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Split [YouTube] [Trailer] Directed by: M Night Shyamalan. Starring: James McAvoy, Haley Lu Richardson, Brad William Henke. While the mental divisions of those with dissociative identity disorder have long fascinated and eluded science, it is believed that some can also manifest unique physical attributes for each personality, a cognitive and physiological prism within a single being. Though Kevin (James McAvoy) has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him—as well as everyone around him—as the walls between his compartments shatter apart.
posted by Fizz at 4:14 PM PST - 142 comments

Four years ago, WNYC published a series titled Women Box: Fighting to Make History (start at the beginning), looking at some women who would take part in the first year that women's boxing was an official Olympic sport. 16 year old Claressa Shields, a junior at Northwestern High School in Flint, Michigan (16 min, audio) was part of that history, probably the biggest part: she won. Four years later, you probably haven't seen her as much as you might have seen other gold medalists, because it's hard to get promotions and sponsors when you're a tough woman who fights, but she's back to fight again.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:08 PM PST - 16 comments

Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel “The new solar cell is not photovoltaic — it’s photosynthetic”
posted by Michele in California at 1:16 PM PST - 46 comments

Startup incubator Y-Combinator acquired a Xerox Alto and Ken Shirriff is currently in the process of restoring it to working condition.

Overview of the Alto and Its Place in History
Day 1: Power Supplies and Disk Interface
Day 2: Repairing the Display
Day 3: Inside the Disk Drive
Day 4: Microcode Tasks and Trying To Boot
"Hello World" in the BCPL Language (Precursor to C) on the Alto Simulator [more inside]
posted by Pong74LS at 1:00 PM PST - 25 comments

"Sexual orientation discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people can only come from the Supreme Court or Congress, the federal appeals court in Chicago rules." [sl-buzzfeed article] [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 12:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Prefer your political analysis in the form of a circa-2000 wordpress blog? Hate Nate Silver's professional formatting? Like numbers and Take a gander at born to run (the numbers), including musical hot takes, In-depth coverage of large-scale political events, deep dives on the electoral college, and accurate predictions.
posted by The Ted at 12:33 PM PST - 3 comments

Watch Luke Aikens jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet without a parachute.
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM PST - 74 comments

Hey kids! Tired of those boring after-school Christian clubs? Why not try something a little different? [more inside]
posted by tau_ceti at 10:37 AM PST - 28 comments

Todrick Hall has been here before, but he recently released Straight Outta Oz as an ambitious visual album on YouTube. It's a Wizard of Oz allegory about his life growing up as a gay black teenager and his rise to stardom. It also features some great singing and dancing, and he's touring with a live version now. [more inside]
posted by JZig at 10:09 AM PST - 8 comments

35 Classy Slang Terms for Naughty Bits from the Past 600 Years [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:49 AM PST - 36 comments

Like to watch baby tortoises eating watermelon, strawberries, or tiny pancakes? They've become a huge problem.
posted by AFABulous at 8:20 AM PST - 25 comments

Connie Bruck in The New Yorker: Why Obama Has Failed to Close Guantánamo

Congress is blamed for preventing the President from fulfilling his pledge. But that’s not the whole story.

posted by Joe in Australia at 4:38 AM PST - 47 comments

Causation can be separated from antecedent conditions only if we can control them. This is a thought provoking essay by Joe Boswell on the notion of searching for the cause of cancer or the reason a marriage failed. It reaches back to Bertrand Russell's idea that science is the search for antecedents not causal relationships.
posted by ObeyDefy at 3:49 AM PST - 32 comments

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind timeline
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 1:15 AM PST - 14 comments

27 strange non-political scenarios will appear. Please respond honestly and alone and we'll guess your brain's political ideology. Explanation, primary source, and supplemental info at end.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:54 PM PST - 164 comments

Joshua Coombes' Instagram mostly consists of before and after photos of the homeless people in London who he provides with free haircuts while they tell him their stories.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 9:04 PM PST - 12 comments

On July 30, 2016, a Louisville woman was brought into a courtroom without pants It turns out the woman was held for five days in jail for a single shoplifting charge, and denied pants or feminine hygiene products for the entire duration. The video shows the judges reaction, and her following actions to help the woman.
posted by greenhornet at 6:53 PM PST - 48 comments

Canada and Denmark have been locked in a dispute over ownership of tiny 1.3-square-kilometer Hans Island since 1933. In 1984, the dispute heated up when the Canadians planted a flag. Incensed Danes removed the Canadian flag, hoisted the Danish one, and left a bottle of Danish schnapps with a note welcoming the Canadian military to Denmark. The Canadians were left no choice but to respond in kind, with Canadian whiskey. Since then, the Canadian and Danish militaries have mounted several expeditions and left several bottles of liquor for their counterparts, keeping the dispute active. Academics have proposed international condominium status, but some consider this a solution in search of a problem, what with the free alcohol and mutual concern about Russian Arctic expansion.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:14 PM PST - 55 comments

Scientists fight crab for mysterious purple orb discovered in California deep. The E/V Nautilus team are working 5,000ft below sea off Santa Barbara, analysis has revealed a foot and proboscis, making it ‘a gastropod of some kind’
posted by Lanark at 1:48 PM PST - 56 comments

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. The quote has gotten more attention this year thanks to Sarah Palin, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each posting the quote, citing Gandhi, in the past year. But there's no record of Gandhi, or anyone else, saying that phrase, but there are some close matches.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:39 PM PST - 58 comments

Secret Wood, a Vancouver-based design studio, makes wood and resin rings that look like tiny forests and landscapes: snowy woods; misty woods; trees under a midnight sky; an underwater plantscape.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:07 PM PST - 20 comments

Which Actors Are Hated by Critics but Loved by Fans? Not a listicle.
posted by ogooglebar at 11:44 AM PST - 32 comments

Logic hacking - "Writing shorter and shorter computer programs for which it's unknowable whether these programs run forever, or stop... the winner of the Busy Beaver Game for N-state Turing machines becomes unknowable using ordinary math - somewhere between N = 5 and N = 1919." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 AM PST - 17 comments

Since May 2015, an man in Far North Queensland, Australia, has been posting videos to YouTube showing how to build various buildings and tools using "naturally occurring materials and primitive tools." In addition to step-by-step videos, he is also leaving increasingly detailed notes on what he is doing, and how.

"I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things. It is a good hobby that keeps you fit and doesn’t cost anything apart from time and effort."

[more inside]
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:16 AM PST - 34 comments

The Brujas are a crew of skateboarding women of color. "'There’s so little opportunity for young people of color in terms of jobs and education that we don’t feel like a part of this city,' Ms. Gil said. “Skating is a way to reclaim our freedom.'" These women meet regularly to skate and plan other community events.
posted by TwoStride at 10:26 AM PST - 9 comments

'The Rocketeer' Reboot in the Works From Disney [The Hollywood Reporter] “The new take keeps the story in a period setting and offers a fresh view on the characters. Set six years after the original Rocketeer and after Secord has vanished while fighting the Nazis, an unlikely new hero emerges: a young African-American female pilot, who takes up the mantle of Rocketeer in an attempt to stop an ambitious and corrupt rocket scientist from stealing jet-pack technology in what could prove to be a turning point in the Cold War.”
posted by Fizz at 10:17 AM PST - 53 comments

This week, prosecutors dropped all charges against the convicted killer of DC intern, Chandra Levy. A new trial had been granted last year, after it was discovered that the primary witness in the case, a jailhouse snitch, had lied about prior jailhouse testimony. The Washington Post reports today that all charges were dropped after a secret recording of the witness was made this month in which he admitted to lying in his testimony. [more inside]
posted by pjenks at 8:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Consumer Reports warns that these supplement ingredients can cause organ damage, cardiac arrest, and cancer. They also report in-depth on how supplements are used in medical care (including hospitals) and how little those selling you the supplements actually know about their side-effects and medication interactions.
posted by hippybear at 8:32 AM PST - 77 comments

Kanji The Parrot makes squeak toy noise when squeezed [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:01 AM PST - 15 comments

Law professor Zephyr Teachout first rose to prominence as the director of internet organizing for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. She's published the acclaimed political history book Corruption in America. In 2014 she primaried Andrew Cuomo from the left, winning half of NY's counties despite Cuomo refusing to even mention her name. And now? She's running for Congress. [more inside]
posted by galaxy rise at 6:52 AM PST - 9 comments

Cookie Jar, a short story by Stephen King
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:26 AM PST - 55 comments

"In 1967, Margaret Crane was a 26-year-old product designer at Organon Pharmaceuticals, sketching face-cream bottles and ointment jars. One day, as she walked through a lab at the company’s headquarters in New Jersey, she spotted rows of test tubes on shiny racks that twinkled under the industrial lights. “What are these?” she asked one of the scientists. Pregnancy tests, he said. A doctor would collect urine from his patient and send it to the company’s lab for analysis. The results would be sent back to the doctor, who would then inform the patient. But Ms. Crane immediately saw another possibility: Why not cut out the doctor entirely?" Why at-home pregnancy tests weren't available until the late-seventies. (SLNYT)
posted by gaspode at 8:17 PM PST - 41 comments

All 58 Stephen King Movie and TV Series Adaptations, Ranked
posted by Artw at 7:46 PM PST - 53 comments

There is only one species of wolf in North America. Genetic analysis has found that the "Eastern Wolf" and the "Red Wolf" are hybrids of the Grey Wolf and the Coyote. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:42 PM PST - 38 comments

A list of whales in videogames, with screenshots.
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 6:49 PM PST - 43 comments

"...the President is hereby authorized to invite each and all the States to provide and furnish statues..." Each state can send up to two statues to the collection, representing notable people from that state. The statues may be rendered in either marble or bronze. [more inside]
posted by dfm500 at 5:50 PM PST - 46 comments

The Oregon State Fair celebrates oddities like the "curviest vegetable" and the "most misshapen fruit." Fairgoers can marvel over award-winning onions and pumpkins and snap photos of the top pig and llama. This year, the state fair is adding a new attraction: prize-winning marijuana plants. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 4:12 PM PST - 21 comments

With America's general election 100 days away, and another two months before the first debate, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are off on a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio (events), while Donald Trump campaigns in Ohio and Colorado. Where The Election Goes From Here
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:13 PM PST - 3379 comments

How Exhaustion Became a Status Symbol. "From sloth to burnout, each age remakes exhaustion in its own image." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 2:22 PM PST - 18 comments

The US Navy will name a new ship for assassinated San Francisco Supervisor, LGBT and civil rights leader, and Navy veteran Harvey Milk. [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 2:08 PM PST - 33 comments

CuratedAI is a literary magazine where the poems and stories are written entirely by machines. For example, there is He Lived with Regret ("He lived with regret at his own table– for his own sake have mercy upon him...") by Tolstoyish, a Recurrent Neural Net trained on the work of Leo Tolstoy. Or Defunct ("defunct and master my god is dead with my love/and the man that i give him") by Deep Gimble I, which is minimally trained on public domain poetry and seeded with a single word.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:23 PM PST - 13 comments

I've nearly paid off $16,000 of student loan debt, but it cost me my friends This is the fourth installment of the series Into the Black , where we hear from people who found ways to pay off serious debt. This week we talked to Kyle Pendergrass, whose debt management has improved his mental and physical health, but who lost some friends in the process.
posted by Michele in California at 12:48 PM PST - 88 comments

Lichtenberg Figures are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or in the interior of insulating materials. Which is a fancy way of describing what is happening here. And you can do it too! (though please be extremely careful).
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:22 PM PST - 7 comments

The 27-year-old CEO and founder of Soylent bought a patch of scrub in an area known as Flat Top to begin an “experiment in sustainable living” early this year.

