MetaFilter

How to change the course of human history - "The story we have been telling ourselves about our origins is wrong, and perpetuates the idea of inevitable social inequality. David Graeber and David Wengrow ask why the myth of 'agricultural revolution' remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM PST - 39 comments

In the dim internet pasts of 1996/7; well before we were wondering "What the Fox Says" or were Hamster Dancing Dana Lyons had an insane hit with "Cows with Guns". This is the story of how it went from divinely inspired dream to life sustaining hit. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 6:48 PM PST - 28 comments

A Genealogy of a Lie. Sarah Viren investigates another academic who has claimed an identity that they should not have. (SLNYT; Archive.org snapshot) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 2:18 PM PST - 44 comments

If shaps, kicksies and pickle-tubs make perfect sense to you, you don't need this link. Otherwise, The Rogue's Lexicon has you covered. [more inside]
posted by Quietgal at 1:27 PM PST - 16 comments

Vox is examining how the last 30 years of public misogyny affected, and is still affecting, the teen girls of the 90s and beyond. Their new series, "The Purity Chronicles", leads off with a look back at Paris Hilton.
posted by hanov3r at 12:36 PM PST - 55 comments

For those who were interested in the recent thread on the thriving artistic life of Ramallah: here are four contemporary Palestinian artists (one musician/painter, one photographer, one director, and one visual artist) whose work you might not know. [more inside]
posted by trotzdem_kunst at 5:05 AM PST - 4 comments

@ThreateningCake is a Twitter account for pictures of cakes with threatening auras. (Not to be confused with the classic Cake Wrecks, though those sometimes have threatening auras too.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:31 AM PST - 36 comments

The future of war is bizarre and terrifying [thread(reader)] - "Drones, eternal cyberwar, info ops, and the specter of biological warfare."[1,2] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Working Less Is a Matter of Life and Death So, work less and live longer and better, right? [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:21 PM PST - 19 comments

The Untold Story of Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s Secret Pact With Nazi Propagandist Leni Riefenstahl
posted by ShooBoo at 4:55 PM PST - 34 comments

A tiny mother bird, learned to give her unborn babies a password so they wouldn't die. A musical password. The Superb Fairy-Wren sings to her eggs. The unborn baby birds learn to sing a particular musical password on hatching. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 1:57 PM PST - 20 comments

A brief and incomplete history of Black bartenders in the US. A brief and incomplete history of women bartenders in the Michigan. (With secondary links to paywalled academic library stuff.)
posted by eotvos at 1:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Names chosen for three new Spokane middle schools [Spokesman-Review, local coverage] shows how well-deliberated choices can lead to inclusive and affirming results in the public square.
posted by hippybear at 1:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Damming the Great Bend. The Chinese government is apparently committed to building what may be the world's most difficult dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river. It would be a megastructure in the Himalayas, closely involved with the Indian border, in the world's deepest canyon, would control a major source of water for India and Bangladesh, and in a seismically dangerous area. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 12:29 PM PST - 15 comments

Voluntarily provocative, The Hater Box transforms the principle of old split flap displays into a random generator of contestations, cold and impersonal. [Parse/Error] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:54 AM PST - 14 comments

A new antitrust case shows that Prime inflates prices across the board, using the false promise of 'free shipping' that is anything but free. An analysis of a recent antitrust case against Amazon by Big newsletter author Matt Stoller. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:30 AM PST - 65 comments

In January 2020, the Petersfield Bookshop tweeted that it had made no sales that day. Its fortunes were turned around by Twitter support via Neil Gaiman. This is an update by the blogger, Matt Wingett, who brought it to Gaiman's attention, and here is a post by Wingett at the time. He also posted in January 2020 about the closure of another bookshop, Adelphi Books in Portsmouth.
posted by paduasoy at 4:04 AM PST - 6 comments

Matt LeBlanc tearfully: But I’m an Actor! I live in Los Angeles! The People of Ireland: No. Your name is Paudie. You live in Roscommon. You love Pints and GAA and you’re everyone’s uncle now.

The Friends reunion saw the return of some familiar characters, but none more familiar to Irish twitter than Matt LeBlanc, who is now as seen in these tweets, everybody's beloved ex-rugby captain, Guiness drinking farmer uncle. (Title nicked from this tweet)
posted by MartinWisse at 12:46 AM PST - 25 comments

They tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they want to run the next one. @kenvogel: "At least four Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn the 2020 presidential election are launching campaigns to become the top election official in key states that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — & who wins the White House in 2024." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:10 PM PST - 153 comments

Learn 12 different chicken calls, including the before and after Egg Songs, in this episode of Urban Farm podcast featuring chicken whisperer Melissa Caughey. Buh-dup means hello (sample page from Caughey's book How to Speak Chicken.) “Bwah, Bwah, Bwah, Bwah” is what a hen says when she is laying an egg (HGTV). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:02 PM PST - 7 comments

“Perspective” by and featuring juggler Taylor Glenn. There’s something kind of hypnotic about the view from above.
posted by charmedimsure at 6:35 PM PST - 14 comments

The 1000-Hour Outdoor Challenge. ""There is great research coming out showing that when children spend time outdoors, it's linked with a number of positive health outcomes," said Jason Bocarro, a professor in the department of parks, recreation and tourism management at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "There's the fact that if you're outside, you're going to be more active. The more physically active you are, there's an incredibly strong correlation between that and improved health outcomes, like reduction in stress, improved mental health and those kinds of things. For younger children, in outdoor play environments, they can test out their limits, regulate their emotions, take risks and learn from those risks."" [more inside]
posted by storybored at 4:17 PM PST - 42 comments

In her short life (she died just before her thirtieth birthday) Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey discovered a significant number of new species of non-flowering plants (mosses, seaweeds and lichens) and was a serious scientist before the word 'scientist' was even invented in 1833. Ellen was active as a botanist between 1805 and 1812, based at home in Ballylickey, on the shores of Bantry Bay, and fitting her studies around caring for her elderly and frail mother and a disabled brother. Ellen searched seashore, woodland, peat bog, mountainside, islands, riverbanks, and her own garden for specimens, and back home she matched them to those already known to botanists and sent those that she considered new to fellow botanists for confirmation and publication. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 12:42 PM PST - 2 comments

Everybody knows that switching doors doubles your chance of a win. Everybody knows that the airplane will take off from the treadmill. But can a wind-driven surface craft run directly downwind faster than the wind? (Veritasium, YouTube, 22 minutes)
posted by flabdablet at 11:44 AM PST - 58 comments

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model Of The Roman World is a website in which you can calculate time and expense costs needed to travel in Ancient Rome. Using land and water routes, taking time of year and geography into account, you can plan your voyage and see how long it will take, how much it will cost. It's like a AAA TripTik for 2000 years ago. [Previously, from 2012]
posted by hippybear at 11:33 AM PST - 10 comments

6 Charts That Dismantle The Trope Of Asian Americans As A Model Minority Characterizing Asian Americans as a model minority flattens the diverse experiences of Asian Americans into a singular, narrow narrative.
posted by mecran01 at 10:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Where Wind and Solar Power Need to Grow for America to Meet Its Goals [ungated link] - "A broad shift toward renewable energy could transform landscapes and coastlines all over the United States." (Net Zero America Project) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:04 PM PST - 27 comments

"There isn’t even a word for us, really. Quiz players? Trivia fanatics? I prefer quizzers. But when I use that to describe myself to a civilian – to a non-quizzer – the inevitable inquiry follows: What does that mean?” A Guardian essay on the world of trivia—and on knowledge, memory, and experience.
posted by blue shadows at 10:00 PM PST - 30 comments

Chinese Grassroots Experience of the Emergency and New Villages in British Colonial Malaya. The British anti-communist operation in Malaya is considered an archetypal COIN campaign and the first modern counterinsurgency. The Emergency, which lasted until 1960, involved the forced relocation of 573,000 rural inhabitants into 480 New Villages. Sixty years on, 450 of these villages, with over 82 percent Chinese inhabitants, still exist in Malaysia. In this study, Teng-Phee Tan visits 150 New Villages and conducts 76 interviews with elderly informants on their personal accounts of the Emergency. [more inside]
posted by xdvesper at 8:53 PM PST - 20 comments

You might know him from the iconic Blade Runner soundtrack, (or the 1492 soundtrack, the Pear Films biography, the more recent soundtrack for the Rosetta Mission or indeed this previous post to the Blue) but today I would like to drop you into the middle of a two hour documentary called "Vangelis and the Journey to Ithaka", in which the man himself casually improvises an entire symphonic work on the most astounding rig I've ever seen.
posted by mhoye at 6:02 PM PST - 28 comments

“To many writers, Ramallah is an ideal, a dream, a promise.” [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 4:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Germany is formally recognizing as genocide the killing of tens of thousands of people from two ethnic groups in what is now Namibia in the early 20th century, the foreign ministry said on Friday, a major acknowledgment of colonial-era crimes. Germany is asking for forgiveness and establishing a fund worth more than a billion euros to support projects in the affected communities. [NYT; Archive] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:03 PM PST - 7 comments

Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said in a news release Thursday that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist. Casimir called the discovery an “unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.” Some of the children were as young as three.
posted by clawsoon at 1:13 PM PST - 64 comments

The Los Angeles Times' food and restaurant critics, Jenn Harris and Bill Addison, find the best fast food chicken sandwich.
posted by box at 12:58 PM PST - 46 comments

RugsInGames is a twitter account that documents the appearance of at least one rug in a given video game.
posted by cortex at 8:47 AM PST - 29 comments

Researchers at Bellingcat have discovered US soldiers exposing nuclear weapons secrets... via free flashcard websites. The flashcard sets "identify the exact shelters with “hot” vaults that likely contain nuclear weapons [and] intricate security details and protocols such as the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have." [more inside]
posted by adrianhon at 7:44 AM PST - 48 comments

David Kelley’s idea of making a company where he could work with his friends took on new meaning. When you don’t consciously design a workplace to include, develop, and support diverse employees, working with your friends can mean promoting primarily people just like you; young, white, cis-male designers without apparent disabilities. Not only does this create a difficult and even soul-crushing work environment for people who don’t match the dominant archetype, but how can a homogenous group competently design for our diverse world?

IDEO, one of the world's foremost design firms, has a serious diversity problem. Former employees such as George Aye and Elizabeth Johansen say it is an unsafe workplace for women, PoC and WoC and detail years of abuse by colleagues and managers. Rachael Dietkus, a licensed clinical social worker and design researcher, offers advice on the matter and workplace trauma.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:17 AM PST - 20 comments

"Telemetry from Flight Six shows that the first 150-meter leg of the flight went off without a hitch. But toward the end of that leg, something happened: Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern. This behavior persisted throughout the rest of the flight." Written by Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Chief Pilot [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:57 PM PST - 17 comments

Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe, and its gravitational force is enough to mesh entire galaxies together in a structure known as the cosmic web. Now, scientists have created the largest ever map of this mysterious substance – and it could imply that there’s something wrong with Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Astronomers create largest map of the universe’s dark matter [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 2:51 PM PST - 54 comments

M1RACLES (CVE-2021-30747) is a covert channel vulnerability in the Apple Silicon “M1” chip.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 1:11 PM PST - 21 comments

Documentary director Ondřej Hudeček has created a documentary about the Czech ice hockey victory in the first Olympics of the professional era of the Games - with an opening that promptly broke anime Twitter.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:55 PM PST - 19 comments

The Pirates may have committed the biggest error in baseball history [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:43 PM PST - 100 comments

They say you can define a particular historical moment by its popular monsters. The Best NEW Horror Movies (Trailers) [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 7:11 AM PST - 56 comments

A drop of rain falls in the USA and finds its way to the sea in an extraordinarily clever visualisation. One thing that stands out - all the wildlife reserves that border rivers.
posted by domdib at 12:40 AM PST - 39 comments

Shungudzo on fetishization of race (slyt)
posted by Gorgik at 8:38 PM PST - 4 comments

Eric Carle, author and artist known for children's books such as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar " and "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" passed away on Sunday. In addition to being known for his books, he and his wife Bobbie founded the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass.
posted by neilbert at 8:19 PM PST - 67 comments

Eight children and an octogenarian nun took the Australian Minister for the Environment to court, to establish whether there is a 'duty of care' to future generations, relating to climate change. The Australian Federal Court today ruled that the duty of care exists. [more inside]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:35 PM PST - 18 comments

"I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young." "If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power." [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 4:22 PM PST - 20 comments

Research reveals why some find the sound of others eating so irritating: Scans show some brains have a stronger link between the part that processes sound and that which controls the mouth and throat (The Guardian): “What we are suggesting is that in misophonia the trigger sound activates the motor area even though the person is only listening to the sound,” said Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, a neuroscientist at Newcastle University. “It makes them feel like the sounds are intruding into them.” [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 3:59 PM PST - 44 comments

A conversation with Andreas Malm about his new book, 'White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism.'
posted by Ahmad Khani at 2:36 PM PST - 9 comments

Hbomberguy's latest video is about the anti-vaccine movement. What is the science behind it and is it any good ?

