MetaFilter

The Atlantic delivers a solid summary of why algorithmically-driven social media is harmful to common culture and democracy itself, ending with a few ideas about what can be done to course correct. [more inside]
posted by Leeway at 6:03 PM PST - 36 comments

A simple-looking edit to R scripts to make them more durable as packages update.
posted by clew at 5:13 PM PST - 64 comments

For Scott, demeaning comments about height are everywhere — whether in his personal life or in pop culture. “When I see a woman that is 5'8", I’m like, ‘That’s a tall woman,’” she says to the camera. “But when I see a man that is 5'8", I’m like, ‘Look! A garden gnome!’” In the comments, users had added to the bit: “No because who let him out unsupervised.” Humiliation flashed across Scott’s face. “Before the surgery, I was 5'7". I was not even a garden gnome to her.”
posted by geoff. at 5:04 PM PST - 135 comments

International opera singer and vocal coach Elizabeth Zharoff* does an analyzing First Listen of Rush's 1981 song Tom Sawyer [19m]. Her level of delight and wonder is overwhelmingly charming. Also, because I don't want to make two Rush posts in a row, Alex and Geddy in conversation with George Strombo, April 15, 2022. [46m, entirely open conversation about a lot of subjects, please watch if you're a Rush fan] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:29 PM PST - 21 comments

Twitter user @bitterkarella read 20 years of the Sinfest webcomic (unrolled) so you don't have to (and you shouldn't). On his Garbage Day blog, Ryan Broderick read the thread so you don't have to (but you should) and summarizes it, in part, as "…the comic’s 22-year evolution actually gives us a startling insight into how a very specific kind of internet man would shift from angry nerd to anti-'woke' transphobic fascist." [more inside]
posted by signal at 1:31 PM PST - 85 comments

Land of Confusion was a 1986 hit by Genesis (No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 14 in the UK). The video featured many political and celebrity puppets from the UK TV show Spitting Image, most notably Ronald (the video being based on a dream he is having) and Nancy Reagan, an allusion to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and much more detail. The video won a Grammy, and was nominated at the MTV music video awards but ironically lost to Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. Previous FPP with commentary.
posted by Wordshore at 11:11 AM PST - 34 comments

Tpying truble? During the iPhone’s first 15 years, its keyboard software has evolved, but it still sometimes flubs your lines. Here’s how it works and what you can do about it. (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan at 7:46 AM PST - 57 comments

Klaus Schulze, German composer and pioneer of electronic and ambient music, has died. He leaves behind more than 60 solo albums and collaborations. [more inside]
posted by fregoli at 5:16 AM PST - 29 comments

256 bytes of JavaScript code to render a shaded city-scape [Twitter] [more inside]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:24 AM PST - 9 comments

The greatest cabaret duo who ever graced a stage, Ronnie Dukes (1931-1981) and Ricki Lee (1933-1986) perform a spectazmatically swingin'-daddy, spellbinding rendition of The Who's classic rock classic, "Pinball Wizard." (h/t @rhodri)
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:22 AM PST - 21 comments

A couple moved into a house on Fire Island and found 20 years worth of cassettes, documenting DJ sets and party soundtracks from 1979-1999. Over 200 tapes are being digitized and uploaded to MixCloud.
posted by hwyengr at 4:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Russian state TV hosts discussed the possibility of a war that expands outside of Ukraine on Tuesday, and Margarita Simonyan, journalist and head of RT, told viewers that a nuclear war would be OK because "we're all going to die someday." [Newsweek, yes, I know but the reported it first] This is the new nuclear war thread.
posted by hippybear at 3:47 PM PST - 139 comments

Started Out As A Fish. How Did It End Up Like This? (NYT; archive.ph link). A meme about the transitional fossil Tiktaalik argues that although we did emerge from the sea, we aren’t doing just fine.
posted by fight or flight at 3:09 PM PST - 8 comments

What have Too Many Zooz been up to since their last previously? Smells Like Teen Spirit, Moon Zooz Part 2, and their recently uploaded I Will Survive.
posted by clawsoon at 2:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Neal Adams, a hugely influential comic book artist has died at age 80. In the late 1960s, he was instrumental in reviving Batman as the "Dark Detective" in the wake of the campy Adam West television series. With writer Denny O'Neill in 1970, he sparked a trend in socially relevant comics with Green Lantern & Green Arrow's road trip across America. Adams gave many budding artists their start in the business and was a champion of creator's rights.
posted by marxchivist at 11:45 AM PST - 39 comments

It's International Dance Day! It's a day to encourage participation and education in dance through events and festivals held all over the world. Take in some international dance, some jazz dance, some tap (like Michelle Dorrance), some musical theater dancing, some swing dancing, some party dancing, some hip hop, some modern dance, some ballroom dancing, or some ballet. And bob your head, move your feet, or sway a bit yourself. International Dance Day at Wikipedia. dance on MetaFilter. [more inside]
posted by kristi at 10:45 AM PST - 6 comments

The breed of dog doesn't seem to predict much about that dog's behavior.
posted by PussKillian at 8:27 AM PST - 111 comments

The U.S. military is actively discussing an initiative, proposed by a defense contractor, to fund athletic scholarships for tens of thousands of college athletes each year in exchange for their mandatory service.
posted by Etrigan at 6:59 AM PST - 55 comments

Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection. During the pandemic, the legendary director completed two films and wrote two books. The first is "[p]art adventure narrative, part memoir, and part unclassifiable lyric, “The Twilight World” tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, an actual Japanese soldier who manned his post on the island of Lubang, in the Philippines, for three decades after the Second World War had ended, having convinced himself that it had not", and the second about himself, describing it as "some sort of memoir, but not in terms of an autobiography. Only part of it is about my life. It’s really about the origins of ideas."
posted by protocoach at 7:40 PM PST - 13 comments

CJ The X reviews Spider-man: No way Home. (spoilers)
posted by simmering octagon at 4:50 PM PST - 18 comments

THE BATMAN, starring Adam West [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:09 PM PST - 53 comments

Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera writes about his religious background and current politics: I like “unbuddhist” because it’s a pejorative to reclaim, perhaps, but also because it signals both opposition and proximity, in the same way that an atheist is someone who exists in a theistic framework and opposes it.
posted by brainwane at 8:41 AM PST - 23 comments

The Mountain Goats front man and novelist discusses art as labor, the value of religious faith, the beauty of Chaucer, and, more or less, the secret to happiness.
posted by Etrigan at 6:42 AM PST - 23 comments

Eugene Debs wrote a scathing Review of Birth of a Nation [PDF] soon after its release. Ida B. Wells thanked him [twitter link]. (Includes racist slurs, used intentionally by people of good will.) [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 4:34 AM PST - 30 comments

A fascinating longread on a (terrifying) London that could have been, the origins of British NIMBYism, and the implications for policymaking in the face of climate change. Michael Dnes writes about London's lost ringways (archive) for Works in Progress.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:11 AM PST - 8 comments

"A key goal of the meetings is for Disney to figure out what it actually means when it talks about the concept, loosely defined as a new version of the internet based on decentralized digital ledgers known as blockchains ... As Disney gets further into businesses including the metaverse and sports betting, that will have to change.
posted by geoff. at 10:49 PM PST - 21 comments

A new generation of fitness instructors teaches simple skills that make a difference. Why is beginner-level exercise treated like a niche? [slAtlantic] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:38 PM PST - 51 comments

The current Supreme Court’s “tiered” system of constitutional rights He didn’t just bow his head. He got on a knee at the very center of the field. I don’t know of any other religion that requires you to get at the 50-yard line
posted by I will not be Heiled at 7:22 PM PST - 47 comments

Eat Your Words: Valerie Stevens (of the Paris Review) cooks from literary classics. [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 7:18 PM PST - 13 comments

The methods that would eventually lead to [Jinyoung Park and Huy Tuan Pham's] new proof of the Kahn-Kalai conjecture began with a breakthrough on a seemingly unrelated problem. In many ways, the story starts with the sunflower conjecture, a question posed by the mathematicians Paul Erdős and Richard Rado in 1960. The sunflower conjecture considers whether collections of sets can be constructed in ways that resemble the petals of a sunflower. 2500 words from Jordana Cepelewicz for Quanta Magazine. [more inside]
posted by cgc373 at 5:50 PM PST - 10 comments

“Every single time we make a decision, we're making a decision about people's lives,”
posted by Selena777 at 1:13 PM PST - 28 comments

Bossware is coming for almost every worker the software you might not realize is watching you. Work from home reproduces the same state of surveillance as the cubicle. [more inside]
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 9:46 AM PST - 44 comments

You ever wish you were an adventurous pixel-art mouse doing inventory tetris while exploring a randomly-generated dungeon and engaging in turn-based combat with wee slimes and hostile rodentia? Great, you should play Backpack Hero. You should also play it if you haven't specifically wished for that previously, because it's delightful and charming and good.
posted by cortex at 9:02 AM PST - 37 comments

Damon Young is a writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and professional Black person. He is also a contributing columnist at the Washington Post, and people send emails to comment on his columns. One of those comments was a complaint about his use of "ain't" and "them white boys". Young was not having it.
posted by Etrigan at 6:26 AM PST - 59 comments

"This is a love letter to my friends and community. Please stay. You matter." "Mourners' Kaddish" is a song by musician Fureigh (disclaimer: a friend of mine) in the context of suicidality among transgender people. "my friend / I hope you know you’re dear / I’d rather celebrate you while you’re here."
posted by brainwane at 4:16 AM PST - 6 comments

“An Ionic Original is the pinnacle of recorded sound,” Burnett said in a statement. “It is archival quality. It is future proof. It is one of one. Not only is an Ionic Original the equivalent of a painting, it is a painting. It is lacquer painted onto an aluminum disc, with a spiral etched into it by music. This painting, however, has the additional quality of containing that music, which can be heard by putting a stylus into the spiral and spinning it.” T Bone Burnett Debuts New Audio Format That’s “The Pinnacle Of Recorded Sound” With Bob Dylan Re-Recordings [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:22 AM PST - 57 comments

Composer and musician Gabriel Kahane's essay, In Defense of Friction is a thought-provoking manifesto that advocates getting rid of your smartphone. Only the first third is about music. (previously)
posted by eotvos at 4:31 PM PST - 35 comments

In his blog post "Can you be sure to clear a line at Tetris?", theoretical computer science researcher Antoine Amarilli asks: can you be sure to clear a line at Tetris? Specifically, even if the computer hates you and doesn't want to let you? [more inside]
posted by cortex at 10:56 AM PST - 14 comments

"Written for me" (link directs you to a CBC Radio interview on Q, with Tom Power): it was a long journey from his roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, but Ke Huy Quan's appearance in Everything Everywhere All at Once (previously) is a cosmically satisfying development. Stick around for a discussion on DALL-E 2 (previously)
posted by elkevelvet at 10:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Eat well, ride a motorcycle. A small celebration of Two Fat Ladies, the joy of eating, travel, and not giving a hoot. Episodes can be found on Youtube.
posted by PussKillian at 8:23 AM PST - 22 comments

A sad and infuriating true story by Domenica Feraud about power dynamics in a relationship, show business, and bad behavior by men. (SL Medium) [more inside]
posted by nayantara at 7:47 AM PST - 44 comments

Nobody will read this essay in 200 years.
posted by box at 7:00 AM PST - 67 comments

Beyond all reason is a real-time strategy game. It has been described as “an homage to Total Annihilation.” It is available for free.
posted by No Robots at 6:47 AM PST - 12 comments

Mattea Roach has paid off her student loans at just 23 years old, thanks to winning 15 games on Jeopardy!, the fourth double-digit win streak in the current season. She has qualified for the Tournament of Champions in November, where she will compete with Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, and a bunch of other people who have got to be thinking Oh come on! at this point.
posted by Etrigan at 6:22 AM PST - 22 comments

