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“what's up buddies my book comes out next month and I'm also transitioning (you don't have to buy the book just bc of that though) (transitioning genders in case that wasn't clear) (this is terrifying lol)” Within a few months, Ortberg plans to start using a male name and pronouns publicly. Article from Autostraddle on Ortberg’s book and coming out. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 8:26 PM PST - 70 comments

Six Degrees Of Wikipedia By Jacob Wenger.
posted by carter at 8:09 PM PST - 29 comments

"Some small, selfish part of you cannot believe that you have to put up with this shit." Parent as a Verb: Mommy Rage, a single-link graphic howl from Emily Flake and The New Yorker.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:37 PM PST - 68 comments

Extreme II Pornograffitti (A Funked Up Fairy Tale) was a 1990 funk-tinged 90s melodic metal/rock album that set the idea of the Sophomore Album Slump on its head. A loose concept album about greed and desire [YT album post, 1h5m], the themes it explores sadly haven't evolved much if at all in 28 years. Side A: Decadence Dance [video], L'il Jack Horny, When I'm President, Get The Funk Out [video], More Than Words [video], Money (In God We Trust) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:13 PM PST - 37 comments

A music video for "Dried Fruit," from the "just sexy grooves and funky bass lines" band, Breastfist. CW: extremely large images of dried fruit. From Breastfist's history: Years passed, more band members, killer shows, cathartic jams, ripping guitar solos, magical stanky synth odysseys, creamy vocal spreads, sweaty dance parties, flightless bird freak outs, trash bag filled with unitards, fans being all “you guys are my favorite band!”, exposed midriffs, adult incontinence products, a mushroom penis, a few Facebook likes, more songs, more years…
posted by the_blizz at 5:51 PM PST - 1 comment

DAVID LYNCH TEACHES TYPING. HELLO THERE KIDDO! DO YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO TYPE? PUT YOUR FINGERS ON THE "HOME ROW." USE YOUR "LEFT INDEX FINGER" AND PRESS THE F KEY. [more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Rescued octopuses have been known to thank their benefactors. But stuck gophers and drowned prairie dogs just scamper away.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Today, Walt Disney Animation Studios dropped the teaser trailer for Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet. Much like the first film was a love letter/affectionate parody of games and game culture, the trailer shows that the sequel will do the same for online culture. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:16 PM PST - 35 comments

Jen Simmons, Mozilla Designer and Developer Advocate, is publishing a great youtube channel called "Layout Land", full of valuable information and guidance in how to use the latest CSS techniques. It provides detailed information in how to use them, but also how to make sure they are accessible and useful for all browsers and users. Great stuff if you're a web designer or developer.
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:34 PM PST - 17 comments

“I’ve seen stand-offs between the crows and the parrots,” he says, “large flocks of each. Mostly, they just yell at each other.” Mixed flocks of naturalized green parrots and parakeets have become a well-known sight around San Diego. Theories abound as to how they arrived. While occasionally noisy and disruptive, they have a variety of fans, including SoCal Parrot, a rescue org (Audubon link, with beautiful parrot photos).
posted by Existential Dread at 2:25 PM PST - 20 comments

Canada Modern is a physical and digital archive of Canadian graphic design, with modernism central to its glowing heart.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:51 PM PST - 19 comments

Plastic-free supermarket aisle opens in the Netherlands (SL Guardian) Co-founder of campaign leading development says, “There is absolutely no logic in wrapping something as fleeting as food in something as indestructible as plastic. Plastic food and drink packaging remains useful for a matter of days yet remains a destructive presence on the Earth for centuries afterwards.”
posted by stillmoving at 11:48 AM PST - 64 comments

As we canter through the last century of humanity and the north pole becomes the next/last winter tropical destination, so Europe gets very cold. In the United Kingdom, as forecasts proliferate, trains were cancelled, drivers used boiling water and shoppers stayed in as high street chains continue to collapse. At universities, academics protest while ... others ... gathered; in Londonium, bygone creatures are seen and heard, and commuters struggle bravely on. Elsewhere, in moor-cavvie weather, as scandal hits fine dining the city of scary barmaids is being covered while Plowo Nutini is "deployed" and residents prepare. Stay safe: avoid trains, help homeless shelter, check on the elderly and neighbours, feed birds, look after pets and treat staff well. (historical perspective)
posted by Wordshore at 10:09 AM PST - 238 comments

Meg Rowley at Fangraphs reviewed all the baseball ejections of 2017, and breaks them down for us. (My favorite is the Uncle Frank Face in post I.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:01 AM PST - 22 comments

Why I'm Writing Captain America, and why it scares the hell out of me - Ta-Nehisi Coates on relaunching the iconic character (along with artist Leinil Yu).
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM PST - 47 comments

The bizarre "cover songs for babies" business is booming [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:26 AM PST - 59 comments

William Eggleston, photographer, on the music that made him a legend The 78-year-old, whose work has graced album covers for Spoon, Big Star, and Joanna Newsom, talks about the music that has meant the most to him, five years at a time. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:54 AM PST - 6 comments

Women of The Not Too Distant Future: Female Fandom and Figures in Mystery Science Theater 3000
posted by Chrysostom at 8:27 AM PST - 12 comments

It started with a simple question: which one do you save?
posted by rewil at 8:02 AM PST - 57 comments

This week in Washington is all about testing limits.
Hope Hicks' testimony before the House Intelligence committee tested the limits of executive privilege.
Jared Kushner tested the limits of his provisional security clearance, and flunked.
Robert Mueller's investigation tested the limits set by Republicansby digging into Trump's business deals with Russians and his 2013 activities around the Miss Universe Pageant.
Meanwhile, Americans tested the limits of their prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:53 AM PST - 1801 comments

The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’. Surprisingly often, they’re copied from mayo jars and famous cookbooks.
posted by gudrun at 7:51 AM PST - 107 comments

Slow Thought: a manifesto (Vincenzo di Nicola, Aeon).
posted by sapagan at 7:46 AM PST - 3 comments

I Heard it Round and Round the Grapevine. A mashup of Ratt's "Round and Round" and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", a combination that works better than one might expect. (slyt)
posted by fings at 7:37 AM PST - 15 comments

"Set in the haute-couture world of 1950s London, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film “Phantom Thread” brings a renowned fashion designer and a young waitress into a weird codependency. The insinuating and expressive score by Jonny Greenwood — with its blend of Minimalist-like riffs, eerie harmonies, alluring melodic lines you don’t quite trust, and piercing chords that leap about aimlessly — conveys both the posh glamour of the designer’s world and his inner obsessions." How Jonny Greenwood Wove the ‘Phantom Thread’ Score [more inside]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:36 AM PST - 11 comments

Moody's downgrades Gibson's bonds to Caa3. Is the 100+ year-old guitar company falling apart? [more inside]
posted by aspersioncast at 7:29 AM PST - 59 comments

Five Books: The best books on military strategy recommended by Dr. Antulio Echevarria II of the US Army War College. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:03 AM PST - 15 comments

A step forward in body diversity makes it all the more noticeable when yours is the shape that’s still not being served. [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:54 AM PST - 70 comments

Talk is cheap: the myth of the focus group
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:35 AM PST - 22 comments

The Waste Management Phoenix Open is explored by Spencer Hall in a gonzo piece for SBNation.
posted by batmonkey at 8:58 PM PST - 21 comments

What's a best friend for? They listen when you work through life's big questions. They support your plans for the future. They comfort you just by being there. They help you look your best. They give you space to do your own thing. They don't rat you out to Santa. They affirm your accompishments. And they help you deal with monsters under the bed. Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs explore the bonds of friendship between a boy and his tiger.
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Star Wars Rebels [Mid Season 4 Trailer] [Contains Spoilers] “The end begins when Star Wars Rebels returns with its final episodes.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:52 PM PST - 40 comments

Summer Luvin by the Buttzz. Punk/garage/rock from Bloomington, Indiana. Buttzz by the Buttzz at Buttzz Bandcamp. Hat tip to Iggy Confidential.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 4:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Wisdom, the oldest known wild bird, has yet again successfully hatched a chick on Midway Island. She is 67 years old, and most Laysan Albatrosses only successfully nest every other year, yet this is Wisdom's 13th successful hatch in a row. Chandler Robbins, the citizen scientist who first banded her, and then found her again 46 years later, died last year at the age of 98, still working with birds until the last at Patuxent Research Refuge.
posted by tavella at 3:27 PM PST - 11 comments

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history: Michael B. Jordan Brings Ray Bradbury's Haunting Dystopia to Life in the First Trailer for Fahrenheit 451. [Trailer]
posted by not_the_water at 12:53 PM PST - 82 comments

“Aside from improving wages and working conditions across campaigns, one of the biggest impacts of the CWG’s (Campaign Workers Guild) efforts could be establishing an industry-standard policy for dealing with sexual assault and harassment.“ 3 Democratic Campaigns Now Have Staff Unions. Why Not More? (In These Times)
posted by The Whelk at 11:57 AM PST - 5 comments

This year the Gates Letter answers 10 tough questions. [more inside]
posted by bonehead at 11:53 AM PST - 44 comments

Imprisoned for disseminated false weather forecasts to sabotage socialist agriculture, Alexey Wangenheim sent his family beautiful watercolor paintings of nature with his letters, while continuing to support the Party that imprisoned him in the Solovetsky Monastery, Russia's first gulag. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:05 AM PST - 9 comments

Wirecutter: Why We Don't Recommend you get an Air Fryer
posted by storybored at 10:48 AM PST - 75 comments

Nonprofit Fight for the Future has planned a day of protest regarding net neutrality. Under the name Operation #OneMoreVote, today, Feb. 27, rallies are planned to take place outside key lawmakers' offices around the country (more detail at The Hill). The organization is also pushing for individuals and businesses to contact their local representatives. Why? To use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the FCC's recent vote to repeal net neutrality. If this CRA can gain one more vote in the Senate, which will need to come from a Republican senator, the measure will move to the House where it again will need a simple majority before being passed to the President. Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is defending the FCC's vote, insisting that "the online experience is going to continue to get better."
posted by mr_bovis at 10:01 AM PST - 10 comments

The 'mullet' consists of short hair on the front and sides, and long hair on the back. A festival has concluded in Kurri Kurri, Australia. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 9:58 AM PST - 45 comments

Last month, White House official Dan Scavino said chain migration was “choking” America. “So Dan,” genealogist Jennifer Mendelsohn wrote on Twitter, “Let’s say Victor Scavino arrives from Canelli, Italy in 1904, then brother Hector in 1905, brother Gildo in 1912, sister Esther in 1913, & sister Clotilde and their father Giuseppe in 1916, and they live together in NY. Do you think that would count as chain migration?” Your selective memory on your family history will do you no good, because the genealogists are coming for you.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:47 AM PST - 45 comments

"I supported Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. Now I think it may have made things worse."What if the Iran Deal Was a Mistake?, Joshua Keating, Slate [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:14 AM PST - 34 comments

MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies Special Digital Collection. It's a presentation of the Center's collection of 20th century art as a 3-D "virtual museum". Start scrolling, branch off onto specific topics, and get lost -- just like in a real museum! (h/t The Outline.)
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:15 AM PST - 4 comments

A staggering number of golf balls wind up in the ocean. What happens to them?
posted by zarq at 6:47 AM PST - 32 comments

Mentour got started early to become a commercial pilot by 20 and a 737 captain by 25. Now he works as a training captain and makes videos for trainee pilots and curious passengers alike: Do aircraft have horns?, A pilot's worst nightmare?, What can't you walk under the wings?, Dating flight attendants?, How dangerous are bird strikes? , The many reasons why we don't hand out parachutes, Turbulence fears: lost wings versus coffee scalds ... [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 5:09 AM PST - 7 comments

The teen survivors of the high school shooting in Florida are doing something amazing. They may finally be the ones to change the debate around gun control. Due to their media savvy, they have kept the issue in the news cycle for longer than any other shooting. There's going to be a march on March 24, 2018 in several cities. Maybe this shooting is the one that turns the tide. [more inside]
posted by honey badger at 4:59 AM PST - 153 comments

The Tragedy of GJ237b: A role-playing game for no players by Caitlynn Belle and Ben Lehman.
posted by juv3nal at 11:17 PM PST - 37 comments

A history of boxing, with special attention to women fighters. And here's an article specifically about 18th century female contenders: Georgian Bruisers
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:23 PM PST - 3 comments

English singer Seal sort of burst onto the scene in 1991 with the ZTT label and Trevor Horn produced album Seal. Side A: The Beginning [video], Deep Water, Crazy [video}, Killer, Whirlpool
No this isn't the album with Kiss From A Rose On it. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:53 PM PST - 16 comments

Meet Mr. Toilet Think shit is something you shouldn’t talk about? Think again. Why the “unglamorous” world of sanitation deserves more attention—yes, even from you.
posted by ocherdraco at 7:58 PM PST - 9 comments

“It used to be, men wanted abs and maybe arms,” he said. “Now, really, it's almost like they don't care about adding anything; they just want to see what they have.” Overall leanness.
posted by oprahgayle at 7:49 PM PST - 80 comments

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is most famous for his iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa. But he produced a huge body of work, including a little-known how-to book: 略画早指南, or Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawings, a manual in three parts. Volume I breaks every drawing down into simple geometric shapes; volume II decomposes them into fragmentary contours; and volume III neatly diagrams each stroke and the order in which they were drawn. [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 7:03 PM PST - 25 comments

From the maker of The Soy Bomb™ (which turned twenty years old yesterday) comes Wrixling, "a new form of one-on-one, online Participatory-Psychic-Scrambling! ... Wrixling was created to re-scale, off-rail, and side-soup that negligible entity formerly known as 'self'."'''.`/. Meet your new DirBs.
posted by not_on_display at 6:40 PM PST - 16 comments

Dogs In Food is a charming Instagram account: It all started with this picture of a Pomeranian peeking out from inside a cream puff, which is a match made in (all dogs go to) heaven. After all, a Pomeranian is already pretty much just a giant ball of fluff, and a cream puff is basically the pastry version of a ball of fluff. We dare you to look at that face and not smile.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:28 PM PST - 17 comments

Into the Breach [YouTube] [Launch Trailer] “Into the Breach is a turn-based strategy game, along the lines of the Advance Wars series, where players control futuristic mechs fighting off an invasion of giant, bug-like alien monsters. It’s basically Pacific Rim crossed with XCOM, and it’s from the creators of the addictive spaceship simulator FTL: Faster Than Light. If any of those words sound appealing to you, you’re going to like Into the Breach a lot. The game takes place in a future on the brink of disaster. Much of humanity has been decimated by the kaiju invasion, with isolated pockets of survivors strewn across four different islands. You control a team of three mechs traveling to different districts across the islands, clearing them of bugs before moving on to the next.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:10 PM PST - 43 comments

Haggard Hawks is a web site, web log, twitter feed, YouTube channel, etc., by Paul Anthony Jones, devoted to obscure words, language facts, and etymology. [more inside]
posted by carter at 3:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Earn Marks, Childish Gambino, Troy Barnes... Donald Glover can't save you [New Yorker]. [more inside]
posted by ilicet at 3:17 PM PST - 17 comments

There is a reboot of Queer Eye available on Netflix. The internet has opinions. [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:22 AM PST - 94 comments

In a classic 1991 episode of The Simpsons, Lisa is distraught to learn that her inspirational substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom, is leaving her. With his train ready to leave the station, Mr. Bergstrom writes Lisa a note. "Whenever you feel like you’re alone, and there’s nobody you can rely on, this is all you need to know," he says. Lisa opens the note as Mr. Bergstrom’s train disappears into the distance. It reads, "You are Lisa Simpson." Why Lisa Simpson Matters (cw: eating disorders)
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:09 AM PST - 76 comments

Sounds of Siberia - "How Novosibirsk’s Shalash record label created a beautiful audio world" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:07 AM PST - 6 comments

Doing okay. In the Winter Olympics just concluded, Norway (pop. 5.3 million) surpassed USA's record of most medals won at a single Winter Olympics with 39 (14 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze). “This is our moment, when we can show the world what we are. Although without boasting too much about it, of course. That wouldn’t be very Norwegian.” Their success is based on grass roots sports, and a “no jerks allowed” team policy. “We’re a small country and we kind of all know each other”. Curling pants and when to steal a painting. 'He also admits Norway is blessed with many advantages for Winter Olympics dominance, like snow, a history of excellence in sports like biathlon and cross-country skiing, and free health care, which helps keep young athletic talent in good shape.' (Fanfare)
posted by Wordshore at 4:02 AM PST - 72 comments

Bollywood superstar Sridevi Kapoor has died after suffering a massive cardiac arrest at a family wedding. She was 54. Sridevi was known for her decades-long career, versatility, charm and killer dance moves. Her work spanned many languages and industries. She acted in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada films. [more inside]
posted by orangutan at 8:11 PM PST - 18 comments

The Apples in stereo's Robert Schneider Left Music for Math. Schneider’s domain these days is a small cubicle in the math department at Emory University, where he is a researcher, a teacher, and a sixth-year graduate student. Shortly after I first met him, he showed me around his workspace. Books with titles like Riemann’s Zeta Function and Fermat’s Last Theorem sat neatly in a tall stack with a few comic books. Photos of groundbreaking mathematicians—Srinivasa Ramanujan, G.H. Hardy, Leonhard Euler—were thumbtacked to a partition, just above a shot of Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson. [more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:09 PM PST - 37 comments

Monica Lewinsky: Emerging from “The House of Gaslight” in the Age of #MeToo. On the 20th anniversary of the Starr investigation, which introduced her to the world, the author reflects on the changing nature of trauma, the de-evolution of the media, and the extraordinary hope now provided by the #MeToo movement.
posted by Anonymous at 5:03 PM PST - 70 comments

For Adorno, popular culture is not just bad art—it enslaves us to repetition and robs us of our aesthetic freedom
posted by koavf at 4:28 PM PST - 58 comments

A French Outpost in Africa Strives for Safer, and Stricter, Migration: France is screening asylum applicants before they resort to a dangerous Mediterranean crossing. A select few get plane tickets to Europe. Everyone else is told to stay home (SLNYT, by Adam Nossiter).
posted by crazy with stars at 4:26 PM PST - 1 comment

Ten ways. Brought to you by this person (previously). Check the tag cloud if confused.
posted by queen anne's remorse at 3:58 PM PST - 9 comments

Lost in Space [Netflix] [YouTube] [Official Trailer] The Robinson family, part of a highly trained mission to establish a new colony in space, is unexpectedly pulled off course forcing them to crash land on a lost planet.
posted by Fizz at 3:58 PM PST - 78 comments

Okay, so: Latin has this word, sic. Or, if we want to be more diacritically accurate, sīc. That shows that the i is long, so it’s pronounced like “seek” and not like “sick.”
posted by cgc373 at 2:25 PM PST - 45 comments

Making Championship Curling Ice.
posted by loquacious at 2:24 PM PST - 31 comments

Larry Collins (previously) is not only a ball of fantastic musical energy: in 1958 (at age 13) he arguably cut the first punk record.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:57 PM PST - 17 comments

When Marvin Gaye sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at the 1983 All-Star Game.
posted by terooot at 12:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Paula Abdul parlayed her experience choreographing music videos for a lot of 80s powerhouses into putting out an album of her own which was a giant hit in 1988: Forever Your Girl [~44m]. Side A: The Way That You Love Me [video], Knocked Out [video], Opposites Attract [video], State Of Attraction, I Need You [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:44 PM PST - 36 comments

The Great Big Spotify Scam. Music Business Worldwide tells how two playlists swindled the Spotify's royalty pool in at least one million Dollars - legally. [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 12:06 PM PST - 23 comments

Treksit: A graph node sorting game with sounds and a "bonus" area.
posted by jjray at 11:32 AM PST - 23 comments

"Window Wanderland transforms everyday streets into magical, outdoor galleries, where you never know what's around the next corner!" A citizen art project turns nighttime windows on streets into luminous windows on worlds. [more inside]
posted by Buntix at 8:05 AM PST - 5 comments

My reporting suggests Donald Trump is on a spiritual voyage . . . "This president’s effect on our cultural norms has been shocking. His critics would call it appalling; evangelicals say it’s immensely satisfying: They’ve seen a culture deteriorate quickly in the past decade, and they’re looking for a bold culture warrior to fight for them. Showing that God does indeed have a sense of humor, He gave them Mr. Trump. " [more inside]
posted by A. Davey at 7:59 AM PST - 123 comments

The Much Better Movie Hiding In 'Titanic'; or, clues hinting at a far bolder direction James Cameron ultimately backed out of taking.
posted by acb at 6:31 AM PST - 69 comments

This is America: 9 out of 10 public schools now hold mass shooting drills for students. "Are you kids good at running and screaming?" a police officer asks a class of elementary school kids in Akron, Ohio. His friendly tone then turns serious. “What I don’t want you to do is hide in the corner if a bad guy comes in the room,” he says. "You gotta get moving." [more inside]
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:36 AM PST - 82 comments