Vaccines: A Measured Response
posted by Pendragon at 1:36 PM PST - 40 comments

Famed manga artist Hisashi Eguchi talks about his work and his favorite places in Tokyo. (12m, SLYT)
posted by theodolite at 1:24 PM PST - 6 comments

What can happen when only half a house is sold? Doppelhaushälften (Semi-detached houses), in this case houses in the Ruhr region of Germany, where former coal miners retain a lifelong right of residence to their quarters, and the sold half is renovated. Photography by Wolfgang Fröhling.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:42 AM PST - 35 comments

History has been made at the Exxon AGM today. At least 2 of the Engine No. 1 directors have been elected. Voting on the other two was too close to call. Investors are serious about the transition to net zero. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 10:40 AM PST - 25 comments

Claims that Covid-19 was an engineered virus developed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and escaped during a lab accident have long been treated skeptically by the scientific community. In the past few weeks there has been a change of tone by scientists and experts including Dr Fauci who have begun to re-consider the possibility of a lab accident as the origin of the outbreak. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 10:34 AM PST - 358 comments

On May 24, Lemonade, a new insurance company, went to Twitter to unveil their innovative program for keeping costs low: AI. In a now-deleted tweet, the company stated: "...when a user files a claim, they record a video on their phone and explain what happened. Our AI carefully analyzes these videos for signs of fraud. It can pick up non-verbal cues that traditional insurers can't, since they don't use a digital claims process." #lawtwitter was quick to chime in.
posted by Silvery Fish at 8:01 AM PST - 64 comments

A shape's Heesch number is, roughly, the number of times it can be surrounded by copies of itself. 0 is boring: it just can't. Infinity is boring: it tiles the plane. Positive but finite? Now that's the good stuff. Craig S. Kaplan has been looking for specimens and has turned up a bunch of new examples recently. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 7:55 AM PST - 19 comments

A perspective rarely seen in the West. A collection of photos taken by North Vietnamese photographers during the Vietnam War, 19**-1975. [more inside]
posted by lon_star at 9:27 PM PST - 25 comments

The Mystery of Magic’s Greatest Card Trick. [NYT] "There are hundreds of ACAAN variations, and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional card magician without at least one in his or her repertoire. (A Buddha-like maestro in Spain, Dani DaOrtiz, knows about 60.) There are ACAANs in which the card-choosing spectator writes down the named card in secrecy; ACAANs in which the spectator shuffles the deck; ACAANs in which every other card turns out to be blank. For all their differences, every ACAAN has one feature in common: At some point, the magician touches the cards. The touch might be imperceptible, it might appear entirely innocent. But the cards are always touched...." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:32 PM PST - 40 comments

11 Size Comparison Videos
posted by box at 3:25 PM PST - 16 comments

"It has been hard to convey, through anecdotes or data, how bizarre the U.S. housing market has become. For example, a Bethesda, Maryland homebuyer working with @Redfin included in her written offer a pledge to name her first-born child after the seller. She lost." Redfin's CEO weighs in on the current housing shitshow market. [SLTT]
posted by gottabefunky at 1:26 PM PST - 159 comments

The End IS Near. No, Seriously. What the end of the pandemic looks like, by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. (slMedium)
posted by backseatpilot at 11:53 AM PST - 264 comments

When he decided to become a forest ecologist, Alemayehu realized that in order to study Ethiopia’s native forests, he would have to study the forests surrounding churches. Until roughly a hundred years ago, Ethiopia’s northern highlands were one continuous forest, but over time that forest has been continually bisected, eaten up by agriculture and the pressures of a growing population. Now the entire region has become a dry hinterland taken over almost entirely by farm fields. From the air it looks similar to Haiti. Less than three percent of primary forest remains. And nearly all of that three percent, Alemayehu discovered, was only found in forests protected by the church. “I was amazed to discover that,” he said. [more inside]
posted by jquinby at 9:52 AM PST - 3 comments

The divorce announcement of Bill and Melinda Gates several weeks ago has spurred a flurry of internet news and analysis, with journalists covering Bill's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda's newfound status as billionaire in her own right, the problematic nature of philanthropy, and the Gates' ownership of large tracts of farmland as private investments. Others are zooming out, looking at the sociological trend of gray divorce as a solution to empty shell marriages.
posted by rcraniac at 8:10 AM PST - 63 comments

One year on, how George Floyd’s murder has changed the world. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:54 AM PST - 5 comments

Lesbian Fascists on TERF Island explores the how (and muses on the why) a number of prominent UK suffragettes became (and, in one case, founded) British Fascism in the 1930s. Then she asks what that means for UK feminism. The author, Asa Seresin, is a PhD student at Penn. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:32 AM PST - 26 comments

The Only Living Boy in New York [more inside]
posted by noiseanoise at 11:36 PM PST - 36 comments

Dr. Hassan Diab is the prime (and only) suspect in a crime he did not commit. His fingerprints, palm prints, and physical description do not match those in the police files. The handwriting analysis, presented as evidence against him during his extradition from Canada, in fact now establishes his innocence. Judges decided eight times that Dr. Diab should be released on bail from the French prison, only to overruled by the Prosecutor. Official documents and witness statements show that he was not even in the France at the time of the 1980 attack. Amnesty International Canada has called Dr. Diab’s experience with the Canadian extradition and French justice systems Kafkaesque, cruel and nightmarish. [more inside]
posted by thisclickableme at 4:06 PM PST - 14 comments

Code Name: Höga [Archive] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:32 PM PST - 16 comments

Project Starline is Google's latest and greatest prototype of the future of videoconferencing. How good is it? "Call it hyper-telepresence. Call it whatever you want. Either way, it’s pretty wild."
posted by storybored at 2:18 PM PST - 59 comments

A genre of “feminist” filmmaking conflates suffering and empowerment.
posted by sapagan at 1:54 PM PST - 14 comments

GalaxyKate has a very nice long blog post on different approaches to generative content, ranging from distributions to grammars to constraint solving. She also developed Tracery, a grammar-based generative text tool, which has a nice web demo and a how-to guide for integrating with video games, and is apparently also useful for making Twitter bots.
posted by kaibutsu at 1:09 PM PST - 7 comments

The threat narrative was a brilliant bit of framing, turning a story of poltergeist hunters battling a cabal of demon-believers into a national security issue. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 12:23 PM PST - 54 comments

Passengers on board a Ryanair flight that was suddenly diverted as it began its descent into Vilnius, Lithuania, have described their panic as they changed course with no explanation. Flight FR4978 was bound for Lithuania from Greece when it was forced to switch direction for the Belarusian capital Minsk on Sunday so the authorities there could arrest dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, 26. Belarus used a fighter jet to force the plane - bound for Lithuania - to land, claiming a bomb threat. Police took Roman Protasevich away when passengers disembarked. [more inside]
posted by M. at 10:38 AM PST - 70 comments

Making Sense of the Great Whip Spider Boom "She [Hebets] couldn’t stop looking at the creature’s front legs. These are the whips that give whip spiders their name — elongated, antenna-like — and they were sweeping around in all directions, as if piecing together a picture of the world. Even now, over 20 years later, she isn’t sure how to describe the grace of that movement. It was like a blade of grass fluttering in the wind, if a blade of grass were purposeful. It was like an octopus tentacle. “I just immediately fell in love,” she said."
posted by dhruva at 8:36 AM PST - 14 comments

A farmer from Crawford County with a family history of winning as a Democrat in rural Western Iowa announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Chuck Grassley today. Dave Muhlbauer, a recent county supervisor and fifth-generation family farmer, kicked off his bid with a video that sought to redefine to Iowa voters what a rural Democrat looks like.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:37 AM PST - 37 comments

“As hard as the initial trauma is,” she said, “it’s the aftermath that destroys people.” If you’ve been swimming furiously for a year, you don’t expect to finally reach dry land and feel like you’re drowning. via @kottke [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 8:23 PM PST - 70 comments

After weeks of cryptic TikTok teasing reminiscent of Kid A-era blips, Radiohead fans were pleasantly surprised this weekend when two of the band's leading members, frontman Thom Yorke and lead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, joined Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner to perform at this year's (virtual) Glastonbury festival as a new band called The Smile (or as Thom put it, "the smile of the guy who lies to you every day"). Their eight-song set, clocking in at over half an hour, is an aggressive melange of funk, post-punk, and math rock, their most guitar-driven material since 2007's In Rainbows, all kicking off with a beautiful version of unreleased Radiohead gem "Skirting on the Surface" [background]. Best of all? Since the livestream DRM shat the bed, the event's organizers released the whole show free online: Part One video - Part Two - Part Three - individual track downloads. Full tracklist, lyrics, and other goodies inside. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:58 PM PST - 10 comments

Enjoy this comprehensive old-school web page documenting the history of the Paterson (NJ) Fire Department, founded in 1815. [more inside]
posted by bq at 5:06 PM PST - 4 comments

In July 2020 Barbara Ketcham Wheaton launched The Sifter, a searchable database to assist people with food related questions. [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Professor Chireau's asks What is Hoodoo? and goes on to explore: Hat Tricks: The Fez and the Turban in Africana Religions and in comics.
Have you heard of the orisha Elegba? one of the most popular avatars in the African diaspora today.
These and much more including Beautiful women with cigars.
[more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 11:27 AM PST - 9 comments

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan! [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 9:50 AM PST - 28 comments

Why Am I Sp Bad At Typign? To solve my typos, I had to become a typo.
posted by storybored at 8:30 AM PST - 50 comments

"For some time now, the major academic publishers have been fundamentally changing their business model with significant implications for research: aggregation and the reuse or resale of user traces have become relevant aspects of their business. Some publishers now explicitly regard themselves as information analysis specialists. Their business model is shifting from content provision to data analytics. This involves the tracking –i.e. recording and storage –of the usage data generated by researchers (i.e. personalised profiles, access and usage data, time spent using information sources, etc.) when they utilise information services such as when carrying out literature searches." [more inside]
posted by zenzenobia at 8:17 AM PST - 15 comments

Give me, in times of strife, a ripped Linda Hamilton doing pull-ups in her cell, preparing equally for escape and Judgment Day. I have zero interest in cars and don’t even know how to drive, yet I absolutely adore it. I’m also a lesbian, but would watch the films for Vin Diesel’s muscles alone. One hundred golden minutes of pithy wisdom on all life’s thorniest subjects: boys, friendship, sex, drugs, accessorising, parking. Everything useful I know about life I learned from this film.