A couple of weeks ago the outline of Lithuania featured in Worldle. The peculiar appendix pene-exclave blurfing into Belarus from the SE border is called Dieveniškės [Polish: Dziewieniszki, Belarusian: Дзевянішкі]. In a border-fluid region of Europe, Dieveniškės came to be Lithuanian because of a petition by the inhabitants in Soviet times. Since shortly after Lithuania joined the EU in 2004, because Schengen, the border has been marked by a neighbour dividing chain-link fence. Dieveniškės is about the size of Liechtenstein or Martha's Vineyard.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:17 AM PST - 11 comments

In which John Oliver spends ~15m talking about the (by now certainly classic but not TCM levels of classic) film Air Bud, and makes several points along the way. I am not sure what any of them are, but I did enjoy it. [dated Apr 24, 2022]
posted by hippybear at 8:18 PM PST - 33 comments

Spanish cartoonist Manuel Álvarez has been translating his gently surreal, occasionally violent short-run webcomic to English. Also the characters are animals but that's not important. The webcomic is called "THE". It is on Twitter and Instagram, and updates Monday to Thursday. CW so far: violence, simply drawn male nudity, a drug mention, death, blood, cannibalism (bloodless), guns, and recolors.
posted by BiggerJ at 7:36 PM PST - 6 comments

A surprisingly sympathetic story about a pandemic glove hustler who found friendship and love along the way. As the world shut down in March 2020, anxious knowledge workers barricaded themselves at home, scrubbing produce with soap. Fear sometimes manifested as altruism: checking on neighbors, organizing mutual aid. But the crisis also prompted cynics to root around for new loopholes to exploit, for ways to raise prices, feign hardship, get a rent reduction, slack off. For every person who spent that spring self-soothing with Animal Crossing or struggling to manage small children, there was someone else out there thinking, “How can I take advantage of the chaos?” This is a story about one of those people.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Deutschland This song and video sees the famously provocative and theatrical band return after ten years with a long, cinematic effort that delves into German history and folklore while setting Ruby Commey at the center of the narrative as a black Germania. (nsfw)
posted by es_de_bah at 11:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Erin Maye Quade was running for the MN State Senate, but had to leave her convention to give birth. She lost the endorsement contest. Her opponent made a statement, including explaining why he refused to suspend the convention [twitter link]. [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:39 AM PST - 21 comments

Climate activist dies after setting himself on fire outside of US Supreme Court
posted by Bottlecap at 11:22 AM PST - 128 comments

"During the months of December 1958 and January and February 1959, two young men flew a mission-modified Cessna 172 around and around over the desert Southwest for 64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes. The world endurance record in a propeller-driven airplane was set in that little Cessna over 50 years ago." [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 10:52 AM PST - 22 comments

It's been a rollercoaster few months for the peregrine falcons of the UC Berkeley Campanile: Annie, Grinnell (2014?-2022) and "New Guy" Alden. (Most links are to social media.) [more inside]
posted by expialidocious at 10:11 AM PST - 4 comments

No person is free who is not master of himself, but this thread is no person! (Yep it's a Free Thread, folks; come on in and converse ad libitum and extempore. )
posted by taz at 8:56 AM PST - 106 comments

The opening tram ride of classic 1998 first person shooter Half-Life except the tram guide uses the TikTok text-to-speech voice.
posted by cortex at 8:22 AM PST - 24 comments

Twitter expected to accept Elon Musk’s bid to buy company for $54.20 per share. (Previously.)
posted by fight or flight at 7:50 AM PST - 327 comments

Luvia Lazo is a Zapotec photographer whose recent work focuses on portraiture that doesn't show the faces of the subjects [timewalled New Yorker] and incorporates aspects of the historied fabric dying industry in Teotitlán del Valle. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 7:36 AM PST - 6 comments

The Library of Congress announced the 2022 National Recording Registry inductees, from FDR's presidential speeches to the Robin Williams episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:01 AM PST - 7 comments

The late comics artist Howard Cruse (previously) was the author of the groundbreaking gay comic strip series Wendel (a sample, "Shopping for Corn Flakes", and more strips). His site has a multipage illustrated autobiography including early sketches and gently self-deprecating humor.
posted by brainwane at 5:06 AM PST - 4 comments

A pioneer in the study of the biological foundations of language who was among the first to demonstrate that sign language was just as complex, abstract and systematic as spoken language Dr. Bellugi and Dr. Klima, who died in 2008, demonstrated conclusively that the world’s signed languages — of which there are more than 100 — were actual languages in their own right, not just translations of spoken languages. Non-paywalled [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:04 PM PST - 10 comments

While reading Hal Erickson's entertainingly-written encyclopedia of television cartoon shows, I discovered an entry about a show I'd never heard of, the 1992-1993 single-season American-South-Korean series Twinkle the Dream Being, co-created by the people behind Denver the Last Dinosaur and Widget the World Watcher. Looking it up, I discovered that the entire series, save a few clips, was considered lost until two months ago, when the whole thing was uploaded to YouTube.
posted by BiggerJ at 7:07 PM PST - 2 comments

For sheer bravado in engineering, Boston’s central artery project has no precedent. Or does it? Let’s turn back the clock about 200 years before the Big Dig . . .
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:05 PM PST - 16 comments

"American workers across various ages, industries, and income brackets have experienced heightened levels of fatigue, burnout, and general dissatisfaction toward their jobs since the pandemic’s start. The difference is, more young people are airing these indignations and jaded attitudes on the internet, often to viral acclaim." (previously) [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 1:33 PM PST - 84 comments

It happens. You want to rewatch Star Trek VI—the one that is a metaphor for the end of the Cold War—but you’re worried you might miss some of the contemporary political references. In fact, you’re probably feeling there’s no point unless there were some way to connect it to the whole genre of political and military thrillers of the 90s. Fortunately, there’s the Unclear and Present Danger podcast. America’s foremost cereal reviewer (and NYT columnist) Jamelle Bouie joins John Ganz to talk about how America (and Hollywood) saw itself as the USSR collapsed. [more inside]
posted by mark k at 12:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Robert Morse, two-time Tony-winning actor, passed away on April 20th at age 90. [more inside]
posted by merriment at 11:51 AM PST - 19 comments

Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, dies at 88 [Deseret News ]

“He was a tough partisan, a solid conservative, but he could make strategic alliances to get legislation passed,” former Senate historian Donald Ritchie said in an interview. “No one questioned his ideology, so he could deal. People on his side of the aisle trusted him, and people on the other side respected him.” [Washington Post] [more inside]
posted by riruro at 10:30 AM PST - 46 comments

The Wachowski sisters are auctioning off a vast amount of stuff to benefit trans youth. Items include the speeder from Cloud Atlas, the lightning gun from The Matrix, and a bunch of guns from Jupiter Ascending, as well as a bunch of things that probably won't cost a berjillion bucks.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:06 AM PST - 22 comments

The Utah Democratic Party votes to endorse independent candidate Evan McMullin over their own candidate, Kael Weston (statement), in his race against Senator Mike Lee.
posted by box at 5:33 AM PST - 23 comments

Why are TV Cameras still HUGE and expensive ? (SLYT)
posted by Gyan at 2:39 AM PST - 21 comments

The 2022 Omicron outbreak in Shenzhen: consensus about staying in place and anxieties about mobility. A plumber was called to fix a toilet. It was a standard job, requiring about 45 minutes to clear and connect pipes. However, in the time required to analyse and resolve the problem, the building was locked down and the plumber had to live with the customer’s family for 14 days.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:13 PM PST - 19 comments

Cynthia "Plaster Caster" Albritton died this week. Her life included many activities, including making original art [mostly broken links], helping to shape the contemporary art and club scenes in Chicago, and running for mayor on a platform that defies easy summary. But, she's most widely known for making plaster casts of the intimate parts of more than one hundred popular musicians. (previously) [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 3:11 PM PST - 19 comments

Who is Marine Le Pen, and why is she so much closer to winning this time? Marine's father Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the far right xenophobic National Rally (Rassemblement National) party in 1972. He made his first run for the presidency as a National Rally candidate in 1974. He would go on to run for president five more times, losing every election. Le Pen has been frequently accused of anti-semitism and xenophobia, but he has also repeatedly garnered enough supporters to influence elections for decades. In 1977, a supporter felt so strongly about him, he left Le Pen a fortune, and a house built by Napoleon III. In 2015, however, his own party expelled him for describing Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history — and Marine helped with the putsch. [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 11:49 AM PST - 55 comments

Neil Patrick Harris has hosted the Tony Awards four times. Here are the opening numbers for each of those appearances. 2009 [Emmy-winning appearance, 9m59s*], 2011 [5m45s], 2012 [8m12s], 2013 [8m26s]. They are all thrilling, all have different themes, and they all make me want to go find the old clothes and a barn and put on a show! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:34 AM PST - 13 comments

Git Gob. That's it, nothing more than hat. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 11:26 AM PST - 4 comments

Jason Torchinsky writes in The Autopian about How My Teenage Girlfriend’s Anti-Semitic Mother Made Me Learn Why VW Beetles Sound Like They Do.
posted by ShooBoo at 10:57 AM PST - 21 comments

"To suggest that the worst part of vacationing in a van is sleeping in a van is not fair to the other aspects of the endeavor, which are also all the worst part — but it is cramped, slovenly and bad. "

The writer Caity Weaver’s pursuit of the manifest destiny of the millennial generation ended up looking better in the photos. [The New York Times Magazine]
posted by riruro at 7:44 AM PST - 93 comments

Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine is a 2017 anthology edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky of Ukrainian poetry by sixteen poets, for example Oksana Lutsyshyna, Serhiy Zhadan, Kateryna Kalytko, Vasyl Holoborodko, Lyudmyla Khersonska, Yuri Izdryk and Lyuba Yakimchuk. There is a preface by the editors, an introduction by Ilya Kaminsky and an afterword by Polina Barskova, two of the roughly thirty translators involved. There are also glossaries of terms and places, as well as video readings of several poems. You can purchase the book from various websites or recommend that your library order a copy. The title of the thread is from Not a Poem in Forty Days by Borys Humenyuk
posted by Kattullus at 1:38 AM PST - 3 comments

TABLE is a deep dive into the cutting edge research and debates on how global and local food systems can become sustainable, resilient, and just. Their FEED podcast (transcripts available!) has looked at the commodification and the venture capitalization of food, the vulnerabilities of the global food trade and smallholder farmers. Their explainers (rigorously reviewed) include agroecology, soy & land use change, methane & livestock, and more. TABLE is sponsored by the University of Oxford, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Independent league baseball team the Savannah Bananas knows how to entertain. On a given night, their sold out stadium might feature the team doing the Harlem Shake as a hitter steps to the plate, their 60 & up female dance troop The Banana Nanas, The Dad Bod Cheerleading Squad, their official bat dog, Daisy, or an opposing team hitter whose bat is literally on fire. Taking their cues from the Harlem Globetrotters, the Bananas aim to be as unproblematically crazy and entertaining as possible. Their motto: Fans first. Entertain always. All inclusive. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM PST - 27 comments

The Stanford Prison Experiment wasn't actually much of an experiment. The marshmallow study has been justifiably criticized. Perhaps less well known is this informal Labov 1966 paper [PDF] which points out that kids have a lot more to say to a pet rabbit when nobody's watching than to a clinical professional. People behave differently when they know they're being tested. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 11:27 AM PST - 38 comments

One more addition to the list of things lost to war in Ukraine: Mirya, the world’s largest cargo aircraft. [more inside]
posted by gottabefunky at 9:54 AM PST - 28 comments

