martin on Inspiration, Interruptions, Cultivating a Creative Atmosphere, and the Only Type of Person You Should Allow Into Your Studio (by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:42 PM PST - 4 comments

Boston Dynamics presents the 'next generation' Atlas robot. (Previously)
posted by fings at 6:54 PM PST - 108 comments

The St. Louis Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church has some issues with the Girl Scouts , particularly, "in regards to sex education and advocacy for “reproductive rights” (i.e. abortion and contraceptive access, even for minors)" (2-page PDF). Don't worry, though -- Archbishop Robert J. Carlson isn't telling you not to buy cookies: "Each person must act in accord with their conscience." [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 5:47 PM PST - 108 comments

ACA International is a national trade group for collection agencies, debt buyers, and third-party debt collectors. This is their legislative tool kit, including talking points. The ACA scored a recent victory in the Wisconsin state legislature, which voted this week to ease lawsuits by third-party collectors against Wisconsin residents alleged to be in debt.
posted by escabeche at 3:36 PM PST - 25 comments

A forest kindergarten is a type of preschool education for children between the ages of three and six that is held almost exclusively outdoors. Whatever the weather, children are encouraged to play, explore and learn in a forest or natural environment. The adult supervision is meant to assist rather than lead. Amos Roberts, reporting for SBS Australia, gets a first hand impression of what this means in practice when he visits one in Denmark.
posted by brokkr at 2:54 PM PST - 51 comments

LABOUR markets are hotbeds of inequality. For every dollar a white American man in full-time work earns, the average white woman earns 78 cents and the average Latina only 56 cents. Marriage is a boon for male earnings; motherhood drags female earnings down. Likewise, gay men earn about 5% less than heterosexual ones in Britain and France, and 12-16% less in Canada and America, even after controlling for things like education, skills and experience. Yet one minority appears immune to this scourge: Lesbians (SLEconomist, semi-permeable paywall).
posted by Diablevert at 2:36 PM PST - 57 comments

The Setup Wizard, a blog about being the Hogwarts IT Guy. Relatively recent, and yet fairly brilliant blog about what it's like to be the muggle IT guy for a bunch of wizards and witches. Nice shoutout to Bowie in there too.
posted by koroshiya at 2:32 PM PST - 24 comments

A Map of 90 of the "Other" Capitals of the World
posted by backseatpilot at 2:11 PM PST - 16 comments

Frog Imperial March Instructions (proper keyboard/numpad may be necessary):
- Play this video
- With your cursor focused on the video, type the following: 6 6 6 8 56 8 56, 3 3 3 2 56 8 56 8 56, 2 7 2 3 4343 7 4 6565 87 8 56 8 56 [more inside]
posted by numaner at 2:10 PM PST - 16 comments

I was made to recite the story of my greatgrandmother, to the extent that I knew it: Her name was Sujaria, and this was her village. The British took her away in 1903 to work their sugar plantations in a place now known as Guyana. She sailed on a ship called The Clyde. My grandfather was born on that ship.

Gaiutra Bahadur traces the story of her great grandmother's singular journey as indentured labour meant for the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, shedding light on the lives of women in British India over a hundred years ago.
posted by infini at 1:41 PM PST - 11 comments

When a medical journal shared some "unflattering" observations about childbirth in Texas (contraception down, childbirth up), two years after Texas defunded Planned Parenthood, it caught the attention of the state Senate. Especially since two of the authors were employees of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. One of these two has since retired, although the particular verb describing his departure varies from publication to publication. [more inside]
posted by colex at 1:24 PM PST - 6 comments

Is K Records a 'Broken, Sinking Ship'? Legendary Olympia Label Struggles to Stay Afloat as Kimya Dawson and Other Artists Demand Unpaid Royalties--- Where to start with the indie charm of Beat Happening and K Records
posted by josher71 at 1:02 PM PST - 16 comments

Historically, the phrase debtors’ prison refers to any detention facility in which people are incarcerated for their failure to pay a debt. Today, the “debts” that lead to incarceration take the form of monetary penalties established and enforced by municipal courts. (slTheAtlantic)
posted by Kitteh at 11:46 AM PST - 18 comments

Lithub commends twenty undeservedly neglected writers to our attention. Stephen Sparks offers two lists: Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads and 10 More Writers Nobody Reads. The authors, men and women, of various races, come from all over: Brazil, France, Britain, Honduras, the United States, the Maghreb, Italy, Germany, and Zimbabwe. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:30 AM PST - 33 comments

Richard Prince's new "portraits" are a reminder that someone else can sell your Instagram pictures for $100,000. When does appropriation go too far? Richard Prince sucks, but his Instagram paintings [prints] are genius trolling. Why the latest copyright lawsuit matters, from experts. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:26 AM PST - 120 comments

The moment of truth: We must stop Trump "Democrats, your leading candidate is too weak to count on as a firewall. She might be able to pull off a general election victory against Trump, but then again she might not. Too much is uncertain this year. You, too, need to help the Republicans beat Trump; this is no moment for standing by passively. If your deadline for changing your party affiliation has not yet come, re-register and vote for Rubio, even if, like me, you cannot stomach his opposition to marriage equality. I too would prefer Kasich as the Republican nominee, but pursuing that goal will only make it more likely that Trump takes the nomination. The republic cannot afford that."
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:26 AM PST - 1548 comments

Brace Yourself: Why we want — and how we get — straight teeth. by Rose Eveleth [Racked] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:13 AM PST - 44 comments

Mienfield, a massively multiplayer online minesweeper.
posted by slater at 8:02 AM PST - 27 comments

"Until last year, I was considered something of a champion of social conservatism in Canada and was well known among politically active Christians. I hosted a nightly show on Crossroads Television for twelve years, was a syndicated Sun columnist, and wrote briskly selling books with such titles as Why Catholics Are Right. Today, as a decade of same-sex marriage waves its arms at Pride parades, I am working away at a new book, Coming Out: A Christian’s Change of Heart and Mind over Gay Marriage. Oh, dear. How and why did it go so terribly wrong?" Michael Coren discusses how he changed his mind about same-sex marriage.
posted by mightygodking at 7:09 AM PST - 95 comments

RIP Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown, Royal Navy officer, Battle of Britain survivor and test pilot who flew a record breaking 487 different types of aircraft. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:47 AM PST - 13 comments

Sandra Bae covers Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" on guitar. [more inside]
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:25 AM PST - 19 comments

After many months, Something Awful (and now also The Bad Guys Win) comedy/insanity writer Zack Parsons (previously) has finally confirmed the long-promised finale of his and Steve Sumner's series of Call of Cthulhu 1990's Handbook campaigns starring Kurt Cobain, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Eazy-E as they battle forces beyond human ken: the custom module Hard Ticket to Baghdad. (He also eventually finished the Tooth Tooth series because word is bond, god.) Beneath the fold: the entire story so far, including the recent 'solo project' campaigns. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 5:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Much like Steven Spielberg and his longtime collaboration with John Williams, it’s incredibly difficult to imagine a Coen Brothers film without the indispensable work of Carter Burwell: [more inside]
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:02 AM PST - 14 comments

"Astronauts onboard Apollo 10 say they heard mysterious "music" on the dark side of the moon. They didn't know if they were hearing things and were left wondering if music really was coming from behind the moon. The answer is - sort of - but not really. They could hear an "outer space-type" droning musical sound when they went around the back of the moon at the end of the 1960s and say they were worried nobody would believe them". CNN news piece with short clip of the sound.
posted by marienbad at 11:43 PM PST - 46 comments

Every Episode of The X-Files, Ranked From Worst to Best, not including the recent FOX revival. Regardless of how those episodes would stand up in the list, David Duchovny would love to come back for more, while Gillian Anderson might prefer to play a Bond villain.
posted by Artw at 9:03 PM PST - 66 comments

Bonjour Paris: a short hyper-lapse film
posted by MoonOrb at 8:58 PM PST - 14 comments

One mile west of Tillamook Head, a rock rises from the ocean. Shaped like a sea monster, it is where old Nor’easters go to die. Where Indians believed under ocean tunnels inhabited by spirits came to the surface. Where sheer cliffs drop straight into the sea to depths of 96 to 240 feet. Where clinging to the top, fighting off the gripping hands of the sea, stands a lighthouse – a symbol of the precarious line between human endeavor and the forces of nature.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:49 PM PST - 26 comments

On Fark.com, a user asked for help identifying the mysterious subject of a photo he'd taken. "Why don't we let William of Occam sort this out: William, what is more likely: a) that a hitherto unobserved light source hovvering over some hills very far away just happens to look exactly like a nearby streelamp when photographed, or b) Forked accidentally took a picture of said nearby streetlight and didn't realise it?"
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 12:16 PM PST - 73 comments

Almost a quarter of the votes in the last US presidential election were cast by women without spouses, up three points from just four years earlier. They are almost 40% of the African-American population, close to 30% of the Latino population, and about a third of all young voters. The most powerful voter this year is The Single American Woman.
posted by zarq at 11:13 AM PST - 50 comments

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. In case anyone missed this, a surprisingly good, yet humorous description of the types of hurdles women must go through to obtain an abortion in the US (with bonus bucket of adorable sloths thrown in for good measure).
posted by WalkerWestridge at 10:39 AM PST - 48 comments

In the Fall of 2015, David Bowie gave us unique pre-release access to the music from ★ (pronounced ‘Blackstar’), his 28th studio album, allowing us to create our own visual interpretations of his songs, with no limits or preconditions on his part. Completed in December 2015, UNBOUND: A★InstaMiniSeries takes the audience on a journey of evocative images inspired by the moods suggested in the album’s music, lyrics and artwork. Each episode of the series is sure to capture the imaginations of all who experience it and will undoubtedly lead to endless speculation and discussion of meaning, metaphor and intention. We are honored to have had this opportunity and hope you'll join our 16 episode series, premiering February 25th. New episode every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
posted by hippybear at 10:35 AM PST - 14 comments

It is one of the most iconic props in film history. For 75 years since Humphrey Bogart tracked down The Maltese Falcon, various collectors have claimed to have the Falcon itself. Some of them must be wrong. Vanity Fair put the properly-alliterative Bryan Burrough on the case, and of course, a shadowy mystery ensued. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:07 AM PST - 36 comments

How not to get into the Iditarod by Blair Braverman (SLStorify)
posted by metaquarry at 10:02 AM PST - 29 comments

Jeff Sharlet writes about Westmont College and it's deep ties to The Fellowship. previously: C-Street, The Family, and Capitol Hill.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:00 AM PST - 14 comments

I talked about how dismal the numbers were, and how the numbers were bad because the experience was bad, and how the numbers wouldn’t change unless the experience changed. And then, I offered a piece of hope that I didn’t at all believe in. One of my friends said, “I thought you were going to end with ‘and then everyone dies’ but you didn’t, how did you do that?” and I didn’t say, “I lied”. It felt a little like a lie, though. It would have felt even more like it had I known that a guy was using that event to pick up girls. A sobering article on one woman who gave up on corporate feminism.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:46 AM PST - 26 comments

Artists Covertly Scan Bust of Nefertiti and Release the Data for Free Online: Al-Badri and Nelles take issue, for instance, with the Neues Museum’s method of displaying the bust, which apparently does not provide viewers with any context of how it arrived at the museum — thus transforming it and creating a new history tantamount to fiction, they believe. Over the years, the bust has become a symbol of German identity, a status cemented by the fact that the museum is state-run, and many Egyptians have long condemned this shaping of identity with an object from their cultural heritage. (project link: The Other Nefertiti)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:46 AM PST - 29 comments

Russian Purge Part 1: Putin Doesn't Need to Censor Books. Publishers Do It For Him. by Masha Gessen [The Intercept_] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:05 AM PST - 7 comments

In 1885, there were 15 lighthouse districts in the US, and over each served an inspector, who visits every light-station quarterly, and his duties include maintenance of all those aids to navigation in it, the discipline of its personnel and pay to each keeper. When he visits a lighthouse that has a library he takes it away and replaces it (Google books preview). Those traveling lighthouse libraries were carried in heavy-duty, dual-purpose boxes that doubled as small book cases. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:55 AM PST - 24 comments

Alan Moore: The art of magic
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:27 AM PST - 30 comments

109-year old Flossie Dickey celebrates her upcoming 110th birthday with Good Day Spokane! anchorwoman Nichole Mischke.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:26 AM PST - 28 comments

Marcia Clark’s crucible came smack in the middle of the 1990s, when it is indeed fair to say that very few people wanted to talk about sexism. It is being revived for the screen today, during a period when lots of people want to talk about sexism and perhaps especially want to talk about the sexism of the 1990s.

The redemption of O. J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:37 AM PST - 53 comments

Sex bots don't even have to be that good to do their job....Their sole purpose is to get the dater to want to chat more. And a pent-up dude online is the easiest mark. As acclaimed AI researcher Bruce Wilcox puts it, "Many people online want to talk about sex. With chat bots, they don't require a lot of convincing."--Rolling Stone on Online Dating's Sex Bot Con Job
posted by MoonOrb at 8:56 PM PST - 33 comments

Rent-A-Minority is a revolutionary new service designed for those oh-shit moments where you've realized your award show, corporate brochure, conference panel is entirely composed of white men.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:33 PM PST - 25 comments

There is surely no doubt that many, many coffee lovers here at Metafilter have used the classic Bialetti stove top espresso pot throughout the years. Heck, 200 million of them have been sold worldwide, including sales to, oh, I'd guess about 1 million Mefiers? So I think it's fitting that we honor the passing of Renato Bialetti, the businessman who brought the iconic appliance to the masses, and whose ashes have been placed, appropriately enough, in a replica of one of his famous pots. But let's also remember and pay our respects to Renato's papa Alfonso Bialetti who set the whole thing up in the first place, and who commissioned illustrator Paolo "Paul" Campani to create the little image of the mustachioed man (Renato himself!) who graces every Bialetti Moka pot. Mille grazie signori Bialetti!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:08 PM PST - 42 comments

Code Words For “Gay” In Classic Films &
Code Words For Lesbianism In Classic Films
by Mallory Ortberg
posted by timshel at 5:26 PM PST - 91 comments

It's not just for burning sausages.
posted by lucidium at 4:26 PM PST - 26 comments

'Unauthorised trousers' kill an otter at the Calgary Zoo (more proof that pants are evil). On the otter hand, police in Newport, Shropshire, UK. responded to a report of an injured otter on the side of the road, and found the “otter” was a fake fur collar detached from a coat. What they did next will make you think "THAT's a Twitter meme". [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:24 PM PST - 31 comments

New York Times' Frugal Traveler columnist Lucas Peterson was frugal travelin' on a Megabus from Chicago to Milwaukee (average fare $10) today when the coach burst into flames. He livetweeted the entire ordeal. [more inside]
posted by retrograde at 3:20 PM PST - 57 comments

With the upcoming centenary of the Irish 1916 Easter Rising, Limerick's own dole-queue Dadaists the Rubberbandits (previously here , here , and here) present their Guide to 1916. If you're Irish you'll find it hilarious, if you have the misfortune not to be Irish, you'll learn all you need to know about the Rising. And also hopefully find it hilarious.
posted by ironjelly at 2:58 PM PST - 10 comments

Jim Stiles at the Zephyr does a thorough job reporting on a small group of people dismantling small town governments in the Rocky Moutnain west. Are Rebecca Davidson and crew agents of change bringing small town 20th century bureaucracies into 21st century reality? Or are they neocons dismantling “big government” from within one small town at a time? Or they just conmen snowing ignorant/greedy city councils? Story long and well researched and still in progress.
posted by Mesaverdian at 2:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Place your cat under the protection of the Cat Goddess, Bastet! If your cat needs a little extra protection, the San Francisco Cat Museum will add it to its prayer list to Bastet (Goddess of Warfare and protectress of felines). [more inside]
posted by smallvictories at 1:49 PM PST - 22 comments

Misadventures meant that I should try again. With each triumph over fear and physical adversity, I gained confidence. (slNYT)
posted by Kitteh at 12:09 PM PST - 59 comments

AD&DRP: Actually, this is your grandmother's AD&D.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:47 AM PST - 21 comments

Combine the violent arrogance of barbarian royality with US politics and you have... Winter Is Trumping.
posted by HuronBob at 11:01 AM PST - 30 comments

In a 'sick' society, sanity is relative - "Is it good to be 'well-adjusted' to rapacious capitalism and consumerism? What defines 'mental health' (or illness) in such a culture?" Is Humanity Getting Better?[1,2] (via)
posted by kliuless at 10:40 AM PST - 23 comments

The Sexy, Holy Saga of Vanity: Prince’s Muse Who Found God: Vanity, aka Denise Matthews, passed away this week. She led a fascinating life, from inspiring the legendary musician Prince to becoming born again. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:15 AM PST - 12 comments

China Has Overtaken the U.S. as the World’s Largest Economy
posted by infini at 10:11 AM PST - 45 comments

CSI: Dixie — a digital history project of coroners' inquests from South Carolina during the 1800s. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 9:12 AM PST - 3 comments

Children of the Century: For writers of historical fiction, fact fades and feeling persists. by Alexander Chee [New Republic] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:37 AM PST - 12 comments

In which Hank Green muses on the loss of his greyhound Lemon, as the camera remains fixed on his feet. [slyt]
posted by Glinn at 7:35 AM PST - 11 comments

One hundred years ago today began the terrible battle of Verdun. The German strategy called not so much for territorial conquest as for simply killing as many Frenchmen as possible, to "bleed France white". The name of the plan was Operation Gericht, as in judgement or, grimmer still, the place of execution. Up to nearly one million casualties resulted.