52 perfect comfort films – to watch again and again [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:23 AM PST - 162 comments

The Body’s Most Embarrassing Organ Is an Evolutionary Marvel — And yet we have very little idea where anuses come from., The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu, 5/18/2021 [alternate archive link]. “...The appearance of the anus was momentous in animal evolution, turning a one-hole digestive sac into an open-ended tunnel. Creatures with an anus could physically segregate the acts of eating and defecating, reducing the risk of sullying a snack with scat; they no longer had to finish processing one meal before ingesting another, allowing their tubelike body to harvest more energy and balloon in size. Nowadays, anuses take many forms...” Don’t miss the ‘death farts’ reference. Although Joseph Pujol’s unique musical talent is not mentioned, Wikipedia has a passable article.
posted by cenoxo at 7:42 PM PST - 52 comments

The Tonight Show with guest host Kermit the Frog and guests Vincent Price, Bernadette Peters, Leo Sayer, Dr Michael Fox and lots and lots of Muppets. Commercials included. (SLYT)
posted by pyramid termite at 6:43 PM PST - 15 comments

For about a decade, between 1984 and the mid-1990s... Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of dying people, many of them gay men who had been abandoned by their families. She had no medical training, but she took them to their appointments, picked up their medications, helped them fill out forms for assistance, and talked them through their despair. Sometimes she paid for their cremations. She buried over three dozen of them with her own two hands, after their families refused to claim their bodies. For many of those people, she is now the only person who knows the location of their graves.

David Koon writing in Arkansas Times in 2015. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:57 PM PST - 30 comments

Matthew Salesses writes about dystopian novels and catharsis for Catapult.
posted by eotvos at 9:30 AM PST - 15 comments

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is promoting homophobia and anti-trans violence TikTok’s recommendation algorithm appears to be circulating blatantly anti-LGBTQ videos, some of which encourage targeted violence. This isn’t the first time TikTok’s opaque algorithm has been caught recommending far-right content, including accounts promoting dangerous movements.
posted by plant or animal at 7:57 AM PST - 47 comments

Today is the 50-year anniversary of Marvin Gaye's album for the ages, "What's Going On?" If you are only familiar with the title track or with Marvin's other material, put this on today: :Spotify: --"Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ Is as Relevant Today as It Was in 1971" [more inside]
posted by nakedmolerats at 9:52 PM PST - 25 comments

Dive into all of the mysterious lore, debated symbolism, and enchanting aesthetics of the famous Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries, currently displayed in the MET Cloisters
posted by bq at 8:52 PM PST - 9 comments

Meet a Historian: Robin S. Reich on Making Sense of Medieval Medicine: Humors, Weird Animal Parts, and Experiential Knowledge The first of potentially many guest posts on (Metafilter fave) historian Bret Devereaux's blog takes a look at medieval medicine. Who—other than anyone who likes reading about history—could have known it was interesting, complicated, and mostly dependent on language issues? [more inside]
posted by General Malaise at 6:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Visualizing a cicada’s life A Washington Post multimedia visualization traces one Magicicada from birth to demise, using a variant on the Snowfall web storytelling/scrollytelling model. Be sure to turn the sound on. (Content warning: bugs!) (SLWP) (previously)
posted by doctornemo at 3:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Robotic ‘Third Thumb’ use can alter brain representation of the hand “Body augmentation is a growing field aimed at extending our physical abilities, yet we lack a clear understanding of how our brains can adapt to it. By studying people using Dani’s cleverly-designed Third Thumb, we sought to answer key questions around whether the human brain can support an extra body part, and how the technology might impact our brain.”
posted by dhruva at 1:51 PM PST - 32 comments

The US state of Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (Part 2)(full text pdf) (Plain language summary) imposes a number of new requirements on employers associated with Colorado: limiting acceptable reasons for wage differentials between employees, prohibiting employers from asking about wage history, announcing promotion opportunities to all employees, and requiring salary ranges for both internal and external job posting. This includes remote jobs being worked by, or advertised as remote to residents of the state. [more inside]
posted by SunSnork at 1:46 PM PST - 16 comments

When the crow whisperer appeared at the side gate to Adam Florin and Dani Fisher’s house, in Oakland, California, she was dressed head to toe in black, wearing a hoodie, gloves, and a mask. This was a few weeks into the coronavirus lockdown, so Adam initially took her garb to be a sign of precautionary vigilance. In fact, it was a disguise. “It’s so the crows don’t recognize me and—no offense—start associating me with you.”

–The Crow Whisperer, by Lauren Markham.
posted by Kattullus at 12:50 PM PST - 30 comments

Drones show California’s great white sharks are closer — and more common — than you think [LAT; archive version; summary from Inside Hook]
posted by chavenet at 11:39 AM PST - 32 comments

So says Agustín Fuentes, American primatologist and biological anthropologist at Princeton University and formerly the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His editorial on the subject appears in today’s edition of Science. He elaborates in an interview.
posted by No Robots at 11:25 AM PST - 42 comments

The Wikipedia entry for fictional Great Dane puppy Scrappy-Doo is 25,623 words long. With six sections, 15 subsections, and 19 sub-subsections, the page has a greater wordcount than Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, is double the length of the average undergrad dissertation, and is nearly 2,000 words longer than the Wikipedia entry for the entire history of Poland. I first discovered this at Halloween.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:32 AM PST - 44 comments

"The real reason American parents hate each other: A lack of support splits parents into warring factions. Here’s what could stop the fighting (Vox): "Essentially, the culture and politics of parenting in America all but guarantee unending conflict by setting up impossible (as well as racist and classist) standards for good parenting and then giving people absolutely no help to meet them." Related: Science Isn’t Here for Your Mommy Shaming: When people sensationalize research, parents pay the price (Nautilus) [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 8:13 AM PST - 12 comments

New music this week! Duran Duran's new single Invisible [3m24s] has them sounding a lot like Duran Duran, while Pet Shop Boys' Cricket Wife [10m] is a neo-classical Lied. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:34 AM PST - 20 comments

The Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) was hit by a major ransomware attack last week. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 4:25 AM PST - 14 comments

Oops Upside Your Head is a disco funk song recorded by The Gap Band in 1979, which became an international hit. It is notable for being one of the first funk songs to use hip-hop style monologues. In Britain it's notable for something else. The traditional way to dance to this song over here is to sit on the floor in ranks and perform a rowing motion. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:11 AM PST - 20 comments

U2 is currently remastering their roster of videos on Youtube. What started as a With/WIthout You remaster (slyt) ended up as One, One, the Fly and more.
posted by kfholy at 3:22 AM PST - 27 comments

Youtube show Adam Walks Around has Adam traipsing around places like the Phillippines, Indonesia, Malasya and Cambodia, and California, but nothing will prepare you for the end of Season 4, where our hero visits as many Californian locations of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes as he can. It has disturbingly appropriate music and a lot of special appearances from actors, musicians, and relatives, the State Historian of New Mexico, Gumby and Pokey (or maybe impersonators), and a certain "J. Elvis." Locations include Bronson Cave, Griffith Park, Coleman Francis Mountain, and the former locations of The Haunted House, Club Scum, and, of course, the diner known only as... EAT.
posted by JHarris at 12:02 AM PST - 6 comments

The Civilization Battle Royale Mark II was an alternate history of the planet narrated from August 2015 to December 2018, first by "TPangolin" and later by team "Blue Cassette," based on a game of Civilization V (previously) with 61 different computer-controlled civilizations and no^* human players. Also available in audio form. [more inside]
posted by one for the books at 9:37 PM PST - 4 comments

"Milo’s habits are simple and revolting." Maria Farrell writes about her "hugely fluffy and dolphin-smiling Samoyed dog, Milo" and of the inconvenience of his bowel movements ("He has absolutely no concept of gastrointestinal cause and effect....For a while, there, Milo’s daily rhythm was primed perfectly to require a straining squat precisely as we passed the entrance to the local Tube station at the height of rush hour."). And then there's what he ate at her brother in law’s fortieth birthday party... Warning for lots of dog poop description.
posted by brainwane at 7:44 PM PST - 6 comments

The Linda Lindas visit the L.A. Public Library with a message and proceed to slay.
posted by Jeff_Larson at 7:33 PM PST - 26 comments

The Amazing Scale Finder. And: A Study of Scales.
posted by storybored at 5:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Tepid reviews for the moody Netflix thriller are all missing the point. In The Woman in the Window—the dark adaptation of A.J. Finn’s controversial bestselling thriller, streaming now on Netflix—director Joe Wright not only steals, but violates images and makes the mélange of film references profane, detached, and artificial. It’s a seedy movie with bizarre cinematography, unhinged editing, unusual acting, and a nonsensical narrative. It faced multiple release delays and, when it finally dropped last week, critical dismissal. Vulture described it as “incredibly silly,” while Rolling Stone wrote that “[the] playbook consists of ‘ape Hitchcock,’ followed by blank pages.” But perhaps it’s because of those choices and not in spite of them that The Woman in the Window is one of the most brilliant films of the year.
posted by folklore724 at 3:06 PM PST - 43 comments

Captain Disillusion's intern Alan goes deep on Flight of the Navigator. You may know Captain Disillusion from his many debunkings/explanations of viral videos. His long-suffering intern Alan has made an appearance over the years, including a virtuoso talk at Blender Conference 2018. Now, with the Captain away, Alan does a 40-minute deep dive into the 1986 movie Flight of the Navigator, specifically its effects, which as he explains in great detail are not - as many believe - all computer generated. He's brought along some props and visited some locations as well. [more inside]
posted by schoolgirl report at 1:33 PM PST - 21 comments

...the overreaction to O’Connor was not just about whether she was right or wrong; it was about the kinds of provocations we accept from women in music. “Not because I was famous or anything, but because I was a human being, I had a right to put my hand up and say what I felt,” O’Connor said....O’Connor has seen a little bit of herself in women who came after her — in Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears. “What they did to Britney Spears was disgusting,” she said. “If you met a stranger in the street crying, you’d put your arms around her. You wouldn’t start taking photos of her, you know?” Amanda Hess (New York Times soft paywall; Archive.org link) interviews Sinead O'Connor ahead of the June 1st release of her new memoir, Rememberings. [Content warnings: trauma and abuse]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:49 PM PST - 50 comments

What was hacked was the company's billing system The cyber attack that shutdown the Colonial pipeline causing a gas panic and stoking fears of gasoline shortages, didn’t actually shut down the pipeline. It impacted the billing system at the Colonial Pipeline Co., which shut it down because they were worried about how they’d collect payments.
posted by robbyrobs at 12:37 PM PST - 65 comments

Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen - Like I Used To (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 10:58 AM PST - 5 comments

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-winning lead author of the 1619 Project, was denied tenure at the University of North Carolina. Following a conservative backlash against her, the university’s board of trustees took the highly unusual step of failing to approve the journalism department’s recommendation to grant her tenure (NYTimes). [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:19 AM PST - 46 comments

14 year old Indian beatboxer, Shashwat, from Madhya Pradesh, India. His amazing Indian Evil Bass Prodigy video. Wait for it. His Insta: Immortal.
posted by nickyskye at 9:56 AM PST - 11 comments

10 of the Meanest Board Games Ever Made [SLYT 13min 8 sec] Collaborative board games are the norm, but outright combative, nay vengeful, and/or mean ones, can really test the boundaries of a social circle. "We accept no responsibility for any friendships ruined after watching this video." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 7:46 AM PST - 108 comments

Among a collection of upcoming improvements for people with disabilities is an amazing demo of AssistiveTouch features on Apple Watch supporting people with limb differences.
posted by Stark at 7:18 AM PST - 17 comments

The editors of manga anthology Young Animal Comics have reported that Kentaro Miura, creator of the seminal dark fantasy manga Berserk, passed away on May 6 of an aortic dissection, at the age of 54. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:01 AM PST - 11 comments

A Japanese bookstore simulator is collaboratively translated into English after 24 years.
posted by brundlefly at 12:45 AM PST - 15 comments

Is Phil Collins’s legendary Texana collection everything it’s cracked up to be? A Texas Monthly longread on the ructions and scheming around the renovation of the Alamo.
posted by zamboni at 8:37 PM PST - 37 comments

Six American families open their doors — and their wallets — to show us how much life costs. (NYTimes) [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 7:44 PM PST - 73 comments

Paul Mooney, who wrote for Richard Pryor and appeared on ‘Chappelle’s Show,’ dies at 79 [The Washington Post] A onetime circus ringmaster, Mr. Mooney got into comedy after watching Lenny Bruce perform at a bar in the early 1960s. He went on to adopt a similarly profane style, with routines about American politics and racism, mocking stereotypes about Black people and incorporating the n-word into his stand-up in an effort to deprive the term of its power.

