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A wild ride with Damien Desbrosses, incredably talented rider who does. not. give. up. Period. In his qualifying run, Desbrosses got a flat tire, placing him at the back of the pack for the start of the race. The start which is pretty much solid ice for the first of this race. Which puts Desbrosses weaving in/out/back/forth through the pack of less talented riders as they crash and careen. It's one hell of a show, just getting through that pack on that terrain. But he does get through them, and now into better riders on every kind of terrain you can imagine, and more than a few types you *cannot* imagine. He's happy, he's festive, laughing, hooting, politely wiping the camera lens so we stay right in the race with him. Right at the middle of the race, unbelievably, [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 10:36 PM PST - 32 comments

In the regular clock the face bezels stay in place and the hands move. Why am I telling you this? Well, maybe you see where I'm going. [more inside]
posted by curious nu at 4:34 PM PST - 55 comments

Feeling down about the latest awful headline? Each week, newsletter Today Do This picks a different news story and suggests one simple thing you can do right now to help. [via Hello from Duncan] [more inside]
posted by Paragon at 3:22 PM PST - 5 comments

How to defeat the billionaire class. Chris Hedges on Kshama Sawant as a model for effective strategy for change.
posted by latkes at 1:22 PM PST - 90 comments

Half-Earth: A Planetary Crisis Planning Game. A companion to the book Half-Earth Socialism, in this game you are in charge of managing the transition to a just, ecologically stable world. Research new technologies, embark on bold new infrastructure and educational projects, and (of course) do so without getting voted out of office. (The "half earth" concept previously.)
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:04 PM PST - 12 comments

And SHE, this 50-something lesbian talks to this stranger on the phone. And a LINE FORMS BEHIND HER. Every customer in that store knows that call, knows that feeling, and every person takes a turn talking to that man. That story comforts me so much to this day.

What happened one night when a desperate stranger called a local queer bookstore to ask for help and found a community eager to do so. (First link to the original Twitter thread, second to the queersplaining podcast (12:07 minutes) going into greater detail.)
posted by MartinWisse at 7:56 AM PST - 23 comments

Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work and Will Never Work [more inside]
posted by glonous keming at 7:34 AM PST - 68 comments

"Joy of Computing is here to remind you that computers can be both useful and fun": one new link to a technical project posted each day -- blog posts, toys, tools, games, and more. There's now an archive going back to 2018 ("a bit like a big group Tumblr"). Everything from a mathematical expression generator ("Do you want to say '1' as inscrutably as possible? This web app will generate a complicated mathematical expression for the integer of your choice.") to "an interactive tool that invites you to play and experiment with DNS to understand how it works" to a book about how WebRTC works.
posted by brainwane at 4:55 AM PST - 11 comments

VisiData is an interactive multitool for tabular data. It combines the clarity of a spreadsheet, the efficiency of the terminal, and the power of Python, into a lightweight utility which can handle millions of rows with ease. [more inside]
posted by kmt at 2:14 AM PST - 64 comments

Even tyrants would be foolish to pass down an iron law when a low-key change of norms would lead to the same results. And there is no question that changes of norms in Western countries since the beginning of the pandemic have given rise to a form of life plainly convergent with the Chinese model. Again, it might take more time to get there, and when we arrive, we might find that a subset of people are still enjoying themselves in a way they take to be an expression of freedom. But all this is spin, and what is occurring in both cases, the liberal-democratic and the overtly authoritarian alike, is the same: a transition to digitally and algorithmically calculated social credit, and the demise of most forms of community life outside the lens of the state and its corporate subcontractors. from Permanent Pandemic by Justin E.H. Smith [Harpers; Archive] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:16 AM PST - 48 comments

Bezos III (Gregorian Chant) / Living in the Future / Is it gonna end? ^YES When? ^NEVER / I Just Want to Feel Good / JEANS™ / Maybe I'll Feel Better / Five years / Trying to be funny / UV teeth / [What have we done to our children?] / The best-case scenario is Joe Biden / S P I D E R 🕷️ / "It's very upsetting that The Future is in front of Now." / This Isn't a Joke / [Never go outside again] / How to make a peanut butter sandwich / "Our doing isn't done and our done-ing isn't did." / "The unspeakable fear of never hitting the wall." / I'm sticking with ✨Jeffrey✨ / "MY PHONE MAKES ME SAD, AWWW." / All Eyes on Me (Early Demo) / "It's only a problem if you go outside." / "The thing that I'm writing about *is* an ending." / Goodbye (alternate ending) / The Chicken / A sneak peek at the ICU / I don't know what's happening / >> One year after the original virtuosic special premiered on Netflix, Bo Burnham returns with THE INSIDE OUTTAKES, a kaleidoscopic, stream-of-consciousness retrospective consisting of over an hour of new songs, new vignettes, fake ads, behind the scenes clips, musical outtakes, confessional pieces, perfectionist tableaus and so much more (including something from yours truly). [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:46 PM PST - 17 comments

I've been to more abandoned churches than I can count. I like to give them each their own gallery but sometimes I only get to an image to two. Holy places are built to worship a higher power; what becomes of them, and of us, when they are left behind? [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 6:50 PM PST - 30 comments

Irish and German people offering each other things. Never have Ask and Guess culture been so clearly shown as in this delightful 37-second Twitter video.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:23 PM PST - 82 comments

Two musicians born on January 8 -- David Bowie has a documentary coming out, with full cooperation by his estate, directed by Brett Morgen: Moonage Daydream trailer, 1m30s. Elvis Presley has a biopic coming out, directed by Baz Luhrmann: ELVIS extended trailer, 4m35s. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:36 PM PST - 11 comments

Tommy Johansson performs the classic Sabaton song, "Winged Hussars" in a Disney style.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:24 PM PST - 2 comments

"If Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, we should probably give him more cowbell!" [more inside]
posted by drlith at 8:20 AM PST - 37 comments

As George Bernard Shaw once said, "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men thread it." At least, I think that's what he said? In any case, in honor of these wise words, whatever they were, here is your new free thread! [more inside]
posted by taz at 5:35 AM PST - 66 comments

Jessamyn on a Slate podcast.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:57 AM PST - 23 comments

Extremes of Conventional Music Notation, a fascinating list of wild demands on musicians found in "conventional Western music" by Donald Byrd of Indiana University Bloomington [via the always-entertaining Threatening Music Notation Twitter account]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:24 AM PST - 12 comments

The fashion for supersized temples in India.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:28 PM PST - 12 comments

The Plot to Out Ronald Reagan (James Kirchick for Politico, an excerpt from Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington)
posted by box at 9:33 AM PST - 19 comments

Three beautiful people, sharing with us what they have lived, sharing with us their wisdom, sharing with us their beautiful smiles..
posted by dancestoblue at 8:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Whitewater [sea and sky][train journey], described as “an insistent, echoing snare drum and melting synth-brass that evokes an old science show that’s been left out in the sun”, is a track on Boards of Canada's extremely-limited 1996 'release' Boc Maxima. The track contains a distorted sample of Sesame Street's “Many Me's” segment (lyrics). Other Sesame Street segments used in BoC tracks. Other BoC track/remix fan videos include R35TT A01, Heard from Telegraph Lines (cover), Poppy Seeds (reprise) and The Children's Prison, R35TT A12, R35TT A14, Finity, Northern Plastics, Fly in the Pool, Dawn Chorus, Julie and Candy, Beware the Friendly Stranger, R35TT B09, Broken Drum, Hiscores, Peacock Tail, David Came To Mahana'im, and Sometimes.
posted by Wordshore at 3:09 AM PST - 16 comments

"Last semester I witnessed the worst cheating in a course I’ve ever seen. And, I’ve seen stuff. Since this whole thing happened I’ve told the story a bunch of times, and sometimes I get requests to tell it. This is also a story for my future students about what not to do. I’m not interested in outing my students, or casting shade on them. So, this is a story about cheating, but also about how I tried to turn things around and get students to engage in my course.

It started in August 2021." (Length: long, 10k words)
posted by lesser weasel at 11:23 PM PST - 195 comments

Rowan Atkinson Live [1h10m] The ever-morphing man takes the stage in Boston (!) with Angus Deayton to present an evening of comedy of all kind of things. Like, if you can imagine Rowan doing it, he's probably doing something else and more entertaining than you pictured. Introduced by The Devil, the evening goes on from there.
posted by hippybear at 8:59 PM PST - 15 comments

How to ADHD is a channel/website by Jessica McCabe, who talks about her life with ADHD. It started with a TEDTalk about six years ago, but she posted a video a few weeks ago reviewing the internalized ableism that was part of that talk, and how she's trying to do something a little different going forward. Highly relevant for anyone who struggles with disability. (slyt, 12:58, some jump cuts, works well as audio-only)
posted by curious nu at 6:36 PM PST - 11 comments

T r o u b l e   i n   m i n d [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 5:48 PM PST - 13 comments

"Yeah, it is seriously putting me off chicken breast." Industrially farmed chicken affected by woody breast has a very different, stringy texture and is dismaying cooks and consumers. White striping and woody breast is associated with fast growing, heavier broiler chickens but research on its effects and poultry industry options remains ongoing.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:57 AM PST - 71 comments

Misirlou played on homemade instruments with great enthusiasm by French band Les Fo'Plafonds (slyt).
posted by john hadron collider at 8:09 AM PST - 18 comments

"A poem will not stop a bullet, a novel cannot defuse a bomb,” Salman Rushdie said. But writers can still “sing the truth, and name the lies.”
posted by folklore724 at 10:55 PM PST - 5 comments

"...A natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it."
posted by blue shadows at 10:50 PM PST - 31 comments

Genesis - The Final Show (London O2 Arena | March 26, 2022) [2h28m] is a multi-cam fan shot edit of what is probably the last show ever of the rockers. A concert that stretches across their career, features stellar playing from everyone involved (Phil's son on the drums!), and continuing their legacy of groundbreaking light shows and concert presentation going back decades.
posted by hippybear at 8:43 PM PST - 19 comments

I Made Some Tools [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by cortex at 5:56 PM PST - 28 comments

Darkpatterns.games is a game review website devoted to helping you find games that don't use psychological tricks to manipulate you into becoming an addicted gamer. Learn about the dark patterns that game designers use to waste your precious time and money.
posted by cosmic owl at 4:21 PM PST - 23 comments

The entire German-speaking internet is going to Sylt. [more inside]
posted by evidenceofabsence at 2:06 PM PST - 24 comments

“Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live With Her Voices.” What psychiatry calls psychosis, the Hearing Voices Movement calls nonconsensus realities. It provides support groups for people with hallucinations and is part of an effort to reform how the mental health field approaches severe psychiatric conditions. [more inside]
posted by akk2014 at 1:30 PM PST - 62 comments

'Mind blowing’ ancient settlements uncovered in the Amazon via Nature.
The urban centres are the first to be discovered in the region, challenging archaeological dogma. Mysterious mounds in the southwest corner of the Amazon Basin were once the site of ancient urban settlements. Using a remote-sensing technology to map the terrain from the air, scientists found that, starting about 1,500 years ago, ancient Amazonians built and lived in densely populated centres, featuring 22-metre-tall earthen pyramids, that were encircled by kilometres of elevated roadways. Some background Amazon ecology: Footprints in the forest.
posted by adamvasco at 12:28 PM PST - 6 comments

"Though its author, Kevin Roose, wrote that it aimed to be a "sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is", it was a thinly-veiled advertisement for cryptocurrency that appeared to have received little in the way of fact-checking or critical editorial scrutiny. It uncritically repeated many questionable or entirely fallacious arguments from cryptocurrency advocates, and it appears that no experts on the topic were consulted, or even anyone with a less-than-rosy view on crypto. This is grossly irresponsible. Here, a group of around fifteen cryptocurrency researchers and critics have done what the New York Times apparently won't." [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 11:04 AM PST - 51 comments

The Blue School teaches kids about labor unions and activism. But it won’t recognize its own union.
posted by Etrigan at 10:03 AM PST - 30 comments

Glug glug, let's take a stroll! [more inside]
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:52 AM PST - 7 comments

Pickleball is the Wild, Wild West
posted by box at 7:37 AM PST - 50 comments

For the purposes of this list, something is femcel if it involves 1) being a woman 2) who is experiencing romantic and sexual rejection 3) and does not want to be. As we will discuss, there are books for the better-adjusted femcel, about the pleasure of living life on your own terms or whatever. But this list is, primarily, for the brooders. There are of course many other micro-canons which overlap: sad girls, alcoholic girls, crazy girls, and so on. But this list is for the girls who are out there listening to “Somebody To Lay Down Beside Me” on repeat.