Kazuo Oga is mainly know as the background artist of Studio Ghibli animated films. Here's a demonstration of him working. Using poster paints. (A shorter version) [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:33 AM PST - 10 comments

The Underground Gold Mine is part 9 of his "Realistic Scenery" series. [more inside]
posted by Laotic at 4:22 AM PST - 6 comments

Every year during Lent, Episcopalians and other liturgically minded Christians participate in Lent Madness, which pits saints, martyrs, and other holy people against one another in sometimes brutal mano-a-mano fantasy smackdowns. Past champions include Florence Nightingale (who ultimately vanquished Franz Jägerstätter), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (prevailing in a thrilling faceoff with Julian of Norwich), and perennial favorite Francis of Assisi (in a nail-biter with fighting Irish Brigid of Kildare). [more inside]
posted by filthy_prescriptivist at 9:32 PM PST - 7 comments

A boy pretends he's a woman on an online gaming website. Then the game changes.
posted by oprahgayle at 6:10 PM PST - 10 comments

Sassafras Lowery wrote at Older Queer Voices
We Know How To Do This - “If you don’t remember a time when your government hated you, those of us who do will help you learn how to survive it.” [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:41 PM PST - 23 comments

The Space Shuttle has been compared to a flying brick. How do you practice landing a flying brick? In a customized Gulfstream II with thrust reversers all the way down. [more inside]
posted by compartment at 3:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Troy Hurtubise's dream of fighting a grizzly in home-made armour still haunts him. So does his fame (cw: some talk of suicidal ideation). Previously: Troy Hurtubise and his inventions. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:59 PM PST - 29 comments

Glory to Arstotzka! Papers Please is now a short film (10 mins) (Previously)
posted by saucysault at 12:47 PM PST - 14 comments

The Tolstoy family recipe for macaroni and cheese and some tips for preparation [more inside]
posted by blixapuff at 12:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Hazel Scott was piano genius and prodigy, star-performer, civil-rights activist, and first black person to host a television show in America. Whatever Happened to Hazel Scott? is a video essay on her life, career, and cultural impact. [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Disney's musical adaptation of Frozen opens on Broadway. Twelve new songs. A darker tone than the animated movie. Will it find success on broadway? Probably.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:44 AM PST - 21 comments

“As soon as we called the work stoppage for Thursday and Friday our locals took it upon themselves to start working with churches and food banks and different places to provide day care for the parents who needed it, to provide meals for the many students who get their hot meals at school.” West Virginia Teachers Walk Out (Dissent) - All public schools in all 55 counties of West Virginia are closed until at least Tuesday as the teachers strike for smaller class size, higher pay, and benefits. Local support is high (The Guardian). An Open Letter to the State of West Virginia From Its Students (The Nation).
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 AM PST - 68 comments

When birds steal food, they usually get away with it, but now the kids are fighting back.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:30 AM PST - 28 comments

Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild by Kathy Fish. A list of collective nouns for these times.
posted by Daddy-O at 7:28 AM PST - 28 comments

First look: All 150+ Emojis for 2018 [YouTube] “The final emoji list for 2018 has now been published, and we here at Emojipedia have created images to show how we think these might look! 🙌 All 157 new emojis for 2018 are in this video, and we created our designs in an Apple-like style. Popular additions include redheads, curly hair, softball, kangaroo, and more. All humans support skin tones. The list for Emoji 11.0 was finalized on February 7, 2018 and these emojis should hit phones in the second half of 2018.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:01 AM PST - 40 comments

Vangelis took a bit of a sideways step when he built a studio and recorded his 1975 album Heaven And Hell, a single unified work which draws strongly from classical music [full album ~43m] than progressive rock. Heaven And Hell Part I [~22m]: Bacchanale; Symphony To The Powers B (Movements 1 and 2); Movement 3 (from "Symphony To The Powers B); So Long Ago, So Clear (featuring Jon Anderson) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:59 AM PST - 16 comments

Inside the OED: can the world’s biggest dictionary survive the internet?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Everyone needs a hobby. Dave Curran's is trying to drive the Irish postal service mad. Me versus An Post: Featuring bricks, puzzles, hand drawn maps, invisible ink, scratch offs, cheerful and accommodating ringmasters (literally) and an attempt to resolve a territorial dispute between Canada and the US via postcard.
posted by Diablevert at 3:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Perhaps nothing that would be any more illustrative than seeing the images yourself. So here's A Time in Film: 1878-1899, 1900-1909, 1910-1912, 1913-1914, 1915-1916, 1917-1918, 1919, 1920, 1921. These may not contain clips from all the great movies from the era, but they provide an excellent start and the videos are worth seeing even if only as an end in themselves. An ongoing series of 3 to 5 minute videos covering the silent era and perhaps beyond.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:31 AM PST - 15 comments

Several years ago, MetaFilter had a famous thread where MeFites interacted with the creator of a unique operating system called LoseThos (previously). The creator, Terry Davis, now calls his work TempleOS, and released version 5.03 last year. [more inside]
posted by ambulocetus at 5:42 PM PST - 32 comments

By the 5th century, christianity's mystical aspects drew the young. As the religion grew, a series of spectacular churches and monasteries were built high atop mountains or excavated out of solid rock, many of which are still in use today. Over in West Africa, mosques were being built of mud. Because islam did not arrive in an invasive flood, the architectural style was mixed with local style to create a vernacular mosque style. West African Mosques
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:19 PM PST - 3 comments

We’ve Always Hated Girls Online: A Wayback Machine Investigation: A former fan searches for a teen girl who was once internet famous for her coding skills [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 4:29 PM PST - 20 comments

"Waiting for the critic’s verdict used to be a moment of high anxiety, but there’s not so much to worry about anymore. The general tone and tenor of the contemporary book review is an advertisement-style frippery. And, if a rave isn’t in order, the reviewer will give a stylized summary of sorts, bookended with non-conclusions as to the book’s content. ... Only the longest-serving critics, if they are lucky enough to be ensconced in the handful of newspapers that still have them, paw at the possibility of a negative review."
posted by oprahgayle at 3:22 PM PST - 35 comments

If you've been to the Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres at Chartres, Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery, the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, or many others, you may have noticed that the Madonna was black - either due to paint, natural materials, age, smoke, or perhaps .... mystical significance. Is Our Lady of the Underground a Goddess in Disguise? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:14 PM PST - 9 comments

How one visionary Latino has influenced his community and one of the largest corporations in America. Flamin Hot Cheetos were created by son of migrant farmworkers, who grew up not speaking English, and dropped out of high school and became a janitor. He had the idea while watching a street vendor in his neighborhood make elote, or grilled Mexican street corn — corn on the cob covered in cheese, butter, lime and chili. “What if I took the same concept and applied it to a Cheeto?” he thought. [more inside]
posted by apricot at 2:26 PM PST - 22 comments

Björk's favourite Syrian wedding singer Omar Souleyman (previously) is now an EDM star, produced by the likes of Four Tet (previously) and Diplo, and his (longish) music videos are... something else: Warni Warni (2013) - Chobi (2017) [more inside]
posted by progosk at 2:23 PM PST - 7 comments

"Domestic conversion - the metamorphosis of a jetliner into a home" just one of the many sections of the FAQ of airplanehome.com the site Bruce Campbell created to explain how he converted a Boeing 727 and turned it into his home. Too many words? Just watch this short video tour. [via]
posted by jessamyn at 1:48 PM PST - 27 comments

A Practical Toolkit to Trigger and Support Social Innovation. You can also get the entire toolkit as a PDF.
posted by storybored at 1:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Stormzy delivers a blistering performance at the Brit Awards, calling out Theresa May's response to Grenfell and suggesting the Daily Mail suck his *bleep* (previously on Twitter). [more inside]
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:28 AM PST - 13 comments

In 2013, software developer Stardock announced they were making a new Star Control game, the first in nearly two decades, after they purchased the rights to the Star Control games from Atari (previously) Or so they thought. [more inside]
posted by thecjm at 11:12 AM PST - 30 comments

The landlord opens the door to a tiny room. It radiates the possibility that I have been wrong about everything. Every decision in my life has led me to this point, and I can't believe what it looks like: The space is 10 feet by 9 feet 3 inches. This living room/dining room/office/bedroom/closet is 175 square feet total, according to my calculations. ... I catch my own face in the mirror. I have a hard time looking at myself, here, in an apartment this teensy, at age 34. If I take this place, that mirror is going to have to come down. What It's Like to Live in a Space the Size of a Closet by Paulette Perhach. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 10:55 AM PST - 102 comments

If you believe that kids these days are fragile “snowflakes,” that political correctness is running amok, and that LGBT people are now society’s true bullies, this new Heathers is the show for you. The premiere of the rebooted cult classic, now airing for free online, takes place in a universe—clearly a fictional one—where the football team is oppressed and yesteryear’s fat, queer, and black victims now rule the school with manicured fists.

The new Heathers opens with a slur against intersex people and goes downhill from there.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:55 AM PST - 73 comments

A cardinal with a rare genetic mutation has been spotted in Alabama. Normally cardinals turn yellow pigments into red with an enzyme, but this one is different. Here's video of it eating.
posted by larrybob at 10:31 AM PST - 23 comments

Increased screen-time for teens impacts psychological well-being , but so does too little screen time. Similarly, phubbing, or phone-snubbing, your partner impacts your relationship. Ditching devices can be particularly hard, as as apps and games are designed to be "addictive" (while Internet Gaming Disorder is a “Condition for Further Study” in the DSM-5, there's no formal designation for "tech addiction"). So what to do? There are lots of options and ideas, from setting new boundaries for yourself and your kids, including "Tech Shabbat" (which isn't a new idea). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:14 AM PST - 53 comments

Birth Becomes Her - Winners of the 2018 photo contest on maternity. [NSFW - naked people, babies being born, breastfeeding] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 8:41 AM PST - 26 comments

“Marie Miranda cooked potato salad, pastelillos and rice for a group of 30 socialists and Emerald Equity tenants gathered in Alex’s apartment for the DSA Housing Working Group meeting. The socialists came to hear the tenants’ experiences, and tenants came to give powerful testimony of landlord abuse. There was standing room only as people crowded into the living room and leaned in from the kitchen to hear the tenants speak.

One by one, in Spanish, the tenants gave harrowing accounts of abuses spanning decades, including the death of one tenant’s father due to management’s negligence...” Rats In The Hallway (Indypendant) how a group of working class women and the NYC DSA teamed up to fight hostile landlords pushing out rent stabilized tenants. (Article in Spanish, Ratas en el Pasillo)
posted by The Whelk at 8:36 AM PST - 4 comments

In which Abhishek Singh recreates a scene from The Ring using Augmented Reality, so the friendly character Sadako can follow you around your house. The scene in the US remake, and more in The Verge, Road to VR and Gizmodo. The character on Wikipedia (Maybe don't answer the phone if it rings while you read this FPP).
posted by Wordshore at 8:35 AM PST - 14 comments

Public radio stations WNYC (New York), KPCC (Southern California), and WAMU (Washington, D.C.) have joined together to acquire key assets of Gothamist and its associated sites LAist and DCist. The acquisition is being funded in large part through philanthropic donations from two anonymous donors. Is this another indication of the rising wave of nonprofit journalism? [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:14 AM PST - 22 comments

Confinement (promo) is an ongoing horror-comedy animated series by Lord Bung based on the stories of the SCP Foundation (Previously). The episodes so far: "The Cannibal" (SCP-082), "The Singing Forest" (SCP-407), "The Robot" (SCP-1360), and "The Girl in the Iceberg" (SCP-1836).
posted by a car full of lions at 7:32 AM PST - 8 comments

Rations for various RPG Races
posted by griphus at 7:15 AM PST - 52 comments

Cocaine & Rhinestones is a podcast on the history of 20th century country music hosted by Tyler Mahan Coe. The first season, 14 episodes plus a Q&A show, is now complete. In addition to the podcasts, there are transcripts and research notes for each show. [more inside]
posted by maurice at 5:02 AM PST - 8 comments

A story told by my grandfather sparked a fascination. Far to the east lies a land, wild and vast, inhabited by the legendary warriors who rescued my grandfather. Mongolia. For fifteen years, I’ve returned to this country, seeking to understand the raw beauty and tenacity that shapes those who call it home. A stunning photo essay
posted by smoke at 2:53 AM PST - 8 comments

Two papers published yesterday suggest that Neanderthals were creating cave art in Europe thousands of years before modern humans arrived on the continent. As well as using pigments on cave walls, they were painting lines and one, very spine-tingling, hand print. Palaeolithic archaeologist Becky Wragg Sykes on the findings and some more context. [more inside]
posted by Helga-woo at 2:37 AM PST - 7 comments

How Hollywood Salaries Really Work
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:06 AM PST - 16 comments

"Transgender people enlarge life and our understanding of spirituality and justice and the nature of God and Christian community," says Jo Inkpin, Australia's first openly transgender priest, who tells her story to the ABC.
posted by Athanassiel at 10:05 PM PST - 7 comments

"I believe in non-violence, as a way of life, as a way of living." Get In the Way, a documentary about congressman, civil rights leader, and hero John Lewis is currently streaming on PBS.org. John Lewis previously on Metafilter: Gun control sit-in in the House. "Because of you, John." - Barack Obama [more inside]
posted by kristi at 7:47 PM PST - 9 comments

"The End of the F***ing World" is an extremely dark-humored British TV adaption of Pennsylvania native Charles Forsman's graphic novel TEOTFW [heads up, animal cruelty]. The 8-episode first series appeared first on the UK's Channel 4 in October, and is now on Netflix. [more inside]
posted by msalt at 7:26 PM PST - 22 comments

With Joss Whedon not directing Batgirl anymore here's 9 rad women who could take his place.
posted by Artw at 7:23 PM PST - 25 comments

List of Oreo Varieties [Wiki] “The most popular cookie in the United States, based on sales, is the Oreo. For most of its history, owner Nabisco (originally National Biscuit Company) only made the basic version of this cookie. But in recent years, increasingly since 2010, it has expanded to a great many varieties, both domestically and globally. In addition to their traditional design of two chocolate wafers separated by a creme filling Oreo cookies have been produced in many different varieties since they were first introduced, and this list is only a guide to some of the more notable and recent types; not all are available in every country.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:42 PM PST - 64 comments

'M*A*S*H' Finale, 35 Years Later: Untold Stories of One of TV's Most Important Shows

When the series launched in September 1972, CBS executives thought they had greenlit a comedy. Series creators Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart instead gave the network seriocomic vignettes of universal truths about the human condition. "We helped break the boundaries of the boss coming to dinner and burning the roast," series star Alan Alda (aka Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce) tells The Hollywood Reporter.

posted by Lexica at 6:40 PM PST - 89 comments

The Opportunistic Rise of Europe’s Far Right. Across the continent, racist groups have used the war on terror to gain a new platform and there is a far-right revival in Central Europe.
Guardian long read; The fascist movement that has brought Mussolini back to the mainstream.
Poland and the Uncontrollable Fury of Europe's Far Right.
The Rise of the European Far-Right in the Internet Age.
Rise of the nationalists: a guide to Europe’s far-right parties.
posted by adamvasco at 4:50 PM PST - 25 comments

I never thought I could feel empathy for the boy who tormented me in childhood.
posted by adamcarson at 4:24 PM PST - 124 comments

The Opioid Diaries "Over the last year, photographer James Nachtwey set out to document the opioid crisis in America through the people on its front lines. Alongside TIME’s deputy director of photography, Paul Moakley, the pair traveled the country gathering stories from users, families, first responders and others at the heart of the epidemic. ADVISORY Graphic content could be disturbing to some readers"
posted by ericost at 2:38 PM PST - 27 comments

One of the many (many, many) challenges to long-term human habitation of Mars is the lack of an atmosphere, which was stripped away over millions of years due to Mars' lack of a magnetosphere. How to kick off a little climate change? How To Give Mars An Atmosphere, Maybe [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Why Is the Manhattan DA Looking at Newsweek’s Ties to a Christian University?
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:03 PM PST - 9 comments

From streams to estuaries to the deep ocean floor, driftwood shapes every environment it passes through. While there's an awareness that temperate rainforests are enriched with nitrogen from the marine environment, delivered by decomposing salmon, less well known is the fact that dead trees from those same forests travel to the sea and become a vital source of food and habitat. Driftwood is in need of a PR campaign, celebrity spokesperson, or publicist at the very least. Driftwood, it turns out, is also rapidly disappearing.

The Trees That Sail to Sea by Brian Payton.
posted by Kattullus at 1:12 PM PST - 3 comments

a comic by Edith Zimmerman: My First Year Sober
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:08 PM PST - 19 comments

In North Adams, Massachusetts, plans are afoot for the construction of a $65 million, 83,000 square foot "Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum", in which 2,000 model freight and passenger cars and 107 locomotives will operate in a landscape filled with scale models of the world's most notable contemporary buildings. Video walkthrough of first conceptual model. Building plans are being drawn up by architect Frank Gehry (the Bilbao Guggenheim, LA Walt Disney Concert Hall, Seattle Pop Culture Museum, etc.), while Thomas Krens (former head of the NY Guggenheim Museum, creator of its various spinoffs, and original driver behind the creation of MASSMoCA, also in North Adams) heads up the project, which will open in 2021. [more inside]
posted by beagle at 10:48 AM PST - 47 comments

How can we explain the existence of Gremlins 2: The New Batch? A good place to start is the classic Key & Peele sketch detailing its origins as a Hollywood sequel but, to really dig into the meaning of it, one must consult the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies. The ruminations regularly posted by the Institute elucidate the hidden symbolism of the gremlins as a challenge to Fukuyama's End of History, revealers of technology's full potential for horror/liberation, and "beings without economy, or perhaps, against economy" who negate the possibility of dialectic. [more inside]
posted by likethemagician at 10:06 AM PST - 41 comments

What Ever Happened to Brendan Fraser?
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 9:12 AM PST - 100 comments

For her third album released in 2006, India.Arie tapped deeply into her personal life and created a minor masterpiece about a strong women dealing with emotional difficulties: Testimony Vol. 1: Life And Relationship (Discogs link with extensive credits) [artist-created YT Playlist missing one song ~55m] [Spotify playlist of full album ~1h] CD track listing part one: Intro: Loving, These Eyes, The Heart Of The Matter*, Good Morning, Private Party, There's Hope [video], Interlude: Living

*fan-made TV show related video, not very good, not of the whole song, only version of album track available [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:52 AM PST - 3 comments

An interview with Carmen Maria Machado at Autostraddle. [more inside]
posted by kokaku at 8:48 AM PST - 10 comments

Scott Moir was at the game last night. The gold medal game for women's hockey was played last night, and went all the way to a shootout. In attendance was Scott Moir, of Virtue and Moir, Canadian gold medalists for ice dance, and he was pretty invested in the proceedings. Let's watch the tape!
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:11 AM PST - 34 comments

The animated TV show BoJack Horseman (previously 1, 2) contains dozens of references to classic and contemporary art. Daily Art Magazine has scoured all four seasons and found them all.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:57 AM PST - 17 comments

Susan Cahill is failing. So is Corey Schutzer. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 5:34 AM PST - 6 comments

As the nation struggles [molten chocolate cake] through the Polar Vortex, failing and closed restaurants, and food pronunciation, hungry Brits [boil an egg] are staying in and using their eBay acquired Instant Pots [coq au vin]. Paula Cocozza tries one for a week, while Jessica Yadegaran happily makes risotto, and in Houston it faces off against the Dutch Oven. While Americans [baby back ribs] grieve over death by Crock-Pot, in Minneapolis Patricia Lopez makes a safer dulce de leche. Elsewhere [Cuban beef stew], Paul Hope faces off the Instant Pot against the Big Green Egg over pulled pork [Sloppy Joes], Melissa Clark is turned by a pork shoulder, and Urvashi Pitre becomes the "butter chicken lady". Though, [lemon pepper orzo] fried chicken replicators may be disappointed.
posted by Wordshore at 12:03 AM PST - 114 comments

"Five years ago, you would be hard-pressed to find flat whites and avocado toast in New York—a mention of either of those things would probably get you laughed out of your local greasy spoon. But today, you can hardly walk five blocks in Manhattan without bumping into a different “Aussie café,” a new genre of coffee shop that emphasizes carefully crafted espresso beverages (such as the flat white), charming service (“G’day, mate!”), and a menu of fresh and light fare (said avocado toast). The sheer number of them indicates that, at the very least, Aussie cafés have been not just a gustatory success but also a commercial one: Two Hands, Toby’s Estate, Citizens of Chelsea, Banter, Ruby’s, Brunswick, Sweatshop . . . the list goes on. They’re popping up not only in New York, but all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland." - How Australian Coffee Took Over—And Why New Zealand Coffee Could Be Next [more inside]
posted by supercrayon at 11:41 PM PST - 150 comments

Watch the single-take kinetic journey of a blue marble (Kaplamino previously).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:32 PM PST - 13 comments