Charles Mingus would have been 100 today. “Mingus contained multitudes, but his native language was protest.” “What I’m trying to play is very difficult, because I’m trying to play the truth of what I am,” Mingus said. “The reason why it’s difficult — it’s not difficult to play the mechanics of it — it’s because I’m changing all the time.” “Genius and madman, visionary composer and canny showman, sensitive artist and tempestuous bully, crusader for justice and two-fisted tyrant—each of these depictions is rooted in fact while obscuring a more nuanced reality.”
posted by oulipian at 8:52 AM PST - 14 comments

Farewell to The Flower One of hockey's legends, Lafleur's career with the Montreal Canadiens resulted in 5 Stanley Cup wins during the 1970s. I'll leave it to others to post a link to the disco album. During interviews in English, Lafleur was as articulate as the next hockey player.. but on ice, he could be pure poetry. This Sportsnet feature provides a decent overview. [more inside]
posted by elkevelvet at 8:20 AM PST - 27 comments

FAUX FEAST - There is an estimated multibillion-dollar market in Japan for life-size food models. The craftsmanship can be extraordinary.
posted by andoatnp at 7:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Catelyn Winona (Caffeine and Magix) has published several short stories or vignettes recently that subvert epic fantasy or superhero tropes. Here are three: "No Heroes Here" ("Daz was raised by a hero. That’s probably why she isn’t one."); a piece in which the Chosen One immediately takes up the Dark Lord's offer to join their cause; and "Wizards Stole My Brother" ("Being the Chosen One fucking sucks. That’s why Erika is furious when she finds out her brother got picked.").
posted by brainwane at 4:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Goals of Care I have been a palliative medicine specialist for more than a decade. Medical teams consult me for the most difficult discussions. I know how to build a picture of the future—and how and when to share that future. For me, these conversations are as automatic as hanging my stethoscope around my neck and clipping my pager to my belt. I often tell learners that bad news floods the brain with emotion so that it is not a good time for decision-making. But as I leave clinic that day, my medical brain comes back; what happens if Dad goes to the hospital? [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:31 PM PST - 27 comments

Somehow, polyester went from being the world’s most hated fabrics to one of its favorites. It reinvented itself thanks to advances in materials science, and did it so successfully that many people don’t even realize they’re wearing polyester today. How Polyester Bounced Back
posted by meowzilla at 4:45 PM PST - 64 comments

Code is LOL Someone stole $182 million by following the exactly coded rules of the cryptocurrency Beanstalk. A compelling and short article about why we’re wrong to call it theft or an attack, and the hubris of “Code is Law” being pushed by coders who style themselves philosopher kings. An excerpt describing the legal caper below the fold. [more inside]
posted by Bottlecap at 1:40 PM PST - 124 comments

The Bottom is Dropping Out of Netflix. "Netflix reported that it has lost 200,000 subscribers in the last quarter, which was bad enough. Even worse, it expects to lose another 2 million subscribers. The stock plummeted 35 percent yesterday, losing $50 billion — or more than Elon Musk offered for Twitter — in market capitalization. What the hell is going on?"
posted by storybored at 12:28 PM PST - 186 comments

Just hours ago, in a sudden, inexplicable, and chilling act of censorship, The Onion has been permanently banned from Twitter. Read all about it on their Twitter page.This is a dark day for journalism and sets a grim precedent for the freedom of expression in America. The truth perishes in the night. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:42 AM PST - 33 comments

Human finds abandoned pet rabbit at a park. Delightful bromance unfolds. TikTok adventures ensue.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:37 AM PST - 20 comments

Laurie Anderson’s debut album Big Science was released 40 years ago this week. “The album is an immense structure, generously democratic, as approachable as it is enigmatic – and it sparks at the very least curiosity among anyone who crosses its path for the first time.” “To listen to the songs of Big Science is to feel something of this state of perpetual transience, as if it is not quite the same album you listened to 10 years ago, nor even this morning.” Laurie Anderson talks Big Science and her creative process with Studs Terkel. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 7:12 AM PST - 40 comments

In 1938, Orson Welles filmed an homage/parody of early silent films to accompany the stage production Too Much Johnson. It stars a familiar cast of Welles' actors and a young Arlene Francis. It never screened and was believed lost until a copy was found in 2008. The restored 70 minute film is rather like a Buster Keaton picture if one were to remove all the scenes featuring Buster Keaton. It is wonderfully strange.
posted by eotvos at 5:57 AM PST - 11 comments

“The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us." (archive.org link) In which Congressional Republicans briefly contemplate breaking from Trump after January 6, and then... don't. Adapted from Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns' 'This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for American Democracy.'
posted by box at 5:45 AM PST - 32 comments

I was in my mid-twenties and I had been stuck on the gerbil wheel of frustrated self-definition since childhood. “I’m ‘Jay’,” I’d say, when I introduced myself. No one heard the quotation marks, no one recognized that the body, biography, and male roles toward which my first-person pronouns pointed weren’t what I meant by “I”. In fact, until I read Dickinson’s poem, I didn’t think anyone else knew, or that language could represent, the hell of uncompletable self-definition. Dickinson, I realized, with a rush of gratitude that still brings tears to my eyes, had used the very inadequacy of the language of self-definition to articulate what her speaker and I meant by “I”.

— Supposed Persons: Emily Dickinson and “I” by Prof. Joy Ladin. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 4:22 AM PST - 4 comments

The concept of McDonaldland (huge playlist, notable compilation from same) has a prominent place in public consciousness. Less well known is its rival, the Burger King Kingdom (compilation video). But before the current Jack-in-the-Verse (playlist) or even the Jack Pack, there was the Jack in the Box Bunch. (Two ads and three flexidisc-records-with-comics. Alt. vid of last one. And yes, at least those last three are voiced by Paul Winchell, Disney's original voice of Pooh and Tigger.) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 7:39 PM PST - 11 comments

I Made A Joke About The White House Easter Bunnies, But Then I Learned The Moving Story Behind Them
posted by Etrigan at 3:45 PM PST - 12 comments

Florida bill SB 7044, signed into law today, ends meaningful tenure at the state’s public institutions of higher education. It imposes a new five year review cycle covering “assigned duties in research, teaching, and service” while simultaneously requiring public lists of assigned readings and syllabi, effectively imposing popular and political review of courses and professors. [more inside]
posted by Songdog at 3:02 PM PST - 31 comments

From the people who brought you "A Dark Room." The Qubit Game is a little game where you protect linnocent-looking qubits from villainous heat blobs. Along the way you measure and store information, dread cosmic rays, and learn about quantum coherence, entanglement, helium coolant, and laser cooling. Then things ratchet up. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 12:38 PM PST - 16 comments

Lucas Rizzotto used AI and the GPT-3 language model to bring to life his unusual childhood imaginary friend: the family microwave oven. You may be skeptical about previous clickbait AI stories about creating chatbots based on the texts of deceased loved ones (The Jessica Simulation from 2021 and When a Chatbot Becomes Your Best Friend from 2018). But while those chatbots held obviously bad conversations that didn't live up to the claims of the news article, this microwave oven AI became something different. Something sinister. Something violent. This was a microwave oven that wanted to kill. (Threadrolled version.) [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 11:56 AM PST - 28 comments

State Senator Mallory McMorrow, Democrat of the Michigan State Senate responds to Senator Lana Theis.

Her Office

Donate
posted by y2karl at 9:56 AM PST - 43 comments

The art of calligraphy on a dried leaf was practiced widely in Ottoman Turkey. This was difficult and delicate work. The leaf was dried, and the tissue removed to leave the skeletal membrane, with gold ink applied over it. For Ramadan, here are 20 exquisite examples… (sltwitter, or threadreader rollout)
posted by curious nu at 9:43 AM PST - 18 comments

Future Tape is a web3 music player for new tracks for offer (~1500 USD) on the blockchain. The focus is on independent artists who are pitching music NFTs on the Catalog, Sound and Nina NFT markets. Use the rather minimalist interface to check out the 9 mostly decent tracks on Fellowships 1.0 Collection. It's a new project from Anthony Volodkin who had a big role in the Web 2.0 as the founder of the very popular MP3 aggregator Hype Machine back in 2005 (previously).
posted by zenon at 8:28 AM PST - 113 comments

Today, the Florida Department of Health issued a memo of guidance for transgender teens and children, advocating for trans teenagers to be restricted from socially or medically transitioning (via Erin Reed on Twitter).

Although there have been some victories in defeating anti-trans bills in the US, other actions taken against anti-trans legislation have been met with dismissal and even more legislation (including laws in some states to forcibly out trans youth to their parents) is on the docket for this year. [more inside]
posted by fight or flight at 8:01 AM PST - 38 comments

Apparently not posted here before, resurrected on Twitter today is this 2012 confessional in The Guardian by a mother about her son's tattoo. Prepare yourself.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:38 PM PST - 152 comments

Following on the boot heels of his Don't Say Gay legislation (MeFi post), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rejected school textbooks for being too "woke" and teaching critical race theory including all but one math textbook publisher for children from kindergarten to fifth grade. [more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:17 PM PST - 150 comments

‘I Have 100 Percent, and I Intend to Keep It That Way’: Kamala Harris Breaks Down Her Daily Wordle Habit [The Ringer]
posted by chavenet at 2:41 PM PST - 52 comments

A former Foxconn executive tries to explain what went wrong in Wisconsin. If you don’t quite remember, the Foxconn project in Wisconsin was announced in 2017 as a massive deal to build the first “Generation 10.5” LCD factory in North America. It was also one of the first big moments in the Trump presidency, complete with President Trump holding a golden shovel at a lavish groundbreaking ceremony where he said the factory would be “the eighth wonder of the world.” [more inside]
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:34 PM PST - 68 comments

Ukraine has stood against the Russian invasion for 55 days. In Mariupol the Azovstal Iron and Steelworks remains as one final stronghold against Russian conquest. Ukraine has sunk the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, the missile cruiser Moskva. Russian President Putin has appointed General Aleksandr Dvornikov to try to turn things around. On Monday Russian forces launched a new offensive on a 300 mile long front in eastern Ukraine. The battle of Donbas is underway. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 12:07 PM PST - 1110 comments

On the Zillow Goes Wild Twitter feed, one Wisconsin listing popped up for a homespun sign with a decidedly atypical (if fitting) message in the master bedroom. MEL Magazine has an interview with the homeowner about the sign and her surprise 15 minutes of fame.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:02 AM PST - 74 comments

Luigi Lineri collects stones. “...walking across the river Adige in an ordinary afternoon it may happen to you that your eyes don’t stop at the sunset or the water flowing or your emotions but, half serious half humourous, your eyes low and mingle with that silent stone-bed in a strange dialogue between man and stone, past and present...”
posted by oulipian at 9:44 AM PST - 4 comments

Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch has died. CW: blood, gore, violence. [more inside]
posted by SystematicAbuse at 9:27 AM PST - 6 comments

How the actress turned showrunner took on inherited trauma through time travel. [Spoilers for season 1 of Russian Doll] [New Yorker / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 5:43 AM PST - 29 comments

Let's get intersectional with the reviews of Janelle Monáe's new book of afrofuturist queer short stories, The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories Of The Dirty Computer. NPR is pretty down the middle (as expected) [article with listen link]. But a work like this, we also have the lens of Ebony, which looks at race and afrofuturism and hope. D.C.'s Metro Weekly has a rainbow prism that brings forward LGBTQ+ themes. And WaPo headlines a half-hour interview with the author herself leading with Race, but there's more going on there.. Also, an article with highlights and transcripts of that interview. If you hurry, you might see her book tour. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:09 PM PST - 12 comments