It has not gone well.
posted by griphus at 12:03 PM PST - 100 comments

"As the seventies began, there were two major schisms bearing down on Austin’s budding country music scene. As the seventies began, there were two major schisms bearing down on Austin’s budding country music scene. The first was political. The cultural upheaval of the sixties was still going full force, particularly in Texas, even in a city that considered itself as forward thinking as Austin did. The second related more narrowly to the music. The only route to success for young Texas country songwriters went through Nashville, a stubbornly conservative industry town considered every bit as reactionary as the Nixon administration. "
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Many people's first exposure to Rev. William Barber was his speech to the DNC Thursday. But he's been working tirelessly ever since the Republican Party took over North Carolina in 2012. His Moral Mondays movement scored a big win today over voting rights. [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 11:09 AM PST - 23 comments

Chelsea Manning Faces Solitary Confinement and Charges After Suicide Attempt [The Guardian] Chelsea Manning may face charges relating to a suicide attempt this year, which could lead to indefinite solitary confinement or transferral to a maximum-security facility, according to a civil rights group. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced on Thursday that Manning, who is serving a 35-year sentence in military custody for leaking state secrets to the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, was under investigation for three charges related to her 5 July suicide attempt: “resisting the force cell move team”, “prohibited property”, and “conduct which threatens”. Manning confirmed through her lawyers in July that she was receiving medical care after having tried to take her own life. If convicted of these new “administrative offenses”, she faces punishment that could include solitary confinement for the rest of her sentence, reclassification as a maximum-security prisoner, and an addition of nine years to her sentence. It might also negate her possibility of parole, according to the ACLU. [Previously.]
posted by Fizz at 10:14 AM PST - 53 comments

Communal Living Is Alleviating Millennial Ennui [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:39 AM PST - 68 comments

If you whistle a tune often enough to a starling, the bird will not only sing it back to you, it will improvise its response and create something new. On May 27, 1784, Mozart whistled a 17 note phrase to a starling in a Viennese shop and to his delight it spat the tune right back — but not without taking some liberties first. So he bought it and brought it home. That bird lived with him for the three most productive years of his life, during which he completed more than 60 compositions, including Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The piano concerto as we still understand it was built in those rooms. The “Jupiter” Symphony began and Figaro ended. Melodies that two centuries of humans have since whistled could have first been volleyed between a genius and his pet bird.
posted by zarq at 7:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Ken Barrie has passed away, aged 83. Ken voiced many of the characters on the TV series Postman Pat, and sang the famous theme tune [alternative: 1, 2, 3] (released as a single, it charted for 15 weeks). Barrie also sang the soundtrack for Charlie Chalk and recorded the soundtracks for Sharks' Treasure and Emily, as well as singing, whistling and narrating in various movies and commercials. Barrie also recorded music under the name Les Carle.
posted by Wordshore at 6:53 AM PST - 12 comments

9 Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women — Should men accept powerful women and not feel threatened by them? Yes. Is that asking too much? IS IT? Sorry I didn’t mean to get aggressive there. (SLCooperReview)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:47 AM PST - 53 comments

100 Stories, 100 Removals, 100 Houses Destroyed by the 2016 Olympic Games.
A difficult legacy to hide: psychological and physical violence, social relations ripped apart, residents in debt and under control of the militias of the West Zone of Rio.
Animations
posted by adamvasco at 5:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Space Jam 3 Starring Jeremy Lin (SLYT)
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Fifteen years ago, Brass Eye released the special episode "Paedogeddon". The Atlantic weighs in on its significance.
posted by Ned G at 4:23 AM PST - 29 comments

The Verge interviews Werner Herzog, a passionate German film maker with his own version of cynical seriousness. Topics discussed include the value of film schools by negating their value, the inherent violence of Pokémon Go and the role of technology in extreme situations [TW: rape, violence].
posted by katta at 2:31 AM PST - 27 comments

On being lesbian in a straight marriage (approx. 26 mins podcast) A conversation between two friends. [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 1:24 AM PST - 3 comments

The Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara died on Wednesday at the age of 87. He wrote eight symphonies, nine operas, 12 instrumental concertos, plus a wide variety of orchestral, chamber, instrumental, choral and vocal works. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 12:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Full transcripts of all seven Generation Kill episodes. [more inside]
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:30 PM PST - 11 comments

David Bald Eagle, Lakota Chief, Musician, Cowboy, and Actor, Dies At 97. [more inside]
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:31 PM PST - 25 comments

What Pokémon Go Would Sound Like Narrated by David Attenborough
posted by infini at 10:23 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

"From his collection of 2,500 vinyl LPs, the rock star has selected his greatest discoveries, and some record-buying memories as well.... In December of that year, my band Buzz broke up, but not without my demanding we play “I’m Waiting for the Man” as one of the encore songs at our last gig. Amusingly, not only was I to cover Velvet’s song before anyone else in the world, I actually did it before the album came out." [From 2003]
posted by marienbad at 6:02 PM PST - 18 comments

In the midst of today's choas and confusion, I bring you an uniting cultural landmark - What's Happening Season Two Episode 16 featuring the Doobie Brothers. For the uninitianted- What's Happening, a TV show inspired by Cooley High. And the Doobie Brothers a band from California, that staretd out playing biker country rock who via personell changes morphed into a blue eyed soul outfit, whose lead vocalist had a solo hit that provided the basis for a hip-hop classic. In any event, the episode is a great late 70's period piece.
posted by jonmc at 5:54 PM PST - 21 comments

tqdm (تقدّم, or “progress”) is a fast, extensible, low-overhead progress bar for Python.
It is primarily developed by Casper da Costa-Luis and Stephen L.
To use, just wrap the tqdm method around an iterable: for i in tqdm(range(1000)): sleep(0.1)
posted by Going To Maine at 5:53 PM PST - 28 comments

Confessor. Feminist. Adult. What the Hell Happened to Howard Stern? (SLNYT)
posted by The Gooch at 5:38 PM PST - 16 comments

"Since 2002, Sharon Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings, have been the world’s standard-bearing funk-bringers," according to Maxwell George, writing about Jones for the Oxford American. "On Sharon’s stage, delivery and dance moves are queen, and in her audience one can rediscover the lost arts of performance: command, direction, showmanship, sincerity." Horns, funk, soul, strength—Jones and her band bring it just for you. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:18 PM PST - 15 comments

R.I.P. Jerry Doyle. He was a star of epic science fiction tv series Babylon-5, then host of talk radio. Dead at 60. B-5 Great Maker J. Michael Straczynski confirmed this on Twitter and also wrote an obituary.
posted by doctornemo at 2:51 PM PST - 104 comments

Astronomy Photographer of The Year - 2016 shortlist.
posted by smoke at 2:50 PM PST - 13 comments

Eisner Nominee Renae De Liz Shares Short Guide for Artists on How to De-Objectify Female Characters
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:54 PM PST - 23 comments

"It’s one of those films that whenever you happen to catch it, you’re caught and you can’t turn away." ‘Stand by Me’ From Variety- Oral History: Rob Reiner and Cast on River Phoenix and How Coming-of-Age Classic Almost Didn’t Happen. [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 1:36 PM PST - 39 comments

“The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it” [SLNewYorker]
posted by alrightokay at 1:31 PM PST - 54 comments

Last stop in Philadelphia: Hillary Clinton’s Convention: Day 4 "I'm gay, so I feel like it's my second coming out party as a Democrat, to be free to wear my Hillary shirt," said Robin, who was wearing a 2008 Hillary campaign shirt and plenty of colourful Hillary pins, standing next to her wife. Livestream. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:53 PM PST - 3486 comments

HBO has fired Gordon, Bob, and Luis from Sesame Street. But not Susan, apparently. My childhood has officially been stabbed to death. HBO and Sesame Street previously. [more inside]
posted by Melismata at 12:11 PM PST - 99 comments

So maybe you've seen hydrographic printing. Last year a team devised a technique for computational hydrographic printing which gives amazing results on 3D objects. Now a team has used similar techniques to do computational thermoforming which give amazing results for printing onto a vacuum formed 3D object.
posted by GuyZero at 12:02 PM PST - 11 comments

"Fusion is fifty years away, and always will be? I hate that joke. I'm really trying to get it out of the English language." Dennis Whyte, director of MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and winner of the 2013 Nuclear Fusion prize, may get his wish, as his talk (1h38 YT) demonstrates. [more inside]
posted by Devonian at 10:47 AM PST - 67 comments

Starting Aug 1, cable channel VH1 Classic will disappear and be replaced by MTV Classic. The debut hour of television will replicate the first hour of MTV, aired 35 years previously to the day. After that, the format will include reruns of TRL and Unplugged and Beavis & Butthead and Daria and a lot of other favorites. Plus, apparently, music videos! The Hollywood Reporter has the most complete scoop on the change / debut / reboot.
posted by hippybear at 10:09 AM PST - 75 comments