Kim Phuc, photographed after a napalm attack in South Vietnam in 1972, is interviewed on PRI.
posted by gen at 8:22 PM PST - 4 comments

A new short story from Afrofuturist author Nnedi Okorafor: "The city of New Delta was big, but her neighborhood had always been “small” in many ways. One of those ways was how people stamped the scarlet badge of “home-wrecking lady” on women who had children with married men... Only her smart home spoke (and sometimes sang) to her." [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Smash Mouth All Star • Smash Mouth All Star But Every Word Is Somebody • Smash Mouth All Star But I Take a Bite of an Onion Every Time He Says "Star" • Smash Mouth But Recreated From Windows XP Sounds • Smash Mouth All Star But Every Word Is Sung By Google Translate • Smash Mouth All Star But It's 24 Cartoon Impressions • Smash Mouth All Star but it's Vintage Reggae Style Cover ft. Vonzell Solomon • Smash Mouth All Star But It's a Spontaneous Piano Duet in Public • Smash Mouth All Star But I Add A Clothes Pin To My Beard Every Time He Says "The" • Smash Mouth All Star But Composed In Mario Paint Composer • Smash Mouth All Star But All Notes Are In C • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Even More Beautiful • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Chiptune • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Metal • Smash Mouth All Star But It's Jazz
posted by Fizz at 5:53 PM PST - 69 comments

For the first time on record, the number of people working in the industry is declining during an economic expansion.
posted by oprahgayle at 4:57 PM PST - 38 comments

The restoration of the ecosystem in the Elwha River Undoing the dam to restore what’s good for all animals [more inside]
posted by Yellow at 4:02 PM PST - 11 comments

In 1985, KGB Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko defected to America. He told agents he had terminal stomach cancer and had decided to make the world right in the time he had left. Yurchenko told KGB secrets to the CIA and NSA, including important details about 55 to 60 KGB assets in America and two Soviet moles (Edward Lee Howard and Ronald Pelton) inside US intelligence. But three months in, he learned he didn't have terminal stomach cancer -- just a minor bowel disorder. So Vitaly Yurchenko changed his mind and escaped back to the Soviet Embassy. He told the media that the CIA had drugged and kidnapped him. “The agency had either been completely taken in by a brilliant Soviet intelligence officer, or allowed one of its top Soviet defectors to slip out of its hands.” (Via) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 3:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Remember the Discman? Remember the best Discmens? Remember the wackiest Discman? Remember the first Discman? Remember the Data Discman?
posted by selfnoise at 1:31 PM PST - 73 comments

The Transformation of Gender in English-Language Fiction is a long essay by Ted Underwood, David Bamman and Sabrina Lee that uses quantative analysis of over a hundred thousand works of fiction digitized by HathiTrust to look at the proportion of fiction written by women, and the proportion of female characters, from 1780-2007. To the authors' surprise both declined steadily and profoundly from 1800-1960, before rebounding. They also looked at gender divisions between male and female characters over the same period, finding that they had lessened. The Guardian has a short summary of the findings. And for more on gender representation in 19th Century fiction, the authors point to Understanding Gender and Character Agency in the 19th Century Novel by Matthew Jockers and Gabi Kirilloff.
posted by Kattullus at 1:04 PM PST - 14 comments

Metafilter's favourite android Janelle Monae announces her new album Dirty Computer. [more inside]
posted by daveje at 12:58 PM PST - 70 comments

Climbing is a huge part of the mythology and culture of road cycling, both professional and amateur. Legends are born on the slopes of mountains, at least going up them. The fun part, however, is going back down again so join ex-pro riders Si Richardson and Matt Stephens as they descend Mallorca's Sa Calobra. [more inside]
posted by jontyjago at 11:21 AM PST - 25 comments

“The systemic poverty and racism America faces today was not inevitable,” the statement continues. “It is the result of choices made by politicians and corporations.” The revival of The Poor People’s campaign on the 50th anniversary of Memphis sanitation workers’ strike seeks to combine the plight of the working poor, faith leaders, and the fight for a fair minimum wage for fast food workers. Behind the minimum wage fight, a sweeping failure to enforce the law. (Politico) Republicans silent on tip-pooling changes that woukd allow owners to pocket server’s tips. (Eater) [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 10:25 AM PST - 11 comments

“You’ve got your whole life in front of you. You’re pretty, you’ve got this house — well, you don’t have this house anymore. This house is my house.” (Warning, disturbing content.)
posted by backseatpilot at 9:32 AM PST - 81 comments

Owen Stephens recalls how in 2000/01 he ran a roleplaying session for Wizard of the Coast's then new Star Wars D20 game when an elderly gentleman with actual commando experience showed up at his table. (Hat tip.)
posted by MartinWisse at 8:52 AM PST - 19 comments

"...it invites participants in on the condition of silence. And because of that, we often miss that whisper networks are a double-edged sword: the same secrecy that protects victims and whistleblowers can shield perpetrators as well." The Verge longform: When Whisper Networks Let Us Down by Sarah Jeong (cw: sexual assault)
posted by Jacqueline at 8:46 AM PST - 9 comments

The Rev. William "Billy" Graham has died at age 99. Washington Post obituary. Politico obituary. As a child, he was kicked out of a local youth group for being "too worldly." At age 14, upon the end of Prohibition, his father forced him and his sister to drink alcohol until they got sick, thus creating a lifelong aversion to drugs and alcohol for the rest of their lives. He rose to prominence after World War II, taking advantage of the new media of radio and TV. Criticized for his centrist views (as well as a registered Democrat), Bob Jones said that "Dr. Graham is doing more harm to the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man." An early integrationist, he was also accused of pandering to southern whites. Pastor to the presidents, he was a good friend of Richard Nixon and supported the Vietnam War. He also helped George Bush, Jr. stop drinking. His Crusades reached millions. Here is CNN's 10 things you didn't know about Billy Graham. God's Bully Pulpit: Time Magazine's feature story on his 75th birthday (paywalled) And hey, did you know that Mike and Karen Pence follow the "Billy Graham Rule"?
posted by Melismata at 8:34 AM PST - 53 comments

A Chinese Casino Has Conquered a Piece of America

Imperial Pacific’s overnight domination of Saipan has generated deep unease among the island’s citizens, many of whom are convinced that their home has been bought. The company, they believe, set out to take over a little piece of America, politicians and all. Given the billions of dollars at stake, it’s not surprising someone would try. What’s shocking is that, so far, it seems to be working.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:29 AM PST - 15 comments

BORA HORZA GOBUCHUL. THERE IS DEATH HERE. [more inside]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:15 AM PST - 171 comments

And that’s when I decided that we — and by we I mean those of us currently drawing paychecks for professional design services — are design’s lost generation. We are the Family Ties-era Michael J. Fox of the design lineage. Raised by hippies. Consumed by greed. Ruled by the hand of the market. And nourished by the last drops of sour milk from the withered old teat of capitalism gone rabid. Living where America ends — Silicon Valley. Mike Monteiro on the ethical state of design's lost generation.
posted by gauche at 7:02 AM PST - 64 comments

Ronald Clark’s father was custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library, creeping down to the stacks in the middle of the night when curiosity gripped him. A story for anyone who’s ever dreamt of having unrestricted access to books.
posted by Stanczyk at 6:02 AM PST - 7 comments

Howard Jones released Dream Into Action in 1985 [CD-based YT playlist, ~55m] and it made quite a splash on both sides of the pond and around the world, with several charting singles and gigantic sales. UK Vinyl Side One: Things Can Only Get Better [video], Life In One Day [video], Dream Into Action, No One Is To Blame [video, completely different version], Look Mama [video], Assault And Battery [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:52 PM PST - 42 comments

The Museum of Broken Relationships. "Before flying to Zagreb, I’d put out a call to my friends—What object would you donate to this museum?—and got descriptions I couldn’t have imagined: a mango candle, a penis-shaped gourd, the sheet music from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3, a clamshell drilled by a dental student, an illustration from a children’s book that an ex had loved when he was young—showing a line of gray mice with thought bubbles full of the same colors above their heads, as if they were all dreaming the same dream."
posted by storybored at 9:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Douglas Hofstadter takes a deep dive into why AI techniques don't equate to real undersanding. longread.
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:58 PM PST - 83 comments

{gravelly voice} Throughout history, mythical creatures and phenomenon have been spoken of, described, searched for. Often, with no resulting evidence, no video, no photo. The Yeti, the Sasquatch, the Unicorn, non-hipsters who eat Blue Star donuts; the roll-call of unproven legends goes on. But now, deep in the Val de Bagnes of Switzerland, unambiguous photographic proof has emerged of the most mystical, most tasty of them all... (as discussed in the Irish media, a nearby sighting, and another, the anatomy of one, a herd or flock, just over the border in Italy, and a previous sighting of similar)
posted by Wordshore at 5:30 PM PST - 20 comments

Thomas, a goose whose love life has delighted visitors to Waikanae's Waimanu Lagoons in New Zealand for many years, has died. His funeral featured a procession led by a bagpiper and a speech from the local mayor before the diminutive coffin was buried in a grave next to his life partner, Henry the swan. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 4:13 PM PST - 12 comments

The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction - by Shuja Haider. A story of: Time travel, a future superintelligence as unavoidably but passionlessly vengeful God, neoreactionaries as the alt-right's intellectual avant-garde, neoreactionaries planning White Flight to Mars, Google's Deep Dream and "the Cathedral", libertarian transhumanism and libertarian fascism, Lyotardian far-rightists, Deleuzian Thatcherism and accelerationism, the Dark Enlightment, superrich supercapitalist super-villains, Silicon Valley hyperracism, Noys, Lovecraft, AI as class disparity amplifier.
And it isn't fiction.
posted by talos at 4:07 PM PST - 39 comments

Just how dangerous are Winter Olympic sports?
posted by Stark at 12:37 PM PST - 69 comments

Holly Dicker attends the biggest indoor hardcore rave in history to tell the story of Thunderdome and Holland's most significant youth culture movement. Legendary Dutch hardcore rave Thunderdome returns 5 years after their "final" 20th anniversary event in 2012. This is a great read about the history of a scene that inspired passion in a lot of people, as well as a detailed review of the event itself which seems rare in festival / rave culture.
posted by thedaniel at 11:02 AM PST - 18 comments

To hide the identity of the new pharmacy, the state has taken extraordinary steps. It uses a code name for the pharmacy in its official documents. Only a handful of state employees know the real name. The state fought at least six lawsuits to stop death row inmates and the press from knowing the pharmacy’s identity. Even the way Missouri buys and collects the drugs is cloak-and-dagger: The state sends a high-ranking corrections officer to a clandestine meeting with a company representative, exchanging an envelope full of cash for vials of pentobarbital. Since 2014, Missouri has spent more than $135,000 in such drug deals. - The secretive company behind Missouri’s lethal injections [SLBuzzfeed]
posted by supercrayon at 10:59 AM PST - 38 comments

Trypophobia may not be a real phobia. There is no green apple Gummi Bear flavor. Basically, our senses may not be reliable.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:49 AM PST - 93 comments

The strange history of an imperial skirmish in Niger
posted by infini at 7:55 AM PST - 3 comments

From Overfishing to Sustainable Farming. The innovative 3D model for ocean farming employs hurricane-resistant anchors on the seafloor at the edges of the farm, connecting with ropes to buoys on the water’s surface. Another rope runs horizontally about eight feet below the surface. The kelp is grown on ropes hanging down off the horizontal rope, creating a vertical growing space. “Next to the kelp, we’re growing scallops and mussels, also vertically, and then further down, we have oysters in cages, and then clams actually down in the mud,” Smith explains. “The vertical-water-column approach reduces the farm’s footprint, and the multiple species create a diversity so that a farmer is protected should anything cause one of those crops to falter or fail in a given season.”
posted by emjaybee at 7:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Wendy's Shabbat. The story of some eighty-something Jewish friends and their 97-year-old rabbi, who found an unorthodox way celebrating their Friday night meals. From the new film by Rachel Myers.
posted by Mchelly at 5:30 AM PST - 17 comments

‘People think the deer are lovely. Then they learn more about it’: the deer cull dilemma. The Scottish Highlands have a deer problem. Is shooting tens of thousands of them the only solution?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:01 AM PST - 132 comments

“The idea is that once you’ve seen the tactics, and used them in the game, you build up resistance,” said Sander van der Linden, director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. Researchers at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab have built an online game designed to reveal the key strategies used in the creation and dissemination of fake news. About the game. Previous related research into the subject from the same institution.
posted by Chairboy at 2:32 AM PST - 25 comments

Jack Monroe (previous) has responded to a now deleted tweet by Bath Conservatives suggesting Monroe is the poster girl for eating on £10 a week. Monroe's response: I have lived, waiting in fear for this moment, for almost six years. Waiting, to be upheld as some kind of justification for the deepest incisions of Conservative cuts as they seek to justify their barbaric policies by attaching them to someone who can be used as an example of ‘pulling themselves up by their bootstraps’. [more inside]
posted by threetwentytwo at 1:33 AM PST - 33 comments

Afghan War Rugs And The Lossy Compression Of Cultural Coding [Twitter][Spooler (req. login) ] [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:58 PM PST - 3 comments

CCM artist Leslie Phillips had been marketed as "the Christian Cyndi Lauper", and it didn't sit well with her. The producer for her 4th album, T Bone Burnett, helped her morph her sound and put enough, um, ambiguity in the album that Leslie was able to start a new, secular music career as Sam Phillips. But here is that brilliant, acoustic textured, questioning, and yearning [and receommended for non CCM audiences too] Leslie Phillips album from 1987: The Turning [YT playlist, ~40m]. Side A: River Of Love, Love Is Not Lost, The Turning, Libera Me, Carry You [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:03 PM PST - 21 comments

It's a neural networks of neural networks up in your noggin. (Dr. Mark Humphries for Medium) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:08 PM PST - 40 comments

'Manuscripts' Encourages Readers To Approach The Bible Like A Novel [NPR] “But there's also been a surge of interest in engaging with the Bible in the same way you would a novel, free of footnotes and asides. That's the approach taken by the small team behind Manuscripts, a new version of the Bible in the form of individual pocket-sized volumes – the first of which are coming out this month after a successful crowdfunding campaign. "Our research showed us that people were often intimidated by how it's traditionally been presented; as one big book," says Manuscripts creative director Jacob Scowden. "We wanted to give an ease to it, and reemphasize the effectiveness of reading the Bible as individual books."” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:12 PM PST - 63 comments

While in the USA they sell scratch and sniff cards, and in Australia serve tanks and discuss naked wrestling, in the UK KFC aren't doing well. Following several days of closures and "everything but chicken" menus, most branches of KFC stay shut. This began when, though warned, KFC switched to a cheaper deliverer - "optimised delivery scheduling" - who promptly could not deliver ("It's pretty complex!"). Speculation on why continues, while KFC staff are being accused of chicken smuggling and "encouraged" to take holidays by KFC. Politicians have been contacted by constituents (some resorting to vegetables), while closures also affect Taco Bell. As ever, Twitter (and dead royalty) is unhappy, though in the not-distant future, a tasty new flavour of chicken may be sold in Britain. Mmm!
posted by Wordshore at 5:26 PM PST - 85 comments

“The irony of athletes from Great Britain, which spent £275m on preparations for the Rio games, raising fundamental questions about fairness in a race against an athlete from a country that spent less than £1.9m has somehow been lost” wrote the South African author and commentator Sisonke Msimang. Grauniad link.
posted by spaceburglar at 3:32 PM PST - 5 comments

A staple of African cooking that was thought lost was found in a small field in Trinidad. The fat, nutty grain, with its West African lineage and tender red hull, was a favored staple for Southern home cooks during much of the 19th century. Unlike Carolina Gold, the versatile rice that until the Civil War was America’s primary rice crop, the hill rice hadn’t made Low Country plantation owners rich off the backs of slaves. The search for the missing grain led to Trinidad and Thomas Jefferson, and now excitement among African-American chefs. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 3:13 PM PST - 15 comments

IBM Sues Microsoft's New Chief Diversity Officer To Protect Diversity Trade Secrets: IBM has filed suit against one of its longtime executives, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, alleging that her new position as Microsoft’s chief diversity officer violates a year-long non-compete agreement, allowing the Redmond company to use IBM’s internal secrets to boost its own diversity efforts. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 1:51 PM PST - 48 comments

Recipes based on food from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand Of Darkness
posted by Artw at 1:19 PM PST - 11 comments

A Silent Place launches. The new project by Jonathan Harris consists of slightly animated, slightly interactive images, displayed slowly and with a meditative soundtrack. The images are drawings of and inspired by Utah-area pictographs. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 11:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Meetup was supposed to be different. While much of the tech industry struggled to create inclusive work environments and free itself from the kinds of workplace harassment allegations that have spewed out of major companies like Google and Uber, Meetup was mission-driven, diverse, profitable, and user-focused. But last year, facing increasing competition, Meetup started negotiating an acquisition with WeWork—and everything changed. [slGizmodo]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:08 AM PST - 81 comments

Happy Presidents’ Day, they’re all awful. Here’s one ghastly fact about 45 presidents.
posted by The Whelk at 3:15 AM PST - 91 comments

'Dolly Said No To Elvis' by Mark Nevin (ex Fairground Attraction), animated by Heather Colbert ... being the true story of the time a certain singer songwriter turned down The Colonel. It proved to be the right decision.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:56 AM PST - 11 comments

In 1889, Tit-Bits magazine offered prizes to single, female readers who sent in the best answers to the question: ‘Why Am I A Spinster?’ Here are some highlights... [sl twitter thread] [more inside]
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:22 PM PST - 22 comments

Watch Knife Skills (full video - 40 min), the Oscar-nominated short documentary about the opening of Edwins, a fine French restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, that is staffed almost entirely by ex-inmates with no prior restaurant experience. They have to learn everything there is to know about French food and restaurants in a very short period of time.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:07 PM PST - 7 comments

China's Dystopian Tech Could Be Contagious: The PRC's "social credit" scheme might have consequences for life in cities everywhere (SLAtlantic)
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:16 PM PST - 68 comments

Abby and Brittany Hensel are dicephalic parapagus twins from Minnesota with separate heads and joined bodies (previously). After as normal a childhood as possible, they graduated from college in 2012 and became part-time teachers. (via) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:43 PM PST - 29 comments

We've hosted Jackie Shane on the blue before but she's worth a revisit, especially in light of a lovely 2-CD retrospective box set and some well deserved recognition.

Jackie Shane was born May 15 1940 in Nashville to Jack Crawford and Jessie Shane. When she was 8 she was asked to join the church choir ("I will sing but I will not listen to the minister and I'm not giving him my money. This shyster."). When she was 10 she moved back to Nasville to live with her aunt and started singing in gospel and church groups. By age 13 Jackie had begun to consider herself a woman in a man's body and started wearing makeup to school. [more inside]
posted by parki at 10:51 AM PST - 4 comments

Weasel Walter (label honcho, Lydia Lunch collaborator, Flying Luttenbachers mastermind, No Wave historian, bar band impresario, jazz bandleader, improviser, etc.) presents The Beatles' She's So 60 Minutes of Heavy.
posted by kenko at 10:08 AM PST - 9 comments

Sometimes a single gif is all you need to make the world feel like a better place.
posted by humph at 8:39 AM PST - 28 comments

Ä Brïëf Hïstöry Öf Mëtäl Umläüts from Kerrang!
posted by chavenet at 6:51 AM PST - 39 comments

I am still learning to accept myself as I am. I hope it doesn't take another 50 years. Photo interview series by Jessica Dimmock with trans women in the PNW. Dimmock is careful to explain that the situations are, well, complicated: some of her subjects don’t consider themselves to be trans because, as Dimmock explains, it was not an identity that they felt free to totally embrace. “They’ve been trapped in a timeline and a situation at home that has made it impossible for them...But everyone I photographed is on the spectrum of having a full female identity. There are women inside all of these people.” The series places the women in the settings in which they found creative ways to steal away and express their honest identities in private,” she explains. “They are intentional and accurate to their stories.”
posted by stillmoving at 5:01 AM PST - 39 comments

In 1992, for their seventh album, Everything But The Girl changed tack entirely and went Acoustic [41m YouTube apologies for commercials] Cassette Side A: Love Ia Strange, Tougher Than The Rest, Time After Time, Alison, Downtown Train [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:33 AM PST - 11 comments

Birmingham UK's GorillaBot take a Robodyssey to discover that I'm Just A Robot
posted by Catblack at 10:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Longread. Church becomes cult? Survivors bond into ... a cult? And so on.
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:31 PM PST - 26 comments

You've never played a game quite like Bayonetta [GQ] “There’s also a pair of high powered pistols attached to her absurdly high-heeled shoes. Oh, and the game darts between biblical analogy and sexual innuendo quicker than Bayonetta herself can backflip into the air to shoot a horde of angry angels with her deadly Louboutins. That near-the-knuckle approach to sex and sexuality is often gratuitous, especially when you’re forced to watch the nth slow-motion crotch shot while you loudly insist to your girlfriend, “Really, this is not what it looks like.” But the game also takes the time to empower Bayonetta. She’s a fantastic female lead and it’s refreshing to play as her rather than just another one of the bone-headed muscle men that are rife in most action games. She’s absolutely the star of the show, and both games string together some of the most absurdly bombastic set-piece moments you’ve ever seen on screen, in a way that’s so audacious you’ll wonder how it continuously ups the ante.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:18 PM PST - 48 comments

The Family Tree of the Noir Western
posted by Artw at 5:39 PM PST - 17 comments

He woke her in the middle of the night.