The battle was the most bloody and destructive of World War One up until that point. It would last for the rest of 1916, continuous fighting lasting for more than 300 days. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 5:56 AM PST - 48 comments

The Perimeter Photographer Quintin Lake is walking 10,000 miles round the British coast, clockwise in sections starting from St Paul's Cathedral, posting a picture a day. [more inside]
posted by Helga-woo at 4:57 AM PST - 14 comments

John Carpenter: analysing his style and growing influence
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:38 AM PST - 26 comments

Salon interviews music critic Jim Fusilli:

“We’re surrounded by people who, despite a narrow perspective, insist the music of their youth is superior to the sounds of any other period,” he writes. “Most people who prefer old music mean no harm and it’s often a pleasure to listen to them talk about their favorite artists of the distant past. But others are bullies who intend to harangue us into submission, as if their bluster can conceal their ignorance. They ignore what seems to me something that’s self-evident: rock and pop today is as good as it’s ever been.”

posted by MoonOrb at 8:49 PM PST - 318 comments

For over 35 years, Roy Underhill has shared his love of American woodcraft. Using only the hand tools of early America, Roy proves that woodworking doesn’t have to be noisy, dangerous or expensive. His insights into the principles of the craft reveal the enduring relationship between tools and material — between the human hand and the creations of culture. 142 episodes of the Woodwright's Shop is available free of charge from PBS. Each episode features construction of a woodworking project using traditional methods or a lesson on use of a traditional tool or technique. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 8:47 PM PST - 41 comments

The original 1977 release of Star Wars has long been the holy grail for fans. George Lucas famously made numerous changes for each release and once declared, "A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition]." Even the National Film Registry (created in response to the pleas of filmmakers like Lucas) which inducted Star Wars in 1989 does not have a copy. Fans resorted to creating "despecialized" editions (previously) in an attempt to recreate the original. Understandably, fans were delighted when Team Negative1 completed a digital scan of an original 35mm print. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:26 PM PST - 90 comments

“You don’t know what you just saw, but when you see it in slow motion you’ll know what you just saw.” The NBA released a mix-tape of last weekend’s All-Star Weekend Slam Dunk Contest. The highlight of the weekend was Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon's Slam Dunk Duel but even the All-Star's kids got in on the action. For the greatest of all time, there's the Ultimate Slam Dunk Contest Mixtape. You can also view it in 360 FreeD Angles. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 5:26 PM PST - 24 comments

Ayn Rand's letter to the collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur that is her niece is what you would expect. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:53 PM PST - 44 comments

Two short, incomplete clips of making patterned wallpaper, largely by hand, in the 1960s from British Pathé: Wallpaper (1963) made by routing sycamore wood blocks hand block printing, seen again in Perfect Match (1968) where "color mixing is still a primitive pour and stir method." Bonus: Out Takes / Cuts From Cp 433 - Wallpaper, Feather Flowers And Perspex Sculpture (1963) and see also: Lino Decor (1958)
posted by filthy light thief at 3:18 PM PST - 9 comments

"Mini mystery! I've hidden 6 clues of who killed kitty. High 5 if you can solve my little crime story :)" - Ian Padgham explains all in "The Shortest Mystery You’ve Ever Watched" (spoilers!)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 3:09 PM PST - 6 comments

The Inside-Out Piano. Pianist, inventor and performer Sarah Nicolls developed her unique ‘Inside-Out Piano’ to explore the belly of the instrument and to coax out some of its hidden sounds. In Moments Of Weightlessness, she explores the extraordinary unexpected characteristics of the instrument, moving it around the stage to gradually reveal her parallel journey into motherhood.
posted by dng at 2:47 PM PST - 5 comments

"For 3 year old Clark Reynolds, Thursday began like most others." Janell Ross on Pete Souza's photograph of Obama and his "little visitor." [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 2:30 PM PST - 34 comments

Dear Jeremy... starts the open letter from [former] customer service representative Talia Jane to Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, highlighting her inability to live in the San Francisco's Bay Area on the wages paid by Yelp subsidiary Eat24. [more inside]
posted by nickrussell at 1:29 PM PST - 425 comments

Garlic Bread of the Revolution: My suggestion? Share this bread with people you really like, so you’ll all smell like garlic.
posted by Evilspork at 9:47 AM PST - 73 comments

The total number of trees is close to about 3.04 trillion - "Crowther's group looked back in time and calculated that the Earth has actually lost nearly half its trees since the start of human civilization. 'We're losing 10 billion trees every year and that's a net number'. So how did the group with the lofty goal of planting a billion trees react to these numbers? Their new goal is to plant a trillion trees." (oh and be sure to Meet Hyperion, the World's Tallest Tree! ;)
posted by kliuless at 9:41 AM PST - 16 comments

In Canada, the Indigenous incarceration rate is 10 times higher than the non-Indigenous population—higher even than South Africa at the height of apartheid. 75 years after First Nations were given permission to travel freely, 50 years after being given the right to vote, and just 20 years since the closing of the last residential school, our history of colonization has been quietly forgotten. [more inside]
posted by mikek at 9:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Kodak's Analog Renaissance with Super 8 Camera
"Kodak’s Super 8 project tells an interesting tale about opportunity and value in today’s post-digital economy."
posted by carrioncomfort at 7:52 AM PST - 45 comments

I anticipated there would be some ice stacking as the massive sheets of ice met the rugged shorelines, so I headed to Brighton Beach.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:49 AM PST - 30 comments

When the Public Defender Says, 'I Can't Help'
"Eight-five percent of these defendants are unable to afford their own lawyer and will need a public defender to represent them. But in New Orleans, where I am in charge of the public defender’s office, we simply don’t have enough lawyers to handle the caseload. Last month, we began refusing new cases."
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 4:58 AM PST - 26 comments

Of the countless video edits under the umbrella of YouTube Poop (previously), few have shown such consistent quality as the Scooby Doo parody The Misadventures of Skooks. Episode One, Two (alternate version if blocked in your region), Three, Four, Five. Epilogue: ReBooB. (Warning: contains swearing, sexual references, violence, drug use and Batman). [MLYT]
posted by BiggerJ at 2:05 AM PST - 10 comments

"The Sexy Douchecanoe isn’t an official trope, as such; at least, it’s not one that I often find people analyzing, subverting, and/or railing against. It is one, however, that I run into constantly because, while they’re often unfairly associated with strapping, half-dressed men on paperback covers, Sexy Douchecanoes actually pop up in every medium and every genre."
posted by MartinWisse at 2:02 AM PST - 39 comments

Engaging with feminism, there is this kind of bubble now that goes off in my head where these really negative thoughts about myself hit where I'm able to combat them in a very rational and quick way. I can see it now in a way that's different. I guess if I could give women anything through feminism -- or you're asking about power -- it would just be, to be able to move away, to move through all of that. I see so many women struggling with issues of self-esteem. They know and they hear it and they read it in magazines and books all the time that self-love is really important, but it's really hard to actually do -- [via boingboing]
posted by cgc373 at 8:02 PM PST - 11 comments

Pee-Wee Herman is coming back - and he's going on his first vacation.
posted by divabat at 7:53 PM PST - 43 comments

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus , according to the journal Nature. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:49 PM PST - 37 comments

A short video tour of the library at Guantanamo.
posted by anothermug at 6:10 PM PST - 4 comments

Umberto Eco, the Italian semiotician, author, and critic, has died at age 84.
posted by freelanceastro at 4:23 PM PST - 184 comments

"Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland lost more than a quarter of its population to starvation, disease and emigration, while its English overlords hemmed, hawed and, in at least one prominent case, cited God’s will as justification. And yet there is just one painting known to exist that captured the famine as it was unfolding: “An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of Their Store,” which depicts a family peeling away the hay and earth protecting its “store” of harvested potatoes, only to find the dark of rot." [more inside]
posted by acrasis at 4:04 PM PST - 9 comments

BBC: David Cameron says a deal struck with EU leaders will give the UK "special status" and he will campaign with his "heart and soul" to stay in the union. The PM said the agreement, reached late on Friday after two days of talks in Brussels, would include a seven-year "emergency brake" on welfare payments. He added the deal included changes to EU treaties and would be presented to his cabinet on Saturday at 10:00 GMT. EU exit campaigners said the "hollow" deal offered only "very minor changes". [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 3:53 PM PST - 71 comments

Steve Martin Performed Stand-up Last Night for the First Time in 35 Years "I'll be honest with you, right off the top, because I'm a little upset with the Beacon Theatre," one joke began. "I was backstage and I used the restroom. And there was a sign that read, 'Employees Must Wash hands.'" Pause. "And I could not find [pause] one employee [pause] to wash my hands."
posted by Servo5678 at 3:39 PM PST - 51 comments

Old and new data-driven efforts implicate mind control (get out the tin foil hats) [more inside]
posted by jiblets at 3:19 PM PST - 27 comments

Astronaut ice cream is a lie (SLYT)
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:50 PM PST - 46 comments

Twenty years of Trainspotting [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:56 PM PST - 50 comments

Brazilian businessman Zero Freitas owns over six million records, a collection which he intends to catalogue for public use and transform into a vast listenable archive. Writer and cultural sociologist Dominik Bartmanski visited Freitas’ São Paulo warehouse for a rare interview with the man himself.
posted by Rumple at 12:40 PM PST - 10 comments

Pantsula is a form of energetic dancing that originated in black townships of South Africa during the Apartheid era, and it's still alive and thriving over 60 years later, pulling in and spinning out influences to other dance styles from around the world. Pantsula dancers show their moves and tell their history and reason for dancing. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:35 AM PST - 8 comments

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective
posted by infini at 11:30 AM PST - 41 comments

I have a copy of Amazon. Meaning that, on my hard drive there is a massive chunk of Amazon’s product and reviews database—a listing of nine million or so products and 80 million or so reviews taken from 1996 to 2014. The names of all the books in that chunk, their sales ranks, their categories. Every pair of pants for kids, every sock. All the books about Hitler; all the books about snakes. All the different Lego sets. Whatever.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:58 AM PST - 50 comments

dinner DATE
(You didn't need that, and, trust me, you don't need more, but incase you want more, there's more.)
[more inside]
posted by cjorgensen at 10:34 AM PST - 16 comments

Twenty years of Democracy Now! (alt link, transcript) Currently an hour-long television and web broadcast, the award-winning news program began on the radio on February 19th, 1996 on the eve of the New Hampshire presidential primary. Previously.
posted by XMLicious at 10:26 AM PST - 38 comments

Alvin Buenaventura, comics publisher, editor, art dealer, and advocate, passed away Feb. 11, 2016 at the tragically young age of 39. [more inside]
posted by Awkward Philip at 10:25 AM PST - 4 comments

"The Complete Review, “a selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new,” sits on the margins of the literary world, where it has flourished for sixteen years. As of last Friday, according to an analog counter on the site’s decidedly unglamorous homepage, it had reviewed three thousand six hundred and eighty-seven books, from a hundred different countries, originally published in sixty-eight different languages—an average of two hundred and thirty books a year. Virtually all of this criticism, and everything else on the Complete Review, is the work of Michael A. Orthofer, a fifty-one-year-old lawyer who was born in Graz, Austria, and brought up in New York City. " [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:48 AM PST - 18 comments

Harper Lee, Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Dies at 89 [The New York Times] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:18 AM PST - 131 comments

The rural Australian city of Wangaratta is fighting a particularly heavy accumulation of fast-growing tumbleweed called "hairy panic." Residents have had to clear the several meter-high piles, which have reached roof levle, of hairy panic several times a day. A large vacuum could possibly combat the grass (Panicum effusum), which occurs throughout Australia and New Guinea and can grow up to 70 cm (2' 4") high.
posted by andrewesque at 7:29 AM PST - 58 comments

Epic journey of Kunkush - a refugee cat. A story which could have been raised in a lab to strike at the heart of all those on Metafilter who love cats and a good cry. (SLGuardian)
posted by biffa at 6:49 AM PST - 20 comments

Sometimes you have to dance like no one is watching. To Alicia Keys. In the ice and snow. On a dock. You may fall, but you must get up again. (SLYT, awesome, made my day)
posted by nevercalm at 6:47 AM PST - 23 comments

Melisandre at a Baby Shower - Late Night with Seth Meyers.
posted by veedubya at 6:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Ophelia feels that Hamlet is acting strangely. So she hires Titus and Dronicus, private investigators, to find out what's going on. (A three episode web series on youtube.)
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 6:09 AM PST - 4 comments

Reich and Sondheim: In Conversation and Performance (2:04:46). Composers Stephen Sondheim and Steve Reich in conversation on stage at the Lincoln Center in New York, interspersed with performances of their work. A summary from the Hollywood Reporter is here, including a list of all pieces played.
posted by rollick at 6:03 AM PST - 5 comments

In May 2008, on a Friday afternoon, on a bodybuilding forum, a debate started: If you're doing something "every other day", does that mean you do it 3.5 or 4 times in a week? How many days are even in a week anyway? 7? 8? 0? Jon Bois details this discussion in the latest episode of Pretty Good.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:23 AM PST - 72 comments

Please enjoy this gloriously kitschy 2001 performance of a house-pop song entitled "7th Element," by Russian singer Vitas. (Vitas previously on MeFi, singing a um, pretty different repertoire.) [more inside]
posted by en forme de poire at 3:04 AM PST - 11 comments

“No matter what anybody thinks about any of them,” said Patti Smith, “every record I’ve done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy. We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.”

Alan Light interviews Patti Smith, discussing her life and work. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 2:46 AM PST - 7 comments

Starting on March 24, 2016, long-running historic house restoration public television show This Old House will begin a 10-episode arc with something completely new -- a brand new pre-constructed, energy-efficient house modeled after other Massachusetts North Shore houses from the late 1700s. A video preview of the project [2m5s]
posted by hippybear at 2:02 AM PST - 39 comments

Andrzej Zulawski, the legendary Polish cult director, has died at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer. A non-conformist visionary of world cinema, his approach to storytelling is idiosyncratic and characterised by explosions of violence, sexuality, and despair. The actors in his movies have played out the most intensely high-pitched emotions in cinema history which inspired the French to coin the term 'Żuławskien', meaning 'over the top'. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 1:01 AM PST - 9 comments

We asked Democratic speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum to write a totally pandering stump speech for an imaginary Democratic presidential candidate — one who espouses only positions that a majority of Democrats agree with (we also did the same with Republicans). Here’s the speech he wrote, including notes to explain his phrasing, behind-the-scenes tips on appealing to Democratic voters and the data he used to decide which positions to take.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:57 AM PST - 7 comments

Kim-Mai Cutler: Nothing Like This Has Ever Happened Before - "San Francisco Bay Area poverty rates in all nine counties have increased in the last economic cycle, even with the Facebook and Twitter IPOs and private tech boom. The main transfer mechanism is land and housing costs, as rising rents and evictions push service and other low-wage workers to the brink. [Henry] George's solution was a single land tax that would replace all other government revenue sources. If an owner wanted to develop their property to make it more useful or productive, George argued that they should have the right to keep the value from those efforts. But increases in the value of underlying land were created by — and ultimately belonged to — the public at large." (previously: 1,2,3) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 33 comments

We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away. [...]

The Aztecs in the shock of the conquest, of utter destruction, tried to regain their speech, and they tried to describe simple things. A cave. A cave is a place of darkness. It is full of fear. It is dark, yes, very dark. And fear looms there. And do we dare to enter? Because the cave is big and it is dark.

A 70-minute conversation with Werner Herzog, loosely structured by one of his favorite books, J. A. Baker's The Peregrine. [more inside]
posted by grobstein at 11:24 PM PST - 3 comments

The Guardian reports on an accusation by a former Muskegon County, Michigan health official claiming that a Catholic healthcare provider forced five women between August 2009 and December 2010 to undergo dangerous miscarriages by giving them no other option. Catholic hospitals must follow the Ethical Health Directives issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and with consolidation in health care providers, more and more Americans are affected. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:27 PM PST - 42 comments

The women's empowerment conference industry (sl Bloomberg)
posted by Lycaste at 7:00 PM PST - 9 comments

What happens when you zoom in too much on Google Maps. Discoveries by digital artist Kyle F. Williams.
posted by numaner at 6:57 PM PST - 14 comments

Adele visits Jamba Juice, chomps wheatgrass, imitates deer.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:51 PM PST - 13 comments

This Speech Was Written For President Nixon To Deliver If The Astronauts Didn’t Make It To The Moon. (slClickhole)
posted by Kitteh at 4:48 PM PST - 31 comments

Wil Wheaton, on depression.
posted by klausman at 4:14 PM PST - 54 comments

A team of programmers has built a self-generating cosmos, and even they don’t know what’s hiding in its vast reaches. Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s Sky ensures that each planet will be a surprise, even to the programmers. Every creature, AI-guided alien spacecraft, or landscape is a pseudo-random product of the computer program itself. The universe is essentially as unknown to the people who made it as it is to the people who play in it—and ultimately, it is destined to remain that way. As previously mentioned here.
posted by slackdog at 1:59 PM PST - 105 comments

'Heavy Sea' by Pejac (slyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:32 PM PST - 3 comments

The World Press Photo Foundation has announced the winners of its 59th annual photo contest. The Photo of the Year, by Warren Richardson, is Hope for a New Life, showing a refugee passing an infant through a barbed-wire fence at the border between Hungary and Serbia. Many of the photos show violence and its aftermath; all are powerful reminders of the world we share, in both beauty and terror. (via The Atlantic)
posted by Etrigan at 1:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Tonight, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton will face off in a town hall from Nevada that will also will stream live at MSNBC.com and NBCNews.com and the Spanish-language version on Telemundo.com, ahead of this weekend's Nevada caucus. Meanwhile, three GOP hopefuls, Donald Trump, John Kasich and Jeb Bush will be in Columbia, South Carolina to answer questions from voters ahead of the Feb. 20 Republican primary in the key Southern state. The event starts at 7 p.m. and will be moderated by CNN's Anderson Cooper.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:02 PM PST - 1796 comments

How to count to 1000 on two hands Covers counting on your fingers in binary, a skill far more people should have. Be careful you don't offend anyone when you hit 4, 128 and especially 132. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 12:39 PM PST - 43 comments

A Reddit thread recently broke down the exchange rate between Wizard and Muggle money, and in doing so shed some interesting light on the financial disparity between many of the characters in the Harry Potter universe. [more inside]
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:06 PM PST - 42 comments

The self-portrait of Ernst Mach. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 11:31 AM PST - 10 comments

"After Taryn Wright exposed an elaborate fake tragedy on Facebook, she found herself leading a squad of online detectives – but on the internet, it doesn’t take long for a crowd to become a mob." (Guardian)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:01 AM PST - 104 comments

Holster wins 2016 Masters Agility Championship. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis at 8:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Here is an episode of Jeopardy!, airdate February 6, 1992. Commercials are included.
posted by theodolite at 8:41 AM PST - 63 comments

An aspiring documentary filmmaker records the post-college struggles of her best friend...sorta. (SLYT)
posted by divabat at 8:31 AM PST - 2 comments

Net cafe refugees | Dumping ground | Overworked to suicide. A three-part documentary based on Shiho Fukada's portrait series, Japan's Disposable Workers. Previously. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 8:13 AM PST - 8 comments

Christopher Robbins interviews Robert Caro for Gothamist.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Longform sports news and commentary website SB Nation, one of the websites under the Vox Media banner, has developed a reputation as being a location for well written and thoughtful commentary on not just sports, but society as well. Which is why it was surprising when they wound up publishing a disastrous longform article about former cop and convicted rapist Daniel Holtzclaw that wound up being little more than a racially charged hagiography. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:57 AM PST - 87 comments

"When we started developing the recipe for the Ultimate I.P.A., back in 2004, we had one goal: to concoct an ale so utterly undrinkable that the craft-beer community would have no option but to shower it with praise." [SLNewYorker]
posted by schmod at 7:42 AM PST - 90 comments

You ask and (a person on) the internet provides: What should I do if the pilot passes out and I (with no flight training) have to land the plane? Watch this 10 minute video that walks you through the steps on a Boeing 737. I am serious. And don't call me Shirley. [via Presurfer] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:27 AM PST - 47 comments

Point & Clickbait is the internet’s finest source for reliable, ethical, and above all true gaming news.

