MetaFilter

SuperButterBuns brings us all the basics with Nier Automata for Beginners ("Become as frogs."), Undertale for Beginners ("Date the Skeleton, you nerds.") and How to Get Into the Kingdom Hearts Series for Beginners ("This is a special episode, everybody.").
posted by Deoridhe at 10:03 PM PST - 9 comments

I stopped in my local bike shop (lbs) today, and noticed that all of the bikes were starting to converge on the same set of features: disc brakes, dropped handlebars, somewhat aggressive position: gravel bikes, adventure bikes, cyclocross bikes, all-road bikes.... what happened? What The Hell Is A Gravel Bike? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:28 PM PST - 107 comments

DC has many tunnels, only some of which are on fire. Using historical maps and the DC Public Library's newspaper archive, local history buff Elliot Carter will take you on a (ongoing) survey of the District's underground domain. [more inside]
posted by waninggibbon at 6:39 PM PST - 12 comments

Stuntronics: Disney Imagineering Has Created Autonomous Robot Stunt Doubles [YouTube] “The Stuntronics robot features on-board accelerometer and gyroscope arrays supported by laser range finding. In its current form, it’s humanoid, taking on the size and shape of a performer that could easily be imagined clothed in the costume of, say, one of The Incredibles, or someone on the Marvel roster. The bot is able to be slung from the end of a wire to fly through the air, controlling its pose, rotation and center of mass to not only land aerial tricks correctly but to do them on target while holding heroic poses in midair.” [via: Tech Crunch] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:33 PM PST - 33 comments

Musher and outdoors writer Blair Braverman (previously, previously) has two litters of puppies on her ranch this year, one slightly older than the other. In these times of distress and sorrow, she uses Twitter threads to keep the world apprised, through pictures and video, of the tiny discoveries of tiny dogs.
the puppies like this hole
6 puppies + 8 puppies = 10,000 puppies
Sled blobs on a mission
[more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 4:18 PM PST - 24 comments

Sam & Max is a multi-media empire focused on the exploits of the Freelance Police: Sam, the laid-back but enthusiastic, brown-coated anthropomorphic Irish Wolfhound, and Max, the hyperkinetic, three-foot tall rabbity thing that is prone to violence. Their adventures were first published as a comic in 1987, which lead to a video game [trailer], a short-lived animated series [intro], and then a second game [trailer] (which was cancelled*), and finally three more games [3 trailers]. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:13 PM PST - 16 comments

"In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools."
posted by Lycaste at 2:55 PM PST - 22 comments

So the BCFD made a home movie demonstrating - with a multi-million dollar fire truck that is too big to fit in the firehouse, and on the same block where the executive director of cycling-advocacy nonprofit Bikemore lives - that bike lanes make it too hard to fight fires.
posted by misskaz at 12:39 PM PST - 38 comments

The Porche 919 Hybrid Evo just lapped the 12.94 mile long Nürburgring in 5:19.546, 51.58 seconds faster than the record. The on board video feels like it's in fast forward. Jalopnik has a nice write up about what it means.
posted by Uncle at 10:57 AM PST - 87 comments

"Welcome to Excel Unusual, the home of the most unique Microsoft Excel animated spreadsheets." How about a gated ring oscillator? Maybe some Pong? Surely you've time for a wireframe rollercoaster? And so on and so forth. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 10:25 AM PST - 9 comments

"Consistent with NSA’s core values of respect for the law, accountability, integrity, and transparency we are making public notice that on May 23, 2018, NSA began deleting all call detail records (CDRs) acquired since 2015 under Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 9:35 AM PST - 11 comments

Noel Gallagher Goes Undercover on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram [SLYT: 10m12s; NSFW] . Corrects grammar, corrects myths, is generally correct. Oh, and judges a Wonderwall cover.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 7:23 AM PST - 12 comments

Short animation explains how to conduct yourself at work in the wake of #MeToo and #TimesUp. Created by Times Up Now, and narrated by Donald Glover and Rashida Jones. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 5:48 AM PST - 13 comments

The Astrobiologist Blues | StarTalk All-Star Dr. David Grinspoon and comedian Chuck Nice co-wrote “The Astrobiologist Blues” to help you experience the inner-workings of an astrobiologist’s mind. Watch as they perform the song in front of Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronaut Mike Massimino, and a few fans and friends! (SLYT)
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:20 AM PST - 4 comments

The belief that interests arrive fully formed and must simply be “found” can lead people to limit their pursuit of new fields and give up when they encounter challenges, according to a new Stanford study.
posted by Vesihiisi at 11:10 PM PST - 13 comments

Security footage of a couple attempting to escape arrest at a Canadian convenience store, which deserves some sort of award for editing. Watch to the end. [more inside]
posted by figurant at 10:45 PM PST - 72 comments

Playing Beethoven in the #BlackLivesMatter era — Johann Baptist Vanhal’s Concerto in D Major is a standard of the string repertoire. A Czech composer and musician who performed with Joseph Haydn, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Vanhal most likely wrote the bright and shimmery concerto for double bass in the 1760s, around the same time that he was saving money to purchase his freedom from a Bohemian count. [CW: this is America] [more inside]
posted by Celsius1414 at 7:34 PM PST - 6 comments

Spotlight on Ricardo Bofill, Architect
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:47 PM PST - 14 comments

"Now I'm told the band playing was Social Distortion from LA, it is a hard rock, punk rock type band, and some of the people here might be described as punk rockers, is that fair or not fair?" Milwaukee local news covers the "Odd Rock Riot" of October 4, 1988, when police broke up an overcrowded Social Distortion show before the band could start their set. Thirty years later, Social D returns to Milwaukee to play tonight at Summerfest.
posted by escabeche at 6:44 PM PST - 10 comments

A short film.
posted by HuronBob at 6:41 PM PST - 8 comments

For more than a century Massachusetts has required drivers to have state-issued licenses before getting behind the wheel, and for much of that time it has asked recipients to declare their gender as either male or female, M or F. Now, at the urging of a teenager from the MetroWest region, the state is considering giving motorists a third option: X. [more inside]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:05 PM PST - 73 comments

Overwatch's Latest Hero Is Wrecking Ball, A Hamster In A Mech [Twitter] “It looks like Overwatch’s newest hero might be who—but not what—we thought. Fans speculated that the first-person shooter’s 28th hero could be Hammond, a monkey companion to the genetically-engineered gorilla Winston. So it came as a surprise that Overwatch just released Hammond the hamster, who goes by “Wrecking Ball,” onto the game’s public test realm this afternoon. Hammond is a mischief-making tank hero who fires machine guns out of his mech, which can roll into a “wrecking ball.”” [via: Kotaku] [Origin Story] [Developer Update]
posted by Fizz at 3:55 PM PST - 34 comments

Choco Mountain: The History of Mario Kart 64's Most Infamous Track - A Nintendo 64 speedrun record almost 20 years in the making. [30 minute video, no Mario Kart knowledge is necessary.]
posted by Sibrax at 2:41 PM PST - 21 comments

They Played Dominoes Outside Their Apartment For Decades. Then The White People Moved In And Police Started Showing Up. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 12:49 PM PST - 171 comments

She’ll grow up in a very diverse home. We surround her with people who are different. Three years after meeting David and Tanner while documenting queer communities, photographer Jackie Malloy saw Tanner's Facebook post that he was unexpectedly pregnant with their child and was proud to be the father to their child. She reached out and they welcomed her into their lives for another year and a half to document Tanner's pregnancy and the evolution of their family through their daughter's first birthday.
posted by stillmoving at 12:33 PM PST - 5 comments

“It’s an unsettled identity, and you can fall out of it, you can barely get into it, you certainly can’t rise above it very easily. Guy Standing coined the term precariat in 2011 to describe the proletariat, which is a Marxist way of understanding the working class, crossed with precariousness. And people get that. Every time they ride an Uber or they have a gig economy Task Rabbit person come to their house they’re like, OK, that’s the precariat. But I was seeing the same thing among paralegals or those who have law degrees but were still doing temporary work.” Reimagining the Middle Class, a talk with Alissa Quart about her new book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America.
posted by The Whelk at 11:56 AM PST - 9 comments

People in U.S. prisons often supplement their meager meals with ramen -- it's cheap, doesn't spoil quickly, and is easy to prepare. However, the average packet of Nissin or Maruchan ramen has more than half of the recommended daily allowance of sodium, leading to heart disease and other preventable illness across the prison system. That's why Ron Freeman developed low-sodium ramen and is specifically aiming sales at prison commissaries.
posted by Etrigan at 10:38 AM PST - 26 comments

“Once exclamation points were scary and loud; they made you jump,” Heidi Julavits wrote in her 2015 memoir The Folded Clock. “You were in trouble when the exclamation points came out. They were the nunchucks of punctuation. They were a bark, a scold, a gallows sentence. Not any longer. The exclamation point is lighthearted, even whimsical."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:41 AM PST - 27 comments

An ethical crisis in the digital forensics industry came to a head last week with the release of new details on Microsoft’s undocumented “Activities” API. A previously unknown trove of access and activity logs held by Microsoft allows investigators to track Office 365 mailbox activity in minute detail.
posted by cgc373 at 9:13 AM PST - 7 comments

Unintended consequences: Inside the fallout of America’s crackdown on opioids.

Chronic pain patients, such as Stewart, are driving extraordinary distances to find or continue seeing doctors. They are flying across the country to fill prescriptions. Some have turned to unregulated alternatives such as kratom, which the Drug Enforcement Administration warns could cause dependence and psychotic symptoms. And yet others are threatening suicide on social media, and have even followed through, as doctors taper pain medication in a massive undertaking that Stefan Kertesz, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who studies addiction and opioids, described as “having no precedent in the history of medicine.”

[more inside]
posted by homunculus at 9:02 AM PST - 42 comments

Here's a surprising extreme heat risk for 1 in 6 Americans Psychiatric medications can interfere with the body's ability to regulate temperature, and most patients don't know, experts say. [more inside]
posted by MrVisible at 8:36 AM PST - 30 comments

As hosepipe bans and water supply issues occur, moist and instagramed Brits bare skin while shopping, slip into thongs, and turn to radishes and licking Earl Grey tea ice lollies. As moors catch fire and roads and buildings "melt" the heatwave stretches onwards. Tube travel is now in "sweaty stranger armpit" mode, while usually delightfully enjoyable British train journeys are delayed and commuters stare at screens. With temperatures topping 30C in all four nations and old people reminiscing about the summer of 1976, the heat is also affecting nearby countries. The usual advice - shade, work breaks, sunscreen, hydration, avoid jumping into quarry lakes and look after your pets and don't leave them in vehicles - prevails. The forecast: more of the same for days ahead. Post title.
posted by Wordshore at 8:32 AM PST - 93 comments

A Report Of Connected Events (slvimeo)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:33 AM PST - 7 comments

Aptly named Ibiza, the film follows three American girls (who struggle to pronounce Ibiza correctly the entire film) as they travel to everyone's favourite clubbing paradise and if luke-warm rom-coms are your thing, then you're in luck. The lead character falls in love with an EDM DJ and absolute hilarity ensues (it doesn't). We spoke to the director Alex Richanbach about how he made the film, his influences and his take on glamourising drugs. This is perhaps the most awkward interview we've ever done.
posted by beisny at 7:08 AM PST - 106 comments

The boys at the Gravity Discovery Centre of Gingin, Western Australia have some fun with oobleck and a bowling ball (also vs a pool table), an anvil (also flaming, vs deodorant cans, and a giant dart (also vs a stack of paper). They've also got a trampoline (or they had one). [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 6:52 AM PST - 28 comments

Princess Chelsea - "I Love My Boyfriend"
posted by griphus at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments

Joanna Scutts asks: What gets lost when it's only the rebel girls who get lionized? [more inside]
posted by Catseye at 5:06 AM PST - 32 comments

Beer and Cider rationed! Pig Welfare at Risk! Frozen Food Supplies Hit! Coca-Cola Production Affected! And now, in a shocking escalation of the crisis: Crumpet Plants Shut! The 2018 European CO₂ shortage has been described as the “worst supply situation to hit the European carbon dioxide business in decades”: Why it really matters for the UK's food and drink supply
posted by misteraitch at 1:37 AM PST - 21 comments

I notice, talking to younger people, people who hit that Napoleonic moment of turning twenty since the crisis, that the idea of capitalism being thought of as morally superior elicits something between an eye roll and a hollow laugh. Their view of capitalism has been formed by austerity, increasing inequality, the impunity and imperviousness of finance and big technology companies, and the widespread spectacle of increasing corporate profits and a rocketing stock market combined with declining real pay and a huge growth in the new phenomenon of in-work poverty. That last is very important. For decades, the basic promise was that if you didn’t work the state would support you, but you would be poor. If you worked, you wouldn’t be. That’s no longer true: most people on benefits are in work too, it’s just that the work doesn’t pay enough to live on. That’s a fundamental breach of what used to be the social contract. So is the fact that the living standards of young people are likely not to be as high as they are for their parents. That idea stings just as much for parents as it does for their children. John Lanchester on the ten years following the credit crunch.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 8:09 PM PST - 50 comments

Since 2011, Butches and Babies (not to be confused with baby butches) has been compiling photos.

It’s not at all easy to march through the world shattering gender norms at every turn. So when a butch holds a small child, relatively unaffected by gender (in a cognitive/behavioral sense), it is a simultaneous exchange of healing and freedom. Maybe I think about this too much, but that’s what I see. Every single time. I see hope and a new world.

[more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:49 PM PST - 20 comments

Harlan Ellison, one of the greatest ever speculative fiction writers, died today at the age of 84. [more inside]
posted by Palindromedary at 2:58 PM PST - 154 comments

[NSFW text and pics] The setup: A redditor in /r/WTF posts a picture with this description: I found a homemade electric chair while exploring an abandoned building in Croatia. While discussing whether or not it is in fact that, redditor /u/anon72c says, "Contrary to what you see in movies, a car battery can't hurt you unless you drop it on your foot, or drink the acid." Another redditor suggests that he try connecting the battery to certain body parts as a test. Challenge accepted. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:15 PM PST - 48 comments

Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough [Autoplay Video] “Tips and tricks on how to beat the alien queen boss battle in Final Deployment 4 (Multi-platform) as well as the "Homecoming" DLC.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:00 PM PST - 19 comments

The World Cup 2018 moves into the knockout round of 16. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:56 PM PST - 80 comments

So you have all this cheese lying around, and you don't fancy eating it. Or maybe, if you're in the US, you're facing down the largest cheese stockpile in a century. What can you do? Suggestions include paint, plastics, jewelry, glue, fabric, and so much more. Turns out cheese is pretty useful after all. [more inside]
posted by sciatrix at 12:16 PM PST - 31 comments

The corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum), a ten to fifteen-foot tall flower which requires months to years (or decades) to store up enough energy to bloom once, is now in bloom at the NY Botanical Garden. Watch the live stream here. [more inside]
posted by gemutlichkeit at 11:27 AM PST - 13 comments

Students raise money to send cleaner and his wife to Jamaica to visit family. "He is the epitome of happiness," one student said. The gift included a note saying, "You have brightened many of our days and we want you to know that we love and appreciate you." Herman has worked at Bristol University as part of the cleaning staff for 12 years. In terms of the positivity that so many students praise him for, Herman told Newsbeat it's important to keep away "negative vibes...I know that these students are studying. You don't want any negative vibes around them."
posted by stillmoving at 10:32 AM PST - 8 comments

With US Supreme Court centrist Justice Kennedy's recent decision to retire, Donald Trump now gets a second Supreme Court pick, one that may reshape the SC (and the country) for decades. Moments after the announcement, Mitch McConnell promised a swift confirmation of Trump's nominee before the midterm elections. This appears likely: all Senate Republicans are likely to go along with Trump's conservative nominee even if they grumble about it, while moderate Democrats may break party ranks to also support Trump's nominee. [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:00 AM PST - 185 comments

After 45 years, five books, thousands of columns, and appearances in more than 100 MeFi FPPs, The Straight Dope has published its last column. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:00 AM PST - 45 comments

"There’s been a tendency over the last century or two to imagine the solo-living man as someone who has chosen peaceful privacy and the solo-living woman as a sort of flawed societal leftover. Or perhaps more alarmingly, a woman who has chosen to reject her preordained role as helper to a husband and family."
posted by Lycaste at 9:54 AM PST - 50 comments

I’m not a party guy but I’d be down if someone threw a real roaring 20’s party for 2020. Like real tuxedos and all. Not shirtless dudes with a bow tie. Like a real Gatsby party with everyone fully dressed like the era.

Why does the above tweet have over 330,000 likes and 84,000 retweets? Ashley Feinberg convenes "an ad hoc panel of extremely online teens " to investigate. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 8:55 AM PST - 48 comments

Pink Triangles Rising (yt link) is a short 1983 documentary by Dan Dinello and Tom Corboy about the 1982 Chicago Pride Parade, which saw its attendance surge from past events fueled by queer people and allies showing up to counter the Nazi rally being held near the parade route. [more inside]
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:06 AM PST - 2 comments

Magic for artists: Part 1 Intro; Part 2 Tarot & other decks; Part 3 Runes, Sigils and more
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:29 AM PST - 12 comments

Be Excellent To Each Other: Virtue Signalling in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure -- Game designer and writer Stew Wilson (website) digs into the neoreactionary logic behind the idea of "virtue signalling", using the classic 1989 time travel/slacker comedy as an ethical (if imperfect) counter-example.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:20 AM PST - 64 comments

'World's fattest hedgehog' placed on diet and exercise regime. "Arbuckle" is a pretty good name, but it can't hold a candle to "Mr Piggywinkle," who was put on a strict diet in 2016. (Hedgehogs previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:17 AM PST - 13 comments

Alice Bolin's Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession "attempts to investigate why we are so obsessed with grim images of beautiful women and their overwhelming influence on our culture—from the art that we consume to the ways in which we view living women as they express their own motives and determinations." [Esquire] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:21 AM PST - 11 comments

In the 1980s, the BBC funded The Computer Literacy Project. They commissioned a home computer (the BBC Micro) and software, and broadcast many features. These (267 of them) are online. See Chris Serles, Gill Nevill, Ian McNaught Davis, Bernard Falk, Lesley Judd, Fred Harris and others and grapple with topics such as programming in BASIC, the Sinclair ZX80, how crap much educational software is, simulating the British economy, robots making harpsichords using Pascal, the ridiculous idea of connecting computers around the world, and what should happen if machines can do things better than people. There's also a project history, a timeline and 166 BBC Micro Software programs. Some materials also on archive.org, and the continuing need for IT education in the UK.
posted by Wordshore at 10:21 PM PST - 35 comments

The Norwegian Consumer Council (Forbrukerrådet), a government agency that promotes and protects the rights of consumers, has published a report in English [pdf link] on how Facebook, Google and Windows 10 use dark patterns to manipulate users.
posted by Vesihiisi at 9:09 PM PST - 17 comments

And now the news: The wonderful Mash Report gives us another vital story. (slyt, swearing)
posted by Mogur at 7:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Amsterdam drained a canal and put everything they found online, piece by piece, chronologically, and you can see it all, from guns to [more inside]
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:45 PM PST - 68 comments

100 years ago last week, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train Wreck occurred near Hammond Indiana. Let the History Guy tell you the story. Wikipedia.
posted by pjern at 6:19 PM PST - 5 comments

20 minutes of HD slow-motion footage of a common nighthawk (SLYT)
posted by rebent at 6:13 PM PST - 5 comments

What is so evocative about industrial robots in colorful clothes? Feast your eyes on Robosuits. Robo-Gear. Robot Covers. [more inside]
posted by drdanger at 5:23 PM PST - 16 comments

The fact that they never did suggests that the group’s members—400 prominent, influential figures in academia, media, and publishing—would rather keep trans people at a safe, anthropological remove where they can talk about trans people without speaking to trans people directly.