"Will you marry me," he asked.

"Of course I will, darling," she replied, a bit saddened.

Truth was, Michael and Linda Joyce had been married for 34 years, but Michael is battling Alzheimer's and he'd forgotten. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:44 PM PST - 16 comments

Hanno the Navigator was Carthaginian explorer who traveled south along the African coast in the sixth Century BCE. He left behind an account of his journey, a periplus, which among other things gave the world the word "gorilla", which may have been a kikongo phrase originally. It can be read in English translation on Livius along with scholarly notes by Jona Lendering. Hanno's brother Himilco was also an explorer, venturing north along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Lionel Casson puts Hanno in context of the history of exploration. While reading the links, you might want to listen to folk rocker Al Stewart's 2008 song Hanno the Navigator.
posted by Kattullus at 12:29 PM PST - 13 comments

"I was just trying to enjoy my book when all of a sudden an earthquake happens..." At 14:31:05 today, Britain suffered its largest earthquake for over a decade, being felt across major population centres such as Cheltenham, Manchester, Blackpool, Rhyl and Salford. The 'massive' quake centred on the village of Cwmllynfell (pronounced 'Cwmllynfell') in Wales, at a depth of 7km, and is the 17th in the UK so far this year. "I posted on Facebook immediately." While residents carried on or prioritised, and cats startled, questions have been asked. Please send British tea and moist crumpets.
posted by Wordshore at 11:38 AM PST - 63 comments

The final installment in Dabrye's trilogy was worth the wait (Doug Coombe, Detroit Metro Times)

Dabrye is musician Tadd Mullinix's hip-hop producer alter ego. His first album One/Three came out in 2001, a unique hybrid of techno influences (Detroit techno, Warp Records, and kindred labels) and the classic hip-hop productions of Pete Rock, DJ Premier, the Bomb Squad, and J Dilla in particular. His second album, Two/Three, came out in 2006 and featured his hero J Dilla and Phat Kat on the single "Game Over," as well as Waajeed, Invincible, MF Doom, and Guilty Simpson. And then... pretty much silence from Dabrye.

That is, until now. Behold: Three/Three, featuring "a dream lineup of both Detroit (Danny Brown, Clear Soul Forces, Nolan The Ninja) and national (MF Doom, Ghostface Killah) MCs." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Gerald Wolkoff Pays for Destroying 45 Works Of Art Judge Federico Bloc orders Gerald Wolkoff to pay maximum damages to the artists whose graffiti art he whitewashed over in 2013.
posted by Yellow at 9:21 AM PST - 23 comments

Farid Ayaz & Abu Muhammad sing “Kaan Roz ke Rooh” & “Adam Amad Babadan” [more inside]
posted by mahershalal at 5:22 AM PST - 9 comments

Be it fridge logic or fanwank, when you think about it the Donkey Kong timeline is truly disturbing.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:43 PM PST - 25 comments

Robert Plant's 1993 Fate Of Nations was his sixth solo album. It's draws from a lot of influences. Like, a LOT. Side 1: Calling To You [video], Down To The Sea, Come Into My Life, I Believe, 29 Palms [video], Memory Song (Hello Hello) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:27 PM PST - 15 comments

Want to make comics? Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett of Big Red Hair have you covered with their recently updated Resources for Comic Book Creators and comic book writing guide.
posted by Artw at 4:54 PM PST - 2 comments

Being LGBTQ is a new series from Calvert Journal that includes Live by night: An evening with Maydana, Ukrainian drag queen and asylum seeker, No Silence: Growing up LGBTQ in the forgotten world of Transnistria, Secret histories: LGBTQ life in pre-revolutionary Russia, Horoom Nights: Inside the secretive queer night at Tbilisi’s world-famous Bassiani club, and more... [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:28 PM PST - 4 comments

"In the following sketches, I explore how early Chinese Americans created space for antiracist medievalism. Not only did people of Chinese ancestry turn “medieval” tropes and rhetoric against their contemporary detractors, but they also found affirming possibilities to assert a shared humanity and to claim cultural belonging." [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 2:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Since 1976, someone has decorated Portland, Maine, with hearts. Red hearts printed on white copy paper on businesses, cars, and the occasional heart banner on the museum, library or other building. Hearts have spread to other towns. Now, one guy is in a snit. [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 1:41 PM PST - 34 comments

Making the Panther a volunteer schoolteacher in Harlem wasn't an evil thing for the previous writer to do, but it was, as McGregor so pointedly acknowledges, a pretty stupid thing to do. T'Challa isn't an African-American looking for his place in the world, he's an African, all caps, and more importantly, he's the spiritual and political leader of an entire country. If he wants to dick around above the Upper West Side and teach poor kids, that's sweet, but what McGregor realized (immediately, and irritably), was that this effectively meant the character had abandoned Wakanda and all of his people along with it.

David Brothers & Tucker Stone write about Don McGregor's classic "Panther's Rage" for The Comics Journal. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 1:14 PM PST - 11 comments

A Twitter thread on video game development hacks
posted by griphus at 12:33 PM PST - 11 comments

"I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what I’m good for. I don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that I have so much in my head, and so much in my Google Drive, that is basically useless right now. I don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that the life I imagined is not going to happen. I’ve already stopped doing my scholarship, other than editorial work for forthcoming pieces. In a few months, I’ll be done teaching. I don’t know how to come to terms with never doing those things again.
posted by Lycaste at 12:16 PM PST - 100 comments

Kim Wall went for a ride on a submarine, hoping to write a story about a maker of "extreme machines." She never did. I needed to know what happened. [more inside]
posted by AwkwardPause at 12:16 PM PST - 23 comments

Burrnesha are women who live as men in Albania for the freedom, but the custom is dying out. The strict patriarchy is slowly giving way to a new culture and these sworn virgins are the last of their kind.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:20 AM PST - 16 comments

What Color Is a Tennis Ball? — An investigation into a surprisingly divisive question [Marina Koren, The Atlantic]

"The seemingly trivial question tore apart our usually congenial group. Lines were quickly and fiercely drawn, team green against team yellow, as my colleagues debated the very definition of color itself. Swords were brandished in the form of links to HTML color codes or the paint selection at Sherwin-Williams. Attempts to broker a cease-fire, to consider that maybe tennis balls are actually yellow-green—or green-yellow, or chartreuse—were brushed aside. At one point, I lashed out at a colleague who then reminded me we were on the same side."posted by Atom Eyes at 10:12 AM PST - 97 comments

Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks. Remember when scale-free networks were all the rage? The idea was that real-world networks (including but very much not restricted to social networks) are surprisingly-often well-characterized by a power-law distribution: a node has k connections with a probability proportional to some (negative) power of k. This had implications for every science involving things connected to or interacting with other things! Well, about that...
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:40 AM PST - 12 comments

Electronic pop duo Tanlines have released a record of children's standards.
posted by josher71 at 9:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Guerrero (whose name, in Spanish, means “warrior”) fought the ban, saying that he had merely drunk a tea that included coca leaves—a common enough beverage in Peru, though Guerrero lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he plays for the soccer club Flamengo. But his claim paved the way for his Brazilian lawyers to mount an even more interesting defense, introducing FIFA to its oldest, and highest, character witnesses ever: the Children of Llullaillaco, three mummies named for the icy, twenty-two-thousand-foot-tall volcano in Argentina where they were left by the Incas, five hundred years ago. - As Peru Heads to the 2018 World Cup, Its Star Striker Has Three Inca Mummies to Thank [more inside]
posted by beisny at 8:40 AM PST - 7 comments

NYC Ethics Watchdogs! The New York City Conflicts of Interest Board posts the city's objectively most ethical dogs. [SL twitter thread w photos of doggos]
posted by moonmilk at 8:30 AM PST - 16 comments

Can you come up with the same answer as a robot in this word association game?
posted by jeather at 8:05 AM PST - 79 comments

Inside the two years that shook Facebook, and the world

The stories varied, but most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege. Of a series of external threats, defensive internal calculations, and false starts that delayed Facebook’s reckoning with its impact on global affairs and its users’ minds. And—in the tale’s final chapters—of the company’s earnest attempt to redeem itself.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:57 AM PST - 49 comments

Couture is weird, and comics creator Jared Pechacek is making it weirder. Electric Lit gathers his collection of tweets turning the 2018 A.F. Vandevorst spring collection into a tale about building community in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:55 AM PST - 7 comments

Abby Beckley had been living on an inactive cattle ranch when she began to have the sensation that something was in her eye. "You know how it feels when you have an eyelash in your eye?" she asked. "That's exactly how it felt, but when I looked in the mirror, I couldn't see anything...I finally couldn't take it any[more]," she said. [more inside]
posted by stillmoving at 7:39 AM PST - 47 comments

M.anifest's new song Simple Love is a slow, luxurious dance through the streets of Tema, Ghana. via okayafrica
posted by ChuraChura at 5:03 AM PST - 3 comments

Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a cellist from Nottingham, England. In 2016 he won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award, the first black musician to do so. He's just released his first record-breaking album, which along with classical pieces, has covers of 'Hallelujah' and 'No Woman No Cry'. He also has six siblings who all play to concert standard too.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Before Usenet and MetaFilter but after email, and launched 40 years ago on February 16th 1978 in Chicago after development that avoided committee inertia, the CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System) was created by Ward Christensen (creator of XMODEM) and Randy Suess. It consisted of a homebrew computer with 40k of memory, was managed by a "sysop", eventually contained 20,000 lines of code, and worked well. Announced in Byte Magazine, the sole modem and 300 baud card meant members took it in turns to use, the system restarting with each new call. textfiles.com has some BBS logs and captures: [1][2][3][4]. Problems with the system?? Phone the developers. (2008 FPP, and a busy 2006 "Did you run a BBS?" AskMe)
posted by Wordshore at 12:01 AM PST - 85 comments

Find you someone who's as happy to see you as this donkey. Or someone who wants to hug you as much as these animals.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:47 PM PST - 31 comments

Intimate Photos Escape the Cloud and Redistribute to Random Phone A man sets up a new smart phone for his gran. Looking through the images he has migrated for her, he notices images of someone he works with, a man and child. Verizon has no idea how images made it from the cloud to another party's phone. The folks whose privacy was dispensed out onto the web, are suing. This is some inborne, disastrous glitch. How much do they charge to go fishing in the cloud?
posted by Oyéah at 7:42 PM PST - 46 comments

Dead Space Is My Favorite Horror Game [Odyssey] “The moment I saw my first necromorph in Dead Space is when I I fell in love with the franchise. I first stumbled upon Dead Space when I was looking through my cheat code book glossary. My mom was going to be taking me to the movie store where they also rented out video games and I wanted something new to play. I had an Xbox 360 at the time and didn't have too many games so I was looking to expand. I saw the words "Dead Space" and was instantly hooked. I flipped the pages to that section and scanned over all the black and white pictures. I loved the look of it. So when my mom took me to the movie store, I bolted for their game section looking for this game. I was scanning the shelves until my eyes rested on the title "Dead Space." The cover made me want the game even more. It was a severed arm floating in space. The entire cover encapsulated the title perfectly. I knew I was going to love this game.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:44 PM PST - 38 comments

Manifesto Jam is a game jam where participants don't make games but manifestos about games.
posted by RobotHero at 5:33 PM PST - 11 comments

You got your swearing in my bird art! No, YOU got YOUR bird art in my swearing! Stop fighting, kids: Effin' Birds on Twitter brings you the best of both worlds. Bonus: The Story Behind the Foul-Mouthed ‘Effin’ Birds’ Twitter Account, from Audubon.org and Andrew Del-Colle.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:29 PM PST - 6 comments

In 1937, Maurice Hilleman had a job lined up as the assistant manager of the J. C. Penney in Miles City. In Depression-era Montana, Penney’s was top-notch employment, especially to a senior at Custer County High who grew up raising chickens on the outskirts of town. But Hilleman’s older brother pointed out there was that college in Bozeman and suggested Maurice should at least try to get a scholarship. He did, finished first in his class and went on to a graduate program in microbiology at the University of Chicago. Of the 14 standard recommended vaccines — including those for measles, mumps, meningitis, pneumonia and both hepatitis A and B — Hilleman developed eight of them. In a century soaked in genocide, his work saved millions of lives, including, potentially, yours and mine. J. C. Penney’s loss was humanity’s gain.
posted by Stanczyk at 3:13 PM PST - 14 comments

You may have heard about B&N's recent layoffs and hiring of a new chief merchandising officer in a brief abstract fashion, but you might not realize it marks a point of no return for the company: The entirely unnecessary demise of Barnes & Noble [more inside]
posted by foxfirefey at 12:49 PM PST - 191 comments

Nike's new Nothing beats a Londoner ad really showcases the diversity of sporting London, including some familiar figures.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:45 AM PST - 26 comments

Gorilla Match-making There’s no Ok Cupid for gorillas, but a complex science to get the right match!
posted by gryphonlover at 11:09 AM PST - 8 comments

Black and Red: a history of the post World War 1 African-American socialist movement [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 10:25 AM PST - 6 comments

"Last Saturday – 12 days ago now – I shared a cringe-worthy video on Facebook: A 6-minute clip of a twenty-something white woman showing off her small, blandly decorated Brooklyn apartment [...] Ever since, this video has been waging a reign of terror over my friends and family, showing up at the top of their feed every single day, over and over and over. They are complaining to me on Facebook. They are complaining to me in real life. They are tweeting me about it and emailing me. Begging me to remove this cursed video that greets them each time they open Facebook.

And of course, they commented on my post. And then people commented on the comments. The more people commented, the more the video showed up on other people's’ feeds. As the rage around this post intensified, so did the comments. Coworkers I sit next to commented. College friends commented. Someone I went to preschool with commented. A vicious, algorithmically delicious cycle."

How I Cracked Facebook’s New Algorithm And Tortured My Friends [Katie Notopoulos, Buzzfeed]
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:47 AM PST - 75 comments

"Twenty years after she shocked the world by winning gold at Nagano, the figure skating prodigy is still an Olympic star, matching and maybe even transcending her prior profile as part of a captivatingly dynamic broadcast team with Johnny Weir." Tara Lipinski Hasn’t Lost Her Edge by Katie Baker at The Ringer
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:24 AM PST - 14 comments

Matthew Guerrieri On Empathy The crimes and misdemeanors language perpetrates against music are many and various, but one offense is more insidious than most, simply for being so insignificant. It’s a preposition. In English, invariably, we listen to a piece of music. Never with a piece of music. [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 9:04 AM PST - 7 comments

ICE cracks down in LA, meanwhile immigration legislation progress isn't looking great. [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:54 AM PST - 2307 comments

Lena Dunham wrote a (characteristically) brutally honest and emotional piece for Vogue about having to have a hysterectomy at 31 as a result of debilitating endometriosis - despite desperately wanting to carry her own children someday. [more inside]
posted by widdershins at 8:32 AM PST - 38 comments

Daleswoman Hannah Hauxwell passed away recently aged 91. She was living alone on her family farm, with no water or electricity, when in 1973 she became famous after being featured in Barry Cockcroft's documentary Too Long a Winter, about the north Pennines community. Her quiet, pragmatic acceptance of her life moved viewers, and donations from the public enabled her to connect her house to the national grid and expand her cattle herd. She went on to feature in several more documentaries, including travelogues to Europe and America, and co-author books. Barry Cockcroft returned in 1989 for a poignant follow up film, A Winter Too Many, as Hannah prepared to sell up the farm she was no longer able to maintain. [more inside]
posted by Helga-woo at 7:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Yesterday, a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 and wounding many others. Many people saw it coming but no one did enough to prevent it. What needs to change? [more inside]
posted by Jacqueline at 7:18 AM PST - 1272 comments

Yudane or yukone, known as tangzhong in Chinese, is a bread baking technique that begins with a water (or milk) roux, heating flour and liquid to 65C to gelatinize the starches. It produces loaves that are tender, springy, moist, and resistant to staling, with a significantly different crumb. Its most famous application is in Hokkaido Milk Bread, but is also useful for bagels, rolls, and any application where a tender crumb or long shelf life is desirable. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 7:04 AM PST - 19 comments

Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand: how an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific. A Guardian long read, by Mark O'Connell. [more inside]
posted by carbide at 2:54 AM PST - 74 comments

GOES-16, NOAA's relatively new atmospheric monitoring satellite, comes with some neat animations.
posted by not_on_display at 11:50 PM PST - 11 comments

Hey, they released it this way intentionally, and here's what Marillion told us about each side of their 1985 prog-ish concept album Misplaced Childhood: Side One [20m40s]: Pseudo Silk Kimono, Kayleigh, Lavender, Bitter Suite: a. Brief Encounter, b. Lost Weekend, c. Blue Angel, d. Misplaced Rendevous, e. Windswept Thumb, Heart Of Lothian: a. Wide Boy, b. Curtain Call [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:45 PM PST - 18 comments

He explored the complicated South by reflecting it with detail, heart, and a work ethic that kept him aiming to write a song a week for 30 years. Over three decades, he wrote 31 country songs that went to No. 1. He worked songwriting like a 9-to-5 job and saved every legal pad he ever wrote on. Now, those 217 legal pads are in the collection of the Country Music Hall of Fame, teaching young writers how he made those hits. He wrote a song a week, at least. And then he stopped.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Here’s All 290 Star Wars Movies Officially in Production Right Now
posted by bondcliff at 8:06 PM PST - 76 comments

Tyler Warren plays Rush's "Permanent Waves" - completely.
posted by davebush at 7:06 PM PST - 28 comments

The Thrill of the Game: Why I Love Sports Anime [Kinja] “One thing to quickly endear me to sports anime was the fact that characters, even villains/rivals don't die(usually, though I've yet to see a character die in a sports anime that I've watched). This means I get to see something that rarely occurs in shonen battle series, the much anticipated rematch. This is something that carries over from my love of real life sports. When one of my teams loses to a rival or a team I just don't like and I'm left all salty, I greatly look forward to a chance at a rematch later on down the road. [...] It feels odd saying one of the reasons I love sports anime is that they are more about the characters than the sport, but it is true. I am a massive fan of shows that are character-focused, and that is largely what sports anime are.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:02 PM PST - 29 comments

Facebook has begun promoting a new "Protect" feature in its mobile app, which will send you to the App Store to download a VPN service called Onavo. Gizmodo: "Millions of people use VPNs to enhance their privacy online. But that is not Onavo’s function....The company is actually collecting and analyzing the data of Onavo users. Doing so allows Facebook to monitor the online habits of people outside their use of the Facebook app itself. " [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 4:43 PM PST - 47 comments

All aboard! Hurtigruten (advert with pronounciation) is a Norwegian cruise, ferry and cargo operator. Their most famous route, the Norwegian Coastal Express, is the 1,200 mile service (in 5 minutes) between Bergen and Kirkenes, stopping at 34 ports including Ålesund, Brønnøysund, Svolvær, Harstad, Tromsø, Hammerfest and Vardo - and then back again. The round trip takes 12 days. Passengers can watch the passing scenery, northern lights, deckhands, or (soon) underwater drone footage. Using 11 cameras, the 134 hour trip was shown in 2011 as a continuous live nationally popular "slow television" broadcast (in 37 minutes, part 1 of 30). Though bridges and tunnels and (soon) tunnels for boats have made coastal Norway more accessible, the route is still popular with locals and tourists.
posted by Wordshore at 3:05 PM PST - 25 comments

Last week, two almost-identical dogs crossed each other's paths at Pike Place Market in Seattle and were overjoyed. The dog's owners soon discovered, to their amazement, that the dogs were littermates and had come over to Seattle together ... from Russia! (original Facebook video of reunion)
posted by lunasol at 1:04 PM PST - 48 comments

It's a cake. It's a cat. It's a zeotrope! See also the making of.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Your daily fall down the rabbit hole: The Ephemera Society of America. As it's been a while since its last mention, let's get caught up on new entries. Mid-century library posters! Victorian fashion alphabet! Medical ephemera! [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:09 PM PST - 7 comments

In an alarming and comprehensive book published last summer, reporter Jesse Eisinger (previously) asks and attempts to answer Why Executives Don't Go To Prison Anymore?
Why Why federal prosecutors often wimp out in going after financial malfeasance? and why let corrupt bankers avoid jail? So why this book?