James Madison's Montpelier plantation, a historic US Presidential site, has been widely praised for its progress interpreting the history of slavery and the nation's founding. In 2021, after years of intensive effort, its board took the groundbreaking step of giving "structural parity" to descendants of the 300 people enslaved at Montpelier by James Madison, with an equal number of seats on its board of directors as non-descendants (previously). But in the past four weeks, Montpelier's CEO and board chair have begun an effort to dismantle and reverse the new structures to limit descendant power on the board. And today, they fired and suspended key longtime staff members in retaliation for blowing the whistle and expressing public support for the descendants. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 6:19 PM PST - 24 comments

Mary Gundel loved managing a Dollar General store in Tampa, Fla. But when she detailed its challenges on social media, the company — and fellow employees — took notice. NYtimes.com story. [more inside]
posted by hydra77 at 6:04 PM PST - 33 comments

American companies are increasingly mining the language for short, simple, and unique words. U.S. brands typically employ foreign-sounding names to convey certain cultural associations (for example Au Bon Pain, which seeks to re-create French cafe bakery culture, or Häagen-Dazs, a nod to Danish). The draw of many Finnish words is the opposite—their lack of affiliation for the average American. They can be seen as more neutral and harder to place, says Pekka Mattila, professor of practice in marketing at the Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki. “Having a Finnish brand name is an easy pick if you want to be different in a large market that is English-speaking,” he says. When consumers don’t have a preconceived idea of a word, brands can use it as a near-blank canvas. “The word raaka means raw in Finnish,” writes Brooklyn-based chocolatier Raaka on its website. “We claim no Finnish heritage, but the cadence of the word and its meaning capture the essence of our chocolate and our process. When we make chocolate we’re after something that feels the way Raaka sounds: strong, wild, playful, and most of all, different.”
posted by folklore724 at 5:03 PM PST - 47 comments

It's Monday and my day off and I've done like six hours of work anyway, which means now I absolutely get to put my feet up and crack open a nice cold can of Free Thread with the boys. (The boys are my cats. They're both girls, come to think of it. Anyway.) Come on in and talk about whatever the hell one talks about when one talks about things, I (increasingly literally) don't make the rules.
posted by cortex at 3:33 PM PST - 122 comments

"The Ignyte Awards Committee Is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2022 Igynte Awards. The Awards seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscape of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts towards inclusivity within the genre. To that effect, the committee feels that these creators, creations, entities and perspectives from 2021 present the brightest lights in speculative fiction’s future." 19 of the shortlisted works are readable for free online, including many short stories and novelettes. Voting is open now (anyone can vote) and closes June 10th.
posted by brainwane at 1:23 PM PST - 9 comments

As a follow-up to their announcement in November, Gizmodo has released part 1 of the Facebook Papers: "As part of an ongoing project to make these once-confidential records accessible to the general public, Gizmodo is today—for the first time—publishing 28 of the documents previously exclusively shared with Congress and the media." [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:30 PM PST - 21 comments

The preeminent Ronan Farrow on NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, a campaign against Catalan civil society, and "the inside story of the world’s most notorious commercial spyware and the big tech companies waging war against it". Technical research and reporting from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab accompanies the New Yorker article. They also found evidence of UK government targets, including Downing Street. [more inside]
posted by redct at 11:01 AM PST - 6 comments

On how to commemorate Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), the mass grave outside of Kyiv. Note: This story was conceived and written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Apart from the addition of updates to reflect recent developments, we chose not to substantially alter the piece.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:40 AM PST - 4 comments

110 years and a couple of days ago, Charles Lightoller was the senior most officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic. He oversaw the launching of many lifeboats, cutting the ropes of the last with a pen knife, went down with the ship, was trapped under water and survived because of a fortuitous boiler explosion. This would be his second newsworthy shipwreck of four. When not escaping sinking ships, he mined for gold in the Yukon, wrangled cattle, rode the rails across North America, won a firefight with a Zeppelin, sunk a U-Boat and had to return to port by traveling backwards in command of a badly damaged ship, ran long-distance surveillance off the coast of Nazi Germany, and rescued more than 100 people during the evacuation of Dunkirk while under fire. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 8:30 AM PST - 24 comments

He does it not for the fame or the nickname or even the football fortune that is suddenly within his grasp. No, Matt Araiza does what he does -- bashing footballs into the stratosphere, defying the laws of gravity -- in search of that one indescribable moment.
posted by Etrigan at 7:38 AM PST - 8 comments

Comic artist Leah Elliott remixes Scott McCloud in another webcomic about Google Chrome. Chrome’s original announcement on September 1 2008 featured a 38 page comic from McCloud explaining why Google was introducing the new web browser. The new comic is not about the promise of a bright and open future, but about what Chrome has become.
posted by zenon at 7:48 PM PST - 74 comments

To independent booksellers, the enormous chain was once a threat. Now it’s vital to their survival. And it’s doing well. “It’s funny how the industry has evolved so that they are now a good guy,” said Ellen Adler, the publisher of the independent New Press. “I would say their rehabilitation has been total.”
posted by folklore724 at 11:48 AM PST - 31 comments

Infinite procedurally generated Chinese landscape painting. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 10:27 AM PST - 11 comments

A series of experiments have suggested that mindfulness meditation may reduce prosocial behaviours by reducing the guilt which leads to them. Article, study (paywalled). [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 10:12 AM PST - 65 comments

Cornwall’s sleeping beauty: the tale of Heligan’s lost gardens The story of the rediscovery of the Lost Gardens of Heligan just over 30 years ago has all the ingredients and romance of a modern-day Sleeping Beauty: a brave prince battles through impenetrable thorns to awaken a beautiful princess who has fallen asleep for nearly 80 years. He rouses her with a kiss and they live happily ever after. [more inside]
posted by ominous_paws at 9:32 AM PST - 16 comments

Ever Forward is moving on! We need a new post to rejoice, because the previous thread is closed.
posted by alygator at 9:08 AM PST - 21 comments

We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:32 AM PST - 9 comments

Engineer Who Tried To Kamikaze A US Navy Hospital Ship With A Train Gets Prison – At the Port of Los Angeles, the locomotive engineer who purposefully ran his train off the tracks at full-speed in an apparent attempt to sink the US Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy has been sentenced to prison for committing a terrorist attack. According to the US Justice Department, neither the USNS Mercy nor anyone else was harmed in the derailment of the train in 2020. The train tracks ended 250 meters before the ship pier, so Moreno did not even come close to damaging the ship, but he did damage his train and cause a 2,000-gallon diesel oil spill. gCaptain, John Konrad, April 16, 2022 (original story, CBS News LA video).
posted by cenoxo at 6:33 AM PST - 29 comments

How would a divine epiphany appear to an artificial intelligence? Artist Diemut Strebe's installation The Prayer is an animatronic silicone mouth driven by a GPT2 instance trained on religious texts that attempts to produce original sermons and chants. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 5:44 AM PST - 28 comments

Music From Nancy is a an experimental music and performance piece based on the comic strip "Nancy".
posted by moonmilk at 7:19 PM PST - 11 comments

Kassem Fawaz’s brother was on a videoconference with the microphone muted when he noticed that the microphone light was still on — indicating, inexplicably, that his microphone was being accessed. Alarmed, he asked Fawaz, an expert in online privacy and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to look into the issue. Fawaz and graduate student Yucheng Yang investigated whether this “mic-off-light-on” phenomenon was more widespread. They tried out many different videoconferencing applications on major operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows and Mac, checking to see if the apps still accessed the microphone when it was muted. [more inside]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 1:44 PM PST - 44 comments

What a depressing descent it’s been for the “Fantastic Beasts” movies
posted by folklore724 at 11:21 AM PST - 67 comments

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation. As previously discussed on MetaFilter, the Dunning-Kruger effect is probably not real. In this blog post, economist Blair Fix explains how it is a statistical artifact. [more inside]
posted by FuturisticDragon at 9:46 AM PST - 84 comments

An experiment in a public reading endeavor of Chinese classic 紅樓夢 "Dream of the Red Chamber" where scholars, readers, and translators participate using the hashtag #ReadingtheStone, from Duke professor Eileen Chengyin Chow inspired by a previous public reading experiment on reading War & Peace online during the early days of the pandemic with author YiYun Li with the hashtag #TolstoyTogether. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 8:00 AM PST - 7 comments

Like the Back of Your Hand? (Requires location services to be turned on.)
posted by dobbs at 6:56 AM PST - 44 comments

27 years ago I accidentally ran the hardest, strangest Easter egg hunt my hometown had probably ever seen. Here’s what happened: (slTwitter)
posted by Etrigan at 6:36 AM PST - 29 comments

"Private prisons are the single greatest real estate investment vehicle around... To increase my cash flow I spent a significant amount of money on lobbying efforts to win a judge who was hard on crime. This paid off by the end of year two. To pay me back the judge sent most young men (higher margin than older men) to my facility. Cash flow went up 3x. By year four cash flows were $15 million at 95% occupancy. To maximize my investment I started to market the facility to outside investors. Halfway through year four we sold the facility to private equity for 10x cash flow or $150 million. In four years I turned $7.5 million into a clean $150 million." (SLThreadReader) [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 3:40 AM PST - 32 comments

Redactle is a daily browser game where the user tries to determine the subject of a random obfuscated Wikipedia article, chosen from Wikipedia's 10,000 Vital Articles (Level 4).
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:34 AM PST - 133 comments

"The Seven Daughters Of The Cailleach Foraoise" by Dyce (Sarah Blackwell) is tagged "new fairy tales / going old school with this one / threes and sevens and animals in danger and trick questions / the lot / enjoy": "Being kind of heart, he wrapped his hands in his cloak to protect them, and freed the young fox despite its attempts to bite him." Thematically related: Kate Clayborn writes a Twitter thread on the Canterbury Tales, the loathly lady, and 'a quest to find a true answer to the question "what do women most desire"' (nitter view, Threadreader view): "i really need to say a word on behalf of my old friend the wife of bath" [Content note for mention of rape in Twitter thread.]
posted by brainwane at 7:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Waxy.org, the slightly younger blog compatriat of actual elder websites like MetaFilter, turned 20 years old yesterday. Run by MetaFilter's own waxpancake aka Andy (absolutely no relation) Baio, Waxy has been a font of interesting links for longer than most of the people on TikTok have been alive, and remains a valuable and likable roundup of web and internet weirdness to this very day. (Hi, Andy.)
posted by cortex at 5:46 PM PST - 8 comments

From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, the gold standard tool for computer-composed music was the tracker. With an origin in software piracy and digital counterculture, tracker-composed music defined new genres and has a legacy that continues today. Trackers: The Sound of 16-bit. (Warning: includes music that may transport geeks of a certain age back to their youth.)
posted by biogeo at 4:22 PM PST - 35 comments

Ask a random person on the street to describe the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and it is likely they will have an answer. Visitors to Verona can visit the famous balcony itself. This is bit surprising, since no balcony [time-walled Atlantic] appears anywhere in Shakespeare, at least in this universe. Juliet comes to a window in the play. The word seems to have been printed for the first time in English two years after Shakespeare's death. It was a common word in what is now Italy, but if Shakespear knew about it, he never wrote it down. A likely origin is Thomas Ottway's very popular play from 1680, The History and fall of Gaius Marius, which liberally borrows from Shakespeare and other sources and prominently features a balcony. (via You're Wrong About)
posted by eotvos at 3:23 PM PST - 23 comments