Full of news (Developer Commits Vile Act Of Censorship By Altering Game Before Release), opinions (I Hope There Aren’t Any Straight Characters in Dragon Age: Inquisition), reviews (Ubisoft Game: The Review), and much more, it's the ONLY video game site you'll ever need to read again.
posted by cthuljew at 3:44 AM PST - 39 comments

The Peer Perception Gap. The Washington Post describes a study in PLOS One which had a goal of identifying peer gender bias in the biology classroom: Men over-ranked their peers by three-quarters of a GPA point [...] In other words, if Johnny and Susie both had A's, they’d receive equal applause from female students — but Susie would register as a B student in the eyes of her male peers, and Johnny would look like a rock star.
posted by frumiousb at 3:36 AM PST - 42 comments

Period pain can be “as bad as a heart attack.” So why aren’t we researching how to treat it? [Via.] [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 8:20 PM PST - 138 comments

ESPN's oral history of Marshawn Lynch's post-game celebratory trip in the injury cart after his Cal Bears knocked off the University of Washington Huskies in overtime. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:11 PM PST - 14 comments

"Power Bowls" are the newest trend for hot skinny people (are there any other kinds of trends we care about?) [more inside]
posted by vespabelle at 6:55 PM PST - 235 comments

The first feature-length documentary to shed light on the Black Panther Party — and all its reviled, adored, misunderstood, and mythologized history. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is now streaming online. [more inside]
posted by triggerfinger at 6:36 PM PST - 23 comments

"When Hadza want to find honey, they shout and whistle a special tune. If a honeyguide is around, it’ll fly into the camp, chattering and fanning out its feathers. The Hadza, now on the hunt, chase it, grabbing their axes and torches and shouting “Wait!” They follow the honeyguide until it lands near its payload spot, pinpoint the correct tree, smoke out the bees, hack it open, and free the sweet combs from the nest. The honeyguide stays and watches. It’s one of those stories that sounds like a fable—until you get to the end, where the lesson normally goes. Then it becomes a bit more confusing."
posted by ChuraChura at 6:08 PM PST - 14 comments

Castle Cheese has been found to be doctoring its “100 percent parmesan” with fillers that include wood pulp. Or…more wood pulp than is typically allowed by the USDA. Even more startling, some of the grated "parmesan" included no parmesan at all. “The tipping point was grated cheese, where less than 40 percent of the product was actually a cheese product.”
posted by blurker at 2:54 PM PST - 204 comments

There’s nothing about Young Thug that’s not a paradox. He wears women’s Uggs but travels with AR-15’s everywhere he goes. He calls his friends, the same ones carrying the AR-15’s, “babe” and “lover” yet is from one of the toughest parts of Atlanta—the south side—where he is at once a hero and an outsider and a leader of the psychedelic fashion movement of rap hippies. Devin Friedman chases music’s most colorful enigma around the streets of Atlanta to answer one question: Exactly what planet is Young Thug from?
posted by gucci mane at 2:45 PM PST - 39 comments

Do you long to be the next big thing in CanLit but suffer from writer's block? Or maybe your ideas are insufficiently Canadian. Never fear, the CanLit premise generator is here to help you, but only after multiple scenes of ice skating.
posted by jeather at 2:44 PM PST - 25 comments

The Back to the Future prequel you never knew you wanted.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:19 PM PST - 24 comments

The End of €500 Bills. Larry Summers wants to get rid of the US $100 note. Is it fighting fraud, crime and money laundering or an actual War On Cash? Is it really a plan to simply drive up bank fees? What about the 9.6M US households that are unbanked? When even Monopoly goes all-electronic can anything be done to stop all-electronic banking?
posted by GuyZero at 1:55 PM PST - 114 comments

For over a year, we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison–the CEOs of companies destroying our environment, economy, and society. Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:49 PM PST - 18 comments

W E A T H E R - I S - H A P P E N I N G | BOSTONS SOURCE 4 NO NONSENSE WEATHER NO GAMES PPL THIS IS IT THIS IS DEFINITELY IT | ABOWT. |
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:06 PM PST - 29 comments

E-Commerce: Convenience Built on a Mountain of Cardboard (sl; nyt) Online shopping is even worse for the environment than traditional retailing, with environmental costs including additional cardboard and other packaging plus emissions from "increasingly personalized" freight services. "Consumers expect that even their modest wants should be satisfied like urgent needs [....]From a sustainability perspective, we’re heading in the wrong direction."
posted by Violet Hour at 11:28 AM PST - 82 comments

Ever want to see what happens when a trash talking, nimble-fingered Washington Square Park chess hustler unknowingly takes on a chess Grandmaster? (via) This was posted to YT as a bonus clip from The Tim Ferriss Experiment TV show.
posted by mosk at 11:25 AM PST - 50 comments

The SFMTA is weighing an appeal that would dismantle the private commuter shuttle program, after the program was approved last November. Yesterday the board approved changes that would keep the program going for another year. [more inside]
posted by j.r at 10:22 AM PST - 128 comments

The good news is that the U.S. incarceration rate is dropping. The less-good news is that black men are now only almost six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men, down from more than seven-and-a-half times as likely in 2000; black women are now just twice as likely as white women to be behind bars, where they used to be six times as likely. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:02 AM PST - 4 comments

A battle over triplets raises difficult questions about the ethics of the surrogacy industry and the meaning of parenthood. (slSlate)
posted by crazy with stars at 10:01 AM PST - 18 comments

Forget checking for hedgehogs on Bonfire Night - Nissan have put together an ad to remind you to knock on your car bonnet in the winter.
posted by mippy at 8:00 AM PST - 40 comments

Rail Map Online Maps showing all rail lines both past and present. Currently covered areas: UK & Ireland and Western USA.
posted by jontyjago at 7:57 AM PST - 15 comments

Smell Dating [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:51 AM PST - 39 comments

"That feeling when you hit a million followers, make more money than your mom, push a diet pill scheme, lose your blog, and turn 16."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:35 AM PST - 60 comments

David Milch, creator of NYPD Blue and Deadwood, has burned through some $100 million in lifetime earnings, and is $17 million in debt to the IRS, due at least in part to massive gambling losses.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:23 AM PST - 58 comments

Can you recognise a well known text via only it's punctuation? "I wondered what did my favorite books look like without words. Can you tell them apart or are they all a-mush? In fact, they can be quite distinct." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:47 AM PST - 32 comments

Investigations into the San Bernardino attack by the FBI have been potentially impeded by information locked in an iPhone 5c found on one of the perpetrators. A federal court judge has ordered Apple to assist the FBI in defeating any and all security measures built into the device. In a turn similar to Ladar Levison's letter to Lavabit users (previously), Apple has written a letter to end users about the civil rights at stake.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:00 AM PST - 532 comments

Ever since August of 2013, first Laurent Fintoni (“And This One Time…”) and then Miles Bowe (“Pay What You Want”) have traveled to the farthest reaches of Bandcamp to find its best content (at least, by the slightly outré lights of FACT Magazine). While twenty-six of the releases have disappeared, more than one hundred remain. They are linked within, for your sampling pleasure. (Not included: “It made quite a splish” by The Fish Was Delish) [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:27 PM PST - 21 comments

Why Hamilton—Not Jefferson—Is the Father of the American Economy - "How we can better energize America's economy, create more jobs, and provide more fulfilling lives for our citizens?" By Stephen Cohen and Brad DeLong (previously; [unfinished] book preview) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:28 PM PST - 23 comments

Why were most of Bernie Madoff's victims Jewish? For instance, he "wiped out Elie Wiesel’s life savings, and stole $15 million from Wiesel’s foundation." Answer: Affinity fraud. "My own incidental exposure would be comical if the stakes weren’t so serious. I happen to live in a majority African American neighborhood in south Chicagoland. . . ."
posted by John Cohen at 5:27 PM PST - 50 comments

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuses would very much like to speak to Catholic Archbishop George Pell about child abuse by the Ballarat Catholic Clergy and claims that Pell tried to bribe an abuse victim to keep quiet. Formerly the highest ranked Australian clergyman and now posted to the Vatican, Pell has declined to attend the Commission to give evidence, claiming that he's too unwell to fly. Amidst anger from survivors at Pell's continued delays and pro bono offers from doctors to transport Pell safely, musical comedian and Matilda composer Tim Minchin wades into the mix with an empassioned plea: COME HOME (CARDINAL PELL) [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:27 PM PST - 26 comments

Architectures is a youtube playlist of 53 short (1/2 hour) architectural videos of buildings around the world, mainly Europe.
posted by carter at 4:52 PM PST - 7 comments

Blogger suggests that a win For Hillary Clinton's methods on the way to the White House is a loss for participatory democracy. Alongside the quiet rollback of Obama's ban on contributions from federal lobbyists within the DNC comes what appears to be a novel tactic to maintain control of the nomination process by the Democratic establishment or HRC: the formation of fundraising agreements between HRC and state Democratic parties. The implications for participatory democracy do not seem good given that state parties with their success financially tied to HRC's success must oversee very narrow caucuses and primaries.
posted by auggy at 4:07 PM PST - 219 comments

Vincent has put his bedroom up on AirBNB.
posted by pjern at 2:58 PM PST - 25 comments

The Simpsons to air live episode (well, kinda sorta...)
"The final three minutes of the May 15 show will use motion capture technology to animate actor Dan Castellaneta — the voice of Homer whom Jean called 'a great improviser' — in real-time." [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:33 PM PST - 34 comments

"Last season, this thing was not a thing,” says trend spotter, a freelance expert." 'Trend Piece' by Rosemary Counter.
posted by The Whelk at 11:46 AM PST - 39 comments

Ramon Casiano is a name you won't likely recognize. At a show this weekend, the Drive-by Truckers debuted a song called, Ramon Casiano, which you can listen to here. (it's track 18. I couldn't find a way to link directly to it. It tells the largely forgotten story of Ramon's murder in Texas in 1931 by Harlon B. Carter, who went on to become head of the NRA, and is largely responsible for changing the organization from one that promoted hunting and sportsmanship to one that focuses on combating anything that smacks of "gun control."
posted by dortmunder at 11:25 AM PST - 14 comments

Preparing For Your Appointment at the Podiatrist Identify the problem. Recall your shaky theories about the dark spot on your left big toenail that first appeared you-can’t-remember-when: it’s mud, it’s a smear of brown hair dye, it’s a bruise from a 25-pound bag of trash you dropped on your foot while clearing out your childhood home to put it up for sale.
posted by zutalors! at 11:15 AM PST - 21 comments

At The Herbivorous Butcher, vegan meats are escaping the uncanny valley of meatless meat flavors. Although not the first vegetarian butcher shop in the world, they appear to be the first in the U.S., part of a global trend. Their grand opening was January 23rd.
posted by Michele in California at 10:35 AM PST - 112 comments

"Whatever you think, y’know, 45 percent – nearly half the country – is not interested in computers, doesn’t fucking want access to them, can’t afford them. That’s British. Why does everyone have to be online? That’s not English to me." An interview with Mark E. Smith of The Fall from Channel 4 News last night. NME coverage.
posted by porn in the woods at 10:12 AM PST - 37 comments

LEO'S RED CARPET RAMPAGE
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:36 AM PST - 21 comments

'Silence of the Lambs' at 25: The Complete Buffalo Bill Story by Kory Grow [Rolling Stone] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:35 AM PST - 75 comments

Little Atoms is a London based website, podcast and magazine dedicated to ideas and culture with an emphasis on ideas of the Enlightenment. A radio show, that became a podcast, that has made the counter-zeitgeist move of recently creating an actual print edition. A ridiculous amount of brain food that will waste/enhance many a mefi’s (wo)man hours. Highlights (for me so far) Podcast: Peter Pomerantsev on Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible. Article: Blue Monday’s not real, but the happiness industry can still get you down. Random: David Bowie translated into Old English. [more inside]
posted by Gratishades at 9:11 AM PST - 3 comments

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: An interactive look at the demographics of more than 400,000 professors at 1,500 colleges, showing where those of each rank, gender, race/ethnicity, and tenure status can be found. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Millennial Revolt with Marshall Harford III: How I Use Radical Self-Love to Express My Hatred of Capitalism [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:55 AM PST - 38 comments

Ensign John Gay of the U.S. Navy had just returned home from several months aboard the U.S.S. Constellation in the South Pacific when his phone rang. A reporter for a photography magazine was on the line, hoping to discuss the 2000 World Press Photo Awards. Gay was perplexed: “Who are you and what do you want?” he said. The reporter explained that Gay’s photo had taken first prize in the Science and Technology category, which was news to Gay: he didn’t even know he’d entered the prestigious contest.
posted by jferngler at 8:48 AM PST - 27 comments

Why Do Black Women In Movies Have To Choose Between A Weave And A Relationship? "Pop culture fronts like black women can’t love both a partner and our hair extensions, but it’s really not that deep." Hannah Giorgis writes for Buzzfeed about the strange movie trope of black women taking out weaves when falling in love
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:48 AM PST - 7 comments

The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people "In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that "we kill people based on metadata." Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent."
posted by cjorgensen at 8:46 AM PST - 49 comments

While Dr. Nadine Akkerman of Leiden University was examining letters sent by Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (Google books preview) during her exile in the Hague, she discovered that some were filled with secret codes.... Akkerman was intrigued as to why the queen would require such covert correspondence. This was her first encounter with the 17th-century female spy.

Within England, Dr. Akkerman uncovered a network of more than sixty female spies. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM PST - 11 comments

endless.horse
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:10 AM PST - 34 comments

"Minutes after Kendrick Lamar scored his fifth Grammy of the night for Best Rap Album, he won the stage. Performing a medley that included "Alright" and "The Blacker the Berry," he approached the microphone chained to other black men in a makeshift prison block. What followed was a Biggie-invoking, glow-in-the-dark, Fela!-inspired event fit for Broadway."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:31 AM PST - 59 comments

The Testosterone Takeover of Southern Food Writing In which Kathleen Purvis asks why male voices have come to dominate big-market Southern food writing and pokes at the genre's resulting obsessions with "bourbon, barbecue and pork belly." From The Bitter Southerner.
posted by Miko at 7:04 AM PST - 40 comments

Learn everything you need to know about Finnish—the secret language of Finland—with Kirikou. Jump wantonly, and learn the magic of verbal derivational suffixes. Kiitos! Anteeksi.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:35 AM PST - 46 comments

To start your Tuesday morning: Pets that are stuck but pretending everything is fine.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:39 AM PST - 46 comments

William Carrà is a somewhat mysterious affiliate of Nicolas Jaar’s Other People record label who makes DJ mixes of eclectic sounds suited for late night. Some things they incorporate: a cappella covers of the theme from The Social Network, piano etudes, sad orchestral music, cool jazz, opera, and wandering instrumental rock. Here are three of them: Elegy, The Heart Has Its Reasons Which Reason Knows Nothing Of, Contemplative Prayer
posted by Going To Maine at 10:55 PM PST - 8 comments

That time Solzhenitsyn made a presentation to Timofeyev-Ressovsky on American atomic weapons, in the gulag. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:12 PM PST - 6 comments

In a 7-Eleven in Reno on Feb. 2, 2013, around 2:30 am, Julian Acox had a confrontation with the members of a motorcycle club. A few minutes later, as Acox was fleeing in his car, he fired his gun, killing one of the club members, Merlin Herrald.
Self-defense, or first-degree murder? A stand your ground state, and a black defendant. Race, self-defense and making of a murder charge
posted by ShooBoo at 7:54 PM PST - 33 comments

Kylo Ren + Titanic
posted by Confess, Fletch at 7:28 PM PST - 18 comments

The New Yorker unfurls a longform expose on Harvey Levin's gossip empire, TMZ, in The Digital Dirt - How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:40 PM PST - 23 comments

Baby rhinos do not sound like what you think they sound like (SLYT)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:21 PM PST - 40 comments

'Hoaxmap' busts rumors about refugees in Germany Reacting to viral rumours and accusations made against migrants arriving and living in Germany, Karolin Schwarz and Lutz Helm from Leipzig have launched hoaxmap.org, which researches and refutes claims made in German social media by contacting local police and newspapers.
posted by bouvin at 3:58 PM PST - 19 comments

HaggardHawks demonstrates the McGurk Effect [more inside]
posted by unliteral at 3:21 PM PST - 17 comments

The Golden Notebook Project: the complete text of Doris Lessing's novel, with copious annotations and responses from seven women readers.
posted by Iridic at 2:59 PM PST - 7 comments

The term APHERCOTROPISM refers to the response an organism makes as it grows to overcome an obstacle in its way.