“I’ve been pretty obsessed with the financial crisis and its aftermath and why there were no prosecutions of top corporate officers from any of the financial institutions in the wake of the crisis,” Eisinger said. “It strains credulity that there wasn’t criminal fraud during the crisis and at the height of the crisis. And its strains the credulity of lawyers and prosecutors who I have talked with. This has become a commonplace observation.” “I don’t think fraud was necessarily at the heart of the financial crisis. But that doesn’t mean the crisis didn’t involve an enormous amount of fraud. I think it did.”

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:07 PM PST - 32 comments

A History of the United American Socialist Republics is a full, 200-page alt-historical atlas. Also see the author's r/worldbuilding post.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:47 AM PST - 18 comments

The overall winner of the 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council science photography competition is 'Single Atom In An Ion Trap'. More winners.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:16 AM PST - 11 comments

Over on Twitter, one Christina asks a simple question: What's a childhood anecdote that says a lot about you?
posted by MartinWisse at 9:47 AM PST - 155 comments

Guy decides to make a sphere out of 42,000 matches, then sets it on fire.
posted by jeather at 8:06 AM PST - 60 comments

On Tuesday afternoon, the New York Times announced that they had made a new hire for their opinion pages: Quinn Norton, a tech journalist who had written for several notable publications such as The Atlantic and Wired. However, it did not take long for critics to point out a lot of aspects of Norton that made her hiring questionable - her ties to major figures in white supremacy, her casual use of bigoted slurs in her tweets, and overall a number of very questionable positions that had many asking the Times a simple question: how did she pass vetting?

By 10 pm that same day, the Times had announced that Norton had been fired. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:44 AM PST - 444 comments

How Angels in America put Roy Cohn into the definitive story of AIDS: This oral history is lightly adapted from The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America. (SL Vulture).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:39 AM PST - 5 comments

Video shoots? Old news. In 2018, there are dedicated GIF shoots.
posted by mosst at 6:22 AM PST - 35 comments

"Scientists had speculated such a soil should exist but it had never been seen—until this discovery four years ago." The Wauneta duripan in northern Arizona is now "officially recognized as one of the toughest types of dirt in the nation." But how does the competition stack up? [more inside]
posted by compartment at 6:18 AM PST - 34 comments

The drama playing out in a New England estuary has all the makings of a Hollywood thriller: unwitting characters carrying out pleasant lives against a bucolic backdrop of branched waterways and rustling grasses when—suddenly!—they’re overtaken by a potent parasite. They turn pumpkin orange and wander away from shelter in zombie-like confusion. Eventually, they’re gobbled whole by winged monsters. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 4:54 AM PST - 4 comments

'Merely a Warning that a Noun is Coming:' a review by Bee Wilson at the LRB about Christopher Hilliard's book The Littlehampton Libels ('A Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery about Words in 1920s England') about a poison-pen case in an English seaside town in the years following the First World War, and more generally about attitudes toward 'foul language' when used by women (via reddit).
posted by misteraitch at 2:51 AM PST - 20 comments

The Third Industrial Revolution: A Radical New Sharing Economy - "Where do we go from here? In this feature-length documentary, social and economic theorist Jeremy Rifkin lays out a road map to usher in a new economic system." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 11 comments

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do, and 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but 52 is...well... [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:54 PM PST - 26 comments

Pump the audio through your big speaker system and let DJ Rap give you a strong female [I seem to be posting these a lot right now!] album experience that starts out from dance electronica but ventures far afield through her 1999 (3rd) album Learning Curve: Cassette Side A: Bad Girl, Good To Be Alive, Fuck With Your Head, Bad Behavior[OMG THE PRESENTATION IN THIS BUT IT'S THE ONLY VERSION OF THIS SONG I FOUND I AM SO SORRY NSFW], Everyday Girl [missing], You Get Around [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:24 PM PST - 9 comments

We'll start with the Harlem Hellfighters band at the end of WW I helping Europe celebrate. Then we've got an article about the Harlem Hellfighters Regiment, serving in WW I Europe and the hero's welcome they got in New York City from whites and blacks: Harlem Hellfighters. Then the awesome musician Elizabeth Cotton: Folk Singer, who almost faded into obscurity. And finally, a great photo of Wilson Pickett onstage with Jimi Hendrix playing backup: Pickett & Hendrix
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Aloha, mutants! It’s that time of year once again when couples are forced to spend lots of money on each other while the single folk get to laugh manically whilst eating alone in their dark, empty studio apartments. (More of a laugh-cry, really.) In either case, Valentine’s Day is clearly a holiday for losers. To help make the day a little more bearable, I’ve whipped up some free valentines [here and here] for you to share, email, print out, burn, and curse.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:05 PM PST - 6 comments

Sarah Clarke, the first Lady Usher of the Black Rod, today was given by Queen Elizabeth II her ceremonial black rod. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:01 PM PST - 27 comments

Almost 70 years ago, UK teen heart throb Dickie Valentine was made, from the chap born with the name Richard Maxwell. Dickie was named the Top UK Male Vocalist in 1952 while singing with the Ted Heath Orchestra, the greatest post-war British big band, and again after going solo in 1954, the same year that his first wedding drew throngs of fans. Valentine had two hits on the charts in 1955: The Finger of Suspicion in January, then Christmas Alphabet in December, when it unseated (and was then replaced by) an early rock'n'roll single, Rock Around the Clock, which gives you a hint at why Valentine faded from popularity. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:11 PM PST - 2 comments

Digital is killing democracy. Renegade Inc. interviews political scientist André Krouwel about his contrarian views on how technology is hindering rather than helping democracies. [more inside]
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 6:16 PM PST - 25 comments

In the course of its 23 years of operation, the website Salon sought to bolster its earnings through a variety of means, including the acquisition of THE WELL in 1999 along with the unveiling of a "premium" version of its main site for paying subscribers. In further pursuit of revenue Salon has now announced it will warn users of ad-blocking software to either enable banner ads on its site, or partition part of their computers for "Salon to use your unused computing power" to mine cryptocurrency. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:38 PM PST - 111 comments

"A West Virginia resident and House of Delegates candidate was physically removed from a public hearing at the West Virginia House of Delegates shortly after she began reading a list of donations made to delegates by the energy industry, during discussion of a bill aimed at easing restrictions on gas and oil-related drilling on private land." She has posted the remarks she had prepared but did not get to finish on her website. [more inside]
posted by 445supermag at 3:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Logan Paul: A Brief Meditation. "They made a kind of monster machine, with every possible lever thrown towards a caustic narcissism, and then they pretend to be fucking surprised when an unbroken stream of monsters emerge."
posted by Sebmojo at 2:54 PM PST - 65 comments

"Filmmaker and educator Cao Shu captures the history of art in an experimental short film that lasts for less than one minute. Throughout the film, the central character goes through the small motions of everyday movements like checking the time and having a drink, with each frame rendered in a different art historical style."
posted by josher71 at 12:56 PM PST - 10 comments

Damn, I Really Like Pressing Buttons In Video Games [Waypoint] “UI games, when done well, are really great at immersion. So, the term “UI Game” isn’t exactly a real, precise thing, so, let me explain: I’m talking about a class of game where your primary means of interaction with the worlds is through an in-game UI. Like pressing buttons or hitting switches on the onscreen HUD, as if going through two layers of obstruction between you and the “physical” world of the game. Think of desktop simulators: like Cibele or Her Story, where all of the action is happening on the other side of the screen, but in this context, in a more sci-fi or mechanical setting. It's as if you are seeing this universe through a ship’s cockpit, or a viewscreen, or a helmet,”
posted by Fizz at 12:31 PM PST - 43 comments

Donald Trump wants to raise the gas tax, previously unthinkable from a Republican, to increase the Highway Trust Fund which is chronically underfunded. As cars and truck become more efficient, what's the best way to fund road maintenance, repair and construction? Make Every Road A Toll Road [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:47 AM PST - 123 comments

Fuzzy, overdriven, bass heavy, driving kick drums and bluesy riffs - 90s stoner rock bands are back, baby!
Fu Manchu - Clone of the Universe
Corrosion of Conformity (w/ Pepper Keenan!) - No Cross No Crown
Monster Magnet - Mindfucker, out March 23
Fireball Ministry (w/Scott Reeder of Kyuss!) - The Answer [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 11:41 AM PST - 19 comments

Never try to eat a bombardier beetle. Because if the little shit feels threatened is will squirt boiling chemicals from its asshole right in your mouth to make you kindly vomit it back up you beetle eating weirdo.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:08 AM PST - 33 comments

Each of St. Paul's 17 districts is required to submit a "Small Area Plan" about once every 10 years to communicate what their needs and priorities are in regards to housing, transportation, arts, education and land use. These are typically dry, jargon-laden affairs, but the Frogtown Neighborhood Association wanted to do something to get the attention of city leaders and bring more neighborhood residents into conversations about urban development. [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:03 AM PST - 6 comments

Prehistoric wine discovered in inaccessible caves forces a rethink of ancient Sicilian culture. Exploration of intolerably hot and humid caves in Monte Kronio in Sicily revealed several Copper Age storage jars containing organic residue. In one, the residue indicated the presence of pure grape wine from 5,000 years ago, the oldest wine found in the Europe and the Mediterranean. The author speculates that ancient Sicilians may have traded wine with people of the Aegean to obtain metals.
posted by exogenous at 11:01 AM PST - 4 comments

An Oral History of The Wire’s Unforgettable 5-Minute ‘Fuck’ Scene
posted by Artw at 9:22 AM PST - 63 comments

"Looking out the window is an underrated activity. Each one is like a never-ending movie about a small, specific place in the world. You never know what kind of characters you’ll see, or what kind of plots will unfold. I tried to capture this feeling with Windows of San Francisco, which features views from 100 different windows around the city. San Francisco is a magical place, enjoy the journey." Windows of San Francisco, made by Jon Murray, Matthew Pullen, Andrew Pullen & Pete Blaszkiewicz
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:55 AM PST - 20 comments

You had me at earthquake proof, climbable floor to ceiling bookcase.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:29 AM PST - 27 comments

The Furby Organ by Look Ma No Computer
posted by gwint at 8:06 AM PST - 26 comments

Grim London - An interactive map of the historical dark side of the Old Smoke.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:09 AM PST - 10 comments

The Twitter account of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is kinda strange.
posted by alby at 6:01 AM PST - 17 comments

Turkish restaurateur Nusret Gökçe, known as Salt Bae for a 2017 viral video which featured him slicing and salting a tomahawk steak in a somewhat unconventional manner, has a spendy new location in midtown Manhattan. Some early diners have not been impressed, but Salt Bae dgaf; he's sprinkled salt for Simone Biles and David Beckham and posed with Diddy. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 5:56 AM PST - 53 comments

"Twin Peaks: The Return, or What Isn't Cinema?" - a four-part essay by Nick Pinkerton at Reverse Shot: 1: Where You Find It, 2: Myth Makers, 3: The Art/The Artist, 4: Life Lessons.
posted by sapagan at 5:48 AM PST - 12 comments

The latest from Boston Dynamics: Hey Buddy, Can You Give Me a Hand? [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:20 AM PST - 60 comments

“It was too slow, too long and there was a violin solo - the antithesis of a commercial single.” Vienna (alternate, lyrics, extended version), by Ultravox and their replacement lead singer Midge Ure/Father Benny Cake, was created in 1980 and released the following year, being kept from #1 in the UK by Joe Dolce's Shaddap You Face. Inspired by the Walker Brothers, eternally popular and admired by Gary Numan, Ultravox performed it at Live Aid, the song becoming the title track (nearly didn't) of their Kraftwerkesque 4th album. The video - “We invented the music video clichés - cropping the top and bottom to make it look like CinemaScope...” - was allegedly based on Carol Reed’s 1949 film “The Third Man” but was filmed mostly in London. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 4:36 AM PST - 34 comments

A long and ongoing thread of (mostly design and UX-related) observations from Japan, by design observer Marcin Wichary (previously: 1, 2, 3).
posted by acb at 3:59 AM PST - 22 comments

"Designing toys is definitely silly and crazy, but we also have a very serious, almost scientific approach to it. Designing dog toys hasn’t really been a category that industrial designers have been trying to break into. It’s been a boring category and we’re aggressively trying to change that."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:05 PM PST - 23 comments

Dionne Farris went from working with Arrested Development [Tennessee] to doing a 1994 solo album which had a pretty big hit with lead-off song I Know [video].. It's a shame the rest of the album didn't garner much attention because Wild Seed-Wild Flower is brilliant: Side A: I Know, Reality, Stop To Think, Passion, Food For Thought, Now Or Later [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Ulysses: Good or Bad? "This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of James Joyce’s Ulysses." [SL LitHub] [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:54 PM PST - 83 comments

First, inject yourself with a diy herpes treatment. Then go off the rails.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:51 PM PST - 42 comments

An hour long mix of hard beats and pop songs? Yes please! Cheese quotient is a little lower than might be expected. Pickle quotient is a little higher.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:32 PM PST - 1 comment

Evan Tyor and Luke McGinnis are roommates who share a 500 sq. ft. apartment in Brooklyn. Each month a bevy of musicians and vocalists cram into their home for the Apartment Sessions. [more inside]
posted by noneuclidean at 6:01 PM PST - 5 comments

Decades ago, a kid didn't listen to his mother, and kept making that face. Today, he's just trying to get through life. Cautionary Tales (Vimeo, approx. 8 min.) (via)
posted by Countess Elena at 4:59 PM PST - 20 comments

The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon
posted by minsies at 3:41 PM PST - 11 comments

The Ski Pole That Norway Will Never Forget "It seems an unlikely event to be emblazoned in a nation’s collective memory. But if you’re from Norway, and you’re over 50, you almost certainly have a vivid recollection of this: A man named Oddvar Bra is skiing the final segment of the men’s 4x10-kilometer cross-country relay at the 1982 world championships in Oslo. Surging up a hill, he passes and sideswipes the only person ahead of him, Alexander Savyalov of the Soviet Union. Immediately, Bra realizes that the impact has had a terrible consequence. His right pole has snapped in two."
posted by ocherdraco at 2:38 PM PST - 15 comments

DeWalt Saws In The War Program [SLYT] , a World War II era black-and-white promotional film that showcases the many ways large, industrial scale, radial arm saws could be used in order to speed up wood frame construction. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 2:03 PM PST - 15 comments

“But the dark engine of the movement is reactionary white male resentment. Alt-right propaganda is designed to nourish the precise grievances recited by the disillusioned and indignant young men that dominate its ranks. It provides a coherent—but malicious—worldview. For a recruit, the alt-right helps explain why they don’t have the jobs or the sexual partners or the overall societal and cultural respect that they believe (and are told) to be rightfully theirs. This appeal is resonating at a moment in the United States when economic inequality is worsening and a majority-minority United States is forecasted for 2044—developments exploited by racist propagandists.” The Alt-Right Is Killing People, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s in-depth investigation into the causes, crimes, and online growth of the racist reactionary movement in the US. (CW for all links, hate speech, Nazi ideology, murder.) [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:59 AM PST - 289 comments

Wrestling fans on Reddit are taking a break from talking wrestling to criticize things other than wrestling in the same way they criticize wrestling. Spoiler warnings after the break. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:53 AM PST - 6 comments

Animal Crossing is a Dystopian Hellscape [The Verge] “But does something darker lie beneath its cheerful exterior? Animal Crossing has always been a game that is as strange as it is cute, full of odd tics and design choices that raise probing questions about what, exactly, is going on in the larger world of this woodland hamlet. Some might suggest that Animal Crossing is its own answer, an adorable, absurdist experience that exists purely to delight. If you prefer this reading, feel free to exit now. But for those willing to go down the rabbit hole, a closer examination of the series — and, particularly, the recent Pocket Camp mobile game — reveals something much more unsettling: a dark mirror that inadvertently reflects some of the most ruthless and dehumanizing elements of modern society, and how they can degrade our social and ethical bonds.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:47 AM PST - 26 comments

Why is this the worst flu season in years? Inspired by many questions on the green about the flu this year. Should I get the flu shot? Is it a cold or the flu? How can I keep myself and others safe from spreading the flu? I'm worried about side effects, should I be? [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:21 AM PST - 53 comments

The official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have just been unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. [more inside]
posted by PussKillian at 8:34 AM PST - 123 comments

What Was Your Favorite Moment Of This Week’s 20,000 Point Journey Of The Dow? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:04 AM PST - 49 comments

Of all the literatures in the world, the smallest and most enigmatic belongs without question to the people of Easter Island. It is written in a script—rongorongo—that no one can decipher. Experts cannot even agree whether it is an alphabet, a syllabary, a mnemonic, or a rebus. Its entire corpus consists of two dozen texts.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:59 AM PST - 8 comments

USAF's Controversial New Plan To Retire B-2 And B-1 Bombers Early Is A Good One – The flying service is making the right sacrifices to ensure the B-21 Raider gets fielded in large numbers while making the B-52 all it can be. (More at Air Force Magazine.)
posted by cenoxo at 7:30 AM PST - 38 comments

Biologists call this need “sleep pressure”: Stay up too late, build up sleep pressure. Feeling drowsy in the evenings? Of course you are—by being awake all day, you’ve been generating sleep pressure! But like “dark matter,” this is a name for something whose nature we do not yet understand. The more time you spend thinking about sleep pressure, the more it seems like a riddle game out of Tolkien: What builds up over the course of wakefulness, and disperses during sleep? Is it a timer? A molecule that accrues every day and needs to be flushed away? What is this metaphorical tally of hours, locked in some chamber of the brain, waiting to be wiped clean every night? [slAtlantic]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:33 AM PST - 81 comments

'A stab at truth': my grandmother and the problem with family histories. Aida Edemariam on writing her grandmother's story through a century of Ethiopian history.
posted by tavegyl at 1:44 AM PST - 5 comments

Austin Walker, EIC of Waypoint, gives a talk at NYU Game Center (youtube) (audio) addressing the role of games in a time of political struggle, followed by a Q&A with Frank Lantz (of Universal Paperclips fame). [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 9:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Cat curling is not just an Olympic sport (previously), it's also a fun thing to play at home! And because no good post is complete without dogs, please enjoy cats and dogs just trying to get along.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:29 PM PST - 16 comments

Cats will sometimes have chats.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:56 PM PST - 20 comments

Nation of Second Chances tells the stories of some of the people who received pardons from President Obama.
posted by queen anne's remorse at 6:49 PM PST - 4 comments

Tori Amos turned the narrative upside down when her 1992 sophomore album Little Earthquakes [~1h] became a mammoth hit. Cassette Side A: Crucify [video] , Girl, Silent All These Years [video], Precious Things, Winter [video], Happy Phantom [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:51 PM PST - 99 comments

He'll never be too old to tame a demon car.
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:18 PM PST - 10 comments

It's A Knockout (1966-2001 in the UK), adapted from the French show Intervilles, was a strange hybrid of village rivalries, Eurovision and the Olympic Games. In 1987, a charity version [1] [2] [3], organised by Prince Edward and involving several Royals and many celebrities such as Sheena Easton and John Travolta, was televised. Of the presenters, some prospered while others passed away [1] [2] or were jailed. Despite large viewing figures, reviews were unkind and Edward was disappointed with journalists. Later, it transpired that Meatloaf and Prince Andrew fought by a moat over Princess Ferguson. Since then, Royals have largely shied away from reality TV, though Edward continued various media projects to this day.
posted by Wordshore at 1:23 PM PST - 21 comments

Three candidates have now registered for the Kansas governor race who are too young to vote. While most of these see themselves as radical outsiders, the most recent to throw his hat in the ring believes standards should be raised in candidate requirements:

“Maybe it’s 18 (years old), but just some way to make sure we don’t have like a dog run,”

[more inside]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:54 PM PST - 28 comments

It's not an uncommon problem in Alaska groceries: A whole shelf meant for bananas was almost completely empty one day last week at the Fred Meyer store in Midtown Anchorage. Keeping fresh produce that's grown thousands of miles away in stock here is a delicate system that grocers have been perfecting for years. Still, one 24-hour delay — recently, a cargo ship needing a repair and stuck in Tacoma, Washington — can send swift ripples through the food supply chain. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 12:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Canada is currently working to heal its relationships with First Nations people, but this was dealt a severe blow on Friday when a jury decided to acquit white farmer Gerald Stanley of all charges in the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie, a 22 year old indigenous man . [more inside]
posted by purplesludge at 10:15 AM PST - 101 comments

Coding without a keystroke: The hands-free creation of a full video game
posted by Artw at 9:21 AM PST - 2 comments

The English language translation of Operation Elop is finally done! The contemporary account of the fall of Nokia is now available under Creative Commons license on Medium. (via)
posted by infini at 9:12 AM PST - 43 comments

Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts [TCG Player] “Most of us don't attend a tournament space to meet a boyfriend or be patronized and coddled. We just want to play Magic on the same footing as everyone else. One of the most intimidating facets of participating in a Magic tournament is being immediately “othered” simply by virtue of being female. It's hard to break into an in-group because we aren't “one of the guys.” We are rarely asked to play side games or trade, and we have far less social capital to influence meaningful interactions that will help improve our standing in the game. We are subjected to behaviors, microaggressions, and questions that make us feel awkward and uncomfortable. As a male, you might not see why asking “Did your boyfriend teach you to play?” is so harmful. But think about this: would you ask a male peer, “Did your girlfriend teach you to play?” Definitely not.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:49 AM PST - 37 comments

The Canadian National Science and Engineering Council has opened a video contest for young scientists to explain their work to the public. Some videos have surprisingly high production values. Learn about how our sense of touch works, how body implants are engineered, or how astronomical impact craters are dated.
posted by christopher.taylor at 5:04 AM PST - 1 comment

The Indestructible Alkemade
posted by Sebmojo at 4:41 AM PST - 7 comments

Nicole adopted an elderly dog. But she seemed oddly familiar.
posted by Hypatia at 8:29 PM PST - 44 comments

Two words: department stores | While there were plenty of lower-class women moving through city streets in the 19th century... it was rare to see a middle-class housewife strolling the town square alone. Other than women laborers, prostitutes were the only ones walking the pavement, so any bourgeois woman that went outdoors unaccompanied would be seen as a “public woman,” or streetwalker. So how did women eventually break free from their domestic existence? [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Icelandic composer of scores for Arrival, Theory of Everything, and Sicario, along with a rich catalog of work, has unexpectedly died at age 48. Sun's Gone Dim, Flight from the City
posted by pashdown at 3:26 PM PST - 46 comments

Rats get a bum rap from people who have never met one. They love to play with other species—including cats [upbeat country music]! A Brooklyn cat café uses them to socialize kittens. And they are clicker-trainable: Rat Tricks I [upbeat acoustic guitar], Rat Tricks II [upbeat rock music].
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:59 PM PST - 24 comments

Why Paper Jams Persist ...Midway through the printing process, the paper was supposed to cross a gap; flung from the top of a rotating belt, it needed to soar through space until it could be sucked upward by a vacuum pump onto another belt, which was positioned upside down. Unfortunately, the press was in a hot and humid place, and the paper, normally lissome, had become listless. At the apex of its trajectory, at the moment when it was supposed to connect with the conveyor belt, its back corners drooped. They dragged on the platform below, and, like a trapeze flier missing a catch, the paper sank downward. As more sheets rushed into the same space, they created a pile of loops and curlicues—what the jam engineers called a “flower arrangement.”
posted by kingless at 2:08 PM PST - 44 comments

Never intended to be released but instead was an exercise for the band to regroup after their 1993 tour, Alice In Chains' quasi-acoustic 1994 release Jar Of Flies was one of the most successful EPs [YTplaylist, ~30m] ever released. Cassette Side A: Rotten Apple, Nutshell, I Stay Away [video] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:41 PM PST - 30 comments

From all natural hair to all African clothing - Black Panther the movie - has been showcasing African culture, heritage, style, and music - so rare an experience that there's a movement on to get children of all ages out to the cinema.