Raccoon astronaut with the cosmos reflected in his helmet dreams of the stars / Jedi sloth / Lego Mona Lisa / Cute animals on rainbow grass / Bulldog in coat and hat drives an old car / Victorian rabbit reads the paper on a bench / Macro shot of a kitten in glasses / Cool panda skateboards in Santa Monica / Propaganda poster of a Napoleon cat with cheese / Plants in a lightbulb / Proud raccoons pose with their art / Studio Ghibli train stations / Kid and dog stare at the stars / Ukiyo-e teddy bears shop for groceries / Soup bowl monster knit out of wool / Astronaut on a horse, pencil sketch / American Gothic, but it's dogs with pizzas / Badass sheep in a science lab / Mona Lisa in Twin Peaks / Kitty donut shop / Colorful gamerooms, Memphis Design / HD photo of Pikachu in a cape / Wooden art deco cat / Fruit golem / Codex Seraphinianus / Voynich Manuscript / Variations on Vermeer, Klimt, Seurat, Ohara / "Good morning" Post-It on the ISS cupola / Cats in blue hats / Writer ponders her next story, oil painting / Timepieces, De Chirico style / Cheshire Cat and Tinkerbell play poker / Pieter Bruegel's Incredible Hulk / A plum and perfume served in a hat / Earth as chocolate cake / The orange cat Otto von Garfield in a Prussian Pickelhaube eats lasagna / A robot paints while playing piano, draws itself, paints itself, shows another robot its art / Meet OpenAI's DALL·E 2, the extraordinary new AI that creates anything you can imagine in a matter of seconds. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:01 PM PST - 87 comments

It has somehow been 20 years since audiences first witnessed the adventures of Manny, Sid, Diego, and all the rest of the Ice Age crew. Throughout all that time, Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel has been searching across all of creation for a place to keep his acorn safe. Blue Sky Studios is the team behind Ice Age, but it has gone extinct thanks to the recent megamerger of Disney and 20th Century Fox. As a brief goodbye from the artists that brought this franchise to life, Blue Sky posted a brief animation of the popular squirrel finally securing the acorn and eating it. [more inside]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 11:54 AM PST - 17 comments

A receipt written by the French artist Yves Klein auctioned by Sotheby’s in Paris has been hailed as a precursor to NFTs [Grauniad]
posted by chavenet at 11:02 AM PST - 16 comments

Let's talk about Sneakers, previously, not that one. [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 9:41 AM PST - 113 comments

Clayton Kershaw was six outs away from pitching the first perfect game in nearly a decade on Wednesday afternoon vs. the Twins. But, after seven innings, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts decided to pull the All-Star pitcher based on his pitch count.
posted by Etrigan at 6:19 AM PST - 54 comments

Japan has a number of islands and locations called "Nekojima" or "Cat Island" because they are overrun by cats, which provide more of a tourist attraction than an inconvenience (one previously). On one such island, the cats are followed by the diligent, silent Youtubers Impressed cat video and 野郎が撮った猫動画. Examples: seaside cats of mixed emotions; pond tea tiger welcomes humans; a failed attempt at lewdness. They are cared for by volunteers like the cheerful BIGMAMA, who feeds, grooms, and medicates the cats. She seems to have uncanny cat-obedience powers, possibly because she sings their names whenever she visits them. Commenters from around the world respond to the Google Translate descriptions in the same dreamlike English. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 5:52 AM PST - 11 comments

In My Language "The first part is in my "native language," and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not." [more inside]
posted by Bottlecap at 9:38 PM PST - 10 comments

As Gurinder Chadha’s film Bend It Like Beckham turns 20 years old, Ali Rampling looks at what it means to players today. [more inside]
posted by mbrubeck at 8:38 PM PST - 18 comments

Non-downloadable PDF and article page. Three researchers suggest a framework "based on descriptions of autistic peoples' lived experiences". [more inside]
posted by bixfrankonis at 7:11 PM PST - 6 comments

A new Cronenberg film will soon be upon us. (content warning for, well, David Cronenberg; NSFW) A teaser trailer for Crimes of the Future* has appeared. So has another one. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:15 PM PST - 31 comments

Lizzo dropped a new video/single today: About Damn Time (SLyoutube).
posted by skycrashesdown at 4:05 PM PST - 32 comments

"READ the closing statement of Alla Gutnikova, one of the editors of the Moscow student journal DOXA, who are all facing prison sentences for "inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests”. But the speech is about so much more. (The translation was adapted from that of Michelle Panchuk.)" [via Mariya Nikiforova on FB] [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 11:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington is having a(nother) moment. (artnews) What you might love about her: [more inside]
posted by warriorqueen at 10:14 AM PST - 12 comments

Released on Webtoons, Wayne Family Adventures is a slice of life comic series revolving around Gotham's extended crimefighting family and how they relate to each other. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:02 AM PST - 10 comments

"Joe Tsai, The billionaire owner of the Brooklyn Nets, made his fortune in China. His company, Alibaba, began in a Hangzhou apartment and has since been described as 'Amazon on steroids.' [more inside]
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 9:27 AM PST - 4 comments

“You realize that in this group, everyone’s parents own at least one house? And we’re the only ones whose parents don’t own property?” It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film. In realizing my own naivety, and that our lives were different, I was shattered. A thought hit: were my peers future-rich millennials?
posted by simmering octagon at 9:18 AM PST - 64 comments

Elon Musk has offered $43 billion to buy Twitter, saying he believes "in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe". He already owns 9% of the company, and just declined an invitation to join its Board, which would have restricted his ability to buy a controlling share. It might be a passing whim, or an effort to remove moderation. Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says, "we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication."
posted by joannemerriam at 7:36 AM PST - 207 comments

Superhero porn parodies are giving the fans exactly what they want, in more ways than one (story is SFW, with some links that are not)
posted by Etrigan at 6:12 AM PST - 25 comments

The personal touch: this year’s Portrait of Humanity prize-winners – in pictures (single link Guardian)
posted by BekahVee at 5:49 AM PST - 3 comments

Pesach is nearly upon us and many people are seeing family for a seder in person for the first time in several years. What about those of us in quarantine or isolation still? No worries! There’s still some beautiful seders happening virtually. Seder Night in Canada 2022 is delightfully and Jewishly campy (and already available to stream) with guests like Itzak Perlman. If you want a reform, queer, interfaith experience, nonbinary Rabbi Nadia Siritsky has you covered. But the real reason we’re all here is a new Six13 parody song.
posted by Bottlecap at 9:32 PM PST - 13 comments

Phoebe and Her Unicorn is just about ten years old. Its initial syndication deal in 2015 introduced it to over 100 different newspapers, it has fourteen printed collections in your local library and/or bookstore, with more on the way, and it's set to become a Nickelodeon animated series next year. It's the whimsical adventures of a nine-year-old girl, a justifiably self-absorbed unicorn, and their attempts to understand the world and each other. But before Phoebe, Dana Simpson wrote several other comics: [more inside]
posted by one for the books at 9:04 PM PST - 13 comments

Tesco's plastic pledge falls short. In August, Tesco announced it was expanding the pilot to all its biggest outlets. Shoppers from Cornwall to Cumbria were invited to return snack packets, shopping bags, and vegetable packaging. Soon after, the company rolled out a national advertising campaign, featuring an image of a young father with a baby in his arms and the words: “Recycling soft plastics shouldn’t be hard.” The problem was, as Ragueneau knew from her activism, recycling plastic is hard—especially the material Tesco is collecting. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 5:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Classic evolutionary theory holds that species separate over time. But it’s fuzzier than that – now we know they also merge. Bonus: If our closest relatives are chimps, why is some human DNA more like gorilla DNA? [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 2:57 PM PST - 13 comments

"am i taking notes? am i dicking around on my tablet? who knows! not my boss!!!" Kitty Unpretty writes an extremely opinionated list of office supplies recommendations -- organizers, highlighters, a hanging file frame, a paper folder, washi tape, and more. "now i always remember to take the slip off to include with the check because, i want my paperclip back. don’t you dare put my cute paperclip in the file cabinet. it’s mine." This post is colorful, literally (lots of colors) and figuratively (profanity).
posted by brainwane at 2:44 PM PST - 47 comments

ProPublica: Secret IRS files reveal the top US income-earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:40 PM PST - 35 comments

First announced on USENET in 1992, BBEdit has always offered powerful text-editing to Mac users. This week it turns thirty, and is still going strong! [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 12:13 PM PST - 40 comments

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Animated Series (single-link Twitter video)
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:10 AM PST - 54 comments

How the hell do you sell AriZona Iced Tea for $0.99 in 2022? [more inside]
posted by zenon at 8:25 AM PST - 30 comments

For House and Garden, Ben Dark on the history and beauty of the magnolia tree: its evolution, its pollination, its abode in the front gardens of London and in Edith Wharton's New York.
posted by Hypatia at 8:07 AM PST - 6 comments

“I have soaked my film in many different substances including soap, dishwasher detergent, lemon, vinegar, Gatorade, curry, and cough medicine.” Film soup is an experimental analog photography technique where you soak a roll of film in different liquids to add fun, crazy colors and effects.
posted by oulipian at 7:55 AM PST - 4 comments

Lukewarm on the heels of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen's epic meltdown (previously on Metafilter), and last year's seafood scare, fermentation bro Brad Leone is once again giving everyone botulism with improperly-cured pastrami.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:55 AM PST - 113 comments

The Richmond Times Dispatch put a large collection of newspaper ads from the 80s on their website.
posted by COD at 6:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Recent years have brought a multitude of challenges to our organization, and despite incredible effort, we have concluded that we are unable to sustainably continue creating the quality content that our readers and supporters expect. It is with very heavy hearts that we tell you that Bitch Media will cease all operations in June, 2022.
posted by Etrigan at 6:04 AM PST - 14 comments

The Tractatus Suite consists of six songs, each in a different style, composed and performed by Finnish singer-songwriter, author and national treasure M. A. Numminen, using phrases from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. UbuWeb doesn't have the sixth song, A Proposition Is… but it is available on YouTube. You can also watch him perform Wovon man nicht sprechen kann in a television studio and also live accompanied by orchestra (who are desperately trying to keep a straight face).
posted by Kattullus at 5:59 AM PST - 5 comments

The Rumble Strip podcast (via 99% Invisible) talks about Town Meeting Day in Vermont, a public holiday when everyone gets the day off work to make sure they have the chance to talk out the issues facing the town and decide how they want to spend their money.
posted by adrianhon at 12:51 AM PST - 16 comments

Hank C. Burnette's Spinning Rock Boogie may be unfamiliar to you. I'm here to help.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:44 PM PST - 3 comments

Alyssa Nakken made major league history as the first woman to coach on the field in a regular-season game when she took her spot for the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night against San Diego.
posted by chavenet at 11:26 PM PST - 5 comments

Do you need a license for those pro nouns, but don't want to pay for one? (author's tweet)
posted by curious nu at 4:54 PM PST - 20 comments

Tiny Elden Ring: Elden Ring, but zoomed out and tilt-shifted and everything moving in a low-framerate Harryhausen stutter.
posted by cortex at 4:04 PM PST - 47 comments

Jon Bois and Dorktown are back with a four part series on a certain perennially undervalued Toronto Blue Jays ace: Captain Ahab, the Story of Dave Stieb. [more inside]
posted by saladin at 1:28 PM PST - 14 comments

Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried (February 28, 1955 - April 12, 2022) [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 1:14 PM PST - 91 comments

"Not long ago, while browsing a craft fair in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, I spotted a guitar like no other I’d ever seen. It hung half-hidden behind a display of cutting boards and wooden bowls in the booth of woodworker and luthier David Smith. Noting my hungry stare, Smith gently lifted the instrument from its perch and urged me to give it a try. I cradled it under my elbow and plucked a few chords. The sound was resonant and true. But the most remarkable part was the look of the thing: Its back and sides rippled like a full moon reflecting off a dead calm sea. Mesmerizing. “What you’re staring at is The Tree,” Smith said, smiling. “It’s the rarest and most coveted wood in the world.” [nopaywall] [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 11:58 AM PST - 33 comments