Or, how to convince tree roots to make 90 degree turns.
posted by jeather at 2:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Six scientists at the American Museum of Natural History explain what we know, and what’s still mysterious, about the disappearance of six different species/genera. [more inside]
posted by coolname at 2:35 PM PST - 13 comments

The 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik occasioned a fantastic series of caricatures, by Icelandic artist Halldór Pétursson, of Fischer and Spassky. The unwatermarked versions at the bottom of the page are the result of some simple but clever image processing.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:05 PM PST - 5 comments

The Present is a short animation by Jacob Frey, about a boy who would rather spend his time playing video games instead of discovering what's outside. One day his mom brings him a little surprise which makes it hard for him to concentrate on his games.
posted by monospace at 1:23 PM PST - 21 comments

Fifteen years ago today, Bad-CRC made a flash video from a techno song and a bunch of forum shops, and posted it to the Internet (youtube copy). [Warning: blinky lights.] The rest is history.
posted by effbot at 1:01 PM PST - 241 comments

Kay Pike transforming herself into Deadpool with body-paint [ via | loud audio ] [more inside]
posted by quin at 12:20 PM PST - 17 comments

The Most Satisfying Video In The World [SLYT]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:25 AM PST - 83 comments

“My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all.”
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Beverly “Guitar” Watkins is seventy-six years old. She is wearing house slippers, a hair net, and an Atlanta Hawks t-shirt on backwards. She is probably the greatest living blues guitarist that no one has ever heard of. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:20 AM PST - 14 comments

The History of the Cucumber. Or how to ferment a cucumber, badly.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:20 AM PST - 14 comments

What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage "You are both screwed, everything will be exactly this unexciting until one of you dies, and it's the absolute greatest anyway."
posted by jillithd at 7:12 AM PST - 51 comments

Spanish civil servant skips work for years without anyone noticing. [slGuardian]
posted by ellieBOA at 6:40 AM PST - 72 comments

Eventually, I wind up in the master bedroom, looking at a poster against the wall that has a hand-drawn map of Area X on it, just like I thought the former director would have left behind. It’s a poster I drew myself, of course. But I stare at it for a while, and a genuine feeling of dread and fear travels up my spine. I’m seeing the room through Control’s eyes—he’s looking at a map created by some unknown source, wondering what the hell it’s doing in the former director’s bedroom.

Getting an entire trilogy published in less than a year is bad for your (mental) health, as Jeff Vandermeer found out writing the Southern Reach trilogy.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:06 AM PST - 34 comments

The Jihadis Next Door follows a small cadre of British born extremists, including a bouncy castle salesman turned alleged Daesh executioner and a part time bus driver who moonlights as an online theological superstar. Documentary maker Jamie Roberts, who spent two years filming the cell, was ambivalent about giving fundamentalists a platform, but as the film makes clear, this is not what mainstream Muslim Britain wants. [more inside]
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 4:35 AM PST - 8 comments

That’s how Sarah Norfolk describes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Seventeen other sufferers also offer their impressions of this debilitating condition. [more inside]
posted by bryon at 3:05 AM PST - 15 comments

A hundred years after the First World War, modern women demonstrate military prestige by donning vintage uniforms historically exclusive to men. Highlighting uniforms from the Second Industrial Revolution until the end of the Weimar Republic, Eve's Glory compares the ceremonial attitudes historically associated with the military to the proud independence of modern women. [more inside]
posted by moody cow at 1:56 AM PST - 10 comments

"WHAT IF, SET FIRE TO 10 000 SPARKLERS!" (3:04 SLYT)
posted by Jacqueline at 12:29 AM PST - 39 comments

Back in March, a few of us here at the magazine got e-mails from friends who had seen an intriguing item listed on eBay. “1930s stripper/dancer scrapbook—Cincinnati,” the posting announced, “Jean Harlow’s double.” So we bought it. But who was she? [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:38 PM PST - 6 comments

While Martin Shkreli's decision to raise the price of a cancer drug by a factor of more than 50 has attracted some bad press, another problem plagues patients: drug shortages are forcing doctors to ration access. [more inside]
posted by The Notorious B.F.G. at 8:35 PM PST - 46 comments

The Tiniest Gallery "I like art, so I built a single-serving art gallery that features local artists and hung it on the fence outside my house. " [via mefi projects]
posted by xingcat at 7:45 PM PST - 14 comments

How 43 Giant, Crumbling Presidential Heads Ended Up in a Virginia Field
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:46 PM PST - 32 comments

A Montana based, politically conservative journalist went to Oregon looking for kindred spirits. He didn't find them. He does, however, connect some dots between economic despair, the Arizona Strip and the Taylor Grazing Act, the Mormon Church, the Koch family, CS Lewis, the US Constitution, and the likely undiagnosed mental illness that led some of the occupiers to risk their lives in defense of principles they simply have no basic understanding of.
posted by COD at 5:30 PM PST - 606 comments

You see them everywhere—exhausted young women pouring all their spare energy into organising, encouraging and taking care of young men who resent them for doing it but resent them even harder when they don’t. You see them cringing for every crumb of affection before someone cracks and it all goes wrong and the grim cycle starts again. You can fritter away the whole of your youth that way. I know women who have. - Laurie Penny, Maybe you should just be single [SL NewStatesman]
posted by melissasaurus at 5:24 PM PST - 248 comments

Honey An organization dedicated to stopping the silence on the subject of sexual assault. Survivors share their truths, find support, and bring awareness to their community.
posted by Marinara at 3:47 PM PST - 2 comments

My Last JDate - "At 54, after 30 years of marriage and two of loneliness, I went on JDate to find a man and found Dean." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:45 PM PST - 16 comments

Two articles by Carla Ruas a Freelance writer and photographer based in Brazil.
Running the joint: - This is the story of Presídio Central, a correctional facility in Brazil that has become a headquarters for the organized crime. And it all began when a cab crashed into the lobby of the fanciest hotel in town. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 3:32 PM PST - 1 comment

An essay [NYT] by Kate Bowler, author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, following her diagnosis with stage 4 cancer. The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty. [more inside]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 3:25 PM PST - 15 comments

What is the coolest mathematical fact you know? (SLReddit)
posted by holmesian at 3:24 PM PST - 49 comments

Tell the people you care about that you love them with a Werner Herzog Valentine. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 1:08 PM PST - 16 comments

Why Texting is Better Than Calling
posted by desjardins at 12:58 PM PST - 103 comments

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Flourless Chocolate Torte but Were Afraid to Ask
posted by ShooBoo at 12:45 PM PST - 30 comments

Valentine's Day Poems for Married People - by John Kenney (SLNewYorker) [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:33 AM PST - 23 comments

National Geographic's Robert Krulwich discusses George Washington’s Oh-So-Mysterious Hair (which was red, and not a wig!). Includes a set of delightfully-illustrated instructions for replicating Washington's signature look, just in case you want to look like a dollar bill.
posted by schmod at 10:56 AM PST - 29 comments

5th-grader Nigerian-American Ify Ufele channeled the bullying she got for her size towards designing and making Chubiiline, a line of plus-size fashion with African influences.
posted by divabat at 7:36 AM PST - 13 comments

A beautiful standalone comics story.
posted by Kitteh at 7:27 AM PST - 17 comments

[Warning: not a pleasant read] A Polygamist Cult's Last Stand: The Rise and Fall of Warren Jeffs Previously, 1, 2, 3, 4.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:37 AM PST - 49 comments

Equality [internet archive] was first published in 1897: "The story takes up immediately after the events of Looking Backward with the main characters from the first novel, Julian West, Doctor Leete, and his daughter Edith. West tells his nightmare of return to the 19th century to Edith, who is sympathetic. West's citizenship in the new America is recognized, and he goes to the bank to obtain his own account, or 'credit card', from which he can draw his equal share of the national product... " (previously 1,2) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:21 AM PST - 3 comments

Bach/Siloti Prelude in B minor - left hand arrangement for my baby daughter (SLYT)
posted by lawrencium at 1:05 AM PST - 14 comments

MissingMoney.com is a database of governmental unclaimed property records. Exactly what it says it is. Click here for a list of participating states and provinces and links to individual states and provinces, along with contact information for the agencies for each respective jurisdiction. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:36 PM PST - 49 comments

A mixtape featuring 20 young independent bands from China, curated by Wooozy, one of the country's leading indie music blogs. "From sunny Guangzhou and cyberpunk Chongqing to the frigid northeast grasslands beyond Beijing. From shoegaze to riot-weird." It can also be downloaded in full here.
posted by beijingbrown at 8:26 PM PST - 16 comments

The Whip Spider: A spider with hands/claws. Let the nightmares begin!
posted by blue_beetle at 7:05 PM PST - 57 comments

The Brain: What is Reality To conjure a reality from all [that] sensory information your brain needs about half a second. [more inside]
posted by asok at 4:59 PM PST - 12 comments

"Peyton, you messed up. I still don't know why you dropped your drawers. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe not. But it was definitely inappropriate. Please take some personal responsibility here and own up to what you did. I never understood why you didn't admit to it...."

Peyton Manning’s squeaky-clean image was built on lies, as detailed in explosive court documents showing ugly smear campaign against his alleged sex assault victim by Shaun King
posted by The Gooch at 4:17 PM PST - 71 comments

Reports indicate that he died of natural causes on a West Texas ranch.
posted by Ouverture at 2:08 PM PST - 1364 comments

The state of Louisiana is facing a massive budget shortfall. Former governor Bobby Jindal positioned himself for a presidential run by slashing taxes and cutting spending, pinning his fiscal policy on the hopes that oil revenues from the Gulf of Mexico would continue to grow. Those revenues have failed to materialize, leaving the state with a deficit. Since higher education funding is one of the largest components of the state’s discretionary spending, it was one of the hardest areas hit. Louisiana has made deeper cuts to education than any other state, and colleges in Louisiana are receiving 55% less state funding than they did before the recession. The state now finds itself with a gap of $850 million for this year, and more than $2 billion next year. The result has been steeply rising tuition and decreased enrollment. It’s about to get much, much worse. [more inside]
posted by kevinbelt at 12:06 PM PST - 60 comments

"We grew up pretty conservative," she recalls. "My parents kept us away from everything. Now everything we do is a sin." Meet Chris Johns and Tabitha Rae, the God-fearing Wisconsin couple who, if web glitches, fiercely defended patents, and a shortage of Novint Falcons don't stop them, are going to build the future of remote fucking right here in the Upper Midwest.
posted by escabeche at 12:05 PM PST - 15 comments

Unseen, rare images of the Vietnam War from the winning side
posted by infini at 12:03 PM PST - 25 comments

How Rogue Techies Armed The Predator, Almost Stopped 9/11, And Invented Remote Warfare [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:02 PM PST - 14 comments

Eighteen months after removal of the last chunks of two dams on Washington State's Elwha River, an event marked on Metafilter by this brilliant post by edeezy, the Seattle Times documents the remarkably fast recovery of the Elwha ecosystem, from headwaters to saltwater. Complete Seattle Times' Elwha coverage
posted by Rumple at 11:28 AM PST - 9 comments

The best love stories on TV are between two women, By Molly Eichel, A.V. Club
posted by pjsky at 9:17 AM PST - 23 comments

In case you missed it, Humans of New York (previously) has recently been doing a series specifically on federal prisoners in the northeastern United States. The project is ongoing, but you can read the stories compiled so far, and general reactions to the stories, on the facebook page or instagram.
posted by likeatoaster at 9:08 AM PST - 8 comments

Zika is not the new Ebola But what is the truth about Zika and microcephaly?
Argentine and Brazilian doctors suspect mosquito insecticide as cause of microcephaly
Meanwhile Brazil’s health minister insisted on Friday that authorities were “absolutely sure” Zika was connected to microcephaly, though it has yet to be scientifically proven.
A review of four years’ worth of medical records finds far greater numbers of microcephaly cases from before the ongoing Zika virus epidemic than had been officially reported.
(Related)
posted by adamvasco at 7:11 AM PST - 27 comments

Trek at 50: The quest for a unifying theory of time travel in Star Trek by Xaq Rzetelny [Ars Technica] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:05 AM PST - 33 comments

Strunk & White's Elements of Style, rewritten by a predictive text generator by Jamie Brew. Follow along at @elementstrunk. [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 5:44 AM PST - 26 comments

RPS' Cara Ellison talks about Maureen, a character in Tim Schafer's adventure game Full Throttle.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:26 AM PST - 12 comments

I’ve watched my dad gut a lot of deer, but this time it was different. It’s different when it’s your own deer. Everything was really interesting, how all the organs fit together and how they all come apart. How much blood is inside a deer…--11 year-old Iris, reflecting on her first deer hunting season. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:31 PM PST - 21 comments

Researchers find software repository GitHub approved code written by women at a higher rate than code written by men, but only if the gender was not disclosed. (slGrauniad) [more inside]
posted by coolname at 9:59 PM PST - 45 comments

Finally, the article on your favorite spy who sews that you always wanted. Also, he saved George Washington twice and Washington stopped in the middle of a parade to have breakfast with him. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:42 PM PST - 40 comments

Bear Bellinger writes about his experiences as a black actor in the Chicago Theatre Scene.
posted by JustKeepSwimming at 8:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Why is it so hard to squash a cockroach? "Insects, whether they creep or fly, live in a world of hard knocks. Who has not stepped on a cockroach, then raised her shoe to watch the creature get up and scoot under a door? Bees and wasps, for their part, face a never-ending obstacle course of leaves, stems, and petals—bumblebees crash their wings into obstacles as often as once a second. Now, researchers are learning how these creatures bend but don’t break."
posted by dhruva at 8:11 PM PST - 26 comments

FIRST, there was the Benedict Cumberbatch Name Generator.
NOW? If you have Python installed, there is module cumberbatch.

> pip install cumberbatch
[...]
>>> cumberbatch.full()
'Fragglerock Cabbagepatch'
>>> cumberbatch.full()
'Bendandsnap Covergirl'
>>> cumberbatch.full()
'Bakery Capncrunch'

[more inside]
posted by JHarris at 5:34 PM PST - 44 comments

Premier League leader Leicester City entered the season as a 5,000-1 underdog -- the same chance as a bet on Elvis being alive -- which is why the English soccer team could become the undisputed champion of beating the odds. [more inside]
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:33 PM PST - 40 comments

Last year Regal Cinema started checking bags and backpacks in their theaters. [more inside]
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:14 PM PST - 191 comments

In the deep stillness of a forest in winter, the sound of footsteps on a carpet of leaves died away. Peter Wohlleben had found what he was looking for: a pair of towering beeches. “These trees are friends,” he said, craning his neck to look at the leafless crowns, black against a gray sky. “You see how the thick branches point away from each other? That’s so they don’t block their buddy’s light."
posted by Hermione Granger at 4:02 PM PST - 9 comments

How to brick an iPhone: Set the date to January 1, 1970. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:35 PM PST - 139 comments

With the highly-anticipated release of two King Hu masterpieces on home video by the Masters of Cinema organization, as well as the critical success of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin last year, it seems like the wuxia film is making some inroads into the Western critical consciousness. So I thought I’d put together a guide to some of the essential films of the genre. - 30 Essential Wuxia Films
posted by Artw at 3:01 PM PST - 32 comments

"I changed the quotes in my AOL Instant Messenger profile almost daily, and fretted over the right combinations of font and color to make my IM voice look as bright and edgy as I wanted to be in real life. I started conversations with acquaintances who made me feel shy in person. I imagined I had inner beauty and wit, and that in chatrooms and AIM was where I could shine until that outer beauty showed up. And slowly, the IRL me started to become more like the me I allowed myself to be online... Matt and I built our relationship over AIM. We used AIM because it was our most practical option; like many teenagers in the year 2001, we didn't have cell phones. We did have computers in our respective bedrooms, though, and parents who weren't expecting phone calls after dinner hours."
posted by ChuraChura at 2:24 PM PST - 27 comments

They do not just behave like Flipper Dolphins are clever and sociable, but they also have a dark side that will make your hair stand on end
posted by cwtell at 2:05 PM PST - 43 comments

"Violence and nurturance are two sides of the same coin. I struggle to understand this even as I write it." From Nora Samaran, author of Dating Tips for the Feminist Man (previously).
posted by Catchfire at 1:51 PM PST - 16 comments

An algorithmic education, despite all the promises made by ed-tech entrepreneurs for “revolution” and “disruption,” is likely to re-inscribe the power relations that are already in place in school and in society. Whether it's annotating the scholarly web, creating connected copies through wikity or domain of one's own, alternatives to algorithmic education are offered by the indie edtech movement.
posted by typecloud at 1:33 PM PST - 11 comments

Why I had to become a snail farmer According to a site dedicated to looking at France through data, Snails production in France is limited to 191 farms. Don't miss all the gory details of snail farming. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 1:17 PM PST - 29 comments

"Patients assume doctors are omnipotent and they know everything there is to know about the universe."
posted by trillian at 1:11 PM PST - 30 comments

If asked to think of the lasting legacies of Ronald Reagan, you might conjure up the long shadow of US military intervention in Central America or the coordinated attack on organized labor and public-sector programs. Probably few of us would think about the spectacle of Shrek hawking Twinkies. But one lasting consequence of Reagan’s reign is felt by every parent in the country every day: As president, Reagan opened the floodgates to targeted junk food marketing to children and teens.

What Ronald Reagan has to do with Dora on your Popsicle package: the backstory behind Shrek hawking Twinkies (and everything else) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:09 PM PST - 19 comments

Rick Rubin: My Life in 21 Songs
posted by josher71 at 1:03 PM PST - 5 comments

The 4.5-foot-tall, 185-pound chimpanzee is built like a high school wrestling coach with a gray beard and a small bald spot just above his brow. Keepers have called him ugly, but he doesn't care. He's come a long way since hanging on Michael Jackson's hip. Bubbles' moonwalking days are over. [more inside]
posted by narancia at 12:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Anchor , which seems to be to audio what Twitter is to writing or Instagram to photography, launched a few days ago as a new "truly public" radio where everyone can contribute and comment. [more inside]
posted by cubby at 11:47 AM PST - 35 comments

During the course of a project to produce a detailed 3D model of the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, we were able to observe and record some hand-written notes and markings in areas of the spacecraft that have been hidden from view for more than 40 years.