The Femcel Canon, by essayist B.D. McClay (previously discussed here and here)
posted by rollick at 6:33 AM PST - 112 comments

And yet Kai ended up going right. He later said that he had misjudged the takeoff, and let the left get away from him. But it was breathtaking, seeing him run against the grain of the swell on a very large wave. He accelerated, now low in the face, then hit a stack of small wavelets coming off the cliff. It was like running over speed bumps while going eighty on a highway. His fins began to cavitate. His board flipped in the air, bucking him off, and the whole wave landed on him from a considerable height. He later said that his jersey was pulled over his head, so that he couldn’t get to the rip cords for his inflation vest. He was underwater for quite a while. From Kai Lenny Surfs the Unsurfable by William Finnegan [New Yorker; Archive]
posted by chavenet at 2:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Andrew "Fletch" Fletcher, founding member of Depeche Mode has passed away at age 60.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:24 PM PST - 74 comments

Alan White longtime drummer of Yes has passed away at age 72.
posted by Windopaene at 5:47 PM PST - 36 comments

Willow trailer (SLYT) via The Verge Plans for a movie were scrapped, so we get a whole series now, and it premieres November 30th on Disney Plus. Warwick Davis and Joann Whalley are back.
posted by soelo at 3:40 PM PST - 38 comments

Experiences. Using VideoGrep, Sam Lavigne created a supercut of Mark Zuckerberg selling us the Metaverse. Warning: Zuckerberg. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:19 AM PST - 31 comments

A shocker. Ray Liotta, the terrific actor whose career breakout came in the 1990 Martin Scorsese crime classic Goodfellas after co-starring in Field of Dreams, has died. He was 67.
posted by Etrigan at 9:35 AM PST - 99 comments

PONG This is a simulation of the 1972 Atari game Pong at a circuit level. The original Pong did not have any code or even a microprocessor. It was a circuit, implemented mostly using digital logic chips, with a few timers and other analog components.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 9:33 AM PST - 12 comments

"It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it - no time can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection." - Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare, by James Baldwin.
posted by mhoye at 9:07 AM PST - 15 comments

The California town was almost totally destroyed in a 2018 wildfire in which 85 people died. Now, as the rebuilding process continues, its housing prices are rising faster than anyone predicted. [sl Vice]
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 9:01 AM PST - 31 comments

(Warning, link to NYTimes) The story of Loren Bouchard, and the soothing comfort of a "decidedly nonaspirational" family "in an unjust, disappointing, fart-choked world."
posted by coffeecat at 3:57 PM PST - 68 comments

Simon Rich (Previously, Previously, Previously) writes yet again in the New Yorker, this time about the tribulations of Mario as he deals with aging: “Mario”

[N]ow that I’m-a in my forties I don’t really think about my body anymore, and when I do it’s-a to focus on the parts that I’m-a proud of, like my thick mustache and my big strong ass. And, honestly, I can’t tell you how liberating it is just to allow myself to feel-a sexy. Like, why can’t a short fat guy be sexy? I feel-a sexy, and I’m not afraid to say I feel-a sexy.

[more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 3:49 PM PST - 17 comments

Propaganda are back after 37 years, with a new album and performing live Famously described as "Abba in Hell", Düsseldorf synthpop duo Propaganda (Susanne Freytag and Claudia Brücken) released the astounding album "A Secret Wish" in 1983. (Here are the tracks Duel and Dr Mabuse.) Then they split up, leaving behind a cult following and a handful of remix albums based on the original master recordings by ZTT's Trevor Horn (see also). But now they're back as xPropaganda with a new album, The Heart Is Strange, and it's like they'd never left.
posted by cstross at 12:49 PM PST - 18 comments

The 100 Greatest Stools in Stand-Up [Vulture; Archive]
posted by chavenet at 12:04 PM PST - 25 comments

Yet in his own lifetime – and indeed for half a century after his death – Dibdin was no one-hit wonder, but a hugely prolific, extremely famous figure. He performed in operas and then wrote his own, composed more than a thousand songs, toured one-man shows around the country, and opened his own London theatre. He penned several novels and a five-volume history of theatre. His own autobiography also stretched to four volumes – the largest memoir of the period, and a good indication of Dibdin's remarkable facility for self-promotion. [more inside]
posted by smcg at 11:33 AM PST - 3 comments

Backxwash is the performing name of Ashanti Mutinta, blending hip-hop with doom metal, avante-noise, pagan spirituality and trans representation. She discusses her latest album, 2021's 'I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES' in various interviews, and has a fantastic half hour studio-live set presented by Audiotree. [more inside]
posted by FatherDagon at 11:03 AM PST - 5 comments

Can we please kill [underarm] crutches. (Outside Magazine podcast + transcript) The best estimates have axillary [underarm] crutches being prescribed roughly 60 to one over forearm crutches [in the U.S.]. They've been the standard for so long that they're just part of the medical system's DNA. But this has been the case for a long time. I mean there's ancient Egyptian drawings that depict the use of an underarm walking stick and I'll bet they just put up with it too.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:34 AM PST - 56 comments

The [U.S.] Army now has nine new potential namesakes to consider for Army bases originally named after the Confederacy. Among them are Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:39 AM PST - 36 comments

If you ever fiddled with DoubleDOS you may be surprised (as I was) to learn of Wendin-DOS. The fact that a multitasking DOS was a derivative of a kit built for an x86 Unixalike, years before the beginnings of Linux, is a weird bonus. Or anti-bonus. I don't know now. The main article is a touch cagey about linking the disk images, (though TBH I've failed with VirtualBox and those images)
posted by pompomtom at 7:03 AM PST - 32 comments

If you're one of the 10% who forgets to put on pants for zoom meetings, Everything Is Hacked has you covered. Add pants or blur out everything from the waist down for extra safety on Zoom calls . Video explanation.
posted by signal at 7:32 PM PST - 28 comments

Alice in Chains in Old English. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 7:20 PM PST - 9 comments

YouTube: Top Dawg-signed artist Doechii goes "Crazy" in this extremely NSFW (tw: guns, murder, nudes) music video. Watch at your peril.
posted by kfholy at 3:35 PM PST - 33 comments

Thomas Collet uses Google Earth as a palette to create glitchy digital art.
Barcode (frustratingly styled as ||||||||||||||||||||) creates downtempo electronic music that will probably make you think of the aughts and quiet late nights, or of Murcof, or Redshape. (“Brainjazz”, per the 110100100 record label)
At Berlin’s Atonal festival in 2021, the two came together to create a forty-five minute video-and-music-scape - a session of music by Barcode, user09081994, and Grand Inc juxtaposed over Google Earth landscape pans, sudden juxtapositions, and visual distortions.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:04 PM PST - 5 comments

Less than two weeks after 10 people were killed in a racially motivated massacre in Buffalo NY, fourteen children and one teacher have been killed in a shooting at a Texas elementary school. The story is still developing. [cw for discussion of gun violence and violence towards children]
posted by fight or flight at 2:40 PM PST - 680 comments

“I have to be mindful of their previous relationship they’ve had with photos of themselves. And then there’s their own self-relationship.” (LA Times original, archive.org version). Shy poses vs. IDGAF poses | Critiquing celebrity poses at the Oscars, mens edition. | Red carpet poses that aren't boring | Shy vs. power couple poses | Quick mirror selfie poses | Four strangers get a posing lesson at Disney Resort.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:22 AM PST - 13 comments

The Woozle Effect, named after a Winnie-the-Pooh story, "occurs when frequent citation of publications lacking evidence misleads individuals, groups, and the public, and nonfacts become urban myths and factoids." [Wikipedia] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:27 AM PST - 33 comments

After the modern world's first successful slave rebellion established the nation of Haiti, reparations were paid - to their former enslavers. "The price tag was huge. In 1803, France sold Louisiana to the United States for 80 million francs — just over half what it demanded from Haiti. And back then, Louisiana encompassed a large sweep of the continent, stretching across all or parts of 15 modern states. Haiti was 1/77 the size. The Haitian government didn’t have enough money to pay even the first of five installments" Where would Haiti be if they hadn't been forced to pay? Estimates of the economic loss vary and has been calculated by some to be up to $115 billion. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:04 AM PST - 24 comments

Legendary funk/jazz fusion drummer Dennis Chambers hears Tool's "Schism" for the first time. Then plays it. A companion piece to Larnell Lewis Hears "Enter Sandman" for the first time.
posted by saladin at 6:11 AM PST - 24 comments

From Dec 2021, Jon Stewart sits down with writers Jay Jurden, Robby Slowik, and Chelsea Devantez and respond to voicemails [45m]. It's funny and charming and really thoughtful and shows a depth of everything that I wasn't expecting. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM PST - 2 comments

Disney+ set up a spectacular drone show in the skies over Lisbon to hype the launch of the new Obi Wan Kenobi series. One of the producers, Fabrice N'Kom from Dronisos, explains.
posted by chavenet at 2:48 PM PST - 18 comments

While many precision excavator (backhoe) feats remain unrecorded, there are now many thousands of videos online. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 2:29 PM PST - 17 comments

“[ 11 chicks ! ] 79 days from nesting to fledging of Japanese Tit nest box (Parus minor)” is a fifty-minute video with some light jazz background music that provides exactly what it claims. Play it on a big screen in the background and mellow out.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:37 AM PST - 12 comments

The Cut and New York have removed their paywall for articles about finding abortion care. Find abortion services near you. How to have a medication abortion. How to protect yourself when seeking an abortion. Don't trust DIY abortion advice on Tiktok. How to get help for your abortion via mutual aid networks. The crisis pregnancy center trap and how not to fall for it. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 10:03 AM PST - 18 comments

