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David Friedman at Ironic Sans rounds up the digital game show set recreations of Steven Rosenow, with mockups of Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Price is Right, and so on. More images and other photography on Rosenow's flickr account.
posted by cortex at 9:00 PM PST - 10 comments

It all started with a simple question: what happened to Ford Timelord?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:16 PM PST - 23 comments

Bob's Burgers (typical intro) has run for twelve seasons (so far). Every neighboring store pun. Every pest removal service pun. Every burger of the day. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:26 PM PST - 9 comments

One of the largest neon fixtures in New York, the Pepsi-Cola sign on the East River, stands thanks to the Landmarks Preservation Commission. "Once regarded as an eyesore, the sign is generally embraced today as a symbol of Long Island City’s industrial past, as a colossal work of Pop Art and as a way for those who live in the six buildings of TF Cornerstone’s Long Island City development to orient friends and families. (The back is not illuminated, so tenants are spared the film noir effect.)" But was the giant Pepsi-Cola sign originally Joan Crawford's revenge for getting rejected by Coca-Cola chaired Robert Winship Woodruff and president of the Riverhouse co-op board?
posted by geoff. at 7:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Plain Language - an animated guide. "...the way we write often creates barriers to who can read it. Plain language—a style of writing that uses simplified sentences, everyday vocabulary, and clear structure—aims to remove those barriers."
posted by storybored at 7:18 PM PST - 65 comments

Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album Year Zero foretold of a dystopian future, set in 15 years in the future, 2022, where the Religious Right was taking over the country, terrorism inspired mass surveillance, drugs for population control were in the water, and something from beyond the planet is trying to reach out with a message. But let's not start with the music... let's start with the plot [Reddit, top answer has a very good synopsis of the setting and storyline]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:02 PM PST - 20 comments

NYT, 03/30/2022: "A Tiny Brontë Book, Lost for a Century, Resurfaces" [archive.ph]. At the British Library, another 1829 text by Charlotte Brontë "Printed by Herself and Sold by Nobody"--"The Search after Happiness": "NOT many years ago there lived in a certain city a person of the name of Henry ODonell ..." Gutenberg text + edited version. Additional juvenilia [PDF] from 1829 discussed by Nicola Friar in "The Twelve Adventurers," "An Adventure in Ireland," and "Autobiography, Wish-fulfilment, and Juvenilia: The 'Fractured Self' in Charlotte Brontë's Paracosmic Counterworld" [PDF]. More context with an image from Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town graphic novel. See also a review of Catherynne Valente's The Glass Town Game or Friar's upcoming A Tale of Two Glass Towns and anthology.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:28 PM PST - 4 comments

"To be heard as complaining is not to be heard" is the first sentence of Sara Ahmed's book Complaint! about how power is used against those who complain about abuses of power (pdf of intro). Paris Review interview: "When you make a complaint about harassment that’s endemic to a university, you’re pitting yourself against people who don’t want that problem to be recognized." Listen to Ahmed's lecture from March 16, 2022.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:12 PM PST - 4 comments

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that one of the men involved in the well-publicized 2011-2012 maple syrup heist in Quebec (or "l’affaire du vol historique de sirop d’érable," if you prefer) must pay a $9.1 million fine. The fine had been reduced to $1 million by the Quebec Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court decision explained in brief, the decision in full, and the heist itself, previously, in cartoon form. More, previously: Sticky Fingers, A Sappy Ending?, Inside Quebec’s Great, Multi-Million-Dollar Maple-Syrup Heist, and a thread with some comments on the ins and outs of maple syrup production.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:41 AM PST - 16 comments

They communicate that we know ourselves, that we know the country, that we have long memories and that we will not shut up. What’s in a Black name? 400 years of context.
posted by youarenothere at 10:56 AM PST - 4 comments

President Biden marked Trans visibility day by announcing that nonbinary people will be able to get X gender markers on their passports starting on April 11th. The TSA will have gender-neutral scanners. There are also federal changes for all trans people, like fewer barriers to access Social Security and FAFSA. [more inside]
posted by blueberry monster at 10:50 AM PST - 19 comments

In 2002, a 15-year-old Quebec boy named Ghyslain Raza filmed himself swinging a golf ball retriever in imitation of Darth Maul's double-bladed light saber from The Phantom Menace. The private video leaked onto the internet and became perhaps the biggest viral video of the pre-Youtube era under the name "The Star Wars Kid." Traumatized by the ensuing ridicule and bullying, Raza has spoken about the video only once before, and the man who initially helped popularize it, Andy Baio (MetaFilter's own), has declined to be interviewed about it. They talk together for the first time about this formative moment in unwelcome internet fame in a new documentary Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows/Dans l’ombre du Star Wars Kid streaming free from the National Film Board of Canada.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:32 AM PST - 14 comments

There She Is! Complete He's a cat. She's a rabbit. Together, they fight crime become close, with all the pits and snares that relationships imply. [more inside]
posted by SPrintF at 9:54 AM PST - 3 comments

The news broke first from the Willis family: “To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” read the statement. “As a result of this and with much consideration, Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.” [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:36 AM PST - 100 comments

"Running Walden Three is not a feel-good exercise. It is a job, and it is a difficult one. We can make an executive love Walden Three, but we can’t make a fool into an executive." "Tomorrow’s Dictator" is a short, dark scifi story by Rahul Kanakia, published in 2012, in which it's hard to hire good brainwashers, er, community managers.
posted by brainwane at 5:57 AM PST - 7 comments

The Incredible Satisfying Birth of a Marble: MetaFilter’s own Andy Baio falls down a rabbit-hole of marble factory videos and marble contraptions.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:16 PM PST - 17 comments

A statement from Pepsi says that “some people still cite heavy carbonation as a barrier to enjoying an ice-cold cola.” Comes in vanilla flavor! "Nitro Pepsi Vanilla smells almost like a candy store, sugary and sweet. And the taste is notably smoother than regular Pepsi, as if the fizz and bubbles have all been kneaded out of the drink. Pepsi promised a “nitrogen-infused cola that’s actually softer than a soft drink,” and well, that’s what I got. I love vanilla and I would choose that version over regular Nitro Pepsi."Interested? Get your free Pepsi Nitro at Wal-Mart!
posted by geoff. at 6:58 PM PST - 50 comments

100 Boots is a narrative work of photographic art by Eleanor Antin, made of 51 postcards over the course of 1971-1973, telling a visual story of a collection of rubber boots making a pilgrimage from San Diego to New York. Additional bits at MoMa; kadist.org; getty.edu.
posted by cortex at 3:01 PM PST - 5 comments

In 2021, an elderly white woman dying from COVID-19 made a death bed confession that as a child she had falsely accused a Black boy of touching her inappropriately. Her accusation lead to a lynching and house burning. Tens of millions of people saw the TikTok video. Five million liked it. Historian and expert on the topic Stacey Patton points out that this particular story probably didn't actually happen and explores why white people were so eager to believe it and share it. [Includes frank discussions of both real and made-up racial violence.]
posted by eotvos at 1:08 PM PST - 26 comments

Good news for Residents fans and game nerds. If you missed out in 1995 on their classic cd-rom game Bad Day on the Midway, now you can have a lousy time too at Midway amusement park, thanks to the laudable efforts of Max Wegner. You can download the game and play like it's 1995, or just read about Timmy and the other characters. Come right in! See Lottie the Human Log and the other attractions! But watch out for murderers and that RED RAT PLAGUE. [more inside]
posted by fregoli at 1:08 PM PST - 14 comments

How an Ivy League School Turned Against a Student Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. SLNYer. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:31 AM PST - 241 comments

Fond feelings for the big chains of the ‘90s help to explain a renaissance for mall bookstores in the U.S.
posted by Etrigan at 8:07 AM PST - 55 comments

“The plan was to simulate a nuclear terrorist incident and explore how every agency would react and whether they would cooperate. To enhance the verisimilitude of the war games, the U.S. government went so far as to record a fake news broadcast about a nuclear bomb exploding in Indianapolis.“
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:22 AM PST - 63 comments

Remember #bus24? That was last year, when @politic_animal set out to find out how far one could travel in 24 hours by bus from London. This year, it's "the obvious sequel: #train24. What is the furthest point I can get from St Pancras in 24 hours?". Spoiler: the route for now has been through France and Germany, and then of course you'll have to follow along to see where it ends! Bon voyage!
posted by bitteschoen at 3:21 AM PST - 28 comments

Follow a theoretical USB charger from creation to delivery and see, link by link, the steps in the supply chain that are invisible and probably out of mind. Also, learn a lot about how each step in the chain has links that are weak or corroding from conditions either systemic or situational It's an examination of Why Global Supply Chains May Never Be The Same [54m, YouTube], from WSJ. Mar 23 2022 but obviously produced pre-war.
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM PST - 28 comments

An interview with Alok Vaid-Menon, "I Understand the Project of Trans-Feminism To Be About the Liberation of All Genders", and an essay by lazenby ("non-binary/agender gender identities... represent one of the most important realizations it’s possible for a person to have") [previously] discuss gender and art. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 6:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Bruce Baker, a Chicago advertising exec, hit on the idea of giving away square-inch lots of land in "Sergeant Preston's Yukon," by putting deeds in boxes of Quaker Oats cereals in order to promote the cereal and a television show the company was sponsoring: Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. The Klondike Big Inch Land Promotion printed up 21 million deeds for one square inch of land in the Yukon (Dawson City) in 1955 and gave them away with the cereal. The land was real. The campaign was a sensational success. The deeds were never registerable but can now fetch up to $40 on eBay. Quaker Oats and the Canadian government still get phone calls about them. [via]
posted by jessamyn at 6:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Hoogeveen et al's "The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity" attempts to measure the effect of both scientific and religious authority, in relation to world-view, on perceived credibility in many countries.
posted by eotvos at 10:53 AM PST - 10 comments

Russia’s chain of command for authorization of the use of nuclear weapons. Russia’s nuclear doctrine as of 2020 (summary of recent developments, more information below). Nuclear Deterrence 101. Under what circumstances might nuclear weapons be used? [more inside]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:12 AM PST - 321 comments

Game designer and art director Daniel Solis has been sharing the results of his experiments with machine learning algorithms that can be trained to generate art: Generated covers for The Ultimate Board Game were fun, as were his collection of impossible birds (shared previously). His latest: These New Yorker Cartoons Do Not Exist--new cartoons generated based on a data set of old cartoons from the magazine.
posted by Inkslinger at 9:41 AM PST - 11 comments

How to Choose Your Perfume: A Conversation with Sianne Ngai and Anna Kornbluh (Jude Stewart for the Paris Review)
posted by box at 8:42 AM PST - 57 comments

It's nearing the end of March, and that means that Eurovision is less than two months away! Forty countries have submitted entries this year, in a wide range of styles and languages. Current hopefuls for the top spot include a Norwegian wolf in need of bananas, Latvian reminders to eat your veggies, artistic handwashing from Serbia, Finland's obligatory rock entry, Lithuanian sentimentality, Moldovans on a train, and perhaps the UK's best entry in years. [more inside]
posted by PearlRose at 8:35 AM PST - 30 comments

Inigo Quilez uses a single (extremely complex) math equation to draw an animated "Selfie Girl" in a graphics card shader program, and explains it all in a 25 minute video. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:28 AM PST - 5 comments

#PulpSabotage. Novelist Richard Kadrey with a thread of parody paperback titles.
posted by valkane at 6:28 AM PST - 12 comments

To Tell The Truth is a American panel TV show which has been around since 1956, in which three contestants, two of which are impostors of the third, attempt to convince a panel of judges of their identity. The archives of the show from 1956 to 1967 are available on YouTube, and provide a interesting and entertaining glimpse into what television game shows were like in the mid-50s.
posted by wesleyac at 4:03 AM PST - 33 comments

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. Related content (SL Reddit content): "the realities of working in a public sector job". On the Blue previously.
posted by fight or flight at 4:30 PM PST - 65 comments

Let me introduce you to the YouTube channel of The Slo Mo Guys [12m]. They just posted a video today, of a Newton's Cradle vs. different projectiles, filmed close to 100K frames per second. They have a lot of other videos, including this look at pinball machines [13m]. There is filler at the beginning of each video to skip if you want to get right into the slo mo action.
posted by hippybear at 3:49 PM PST - 15 comments

"Beginning around 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, a series of technical and human errors led to a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Four[-plus] decades later, the event remains the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history." ‘Three Mile Island: As It Happened’ — a three-part podcast. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:23 PM PST - 80 comments

Our liturgy, that’s advertising. It’s produced some great and beautiful art. What I would argue to you is that all of it—the television commercials and the print advertisements, the marketing campaigns and the logo designs—constitutes the United States’ artistic patrimony; that our great literature is the jingle, the copy, the billboard, the TV spot. Ed Simon is Tripping the Late Capitalist Sublime [The Millions]
posted by chavenet at 2:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Songs of The IBM is the 1937 corporate hymnal that proclaims "there is no God but IBM and T.J. Watson is his prophet" with lyrics praising the company's founder. It is impossible to overstate how cult-like these songs are, extolling not just Watson, but also the T-H-I-N-K Slogan, the Vice Presidents, District Managers, and each of the seven Product Lines (Tabulation, ITR, Industrial Scales, Writing Machines, Radiotype, Proof Machines, and Ticketographs). [more inside]
posted by autopilot at 2:26 PM PST - 17 comments

Patty vs. Patty tells the story of Toronto’s bizarre 1985 “patty wars,” when Jamaican-Canadian bakers went head-to-head with the federal government over the name of their beloved beef patty.