[more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:43 AM PST - 14 comments

PUP - DVP (Official Video) (SLVimeo)
posted by slater at 10:42 AM PST - 3 comments

For the moment, the fate of the Clean Power Plan — and the question of just how capable the United States is of self-governance — remains uncertain. The Supreme Court ordered the Plan to be temporarily halted, most likely until the Court hands down an opinion on the legality of the Plan in June of 2017. If the Plan survives the next presidential election, and if it is ultimately upheld by the Court, then Tuesday’s order will only succeed in delaying the new rules. If the Court ultimately strikes down the Plan, however, the United States could be left impotent in the face of a looming catastrophe — and not just with respect to this particular catastrophe. The states challenging the Clean Power Plan call for sweeping changes to the balance of power between the regulator and the regulated. Indeed, if some of their most aggressive arguments succeed, it’s unclear that the federal government is permitted to do much of anything at all.

-Ian Millhiser for ThinkProgress, "Inside The Most Important Supreme Court Case In Human History"
posted by zombieflanders at 9:52 AM PST - 53 comments

How Video Games Are Changing The Action Movie - "It’s evidence in the case that videogames have started showing a strong influence on cinematography beyond goofier incarnations such as CGI, tie-ins, or critically derided adaptations. Instead, the movies leading this charge across mediums are rooted in physicality and often adored by cineastes."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Why Are Black Women Makeup-Shamed So Heavily?
posted by girlmightlive at 9:25 AM PST - 33 comments

"Pretty please, with a cherry on top." The Curzon is one of the best cinemas in London, but it's under threat from plans to redevelop its Soho home. In its bid to survive, the cinema has produced this original, inventive (and very sweary) video (SLYT).
posted by Paul Slade at 9:19 AM PST - 5 comments

SoundCloud has lost more than $70 million over the last two years . Recently released financial statements paint a grim future for the streaming service, as despite an increase in investment they still struggle to capitalize on a userbase close to 200 million. FACT presents five reasons why.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:08 AM PST - 100 comments

This short film follows a diver on a search below the ice (SLNYT video). [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:02 AM PST - 6 comments

The New York Times has obtained and published a video of a first grade teacher at the Success Academy, a charter school in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, berating and ripping up the paper of a six year old after the child could not explain to the class how she solved a math problem. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:13 AM PST - 188 comments

Death Cab For Yeezy (SLSoundcloud. Does what it says on the tin)
posted by schmod at 6:13 AM PST - 18 comments

In the short hush right after, I think about something Chris said: "It is such an emotional journey to train for your first fight, even if you are a totally stereotypical dude." I am surprised to find myself so overwhelmed with gratitude that I tear up... And then they call my name.
"Why Men Fight" — a beautiful longform story about manhood, trauma and amateur boxing, by Thomas Page McBee.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:39 AM PST - 74 comments

Hardcore Henry trailer (NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:15 AM PST - 51 comments

There are several videos of cats playing theremins on Youtube, but this one is the best.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:49 PM PST - 39 comments

Starting in 2017, city residents will be able to contribute to local candidates without spending a dime of their own money. Instead, the government will send each registered voter four $25 vouchers that they can give to candidates of their choice. No cutting a check. No minimum contribution. Candidates can opt out, but those who participate will have to abide by strict limits on spending and on receiving private donations. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:26 PM PST - 18 comments

Hingle McCringleberry and Kimble Mathias of the Portland Tigers are known for their unique endzone dances, often taking them too far.
posted by numaner at 7:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Inside the Eye: Nature’s Most Exquisite Creation "If you ask people what animal eyes are used for, they’ll say: same thing as human eyes. But that’s not true. It’s not true at all" [more inside]
posted by dhruva at 6:22 PM PST - 14 comments

More women are killed by intimate partners in the United States than by any other group of people. It's not strangers, friends or acquaintances who pose the biggest threat to women's lives: It's the men they date and marry.
posted by sockermom at 5:24 PM PST - 37 comments

Behold, the World's Fastest Log Car [Road and Track]

"THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE IT, your brain almost short circuits—nope, uh-uh, that's not real. But it is, and it is exactly what it looks like: a tree car. More specifically, it is a car made out of a western red cedar log with a concave mouth for a "grille", a wooden roll bar and wooden fenders, and a pair of turbines protruding from its rear. The thing looks ludicrous, like something a crazed Woody the Woodpecker would drive, or maybe a George Barris creation if he had ever gotten lost in the Pacific Northwest with an axe and a flask of whiskey. It gets better: The log car is rear-wheel drive, uses the mechanicals from a Mazda RX-7, and is powered by eight lithium-ion batteries. More than 500 pounds of them. Why? Why would someone do this, you might ask. And who? Who in the world would devote time to such a project? Also, what? What were they smoking? Must've been some potent stuff."

posted by Fizz at 4:28 PM PST - 38 comments

Robert Egger of Specialized Bicycles thinks UCI racing regulations are stifling bike design: His latest prototype, the fUCI, is both a protest and a design experiment. This ultimate go-fast bike features an in-frame motor (previously), aerodynamic windshield, integrated trunk, oversized wheel, and smartphone dock. [more inside]
posted by sibilatorix at 3:16 PM PST - 98 comments

"Oh he who looks upon this tomb! I am already consumed inside it, and dust has settled on my eyes. On my couch in my abode there is nothing but tears, and what is to happen at my resurrection when I shall appear before my Creator?" [more inside]
posted by BWA at 2:01 PM PST - 13 comments

What I’ve Learned by Going from College Student to Class B Celebrity to Nobody to Kinda Sorta Getting Famous Again…
posted by capnsue at 11:51 AM PST - 66 comments

The Story Behind New Kids on the Block’s Insane (and Preempted) 1991 Halftime Show (SL Playboy) NSFW
posted by josher71 at 11:33 AM PST - 21 comments

Prof. Steven Hawking gives the 2016 Reith Lectures [more inside]
posted by Thorzdad at 11:18 AM PST - 6 comments

Secret Six / Batman fan film. Gail Simone likes it, so you must too.
posted by signal at 10:45 AM PST - 7 comments

In the wake of the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s, genome pioneers and social scientists alike called for an end to the use of race as a variable in genetic research. Unfortunately, by some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the postgenomic age. Although inconsistent definition and use has been a chief problem with the race concept, it has historically been used as a taxonomic categorization based on common hereditary traits (such as skin color) to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. We believe the use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research—so disputed and so mired in confusion—is problematic at best and harmful at worst. It is time for biologists to find a better way. - An editorial in Science exploring the conundrum facing genomic researchers where race is both fundamentally flawed as a scientific model and violently dangerous but still the only consistent lens through which study participants understand the information they have about their own connection to human diversity [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 10:36 AM PST - 34 comments

You don’t need to read any more lists and posts about how you’re not doing enough. (slMedium)
posted by Kitteh at 10:34 AM PST - 89 comments

If you like relatively obscure teenage superheroes and Joan Jett-style rocking out, block out six minutes to watch this fan film of Marvel's New Mutants at a Lila Cheney concert, by Greasy Pig Studios. [more inside]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:16 AM PST - 29 comments

Still not having enlightened you to the extent of your plight, Cave Story teases bits and pieces of its plot to remind you that you're not just a player jumping and shooting enemies. You're a character, venturing forth in an unknown world for unknown reasons, and it's up to you to unravel the story. Cave Story recognizes the importance of narrative, and utilizes this storytelling experience to enhance the game's design while simultaneously guiding you through the mysterious island and its inhabitants.
posted by smcg at 9:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of the 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird is coming to Broadway. Producer Scott Rudin told the New York Times that while no casting decisions have been made, “The Atticus we do is going to be the Atticus in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'" [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 9:39 AM PST - 37 comments

Charlie Brooker versus 2015 The creator of Black Mirror and some friends look back at 2015. (SLY)
posted by doctornemo at 9:38 AM PST - 21 comments

"[E]ver since noticing a beautifully wrinkled and mysteriously sensual older French woman at a friend’s party, and, having inquired if she was the wife of the frizzy-haired, balding older man with the huge, horn-rimmed glasses next to her, and being informed that, “Nooo, she’s his mistress. They’ve been lovers for many years,” I’d decided that loverhood was what I aspired to." "The Magic Trick," by Carolita Johnson. (SLTheHairpin) [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:48 AM PST - 12 comments

‘I am a radicalised goat hell-bent on jihad’ – the FBI’s new anti-Isis video game: “As the title suggests, there are more metaphors to unmangle here: a wooden mannequin bound by strings, for example, which you can free by visiting all the site’s sections. These are rendered as rooms of a confusing family home, which appears to contain a dingy, windowless lecture room and a serial-killer basement.” (SLGuardian)
posted by Maecenas at 8:45 AM PST - 19 comments

If you are alive to the need of making every minute count in this modern, high speed age, you will often have occasion to avail yourself of the facilities of the highly organized institutions which have succeeded the old time operator bent over his telegraph key in the little dingy telegraph office of a few generations ago.

So said one Nelson E. Ross in his Small Booklet entitled "How to Write Telegrams Properly" in 1928. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:45 AM PST - 21 comments

The images for JPL’s Visions Of The Future 2016 Calendar, which was an internal gift to JPL and NASA staff along with scientists, engineers, government and university staff, have been put online. "As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future." [via] [more inside]
posted by cashman at 8:28 AM PST - 16 comments

Portfolio Visualizer is a website that lets you backtest asset allocations, conduct Fama-French Factor Regression Analysis, look at Asset Correlations, run Monte Carlo simulations, find the efficient frontier, or test market timing models against historical data. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:23 AM PST - 6 comments

Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them. The New York Times also has a writeup.
posted by kmz at 8:12 AM PST - 133 comments

New music video shot in zero gravity from our very very very very very very very very very old friends OKGO.
posted by gwint at 7:43 AM PST - 69 comments

A month from today will be 50 years since Sammy Davis Jr. satisfied a whim and had The Andrew Sisters sing the hits of The Supremes, and vise-versa. The quality isn't great, and it's only a snippet of Sammy's short-lived show from 1966. If you want more, here's the full episode, full of singing, dancing and comedy: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:15 AM PST - 11 comments

The Internet Archive now has Windows 3.1 emulation running in the browser, including a stock installation of the OS, WinTrek, Tapei, and most importantly SkiFree. [more inside]
posted by timdiggerm at 6:16 AM PST - 53 comments

Kutiman has dropped his new video album: OFF GRID (YouTube version here). "In this new work, Kutiman utilizes his unique method of carefully blanketing together YouTube users' original content into one natural and cohesive audio-visual experience. This time around, Kutiman plays with the concept of expanded time, musical complexity and intricate layering while adding special visual effects to create a new perspective of the Jazz genre."
posted by progosk at 5:36 AM PST - 5 comments

Sweden's initial humanitarian response, and subsequent withdrawal in the face of the European refugee crisis. (Single link foreign policy article.)
posted by Ned G at 5:27 AM PST - 83 comments

"In 1915 women could neither vote, divorce nor work after marriage, yet in that same year the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman envisaged a revolutionary world populated entirely by women who were intelligent, resourceful and brave." -- For Radio 4 science fiction writer & critic Geoff Ryman looks at the utopian feminist tradition in science fiction, with contributions by Stephanie Saulter, Laurie Penny, Dr Sari Edelstein, Sarah Le Fanu, Dr Caitríona Ní Dhúill and Sarah Hall. Related: ten women who changed sci-fi.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:34 AM PST - 20 comments

In Sweden, a Cash-Free Future Nears - "Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Last weekend The Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon happened in Brooklyn. (Considering the first 'Terrible Idea' listed is 'Soylent Dick' please assume NSFW-ness) Vice.com and the Guardian have additional tawdry details. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:10 AM PST - 18 comments

Kanye West is set to release his 7th studio album today. [more inside]
posted by R.F.Simpson at 11:07 PM PST - 49 comments

A variety of documentaries about Negro League baseball: Only The Ball Was White, Black Ball, Extra Innings: Preserving the History of the Negro Leagues, and The Long Summers of Lou Dials. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:10 PM PST - 3 comments

Zoë Quinn explains “why [she] just dropped the harassment charges [against] the man who started GamerGate.” (via Ellen Pao’s Twitter.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:45 PM PST - 66 comments

Moore's law is dead, for real this time?
posted by sfenders at 9:23 PM PST - 35 comments

Twenty years ago a Seattle boy moved to Nepal after being recognized as the reincarnation of a revered Tibetan lama. The public’s reaction to his mother’s decision to let him go says as much about our understanding of parenting as it does about Buddhism.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:11 PM PST - 20 comments

Misty Copeland recreates Degas's ballet paintings for Harper's Bazaar.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Wasps are a dangerous introduced pest in New Zealand. Here, a researcher excavates an active German wasp nest by hand. Thrill to the angry buzz of outraged wasps! Recoil as they hurl themselves at the camera! Goggle at the venom splatters! 10 minutes of terrifying yet compelling man on wasp action. [more inside]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:09 PM PST - 64 comments

Anfield Road prices to stay frozen for two years. After many protests [nsfw:language] over a price increase from £59 to £77 - that included an unprecedented 10000 fan walk-out against Sunderland at the 77th minute (result 2-0, final score 2-2), Liverpool FC owners Fenway Sports Group stepped back and apologized from the original pricing plan. [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 5:44 PM PST - 15 comments

Fox doesn't understand the difference between white bedsheets and snow. (SLTwitter)
posted by orrnyereg at 1:17 PM PST - 53 comments

As reported this weekend, Twitter announced today that timelines will no longer be ordered strictly by reverse chronology. [more inside]
posted by davidjmcgee at 12:48 PM PST - 142 comments

"We accuse someone of pretentiousness to call out false authority and deflate delusions of grandeur. But we’re also using the word as a tool of class policing: a way to tell a person to stop putting on airs and graces." Dan Fox, Why I'm pretentious and proud of it [more inside]
posted by peripathetic at 12:38 PM PST - 46 comments

Everyone dies of something, but after slogging through the daily news, you'd think most people die from terrorism, shark attacks and gas explosions. But are these tragedies — not to mention deaths from lightning strikes, plane crashes and tsunamis — actually top killers in the United States?
posted by veedubya at 12:25 PM PST - 45 comments

The always-excellent Shmuplations has translated a 2011 interview about the creation of classic NES game Rockman, known in the US as Mega Man, and its sequel. It's a great depiction of the creative process relating to game development.
posted by JHarris at 11:21 AM PST - 26 comments

What's the fairest way to split a check? No, really. What's the fairest way? Equipay. [more inside]
posted by Betelgeuse at 10:37 AM PST - 22 comments

I love the ontological aspects of internet style, but dressing has gone woefully algorithmic.
posted by josher71 at 10:14 AM PST - 121 comments

Short-but-pretty SLYT. So that's what was going on ... [more inside]
posted by carter at 9:37 AM PST - 25 comments

Loudly, and apparently without caring who heard her, a research assistant at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City charged that her boss—noted paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond, the museum’s curator of human origins—had “sexually assaulted” her in his hotel room after a meeting the previous September in Florence, Italy. At the meeting, one person who heard the allegations was Bernard Wood, 70, a senior paleoanthropologist originally from the United Kingdom. In St. Louis, Wood canvassed younger researchers about their experiences with Richmond. He asked everyone the same question: “Does this alleged behavior come as any surprise to you?” He didn’t get the “yes” he was expecting.
posted by sciatrix at 9:33 AM PST - 86 comments

One of the most compelling arguments for literary diversity has to do with the people who are following behind. If a little Mexican-American girl grows up with dreams of being a poet, what happens when she looks at the prize winners each year and doesn’t see anyone who looks like her? Can a young African-American man aspire to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist if he doesn’t know that there is someone like him out there? I would argue the same thing happens for working-class kids, especially those in families more concerned with putting food on the table than getting to the symphony, families who see the arts as the sole pursuit of the rich (as my own working-class immigrant father did).
posted by Kitteh at 9:25 AM PST - 12 comments

This week, copyright trolls came for @Dog_rates, the beloved Twitter account that rates dogs (but NOT saber-toothed tigers or t-rexes). In a chilling move, the troll threatened to make a similar attack on @Dog_rates's biggest rival/colleague, @EverythingGoats. Twitter has refused to comment.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:55 AM PST - 18 comments

The Brackets for The Morning News 2016 Tournament of Books by The Tournament of Books Staff [The Morning News]

You already know the titles and judges that will participate in this year’s tournament. You likely perused the “long list” for a glance at 86 of our favorite works of fiction from last year. You might have even checked out our 11 previous tournaments, just to whet your appetite—or maybe you have no idea what we’re talking about, in which case you should go read this primer. [Download the 2016 brackets as a .PDF]

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Atlas Obscura brings us the story of the mid-20th Century "Peanut Butter Hearings", where the Peanut Butter Manufacturers Association faced off with the FDA (and the Peanut Butter Grandma, a.k.a. Ruth Desmond, head of the Federation of Homemakers) to hammer out the exact percentage of peanut butter that had to be peanuts. (via Mental Floss)
posted by Etrigan at 8:27 AM PST - 41 comments

She’s the dead hooker in the trunk. A universal cautionary tale, the drug-using sex worker is too wretched to be relatable, too scorned for even countercultural cred. She is repulsive, unclean and immoral. She is pitiable at best, inhuman at worst—dismissed by police lingo about murders whose victims are drug-using street workers: “No Human Involved.” If she’s white, she’s lucky enough to be merely an abject victim. If not, she’s a deranged criminal. She’s a scarred, blotchy mugshot in your local paper’s coverage of prostitution stings—recycled without regard for privacy by anti-drug PSAs to let kids know that that’s what they’ll look like after years of doing dope. She’s the woman I’ve heard my escorting clients joke about not wanting to fuck with someone else’s dick—not realizing that they are talking to a sex worker who uses heroin, as I force myself to laugh along with them.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:03 AM PST - 52 comments