In 2014, UK sculptor Douglas Jennings was commissioned by the Public Memorials Appeal (funded through public donations) to create a 10ft tall bronze statue of the late Margaret Thatcher. This was rejected by Westminster Council in 2018. Earlier this month the statue was installed in her home town Grantham with some local support. Within hours the statue had been egged allegedly and inaccurately by Jeremy Webster an employee of University of Leicester. Within days, Oli Dugmore, entrepreneur, set up a stall next to the statue selling £10 eggs. tl;dr: 5 minute YT. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:23 AM PST - 27 comments

At last summer's meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (previously), delegates voted to force their executive committee to turn over confidential documents about the church's handling of sexual abuse cases to an independent review committee. Almost a year later, the report (trigger warning: sexual abuse) has been released. It says that church leadership routinely silenced and disparaged sexual abuse survivors, ignored calls for policies to stop predators, and dismissed reforms that they privately said could protect children but might cost the SBC money if abuse victims later sued.
posted by clawsoon at 9:12 AM PST - 64 comments

The French street artist Miss.Tic has passed away. The BBC has an English obituary, Le Monde in French. You can see a gallery of works on her website but the real joy is seeing her work in context on random Parisian streets. [more inside]
posted by Nelson at 8:40 AM PST - 8 comments

Adam "tweebiscuit" Conover decided to run the LA Marathon more or less on a whim. It sucked, even more than a marathon should.
posted by Etrigan at 5:30 AM PST - 46 comments

This week's free thread is dancing, dancing, dancing 💃🏽 ... and narrated by Florence (+ the Machine) with Bill Nighy, co-starring as Florence's anxiety. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:26 AM PST - 87 comments

A wild new court decision would blow up much of the government's ability to operate - "The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit's decision in Jarkesy v. SEC would dismantle much of the system the federal government uses to enforce longstanding laws." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 37 comments

From the department of 'pop culture ephemera which is far better than it has any right to be,' I bring you the BMO Mixtape. Or listen on soundcloud, which breaks it out by tracks, but that's kinda cheating, because the whole point of this thing is starting at the beginning and just melting into the chillest remixes of Adventure Time songs imaginable. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu at 10:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Most medical authorities do not consider excited delirium to be real. A ‘city on fire’: How [1980s] Miami shaped a disputed diagnosis used to justify deaths in police custody is a May 2022 podcast episode from StatNews (pdf transcript). Earlier StatNews coverage on the topic: The term was first used in 1985 to explain a series of seven deaths among people who used cocaine, all of whom were forcibly restrained and five of whom died in police custody. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:41 PM PST - 54 comments

The YouTube channel Random Things, despite its name, provides something very specific: commentary-free, music-free videos of the manufacturing process in small factories and workshops in Pakistan. Craftsmen and laborers work in what are often difficult circumstances to make cricket/tennis balls, Hollywood fantasy swords, spoons, recycled steel, and much more.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:47 AM PST - 38 comments

"Devoted to exploring great films." Since 2016, film professionals Steve Morris and John Rocha have perused a couple hundred beloved movies. Near the show's beginning, fans asked for more depth and more detail. So they honed the show into a longer format and revisited movies from early episodes, such as Die Hard, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Their back catalogue contains deep-dives into Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ratatouille, Rear Window, Remains of the Day, Reservoir Dogs, Return of the Jedi, The Right Stuff, Robocop, Rocky, Rocky IV, Rushmore, and that's just the Rs. The last couple months have been focused on Spike Lee, with detailed examinations of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. (They've similarly discussed directors Hitchcock, Coppola, and Kurosawa.) Their latest episode is a first part on Soderbergh's Oceans 11.
posted by McLir at 8:24 AM PST - 7 comments

A Hugh Jass Oral History of ‘Flaming Moe’s' [Mel Magazine]
posted by chavenet at 3:05 AM PST - 16 comments

I post this to let y'all know that da share z0ne (previously) has now posted perhaps the graphic most? or least? suited for reference in MetaFilter discussion: "Thank's for the infomation / I changed my mind / I was wrong / It won't be the last time / bitch" of course accompanied by a leather-clad skeleton arcing colored energy between their hands.
posted by brainwane at 8:43 PM PST - 24 comments

In Numismatics News: Rare gold Eid Mar aureus is up for auction. "The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen." (Nice History) -William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost. It sold in 2020 for 4.2 million 💵. Et Tu, Brute?' Who Was the Real Brutus.
posted by clavdivs at 8:25 PM PST - 7 comments

An oral history of the improbable 1972 Toronto production, featuring Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber and Paul Shaffer
posted by Etrigan at 6:43 PM PST - 39 comments

"The history of lingerie is an important part of the history of women’s changing role in society, yet it is rarely given the attention it deserves. The Underpinnings Museum is an online museum: a radical innovation in showcasing and documenting exquisite objects, dedicated to the evolution of underwear through the ages." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 5:01 PM PST - 5 comments

Meet Rambo: a very crafty fox whose knack for evasion is driving Australian conservationists to wit's end while also gaining their grudging respect.(SLSydney Morning Herald) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:26 PM PST - 14 comments

WaPo: Russia bans 963 Americans, including Biden and Harris, for life. Here is the list (mostly Russian, but the names are in English). (archive.today link)
posted by Rash at 3:03 PM PST - 45 comments

As right to repair laws slowly advance through the US and several states, The Verge tries out Apple's Self Service Repair process and is surprised to receive 79 pounds of equipment on their $1,200 deposit, compared to the $45 iFixit equivalent.
posted by meowzilla at 2:40 PM PST - 52 comments

Edible, tasteless food tape to keep alllll the ingredients in the burrito. Student project solves real problem. Honestly, I want to see this replace at least half the tinfoil around giant fast food burritos.
posted by clew at 10:19 AM PST - 101 comments

You Are Not Where You Think You Are The latest offering from Kurzgesagt.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:39 AM PST - 43 comments

... by Grace Petrie. It was smcg who introduced me to Petrie right here on the Blue, and I'm very grateful for that because she's a terrific songwriter. Her latest album's called Connectivity, and this is my favourite track.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Alan Watts on KPFA - "A carefully curated collection of Alan Watts wisdom."[1,2] (via)

---
Levels of Magnification (mp3) - "We can never change things until we first accept them." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 13 comments

It's election time once more in the Antipodes, so let's consider the cream of this season's political comedy. Have you missed the last three years? Catch up with this helpful Honest Government Ad from the 'Australien Government'. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:18 PM PST - 191 comments

Retiring to cruise ships to avoid cost of land living The Burks have grown frustrated by the mounting costs of living on land, they said.... [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 5:59 PM PST - 96 comments

NYT obituary. From a remembrance by New Yorker editor David Remnick: He was not only the greatest of baseball writers; he had also lived long enough to see Babe Ruth, of the Yankees, at one end of his life and Shohei Ohtani, of the Angels, at the other. Age conferred authority. When Roger covered the Yanks in their late-nineties heyday, Joe Torre, the team’s heavy-lidded chief, would sometimes interrupt one of his avuncular soliloquies to a clutch of young reporters and look to him for affirmation: “Roger, am I getting that right?” Sitting in his office, Roger, much like Torre, held court, telling stories about playing Ping-Pong with James Thurber, editing William Trevor and Donald Barthelme, and watching ballgames with the Romanian-born artist Saul Steinberg, . . . [more inside]
posted by beagle at 5:43 PM PST - 22 comments

A new trailer for "3000 Years of Longing", the new film from George Miller, based on story by A. S. Byatt. (SLYT)
posted by Ipsifendus at 3:58 PM PST - 22 comments

The author of Thousand Year Old Vampire made something even weirder than that [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 2:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer Mary Robinette Kowal offers various writing tips on her TikTok such as why "Show, Don't Tell makes her cranky", "Show, Don't Tell, Part 2", "'Write What You Know' Isn't What You Think", and "How To Start Writing". She also has one of the most eloquent examples of Ask vs Guess Culture. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:38 PM PST - 35 comments

While preparing to write a play based on Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer-winning novel Angle of Repose, Sands Hall learned that Stegner plagiarized from the writing of Mary Hallock Foote (who was also an accomplished illustrator.) Later, Hall wrote a play about the situation called Fair Use.
posted by larrybob at 1:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Ed Simon of Belt Magazine: The Rise of Pennsylvania’s Everyday Left — Candidates like John Fetterman and Summer Lee are charting a more progressive future for Democrats [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 12:59 PM PST - 17 comments

The Annihilation of Florida: An Overlooked National Tragedy. Jeff VanderMeer: 'A state that had been among the wildest outside of Alaska or Montana asks its citizens to passively watch as the nonhuman world is liquidated...'
posted by Lyme Drop at 12:25 PM PST - 10 comments

Christian Cooper who was bird-watching in Central Park in 2020 when Karen Amy Cooper (no relation) saw him and called 911 frantically reporting that "an African-American man is threatening me and my dog," now has his own show on National Geographic called “Extraordinary Birder” [more inside]
posted by bendy at 11:52 AM PST - 14 comments

Her baseball journey has just begun. Stay tuned [MLB.com] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 10:00 AM PST - 5 comments

Bob (Robert) Neuwirth, born June 20th, 1939; died May 18th, 2022

See also

Friend and confidant of Bob Dylan in the 1960s and Janis Joplin in the 1970s, he appeared in both Don't Look Back and Eat the Document as well as on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. He was the OG hipster.
posted by y2karl at 8:18 AM PST - 12 comments

India Walton: The Buffalo Massacre Is Rooted in Segregation and Disinvestment "There are a lot of people in this community who are devastated, but not surprised. Buffalo is racist. Buffalo is racially segregated. There’s a line that separates those who have from those who have not, and that is Main Street. Anything east of Main Street is where 85 percent of the black folks in the city live. It’s been that way." [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:06 AM PST - 10 comments

Zeynep Tufekci in the New York Times: "That core principle of liberty, the right to be free of intrusions and surveillance of this scope and scale, needs to be defended against the new technologies that have undermined it so gravely." [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 11:16 PM PST - 30 comments

History Hit brings us Dan Snow being shown around Westminster Abbey by Sir David Cannadine, and it's a history lesson, an architectural tour, and a pilgrimage all rolled into 28 minutes. Enlightening and fun!
posted by hippybear at 7:55 PM PST - 8 comments

Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, and so the city put his silhouette on the town water tower. On Monday, a man was arrested for shooting a hole in the water tower.
posted by MtDewd at 6:07 PM PST - 48 comments

"Once upon a time, the world was cruel, and there was a witch who knew it well. And so, she sold her heart away and built a house in the woods where the world could never find her. At first she would let no one into her fortress. But in the long march of days, a strange thing happened: in her own cold and spiteful way, the witch made a friend... and then another... and then several more, until her house was teeming with colorful faces and complicated lives. The house would come to be known as Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, and it would last for a very long time." [more inside]
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:09 PM PST - 4 comments

The Long, Slow Death of Lehman Brothers. You would think that Lehman Brothers, the bankrupt firm that inaugurated the financial crisis of 2008 would be dead and buried by now. Not so. "About that same time, on the seventh floor[the day of the bankruptcy], there was a run on the on-site snack shop. Staffers were panic-buying fruit and chocolate bars, afraid that the payment cards they loaded with cash would become worthless. Some returned to their desk with arms full of bananas. It was a microcosm of what Lehman’s administrators would be doing for the next 14 years: answering questions from people who had claims on Lehman—not lunch cards, but bonds—and then deciding how many bananas they could give them. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 1:41 PM PST - 21 comments