Waging war on the Jamaican patty: Canada’s bizarre beef with the delicious snack [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 1:09 PM PST - 42 comments

"On offering help that’s actually helpful" by Chelsea Troy:

there are two kinds of help: 1. Advice, and 2. Backup. And it’s exceedingly common to offer #1 to people who need #2.

posted by brainwane at 12:15 PM PST - 9 comments

East to Eden "What follows here is a chapter from Roger [Deakin]’s Wildwood, to which I have written a short postscript essay that tells—by means of the story of a seed and a tree—how Roger continues to root and branch through my life and the lives of many others, long after his death" (introduction and postscript by Robert Macfarlane [previously]) [more inside]
posted by dhruva at 11:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Much Loved, intimate portraits of threadbare companions. Flopsie, Bobo, Daddy Bunny, Teddy Tingley, Peter Rabbit, Panda, One Eyed Ted, Edward, Patsy, Gerry the Giraffe, Pierre, Brownie. A collection of portraits of stuffed animals and the stories of their relationship with the people who own them. Photographs by Dublin based photographer, Mark Nixon. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:32 AM PST - 9 comments

Writing in The New Yorker, Becca Rothfield reviews and critiques two new takes on shame and its uses and abuses, particularly in online contexts (How To Do Things With Emotions by Owen Flanagan and The Shame Machine by Cathy O’Neil): “The Shaming-Industrial Context” (archive.org)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:15 AM PST - 34 comments

Esoterica is the YubTub channel of Dr. Justin Sledge, a scholar of the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion. In each of his video essays he does a deep dive on the mystical traditions, texts, and progenitors of various occult traditions, with a very scholarly eye and a surprisingly witty dry humor. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 8:34 AM PST - 8 comments

That's right, Monday people, it's time for the Free Thread! For discussion of trees, shrubs, mosses, fungi, carnivorous plants, and -- well -- let's not get too caught up on botany here, let's just talk about stuff!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:17 AM PST - 228 comments

Nine Inch Nails via Eight Bit Architecture: Pretty Eight Machine, by prolific chiptune musician Inverse Phase, is a reinterpretation of the classic NIN album on a variety of different 8-bit hardware configurations, ranging from the C64 and Atari 800 to special onboard sound chips from the Famicom Castlevania 3 cartridge. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 8:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Back alley deals, fake crashes, arson, and even murder—nothing is off limits in the ruthless world of Canada's towing companies. From The Drive, an interesting look at Canada's towing industry.
posted by msiebler at 5:33 AM PST - 15 comments

Straight from the I can't believe with all this internet we've got I've never seen this before, please enjoy this old commercial for the McDLT. [Technically this is a double post, I was packing to leave for college last time this hit mefi.]
posted by phunniemee at 7:35 PM PST - 94 comments

From Doug Mack's Snack Stack newsletter, Goldfish-Swallowing: A History: "a practice with a surprisingly long history as prank, hazing ritual, sport, and crowd-gathering spectacle, including a brief moment when it was front-page news despite a looming world war." (TW: animal cruelty)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:39 PM PST - 5 comments

At the National Forensic Academy, crime scene investigators learn to dowse for the dead, though it’s not backed by science. Experts are alarmed. (Content warning for some discussion of finding dead bodies.)
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:07 PM PST - 52 comments

Ken Shirriff writes about the magnetic amplifier for IEEE Spectrum's History of Technology series. [Possibly timewalled without an account.]
posted by eotvos at 2:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Idle Breakout. Break a million bricks! A weird, addictive mix of the classic game Breakout, a tower defense game, bullet hell and an idle clicker and upgrade game where certain upgrades carry over through resets. (Warning: Manic sound and graphics.)
posted by loquacious at 11:52 AM PST - 68 comments

Urban Planning graduate student Sola Olasunda unearthed and tweeted a clip of white children racially abusing Black children from a nearby neighborhood in Queens, which went viral in the summer of 2019 (WPIX doc, 24min). The segment came from a 1976 Bill Moyers documentary (Vimeo, 58min) on Rosedale, where the arrival of a few Black families to the mostly white neighborhood had spurred racist violence and protests, including the 1974 New Years Eve bombing of the home of Ormistan and Glenda Spencer. In June 2020, the New York Times published interviews with many of the (Black) children from the video clip. [more inside]
posted by pjenks at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments

🐦 Kaitlin's Dad has an Idea: “for years my dad has argued that what the world needs is ‘the travel taco’ i.e. a taco with sealed edges to keep all the filling from falling out while you’re on the move. and for years my mom has patiently explained the concept of burritos.” [🧵 threadreader]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:14 AM PST - 93 comments

"Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become." [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:07 AM PST - 50 comments

Lawsky Practice Problems is a website that generates multiple-choice practice problems for United States federal income tax classes and often provides useful redirections for wrong answers. "The problems are a random selection of facts, names, and randomly (but thoughtfully) generated numbers about a range of basic tax topics and partnership tax topics" such as depreciation, options as compensation, home mortgage interest deduction, capital gains, etc. Professor Sarah Lawsky also works on Catala, a "domain-specific programming language designed for deriving correct-by-construction implementations from legislative texts". [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 4:57 AM PST - 4 comments

Vol Libre, by Loren Carpenter: "I made this film in 1979-80 to accompany a SIGGRAPH paper on how to synthesize fractal geometry with a computer. It is the world's first fractal movie. It utilizes 8-10 different fractal generating algorithms. I used an antialiased version of this software to create the fractal planet in the Genesis Sequence of Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan. These frames were computed on a VAX-11/780 at about 20-40 minutes each."
posted by cortex at 3:16 PM PST - 17 comments

What is a Wilbury, and how does it Travel? These questions will not be answered in The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys [25m]. But the story of a few friends getting together to jam a bit is still worth checking out. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:07 PM PST - 6 comments

In How American Culture Ate the World [The New Republic; ungated], Dexter Fergie reviews Sam Lebovic's new book, A Righteous Smokescreen.
posted by chavenet at 11:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Welcome to Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge!
posted by geoff. at 9:19 AM PST - 21 comments

On Tuesday, Republican Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill that would have banned transgender athletes from participating in girls’ high-school sports (the second Republican Governor to do so (NYT link) this week). In doing so, he wrote a (perhaps surprisingly) thoughtful letter in an attempt to appeal to the humanity of his fellow legislators.

Yesterday, the Utah House and Senate overrode his veto.
posted by fight or flight at 8:18 AM PST - 36 comments

He is one of our great actors. Also one of our most inscrutable, most eccentric, and most misunderstood. But as Cage makes his case here, every extraordinary thing about his wild work and life actually makes perfect ordinary sense. [SL GQ]
posted by ellieBOA at 8:10 AM PST - 23 comments

On March 21, 2022, the number of known exoplanets passed 5,000 according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The music is created by playing a note for each newly discovered world. The pitch of the note indicates the relative orbital period of the planet. Planets that take a longer time to orbit their stars are heard as lower notes, while planets that orbit more quickly are heard as higher notes.
posted by adept256 at 6:35 AM PST - 9 comments

Foo Fighters were founded by Dave Grohl, the drummer for Nirvana after the band's lead Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994. Hawkins was also the drummer for Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill tour and appears in the videos for "You Oughta Know, "All I Really Want" and "You Learn". [more inside]
posted by bendy at 10:14 PM PST - 69 comments

Marcus King and friends cover a 1967 song by Danny O'Keefe.
posted by valkane at 9:15 PM PST - 7 comments

It turns out, you can really waste away (your retirement years) in Margaritaville.
posted by COD at 2:38 PM PST - 96 comments

Nature: Documents reveal NASA’s internal struggles over renaming Webb telescope - which is to say, NASA ignored evidence of James Webb's culpability in purging queer people from NASA and tried to cover it up. [more inside]
posted by ursus_comiter at 1:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Barney the Cat on pianoforte and Jeffin Rodegheri on Modulus flea bass

Barney the Cat on pianoforte and Jeffin Rodegheri on Modulus flea bass [2] [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Rockstar is a computer programming language designed for creating programs that are also hair metal power ballads. [more inside]
posted by majick at 5:25 AM PST - 19 comments

My favourite thing is when people stick trackers on animals and one does literally nothing interesting and sits in 1 place 99% of the time and the researchers are like oh yeah that weird datapoint is Lazy Geoff, he doesn't ever do anything for reasons we don't entirely understand

There follows a long twitter thread with other examples of Lazy Geoffs.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:08 AM PST - 35 comments

Short video segment from BBC Four documentary Better than the Original: The Joy of the Cover Version featuring Deborah Evans-Stickland of the Flying Lizards discussing their 1979 cover of 'Money (That's What I Want)'. [more inside]
posted by maxwelton at 12:39 AM PST - 8 comments

Goings On Below Stairs [30m] uses actual diaries of servants and household members to recount how people lived their lives in service when they were not actively serving. Wonderful, fascinating stuff.
posted by hippybear at 9:16 PM PST - 8 comments

As a physician who cared for the oldest and sickest people in New York’s jails, I thought the pandemic might create a portal to a better world. Two years later, I wonder if we missed our chance.
posted by geoff. at 7:34 PM PST - 7 comments

It all began when police found a small quantity of "a cannabis-like plant material" in the car of Jōmon-revivalist sculptor ŌYABU Ryūjirō (大藪龍二郎, nickname "Yaburyū". He believes that the Jōmon "cords" are actually cannabis fibers.). But it goes back farther than that, to when MIKI Naoko (scroll to the bottom) (三木直子) was translating Marijuana is Safer into Japanese, and was moved by the story of Peter McWilliams, a Prop-215-protected AIDS patient who was persecuted by the US Federal government and denied access to cannabis, and aspirated on his own vomit on his bathroom floor and died while awaiting trial. MIKI appears on the Great Moments in Weed History podcast to promote a Change.org petition (English follows Japanese) to pressure the judge in Yaburyū's trial to accept evidence and witnesses from the defense into consideration. The next court date happens today (in Japan time), March 25th 2022, about one hour from the time of this post. [more inside]
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 6:02 PM PST - 18 comments

The JiXia Academy was a scholarly academy during the Warring States period of China. Daoist, Naturalist, Mohist, and Confucian scholars all spent time there, including such luminaries as Zhuangzi and Mencius. [more inside]
posted by ambulocetus at 4:29 PM PST - 18 comments

Second Hand Songs is a project that collects information about covers of recorded music. They also have a radio show featuring curated covers. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 11:39 AM PST - 22 comments

Lapham's Quarterly delivers a deep-dive analysis of Roman allusions, imagery, and most of all, Emperors, in heavy metal music. Follow Jeremy Swist down the metal rabbit hole \m/
posted by supermedusa at 11:22 AM PST - 14 comments

And here, my Precious, is the Site Map of TOLKIEN -- the official website of the Estate of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. It is a museum, library and near universe of almost all things Tolkien

For example: his Letter to the poet W. H. Auden 7 June 1955

or...

his Painting, to name but a few...