WARNING: may induce vertigo, nausea, flashbacks, and/or mild amusement.
posted by Chrischris at 8:02 AM PST - 9 comments

Robert Pollard has reformed Guided by Voices with a new lineup. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:41 AM PST - 32 comments

Cassandra Clare, fanfiction author turned bestselling author, has been accused of copyright infringement by Sherrilyn Kenyon for sharing such themes [pdf of exhibit] as "evil father who has to be killed", "magical swords that battle evil", "rebellious and beautiful female character" and "round room with magical portals". [more inside]
posted by jeather at 7:34 AM PST - 85 comments

Funny or Die Made a Trump Biopic, Starring Johnny Depp [NYT]. The 50-minute comedy is streaming now at Funny or Die. (Head's up: NYT link has spoilers!)
posted by Room 641-A at 7:20 AM PST - 20 comments

‘Letterlocking refers to the folding and securing of any writing surface (such as papyrus, parchment, and paper) to function as its own enclosure.’ In their YouTube channel, Jana Dambrogio of MIT Libraries and her colleagues demonstrate a number of letterlocking techniques, from a simple method used by Russian soldiers in WWII, to more elaborate and ‘secure’ schemes employed by the likes of John Donne, Constanijn Huygens, Elizabeth Stuart and Queen Elizabeth I. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 6:11 AM PST - 18 comments

The smuggler in the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from the original Star Wars who refers Obi-Wan to Chewbacca has been known for years as BoShek. But despite having an action figure of the character, the actor playing him was unknown. With help from the Rebel Scum forum, Billy Jensen was able to use social media detective work to track him down.
posted by graymouser at 5:54 AM PST - 32 comments

Kept in the dark for 60 years, fruit flies begin to reveal their genetic adaptations. In 1954, seven years after their cousins returned from space, a colony of fruit flies was plunged into a darkness which would continue through 1500 generations right up till the present day. The results of this study shed considerable light on the role of genetic variation in physical adaptation. Spoiler: [more inside]
posted by fairmettle at 4:07 AM PST - 12 comments

Why Ghana started a space programme.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:21 AM PST - 16 comments

Horses can recognise human emotion, study shows Man’s favourite neigh-sayer can not only tell whether a human might be in a bad mood, it can do so from a photograph. So brilliant! [more inside]
posted by stevedawg at 1:57 AM PST - 25 comments

Bryan Fuller to Run New Star Trek Television Series! [more inside]
posted by aldurtregi at 1:34 AM PST - 154 comments

The Research Pirates of the Dark Web - "After getting shut down late last year, a website that allows free access to paywalled academic papers has sprung back up in a shadowy corner of the Internet."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:56 PM PST - 30 comments

60 Free Film Noir movies, courtesy of MetaFilter favorite Open Culture.
posted by MoonOrb at 7:20 PM PST - 14 comments

The world could be free to sing Happy Birthday without being sued by as early as next month.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:19 PM PST - 32 comments

Rejected Lord Voldemort Anagrams
posted by capricorn at 6:14 PM PST - 15 comments

2016 All Candidates Debate - [SLYT] from Mefi's own Greg Nog [via mefi projects]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:13 PM PST - 37 comments

When “Mike” spotted a newspaper advert for a clinic making prosthetic fingers in the 90s, he thought it was a scam. But the ex-yakuza member had booked himself a consultation within the hour. For almost a decade, a stumpy pinkie on his left hand had marked out his previous allegiance to the criminal world, preventing him from leading a normal life. A fake little finger, he thought, sounded outlandish, but it was worth a shot. It might allow him to disguise his past—and help shield against Japanese society’s prejudiced view of ex-yakuza members in search of redemption. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:06 PM PST - 16 comments

Stunning drone footage of surfers off of the coast of Teahupo’o in Tahiti.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 5:22 PM PST - 21 comments

Carbonating the World. "Overweight, obesity, and diabetes have been spreading throughout the world hand in hand with the consumption of ultra-processed foods, especially sugar-sweetened beverages. My country, Mexico, has almost the highest per capita consumption of sugary drinks in the world, where 70 percent of added-sugar consumption comes from those products. You can stand in front of any audience and ask who has a relative with diabetes, and a landscape full of hands will rise before you, revealing a tragedy that has already caught up to us." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 4:21 PM PST - 64 comments

"I thought I was pretty good at Snapchat. Then I watched my little sister ..." Buzzfeed's Ben Rosen learns to Snapchat like a boss from his 13-year old sister. "I would watch in awe as she flipped through her snaps, opening and responding to each one in less than a second with a quick selfie face. She answered all 40 of her friends’ snaps in under a minute. How was this even possible?"
posted by zanni at 1:11 PM PST - 152 comments

What It's Like Experiencing Canada as a Refugee [video] “Amidst ongoing attacks from public figures such as Donald Trump, it's easy to forget that Syrians and other desperate refugees are, in fact, people. One person is pushing back and rolling out the red carpet: Kourosh Houshmand. [more inside]
posted by mr. manager at 12:00 PM PST - 6 comments

New Hampshire votes today in the first primary of the 2016 US Presidential election. [more inside]
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:42 AM PST - 3501 comments

Caution: Silly Walk Zone
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Life with hypochondria , as described by an anonymous and humorous buzzfeed user.
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 10:46 AM PST - 19 comments

New Software Can Actually Edit Actors' Facial Expressions A new software, from Disney Research in conjunction with the University of Surrey, may help cut down on the number of takes necessary, thereby saving time and money. FaceDirector blends images from several takes, making it possible to edit precise emotions onto actors’ faces. [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 10:20 AM PST - 56 comments

Studio Heads Of The Classic Era Ranked In Terms Of Personal Awfulness -by resident Hollywood expert The Whelk [via mefi projects]
posted by Artw at 9:05 AM PST - 25 comments

In October 2014, eight women came forward to the Toronto Star stating that well-known CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi had assaulted them. [Previously on Metafilter] As the case against Ghomeshi finally went to trial this month, it has prompted criticism over the way the defense has treated the women testifying against him. Canadian radio host and therapist Svea Vikander has decided to share her personal experiences of sexual harassment and assault, one for each day of February: "This trial is not only about a man who violated the four women pressing charges, but about whether we, as a society, trust women who tell...It's personal for me...But I can't not do it. The Ghomeshi scandal has one hell of an undertow." [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:40 AM PST - 225 comments

Daniel Pinkwater reads Ducks! [audio, about 7 minutes]. [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 7:56 AM PST - 15 comments

A Fine Mess: How Not to Assert Your Copyright in the Youtube Age by Vlad Savov [The Verge] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:40 AM PST - 42 comments

An open letter to Gloria Steinem on Intersectional feminism. By Sarah Grey at theEstablishment.co [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 6:44 AM PST - 128 comments

A Shrove Tuesday pancake history, with seventeenth century recipes! Take twenty eggs, with halfe the whites, and beat them half an houre or more...
posted by moonmilk at 5:44 AM PST - 58 comments

WRITE YOUR OWN FANTASY GAME FOR YOUR MICROCOMPUTER (PDF) is a beautifully illustrated guide to programming (what else) fantasy roleplaying games on early personal computer hardware, along with its companion WRITE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE PROGRAMS (also PDF), covering text adventures. Hat tip to the game design Tumblr Put Games Here for the original link. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 5:19 AM PST - 28 comments

Emojis are like modern-day cave paintings: simple, direct, visual. And because visual images are processed far faster than text, emojis can be among the quickest ways to send a message of support or concern. Anti-bullying advocate Monica Lewinsky has partnered with Vodafone on a new tool set for teens. [VanityFair]
posted by Sir Rinse at 4:59 AM PST - 21 comments

Having fallen down the rabbit hole of British colonial cinema history, I thought to share some of the wonderful discoveries with you.
posted by infini at 1:24 AM PST - 3 comments

How 26 tweets broke my filter bubble -- B. J. May was just an ordinary Javascript developer from Middle America until a series of tweets by Marco Rogers helped him discover a wider world outside his whitebread bubble.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:09 AM PST - 33 comments

When Jenny and Jenna, two Black singers regularly posting Kpop covers on YouTube, found that they were often confused for each other, they decided to band together and form CoCo Avenue, currently the world's first all-Black Kpop group. Other Black Kpop performers include RaNia's Alex, Insooni, Lee Michelle, and Tasha a.k.a. Yoon Mi Rae.
posted by divabat at 10:43 PM PST - 1 comment

The Slo Mo Guys film a tongue in a mousetrap at 2000fps
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:36 PM PST - 12 comments

"You wouldn’t see it in most classrooms, you wouldn’t know it by looking at slumping national test-score averages, but a cadre of American teenagers are reaching world-class heights in math—more of them, more regularly, than ever before." Peg Tyre in The Atlantic covers the new wave of deeper, faster, and hopefully broader math education. [more inside]
posted by escabeche at 9:34 PM PST - 27 comments

Daniel Bryan is arguably the most beloved professional wrestler in the entire world; he is also widely considered to be one of the best professional wrestlers of all time. He has not wrestled a match since April of 2015, when injuries forced him out of action - after they had previously cost him much of 2014 as well. He spent 2015 training regularly and going to doctors hoping to learn that he could continue to be a professional wrestler, and finally, last week, learned conclusively that he could not. This is his retirement speech.
posted by mightygodking at 9:28 PM PST - 26 comments

Melbourne researchers develop a paper clip-sized mind control device that sits inside your brain.
posted by adept256 at 9:15 PM PST - 6 comments

People who move to New York always make the same mistake. They can’t see the place. This is true of Manhattan, but even the outer boroughs too. Whether Flushing Meadows in Queens or Red Hook in Brooklyn. They come looking for magic, whether evil or good, and nothing will convince them it isn’t here. This wasn’t all bad though. Some New Yorkers had learned how to make a living from this error in thinking. Charles Thomas Tester for one.

an excerpt, The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Buymeonce.com is a website that sells things you should only have to buy once, because they have a lifetime guarantee, lifetime repairs, or are just very well made.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:00 PM PST - 95 comments

After logging onto their computers today, staff here at the MERL were greeted by an unusual email from the Assistant Curator:
There appears to be a dead mouse in this mousetrap, it began, …which is not described as being there on the database.
155-year old mouse trap claims its latest victim
and
How a mouse died in our Victorian mouse trap [more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:34 PM PST - 21 comments

Five Japanese girls meet in Los Angeles. They are far from home but they have same goal, chase the dream of becoming hip hop dancers. [SLVimeo]
posted by MoonOrb at 7:13 PM PST - 4 comments

The Scottish SPCA is looking for a new home for Atlas, a continental giant rabbit. "Giant rabbit?" you ask, "How big could a-- Oh dear lord will you look at that." The 7-month old, nearly 6-kilogram Atlas is still growing, and the SSPCA wants you to know that "A standard rabbit hutch won’t do so his new owner will need plenty of space for him."
posted by Etrigan at 6:49 PM PST - 38 comments

Murray Perahia on Bach - a 28 minute chat at the piano.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Meet the "rented white coats" who defend toxic chemicals: How corporate-funded research corrupts America's courts and regulatory agencies. [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Some of the most exciting gymnastics routines are happening at the college level. UCLA Senior Sophina DeJesus helped lead her team to victory with a hiphop-flavored floor routine that included a whip, a nae nae, and a tumbling pass that landed in a split. The Internet is rightly losing its collective mind. The whole Bruins squad seems pretty amazing (Sophina at 1:31). But if that wasn't impressive enough for you, she can also moonwalk on the balance beam.
posted by CatastropheWaitress at 5:31 PM PST - 23 comments

It’s not Cyberspace anymore (from data & society, Medium). [more inside]
posted by redct at 2:00 PM PST - 50 comments

Catherine Nichols on the technique of adaptation. [more inside]
posted by flex at 1:24 PM PST - 27 comments

How To Survive A Nuclear Bomb an 'interactive survival experience' from the channel that brought you Threads.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:09 PM PST - 78 comments

That'swhatshesaid, a one-person play by Courtney Meaker and Erin Pike, consists entirely of lines and stage directions for female characters in the top 11 most-produced plays of the 2014-15 season. The play opened Thursday night for a four-night run at Seattle's Gay City Calamus Auditorium. An hour before curtain on the show's second night, the publisher of Joshua Harmon's play Bad Jews, which is featured in the production, served Gay City Arts a cease and desist order , and the publisher's VP left Pike a voicemail claiming they'd "go after" Gay City Arts if the show continued. Instead, That'swhatshesaid went on as planned--but with a few last-minute changes. Among them: every time a line from Bad Jews came up, Pike merely mimed the stage directions as someone offstage shouted, "Redacted!" Today, according to Meaker, another cease and desist has been delivered--for a play that was not included in That'swhatshesaid because it featured no women. [more inside]
posted by duffell at 12:52 PM PST - 119 comments

He’s boring; he’s unrelatable. He wears his underwear on the outside. But is that the real problem of Superman? It’s a problem that has less to do with the character himself and more to with DC Comics, which found itself stuck with a flagship character it thought needed fixing. In trying, it broke him nearly beyond repair. [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:38 PM PST - 153 comments

"Ed Koch once said that "to be a New Yorker you have to live here for six months, and if at the end of the six months you find you walk faster, talk faster, think faster, you're a New Yorker." On the search to find the realest answer (is it "until you cry on the subway"?), we decided to hit the pavement to ask locals to finish the sentence for us. "
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:24 PM PST - 47 comments

Robbing of bees has become an increasingly problematic crime as bee populations dwindle due to Colony Collapse Disorder and the price of a healthy hive rises. A swarm of thefts occur around this season every year in California as cells of thieves extract hives from almond orchards in the Central Valley, where 90% of all managed bees are brought every year. [more inside]
posted by Sophie1 at 12:10 PM PST - 9 comments

Toormina Video- a short comic by Pat Grant
posted by Adridne at 11:51 AM PST - 6 comments

In the Fractal Jigsaw Puzzle, each piece of the jigsaw (subsequent to the first) is made of a smaller, constituent puzzle. Confused? Watch the video, or just give it a whirl. Don’t worry about finishing it all in one go: the game saves your progress. [via mefi projects]
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 AM PST - 37 comments

In Quentin Tarantino's recent Western, The Hateful Eight, one scene involves Kurt Russell's character, John Ruth, snatching a guitar away from Jennifer Jason Leigh's character, Daisy Domergue, and promptly smashing it to pieces. The only problem? The guitar was a 140 year old original Martin on loan from the Martin Guitar Museum and was supposed to have been swapped out for a replica before being said smashed. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 11:07 AM PST - 110 comments

Vimeo user somersetVII has created 10 beautiful, masterful supercut videos. Coens | 30 celebrates 30 years of Coen Bros movies while Stanley Kubrick gets an appropriately moody and atmospheric tribute. Other standouts include Baseball on Film and Cinema: A Space Odyssey, which only a true fan of the genres could make.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:55 AM PST - 8 comments

There’s a big difference between sharing a Netflix account and struggling to make ends meet. There’s a big difference between not being able to order a pizza or go out with your friends and not being able to pay the bills. And there’s a huge difference between being destitute and being strapped for cash. (slEverydayFeminism) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 10:45 AM PST - 88 comments

What my favourite historical fiction has done for me, besides make me happy in the way that good books do, is teach me more about justice, and silence, and perspective. These are the questions I want to spend my time examining and writing about. The limits placed on many women’s lives are the very reason they are conveniently written out of the dominant historical narrative, in a circular argument as old as misogyny itself: “Women do not appear in the record because they didn’t do anything of note, and they didn’t do anything of note because they don’t appear in the record.”
posted by sciatrix at 9:54 AM PST - 11 comments

"It Started Here." With great excitement, living history attraction Colonial Williamsburg spent more than a million dollars to put out its first-ever TV ad during the Super Bowl. The splurge may have backfired, as its use of footage of the World Trade Center towers falling on 9/11 to a Tom Brokaw voice-over angered and upset many in its target markets and puzzled plenty of others. Takes from Daily News, Esquire, Gothamist, USA Today, NY Post, Slate, HuffPo. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 9:23 AM PST - 87 comments

Like to apply for the position of the head of an organization dedicated to advocating for the disabled? Better not be disabled yourself. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:04 AM PST - 16 comments

How Hollywood's Favorite Juice Bar Owner Eats Every Day. Come for the pretty zucchini ribbons. Stay for the magic activated cashews. via Kottke.
posted by Mchelly at 7:29 AM PST - 202 comments

Toronto-based artist Bailey Henderson sculpts the fearsome sea creatures depicted on medieval and Renaissance-era maps. [more inside]
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:43 AM PST - 13 comments

Hard Numbers Reveal Scale of America’s Trophy-Hunting Habit by Rachael Bale [National Geographic]

Sport hunters, those who kill animals for recreation rather than out of necessity, imported more than 1.26 million trophies to the U.S. in the decade from 2005 through 2014, according to a new analysis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s import data by Humane Society International and the Humane Society of United States. That’s an average of 126,000 trophy imports a year, or 345 a day.