Graphic designer Justin Ladia served as the Art Director of the 2022 MIT Mystery Hunt. His lengthy retrospective includes fun art, spoilers for some puzzles (which you can play online), and a fascinating, detailed start-to-finish case study of what it takes to direct the art for a big complicated collection of mostly-online experiences. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 10:27 AM PST - 2 comments

Something's Missing | Ancient Bowl From Tibet Shows Alexander the Great – the Jewish Version [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:14 AM PST - 2 comments

In 1980, Francis Hines wrapped New York City's Washington Square Monument with 8,000 yards of synthetic white fabric, creating "a giant bandage for a wounded monument." It was his best known work though he continued to create and exhibit his work well into his 90s. However, he made no plans for his smaller artworks after his death, resulting in a Connecticut barn clean-out contractor discovering hundreds of pieces of art potentially worth millions and creating a new interest in Hines' paintings.
posted by jessamyn at 9:02 AM PST - 7 comments

Lake Mary Jane, in central Florida, could be harmed by development. A first-of-its-kind lawsuit asks whether nature should have legal rights.
posted by Etrigan at 4:48 AM PST - 16 comments

"Though the store is not releasing a special CD, it did create a Spotify playlist called the “MB Store Songs CD” after the support from customers." | MB MeFiviously | They also bumped TJ's out of the #3 spot. Pissaaaaaah!
posted by not_on_display at 12:57 AM PST - 33 comments

"Honey," I said. "You're not going to believe this, but I just got off the phone with a guy who's in charge of video game world records, and he said the world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines, and he wants us to go to New Hampshire this spring so you can try to break the world record live in front of the judges at the world's largest classic video game tournament."
posted by sciatrix at 9:28 PM PST - 25 comments

Here's Why It's Actually A Nightmare. Hearing people would probably think I’m the lucky one ― the success story ― because I can talk. But I agree with my [Deaf] friends. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:59 PM PST - 14 comments

Pump Up The Volume: A History Of House Music [2h26m] is a 2001 Channel 4 documentary in three parts, all here in one for viewing convenience! Starting out with disco and tracing forward, it's a nice (albeit perhaps too linear) history of a music style that has basically taken over the world.
posted by hippybear at 8:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Summon Demons (SLYT)
posted by furtive at 8:17 PM PST - 13 comments

Etsy sellers have gone on on strike, and they're asking us not to cross the picket line. "What would happen if on April 11, so many sellers put their shops on vacation mode that Etsy starts shitting bricks?” https://etsystrike.org/ [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:37 PM PST - 53 comments

Found this on a dezeen article [NSFW]. Highly recommend checking out the product website [NSFW] which contains the most magnificent gifs I've ever seen. You are welcome.
posted by poppypetalmask at 4:44 PM PST - 71 comments

Oscar the cat survived 3 shipwrecks in one year during WWII and was rescued each time, unlike 2145 of his human crewmates. Sadly, the story is hard to confirm. Oscar the cat [PDF] had the amazing ability to predict the imminent death of nursing home patients. Sadly, this widely cited story is probably exaggerated. Oscar the cat lost both his hind feet in a car accident and had them replaced with prosthetics. This story is true. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 1:56 PM PST - 10 comments

Klaus-Dietmar Henke, a spokesperson for the research group looking into the spy agency’s history, likened the scheme to the Watergate scandal in the US, when Richard Nixon planned to have ex-CIA and FBI agents bug the headquarters of the Democratic party. Unlike Nixon’s bungled break-in, however, Adenauer’s infiltration of his rival party was a success – and until now had eluded historians. The Guardian (EN) [more inside]
posted by kmt at 12:48 PM PST - 4 comments

It's snowing in Portland, OR in the middle of April, which according to the prophecy means it's time for a Free Thread and also for me to not leave the house today. Come on in, chat about whatever, and put on a sweater, I'm cold.
posted by cortex at 9:43 AM PST - 187 comments

Two discussions of persuasion and susceptibility to persuasion. On scar tissue among people who experienced the post-9/11 shift in public American discourse, and on a different variety of scar tissue for people who came to political awareness in the last ten years, and how they respond to different kinds of rhetoric. On conditions for the formations of cults, and building resilience to being recruited.
posted by brainwane at 8:55 AM PST - 39 comments

The Nimona movie is coming to Netflix in 2023. [more inside]
posted by All Might Be Well at 7:25 AM PST - 31 comments

How Loud Can Sound Physically Get? (Benn Jordan, YouTube, 12m30s)
posted by flabdablet at 1:13 AM PST - 57 comments

The psychology of climate change. Climate grief is on the rise. Mourning is necessary, but as an antidote to hopelessness, try out this 30 day climate change action plan at The Revelator. And check out their series Vanishing, that explores some of the human stakes of the wildlife extinction crisis.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:32 PM PST - 59 comments

Harder Drive: Hard drives we didnt want or need - YouTube

In this video we make and evaluate several hard drives that we didn't want. Drawing some inspiration from vexing current events, we find that creative, structured thought on adjacent (but frivolous) problems is a sort of digestive act, and one that is ultimately laxative. Paper and source code: http://tom7.org/harder For SIGBOVIK 2022

[more inside]
posted by zengargoyle at 2:40 AM PST - 29 comments

Terrible Tilly, Oregon’s Legendary Lighthouse, Is for Sale From a distance, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse looks like a real-estate investor’s dream... [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 8:00 PM PST - 43 comments

William Gaddis: Below Deck On The Ship of Fools (Pt. 1; Pt. 2) [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:26 PM PST - 13 comments

A new analysis of W bosons suggests these particles are significantly heavier than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Original article in Science.
posted by Rumple at 2:04 PM PST - 42 comments

Social science researchers Dr. Kristen Nielsen Donnelly and Dr. Erin Hinson decided to spend the second year of the pandemic learning about a different colonized nation every week. They discuss what they've learned each week in the videos of their Colonizer's World Tour, currently up to episode 68.
posted by clawsoon at 1:42 PM PST - 7 comments

My scream is famous. A short piece in The Guardian where Ashley Peldon talks about her career as a voice actor specializing in screams, to the point where she is known as a "scream artist." Her IMDB page also contains a short video interview, which includes some shots of her working (screaming) in the recording studio.
posted by soundguy99 at 9:01 AM PST - 24 comments

"... now I was getting to know a swathe of 20 first year students, few of whom had any interest in majoring in Philosophy, and with whom I’d keep in touch throughout." Harry Brighouse, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, describes a structure that helped him work better with First Year Interest Groups (seminars with linked courses). "Who wants another workshop or class that’s just going to serve more of the same old people who are currently being served, in the same old way they’re already being served?" Lindsey Kuper, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz, discusses "Going all in on weird outreach" (several paragraphs in), in particular encouraging undergraduate students to create zines about a CS research project. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 6:13 AM PST - 6 comments

If you disagree with publishers about how to furnish the room, but you can't rebind all your books as people used to do, you can replace the dust jackets. If you have cases of books of the same size, you can jacket them into a single mural. (This reminds me of an encyclopedia aimed at young readers when I was a kid. Possibly the World Book?) [more inside]
posted by clew at 4:47 PM PST - 48 comments

Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest active park ranger for the National Park Service (NPS), retired on March 31 at the age of 100. As an NPS employee, she promoted the stories of African American people and women of color who contributed to the home front effort during WWII [more inside]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 2:49 PM PST - 11 comments

Bringing a 100 year old hardanger fiddle back to life: "A customer recently brought an old fiddle into the shop that belonged to her great grandfather. The fiddle was in poor shape and hadn't been playable in many decades. There was even a mouse living in the fiddle for a period of time" (YouTube, runs 1 hour 20 minutes with no narration - just the sound of the luthier's tools and a few explanatory captions as he moves through the restoration process). [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:45 PM PST - 23 comments

The problem with every-unit-moves (EUM) in 4X games is that it only creates the illusion of tactical and strategic decision making. (I am taking the prerogative to coin an acronym for this to draw attention to the fact that employing EUM is an intentional design choice, just like using one-unit-per-tile is a choice.) Each turn, the player is evaluating the most effective single move for each of their units, which is often a very straightforward and often even boring decision, without any tradeoffs, with no reason to NOT take an action. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 12:43 PM PST - 12 comments

Thieves Steal Over $22,000 in Cheese Wheels from a Dutch Dairy Farm. That's it; that's the post.
posted by fedward at 10:24 AM PST - 51 comments

How a Museum’s Money Is Shaping the Fight Over San Francisco’s Most Controversial Street. Of all the hysteria to arise in San Francisco during the pandemic, perhaps the most on-brand controversy for a city so insular and hyperbolic concerns a 1.5-mile stretch of asphalt. The fight over whether John F. Kennedy Drive—the road that traverses Golden Gate Park—should remain car-free has led to accusations of shadow lobbying, financial shell games, ageism, ableism, cronyism, elitism and racism. And many of them are legitimate.
posted by niicholas at 10:03 AM PST - 21 comments

“The Pen’s perfect, or at least it’s everything I want a camera to be. Its design is genius, it’s easy to use, and it’s the most practical film camera I’ve ever used. More than even my most trusted cameras, it makes me want to keep shooting, keep having adventures, keep loving photography. I don’t think I had more fun shooting a camera than I did shooting this thing in Tokyo. I had plans to take it back with me to LA to shoot shows, recording sessions, tours, everything. It was going to be my number one. But then I actually got home, and all of those plans just… vanished.” — Surviving 2020 with an Olympus Pen FT, from Casual Photophile.
posted by oulipian at 8:05 AM PST - 33 comments

🌸 home sweet homepage 🌸 is a comic about growing up online from sailor mercury aka @sailorhg. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 7:57 AM PST - 25 comments

What does transforming towards more sustainable sources of energy look like? This series explores solar power plants in the United States, France and Spain. These man-made, constructed landscapes represent our efforts of building a more sustainable future in the most sophisticated ways.
posted by Etrigan at 6:37 AM PST - 25 comments

Join a family as they ride up a summertime ski lift and then ride down the Toboggan Pradaschier, around 2 miles downhill. Beautiful mountains and a lovely quiet (and mildly thrilling) 14 minutes).
posted by hippybear at 7:10 PM PST - 12 comments

Silvery Fish's recent prison writing post is an excellent reminder of the potential of writing to change the lives of incarcerated folks and the long tradition of college writing instructors and scholars investigating that potential, including former prisoners. There's an idea that writing instruction can or should help the underprivileged (PDF), which has contributed to a broader debate over who gets defined as underprivileged or remedial student writers. Perhaps the most widely cited article on the topic is David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University," which contributed to Bartholomae's debate with another prominent writing scholar, Peter Elbow, about the purposes of writing and the identities of student writers. [more inside]
posted by vitia at 1:56 PM PST - 6 comments

At Islamic Illumination, UK-based Saudi artist Dr. Esra Alhamal hosts the annual Golden Flower Art Challenge! See everyone's completed flowers on Instagram! This year's floral templates are inspired by Mughal manuscript borders. Previous templates included Turkish plates in 2021 and Safavid Iranian textiles in 2020. And, as Dr. Alhamal says, have a creative Ramadan!
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:50 AM PST - 8 comments