Let other horrible workers etc. etc...
posted by y2karl at 8:52 AM PST - 14 comments

Over the last three years, beatriceeagle has made fifteen fanvids celebrating, critiquing, and reflecting on Star Trek -- one vid for each song in the album Rainbow by Kesha (formerly Ke$ha). The playlist on YouTube has 14 videos and AO3 links to a fifteenth bonus track. Standouts include "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down": "A vid for the underserved and screwed-over characters of Star Trek", and "Praying": "Some things only God can forgive. (Kira and Dukat)". "Praying" previously on MeFi.
posted by brainwane at 3:12 AM PST - 8 comments

An investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals a sprawling, technologically sophisticated system of police surveillance targeting civil rights activists, protesters, and members of the press in Minnesota.

part 1: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder

part 2: After protests around George Floyd’s murder ended, a police system for watching protesters kept going

part 3: Inside the app Minnesota police used to collect data on journalists at protests

[more inside]
posted by theory at 1:12 AM PST - 14 comments

I was going to quit playing Scrabble competitively. Then something utterly nuts happened. [It was bushveld. Bushveld happened. -ed]
posted by cortex at 6:22 PM PST - 43 comments

Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto (Barbareño Chumash), "When I first met this remarkable basket, it was like meeting an old friend ... I was perplexed by the date 1711 ... [W]e concluded that Juana Basilia had copied the year from the coin she used for the design." In a unit on "Native American art after 1600," Khan Academy has a ~4 min. video on the same Coin Basket made by Juana Basilia Sitmelelene, ca. 1815-1822 [YouTube]. More recently, a different Chumash basket "... Returns to Chumash Land": "Are you sitting comfortably? We have a long story to tell you." Related: Kaitlin M. Brown, et al., on communities of practice in Chumash basket weaving [PDF]; and Yve Chavez on "Indigenizing Southern California Indian Basket Studies" and "Indigenous Artists, Ingenuity, and Resistance at the California Missions" [PDFs].
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:07 PM PST - 3 comments

In 1987, SST Records released a double album, "No Age," a collection of punk-adjacent instrumental music. (Not everyone appreciated this.) [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 5:04 PM PST - 10 comments

Sunday March 20, 2022, This American Life. In the prologue to this week's episode "765/Off Course", Ira talks to Yibin, who grew up in China, in the Gobi Desert in the 1970s. Her dad was lucky to have a better than average job, as a musician (though the music was in service to government propaganda). He knew his daughter would have a hard life in their town of Jiuquan, so he was determined to make his daughter a violinist, in the hope of a better life. [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 2:44 PM PST - 7 comments

(Reuters) Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia during World War Two then rose to become the first female U.S. secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84.
posted by MiraK at 1:05 PM PST - 59 comments

Revisiting Work From Home. In March of 2021, Rest of World profiled nine workers. Now that we're in 2022, how do they describe the past year? "I have noticed that people celebrate even harder these days, perhaps because they are still here after the pandemic, and the ones that are still here want to celebrate life."
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:47 AM PST - 18 comments

"Eric Prydz’ music career received a massive boost after he released the #1 UK hit ‘Call On Me” based on a sample from a Steve Winwood track. Thanks to YouTuber HowardHandsTV, he has told the story of house originally Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk fame and DJ Falcon 2 years earlier were playing in their club sets the famous sample over beats mainly as a dj tool." Thomas Bangalter & DJ Falcon - Call On Me and the original, Steve Winwood - Valerie, and finally Eric Prydz – Call On Me.
posted by geoff. at 9:33 AM PST - 43 comments

The 30-minute Russian animated film Tale of Tales has been more than once voted the greatest animated film of all time. Here it is with English subtitles, though they are not needed. The film is structured like a memory, and depicts war, love and dancing. One review site states "It is without precedent in cinema - maybe in all of art, because although it borrows heavily from literature and poetry, it does so in a final form that does not to any real extent resemble those media." The animator Yuri Norstein (also mefi previously) has stated that the film is about "simple concepts that give you the strength to live"
posted by vacapinta at 4:43 AM PST - 15 comments

A Twitter thread of a collection of Space Force unit emblems, assembled by Ben. (title origin for those unfamiliar)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:19 PM PST - 74 comments

"The Divine votaries in the roadside temples become easier to convince as Tishrel goes higher into the foothills, recognising on sight what he is. It’s Tishrel himself who is forgetting now, with words from his past drifting in fragments through his mind. All this is yours, Tishrel. One foot after another. Before the individual, the state." "To Embody a Wildfire Starting" is a fantasy novelette by Iona Datt Sharma (previously), published this year. Their summary: "Now the revolution has come, Tishrel is on his way home to the Eyrie, the socialist dragonish community of his upbringing; it turns out that both he and it have changed." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 2:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Ida Saint-Elme, Memoirs of a Contemporary, chapter 12: "The famous Russian expedition was about to begin. If what I have already written about my adventurous career has not shown what a daring spirit I had, it should be enough to say that I unhesitatingly made up my mind to chance the perils of the campaign of 1812" [n.b.: a loose, abridged translation of chs. 113-114 in the 8 vol. original; short 2020 bio in Dutch clearing up a few embellishments; her later life as publisher of a satirical magazine]. A brief excerpt from the memoir of Alexander Alexandrov relates connected events from the opposing side, and Ruth Wurl's 2021 talk "The (Un)making of a Man" recontextualizes that memoir in terms of Alexandrov's "own words, thoughts, feelings, and intentions" while leaving open the continuing and careful theorization of trans historiography.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:55 PM PST - 4 comments

Will and Kate's Commonwealth Tour is a traveling celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee for her 70-year reign. Intended to shore up support in the Commonwealth after Barbados declared independence in 2021, the tour is not feeling very celebratory. Belize's Q’eqehi Maya people specified their message to the royal couple was "“We don’t want them to land on our land...." [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 12:03 PM PST - 58 comments

The most incredible thing about writing a book is that anyone can do it. I didn’t need a degree or any special training. All I needed was a library card and a laptop. I didn’t always have my own laptop, so I wrote my first book on a work laptop, sitting in my work van behind Home Depots and grocery stores. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:44 AM PST - 111 comments

5-MeO-DMT: The 20-Minute Psychoactive Toad Experience That’s Transforming Lives "Since 2018, when Pollan first burst through the glass ceiling of legitimate psychedelic use with his influential book How To Change Your Mind, the idea of cognitive freedom had suddenly inched up to the forefront of the American conversation on mental health. Employing an erudite, mainstream viewpoint on mind-altering drugs, the then 62-year-old straight-edge author from Long Island — who taught at Harvard and Berkeley and penned bestselling books about the clean food movement — lent a credible air to the use of these magic molecules, including LSD, DMT and psilocybin." No word on the connection between DMT and Shpongle.
posted by geoff. at 8:01 AM PST - 54 comments

Residente released This Is Not America, a harsh look at U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Latinorebels published a strong analysis of the song, video, and their context, including the relation to Childish Gambino's This Is America (previously), name-checked in Residente's song. CW for the video: police violence, gun violence, shootings, cadavers. [more inside]
posted by signal at 5:59 AM PST - 14 comments

"After years of serving in smoldering occupations, trying to spread democracy in places that had only a tepid interest in it, many are hungry for what they see as a righteous fight to defend freedom against an autocratic aggressor with a conventional and target-rich army"

20,000 people, from over 52 countries, are in the process of heading to Ukraine to fight, after a plea from Zelenskyy. Among those are large numbers of American veterans - yet a number of challenges and barriers exist: vetting; logistical, and legal. [more inside]
posted by corb at 11:03 PM PST - 63 comments

electricityMap shows the carbon intensity of the electricity generated in countries and regions around the world. It's open source. Sadly, missing data from China, Russia, Africa et al. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 6:44 PM PST - 33 comments

"And what's funny was I was thinking, man, what's the deal? Why is no one attractive?" While maintaining personal boundaries, JaidenAnimations publicly comes out as aro-ace - aromantic, asexual [slyt] (15m) and explains what that is and how she viewed romance growing up.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:34 PM PST - 25 comments

You so truly know your inner plankton, it is a revelation not unlike discovering an impacted toll booth upon the plains of Patagonia. Spread a little off-kilter, approbatory joy with the The Surrealist Compliment Generator.
posted by youarenothere at 4:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Fans of rust and public infrastructure might enjoy the twitter tag #ManHoleCoverMonday, as well as the images curated by @IronCovers [all twitter links]
posted by eotvos at 4:05 PM PST - 9 comments

Petra the home automation expert

OK Google, spell Petra... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 3:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Marjory Fleming died in 1811 from complications of measles. She was not quite nine years old. Yet, over fifty years later, the little Scottish girl became a famous author. She was celebrated for the naughtiness and sharp observations in her diaries, published here, which read a bit like an Eloise of Regency Scotland.
In the love novels all the heroins are very desperate Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers & heroins and tiss too refined for my taste ... A sailor called here to say farewell, it must be dreadful to leave his native country where he might get a wife or perhaps me, for I love him very much & with all my heart, but O I forgot Isabella forbid me to speak about love
... I am now going to tell you about the horible and wretched plaege that my multiplication gives me you cant concieve it — the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 & 7 times 7 it is what nature itselfe cant endure [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 2:11 PM PST - 6 comments

There are between 238 and 280 anti LGBTQ+ bills filed this year, mostly targeting trans people, particularly trans youth, and this doesn't include measures like the the recent anti trans youth directive from Texas Gov. Greg Abbot. There are between one and three million transgender and non cisgendered people in the US. Here are a three of us, talking about how this unprecedented government onslaught threatens our lives. [more inside]
posted by Chrysopoeia at 2:10 PM PST - 11 comments

The hidden recesses of long-played videogames can sometimes reveal fantastic surprises. The mountain of Chiliad in GTA V is apparently one of these slowly unfolding, little-visited spaces. Come along on a journey that involves Sasquatch hunting, magical transformations, and alien visitations, plus a side journey into the Old West. Perhaps a bit grand with its naming, here's Chiliad - Gaming's Greatest Mystery [1h], an astounding watch into the tucked-away borders of truly popular videogames.
posted by hippybear at 2:07 PM PST - 9 comments

It's Monday, the site is not currently experiencing unexpected downtime, and we're just narrowly on the far side of the the equinox: what else is there for it but another Free Thread? Come on in and discuss your favorite solar calendrical phenomena or, like, probably mostly other things, whatever is fine.
posted by cortex at 9:26 AM PST - 177 comments

"There are a lot more seems-haunted old-house-turned-traveller’s-rest places than most people think, and in my experience most night auditors are hollow-eyed, faintly eldritch, and disinclined to let someone check in just before dawn." "The Late Traveller" by dyce (Sarah Blackwell) is a short fantasy story set at "a little old hotel in the middle of nowhere, with a creaking wooden sign instead of neon".
posted by brainwane at 8:19 AM PST - 7 comments

This year's Pritzker Prize winner is Diébédo Francis Kéré. The Burkino Faso-born Kéré is the first African and the first Black architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize which has been awarded annually since 1979 and is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Architecture. [more inside]
posted by the primroses were over at 5:54 PM PST - 12 comments

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for nearly a month. According to most analysts, it has not gone according to plan, and Russia has begun preparations for a long war. The most horrific battle has been in Mariupol, a port city devastated by shelling and fighting. Meanwhile, live in the capital, Kyiv, is almost calm. In occupied cities, Ukrainians hold daily protests, and across the Western border, Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. The name of this thread is from a painting by Maria Primachenko.
posted by Kattullus at 3:06 PM PST - 1099 comments

Choreographer Antoine Hunter is Deaf. Going to a ballet performance as a kid was the first time Hunter felt in sync with the world instead of isolated and alone. "But this time, I could be in the same rhythm as everyone else." During the pandemic, Hunter taught a40 minute dance class in ASL as part of the #stayFRESHatHOME series. In 2021, the choreographer also partnered with the New Century Chamber Orchestra for the Resonance Series. For people hard of hearing who just want to hit the dance floor, DJ Troi Lee launched Deaf Rave back in 2003 in the UK.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:51 PM PST - 6 comments

Licoricia of Winchester, was murdered in 1277. A new statue honors her, a 13th-century moneylender whose life illuminates the challenges faced by Jews in Medieval England. Her history was revealed by the late Susan Bartlet who became engaged with medieval history when excavations near her home uncovered part of the Winchester medieval Jewish cemetery. Intrigued by what she found published about Anglo-Jews of the period, Bartlet returned to school, earned a Masters in medieval history and traced Licoricia through the archives and wrote Licoricia of Winchester: Marriage, Motherhood and Murder in the Medieval Anglo-Jewish Community.
posted by ShooBoo at 10:34 AM PST - 7 comments

On March 3, Justin Friello and Andrew Fox released the first of six videos they produced to honor Stephen Sondheim, covering his songs in a variety of styles. Five are currently available. Youtube playlist, individual links inside [more inside]
posted by fings at 9:13 AM PST - 5 comments

"During February 2022, I challenged 3D artists with the Infinite Journeys 3D challenge, where I provided artists with a simple animation of a moving "vehicle" and they built out their own customs scenes. Of the 2,448 entires, the top 100 were chosen for this montage" [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 3:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Kerri Andrews (Lapham's Quarterly), "A Most Laborious Road": "Arriving in Edinburgh on April 21, 1822, aboard the Leith Smack Superb, Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt stepped onto the docks toward a most uncertain future. She had journeyed for seven days up the British east coast ... in order to be divorced by her husband of fourteen years ... [S]he documented both the circumstances of her divorce and the miles and miles of walking she undertook when she had the chance to steal away. On foot, she was able to enjoy something approaching freedom." Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, "Journal of My Trip to Scotland." An annotated map of her travels [Google Earth], via The Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt Project. Interview with Kerri Andrews about Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt and other notable walkers / hikers, including Nan Shepherd whose work inspired the short documentary "The Living Mountain: A Cairngorms Journey."
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:29 PM PST - 2 comments