Paul Mooney Remembered by Dave Chappelle, Ava DuVernay and More: ‘He Spoke Freely and Fearlessly’ [The Wrap] [more inside]
posted by riruro at 5:37 PM PST - 35 comments

Another week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Starting from the sun: the NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter hurtled around the far side of the star from the Earth and tracked a coronal mass ejection. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 2:54 PM PST - 2 comments

“In the first few weeks of the pandemic, OK Go wrote and recorded a song together, alone in our homes.” It’s called All together now and you can read more about it in this letter from band leader Damian Kulash. But the story doesn’t end there: “A few months later, a high school choir from Long Island asked for the sheet music, so they could collaborate from their homes the same way. We loved the idea, and invited the world to join. [more inside]
posted by amf at 2:51 PM PST - 6 comments

Deep in the forests of Germany, nestled neatly into the hollowed-out shells of acorns, live a smattering of ants who have stumbled upon a fountain of youth. They are born workers, but do not do much work. Their days are spent lollygagging about the nest, where their siblings shower them with gifts of food. They seem to elude the ravages of old age, retaining a durably adolescent physique, their outer shells soft and their hue distinctively tawny. Their scent, too, seems to shift, wafting out an alluring perfume that endears them to others. While their sisters, who have nearly identical genomes, perish within months of being born, these death-defying insects live on for years and years and years.
posted by gauche at 1:44 PM PST - 28 comments

It Is Unconscionable That The Gay Community Has Ostracized Me Simply Because I Was Born A Cop
posted by rorgy at 1:08 PM PST - 37 comments

Mark Rober has made another backyard squirrel obstacle course for 2021. Previous obstacle course here. With new squirrel houses, Fort Knutz, walnuts, stuffed squirrels, and spy/heist movie inspiration!
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:52 AM PST - 21 comments

"there is a link to differences in moral instincts, which cut across demographics and ideology." "A new way of looking at trust in media: Do Americans share journalism’s core values?" by the Media Insight Project. (Answer: many do not.) "The trust crisis may be better understood through people’s moral values than their politics." Using moral foundations theory, researchers found four clusters of people linked by their journalism & moral values. Researchers were able to revise stories to -- while keeping them factually accurate -- emphasizing aspects that made them more appealing to, for instance, people who care a lot about loyalty and authority. "Might people trust these stories more, attend to them more closely, see them as accurate, and so on?" [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 9:43 AM PST - 21 comments

"It’s winter on the Mississippi River, one of the busiest and most dangerous waterways in the world. Over the past two days, Captain Jared Austin has transported 300,000 barrels of jet fuel on a tanker headed for Europe and fifty thousand tons of corn on a freighter en route to Brazil. Austin is certified to pilot ships between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s his responsibility to know every bend of the river, and how its mood shifts, depending on the weather." Lara Naughton writes about shipping on the Mississippi for Narratively (from 2017).
posted by dellsolace at 9:35 AM PST - 6 comments

“I freaked out and cheered over a bonus only to watch the rest of my team quietly put their checks in their wallets and say nothing.” Meg Elison relates some of her experiences being the only person at a tech startup who had to worry about money.
posted by Monochrome at 8:41 AM PST - 94 comments

A twitter thread by @hanalyst, who continues: “I leaned my head back to wet my hair in the shower and pulled a muscle in my neck.” @maureenchuck1 responds: “I threw my hip out dancing to Groove Is In The Heart and had to go to hospital”, while @JlhNeuro replies: “Raised my arm to reach for something and got frozen shoulder for two years” and @RenDan81 responds: “I burned the word Pyrex onto my arm trying to take the dish out of the oven.” There's more, including... [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 1:39 AM PST - 239 comments

"Just having a normal one. Stuck in traffic with a pigeon in my car." This is how Passenger, an injured pigeon from Baltimore, was introduced to the internet. A few days later, after the thread went viral, five strangers drove a 600-mile relay to bring Passenger to the Ramsey Loft for rehabilitation and eventual adoption. [more inside]
posted by vibratory manner of working at 8:37 PM PST - 9 comments

The Darwin Arch has collapsed "Unfortunately today, our guests of the Galapagos Aggressor III experienced a once in a lifetime event," the company shared. "This morning at 11:20 a.m. local time, the world famous Darwin's Arch collapsed in front of their eyes. "Some in the dive & travel industry are already referring to this now as 'The Pillars of Evolution'. We will miss this iconic site."
posted by grateful at 8:20 PM PST - 28 comments

Rufford Lane, about 20 miles north of Nottingham in England has a trap for the incautious driver: a very deep ford. It can be filled with fail. Sometimes vehicles get so close to getting through … but no.
posted by scruss at 5:46 PM PST - 86 comments

He came to believe that, if he had enough money, he would be able to focus on his art. He decided to turn to a life of crime, but didn’t want to risk the violence of a stickup. [SL New Yorker] As Germany reunited, Arno Funke, an unsuccessful cartoonist, started to bomb department stores (at night to avoid injury) and leave ransom notes signed Scrooge McDuck.
posted by jeather at 2:54 PM PST - 17 comments

Charles Grodin, Star of ‘Beethoven’ and ‘Heartbreak Kid,’ Dies at 86 [NYT Archive] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:28 PM PST - 56 comments

The Foo Fighters once embraced the cult of HIV/AIDS denial, enthusiastically spreading a potentially lethal message to their young fans. And they seem to have never apologized or admitted their mistake. In an open letter to bassist Nate Mendel, Bruce Mirken says "You can’t undo the damage you did, but you can at least say you’re sorry you did it."
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 12:52 PM PST - 54 comments

Grady at Practical Engineering has the story. Link to PDF of the report itself. Previously.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:20 PM PST - 20 comments

Kevin Kelly has 99 bits of unsolicited advice. Kelly is behind the cooltools website, and before that he worked on the seminal Whole Earth Catalogs. Also see 68 bits of unsolicited advice. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:15 PM PST - 35 comments

Daði Freyr Pétursson (Icelandic pronunciation: ​[ˈtaːðɪ freiːr ˈpʰjɛːtʏrsɔn], born 30 June 1992), known professionally as Daði Freyr or by the mononym Daði, is an Icelandic musician living in Berlin, Germany. He was due to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 with the song “Think About Things” (music video / performance video) before the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is set to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with the song “10 Years” (music video / performance video)
(Text from Wikipedia. Daði previously, Eurovision 2021 previously)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:05 AM PST - 23 comments

''EEN STUK IS NIET EEN METER" is a sentence that has been shouted at least a dozen times. Also the guy from the company just made a disparaging remark about Onno's (in)ability to sexually please his wife. I don't think this is the first time Onno has screwed up.

There was a small mix-up with the delivery of Molly Quell's new roof plants: instead of 51 trays, she got 510 square meters. All thanks to one hapless employee called Onno. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 10:02 AM PST - 27 comments

Rating Emergency Alert System (EAS) alarms: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, via
posted by not_the_water at 7:55 AM PST - 32 comments

Tishani Doshi writes about breasts and women's bodies in India. (CW: graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault.) The breast in India is one of the most eroticized and policed body parts. From 8,000-year-old Harappan terracotta mothers with their suckling infants to Bollywood starlets cavorting under waterfalls with wet saris, the breast has been central to the idea of sex, maternity, nourishment and power. And as in many countries where mother-worship is practiced, the dichotomy between adoration and abuse is significant. The idea of a neutral breast in India? A breast just casually hanging around, being a functional exocrine gland, enjoying the sun? Impossible.
posted by MiraK at 7:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Billions of cicadas are about to emerge from the ground, and a psychedelic mushroom is along for the ride. “With missing butts and full hearts, they’ll forge ahead with their only reason for existing: finding a mate and reproducing” Nature is amazing and fills me with awe!
posted by tarantula at 4:45 AM PST - 50 comments

"For Indian women, rideshare apps are a lifeline: Six Indian women describe how rideshare apps have transformed their lives", in Rest of World, by Chandni Doulatramani. "The ubiquity of rideshare cabs has had a lasting impact on the urban-dwelling women of India, with ripple effects reaching stay-at-home moms, workers, and college students." (For folks who are wondering: Uber Moto gives the passenger a motorcycle ride.)
posted by brainwane at 12:35 PM PST - 31 comments

Try and avoid agreeing to these dastardly terms. Think you've worked out which buttons to press and which options to untick so that you can opt out? See if you can beat the devious tactics deployed on this site.
posted by grahamspankee at 12:14 PM PST - 37 comments

USC Annenberg journalism student Camila Thur de Koos presents Gowns, balls and underlying racism, a story about how "historical costumers of color navigate a hobby centered on a history that excludes them."
posted by jedicus at 11:38 AM PST - 9 comments

From Its Myriad Tips: the LRB reviews Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, exploring the worlds of mushrooms, lichen, and yeasts — and our relationships with them
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Restaurant Signs Claiming Staff Walking Out Are Popping Up Across U.S. from Newsweek, via naked capitalism. "On a list of the 100 lowest paying jobs in the U.S., food cooking machine operators and tenders rank 94, cooks rank 71, bakers rank 56, restaurant cooks rank 34, and bartenders rank 26..." [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 8:03 AM PST - 154 comments

Long working hours are killing hundreds of thousands of people a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The first global study of its kind showed 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and heart disease due to long hours. (CW: heart attack) [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:16 AM PST - 16 comments

She’s always been an A-lister. But her new film, Those Who Wish Me Dead, reflects Hollywood’s impulse to stifle female action heroes once they hit a certain age. And though she’s continually made the case for herself as an action hero, even now, reviews for Those Who Wish Me Dead question the effect of her “ice-sculpture perfection” on the film’s believability—as if a film featuring Hannah getting hit by lightning needs to be believable—and whether audiences can “get past the miraculously dewy complexion and on-point smoky-eye look.” In the past decade, Jolie has used her fame to elevate the story of the Cambodian Civil War, co-author a book on protest rights geared toward teenagers, and even criticize the United Nations, where she advocates for the rights of refugees. She hasn’t played a seductress since Salt. How are her good looks still such a sore spot?
posted by folklore724 at 10:17 PM PST - 36 comments

Neopets (which is 21 years old) is preparing for a comeback, with an animated show in the works. Polygon covers a thriving black market within the cutesy JPEG distribution system, in newly-made, but old-style, "unconverted" pets that management long claimed weren't possible, in an entertaining video story on the whole affair, and which also provides some background on the site's history. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 9:03 PM PST - 10 comments

The "p-factor" may be the invisible, unifying force behind a multitude of mental disorders. While other specialities of medicine have drastically reduced mortality rates from heart disease, cancer and stroke, there haven’t been similar successes in mental healthcare. As a paper from 2013 put it, ‘mortality has not decreased for any mental illness, prevalence rates are similarly unchanged,... and there are no well-developed preventive interventions.’ Psychiatry appears to be stuck. Perhaps it’s because the diagnostic system is faulty.
posted by MiraK at 8:08 PM PST - 30 comments