Divers in Sweden Sniff Out 340-Year-Old Shipwrecked Cheese [The Guardian] Divers exploring a historic royal shipwreck off the south-east coast of Sweden have discovered what they believe is probably a chunk of exceedingly smelly, 340-year-old cheese. “We’re pretty sure it’s some kind of dairy product, butter or cheese,” said Kalmar county museum’s Lars Einarsson, who is in charge of the dive on the wreck of the Kronan, a 126-gun warship that sank in 1676. “It’s like a mixture of yeast and Roquefort, a sort of really ripe, unpasteurised cheese,” Einarsson told local media. He added that, while he was partial to cheeses “whose character lives on in their smell”, this one was “probably not for everyone”.
posted by Fizz at 10:03 AM PST - 26 comments

What we owe the slaves that built the White House
posted by dfm500 at 9:36 AM PST - 41 comments

Since 1988, photographer Carol Highsmith has been donating many of her photographs to the Library of Congress for public use. But in December, she got a letter demanding $120 as compensation for copyright infringement... for hosting one of her own pictures on her website. Now she's suing Getty Images for USD $1 billion. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 6:53 AM PST - 62 comments

Starbucks wants its baristas to wear fedoras and other awful hats — The fedora is meme shorthand for so many things, but perhaps most succinctly, it conveys the attitude of a male with poor hygiene, a Reddit addiction, and the firm belief that women keep putting him in the "friend zone" while dating assholes despite the fact that he's a "nice guy"—which is a thin cover for immature and often repellent ideas about gender roles. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:55 PM PST - 365 comments

Deadspin's Samer Kalaf spends entirely too much effort on explaining why Stone Cold Steve Austin's "Stone Cold Stunner" finisher is the most important wrestling move of all time. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 PM PST - 17 comments

The Vatican entered the sex education business this week with some free online lesson plans. "Under the title "The Meeting Place" and built on the image of the tent, this educational path accompanies the young people as they learn to understand of themselves as persons, called to live relationships with one another, with dignity and respect. The discovery of the plan of God, who calls each person to love, is the culmination of six units that compose this path."
posted by Stewriffic at 3:03 PM PST - 39 comments

The Definitive Ranking of Livestream Wildlife Cams [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:26 PM PST - 18 comments

In 1909, Julian Hawthorne (Nathaniel H.'s dashing, reckless son) released a wildly eclectic anthology called The Lock and Key Library: ten shotgun blast volumes of mystery, detection, horror, suspense, crime, decadence, and romance, comprised of stories, novel excerpts, folktales, and memoirs gathered from Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, Tibet, Iran, the Ottoman Empire, India, Arabia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Germany, France, England, Ireland and the United States. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:55 PM PST - 6 comments

The DNC 2016 fight song landed last night featuring: Aisha Tyler, Alan Cumming, America Ferrera, Ben Platt, Billy Porter, Chrissie Fit, Connie Britton, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Greene, Esther Dean, Eva Longoria, Garrett Clayton, Hana Mae Lee, Ian Somerholder, Idina Menzel, Jaime King, Jane Fonda, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Michael Higgens, Josh Lucas, Julie Bowen, Kathy Najimy, Kelly Jackle, Kristin Chenoweth, Mandy Moore, Mary McCormack, Mary-Louise Parker, Mike Thompkins, Nikki Read, Rachel Platten, Renee Fleming, Rob Reiner, Shelley Regner, Sia, and TR Knight.

It was the culmination of an eventful night including a roll call featuring Larry Sanders personally putting in a delegate vote for his brother, Bernie and the roll call finishing up with Bernie Sanders nominating Hillary Clinton by acclamation.

Also, it almost didn't officially end. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 12:31 PM PST - 3145 comments

On the 40th anniversary of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Montreal Gazette is running an extensive retrospective series on the preparations for, legacy of, and notable moments at the games. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:05 AM PST - 18 comments

Can the origin of grime actually be found in a SNES game?
posted by selfnoise at 11:05 AM PST - 16 comments

We love microchips . That's why we boil them in acid and cut them up with a dremel.
posted by carter at 10:29 AM PST - 27 comments

Cartoonist Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac, Richard's Poor Almanac) has passed away at the age of 58 due to effects from Parkinson's Disease.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:29 AM PST - 54 comments

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bod (slMaisonneuve)
posted by Kitteh at 10:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Man Booker Prize Announces 2016 Longlist: The longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen’, for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize is announced today. This year’s longlist of 13 books was selected by a panel of five judges: Amanda Foreman (Chair); Jon Day; Abdulrazak Gurnah; David Harsent and Olivia Williams. It was chosen from 155 submissions published in the UK between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 1969, is open to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:41 AM PST - 10 comments

Want some good news for terrible times? It seems the Ice Bucket Challenge viral fundraiser for ALS research has yielded identification of a common gene amongst 15,000 ALS patients. It's still early days for this research, but it's progress: progress funded as the result of a viral phenomenon.
posted by hippybear at 9:38 AM PST - 27 comments

From a Pineapple to a Six-Pack, 23 Buildings that Resemble the Things They Sell
posted by bq at 8:55 AM PST - 40 comments

In the public hospital in Maiwut, a town 400 kilometers north-east of the capital, Juba, doctors and nurses work around the clock to help those in need. ... Health facilities and critical services like water and electricity are often disrupted or destroyed completely. The hospital in Maiwut is basic. The only available electricity comes from diesel-powered generators that occasionally cut out, a fact of life that can prove deadly. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 8:51 AM PST - 4 comments

This Is Your Brain on Silence
posted by infini at 8:50 AM PST - 29 comments

"As we enter complex discussion in Canada about doctor-assisted suicide, we worry that Canadians are only getting one side of the disability story – that death is a natural choice for these poor suffering disabled people. But this story doesn’t speak to the experiences of many with disabilities. This project seeks to explore a different perspective; to share stories and experiences that contradict the narrative that disability is a fate worse than death." [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 7:55 AM PST - 33 comments

In the winter of 1980 The Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road) abandoned almost 2000 miles of track between Miles City, Montana and Cedar Falls, Washington -- part of a passenger and freight shipping route known as the “Pacific Coast Extension.” Today, what's left of the Extension is "cut up among different railroads and the best engineered rail line through the rugged Rockies and Cascades is but weeds and trails, a vital transportation artery no longer available to shippers and the American economy." But in August 1980, before it was abandoned, two former locomotive firemen and engineers spent $400 to rescue a track-maintenance railway car, a 1952 M-19 Fairmont Speeder, from a scrap heap in a Maine train yard. They used it to travel the route and took photos along the way. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:42 AM PST - 20 comments

"There is something of a journalistic routine each time terror erupts. Cover the news, of course, and put it into geopolitical context. Capture the drama of the scene. Pursue every tidbit about the attackers. And, perhaps most wrenchingly, try to showcase the human suffering... It never feels like enough. During what seemed like a particularly intense spate of attacks back in March, we decided it was not enough... We decided not to move on but to look back... to show terrorism’s human toll."
posted by ChuraChura at 6:47 AM PST - 36 comments

If My 3 Little Kids Reviewed Family Dinners
posted by Mchelly at 4:11 AM PST - 30 comments

Justin Roiland - the voice of Adult Swim's Rick and Morty - reenacts a truly ridiculous court transcript from a Georgia county courtroom, as Rick and Morty. (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:48 AM PST - 41 comments

Over the past year, the Archie series of comics has been receiving acclaim for efforts to rethink its classic characters. This fall, that continues onto the television screen, with the forthcoming series: Riverdale [Facebook Link]. Early reports about the show claim, "More Twin Peaks than Dawson's Creek", and that the show will focus on a darker side of the iconic characters, "As a new school year begins, the town of Riverdale is reeling from the recent, tragic death of high school golden boy Jason Blossom — and nothing feels the same." As bizarre (and, perhaps, terrible) as this may sound, the pilot episode is reviewing well.
posted by codacorolla at 9:17 PM PST - 26 comments

New York Times: "...last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, signed a law permitting funeral parlors to serve light refreshments and nonalcoholic drinks, joining 46 other states..." The article also mentions funeral potatoes and funeral pie , but omits Koliva and funeral biscuits.
posted by Wordshore at 6:28 PM PST - 83 comments

BBC: "There are strong social divisions in how young people use digital technology , according to international research from the OECD. The economics think tank found that in many countries wealthy and poor pupils spent similar amounts of time online. But richer youngsters were much more likely to use the internet for learning rather than games. The study argues that even with equal access to technology a "digital divide" persists in how the internet is used.""
posted by marienbad at 6:25 PM PST - 24 comments

Mad Men to Seinfeld: TV's most criminally overrated shows — The Guardian's reviewers unburden themselves. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:59 PM PST - 193 comments

A New Yorker article on a tailor (cutter), bespoke clothing, desire and wealth.
posted by andrewcooke at 5:08 PM PST - 23 comments

Burn Out, Depression, Insomnia, and drug abuse are among other ills destroying lives “We’re like a pinball, free and easy to fly around the world,”
posted by shockingbluamp at 4:14 PM PST - 20 comments

Join us for Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention, featuring the Roll Call of the States, Mothers of the Movement, Madeleine Albright, and President Bill Clinton. [more inside]
posted by zachlipton at 1:10 PM PST - 2604 comments

"Peter Nickeas is a Tribune reporter recently accused of informing on protesters to the police. Monica Trinidad is the activist who publicly accused him. Jerry Boyle is the Chicago attorney who put the idea in her head. And I'm the media writer who wishes he hadn't."
posted by alexoscar at 12:19 PM PST - 18 comments

Genes that do the same thing in a human and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal. So by comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families. Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.