"What do you say when a guy walks up to you, stares squarely into your light brown eyeballs and says: 'Buddy, man will never fly!'" The Man Will Never Fly Memorial Society was founded in 1959 to combat the global conspiracy that claims human flight has happened. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 5:08 PM PST - 34 comments

What sort of things do you picture when you think "small indie videogame gets a rabid online following"? Oh I assure you, none of those things go far enough. Here, in 40 minutes, is the amazing story of What The Internet Did To Undertale, a $5K Kickstarted game that became something much much larger than anyone could ever have expected.
posted by hippybear at 3:50 PM PST - 28 comments

Post-Gogol World [via mefi projects]
posted by lipsum at 3:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Today at 3pm Eastern, Yo La Tengo will do their long standing WFMU tradition of taking requests for pledges for the mighty WFMU. If you donate $100 to this great independent radio station, Yo La Tengo will try to play any song you request. The YLT request show has become a low-key Metafilter tradition over the years, with Mefites getting their favorite songs in and sharing commentary. Unlike nearly everything else on WFMU, you can't listen to the request show in the archive later. When it's done, it's done. If you do put in a request, be sure to use this link (with the pledge earmarked for Todd-a-phonic Todd's show). Otherwise, the request may not make it to the band. [more inside]
posted by wheelieman at 12:02 PM PST - 11 comments

From The Guardian: I can be cold and not know it. I can be hungry and not know it. I can need to go to the bathroom and not know it. I can be sad and not know it. I can feel distressed and not know it. I can be unsafe and not know it. You know how sometimes you put your hand under running water and for a brief moment you don’t know if it is hot or cold? That is every minute of my life. Being perpetually potentially unsafe is a great recipe for anxiety. And – spoiler alert – anxiety is bad.
posted by Bella Donna at 11:51 AM PST - 21 comments

Wood Sorrel House is a short (horror?) story by Zach Williams. Content warning for themes of child neglect and abuse. The author discusses his story here. Archive link.
posted by Rora at 10:44 AM PST - 12 comments

Christopher Alexander, a towering figure in architecture and urbanism—one of the biggest influences on the New Urbanism movement—died on Thursday, March 17 [2022], after a long illness, it was reported by Michael Mehaffy, a long-time collaborator and protege. Alexander was the author or principal author of many books, including A Pattern Language, one of the best-selling architectural books of all time. He is considered to be the father of the pattern language movement in software, which is the idea behind Wikipedia. In 2006, he was one of the first two recipients, along with Leon Krier, of CNU's Athena Medal, which honors those who laid the groundwork for The New Urbanism movement. [quoted from cnu.org] [more inside]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 7:06 AM PST - 38 comments

Mia Hannson has been recreating the Bayeaux Tapestry on her own for the past six years, with its original mistakes. Her Facebook: Mia’s Bayeux Tapestry Story. She also has had published Mia’s Bayeux Tapestry Colouring Book
posted by ShooBoo at 6:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Wolverine vs. Black Bear. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 11:30 PM PST - 15 comments

Zelenskyy: The Man Who Took On Putin

"No one knows at this stage, how this story will end." [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 9:04 PM PST - 39 comments

YouTuber KaiserBeamz has made a name for themselves with detailed dives into various retro anime titles - both notable works like Area 88 and questionable dreck like Mad Bull 34,along with their excellent Merrie History of Looney Tunes retrospective on the history of Termite Terrace. Having hit the milestone of 100 episodes, they decided to cover one of the most famous retro anime titles from the 80s that played a major role in building Western anime fandom, a title filled with silliness, geeky gags, and just plain oddity - Project A-Ko.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Winners of the 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest. Winners of 2021 World Nature Photography Awards. Winners of Sony World Photography Awards for 2022.
posted by blue shadows at 6:49 PM PST - 4 comments

Dianna Cowern's Physics Girl videos "Singing plates - Standing waves on Chladni plates" (2014; also re: acoustic levitation) and "I built an acoustic LEVITATOR! Making liquid float on air" (2017; via DIY instructions with a 3D printer, Arduino, etc.; recent 256-channel alternative) demonstrate physics involved in ch. 3 of Amy Marie Hill's Sophie Germain: A Mathematical Biography [PDF]: "His Majesty the Emperor and King ... desires that the Class make this the subject of a prize ... for ... the development of a mathematical theory of the vibration of elastic surfaces ...' The deadline for entries was set for October 1, 1811." Hill explains obstacles to Germain's attempted théorie des surfaces élastiques, and Dora Musielak describes more recent research on Germain's well-recognized work on number theory "... and Her Fearless Attempt to Prove Fermat's Last Theorem" (PDF; cf. Sophie Germain's Identity & Sophie Germain Primes).
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:23 PM PST - 2 comments

People Make Games investigates reports of workplace toxicity [YouTube] at Mountains, Fullbright, and Funomena. [TW: workplace toxicity/abuse] [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:51 PM PST - 15 comments

Professional rug cleaning takes decades of dirt off of this beautiful weaving that was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and just needed a refresh. 31m of carpet cleaning. Water, suds, pressure jets scrubbing, and a pleasing ending make this a satisfying watch in these turbulent times. Unless you're some rug dirt, in which case....
posted by hippybear at 1:46 PM PST - 59 comments

Previously Thoraya Maronesy continues to ask strangers questions. This March 10th addition, What's something I wouldn't believe about you?, might provide a moment's respite from the heavy times. Hope you have a good weekend.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:10 PM PST - 9 comments

We all know what castles were like indoors from the movies: dark, austere, lit by torches. But Tod (previously) takes us through the bright colours of reconstructed Dover Castle, and also some mail and other things he made.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 4:39 AM PST - 19 comments

Teaser Trailer for "We Own This City" from HBO and David Simon, premiering April 25. Based on the book of the same name by investigative journalist Justin Fenton, the miniseries tells the true story of the Gun Trace Task Force, the corrupt Baltimore police squad.
posted by riruro at 7:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Amy Watkin (McSweeney's), "Germaine de Staël: Napoleon's Worst Enemy": "[S]he took her conversational skills seriously and used them to put people at ease, to entertain, and ... to make people examine their own views of the world" (Watkin's column archives). De Staël's Corinne; or, Italy (1807; odes trans. by Letitia Elizabeth Landon) is a "novelogue" [PDF] based on her tour of Italy during her Ten Years of Exile from Paris. Toril Moi's "A Woman's Desire to Be Known" [PDF] argues it "offers a radical analysis" and reflects "meditations on the relationship between love and expressivity, and between love and our capacity to understand others." De Staël's biography by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. De Staël as Corinne by royal portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun [repainted]; de Staël & daughter Albertine by "Bad News" cat fancier portraitist Marguerite Gérard. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:19 PM PST - 7 comments

Welcome to Flowchella!! It's March, it's Minnesota, it's time for salad and flow: the members of the 2022 Minnesota State High School All Hockey Hair Team - and over 100,000 fans - descend upon the many rinks of the Twin Cities to show off their mullets, their stripes, and a little bit of hockey as well as the hair. [more inside]
posted by Gray Duck at 3:56 PM PST - 20 comments

Perspectives on a Global Green New Deal features climate justice advocates and critical scholars from around the globe on reparations, migration, oceans, and much more (online version & pdf are both free). The fantastic companion podcast "Planet B: Everything Must Change" episodes: 1. Work, 2. Land; 3. Infrastructure; 4. Water; 5. Migration; 6. Debt. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Half Man Half Biscuit has a new album out called The Voterol Years. Tracks include Tess of the Dormobiles, Grafting Haddock in the George, and In A Suffolk Ditch. As usual, the lyrics are provoking a good deal of discussion. Recently the band did a kitchen session for Andy Kershaw's podcast. Here's some previously and some 2021 live footage. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 11:13 AM PST - 12 comments

In order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the launch of Toonami and it's impact on anime in the US, Adult Swim is working with fan archivist SlimD716 to remaster a number of interstitials and promos that helped define the block's identity, such as the titular Space Is The Place. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:27 AM PST - 26 comments

Guayaquil likely had the world’s most lethal outbreak of covid-19 per capita. During that hellish stretch from late March to mid-April of 2020, hundreds [in one city] were dying each day. For more than a week in early April, the number was around seven hundred. In the evenings, she’d return home, but wouldn’t cross the threshold of the apartment before making sure that her mother, Loli, was in her own room, with the door closed. [Loli] was concerned, confined to the apartment, and eager to know what was really happening out there. How many patients came in, how many died, Loli would ask every night. Lots, Vélez would answer, always vague, trying not to worry her mother. After all, what good would it do to admit that she’d seen fifty people die that day?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Yacht Soul: The Cover Versions (Spotify, Bandcamp) is a compilation of cover songs (original artists include Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, and Fleetwood Mac) by artists like Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, and The Pointer Sisters.
posted by box at 8:44 AM PST - 32 comments

For the day that's in it, 17 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About The Historical (St) Patrick and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs St. Patrick's Day Message which is extra-special this year.
posted by scorbet at 8:01 AM PST - 25 comments

Youtuber Shaun takes a deep dive into the dangerously liberal moral philosophy of the Harry Potter universe. [SLYT 1h48m] [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 7:56 AM PST - 46 comments

Who was Thomas Buchler, the late creator of beloved Torah program TropeTrainer? And can anything be done to revive his life’s work? S.I. Rosenbaum recounts the surprisingly complex story for Input.
posted by zamboni at 5:44 PM PST - 15 comments

The Fanm Rebèl Project, "Marie-Louise Christophe: A Haitian Queen in Great Britain" (30 mins.): "In 1821, one year after the death of the Haitian King Henry Christophe, his widow, Marie-Louise Christophe, immigrated to England." "Account of Marie-Louise Christophe in Pisa." Last Will and Testament. Project gallery. See also La Gazette Royale d'Hayti: "Here, you can journey through the northern government of Haiti's official newspapers and explore its yearly almanacs," including a four day (untranslated) account of the fête of Queen Marie-Louise. Related: Marlene L. Daut writing for Aeon on "How a utopian vision of Black freedom and self-government was undone" (also portrayed in a ~5 minute animation; cw: suicide).
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:08 PM PST - 1 comment

Breaking the Color Bar - David Jesudason, writing at Good Beer Hunting
During the early 1960s, the IWA used these tactics in the town’s pubs, organizing pub crawls with white left-wing university students who would buy their comrades of color pints in a nationwide campaign. When landlords noticed the color bar was being broken, they would bar the “offenders,” and campaigners such as Jouhl would then give evidence at licensee meetings, which resulted in some pub landlords losing their licenses. [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 5:07 PM PST - 7 comments

Back in November, Earthlings received an intriguing message from Circus Mircus, the Georgian representative for Eurovision Song Contest 2022. On March 9 they released the addictive Lock Me In, foregoing the official video in solidarity with Ukraine. [more inside]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 3:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery (Urbina, F., Lentzos, F., Invernizzi, C. et al. Nat Mach Intell (2022):

Our drug discovery company received an invitation to contribute a presentation on how AI technologies for drug discovery could potentially be misused. The thought had never previously struck us.... When we think of drug discovery, we normally do not consider technology misuse potential. We are not trained to consider it, and it is not even required for machine learning research.