Husband and wife Justin and Julia host I Pray You Put This Journal Away, a podcast based on the couple’s experiences growing up in the fundamentalist Christian church, with Justin reading from his teen diaries about his struggles “growing up with the Duggars, fundamentalism, and undiagnosed autism.” If you prefer to read instead of listen: in the last few weeks, since the news broke about Josh Duggar’s arrest for possession of child sexual abuse images, Justin has done two Reddit AMAs shining a thoughtful spotlight on the ways fundamentalist Christian culture justifies, enables and covers up abuse. [Content warnings: trauma; sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse.]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:10 PM PST - 9 comments

“None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin’ Hot test market,” Frito-Lay wrote in a statement to The Times, in response to questions about an internal investigation whose existence has not been previously disclosed. “We have interviewed multiple personnel who were involved in the test market, and all of them indicate that Richard was not involved in any capacity in the test market. ... “That doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate Richard,” the statement continued, “but the facts do not support the urban legend.” from The man who didn’t invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos [LAT, alternate link] [Previously]
posted by chavenet at 3:20 PM PST - 28 comments

Baelin's Route. A 30-minute epic film complete with sweeping shots of New Zealand landscapes, a one-shot fight scene with a gang of orcs, and an NPC protagonist who's incapable of saying anything other than, "Morning! Nice day for fishing, ain't it?" From New Zealand comedy group Viva La Dirt League (previously).
posted by russilwvong at 2:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Another US military UFO video clip surfaces. In 2019 sailors recorded an unidentified object flying around the littoral combat ship USS Omaha before vanishing into the sea. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:25 PM PST - 94 comments

BTS - IDOL on 2 calculators
Beethoven - Fur Elise on 3 calculators
Radiohead - 2 + 2 = 5 on 4 calculators
Pinkfong - Baby Shark on 5 calculators
Among Us BG Music on cat piano [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 10:13 AM PST - 16 comments

The filing cabinet was critical to the information infrastructure of the 20th-century. Like most infrastructure, it was usually overlooked (Places Journal): "But if it appears to be banal and pervasive, it cannot be so easily ignored. The filing cabinet does not just store paper; it stores information; and because the modern world depends upon and is indeed defined by information, the filing cabinet must be recognized as critical to the expansion of modernity. In recent years scholars and critics have paid increasing attention to the filing systems used to store and retrieve information critical to government and capitalism, particularly information about people — case dossiers, identification photographs, credit reports, et al. But the focus on filing systems ignores the places where files are stored. Could capitalism, surveillance, and governance have developed in the 20th century without filing cabinets? Of course, but only if there had been another way to store and circulate paper efficiently. The filing cabinet was critical to the infrastructure of 20th-century nation states and financial systems; and, like most infrastructure, it is often overlooked or forgotten, and the labor associated with it minimized or ignored." via things magazine [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 8:23 AM PST - 36 comments

Poison Ivy has Underappreciated Superpowers. (SLNYT)
posted by storybored at 7:08 AM PST - 35 comments

The Mysterious Origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant (NYer) The Cerne Giant is so imposing that he is best viewed from the opposite crest of the valley, or from the air. He is a hundred and eighty feet tall, about as high as a twenty-story apartment building. Held aloft in his right hand is a large, knobby club; his left arm stretches across the slope. Drawn in an outline formed by trenches packed with chalk, he has primitive but expressive facial features, with a line for a mouth and circles for eyes. His raised eyebrows were perhaps intended to indicate ferocity, but they might equally be taken for a look of confusion. His torso is well defined, with lines for ribs and circles for nipples; a line across his waist has been understood to represent a belt. Most well defined of all is his penis, which is erect, and measures twenty-six feet in length. Were the giant not protectively fenced off, a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member and take in the idyllic vista beyond.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:48 PM PST - 37 comments

The Rise Of The Appuccino: How TikTok Is Changing Starbucks (BuzzFeed)

There was a time when the idea of a mere soy latte or mocha Frappuccino was the punchline of dad jokes, an eyeroll about people not drinking “real” coffee. That time is long past, and a set of factors all coming together at once has made incredibly complex orders at Starbucks the norm rather than the exception — sometimes to the chagrin of the workers.

[more inside]
posted by oakroom at 6:06 PM PST - 173 comments

Obsessive Gabriella Paiella asks how Frasier could afford it all on a radio show salary. Paiella explains her inspiration to ABC Australia’s Jonathan Green. [more inside]
posted by ec2y at 4:46 PM PST - 69 comments

"But the Davids have got themselves a slingshot." A celebration of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's 50th anniversary, by Together Louisiana. A video, called "When Goliath stays in charge, places stay poor," was created for a celebration of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development's 50th anniversary, by the group Together Louisiana. [more inside]
posted by eustatic at 3:55 PM PST - 2 comments

Of models and memes: Women are reclaiming their images via NFTs [Input] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:34 PM PST - 83 comments

Drain-spotting : Bethan Bell at the BBC writes on the joys of operculism, that is, the study of manhole covers, coalhole covers and drain covers, etc., those "abstract flowers in an otherwise arid field, bringing a note of flippant gaiety into the often depressing city surroundings".
posted by misteraitch at 12:59 PM PST - 12 comments

Only 44 people have reached the summit of all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, according to the people who chronicle such things. Or maybe no one has. [more inside]
posted by YoungStencil at 12:50 PM PST - 26 comments

One Note Song (Rob Moitoza, 2000). One Note Piano (Boyan Hristov, 2013). These Notes Number One (Sledg3, 2017). And, of course, One Note Song (Tenacious D, 2001). Inversely, One Chord Songs (Nate Bucklin, 1991 - starts at 19:01 on the pre-selected Hour 2 track).
posted by BiggerJ at 12:15 AM PST - 24 comments

Glauber Contessoto went looking for something that could change his fortunes overnight. He found it in a joke cryptocurrency. What explains Dogecoin’s durability, then? There’s no doubt that Dogecoin mania, like GameStop mania before it, is at least partly attributable to some combination of pandemic-era boredom and the eternal appeal of get-rich-quick schemes. But there may be more structural forces at work. Over the past few years, soaring housing costs, record student loan debt and historically low interest rates have made it harder for some young people to imagine achieving financial stability by slowly working their way up the career ladder and saving money paycheck by paycheck, the way their parents did. Instead of ladders, these people are looking for trampolines — risky, volatile investments that could either result in a life-changing windfall or send them right back to where they started.
posted by folklore724 at 5:39 PM PST - 54 comments

Just some tik toks.
What it was like hearing Smells Like Teen Spirit for the first time in 1991
What it was like hearing Creep for the first time in 1992
What it was like hearing Cherub Rock for the first time in 1993
What it was like hearing Freedom by Rage Against The Machine in 1993
posted by Going To Maine at 3:42 PM PST - 91 comments

Mammals can breathe through their intestines? We all know that some creatures have to poop through their mouths. But now researchers have shown that you can also flood a mouse's colon with oxygen-saturated perfluorocarbon and have them breathe through their large intestine. Which is presumably less stressful than flooding your lungs with it.
posted by GuyZero at 12:06 PM PST - 49 comments

My deepest pleasures come from accounts of and by the original B girls. Those lucky few who, given the chance to create a school in their own image, rose to the occasion. Free to decide on their classes and lifestyles, these pioneers rejected dogma, prohibition, curfews, and dress codes, embraced annual non-resident work terms, and, as a decades-long study by sociologists proved, almost routinely turned their backs on the politics of their conservative daddies. From The Bennington Girl by Jill Eisenstadt
posted by chavenet at 10:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Earlier this week, Apple employees petitioned the company for an investigation into the hiring of Antonio García Martínez, a former Facebook employee who had published Chaos Monkeys, in which he had made a number of blatantly misogynistic comments. Hours later, Apple had verified that García Martínez was fired. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:59 AM PST - 117 comments

Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is an editor for a database of mathematical research. "Branch cuts: writing, editing, and ramified complexities" (9-page PDF) discusses reevaluating career priorities (especially after the University of Wisconsin redefined tenure), reflecting on gender and sexuality, and "bridging queer and mathematical communities". Whitcher has also written for the American Mathematical Society on predictive policing, research projects that a protagonist of a Courtney Milan romance novel might be interested in, and more. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 7:52 AM PST - 12 comments

The story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, notorious gender bending pirates.
posted by ichimunki at 5:43 AM PST - 20 comments

From Ari Berman and Nick Surgey in Mother Jones, a leaked video and investigation into Heritage Action and US voter suppression laws. In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.” [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:25 AM PST - 30 comments

How D&D classes use a bow (SLTT).
posted by Alex404 at 1:18 AM PST - 37 comments

To celebrate Alvin Lucier's 90th birthday, over the next 27 hours Issue Project Room will livestream 90 different performances of I Am Sitting in a Room. [more inside]
posted by phooky at 6:18 PM PST - 33 comments

The people of Glasgow gathered quickly, and peacefully, in their hundreds today, to save two asylum seekers from detention after a dawn raid on the morning of Eid. The two men were awakened in their flat in Glasgow's Southside at dawn by the Home Office Immigration Enforcement team and loaded into the waiting van outside. But their removal to a detention centre was blocked by five local residents who gathered in front of the vehicle, one then wedging himself beneath the van. Word quickly spread, and soon hundreds of local people had gathered peacefully in the street outside the men's flat, surrounding the van and calling for their release. [more inside]
posted by penguin pie at 3:24 PM PST - 43 comments

A discussion between your dog and your cat.... Other recent comics from They Can Talk by Jimmy Craig tackle existential animal dilemmas such as the meaning of your person going into the kitchen, the self-worth of a fish, and the identity crisis of an indoor-only cat who just saw an outdoor cat stroll past. They Can Talk was previously posted on the blue all the way back in 2016. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:23 PM PST - 7 comments

My Google search history: a frank interrogation by Ashley Feinberg (many previously)
posted by theodolite at 2:47 PM PST - 9 comments

You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations including local business and workplace guidance. [more inside]
posted by craniac at 1:49 PM PST - 383 comments

Sleater-Kinney (now reduced to the duo of Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein) will be releasing a new album, Path Of Wellness, in June.
It is the band’s first self-produced album.
This is the music video for lead single “Worry With You”. It was directed by Alberta Poon
posted by Going To Maine at 10:33 AM PST - 38 comments

San Francisco Giants outfielder Drew Robinson's remarkable second act [ESPN] [CW: All links above & below include graphic discussion of a suicide attempt; if you need help, ThereIsHelp] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 8:47 AM PST - 4 comments

Lizzie Feidelson of The New York Times Magazine reports on how, in light of the horrific abuses in gymnastics being revealed and shifts in the sport's focus, older gymnasts are returning and putting to question the idea that gymnasts peak in their teens - and the need for abusive, controlling coaches.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:43 AM PST - 63 comments

The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India, feeds 100,000 Sikh worshipers and visitors for free every day - and up to 200,000 on holy days. Here's how.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:44 AM PST - 28 comments

If you can't do full push-ups, "just like with everything else in the world, you can build up!" Hampton from Hybrid Calisthenics shows you why and how you can progress from wall pushups to inclined push-ups to kneeling push-ups and then to full push-ups in an encouraging one-minute video. (Three-minute video with more detail, still photos.) "When we're doing these exercises, we're actually building strength. When we move on to a harder exercise, all we're doing is demonstrating and using our new strength." (found via Twitter)
posted by brainwane at 4:33 AM PST - 48 comments