Meet Luca, the Ancestor of All Living Things [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:19 AM PST - 36 comments

Thanks to science, you can now change the way a person gazes in a photo in a not at all totally creepy or derpy way.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:23 AM PST - 38 comments

Chris Ryan of The Ringer wants us to stop watching movie trailers, because "They are broken, and they're ruining movies." [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:02 AM PST - 99 comments

T2: Trainspotting 2 [YouTube] [Teaser Trailer] Director Danny Boyle reunites the original cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle. [via: Pitchfork Media]
posted by Fizz at 9:06 AM PST - 66 comments

The Truth About VR And Vomit "In flight simulators, the Navy has perhaps the most practical application of something resembling VR, and their research is focused on how they can minimize sickness and how well people can accomplish tasks while nauseated. On the other hand, when your goal is enjoyment of a game or movie, your threshold is probably lower, but maybe vomit in entertainment has a different appeal—it’s disgusting, but powerful and noteworthy, and it seems to keep coming up in popular art and culture in a way that other bodily functions don’t." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:49 AM PST - 39 comments

European refugees in India, Africa and the Middle East

During World War II in Europe over 40 million refugees sought shelter away from the catastrophic bloodshed that engulfed the continent for over six years.

posted by infini at 7:53 AM PST - 12 comments

Pokémon in Space , Pokémon in the NYPL [via mefi projects] Two new Twitter bots sending Pokémon into the depths of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
posted by joannemerriam at 7:43 AM PST - 5 comments

I argue that taken to its most extreme conclusion, [central bank digital currency] issuance could have far-reaching consequences for commercial and central banking – divorcing payments from private bank deposits and even putting an end to banks’ ability to create money. By redefining the architecture of payment systems, CBcoin could thus challenge fractional reserve banking and reshape the conduct of monetary policy.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:39 AM PST - 15 comments

Solar Impulse 2, a sun-powered plane many times lighter than the lightest glider, has completed a round-the-world flight. The craft landed early Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, ending a journey that took some 558 hours (more than 23 days). The wingspan of the fuelless craft is the size of a 747, yet the unpressurised, unheated cockpit is not much bigger than a phone booth. Towards the end of the trip it was escorted by Spanish Jets. The landing (and all 17 legs of the journey) were streamed live. [more inside]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 3:48 AM PST - 33 comments

As streaming has gone mainstream, these curators, many of whom began their professional lives as bloggers and DJs, have amassed unusual influence. Their work, as a rule, is uncredited — the better for services designed to feel like magic — but their reach is increasingly unavoidable. Spotify says 50% of its more than 100 million users globally are listening to its human-curated playlists (not counting those in the popular, algorithmically personalized “Discover Weekly”), which cumulatively generate more than a billion plays per week. According to an industry estimate, 1 out of every 5 plays across all streaming services today happens inside of a playlist. And that number, fueled by prolific experts, is growing steadily. [slBuzzfeed]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:53 AM PST - 43 comments

For the first time the true scale has been revealed of a coldly calculated, deliberate and sustained scheme by scores of Volkswagen executives and engineers to defraud American car buyers and deceive American regulators.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:09 PM PST - 134 comments

Victorian Women of Color: A Rare View — Photos of Women of Color from this era are hard to come by, especially "family" photographs. Sadly these beautiful and touching images go unnamed. A couple of these photos were taken when there was still slavery in the United States. [Downtown LA Life Magazine is] honored to present these images as part of our dedication to the photographic history of our country. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:42 PM PST - 15 comments

Marni Nixon, the Singing Voice Behind the Screen, Dies at 86. [more inside]
posted by Hermione Granger at 5:25 PM PST - 36 comments

Why do human mothers spend so much energy manufacturing complex sugars (the third most plentiful ingredient in human milk) that babies can't even digest? Why do these complicated chemicals pass through the stomach and small intestine unharmed? What if a large amount of breast milk isn't food for babies at all? What if it is food for microbes?
posted by AceRock at 3:32 PM PST - 19 comments

"Don't get me wrong. Not every burger or grilled cheese I eat is made with American cheese, and there are times when I'm happy with a slab of sharp cheddar, a slice of Comté, or a crumble of Roquefort on top. But if I had to pick one cheese to stock in my burger joint, you're damn right it's gonna be American." -- J. Kenji López-Alt, What Is American Cheese, Anyway?
posted by Room 641-A at 3:23 PM PST - 160 comments

The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, starts today. [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 12:34 PM PST - 3120 comments

An interview with Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown, otherwise known as Louviere + Vanessa who created the album Resonantia which includes unique visualizations made by photographing water vibrating at the frequencies of musical notes. There is a twelve frame animation that can be viewed by placing the included praxinoscope mirror on the album to reflect images etched in the vinyl. [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:02 PM PST - 3 comments

The BBC after the bomb. The BBC's War Book contains meticulous plans for the organisation's operations after a nuclear attack on the UK. Ordered to be destroyed after the end of the Soviet Union, a rebellious BBC official quietly transferred it to the corporation's archives. Filled with the sort of mordantly amusing detail common to such documents - the BBC would be run by Radio 4, 'informal clothing' only being required, and an abandoned plan to entertain the nation with Round the Horne and Goon Show repeats - the plans help flesh out the way British bureaucracy faced up to an unknowable future that, at the time, seemed sometimes to be very close indeed. Previously.
posted by Devonian at 11:08 AM PST - 35 comments

"But it goes way beyond that. Some researchers claim that liberals aren't motivated by feeling of moral disgust, but I disagree. Liberals think incidents like these are disgusting. Racism is viscerally wrong, it's unacceptable, and it needs to stop." Four years ago Mark Rosenfelder (metafilter's own) wrote The Practical Case For Liberalism (previously). He follows it up now with The Moral Case For Liberalism.
posted by The Whelk at 10:58 AM PST - 29 comments

Fundamentalist theologian and rapture prophet Tim LaHaye, best known as the co-author of the Left Behind books, has passed away at the age of 90 after suffering a stroke.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 10:53 AM PST - 50 comments

"Tristan Perich’s Noise Patterns comes in a clear jewel case, but it isn’t a CD. It’s a small, matte-black circuit board. Powered by a watch battery, it produces a series of musical compositions built from the on/off operations on the minuscule chip at the center of the device, the same sort of chip you might find in a microwave oven." It's a 1-bit noise-techno album, painstakingly constructed from assembly language instructions that work directly with the binary data of the processor itself. Oh, and every single byte is used. Marc Weidenbaum sits down for a lengthy, detailed interview with Tristan to discuss what Noise Patterns is, and how it was made. (You can order through Physical Editions or Bleep, where there are a few clips to listen to.)
posted by naju at 10:45 AM PST - 26 comments

PHANTASM Is DUNE
posted by griphus at 9:30 AM PST - 17 comments

The last VCR will be manufactured this month. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 8:17 AM PST - 64 comments

Evidence of torture of children in custody in Australia. As seen on Australian television this evening. [more inside]
posted by taff at 6:12 AM PST - 46 comments

>look
Darkness moves differently underground.

>exit is a dark, uneasy story by Jessica Hayworth, told in text adventure format and illustration. [more inside]
posted by automatic cabinet at 1:15 AM PST - 6 comments

At the top of the world a climate disaster is unfolding that will impact the lives of more than 1 billion people.
posted by smoke at 8:00 PM PST - 46 comments

The first of a seven-part longish read article series from the Christian Science Monitor: How the push for gay rights is reshaping religious liberty in America As gay rights rapidly expand, some religious conservatives worry that their ability to live their public lives according to their faith is being swept away. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:04 PM PST - 199 comments

Beat That Wall, or "American Ninja Warrior" in Uneasy Times
posted by AFABulous at 4:17 PM PST - 38 comments

In fact, I’m much stronger at thinking about food than I am at cooking it. And recently I started seeing patterns in our most successful dishes that suggested our hits weren’t entirely random; there’s a set of underlying laws that links them together. I’ve struggled to put this into words, and I haven’t talked to my fellow chefs about it, because I worry they’ll think I’m crazy. But I think there’s something to it, and so I’m sharing it now for the first time. I call it the Unified Theory of Deliciousness. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 2:55 PM PST - 46 comments

Through Our Eyes gave disposable cameras to 100 homeless people in Spartanburg, South Carolina and asked them to take pictures of their lives.
posted by holyrood at 2:38 PM PST - 10 comments

McDonalds Let the Internet Create Their Own Burgers and Guess What Happened
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:12 PM PST - 37 comments

First look at the new Star Trek ship, USS Discovery. Mirror for those who get the unavailable message. [via Reddit Star Trek sub. Threads 1, 2]
posted by marienbad at 1:45 PM PST - 114 comments

Verizon to Pay $4.8 Billion for Yahoo’s Core Business [The New York Times] Yahoo was the front door to the web for an early generation of internet users, and its services still attract a billion visitors a month. But the internet is an unforgiving place for yesterday’s great idea, and on Sunday, Yahoo reached the end of the line as an independent company. The board of the Silicon Valley company agreed to sell Yahoo’s core internet operations and land holdings to Verizon for $4.8 billion, according to people briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to speak about the deal before the planned announcement on Monday morning. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:29 PM PST - 96 comments

Dr Kate Granger has died at the age of 34, three years after a hospital stay with post-operative sepsis prompoted her to start the "Hello, my name is..." campaign. The campaign has now spread across the entire NHS, and out of this has also come the Kate Granger Compassionate Care Awards. She wrote two books and a blog, as well as tweeting about her experiences as a doctor becoming a patient, and having terminal cancer. Three days before she died, she hit her fundraising target for the Leeds Cancer Centre. [more inside]
posted by Vortisaur at 1:16 PM PST - 17 comments

The longest English word, pronounced. [SLYT]
posted by OmieWise at 12:04 PM PST - 25 comments

Waltzing Matilda is the bush ballad that introduced elements of Australian slang to generations of Americans. Instantly recognizable but less familiar is Waltjim Bat Matilda a version by Darwin-based Indigenous singer Ali Mills. She’s singing in Kriol, which is spoken by more people than any other language exclusive to Australia and is based on the highly endangered Gurindji. Waltjim Bad Matilda is also the name of Mills’ first solo album after performing many years with the Mills Sisters.
posted by layceepee at 11:47 AM PST - 9 comments

Two years ago, an Italian Foo Fighters fan came up with a crazy idea to convince the Foo Fighters to play in his home town of Cesena, Italy - assembling 1000 musicians and make a video of them all playing "Learn to Fly.". One year ago, they released their video, and the Foos agreed to add their city to the tour. But the band from Cesena had so much fun that they're all getting back together today to do a concert themselves. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:48 AM PST - 16 comments