[more inside]
posted by autopilot at 2:24 PM PST - 48 comments

Saharan dust storm covers Spain, spreads out across Europe [ABC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:25 PM PST - 18 comments

Globle! It's Wordle, but for globes. Well actually there's just one globe, and you have to guess a country. And it hasn't been bought by the New York Times. But the globe spins and it's 3D, and real snazzy! You get the idea. A game by @theAbeTrain. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 10:07 AM PST - 41 comments

Two years ago, teaching staff at a London school "smelled cannabis" on a fifteen year old child. Despite searching her bag, clothes and shoes and finding nothing, the police were called. [CW: sexual abuse of a minor by police] [more inside]
posted by humph at 8:10 AM PST - 27 comments

A Holocaust Survivor's Hardboiled Science Fiction [ungated] - "Though he rarely discussed them, Stanisław Lem's experiences in wartime Poland weighed on him and affected his stories." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:46 AM PST - 13 comments

When the CEO of Scholastic died suddenly last year, he left control of the family empire to a former colleague—his ex-girlfriend. Now there may be a showdown brewing over billions of dollars in kids’ fare.
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 12:30 AM PST - 44 comments

David Mitchell, "Manuel Complet des Jeux de Société by Elisabeth Celnart, 1827" and its story collab and/or Mad Libs-like precursors to Exquisite Corpse sometimes also in Catharine Harbeson Waterman's Book of Parlour Games, 1853: "L'Histoire ... in which each successive player only sees the last word of what was previously written ... [or, alternatively] in which each player adds information according to a previously agreed set of categories ... 'The game of 'l'histoire' [1812*; 1836*; Waterman 1853] is the same as the game of 'l'amphigouri' [1812*; 1866*], 'roman impromptu' [1812*; 1836*] and 'secrétaire' [1788*; 1812*; 1836*; Waterman 1853]." Also, on Oct. 10, 1824, Anne Lister (prev.) described the French parlor game of Les Résultats and compared it to Consequences [Higgins 1854; Sandison 1895]. Celnart is known for works on hair care, cosmetics*, perfumery, cooking*, etc.; Waterman, for a language of flowers. [*In French.]
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:04 PM PST - 7 comments

Denialism is a process that employs some or all of these characteristics.
1. Conspiracies.
2. Fake experts.
3. Selectivity.
4. Creation of impossible expectations for research.
5. Use of misrepresentation and logical fallacies, e.g. Hitler was anti-smoking therefore... [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:11 PM PST - 25 comments

"Disparities in health across the 50 states are growing, a trend that began in the 1990s. For example, in 1990, life expectancy in New York was lower than in Oklahoma, but the trajectories separated sharply in the 1990s and, by 2016, New York ranked third in life expectancy, whereas Oklahoma ranked 45th... The widening gap cannot be explained by changes in the racial and ethnic composition of states, because the same trend occurred within racial and ethnic groups... States assumed increasing powers decades ago, when the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the US Congress in the 1990s promoted devolution... States with different political priorities and economic circumstances made diverse policy choices, widening the gap..."
posted by clawsoon at 3:49 PM PST - 25 comments

Here are the "National Costumes" brought to you by Buzzfeed. What costume best epitomizes one's culture and nation, while also showing off one's abs? And who will be the most beautiful man? Spoiler alert: [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 3:41 PM PST - 28 comments

How To Make A Shillelagh, Ireland 1986 Such great comedy, so much melancholy.
posted by Buntix at 2:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Colbert was still doing his Comendy Central show. Tyson was at perhaps the height of his powers. The two are electric together, and the amount of science and good humor in this 1h25m is delightful. Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy - 2010-Jan-29 Previously, from 2011.
posted by hippybear at 2:08 PM PST - 4 comments

Parable of the Polygons: A Playable Post on the Shape of Society These little cuties are 50% Triangles, 50% Squares, and 100% slightly shapist. But only slightly! In fact, every polygon prefers being in a diverse crowd. You can only move them if they're unhappy with their immediate neighborhood. They've got one, simple rule: “I wanna move if less than 1/3 of my neighbors are like me.” Harmless, right? Every polygon would be happy with a mixed neighborhood. Surely their small bias can't affect the larger shape society that much? Well... [more inside]
posted by MiraK at 1:20 PM PST - 15 comments

It seems to me that there’s something about men’s hockey—a sport about which comedian Rodney Dangerfield once reportedly quipped, “I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out”—that’s especially unfriendly to queerness. Its core culture remains one of male aggression, where weakness of any kind, real or perceived, gets weaponized.

I know what I’m talking about because I left hockey myself, largely over not being “manly enough”. Alex Manley writes in The Walrus.
posted by Rumple at 12:43 PM PST - 25 comments

The Senate has unanimously passed a resolution to make DST permanent. In a bill co-sponsored by (my man!) Sheldon Whitehouse of RI and Marco Rubio of FL, Daylight Saving Time would become permanent. In other words, we just "sprang forward" and will never "fall back" again. This is change sought by medical groups and populist lawmakers, though individual vary on whether they prefer Standard Time or DST. [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 12:11 PM PST - 230 comments

Pathocracy, identified by the Polish psychologist Andrzej Lobaczewski, is the condition where government of a society is dominated by those with psychopathological disorders. It begins when one such disordered individual emerges as a leader figure; soon, their personality amplifies it, filtering out those appalled by their brutality and irresponsibility but attracting others who see it as charisma and decisiveness. Soon, others with psychopathic traits attach themselves to the power hierarchy, while responsible and moral people leave or are ejected, and before long, the entire government is filled with people with a pathological lack of empathy and conscience. This psychopathy soon spreads beyond the government, through the population, through propaganda and polarising ideology. [more inside]
posted by acb at 11:04 AM PST - 22 comments

The Ms. Marvel tv series trailer just appeared. The series will stream on Disney+ starting June 6, 2022. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:33 AM PST - 45 comments

Insects in Art "Throughout history and across many cultures, insects have inspired artists and artisans. Moth larvae, bees and beetles have provided silk, wax, dyes and other art media. Some insects leave traces on their environment that artists capture, while others in effect become collaborators as their natural behaviors are incorporated into art."
posted by dhruva at 9:20 AM PST - 7 comments

In 1890, Mssrs. Louis Glass and William S. Arnold patented the "Coin Actuated Attachment for Phonographs," which took a nickel and played a wax cylinder into headphone-like "listening tubes" that patrons would stick in their ears. They were the first jukeboxes. Glass installed one at the Palais Royale Saloon, 303 Sutter Street, San Francisco. (The building was destroyed by fire after the 1906 earthquake; the landmark Hammersmith Building now sits at that address.) It was immediately popular, and over the next six months Glass placed several more around San Francisco (from the link: in the first six months of operation, “the first 15 coin-op machines in San Francisco had brought in $4,019” in 1890 money, or about $120,000 today. That’s a lot of nickels!) [more inside]
posted by AgentRocket at 6:23 AM PST - 5 comments

This is not a Doubles Jubilee post, they really have done it again. Almost a year to the day since the EVER GIVEN wedged herself across the Suez canal, another Evergreen ship - the deliciously inaptly named EVER FORWARD - is hard aground in Chesapeake Bay. AIS tracking suggests she may have missed the turn into the Craighill Channel on her way out of Baltimore, putting the 43ft deep ship - all 120,000 tons of her - firmly aground on a shoal in only 24ft of water. Refloating her will be a major operation. Strap yourselves in folks, for another exciting round of maritime salvage rubbernecking.
posted by automatronic at 4:33 AM PST - 122 comments

Semantle has been mentioned a few times in MeFi Wordle-type-game threads—it works by letting you know how "semantically similar" the word you've guessed is to the target word: how close you are, or "(cold)". From the maker, erstwhile MeFite David Turner: "...[I]t's not about the spelling; it's about the meaning. The similarity value comes from Word2vec. The highest possible similarity is 100 (indicating that the words are identical and you have won). By "semantically similar", I mean, roughly "used in the context of similar words, in a database of news articles." He also warns that you will need more than six guesses. You can play once a day, but you can keep on guessing during that game's 24-hour period. It'll keep some stats on how you've been doing over time, too. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 12:31 AM PST - 76 comments

Sports Illustrated from 2020: The Inside Story of Caddyshack II, One of the Worst Sequels in History [more inside]
posted by porn in the woods at 11:24 PM PST - 46 comments

The 2021 Ig Nobel prizes were announced last September.
posted by eotvos at 10:18 PM PST - 6 comments

He was the man who kicked off the biggest boom period in the history of professional wrestling. Along with Shawn Michaels, he innovated the ladder match, now a staple of the sport. He wrestled a desperate battle with alcoholism for almost twenty years, and in his twilight appeared to have finally beaten it into submission, and was known throughout the business for a keen mind and for being generous towards his fellow wrestlers to a fault. Whether you knew him best as the Diamond Studd, as Razor Ramon, or simply as himself, "Da Bad Guy" was always one of the coolest wrestlers to ever set foot in the ring. Scott Hall passed away today after being taken off life support following complications from hip surgery. He was 63.
posted by mightygodking at 5:53 PM PST - 13 comments

The Chickasaw Mudd Puppies were a music duo from Athens, Georgia. In 1990-91, they released an EP and two albums, White Dirt and 8 Track Stomp, produced by bluesman Willie Dixon and REM's Michael Stipe (he also sings on 8 Track Stomp's closer, 'Words and Knives.') They made two videos, for 'McIntosh' and 'Do You Remember,' played on Canada's answer to MTV, MuchMusic, and made a cover of CCR's 'Lodi' a staple of their live sets. [more inside]
posted by box at 3:32 PM PST - 6 comments

State officials in Tennessee ask residents of a small, predominantly Black town near the site of new Ford investment to forfeit their city charter or face takeover.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:23 AM PST - 41 comments

We can't build our dreams on suspicious minds: In 1968 songwriter/Houstonian Mark James (née Francis Zambon) was married to his first wife but had feelings for his childhood sweetheart, Karen Taylor, who was also married. He wrote “Suspicious Minds” about his feelings. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 7:59 AM PST - 30 comments

Free Thread? More like free games. As in I am currently playing at least three different free idle games between my PC and my phone. None of them are great! But they're free, and they each have small charms, and it's a pleasant distraction from everything. Which, hey, free thread! Come on in and chatter about whatever and make the comment number go up. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 7:37 AM PST - 115 comments

The new get rich quick scam: passive income on Amazon. [SL Atlantic] Scams, the gift that keeps on grifting! From the article: “ Within six months, McDowell and Bjork had spent nearly $40,000, with almost nothing to show for it. So they auctioned off what inventory they could, paid Amazon to destroy the rest, and got out of the business. “It’s not a passive income; [it’s] a ton of work,” McDowell told me. “We lost all our savings—everything we had.””
posted by ec2y at 3:28 AM PST - 119 comments

Scott Murphy (Musicellanea), "A Gutsy Prelude by Maria Szymanowska Turns a Chord Inside Out": "Just over three years ago in Paris, a scholarly conference called 'Maria Szymanowska and Her Times' was wrapping up its focus on the talented Polish pianist-composer ... If I had been on the program, I might have talked about the innovative aspects of the seventeenth prelude of her Twenty Exercises and Preludes, which were published in Leipzig almost two centuries ago in 1819." Szymanowska's biography, study of her portraits, complete piano works, and sheet music for various works that year (the preludes, Six menuets, Dix-huit danses, and Caprice sur la romance de Joconde [another recording]). But also, perhaps especially, the nocturne "Le Murmure," ca. 1819, and the "Romance à la nuit" from the following year.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:47 PM PST - 5 comments

William Hurt, Oscar-Winning Actor for ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ Dies at 71 [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:47 PM PST - 74 comments

"So your database now needs to know, for every single piece of text... whether that is a place, person or company in Scandinavia or not, to get the alphabetical ordering correct." - Plain Text - Dylan Beattie - NDC Oslo 2021 (YouTube, 54m12s)
posted by flabdablet at 9:41 AM PST - 45 comments

The Guardian profiles actress Lori Petty, who has appeared in Station Eleven, Orange is the New Black, Point Break, A League of Their Own, Tank Girl
posted by ShooBoo at 7:55 AM PST - 15 comments

Regarding Carole Cadwalladr:

This caught my eye last night:

Russian Misinformation is a "Military Assault" on the West | Amanpour and Company

See also

Facebook's Role in Brexit -- and the threat to democracy | Carole Cadwalladr

     Transcript [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 5:14 PM PST - 48 comments

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, "On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing": "A Collection of Novels has a better chance of giving pleasure than of commanding respect ... It might not perhaps be difficult to show that this species of composition is entitled to a higher rank ... A good novel is an epic in prose ..." Barbauld's essay gives a brief history of the novel--a starting point for readers of her 50 volume / 28 novel collection The British Novelists, published in 1810. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:45 PM PST - 1 comment

How does the Ukrainian Language Differ from Russian? "If you’re an English speaker learning Ukrainian, the grammar will likely be complex at first, but there will also be some familiar features, too. One mostly unfamiliar feature is Ukrainian's robust case system. This means that nouns change their form depending on what role they play in the sentence. A number of languages have case systems, including Russian, Latin, German, and even English — though in English, we only mark case on a few words. (Basically, the case system is the reason we say “I love him” but “He loves me.”) In Ukrainian, case gets marked on regular nouns (house, newspaper, child, country), pronouns (I, they, it, we), and even people's names." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 2:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Safe in Heaven Dead - Thinking about Jack Kerouac on the 100th anniversary of his birth. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:38 PM PST - 6 comments

What things cost in Ancient Rome [more inside]
posted by gregoreo at 12:45 PM PST - 28 comments