Is the return of the return of Mystery Science Theater 3000 not enough for you? How about five fan-made MST3K episodes? Or an archive of almost 2000 text-based MST3K fanfics (MiSTings) riffing on bad fanfics and other texts? Or this specific archive of MiSTings of the Star Trek fanfiction of Stephen Ratliff? Or interactive MiSTings of three cheesy text adventure games, playable in your browser (note: third one is not for the childrens)? Or interactive MiSTings of six games made in the text-based ZZT engine, also playable in your browser? (Game tips and more after the jump.) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 1:17 AM PST - 17 comments

Decades before 'Zoom fatigue' broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind.
posted by curious nu at 9:14 PM PST - 36 comments

What did we miss out on, by failing to make more space for people not to pair? By treating this pairing culture as something so fragile, and so precious? Pairing requires being vulnerable, to another human being, for hours at a time. Intimacy, both physical and mental. I had to share space, decisions, thought processes, and often feelings with this person. via https://pinboard.in/popular/ [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 8:37 PM PST - 64 comments

More than 100 Republican former officials to seek reforms, threaten new party "More than 100 influential Republicans plan to release a call for reforms within the GOP alongside a threat to form a new party if change isn't forthcoming, a person familiar with the effort said." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:56 PM PST - 72 comments

JustUseEmail.com is a small site with a big opinion. It asks us to reconsider the myriad services we rely on for productivity and instead just use email. “The premise of this site is that often just using email allows us to be more efficient, effective, and focused, even when offline.” writes Lawrence (the site’s author). Though the site has just started, dozens of future posts are promised. The titles “How to have a group discussion by email that beats the one done in Slack” and “How to be less annoying to your friends and family by email” give hints about the tenor of posts.
posted by Monochrome at 3:41 PM PST - 55 comments

xkcd's "Map Projections", animated [via mefi projects]
posted by biogeo at 1:18 PM PST - 39 comments

"Mulaney has had an incredibly difficult year. We knew that he had checked himself into a Pennsylvania rehab facility in mid-December for a 60-day treatment to address his addiction to alcohol and cocaine, and that he and his wife of seven years, Anna Marie Tendler, were on the verge of divorcing; the latter news was confirmed the day of his first City Winery show. On Monday night, Mulaney opened up in ways no one had been expecting." (SLVulture) [more inside]
posted by lunasol at 10:53 AM PST - 169 comments

Working remotely for the last year has revealed just how much of office culture is accidental, arbitrary, and sexist. Guess what? It’s not their job to buy you cake.
posted by Mchelly at 10:42 AM PST - 123 comments

Norman Lloyd, arguably the last surviving significant figure from Hollywood’s golden age, has died. “Who is Norman Lloyd? Well, if you don’t know Norman Lloyd, you should know Norman Lloyd, because he is the history of our industry.” – Karl Malden. Lloyd acted on Broadway and in movies and TV shows for Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin, Robert Wise, Peter Weir, Martin Scorsese and Judd Apatow. He directed more than 55 TV episodes and movies, and produced many more. He played tennis with Chaplin and Spencer Tracy. Widely beloved in the industry, his annual birthday parties were attended by many friends of all ages, who enjoyed his skills as a raconteur. And he was married for 75 years. [more inside]
posted by pmurray63 at 10:33 AM PST - 27 comments

New, incredibly detailed videos capture how the brain jiggles inside the skull as blood and other fluids flow through the squidgy organ (LiveScience): gif, Youtube. "Really, it's a very small motion," typically between about 0.002 inches and 0.015 inches (50 to 400 micrometers) at most, in terms of how far the tissue deforms [...] Making the movements appear about 25 times larger allowed the researchers to assess that motion in greater detail, tracking its direction and amplitude with precision." "Stunning" Brain Movement Detail Possible with 3D Amplified MRI (Diagnostic Imaging)
posted by not_the_water at 9:56 AM PST - 10 comments

Room 8. Felicette. Orangey. And before there were bodega cats, there were post office cats: In 1904, the New York Times reported that George W. Cook, “the only Superintendent of Federal Cats in this country,” gave a party for 60 post office cats in honor of his own 81st birthday. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:48 AM PST - 5 comments

Lyz Lenz in Glamour from September 2020: I was 33, a mother of two, and bone-tired. I didn’t want the laundry and chores to be the rest of my life. I didn’t want to always be drowning in work and childcare and housecleaning and dinner, bearing the brunt of the labor. I’d spent the past two years begging for help with the kids and housework, only to be told that I could just quit my job if it was all too much. “It’s not too much,” I’d said over and over. “It’s just not all my job.” Standing in the dining room, overwhelmed with the weight of my life, I broke. The next day, in couples therapy, I asked for a divorce. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:47 AM PST - 67 comments

Mow-Rio Kart by Ian Padgham, aka @origiful [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:01 AM PST - 3 comments

In the Guardian / Grauniad: "Readers were informed that the 2003 spring season at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon would feature “The Taming of the Screw”. Anyone spluttering over their morning muesli at this point might have reached for Glaxo’s “controversial treatment for irritable bowl syndrome”, as we once had it." Recently on MetaTalk, wikitionary entry and urban dictionary entry, a typo from last year, and a 2009 Grauniad/Guardian article from their style editor.
posted by Wordshore at 11:44 PM PST - 23 comments

Welcome to ThatchingInfo.com
The information available here is the result of over three decades of practical experience plus more than a dozen years of research into the history and various working methods employed in the craft of thatching. The research included an eighteen thousand mile trip around most of Britain… This is a big site, 100 pages of information[,] so please take a while to explore it properly. It’s best to start at the beginning and treat it like a book. But you can just dip in; each page stands on its own and there is a large glossary to help you.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:39 PM PST - 12 comments

Endless scrolling. That’s one of the telltale signs of a novel phenomenon new research identifies as algorithmic fatigue. People who spend ages browsing streaming services, looking for something new to watch, are some of the many examples of the growing numbers of consumers who are now finding that AI systems fall short. When the algorithm fails to live up to people’s expectations of the user experience, and doesn’t deliver the service its users want, the people using the system end up feeling annoyed, frustrated, and fatigued. Brands are slowly waking up to the same realization: AI is no longer just about the technology; it’s about how humans experience and interact with the algorithms. .... Ultimately, it’s about creating parity: granting the users equal agency over decision making by allowing them to choose and change when they want to be actively involved in the algorithm or just passively guided by it.
posted by folklore724 at 10:36 PM PST - 86 comments

Jorge Luis Borges and Nancy Meyers Pitch a Movie (Because, Admit It, You’ve Watched Everything Else) - Nina Sharma at The New Yorker (archived link)
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:44 PM PST - 10 comments

Back in January, the National Rifle Association filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, less out of a financial need but in order to reincorporate in Texas, in light of the lawsuit in New York to dissolve their corporate charter. Today, the federal judge overseeing the case has dismissed the NRA’s request, stating that it was purely intended to get around the NY lawsuit. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:28 PM PST - 56 comments

It wasn't a yeti attack. A Yekaterinburg prosecutor held a press conference to announce his solution (previously) to the Dyatlov Pass mystery. It was not well received.(SLNewYorker) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:38 PM PST - 22 comments

A24 has released a new trailer for David Lowery's "The Green Knight".
posted by Ipsifendus at 1:37 PM PST - 53 comments

We will set sail and journey once again to tell the planet that in the world that we hold in our collective heart, there is room for everyone. (...) We’re ready to wait there in front of the European coast and unfold a large banner that reads “Wake up!” We will wait there to see if anyone reads the message, then wait a little longer to see if anyone wakes up, and then a little longer to see if anyone does anything.
posted by Tom-B at 11:38 AM PST - 11 comments

A few stories of houseless New York City residents who have lived in hotels for the past year thanks to the #HomelessCantStayHome campaign.
posted by brainwane at 10:39 AM PST - 6 comments

Heidi Bond (aka historical and romance novelist Courtney Milan) re-reviews Pride and Prejudice for the Michigan Law Review (PDF). "Pride and Prejudice details the community-wide damage that can be laid at the feet of serial sexual predators. It details the characteristics of predators, discusses the systemic social failures that allow predators to abuse others, and grapples with difficult questions of how communities should deal with those predators."
posted by adrianhon at 7:41 AM PST - 41 comments

Cyber-attack forces shutdown of one of the US’s largest pipelines ... Colonial Pipeline hackers apologize, promise to ransom less controversial targets in future ... Colonial Pipeline: 'A Global Day of Reckoning' [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:31 AM PST - 129 comments

The New York Times on the challenges of translating Amanda Gorman's poem "The Hill We Climb".
posted by Stark at 1:38 AM PST - 28 comments

Full Concert VHS concert recording. Audio quality is not great but better than you might expect. RIP & respect to Mary Hansen as always
posted by CarrotAdventure at 9:11 PM PST - 23 comments

Dry Cleaning is a post-punk band from South London featuring a tight rhythm section, sweet guitar riffs, and wonderfully scattershot spoken word vocals. A song with a fun arty music video. A song about the Duchess of Sussex. The title track from their new album.
posted by a feather in amber at 6:33 PM PST - 22 comments

Mystery Science Theater 3000 lives once more! The show has been revived five times now: for Comedy Central (from KTMA), the Sci-Fi Channel (long before it was Syfy), for Netflix, as a series of live shows that technically (because of COVID) haven't even ended yet, and now, as the result of a second Kickstarter even more successful than their first, as a production for their own video site and apps, to be called The Gizmoplex. The first episode of the new season... GAMERA VS JIGER. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:57 PM PST - 24 comments

Nadia Eghbal gives a Long Now Foundation seminar on the maintenance of open source software. (SL one hour of video or audio)
posted by eotvos at 1:27 PM PST - 11 comments

We now have menu engineers. How some restaurants design menu weight, fonts, item positioning, boxes, pictures, and language to encourage you to buy more food. (SLBBC)
posted by doctornemo at 1:11 PM PST - 62 comments

A single-mission twitter account about video game design and representation, Can You Have Black Hair documents the answer to that question for a wide variety of games, plus related game asset and digital art tidbits.
posted by cortex at 7:45 AM PST - 20 comments

"You can try," he says softly in Mandarin, "but I don't think they'd talk to you about New Mexico." The confluence of changes in local regulations around hemp and cannabis cultivation and sale in the US, disagreements among neighbors in the Navajo Nation, the pandemic, investment by foreign investors (including people from China), exploitation of migrant workers (including people from China), and anti-Asian racism has led to tense confrontations, arrests, and tensions within families.
posted by brainwane at 7:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Helmut Jahn died Saturday from injuries suffered in a cycling accident near his home in the Chicago suburbs. Brash and fearless, Jahn was part of the so-called Chicago Seven, a contentious group of architects who rebelled in the 1970s against what they saw as the reductionist modernist narrative, popular in the media’s chronicling of Chicago architecture. [more inside]
posted by mookoz at 7:14 AM PST - 26 comments

A large part of the charm of Adventure Time was the original music. Wanna hear Marceline sing in Portuguese? Over 200 tracks from the show are available for free on youtube. [more inside]
posted by adept256 at 6:13 AM PST - 18 comments

We Found the Textbooks of Senators Who Oppose The 1619 Project and Suddenly Everything Makes Sense. Michael Harriot @ TheRoot.com takes a dive into the confirmed (or likely) school textbooks used by the US Senators most vocally opposed to the 1619 project and is . . . not surprised at all. The 1619 Project previously on Metafilter. [more inside]
posted by soundguy99 at 5:29 AM PST - 47 comments

Albert O. Hirschman [threadreader] - "Anti-fascist, resistance hero, later a development economist—may be the most interesting person to ever take up the profession... Hirschman had fought fascism in four countries, earning two graduate degrees along the way. He was still just 25 years old."[1,2,3,4,5,6] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM PST - 6 comments