Harron Walker: Private Messages Reveal the Cis Journalist Groupthink Behind Trans Media Narratives [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 4:41 PM PST - 64 comments

The Neuroscience of Pain: Brain imaging is illuminating the neural patterns behind pain’s infinite variety.
posted by homunculus at 3:20 PM PST - 13 comments

Titanic's Distress Calls as Text The increasing desperation of the SOS and CQD messages after Titanic hit the iceberg on April 15, 1912, mixed with a certain banality of "old man" exchanges, is reproduced as text messages with the SOS sounding in the background. Amazing how much time is spent repeating the same thing while the Titanic operator remains calm yet is clearly begging for help. On Youtube. Some history on CQD/SOS distress calls
posted by etaoin at 3:07 PM PST - 43 comments

Fortnite Is Bad But Sony's Refusal to Play Nice Is Worse [Gizmodo] “Earlier this week, Nintendo delighted Fortnite fans by announcing that the game, which might just be the most popular game being played right now, was coming to the Switch immediately. Even better, Switch players would be able to compete with PC and Xbox players, too—instant digital distribution and multiplayer open to all! Nintendo’s announcement felt like a dream come true after years of console makers refusing to play nice. But it isn’t a dream, because Sony continues to flip the bird to its competitors and Fortnite players on the PS4 are being left out in the cold, unable to play with Xbox or Switch gamers.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:28 PM PST - 33 comments

RIP Joseph Jackson, 89. His website. Patriarch of the Jackson family, he beat his children and was not named in his famous son's will. He was memorably portrayed by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. Variety obit. TMZ "exclusive".
posted by Melismata at 11:53 AM PST - 20 comments

“The substance of the show wasn’t that different from “Riverdale”: it offered the usual roundelay of broken hearts, bruised feelings, and hookups. Teens kissed. They zoned out in class. They shared earbuds. But “skam Austin” had many hidden layers, and the producers wanted viewers to uncover them all. The characters, some of them played by local teen-agers, all had Instagram accounts, and, like real people’s, the posts offered insights into the characters’ pasts and their hopes for the future. Collectively, the video clips, photographs, and comments imbued the characters with a depth that not even flashbacks provide in conventional TV.”

“SKAM,” the Radical Teen Drama That Unfolds One Post at a Time: Is a narrative built from Facebook comments, texts, and Instagram Stories the future of TV?
posted by Grandysaur at 10:40 AM PST - 15 comments

Introducing Windows 95 Mobile [slyt]
posted by porn in the woods at 10:37 AM PST - 15 comments

8:42 AM— Stayed out pretty late killing teenagers last night, so I let myself take the morning off and just laze around in bed.
posted by josher71 at 10:12 AM PST - 18 comments

In a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court has overturned a 40-year-old precedent, ruling that public-sector unions cannot require union dues from non-members who do not wish to pay them. The decision was split along party lines, with the Court's five conservative members finding that this requirement was a violation of the right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 9:35 AM PST - 96 comments

Earlier this year, the owner's of the NFL approved ejection standards to go along with the new helmet contact rule, intended to decrease the risk of injury during tackles. How The NFL's New Helmet Rule Could Change Football As We Know It
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:15 AM PST - 17 comments

Fear of a Brown Planet is an album of psychedelic Latin funk...covers? interpretations? celebrations! of classic Public Enemy joints by Austin's Brownout, previously noted for their Black Sabbath covers. It goes hard. [more inside]
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 8:07 AM PST - 10 comments

Meet a professional Dungeon Master
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:23 AM PST - 36 comments

Damien Hirst works will go up for sale this fall Sotheby’s London will be offering Frank Dunphy’s personal collection of Damien Hirst works (as well as other artists’ items) this coming September.
posted by Yellow at 7:11 AM PST - 11 comments

The 10th edition of ESPN's The Body Issue featuring: Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe (featured together as a couple), Lauren Chamberlain, Adam Rippon, Breanna Stewart, Greg Norman, Yasiel Puig, and more.
posted by like_neon at 6:36 AM PST - 17 comments

Is America Ready to Love Cottage Cheese Again? (slNYT)
posted by box at 5:33 AM PST - 124 comments

Minecrafting YouTuber and documentary maker Mumbo Jumbo presents a serious documentary about Minecrafting Youtuber Grian and his cats, Maui and Pearl. (SLYT).
posted by carter at 4:27 AM PST - 1 comment

Record Label Logos curated by designer and illustrator Reagan Ray. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Paul McCartney on Carpool Karaoke is television at its best. Not only does it have all the happiness and goofiness you expect Corden to deliver, but this McCartney karaoke is also unexpectedly tender, touching and meaningful. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:27 AM PST - 36 comments

In planetary defense news, a new National Near Earth Object Preparedness Plan has been released in the United States. [more inside]
posted by Rob Rockets at 11:40 PM PST - 17 comments

The ISFJ Assassin.
Find your post-apocalyptic Myers-Briggs type
or just keep reading the sidebar articles.
posted by michaelh at 11:12 PM PST - 37 comments

Ten years after retiring, Cubs clubhouse manager Yosh Kawano died Monday [EU unfriendly], age 98. He worked at Wrigley Field for nearly 65 years, witnessed 37 managers and his continued employment was infamously guaranteed when the Wrigley family sold the Cubs in the 1980s. [more inside]
posted by hoyland at 8:33 PM PST - 11 comments

For the first time in 35 years, the Elks are growing. Average member age is down from 69 to 61. Membership is exploding in San Francisco, the Florida Keys, North Carolina, and dozens of other areas, including the bedroom communities of New Jersey, where Eli Manning was just voted to membership. Each of those lodges has a story of where that growth is coming from, yet the impulse remains constant: seeking connections, with people who are not necessarily like them, in dusty old buildings with $2 drafts and animal heads hanging over the doorway.

Anne Helen Petersen on the millennial resurgence of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
posted by Iridic at 3:13 PM PST - 156 comments

Lethal Weapon is a cop show about the literally explosive fallout of men excusing themselves from the work of being emotionally productive in the shadow of their survival.

It’s exactly the kind of story men don’t need. By Brandon O’Brien.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:26 PM PST - 29 comments

Domestic abusers are using the likes of internet-connected thermostats, doorbells, speakers, lights, and other smart home devices to establish their power or harass their partners. One woman alleged that her air conditioning turned off without her controlling it, another woman alleged her front door lock code frequently changed, and another alleged that her doorbell repeatedly rang when no one was there. One woman told the New York Times that she resorted to pulling her smart thermostat out of the wall. [more inside]
posted by hepta at 12:14 PM PST - 76 comments

A branch of the ALA has removed Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from an award for children's literature. Laura Ingalls Wilder was (and is) beloved for her landmark Little House on the Prairie series, but her books have rightfully been decried for their racism against Native Americans, among other things. The ALA has reassured their constituency that this is not intended as censorship or meant to suppress discussion of these works. Conservatives are, predictably, outraged. [more inside]
posted by zeusianfog at 11:59 AM PST - 73 comments

“For 500 years, the painted wooden effigy of St George that adorns a chapel in the Spanish town of Estella has been locked in a silent struggle against his old foe, the dragon. Today, however, the saint faces a different battle thanks to a feat of restoration that has prompted comparisons with the infamous “Ecce Homo Monkey Christ” and exasperated the mayor. [...] The restoration is believed to have been carried out by a handicrafts teacher at the request of the parish authorities of the Church of St Michael.” via: [The Guardian]
posted by Fizz at 11:41 AM PST - 19 comments

Exploration Vessel Nautilus (previously here, here, and here) and her research team are currently exploring the Cascadia Margin for methane seep and hydrate sites and their ecosystems off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and northern California as part of their 2018 expedition. Follow along via the E/V Nautilus' 24/7 live video feed and social media channels. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:17 AM PST - 3 comments

Need 8 minutes to calm down? Watch a short, quiet, idyllic video of Li Zikai building a cat-shaped brick-and-clay oven from scratch. (slfb video) [more inside]
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:59 AM PST - 10 comments

“There’s no narrative to chicken tenders, there’s no performance. That is the substance of their allure: If you’re ordering them, you don’t have to look at the menu. You don’t have to think about whether you’ve been posting a lot of pasta lately or whether it’s kind of passé at this point to go for a kale salad. Chicken tenders aren’t cool. They’re not retro. They’re not funny. They ask nothing of you, and they don’t say anything about you. They are two things, and two things only: perfect, and delicious. That’s enough. That’s everything.“
posted by Grandysaur at 9:56 AM PST - 82 comments

Eight spectacular outdoor staircase murals from around the world.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:40 AM PST - 4 comments

TeacherTube is a free resource for educators, students and parents to share and watch instructional videos. Launched in 2007 as a YouTube alternative that is "a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners," the site is now home to over a million user-generated videos on dozens of topics, many of which are used as teaching tools in schools and libraries across the United States. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:43 AM PST - 2 comments

MeFi's own mhoye has a question: What is the least plausible story about yourself that's true? It has gone viral, with thousands of replies and quote-tweets. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:28 AM PST - 273 comments

The Obsessive Search For The Tasmanian Tiger [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Twenty years ago today, Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire first traveled from their homes [trailer] on the Coeur D'Alene Indian Reservation in Plummer, Idaho, down to Phoenix, Arizona. This journey was adapted from the stories in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, particularly "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" [PDF with questions for discussion]. The movie was unique, as an all-Native American production: producers, director, screenwriter, actors and technicians. What Smoke Signals means 20 years later by Ellen C. Caldwell, who notes that "the film is constantly playing with dismantling and challenging dominant Native stereotypes." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:42 AM PST - 21 comments

After three are killed by a train in London, graffiti artists on why they risk their lives. Also Vandalism or art?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Hareton Splimby (aka Harris Bomberguy, aka hbomberguy) discusses Ctrl+Alt+Del ... plus also Penny Arcade, The Room, Sonic the Hedgehog, gamer culture, puppies, Jack Thompson, Visceral Games, "it's just a video game," making art that says more than you thought it did, popular art as a means of cultural self-reflection and the rejection of art as indicative of an unwillingness to participate in that self-reflection, and some very silly jokes. [more inside]
posted by Kybard at 7:17 AM PST - 16 comments

Fashion Studies is the first open-access journal in fashion that celebrates multiple ways of knowing and sharing that knowledge. Published annually by Ryerson University’s Centre for Fashion Diversity and Social Change, it aims to evolve and re-imagine the interdisciplinary field of fashion studies at no cost to authors or readers. The inaugural issue is now out. [more inside]
posted by Vesihiisi at 4:28 AM PST - 5 comments

NPR Music's 35 Favorite Songs Of 2018 (So Far) [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 9:54 PM PST - 21 comments

How GE Went From American Icon to Astonishing Mess.
posted by storybored at 9:38 PM PST - 46 comments

NewRetroWave is a YouTube channel devoted to the 80’s-infused electronic music genre known variously as synthwave/retrowave/outrun. Whether you’re jacking into a mainframe in Neo Tokyo, cruising down a Miami highway at night in your convertible, or discovering what true love means with your girlfriend Jennifer, this channel has got you covered. [more inside]
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:46 PM PST - 34 comments

Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall is a charming story about a modern day Glaswegian giant and his run-in with a witch. [more inside]
posted by Omnomnom at 1:36 PM PST - 16 comments

10 year-old Erica Tandoh is a young DJ taking Ghana by storm “Deejaying is my passion but I want to be a gynaecologist because I want to help women,” she said in an interview with Nairobi News. A couple more clips of her here.
posted by stillmoving at 12:12 PM PST - 12 comments

Singer Lena Hall is obsessed. Best known for her Tony-winning performance as Yitzhak in the 2014 revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hall is publishing a monthly series of YouTube videos featuring stripped-down versions of songs by artists she’s obsessed with. So far, the list includes songs from The Cranberries, Peter Gabriel, P!nk, Elton John, Radiohead, and Hedwig. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 11:36 AM PST - 12 comments

KOOPAISM IS CAPITALISM - MeFi's The Whelk on The Super Mario Bros. Movie at 25. [via mefi projects]
posted by Artw at 11:28 AM PST - 11 comments

How Reporter’s Affair With a Senate Aide Rattled the Media. The seizure of email records from a Times reporter alarmed First Amendment groups. Her relationship with an intelligence aide set off an ethical debate. (SLNYT by Michael M. Grynbaum, Scott Shane and Emily Flitter)
posted by crazy with stars at 10:29 AM PST - 14 comments

When we think of a hero, the image that comes to mind for many people is a straight, cisgender white man in a costume, basking in his importance as he blusters his way into saving the world. We at them. not only believe that queer people are heroes, but that we are heroic precisely because we live in a world that doesn’t consider us valuable, yet still find ways to prosper and care for each other in that world every day. This month, we decided to honor individuals who not only make our community more visible, but who actively work to help other LGBTQ+ people feel important and supported. Here are our 2018 Queeroes, and the reasons why we cherish them.
posted by ellieBOA at 9:49 AM PST - 10 comments

The Weird and Wavy History of Wine Coolers [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:37 AM PST - 65 comments

These gamers are able to kick ass despite lacking vision, a sense most modern video games take for granted.
posted by Alensin at 8:53 AM PST - 10 comments

The Fall of The Simpsons: How it Happened
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:00 AM PST - 79 comments

Can Scotland save its wildcats from extinction? [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:12 AM PST - 12 comments

Two days after thousands marched in London for a People's Vote, Bloomberg reports that political insiders helped hedge fund managers make millions by shorting the market over the EU referendum. Security analyst James Patrick adds evidence that more millions were made by betting the opposite way on cryptocurrencies. In Westminster, hardline Tories tell Theresa May to get ready for no-deal, even as evidence piles up that a no-deal Brexit will ground Britain to a halt and that there's no back-up plan for Northern Ireland. One study indicates that Brexit has already slowed UK growth by 2.1%, and is costing the UK government £440 million a week. Brexiters are discovering that the UK already had the best model: EU membership. [more inside]
posted by rory at 6:18 AM PST - 272 comments

As the body count from school shootings has risen, school officials across the nation have been forced to consider versions of this question. Administrators use detailed protocols and checklists to examine the circumstances of students who may pose risks. The pressure to prevent the worst has grown as students have begged adults to make sure they aren't next to die. In a nation divided over gun control, school threat assessments offer another option: Find a way to control the student. From Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter by Bethany Barnes in The Oregonian
posted by chavenet at 2:58 AM PST - 49 comments

The 25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America. (SLNYT)
posted by storybored at 9:23 PM PST - 20 comments

The @MeanwhileInCana Twitter account covers all things Canadian, often with a light touch (unless it's indigenous injustice or oil sands exploitation). Today it's highlighting ACTUAL HEADLINES FROM CANADIAN NEWSPAPERS. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:34 PM PST - 20 comments

Someone Sold Hot Dog Water for $28 at a Festival [Teen Vogue] — literal bottles of water containing a single hot dog each — which were sold at the Car Free Day festival in Vancouver. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:59 PM PST - 57 comments

“Why are you architects not interested in people?” Ingrid Gehl asked her new husband, Jan. “What do you think about the fact that your architecture professors take their photos at four o’clock in the morning . . . without the distraction of people in the photos?” The little-known behavioral scientist who transformed cities all over the world is the story of Ingrid Gehl, the psychologist who helped her now famous husband, Jan Gehl, in his battle to make cities livable. See also: Live Between Buildings (20 minute video, "annotated" links below the break) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Every book/play title should be written in the form of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
posted by gwint at 6:30 PM PST - 136 comments

How food is used to create a sense of identity and belonging has been well documented by anthropology for over a century. Change how a people eat -- or what they eat -- and you change the people, is the anthropological axiom at hand. So, how is food being used to create a culture of belonging coupled with extremes of self-sacrifice in Silicon Valley?
posted by clawsoon at 4:54 PM PST - 31 comments

Are you being served? Maybe not, if you're a fascist. This story and more coming up, as we review the latest dispatches from an America in crisis. [more inside]
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 4:14 PM PST - 2567 comments

Pride Month Special: “One True Pervert In the Courtroom” – The Trial of Dale Jennings

So smear on your best body paint, cuddle up with the spouse you previously couldn’t marry, and call that one homophobic Aunt that everyone has just to tell them to fuck right off as we talk about Dale Jennings, and how the LAPD totally George Michael’d the fuck out of him…and in doing so helped kick off the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement as we know it today.

…Fucking talk about some shit backfiring, eh?

[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 4:07 PM PST - 10 comments

And she might just break the internet with the most persuasive political campaign ad ever created. (SLYT)
posted by bologna on wry at 3:45 PM PST - 44 comments

If people want to write about my mum’s bathroom in her house, all I have to tell you is that 15 years ago, we were cleaning toilets in Stonebridge and getting breakfast out of the vending machine. If anybody deserves to be happy, it’s my mum. She came to this country with nothing and put herself through school cleaning bathrooms and changing bed sheets, and now she’s the director of a nursing home.

And her son plays for England.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:12 PM PST - 23 comments

the black Gothic revival not only works through what it means to be black in a nation still structured by violent white supremacy, but also dramatizes how black artists like Glover, Peele, Ward, and even Kanye must negotiate their celebrity while also remaining cognizant of the ways their race binds them to the vulnerabilities of a racialized second-class of citizenship.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:41 PM PST - 5 comments

BAD WITCH has been released. 30 minutes of NIN being NIN where they are now. Trent talks about the album and other things. Worth a read and a listen.
posted by hippybear at 1:27 PM PST - 18 comments

Prolific poet, writer, & former Poet Laureate of the United States, Donald Hall, September 20, 1928 - June 23, 2018. On poetry “It is beautiful ... there is no other purpose than the beauty of it. And that is reason enough to be.” [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 12:21 PM PST - 18 comments

In the City of South Fulton’s justice system, black women hold all the reins. The city is the first city in American history where every criminal justice department head is an African American woman. [more inside]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Reclaimed is an hour long CBC show focusing on indigenous music from all over the world. Each week, host Jarrett Martineau brings you sounds from the Indigenous next wave: artists reclaiming their culture through music and song, while paying respect to the previous generations that have set the stage for today’s diverse and inspiring talent to rise. Every episode is now available for streaming, going back to the show's debut at the start of 2018 (currently approx. 25 hours of realllly good music).
posted by mannequito at 11:15 AM PST - 6 comments

"For Gilbert Baker, sequins and rhinestones weren’t just fabulous. In his hands, they became political." Gilbert Baker, the ‘gay Betsy Ross’ (San Francisco Chronicle)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:23 AM PST - 3 comments

"I flaunt it," said Lyn Slater, a professor, model, and blogger. "I'm not 20. I don't want to be 20, but I'm really freaking cool. That's what I think about when I'm posting a photo." [more inside]
posted by holborne at 9:39 AM PST - 37 comments

Midsummer listening recommendations on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Over midsummer week, BBC Radio 3 explored the "the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer", through words, music and soundscapes. And if you need more, Radio 4's Pursuit of Beauty recent episodes include Colombian born artist, Alison Turnbull travelling to the tropical forest of Chocó on the Pacific coast in search of butterflies, and this week, going in search of musicality and sonic landscape of Virginia Woolf's world.
posted by Helga-woo at 8:54 AM PST - 2 comments

The Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn is a Victorian Banquet Hall. It's an over-the-top banquet hall, full of things to look at and nowhere to rest your eyes.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:00 AM PST - 16 comments

David Lynch interview as Room to Dream, his biography is published. Discussion (audio only). 'It is calling, but there are a lot of disturbances' Lynch hints at the possibly of more Twin Peaks.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:53 AM PST - 10 comments

"Situated in a neighborhood that's almost a caricature of urban grit — where the city's early-20th-century streetscape meets the Instagram-era — Washington Street has become a must-visit because of the way the buildings frame the Manhattan Bridge and the bridge, in turn, frames the Empire State Building beyond it." [more inside]
posted by How the runs scored at 6:33 AM PST - 31 comments

The unexpected is what makes an impression Surprises fires up the neural signals in the brain way more than an expected outcome. It is no different when listening to music and the notes take a different path.
posted by Yellow at 4:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Yamaguchi Akira makes art that takes everyday aspects of Japanese modernity (department stores, highway intersections, telephone poles...) and makes them half medieval and half science fantasy, without losing their everydayness. The art is also really beautiful. (I would give anything to ride on one of his subway trains; he's also done the New York subway among his illustrations to Donald Keene's autobiography, sadly not findable online as far as I can tell.)
posted by huimangm at 3:12 AM PST - 5 comments

"We are a species that strives not just for survival, but also for significance. We want lives that matter. It is when people are not able to maintain meaning that they are most psychologically vulnerable." An opinion piece about society and our existential crises (SLNYT).
posted by JiffyQ at 9:07 PM PST - 57 comments

Dog eating watermelon. Another dog eating a watermelon. More dog eating watermelon. Lots and lots of dogs eating watermelon. What's that, you want more dogs eating watermelon. A dog with flowers on its head eating a watermelon. A dog watermelon eating contest. A dog in a watermelon eating a watermelon. Two dogs in pink tutu dresses eating watermelon. Just another old dog eating a watermelon. Slow-motion dog eating watermelon. Two dogs enjoying watermelon in the backyard. Dogs sharing watermelon. Bonus capybara eating watermelon.
posted by Fizz at 7:04 PM PST - 38 comments

Looking at the current state of being bisexual on TV.