A brief survey of the short story, part 56: Clarice Lispector (+ a few stories) - 'In Brazil (her family, fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms, emigrated from Ukraine in 1921 when she was still an infant), Clarice Lispector became that unusual combination: an avant-garde artist who is also a household name. Fame arrived in the 1960s, two decades after she published her first book and a decade before she died, aged 56, from ovarian cancer. She had no particular desire for fame, just as she had no particular desire to be identified as an experimental writer. She never understood why readers found her work opaque, while the fact that she consistently attempted new things in her writing was, for her, simply necessary to her aim: "In painting, as in music and literature, what is called abstract so often seems to me the figurative of a more delicate and more difficult reality, less visible to the naked eye."' [more inside]
posted by plant or animal at 10:49 AM PST - 10 comments

The 2022 ballot for the Hugo, Astounding, and Lodestar Awards, awards for achievement in science fiction and fantasy, has been announced. Worldcon members submitted 1368 valid nominating ballots (up from 1249 last year and down from the heights of the 2010s); voting will open in May and the final results will be announced on September 4. Notably, "Unknown Number" by Blue Neustifter a.k.a. Azure Husky (previously) is a story that was originally published as a Twitter thread containing a series of simulated text messages. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 8:51 AM PST - 37 comments

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims. (Study.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:37 AM PST - 62 comments

Daym Drops reviews the only black-owned pizzeria in Connecticut, and interviews the owner. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by gauche at 5:41 AM PST - 16 comments

Facebook’s financial arm, Meta Financial Technologies, has been exploring the creation of a virtual currency for the metaverse, which employees internally have dubbed “Zuck Bucks”, according to several people familiar with the efforts. This is unlikely to be a cryptocurrency based on the blockchain, some of the people said. Instead, Meta is leaning towards introducing in-app tokens that would be centrally controlled by the company, similar to those used in gaming apps such as the robux currency in popular children’s game Roblox. Facebook owner Meta targets finance with ‘Zuck Bucks’ and creator coins [Financial Times; unpaywalled] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:20 AM PST - 43 comments

Alice B. Toklas reads her "Recipe for Hashish Fudge" (as provided to her by Brion Gysin). [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:53 PM PST - 9 comments

The university of California made to withdraw a job advertisement for an assistant adjunct Professor in Science that offered no salary. Throws a light on university sweat shops. Boston Globe [more inside]
posted by Narrative_Historian at 8:49 PM PST - 43 comments

The final two shows of the Spirited Away stage production will be livestreamed through Hulu, July 3rd and 4th. This announcement was preceded by some photos of the stage production - the puppetry looks amazing, I can't wait to see it in motion. Official Disney trailer for English dub of Spirited Away, the movie (YT). [more inside]
posted by snerson at 8:47 PM PST - 10 comments

Ilan Manouach is a comics artist whose works include conceptual pieces appropriating from other comics , AI-generated New Yorker comics (in collaboration with Yannis Siglidis) and a tactile language. [more inside]
posted by solarion at 7:59 PM PST - 2 comments

Bernadette Peters At The Adelalde Cabaret Festival was recorded in 2009 and is exactly what it says on the tin. [1h32m, proshot]
posted by hippybear at 6:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth.
posted by Etrigan at 6:29 PM PST - 29 comments

How do you start writing when you’re incarcerated in prison? How do you establish a literary life without access to craft workshops, the internet, or even to the outside world? PEN America’s new writing handbook, The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, addresses those questions to serve as “a road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars.” In addition to providing guidance on developing a personal and professional writing life while incarcerated, The Sentences That Create Us provides introductions to the foundations of writing, strategies for addressing trauma in writing, as well as writing exercises developed by prison educators.
posted by Silvery Fish at 3:47 PM PST - 2 comments

It is time for another Ukraine thread. The battle of Kyiv has ended with a victory for Ukraine. The retreating Russian army left behind evidence of war crimes and genocide, and their trenches dug into the radioactive soils near Chornobyl. Russia has shifted its focus to conquering the remainder of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The West continues to announce more sanctions and send more weapons while China, India and others remain undecided on how to respond. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 3:00 PM PST - 793 comments

"Worldcoin promised to jump-start the global crypto revolution with an audacious plan: to give out digital money to all 7.9 billion people on Earth. […] [Worldcoin CEO Alex] Blania strongly pushed back on the suggestion that Worldcoin’s purpose was to harvest the world’s eyeballs in return for a cryptocurrency that may turn out to be worthless. That notion “is just very wrong. I don’t even know where to start, like this is just very wrong.” [...] “We didn’t want to build hardware devices — we didn’t want to build a biometric device, even. It’s just the only solution we found.”" [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:35 PM PST - 50 comments

“Auntie is a word that comes with baggage, and young Black people calling Black women over 40 years old “Auntie” in the public arena are not carrying that baggage.” Imani Perry on the complicated revival of a controversial term: I Just Might Be Your Auntie (sl Atlantic). [more inside]
posted by miles per flower at 1:29 PM PST - 7 comments

'Breathtaking' is one word for purported Arnell Pepsi doc (Breathtaking Strategy by Arnell Group, PDF). "When I did the Pepsi logo, I told Pepsi that I wanted to go to Asia, to China and Japan, for a month and tuck myself away and just design it and study it and create it," Mr. Arnell said earlier to Ad Age. "There was a lot of research, a lot of consumer data points ... and dialogue that I had with the folks at Pepsi, consumers and retailers. We knew what we were doing." The Crazy Genius of Peter Arnell "Two former business associates, who requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with Arnell, say Arnell carried a handgun in an ankle holster. (Arnell acknowledges only having a gun permit and says stories of him carrying it at work are "inaccurate.")" Bonus 2000s references that dated horribly! "Arnell has been compared to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, meaning you could fill a book with horror stories about his cruel behavior—screaming at people, even hitting them. "He has this remarkable capacity to be both the most intoxicating character—lovable, brilliant, seductively intellectual—and then turn on a dime and be staggeringly cruel." [more inside]
posted by geoff. at 12:45 PM PST - 24 comments

The vast majority of large-scale social platforms have an explicit policy of ignoring the harms or destructive actions that someone commits on any platform other than their own. When people have deliberately targeted others for abuse, spread harmful propaganda, or even bilked people out of money or opportunities, it's very common for a company to say, "That happened on another platform, and we only judge users by what happens on our own platform." That's a mistake, and it's one that is frequently exploited by some of the worst actors on the Internet.
posted by qi at 11:34 AM PST - 49 comments

“When a miner got a new pair of work pants, he’d cut up the old ones and use them for lagging around pipes, so there were a lot of antique jeans buried out here.” “They can be very attractive to denim collectors. People that are really into that piece of clothing will pay upwards of $100,000 for these jeans.”
posted by oulipian at 10:11 AM PST - 23 comments

After more limited trial runs in the 2021-2022 season, in March "Major League Baseball ... announced a variety of experimental playing rules that have been approved by the Competition Committee and the Playing Rules Committee for use during the 2022 Minor League season." "Consistent with the preferences of fans, these rules are designed to improve the pace of play, create more action on the field, and reduce player injuries." Minor league teams will test out a pitch timer ("to create a crisp pace of play"), larger bases, and constraints on defensive positioning ("a minimum of four players on the infield, with at least two infielders completely on either side of second base"). If the rules work well in the minor leagues this year, then MLB might alter its major league rules in the future.
posted by brainwane at 4:42 AM PST - 118 comments

Beautiful Jim Key made a splash at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, but he was already famous. He was celebreated by President McKinley. He predicted Alice Roosevelt's marriage when they met. It is reported that he could perform arithmatic, make change, sort mail, read bible passages, and express political opinions. Notably, he was a horse. Jim was made an honorary member of the American SPCA, presumably because of his trainer, Dr. W. M. Key's advocacy for kindness toward animals. Some sources estimate his pledge of Jim Key Band of Mercy was signed by two million children. Sadly, the details of the Beautiful Jim Key Two-Step dance seem to be lost to time, but many other artifacts remain. [Includes some quite racist statements and slurs, all written in the early 1900s.] [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 12:10 AM PST - 6 comments

In Space with Markiplier: Part 1 is a choose your own adventure youtube thing by Markiplier. previously [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 9:42 PM PST - 4 comments

For many of us, Metafilter is our online 'third place.' Off-line, however, how easy are they to find? Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’ is fundamentally describing the bar in Cheers or Central Perks — the cafe — in Friends. A pleasant place to hang out that's not home and not work — where folks know your name, or maybe could learn your name. Reminiscent of a college hang-out, they are not anyplace you're supposed to be: Instead, they're simply a place where one afternoon, or on the odd night, you choose to be. Sitting, sipping, shooting the sh*t with the bartender or the cafe keeper, chatting with your neighbor at the next table, cracking wise to the person beside you on a stool. [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 5:05 PM PST - 89 comments

Found a couple of interesting documentaries about board game design: Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary [1h15m] and The Game Designers [1h33m] both cover very similar territory but through very individual lenses Both great watching, and worthwhile if you're interested or aspiring!
posted by hippybear at 4:53 PM PST - 2 comments

A new visual language for climate change. All too often, the climate change imagery the world sees is ineffective at driving change – it may be aesthetically pleasing and illustrative but not salient or emotionally impactful. Instead of a polar bear on an ice floe, let's use climate visuals that are more compelling and diverse. For example, images of floods are emotionally powerful... but they can also be overwhelming. Make sure to include solutions or immediate tangible action.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:50 PM PST - 13 comments

In November 2020, Cambridge University Library announced that two of Charles Darwin's notebooks, including his famous 'Tree of Life' sketch, were missing, believed stolen. (Previously on MetaFilter.) Now there's an update, and it's good news: the notebooks have returned, in a bright pink gift bag left outside the librarian's office with the printed message: Librarian / Happy Easter / X.
posted by verstegan at 2:41 PM PST - 7 comments

The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:09 AM PST - 42 comments

In Ireland, a new Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme will see 2,000 artists and creative arts workers receive €325 a week for three years starting in 2022, no strings attached. The only obligation on the artist is to keep a weekly journal for research purposes. Read the government press release here, news coverage here and here, and information for applicants (including eligibility criteria) here. [more inside]
posted by rollick at 8:51 AM PST - 28 comments

A new trailer , for a film distributed by A24 no less, featuring Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. (Marcel previously)
posted by Ipsifendus at 6:23 AM PST - 15 comments

for anyone who wants to do some flipping perusing, for anyone who wants to taste the apple, for anyone who wants to bite the electric tiger's tail and ride it until the end of the mother flipping line — HERE IS YOUR FLIPPING FREE THREAD.
posted by taz at 3:30 AM PST - 166 comments

The Pepsi – UNC Connection. Unfortunately for UNC, they lost the NCAA championship tonight in an incredible Kansas comeback wi. That doesn't mean they can't enjoy the great taste of UNC alum and Pepsi founder Caleb Bradham's delicious carbonated beverage. “Born in the Carolinas” is one of the official trademarks of Pepsi-Cola in its regional marketing strategy. Unlike the cocaine fiends at Coca-Cola, Bradham set out to developing a caffeine free beverage which he believed aided digestion and had no harmful effects. Wanting to have a different soft drink–one without the narcotics so frequently used in others during the time—the druggist experimented with various combinations of juices, spices, and syrups.
posted by geoff. at 10:55 PM PST - 35 comments

The BBC reports on a new epidemic facing workplaces: "coasting". “Because their engagement needs are not being fully met, they put their time, but not energy or passion, into their work.” [SLBBCP] [more inside]
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:21 PM PST - 132 comments

1981: Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love [more inside]
posted by box at 3:54 PM PST - 23 comments

Facebook is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country, Targeted Victory, to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok. [12ft.io; WaPo] [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 1:57 PM PST - 52 comments

Chuck Tingle has released a new pro-union book, UNIONIZED IN THE BUTT AND NOW EVERYONE IS SAFER, HAPPIER, AND BETTER PAID. The book is free and only an available on Patreon. In lieu of payment, Tingle encourages readers to donate to the Amazon Labor Union Solidarity Fund.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:36 PM PST - 16 comments