This September, the 10th annual Great Salt Lick Contest will be held in Baker City, Oregon. There's also a short public radio piece on a past event, and a less frame-filled facebook image gallary of past winners.
posted by eotvos at 9:55 AM PST - 9 comments

And I Will Kiss is the music to the Industrial Revolution (Pandemonium) sequence of the 2012 London Olympic Games Opening Ceremony [shorter version]. With the input of Dame Evelyn Glennie, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, the London Symphony Orchestra and 1,000 volunteer drummers, Underworld produced a 17 minute piece to the brief of frightening people. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 7:03 AM PST - 9 comments

Nickelodeon is turning its 90s kids' game show Legends of the Hidden Temple into a movie.
posted by divabat at 6:44 AM PST - 11 comments

Peter Staley was a 24 year-old banker at J.P. Morgan when he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1985. His brother, Jes, worked there as well. In a Q&A with Fortune, they discuss how their paths diverged,
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:40 AM PST - 8 comments

"It is said that every new nation or groups making claims to nationhood needs to have a national football team, otherwise you may as well not exist in the first place. The late historian Eric Hobsbawm once declared: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people. The individual, even the one who only cheers, becomes a symbol of his nation himself.” So, in the absence of recognition by formal political bodies, recognition by the Fédération Internationale de Football Associated (FIFA)—which is larger than the United Nations—can be a boon in struggles for political self-determination." Now Western Sahara is trying some football diplomacy of their own.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:28 AM PST - 8 comments

"The foulest place of mine arse is fairer than thy face" : A worthie Disquisition on Gendered Insults in Earlie Moderne Times, together with a Peroration vppon Farting [more inside]
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:02 AM PST - 13 comments

Kay Parley, a 93-year-old psychiatric nurse and former psychiatric patient, reflects on her experiences — from institutionalization, through experimental psychedelic treatments and the advent of group therapy, to the medical model — in interviews with the CBC (~24 minutes; transcript included) and the Regina Leader Post. [more inside]
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:52 PM PST - 5 comments

"Why did the Royal Canadian Mint make the world's purest and largest gold bullion coin? Because we can." The Royal Canadian Mint makes all of Canada's money. They offer tours that are FULL of fascinating facts. Now, for the first time ever, see these facts at your local Metafilter website! [more inside]
posted by eisforcool at 8:03 PM PST - 35 comments

Writing for the BBC, Lucy Scholes lists "Ten 'Lost' Books You Should Read Now," starting with Teffi's Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea. An excerpt from Memories appeared in The New Yorker in 2014, and a recent article there provided additional background for that book as well as the collection of which the essay "My Dinner with Rasputin" is a part. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:31 PM PST - 11 comments

The first trailer for the Wonder Woman movie, starring Gal Gadot.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:34 PM PST - 141 comments

How did Hitler rise to power? SLYT. A basic explainer with beautiful animation.
posted by AFABulous at 3:49 PM PST - 45 comments

Visithra Manikam writes about the various facets of Malaysian Indian life that Indian moviegoers might have missed in Kabali 'Kabali is our story. The story of Indian Malaysians and not Indian immigrants who now come to work in Malaysia or NRIs. We are not same. [...] I realised a lot of reviews are being written based on Indian cultural experience rather than the actual Malaysian culture and issues. ' [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 12:53 PM PST - 19 comments

"It turns out rewriting history is pretty hard, but I did it. Because I'm bored. And because I love you." Jon Bois takes a look at what the 2015-2016 NBA Season would have been like without the 3 point line.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Per @AcroNite7: idk how to feel about this

"Of course everybody knows that The Killing Joke has its controversial elements, so how do you make it exciting for the kids today? You add more controversy - namely you have SPOILERS AHOY [including the URL, so don't scroll over if you don't want to see].... [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 12:41 PM PST - 75 comments

Sheep seem to be particularly prone to inter-species confusion, as shown in this compilation. Some like to chase balls, while others enjoy romping with their ostensible keepers. Lamo, however, is a bit of a dick. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:24 PM PST - 13 comments

For the past twenty-five years, Hallmark has included Star Trek themed Christmas ornaments in it's annual Keepsake ornament series (Memory Alpha has a complete rundown). These range from ships to characters to props to memorable scenes. However, none of these compare to this years' contributions, which include perhaps the pinnacle of their efforts.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 12:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Alright sir, if you don't get on oxygen you're going to die. [YT] Destin Sandlin of "Smarter Every Day" goes into a high altitude simulation chamber where he demonstrates why you should definitely, always, put on your own oxygen mask first. The chamber is set to the equivalent of 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) after a slow decompression, which allows 3 to 5 minutes of consciousness. The video points out that "most airliners travel at 35,000 feet" (10,670 meters), and under a real scenario you may get only 15-30 seconds of useful consciousness.
posted by zennie at 11:52 AM PST - 32 comments

“As a general rule, if you loved it in the book, it is probably going to end up on your screen.” - Neil Gaiman on Bryan Fuller's TV series of his American Gods. First trailer here.
posted by Artw at 10:44 AM PST - 114 comments

67 Years of Lego Sets

I started to wonder how Legos evolved from the sets I remember from my childhood to what they are today. As an analyst, I turned to data for answers. I used Plotly and Mode Python Notebooks to explore the data.

posted by infini at 10:20 AM PST - 6 comments

How NYers Endured Unbearable Summers Before A/C [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:45 AM PST - 118 comments

We would have had to be told how it’s not cute to call a short skirt or a tight dress “slutty” when you’re writing about fashion. In fact, we were told. Just as we were told how to talk about people in a more respectful way while still providing some entertainment. Just as we were told that the fashion and entertainment journalism industries white-wash the definition of beauty and tend to render anyone who falls outside the limited scope of it invisible.

Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez of the namesake fashion and pop-culture blog Tom & Lorenzo (née Project RunGay) reflect on what they've learned in their ten years of blogging.
posted by psoas at 8:46 AM PST - 4 comments

Who is Tim Kaine? He's a senator from Virginia, and formerly served as mayor of Richmond and governor of Virginia. He's a Jesuit (like Pope Francis). He's highly-rated by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. He speaks Spanish. And yesterday, it was announced he's Hillary Clinton's candidate for Vice President.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:22 AM PST - 1589 comments

Pretty talented director Thomas Rhazi passed away this week of his injuries following a motorcycle accident. He was an up and coming director whose work ranged from the critically acclaimed "Pusher" for English indie rockers alt-J, to the Vimeo Staff-Picked "GoGo!" for Bauuer. More links inside. [more inside]
posted by kevathens at 8:51 PM PST - 5 comments

Not a modern remix of an 80s song. Remixes from the early days of extended mixes, back in the 80s. Like Phil Collins - Take Me Home (Extended 12" Mix). When remixes were made up of elements from the original song, not a DJ remix. Like Yes - Owner Of A Lonely Heart (12" Extended Version). Back when remixes were a bit clunky but imaginative, like Madonna - Lucky Star (US Remix). [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:23 PM PST - 175 comments

diep.io is a massively multiplayer minimal shmup with upgrades.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:08 PM PST - 11 comments

"I am my own muse, I design for myself," says Suket Dhir, this year's winner of the International Woolmark Prize. And, according to one style editor, "he could be the first Indian designer to conquer the world of Western menswear." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:58 PM PST - 10 comments

Big Dumb Objects: Science Fiction's Most Mysterious MacGuffins by Damien Walter [The Guardian] “When the unknown is also alien, the mystery only grows more magnetic. Think of that iconic opening to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: a family of apes wake one morning to find a black monolith looming over them; that had its origins in Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Sentinel. Did some super-advanced civilisation intercede in the early evolution of intelligent life on earth? Or was the monolith just filming a very special edition of Life on Earth? We don’t know, and never find out. But this shiny, looming thing is just one of many Big Dumb Objects [wiki] that have turned up in science fiction over the decades.”
posted by Fizz at 5:44 PM PST - 48 comments

It was a bit harder than you might think....
Ronald Reagan told the joke:
a guy in a Soviet country is told he has a 10 year wait for a car.
This man laid down the money, and the fellow in charge said to him:
Come back in 10 years and get your car.
The man answered: Morning or afternoon?
And the fellow behind the counter said: Ten years from now, what difference does it make?
And he said: Well, the plumber is coming in the morning. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 5:13 PM PST - 21 comments

“The myths of rape should be dispelled once and for all,” he announced near the long-awaited end of his verdict. “It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped.” He underlined that last line, literally.
posted by Shepherd at 3:32 PM PST - 26 comments

Not being heard? Here's a handy counter to help you visualize how annoyed you should be.
posted by phunniemee at 12:48 PM PST - 46 comments

In 1963, more than a dozen African American girls, aged 13-15, were held in a stockade for two months. Their crime: demonstrating for integration in Americus, Georgia. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 12:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Meet Graham, an interactive sculpture developed by a trauma surgeon, a crash investigation expert and a Melbourne artist to show what humans might look like, if they had evolved features to withstand car crashes (via)
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:05 PM PST - 25 comments

Popcorn. Not just a snack, but a metaphor for schadenfreude. And darn tasty to boot. You can mix equal volumes popcorn and milk without raising the level of the milk, which is kinda fun but doesn't taste very good. Or.... [more inside]
posted by sotonohito at 11:38 AM PST - 61 comments

Two and a half years after the disappearance of MH370 (original thread), China, Malaysia and Australia have announced the search will be suspended. Why had they been so confident in the first place? How could they have been wrong? (Popular Mechanics)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:37 AM PST - 38 comments

In the Mansfield Library of the University of Montana, librarians discover some cold war rations, produced in 1962. Their reaction was to eat them. “I took a taste of one [of the survival biscuits]; It’s like a stale graham cracker with a hint of vanilla in it. It could be far worse.” Making your own food time capsule? A few suggestions.
posted by Wordshore at 11:11 AM PST - 17 comments

King, magician, general … slave: Eunus and the First Servile War against Rome , Mike Dash
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:05 AM PST - 8 comments

Sex, death and cannibalism: why mondo movies still shock (SLGuardian) — Mondo Mondo, a wide-ranging repertory series of films running at New York’s Anthology Film Archives from 22-31 July, serves up a platter of grotesque, chewy and challenging work that one would be hard-pressed to label as “entertainment” in any conventional sense.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:00 AM PST - 18 comments