I was told so many lies about what being bisexual means that it took me 27 years to come out as bisexual myself. Friends shrugged that bisexual people just couldn’t make up their minds. Family members insisted that being gay or straight was one thing, but anything in between just didn’t make sense. And in a crushing blow, my beloved escape, television, insisted over and over that someone who might like men and women was a confused joke at best, and a slutty sinner at worst.

[more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 6:53 PM PST - 59 comments

On Friday night the New South Wales Blues defeated Queensland Maroons 16-10 in the first ever Women’s State of Origin rugby match. After the contest, Queensland captain Karina Brown shared a kiss with her long time partner, NSW player Vanessa Foliaki. The National Rugby League had some words for any haters. [more inside]
posted by chrisulonic at 6:24 PM PST - 4 comments

There is a . . . tension running through this year’s Pride celebrations . . . it’s becoming harder for people who don’t present as the “right” kind of queer-identified person to feel welcome "The contrast is clear in triumphant, ecstatic celebrations of marriage equality, when trans people still can’t use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. Corporations are cashing in on these identities by selling gay-themed products during Pride Month — often referred to as 'rainbow capitalism' — but too often, the rainbow begins and ends with masculine gay men. 'There is a sense now of compulsory gayness,' said Josh Burford, the director of community engagement at the Invisible Histories Project." [more inside]
posted by A. Davey at 5:39 PM PST - 71 comments

Lift bans on paying for human-blood plasma. "Plasma is used to make drugs such as factor VIII, which helps haemophiliacs’ blood to clot, and vaccines for rabies, tetanus and Rhesus disease. Almost 50m litres of it were used in 2015, enough to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools. America, the OPEC of plasma, produces 15 of those swimming-pool equivalents. Forget steel and cars: plasma makes up 1.6% of America’s total goods exports. The secret of this success is simple: America lets companies pay people for their plasma. ...The aversion to paid plasma rests on three reasonable-sounding but largely groundless propositions. "
posted by storybored at 5:17 PM PST - 12 comments

"Books are such a significant part of the dialogue in key scenes, and how often does any show feature a Black man with an affinity for books — as any character, much less the lead?" (The comments actually are mostly pretty good and have additional information!)
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 2:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Kant didn’t believe a dog like Mu could think or distinguish between bad and good because she isn’t self-aware. For this reason, she is not moral. This view—which is known as human exceptionalism—persists today. But increasingly philosophers and scientists argue that animals are moral and that we humans may just be insufficiently aware of their inner lives to understand how or why they decide to do what they do.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:58 AM PST - 47 comments

Gentle Forest Jazz Band (Japanese-language site) is a 21 (or so) piece Japanese big band-style jazz group.

• Dolls Look the Moon - Come for the hot playing, goggle at the manic bandleader, and stay for the Andrews-sisters harmonies of the women after they make their way down the stairs.
• Otokotte Otokotte - In which our singers turn into goldfish and everyone plays barefoot in a river. Contains a traveling clarinet soloist.
• Nica's Band - Standout guest vocals, shoes, and posing by Nikaido Kazumi.
• Thrilling the Band - It's never good when you're being chased by someone in a black tinted motorcycle helmet. As more people join the pursuit, the band pulls out all the stops.

Hope this puts a smile in your day!
posted by freecellwizard at 10:25 AM PST - 14 comments

This is the inspiring tale of one number-loving man with a 2007 Honda Odyssey and a dream. Shortly after posting a photo of his carefully planned odometer reading to social media, MetaFilter's own freecellwizard was contacted by a senior editor from Jalopnik interested in sharing this heroic achievement with their readership. Later that afternoon, the Canadians came calling.
posted by little mouth at 8:11 AM PST - 28 comments

And it’s sort of like — in my first fiction workshop, I wrote a story using Tagalog words, and I italicized them, because that’s what I was used to even back home, because I write in English. And it became a huge discussion for the class. Like, “why is she italicizing her words? Is that othering? Is that intentional? Is she writing for a white audience?”

Isabel Yap talks about writing Filipino speculative fiction and learning to write for an American audience when you don't necessarily feel like you're Asian-American.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Dancing in Movies (movie list) Bonus! Batman Dance Party, Batcave Dance Party VR
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:38 AM PST - 4 comments

The Annette Gero Collection of Quilts from Military Fabrics , currently on display at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, contains intricate and complex geometric quilts (Vimeo) made exclusively by men using richly dyed wools derived from British military and dress uniforms. Once termed “soldiers’ quilts” or “convalescent quilts,” the pieced textiles are most closely associated with the Crimean War as well as conflicts in India, South Africa, and other troubled regions of the British Empire during the nineteenth century. [more inside]
posted by carter at 4:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird are a modern klezmer band whose music I discovered about a month ago. Their dark, yiddish-infused songs feel perfect for Trump's America, offering a witty, wise take on all the worst aspects of human nature. The accompanying music is utterly joyous, however. Among their best songs are March of the Jobless Corps Freedom is a Verb and The Butcher's Sher. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 2:21 AM PST - 10 comments

11 horror movies that critics loved but (Rotten Tomatoes) audiences hated versus 12 horror movies that (Rotten Tomatoes) audiences loved but critics hated.
posted by Artw at 11:28 PM PST - 64 comments

"A few years back, I worked for a small, questionably honest used car dealership and repair shop. I'm a service writer, which means I'm the interface between customers (who are idiots) and the technicians (who are mostly felons). Think Tom Smykowski from Office Space. I will warn you ahead of time, I am not the hero of my stories, just the protagonist. There are no heroes in the car industry - we are all villains in our own ways." u/36055512 regales r/talesfromtechsupport with stories about Dishonest Used Car Dealership. [more inside]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:00 PM PST - 68 comments

Giant Hogweed Can Cause Burns And Blindness — And It’s Arrived In Northern Virginia [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM PST - 52 comments

Wake Up from Brass Against
posted by latkes at 8:45 PM PST - 14 comments

Octopath Traveler’ Brings it Back to JRPG Basics [Goomba Stomp] “The original Final Fantasy set the JRPG standard: heroes of good unite to combat the forces of evil. The NES’ limitations necessitated a simplistic approach, but there’s no denying it was an effective one. As time passed, more games added to the laundry list of JRPG tropes. Players took on the roles of brighteyed youths yearning for adventure or stoic warriors heeding the call of duty. There’s a certain charm and familiarity that comes with revisiting these stories in different forms. Octopath Traveler, the upcoming Square Enix game on the Switch, capitalizes hard on that. However, rather than relying on nostalgia to prop itself up, Octopath factors it into its own unique design.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:14 PM PST - 18 comments

The Mahlongwa River needs to be in that Ocean RIGHT NOW! Watch as a tiny trickle turns into a raging torrent. Part One and Part Two
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:15 PM PST - 25 comments

When designing a conference, who do you expect to be on stage? What do they need?

I was recently set to co-host an event. I wore a cute blue dress that ended just at my knees. This, I soon learned, was a mistake. My male co-host and I were seated on two tall stools. As he chatted up the audience, the dress slowly crept up my legs. I spent the entire event balanced precariously at the edge of the stool, legs crossed, trying not to move too much so I wouldn’t inadvertently flash the audience. When I thought maybe nobody was looking—which made no sense, since there were only two of us on stage—I lightly tugged my dress down.

[more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 2:12 PM PST - 38 comments

ちえのわ feat.峯田和伸 (Chie No Wa, or Wisdom Ring, feat. Kazunobu Mineta) - Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra [SLYT]
posted by Freeze Peach at 2:03 PM PST - 11 comments

No alcohol, weekly training sessions, and an unwavering dedication to fighting football fans: the life of a Russian hooligan, as told to an unsuspecting English fan (reporter) in Moscow
posted by sammyo at 1:53 PM PST - 14 comments

ShortWaveMusic (2005-2013) was a global sound project and documentary series which aimed to preserve the sound of regional and international broadcasting around the world. Recordings include low-power and community stations, pirate and clandestine transmissions, and traditional international broadcasters. (previously)
posted by OverlappingElvis at 1:49 PM PST - 4 comments

In the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, sellers and manufacturers of foodstuffs are experimenting with different ways to reduce plastic packaging. Free plastic shopping bags are already a thing of the past in, among other countries, the Netherlands; as a result, more and more Dutch shoppers show up with their own reusable bags, and usage of plastic bags has dropped by 71%. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:32 PM PST - 27 comments

robot security system
posted by zippy at 12:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Though in the business of selling travel to people, long-time guidebook company Fodor's is now also advising you where not to go. The inaugural list in 2017 told us what was too dull or crowded or full of Zika virus to rate a visit, and where you should go instead. The 2018 list is more focused on the damage that too much tourism is doing to a number of areas and places that don't rate getting your money because of human rights issues. [more inside]
posted by JanetLand at 12:01 PM PST - 57 comments

Stanley Kubrick was 17 when he joined Look magazine in 1945 as a staff photographer, shooting feature stories all over his hometown of New York City. He spent the next five years working on stories that focused on New Yorkers and their daily lives. Looking back at Kubrick’s early photos, one can get a glimpse of what he would he eventually become.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:45 AM PST - 9 comments

Why Do We Hate Certain Words? The curious phenomenon of word aversion.
posted by strelitzia at 11:40 AM PST - 124 comments

Teams from Yale, Harvard, and elsewhere recently met up to try recipes recorded on ancient Babylonian tablets, possibly the oldest surviving recipes in the world. “Having an understanding of what the food is supposed to feel and taste like is very important,” says Lassen. “We didn’t know what we were looking for. When we were recreating one of the recipes I kept thinking they were doing this wrong, ‘this is not how I would make this.’ And then when it had boiled for a while it suddenly transformed itself into something delicious.” [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 11:04 AM PST - 38 comments

How to become a certain kind of man.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:53 AM PST - 72 comments

A big swift car squealed its tires and jerked his wheel, the car nearly tipping up on two tires as the vehicle narrowly missed the family pet. “Dammit, but I won’t be a symbol for the suffocatin’ and murd’rous weight of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream on the day laborer and migrant worker by killin’ your pup with my sportscar!” the driver screamed out his window, giving the whole Joad family the finger. And he wouldn’t. Everythin’ else — ev’ry death an’ loss an’ unjustice an’ tragedy an’ animal for the next 400 pages or so would basically drive that point home — but at least the whole time, through everything, the Joads had their beloved dog. He wasn’t very good symbolism, but he was a very good boy.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:23 AM PST - 7 comments

Remember late last year when the jerk new owner of Gothamist and DNAInfo shut down his string of hyperlocal news sites? The one in LA has been resurrected (LAist) and today it reminds us of the book all Angelenos of a certain age owned. [more inside]
posted by notyou at 10:14 AM PST - 22 comments

Jerry O'Connell loves North Bay, Ontario... and North Bay seems to love him back. Jerry spent last summer in Ontario's "Gateway to the North" filming the TV series "Carter" and became a local favourite and a city ambassador. [more inside]
posted by sevenyearlurk at 9:20 AM PST - 27 comments

Matt "Guitar" Murphy, one of the last links to the heyday of Blues Scene in the 40's and 50's Chicago, passes away. [more inside]
posted by indianbadger1 at 9:13 AM PST - 19 comments

Many chain restaurants have tabletop tablets that let restaurant customers rate their servers. But what happens when you give your waiter 4 stars ("satisfied") instead of 5 ("highly satisfied")? Their hours can get cut, and they can be moved to less lucrative roles in the restaurant, which can lower their weekly paycheck by hundreds of dollars. What about when you rate an Uber driver 4 stars? The driver can be put on probation, and eventually deactivated. If the service wasn't perfect, what is the morally right thing for the consumer to do? (Spoiler: You rate drivers 5 stars. Always. Unless they truly, royally suck.) (previously) [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 9:07 AM PST - 136 comments

It's time for another episode of Dorktown, and in this episode, SB Nation editor/national treasure Jon Bois and compatriot/fellow stats dork Alex Rubenstein discuss the Houston Rockets' love for the trey, how it got them to the heights of the NBA...and how it broke their heart in Game 7 of the conference finals. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:02 AM PST - 1 comment

Tumblr user alloverthegaf plunks down $4AUD to watch "The Fellowship of the Ring" for the first time and liveblogs it. [more inside]
posted by hanov3r at 8:36 AM PST - 26 comments

A shelter in Golden Valley, Minnesota is testing out housing for dogs where they can interact with each other, instead of being housed separately. "Instead of housing animals individually, the new space allows for up to six dogs to live together in a shared room. Each still has their own den, where they rest and eat, but for much of the day they live and mingle with one another in an open play area. And when potential adopters visit, they're more likely to see a dog's true personality." [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:43 AM PST - 26 comments

On Tuesday the 19th of June, the US Patent Office granted it's 10,000,000th patent. Inventor Joseph Marron and patent assignee Raytheon Company received this patent for a “Coherent LADAR Using Intra-Pixel Quadrature Detection,” which improves laser detection and ranging (LADAR). A new patent cover was released at SXSW in anticipation of this event, originally anticipated to occur at some point this summer. The USPTO has created a special website, 10 Million Patents, with a timeline of the intellectual property process (sliced bread, Hedy Lamarr, the Slinky!). [more inside]
posted by librarianamy at 7:14 AM PST - 20 comments

Portraits of Children and their Toys Around the World - From China to Zanzibar, kids proudly pose with their treasures.
posted by like_neon at 7:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Multimillion-dollar lawsuits, a haze of booze and hash, a marriage gone very wrong and a lifestyle he can’t afford - The Trouble With Johnny Depp
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:31 AM PST - 83 comments

A man saves a kitten stranded on a flooded street in Tallinn. A cat is pulled up from the river Liffey by a lifebuoy. A fisherman catches two kittens swimming in the Warrior River in Alabama. A Swedish seaman rescues a cat stuck on the HSC Gotlandia II.
posted by Vesihiisi at 6:11 AM PST - 14 comments

This Is Where Internet Memes Come From
On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities(arxiv.org) [PDF]
Researchers Studied 160 Million Memes and Found Most of Them Come From Two Websites [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:36 PM PST - 24 comments

Four-year-old Léa Langumier has accompanied her father, Raphael Langumier, 40, on multiple plane rides near their Lachute, Que., home since she was two years old but always had one rule — her father was not allowed to put the plane upside down. Last Sunday, the girl overcame that fear — gleefully — when she took part in her first aerobatic plane ride. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:51 PM PST - 8 comments

Who is Wilbur Sargunaraj? He's a world-traveling Simple Superstar out to up your Cultural IQ. Come along as he showcases Tamil village life for NPR, tests out latrines (eastern, european, african pit, and Airbus A 380-800 varieties), eats Chicago soul food, feels "genki" in Tokyo, sings about a chicken dish, cooks an egg on a hot road, learns about sanitary pads and condoms in Uganda, expresses his devotion to love, demonstrates how to fly for the first time, experiences an Ethiopian coffee ceremony, and tells us that dark is beautiful. [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 10:39 PM PST - 14 comments

Australia's been having a bad week with several high-profile violent assaults on women. An eyebrow-raising police response urging people (women) to 'have situational awareness' and 'be aware of your surroundings' sparked another angry wave of calls nation-wide for the onus to be placed on (cis) men to not assault women.

With men asking what they can do, Victoria Against Violence's Call It Out videos (first one was BBQ released two months ago) gains fresh attention with two new videos this week (Public Transport, Bar) (links all go to FB) [more inside]
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 10:30 PM PST - 28 comments

Unlikely Hikers is a diverse and inclusive Instagram community featuring the underrepresented outdoorsperson. The outdoors industry and outdoors social media tend to display a very narrow definition of who is “outdoorsy.” We feature fat people, people of color, queer, trans, gender nonconforming folks, people with disabilities and so on.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:06 PM PST - 13 comments

Way back in 1989, I found this Windham Hill compilation that completely rocked folked my world: Legacy: A Collection Of New Folk Music. Side A: Pierce Pettis - Legacy, Cliff Eberhart - My Father's Shoes [not compilation version], Rebecca Jenkins - Through The Leaves, David Massengill - My Name Joe, Blue Rubies - When You Were Mine [Prince cover], Bill Morrissey - Handsome Molly, Lillie Palmer [Not information, anyone have anything?] - Insanity Street [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:46 PM PST - 11 comments

DMK is a Depeche Mode cover band from Bogotá, Colombia. The group comprises Dicken Schrader and his two children, Milah and Korben. [more inside]
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Parallax: space opera for the New Sincerity. "Imagine you're watching funny-animal Star Trek. Except every other episode is from the point of view of the Borg." - a new comic series (and maybe someday animation?) from MeFi's own egypturnash. Previous projects include Decrypting Rita (previously) - the complete story of a robot lady dragged out of reality by her ex-boyfriend, 5 Glasses of Absinthe - smutty adventure fun (WIP), and the Silicon Dawn Tarot (previously). [via mefi projects, which has much more detail]
posted by Artw at 5:56 PM PST - 12 comments

How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story. Twenty-five years after the murder of Brandon Teena, queer cis journalist Donna Minkowitz looks back at her Village Voice article that inspired the film Boys Don't Cry and writes a mea culpa for how '90s biases and her own transphobic ignorance and personal projections shaped the story she wrote about Brandon. [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 5:43 PM PST - 11 comments

The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, has given birth to a happy baby girl. [more inside]
posted by Paragon at 5:40 PM PST - 12 comments

• 73 Books to Read While the Sun Is Out and the Days Are Long [The New York Times] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:53 PM PST - 10 comments

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation unveiled a new "3D Laboratory" virtual tour of Taliesin West yesterday [article in Quartzy]. FLW 3D Laboratory (scroll down to "Taliesin West Explore 3D Space"; I suggest going full-screen and hitting the play button to be taken on a virtual fly-through the entire compound. Click to stop anywhere and poke around, a la google maps. Less impressed with the "Doll House / Floor Plan" views, they're pretty rough.)
posted by Bron at 3:27 PM PST - 2 comments

Spite buildings: when human grudges get architectural (SLGuardian) "Feuding brothers, thwarted lovers, and a lot of spoiled views: ‘spite buildings’ are our smallest human pettiness made manifest in bricks and mortar."
posted by chimpsonfilm at 3:02 PM PST - 15 comments

GitHub, Medium, and Twitter take down database of ICE employee LinkedIn accounts . The database's creator, Sam Levigne (previously, previously, previously), is a Brooklyn artist whose work often deals with data and technology. [more inside]
posted by enn at 10:24 AM PST - 205 comments

A collection of links for educating oneself or others about the impacts of trauma on the very youngest of us. What forcible separation does to children: brains, bodies, nervous systems. [more inside]
posted by fairlynearlyready at 10:03 AM PST - 17 comments

An Illustrated Linguistic Tree.
posted by storybored at 9:49 AM PST - 27 comments

“On Monday, Task & Purpose reported that Army 2nd Lt. Spenser Rapone was slapped with an other-than-honorable discharge (and potentially $300,000 in West Point tuition repayments) after a photo went viral last September of him as a West Point cadet with the words “Communism Will Win” written in his cover.” Why Did The Military Keep A Neo-Nazi Marine But Boot That ‘Commie Cadet’? (Task And Purpose) The ‘Commie Cadet’, Spenser Rapone, in his own words “My actions overseas did not help or protect anybody. I felt like I was little more than a bully, surrounded by the most well-armed and technologically advanced military in history, in one of the poorest countries in the world.” (Interview with Rapone on the leftist veteran podcast What Hell Of A Way To Die) While The “Neo -Nazi Marine”, Vasillios Pistolis , at the Unite The Right Rally in Charolettville is likely to be pushed out, he’s only one of many veterans found to be active in or training with white nationalist or Neo-Nazi groups.
posted by The Whelk at 9:19 AM PST - 24 comments

"I am here to tell you: most people in your family will never buy your book. Most of your friends won’t either. " [more inside]
posted by veggieboy at 8:10 AM PST - 81 comments

Pickle carving. Not this Pickle. Getting closer. Gorgeous, but still not there. No, I'm talking about the instructions here for carving not just any pickle, but the CHRISTMAS PICKLE. [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 8:01 AM PST - 21 comments

"There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself," Australian comic Hannah Gadsby says in her new Netflix special. Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette Will Change The Way You Think About Comedy, says Anna Silman in The Cut, which has MANY SPOILERS. (CW for sexual abuse, rape, assault in Netflix special.) "...Perhaps the power of her performance will open the door for a richer and more humane kind of stand-up – one that sets an example for future young women deciding how they want to tell their stories to the world." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:37 AM PST - 59 comments

From cartoonist Gale Galligan comes Jon, a Garfield fancomic considering the life of Jon Arbuckle, cartoonist. Part 1, 2.
posted by Maecenas at 6:10 AM PST - 41 comments

Give Everyone Government Bank Accounts - "A new report co-authored by two Treasury Department veterans, 'Central Banking for All: A Public Option for Bank Accounts', argues that Americans should have an account at the Federal Reserve, just as banks do. They believe this would solve a vast array of problems at once, ensuring that everyone is included in the financial system, driving down retail costs for businesses and consumers, and even making recessions less likely." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:09 AM PST - 33 comments

How we speak can reveal where we are from: not just our accent, but the language we use. Words and phrases particular to a city, region, or country are a distinctive part of English, and we at the OED are asking you to help us identify and record them.