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:07 AM PST - 67 comments

The biggest change to the island’s economy isn’t the thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations.
posted by ellieBOA at 3:12 AM PST - 17 comments

"This is what it’s like to spend a fifth of your waking life in transit."
posted by Catseye at 12:26 AM PST - 112 comments

Monday Punday - try to figure out the pun illustrated in the cartoon. No scoring. No prizes. And no "I don't get it, tell me" button. (Hint: If you can't figure out the first three, don't torture yourself further.) [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:10 AM PST - 42 comments

In the far reaches of the sky there are sun-bright discs as wide as solar systems, their hearts run through by spears of radiation that outshine galaxies. The energies that feed these quasars beggar all metaphor, and their quantification seems all but meaningless. What does it serve to know that they are converting matter to energy at a rate that equates to the complete annihilation of a planet the size of the Earth ten times a second? Or that all the fires of the sun, from its birth to its death, would be a few weeks' worth of work to one of them? No human sense can be made from so inhuman a scale. Boggle, and move on. [via 3quarksdaily] [more inside]
posted by cgc373 at 11:40 PM PST - 32 comments

The Princess Steel, W. E. B. Du Bois's recently-discovered SF story. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:12 PM PST - 7 comments

:D :/ :( :)
posted by MoonOrb at 5:36 PM PST - 18 comments

This internet radio station plays music from the Jet Set Radio soundtracks and music that would fit perfectly in them. Real-life Jet Set Radio!
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:57 PM PST - 37 comments

Paul Falstad's stable of science and engineering visualizations has been MeFi-celebrated as recently as 2005 and 2006. Sadly, with Java applets on death's door, they're largely inaccessible today. What remains? A lovingly HTML-Fived and expanded electronic circuit simulator, a gleaming key to understanding hundreds of different circuits and components. [more inside]
posted by tss at 4:03 PM PST - 10 comments

This is where Cam Newton comes from: an institution where being African-American and excellent, African-American and respected, African-American and optimistic are normal conditions. A visit to the church Cam grew up in.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 2:43 PM PST - 37 comments

Birgitta Jónsdóttir May Be Iceland's Next Prime Minister - "Poetry told Birgitta that she is alive. The internet taught her that she belongs in this world. The crisis showed her that she has a role to play, and politics showed her that everything needs to change." (Jónsdóttir, WikiLeaks & Iceland, previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:49 PM PST - 36 comments

triplets+toddler -- multitasking
posted by HuronBob at 12:04 PM PST - 64 comments

Haitian President Michel Martelly will leave office today and hand control over to a provisional government (warning: very graphic image in the link). In the face of massive protests against widespread fraud and irregularities in the election process, the January runoff election was cancelled after second place candidate Jude Celestin refused to participate in an election which he believed was rigged in favor of Martelly's chosen successor, Jovenel Moise. This leaves Haiti without a president. Martelly leaves office 30 years to the day since the end of former dictator Baby Doc's rule.
posted by molecicco at 10:38 AM PST - 9 comments

The top 10 similarities between the Super Bowl and Puppy Bowl [more inside]
posted by triggerfinger at 9:54 AM PST - 16 comments

Enjoy this animated webcomic about Mozart's early exploits ... up to age nine, along with those of his sister Nannerl.
posted by immlass at 9:14 AM PST - 8 comments

"Demaryius Thomas has just sent his mother a picture of the most unlikely Super Bowl ticket of all, the one intended for her, and now Katina Smith has a few days to decide whether she's prepared to take it."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:01 AM PST - 33 comments

Feminist Lindy West writes in The Guardian about how she's experienced years of extreme online harassment from a misogynist blogger and his minions, and about why she's not particularly happy to see them receive the same treatment.
posted by orange swan at 8:58 AM PST - 90 comments

Dan Hicks, Bay Area music icon, dies at age 74. Last night Clare Wasserman announced that her husband, musician Dan Hicks, had succumbed to liver cancer. [more inside]
posted by tommasz at 7:28 AM PST - 31 comments

Classic Era Warner Bros outakes, 1936-46. The breakdowns of 1941 part 1, part 2 The breakdowns of 1946. 1944
posted by The Whelk at 6:40 AM PST - 12 comments

Rescued piglet in a dress and a rescued kitty: a love story
posted by Room 641-A at 6:04 AM PST - 19 comments

Alan Partridge: I don’t need TV, I’ve got two Nutribullets
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:06 AM PST - 11 comments

Most construction projects are bumpy....but this one, starts out smooth.
posted by vespabelle at 12:14 AM PST - 12 comments

The Great British Television Map "I'm an American, but I love British TV series, and so does my wife. As for Geography... I'm a bit more into that than she is." So, this informative map showing the locations depicted in most of the most popular British TV series*... and where they were actually filmed (if it differs)**. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:06 PM PST - 54 comments

The Calvert Journal's Special Report: Red Africa: When international socialism met the developing world [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:28 PM PST - 6 comments

this is what happens when i stay up 5 hours and 13 minutes past my bedtime [from bitches gotta eat]
posted by desjardins at 3:53 PM PST - 82 comments

Hieronymus Bosch's amazing painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Exceptional detail, zoom in or out inside the painting. There are many stories hidden behind the images inside the painting. Click on the white text boxes to listen to and/or read the stories. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 3:26 PM PST - 35 comments

New Beyoncé video
posted by Artw at 3:11 PM PST - 234 comments

Instilling existential dread, for generations to come. "There should be a camp for Jews who don't like camp," I said. "Who feel alienated by camp." To which a colleague exclaimed, "Camp Kafka!" It came together after that. [more inside]
posted by 0cm at 3:08 PM PST - 9 comments

Hidden population of up to 200 lions found in remote Ethiopia “During my professional career I have had to revise the lion distribution map many times,” says Hans Bauer, who led the expedition. “I have deleted one population after the other. This is the first and probably the last time that I’m putting a new one up there.” [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 2:41 PM PST - 6 comments

Lisa Bedford's "Survival Mom" blog, which aims to help women, and especially mothers, be ready for a myriad of possible disasters, is "part of the new accessible, female-oriented, and, crucially, logical face of prepping. Even that word — prepping — makes it sound like an extension of performing responsible motherhood: like scheduling your kid’s dentist appointments ahead of time or making sure to take get your Christmas card ready in October. ... [and] Bedford’s advice feels more and more common sense." Anne Helen Petersen, "What to Expect When You're Expecting the Collapse of Society" (SLBuzzfeed). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:53 PM PST - 139 comments

The Democratic Republic of Congo has a troubled history to say the least. Terrible crimes were committed against children, women, and men, but one woman rose up in response. Now, Rebecca Masika Katsuva has passed. Her words. Her story: Surviving Against the Odds, It's Not the End of the World.
posted by ReginaHart at 12:52 PM PST - 7 comments

This is a Google Docs spreadsheet recording, for every given name ever held by a major league baseball player, the first player to bear that name. Via Value over Replacement Grit.
posted by escabeche at 12:21 PM PST - 23 comments

The Nicholas Sparks White People Experience: Lainey Gossip's Sarah reviews Nicholas Sparks's latest "whirlwind romance straight out of an erectile disfunction commercial." [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 12:07 PM PST - 37 comments

Waterdrop "Waterdrop" is a science fiction film about the second kind of close encounter with aliens. It is a tribute to the critically acclaimed Chinese science fiction novel "The Dark Forest"
posted by dhruva at 11:42 AM PST - 18 comments

On the Food Warriors, lunch is up to the locals' vote. Traveling the length of NYC's A-train, the Internets Celebrities "talk to people on the street about their habits and tastes," ponder an ever-changing New York, and hopefully find a good meal. [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 11:38 AM PST - 6 comments

A slightly silly and squirrelly animation for a rather rude song. Contains meerkats with beehive hair and a very large singing squirrel with a bad wig. Found through b3ta, a long time ago.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:37 AM PST - 5 comments

The giant impact hypothesis is the most widely supported theory for how the moon was formed, with research in 2014 adding support to this theory over other possibilities. Now UCLA-led research reconstructs a massive crash that took place 4.5 billion years ago (abstract, full article paywalled), supporting the theory that the Moon was produced by a head-on collision between Earth and Theia, a forming planet.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:01 AM PST - 11 comments

When a freak brain hemorrhage struck out of nowhere a couple of years ago, I became a little depressed, stuck in a rut, and strangely fearful of death. So when I heard about people (in my neighborhood, even) using hallucinogens to push beyond their preoccupations, to help them live without fear, I decided that was a trip I had to take.
posted by pwally at 8:28 AM PST - 44 comments

Flying Fish Slaps Remix (hat tip: Kottke) Not to be confused with the Fish-Slapping Dance. … For those still confused, here is a documentary on the complex and intriguing ritual of the ancient art of fish-slapping. And for anyone who continues to be confused, Michael Palin explains.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:19 AM PST - 17 comments

Fake Online Locksmiths A locksmith’s shop on a street in Sun City, Ariz. [...] turned out to be a fiction that was created for the locksmith by a web design firm using Photoshop at what is, in fact, a vacant lot. [via marginal revolution] [more inside]
posted by hawthorne at 3:09 AM PST - 64 comments

Thousands of iPhone 6 users claim they have been left holding almost worthless phones because Apple’s latest operating system permanently disables the handset if it detects that a repair has been carried out by a non-Apple technician.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:19 PM PST - 204 comments

Crushed between two Portals pushes Valve's Source Engine to places it was probably never intended to go. (SLYT)
posted by Uncle Ira at 7:32 PM PST - 49 comments

A federal court panel has ruled that two of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts were racially gerrymandered and must be redrawn within two weeks. Critics of the 2011 Republican-led redistricting contend the map lines were drawn to concentrate black voters in districts that reduced their overall political power. North Carolina is home to 3 of the nation's 10 most gerrymandered congressional districts.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:00 PM PST - 70 comments

Every Coen brothers movie, ranked from worst to best. [more inside]
posted by How the runs scored at 6:13 PM PST - 183 comments

Jun cooks Fluffy Omurice
Jun cooks Koi fish sushi
Jun cooks Chicken Nanban
[more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:57 PM PST - 28 comments

The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Resource
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:56 PM PST - 37 comments

Edgar Mitchell, NASA astronaut, Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot, and outspoken alien visitation believer, has died at age 85. [more inside]
posted by 1367 at 2:37 PM PST - 43 comments

Stealing White: How a corporate spy swiped plans for DuPont’s billion-dollar color formula By Del Quentin Wilber [Bloomberg Business]

“At first, you’re like: Why are they stealing the color white? I had to Google it to figure out what titanium dioxide even was,” says Dean Chappell, acting section chief of counterespionage for the FBI. “Then you realize there is a strategy to it.” You can’t even call it spying, adds John Carlin, the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice’s national security division. “This is theft. And this—stealing the color white—is a very good example of the problem. It’s not a national security secret. It’s about stealing something you can make a buck off of. It’s part of a strategy to profit off what American ingenuity creates.”

posted by Fizz at 2:01 PM PST - 58 comments

Drone flight over (and in) the ruins of Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers. (SLYT, 2:25) (via)
posted by immlass at 1:58 PM PST - 13 comments

What is Design Fiction?

"the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change. That’s the best definition we’ve come up with. The important word there is diegetic. It means you’re thinking very seriously about potential objects and services and trying to get people to concentrate on those rather than entire worlds or political trends or geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories." — Bruce Sterling

Examples of Diegetic Prototypes in Design Fiction. [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam at 1:50 PM PST - 13 comments

On February 2, 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released new guidelines advising all sexually active women to abstain from alcohol unless they are on birth control. The recommendation and related infographic were quickly criticized. [more inside]
posted by melissasaurus at 1:35 PM PST - 162 comments

On February 5, 1916, 100 years ago today, the Cabaret Voltaire opened in Zurich, Switzerland, marking the beginning of Dada. Happy birthday, Dada! [more inside]
posted by larrybob at 1:01 PM PST - 25 comments

Full cast radio adaptations of The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye, The High Window, and three more Raymond Chandler mysteries. Starring Toby Stephens as Philip Marlowe.
posted by Iridic at 12:07 PM PST - 32 comments

In 1980, Menahem Golan showed us a harrowing vision of the power of rock...in 1994 The Apple is a futuristic, dystopian disco rock musical that also manages to be a druggy, sexy biblical allegory. [more inside]
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:51 AM PST - 44 comments

Jury rigged Skylab fix alien satellites fall marathon man disaster refugees ubiquitous. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:50 AM PST - 7 comments

First broadcast on Feb 5th 1924, the BBC's Greenwitch Time Signal has collected some history. The pips have marked the hour with six (or seven) beeps for over 90 years. Sometimes the pips arrive on time, but the merely human announcers "crash the pips" by talking over them. Sometimes, the pips go missing entirely, throwing the BBC and its listeners off-kilter. In 2014, Radio 4 celebrated their 90th birthday in musical fashion. A short medley of announcers playing with, swearing at, and missing the pips (via). [more inside]
posted by BungaDunga at 11:28 AM PST - 24 comments

Are you looking for a world of progressive and psychedelic music? Look no further than Psyche Music aka Prog/Psych/Advanced Music Reviews and Psychefolk aka Psyche Van Het Folk. The sites are old, so beware of dead links, but there's also more online now than there was when Progressive.Homestead.com was first linked on the blue, over a decade ago. Now hear Metin Alatli's "Alamooga Esinlenmeler" for 34 minutes of "early 70s Moog-madness" from Turkey.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 AM PST - 4 comments

SLYT: Centriphone - an iPhone video experiment by Nicolas Vuignier
posted by Aizkolari at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

"For over a decade, architecture students at Rural Studio, Auburn University's design-build program in a tiny town in West Alabama, have worked on a nearly impossible problem. How do you design a home that someone living below the poverty line can afford, but that anyone would want—while also providing a living wage for the local construction team that builds it?" Now Rural Studio has a prototype it's trying to bring to market, and it's hitting its biggest challenge yet: how to fit its small, efficient, inexpensive houses into an infrastructure that has no place for them.
posted by sciatrix at 10:44 AM PST - 69 comments

The Melvins-Big Business merger crushes the entire Houdini album live. Watch them play Night Goat and just try not to flip over your desk. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 10:03 AM PST - 23 comments

Striped pyjama squids are the latest addition to the Monterey Bay Acquarium's Tentacles exhibit.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:56 AM PST - 18 comments

ProbablyRichard spends an hour discussing the PC adventure game Limbo of the Lost. A game so bad and so terribly produced that "when the plagiarism was first discovered, many were incredulous that the developers could actually get away with such blatant copyright violation. Some posited that it may be an ARG (Alternate Reality Game)." and was eventually disowned by every person associated with it.
posted by boo_radley at 9:54 AM PST - 7 comments

The English are famous for complaining about the weather, but this is nothing new. Nearly a thousand years ago, an unknown musician set down a single verse that still carries heartfelt sadness about the longeurs of winter, leaving us a wistful window into existence, art and society in the early medieval years. Decoding the earliest surviving secular song in English.
posted by Devonian at 9:36 AM PST - 12 comments

Missing Jon Stewart. Trevor Noah is smooth and charming, but he hasn’t found his edge.
posted by four panels at 8:17 AM PST - 72 comments

"Members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology tore apart NASA's Journey to Mars initiative, claiming the program needs a much more defined plan and clear, achievable milestones to work. Those in attendance also doubted the feasibility of a long-term Mars mission; they cited the massive amount of money needed for the trip — much more than NASA currently receives year to year — as well as a significant leap in technological development. Because of these enormous challenges, a few witnesses at the hearing suggested that NASA either rethink its approach or divert its attention to a Moon mission instead."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:52 AM PST - 89 comments

The NYPD is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven’t Committed a Crime via ProPublica and the New York Daily News.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:47 AM PST - 24 comments

A remodeled wall-climbing toy by Y_Nakajima. Production details (with GIFs), Twitter, and Pixiv.
posted by automatic cabinet at 7:41 AM PST - 8 comments

BREAKING: Royal with sword attacks popular musician, all applaud! [more inside]
posted by eriko at 7:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed. (SLWAPO)
posted by josher71 at 7:12 AM PST - 47 comments

In the ISS there are two Astro Pi computers, Ed and Izzy, equipped with Sense HATs, two different camera modules (visual and IR), and stored in rather special cases. They are now running code written by UK school children - the winners of a competition. The data will be feeding back soon! [more inside]
posted by Stark at 6:58 AM PST - 3 comments

BMX icon Dave Mirra dead at 41. [more inside]
posted by Huck500 at 6:56 AM PST - 16 comments

The Malware Museum (archive.org) is a collection of malware programs, usually viruses, that were distributed in the 1980s and 1990s on home computers. Once they infected a system, they would sometimes show animation or messages that you had been infected. Through the use of emulations, and additionally removing any destructive routines within the viruses, this collection allows you to experience virus infection of decades ago with safety.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 6:36 AM PST - 18 comments

Wargaming the Defense of the Baltics. As Presently Postured, NATO Cannot Successfully Defend the Territory of its Most Exposed Members. [more inside]
posted by Roger_Mexico at 5:37 AM PST - 79 comments

The shadow leader of the House of Commons, Chris Bryant , has joined calls for the Tom Jones song Delilah to be banned from Six Nations rugby matches because it incites violence against women. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 5:25 AM PST - 47 comments

Despite the name games, airline food hasn't changed much. Economy class meals still come in a wrapper, and business or first-class meals come with real cutlery. This list shows the sometimes striking difference between what the different classes eat.
posted by heyho at 4:41 AM PST - 63 comments

Maurice White, Earth, Wind & Fire Singer and Co-Founder, Dead at 74
posted by ogooglebar at 7:43 PM PST - 65 comments

It began as a strange post on the Redskins's subreddit outlining the secret to quarterback Kirk Cousins's talent: faithfulness to his wife, Julie. This has spun off into an entire community celebrating the couple, which is currently excited about a touching moment from Kirk's AMA today. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla at 6:29 PM PST - 32 comments

The Guardian: It's not about sex, it's about identity: why furries are unique among fan cultures: Furries tend to get a bad rap as perverse fetishists when in reality, the subculture is about playful escapism and a fascination with what links humans to animals [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:03 PM PST - 55 comments

'The Story Behind The Most Creative Job Application We've Ever Seen' Étienne Duval is a thirty year old architect who wants to work with Bjarke Ingels at B.I.G. ... 'To catch a big fish you need a big hook! I began this application like an architectural project, by finding the key criteria and playing with it. A cover letter is an ego trip, so I thought about this hip hop video clips and told myself "why wouldn't I do the same?" A short interview with Etienne Duval at ArchDaily
posted by honey-barbara at 4:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Prominent Black Lives Matter member DeRay McKesson has announced that he is entering the Baltimore Democratic Mayoral Primary; McKesson is the 13th candidate to enter the race. The Baltimore Sun has the story, along with follow-up coverage of how the news is being received. The story is also being reported in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Root, and Slate.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:40 PM PST - 44 comments