For your late night chill-out phantasmagoria needs, may I offer some sick tunes & some sick toons?: DWIG — Orange Evening; Daniel Norgren — Howling Around My Happy Home (Margee Rework); Dead Pirates — UGO (warning: dumb toon boobery at the end); Mcbaise — Water Slide (feat. Kamggarn). [more inside]
posted by taz at 12:41 PM PST - 2 comments

Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, a 51 page report (pdf). Co-author Carl Bergstrom summarizes in a Twitter thread: [Science] textbooks largely traffic in certainties—the settled "facts" of last year's science. This can be terribly disorienting when science-in-the-making is suddenly thrust into public view by ongoing events... Students need to know about how scientists manage uncertainty. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:18 PM PST - 29 comments

TheBaseMesh by Tim Steer: Whether you need a mesh for Digital Sculpting, creating a High or Low poly model, Game Prototyping, draw-overs for concepting or any other creative endeavour, this [CO0-licensed, weekly updated] asset library has you covered. Every model adheres to real-world scale and comes with basic UVs, so you can get to making those all-important creative decisions faster. ZIP files contain both .FBX and .OBJ files. Happy creating!
posted by Going To Maine at 11:14 AM PST - 3 comments

Greek composer Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, noted for the soundtracks of Blade Runner and Chariots Of Fire, and compositions honoring the NASA's 2001 Mars Orbiter mission and the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission among many, many others, and better known as Vangelis, has died. [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 10:58 AM PST - 83 comments

In the back end of Tajikistan seems like there is an ugly police action underway. Badakshan is the "other half" of Tajikisan, home of the Pamirians. They are ethnically distinct from the Tajiks and are Ismailis (followers of the Aga Khan) so they tend not to mix with the majority Tajiks so much, despite meddling since the 70s at least. So why is this ugly thing happening?
posted by Meatbomb at 7:44 AM PST - 14 comments

The pro-Depp, anti-Heard stance is now a dominant trend on social media. What is with these people? (SLAtlantic)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:51 AM PST - 334 comments

Ant Game! Place anthills and see how much food your ants can collect before time runs out. Make your own maps in Sandbox mode. Compete against the world in Daily Challenges.
posted by MetaFilter World Peace at 6:42 AM PST - 19 comments

This Hacktivist Site Lets You Prank-Call Russian Officials [archive] To protest the war in Ukraine, WasteRussianTime.today auto-dials Russian government officials, connects them to each other, and lets you listen in to their confusion.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:50 AM PST - 19 comments

Disconnect from work and let the horses of Iceland reply to your emails while you are on vacation. (Seriously)
posted by chavenet at 3:47 AM PST - 23 comments

The Diablo Sandwich was first ordered by Sheriff Buford T. Justice at the Old Hickory House BBQ joint during a pause in his pursuit of The Bandit. It is washed down with a Dr Pepper and eaten while you are in a God Damn Hurry. Variously described as a pulled pork sandwich, an executive burger, or a jazzed-up Sloppy Joe, most variations are a combination of beef, tomato sauce and sour crème, though a forensically detailed analysis concludes with 'for the purist, one must use Trappey's hot sauce'. Recipes: Oakland County Moms, Cook Gem, Vaya. Previously.
posted by Wordshore at 3:16 AM PST - 27 comments

Futel: Free Public Telephony in the name of Social Justice. "Denial of telephony services has long been a tactic used against undesirable populations, and our devices will counteract that. But more importantly, we will help to establish a new era of communication, one in which reaching out is not only desirable, but mandatory." In a nutshell, Futel fixes up old public telephone booths, and then resituates them back into public spaces so that Anyone can call Anyone again, and be able to stick their used gum in the plastic folder that used to hold a phone book. Here's a HOPE talk from 2018: "Futel: A Technology So Advanced We Leave It Out On The Street All Night"
posted by not_on_display at 9:16 PM PST - 11 comments

Can Labor Unionists Be Style Icons? John Elward has been documenting the stylishness of union workers on his Twitter account DrippedOutTradeUnionists and argues that "Drip can be very much an organizing tactic". [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 4:06 PM PST - 20 comments

Mike Douglass interviews Carrie, Mark, and Harrison [14m] sometime soon after the 1977 release of their film. The interview weird and young and charming. Everyone seems overwhelmed, and everyone is still having to explain the movie when they talk about it.
posted by hippybear at 4:05 PM PST - 24 comments

Harrowing, yet interesting, video shot from a car while a brush fire came towards the road they were traveling on.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:22 PM PST - 11 comments

The Final Dance in Dirty Dancing, But They're Dancing to The Muppet Show theme (SLTweet)
posted by box at 12:39 PM PST - 27 comments

This is a single link to a thoughtful twitter thread about choosing not to kill a a spider.
posted by eotvos at 9:47 AM PST - 40 comments

PMG: Making Sense of VRchat, the 'Metaverse' people actually like. An excellent overview on VRChat, what makes it work, its pitfalls, and what makes it so appealing in comparison to the type of environment Meta/Facebook envisions.
posted by Philipschall at 9:39 AM PST - 13 comments

Hell has frozen over. "Finland and Sweden submitted letters Wednesday [today] formally applying to join NATO, a historic moment for two countries that held fast to military nonalignment until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended their thinking about security." [more inside]
posted by bendy at 5:03 AM PST - 76 comments

Struggle for Pleasure, by Wim Mertens (Antwerp, 2005) (Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, 2008) (Brussels, 2015) was originally released in 1983. The piece influenced 1993's Café Del Mar by Energy 52 (original) (higher quality radio version) which has undergone numerous remixes e.g. Paul Oakenfield's remix, Paul van Dyk's SHINE remix, Michael Woods remix.
posted by Wordshore at 1:09 AM PST - 13 comments

The ghost in the machine - Army PSYOPS recruitment video appears (Army Times). The Army has a PSYOPS group, and they need people, and on their YouTube channel they have posted a recruitment video that in three minutes creates a quite harrowing mood. They say that they will show who’s pulling the strings, and they do, dark silhouettes, of people here and there, maybe around the world, maybe here, but all faceless, and in dark spaces. All centered on a Fleischer Brothers cartoon of Koko the Clown, rotoscoped from a film of Cab Calloway, turning into the ghost in the machine. But you know, that might be an interesting job?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:07 PM PST - 42 comments

"I’ve no fixed place on account of I’m often late from my shift." "Churched" by Maria Farrell is a short story that is about, among other things, "the marooned generations of Irish in London – people who came over from the 1950s onward, pushed out by economic and social stagnation, and who rarely got home again." And resolving a little mystery about a man who starts acting oddly in church. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 6:01 PM PST - 5 comments

The truth is, the Marcos victory was largely a democratic outcome in the narrow electoral sense, and the challenge for progressives is to understand why the runaway majority of the electorate voted to bring an unrepentant thieving family back to power after 36 years. How could democracy produce such a wayward outcome? [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:02 PM PST - 19 comments

!!! (chk chk chk) reinterprets a familiar REM tune in a way you wouldn't expect.
posted by Kitteh at 2:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Matthew McCormack describes encountering a delivery robot in the woods. That is all.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:16 PM PST - 17 comments

David Cronenberg goes to a video store and talks about some of his favorite movies. (23-minute video, includes a few NSFW film clips)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:01 PM PST - 8 comments

The Calgary Stampede has released its lineup of midway food for 2022. From Bad-Breath Lemonade ("ice-cold lemonade with a smooth, delicious garlic and caramelized onion finish") to Kraft Dinner soft serve ("the familiar taste of macaroni and cheese combined with a creamy coolness of soft-serve ice cream), stunt foods are well-represented along with twists on old classics, such as Nanaimo bar mini donuts ("mini donuts topped with chocolate syrup, vanilla custard, shaved sweet coconut, and a choice of coconut crème").
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:34 PM PST - 40 comments

A number of restaurants are betting that Americans want to get gussied up again, but not everyone is thrilled about the fashion screening. “There are rules and then there are rules,” she said. “You know when Tom Fontana comes here, he is a neighborhood regular, he wrote ‘Oz,’ he is a good friend of our house. Tom comes, he forgets a jacket, we will close one eye.”
posted by geoff. at 1:32 PM PST - 76 comments

The young Yankees fan who lost his autographs [ESPN]
posted by chavenet at 11:10 AM PST - 13 comments

The war continues. The illegal and criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine nears the third month of fighting. It's not going super well for them, with minimal gains in the east and significant withdrawals around Karkhiv, towards the Russian border. Ukraine counterattacks are expected to continue. The USA and many other countries continues to give billions in support and weapons. But Ukraine has suffered intensely as well, losing irreplaceable people and devestating economic blows. [more inside]
posted by Jacen at 9:49 AM PST - 592 comments

SLYT, ~2 min. Metal spheres swinging and bouncing off each other in increasingly inventive ways, all synchronized to music -- idk, it's just a lot of fun to watch!
posted by mpark at 8:31 AM PST - 25 comments

Art professor Kim Beil in Lapham's Quarterly on the advent of color photography and the complicated questions of the perception of color. Color is among the most challenging aspects of our experience to describe. Spectrophotometers and colorimeters can quantify light waves, yet their measurements have little impact on our feeling for color. As the philosopher Zeno Vendler put it, “Vincent van Gogh loved the color yellow—and certainly not because of its wavelength.” Color is infamous for its variability in language and perception. How can we know that what we are seeing is the same as what someone else sees? How can we separate what we are seeing from the thing itself? Or, as Ludwig Wittgenstein asked in his Remarks on Colour, “Where do we draw the line here between logic and experience?” In the Remarks, written the year before his death in 1951, the philosopher’s thoughts about color invariably lead back to the study of philosophy. What things are knowable? How are they known? What can be determined through philosophical reasoning? Wittgenstein reflected, “Colors are a stimulus to philosophizing.”
posted by briank at 7:32 AM PST - 16 comments

While I was scrolling deep in the trenches of TikTok one morning, I had a visceral reaction to a video—with what I can only describe as chaotic good energy—about a design trend called “cluttercore.” Taking off during the pandemic, the hashtag has reached 49.6 million views on TikTok (and 23,703 tags on Instagram), and spawned more videos than any of my devices can load. I honestly had a hard time looking away from my screen because I saw so much of myself within this aesthetic. From Sydney Gore in Architectural Digest. See also Vanessa Brown's piece for The Conversation and Olivia Harvey's take for Apartment Therapy.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:19 AM PST - 91 comments

The diminutive Wheelie is an Autobot child / But don't let your guard down; he gets pretty wild! He's often sold short and gets called hurtful things / But Wheelie won't suffer such arrows and slings!
Of all of the years he's spent fighting in space / With Sharkticon goons and the Quintesson race. Keeping things peaceful gets a bit tricky / When he hangs out with Daniel Witwicky.
This bot and that child are birds of a feather / And they tend to get into trouble together! Though reasons may differ across his depictions / Young Wheelie speaks always with curious diction.
posted by Foaf at 6:31 PM PST - 7 comments