The Oxford English Dictionary (previously) has put out an appeal to help find and define regionally distinctive English words around the world. The official hashtag (added June 2014) is #WordsWhereYouAre. [more inside]
posted by Vesihiisi at 6:00 AM PST - 12 comments

In celebration of its 30th anniversary, KEXP presents the latest in our series of album breakdowns, dissecting the classic platinum-selling Public Enemy record It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Over the course of 12 hours for this live radio event, the station will play every discernable recording sampled on the album, along with exclusive interviews with Public Enemy co-founder Chuck D, the producer of the record Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad, Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces and Digable Planets, former KEXP DJ Larry Mizell, Jr., professor, writer, and historian Dr. Daudi Abe, and more. It’s a celebration of Public Enemy, Thursday June 21st, only on KEXP, where Public Enemy really matters.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:54 AM PST - 16 comments

The proposed Obi Wan and Boba Fett films have been put on hold.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:53 AM PST - 115 comments

The DIY ethos is alive and well in music. Whether you are self-releasing your music or organising your own tours, it requires serious tenacity. At a recent member event in Perth, two of Western Australia's most prolific live acts shared a treasure trove of knowledge and tools on DIY Touring.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:12 AM PST - 1 comment

The Gorilla Foundation has announced the passing of Koko. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:59 AM PST - 74 comments

Game of Our Lives is a podcast about football, and as such its sights are currently set on the World Cup. The latest episode goes over the first few days of games, but the most interesting bit is the interview with Mani Djazmi, a blind British-Iranian football journalist. If you dip into the archive you’ll find that the focus of the host David Goldblatt, a football writer and sociologist, is on interviewing people from around the world with a perspective on football not often found in British or American sports pages. The first interview subject is Werner Herzog on football cinema, but you might also be interested in interviews with Supriya Nair on football in India, John Foot on Italia and football, and Shireen Ahmed on Muslim women and football.
posted by Kattullus at 12:43 AM PST - 3 comments

2018 Nature Conservancy Photo Contest Winners. Also, here's the link to the 2018 Underwater Photography Contest Winners: Underwater Photos. I see the link says "2017" but the text says "2018"
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:37 PM PST - 8 comments

This is Kellar. He is a three-year-old English Springer, and he was born completely blind. And this is Kellar playing fetch. [h/t Miss Cellania]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:28 PM PST - 18 comments

The Machine Fired Me, Ibrahim Diallo
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:49 PM PST - 14 comments

HAU is dead, long live OA initiatives
Open Secrets: On Power and Publication
chronology
#hautalk
meaning and pronunciation
posted by unliteral at 8:40 PM PST - 8 comments

Short fiction and poetry by Déwé Gorodé and political writings by Jean-Marie Tjibaou offer intimate views of New Caledonia unavailable in a political history. Memoirs and biographies convey the stories of a man from the Solomon Islands and a Japanese woman who married an Australian soldier in the years following WWII, plus women's narratives of war and peace on Bougainville and numerous aspects of the Indo-Fijian experience. These are just a few intriguing books digitized as PDFs at The Australian National University's Pacific Institute. [Via.]
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:40 PM PST - 7 comments

When occasional journalist Max Robinson filmed his town being devastated by floods the video went viral -ending up on television, including some places he didn't want it. On getting caught up in the news cycle, treatment of sources, and FOX not taking "fuck off" for an answer.
posted by Artw at 2:51 PM PST - 8 comments

"When I look back on it now, it’s hard to understand how I, a highly educated feminist, ended up devoting myself to Michael to the detriment of my own productivity and financial security."
posted by Lycaste at 1:42 PM PST - 89 comments

Hollywood Reporter followed a comedy agent around Los Angeles for a night and breathlessly reported that "A newer comic just breaking into the L.A. circuit can earn anywhere from $1,250 to $2,500 per week...". Comics -- newer and less so -- were somewhat surprised at these numbers .
posted by Etrigan at 1:40 PM PST - 21 comments

Why are game companies so afraid of the politics in their games? [Polygon] “Game publishers are lathering their productions with the stark imagery of modern political divisions, while at the same time denying any topical intent. Their strategy, according to industry sources ranging from developers to publicists, is to profit from emotive societal divisions, while ducking difficult conversations about what their works might signify. Their games garner publicity and a sense of cultural relevance, but the companies avoid the challenge and expense of controversy. In the words of one senior game industry publicist I spoke to, under conditions of anonymity: “It’s bullshit. They want to have their cake and eat it too.” In the past few years, we’ve seen repeated examples of the quasi-political AAA game. ” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:30 PM PST - 42 comments

How to decorate like a viking
posted by PussKillian at 11:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Couldn't your indie film use a touch of Werner Herzog? Well, the folks at Truthteller think all filmmakers, regardless of their status, should have the chance to work with The Master, so they developed WernAcular (Vimeo), a highly sophisticated speech synthesizer that analyses your voice and turns it into Werner Herzog’s. The WernAcular audio plug-in was released in early April.
posted by kristi at 9:48 AM PST - 15 comments

Professional wrestler Leon White, better known as "Vader" has died at the age of 63. [more inside]
posted by The Gooch at 9:46 AM PST - 18 comments

This French Bulldog Is A Foster Dad To ASPCA Kittens [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:09 AM PST - 30 comments

“First Impressions” consists entirely of first sentences from 268 short stories published in The New Yorker over the past 20 years, from 1997 to 2017, all of which are cited below. After collecting every first sentence, I found they fell into a number of patterns, some surprising, others obvious: points of view, different tenses, genre fiction like western and military, stories set in smalltown America, stories set in Montana (oddly there were a lot), etc. I then arranged these patterns into a sequence of vignettes, a short story in its own right. A story by by Tom Comitta
posted by chavenet at 8:18 AM PST - 11 comments

Visions of the fantastic. From robots to Pinocchio to spaceships to kindergartens with secret messages, Seoul-based architect Moon Hoon designs fantastic structures. Moon Hoon sees no boundaries – he says that while there’s a place for serious, functional architecture, it is also important to have variety in the country’s buildings. “Like if you go under the sea” he says, “you see so many colours and so many strange animals. Do you think anybody actually says that one is more better than the other? They exist even though they look ugly or good or bad.”
posted by korej at 5:56 AM PST - 11 comments

"The World of Playing Cards is a living encyclopaedia of the history and visual art of playing cards." Follow playing card history or see notable designs; or browse by way of countries of origin or card manufacturers. There is also a blog and a shop. (Previously: i, ii, iii).
posted by misteraitch at 5:30 AM PST - 10 comments

Does what it says on the tin [slyt]
posted by Gorgik at 10:52 PM PST - 13 comments

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger of the United States Army arrived in Galveston, Texas. One of the orders he issued was GENERAL ORDER #3:

The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.

What Is Juneteenth?, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the “Executive” to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification. But Granger wasn’t just a few months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two-and-a-half years before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn’t it all over, literally, but the shouting?

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:36 PM PST - 24 comments

So, you're at your daughter's dance recital and she's having a total breakdown on stage. What do you do? This dad got up on stage and did basically the entire dance encouraging his daughter. [2m55s]
posted by hippybear at 7:54 PM PST - 41 comments

Canada's senators have voted to legalize recreational marijuana. It'll be about 8-12 weeks before you'll be able to walk into your local licensed retailler to buy, though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:08 PM PST - 120 comments

This Sounds Serious is a true crime podcast where Minnesota public radio host Gwen Radford investigates the case of Chuck Brondstadt, an Orlando weatherman who drowned in his own waterbed, possibly at the hands of his twin brother Daniel. It's brought to you in part by Vancouver media personality Dave Shumka, and the team behind CBC Radio's popular newsmagazine This Is That. [more inside]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:01 PM PST - 12 comments

At this year's Berlin Biennale, titled "We Don't Need Another Hero, artist Heba Y. Amin (previously) presents OPERATION SUNKEN SEA, a utopian plan promising that "...A new era of human progress will be initiated through the draining and rerouting of the Mediterranean Sea to converge Africa and Europe into one supercontinent." [more inside]
posted by nikaspark at 5:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Rainbow Rowell is teasing us with a sequel to Carry On. Originally fanfiction from her novel, Fangirl, the cast of Carry On includes gay, lesbian, and questioning characters, and multiple perspectives on what it means to be a chosen one and how to save the world. [more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 4:50 PM PST - 13 comments

Thrillist has compiled the 100 greatest YouTube videos of all time, ranked.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:55 PM PST - 77 comments

Ever wonder what those bumps in the sidewalk are for when you’re approaching an intersection? Dr. Amy Kavanaugh explains in this twitter thread.
posted by jenkinsEar at 3:33 PM PST - 29 comments

Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, and Kaliningrad.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:05 PM PST - 2 comments

Die Sendung mit der Maus (German link) is the oldest kids' show on German TV - it first aired in 1971. Its main charm was its unhurried, affirming and positive approach to children's stories and children's questions. Despite multiple makeovers, the basic format remains the same: each episode has animated shorts (Lachgeschichten) and documentaries about everyday things (Sachgeschichten). But most of all, we children loved the Maus Spots that separated the individual blocks from each other: charming, wordless adventures of a very big, orange mouse and a very small, purple elephant. The best thing is: It's all available online and if your kids are like mine, they will love Mouse and Elephant, too. [more inside]
posted by Omnomnom at 1:31 PM PST - 14 comments

Monoskop is a wiki project for collaborative studies of the arts, media and humanities. It includes an archive of out-of-print magazines and books, and much more.
posted by carter at 12:38 PM PST - 2 comments

The donug, which should be a "sweet, deep-fried dough stuffed with chicken", is actually "chicken, in a ring shape, coated in cornflakes and panko crumbs, plus a secret blend of flour and spices, deep-fried"
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:05 AM PST - 98 comments

"Some neophyte knitters might think that one scarf is a project. But then their goal is probably to make a scarf. My goal was to no longer want to drink a bottle of wine every night, and that would take more yarn." Or maybe a felted otter kit. Or maybe saying no to the want instead of killing it. Kristi Coulter, for Longreads: Trying to Kill the Want.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:42 AM PST - 28 comments

Michigan Central Station was originally a grand train depot in the style of the early 20th Century, complete with an office building that made it the tallest train station in the world. It fell into disrepair as Detroit's own automotive industry killed the trains, and has stood as one of the preeminent examples of "ruin porn". But earlier this month, Ford bought the structure, intending to redevelop it as a hub for its autonomous vehicle development. The news was hailed across Michigan as a sign of recovery, attracting even the attention of scavengers, returning one of the antique clocks that had been taken from the depot during its long abandonment.
posted by Etrigan at 7:19 AM PST - 32 comments

On Ask Reddit, a user asked "What really happened in real life that if you saw it in a movie you would say "that's totally unrealistic"?". The top scoring result is a story that presented a baffling mystery to one group of people, a Lovecraftian horror to another, and grand hilarity to everyone else.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 6:17 AM PST - 57 comments

Campaigns have been mounted against Article 13, which aside from banning memes will have all kinds of consequences if passed. Voting is being held tomorrow.
posted by whorl at 4:28 AM PST - 40 comments

"There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. ‘Only two people?’ I asked." [more inside]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 4:14 AM PST - 9 comments

"I choose justice and human rights over revenge and violence as my means to fight back against what Jamil Hassan has done to me and my friends. And today's decision shows that I chose the right path and I am very grateful for it", says Yazan Awad. He was held four and a half months in various detention facilities of the air force intelligence and was severely tortured during this time. He is one of the claimants in the complaint submitted in November 2017. Caution: Some of the links I used contain photographs showing the bodies of people who had been tortured or descriptions of torture. [more inside]
posted by 15L06 at 2:54 AM PST - 5 comments

If you're going to change your name, you might as well go with Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow or just Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow for short. Meow-Ludo, a self-described biohacker, who has previously run for office and had an RFID chip planted in his hand today had his conviction for fare evasion overturned. He's been in the news here in Australia often enough that newsreaders can now say his name without even pausing. [more inside]
posted by maxcelcat at 8:43 PM PST - 14 comments

Meet the man who holds the keys to the Pope’s Museums, and other stuff. (YT video)
posted by shoesfullofdust at 6:51 PM PST - 6 comments

lofi study chill beats radio [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:27 PM PST - 29 comments

Sure, in this age of LCD screens and 8k displays, it's easy-ish to understand how video is played. But what about before computers, before integrated circuits, hell, before transistors? Simple. Televisions used analog lines of light to draw their pictures. [more inside]
posted by thegears at 5:24 PM PST - 29 comments

Jared Pechacek (@vandroidhelsing) has used Twitter's poll feature to write three Choose Your Own Adventure-style stories — each a fairy tale, of one sort or another — as he responded in real time to readers' choices.

• The Well: a story of blessings and curses
• The Lady at Winter's Heart: a story of gifts
• The Last Queen of Elphame: a story of noir in the city of the fae^*

[more inside]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 5:15 PM PST - 6 comments

Not Ok is an app to let people know you need help. Designed by teenagers for both physical and mental illnesses. Hannah Lucas came up with the idea for this because she needed it herself. [more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 4:38 PM PST - 24 comments

From the Department of No One Could Possibly Have Foreseen this: Tronc finally realizes it has a stupid name (previously) (previouslier) [more inside]
posted by GuyZero at 4:12 PM PST - 46 comments

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no pleasure is so cheaply bought, and so unmarred by complexity, as the simple joy of seeing a dog hurl itself into a pond in pursuit of a slobbery stick. Science has proven the impossibility of the human brain to register self-pity, or maunder on about the generally sorry state of things, while in the presence of canine bellyflops. (Outside magazine)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:16 PM PST - 19 comments

A wonderful profile by Samanth Subramanian of James Martin, perhaps the world's best forensic forgery detection expert, waging a battle with increasingly skilled forgers who have set off a "crisis of authentication" in "a time when the art market is synonymous with art itself." [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 1:52 PM PST - 21 comments

Do you feel low? Worn down? Discouraged? Maybe you need a break. Maybe you need a lot of breaks. Here are 25 ways to feel happier in the next 5 minutes because we all could use a little happiness. No good? Perhaps 14 ways to get through tough times is a better fit. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:42 PM PST - 13 comments

Nastybot is a Facebook chatbot that helps people navigate creepy and unsolicited messages. Your assistant for dealing with internet harassment. Nastybot has answers for all sorts of scenarios when unsavory characters send unwelcome messages to your inbox. Keep her in your toolbelt next time someone harasses you online and thwart creepy messages.
posted by holmesian at 1:31 PM PST - 4 comments

The Death of a Once Great City: The Urban Crisis of Affluence. What are we going to do about a New York that is, right now, being plundered not only of its treasure but also of its heart, and soul, and purpose? [more inside]
posted by hydra77 at 12:23 PM PST - 55 comments

I ask a bunch of men, "Have you ever interrupted a woman?" [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:16 PM PST - 39 comments

"She will not be missed" is a brutal phrase to read in an obituary, but leads to the question: how have obits changed in recent time? Susan Soper has a theory: "after 9/11 when The New York Times wrote those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands of very short, poignant obituaries in their pages ... that was sort of when the tide turned in obituaries and people realized that you could bring a person to life and keep them alive in even a short written bio, really." And many taboo topics, like children born out of wedlock, drug use and suicide, are less of taboos than they used to be [content warning]. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:23 AM PST - 30 comments

Why Are Millions Paying Online Tax Preparation Fees When They Don’t Need To? Few taxpayers use the Free File system — intended to help moderate- and low-income filers — and that benefits companies like Intuit and H&R Block. Now Congress is moving to make the program permanent. (SLProPublica by Tik Root)
posted by crazy with stars at 10:14 AM PST - 22 comments

"My wife said you may want to marry me. A little over a year ago, my wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, published a Modern Love essay called “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” At 51, Amy was dying from ovarian cancer. She wrote her essay in the form of a personal ad. It was more like a love letter to me. Those words would be the final ones Amy published. She died 10 days later." (previously)
posted by Memo at 9:24 AM PST - 23 comments

Fred Gonsowski has been sharing gardening tips at Fred Gonsowski Garden Home since 2010 based on his experience building a beautiful garden at his upstate New York home. [more inside]
posted by imabanana at 9:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Just As I Am: "By age twenty, he was working consistently on the bluegrass-gospel circuit. One gig ended abruptly when he loaned his laptop to a couple of bandmates at a recording session. They got nosy and found photos from a hush-hush trip to Gatlinburg with his clandestine boyfriend. 'I don’t know how you and God are,' the bandleader thundered at Brandon, who stared at the floor, 'but you need to get it right. If you keep on this path, you’ll be in hell for sure.'” [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:10 AM PST - 9 comments

The University of Chicago announced that it would no longer require the ACT/SAT for admission, becoming the most-selective institution ever to adopt a test-optional policy. [more inside]
posted by WedgedPiano at 8:56 AM PST - 23 comments

How exciting is it when your team beats the reigning World Cup champs in your first match against them? Enough to shake the earth, apparently! [more inside]
posted by a fiendish thingy at 8:49 AM PST - 9 comments

A supercut of superheroes (and Justin Timberlake) dropping in to cause mayhem [more inside]
posted by quaking fajita at 8:08 AM PST - 37 comments

7,506 oil barrels floating in Hyde Park. Christo has unveiled his latest piece of art: a mastaba in the middle of the Serpentine in London. "Based on the trapezoid shapes of traditional Islamic mastabas – a type of tomb – the temporary sculpture is the realisation of the artistic duo's shared dream of creating a floating version of the form that has fascinated them for half a century." Entirely self-funded, free to view (obviously enough), and difficult to miss if you're wandering through the park.
posted by humuhumu at 7:49 AM PST - 25 comments

Mesopotamian ghostbusting with Irving Finkel I Curator's Corner | The British Museum. Favorite beard is at it again with Sumerian tablets and ghostlies.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:37 AM PST - 6 comments

In an 1898 letter to her son Emily wrote, “I have more brains, common sense, and know-how, generally than any two engineers civil or uncivil that I have ever met, and but for me, the Brooklyn Bridge, would never have had the name Roebling in any way connected to it!”
posted by ChuraChura at 6:35 AM PST - 6 comments

Debbie Sims Africa was released on parole Saturday after 40 years in prison. She was one of the MOVE 9, nine men and women who were arrested in 1978 during a police raid on the building occupied by the Philadelphia Black liberation group MOVE. [more inside]
posted by enn at 5:47 AM PST - 9 comments

If you, or you ancestors are British, and paid tax between the 1830s and 2015 you contributed to reparations for the slave trade, not for the slaves but compensation for the owners. There are 32 images of William Wilberforce in the National Portrait Gallery, but just four images of black abolitionists. It's argued that slavery in the British empire was only abolished after it had ceased to be economically useful. When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity? (has descriptions of slave punishment and torture)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:10 AM PST - 39 comments

Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times, by Alison McQueen, traces the responses of three canonical political realists, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Hans J. Morgenthau to apocalyptic politics. Review here. Interview here. The Apocalypse in U.S. Political Thought. How to Be a Prophet of Doom.
posted by spaceburglar at 11:31 PM PST - 2 comments

TANK is an animated short film that took that Stu Maschwitz a year and half to create..."but I have to warn you, this is not how I would recommend anyone make a film." [more inside]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:33 PM PST - 10 comments

From the legendary Mr. Magic's Rap Attack to tiny college and pirate stations, in the 80s and 90s radio was pivotal to the growth of hip hop culture in the US and beyond. The Hip-Hop Radio Archive is bringing taped recordings out of collectors' basements and into a more secure and public home, tracing the spread of hip-hop by providing regional and historical context for the episodes. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 9:49 PM PST - 11 comments

OMDO [itch.io] “Plays just like DOOM, except every frame is a random dot autostereogram. If you don't know what that is, you should read more about it here, but the gist is that you have to either go cross-eyed or wall-eyed in order to see the game. Otherwise it just looks like a bunch of random dots.” [via: PC Gamer]
posted by Fizz at 8:50 PM PST - 41 comments

"I watched these pothole crews going up and down my street, and there was a defiant pothole in front of my house that was just staying, that wasn't being fixed. I thought I should fill it in." That was mosaic artist Jim Bachor in 2014, when his 87-year-old neighbor stood lookout as Bachor turned an eyesore into eye candy. Just look at what the pothole vigilante has been up to since then. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:02 PM PST - 15 comments

For centuries -- millennia even -- the biggest goal of Pixar fanatics has been to find the Holy Grail, the rarest of all DVDs to bear the lamp: Made In Point Richmond. Given out exclusively to employees shortly before the studio moved to a larger facility, it was never sold to the public. You could only have a copy if you worked for the company at the time, and though it had grown to a staff of hundreds by the time the disc was printed, it still wasn't as big as it is now.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:39 PM PST - 8 comments

Houseplants occasionally get a little leggy, but usually not in this direction. Franktasia's quick sketch-up of his most accomplished son, "whomst has defied the restrictions placed on him as a plant," prompts a delightful responses from the Twitter artsy community.
posted by drlith at 5:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Utopia and work - "The utopianism of full employment is so entrenched, as a seemingly uncontested common sense, it's difficult to imagine a different utopian horizon. But there is one, which emerges from at least three different theoretical and political traditions." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Swaying gently in an urban hammock has become increasingly popular as lightweight and more advanced hammock designs have become available. There are photos. There are articles. Sometimes permits are required. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 12:05 PM PST - 58 comments

The Passionate Photo Colorizers Who Are Humanizing the Past

“I love how colorized photos enable me to imagine these guys walking around today,” one commenter remarked. “I feel like I saw this guy at the store,” wrote another.