The arrival, expansion and disappearance of the bilingual street signs have traced the ebb and flow of Chinese immigration in New York City’s oldest Chinatown. A dive into history, both NYC and Chinese, linguistics, and city administration.
posted by praemunire at 10:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Rough Translation podcast (& transcripts!) "Wouldn't it be easier to teach Americans when they enter global business meetings to check their idioms at the door?" from April 21, 2021 episode on "bad English". "Without any official permission from McDonald's, this former restaurant [in Marseilles France] has been occupied and repurposed as a food pantry and community hub during the pandemic" from April 7, 2021 episode. The Ukrainian and Russian languages are the focus of the most recent episode (March 2, 2022).
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:02 AM PST - 5 comments

1.0 A short conversation with, and about, a bank. In which the author, in need of a digital statement, faces our current broken reality.
posted by swift at 7:44 AM PST - 73 comments

First:

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov
    Biography

Second:

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov
    NYT obituary

And oh, if ever there was a time we needed another one, two, three or more of such Russians, now comes to mind... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:51 PM PST - 18 comments

Laurie Shannon for the Anne Lister Society, "Anne Lister's Story": "On 21 March 1817, Anne Lister raised the stakes ... to propose 'from this day to keep an exact journal of my actions and studies' ... Her observations include ... engineering calculations, legal issues ... geology, landscape design, and anatomy ... and practical accounts of summiting two of the highest peaks in the Pyrenees ... Most consequentially ... direct testimony ... 'I love & only love'" women "'& thus beloved by them in turn my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.'" Early volumes have large PDF transcripts for dates beginning in Aug 1806, Aug 1816, Nov 1816, Mar 1817, Jan 1818, Apr 1819, Nov 1819, Feb 1821 & May 1822 (italics = decoded text). Reference to scans of all volumes, transcripts, edited publications, and the cipher (online encoder/decoder). More info. Gentleman Jack on Fanfare. Yesterday's trailer for Season 2, starting in April.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:31 PM PST - 5 comments

Multiple women have been harassed by Christian Kane and Timothy Hutton of Leverage. As a fan of Leverage and The Librarians, I'm really disappointed to hear that Christian Kane was apparently sexually harassing employees while filming was going on for those shows. Women reported it, nothing happened (shocking, I know). A camera operator and a producer are also cited as sexually harassing in the article. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:49 PM PST - 31 comments

It’s March 2022, the dark nights are giving way (at least in the northern hemisphere) to the Equinox, and Archive 81, one the earlier weird podcasts, is now a Netflix series (FanFare). To help get through the last gasps of winter's wrath, here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! Now that some COVID restrictions are lifting (again), maybe you can listen to them on nice walks, at least if you walk where the shadows can’t get you… Most of the series are audio dramas with paranormal elements, but anthologies, fantasy, and science fiction are included. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:30 PM PST - 10 comments

Did Dua Lipa ACTUALLY Plagiarize Levitating? [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 9:43 AM PST - 35 comments

Bobbie Nelson, pianist and older sister to Texas music icon Willie Nelson, died Thursday morning at 91. "Each night Willie would draw attention her way, moving to the piano and watching intently while she played her showpiece, the instrumental “Down Yonder.” Casual fans likely thought he was being polite; Bobbie never made a big show out of what she was doing. But Willie would tell you she was the most important person onstage."
posted by mcdoublewide at 7:37 AM PST - 18 comments

Calum does a deep dive into the Jerry Can: from its invention as the Wehrmachtkanister in pre-war Germany - through a war time during which the design was noted and copied by allies - onwards towards its modern incarnation .
posted by rongorongo at 2:44 AM PST - 15 comments

Finally the single most important fact... is hidden at the very bottom. Twelve little words which the audience would have had to wade through more than 100 to get to. If they even managed to keep reading to that point. Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people [more inside]
posted by meowzilla at 7:08 PM PST - 76 comments

To A Starling Is a cute, free PICO-8 physics-y jumpy platformer puzzle game by peteksi where you play a bird who can walk, hop, and teleport that should feel pleasantly familiar to anyone who has played Celeste, Portal, Super Meat Boy, etc.
John Walker’s review at Buried Treasure
posted by Going To Maine at 5:50 PM PST - 5 comments

Dr. Raziya Parvin, "Rani Chennamma of Kittur - Why do we remember?" Much more detail in Chennamma's biography, e.g. "Ch. 5 - The Question of Adoption": "On October 18th, 1824 ... in an impassioned speech, she declared, 'Kittur is ours. We are masters of our own territory. The Britishers say that the adoption is not valid because we did not take their permission ... We will tell Mr. Thackeray [the novelist's uncle; letter of complaint about him] ... that we will not submit to them whatever be the consequences. Kittur will fight to the last.'" Summary in a history of Karnataka, also mentioning Rama Habshi. The 1961 film Kittur Chennamma / ಕಿತ್ತೂರು ಚೆನ್ನಮ್ಮ retells Chennamma's life story, and two songs in it are based on poems by Akka Mahadevi (c. 1130-1160; more on her poetry): "Kolu Thudiya Kodagananthe" and, as described thoroughly / with a translation at The Southern Nightingale, "Thanukaragadavaralli Pushpava."
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:28 PM PST - 3 comments

Michel Gondry's autobiographical film, I've Been 12 Forever (2004) [41m], deals with his filmmaking and his imagination and how it all goes back to his childhood and his dreams. Michel Gondry's autobiographical film, I've Been 12 Forever (2004)[36m], deals with the concepts for his music videos and how it all goes back to his childhood and his dreams. In French and English with no subtitles, and that's okay.
posted by hippybear at 3:49 PM PST - 7 comments

Dogs of 2021

I just searched this onsite and Google limited to MetaFilter. According to my phone, it has never been posted. How can that possibly be !? [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 3:23 PM PST - 28 comments

In an interview with Simon Hattenstone in conjunction with the re-issue of her autobiography, nearly 50 years after its first publication, Angela Davis reflects on 60 years of formative episodes and how she has sustained her fight for civil rights across shifting, intersectional battlefields, without losing her optimism.
posted by drlith at 10:44 AM PST - 15 comments

YouTube: Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, aka Doja Cat, has been not-so-silently amassing hit after hit with her latest album Planet Her with not a -ton- of press. Check the youtube search query for 'Doja Cat' to see much of her videography, or her personal/official uploads + Insta.
posted by kfholy at 10:37 AM PST - 15 comments

"When I first read The Left Hand of Darkness, it struck me as a guidebook to a place I desperately wanted to visit but had never known how to reach. This novel showed me a reality where storytelling could help me question the ideas about gender and sexuality that had been handed down to all of us, take-it-or-leave-it style, from childhood. But also, Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel felt like an invitation to a different kind of storytelling, one based on understanding the inner workings of societies as well as individual people." From 2019, Charlie Jane Anders writes about the classic.
posted by curious nu at 7:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Do people tell jokes anymore? They sure used to, and we've certainly seen 'em here previously (and also previously). Jokes may or may not be funny, but they do belong the broader category of "humor" (also also previously, as well as previosly). [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:43 AM PST - 136 comments

Jailed for 10 months, a prisoner found a cellmate who played Magic: The Gathering and created 20 jailhouse decks from memory. (SLReddit)
posted by Shepherd at 2:55 AM PST - 21 comments

Starring Ronnie Drew as a Burgler.
posted by lkc at 8:03 PM PST - 2 comments

Marginalia Search is "an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of." Clive Thompson describes Marginalia (also known as Edge Crawler and Astrolabe) as "a search engine with a fascinating design — rather than give you exactly what you’re looking for, it tries to surprise you... By up-ranking web sites that are text-heavy, and downranking ones that are highly visual, loaded with modern web cruft, and SEO-optimized. The upshot, as the creator suggests, is that you wind up with a lot of weird results very different from the usual fare coughed up by Google or Bing or even DuckDuckGo.... Call it 'serendipity engineering.'" [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 4:44 PM PST - 27 comments

Mary Gartside (1808), An Essay on a New Theory of Colour: "Suppose, for the sake of illustration, that each blot is a group of flowers ... exhibiting the effect produced by arranging them according to the theory ... I would place my principal flower at No. 1" [more: yellow; orange; scarlet; green; blue; crimson; violet]. Like Georgiana Houghton and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, Gartside has been recognized for working in an era of realist / representational art while anticipating later abstract art, as noted in Alexandra Loske's "Mary Gartside: A female colour theorist in Georgian England" [PDF, see "Recent Critical Reception"]. Some plates from Gartside's other 1808 book on color / composition are here, here, here, and in this short video. See also: Mary Moser's "Spring" (c. 1780; it is "very likely" she knew Gartside); and still life flower paintings in general from C16, C17, C18, C19, and C20.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:19 PM PST - 2 comments

So, they're shutting down Chowhound. Jim Leff, the Alpha Dog, has thoughts.
posted by jindc at 3:27 PM PST - 36 comments

Hello World might be the most frequently written computer program. For decades, it's been the first program many people write, when getting started in a new programming language. Surely, this humble starting-point program should be bug free, right? A 650-word blog post from sunfishcode via lobste.rs
posted by cgc373 at 2:40 PM PST - 36 comments

Eric Idle Talks About Monty Python, Spamalot, and Why He Always Looks on the Bright Side of Life is 1h30m of really interesting conversation between Idle and Saget, from June 2021. This isn't a comedy interview, it's full of biographical information and insights.
posted by hippybear at 1:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Did you know that playwright Harold Pinter starred in a 1964 BBC production of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit? It's true.
posted by wittgenstein at 12:49 PM PST - 2 comments

Russia's Invasion of Ukraine is entering its second week: what Happened on Day 13 of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. [NYT] Conditions are worsening in Ukraine as Russia's invasion nears the end of its second week, with the shelling of Kharkiv [Al Jazeera -- warning, graphic], the capture of Kherson [NBC], where food is now running low, and the encirclement of Mariupol [AP]. International tensions are increasing amidst the impact of sanctions and Russia's efforts to draw 'red lines' for further escalation in response, including by nuclear saber rattling. Amidst halting peace talks, Zelenskyy seems to be backing off the importance of Ukraine joining NATO -- a key Russian demand for any de-escalation. The US CIA director warns that "the next few weeks of fighting in Ukraine will be "ugly" as the Kremlin loosens the rules of engagement for Russian forces to resume stalled advances or compel the surrender of resisting cities. Reuters: in his most recent comments, China's Xi Jinping has called for "maximum restraint." NPR: More than 2 million people have now fled Ukraine, 12 days after Russia invaded. [more inside]
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:53 AM PST - 1032 comments

The Gender Pay Gap Bot caused chaos on Twitter yesterday (International Women's Day). Every time a UK business tweeted using the hashtag #IWD2022, the bot retweeted with the organisation's gender pay gap (using data from gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk. Businesses started deleting their tweets, some reposting without the hashtag, others amending their message and others not posting again at all, but other Twitter users were quick to screenshot the tweets and call them out. Here's an interview with the creators, Francesca Lawson and Alastair Fensome, where Lawson says: “I want employers to stop treating International Women’s Day as a Hallmark holiday and start taking responsibility for the inequalities in their organizations”.
posted by atlantica at 5:13 AM PST - 59 comments

Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic – 107 years after it sank, the Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats. Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition. Even though it has been sitting in 3km (10,000ft) of water for over a century, it looks just like it did on the November day it went down. Its timbers, although disrupted, are still very much together, and the name - Endurance - is clearly visible on the stern. BBC, March 9, 2022.
posted by cenoxo at 4:20 AM PST - 55 comments

Multimodal Optical System with Adaptive Imaging Correction (MOSAIC) is bringing scientists a 3d view of living cells like we've never seen before. A longer view of immune cell migration in zebrafish ear. Several more samples. A writeup with more detail. And the original paper. [more inside]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 4:45 PM PST - 10 comments

In 1809, Matilda Betham painted miniature portraits of Sara Fricker Coleridge ("Romantic but hardly romantic: Sarah Fricker's life ...") and her daughter Sara Coleridge [PDF] (~30 years later, author of the fantasy novel Phantasmion--"Its supernatural beings have no English originals ... Feydeleen the Flower Spirit ... Oloola the Spirit of the Storm," etc.--which has one copy annotated autobiographically). Betham was a Romantic poet whose Poems / Vignettes addressed Ann Radcliffe, the Ladies of Llangollen ("... who were famous for wanting to be left alone"), M.I., Belinda, and others. Betham also wrote an enormous collective biography [plain HTML] of celebrated women--an alternative to the work by Mary Hays mentioned in her preface and published in the same year as a work in French by Fortunée Briquet (see also Collective Biographies of Women).
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:09 PM PST - 1 comment

"The 2022 theme for International Women’s Day is #BreakTheBias. With that in mind, I decided to do a little experiment to see what GPT-3 can show us about the gender bias that’s built into our language." [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 2:56 PM PST - 13 comments