Can asexuals be part of pride? Who decides? (Single link S. Bear Bergman). Queer identity may sometimes be about who we might be fucking at the moment, or have done in the past, but it is also about our politics, our place of resistance to the forces of compulsory heterosexuality and all the other pieces of the privilege puzzle that come with it. And you, who are doing the thing with vigor professionally and in your spare time, are definitely not the person I think should be quietly excusing yourself from a dry spot under the rainbow umbrella, if you will.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:21 PM PST - 30 comments

A few memories and reflections on buying bagels in New York City and Döner in Berlin, language, tourists and immigrants, and expectations. "When you move to a country, you have this list of things in your head that you know will make your life easier. If I can just get my Anmeldung, if I can just learn the language, if I can just get my Unbegrenzte Aufenthaltserlaubnis, then everything will be ok. Then, I will be secure. Then, I will truly be able to call this place home. Could you imagine, years later, slowly realising that your efforts to integrate have suddenly depreciated?"
posted by brainwane at 10:42 AM PST - 56 comments

Tomorrow, Liverpool Football Club take on Southampton. Lose, and the possibility of the Quadruple (English Football League Cup, Football Assocation Cup, Premiership, European Champions League) in the same season is finished as Manchester City will be Premiership champions. A Liverpool draw or win, and it goes to the last day of the Premiership season, and the Champions League final (against Real Madrid, who have a track record in this tournament) on May 28th. Liverpool Football Club is managed by Jürgen Klopp. The odds continue to shorten. Plot twist: Liverpool can only win the Premiership if Manchester City fail to win their final game. Against Aston Villa (who sold Jack Grealish to them for £100,000,000). Who is managed by Steven Gerrard.
posted by Wordshore at 8:07 AM PST - 43 comments

More and different kinds of people can now aspire to TV’s most important job—but streaming and COVID have set them up to fail.
posted by Etrigan at 6:31 AM PST - 50 comments

Pop Quiz Time! Who said the following? “Freedom is power. To live a life untamed and unafraid is the gift that I've been given, and so my journey begins.” A: Wei Wuxian ☐; B: Catwoman ☐; C: This Thread ☐ [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:49 AM PST - 112 comments

Buried in These Hands for Years: Thomas Dolby’s ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’ Turns 40 [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:18 PM PST - 54 comments

Put your skills to the test and solve thirty-two Wordles at once! You have 37 guesses to solve all 32 words.
posted by geoff. at 2:43 PM PST - 78 comments

RAMMSTEIN - Amerika (WAY TOO AMERICAN Cover) This is what happens when it two Italian multi-instrumentalist musicians decide to cover big hits in often very unsuitable styles. [more inside]
posted by dominik at 9:24 AM PST - 14 comments

"The only reason it's sold is to have some alternative [to pseudoephedrine] to offer consumers, even if it's a worthless one." Pharmaceutical blogger Derek Lowe of In the Pipeline (previously) discusses phenylephrine, which does not work as a decongestant and is "indistinguishable from placebo in conditions like allergic rhinitis", saying it is "is of no real use and does not deserve its FDA listing." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 8:12 AM PST - 61 comments

Imagine you receive an invitation one day from your mayor, inviting you to serve as a member of your city’s newly established permanent Citizens’ Assembly. "You will be one of 100 others like you — people who are not politicians or even necessarily party members. All of you were drawn by lot through a fair and random process called a civic lottery. ... Important decisions have been shaped by everyday people about 10-year, $5 billion strategic plans, 30-year infrastructure investment strategies, tackling online hate speech and harassment, taking preventative action against increased flood risks, improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many other issues."
posted by NotLost at 7:42 AM PST - 30 comments

If It Feels Like a New Dark Age Is Falling… That’s Because It Is. Why We’re Entering a Dark Age Between Civilizations.
What’s Happening to America? A Theocratic-Fascist Revolution. When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution.
Umair Haque - love him or leave him. That his writing output is prolific is an understatement.
He has been described as a Master of Catastrophe who speaks in apocalyptic jazz scat (thanks clavdivs).
posted by adamvasco at 5:21 AM PST - 57 comments

These days you don’t need to worry about not knowing stuff. Just type your personal failings into YouTube and there’ll be a big, beardy American come along to explain that, hey, you simply fire up charcoal to about 4,000 degrees, then brush all the charred gunk off when it’s cooled down. Another Guardian list of small ways to improve your life.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:42 AM PST - 43 comments

In last night's Eurovision Song Contest [Fanfare], the UK came second with the entry sung by Sam Ryder. Previous to this, the most recent UK finishing positions were 26th, 26th, 24th, 15th, 24th, 24th, coming last five times since 2005. BBC: How Sam Ryder turned things around for the UK. Andover Advertiser: "The new strategy included ensuring Ryder’s single, Space Man, got played on BBC Radio 1 instead of Radio 2, and targeting smaller countries such as San Marino, Serbia, Croatia and Malta, which have the same voting powers as larger countries such as Germany."
posted by Wordshore at 10:40 PM PST - 40 comments

Windows XP - 2022 Edition [more inside]
posted by glonous keming at 4:19 PM PST - 16 comments

Challenging the school PTA fundraising norm, 12 of south Seattle's most diverse and low-income (Title 1) schools agreed not to compete against one another but instead to pool their earnings and share in them equally. The approach was designed to lessen the potentially disparate impact of fundraising and to support schools without sophisticated fundraising arms. “This isn’t equitable,” cofounder Christina Jiménez, a Graham Hill Elementary parent and Seattle Public Schools (SPS) teacher, told the Emerald at the time, “but this is a move in the right direction.” (SLSouthSeattleEmerald, long-form article worth reading in full)
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Olivia Colman Greatest Award Speeches | Compilation is ~17m long, but is an entire human journey of emotions several times over. It's pure and joyous and to be honest, I feel somehow cleansed after watching this. #VideoTherapy
posted by hippybear at 2:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Dinosaur Apocalypse Newly found fossils may reveal an unprecedented snapshot of the day the dinosaurs died. A two-part PBS NOVA (preview w/audio interview, written preview) featuring Sir David Attenborough. [more inside]
posted by box at 2:13 PM PST - 14 comments

US grocery retailer Trader Joe's this year announced the winners of its 13th Annual Customer Choice Awards (podcast audio and PDF transcript; podcast is silly and includes a cooking segment). The podcast hosts mentioned that this year's overall winner has been "on the list as either the Favorite Frozen Product or the Favorite Entree, the favorite of whatever category in which it fits every year, since we've had the Customer Choice Awards" so let's look at the historical winners! [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 5:42 AM PST - 82 comments

What The Kids in the Hall Taught Me About Feminism
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:37 AM PST - 45 comments

The World’s a Mess. So They’ve Stopped Saving for Tomorrow. “No, I’m not saving for retirement. I’m going to spend my money now, while we still have a supply chain at all.” - archive.org mirror
posted by simmering octagon at 7:17 PM PST - 109 comments

Last February, Polygon published an article about the Video Game History Foundation's search for the creator of an Atari 2600 game, "Wabbit". Now, their search has come to fruition. [more inside]
posted by hanov3r at 7:14 PM PST - 6 comments

A year after their surprise reveal at Glastonbury, Radiohead pandemic spinoff project The Smile have finally dropped their much-anticipated debut album: A Light for Attracting Attention [full album on YouTube]. Featuring Yorke, Greenwood, Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, longtime RH producer Nigel Godrich, and an assist from the London Contemporary Orchestra, the album's heady mixture of funk, post-punk, math rock, soaring ballads, and themes of passion, alienation, and melancholy make it (perhaps) a worthy successor to 2016's elegant A Moon Shaped Pool. Music videos: angry #MeToo rocker "You Will Never Work in Television Again" [lyrics] - abstract animation for orchestral odyssey "Pana-Vision" [lyrics] - subliminal lyrics for swanky groove "The Smoke" [lyrics] - trippy stop-motion nightmare "Thin Thing" [lyrics] - an occult ritual framed by hopeful elegy "Free in the Knowledge" [lyrics] - Thom ventures into a coal mine for the beautifully ethereal "Skrting on the Surface" [lyrics], a fan favorite 20+ years in the making. Full tracklist (including a complete live set list!) inside. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 2:28 PM PST - 10 comments

Luna Cryptocurrency Collapse: How UST Broke and Why It Matters [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:23 AM PST - 235 comments

Films based on Marvel Comics superheroes have made billions. Yet the artists and writers who created these characters get a pittance, if that. it doesn’t seem just for them to extract what Steve and Ed put into this and create a multi-billion dollar franchise … just because it’s in a contract doesn’t make it right.
posted by bq at 8:47 AM PST - 42 comments

Occlusion Grotesque is an experimental typeface that is carved into the bark of a tree. As the tree grows, it deforms the letters and outputs new design variations, that are captured annually. The project explores what it means to design with nature and on nature's terms.
posted by secretdark at 8:15 AM PST - 31 comments

Celebrating Bitch Magazine: A Reading List Longreads' A.H. Reaume picks ten favorites from the extensive archives of the late (previously) Bitch Magazine.
posted by box at 7:51 AM PST - 2 comments

The proprietor of one of the longest regularly updated static web blogs, kottke.org, has announced that he is taking an extended break. After 24 years, Mefi's own (#109) Jason Kottke says his fiddle leaf fig tree "is not ok. And neither am I — I feel as off-balance as my tree looks. I’m burrrrned out." Starting back with post 78 there have been hundreds of posts and thousands of comments referencing Kottke, and Jason has featured Metafilter a number of times as well. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 7:48 AM PST - 19 comments

On TikTok, the woman briefly known as Pornhub’s No. 1 performer is amassing a more supportive, more female fanbase. Creeps and jerks will be blocked.
posted by Etrigan at 7:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Big: The Role of the State in the Modern Economy with Richard Denniss is a 1 hour webinar recording from the YouTube channel of The Australia Institute in support of the launch of a new book by its chief economist Richard Denniss (author of the indispensable Econobabble).
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM PST - 2 comments

On April 6th at around 4:30, the Las Dispensas controlled burn (North of Las Vegas, New Mexico) got out of control and was declared the Hermits Peak fire by the US Forest Service. On April 19th, the fire had burned 7500 acres and was 80% contained; when a new fire began west of the Hermits Peak... the Calf Canyon fire. The 2 fires merged and by week’s end grew to 65,000 acres. As of today; May 13th, the fire has burned 259,810 acres or roughly 406 square miles (the fire perimeter is over 472 miles long). The fire has caused evacuations in Las Vegas, Mora and is expected to make a run at Red River and even Taos. The Calf Canyon / Hermits Peak fire is now the largest in New Mexico history and the state leads the US in acreage burned so far in 2022. [more inside]
posted by jabo at 11:49 PM PST - 24 comments

Cookingflavr.com may be the worst-disguised food advice site run by an AI. In fact, let's not stop at food. There are a few dozen questions posted (by itself) every day, and almost each answer semantically confuses itself out of correct or useful advice. [Via Janelle Shane's AIWierdness blog] [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 11:10 PM PST - 33 comments

Swear-y mashup silliness of George Carlin's regular stuff with his Thomas the Tank Engine dubbing [SLYT] [NSFW]
posted by slater at 9:20 PM PST - 14 comments