[more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 9:37 AM PST - 29 comments

The Cyclo Knitter is the perfect contraption for those cold waits at a train station when one has forgotten their book. Design student George Barratt-Jones's invention, a five minute stationary bike ride on the machine knits up a simple scarf to cozy in or give away. Watch the bike-scarf-er in action or read more about the design process and construction. [more inside]
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 9:20 AM PST - 20 comments

"Rearing children should be the common responsibility of the whole community. Any legal rights parents have over ‘their’ children should be dissolved and each child should be free to choose its own destiny."
posted by latkes at 9:00 AM PST - 15 comments

In the cookie-cutter conservative era of the 1950s, even good, wholesome girls were undressing Elvis, and not just in their minds. During the mid-20th century, the popularity of paper dolls peaked and production boomed like never before. By then, the medium was well-established as a cheap way for young people to make believe: You could be Martha Washington, carefully selecting a regal wardrobe, or a rebellious teen-queen cruising around with famous rock idols. But these simple-seeming toys have a complicated past. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:51 AM PST - 13 comments

On October 22, 1797, André-Jacques Garnerin ascended to 3,000 feet in a hydrogen balloon -- and became the first person to parachute from a high altitude. The Paris crowds below watched, mesmerized, as Garnerin detached his basket and parachute from the hydrogen balloon. Anxiety must have diffused through the crowd like bolts of lightening as Garnerin began to free-fall, until seconds later his parachute opened. A small revolution had taken place a few thousand feet above the crowds, as a man began slowly descending beneath his parachute, and the crowds were ecstatic. [more inside]
posted by kmkrebs at 8:20 AM PST - 8 comments

In Detroit's busiest ER, a man with his own dark past tries to halt a cycle of violence [LATimes] 'In the first year of the program, Winans received a letter from President Obama honoring his achievements as a mentor. He keeps it in his office along with a photograph of himself in a prison uniform and a portrait of his father taken shortly before he was killed.'
posted by riruro at 6:41 AM PST - 4 comments

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (previously) in collaboration with the British Library is running Wiki-Food and (mostly) Women, a project aimed at improving and expanding Wikipedia's food coverage, especially (but not exclusively) entries related to women and those outside of the Western gaze. Four edit-a-thons have been held to date, and some of the improved articles include Sophie Coe (historian of chocolate), Anna Wecker (16th century German cookbook author) and the use of charcoal in food.
posted by Vesihiisi at 4:43 AM PST - 4 comments

A Clear Look at the Issue of Resolution

Steve Yedlin, ASC [previously] offers an intriguing demonstration on how capture formats, pixel counts and postproduction techniques affect image quality and why simply counting Ks is not a solution when selecting a camera.

[more inside]
posted by Bangaioh at 4:24 AM PST - 14 comments

old podcast interview with the late Henry Bromell, master of writing one-hour tv dramas During his lifetime wrote for "Northern Exposure", "Homicide", "Carnivale", "Homeland", and created one of the most underrated shows of all time, "Rubicon"
posted by FiftyShadesOfBae at 10:59 PM PST - 8 comments

The deeply-personal Home, by British-Somali poet Warsan Shire, has become a rallying call for refugees and their advocates. Listen to her read it. An earlier version of the poem, Conversations About Home (at a deportation centre), featured an unusual typographical style. Watch her read it. [CW: sexual abuse]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:47 PM PST - 10 comments

BTS (방탄소년단; Bangtan Sonyeondan), also known as the Bangtan Boys, celebrate their 5th anniversary with a notable first in the U.S.: their 6th album, Love Yourself 轉 'Tear' (YT playlist), is the first (largely) Korean language album to hit #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, which some to ask: bigger than Bieber? (CNN) Is it time for a Korean invasion? (NPR) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:32 PM PST - 11 comments

The Paris Review's new monthly column, Feminize Your Canon seeks to explore the lives and works of women writers who have achieved less attention and/or appreciation than one might think they ought. First up: Lapham's Quarterly's Emma Garman profiles 20th-Century British novelist, poet, and reviewer Olivia Manning. [more inside]
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 6:50 PM PST - 15 comments

Photorapher Erin Babnick gives anyone interested in colour and photography a different perspective. Illustrated with some gorgeous examples, this isn't a photoshop tutorial, but rather a way to think about colour.
posted by smoke at 6:40 PM PST - 13 comments

As of February 2018, 4am has deprotected 1673 Apple II software titles, and that number is still climbing.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 5:28 PM PST - 23 comments

The metaphysics of water. Lakes, river, the ocean — they spur us to reckon with the immense and the unknown, to confront life’s fluidity.
posted by spaceburglar at 4:46 PM PST - 4 comments

It Can Happen Here [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:09 PM PST - 42 comments

The Carters drop a video from their new surprise album, "Everything is Love".
posted by jjray at 3:26 PM PST - 42 comments

Budget Bytes is a weblog/recipe collection I use every single week. It has priced-out ingredients for each recipe and often recipes stay under about $1.50/serving, which is nice for those of us on tight budgets. [more inside]
posted by thegears at 12:15 PM PST - 67 comments

SIGGRAPH 2018 Technical Papers Preview (previously)
posted by a car full of lions at 10:11 AM PST - 15 comments

GM's dress code is only two words

While GM’s dress code empowers all employees, it’s particularly impactful for women.

[more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:04 AM PST - 145 comments

Who knew there was a Harvard personality type? It's not what you know; it's what you're like: "Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like 'positive personality,' likability, courage, kindness and being 'widely respected,' according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university." [more inside]
posted by A. Davey at 6:03 AM PST - 69 comments

Sachio Yoshioka is the fifth-generation head of the Somenotsukasa Yoshioka dye workshop in Fushimi, southern Kyoto. When he succeeded to the family business in 1988, he abandoned the use of synthetic colours in favour of dyeing solely with plants and other natural materials. 30 years on, the workshop produces an extensive range of extremely beautiful colours. [more inside]
posted by carter at 4:39 AM PST - 30 comments

100 years after the 1918 flu pandemic, and outbreaks like SARS and Ebola among others in the last several decades, how ready is the US, and the world, for the next great plague?
posted by blue shadows at 1:33 AM PST - 30 comments

Through the process of translating his book about Japan's robust independent music scene into the country's native language, its author finds himself reckoning with where he's really at. - From NPR by Ian Martin [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:07 PM PST - 4 comments

The future of the Glasgow School of Art’s historic Mackintosh Building has been plunged into uncertainty after it was gutted by a large fire on Friday night. Long considered Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterwork, the Mackintosh Building of the Glasgow School of Art took over ten years to complete, from 1897 to 1909. The building suffered a devastating fire just four years ago that gutted the iconic library. Restoration work was underway, and the building was expected to reopen in early 2019. Earlier on Friday, a huge tribute mural to Mackintosh was unveiled above the Clutha Bar in Glasgow to mark the 150th anniversary of the designer's birth. Previously and previously.
posted by Preserver at 8:19 PM PST - 35 comments

To quote Montesquieu: literary cafés were the place where the conversation creates reality, where giant plans, utopian dreams and anarchist plots are born without having to leave your chair Nine fabulous places to refresh yourself while wandering around Italy.
posted by MovableBookLady at 3:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Do you like Apples? Peaches? Grapes? Strawberries? Lemons? Or perhaps you're into weird things like mulberries, cherimoyas, serviceberries, or cloudberries? Or maybe you're just nuts. Between 1886 and 1942, the USDA commissioned 7,584 watercolors from 21 artists depicting a wide variety of fruit. [more inside]
posted by ragtag at 2:46 PM PST - 29 comments

Why Are Straws So Bad For The Environment? [Bustle] “Plastic straws may be on the way out. From McDonald's locations in the U.K. testing paper straws to proposed European Union legislation that would require straws be made of sustainable materials, to bans and limits on the use of plastic straws in cities like Malibu, Calif., Seattle, and Miami Beach, Fla., more and more companies and areas are cracking down on the use of what has for many years been a universal drinking tool, present at all your favorite restaurants, movie theaters, theme parks, and, well, everywhere else. Most of us know plastic straws are bad for the environment because we're told plastic straws are bad for the environment, but now that anti-straw legislation is pouring in, it's a good time for a refresher on just why plastic straws do so much damage to the Earth.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:53 PM PST - 102 comments

Straight out of a shitty horror movie, a pair of port-a-potties took flight after some heavy winds hit a gathering in Commerce City, Colorado. The area's local TV station reported that no one was hurt, though they did not comment on whether or not anyone was covered with shit, piss or whatever it is they put in port-a-potties to make them smell like that.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:38 PM PST - 40 comments

Star Trek: Discovery's production woes continue, after it broke last night that showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts were fired for abusive behavior and budgetary overruns. Multiple writers on the show are reported to have been so upset that they threatened to go to HR or quit the series entirely. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman will take over showrunning duties, although it's not clear if this is a temporary or permanent decision. [more inside]
posted by Automocar at 12:56 PM PST - 82 comments

15 Songs in 15 Minutes: Inside Tierra Whack’s Whimsical, Twisted World
posted by boygeorge at 12:49 PM PST - 4 comments

There's going to be a new novel in the Buffyverse, set some years after the end of the TV show, with a new cast of characters. [more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 11:49 AM PST - 6 comments

Whether you call it afroswing, afrowave, or afrobashment – it's the new sound of the UK.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:49 AM PST - 4 comments

Have you tethered your goats? Might be a good idea as our slippery bovid friends are active escape artists. Even working goats like to go on the lam. No need for a West Point cadet to steal them, they are perfectly capable of taking themselves for a walk. Apparently, there was even a video game about the subject. So tether your goats. Or don’t! They’ll probably get loose anyways!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Actress and cosplayer Chloe Dykstra has published a thoughtful essay on Medium about her abusive relationship with a man who went from being "a mildly successful podcaster to a powerhouse CEO of his own company". Most sources have gone ahead and identified Chris Hardwick, whose name has already been disappeared from his former site/brand Nerdist Industries. (trigger warning: emotional and sexual abuse, eating disorders, misogyny and homophobia)
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:23 AM PST - 109 comments

Goose Island wins lawsuit over infected Bourbon County original law-nerdier post here
posted by beerperson at 10:38 AM PST - 22 comments

The McKenzie Tapes is a collection of live audio recordings from some of New York City area’s most prominent music venues of the 1980s and 1990s. It spans mostly from 1985 to 1993, and includes shows played not only at Maxwell's, but also The Ritz, Irving Plaza, City Gardens, and more. [more inside]
posted by chinese_fashion at 10:14 AM PST - 14 comments

“Historically, European nations have more developed welfare states, stronger unions, and less inequality, all of which are the products of more potent left-wing parties and labor movements that succeeded in reforming capitalism in the post–Second World War period. But this never happened here. The United States therefore needs a healthcare system that has universalism—and equity—built into its very foundation.” Single-Payer Or Bust: By providing a single tier of coverage to all, with automatic enrollment, comprehensive benefits, and no cost-sharing, single-payer provides a distinct, egalitarian vision of universality. (Dissent)
posted by The Whelk at 9:50 AM PST - 38 comments

How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised. MoonViews, the website of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, is now finished as LOIRP has finished their mission and delivered the data to NASA. High-res pictures can be viewed here. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:29 AM PST - 13 comments

/r/somnivexillology, for the study of flags that appear in dreams.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Climate change is creating a new kind of grief, and we’re completely unprepared for it. Quartz's Jeremy Deaton looks at the gathering psychological crises caused by environmental collapse.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:56 AM PST - 38 comments

A new zefrank documentary: "The giant anteater resembles a walking index finger with a mullet...and leg warmers."
(SLYT, 7:24 mins, no CC)
(NSFW language + about 2 seconds of NSFW footage)
(note: is Buzzfeed content) [more inside]
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 6:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Ramadan nomnoms in 2018: It takes 350 chefs, 160 stewards and 450 supporting staff to prepare the iftar at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
Syrian refugees celebrate Ramadan in Lebanon: "little things that we miss like the Ramadan-exclusive drink jalaab."
Celebrity chef Vikas Khanna breaks his fast with the Muslim family who saved his life during the 1992 Mumbai riots: "When rioters visited their house... the family lied and said that Khanna too, was their son." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:19 AM PST - 9 comments

"The Clinton Trump foundation is a criminal enterprise!" At least that's what the New York State Attorney General's office is suing him for. Meanwhile Trump made friends over the weekend in Singapore, much to Kim Jong Un's delight. They even made a video to commemorate the historic event. [more inside]
posted by From Bklyn at 4:07 AM PST - 2541 comments

Friedrich Nietzsche or Janelle Monáe?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:18 AM PST - 9 comments

I recently checked into a hotel while two people in dog costumes nuzzled and pawed at each other behind me, because I had been invited to attend Fur-Eh, an Edmonton-based furry convention. In part because I am a hardworking writer, but mostly because I've heard these conventions are a great place to score drugs, I spent three days hanging with furries. Here's what I learned. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:54 PM PST - 26 comments

The first recorded goat kidnapping was in 1953. The animal was the property of the United States Naval Academy, the perpetrators were from West Point, and a football tradition was born. This wasn't about ransom; it was psychological warfare in the name of Army football.
posted by sciatrix at 9:22 PM PST - 5 comments

Sending disabled people to inaccessible centres causes pain and distress. Worse, it leads to them being denied benefits. (SLGuardian)

This is Britain’s benefit system in a nutshell: a wheelchair user is told to negotiate 44 steps to get her benefits. Linda’s letter informs her that if she thinks she’ll “have difficulty” using the stairs, she should “ring the helpdesk”, so they can “make alternative arrangements for you”. Calling a helpline is little use when you’re deaf; panicked, Linda had to ask a friend over to contact the DWP for her. I ask Linda what alternative the DWP officials told her she could have. “None at all,” she says, “despite my friend, a MP and my doctor all saying I can’t get up or down any steps.”

posted by Lexica at 9:13 PM PST - 44 comments

For nearly 1,000 years, the Gorgan Wall was the longest and mightiest border wall ever built. It was twice as long as Hadrian's Wall, and its construction is an unsolved mystery to this day. [SLTwitter]
posted by Chrysostom at 9:11 PM PST - 14 comments

RIP and TCB, DJ Fontana. Best known as Elvis' drummer, Fontana backed Elvis from 1954 to 1968. He could deliver a machine gun on Blue Suede Shoes, or he could simply 'get out of the way', but his work with Presley “helped define the rhythmic foundations of the last several decades of pop music”. He recorded 'approximately' 460 cuts with the King for RCA. The band is back together. DJ Fontana was 87.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:47 PM PST - 18 comments

Enchanting Illustrations Carved From Old Books

What happens to old hardcover books that no one wants any more? There’s donation and recycling, but it seems that as often as not they end up forgotten, in boxes and piles in garages, attics, or basements, where they can grow musty and moldy. But sometimes they can be repurposed, and if they find themselves in the hands of illustrator Isobelle Ouzman, they can be art.

[more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 5:51 PM PST - 9 comments

Everybody hate wallpaper . . . right? For Bradbury and Bauer, the hand screen-printed wallpaper produced at B&B is an important tool of historic preservation, as vital to the restoration of a vintage Victorian home as choosing the right colors for the finials and spandrels. The fact that their wallpaper also happens to be gorgeous is icing on the gingerbread.
posted by MovableBookLady at 3:01 PM PST - 44 comments

Guy Williams talks to the Greymouth boat crash bloke from Greymouth (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments

The Movie Poster Collection at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin) spans the entire history of film: from the silent era to the present day. They're in the process of photographing, scanning and digitizing their entire 10,000 poster collection. Over 1,000 can now be viewed online, searched through and downloaded in high resolution for free. (Via)
posted by zarq at 11:35 AM PST - 3 comments

Say hello to the newest country (name) in the world: the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has reached an agreement with Greece (which has a province named Macedonia and wasn't cool with FYROM claiming the name) to become the Republic of North Macedonia (Република Северна Македонија).
posted by Etrigan at 11:02 AM PST - 24 comments

"It is not entirely clear what the Kansas scribe was trying to achieve with his nonstop writing—or why it survived. But deep within the deep state, he found a voice."
posted by jjray at 10:29 AM PST - 81 comments

Maps and pictures of every lighthouse in the US and most lighthouses in Canada with lighthouse-related news and resources for the lighthouse fan.
posted by frimble at 10:28 AM PST - 24 comments

The Real Reason You Don’t See J.T Walsh or Five Other Legendary Character Actors in Big Movies Anymore
posted by brundlefly at 10:16 AM PST - 55 comments

Jimmy gets the gang back together for a Degrassi reunion
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Warning: Consensual Cannibalism "Three weeks after his accident, our anonymous redditor invited his friends for a meal: On Sunday, July 10, 2016, three weeks after the accident, Shiny, who prefers to remain anonymous, invited 10 of his most open-minded friends to a special brunch..." [more inside]
posted by starlybri at 5:05 AM PST - 124 comments

What would happen if the five boroughs fought each other? A discussion of the martial strengths of NYC’s five boroughs if they were locked in a war with each other with no outside help.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 5:00 AM PST - 45 comments

Behind the scenes in the National Zoo kitchen. "Pumpkin spice is a favorite of the lions, sending them into a flurry of activity—rolling, rubbing and scent marking... Turns out, lions love this seasonal scent just as much as we do."
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:41 AM PST - 21 comments

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted historic Internet rules (CNN Money), when the Democratic-led commission approved 3-to-2, split along party lines, to assert extra government authority over the Internet and permitted enforcement of net neutrality rules that would prevent Internet providers—including cellular carriers—from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment (Ars Technica). That came to an end on Monday, June 11, 2018 (CNN Money), following another FCC vote, split on party lines again (CNN Money), but breaking for the GOP. The FCC's Net Neutrality rules are dead, but the fight isn't (Wired). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:46 PM PST - 12 comments

Gizmodo reports on Amazon's "Voluntary" Time Off (VTO) scheme, whereby workers are encouraged, incentivized, or even forced to work fewer hours in order to improve the efficiency of their distribution centers. [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 9:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Cats come in all shapes and forms. Even liquid. Documenting them all, an Instagram account called DailyPurrr is creating "stupid cat drawings on a daily basis." The portraits they share are purrrfect combinations of simplicity and humor, and even you'll be able to replicate them!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Before he mysteriously disappeared and landed on the Air Force Most Wanted list, Capt. William Howard Hughes Jr. phoned home to tell his mother and father that he was going to the Netherlands.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:01 PM PST - 11 comments