“The thing that really touched black folks and Africans around the world is its imagery. Its use of wardrobe, its aesthetics, the colours, the design – that. People found their stories in that.”

via
posted by infini at 9:05 AM PST - 33 comments

The Whitechapel Monster, a giant block of grease from the sewers, has arrived at the Museum of London. The "solid calcified mass of fats, oils, faeces, wet wipes and sanitary products" went on display at the museum on Friday: "The Fatberg! exhibition will tell the story of the nine-week battle to remove the massive blockage and its journey from the Victorian sewers in Whitechapel to the sealed display case it now rests in." Vyki Sparkes, the curator of Fatberg!, explains how one goes about procuring, handling, displaying, and interpreting such a specimen for museum visitors. The fatberg previously and previouslier.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:50 AM PST - 76 comments

Interviews with various septuagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian and centenarian Americans in 1929 1, 2 (mlyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Larry Graham tells the story of how he invented slapping and popping, creating much of the sound of Sly and the Family Stone.
posted by jenkinsEar at 8:08 AM PST - 11 comments

The Lost Words is an award-winning book illustrated by Jackie Morris (twitter) and written by Robert MacFarlane (interview). Each entry is a nature-related word, such as acorn, adder, blackberry, bluebell, dandelion, kingfisher, magpie and otter, deleted from the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary. On the design of the book, the language of nature (by the author) and a related exhibition. A successful crowdfunding campaign by Jane Beaton means a copy of the book will be in every school in Scotland. Reviews in Shiny New Books, Goodreads, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Washington Post. Robert's tweets frequently describe old words about nature and history.
posted by Wordshore at 8:03 AM PST - 12 comments

A handy Davos jargon explainer from the BBC, and accompanying reader reactions. Don't miss the helpfully captioned illustrations.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:48 AM PST - 6 comments

At Worldcon 76 in San Jose this August, the 1943 Retro Hugo Awards will be presented for works of SF/F from 1942. An announcement video has suggestions. The Hugo Award Book Club has discussed options for novel and graphic story. FANAC has prepared material helpful for judging fan categories (including work by a key figure on whom #MeToo helped shine more light). Many works of fiction eligible for the award are available online. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Them’s Fightin’ Herds [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Them's Fightin' Herds is exactly what it looks like: a fighting game where all the characters are four-legged animals, a few of them ponies. Its "original universe" was designed by My Little Pony producer Lauren Faust, and it's billed as a spiritual successor to Fighting is Magic, a direct, fan-made adaptation of the cartoon which was shut down by Hasbro in 2013. It looks like a standard four-button fighting game at first blush, albeit with pony magic flare, but there is at least one novel system: juggle decay, wherein "opponents become gradually heavier during a combo."” [via: PC Gamer]
posted by Fizz at 6:26 AM PST - 12 comments

When news broke that WWE would be bringing back the Starrcade name, a lot of people took notice. When it turned out it was going to be only for a house show (i.e. not televised), there was more than a little grumbling and head scratching. Uproxx writer Brandon Stroud wrote about Starrcade, what it meant to him and his family growing up, and what it meant to see the revival of the show with his parents. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 5:49 AM PST - 3 comments

‘All of a sudden my world would flip’: the woman who is permanently lost [slGuardian] [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 5:05 AM PST - 42 comments

"Not only a fine, masterful actor -- but simply one of the most delightful human beings with whom I ever shared some long days on set. On wit alone, he could double any man over and leave him thinking. Reg, your memory is a great blessing." - David Simon
posted by wheek wheek wheek at 4:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Firefly canon to expand with series of original books: "EW can exclusively report that Titan Books and Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products have teamed up to publish an original range of new fiction tying in to Joss Whedon’s beloved but short-lived TV series Firefly. The books will be official titles within the Firefly canon, with Whedon serving as consulting editor. The first book is due in the fall." [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 11:42 PM PST - 71 comments

Paradise OS
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:13 PM PST - 9 comments

He calls me into his office and closes the door… to promote me. He promotes me again and again. I am wild with ecstasy. New Erotica for Feminists (SLMcSweeny’s)
posted by supercrayon at 7:19 PM PST - 35 comments

Telescope Building with John Dobson
posted by loquacious at 2:24 PM PST - 22 comments

The school board of Salt Lake City Utah has voted to rename (Andrew) Jackson Elementary in honor of Mary Jackson, one of the NASA engineers featured in the book/film Hidden Figures with wide support from students, parents, and the community.
posted by vespabelle at 1:57 PM PST - 16 comments

I admit that, as a skater, when I’m watching I just go, ‘For God’s sake, just slow down.’ When I was competing and choreographing for competitors, my whole thing was, if you fell on every jump or if you took every jump out, would your routine still be interesting to look at? I want to bring the beauty back.

As the 2018 Olympics kick off and figure-skating fans settle in for ‘quad watch’, let’s take a moment and revisit the artistry, musicality, and graceful athleticism of Robin Cousins. [more inside]
posted by myotahapea at 1:37 PM PST - 12 comments

IVF, adoption, and questioning why what's "natural" is what's thought to be best. (SL TheCut)
posted by stillmoving at 1:27 PM PST - 10 comments

The winners of the 2017 SkyPixel Photo Contest have been announced.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:12 PM PST - 2 comments

Second breakthrough in two years for humankind's commonest mental illnesses. Published in Science today, Gandal et al. show correlations in gene expression between Schizophrenia and three other major mental illnesses: 70% for Bipolar disorder, 45% for Autism spectrum disorder and 30% for Major Depressive disorder. This research comes exactly two years after Sekar et al. published an in-depth discovery that a known gene from the immune system was over expressed in the brains of Schizophrenics. 'Complement Component C4' gene flags connections between neurons for destruction in a late-adolescent process that called "synaptic pruning" and which is devastatingly overactive in Schizophrenia (previously). In the years ahead will these two findings merge into a scientific picture that our brains are profoundly shaped by our immune systems in late childhood?
posted by dongolier at 12:01 PM PST - 29 comments

They stroll through Disneyland in packs of 20 or more, motley crews that resemble a cross between the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and a grown-up Mickey Mouse Club with their Disney-themed tattoos and their matching denim vests strewn with trading pins and logos.

Disneyland social clubs, by most accounts, are harmless alliances of friends and family who meet up at the park to share a nerdy obsession for all things Disney. With club names such as Tigger Army and Neverland Mermaids, how threatening can they be? "It's all about the shared love for Disney," said Mark Drop, Jr., 39, who founded a club called Flynn's Riders, after a character in the Walt Disney animated film "Tangled."

But a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court has revealed a dark undercurrent to the pastime. The head of one club has accused another of using gangster-like tactics to try to collect "protection" money for a charity fundraiser at the park.

posted by Atom Eyes at 11:22 AM PST - 59 comments

John Denver's 1972 album Rocky Mountain High [YTplaylist ~40m]: Side A: Rocky Mountain High, Mother Nature's Son, Paradise, For Baby (For Bobbie), Darcy Farrow, Prisoners [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:08 AM PST - 27 comments

The huia is an extinct New Zealand bird whose last confirmed sighting was in 1907. There are no audio recordings of an actual huia. And yet we know what it sounded like. [more inside]
posted by compartment at 11:01 AM PST - 11 comments

The Banaue RiceTerraces are on the UNESCO Heritage list and are spectacular. Added to the now-annual Imbayah Festival are the scooter races. Mind you, these are hand-carved wooden scooters with no brakes, coming down the mountain into the town full of festival goers. Watch this: Racing Wood Scooters
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:56 AM PST - 4 comments

ORBIT - A Journey Around Earth in Real Time [SLYT]
posted by gwint at 9:04 AM PST - 5 comments

corgi riding a pony
posted by griphus at 8:46 AM PST - 30 comments

As the Japanese figure skating duo of Suzaki Miu and Kihara Ryuichi started their routine, some very recognisable music started playing... [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 8:18 AM PST - 10 comments

See the most popular song in 3000 world cities. This visualization with clickable links allows you to explore the biggest hits from last month globally. There are some to be expected like Perfect and Havana but some fun surprises like Troll in Russia.
posted by k8t at 7:10 AM PST - 15 comments

Drawing upon the films, books, comics, and more, Amy Richau is determined to highlight one woman a day for a year who has been featured in some way in Star Wars. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 7:10 AM PST - 5 comments

How a Commercialized Genre Lost its Teeth (Brady Gerber, Literary Hub).
posted by sapagan at 11:40 PM PST - 64 comments

Why is Civilization 5 still more popular than Civilization 6? [PC Gamer] “It's hard to make a new strategy game that can compete with Civilization—even when that new strategy game is also Civilization. When Civilization 6 released on Steam in October 2016, it peaked at more than 160,000 concurrent players, quite a feat for any new game. But after the excitement of its first month, Civilization 6 has failed to surpass Civilization 5 in terms of regular players, according to Steamcharts. It’s gotten pretty close in recent weeks as expansion hype for Rise and Fall builds, but Civ 5 still holds the edge. Similarly, community members reported that Twitch viewership between the two games tended to favor Civ 5 prior to press and streamers receiving pre-release code for the expansion (though we were not able to independently verify this). Why is this? Why are 4X fans (at least on Steam) still sticking to the old warhorse rather than moving on to the new hotness? Is it discontent with changes made in the newer iteration? Is it the price difference? Was Civ 5 just that good?” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:50 PM PST - 88 comments

“We know for a fact that as delivery increases, our profitability decreases,” she said. For each order that Mulberry & Vine sends out, between twenty and forty per cent of the revenue goes to third-party platforms and couriers...For a sense of why a thirty-per-cent delivery-service charge is so problematic, consider that in the restaurant world, notorious for its slim profit margins, an industry-standard budget apportions thirty per cent of revenue for the cost of ingredients, thirty per cent for the cost of labor, and the remainder for “everything else”—rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, credit-card fees, and profit. (slNewYorker)
posted by d. z. wang at 5:48 PM PST - 81 comments

Afterimage Requiem is a large-scale visual and sound installation by Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper that probes the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and their intertwined family histories. The exhibition includes 108 human-scale photograms made using sunlight, light sensitive paper and Ito’s body evoking those lost in the bombing, and a 4-channel sound work that portrays the places and processes of the bomb’s production, and includes field recordings made at atomic heritage sites in New Mexico and Chicago. [more inside]
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:39 PM PST - 4 comments

In January, Statistics Canada (a.k.a. Statscan) began crowdsourcing cannabis pricing data from the currently-illegal-but-soonishly-to-be-legal Canadian market. Statscan has been asking Canadians: "Please help us improve our estimates by telling us what you paid for your latest purchase of cannabis" via an online survey. It now publishes that crowdsourced data on its Cannabis Stats Hub, along with other health, justice, pricing and economic data related to cannabis in Canada. For more discussion of the challenges inherent in collecting data on cannabis consumption, see: Experimental Estimates of Cannabis Consumption in Canada, 1960 to 2015 and A cannabis economic account - The framework.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:30 PM PST - 12 comments

Puzzle jugs were intended as pub or dinner party games, in which you had to figure out how to drink out of one without pouring the alcohol all over. Michelle Erickson, ceramicist, shows how she made one while artist in residence at the V&A.
posted by jeather at 3:12 PM PST - 18 comments

How New Zealand made Edmund Hillary, the man who conquered Everest , by Spencer Hall

There is another sign here: “POWERFUL CURRENTS: SWIMMING ALONE HERE IS DANGEROUS!!! DO NOT SWIM HERE ALONE!!!” And right past that sign, on the far, far edge of a city built on a ring of volcanoes, walks a lone morning swimmer in a bikini, toweling off and heading to the parking lot. It all seems very safe and also sort of not safe at all.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:01 PM PST - 10 comments

I think we all knew that though. You don't make over $500 million by sitting on the beach drinking Margaritas.
posted by COD at 1:25 PM PST - 98 comments

NPR First Listen: Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet debut the recording of a 2013 work that reflects on Hurricane Sandy. Listen to Landfall now before it's released. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:54 AM PST - 13 comments

"Something pretty fun happened yesterday that I wanted to share with you all: a bot on Twitter accidentally provided the clue that finally solved a 28-year-old mystery about a DOS game that never shipped." [more inside]
posted by griphus at 8:26 AM PST - 10 comments

How Tom Tryniski digitized nearly 50 million pages of newspapers in his living room.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:21 AM PST - 27 comments

Anne Duncan, 63, came up with the idea because she loves to dance with her husband Bill, 69, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago. She said: “We still thoroughly enjoy dancing. It transports Bill into a place where he was before his illness, so for us it is especially poignant. It is an enjoyable feeling when we dance – there is nothing to worry about in the whole world. It is amazing.”
posted by ellieBOA at 7:40 AM PST - 7 comments

What advice would you give to a comedian who starting up right now? I would say go to Palo Alto, go to One Hacker Way, walk into the front door of Facebook, and demand to know what the hell they’re doing. Someone told me that crazy people show up at Facebook every day because it ruined their lives, usually because of a personal reason, and I’m so close to being one of those crazy people. But instead of “Why did my wife leave me because of you?” it’s like, “Why did you destroy the internet comedy scene?”
posted by Diablevert at 7:28 AM PST - 88 comments

The most important public vote in 2018 is, of course, the Eurovision Song Contest in three months time. 43 countries will participate; ticketing is open. Nations are in the process of deciding their contestant and song; the UK has just chosen theirs, as have Malta, the Czech Republic and a few others. Sadly though, the dancing lobster has already been eliminated after their Swedish qualifier performance. Controversy over last year's contest continue to bubble, while the winner recovers from surgery. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 7:25 AM PST - 70 comments

Tegan O'Neil reviews issues #13-20 of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow series from 1989 - "But suddenly we see here, within the context of Green Arrow’s career, a larger dynamic at work. The guy who went to Woodstock and though the Freedom Riders were just the bee’s knees is suddenly really upset about street crime. [more inside]
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:35 AM PST - 22 comments

Map (with mop) vs Pickup Truck... play by play commentary by John Curley of KIRO radio (slyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:45 AM PST - 13 comments

This is How a Woman is Erased From Her Job by A. N. Devers is the story of how The Paris Review's second ever editor, Brigid Hughes, was pushed out of her position and written out of the magazine's history. The Paris Review was recently embroiled in scandal after its latest male top editor was featured prominently on the Shitty Media Men spreadsheet and left the magazine. After her ouster Hughes went on to found and edit the excellent magazine A Public Space.
posted by Kattullus at 12:18 AM PST - 11 comments

Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays (SLNYT)
posted by jjray at 8:58 PM PST - 45 comments

As most of British Columbia digs itself out from under a record-breaking snowfall, one family has it made: their six year old Newfoundland dog, Morgan, is trained to clear their driveway with a snowblower (she recently graduated from using a shovel). She knows other tricks, too: "She can cook hotdogs on fires, she can get beverages out of coolers, she can go in the fridge and get a beer for me...and she vacuums," said Morgan's owner, Dean Edwards of Sunnybrae, near Salmon Arm, BC. Morgan is also trained in water rescue and is a registered therapy dog for local seniors' homes. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:16 PM PST - 22 comments

Zooniverse [previously] currently has 73 active projects they need your help with—ranging from transcribing the handwritten correspondence of anti-slavery activists to annotating the Tate; from tagging animals captured on camera traps throughout Africa, zooming in to cordon off cell nuclei in electron microscope snapshots, or zooming out to explore our home galaxy's wierdnesses . There's something in there that will that pique your interest and send you down the rabbit hole of searching and tagging. Why? Because you are still a better spotter of stuff than a computer at these tasks, you will be doing a mitzvah for the corpus of SCIENCE!, and you may see a heckin' fuzza cheetah kitteh along the way.
posted by not_on_display at 7:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Barlow, a Lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, died in his sleep. Barlow met Bob Weir, founding member of the Dead in 1971 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last until 1995, penning lyrics for “Cassidy”, “Mexicali Blues”, “ Looks like rain” and other tunes. In 1990 he, John Gilmore (cypherpunk, Usenet alt., Cygnus) and Mitch Kapor (Lotus) founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation to “defend civil liberties in the digital world.” In 2012 Barlow founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation. He was a great protector of human rights and a true hero of the internet. On a personal note: I met him once at a TTI Vanguard conference, on which he served as a a board member. He was as charming and fascinating as you might imagine.
posted by grimjeer at 6:36 PM PST - 99 comments

Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks by Joseph Heath, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

“In Thailand, they have this thing called the Dog. You see the Dog wherever you go, hanging around by the side of the road, skulking around markets. The thing is, it’s not a breed, it’s more like the universal dog. You could take any dog, of any breed, release it into the streets, and within a couple of generations it will have reverted to the Dog. That’s what the Culture is, it’s like the evolutionary winner of the contest between all cultures, the ultimate basin of attraction.” “I’m in,” I said.

posted by Justinian at 5:49 PM PST - 65 comments

At 15, the author found Modesty Blaise, the story strip heroine. Modesty Blaise, the ex-criminal and adventuress, has been an icon for women (and men) since it began in the mid-1960s and lasted for almost 40 years. She provided this author with an image of a women who was unafraid and was the boss. As the author says, "for the first time, I imagined what it would be like to be physically unafraid in the world, to walk down any city street I wanted, at any time of night, and not give a second’s thought to the special care a girl has to take. I thought about what it would be like to be deeply loved by a man, deeply known, but still be the main character in my life story, the only one with her name in the title." The author has most of the particulars of Modesty's story correct. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 4:13 PM PST - 21 comments

Stunning Street Art courtesy of the Museum of Public Art. Despite the name the Museum is not your typical air-conditioned gallery. Check out the video. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 3:59 PM PST - 2 comments

The House That Spied on Me - "Thanks to the Internet of Things, I could live in my very own tech-mediated Downton Abbey. That’s the appeal of smart homes for most people, and why they are supposed to be a $27 billion market by 2021. But that wasn’t my primary motivation. The reason I smartened up my house was to find out whether it would betray me."
posted by AFABulous at 3:02 PM PST - 110 comments

CHOOSE YOUR PLAYER
LINDA is a business magnate who made her fortune franchising juice bars and is now a judge on ‘Orca Tank.’ She knows in her heart she has what it takes to flip a local mall.
MAXIMILLIAN is a tech-savvy angel investor who made his fortune monetizing reaction GIFs. He wants to put some of that money in a traditional mall to diversify his wealth.
COLTON inherited millions and became independently wealthy when he sold his Beanie Babies collection at the height of the craze. Buying a mall and turning it around would finally prove to his parents that he’s an adult.
BARBARA wrote a massive one-hit wonder in 1983 called ‘It’s Your Birthday II’ and amassed a small fortune. She wants to invest it in a mall.