Sixteen Years After ‘The Road,’ Cormac McCarthy Is Publishing Two New Novels [New York Times; Archive]
posted by chavenet at 1:49 PM PST - 17 comments

The Chemical Brothers [Wikipedia, YouTube playlist], make electronica-based rock and roll. Or rock and roll-based electronica. Either way, they don't do a lot of interviews. Here are a few I found: 1997 audio interview, answers only [39m], 10 Years of Block Rockin Beats (2003) [34m], We Are The Night (2007) [YT playlist, ~25m total]. The Darkness That You Fear [4m] is their recent house-music-influenced release, from Apr 2021. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:54 AM PST - 18 comments

Free Thread? More like Three Head, amirte? Janus was an amateur, triple-faced hellhounds are where it's at. Is that a hot take? They said you should do hot takes to get engagement. I guess hell is hot, so that part works. He's a hot dog! Hot dogs. They're a hot dogs. Okay, this isn't going well, just come on in and chat about whatever already.
posted by cortex at 10:28 AM PST - 163 comments

House bill 1557, aka the Parental Rights in Education bill, otherwise known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, passed the Florida Senate today. This bill "prohibits classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels [kindergarten through grade 3]" and would allow parents to sue schools or teachers who engage in these topics. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has expressed support for the bill. Students in Florida have participated in walkouts and demonstrations to protest it. Meanwhile, Disney CEO Bob Chapek has not explicitly spoken out against the bill, generating backlash from Disney employees and supporters.
posted by fight or flight at 10:00 AM PST - 54 comments

Hot on the heels of the Bundle for Texas Trans Kids, Itch has a Bundle for Ukraine. [more inside]
posted by Runes at 8:41 AM PST - 24 comments

These tiny spiders perform a synchronized pop-and-lock 'dance' as they hunt "These spiders capture the most prey when they synchronize their movements. More specifically, the arachnids perform a pop-and-lock-style “dance” in which each animal starts and stops quickly, and at the same time."
posted by dhruva at 7:44 AM PST - 10 comments

Two years ago, comedian Peter Kay proposed a social media public public dance craze in medical and other worksplaces and also some other surprising venues, for the song called Amarillo. Tagged everywhere with #BigNightInAmarillo [All links to youtube and twitter videos.]
posted by eotvos at 1:50 AM PST - 19 comments

Taking inspiration from online challenges such as #Inktober, urban sketchers Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel invite the world to join in with #OneWeek100People. The simple goal is: Draw 100 People in One Week. Facebook group. Instagram. Twitter. YouTube. [more inside]
posted by rebent at 5:46 PM PST - 5 comments

One of the more annoying 'controversies' in anime/manga/etc fandom is that of localisation versus literal translation, with a small core of (often right wing) fans prefering their subtitles to be as exact to the Japanese as possible. Professional translator Sarah Moon thought to prove them wrong by using the excellent official slang laden subs of currently running anime romcom My Dress-Up Darling/Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi o Suru and providing a literal alternative for them.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:21 PM PST - 97 comments

Witness History -- Anna Akhmatova -- Voice of Russia -- BBC Sounds

Requiem by Anna Akhmatova in English translation [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:50 PM PST - 10 comments

The thing that made me wonder the most about what burnout might actually be, in terms of a diagnostic definition, was when we headed back into winter in 2020 after a summer of lockdown, before vaccines were rolled out, and my friends and colleagues started expressing a relationship to time and the future that alarmed me. They began talking about the future as if it didn’t exist, as if their imaginative powers were gone. There was no future, there was only this moment, this week, this day, and getting through it. We could be stuck here forever was the vibe at large. This shift was alarming, because up until that point, I was the only person I knew who consistently related to time that way — thanks to complex PTSD.
posted by curious nu at 10:06 AM PST - 71 comments

METAL MACHINE Music For Airports. Does anything more need be said? [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 9:18 AM PST - 17 comments

Anne Ritson (1813), Exercises for the Memory: An Entire New Set of Improving Enigmas: "Now take these Poets as they stand, / Close united hand in hand; / And their initials soon will bring / A Shire where once was kill'd a King." Ritson's acrostic rebuses resolve to names of UK counties, often abbrev., spelld oddly, or permjttjng J for I. Her easier Classical Enigmas resolve to names of months. A set of puzzles by Marianne Curties resolves to planets / zodiac signs. Like enigmas, acrostics are ancient. Charades / logogriphs--acrostic rebuses too, e.g. the acrostic rebus solved by Phillis Wheatley Peters as a matter of political engagement--flourished in the 1700s and 1800s. But histories of word games & crosswords [PDF] often focus on later puzzles with multiple intersections--the era of double acrostics (one credited to Queen Victoria).
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:30 AM PST - 5 comments

Houseplants occupy a curious intersection of home and design and history: they are hobbies, and testimonies of skill (or lack thereof), and components of interior design. At the same time, they’re also artifacts of colonization and the controlling impulses that accompanied it, and quiet, nostalgic attempts to regain a steadily dissipating relationship with the natural world. A house plant is never “just” a house plant, the same way a couch is never just a couch or a movie is just a movie. Houseplants said something about the people who cultivated them in the early 1600s, which was different than what it said about something in the 1860s, or the 1960s, or today. To try and understand what, exactly, our house plants mean today — why we collect and display them the way we do, what they communicate, and how that might be in flux — we have to understand, even if just briefly, what they’ve meant before. [sl Culture Study Substack by Anne Helen Peterson]
posted by ellieBOA at 7:34 AM PST - 25 comments

"As tensions rose between Russia and the United States, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, on drug charges. The Russian Federal Customs Service announced Ms. Griner’s detention on Saturday but said she was stopped at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow last month. [more inside]
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 6:45 AM PST - 26 comments

“I feel like I’ve seen something that shouldn’t be seen" Since 2022 is the year that keeps on giving, in Japan, the Sessho-seki rock (殺生石) has split apart, and a fox demon may be on the loose. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 5:32 AM PST - 41 comments

"You shall not bear a child, but a language.” "Annunciation" by P. Akasaka (a Japanese writer living in the UK), published last month in Strange Horizons, is a short, fantastical story about an unexpected pregnancy.
posted by brainwane at 11:32 PM PST - 3 comments

‘Bloom County’ to Bring Opus, Bill the Cat and the Rest of the Comic Strip to Fox As an Animated Series in Development [Variety] "The comic strip, created and written by Berkeley Breathed, is being developed as an animated series at Fox, through its animation studio, Bento Box Entertainment, as well as Miramax, Spyglass Media Group and Project X Entertainment."
posted by hippybear at 9:16 AM PST - 70 comments

One man's search for a suitable keyboard. Not all hands are alike, which is a problem for most pianists. Fortunately, Mr. Steinbuhler and the non-profit DS Standard Foundation want to help. [more inside]
posted by BWA at 8:11 AM PST - 68 comments

A visual and sound essay on WH Auden's poem Musee de Beaux Arts and Breughel's painting, Landscape with The Fall of Icarus. "The message seems simple enough, but the poem is full of riches, hidden details that you might miss if, like a farmer with his head down — or a distracted museumgoer — you weren’t looking at the edges." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:06 AM PST - 23 comments

The Failed Logistics of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Wendover Productions takes a detailed look into the logistical failures of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
posted by loquacious at 1:57 AM PST - 129 comments

Jane Marcet, Conversations on Chemistry [vol. 2], "Caroline: Well, now that we understand the nature of the action of the Voltaic battery, I long to hear an account of the discoveries to which it has given rise. Mrs. B.: You must restrain your impatience, my dear." G.J. Leigh, "The Changing Content of Conversations on Chemistry as a Snapshot of the Development of Chemical Science" [PDF]: "published ... in 1806 ... a tutor Mrs. B and two students, Emily and Caroline, also convey a picture of the political and social atmosphere of that period. Conversations is not a dry text." Letters on writing it & US reception [PDFs]. Marcet's later intro texts on botany and ~physics (or getting there). Others' intro texts: Botany in a Series of Familiar Letters by Priscilla Wakefield and A Compendious System of Astronomy and a text on ~physics (etc.) by Margaret Bryan (boardgame consultant; see also [PDF]).
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:10 PM PST - 2 comments

The Open Reel Ensemble makes interesting music by directly manipulating slightly modified reel-to-reel tape recorders and other things. Often involving with magnetic tape strung across the room and hit with drum sticks. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 8:37 PM PST - 5 comments

14 feet tall, nearly 30 feet wide, and composed of 406 handmade blocks, The Museum of Food and Drink's Legacy Quilt honors the countless African American food and drink producers who have laid the foundation for American cuisine. The quilt can be browsed and searched online in its entirety. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 4:47 PM PST - 2 comments

Journalist Ruth Shalit Barrett sues The Atlantic. “Ruth Shalit Barrett, the freelance writer whose widely read 2020 story the Atlantic retracted after saying it had lost confidence in her credibility, is suing the magazine for $1 million in damages. She alleges that the retraction of the article and a lengthy editor’s note that disavowed her and mentioned incidents of plagiarism in her past “destroyed her reputation and career.”” [more inside]
posted by Ideefixe at 4:27 PM PST - 31 comments

The ceremonial start of the 50th edition of the Iditarod sled dog race took place in Anchorage, Alaska on 5 March 2022. The race proper will start from Willow on Sunday 6 March. Forty nine mushers and their dogs will race 1049 miles through arctic wilderness and the Alaskan interior before skirting the edge of the Bering Sea and finishing in Nome to commemorate of the 1925 Serum Run. Climate change, covid and hungry, angry and aggressive moose are challenges facing this year's race. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 4:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Heardle is like Wordle (previously), but for pop music
posted by box at 3:42 PM PST - 23 comments

The Great Tree Migration. A multimedia article at Emergence Magazine.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:09 PM PST - 2 comments

"The distance from the Stop & Go to his childhood home is the length of time it took to eat a bag of spicy pork skins and throw the evidence in a neighbor’s garbage can so his mom wouldn’t know he’d been ruining his dinner. But he’d measured it in a teenage boy’s appetite, and the walk seems quicker now. The streets narrower, the telephone poles shorter, the sky closer, everything more squat, and the gritty smell of the marsh clinging on even two blocks up the street." "Babang Luksa" by Nicasio Andres Reed is a short speculative story published last month in Reckoning, a journal of creative writing on environmental justice.
posted by brainwane at 5:28 AM PST - 6 comments

Ed Park (Village Voice), "The Family Plot": "[I]f it is your husband who lies within, you might understandably refer to the chest, four decades hence, as 'that thing.'" JaHyun Kim Haboush's introduction [PDF] to her translation of The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong provides context for a "tragic episode" in a "literary masterpiece and an invaluable historical document"--one adapted numerous times, e.g. in the 2015 film The Throne (winner of many awards and selected for Oscar consideration; currently available in the US on Tubi [ad supported]). Yang Hi Choe-Wall's thesis Hanjungnok: Memoirs of an Yi Dynasty Court Lady translates relevant memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong: in chapter 1, much of the memoir of 1795, and in chapters 2 and 3, the memoir of 1805. Also, from a few years later, the royal manuscript Gisa jinpyori jinchan uigwe depicts ceremonial details, flower arrangements, etc. for an occasion honoring Lady Hyegyeong (more info).
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:07 PM PST - 6 comments

The TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas bundle features nearly 500 different downloadable tabletop roleplaying games, for a minimum donation of $5, in response to the heinous policies recently announced by Texas's government. Donations are to be split between the Transgender Education Network of Texas and Organización Latina de Trans en Texas. A google spreadsheet provides an alternate way of browsing the titles on offer. Another huge itch.io bundle, for Ukraine, is just wrapping up submissions and hopes to release on Monday.
posted by one for the books at 8:24 PM PST - 19 comments

How Clubbing Changed The World [1h37m] is a BBC documentary hosted by renowned DJ Idris Elba that counts down the Top 40 "most defining moments" about how clubbing has changed the world, based on a survey of some sort. It's not in chronological order. It's in some kind of abstract order of importance. It's interesting. It's not deep, but it's nicely done and has some insights.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM PST - 9 comments

Selected Negative Teacher Evaluations of Jesus Christ. (SLMcSweeney's) "“Not what I expected. They say his area of specialty is carpentry, but we never built anything.” [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:47 PM PST - 35 comments

Shane Warne, legendary spin bowler, has died at 52. Warne died of an apparent heart attack in Thailand, not long after posting a tribute to fellow Australian cricket legend Rod Marsh. [more inside]
posted by the duck by the oboe at 4:20 PM PST - 24 comments

@friendshapedcar catalogs cars that are shaped like friends. [SLTwitter] [more inside]
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 1:55 PM PST - 21 comments