Around the world in rare and beautiful apples: Atlas Obscura's Gastro Obscura showcases photos of unusual apples like the delicate and pretty Pink Pearl, the star-shaped Api Etoile, the deep red-black Black Oxford, the potato-like Knobbed Russet, and dark red-fleshed Otterson.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:38 PM PST - 30 comments

Why do trees keep happening?
posted by curious nu at 4:45 PM PST - 44 comments

In honor of Genesis (Phil, Mike, Tony, Daryl, and Nic Collins) touring for the first time since 2007 [Rolling Stone], let's revisit the Genesis catalog by looking at the shortest song on each album! Starting, very gently, with A Place To Call My Own, from From Genesis To Revelation. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:14 PM PST - 43 comments

Last year something massive came hurtling into view and exploded against the surface of daily life in the US. Many are still struggling to grasp what that thing was: its shape and implications, its sudden scale and bitter limits. One thing we know for sure is that it opened with a riot, on the street in Minneapolis where Floyd had cried out “I can’t breathe.”
posted by latkes at 8:15 AM PST - 23 comments

John Ernest Crawford, March 26, 1946 - April 29, 2021. One of the original Mouseketeers when The Mickey Mouse Club premiered in 1955, Johnny was best known for his Emmy-nominated portrayal of young Mark McCain on the TV western The Rifleman. (1958-1963). [more inside]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:04 AM PST - 19 comments

Out of power in Washington, Republicans pursue hard-right agenda across the country - "In Florida, Oklahoma and Iowa, Republican legislators passed bills granting immunity to drivers who hit protesters, part of a wave of Republican-led legislation aimed at cracking down on public protests of the kind that followed the police killing of George Floyd. Across the country, a bevy of states have passed bills preventing transgender athletes from playing high school sports." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:54 PM PST - 66 comments

I don't know if there's really any rules and I'm pretty sure there's not really a point, but apparently every year at Rockford Speedway they have a figure 8 trailer race. That was 2018; here's 2019, and (complete with shouted COVID seating instructions) 2020. Heck, I'll even throw in 2017. Not into trailers? You drive a hard bargain. Here's some schoolbuses.
posted by cortex at 9:28 PM PST - 24 comments

In 1959, at a dentist’s home in Seattle, a housekeeper was told to leave early. Her employers were hosting a neighborhood meeting that evening. As she left, she overheard their discussion: They were plotting ways to prevent a young Black doctor and his family from moving into the new Modernist house across the street. They had a secret weapon: real estate titan John L. Scott.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:44 PM PST - 7 comments

2021 census includes music playlists In 2015, the Canadian conservative government tried to undermine the census by making it optional. But Canadians fought back and won. Since then, gleeful social medial posts announce "I got the long form!" and Stats Canada has now provided a CanCon music playlists to enjoy while you enumerate. [more inside]
posted by chapps at 7:42 PM PST - 8 comments

Heather Lanier explores the pressure to perform happiness | Happiness is an encouraged performance in America whether you’re disabled or not. But the stakes of that performance are higher for disabled people and their caregivers. Heather Lanier's memoir about being a caregiver to a child with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, "Raising a Rare Girl," was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:25 PM PST - 25 comments

This week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Let's start at the center. The Parker Solar Probe set two new records as the fastest object ever made by humanity (330,000 miles per hour, 532,000 km/h) and the closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun (6.5 million miles, 10.4 million km). Back on Earth, scholars published research into Venusian data Parker caught when it last hurtled past that planet (previously). [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 3:44 PM PST - 11 comments

1943: “The unsolved color problem is gnawing deeper and deeper like a slow venom into the unstable, social structure of the U.S.A. The color riots this summer are in all probability only the forerunners of even more serious disturbances.”

The Enemy as Sociologist: American exceptionalism as diagnosed by the Nazi propaganda magazine Signal, by Sara Krolewski .
posted by Rumple at 2:17 PM PST - 16 comments

"In 2017, I created Women Street Photographers, an Instagram account that highlights and celebrates the work of women who work in what has historically been a male space." Staring is rude, but photographs allow us to gaze endlessly at what we find compelling.
posted by mecran01 at 1:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Actress and self-proclaimed 'vid vix' Tawny Kitaen is dead (sltmz). [more inside]
posted by kfholy at 9:29 AM PST - 29 comments

It's the 4th anniversary of Tom Holland doing Rihanna's Umbrella. By now, of course, there is an oral history of how it happened. (Previously.)
posted by toastyk at 8:27 AM PST - 14 comments

100 Best Sitcoms of All Time - "From family stories to band-of-misfits hangouts, classic rom-coms to workplace mockumentaries, cringe comedies to antihero showcases, and some shows that defy definition, these are the hundred series that have made us laugh, think, occasionally cry, and laugh all over again."
posted by kliuless at 11:49 PM PST - 124 comments

Airborne transmission is driving Covid, not droplet transmission, which means that certain precautions (avoiding indoor spaces, wearing a mask, ventilation) matter much more than others (staying six feet apart, cleaning surfaces). The WHO and CDC just updated their websites this week to reflect the importance of airborne transmission. Zeynep Tufekci: Why did it take so long for scientists to accept that Covid is airborne? Twitter thread. One part of the answer: in 1910, Dr. Charles Chapin attributed the efficacy of social distancing to droplet transmission. This became the conventional wisdom. And there's often "a higher standard of proof for theories that challenge conventional wisdom than for those that support it." [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 10:20 PM PST - 148 comments

The oldest trousers in the world. Scholars painstakingly recreate wool trousers found in a 3000-year-old grave site in Central Asia.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:11 PM PST - 60 comments

You probably didn’t expect that watching the NL West would be like putting on Godzilla vs. Kong only to see Mothra kick everyone’s ass. With all due respect to the Dodgers and Padres, this fledgling season has belonged to the less-than-ballyhooed San Francisco Giants—who not only lead the NL West over teams that Baseball Prospectus projected would win 103 and 96 games, respectively, but in fact are tied for the best record in the National League. It is bizarre. It is wonderful. What in the world is going on? from The NL West Has Only One Superteam, and That Team Has Buster Posey [The Ringer, by Claire McNear]
posted by chavenet at 2:25 PM PST - 14 comments

A 20 minute documentary about the Reykjavík downtown library by Jiaqian Chen, who interviews staff and patrons, including a child, a musician, and a homeless person, and films various activities taking place on the first day the library opened after the latest Covid lockdown in Iceland. The interviews are in English, the narration is in Chinese, and everything is subtitled in English and Chinese.
posted by Kattullus at 1:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Start The Steal [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:47 PM PST - 108 comments

Stacey Abrams Contains Multitudes [ungated link] - "Abrams went on to write seven more Selena Montgomery books (one of which, 'Never Tell', is in development with CBS), as well as two nonfiction works under her own name, while pursuing her day jobs as a tax lawyer, business owner, state lawmaker, candidate for governor and voting-rights advocate, to name a few."
---
*that famous Annie Dillard line
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM PST - 15 comments

This summer, five ginormous monsters are taking up residence at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. "Dambo admits that the stories and concepts he comes up with might be lost on visitors. "It doesn't really matter for me," he says. What matters is that his trolls draw people into nature "to have a good experience there." He also hopes they see that garbage can be turned into something big and beautiful. "I like to think that my art can help change people's perspective from trash being something that has no value to something that has a big value," he says." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:04 PM PST - 21 comments

An engaging overview of the unusual life of mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, by Luca Signorelli. [more inside]
posted by mubba at 12:44 PM PST - 24 comments

Inside a viral website: This is an account of running istheshipstillstuck.com. [Via Popbitch]
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM PST - 20 comments

Why people and organizations need to not look busy "Any time we eliminate slack, we create a build-up of work. DeMarco writes, “As a practical matter, it is impossible to keep everyone in the organization 100 percent busy unless we allow for some buffering at each employee’s desk. That means there is an inbox where work stacks up." [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:16 AM PST - 60 comments

The Guardian website, 200 years ago. [more inside]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:08 AM PST - 12 comments

Thursday, August 20, I got back from a 9 day pack trip with my packgoats. I took Grant, Albert, Bryce and Benson. A charming, vaguely anthropomorphic trail review of a person hiking alone with four goats. [more inside]
posted by Corduroy at 10:36 AM PST - 21 comments

A Monotown (monocity, моногород), is a local community dominated by a single company. There are a lot of them. Their architecture is often striking. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 9:08 AM PST - 14 comments

How a fringe religious movement in Japan built a pro-Trump social media Happy Science has adopted American far-right ideology for its own gain, just like Falun Gong.
posted by robbyrobs at 7:31 AM PST - 14 comments

The Slander Industry [slNYT] Two NYT reporters investigate "the secret, symbiotic relationship between those facilitating slander and those getting paid to remove it" by having one of them submit himself to a reputation-wrecking website and seeing where else his face and name popped up, then going to the reputation-repair sites. A follow-up of sorts to this article (earlier on the blue). (Via boingboing).
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:30 AM PST - 11 comments

From writer Anne Helen Petersen: “Prophets of Place: Centering Waco in the Shiplap Frontier of Fixer Upper” is truly my platonic ideal of an academic article: deeply interdisciplinary, beautifully written, accessible and rigorous. It’s the work of Ph.D. student Rebecca Lea Potts, and I was thrilled when she agreed to talk more about her route to this work, Texas, her mini-shiplap dissertation, and the sort of Christian music that you JUST KNOW is Christian. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:52 AM PST - 37 comments

Golf's Missing Links. John and Marie Llewellyn's website gathers together information about quondam community golf courses, mostly focussed on the late 19th and early 20th century in the UK but with some Irish and a smattering of mainland European courses as well. Each course has a few bits of historical documentation, usually some soothingly trivial contemporary local news reports ("[I]n matches like these the score is not the single object. The home club were, I am told, as hospitable as ever...") and occasionally some interesting accompanying photos. [more inside]
posted by Dim Siawns at 5:32 AM PST - 3 comments

Politician's Zoom Background Can't Hide Fact That He's Actually Driving — Andrew Brenner, a state senator in Ohio, is getting some heat for driving while participating in a Zoom call earlier this week. The Ohio Senate is currently taking up a bill that would create additional penalties for distracted driving and a local newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, pointed out the irony of the situation. But local media aren’t discussing perhaps the funniest aspect of this whole minor scandal: Brenner turned on a virtual background to make it appear like he was at home in his office. And he failed miserably., Gizmodo, Matt Novak, 5/6/2021.
posted by cenoxo at 4:49 AM PST - 44 comments

Muslim prayer rugs tend to be rectangular. Cats love bounded areas. You can see where this is going: "the biggest trial in prayer is not the devil, but cats" [translation from Malay. The thread is mainly in Indonesian and Malay, but I trust the visuals are sufficient]. As the second Ramadan in COVID season swings around, many families have to adapt and commit their taraweeh/terawih prayers at home. Last year, a similar thread went viral, with Muslims sharing their compromise prayer rugs for their kitties. Muslims really do love felines. Per Dr Stephennie Mulder in her twitter thread: 'Cats hold a revered place in Islam', so much so it was worth commenting on by Europeans during the time of the Ottoman Empire.
posted by cendawanita at 4:00 AM PST - 40 comments

In 2018, John Means was a 25-year-old soft-tossing lefty in his third straight year of double-A. Drafted in the 11th round by the Baltimore Orioles, and making it only up to #29 on the team's prospect list, the end of his baseball career seemed near enough that he set up a LinkedIn page advertising his (limited) experience as a substitute teacher. Today, he no-hit the Seattle Mariners, becoming the first Orioles starter to throw a no-hitter since Jim Palmer more than 50 years ago. [more inside]
posted by escabeche at 7:00 PM PST - 25 comments