The American Mall Game: A fully playable mall strategy experience for the year 2018
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:13 PM PST - 18 comments

On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language are holding onto their culture as it slowly dies out.

Antia is home to the last whistlers of Greece. Sfyria, as the whistling language is called in Greek — it comes from the Greek word sfyrizo, to whistle — is not technically a language; linguists refer to it as a speech registrar, like shouting or whispering. It’s the same as modern Greek — the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure all remain intact — but the sounds come out in high-pitched musical notes. Each letter of the alphabet is individually whistled (alpha, beta, gamma), and strung together to create an ariose warble.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:05 PM PST - 7 comments

The BBC is launching a new look for its weather map - and Scots will be happy to know that the map of the UK will now be flat. Says the BBC: With this new modern look, lots more data and the latest in technology and forecasting science, this is the biggest change to BBC Weather, both for UK and international audiences, for more than ten years.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:50 PM PST - 25 comments

Fuck it, let's dissolve a keyboard in acetone. (Definitely via jessamyn via mltshp this time.)
posted by cortex at 11:04 AM PST - 53 comments

Breed some monsters Monster Breeder is a simple in browser game made by Neil Cicierega in which you must catch, and then breed some monsters. Previously.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 10:51 AM PST - 102 comments

My wanting was the leash that pulled me through my life. It kept leading me to the right things. Until one day the leash was off. I can’t identify what occasioned it, I don’t think it even works that way—with a single, switch-throwing moment—but at some point in the last year my urgency to sustain or possess something (an emotional state, a relationship, a milestone of financial success) evaporated, and my me-ness along with it. I can still put one foot in front of the other, but without conviction. I recall what goals used to be important to me—making a home in a city I love, establishing myself as a writer, arranging a life of regular adventure—but those lures aren’t baited anymore. I am radically disincentivized. [Heads up: some discussion of depression and ideation.]
posted by perplexion at 10:33 AM PST - 38 comments

What elevates it to a crime so gruesome and compelling that it deserves its own podcast? In new true crime podcast 'A Very Fatal Murder,' David Pascall heads to Bluff Springs in the heart of small-town America, where the small town is reeling from the death of 17-year-old Hayley Price. Review here.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 10:00 AM PST - 13 comments

“The idea of canceling student debt is not just some crazy idea out of left field, but is actually something that could be done, and done in a way that has a moderately positive economic impact,” Marshall Steinbaum, a fellow and research director at the Roosevelt Institute and a coauthor of the report said in an interview.

“The way this and similar polices are often discussed is in a mode of ‘well can we really afford this?’ and the answer is definitely yes.” Let’s Cancel Student Debt And Grow The Economy (Mic)
posted by The Whelk at 9:34 AM PST - 60 comments

there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:27 AM PST - 35 comments

Despite spending the majority of last decade as a piece of unwanted trash left on the curb, there are now desperate measures being taken to keep CRT monitors and televisions alive. Vintage arcade games need them, and you'll need to keep one around if you want to use that old Zapper. If you can't think of anything else, why not turn one into an oscilloscope? [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 8:38 AM PST - 42 comments

Science journalist, blogger and author Ed Yong has spent the last two years trying to fix the gender imbalance in his stories. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:47 AM PST - 6 comments

Justin Timberlake seems lost in the woods. No longer can a star like Justin Timberlake — a white artist who has spent his career connecting with black music and popular culture, a straight male artist who has released countless dance-floor seductions that sometimes veer into pushiness, let's say — expect for people to just accept this point of view. Regardless of your feelings about Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl halftime show (I enjoyed at the time), NPR gives an interesting perspective on his Super Bowl performance, his new album, and how the time just "is not right" for JT.
posted by foxywombat at 4:33 AM PST - 95 comments

Boxers, a hairdresser, a stuffed kiwi, an accordion player, a gun, a newspaper, a lute, and a stack of whiskey bottles. Charles Anderson discovers the story behind this portrait of a unique part of New Zealand history (The Spinoff) [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 3:43 AM PST - 4 comments

With video-rental stores consigned to recent history, British artist and movie enthusiast Andrew Glazebrook (fb only) decided to open his own, armed with little more than glue and discarded candy boxes. In painstaking detail, right down to the drink-stained counter, charity donation tin and membership forms, he has recreated all the grime and glamour of long-forgotten classics like Cannibal Holocaust, Dolls and Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce on a tableau less than six inches high. (via)
posted by lmfsilva at 3:18 AM PST - 36 comments

Resident Advisor Podcast 610, a mix by DJ Bus Replacement Service (Show Notes) [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:42 PM PST - 26 comments

If I were a singer, I wouldn't be a fireman. (SLVimeo) [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 7:31 PM PST - 6 comments

Hello. Building on the domestication of fire, stable agriculture, invention of cheese and the slicing of bread, the greatest innovation of humanity is without question the cheese sandwich. These can be uncooked, or open, or toasted or grilled. Offering popular versions and other variations, sandwiches can also be tiny, substantive, or earrings or Christmas tree decorations. Other ingredients could include balsamic blueberry, fried egg, apple, olives, mac and ham, spinach, bacon and avocado, pickle, haggis, cucumber, clementines or smoked reindeer. Or twenty slices of American cheese. Makers can be competitive or award winning, speak in Welsh, or serve you from a truck; just respect the dish and its history, even if you were expecting something else. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 2:31 PM PST - 103 comments

In his first extended piece for the New Yorker in nearly six years, David Grann writes of past polar explorers and the modern day expedition of Henry Worsley
posted by chris88 at 2:30 PM PST - 9 comments

Traditional Crafts of Finland - Puukko Knife Making
posted by saladin at 2:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Why should concert pianists play their music from memory? Maybe they shouldn't. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:52 PM PST - 53 comments

$559M Lottery Winner Fighting to Remain Anonymous "A woman who won $559.7 million in last month’s New Hampshire Powerball lottery has filed a complaint requesting she be allowed to remain anonymous despite the fact that under state law, lottery winners’ names, towns, and prize amounts are public information." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:39 PM PST - 142 comments

The Searchers, best known for songs like Love Potion No. 9 and their cover of Needles of Pins released a stunning album called "Love's Melodies" in 1981. [more inside]
posted by Annika Cicada at 12:28 PM PST - 22 comments

My last meal was either chicken and rice, piled with Mom’s brown gravy, or chicken stir-fry; I seem to remember the latter, but a blog post I wrote soon after says the former. What I know for sure: It was a Thursday, dinner involved rice, and the few bites I managed to force down were wrong. My mouth felt overly large, chunks of food bouncing every which way and not where or when I expected. My tongue seemed thick and wide. And at its sloping base, a feeling of tubal claustrophobia. I corralled the bites backward and downward, but when I tried to swallow, my throat retched forward. Not like vomiting, not an expulsion. A rejection.

Kayla Whaley talks about how she lost the ability to eat solid food as a result of Spinal Muscular Atrophy in her column for Catapult.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:09 PM PST - 8 comments

Unable to attend the Oscar nominees lunch, 89 year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda sent along several life-size replicas of herself instead – much to everyone’s delight.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:48 AM PST - 19 comments

"Other than destroying Nik Ehlers in Call of Duty, I think the best thing to happen to me last year was falling in love with Winnipeg." Patrik Laine, Left Wing for the Winnipeg Jets: Winnipeg Is Good
posted by everybody had matching towels at 11:33 AM PST - 23 comments

One of the most delightful things about Ronin is that Frankenheimer fills the movie with spycraft by characters who are at all times acting as conspicuously as possible. None, though, have as much panache as this top-notch henchman (listed in the credits as "Dapper Gent" just an unbelievably pure henchman character name) who has gone above and beyond by wearing an overcoat without putting his arms through the sleeves. A Comprehensive Review of the Henchmen and Heavies of Ronin
posted by Existential Dread at 11:05 AM PST - 47 comments

"The Good Place" [spoilers for Season 2] (which has the best acting ensemble on TV), one of the best shows on TV right now and " something uncomfortably appropriate for our apocalyptic era" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:58 AM PST - 126 comments

The marbled crayfish or marmokrebs evolved from the slough crayfish 25 years ago in someone's aquarium in Germany. A recently identified mutation caused it to carry three sets of chromosomes in its eggs, which allows the large, attractive mudbug to clone itself — which it does in great numbers across Europe and Africa, threatening local species and potentially disrupting ecosystems.
posted by me3dia at 9:21 AM PST - 23 comments

As reports reveal that homelessness in the US is on the rise, people ask why isn’t homelessness seen as a national crisis? (Curbed) Homelessness surged 75% in L.A in 6 years, a disaster activists call ‘years in the making’ ( LA Times). Meanwhile, There Are 2 Vacant Investor-Owned Homes for Every Homeless Person in America. A visual catalogue of every empty storefront in NYC’s West Village. The NYC Community Land Trust movement wants to go big and take the power away from developers and landlords and return it to residents and neighborhoods. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:05 AM PST - 97 comments

SpaceX will attempt to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time today. The launch window is from 1:30 to 4:00 PM Eastern. You can watch it live here. An animation on Youtube depicts how the launch will work if everything goes according to plan. The payload is Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster carrying a space suit-clad dummy. David Bowie's "Space Oddity" will play in the vehicle during the launch. The car is destined for an elliptical orbit around the Sun, taking it into the vicinity of Mars.
posted by artsandsci at 8:09 AM PST - 451 comments

Cats are weird. That is all.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:04 AM PST - 20 comments

"It's not a film you can really say you like." In this award-winning Irish short based on a short story by Nollaig Rowan, a new mother struggles with "the initial excitement and subsequent grief that sometimes accompanies giving birth to a child with disabilities." CW, premature birth, difficult emotions. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 7:54 AM PST - 5 comments

Fido's is a 40-tap beer hall with a play area for adoptable rescue dogs. Sadly Quite rightly, you can't adopt dogs right there and then:

"We've talked about that," he says. "[Oregon Friends of Shelter Animals] won't let anybody adopt while they're here. There's a two or a three step process. But I joke about this: We don't want anybody here with a couple drinks, then you wake up in the morning with a leash in your hand and somebody licking your face."

posted by humph at 6:05 AM PST - 18 comments

End domestic violence, vanquish trolls and defeat body shame [...] One hundred years after suffrage, there is still so much to campaign for. Women including Jo Brand and Archie Panjabi set out the change they would like to see by 2118 – from unisex loos to challenging the dominance of male desire. [slGuardian]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:54 AM PST - 7 comments

FURRY FRIENDS, WE NEED SOME HELP! Could you guys share some terms for young Furries to avoid and parents to be on the lookout for? We ❤️ you all, but we're trying to help them find accounts and YT channels that are Safe for Young Furries.#SFYF #momsoffurries #welovethisfandom [SL tweet and attached thread.) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:22 PM PST - 44 comments

How an Engelbert Humperdinck B-side became New Zealand’s unofficial national anthem. The Secret Life of Ten Guitars (RNZ, 24’11, radio programme) [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 10:54 PM PST - 10 comments

If you can't make it to the Studio Ghibli Museum (Museo d'Arte Ghibli) in Japan (Google streetview), you can take a (low resolution, mostly text) tour or see someone else's video recording of a tour (no audio, but good video, with some stroboscopic animations), or enjoy three audience recordings of the exclusive shorts: Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess (Vk.com), Water Spider Monmon (Daily Motion), and Mei and the Kittenbus (Daily Motion, with English subs). If that last shuttery video is hard to watch, enjoy the soundtrack and two similar (YouTube) but different videos (Bili Bili) with stills of the short.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:39 PM PST - 23 comments

“The theater is my brothers, my sisters, my father, my mother, my wife." The actor died Sunday in Chicago after a brief hospitalization, Paul Martino, his manager for more than 30 years, reported. The cause of death was not immediately provided. Mahoney had never married, and did not have any children. Born in Blackpool, England, he made Chicago his adopted home. [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:27 PM PST - 80 comments

The song and music video of the remix of Bruno Mars' Finesse with Cardi B sounds and looks like it came directly from 1992, but it was released in January 2018.
posted by divabat at 4:47 PM PST - 55 comments

Hands-on with Intel's new smart glasses. By shining a low-powered laser into your retina, the glasses can get all sorts of information without pulling out your phone. previously
posted by adept256 at 3:32 PM PST - 79 comments

I made a free 8-week fiction writing course in podcast form. [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 3:10 PM PST - 17 comments

Last month, agents of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office raided Newsweek's headquarters and seized more than a dozen of the company’s servers. Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that the company had engaged in “fraudulent online traffic practices." That same week, Newsweek Media Group co-founder and chairman Etienne Uzac and his wife Marion Kim, NMG's director of finance, both stepped down - amid increasing allegations about their ties to a controversial fundamentalist Christian church. And today, it was announced that Newsweek had gutted its editorial staff, firing Editor in Chief Bob Roe, Executive Editor Ken Li, and several reporters - all of whom had recently been reporting on Newsweek's recent legal troubles.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:47 PM PST - 22 comments

The cast-iron terrine took up space on the shelf for more than seven years, sitting there like a big blue brick, inert and largely undisturbed. Maybe I’d dusted it a few times, during seasonal cleaning frenzies. But I’d never once used it for its appointed purpose: to make pâté. Making pâté was Frank’s thing, not mine.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 1:03 PM PST - 17 comments

The Berlin Wall fell 10,316 days ago—meaning that as of today, it's now been gone for as long as it stood. Coincidentally, on the eve of this anniversary came news that a previously forgotten 260-foot segment of the original wall had been rediscovered in the northeast Berlin neighborhood of Pankow. [more inside]
posted by caliche at 12:32 PM PST - 29 comments

Japanese Teaching Prints of Western Inventors, Artists and Scholars
posted by OmieWise at 12:27 PM PST - 13 comments

Ever wondered what it takes to produce a concert-like experience in a football stadium with only 6 minutes to set the stage? Let sound engineer Patrick Baltzell tell you all about it... [more inside]
posted by msbubbaclees at 10:50 AM PST - 22 comments

Nearly 17 years ago Metafilter was introduced to Tunak Tunak Tun. And now, AN EPIC METAL VERSION by Bloodywood. [more inside]
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 9:32 AM PST - 20 comments

In the SFF world of the last several years, the so-called "Sad Puppy" and "Rabid Puppy" campaigns (previously), ostensibly about ethics in science fiction--but more often involving targeting authors and fans from marginalized groups--have been causing controversy. An anonymous blogger named Camestros Felapaton has become known for extensive and well-sourced criticisms of the Puppies and the authors that are responsible for organizing them. In a post at a collaborative blog run by several Puppy authors, Puppy organizer Brad Torgersen publicly accused the husband of author Foz Meadows of being Camestros. Based on some initial "detective work" of Lou Antonelli, who previously tried to sic law enforcement on author David Gerrold, the Puppies began a series of increasingly disturbing attacks aimed at both Camestros and the Meadows family. [more inside]
posted by zombieflanders at 9:16 AM PST - 66 comments

Gene Sharp, 1928-2018. The founder and former director of the Albert Einstein Institution dedicated his life to the study of nonviolent political struggle, and his books have been used as virtual how-to manuals by pro-democracy activists around the world. ("I would rather have [Sharp's book Civilian-Based Defense] than the nuclear bomb," Audrius Butkevicius, the former Lithuanian defense minister, once said.) Appreciation for Sharp from Slobodan Djinovic and Srdja Popovic (leaders of the anti-Milosevic movement in Serbia), Timothy Gee, and Jesse Walker.
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:26 AM PST - 15 comments

This is the latest chapter in the US Politics megathread. POTUS says memo vindicates him. Members of both parties in Congress say it doesn't. Several Eagles players are declining the White House celebratory trip after winning SuperBowl. Release the memohounds!
posted by darkstar at 6:32 AM PST - 1837 comments

Muslim Women, Caught Between Islamophobes and ‘Our Men’ Muslim feminist, Mona Eltahawy writes about the difficulty Muslims face in confronting sexual assault and abuse allegations in the community in the face of internal patriarchy and external Islamophobia. Since this op-ed, Tariq Ramadan has been charged with rape. [Previously]
posted by cendawanita at 9:37 PM PST - 15 comments

Rotationplasty is an autograft wherein a portion of a limb is removed, while the remaining limb below the involved portion is rotated and reattached.

Gabi Shull was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2011 and had the operation so she could continue dancing. Now sixteen years old, she's the national spokesperson for The Truth 365, a childhood cancer advocacy group.

Sean Prendeville was diagnosed at ten years old with a very aggressive osteosarcoma; his journey has been more difficult.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:34 PM PST - 7 comments

For over four years Felipe Pepe has been working on a 500+ page book reviewing 400 CRPGs, going over their history from early PLATO amusements to the latest 100+ hour Bethesda open-world monstrosities. At last his efforts have reached a conclusion, and he's giving the ebook away free on his website.
posted by JHarris at 6:06 PM PST - 30 comments

Solo: A Star Wars Story (Teaser trailer, SLYT)
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:23 PM PST - 181 comments

from a 1968 episode of William F. Buckley's Firing Line
posted by philip-random at 2:53 PM PST - 21 comments

The Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, otherwise known as the Tonys, have been awarded since 1947. The awards ceremonies have been televised since 1967 and are notable for their opening numbers, which reached an apotheosis between 2011 and 2013, when Neil Patrick Harris hosted for three successive years. [more inside]
posted by How the runs scored at 1:28 PM PST - 29 comments

It's Superb Owl weekend, so here's some Bad Lip Reading [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 1:19 PM PST - 7 comments

Monster Size Comparison. Robot Size Comparison. Dinosaurs Size Comparison. Spaceship Size Comparison. Galaxies Size Comparison. All from MetaBallStudios [last link contains a link to a NSFW video]
posted by gwint at 11:11 AM PST - 20 comments

In less than 90 days, Cape Town may become the world’s first major city to run out of water. [more inside]
posted by exutima at 10:46 AM PST - 55 comments

"NASA’s Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada gives a descriptive tour of the Mars rover's view in Gale Crater. The scene from 'Vera Rubin Ridge' looks back over the journey so far, including buttes, dunes and other features along the route." Also check out Curiosity's selfie, taken on Sol 1943: From the South Rim of Vera Rubin Ridge: "Having spent 1943 sols on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is in its 6th Earth year on Mars, but it is in its 3rd Mars year of exploration. That means Curiosity has encountered this season of the year twice before." The ridge is named for the late American astronomer Vera Rubin (previously), who was responsible for discovering evidence of dark matter (also previously).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:08 AM PST - 5 comments

A Parliament of Owls [New York Review of Books] “Humans have always noticed owls. One of the earliest examples of Paleolithic art is an owl engraved on the wall of the Chauvet cave in France.1 Among the peculiarities of owl physiognomy is that owls have both eyes facing forward, unlike most birds. They can also turn their heads 270 degrees (making up for their inability to move their eyes). It has been easy to imagine that these creatures of darkness, mostly experienced as an ominous cry in the night or a disconcerting stare during the day, have personalities, and malign ones at that. [...] The truth about owls is less fantastical but no less interesting than what humans project onto them. Owls’ remarkable physical attributes were shaped by the imperatives of the hunt. They are impressive killing machines, capable of dispatching other birds or animals larger than themselves. Central to this are big legs and claws, wing feathers designed for silent flight, and highly sensitive eyes and ears. Owls have acute binocular vision and, contrary to legend, can see in daylight.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:00 AM PST - 22 comments

Signal Loss: Mapping "video errors" in Star Trek. Collected examples from each of the Star Trek series where audiovisual signal loss is conveyed. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 8:40 AM PST - 19 comments

In 1980, Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime climbed the charts to become The Korgis only top 5 hit song. [more inside]
posted by fairmettle at 12:48 AM PST - 22 comments

Ice cross downhill is the "fastest sport on skates" and basically involves 4 skaters speed skating down a bobsled course, with jumps. (You will not be surprised to learn it's sponsored by Red Bull.) Videos incoming! [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:17 PM PST - 41 comments

'Seeing someone cry at work is becoming normal': Employees say Whole Foods is using 'scorecards' to punish them. The new system, called order-to-shelf, or OTS, has a strict set of procedures for purchasing, displaying, and storing products on store shelves and in back rooms. To make sure stores comply, Whole Foods relies on "scorecards" that evaluate everything from the accuracy of signage to the proper recording of theft, or "shrink." [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:14 PM PST - 71 comments

The search for Jackie Wallace A New Orleans football legend reached the pinnacle of the sport. Then everything came crashing down. This is the story of his downfall, redemption, and disappearance. [more inside]
posted by bongo_x at 9:36 PM PST - 4 comments