Vintageaerial.com is a photo archive of over 25 million photos from flyover country (PDF), capturing a time and place that may no longer exist. Some of us rural folk may have grown up with aerial pictures of their farms on the walls. My family had two pictures, one from 1967 and one from 1983. Pretty cool archive if you're interested in that kind of thing. Previously something similar.
posted by cass at 9:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Stressed out by politics, the news, family, or something else? String up a hammock, relax, and take a break from the world for a while: it's National Hammock Day today. July 22, 2016, is the day when we should all take a moment to pause, consider how we sit, sleep, lounge, or camp, and decide to make out lives better...in a hammock! [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:51 AM PST - 30 comments

A Kate Bush Gif a day keeps the sanity away!
posted by josher71 at 8:42 AM PST - 26 comments

We were born to create.
posted by BekahVee at 8:39 AM PST - 31 comments

Mariana Mazzucato is Rethinking Capitalism (pdf; via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:22 AM PST - 16 comments

In the Daily Dot, Jaya Saxena profiles Stimtastic, a company that sells jewelry and toys for adults with autism who engage in stimming, or self-stimulatory behavior. People with autism are often encouraged to suppress these behaviors, which include rocking, hand-flapping, and humming, among many, many other things. Stimtastic's products do the opposite: they provide opportunities to stim. Founder Cynthia Kim, who also runs the blog Musings of an Aspie, says that “[m]y goal for Stimtastic and for the products we sell is to help adults and teens who stim feel not just comfortable but celebrated.” [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:46 AM PST - 41 comments

Biology textbooks tell us that lichens are alliances between two organisms—a fungus and an alga. They are wrong.
posted by komara at 6:41 AM PST - 39 comments

As South Sudan tries to restabilize after the shaky resolution of the 2013 civil war, The Guardian turned over their African coverage to Sudanese and South Sudanese journalists to talk about more than just violence. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Woodhull ended her speech with a threat: if men continued to exclude women from government, women had no choice but to revolt and govern themselves. “If Congress refuse to listen and to grant what women ask, there is but one course left to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?"(slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 5:47 AM PST - 3 comments

When Did the Media Turn Against Taylor Swift? - In an interview with The Guardian, she came out as a feminist. A charitable read is that Swift was simply growing as a person as she entered her mid-20s. A more cynical outlook is that, in the words of BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen, she was employing "an incredibly savvy image maintenance strategy." These interpretations are not mutually exclusive. [...] It's increasingly popular to use celebrities as signposts (or, as Roxane Gay puts it, "brand ambassadors") for various strains of political thought [...] This development has been very beneficial for the media — entertainment news spreads better when injected with a dose of political signaling, and potentially abstract political discussions spread better if they're attached to a recognizable name — and for an artist, there can be definite benefits in having your work linked with a specific politics. But the risks are heightened, too: Your failings become not just the failings of a person, but the failings of an ideology, and must be denounced even more loudly. [previously] [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 2:58 AM PST - 203 comments

Marvel and Netflix releases a Luke Cage trailer at SDCC Plus: Iron Fist teaser. Plus: Defenders teaser. Also: Daredevil season 3 confirmed. More from the Luke Cage panel.
posted by Artw at 9:30 PM PST - 125 comments

A man achieves his dream of becoming Dr. Robotnik, the God of Dance. This is actually a hijacked video, the original had the sin of an inadequate soundtrack.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:20 PM PST - 9 comments

For your Flash Fthursday enjoyment: Deterministic Dungeon.
posted by threeants at 6:26 PM PST - 7 comments

Like These Books? Here Are 60+ Things You Might Also Like ... [NPR.org] Welcome to the second installment of Read, Watch, Binge! our summer recommendation series. As you may recall from last month's list [Like These Movies? Here Are 100+ Things You Might Also Like ...], we were tired of algorithms that only matched books to books or movies to movies. So this month, we've enlisted the help of real live humans to pair books with movies, musicals, TV, comics, podcasts and more.
posted by Fizz at 5:38 PM PST - 8 comments

"In August 1868, a double-masted Canadian schooner named the Royal Albert was en route to Toledo, Ohio, loaded down with 285 tons of railroad iron when the heavy cargo suddenly shifted. The iron rails busted the hull open and sent the ship to the bottom of the lake. While the crew survived, the ship was lost for nearly 150 years—until earlier this month, when a group of underwater explorers finally discovered it." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:25 PM PST - 13 comments

The twitter account Soviet Visuals is on vacation in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation aka the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. You can follow along on Twitter (where they are semi-consistently using the #LiveFromChernobyl tag) or Facebook. And don't worry: "the radiation exposure inside the approved itinerary @ exclusion zone is equal to roughly 1hr of transatlantic flight [...] and this is over 1 whole day of being in the zone."
posted by griphus at 1:08 PM PST - 21 comments

Anthony Schorr has been reviewing root beer at rootbeerbarrel.com since 1996. The rankings. Root Beer Previously [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:49 AM PST - 51 comments

Watch This Beekeeper Tend To 50,000 Bees At His Apiary In Queens
posted by poffin boffin at 10:23 AM PST - 62 comments

"Air travelers love nothing more than to complain about their latest flight. But modern aviation is an incredible technological achievement, and it doesn't have to be so miserable. Here's how you'll love flying again." A long read touching on everything from air traffic control, ticket buying strategies, and future airliner improvements, to the future of in-flight WiFi and how to mix your own cocktails while in the air.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:38 AM PST - 83 comments

Did inequality cause the First World War? Contra Hobson-Lenin-Milanovic [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:29 AM PST - 35 comments

How a Mythical Imp that Snuck Up People's Large Intestines Became a Symbol of Japan
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:10 AM PST - 22 comments

Mike pound explains how to crack passwords to Computerphile. And, on the basis of this he suggests how to choose them. (yes he has read XKCD on the matter). Bonus file on how (not) to store passwords.
posted by rongorongo at 7:13 AM PST - 107 comments

First Lady Michelle Obama joins James Corden for a drive around the White House grounds. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:00 AM PST - 55 comments

The morning after Trump's running mate, Mike Pence's big night, the headlines read, "Ted Cruz Dashes Hopes for Unity by Snubbing Donald Trump." Welcome to Day Four. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:31 AM PST - 3670 comments

"Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared."
posted by memebake at 3:33 AM PST - 129 comments

U.S. Targets $1 Billion in Assets in Malaysian Embezzlement Case After a few years of investigations (and it's not the only country investigating), the USA Department of Justice announced that it will be seeking to seize more than US$1 billion worth of assets 'bought with money stolen from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund by people close to that country’s embattled prime minister, Najib Razak' (perhaps the unnamed 'Malaysian Official 1', as according to US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch - recording; press release). The route of the money being laundered can be traced all the way to Hollywood, in a little movie you may have heard of. [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 2:41 AM PST - 21 comments

The older brother detonated a bomb at the Brussels airport. The younger one is representing Belgium at the Olympic Games in Rio. The story of two Belgian siblings who long ago parted ways.
posted by romados at 2:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Kirby Café [Japanese] Starting this August, several Kirby Cafes will open across the country [Only in Japan]. Here are some of the dishes that will be served. The Kirby Cafe opens August 5 at Lucua 1100 in Osaka’s Umeda and will run until September 4. Similar cafes are slated to open this August in Tokyo and Nagoya. [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz at 4:37 PM PST - 26 comments

Who's to Blame for Inequality in America? Bowdoin's Awesome Cafeteria. Malcolm Gladwell says that, "The food at Bowdoin is actually a problem, a moral problem,” because every dollar spent towards snazzy cafeteria food to attract wealthy students is a dollar not spent on financial aid. Bowdoin responds: "Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History” (aptly named) takes a manipulative and disingenuous shot at Bowdoin College that is filled with false assumptions, anecdotal evidence, and incorrect conclusions."
posted by leotrotsky at 3:38 PM PST - 100 comments

Seattle-based artist Natasha Marin has started a project called Reparations, intended to go through the end of the year, in which people of color make requests and white-identified people volunteer to fulfill them or make offers of their own. [more inside]
posted by Errant at 3:35 PM PST - 19 comments

John Cho, star of the new Star Trek movies, Harold & Kumar, and Selfie, as well as the recent internet meme #starringjohncho, gives an honest, insightful interview about his experience as a Korean-American actor in Hollywood. Plus, an answer to the question: should Mr. Sulu have a human husband?
posted by roger ackroyd at 2:25 PM PST - 15 comments

Playmobil mountain biking and BMX and other videos from Karim Rejeb
posted by pseudodionysus at 2:19 PM PST - 5 comments

In June of 1979, a song called "Ready 'N Steady" appeared on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" chart and persisted there for three weeks, struggling up to number 102 before vanishing into a legendary obscurity. For the next 37 years, music historians were unable to find any other evidence of the song's existence—no recordings, no memories of airplay, no band or label information. This month, the mystery of the "phantom record" was finally solved: "Ready 'N Steady" exists, and you can listen to it here. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:06 PM PST - 48 comments

Kem Ley, a popular political commentator and critic of Cambodian PM Hun Sen's regime, was shot dead last week while getting his morning coffee (tw: image with gunshot wounds). After over three decades in power, could this spell the end for the ruling Cambodian People's Party? Mu Sochea, an opposition leader and human rights activist, makes the case in a NYT op-ed. [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments

What if modern brands were found in the USSR?
posted by griphus at 12:56 PM PST - 25 comments

Chicago close up magicians: Every Saturday for the past 25 years, a group of friends has gathered in a Lincoln Park apartment to invent and perfect some of the world’s most mind-blowing card tricks.
posted by garlic at 12:44 PM PST - 9 comments

“To be a witch is to be a woman with power in a world where women are often otherwise powerless.” [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 9:56 AM PST - 31 comments

Donald Trump is officially the Republican nominee for president, but there are still two days left for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, OH. [more inside]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:20 AM PST - 1699 comments

A new biography and Met exhibit show how she sacrificed her marriage, her friendships, and eventually her life for her career as an artist living on the edge (SL NYMag) [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:23 AM PST - 15 comments

"Millions of women are injured during childbirth. Why aren't doctors diagnosing them?" [more inside]
posted by liet at 7:47 AM PST - 44 comments

Christoph Klein, director of the Dr. von Hauner Children's Hospital in Munich, is considered an excellent doctor with plenty of ambition. Too much? For years, Klein has been pursuing an experimental study. Several of the children he has treated are now dead.