A lesson in foresight: Balloonfest—about the Doomed Cleveland Balloonfest of 1986. Release 1.5 Million Helium Balloons at the same time? To raise funds for charity, to raise Cleveland's civic pride, and get the city into the Guinness Book of World Records? That's a Great Idea! What could possibly go wrong? This post features old-school local news footage, murmurations of balloons, the mysteries of atmospheric science in 1986, maritime tragedies, and Cleveland. \\ Happy footage. "Let the Bad Memories Fade Away." \\ [via The Atlantic and Jessamyn]
posted by not_on_display at 8:19 PM PST - 21 comments

This Pitchbook report talks through this insane moment in private equity and venture capital. Some of the origins, some ongoing trends, and some potential effects it'll have on tech investing and our economy. Dizzying but interesting read.
posted by shashashasha at 8:15 PM PST - 27 comments

An oral history of B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, the racy module that almost sunk Dungeons and Dragons. Some more details. A review.
posted by Artw at 7:40 PM PST - 47 comments

Cameron Esposito has a new stand-up special about sexual assault from a survivor’s perspective available to stream for free on her site. Proceeds from donations benefit RAINN, the United States’ largest anti-sexual violence organization. (CW: sexual assault) [more inside]
posted by numaner at 4:53 PM PST - 11 comments

R.I.P., Liberal Contrarianism, Michael Bérubé
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:48 PM PST - 74 comments

Dearborn, Mich., is the capital of Muslim America, and it is never more vibrant than during the holy month of Ramadan, which comes to an end this week. Authentic Yemeni cafes are packed with customers into the early-morning hours, colorful rows of desserts are displayed in Lebanese and Palestinian sweet shops, and the tables at private iftars — the traditional dinners where Muslims end their daily fast — overflow each evening with an abundance of food. [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 3:13 PM PST - 3 comments

Lucio Venna was a Futurist movement artist. In 1920 he moved to Florence, left Futurism and painting behind, and became a commercial artist. This is a selection of his racing posters. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:57 PM PST - 5 comments

Falling in love in 1948 ... and still not recognized as a couple five decades later [YT]. Jim Egan, the pioneering gay rights activist, and his partner Jack Nesbit are recognized in the first LGBTQ2 Heritage Minute. [more inside]
posted by jb at 1:46 PM PST - 7 comments

The Legend of Mitch Green
posted by box at 1:24 PM PST - 2 comments

Solved Wheel Of Fortune puzzles.
posted by griphus at 12:18 PM PST - 89 comments

They Might Be Giants' classic medley Fingertips, as told by clips from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (contains spoilers) [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 10:32 AM PST - 22 comments

ProPublica’s roundup on rent and housing issues in NYC: THE RENT RACKET covers issues from tax breaks to loopholes to developers funding candidates to the history of why rents are so high. - Since 1993, NYC has lost 152,000 regulated units after landlords increased rent. (6Sqft) - ”Rent control is one of most effective ways to protect working-class tenants from being priced out of their homes and neighborhoods. Because it stands in the way of investors making money, however, it is under attack.” New Yorkers Need Universal Rent Control Now. (The Indypendant) Previously: Brokelyn
posted by The Whelk at 8:51 AM PST - 92 comments

Yesterday at E3, the cast of Lucasarts' 1998 adventure game Grim Fandango reprised their roles in a reading of much of the game's script (SLYT, skips to 8:15:22 in the video).
posted by uncleozzy at 8:05 AM PST - 11 comments

What would the last four decades look like if George Lucas had never made Star Wars at all? The release of Solo: A Star Wars Story just five months after that of The Last Jedi makes it clear that Star Wars has never been more ubiquitous than it is now; in fact, if Solo’s box office is any indication, audiences might actually be going a little sour on Disney’s attempts to turn the property from a touchstone of childhood and nostalgia into a never-ending modern-day cinematic universe like Marvel and its imitators. Considering that tension, it makes sense to wonder: What would the last four decades look like if George Lucas had never made Star Wars at all?
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:06 AM PST - 95 comments

Music critic and composer Justin Davidson reflects on how the new music scene in New York has changed over the past decades - from inscrutable academic music to a thriving and diverse community of composers - along with his own life and career as a composer and critic. On 10 Years of the New New-Music Scene, and 30 Years of My Own
posted by fremen at 6:23 AM PST - 2 comments

For 100 years, express trains on British railways would sometimes drop passengers off at local stations without stopping, by detaching rear cars at speed while passing the station. Operation of these "slip coaches" (also called "slip carriages") required quite a bit of technical maneuvering, as Thomas and Friends could tell you. Slip coaches had their final day in 1960--and we have video from the voyage!
posted by duffell at 4:55 AM PST - 33 comments

From the origins of Jake Jortles to the mystery of Chidi's American accent, Mike Schur answers every lingering question about season 2 of “The Good Place.” (Spoilers, yes.) [more inside]
posted by rewil at 9:32 PM PST - 37 comments

On August 26, 2017, Victor Solf performed without his musical partner and the other half of Her, Simon Carpentier, at the Rock En Seine festival. Simon had tragically lost his battle with cancer a few weeks before. He was 27. “Simon told me I needed to perform at this festival and talk about Her,” remembers Solf. “Play the songs and sing the lyrics.” Their sound is a mash up of old and new, analogue and digital, classic and contemporary -- in 2015, they cite the soulful sounds of Ray Charles and BB king, the quick song-writing of Otis Reading and The Doors, alongside modern artists such as James Blake and Frank Ocean. Knowing their time was limited, they mapped out how they wanted their debut album to sound, and how the entire project would be presented to the world. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:26 PM PST - 1 comment

When the chalk outline on the floor is around a woman, the heart of the crime is usually love. - Chelsea G. Summers explores love, trust, murder, survival and rehearsal, and the appeal of True Crime podcasts.
posted by Artw at 6:07 PM PST - 25 comments

"Was Kidd one of Joyce’s prophesied professors, made so busy by the puzzles and enigmas that he was driven to literal madness? It seemed impossible to say, because not long after that newspaper article was published, Kidd simply vanished. Over the last 10 years, I would occasionally pick up the telephone, trying to scratch out some other ending to the story. I harbored this idea, a fantasy really, that John Kidd had abandoned the perfect “Ulysses” to become the perfect Joycean — so consumed by the infinite interpretations of the book that he departed this grid of understanding."
posted by Stanczyk at 4:43 PM PST - 20 comments

Field recordings from around Indonesia accompanied by text and pictures that mostly follows the format of: sound samples (sometimes with a video); some background and history of the instruments, music, people; and then context (the story of how the field recording/s were obtained [quite entertaining in and of themselves]). [AMA]
posted by unliteral at 4:35 PM PST - 4 comments

The Mexican general election will be held on July 1. The likely winner of the presidency is Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO), a left-wing populist representing the Juntos Haremos Historia coalition (“Together We’ll Make History”). The election has already been marred by significant violence, with at least 112 politicians killed and 80 withdrawing since the start of election season in late 2017. [more inside]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:31 PM PST - 14 comments

2018 E3 Recap. All the major announcements made at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in one convenient place. Trailers, announcements, etc.
posted by Fizz at 4:12 PM PST - 82 comments

The DOJ has lost its suit to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner. The $85.4 billion purchase was cleared with no conditions. United States District Judge Richard Leon's 172-page opinion here.
posted by hypersloth at 3:53 PM PST - 37 comments

Can't Keep My Paws to Myself
posted by y2karl at 3:42 PM PST - 14 comments

A raccoon has decided to climb to the 22nd floor of the UBS tower in downtown St. Paul. It's currently taking a nap, but Minnesotans are still watching and tweeting about it at #mprraccoon
posted by dinty_moore at 2:11 PM PST - 110 comments

The Guardian (through their expert's network) has provided a beginners guide to World Cup 2018, a team-by-team guide to all 32 teams, a preview from a fan of each team, a guide to all the venues in Russia, and a comprehensive guide to all 736 players.
World Cup 2018 team previews: What you need to know about all 32 teams. Copa del Mundo 2018: Todo lo que debes saber sobre los 32 equipos. Guia da Copa do Mundo 2018: tudo o que você precisa saber sobre as 32 seleções [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:07 PM PST - 98 comments

I’m queer, which is why I always thought I’d be dead by now. I grew up standing just inside the open door of the closet, like a cat looking out the window at a bird and thinking she’s outside. The door was open — my queerness wasn’t a secret, that’s what I told myself. The door was open, but I was tucked between the coats, breathing shallow and hoping no one asked any questions. Sometimes people knew and sometimes people didn’t and often people forgot, forgot for years at a time, forgot even though we were coworkers, parishioners, friends, best friends, relatives, married.

Between the Coats: A Sensitivity Read Changed my Life – an Essay by Sarah Gailey [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 11:38 AM PST - 40 comments

Is This the World’s Most Bizarre Scholarly Meeting? What would Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra, a very friendly robot, plus a bevy of scientists, mystics, and wannabe scholars do at a fancy resort in Arizona? Perhaps real harm to the field of consciousness studies, for one thing. (SL Chronicle of Higher Education)
posted by crazy with stars at 11:32 AM PST - 62 comments

Like the Taj Mahal, Don Justo’s cathedral was born out of unwavering devotion to someone, and both of these magnificent specimens of religious architecture rose up from ordinary farmland. Unlike the Taj Mahal, though, the ex-monk Don Justo has built his masterpiece from donated materials and to no plan. And now it's under threat of demolition.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:11 AM PST - 11 comments

8 year old Yoyoka Soma's entry for the Hit Like A Girl Contest: Good Times, Bad Times. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 4:32 AM PST - 37 comments

Here's what it says: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un signed a document Tuesday asserting that the U.S. president would provide unspecified “security guarantees” to Kim in exchange for the North Korean leader’s “unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” [more inside]
posted by oheso at 4:24 AM PST - 212 comments

The last bat: the mystery of Britain’s most solitary animal We cannot speak of its loneliness, but it must be Britain’s most solitary animal. For the last 16 years, every winter, a male greater mouse-eared bat has taken up residence 300 metres inside a disused and exceedingly damp railway tunnel in West Sussex. The greater mouse-eared bat has been all but extinct in this country for decades. [SLGuardian]
posted by halcyonday at 1:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Breathe, exhale, repeat: The benefits of controlled breathing.
posted by storybored at 9:50 PM PST - 20 comments

BoredPanda presents an Oddly Satisfying Art Video Compilation. Here's another one. Oddly satisfying things previously.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:08 PM PST - 6 comments

In the early days of the telephone, about a decade after Alexander Graham Bell's telephone (patented in 1876), telephone poles were the skyscrapers of their day. Hundreds of lines could be strung from a single pole or structure, often collapsing each winter under the burden of snow. The era of these many-tiered poles lasted only about ten years, with the development of telephone cables. Many telephone wires were contained in one telephone cable, and with better insulation, employed for aerial, underwater and underground use starting around 1879. Meanwhile, barbed wire was used by Great Plains farmers to transmit telephone calls. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:07 PM PST - 16 comments

The Doors of Fall River. Documenting architecture in a crumbling New England mill town. Fall River is one of Massachusetts's "Gateway Cities" - a once mighty center of the textile trade forgotten as The Hub ascends ever higher. (The Chess School has been out of business since forever, they just used great paint and the space is really that unrentable.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:08 PM PST - 18 comments

"Today was the greatest birding day of my life." writes Ian Davies on May 28th when he saw (approximately) 721,620 warblers, beating the previous warbler high by about half a million, in what Andrew Del-Colle from Audubon describes as "an absolutely bonkers eBird checklist."
posted by jessamyn at 7:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Why Is Beethoven's Allegretto So Completely Captivating? The second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7—the Allegretto—has captivated listeners since the symphony’s 1813 premiere, when it was so popular that the orchestra used it as an encore. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has more on why this particular movement continues to engage us.
posted by homunculus at 4:20 PM PST - 65 comments

Here's The Best Mario Kart Character According To Actual Science by Henry Hinnefeld [Medium] “Most of us love a good Mario Kart session every now and then; there aren't many better things in life than ordering in a pizza, having some friends over, and proceeding to throw your controllers at each other in uncontrollable rage as the umpteenth blue shell of the evening comes hurtling towards you. One question always slows things down a little, though: which racer do you pick? While we suspect many players will simply stick with childhood favourites for the most part, one man has worked out exactly which character is best for the job with real, actual science. The data has been collected by Henry Hinnefeld, who has used nineteenth-century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto's concept of Pareto efficiency to work out precisely which racer should be number one.” [via: Nintendo Life]
posted by Fizz at 4:06 PM PST - 46 comments

VR interactions have the potential to be easier and more intuitive than with any other technology. Cat Explorer is a fun demo that points to the transformative potential of VR and natural interaction in fields as diverse as education, training, healthcare, and entertainment.
posted by joan_holloway at 3:39 PM PST - 15 comments

Repairing our crumbling infrastructure is being left to [checks notes] Domino's Pizza.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:14 PM PST - 23 comments

Ben Blum writes that the popular narrative surrounding the Stanford Prison Experiment is incorrect.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:56 PM PST - 40 comments

"...but if sexual harassment were a meal, the comedy club would be an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
posted by Kitteh at 1:31 PM PST - 2 comments

Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:39 PM PST - 46 comments

EA Sports Looks to the Future With Three Terrifying Dystopian Games Set in the Year 2019 by Matthew Dessem for Slate
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:15 PM PST - 17 comments

"The poems vary in subject matter from an Ichthyosaurus to the possibility of a fourth dimension, but they share a deep fascination and engagement with science itself, along with relentless mockery of anyone who would use science to maintain the status quo." Olivia Rosane looks at the work of May Kendall (1861-1943), in which she "take[s] science as inspiration, to act based not on the male-dominated discourse surrounding it but the spirit of inquiry that animates it at its best." [more inside]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 11:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Here's a gorgeous collection of Chladni figures, illustrations of vibration patterns by acoustics pioneer Ernst Chladni. Full scan of the original 18th C. German text (illustrations start around page 90). Hat tip to interrobang.

Chladni and cymatics variously previously on MetaFilter: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2014.
posted by cortex at 11:27 AM PST - 11 comments

Since new excavations in Regio V of Pompeii began in March 2018, the discoveries have been phenomenal. [more inside]
posted by Mouse Army at 8:59 AM PST - 31 comments

Fresh off their “Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour”, the most versatile band in the world is made up of drummer Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz, bassist Steve Jay, guitarist Jim “Kimo” West, and keyboardist Rubén Valtierra. On this tour, along with their lead singer / accordionist (a guy who goes by the name “Weird Al” Yankovic), the band focused less on the parodies they’re best known for in order to show off their lesser-known original material and, for the first time, cover songs... [more inside]
posted by bondcliff at 8:38 AM PST - 34 comments

"A good match of soccer is much like a fine meal. When carefully prepared and crafted, both ought to leave one challenged, provoked, delighted, entertained, and, one hopes, nourished. Likewise, picking a soccer team to root for can be, perhaps even should be, akin to picking a restaurant at which to dine — a flavor quest." SBNation presents: A Tasteful Quiz for Selecting Your Team.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:31 AM PST - 40 comments

One of the Deepest Caves in the World is Even Bigger Than We Thought Sistema Huautla is now known to be 53 miles long and has 25 distinct entrances. With a depth measurement of 5,118 feet (1,560 meters) from its highest known entrance to its lowest reached point, System Huautla is the deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere and the ninth deepest cave in the world. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:16 AM PST - 34 comments

Fred Turner’s research and writing explore media, technology and American cultural history. He is especially interested in how emerging media have shaped American life since World War II. He is the author of three books, including The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties (Chicago, 2013) and From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago, 2006).
posted by spaceburglar at 7:12 AM PST - 2 comments

Do you remember Fireflies? Well, after spending nearly all of 2016 on his ambitious Scores project (in which he would create a truncated film score about various topics, one each month), Adam Young, AKA Owl City has quietly been moving forward with a new pop album. Released in three "Reels", the first single I encountered from Cinematic is from Reel 2: Lucid Dream. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:54 AM PST - 10 comments

It's been 11 days since art challenge #Kaijune has dropped for 2018.
Some highlights so far (all SLInsta):
artist @fourthdensity
artist @jordanlewerissa
artist@anna.pavleeva
artist @alexdaikaiju
artist @theadrianchin
artist @charleslister [more inside]
posted by womb of things to be and tomb of things that were at 5:51 AM PST - 5 comments

2018 Winners- Catch up on the performances from last night's 2018 Tony Awards! (many YouTube links ahead) [more inside]
posted by Bibliogeek at 3:40 AM PST - 25 comments

The last time Michel Gondry and Jim Carrey linked up we got Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Now, they're Kidding. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 2:29 AM PST - 27 comments

Mood Elevator for the week ahead: babies laughing at dogs [CW: LAUGHTER, BARKING]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Trailer for Peter Jackson's adaptation of Philip Reeve's novel of mobile cities
posted by octothorpe at 5:34 PM PST - 89 comments

What is science fiction, anyway?
posted by Chrysostom at 5:11 PM PST - 52 comments

"My name is Alexis, I’m 18 years old, I live in Paris and I practice digital double exposure."
This one has motion effects created by legally blind Native American George Red Hawk aka DarkAngelOne whose Google + page has some very impressive animation.
posted by adamvasco at 5:00 PM PST - 2 comments

Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.
posted by knackerthrasher at 4:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Are you a member of the Church of Interruption? How two conversational cultures collide very badly.
posted by Zarkonnen at 11:55 AM PST - 279 comments

The battle of the "Bois de la Brigade de Marine". One hundred years ago United States Marines fought the brutal Battle of Belleau Wood. As the Allies struggled to contain the German spring offensive (previously), a Marine force and a French unit turned back a German attack, then drove them out of a dense, small forest, suffering nearly ten thousand casualties. Ever since Belleau Wood has been legendary in American military culture. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 11:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Hi there. My name is Noela Mogga. I am a physician, mother, food blogger. I was born in South Sudan. I plan to showcase tasty South Sudan food recipes, traditional customs, and natural beauty regimens. When I am not busy practicing Anesthesiology in my adopted state of Texas, I can be found whipping delicious meals for my husband and children
posted by infini at 11:18 AM PST - 6 comments

Newark, New Jersey has surveillance cameras everywhere, but unlike most, these are open for public viewing.
posted by Slinga at 11:14 AM PST - 18 comments

On Ryan's blog, "Ryan Blog", Ryan has blogged many edits of songs to remove every other beat or half-measure and the resulting deconstruction and resynthesis of mega-hits is good as hell. Some favorites: the glitchy weirdness of Uptown Girl; the newfound brevity and energy of Shake it off; the incoherent squashing of Sails. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 7:31 AM PST - 29 comments

A short documentary about the Mauritania Railway. [SL to Vimeo]
posted by kmt at 6:05 AM PST - 4 comments

American hailed for capturing reality of war and also took famous images of Picasso And here's the link to a gallery of his photos: DDD Gallery
posted by MovableBookLady at 4:12 AM PST - 6 comments

In its inaugural year, the Northern Territory Film festival celebrates Balang T Lewis – and helps NT communities watch their stories on screen.
posted by spaceburglar at 4:09 AM PST - 1 comment

Dead Golf Courses Are the New NIMBY Battlefield [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:31 PM PST - 164 comments

"She has been described, in some musical circles, as the 'Master of the Mundane' but this is not intended as an insult. It is an attempt to convey her incredible ability to take the viewer (and indeed listener) out of their own world and place them comfortably into a world of her choosing. To make them feel like a bluesy space cowboy, an android moving to a digital beat or a jazz-angry teenager. All without them even noticing that she’s doing it." Yoko Kanno: The Greatest Composer You’ve Never Heard Of [Medium] [more inside]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:12 PM PST - 37 comments

"In the workplace, the expectation for women to cushion their responses, manage the emotions of their peers and make their workplace “pleasant” can hold them back from doing the work that will help them get ahead." Gemma Hartley, author of the forthcoming book Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, discusses emotional labor at work. Hartley's upcoming book credits the original MeFi emotional labor thread as an influence on her work. [more inside]
posted by velvet winter at 2:00 PM PST - 39 comments

Treat money as the public good it is (pdf) - "The Swiss will vote on a proposal that, if passed, would transform the economy even more radically than UBI would have done." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:45 PM PST - 35 comments

Fairfax goes deep on disturbing allegations about the actions of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan — where one patrol developed a sick "warrior culture" involving "a devotion to the Hollywood movie 300" and a "kill board," then allegedly "reacted the climactic 'kick' scene" from 300 on a local shepherd. [more inside]
posted by retrograde at 11:20 AM PST - 19 comments

The Salton Sea used to be an ecological marvel, but now it's literally dying. The impact on neighbors and elsewhere is breath-taking in the worst sense.
posted by Alensin at 9:37 AM PST - 40 comments

Deadly /ˈdɛdli/ adjective: excellent, awesome, very good. [more inside]
posted by Thella at 8:50 AM PST - 8 comments

The Adapter Museum hasn’t seen a new post in years but it’s still a lovely trip down memory lane that examines, celebrates, and perfectly lightbox captures those random connectors we all keep in a box somewhere. Entries earnestly describe the technology and ingenuity required for each adapter with a reverence that elevates the seemingly mundane into what it truly is: a curated museum.
posted by mathowie at 7:56 AM PST - 60 comments

.. by The Snakecharmer. Easily the best thing I've heard this week. Great video too.
posted by Paul Slade at 7:55 AM PST - 16 comments

Before the youth of America fooled around at drive-ins and necked on Lover’s Lane, they coupled in canoes. It didn't last very long, because automobiles started showing up everywhere, but while the craze was on, it was cra-a-a-zy.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:54 PM PST - 85 comments

The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation has been desperately trying to get an Australian university to accept part of a $3 billion bequest that entails the creation of a degree in Western Civilisation. [more inside]
posted by lollusc at 10:43 PM PST - 75 comments

I found this 5-part series Let's Cook History, which is just short of an hour each episode exploring cooking in different eras. You might start with the first episode (perhaps misnamed for $REASONS) The Roman Banquet. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:28 PM PST - 18 comments

Starting out singing Misfits covers in a local punk band, then moving onto producing her own electronic tracks and making a name for herself in Cairo’s underground scene, Nadah El Shazly’s backstory is not that unusual. Her debut album on the other hand, is an entirely unexpected story.