Researchers from The Children's Hospital Westmead in Sydney appear to have identified the cause of SIDS (Sudden infant death syndrome), which accounts for about 37% of sudden unexpected infant deaths a year in the United States. This could potentially lead to screening and/or other interventions. [more inside]
posted by gemmy at 8:35 PM PST - 10 comments

While the $800-a-month rent may seem steep for a stacked bunk bed pod, the average rental rate for a studio apartment near Stanford University, is currently around $2,400. Co-founder Christina Lennox has lived in a pod herself for the past year. "The wood kind of allows for relaxation, rather than like going inside of this futuristic-looking plastic object."
posted by geoff. at 5:54 PM PST - 77 comments

Naomi Judd, one-half of the musical duo The Judds with her daughter Wynonna, died April 30, 2022, one day before The Judds were to be inducted into The Country Music Hall of Fame. (CW: suicide) [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:45 PM PST - 29 comments

Remembering Ian Dury on what would have been his 80th birthday.
Shall I mourn your decline/With some Thunderbird wine/And a black handkerchief? - Sweet Gene Vincent - Lyrics
As national treasures go, Ian Dury was one of the unlikeliest. A cantankerous cripple with a penchant for pills and puns, he was a living breathing saucy seaside postcard, a master of the double or even triple entendre; a Cockney caricature with cleverly constructed couplets coming out of his Aris.
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 4:19 PM PST - 18 comments

Set to be released in 2024, 40 years after the original 'Spinal Tap': ‘Spinal Tap II’ On Tap As Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest & Harry Shearer Back For Encore: “They’ve played Albert Hall, played Wembley Stadium, all over the country and in Europe,” Reiner said. “They haven’t spent any time together recently, and that became the premise. The idea was that Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away. In reality, Tony Hendra passed away. Ian’s widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert. She was basically going to sue them if they didn’t. All these years and a lot of bad blood we’ll get into and they’re thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert.”
posted by ShooBoo at 2:45 PM PST - 38 comments

Ethel Cain, Hayden Anhedönia's dark, evil twin, has released her first album, Preacher's Daughter, described by Paste as "a breathtaking account of a woman, her mysterious partner and her troubled family", and by thelineofbestfit as "If Flannery O’Connor had listened to more Witch House and spent time on r/FlorenceAndTheMachine, she might have ended up making a record as perfectly beautiful and haunting as Preacher’s Daughter." Previously
posted by signal at 2:02 PM PST - 4 comments

The story of the Nation State in five biscuits: Parle G, Milk Bikis, Karachi Bakery’s Fruit Biscuit, Hide & Seek and Little Hearts by Sharanya Deepak for Vittles
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:34 AM PST - 9 comments

The band Sub Sub, with Melanie Williams on guest vocals, scored a hit with Ain't no love (alternate). Then, life happened (dropped by label, studio burns down, the usual). But rather than staying with their old style, changes in direction happened. Kingdom of Rust (alternate), their 2009 single which also appeared in the film Zombieland.
posted by Wordshore at 10:07 AM PST - 3 comments

Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller, and Polly Smith are among this year's inductees for the US National Inventors Hall of Fame because they created the first sports bra. Jogbra started in 1977 -- five years after Congress passed Title IX. This BBC article details the story and includes cool photos of old advertisements.
posted by brainwane at 9:02 AM PST - 6 comments

Upon casual listening, a magnificent spontaneity seems to permeate The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (released 5/12/72). A closer perusal of the sixty-seven some minutes, however, reveals an unnerving sense of psychic dislocation. But then, that’s not in the least surprising given the circumstances of the album’s recording: although began in 1969, most of the work took place outside the iconic group’s native England. The imposition of burdensome tax laws prompted the group’s move to France in 1971 and an impending tour commitment compelled vocals and overdubs completed in the United States late that year and early next. Yet, as a direct result of their disenfranchisement, the double album is arguably the Rolling Stones’ most personal work.
posted by Etrigan at 7:29 AM PST - 43 comments

The "earth-size" Event Horizon Telescope has captured a second image of a black hole and this time it's the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Sure, it looks a little blurry, but that's probably for the best, considering what a black hole sounds like.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:27 AM PST - 34 comments

La Conquista is an opera based, more or less, on a lost an score by Vivaldi about Moctezuma II and Cortés. It was performed in Nahuatl/Spanish/Mayan/etc in Mexico City in 2019. Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli is a contemporary opera that uses traditional instruments and was performed by people who probably grew up speaking Nahuatl.
posted by eotvos at 6:31 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

I Don't Exercise (my city does that for me) [SLYT]
posted by lazaruslong at 3:35 AM PST - 30 comments

Roughly 50 million Americans are thought to believe in ideas associated with the conspiracy theory QAnon. In the 8 minute documentary “We Call Him Super,” the director Michael Patten tells the story of his next-door neighbor.
posted by dmh at 5:58 PM PST - 32 comments

An author admits that significant portions of their debut novel were plagiarized, in a "plagiarism atonement essay" [archive link] that itself plagiarized from Plagiarism Today.
posted by ordinary_magnet at 5:35 PM PST - 29 comments

"Asshat may not be the first word you draw from your quiver when seeking to adequately describe someone for whom you feel some measure of distaste. It’s fine by us if you choose not to use the word, but given its status in our language we would be remiss in our duties if we failed to provide it with a definition."
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:03 PM PST - 81 comments

Apple discontinues the iPod after 20 years. Here’s Why It Should Live On. [archive] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:21 PM PST - 117 comments

As GPT-3 creates more and more convincing poetry, Carmine Starnino writes for The Walrus, asking "what would it mean for AI to “win” at poetry? And what kind of poem would finally convince us? The answer depends less on what we believe a computer can do and more on what we believe suffices as poetry."
posted by dellsolace at 1:40 PM PST - 45 comments

Vox's Christophe Haubursin investigates (27m slyt). Bonus: the original /r/Whatisthis reddit post.
posted by specialagentwebb at 11:37 AM PST - 20 comments

"The oldest known tree in Wisconsin is a scrawny, scrubby little red cedar growing out of the side of a cliff. It’s not majestic. Actually, it’s so unremarkable that it’s easy to miss. I should know. I might’ve missed it myself, even when — after years of searching for it — this tree was right in front of me."
posted by escabeche at 9:29 AM PST - 5 comments

An OCEAN of Muppets (that is, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism): "In case you are searching for a unified account of Frank Oz Muppets in terms of the Big Five Personality Traits—and, to be clear, someone on the internet was earlier today—I’m providing it here for posterity. This version includes the 'Henson Area', which is optional but both clarifying for the strictly psychological aspects and a bridge to a fully social theory of Frank Oz Muppets." By Kieran Healy (previously).
posted by brainwane at 8:15 AM PST - 31 comments

Step one: Spend thousands on outdated CRT signal-processing tech.
posted by Etrigan at 6:28 AM PST - 20 comments

RENT in Spanish.
RENT in Japanese.
RENT in Portuguese.
RENT in Korean.
[more inside]
posted by eotvos at 5:48 AM PST - 7 comments

We praise canonical authors for their boundless imagination. Then why do all their plots feel the same?
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:01 AM PST - 58 comments

'Meet the New Old Book Collectors' (NYT)
posted by clavdivs at 8:52 PM PST - 6 comments

Political strategist Steve Schmidt, who worked on campaigns for GW Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and most notably John McCain, put a letter on Substack Sunday in which he admits to lying for McCain to cover up an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman and to help kill a story about how McCain spent his 70th birthday on a Russian yacht. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:31 AM PST - 63 comments

The Untold Story of the White House's Weirdly Hip Record Collection Jimmy Carter’s grandson is unlocking its mysteries (Washingtonian, Rob Brunner)
posted by box at 9:16 AM PST - 23 comments

Professor Solomon gives us twelve principles for how to find something you've lost. Possibly one of the most useful sites on the internet. [more inside]
posted by ewok_academy at 7:42 AM PST - 93 comments

When they arrive in Thailand, the migratory vultures are often very tired from a long flight. They rest in big, tall trees, and then, like any good tourist, go find a local delicacy to try.
posted by Etrigan at 6:00 AM PST - 15 comments

Helen Keller’s Socialism Has Been Whitewashed. The politics of Helen Keller: Socialism and disability. How I Became a Socialist, from Out of the Dark.
posted by clawsoon at 4:23 AM PST - 20 comments

Luigi Russolo's Cacophonous Futures is a thoughtful introduction to the Futurist composer and his mechanical noise makers, or intonarumori. In addition to pioneering the art of noises, and influencing rather a lot of later experimental music, he was a fascist and probably not have been a terribly nice person. He was also a palm reader and fan of the occult.
posted by eotvos at 4:05 AM PST - 9 comments

Joseph Pulitzer is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes, which were established in 1917 as a result of his endowment to Columbia University. The prizes are given annually to recognize and reward excellence in American journalism, photography, literature, history, poetry, music, and drama.

Sometimes just seeing someone else's favorites is enough to make your day: 2022 Pulitzer Prize winners.
posted by bendy at 2:03 AM PST - 14 comments

Avatar: The Way of Water | Official Teaser Trailer [more inside]
posted by one for the books at 11:09 PM PST - 159 comments

Nursing losses in 2022 that are worse than the rest of the market’s, amateur investors who jumped in when the lockdown began have now given back all of their once-prodigious gains. Famous names from the height of the frenzy are nursing serious losses. AMC Entertainment is down 78 per cent since June 2021. It has lost 49 per cent this year. Peloton Interactive is off 90 per cent from its record.
posted by geoff. at 7:00 PM PST - 47 comments

TikToker erica_mallett asks "If I say we have a meeting at midday, then ask if we can move it forward 2 hours, what time is that?" Here's her reasoning on the two possible answers.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:22 PM PST - 135 comments

How Billy Joel’s ‘Vienna’ Went From a Deep Cut To His Most Popular Song [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:06 PM PST - 35 comments

More uniformly infectious, more treatable, more genetically predictable: How coronavirus is getting closer to flu. A recent modeling study led by Lidia Morawska at Queensland University of Technology found that the Delta variant is less reliant on superspreading events, with a k of 0.49. Her team hasn’t yet repeated the work for Omicron, but she expects that its preference for the upper respiratory tract, where it replicates at astonishing rates, probably results not just in more transmission, but more uniformity in who transmits to others.
Also at Stat News: Six Covid mysteries including how it will evolve. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:32 PM PST - 92 comments

"i wiggled a mushroom at her and she gasped and kept staring." Single paragraph.
posted by brainwane at 10:17 AM PST - 55 comments

Drummer Ric Parnell, who played drummer Mick Shrimpton in This Is Spinal Tap, later touring with the band as his identical twin Rick Shrimpton, died last week at age 70 of complications from a blood clot in his lungs. [more inside]
posted by fedward at 9:18 AM PST - 34 comments

Contender for top video of the year: Kendrick Lamar The Heart Part 5 – the fifth track in his “Heart” series that he started in 2010. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 8:35 AM PST - 18 comments