[more inside]
posted by brokkr at 7:34 AM PST - 9 comments

After Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones experienced racist harassment on Twitter, blogger Milo Yiannopoulous has been permanently banned from the site.
posted by Theta States at 7:05 AM PST - 224 comments

Joel Cares is a 3D artist who plays with the low rent aesthetic of poser models combined with body morphing glitchiness. Help Us applies that to a familiar genre of commercial (swelling music, confident statements delivered directly to the camera, unsettling wind noises), with bizarre results. You can see more on his personal website.
posted by codacorolla at 6:50 AM PST - 2 comments

Bogleech (previously) is currently providing in-depth reviews of every. single. Pokémon. Not every Pokémon game - every individual Pokémon. He's up to #374 now. He can also tell you all about the real-world biological organisms behind such Pokémon as Parasect, Weepinbell, and his beloved Gloom, and explain why they are both grosser and more charming than you ever suspected.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:48 AM PST - 19 comments

Author Rebecca Solnit: "Hope is a​n embrace of the unknown​."
posted by zarq at 6:37 AM PST - 5 comments

"...in one of the richest countries that has ever existed, about 15 percent of the population faces down bare cupboards and empty refrigerators on a routine basis." (slTheAtlantic)
posted by Kitteh at 5:44 AM PST - 23 comments

“Pray for Kumamoto & Kumamon" What is cute? Specifically, what is kawaii? A long read exploration, ranging from earthquakes to mayonnaise and Satan. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 4:55 AM PST - 15 comments

eBay is full of outsider paintings of aliens, clowns and right-wing politicians, executed with endearing incompetence on scrap wood, and selling for hundreds of dollars to deep-pocketed collectors of authenticity. Now Tom Ellard has a guide to getting into this burgeoning industry. [more inside]
posted by acb at 4:22 AM PST - 28 comments

Dead Man Laughing. Comedy, family, class (British) and death intertwine in this essay by Zadie Smith. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 9:11 PM PST - 7 comments

Garry Marshall, creator of classic television (Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, Laverne and Shirley); director of well-loved movies (Overboard, Beaches, Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries); character actor (A League of Their Own, Soapdish, Louie); brother to Penny Marshall; and Hector Elizondo superfan, has died at age 81.
posted by sallybrown at 9:05 PM PST - 63 comments

Jens Juul, a photographer based in Copenhagen, Denmark, recently won the 2016 Magnum Photography Award in the Portrait category for his his work Six Degrees of Copenhagen (some photos nsfw). In an interview, he explains that Six Degrees of Copenhagen is about breaking boundaries. [more inside]
posted by sockermom at 5:01 PM PST - 4 comments

ABC (potentially NSFW, due to CGI butts) by Alan Warburton (previously), as inspired by the work of Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland (kinda previously)
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:42 PM PST - 5 comments

One man's journey to discover what the MLB would be like if every single player on every single team was Mets pitcher Bartolo Colón.
posted by burgerrr at 4:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Canadian artist Rae Spoon has released their newest music video, I Hear Them Calling [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 3:46 PM PST - 13 comments

A reddit user posed the question, “Satan opens up Heck, a lighter version of Hell. What kinds of tortures are in it?” Here are a few of the responses. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:34 PM PST - 214 comments

Can a Woman’s Voice Ever Be Right? "From the Roman Forum to the 2016 campaign trail, anxiety over what women sound like is part of our cultural DNA."
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:21 PM PST - 25 comments

Unmasking the Bunkers disguised as Quaint Swiss Villas [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 1:54 PM PST - 37 comments

Some ambitious Futurama fans have come together to create the unexpected and the incredible, a live action Futurama movie, Fan-O-Rama. Here's the trailer.
posted by Atreides at 1:43 PM PST - 32 comments

Batman: The Telltale Series [YouTube] [Trailer]
posted by Fizz at 12:37 PM PST - 23 comments

The stretch of Eyre Highway between Balladonia and Caiguna is the longest straight road in Australia. This video compresses a run down the "90 Mile Straight" into five hypnotic minutes. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 12:27 PM PST - 22 comments

Live Coverage of the Republican National Convention: Day 2. "The stated theme of Tuesday’s slate is “Make America Work Again” — a potential challenge of tone for speakers eager to sully Mrs. Clinton on a topic as sober as job creation, a night after blistering attacks on her foreign policy." [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:43 AM PST - 1406 comments

An ordinary day on the seaside in Karwia, Poland took a turn toward the mythological with the dramatic appearance of a dark boar from the sea foam. (sl YouTube)
posted by palindromic at 11:36 AM PST - 23 comments

Finley was hired by JPL in 1958, eight months before Congress and President Eisenhower officially created the American space agency. Over her 58-year career there is hardly a NASA mission her work has not touched. She was there for the launch of the first American satellite, worked in mission control during the early lunar missions, plotted a route for the Voyagers on their grand tour of the solar system, cheered as balloons loaded with scientific instruments bobbed in the Venusian winds, and landed Mars rovers on the red planet. Over the course of her long and varied career, she has overcome obstacles that few women working today can contemplate.

Yet in 2004, NASA demoted her because she doesn't have a bachelor's degree.

The Woman Who Helped Us Hear Juno (Popular Science)
posted by hippybear at 10:05 AM PST - 47 comments

Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again! The Nac Mac Feegle are coming to Hollywood. Hide your ships!
posted by Deeleybopper at 8:24 AM PST - 66 comments

A New Yorker profile by Rachel Aviv: Martha Nussbaum’s far-reaching ideas illuminate the often ignored elements of human life—aging, inequality, and emotion.
posted by listen, lady at 8:21 AM PST - 8 comments

Performance duo DarkMatter on being LOL killjoys and drag as politics. (SL Guernica Mag). A great interview with trans South Asian performance artists Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, aka DarkMatter. DarkMatter's performances include It Gets Bougie, The Story They Never Told Us, White Fetish, Padma & Parvati Patil, and When Brown Looks in the Mirror and Comes Out White (all YT links). “I hear white men have huge—” “—Empires” [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:03 AM PST - 20 comments

Tumblr user wintersoldierfell has a whale of a time reviewing Moby Dick.
posted by divabat at 9:48 PM PST - 98 comments

In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) is an installation comprised of a touring, portable, inflatable ‘Truth Booth’ that embarked on a world tour at the Galway Arts Festival, Ireland in 2011. Stemming from an earlier Cause Collective project, The Truth is I am You, The Truth Booth is currently on a 50 state tour in the US. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:15 PM PST - 3 comments

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher J.A. Happ recently caused a small kerfuffle on Canadian Twitter when, during an interview, he said, "You guys sell milk in bags and I don’t really get why, or what you do then with the bags." This isn't the only time bagged milk has been a source of confusion and controversy - the dairy producer Saputo recently apologized to customers for reducing the amount of milk sold in their bags. So what's the deal with milk bags anyway? [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:49 PM PST - 145 comments

In 1998, cult horror author Thomas Ligotti and coworker Brandon Trenz wrote a script for an episode of The X-Files which draws more on Ligotti's style and sentiment than on Kolchalk and flying saucers. The episode, "Crampton", was never produced, but the text is online.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:53 PM PST - 26 comments

Pakistan has recently said farewell to a man some saw as a saint and everyone saw as a hero.
Abdul Sattar Edhi´s was a life bigger than accolades.
The Edhi Foundation is the country's largest welfare organisation - it runs schools, hospitals and ambulance services across the country, often plugging gaps in services which the state simply fails to provide.
Peter Oborne: - The Day I met Sattar Edhi.
posted by adamvasco at 4:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Zaina Erhaim (Twitter) is an award-winning journalist and project coordinator with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting based in Aleppo, Syria. She is training citizen journalists in the area, a third of whom are women. [more inside]
posted by sockermom at 3:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Young Bucs fan in it to win it (SLMLB)
posted by clorox at 3:49 PM PST - 21 comments

In the almost too perfect Star Trek universe, Lt. Reginald "Reg" Barclay started out as a insecure and neurotic comic relief but became one of its most lovable and relatable characters. Here's a surprisingly sweet tribute to Reg.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:16 PM PST - 40 comments

Renderings: A Closer Look At The [NYC] MTA's Upcoming Open Ended Subway Cars [more inside]
posted by griphus at 1:26 PM PST - 125 comments

While all eyes are on Cleveland, the RNC convention coincides with the anniversary of a significant chapter in the city’s history. Today, July 18th 2016, marks the 50th anniversary of the Hough Riots. Last week WCPN, Cleveland’s NPR station ran a series of stories about the riots, their antecedents, the aftermath, and developments in the five decades since. [more inside]
posted by Herodios at 1:17 PM PST - 6 comments

seems like folks like us be best
when we broken open
when we melted down
when we easier to digest

On June 26, 2016, author Jason Reynolds accepted two Coretta Scott King author honors for his YA novels All American Boys (co-authored with Brendan Kiely) and The Boy in the Black Suit. For his second acceptance speech, he delivered a call to action poem: Machetes (full text of poem at link). Video. [more inside]
posted by sunset in snow country at 12:54 PM PST - 3 comments

"The most amazing gift about Matt's physical appearance is that he can walk into the hair-and-makeup trailer looking like someone who slept directly on his face for seven hours and emerge a bona fide movie star. He has a great makeup artist." GQ rounds up friends and co-workers for an oral history of the most likable man in Hollywood, Matt Damon.
posted by The Whelk at 12:07 PM PST - 37 comments

Ice Cream or Not Ice Cream? — get your terminology straight before you order that heat-relieving treat. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:49 AM PST - 47 comments

 The Devastating Process of Dying in America Without Insurance [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:34 AM PST - 44 comments

The return of Belly. (sltheGrauniad)
posted by Kitteh at 11:20 AM PST - 29 comments