The album's final track, "Mahmiya (Protectorate)," now has a mind-bending video by the cover artist, Marwan El-Gamal. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:07 PM PST - 8 comments

"For someone who once sang “It doesn’t matter if we all die”, Robert Smith has an endearing relish for the bathetic comedy of life."
posted by spaceburglar at 7:19 PM PST - 23 comments

Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story [YouTube][Documentary][Trailer] “Are kangaroos a great icon for Australia? Or a natural resource? Or, perhaps, even a pest? A new documentary explores this complicated relationship, and exposes some shocking secrets.” [via: Geographical Magazine] [Note: NSFW scenes of animal violence, severed limbs]
posted by Fizz at 4:50 PM PST - 18 comments

For some time now, the Guardian has been publishing a Week in Wildlife series, collating terrific wildlife photography from all over the world. Every week there are some absolutely fantastic photos.
posted by smoke at 3:58 PM PST - 5 comments

In a longform piece for Splinter, Dan Solomon and Jessica Luther discuss sexual harassment in academia, and how #MeToo has begun to shift things, if slowly - and how much more work is to be done. (SLSplinter)
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:50 PM PST - 31 comments

World's fastest paper shredder, carefully engineered to optimize GDPR compliance. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 2:40 PM PST - 32 comments

Mr. Rogers’s placidity belied the intense care he took in shaping each episode of his program. He insisted that every word, whether spoken by a person or a puppet, be scrutinized closely, because he knew that children—the preschool-age boys and girls who made up the core of his audience—tend to hear things literally. Maxwell King, former director of the Fred Rogers center, describes the late great Mr. Rogers's approach to writing the show. (SLttAtlantic) [more inside]
posted by dismas at 12:05 PM PST - 53 comments

And we stood up because we believe a strong ethical framework that values human life and safety is inseparable from positive technological progress.
posted by infini at 11:03 AM PST - 39 comments

Donald Fauntleroy Duck, lifelong second banana to Mickey Mouse, star of the Academy Award-winning Der Fuehrer's Face, and wearer of many hats (not just his signature sailor cap), turns 84 years old on June 9. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 9:58 AM PST - 37 comments

Raccoons are cute, but raising one up can be more work and worry than you might think. Here's one man's blunt assessment of his first year of fostering Tito: https://youtu.be/JQ66M5houqw [SLYT] Includes ear bites, sewer rescues, and selfie-stick video. [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:36 AM PST - 24 comments

In the 1930s and 1940s, one of the most coveted jobs in bustling diners and drugstores where one might find a soda fountain was that of the soda jerk, or jerker, master of displays and puns (the title of the position itself a play on "soda clerk"). But with increased corporate control, the linguistic concoctions of the soda jerker (paywalled scholarly article, first page preview) largely fizzled up, but Gastro Obscura rounded up some prime slang in The Lost Lingo of New York City’s Soda Jerks. Just don't be a George Eddy, tip the jerk!
posted by filthy light thief at 9:11 AM PST - 35 comments

Friday Flash Fiction: "Sum" by David Eagleman. "In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet. You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Bones break, cars crash, skin is cut, babies are born. Once you make it through,..." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Today’s generation of queer comics, having stormed through the doors left ajar by DeLaria and company, are no longer the butt of the joke. And standup comedy, for so long the preserve of straight white men, is being refashioned in their image. “My generation is the first that’s able to talk about our lives in a way that’s normative but also accessible,” says Cameron Esposito, a standup whose first special, Rape Jokes, debuts later this month. “Ten years ago when I was starting I was always able to be out, but only because a bunch of folks did it before I got there.” [more inside]
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:28 AM PST - 3 comments

CNN obit. The cause was suicide. He was 61. [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:48 AM PST - 414 comments

What happens when a millennial hears Rage Against the Machine for the first time. I am such a sucker for reaction videos, especially when kids or millennials discover something that I love. But this takes the cake; a millennial hip hop fan listens to the very first Rage Against the Machine Album. In hindsight, I wish my first Rage Experience were "Evil Empire." I need more of this in my life today.
posted by HiPhiNation at 4:30 AM PST - 130 comments

Big, Bigger, and how. The moon also rises. (Stay for the credits.) More, skyward, and previously.
posted by gregoreo at 4:11 AM PST - 2 comments

David Farrier, journalist and film maker (Tickled), investigates a mysterious film festival. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Mike Sweatman writes in the Guardian about ten historically important derailleurs in the development of modern cycling.
posted by Dim Siawns at 2:18 AM PST - 45 comments

For you D&D 5th edition fanatics out there, Youtube animator Zee Bashew makes a series of short cartoons illustrating different aspects of and ideas for the game (especially magic) called the Animated Spellbook. Spellbooks - Save Spells vs. Attack Roll Spells - Spell Levels and Cantrips - Casting Times and Rituals - Weak Characters are Better - Prestigitation - Sleep - Feather Fall - Goodberry - The Deadliest Thing in D&D - Detect Magic
posted by JHarris at 1:59 AM PST - 28 comments

The 'Killing Me Softly' Story - made a worldwide hit by Lauryn Hill and the Fugees, it starts with a Don McLean concert in Los Angeles ... [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:10 PM PST - 12 comments

seamless one-shot sequences are starting to appear in movies like ‘Black Panther’ and ‘The Last Jedi.’ And, of course, it turns out that they aren't seamless at all: they just look that way. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:17 PM PST - 71 comments

"Officially, Bondy is in Île-de-France, the broader Parisian region. To most in France, though, it is in the northern swath of the banlieues, a label that is both a euphemism and a stigma: places with large, working-class, nonwhite communities, synonymous with riots and social strife, thought of as breeding grounds for crime and terrorism. It is here, amid the tower blocks of the Parisian banlieues, that France finds its soccer players: hundreds who go on to Clairefontaine, the national training center, dozens who go on to play professionally at home or abroad and, this summer, the select few who will represent France at the World Cup in Russia." (Lire en français)
posted by ChuraChura at 6:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Live from Omaha, here's a terrible pitch for a conservative Saturday Night Live [more inside]
posted by Artw at 4:20 PM PST - 75 comments

The fact that there are abusive leaders in the evangelical church is utterly, unremarkably unsurprising. Where there are men in power, there will be men abusing it. What separates #ChurchToo from #MeToo are the power dynamics (at the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality) entrenched in evangelical purity culture, a sex-obsessed, white Christian moralism. [more inside]
posted by narancia at 3:22 PM PST - 31 comments

Sweethaven, the ramshackle provincial seaport which was the setting for 1980's Popeye, persists to this day. On the island nation of Malta, the set from the film still stands and has been repurposed into the theme park of Popeye Village. It is much more welcoming to visitors today than as it was depicted in the film.
posted by subocoyne at 2:30 PM PST - 30 comments

Zarathustra has new glamour shots. SLBoredPanda, by the artist [more inside]
posted by cooker girl at 1:15 PM PST - 11 comments

There’s hardly anyone who can argue with the popular saying ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’, well, maybe except for this special canine. A clever [Colombian] dog named Negro managed to secure himself a seemingly endless supply of treats, by paying for them with leaves. (BoredPanda, and a few more pics at TheDodo)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:42 AM PST - 18 comments

You're a busy person. You don't have time to listen to a whole 4-minute song in its entirety. Thankfully, there's the EveryOtherBeat YouTube channel, consisting of songs with every other beat removed. Enjoy precisely one-half of hit songs such as Smooth Criminal, Seven Nation Army, Bring Me To Life, or (of course) All Star. What a time savings!
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:33 AM PST - 41 comments

Fire at London’s Hayward Gallery as rotting fish artwork explodes. The installation, "Majestic Splendor" by Lee Bul, was a commentary on the ephemeral nature of beauty. The symbolism is now, perhaps, even more apropos now than when it was removed from the MoMA for for filling the gallery with a terrible stench. A closeup of a detail of the artwork, pre-explosion. A scientific explanation of the reasons the piscine masterpiece exploded.
posted by kyrademon at 9:58 AM PST - 17 comments

The 25 Best Heist Movies of All Time [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:20 AM PST - 127 comments

Norman is an AI that is trained to perform image captioning; a popular deep learning method of generating a textual description of an image. We trained Norman on image captions from an infamous subreddit (the name is redacted due to its graphic content) that is dedicated to document and observe the disturbing reality of death.
posted by sammyo at 7:05 AM PST - 29 comments

“The rally came days after the Trump administration announced it would roll back the Volcker Rule, which since 2014 has prohibited banks from using their accounts to conduct risky, speculative trading, in an effort to avoid another financial meltdown like the one that threw the country into a recession in 2008.” The Public Banking Movement comes to NYC (Common Dreams) “The Wall Street banks that are holding the public’s money are actively harming New Yorkers, harming New York communities, harming the planet, etc.” Progressive Groups unite to push for a Public Bank in NYC. (Mic) What is a Public Bank and how could it do better for California? (Truth Out) How Germany’s Public Banks funded their green revolution. (Guardian)
posted by The Whelk at 7:02 AM PST - 18 comments

Solve the Internet is a new weekly mini crossword puzzle for the extremely online. [Motherboard]
posted by mosessis at 3:31 AM PST - 25 comments

150 years of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. From sci-fi libraries to steampunk tearooms, his dazzling creations made Glasgow a design paradise. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:03 AM PST - 13 comments

In which Giselle Clarkson confronts a serious avian problem for artists everywhere
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:17 PM PST - 19 comments

70 Long-Lost Japanese Video Games Have Been Discovered in a 67GB Folder of ROMs on a Private Forum [Motherboard] “Until yesterday, rare Japanese PC game Labyrinthe, developed by Caravan Interactive, was long thought to be lost forever. That is until the almost mythical third game in the already obscure Horror Tour series was found on a 67GB folder of ROMs on a private forum. Other rare games from the folder are expected to become public soon.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:47 PM PST - 19 comments

Incels aren’t monsters of cruel internet culture – they are the product of the American literary canon that has long glorified male sexual frustration
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:26 PM PST - 116 comments

r/cospenis is a subreddit of people who dress their dicks up in little costumes. Like as a cactus or the Boss or maybe just in a cute little hoodie. Previously. EXTREMELY NSFW. ALL LINKS CONTAIN PICTURES OF ACTUAL PENISES. ALSO SOME LINKS CONTAIN REDDIT. IF YOU ARE NOT OK WITH DICK PICS (even adorbs cute ones!) OR REDDIT, THIS IS NOT THE FPP FOR YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
posted by phunniemee at 3:50 PM PST - 49 comments

A neighbourhood in Surrey, British Columbia has been home to a lot of peacocks for quite a while. Right now, it's mating season, and the male peacocks have been spotted throwing down with their own reflections on parked cars. One resident recently took matters into his own hands, illegally felling a tree that the peacocks were roosting in at night. The situation escalated again earlier this week with the alleged assault of a bylaw officer investigating complaints about a man feeding the peacocks. Other residents have taken things a little more in stride.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:32 PM PST - 44 comments

Boffins quietly cheering possible discovery of new fundamental particle [more inside]
posted by GhostRider at 2:13 PM PST - 18 comments

Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders [WSJ, Archive] [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:28 AM PST - 27 comments

Actress Kelly Marie Tran, Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, recently deleted all her Instagram posts in response to continuous online harassment. It's part of a long chain of heavy harassment of Star Wars actors that leads to withdrawal from social media and public life. Director Rian Johnson took to Twitter to praise positive fandom and slam trolls, leading to a recognition that people in positions of power in genre fandom can help shut down vitriolic fans. [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:22 AM PST - 279 comments

"Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" full-length movie trailer, featuring Afro Latino teenager Miles Morales as a newbie Spider-Man. (Teaser trailer previously.) [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 9:17 AM PST - 44 comments

The Post has mapped more than 52,000 homicides in major American cities over the past decade and found that across the country, there are areas where murder is common but arrests are rare.
posted by standardasparagus at 7:59 AM PST - 27 comments

The Chicago DSA and Midwest Socialist presents Primer Red, introductions to the basics of radical thought and history. Dialectical Materialism (“What are the forces of history?) - Alienation (“The cheaper each worker is, the more they have to work to survive.”) - Class (“What do you sell in order to live?”) - Value (“Why does surplus abundance go to the people who need it least?”) - Praxis (“How do you do things?”)
posted by The Whelk at 6:35 AM PST - 20 comments

Miss America will no longer have a swimsuit competition. Gretchen Carlson, the chairwoman of the board, said, "We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance." She also said the new Miss America competition will be more inclusive to women of "all shapes and sizes." [more inside]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:40 PM PST - 75 comments

Student journalist Samantha McCabe's (excellent!) long form piece for the Ubyssey "It has been a year since UBC put their first stand-alone sexual assault policy into place, and students are disappointed with the university’s progress. As The Ubyssey investigated sexual misconduct and Policy 131, we discovered numerous problems with the policy's implementation, education and communication. While UBC has cited a reasonably lengthy checklist of things they have done, the holes that remain are the ones that survivors routinely seem to be falling through." (TW: sexual violence) [more inside]
posted by chapps at 10:29 PM PST - 5 comments

Paint By Monster (previously), everyone's favourite singing puppet art educator, has put some of his adorable songs up on Soundcloud. I've had them on a loop all day, especially 7 Holes in Your head and Giant Terrible Robot, which includes the greatest line ever written: "He was a big industrial trash heap, with a mean look on his face... But why did they give him a face?" [more inside]
posted by maxcelcat at 10:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Can't Do the 7 Minute Workout? Try this.
posted by storybored at 10:01 PM PST - 15 comments

Here's a taxidermy bird stuck on some wheels. Specifically, it's a female Greater Sage-Grouse, and it's Salt (or Peppa), Fembot version 2, designed and operated by Professor Gail Patricelli and her teams to better study the noble and stately male Greater Sage-Grouse. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:21 PM PST - 9 comments

A Pizza Wedding Bouquet Is A Real Thing & The Photos Will Give You The Meat Sweats [Elite Daily] “Villa Italian Kitchen, the restaurant chain out of New Jersey, is the first to create the pizza bouquet and boutonniere. “We are so excited to kick-off wedding season with the launch of the world’s first Pizza Bouquet and Boutonniere,”” [Image 1][Image 2][Image 3][Image 4]
posted by Fizz at 4:57 PM PST - 26 comments

"Uber’s “PR shenanigans” amount to little more than an effort to distract users from the fact that the rides are so cheap essentially because it has used 21st-century technology to erode 20th-century workers’ rights."
posted by spaceburglar at 4:34 PM PST - 86 comments

Claire Rudy Foster: "When I was young, there was no word for what I was – or what I was not. Even now, the words we have are incomplete. I struggle to describe myself. “Not a girl” is usually as far as I get. The closest our language has so far for a person like me is “non-binary,” meaning I exist outside the “masculine” and “feminine” gender norms. It means that, walking down the block, I will get called both “sir” and “ma’am” before I even cross the street – and neither will be right." Claire Rudy Foster is a writer.
posted by biscotti at 3:17 PM PST - 22 comments

IHOP is changing its name, and making a PR game out of it. Is nothing sacred in 2018?
posted by Everydayville at 2:45 PM PST - 148 comments

In Conversation: Conan O’Brien . David Marchese of Vulture talks with the current longest-serving late night show host in television, as he prepares to shift Conan to a 30-minute slot.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:55 PM PST - 30 comments

Kate Spade , born Katherine Noel Frances Valentine Brosnahan, has been found dead in her Manhattan home at age 55. [Warning, suicide] [more inside]
posted by Sophie1 at 11:44 AM PST - 78 comments

50 years ago today, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. [more inside]
posted by zooropa at 10:44 AM PST - 41 comments

The Story of Design, written by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, is a new book that chronologises and contextualises the history of design. To give a taste of the book, below we publish its chapter that examines Japanese post-war design, a period in which Japan regenerated its industry following the Second World War.
posted by infini at 9:58 AM PST - 2 comments

Own Goal: The Inside Story of How the USMNT Missed the 2018 World Cup [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:51 AM PST - 41 comments

As the expansion Vegas Golden Knights face what might be the impending end of their miracle season, let’s look at another great impossible occurrence in the history of NHL hockey: 1982’s Miracle on Manchester, the greatest comeback in league history, when the Los Angeles Kings overcame a 5-0 deficit against Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers and won in overtime. Read an oral history. Read an interview with game-winning goal scorer Daryl Evans. Watch a short documentary. Watch the whole game.
posted by goatdog at 9:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor, S.244/2, is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, and is by far the most famous of the set. Here it is performed by 15 year old Yannie Tan.
posted by growabrain at 8:54 AM PST - 13 comments

Toni Griffin of Harvard can show you how it's different in Boston and Rotterdam.
posted by MovableBookLady at 7:54 AM PST - 5 comments

"The enormous public success of Dove’s ads flipped a switch in the minds of other people in the attention business. The Real Beauty campaign launched a thousand imitators, but not because it inspired a wave of genuine self-reflection in the people who make a living inventing things for women to feel bad about. Instead, it taught brands like Aerie and Target, which have both received waves of positive public attention for Photoshop-free campaigns, that they could get exposure for pennies on the advertising dollar if they created content that people felt compelled to share themselves, above and beyond paid placements." Body Positivity is a Scam: How a movement intended to lift up women really just limits their acceptable emotions. Again.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:54 AM PST - 87 comments

The Calgary Exhibition and Stampede (aka "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth") has been attracting visitors and competitors since 1912. They've just announced this year's midway food offerings. There's way more than Barbecued-Things-on-a-Bun and mini-doughnuts and more deep-fried stuff than I thought possible.
posted by angiep at 7:16 AM PST - 17 comments

It may surprise you to learn that cats have Sitters and Standers, just like humans! Check out the latest Cat Snapchats from BoredPanda (which also has something for those who prefer cat humor in cartoon form).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:49 AM PST - 17 comments

Voters in Canada's largest province go to the polls on Thursday. Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne followed her sorry-not sorry campaign with the surprising-not surprising admission that she won't win. PC leader Doug Ford has been light on official policy statements, but it hasn't been difficult to figure out where he stands. Andrea Horwath's left-wing NDP rose dramatically in the polls during the first part of May, but the better spread of votes across ridings for the PCs means that the NDP has only a slim chance of winning. Voters are asking how best to vote strategically. Ontari-ari-ari-o. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:56 AM PST - 286 comments