Africa Is a Country Radio is a monthly deep dive into the music and cultural politics of the African continent and beyond. Season 3 focuses on authors and began with an episode on Tizita music to highlight Mukoma Wa Ngugi's latest novel Unbury Our Dead with Song. Next is a guest mix from Folarin Ajibade inspired by the ethnography Kwaito Bodies by Xavier Livermon. The latest is Chief Boima's soundtrack for Fiston Mwanza Mujila's debut novel, Tram 83. Track listings
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:34 PM PST - 3 comments

Later in the hearing, Martin broke down the costs per flight, which will apply to at least the first four launches of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion's Service Module. NASA, Martin said, had checked and confirmed these figures.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:45 AM PST - 60 comments

Does my son know you?- Jonathan Tjarks from The Ringer, not talking about sports, but about his cancer diagnosis, and his wrestling both with his own imminent mortality, and his efforts to build a childhood full of family for his son. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 9:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Anna Ezekiel on "The Woman at the Heart of German Romantic Philosophy" (cw: suicide): "Philosophy and literature became an escape from these tragedies ... 'A little while ago I was able to soar in a beautiful sublime fantasy world, in Ossian's half-dark magical world.'" Ezekiel has translated much of Karoline von Günderrode's fiction and poetry [German texts]. Günderrode has inspired art, fiction (inspiring art), and several philosophical studies too. Ezekiel also has intro articles on Dorothea Veit-Schlegel (whose 1804 German translation of "The Story of the Magician Merlin ... foregrounds relationships between men and women") and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim (a fantasy writer too, her semi-fictional Günderode, "and the account of female friendship it illustrates, was an influence on American Transcendentalism"). And Günderode includes work by Günderrode, e.g. the brief, eschatological, 'oceanic feeling' of "Apocalyptic Fragment" (1804).
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Title from Maria Primachenko's painting - thread #3 for the invasion of Ukraine. Related on metafilter: The Bear and the Sunflowers, previous invasion thread. Also, the Historical origins of the Ukranian conflict, The Ghost of Kyiv and on Metatalk, a thread on how to help Ukraine and news resources and an earlier thread for people directly affected and how to help. Please remember: this is a fast-moving and terrible topic. Discussion should be Ukraine-centered, with US news added only when it is highly relevant (take it to Joe Biden's first State of the Union thread.) If you need to take a break, visit the new free thread for non-serious chat, or Remembering the Shire on metatalk for specifically good moments.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:35 PM PST - 682 comments

Monica Hesse gives a thoughtful take on Anthony Weiner wanting to be "of service" and venturing back into the public eye once again. (Link in post is from 12ft.io to get around paywall, here is also the WaPo link.) [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:37 PM PST - 37 comments

Recent events in Ukraine have brought the US military’s A-10 Thunderbolt II back to the spotlight. Purpose built to destroy Soviet tanks and seen by many as an excellent tank busting, close air support, and low tech platform. The A-10 has survived multiple efforts by the US Air Force to retire it. Enter LazerPig’s two part myth busting series: The A-10 Sucks and I Can Prove It Part 1 , Part 2. The videos make a strong case that emotions and outdated thinking have forced America to waste billions to keep the A-10 going despite it subpar performance on actual battlefields.
posted by interogative mood at 12:26 PM PST - 56 comments

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 first novel, is widely considered in and outside the U.S. to be a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender. Feinberg was the first theorist to advance a Marxist concept of “transgender liberation.” The book is available in its entirety for free as a PDF on Feinberg's website. [Direct PDF link] [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 11:46 AM PST - 7 comments

As lightly reported by Glenn Bunn at ScreenRant, a delightful-and-educational subset of TikToker @thejahni’s videos are devoted to identifying and juxtaposing moments when video games -possibly- swiped from pop songs and moments when pop songs -possibly- swiped from video games: 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sonic only), 5 (Ed: Mamma Mia!), 6.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:34 AM PST - 6 comments

You've encountered loud car stereos, maybe you're even aware of the Secret World of Competitive Car Audio, where the loudest ride wins. But how about Siren Kings? The Guardian: "A way to be heard": the New Zealand Pasifika youth subculture devoted to emergency sirens.
(archive link) [more inside]
posted by Rash at 10:24 AM PST - 15 comments

The Internet Is Not as New as You Think. An interesting medium-read on how humans didn't invent telecommunications. [more inside]
posted by signal at 10:02 AM PST - 13 comments

No, you got distracted by the everythingness of everything from keeping to the nascent Monday-ish pattern for new Free Thread posts. I told you not to play so much Elden Ring. You really look like a silly goose now. Anyway, here's a place to talk about anything but the stuff we've been unable to escape the last several days, come on in and chatter.
posted by cortex at 8:48 AM PST - 170 comments

Last night on AEW Dynamite, All Elite Wrestling CEO Tony Khan announced that he has acquired the indy promotion "Ring of Honor" from former owners Sinclair Broadcasting. [more inside]
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:29 AM PST - 9 comments

"Saturday, August 27th ... It was dark when we landed, and ... I was sick with cold. The good woman had provided, according to her promise, a better fire than we had found in the morning; and indeed when I sate down in the chimney-corner of her smoky biggin' I thought I had never been more comfortable in my life. Coleridge had been there long enough to have a pan of coffee boiling for us, and having put our clothes in the way of drying, we all sate down, thankful for a shelter ... laughing like children at the strange atmosphere." Dorothy Wordsworth's gentle, slice-of-life Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803 [plain HTML] went unpublished in her lifetime. Caroline Jean Liebel's thesis Dorothy Wordsworth's Distinctive Voice [PDF] offers context, and so does the Guardian's December article about Wordsworth, noting her 250th birthday. See also: an excerpt recorded as a bedtime reading for adults; and video of Loch Achray.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:04 PM PST - 3 comments

You've probably never seen anything like this before. Six members of the vertical dance troupe BANDALOOP dance on...skyscrapers. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 6:04 PM PST - 25 comments

Thank you for asking that question for the thousand-and-oneth time. Today is Wednesday, March 731st, 2020 (Covid Standard Time).
posted by not_on_display at 5:13 PM PST - 80 comments

Between 2003-2006 a blog was created entitled She's A Flight Risk. The blog detailed the life of a 20 something European heiress who had hidden money away and was running away from her wealthy, well connected father and the marriage he had arranged for her. The blog caught the eye of an Esquire reporter who did some digging and alleged to have met the heiress in person and claims her story was true. So the question is who was Isabella v.?
posted by chavenet at 4:12 PM PST - 19 comments

As the main post on the Ukrainian war is dedicated to discussion of current events, this post is an attempt to gather a variety of viewpoints on the origins and implications of the war. Please feel free to add more links in the comments, and please keep the discussion respectful. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 2:38 PM PST - 133 comments

Seattle Times boosts Seattle-area intergenerational bridge groups. It pointed me to a free online bridge course for students, BridgeWhiz, commissioned and hosted by the American Contract Bridge League; and an app for online teaching (and play?), Shark Bridge.
posted by clew at 12:29 PM PST - 13 comments

It has been jointly announced that Fortnite creator Epic Games have acquired indie (as in independent from corporate control, not the genre) darling Bandcamp. [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 12:14 PM PST - 73 comments

Broadway Barbara's Fosse Dance Tutorial! Broadway Barbara's Further Fosse Dance Tutorial! Starring Barbara Dixon, Broadway Barbara!
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:20 AM PST - 11 comments

If you want to build a boat from wood the first thing to consider are the various construction methods. Next consider where you are going to do the building. If you are planning to build her in your back yard, will you have enough room to work on her? Will you be able to get her out when she is finished? Might your neighbours object when that that fifty-foot super yacht towers above the fence?
posted by Think_Long at 11:17 AM PST - 19 comments

The World's First Granny Square Pattern - A blog post by Mefi's own rednikki, tracking down the origin of this familiar crochet staple. [via mefi projects]
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:57 AM PST - 21 comments

Among the nominees at next month's Grammys for Best Historical Album is Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World's Music (1907-1967). Released by archival label Dust-to-Digital as a digital download only, the album is a collection of 100 songs recorded around the world in the early days of recorded music. The liner notes in the accompanying digital booklet provide great context to the artists, locations and recordings, where each song gets its own short essay. The digital transfers beautifully capture the spirit of each song and the music, beyond being mere curios, is sublime. Excavated Shellac is the nom du blog of Jonathan Ward, an archivist who organized the project, researched and wrote the liner notes, and selected each song from his own personal collection of 78s.
posted by lowest east side at 7:14 AM PST - 4 comments

In the early 1980s, Anthony Burgess was commissioned to write a book of book recommendations. He was well placed to do it, as a prominent international author himself, as well as a prolific reviewer of fiction since the 1960s. Lore tells us that he wrote the book in a mere three weeks. By contrast it has taken me three days just to produce my own list which takes us from where Burgess left off – that resonant year 1984 – to the present.

Following on from Anthony Burgess' Ninety--Nine Novels (1984), Jim Clarke provides us with Ninety-Nine More novels for us to disagree violently with.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:46 AM PST - 60 comments

...As for Happy, Breheny declared, with evident frustration, “We are forced to defend ourselves against a group that doesn’t know us or the animal in question, who has absolutely no legal standing, and is demanding to take control over the life and future of an elephant that we have known and cared for over 40 years.” He went on, “They continue to waste court resources to promote their radical philosophical view of ‘personhood.’ ”

According to the Nonhuman Rights Project, it has repeatedly offered to drop the case if the zoo consents to send Happy to one of two sanctuaries, in Tennessee and in California, that have indicated a readiness to accept her. Given the zoo’s stated intention of eventually shutting the exhibit down, its refusal to settle the case suggests an institutional desire to put an end to the campaign for animal personhood. Officials for the society and the Bronx Zoo refused repeated requests to comment for this article.

The Elephant in the Courtroom [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 1:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Some Recent Good Half-Hour Comedies on TV. Classified as: Shows That Will Remind You of the Joy of Community. Shows That May Bring You Back to Your Younger Years. Shows That Can Inspire Self-Reflection. Shows That Offer Bite-Size Scares. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:19 PM PST - 38 comments

Andrew Cooper (Aeon, 9/13/2021), "Germany's Wollstonecraft": "[I]n the German states in 1802 ... Amalia Holst declared that it was time someone spoke out about the plight of women in Germany 'from a woman's standpoint' ... Holst's critique of Rousseau identifies philosophy as the means by which men have justified to themselves the legitimacy of their privileged position." Amalia Holst, Über die Bestimmung des Weibes zur höhern Geistesbildung.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:03 PM PST - 1 comment

Happening now: President Joe Biden delivers his first official State of the Union address (after last year's "address to a joint session") during a time of crisis both domestic and international. Tune in on YouTube to hear #46 on coronavirus, democracy, the economy, the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the situation in Ukraine, for the first time with two women on the podium behind him, and for (potentially) the last time under full Democratic control of Washington. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:08 PM PST - 137 comments

Maybe you need a filthy adult break from all the insanity? An Evening with Bob Saget Moderated by John Oliver is 1h15m from the 2014 92nd Street Y that is charming and funny and delightful.
posted by hippybear at 4:26 PM PST - 8 comments

The Writer’s Guild East has announced a strike of all Gizmodo media sites, including The Root, Jezebel, LifeHacker, Kotaku, Jalopnik and Gawker. [more inside]
posted by Pretty Good Talker at 10:17 AM PST - 40 comments

People from all over the world are sending emails to Melbourne’s trees. "Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns." There are about a dozen letters quoted in the article, each more charming and adorable and heartwarming than the next.
posted by MiraK at 7:39 AM PST - 14 comments

Generate an imaginary medieval town from scratch. A webtoy which does what it says on the tin. You can adjust parameters and reshape the results. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:06 AM PST - 11 comments

“There is no definitive Gotham,” says Barbara Ling, the production designer on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. “The excitement is reinventing with each new vision.” from Designing Gotham [The Ringer]
posted by chavenet at 5:02 AM PST - 36 comments

A stunning collection of owl photos from The Atlantic at Superb Owl Sunday VI. [more inside]
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 4:36 AM PST - 9 comments

Musical jenga is when strangers on the Internet take turns adding another level of music to each other’s creations. Sometimes they sing about muffins or procrastination. Sometimes they duet with frogs or dryers. Sometimes the original participants know they’re leaving space for a duet partner to join in… and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re short and sweet. Often, they’re original, but occasionally they cover John Williams or Nirvana. If you aren’t on TikTok, where many of these originate, Mimo on Youtube sometimes edits together the best TikTok jengas. [more inside]
posted by yankeefog at 3:51 AM PST - 13 comments