Ed Ward was an early records reviewer for Rolling Stone and the Rock Historian for Fresh Air with Terry Gross until they refused to have him as a guest to promote The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1.. Against the orders of boss Jann Wenner, he launched the career of legendary critic Lester Bangs. After moving to Austin and working for the Austin American-Statesman, he was instrumental in the founding of South By Southwest. Ed died over the weekend at the age of 72. [more inside]
posted by cyndigo at 12:43 PM PST - 33 comments

This week is Senators Week on Defector, featuring posts on one or both of the upper house of the United States Congress and the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey team. [more inside]
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Former NBA players Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles host the Knuckleheads podcast, a series of freewheeling discussions with current and former NBA and WNBA players. Their first question is always the same: "When you first got to the league, who was the first person to bust your ass?" The answers are funny, enlightening, surprising and (almost) always humble; players often remember the exact number of points their buster scored in years- or decades-old games. They offer a unique window into what it's like to make the transition to the upper echelons of professional sports, when someone who has spent their life as the best player in the gym suddenly realizes that they still have a lot to learn. Here's Gary Payton with the paradigmatic "welcome to the NBA" moment, but there's much more inside. [more inside]
posted by googly at 10:12 AM PST - 20 comments

How to Build Language Justice [more inside]
posted by aniola at 8:40 AM PST - 15 comments

"I just wanted him to value me enough to break up with me." "When you are ghosted, you may feel like you should quietly accept the rejection and never bother the person again—either to prove that you “get the message” or because you want to preserve your dignity. This is exactly what your ghoster wants: to not have to deal with you. " [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:56 AM PST - 172 comments

How do people from religions who rely on the sun for certain events deal with it?
posted by kathrynm at 6:48 PM PST - 74 comments

"He made Belgium bigger and France smaller, it's not a good idea"
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:23 PM PST - 56 comments

biking is (not just) for boys (from peopleforbikes) Roshun Austin grew up poor in Memphis, Tennessee, the middle of five girls raised in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. “Religiously, there were a lot of things that girls could not do,” said Austin. “In the Holiness Pentecostal tradition, whistling was considered sinful, as was skipping. We couldn’t even wear pants, so riding a bike wasn’t that acceptable.”
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 3:21 PM PST - 11 comments

The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer. An AI program that recognizes unwrapped pastries for Japanese bakeries, built before image-recognizing neural networks became widespread, turns out to be useful for recognizing cancer cells. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 9:55 AM PST - 32 comments

How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life [ungated link] - "Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism." (NYT, PBS) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:54 AM PST - 22 comments

Buy Nothing groups are part of the Internet gift economy, currently only on Facebook. The idea is "give where you live" and to "buy nothing". Now they are building a sharing app, currently in beta.
posted by toastyk at 8:37 AM PST - 72 comments

The Brilliant Stupidity of Robert Palmer’s 1986 No. 1 Hit, ‘Addicted to Love’. A brief reflection on the 'utterly ridiculous', 'absolutely iconic', and 'brilliantly idiotic' song on the thirty-fifth anniversary of its hitting #1. [SLVariety]
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:06 AM PST - 81 comments

Ultra-runner Sabrina Verjee is struggling through blizzards even as you read this, on her latest attempt for a record-setting run of the Wainwright Fells Round, after becoming the first woman to do the run continuously last year. Her almost unbelievable effort to climb 214 peaks, without stopping, in less than six days, in the British "spring" weather, can be followed live here. [more inside]
posted by SandCounty at 6:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Sugar in COVID-19 (YT) from the Blue Brain Project at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland [more inside]
posted by daksya at 5:37 AM PST - 23 comments

Factories produced tired workers. A new frontier in fatigue studies followed. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 1:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online. The list is a tiny bit UK-centric, but if you have other online performances you'd like to recommend, that would be excellent :).
posted by storybored at 7:43 PM PST - 10 comments

Leverage: Redemption is coming. The heist-of-the-week TV series Leverage is coming back some time in 2021, with much of the original cast and some new additions, notably including Noah Wyle. (No Timothy Hutton, but Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Beth Riesgraf, and Aldis Hodge are all back.) The series will be available on IMDB's IMDB-TV streaming service. Leverage on MeFi Fanfare.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:19 PM PST - 50 comments

Marvel Studios Celebrates The Movies.

Marvel blasts off with a megatrailer for Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:45 PM PST - 123 comments

Colette is a 25 minute documentary by Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard about a visit made by 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine, to the Nordhausen concentration camp where her brother died. They were both members of the Resistance. She is accompanied by 17-year-old history student Lucie Fouble. The film won the Oscar for best documentary short this year.
posted by Kattullus at 2:02 PM PST - 12 comments

The Adventure Zone Season 4 trailer (SLYT). It's another beautiful (and well-scored!) TAZ trailer from animator Mimi Chiu!
posted by snerson at 10:28 AM PST - 85 comments

Eleven Ways Of Smelling A Tree: David Haskell invites us into the unique and sometimes surprising aromas of eleven different species of trees (Emergence Magazine) - "I kneel at the pile of fresh wood chips and scoop a double handful to my nose. A wet-green aroma: chopped lettuce and asparagus, backed by a whisper of tannin. Four hours ago, an ash tree stood here. Now, its trunk and limbs are gone, hauled off by the arborist’s crew. A stump grinder’s spinning maw turned the trunk’s base and the upper roots into a heap of pulverized sawdust. A circle of golden leaves on the ground marks the extent of the canopy, an imprint that will be raked away by evening. I lower my head and inhale again. Chopped fennel, a hint of mushroomy soil. The odor is intense, like diving in, mouth open. All at once, years of slowly accumulated aromas in ash wood are liberated into the air."
posted by not_the_water at 10:10 AM PST - 19 comments

How Batteries Work: Inside The Batteries Powering Your Car, Phone and More - "From electric vehicles to your cell phone, lithium ion batteries have evolved quickly over the past few years. Bloomberg Green charted the evolution of their makeup and how they work." (Bloomberg: The Next Generation of Batteries | How a New Generation of Batteries Will Change the World) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:42 AM PST - 19 comments

John Swartzwelder gives an interview to The New Yorker.
posted by box at 5:54 AM PST - 39 comments

Gates suggested that it could be unsafe to share the critical information that allows vaccines to be more widely produced “Typically in global health, it takes a decade between when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets to the poor countries.” Yet, in the past few months, the danger of not transferring the knowledge more quickly has become painfully clear, with deaths climbing in India, Brazil, and other parts of the world that have been unable to procure adequate supplies of vaccines while richer countries stockpile them. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 5:40 PM PST - 154 comments

Doc & Marty [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:17 PM PST - 19 comments

The Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical first identified Neurotypical Syndrome in 2002. A condition characterized by "preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity," this life-long disorder is complex and has no known cure. Will Rogers goes into detail about some of the hallmarks of Neurotypical Syndrome. Fortunately, recent research into the double empathy problem has revealed new ways in which we might learn to accommodate individuals with this condition. [more inside]
posted by brook horse at 9:03 AM PST - 23 comments

Modern CPU Architecture Part 1 – Key Concepts (Part 2 – Microarchitecture Deep Dive)[1,2] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 26 comments

Every spring, fish swim right through Utrecht, looking for a place to spawn and reproduce. Some swim all the way to Germany. There is a problem, however: they often have to wait a long time at the Weerdsluis lock on the west side of the inner city, as the lock rarely opens in spring. We have come up with a solution: the fish doorbell! An underwater camera has been set up at the lock, and the live feed is streamed to the homepage. If you see a fish, press the digital fish doorbell.

You too can help horny little fishies get to their make out spot by ringing the doorbell for them, as explained here. Bonus points if you live on the other side of the world, as the fish like to swim mostly at night.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:56 AM PST - 48 comments

Except for the simple difference in size, there are no meaningful differences between men’s and women’s brain structure or activity that hold up across diverse populations. [more inside]
posted by sammyo at 4:36 AM PST - 36 comments

The Radio We Could Send to Hell — Silicon carbide radio circuits can take the volcanic heat of Venus., IEEE Spectrum, 4/28/2021. Its average surface temperature is 464 °C, sulfuric acid droplets fill the atmosphere, and its surface pressure is ~90 times Earth’s. Venus is considered Earth’s planetary twin: their size and mass are very close, and perhaps it once had massive oceans (with life) like Earth. But what cataclysm caused Venus to lose its water? Scientists think Earth’s fate may be similar as our climate changes, but to gather more data new Venusian robotic landers and rovers are needed. Can we build them to survive and explore its hostile environment for months or years? We can.
posted by cenoxo at 4:09 AM PST - 11 comments

The Ernie Flatt Dancers put the variety in variety show with their weekly numbers on The Carol Burnett show. Here they are dancing to Emerson Lake & Palmer's Hoedown. Here's guest star Ken Berry with the Dancers. Or Sally Struthers. And here, flip-dancing with Dick Van Dyke. They certainly had Versatility! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:26 PM PST - 5 comments

After six years of successful partnership and transforming the men’s health and media spaces for the better, MEL and Dollar Shave Club’s financial relationship will come to an end in 60 days. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:04 PM PST - 4 comments

Not a UFOlogist, but it's been a long trip since people started seeing things in the sky and wanting to believe they were there for a reason. Recently the U.S. government, after years of denial, has sort-of-centralized reporting on UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). For Those Who Want To Believe and Those Who Want To Disprove rages on, as the Unidentifed Aerial Phenomena Task Force report, expected in June 2021, will be probably just one more light in the sky to debate about.

• New Yorker article with history
• Metabunk, asking the hard questions
• FLIR1 video mentioned in texts, showing UAP in incident the U.S. Navy classifies as unidentified.

posted by lon_star at 2:47 PM PST - 70 comments

Metafilter's own effugas, aka Dan Kaminsky, has passed. He was well known in computer security industry for his work on attacks against DNS (mefi), as well as his work publicising the Sony Rootkit fiasco. He was one of seven keyholders for the DNSSEC root recovery shard. An online memorial by Defcon is planned for May 2nd. [more inside]
posted by fragmede at 1:13 PM PST - 70 comments

Fundamentally, my work here is about creating a stable foundation of technology that is reliable, understandable, and practical for an individual to build for themselves.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:58 PM PST - 11 comments

From Bartosz Ciechanowski, an extremely readable illustrated tutorial of the basics of an internal combustion engine, with interactive 3D illustrations of various parts and principles.
posted by cortex at 12:46 PM PST - 12 comments

"I had butter in places a guy shouldn't have butter." On May 3, 1991, 20 million pounds of butter caught fire at a warehouse in Madison, WI. It took eight days to put it out entirely. Some video of the Great Butter Fire.
posted by escabeche at 12:37 PM PST - 20 comments

In a seemingly inevitable mutation of conspiracies about the pyramids and other megastructures of antiquity, adherents of the Tartarian Empire theory believe that non-brutalist architecture is proof of an ancient multicontinental empire that "they" are trying to suppress. No, really. Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 10:20 AM PST - 75 comments

Worthikids (previously) teams up with Japanese voice actors RASH A1M to kick it into outer space with 80's stop motion animation classic CAPTAIN YAJIMA
posted by Catblack at 9:20 AM PST - 12 comments

Konnakol is a style of vocal percussion in South Indian Carnatic music distinguished by its rhythmic intricacy and ancient heritage. It is based on a sophisticated system of rhythmic solfege that invites the expression of elaborate interlocking patterns and time signatures, like this musical exploration of the Fibonacci sequence. [more inside]
posted by dmh at 8:39 AM PST - 9 comments

The Joy of Condensed Matter - "Hard times in fundamental physics got you down? Let's talk excitons."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:26 AM PST - 5 comments

The dawn of a superstimulating Entertainment. Biologist Erik Hoel considers the purpose of dreaming, the function of fiction, and some futures of entertained minds. (SLBaffler)
posted by doctornemo at 8:02 AM PST - 21 comments