Jazz and hip-hop drummer Karriem Riggins and acclaimed DJ, J.Rocc collaborate in a 360° video where they put a live spin on two tunes from their dearly departed collaborator, J Dilla (previously: 1 2) -- "Lightworks" and "E=MC^2" [more inside]
posted by raihan_ at 3:40 PM PST - 4 comments

Why do so many Americans live in mobile homes?
posted by Michele in California at 3:18 PM PST - 137 comments

Toddler GoPro Hide-and-Seek
A mom, a dad, a kid, a camera, and a very special appearance by Ollie the dog!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:05 PM PST - 13 comments

Make new friends. There's an app for that. (SLHP)
posted by Sophie1 at 1:47 PM PST - 47 comments

The epic uncool of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:39 PM PST - 27 comments

Trump Donald: This is absolutely tremendous.
posted by Guy Dudeman at 11:30 AM PST - 60 comments

How abortion opponents secretly bought a Va. abortion clinic to deceive women. (WaPost) Just five minutes after signing the final papers at closing, the doctor called her office to check her messages. “Triple A Women for Choice,” a voice answered. The doctor thought she made a mistake and redialed. “Triple A Women for Choice,” the voice said again. Whoever bought her practice had the phones forwarded to the pregnancy center within minutes of the sale, before the lawyers even had a chance to close their briefcases.
posted by OmieWise at 10:56 AM PST - 48 comments

On February 3rd, 2016, after more than 14 years, the Free State Project -- an ambitious plan to move 20,000 freedom-loving, law-hating people into New Hampshire to upend its political system and bring about a libertarian utopia -- has reached its 20K threshold of pledges to move, thereby "triggering the move" for the 90-plus percent of FSPers who declared their intention to relocate but haven't yet. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:14 AM PST - 71 comments

19 Historical photographs of well known places in San Francisco. Use the sliders to see them today. (SLGuardian).
posted by immlass at 9:52 AM PST - 21 comments

Want to decorate your hunting lodge or baronial hall without feeling too guilty? Crochet taxidermy to the rescue! [more inside]
posted by Quietgal at 9:32 AM PST - 19 comments

Chronicle of Higher Ed: U. of Iowa Doesn’t Know Why Its Fight Song Blares From an Empty Building in Niagara Falls "A University of Iowa spokesman said on Tuesday that he had 'no clue' why the university’s fight song is being played, week after week, in a vacant building in Niagara Falls, NY. The mystery was first reported by the Niagara Gazette, which says the song has been repeated on a loop, for several hours at a time, on 'most nights for roughly six months.'" [more inside]
posted by capricorn at 8:49 AM PST - 50 comments

Former Friends star Matt LeBlanc is to be one of the new presenters of Top Gear when the motoring programme returns to BBC Two in May.
posted by veedubya at 8:22 AM PST - 85 comments

"The rich Jewish traditions in the city of Uzhhorod were all but wiped out by Nazi death camps and decades of Soviet rule. Now one born-and-bred New Yorker aims to bring them back, one perfectly browned challah at a time." "Bringing a Bite of Old Brooklyn to Ukraine," by János Chialá, Tali Mayer, and Ilya Ginzburg.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:56 AM PST - 24 comments

"The goal is to give those in uniform the peace of mind that if they are hurt on the battlefield — hundreds of veterans suffered injuries to their reproductive organs in Iraq and Afghanistan — they would still be able to have children." (NYTimes) [more inside]
posted by Mr.Pointy at 7:53 AM PST - 15 comments

Artisanal Integers - Summer of 2012. Suddenly several “integer-as-a-service-providers” spring from nowhere. They deliver “artisanal integers”. Integers which (they claim) are “hand-crafted and guaranteed to be unique and hella-beautiful”.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:34 AM PST - 78 comments

This is in response to repeated requests on the grey for puppy theater FPPs.
In 1986, Dutch performing artist Wim T. Schippers put up his stageplay "Going to the Dogs", performed entirely by canines. It's available on Youtube in seven parts (poor quality video). Apparently, questions were raised in parliament.
posted by bleston hamilton station at 4:02 AM PST - 8 comments

St. Louis turns to predictive policing software: "At a time when communities are crying out for justice," Crockford told me, "I never heard anyone in one of these communities say, ‘I think police need to use more computers!’"
posted by MoonOrb at 10:06 PM PST - 23 comments

The Food Surgeon 4 minutes and 33 seconds of exactly what the title says. Do not try this at home without a medical degree and sterile conditions.
posted by HuronBob at 8:57 PM PST - 51 comments

Stephen King On What Hollywood Owes Authors When Their Books Become Films: Question & Answer by Mike Fleming Jr. [Deadline] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:03 PM PST - 101 comments

A series of experiments in mice has led to what some are calling “one of the more important aging discoveries ever." [more inside]
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:14 PM PST - 53 comments

The "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy... Suicide Squad Style! (SLYT)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:28 PM PST - 15 comments

Unleash your Power Animal. Hover you mouse over the picture. When you feel the primal move you, click to learn your Power Animal. You can even hear its song in FULL SYNTH GLORY! [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:44 PM PST - 57 comments

When Bat Guano created "The Bat Guano's SwaG! Radio Program," he used ingredients specially blended for listenability. All of the notes created by the finest musicians are in most of the songs he broadcasts. Genres are mixed and matched, compared and contrasted, hitting all the seasons that make it lively for the ears’ tongue. Then it is all lightly breaded and personally dipt in Ranch Dressing by your server, Bat Guano.

SwaG's decades-long run on Western Michigan University's radio station WIDR FM will be ending tonight with a final broadcast from 9:00-11:00 EST, streaming Here or Here. In the mean time, you can listen to the archive on Bat Guano's website. If you're feeling spookey, start with a Halloween episode. More romantic? Valentines ep, right here. otherwise jump right in to any one of his Timeless Broadcasts [more inside]
posted by rebent at 2:23 PM PST - 5 comments

The Man Who Invented(?) Whac-A-Mole Has One More Chance [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Forty years of the Ramones ‘They were the smartest dumb band you ever heard’: Bands from the Sex Pistols to Blondie to Talking Heads recall the Bowery punks’ explosive impact
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:08 PM PST - 38 comments

(Multiple YouTube links) Mike Rugnetta says (via four small, linked interactive YT videos and a 14+ minute presentation worth 40% of his final mark): Personality quizzes draw us in with the promise of telling us something about ourselves, but do they truly succeed? We constantly seek to categorize our world, including ourselves. It gives us a sense of belonging, and can help us to make more sense of our thoughts and feelings. We want to be understood, but do these quizzes actually understand us, or are they simply reaffirming what we already know? [more inside]
posted by maudlin at 1:00 PM PST - 19 comments

After months of fan speculation and adorable photoshoots, it's been officially confirmed that CBS' Supergirl TV series will cross over with the CW's The Flash. [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 12:59 PM PST - 100 comments

Last night FX premiered their true crime adaptation of The People V. O.J. Simpson, based on the Jeffrey Toobin's book The Run of His Life. Marcia Clark, a prosecutor in the case, has given an interview to Vox on, "on What Episode One of The People v. O.J. Simpson Got Right and Wrong". Briefly, Clark covers how the prosecutorial team considered race, liberties the show takes, her perception in the media circus the trial would inspire, the aftermath of the case (including O.J.'s later incarceration), and the meaning of the trial in the present day.
posted by codacorolla at 12:37 PM PST - 41 comments

Bob Elliott, the legendary radio comedian has passed away at 92. It all began in Boston in the late 1940s, when Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding started goofing around on the air during rain delays of Red Sox games. Soon, they were a hit nationally as well, with such well known characters as Wally Ballou the long-suffering radio newsman and the adventures of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. Bob and Ray's comedy career spanned decades until Goulding's death in 1990. [more inside]
posted by briank at 12:29 PM PST - 77 comments

Ever wish you could watch the Super Bowl Big Game with your favorite sketch comedy artists? This Sunday, you'll get your chance as Key & Peele have announced that they will host a live video broadcast during Super Bowl L Super Bowl 50 the Big Game. Due to legal restrictions, however, the duo are not allowed to say any of the players' names or mention the game at all. Technically an ad for Squarespace, the stream will mostly consist of the duo riffing and "talking around the game." (Key and Peele previously.)
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 11:25 AM PST - 61 comments

Do you feel like you need more culture in your life? Well, then you should head down to The Tiny Gallery on Twitter! Brought to you by emoji, ASCII, and @deer_ful. [more inside]
posted by ignignokt at 11:21 AM PST - 2 comments

Behold The Frinkiac, a search engine that matches Simpsons quotes to exact screen grabs. Sure, it looks impressive, but I predict that within 10 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the 5 richest kings of Europe will own them.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 11:06 AM PST - 95 comments

An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him "I was once a Coates fan", writes Cedric Johnson in Jacobin. Johnson criticizes Coates for his black nationalism at the expense of class based identification.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:15 AM PST - 124 comments

Dreams of Dalí is a 360º video that takes you inside Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's "Angelus" into a surreal world, featuring some notable motifs from other paintings , such as Weaning of Furniture Nutrition (1934), Lobster Telephone (1936) and First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain (1973), set to a soundscape with audio of Salvador Dalí and a bit of Halo of Flies by Alice Cooper. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:09 AM PST - 10 comments

Reading a barrage of violent comments and threats doesn’t make me want to retaliate. It doesn’t make me want to fire back at those guys with the same hate and rage that they spewed my direction about me and the rest of my gender. It makes me want to censor myself. It makes me hesitant to write certain jokes. Could this tweet make hundreds of men tell me I belong locked in their closet? Will this idea I’m putting out there also end in threats of rape or murder?

Is That a Threat?, by Alison Leiby for The Lighthouse.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:28 AM PST - 88 comments

A Colleague Drank My Breast Milk And Other Wall Street Tales I kept the conversation light. I shared a funny story about my first day on Wall Street, when I opened up a pizza box to find condoms instead of pepperoni slices. Unwrapped. I was “the new girl,” and the guys just wanted to see me blush. I did blush, and I lived. “It’s not that bad anymore,” I said with a laugh. [more inside]
posted by triggerfinger at 8:38 AM PST - 38 comments

Melissa Harris-Perry recounts her terrifying experience in Iowa on Monday night, on a #WaketheVote trip with her political science students.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:17 AM PST - 51 comments

Dickey’s poetry made him famous, the nation’s poet laureate. But Deliverance catapulted him into the stratosphere, where he was toasted all the way from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in Hollywood to the presidential inauguration in 1977. For decades, the themes of the story had haunted the native Georgian. It started with canoe and hunting trips in the 1950s. “I love the woods and I love wild nature,” he said in a short studio documentary produced to accompany the film’s release. He envisioned a battle between man and nature in which man summons within himself courage he never knew he had.
posted by veedubya at 8:09 AM PST - 17 comments

Norm Kelly, 74, has been Councillor of Ward 40, the Scarborough—Agincourt neighbourhoods in Toronto, for over 20 years. So how has he gained the adoration of thousands of adolescents and young adults in the Toronto area and afar who affectionately call him 'dad'? [more inside]
posted by fizzix at 7:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Afterdark | + | Jet Plastic | 80 Proof Midnights and 98 Octane Noons | Day 4 | Hope |
| NEED | FIXED | STATIC | Speed | Funky Mustache | Nightmoves | Tesla | 70/80 |
The neon landscape of Valenberg, via 8bitDash.com
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:17 AM PST - 3 comments

The Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy announced the first government initiative in Europe to develop a legal and regulatory framework on the future ownership of minerals extracted from objects in space, such as asteroids.
posted by adept256 at 5:42 AM PST - 93 comments

When he died this week at the age of 44, Benoit Violier was considered by many to be one of the top chefs in the world, presiding over the three-Michelin-star Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville Crissier near Lausanne, Switzerland. His death is the second suicide of a successful, high-profile young chef this year. [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:36 AM PST - 24 comments

Ten eight under-the-radar websites every film buff should know about [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 8:04 PM PST - 11 comments

history of japan in 9 minutes by bill wurtz
posted by gen at 8:03 PM PST - 41 comments

“We wanted this to be fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also to have legitimate scientific data backing it up, "Why are some faces seen as truly expressionless, but others are inexplicably off-putting? What, exactly, makes us register a seemingly neutral expression as RBF?" (Washington Post link.) [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:24 PM PST - 106 comments

NFL Bad Lip Reading 2016, part 1. (2015, 2014, Etc.) [more inside]
posted by numaner at 6:08 PM PST - 20 comments

John Green discusses the gender pay gap (SLYT)
posted by Adamsmasher at 5:54 PM PST - 17 comments

Whence gqom, for the West?
January, 2016? Gqom Oh! The Sound of Durban is the first full-length, high-quality audio compilation of the scene and you can stream it on Bandcamp for free. Jake Hulyer profiles the scene and album, and suggests that gqom : kwaito:: footwork : ghetto house. Kwanele Sosibo breaks the style down in more detail. [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 5:13 PM PST - 8 comments

A painting commissioned for the firm’s hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, “Transport Through the Ages,” hung above the reception desk. Bouvier insists that he never used confidential information from his logistics business to buy and sell paintings. None of the thirty-five works that he sold Rybolovlev were in storage with Natural Le Coultre. “I have the information not because I am a shipper,” he said. “It is because I am clever.”

The high-end of the art market is full of mystery, built on trust, reputation, and secrecy. What happens when someone starts turning all of that on its head? An art shipper, Russian oligarch, and a Rothko in The Bouvier Affair. (Sam Knight, for The New Yorker)
posted by redct at 3:57 PM PST - 12 comments

In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a massively popular BBC sitcom called Are You Being Served, about the “antics” of the staff of the Grace Brothers department store ... [One of the main characters] was devoted to her cat, Tiddles. She would regale her colleagues each day with tales of its various misfortunes, and was always keen to finish work on time to get home and attend to its catly needs. She rarely called the moggy by its proper name, though – it was always referred to as “my pussy”.

A tribute to Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy.
posted by tocts at 2:07 PM PST - 73 comments

Single-Serving Recipes [via mefi projects]. Does what it says on the tin.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:02 PM PST - 42 comments

In honor of its latest flight transporting the Orion capsule to the Kennedy Space Center, let's consider the world's most bulbous plane, NASA's Super Guppy.

The Super Guppy has a cargo area that is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long. The jumbo plane can carry over 26 tons worth of cargo and is often used by NASA to ferry large components around the country that would take too long (or be impossible) to ship by land or by sea.

[more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 1:06 PM PST - 51 comments

Trying to Separate Bill Cosby From Cliff Huxtable by Rachel L. Swarns [The New York Times]

"It was hard then to know where Dr. Huxtable ended and Mr. Cosby began. Mr. Cosby inhabited the role so completely that for a long time I thought character and creator were pretty much one and the same, at least until the allegations of rape began surfacing with increasing frequency. Then I went from feeling certain that Mr. Cosby was just like Dr. Huxtable, to wondering whether Mr. Cosby was like Dr. Huxtable, to desperately hoping that Mr. Cosby was the devoted family man I once thought he had been."

posted by Fizz at 12:23 PM PST - 101 comments

Martha Wash was sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room, furious and confused. It was late 1990 and the singer, relaxing before a show that night, had decided to unwind with some channel surfing. She stumbled upon a new music video by Italian house group Black Box, whose synth lines, horn stabs and pulsating, club-tailored drum patterns had already made them dance music stars. When the song's vocals kicked in, she was shocked to see French model Katrin Quinol, the ex-girlfriend of founding member Daniele Davoli, bending over and crouching in a unitard, lip-syncing Wash's vocals to the eventual hit "Everybody Everybody." - Martha Wash: The Most Famous Unknown Singer of the '90s Speaks Out (Rolling Stone) [more inside]
posted by duffell at 12:16 PM PST - 28 comments

Grindhouse Star Wars (slyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:01 PM PST - 15 comments

Army and Marine Corps chiefs: It’s time for women to register for the draft The top officers in the Army and Marine Corps testified on Tuesday that they believe it is time for women to register for future military drafts, following the Pentagon’s recent decision to open all jobs in combat units to female service members.
posted by pjsky at 10:48 AM PST - 157 comments

It's a legal, natural plant that has been used in Asian medicine for centuries. Indeed, a growing number of Americans are finding it to be a useful alternative to heroin and prescription pain relievers. But of course, there's a catch. Like the opioid drugs it is used to replace, this stuff can be addictive, and it can also cause serious nausea. Unlike other opioids, however, it seems to have an extremely low overdose risk, which has caught the eye of people working to fight the record high level of overdose deaths. It's called kratom. MeFi's Own Maia Szalavitz for Vice News. [more inside]
posted by porn in the woods at 10:23 AM PST - 32 comments

Frederick Seidel’s poems of age and experience. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:05 AM PST - 4 comments

Sia Furler's forthcoming album, This Is Acting, has a novel concept: It's full of songs rejected by A-list artists
posted by josher71 at 10:04 AM PST - 30 comments

Two years ago, when Oregon parents Jill Brown and Jason Young met Brad and Tricia Salyers, the families had no idea that they would eventually be sharing in a tragedy that sickened four of the Salyers’ children and left Brown and Young’s youngest child, Kylee – 23 months old at the time – with such severe medical complications that she would need a kidney transplant from her mother. All of that and more happened beginning in April 2012 when the children were among 19 people – 15 of them under the age of 19 — who fell ill with E. coli O157:H7, a potentially fatal foodborne pathogen. Soon after, Oregon health officials determined that the outbreak was caused by raw milk from Foundation Farm near Wilsonville in Western Oregon — the Salyers’ family farm. Four of the sickened children were hospitalized with kidney failure. Foundation Farm had been providing 48 families with raw milk. Raw milk is milk that hasn’t been pasteurized to kill harmful and sometimes deadly foodborne pathogens such as E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella and Campylobacter.
posted by Blasdelb at 9:46 AM PST - 76 comments

Colin Hanson, aka Active_ate, goes through the original (fan-translated) version of Final Fantasy V with only a single Time Mage character, and provides complete, exhaustive details of how this feat was achieved: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. From retrogaming enthusiast site Skirmishfrogs. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:06 AM PST - 16 comments