End corporate profiteering. Economic justice advocates at the Groundwork Collaborative have compiled corporate bragging about profits and how they are rewarding investors on the backs of consumers. Chevron: Our record free cash flow enabled us to address all our financial priorities in 2021: a higher dividend for the 34th consecutive year; significant debt paydown, and another year of share buybacks, our 14th out of the past 18 years.”
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:52 PM PST - 16 comments

"I’ll be remembering her for the rest of my life. I never met her." Author Celia Lake grieves a reader and critic who deeply understood her work, writing of "this tremendous gap in my life now that feels impossible to find words for".
posted by brainwane at 12:28 PM PST - 5 comments

Hold on to your grog, it's time to Return to Monkey Island! (Otherwise known as Monkey Island 3a.)
posted by fight or flight at 9:42 AM PST - 29 comments

Minneapolis news station WCCO was doing a news piece on a teachers' strike in the city last month, and restored some footage from the archives from when they covered another strike back in 1970. But when Production Manager Matt Liddy watched the footage later, he found something else - an interview with an 11-year-old Prince. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:39 AM PST - 43 comments

Three Short Films by Harvey Pearson. (imdb) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 9:31 PM PST - 1 comment

A Marxist threat to cola sales? Pepsi demands a US coup. The October 1970 plot against Chile's President-elect Salvador Allende, using CIA 'sub-machine guns and ammo', was the direct result of a plea for action a month earlier by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two telephone calls to the company's former lawyer, President Richard Nixon ... Mr. Kendall cultivated a close personal and professional relationship with Richard M. Nixon, who early on represented Pepsi as a lawyer and in 1965 played the piano at Mr. Kendall’s second wedding, at the Pierre hotel in Manhattan, and at Mr. Kendall’s request, Nixon steered Khrushchev to the Pepsi display during the infamous "Kitchen Debate."
posted by geoff. at 8:46 PM PST - 24 comments

Viktor Orbán wins fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister - Viktor Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader, calls Zelensky an 'opponent' after winning reelection - Viktor Orban Is Set for a Fourth Term as Hungary's Prime Minister. That Could Be a Boost for Putin - Hungary's isolation, economic woes will make Orban's fourth term his toughest yet - In Hungary, Viktor Orban Remakes an Election to His Liking -The Hungarian Journalist Trying To Break Viktor Orban's Grip On Media, And Voters - Why Conservatives Around the World Have Embraced Hungary’s Viktor Orbán [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 6:14 PM PST - 29 comments

Late March 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. The past couple of weeks saw a lot of activity in the solar system, especially with launches and images. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 5:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Nintendo once had a flash game designed as a sort of advent calendar, each day advertising a new game in a very strong winter line-up. It had an expiration date and disappeared, but one YouTuber had fallen in love with it. Mission In Snowdriftland: Nintendo's Forgotten Flash Game [38m] outlines a 14 year passion quest full of twists and turns and a fortunate ending, from late 2020, right before Flash's demise. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:10 PM PST - 2 comments

The Chumbawamba between-years. Anarcho-pop-punk-cabaret’s finest at their peak, recorded live at the infamous DIY venue, 924 Gilman Street, in Berkeley, California. Filmed and generously shared by 3.Cameras.and.a.Microphone
posted by Buntix at 3:03 PM PST - 8 comments

A split in the prepper community as women examine what prepping means for them. As the overhanging threat of nuclear annihilation returns to the zeitgeist, interest in survival preparation, or "prepping" is surging with it. But a "schism" has opened in Reddit's r/preppers forum as women note that the predominant traditional view of prepping is strongly gendered and specifically male. [more inside]
posted by Naberius at 2:22 PM PST - 109 comments

Photographer Roman Robroek takes gorgeous photographs of Italy's abandoned churches in the process of being reclaimed by nature, tracing both the decline of Christianity and of rural villages. (via Colossal)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Horrible edge cases to consider when dealing with music
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 11:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Timothy Snyder posted a poem this morning about the horrors being revealed in Ukraine, in the wake of Russia's retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv. It recalls 'To Live is to Die's, spoken words, Metallica's tribute to Cliff Burton, their bassist who passed away September 27, 1986, in a bus crash in Sweden, touring to support 'Master Of Puppets'. Those words are mis-attributed to Burton, the first line most likely came from hymn writer and poet Paul Gerhardt (1703-1791), and was spoken by Merlin in the film Excalibur.
posted by kmartino at 10:34 AM PST - 5 comments

For April Fool's Day 2017, Reddit launched an intriguing experiment: Place. Given a blank digital canvas, any user could add a single colored pixel at 5-minute intervals. Thanks to cooperation between myriad subreddit communities, Place quickly blossomed into a complex sprawl of jokes, memes, and digital art -- a Million Dollar Homepage for the modern era [final image; timelapse]. Five years later, Place has returned -- with the added twist of a canvas that sometimes doubles in size, with another expansion expected soon. Watch the timelapse so far, or if you have a Reddit account, leave a pixel yourself. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:46 AM PST - 42 comments

While COVID didn't sink Canadian healthcare, it exposed a weakening system. (slGlobeandFail)
posted by Kitteh at 7:55 AM PST - 16 comments

In the 1960s, Pepsi rebranded with a new slogan, a new look, and a cutting edge modernist building. When the Pepsi Headquarters was built in 1960, the 13-story building at the corner of Park Avenue and 59th Street exemplified the International Style in America. Moreover, it pushed the limits of what was technically possible; its nine-feet-high by thirteen-feet-long glass panes were the largest that could be created and only a half-inch thick. (Part 1) Employee morale rose but architecture critics were repulsed upon the opening of the company’s new campus in Purchase, New York. (Part 2)
posted by geoff. at 7:33 PM PST - 24 comments

The Spiffing Brit ran a gigantic marble run (in Marble World, digital not physical) with 400 marbles and did play-by-play, and it is gripping. If you enjoy such things and have 32 minutes to watch round things rolling down ramps, then this is for you! Bonus: the unpaid intern shows his construction process! [13m]
posted by hippybear at 2:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Delayed a year because of Covid, Ireland will be enumerating the people tonight with a Census form [PDF]. It usually happens every 5 years and is substantively the same each go-round - so that comparisons can be more easily made. For the first time, households are being offered the option to send a message to the future; all of which will be sealed for 100 years. These Time Capsules are anything that can be written / drawn in a rectangle 17cm x 12.5cm. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:48 AM PST - 15 comments

A powerful phenomenon that you may or may not be taking advantage of: the calf muscle pump. Time spent not using your calf pumps is time the heart muscle has to go it alone, which it’s not well-equipped to do. An illustrated valentine from Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement, author and host of the Move Your DNA podcast (with transcripts!)
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:43 AM PST - 22 comments

During Samantha Stevens’ seven-plus years as Michigan State’s director of licensing, tens of thousands of designs and renderings for Spartans souvenirs crossed her desk, seeking the stamp of approval. Within this pile of prospective products, Stevens vividly recalls a submission last year by FOCO, the licensed fan goods manufacturer, for an MSU-anointed “Man Cave” sign. Specifically, she recalled it as being “outdated” and “creepy.”
posted by Etrigan at 9:28 AM PST - 32 comments

@depthsofwikipedia. Background: Annie Rauwerda on the NYT. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:13 AM PST - 19 comments

Is it safe to walk downstairs backwards if I close my eyes? That depends. Do you have a TV? [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 7:13 AM PST - 25 comments

The idea is pretty simple: on April Fools' Day (also known as “April 1st”), a participant produces genuine content that's very different from their normal produced content. It could be a different format, a different topic, a different style, anything. The constraints are:

1. It is something they normally wouldn't do.
2. It is totally genuine: no irony to it.
3. It is up to their usual standards of quality.

posted by kmt at 6:07 AM PST - 4 comments

Groucho Marx reads at T.S. Eliots funeral. (YT/Audio) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 12:02 AM PST - 10 comments

최자(Choiza) - 'Family (Feat. THAMA)' A love song to the furry (or feathery, or scaly) non-human members of our families.
posted by Lexica at 9:23 PM PST - 4 comments

In 1996, Pepsi ran a promotion that jokingly suggested entrants could win a military aircraft. One man took it very seriously. “HARRIER FIGHTER … 7,000,000 PEPSI POINTS” flashes across the screen as the music crescendos into a fade-out. Leonard v Pepsico case brief and Yale's course on contract law.
posted by geoff. at 7:27 PM PST - 22 comments

yesterday, the improbable became the most probable when the scrappy band of workers who make up the Amazon Labor Union took the lead in a union election at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, putting within reach a historic labor win at the corporate behemoth. The ALU clinched a decisive victory today, winning by a wide margin to create the first unionized workplace in Amazon’s extensive network of fulfillment, delivery, and sortation centers across the U.S.
posted by latkes at 6:06 PM PST - 37 comments

A banjo player goes to Africa.
posted by Buntix at 5:32 PM PST - 5 comments

"Magnetic turd": scientists invent moving slime that could be used in human digestive systems (The Guardian). [more inside]
posted by biogeo at 5:10 PM PST - 29 comments

just found this ultra-rare Lana Del Rey single in the bin at a record store. i guess she wrote it for a movie soundtrack but, uh... i kinda think she was a weird choice... [more inside]
posted by mhum at 12:13 PM PST - 16 comments

Consider yourself forewarned.
posted by nicwolff at 11:15 AM PST - 67 comments

Why do we quench? It turns out the word is not simply a lexical anomaly but the last surviving remnant of a forgotten verb... an edifying explication by star-ajea. (threadreader)
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:39 AM PST - 36 comments

"We’re celebrating April Fools’ Day by getting back to what the internet was originally built for: all cat content, all the time." The Noun Project (previously), a site where you can download freely licensed icons and photos to reuse in your projects, today offers collections such as Cat Commerce, cat body language, and a work-from-home cat. Please feel free to also use this thread to share fun April 1st projects and treats!
posted by brainwane at 8:07 AM PST - 19 comments

Two business bros announced plans to launch a knitting site. The crafting community is blasting their “cishet white” male approach. [more inside]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 7:09 AM PST - 44 comments

It's April 1st, but it's no joke. Well, except in the sence that it's hilarious. It's STRONG BAD EMAIL #209, on Parenting! It's even got a page (although it links to YouTube) on the main site!
posted by JHarris at 6:58 AM PST - 17 comments

Many movies have coughs and sneezes in them. Some win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Is there a connection? The mainstream statistical hegemony says “no,” but our research suggests otherwise. We have created a model capable of predicting a Best Picture winner based on the number of coughs and sneezes in nominated films. This allows us not only to predict this year’s winner with 91.7% accuracy, but also to determine that Viggo Mortensen will be cast as Batman at some point in the future. from Chalamet Coughs, Dune Wins: Predicting Best Picture Winners Using Coughs and Sneezes
posted by chavenet at 5:56 AM PST - 23 comments

As the Crow Flies Welcome to Camp Three Peaks. A rustic, Christian summer retreat for teenage girls! A week of hiking, adventure, and communing with the God of its 19th-century founders… a God that doesn’t traditionally number people like 13-year-old Charlie Lamonte among His (Her? Their? Its?) flock. [more inside]
posted by signal at 5:31 AM PST - 6 comments

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Internet accounts are copied and set aside by Internet providers on behalf of federal and state law enforcement. This process, known as preservation, ordinarily occurs without particularized suspicion.... the preservation process is largely secret. Orin Kerr writes a persuasive paper arguing that current internet content preservation practices violate fundamental Fourth Amendment rights. He is drafting a personalize-and-file sample motion to suppress that he hopes will be adopted by defense attorneys.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:00 AM PST - 7 comments