Whimsical Monday: The Surprising Artistry of Fruit Stickers. "In the world of fruit stickers, according to Angood, citrus is one of the best canvases. Her favorites are the green stickers she finds often on tangerines while on vacation in Valencia, Spain, that resemble the fruit’s leaves. “It’s almost alluding to its natural state,” Angood says, adding that the stickers typically bear the grower’s name on the leaf. She finds these more memorable, almost because they take the unusual advertising tack of trying to blend in." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:13 AM PST - 10 comments

With early-internet-looking videos, hyper-pop duo Magdalena Bay mixes dark lyrics with bright sounds. [more inside]
posted by signal at 7:36 AM PST - 6 comments

While living in an internment camp in Vichy France, Alexander Grothendieck was tutored in mathematics by another prisoner, a girl named Maria. Maria taught Grothendieck, who was twelve, the definition of a circle: all the points that are equidistant from a given point. The definition impressed him with “its simplicity and clarity,” he wrote years later. The property of perfect rotundity had until then appeared to him to be “mysterious beyond words.” Rivka Galchen, in the New Yorker, on the life, work, thought, and spirit of Alexander Grothendieck, the great intellectual revolutionary barely known outside mathematics.
posted by escabeche at 5:49 AM PST - 21 comments

Why a strange obsession with hippo teeth, skin and bones might cause the U.S. to classify them as endangered.
posted by Etrigan at 5:24 AM PST - 6 comments

Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch, Part 1 and Part 2: For years, a Grey’s Anatomy writer told her personal traumas in online essays, and wove those details into the show’s plot—until a surprising email to Shondaland accused her of making it all up. [more inside]
posted by hydropsyche at 4:49 AM PST - 20 comments

my name is Post / and wen its blue / i give the cliks / for u to vue / but wen let free / i roam in stead / u tell the tails / i lik the thread [more inside]
posted by taz at 4:10 AM PST - 96 comments

Greg Egan's Dream Factory is a story about the ethics of turning cats into entertainment devices with brain electrodes.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:17 AM PST - 3 comments

From the Zillow Gone Wild files, we have a a house listing which has gone viral thanks to a family prank involving their son and a well executed costume. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:30 PM PST - 36 comments

Drummer Hannah Welton was recruited by Prince to drum for 3rdeyegirl and she played on his last four tours with a band before he died. Spend 1h learning about What’s It Like Drumming For Prince? (The true story…) with drumming tips like how much the space matters, how funky can be simple, and stories about Prince being Prince. She's charming and delightful and so f'n talented!
posted by hippybear at 1:17 PM PST - 4 comments

A New York Times Close Read
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:56 AM PST - 22 comments

Philosopher Ewa Majewska on protests for reproductive rights in Poland. The 2016 women’s protests began as a reaction to the bill to add imprisonment to the already harsh restrictions against abortion in Polish law. The Black Protests included a national strike inspired in part by Iceland's 1975 women's strike and 19th century Polish nationalist protests. Polish feminists highlighted the social inequalities of the abortion ban, the fascist policies of the then ruling Law and Justice Party and explicitly connected reproductive rights to labor rights, drawing on the iconography of Solidarność. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:49 AM PST - 3 comments

The Future is Here! Actor Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education) has just been announced as the new Doctor in the TARDIS, after Jodie Whittaker's final episode later this year.
posted by crossoverman at 4:43 AM PST - 64 comments

This Interview is a Mistake | Spike Art Magazine.

From writing about the internet with Timothy Leary to releasing music under the techno-rock moniker “Mondo Vanili”, R.U. Sirius has shaped digital culture since its inception. He dishes to Lydia Sviatoslavsky about (what’s left of) cyberpunk, stoner-inflected French theory, and the drab cruelty of American politics.

posted by zengargoyle at 7:39 PM PST - 47 comments

From Now On is a much deeper redemption story in Jeremy Jordan’s voice. I couldn’t imagine anything more touching than the TGS viral videos. I was wrong. [more inside]
posted by beckybakeroo at 6:02 PM PST - 5 comments

In yet another "this film ends too soon" documentary about dance music, here is 1998's Hang The DJ [1h25m], featuring François Kevorkian, Larry Levan, Jellybean Benitez, A-Trak, Roc Raida, Junior Vasquez, Q-Bert, Roger Sanchez, Carl Cox, Claudio Cocolutto, Kevin Aviance, and Danny Tenaglia.
posted by hippybear at 12:47 PM PST - 5 comments

like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin "According to a young American critic, one of the great discoveries of our age is the value of boredom as an artistic subject. If that is so, Antonioni deserves to be counted as a pioneer and founding father. His movies are perfect backgrounds for fashion models."
posted by mecran01 at 12:11 PM PST - 57 comments

If your jam is listening to undersea scientists nerd out while steering a submersible around the ocean floor discovering weird-looking stuff, then follow the yellow brick road to the Exploration Vessel Nautilus' YouTube channel, courtesy of the Ocean Exploration Trust and the Nautilus Exploration Program. They're currently bobbing around in the Central Pacific..
posted by not_on_display at 11:55 AM PST - 3 comments

George Perez, comic book artist and cornerstone of the industry, has died aged 67. George had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2021. Official obituary at CBR. DC comics remembers him. Marvel pays tribute.
posted by fight or flight at 11:14 AM PST - 26 comments

Critics of the "App Store improvement" plan say the update requirement is arbitrary and burdensome
posted by Etrigan at 9:04 AM PST - 53 comments

There are many methods for handwashing dishes, but which is right? Wikihow is scrub-centric, but Penny and Chris disagree about soaking and rinsing. A 2021 AskMe produced a range of MeFite protocols, while Elizabeth queries one British method. The American Cleaning Institute have a five-step recommendation, people discussed alternatives to soap, and several websites advocate mustard. On Twitter: incomplete, hand protection, unstacked. Alternative: consider paper plates. The author of "How to wash the dishes" recommends using wool, but no-one answered this urgent query. Good Housekeeping recommends getting someone else to do it.
posted by Wordshore at 6:59 AM PST - 106 comments

Diseases of Disfunction "Government investment in public health is a particular threat to predatory wealth because of the mindset it imbues. The more the public learns about hookworm, pellagra, teen pregnancy or COVID, the greater the awareness of our inherent, inescapable interconnectedness. Public health initiatives hinge on teaching basic biology. The more people understand our biology the harder it is to keep us divided and therefore politically weak."
posted by hydropsyche at 5:26 AM PST - 14 comments

SLYT For those you need a laugh in these bleak ages
posted by mumimor at 3:59 AM PST - 23 comments

Former U.S. staffers tell of sleep deprivation, work on weekends and mandatory meetings with colleagues on the other side of the globe. Mr. Martinez said he left after he objected to having to work all weekend even though his project was on schedule, and the response he received from a manager was: “That’s not how we do business here.” ... For months, some former employees said, members of the human resources and finance teams in the New York office didn’t know there were separate teams performing the same functions in California ... TikTok describes itself as a home for “joyful, entertaining, diverse and unexpected experiences.”
posted by geoff. at 6:02 PM PST - 19 comments

In the US, the pandemic has caused a nationwide shortage of medical supplies like syringes, gloves, gowns, laboratory reagents, bedpans, suction canisters, IV kits, and IV contrast. Drug shortages were already a problem pre-pandemic. Shortages of raw materials have also hampered production, as well as the war in Ukraine (in part due to Russia’s outsize role in nickel, steel, and titanium production). [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 4:28 PM PST - 21 comments

How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum in Tennessee and nationwide A Chalkbeat investigation explores the report for 31 challenged texts to provide context on the complaints and how they were handled. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by bleary at 11:07 AM PST - 32 comments

Writing for Defector, Diana Moskovitz recounts the stories of three gymnasts from the Midwest Gymnastics and the abuse, neglect, and harm they suffered at the hands of gym owner and coach Jess Graba and his spouse and fellow coach Alison Lim. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:08 AM PST - 70 comments

I Know What It Sounds Like But My Liege Lord Just Happens To Be Exemplary In Form and Countenance [sir dan lav prev]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 7:52 AM PST - 32 comments

A delightful performance of Canon in D by Hiromi Uehara that keeps getting jazzier as it progresses, with an inline transcription following the whole way. [more inside]
posted by a faithful sock at 7:17 AM PST - 36 comments

Leni Robredo's grass-roots campaign takes on the Marcos juggernaut (WaPo gift article)
posted by PussKillian at 7:10 AM PST - 9 comments

On April 7, 29-year-old Ibrahim Sadeq took the title for Tallest Stack of M&M's by stacking seven of the small circular candies in Nasiriyha, Iraq.
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 AM PST - 26 comments

The Internet is a 2021 song and meme-centric video by Oliver Tree and Little Big (previously), from their EP "Welcome to the Internet". Oliver Tree and Little Big also worked together - with Tommy Cash - on the song and video "Turn it up" [CW: motion sickness]. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 6:54 AM PST - 3 comments

What If? is back! For the first time in (just under) four years, xkcd's Randall Munroe gives "serious answers to absurd questions and absurd advice for common concerns". Today's question: how many bananas would you need to power a house?
posted by cozenedindigo at 6:32 PM PST - 24 comments

Infinite Images and the latent camera Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst talk about their experiences with DALL-E (versions 1 and 2) and their thoughts on a future where anyone can make conceptual art from a few words. Holly and AI previously and previouslier.
posted by snortasprocket at 5:52 PM PST - 19 comments

every.horse provides an ever-updating list of every .horse domain. [via mefi projects]
posted by Going To Maine at 5:01 PM PST - 40 comments

How did it come to this? In the 1980s, a vibrant opposition to mass culture thrived. Punk formed a whole DIY ethos, a collective way of life outside of mainstream structures. At any rate, that was the promise. Michael Friedrich looks at Jim Ruland's new book on the legendary punk label in The Unraveling of SST Records [The New Republic; punk rock no-paywall version] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:09 PM PST - 24 comments

In the world of modern portable devices, it may be hard to believe that merely a few decades ago the most convenient way to keep track of time was a mechanical watch.
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:38 PM PST - 54 comments

The Great Salt Lake is drastically receding, and is is expected to reach a new historic low this year. [more inside]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:30 PM PST - 24 comments

Chartreuse had its own party drink? In branded Mason Jars? Yes. Punchdrink takes us to a time when desperate importers thought big -- and gives us a modern remix. David Lebovitz gives us the original recipe and the ads that introduced it.
posted by Hypatia at 1:29 PM PST - 22 comments

Banned Book Store Library advocacy group EveryLibrary launches the Banned Book Store, the most comprehensive seller of currently banned and challenged books in the United States.
posted by box at 10:21 AM PST - 19 comments

Thrifter locates first-century Roman bust looted from a German museum/villa. Absolutely wild story that includes Pompeii, one Drusus "Dennis" Germanicus, King Ludwig I, lawyers, and ultimately a new home.
posted by humbug at 9:43 AM PST - 17 comments

Apparently the Brontës all died so early because they spent their lives drinking graveyard water.
posted by Etrigan at 6:43 AM PST - 57 comments

The Gif Gallery claims to contain (very nearly) 100,000 gifs. Related: a 2013 FPP on the pronounciation, a Stephen Whilite obituary, the giphy repository (FPP), and a 2010 Slate article.
posted by Wordshore at 4:11 AM PST - 38 comments