When the new owners of the chateau of Picomtal decided to renovate the parquet in some of their upstairs rooms, they made a remarkable discovery. (SL BBC News)
posted by aqsakal at 5:40 AM PST - 23 comments

Today marks the one year anniversary of nine governments (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and their allies) cutting ties with Qatar. [more inside]
posted by Fezzer at 11:07 PM PST - 12 comments

A gallery of royalty (not Hollywood Royalty, actual royal family sorts) gathered for a gala of their own set, Prince Frederik of Denmark's 50th birthday party. Not just women, but men... see how actual royals dress when they go out ot party! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:52 PM PST - 52 comments

At 70, Paul Mounsey is the UK’s oldest BMX Racer, and got back into biking when he was 63 and he sat at home thinking "what am I going to do now?" Kittie Weston-Knauer is following him, age-wise, as the oldest female BMX bicycle racer in the U.S., but she was introduced to the sport by her son in the 1980s, and she's been riding since then. "I don't like to be the person standing around, watching someone else having fun, if that's something that I, too, can do."
posted by filthy light thief at 9:10 PM PST - 9 comments

267 pages of pictures of cats on, in, and around audio gear. Have fun!
posted by Slinga at 5:10 PM PST - 9 comments

'Star Citizen' Is Offering VIP Players a $27,000 Bundle of Spaceships [Motherboard] “Star Citizen is an unreleased video game that has promised fans the moon. Developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) has advertised the game as the ultimate space adventure, the kind of simulation you can play for years to come. [...] RSI is only offering the $27,000 Legatus Pack to its concierge members. Concierge players are those who’ve already dropped at least $1,000 on the game. Such backers have access to the Legaus Pack, but also receive a personal concierge at RSI who’ll pick up the phone anytime they call. Included in the Legatus Pack is 117 ships, 163 other items, and lifetime insurance on each of the ships. That’s almost every ship that will exist in the game, save for a few that were reserved as prizes for special events or rewards for early backers.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:11 PM PST - 117 comments

Fuck Neoliberalism. [pdf] Abstract: Yep, fuck it. Neoliberalism sucks. We don’t need it. Keywords: fuck neoliberalism; fuck it to hell. [more inside]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:33 PM PST - 109 comments

The President's lawyers claimed in a secret memo that he's immune from subpoena and on national TV that he can literally murder anyone. Many people are saying this is already a Constitutional Crisis. Then he claimed the power to pardon himself. Others say Trump is speaking from a position of weakness. It's week 71 of the Trump Presidency. [more inside]
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:51 PM PST - 2522 comments

Fatal accidents, off-the-books workers, a union once run by a mobster. The rogue world of one of New York’s major trash haulers. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:27 AM PST - 7 comments

A large number of demonstrations are scheduled across Canada today to protest the Trudeau government's purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion. The company was losing interest in the controversial project after fierce opposition from environmentalists, Indigenous groups and the BC government. Economist Robyn Allan details the economic consequences of the government's proposed purchase. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:46 AM PST - 62 comments

Teaser trailer for Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino's remake of Dario Argento's 1977 classic.
posted by sapagan at 9:37 AM PST - 37 comments

“So far, taxpayers are footing the bill without any help from corporations that have grown rich off of the fossil fuels that cause climate change ....New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration took a stab at answering that question by filing a lawsuit in the U.S. Southern District of New York against five oil companies: BP, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corp. “We’re taking this fight straight to the fossil fuel companies that caused this mess, and, with the lawsuit in particular, we need to recoup against the damages that have been caused...” Is Exxon Mobil the next Philip Morris? [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 9:15 AM PST - 12 comments

"Nobody likes the idea of killing cats . . . but sometimes, it is necessary" According to scientists, Trap/Neuter/Return programs don't really work. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 8:26 AM PST - 73 comments

S C O R P I O [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:01 AM PST - 2 comments

Half Man Half Biscuit have a new album out. (Some NSFW language). HMHB make intelligent, angry, absurd, punk tinged indie music that is frequently hilarious. The HMHB Lyrics Project will tell you all you need to know, including fans' interpretations of the lyrics. [more inside]
posted by alfhild at 6:57 AM PST - 15 comments

Below is a grid containing 2 editions of 6 different books. Your challenge : match the pairs of books from the cover art alone. (via the recently resurrected B3ta newsletter)
posted by slogger at 5:43 AM PST - 41 comments

A peculiar conflict in Maine over whether rockweed is more like a plant (and therefore belonging to those who own the foreshore) or more like a fish or oyster (and therefore harvestable as a common public resource).
posted by Dim Siawns at 4:29 AM PST - 24 comments

"Cities worldwide face the problems and possibilities of “volume”: the stacking and moving of people and things within booming central business districts." "With the introduction of ticketless transport cards it’s now possible to gather more data about people flow through busy transport hubs as we tap on and off. Tracking commuters’ in-station journeys through their Wi-Fi enabled devices, such as smart phones, can also offer a detailed picture of movement between platforms, congestion and delays." [more inside]
posted by wallawallasweet at 12:47 AM PST - 24 comments

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day in tech. Now it just got busier. Microsoft to acquire GitHub in a deal to be announced Monday. Microsoft has long been a fan of open source, now they are acquiring one of the main repositories of open source projects. [more inside]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:35 PM PST - 96 comments

Daft Lego - Harder Better Faster Stronger It's LEGO, it's Daft Punk, it's been done, this is another.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:05 PM PST - 13 comments

Great article about the best comic-themed deep dive podcast you weren't aware you needed to start listening to: Jay & Miles X-Plain The X-Men [previously], which posted its 200th episode today, featuring the most important X-Men author whose surname doesn't rhyme with Belmont*, Louise Simonson, and is hosted by Miles Stokes and Jay Edidin. Jay was ComicBook.com's Comics Person of the Year 2017, in large part for their part in publishing an exposé on sexual harrasment at DC. * besides, he was featured in episode #100)
posted by signal at 7:45 PM PST - 4 comments

We habitually conflate the concepts of “protagonist” and “hero” (and “antagonist” and “villain”).
posted by spaceburglar at 7:44 PM PST - 37 comments

Faa Mai the elephant was born in 2009 on the grounds of Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. She became very attached to sanctuary founder Lek Chailet, who sang lullabies to her as she grew up. Recently, Faa Mai has taken a liking to Thong Ae, a recently-rescued calf. When Thong Ae needed a nap, Faa Mai knew whom to turn to. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:50 PM PST - 17 comments

Dark Souls: Remastered [The Guardian] “Seven years on, the price is still being paid. There have been two sequels, an endless array of merchandise, an army of writers and video-makers dedicated to dissecting the game’s mysteries and now Remaster.” [YouTube][Remastered Launch Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:53 PM PST - 40 comments

Maybe the new alternative to wi-fi.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:18 AM PST - 87 comments

GSTdaisuki features thoroughly annotated videogame music mixtapes and showcases of some composers and technology of the heyday of 8 and 16-bit computer and console technology. [more inside]
posted by lmfsilva at 11:00 AM PST - 3 comments

"...the intertitle is the defining feature of silent cinema—more important than tinting or musical accompaniment or even the silence itself," claims Kyle Westphal in his article Corrupted Texts: Silent Cinema and the Intertitle. See a list of The Top 10 Intertitles from silent movies; or another, slightly larger assortment of them; or a whole Tumblr blog devoted to them. Or make your own in real time using Google's The Peanut Gallery (which, please note, will request access to your device's microphone). [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 6:53 AM PST - 22 comments

Having lived as a woman for the past 17 years, she is comfortable using female pronouns rather than “they” or “them” but describes herself as gender-fluid. “My breasts are real, my skin is smooth, I don’t have a beard or take hormones but now I am 57. I have lived life on both sides; sometimes I feel as a man, sometimes I feel as a woman, sometimes I don’t feel anything.”

The Guardian interviews Leonne Zeegers, who just won a court case that established the right of people to not be registered as either man or woman and that the Dutch legislature should provide laws to that effect.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:54 AM PST - 11 comments

An obstetrician on the conflict between promises to her children and duty to her work (Warning: contains descriptions of surgery, obstetric emergency, and pregnancy loss. SL: The Rumpus).
posted by stillmoving at 3:24 AM PST - 29 comments

Neko Atsume, a game where you collect cats (previously), has been released on the Playstation VR. [more inside]
posted by Vesihiisi at 12:33 AM PST - 12 comments

Jeff Goldblum Loves Jeff Goldblum Impressions • Jeff Goldblum's Secrets To Aging Gracefully • Jeff Goldblum Loves His "Jurassic Park" Pop! Figures • Jeff Goldblum Is Just Like Sherlock Holmes [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 8:25 PM PST - 52 comments

Paper, board, the back side of anything, glue, hot glue, tape, staples and what was almost thrown away. I turn them into very small objects that hold distinct memories. By Lydia Ricci.
posted by carter at 6:20 PM PST - 21 comments

When The Punishment Feels Like A Crime, Julia Ioffe Stanford professor Michele Dauber is leading the recall campaign against Judge Aaron Persky whose handling of the "Emily Doe" rape case in 2016 [previously] has attracted significant scrutiny.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:29 PM PST - 162 comments

As mentioned previously, Grammy Award-winning Beninese singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo's reinterpretation of Talking Heads' 1980 album Remain in Light (YT pl, Wiki) brings the sound full circle, from the album's original construction based on the template of Fela Kuti's 1973 album Afrodisiac (Bandcamp, prev.), to take the album back to Africa, with help from other artists informed by Talking Heads. You can enjoy the first single/video, "Born Under Punches," and the second music video, "Into the Light," which Kidjo performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and even hear the full album a bit early from NPR's first listen. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 5:03 PM PST - 9 comments

During the Cold War years, the Soviets ran a secret, massive program that produced a million maps of cities and places around the world. They were remarkably accurate and contained information not found on local maps — like the “explosive devices” factory in Ballard.
posted by bq at 4:22 PM PST - 22 comments

At The Paris Review, Anthony Madrid works through "A Homework Assignment from W. H. Auden" that others have also tried. At Herbert Tucker's For Better For Verse, two introductory exercises are worked out on the instructions page, and another explains itself; for the rest, click above, on, and right of each line to try to solve. Several linguistic introductions are available online too, e.g. Mark Liberman, "An Internet Pilgrim's Guide to Accentual-Syllabic Verse" (etc., etc.); Arnold Zwicky, "Word Accent, Phrase Accent, and Meter" [PDF]; and Bruce Hayes & Russell Schuh, Linguistics 251: Metrics (+ earlier version). Incidentally, Auden's original [PDF] "hardest course in the humanities" [PDF] required memorization of poetry--a practice historically linked with meter.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:34 PM PST - 12 comments

The whole idea is definitely nightmare fuel, but yeah, it happens. Millions of spiders falling from the sky, as if they were descending from the clouds. In fact, there could be spiders floating above you right now! And that's why we invented houses. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out explains how spider rain happens, and why it is often seen as a good thing. (Spider rain previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:04 PM PST - 24 comments

Internal Cambridge Analytica Documents Reveal Private Intelligence Web Behind Global Surveillance Program. Pt I on behalf of Archimedes,” a US-based military contractor. Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL group, conducted a surveillance operation in Yemen, using psychological profiling, “strategic communications campaigns,” and infiltration of foreign operatives into indigenous communities through unwitting local partners whom they were instructed to deceive. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 12:38 PM PST - 22 comments

SEGA Mega Drive Classics Launch Music Video by Eclectic Method [YouTube] “A collaboration with Eclectic Method. The trailer features an original track of classic 16-bit sounds composed solely of memorable thwacks, zings and booms from fan-favourite SEGA Mega Drive titles, which plays alongside visuals of landmark locations and famous characters found in the collection.”
posted by Fizz at 11:18 AM PST - 10 comments

Why Dictators Write [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:58 AM PST - 6 comments

“If I have any takeaway from nearly drowning in the flash flood that swept through Ellicott City, Maryland, last Sunday, it’s that reality feels like it’s falling apart around you. “ When the Water Came for Me, a first person account of the Ellicott City flood and how thousand year storms are happening every two years.
posted by The Whelk at 10:46 AM PST - 20 comments

Apple’s biggest event of the year is looking unusually quiet: Instead of announcing new features at WWDC 2018, Apple may double down on being the privacy-first, user-focused alternative to its competition. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:38 AM PST - 46 comments

The strange tale of the hovertrain, the British hyperloop of the 1970s
posted by Artw at 7:32 AM PST - 12 comments

"A lot of us were middle-aged women so, it's like, who was going to listen to us?" An auditor general's report has concluded that the billion-dollar Canadian federal Phoenix payroll fiasco (previously), which has underpaid or overpaid more than half of Canadian civil servants, arose from a "culture that makes people believe they can't bring forward those problems." [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:16 AM PST - 40 comments

His YouTube clips often show highlights of low-adrenaline action, including officers pulling people over for texting while driving and breaking up a scuffle between Just Eat delivery drivers. “Not many other YouTubers bother to post these more routine calls, so it's somewhat of a niche that people seem to quite enjoy,” he says.

A group of UK Grand Theft Auto players got tired of the usual murdering and decided to roleplay as proper British cops, modding GTA V to include all the tat PC Plod would need, uniforms, kits, Volvo XC90 jam sandwiches and all. The resulting low-drama, high-relaity action is captured on their Youtube channel.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:39 AM PST - 30 comments

Looking for Life on a Flat Earth [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:27 AM PST - 45 comments

As part of a joint campaign with the Shinjuku police department to warn pedestrians of the dangers of inattentiveness when using smartphones, the Final Fantasy XIV dev team has put together a pair of PSAs to be aired on the screens overlooking Shinjuku's famous "scramble" crossings. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:19 AM PST - 10 comments

The BBC provides a fascinating look at the lesser-known Faroe Islands, Tales from the far-flung Faroes, via the Faroese Post which is slowly closing on the islands where demand for letter carriers has dropped as population has dropped.
posted by gen at 12:46 AM PST - 22 comments

Maxwell the cat gets salty with his owner [SL Twitter]
posted by porn in the woods at 7:05 PM PST - 38 comments

The Problem With DC Action Scenes [SLYT, 7:33]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:40 PM PST - 33 comments

Slipped into a New York Times listicle (of sorts) on the 6 things you're recycling wrong as an aspirational recycler is a link to another article: your recycling might not be getting recycled because of a ban on importing 24 types of "foreign waste" that was announced in July 2017, with the restrictions to start in 2018. In December of 2017, there was recycling chaos in the U.S. as recyclers were looking for new importers for the 1/6th of U.S. recycling that was previously heading to China. In April 2018, waste exporters such as the U.S., Europe and Japan were still scrambling for an alternative to China. Ahead of Earth Day 2018, China announced additional bans on waste imports. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:56 PM PST - 53 comments

"Patience (After Sebald) is a multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss - an exploration of the work and influence of WG Sebald, told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book The Rings Of Saturn. The source material for the soundtrack was sourced from Franz Schubert's 1827 piece Winterreise and subjected to ... perplexing processes, smudging and rubbing isolated fragments into a dust-caked haze of plangent keys, strangely resolved loops and de-pitched vocals which recede from view as eerily as they appear."
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:27 PM PST - 5 comments

"Local beekeepers were called in to help move the bees to a safer location and try to redirect the bees back into their hives..." "A semi-trailer truck carrying a reported 15-30 million honeybees overturned on an East Texas highway on Memorial Day." Additional Links:
posted by grobertson at 1:47 PM PST - 56 comments

In the summer of 2017, the survivalists began to worry—really worry—about the bears. The problem wasn’t the animals’ nighttime behavior; that was just a nuisance. The survivalists were used to catching sight of the hulking intruders emerging from the darkened woods of rural New Hampshire to damage property, steal food, and deposit huge piles of excrement. Recently, though, the bears had started showing up in broad daylight, and not just at the survivalists’ encampment. The survivalists agreed that something had to be done to defend their makeshift home...
posted by ChuraChura at 1:32 PM PST - 67 comments

Andrew Garfield currently has a TONY nomination for playing Prior Walter in the Broadway revival of “Angels in America”. As it happens, Stephen Spinella - who originated the role in 1993 - is in another revival of the same play in Berkeley, California, only this time he's playing the part of Roy Cohn. The New York Times asked the actors, who have never met, to correspond by email during a week’s worth of shows. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:11 PM PST - 22 comments

Woods is what women would have called an "Internet boyfriend" a few years ago [...] Woods, of course, is not aware of his effect on the Internet because he doesn't read anything about himself, but the news delights him. [via nikkuneko on mltshp ]
posted by ellieBOA at 11:07 AM PST - 25 comments

"A crisis is an intense, short-lived, acute, easily identifiable, and defining event that can be controlled and managed. Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling." "The Midlife Unraveling" by Brené Brown. "...We are torn between desperately wanting everyone to see our struggle so that we can stop pretending, and desperately doing whatever it takes to make sure no one ever sees anything except what we’ve edited and approved for posting....it seems as if we spend the first half of our lives shutting down feelings to stop the hurt, and the second half trying to open everything back up to heal the hurt."
posted by brainwane at 11:01 AM PST - 18 comments

It's just 50 pictures and videos of sweet, sweet dogs and puppies. [imgur gallery]
posted by moonmilk at 11:01 AM PST - 13 comments

minutephysics [previously: little bits of science, for SCIENCE!, dear Mr. President, OMG Science!, how to see without glasses] has a series of short videos explaining Special Relativity:
Why Is Special Relativity Hard? - We don't have to follow the same path Einstein did
Spacetime Diagrams - How motion looks from different perspectives
Lorentz Transformations - What do things look like from the moving perspective?
Relativity of Simultaneity - Events that were at different places at the same time are no longer simultaneous (at, say 1/3 the speed of light)
Length Contraction And Time Dilation - Perceiving each other's perception of time
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:49 AM PST - 15 comments

The band NOFX has a reputation for dark and often confrontational humor. Now the LA based punk rock band has come under fire for making fun of the victims of the Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting. [more inside]
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:38 AM PST - 27 comments

The Secret Buried in the Puerto Rican Death Toll, the ‘official death toll’ from Hurricane Maria was 64 but a new Harvard study puts it closer to 5,000 ( Rolling Stone) A New Hurricane Season Is Starting In Puerto Rico. Thousands Are Still Living Without Electricity. (Buzzfeed) People on Twitter shares stories of those they lost #4645boricuas. Puerto Rico’s DIY disaster relief (NYR books) Anarchists come to aid when the state doesn’t (previously) Hurricane season starts June 1st.
posted by The Whelk at 9:30 AM PST - 29 comments

Detroit: Become Human review: a beautiful vision of the future gets stuck in the past [The Verge] “Like many socially marginalized groups before them, their demands are simple: they just want the same rights as everyone else. Just in case the historical and modern parallels haven’t hit you over the head hard enough enough, your character — the head of the group — can lead them in chanting the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “We have a dream!” But the protesters in Detroit aren’t people of color demonstrating for their human rights. Indeed, they aren’t human at all, but rather sentient androids. And if it seems like a bad idea to bluntly map the complexities of race, slavery, and the civil rights struggle in America on to the struggles of fictional robots — well, it is.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:59 AM PST - 43 comments

Sojourner Truth is famous for giving the "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. Only she never gave that speech. A version of the speech she gave at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851, substantially rewritten by a white abolitionist during the Civil War to make Truth sound like a stereotypical southern black slave (even though she was a New Yorker with a Dutch accent), is what most of us know today. The Sojourner Truth Project aims to correct that error, providing side-by-side comparisons of the original speech with the popular version, as well as renditions of the original speech by Afro-Dutch women.
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:11 AM PST - 41 comments

“This wasn’t about justice,” Maloney told Epstein. “This was about politics. The world knew something horrible happened, and there had to be an answer for it. It can be us as a Marine Corps. It can be a unit, or it can be a squad, or it can be a platoon, or it can be one man. And one man became the politically expedient answer.”

How the US Marine Corps (deliberately?) blew the war crimes trial for the massacre in Haditha. Previously: the massacre, its consequences (2006) and the trial (2007).
posted by MartinWisse at 4:15 AM PST - 12 comments

Hunks Punch Lunks: The Fascist Sex Cult Of The Professionals [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:56 AM PST - 16 comments

NYT Popcast delivers an exquisite excavation of the skeletons animating the back-and-forth between Pusha T and Drake. Latest update.
posted by spaceburglar at 2:48 AM PST - 12 comments