The 2017 Locus Recommended Reading List is out. Rocket Stack Rank breaks down the short fiction lists according to whether several other sources also recommended the story (e.g. Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Neil Clarke, Jason McGregor, and Charles Payseur). Incidentally, none of the r/Fantasy "Stabby" Award winners made the Locus list, but many nominees did. Additional short fiction recommendation lists from A.C. Wise (part 1 & part 2), Maria Haskins, and forestofglory are also available. 2017 SF/F short fiction on MeFi previously, previously, previously, previously, and previously.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:59 PM PST - 25 comments

Benjamin "Bejamin" Everett was a painter and now paints digitally, mostly of wild places. Four galleries: Mountains Oceans Deserts Night
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:58 PM PST - 2 comments

The one-liners were impeccable, unimprovable. Dangerfield spent years on them; he once told an interviewer that it took him three months to work up six minutes of material for a talk-show appearance. If there’s art about life and art about art, Dangerfield’s comedy was the latter — he was the supreme formalist. Lacking inborn ability, he studied the moving parts of a joke with an engineer’s rigor. And so Dangerfield, who told audiences that as a child he was so ugly that his mother fed him with a slingshot, became the leading semiotician of postwar American comedy. How someone can watch him with anything short of wonder is beyond me. - Letter of Recommendation: Rodney Dangerfield (SL NYTIMES) [more inside]
posted by beisny at 4:39 PM PST - 60 comments

Pleated Jeans has a new feature:

These aren’t the most hilarious memes. These aren’t the dankest memes. These aren’t the newest, hottest memes. Heck, some of them aren’t even actual memes. These are meant to pick you up when you are down. This is a safe place to come every week and feel good. You deserve it. I love you. (titular meme)

Bonus: Literally Just 20 Funny Posts About Loving Mac N’ Cheese
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:05 PM PST - 31 comments

Shoes in Books
posted by cashman at 3:56 PM PST - 4 comments

On Jan. 29, 2018--the same day the Senate rejected the Trump-backed bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks--four Christian pastors and a rabbi gathered to bless Dr. LeRoy Carhart's new Bethesda, Maryland abortion clinic, one of the very few in the United States to offer late-term abortions. Dr. Carhart previously performed abortions at a different clinic, until the owner sold the property to an anti-abortion group in 2017. The staff of the clinic and visitors from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice sang hymns, including the Jewish prayer for healing, “Mi Shebeirach,” in the lobby...“We give honor to all of these women who choose to come to this space,” said [Rev. Cari] Jackson...“We sanctify this space, and we honor this as holy.” [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:22 PM PST - 9 comments

Guess the year of a Library of Congress image in Photo Roulette! [more inside]
posted by oneirodynia at 12:30 PM PST - 34 comments

"Coaches had touched me a million times, always spotting, holding, stretching, pulling, pushing, twisting. But none had ever touched me like this. I could feel the tips of her fingers digging deep into my cheeks. This woman who had caught me when I was falling, who had saved my life dozens of times, was now squeezing my face in her hand as though she wanted to crush it. I knocked away her hand and said: 'That's it! I quit!' Then I walked out." In "Quitting Gymnastics Taught Me that Failure Is Golden Too", Michelle Kaeser reminisces about her pursuit of athletic glory and reflects on the space between what she imagined she could accomplish and what she was actually able to.
posted by New Frontier at 10:36 AM PST - 61 comments

Mort Walker, creator of the deathless comic strips Hi and Lois and Beetle Bailey, died on January 27. Josh Fruhlinger, who is generally in the business of making fun of zombie legacy comics, offered a remarkably respectful look back at the way Beetle Bailey changed (yes, it did change).
posted by Countess Elena at 8:47 AM PST - 37 comments

The Three Essential Ingredients Of A Great Video Game Demo [Kotaku] “It may be a rare sight today, but a demo is one of the best things an upcoming game can do for its audience. Of course, not all demos are created equal—the best demos generate excitement and set expectations for what’s to come, while the worst demos convince us not to buy. What makes a great demo? What is a demo, really? Speaking in the strictest sense, a demo is a limited version of a game that people can play to get a better idea of the game itself. This can range from E3 demos, which may not be representative of the final project and aren’t accessible to the general public, to timed trials like ReCore’s, where players can do anything for a set amount of time. We could argue that shareware releases of games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were a kind of early demo too!” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:22 AM PST - 19 comments

'Fiction is outperforming reality': how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth An ex-YouTube insider reveals how its recommendation algorithm promotes divisive clips and conspiracy videos. Did they harm Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:42 AM PST - 41 comments

Kentucky Route Zero is an ongoing independent video game, a "magical realist journey through subterranean Americana." In preparation for the final act, developers Cardboard Computer have released another free interlude to the game. Previous interludes (all free, and available for Mac, PC and Linux) have included a VR stage play, a virtual art gallery, and a callable tourism hotline for an underground river. The most recent is a surreal live action cable access show, with a video game companion piece from the point of view of the show's producer. [more inside]
posted by Rinku at 12:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Actually, this is not a joke. The Four Chaplains and the sinking of the USAT Dorchester. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. [more inside]
posted by filthy_prescriptivist at 10:55 PM PST - 9 comments

For his second solo album (post "and The Range", fifth album overall), Bruce Hornsby recruited Debbie Harry, Bela Fleck, Pat Metheny, Chaka Khan, Jerry Garcia and many others to create an album that is as wide-ranging and surprising in its subject material as it is in its musical styles and virtuosity -- 1995's Hot House. Side A: Spider Fingers, White Wheeled Limousine, Walk In The Sun, The Changes, The Tango King [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:28 PM PST - 45 comments

On July 7, British pop singer Dua Lipa released a video for New Rules. In a recent Vice essay, author Emily Bootle argues the song distinguishes itself from other empowerment anthems: “From Christina Aguilera’s Stronger to Little Mix’s Shout Out To My Ex, there is a whole world of music that celebrates the failed relationship as a character-building experience, and interprets heartbreak with unbridled optimism... But New Rules is different: it’s a song about what we can provide for ourselves. It maintains a neutral perspective, finding empowerment not in optimism, but pragmatism.” [more inside]
posted by roger ackroyd at 6:02 PM PST - 13 comments

The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes. Fossilized remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal’s skull. Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward. I can count the scales on its sole. Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, grins at my astonishment. “We don’t just have a skeleton,” he tells me later. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”
posted by curious nu at 6:00 PM PST - 34 comments

We begin with the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, which opened in 1850. There are many photos of women students at class, at autopsy, at home. And there's considerable discussion of how much they had to put up with from the male students and from the media and current culture. Nevertheless, they persisted. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Why Skeleton Racing Is So Brutal on the Body. "Corners are where skeleton racing is the most physically brutal. A tight turn can produce G-forces, or “pressures,” of up to five times normal. (For perspective, consider that astronauts lifting off on a rocket experience only about three G-forces.) “We compare it to a contact sport,” says Matt Antoine, a member of this year’s U.S. Olympic skeleton team. Part of the challenge is how quickly the pressures hit: In a few milliseconds, your head suddenly feels as heavy as a bowling ball, and keeping it upright — and away from the ice — is a struggle." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:45 PM PST - 11 comments

"The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs" is the first single of Wye Oak's fifth album. [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by Pendragon at 4:59 PM PST - 3 comments

Nigel, the world's loneliest bird dies next to the concrete decoy he loved [more inside]
posted by me & my monkey at 2:02 PM PST - 35 comments

To celebrate Ellen Degeneres turning 60, Portia de Rossi surprised her with a gift. [more inside]
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 1:40 PM PST - 26 comments

A Visit to South Africa’s Strange, Astonishing Owl House is an article by Rosa Lyster [previously] about the art and life of outsider artist Helen Martins, and the museum of her work, The Owl House [previously discussed in 2002]. The Helen Martins Museum website has a gallery with high resolution photographs of her work and a few more can be seen here.
posted by Kattullus at 12:49 PM PST - 3 comments

After extensive analysis of the videos, King of Kong's Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong high score, the famous "King of Kong" tape, has been vacated by Donkey Kong Forums. He is alleged to have used a MAME emulator for his scores, instead of an authentic arcade cabinet, as well as possibly using additional software to assist his runs. In King of Kong, he successfully challenged Stephen Wiebe's scores on the possibility that Wiebe's cabinet's board had been modified. (Billy Mitchell did not hold the current high score and the challenged score is still on Twin Galaxies.)
posted by flibbertigibbet at 12:14 PM PST - 41 comments

Scandal haunts the supermarket aisles of Britannia. Previously phallically packaged, Jaffa Cakes (MetaPreviously), part of the national diet (posh variations), a present for teachers or reward after donating blood, are being (again) sold in boxes of 100 for only £3.50 (or 3.5p, less than 5 US cents, per cake). Many of the newly repackaged cakes have gone, some people are well stocked up, but the sole chain outlet oft runs out, leaving shoppers to buy smaller boxes... of only ten to a pack (previously twelve). This is part of a wider trend, though Jaffa Cakes (size issue) are better on some metrics because it's complicated. Though healthy, please eat slowly and decently; alternatives (raspberry, cake, donut, light snack, Polish, Halloween, ice cream) exist, and the future.
posted by Wordshore at 10:40 AM PST - 54 comments

Death in the Village - an elegy by Anthony Oliveira on Toronto's LGBT community processing disappearances, murders, a serial killer, police tensions and the comments section.
posted by yellowbinder at 10:18 AM PST - 21 comments

The High Cost Of Short Term Rentals In NYC (PDF) A 3 year study by McGill University on the effects on Airbnb in NYC came to some startling conclusions. Among them: Top 10% of hosts get 48% of revenue - In predominately black neighborhoods, hosts are 5 times more likely to be white - Airbnb has increased median rents by $380- 4,700 ‘ghost hotels’ set up to avoid regulation and remove long term rentals from the market.
posted by The Whelk at 9:18 AM PST - 63 comments

A Kingdom from Dust. Stewart Resnick is the biggest farmer in the United States, a fact he has tried to keep hidden while he has shaped what we eat, transformed California’s landscape, and ruled entire towns. But the one thing he can’t control is what he’s most dependent on — water. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:27 AM PST - 20 comments

Traditional wisdom dictates that birds don’t become dependent on a free lunch, but more than 50 million Americans are conducting an unwitting experiment on a vast scale. Author Emily Voigt joins them from her Manhattan high-rise and finds that there is such a thing as a finch Brooklyn accent. (SL Atlantic; delightful read even if you aren't a birder.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 8:04 AM PST - 10 comments

SL r/audioengineering; unquestionably the Best of the Web. [more inside]
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:51 AM PST - 20 comments

The prudish, sexy, shaming, expensive history of maternity clothes [slRacked Long Read](TW: miscarriage).
posted by ellieBOA at 4:11 AM PST - 21 comments

A bot attempts to write a Star Trek TNG episode. Yes, Episode 279 (Here's Looking at Q) is pretty great.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:19 AM PST - 37 comments

Following on from his earlier article on US farmers hacking their tractors with Ukrainian pirated software (previously), Jason Koebler has teamed up with Lara Heintz to make a short documentary for Motherboard about some of the people involved: farmers, tractor repairers as well as the politician who introduced a "right to repair bill" (previously).
posted by MartinWisse at 11:21 PM PST - 20 comments

When a palliative care pediatrician in South Africa saw too many negative stories appear on his Twitter feed, he decided to share some positive, inspiring thoughts from his patients. He surveyed several patients and none of the children, aged between four and nine, said that they wished they had watched more television, or spent more time on Facebook.
posted by stillmoving at 11:14 PM PST - 8 comments

Like it's literally as thrilling now as it was then. Oh wait, that's a comment.The B-52's (1979) [40m]: Side A: Planet Claire, 52 Girls, Dance This Mess Around, Rock Lobster [video] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:20 PM PST - 48 comments

To Be or Not To Be , by Masha Gessen
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 7:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Farminaries: How faithful stewardship is escaping the seminary classroom and rooting itself in the soil. Kendall Vanderslice's article for Christianity Today explores the growing intersections of seminary education, ecology, agrarian studies, injustice, hunger, health, and homegrown tomatoes (YT; musical accompaniment from Guy Clark). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:09 PM PST - 1 comment

Inside the Top-Secret Abortion Underground (slMotherJones)

Renata is part of a growing underground movement of people across America who have taught themselves to help women terminate pregnancies without a doctor. I talked to dozens of these clandestine providers, and our conversations offer a rare glimpse into a world that is shrouded in secrecy and fear. Some urged me not to write about their work. But their efforts reveal a new aspect of how the war on reproductive rights has played out, and how a new generation of activists has come to believe that it’s reasonable to handle this aspect of women’s health care outside a medical setting. And they are determined to give more women that opportunity, no matter the legal risk.

[more inside]
posted by Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? at 6:03 PM PST - 16 comments

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours: a Pre-Photographic Guide for Artists and Naturalists is how colors were perceived and described in the 19th century.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:26 PM PST - 13 comments

In 2017, a US board game studio launched a crowdfunding campaign for a game named Rising Sun, set in feudal Japan and involving battles between mythological monsters. The campaign was successful, unlocking numerous stretch goals in the form of exclusive monsters. One of those, which made it into the game, was the Kōtahi, a fearsome monkeylike demon. Only after the game went out, a Japanese user noticed that there is no such creature in Japanese folklore. It turned out that “Kōtahi” was not actually Japanese, but instead Maori, and was the name of a guy in New Zealand, a friend of whose edited the Wikipedia list of legendary creatures from Japan as a joke, defining his friend as “a Manawa Bradford, a spirit monkey that is very hairy and gets engulfed in rage”.
posted by acb at 5:23 PM PST - 19 comments

Neoliberalism: The force isn’t with you… "Verhaeghe’s argument for good authority over state-sponsored violence is simple: Only by strengthening the power of horizontal groups within existing social structures such as education, the economy and the political system, can we restore authority to its rightful place. This, he explains, is one of those functions that cannot be left to the so-called ‘free market’."
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 4:21 PM PST - 2 comments

It’s What’s for Dinner, Scott Korb

Each semester for the past five years, I’ve set out to discuss the suffering and killing and deaths of animals as part of a freshman-level food-writing course I call “Setting a Fine Table,” so named for a favorite line from M.F.K. Fisher.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:34 PM PST - 22 comments

Four stories about navigating your new life as well as your old one. (slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 3:06 PM PST - 12 comments

A 4-Year-Old Girl Was the Sole Survivor of a U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan. Then She Disappeared. [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 2:32 PM PST - 7 comments

A collection of useful links for different aspects of self-care. Exactly what it proclaims to be. [more inside]
posted by fairlynearlyready at 2:28 PM PST - 12 comments

In 2013, Patricia Lockwood asked the obvious. A year later, the Paris Review answered, but their verdict felt punfunctory and biased. Finally, five years later, the Paris Review has, through the power of crowd-sourcing, provided a researched and annotated answer: ⭐⭐⭐⭐★.
posted by maryr at 2:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Alana Semuels writes in The Atlantic about the impacts of Amazon distribution centers on the poorer communities where they are located. In San Bernardino, the unemployment rate dropped from 15% to 5%, but the percentage living in poverty went from 23.4% to 28.1%. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 1:54 PM PST - 37 comments

Into the Dark is a music video for the new single by teenage indie duo Between Mountains from the rural Westfjords region of Iceland. The video portrays a society where dark-suited people must mimic everything their brightly-clothed betters do. Dancing ensues. The group, comprising Katla Vigdís Vernharðsdóttir and Ásrós Helga Guðmundsdóttir came to prominence after winning last year's Músíktilraunir, a national battle-of-the-bands. Their winning performance can be seen here (scroll down). They also performed for Seattle based KEXP last year, which can be seen here. While normally using keyboards and vocals, they do also sometimes break out an accordion.
posted by Kattullus at 12:17 PM PST - 2 comments

"Squirrels aren’t natural city slickers. In 1856 the sight of one in a tree near New York’s city hall so shocked passersby that a newspaper published a report about the “unusual visitor.” Around that time, the tree-dwelling rodents were being released in America’s urban areas to “create pockets of rural peace and calm,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Etienne Benson, who studied our relationship to squirrels over the course of five years. First they were introduced to Philadelphia, then to New Haven, Boston, and New York City. Park visitors were encouraged to feed them, and security guards ensured their safety."
posted by caddis at 11:46 AM PST - 88 comments

A small treasury of live, filmed performances by ustad zia mohiuddin dagar
posted by OmieWise at 11:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Writer Damien Love marks the 40th anniversary of Lou Reed's Street Hassle LP and its 11-minute masterpiece of a title track with an excellent essay, a shorter version of which was published in Uncut magazine in October 2016. [more inside]
posted by porn in the woods at 11:39 AM PST - 8 comments

What it says on the tin. [SLYT]
posted by chavenet at 11:21 AM PST - 11 comments

A Mayan megalopolis "In what’s being hailed as a “major breakthrough” in Maya archaeology, researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala."
posted by dhruva at 11:12 AM PST - 19 comments

Black History Month reading list: [The Guardian] “At the start of the month dedicated to African American history, here’s our rundown of what to read.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:55 AM PST - 14 comments

"The Body Politic was conceived in a basement (not the last it would know), born in an Annex apartment, named in a downtown Victorian flat (possibly; accounts vary), and raised for a time in a backyard shed." Published from 1971 until 1987, it was "Canada's first significant gay publication." Now, every issue of the magazine is hosted by the Canadian Human Rights Museum in an online collection. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:45 AM PST - 1 comment

The Problem With Annihilation’s Messy Release - why the latest film from Ex Machina's Alex Garland will not be getting an international release. (previously) (full trailer)
posted by Artw at 10:23 AM PST - 75 comments

It’s not a headache. It’s not “getting your bell rung.” You don’t have a bell. It’s a traumatic brain injury. Data artist Josh Begley edited together a 5m30s video of every concussion suffered in an NFL game this year. [more inside]
posted by A Terrible Llama at 10:09 AM PST - 28 comments

The greatest football club in the world has a player featured in the New York Times. He is from the USA and has a few thoughts about the USMNT failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. (H/T 7Segment) [more inside]
posted by josher71 at 9:26 AM PST - 21 comments

How Ernest Goes To Camp Made Me A Socialist (Twitter thread) Come for a fun little bit of critical theory; stay for the reminder of what a nice guy Jim Varney was.
posted by Guy Smiley at 9:26 AM PST - 38 comments

Atlanta musican K Michelle DuBois dives into her record collection (literally) in her new video for "Reckless Needs."
posted by Maaik at 9:11 AM PST - 1 comment

“I resented myself for being poor. My pride kept the EBT card, untouched, in the back pocket of my wallet for almost a year. Using it was an admission of failure. It meant giving up my financial autonomy, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.“ How I Stopped Being Ashamed Of My EBT Card - Janelle Harris, Buzzfeed. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue’s preview of the new farm bill hints at increased restrictions on SNAP and food assistance programs. New, cashier-less Amazon Grocery stores don’t accept SNAP. What Americans get wrong about ‘food stamps’ according to an expert. Protect the food stamp program by giving them to everyone, even pets. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 8:57 AM PST - 52 comments

pick two of the options here. They will defend you; the rest come to kill you. The options are: 50 eagles, 10 crocodiles, 3 bears, 7 bulls, 1 hunter, 15 wolves, 10,000 rats, 5 gorillas, and 4 lions. Your picks are wrong and bad and you should feel bad.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:16 AM PST - 137 comments

A wry disgruntlement will forever unite those of us who were children during the height of the nineteen-seventies natural-foods movement. It was a time that we recall not for its principles—yes to organics, no to preservatives—but for its endless assaults on our tender young palates. There was brown rice that scoured our molars as we chewed, shedding gritty flecks of bran. There was watery homemade yogurt that resisted all attempts to mitigate its tartness. And, at the pinnacle of our dietary suffering, worse even than sprout sandwiches or fruit leather or whole-wheat scones, there was carob, the chocolate substitute that never could.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:27 AM PST - 258 comments

We previously met this subject and author in the Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner. Tonight in Melbourne, part-time legal consultant and first-time book author Sarah Krasnostein, won Australia's richest literary award for her work The Trauma Cleaner, the 'complex and tender memoir' of Sandra Pankhurst. Judges said the title is "not just the compelling story of a fascinating life among lives of desperation, but an affirmation that, as isolated as we may feel, we are all in this together." [more inside]
posted by Thella at 3:52 AM PST - 10 comments

As a work of art by Sonia Boyce the painting 'Hylas and the Nymphs' by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John William Waterhouse has been removed from the 'In Pursuit of Beauty' room - featuring many paintings of female nudes - of the Manchester Art Gallery. It has been replaced by a notice explaining why: to prompt conversation how artworks are displayed and interpreted in the gallery. (Some links possibly nsfw)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:43 AM PST - 62 comments

It's the centenary of the birth of the poet, novelist, short-story writer, biographer & critic Muriel Spark (d. 2006). To mark the occasion, all 22 of her novels are being re-published in new hardback editions; and there's an exhibition about her ('The International Style of Muriel Spark') at the National Library of Scotland. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 12:44 AM PST - 3 comments