All-girl group Fertile Virgin was the hottest soon-to-be-obscure band in Boston in 1990. They had two drummers, gigged constantly, signed to respectable indie label Harriet Records, and even had their record played on the John Peel radio show. As with so many promising acts, the grunge tidal wave buried them. [more inside]
posted by Fritz Langwedge at 3:22 AM PST - 7 comments

Scientists Discover Method to Break Down Plastic in Days, Not Centuries - "Scientists modified an enzyme that can break down plastic in one week to create fresh material for new products."[1,2,3] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Between The Scenes is Trevor Noah doing audience work during tapings of The Daily Show. If you want to see his comic gifts sparkle, here's your chance, as compilations. The Best Of Trevor's Accents [24m], Growing Up In South Africa [19m], Trevor's Family [15m30s], Eight Times America Surprised Trevor [16m], The Best Guest Moments [23m] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:21 PM PST - 17 comments

Every Bay Area House Party
posted by mlis at 4:38 PM PST - 53 comments

“Of supreme importance,” writes Zola in his 1883 department store novel The Ladies’ Paradise, “was the exploitation of Woman. Everything else led up to it, the ceaseless renewal of capital, the system of piling up goods, the low prices which attracted people, the marked prices which reassured them.” from "Lost In the Supermarket," in which Rhian Sasseen riffs on Claire-Louise Bennett's new book Checkout 19 and the literature of retail
posted by chavenet at 3:28 PM PST - 10 comments

Tico is a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot vocalist who performs with his guitarist, Frank Maglio, on YouTube as the duo Tico & the Man. They began performing together when Frank started working from home because of COVID, and he discovered Tico's response to strumming his guitars. They have amassed a huge collection of videos (and followers) and covered all the big hits. And yes, of course he's done Freebird. [more inside]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:09 PM PST - 17 comments

i am feeling unwell. would you like to report an incident after months of total darkness? please, at least before you begin destroying the earth, over and over again... just look at that round ass shit. //// Today marks the beginning of PRISMATIC GROUND (Year Two), an experimental documentary and avant-garde film festival that you can experience in person if you happen to be in New York City, New York, USA, or for free, online, everywhere there is an internet. [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:46 PM PST - 4 comments

They Might Be Giants' Fingertips, set to The Last Jedi. Set to other Star Wars movies. (Previously, set to The Force Awakens) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 10:14 AM PST - 29 comments

Today I read and enjoyed the English Wikipedia-style-y plot summary for The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover, a classic children's book. Here's the edit that changes "However, nothing works (primarily because from the reader's POV these are simple illustrations, not actual difficulties)" to "nothing works (mostly because these are really simple illustrations, not actual obstacles)" (the "primarily" line having been added in 2014; thanks XTools Blame!). Previously, previously.
posted by brainwane at 7:51 AM PST - 47 comments

"In a lot of ways I think this attitude reflects this, now dated, conception of the geek as an oppressed underdog [...] but, at the same time, the actual real world conditions around you reflect the exact opposite of that. So, you not only get this fervent demand for geek stuff to be liked and consumed by everyone but also this notion that a rejection of geek culture is somehow the dominant attitude: "the bully picking on the loser"

Sarah Z chronicles The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:31 AM PST - 68 comments

A quota system implemented in 2005 has meant economic and social trade-offs.
posted by Etrigan at 6:35 AM PST - 5 comments

Knotwords (iOS, Android, Steam) (trailer, review) is a new daily word game from Zach Gage, creator of games like Ridiculous Fishing, SpellTower, and Really Bad Chess. It's probably not going to get Wordle-famous, but Josh Wardle likes it, and, if you like word games and/or logic puzzles, you might too.
posted by box at 6:19 AM PST - 25 comments

World’s Most Dangerous Toy? Radioactive Atomic Energy Lab Kit with Uranium (1950) “USERS SHOULD NOT TAKE ORE SAMPLES OUT OF THEIR JARS, for they tend to flake and crumble and you would run the risk of having radioactive ore spread out in your laboratory.” Such was the warning that came with the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, a 1950s science kit that included four small jars of actual uranium. Yes, the Gilbert company definitely intended for kids to try this at home. And so the company’s warning was couched not in terms of health risk but rather as bad scientific practice: Removing the ore from its jar would raise the background radiation, thereby invalidating your experimental results."
posted by geoff. at 5:24 AM PST - 44 comments

What Democrats Don’t Understand About Rural America. Chloe Maxmin is a state senator (D) in Maine. Canyon Woodward was her campaign manager in 2018 and 2020. "As two young progressives raised in the country, we were dismayed as small towns like ours swung to the right. But we believed that Democrats could still win conservative rural districts if they took the time to drive down the long dirt roads where we grew up, have face-to-face conversations with moderate Republican and independent voters and speak a different language, one rooted in values rather than policy." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:06 PM PST - 128 comments

"Today is my birthday. I turn 70. I’ve learned a few things so far that might be helpful to others. For the past few years, I’ve jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year and much to my surprise I have more to add this year. So here is my birthday gift to you all: 103 bits of wisdom I wish I had known when I was young."--Kevin Kelly (more advice, previously, from the man who brought you Cool Tools). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:09 PM PST - 90 comments

David Adamsen is a woodworker out of Maine, with a delightful YubTub channel full of vids showing how his luxurious woodturning creations come into being. Come for the delicious wood art, stay for the soothing and wordlessly meditative twenty minute vids of blurs turning into shapes and wood shavings.
posted by FatherDagon at 11:33 AM PST - 6 comments

It's May 3rd, the date of Johnathan Harker's first diary entry, which means Dracula Daily starts today! Sign up and every day somebody writes a letter or a diary entry, through the ending on November 7, you'll get that day's segment of the classic epistolary novel in your email.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:43 AM PST - 51 comments

Measuring the extent of self-reviewing at the New York Review of Books from 1963-2022
posted by Etrigan at 6:24 AM PST - 24 comments

“I am a homosexual,” he began. “I am a psychiatrist.” For the next 10 minutes, Henry Anonymous, M.D. — this is what he had asked to be called — described the secret world of gay psychiatrists. Officially, they did not exist; homosexuality was categorized as a mental illness, so acknowledging it would result in the revocation of one’s medical license, and the loss of a career.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:54 AM PST - 12 comments

"There’s a common story about abortion in this country, that people have only two options to intentionally end a pregnancy: the clinic or the coat hanger. They can choose the safe route that’s protected by Roe v. Wade—a doctor in a legal clinic—or, if Roe is overturned, endure a dangerous back-alley abortion, symbolized by the coat hanger. But a close look at the history of abortion in this country shows that there’s much more to this story. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could overturn Roe v Wade in June, activists are once again preparing to take abortion into their own hands." [more inside]
posted by coffeecat at 8:53 PM PST - 56 comments

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion (pdf) written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO. No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:20 PM PST - 744 comments

This $139 million Bel-Air mansion has its own Nightclub and vodka tasting room ... and dinosaur, and a six car rotating see-through Batman-like garage, two theaters and a bar with swings. The vodka tasting room has fur coats in case you get cold. Still less than the most expensive LA-area home: the $177 million Marc Andreessen mansion in Malibu.
posted by geoff. at 4:39 PM PST - 55 comments

cw: death, police violence Last Monday, the Indianapolis Police Dept. killed Herman Whitfield III, a Black pianist and composer, while he was experiencing a mental health crisis [more inside]
posted by paimapi at 2:42 PM PST - 25 comments

The Opening Credits to The Prisoner. To say more - that would be telling. [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein at 2:38 PM PST - 25 comments

On Snow an essay by writer, poet, and translator Anne Carson. [more inside]
posted by gwint at 1:53 PM PST - 2 comments

In an essay translated by Ikuho Amano and James Shea and published in Poetry Magazine, 19th c. (Meiji period) poet Masaoko Shiki ponders the ways in which the authors of haiku refer very directly to excrement: “Haiku on Shit”
posted by Going To Maine at 11:00 AM PST - 16 comments

Search Movie Quotes. Does what it says on the tin, for MCU and Star Wars; cites in the manner of Bible verses.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:20 AM PST - 29 comments

Receipts can target customer preferences far better than circulars or coupon offers. Ever walk into a CVS to pick up some gum, maybe some Chapstick, only to get hit with a ridiculously long receipt? It’s no secret that most CVS purchases come with these comically long receipts. But what might surprise you is that these long receipts are part of a marketing plan that's paying off big time for CVS. Cheddar Explains: Youtube. [SLYT 8mins] [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 7:48 AM PST - 45 comments

A group of outdoor adventurers are revolutionizing how their sports treat the survivors of tragic accidents
posted by Etrigan at 6:00 AM PST - 9 comments

5 Things to Know About this Thread: 1) It wants to break free; 2) You're so self-satisfied, it doesn't need you; 3) It's fallen in love for the first time; 4) This time it knows it's for real; 5) God knows it wants to break free. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:51 AM PST - 148 comments

How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 6:53 PM PST - 56 comments

Announced by Indiana.edu (Sept 2021) "Our latest paper “Neutral bots probe political bias on social media” by Wen Chen, Diogo Pacheco, Kai-Cheng Yang & Fil Menczer just came out in Nature Communications. We find strong evidence of political bias on Twitter, but not as many think: (1) it is conservative rather than liberal bias, and (2) it results from user interactions (and abuse) rather than platform algorithms." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:36 PM PST - 5 comments

Falls Church, VA bike shop owner Nick Clark was many things, a former cycling champion, former CEO, a scholar (3 Bachelors, 3 MBAs, and a PhD), former soldier and more. Or so he would have you believe. The truth, as outlined by Cycling Tips, is much, much different. (Note: long read)
posted by tommasz at 1:09 PM PST - 40 comments

Machado de Assis (1870), "Captain Mendonça": "'So you think her eyes are pretty?' 'As I said, they have the rarest beauty.' 'Would you like to have them?' the old man asked." Quotes from other stories by Machado de Assis appear throughout Paul Christopher Johnson's prize-winning open access book Automatic Religion, which "reanimates one of the most mysterious ... questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?" in discussions of "hysteria" and Charcot's monkey [PDF], the trial of a "possession priest," the popular saint Escrava Anastácia [PDF], Ajeeb the chess automaton, the spiritist Chico Xavier, Locke's Brazilian parrot, and more. See also suggestions made by P. Gabrielle Foreman, et al., in "Writing about Slavery/Teaching about Slavery: This Might Help."
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:59 AM PST - 2 comments

After doing audio production services for The Arboria Institute*, Benge from Memetune Studio has released TMP-01 Vintage Synth TV Series. [more inside]
posted by 2N2222 at 9:28 AM PST - 10 comments

iCalendar (.ics) files (electronic calendar invitations) are specially formatted text and, if you're a programmer, maybe you'll enjoy Christine Spang's "Email as Distributed Protocol Transport: How Meeting Invites Work and Ideas for the Future" (34 minute video) (an Open Source Bridge talk from 2015), as I did. And/or: if you need to make a slightly complicated .ics file to attach to a message or make available as a download/feed, to invite people to several events in a series, Marudot's iCal Event Maker makes that easier.
posted by brainwane at 4:32 AM PST - 8 comments