Stealing Hope: A longread series from the Charleston Post & Courier on a group of "emotional scammers" preying on increasingly desperate adoptive parents. (Design Warning: All Links Contain Autoplaying Animations)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Why Calvin and Hobbes is Great Literature: On the ontology of a stuffed tiger and finding the whole world in a comic
posted by holmesian at 10:21 AM PST - 7 comments

The Hollywood Reporter has, once again, released excellent roundtable discussions with notable television actors: Comedy Actor Roundtable (Rob Lowe, Aziz Ansar, Jeffrey Tambour, Tony Hale, Anthony Anderson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jerrod Carmichael) [1h7m], Comday Actress Roundtable (Allison Janney, Lily Tomlin, Gina Rodriguez, Rachel Bloom, Niece Nash, Ilana Glazer) [52m], Drama Actor Roundtable (Cuba Goodling Jr., Rami Malek, Paul Giamatti, Forest Whitaker, Wanger Moura, Bobbay Cannavale) [55m], Drama Actress Roundtable (Kirsten Dunst, Julianna Marguiles, Jennifer Lopez, Kerry Washington, Sarah Paulson, Regina King, Constance Zimmer) [lh13m]
posted by hippybear at 8:53 AM PST - 8 comments

How Donald Trump Won: "The specific tactical modalities that took Trump from "well-known celebrity who polled well among Republicans" to "guy who beat a dozen established politicians and became the nominee" are worth recounting on their own terms. It’s a story of strong, innovative behavior on Trump’s part. But it's also a story of massive blundering on the part of the Republican establishment." [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM PST - 1903 comments

In the past five years, the Syrian government has assassinated, bombed, and tortured to death almost seven hundred medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that documents attacks on medical care in war zones. (Non-state actors, including isis, have killed twenty-seven.) Recent headlines announced the death of death of the last pediatrician in Aleppo, the last cardiologist in Hama. A United Nations commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage,” denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilians “as a matter of policy.”

THE SHADOW DOCTORS: The underground race to spread medical knowledge as the Syrian regime erases it. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:23 AM PST - 16 comments

ARM Holdings, the British microprocessor design company whose designs are in almost all mobile devices, is being acquired by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank for £24.3bn. [more inside]
posted by acb at 6:20 AM PST - 57 comments

World War II Railroad Women In April 1943, Office of War Information photographer Jack Delano photographed the women of the Chicago & North Western Railroad roundhouse in Clinton, Iowa.
posted by pjern at 5:40 AM PST - 9 comments

Southern Rail is the rail franchise providing overland rail service through much of South East England, including important long distance routes between London and Brighton, and South London metro services. It has gone downhill. [more inside]
posted by generichuman at 2:23 AM PST - 51 comments

Helen DeWitt is the author of the cult-classics The Last Samurai and the (partly inspired by battles with publishers) Lightning Rods, and has written about the terror of being stalked for The London Review of Books Previously
TLS is finally getting a well-deserved reprinting! As part of the press run-up Christian Lorentzen has written a detailed profile of the author and her struggles for New York Magazine. Miranda Popkey has re-assessed the book for The Paris Review, and DeWitt has recorded a video describing her creative process. DeWitt previously
posted by Going To Maine at 8:51 PM PST - 26 comments

Christian Flores lands a trick.
posted by gwint at 8:10 PM PST - 30 comments

Małgorzata Chodakowska creates amazing art with water (video | images )
posted by Deoridhe at 6:51 PM PST - 3 comments

Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true. Many newsrooms are in danger of losing what matters most about journalism: the valuable, civic, pounding-the-streets, sifting-the-database, asking-challenging-questions hard graft of uncovering things that someone doesn’t want you to know. Serious, public-interest journalism is demanding, and there is more of a need for it than ever. It helps keep the powerful honest; it helps people make sense of the world and their place in it. Facts and reliable information are essential for the functioning of democracy – and the digital era has made that even more obvious.
posted by bitmage at 6:44 PM PST - 33 comments

Rick Kelly, owner of Carmine Street Guitars makes guitars from the salvaged wood from old buildings.
Every guitar has a story. (via Great Big Story)
posted by dfm500 at 6:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Dan Aykroyd grew up with psychic researchers and seances, which lead to the original Ghost Smashers idea, which in turn would become the Ghostbusters film. As he and his father, Peter, discussed on Q TV, their shared interest in the unexplained continued. A significant work of theirs was Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, a Canadian science fiction drama television series co-created by Peter Aykroyd and Christopher Chacon, a researcher of psychic and parapsychological phenomena, and episodes are hosted by Dan Aykroyd. You can now see the show, as archived by fans, on YouTube (72 episode playlist). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:06 PM PST - 12 comments

'2026' was conceived to challenge heteronormative attitudes to self-expression through fashion. It imagines what menswear might look like in 10 years’ time through the use of fabrics rescued from rubbish skips and thrift shops in Johannesburg and customised into new garments. . . suggestive of a more liberated manifestation of masculinity that encourages a freedom of expression.  [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 4:57 PM PST - 31 comments

Once upon a time, in a public library branch in Boston's North End, 29-year-old Edith Guerrier, librarian, decided to change the world around her by founding the Saturday Evening Girls, a club devoted to improving the intellectual and cultural lives of area immigrant girls through lectures, stories, singing, and dancing. In 1908, nine years after its founding, the SEG branched out into the making of beautiful earthenware--and the creation of jobs for women--with the launch of the Paul Revere Pottery. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Celebration Reel [YouTube] Go behind the scenes with the cast and crew of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 4:16 PM PST - 36 comments

How A Danish Town Helped Young Muslims Turn Away From ISIS
posted by Michele in California at 3:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Michael Friedman is engaged in an unusual form of journalism. The composer, who has worked on shows including “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” and “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” is travelling the country talking to voters about what’s on their minds in this election, and then turning his interview transcripts into original songs. “The New Yorker Radio Hour” has been documenting his work. In California, Friedman spoke with a network-news producer whose jaded feelings about political coverage was shocked by Donald Trump’s hijacking of politics for entertainment

Presidential Campaigns Are Like Wildfires...

from The State of The Union Songbook
posted by y2karl at 12:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Henry Rollins reports that Alan Vega, vocalist for legendary proto-punk band Suicide, has died.

With profound sadness and a stillness that only news like this can bring, we regret to inform you that the great artist and creative force, Alan Vega has passed away. Alan passed peacefully in his sleep last night, July 16. He was 78 years of age

[more inside]
posted by SansPoint at 10:54 AM PST - 50 comments

Why I’ve Avoided Dressing More Femininely — Until Now All my life, I worried that wearing flamboyant clothes would mean putting a target on my back. But in the wake of the shooting at Pulse, I realized that I’ve been sacrificing a huge part of myself for a safety that was never guaranteed in the first place.
posted by AFABulous at 9:35 AM PST - 19 comments

Some residents of Snowflake, Arizona, take refuge from the modern world of fragrances, wifi, and plastic. They suffer from what they call "environmental illness," a controversial condition in which inks, dyes, and electricity, among a wealth of other things, are blamed for an array of physical symptoms. A Guardian reporter and photographer interview several residents.
posted by Miss Scarlet with the Candlestick in the Lounge at 9:04 AM PST - 80 comments

Gaspar Marcos stepped off the 720 bus into early-morning darkness in MacArthur Park after the end of an eight-hour shift of scrubbing dishes in a Westwood restaurant. He walked toward his apartment, past laundromats fortified with iron bars and scrawled with graffiti, shuttered stores that sold knockoffs and a cook staffing a taco cart in eerie desolation. Around 3 a.m., he collapsed into a twin bed in a room he rents from a family. Five hours later, he slid into his desk at Belmont High School, just before the bell rang. The 18-year-old sophomore rubbed his eyes and fixed his gaze on an algebra equation.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:20 AM PST - 35 comments

The Strand Bookstore (NYC) has included a literary matching quiz in its job application form since the 1970s. Here are some quizzes from years past. Can you match the authors and titles? Beware of trick questions.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:05 AM PST - 92 comments

Gulsen Bahadir could not have known that one week after speaking out on Facebook against the futility of war and the importance of resisting injustice, that her name would be added to the roll call of losses, along with 43 others killed in the attack on Istanbul's international airport on June 28. Three days later in Bangladesh, the country's grief would in no way be lessened by the fact that the 20 people slain by terrorists at a cafe in Dhaka were mostly foreigners.
posted by drlith at 7:49 PM PST - 21 comments

A designer will grow Alexander McQueen’s skin in a lab to use for leather bags and jackets. Tina Gorjanc has proposed a conceptual range of leather accessories made of skin grown from late fashion designer Alexander McQueen's DNA. [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 4:31 PM PST - 96 comments

The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek is a humorous essay by Rosa Lyster about driving people mad by pretending she doesn't know a common cultural touchstone, such as Žižek, Twin Peaks or The Beatles. This is her second essay for The Hairpin, after My Dad Reads ‘Wuthering Heights’ For The First Time, which is how her dad rediscovered a love for reading fiction. Her essays have been published here and there, and she writes an essay a week on her website. The latest essay is about Peanuts and being an older sister.
posted by Kattullus at 3:23 PM PST - 126 comments

Gao’s Map by Christopher St. Cavish [The California Sunday Magazine] On the trail of one of the most expensive, controversial teas in the world. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:10 PM PST - 8 comments

It all started with a question, one my parents had been unable to answer for 70 years. What happened to the French doctor they had taken in during the Russian siege of Budapest? He was an escaped prisoner of war. They were just trying to hang on. Together, they hid in a cellar, beneath the feet of German soldiers who had made the home their headquarters.

San Francisco Journalist John Temple follows the threads of World War II into the present.
posted by Rumple at 2:48 PM PST - 20 comments

Now that the Ghostbusters reboot has finally hit the big screen amid generally positive reviews (with a healthy dollop of wailing and teeth gnashing), someone has come forward with her very own personal two cents on the subject: Violet Ramis Stiel, daughter of the late Harold Ramis, writes about her memories of the original films, her feelings about the new film and the nature of reboots for Splitsider.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:20 PM PST - 77 comments

At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, we see for the first time a full Rebel Alliance fleet; vast blobby spaceships to rival the Empire’s. Aren’t warships expensive? Who’s funding these people? Consider that when we see that fleet, it’s positioned outside the Galaxy. There’s a name for groups like the Rebel Alliance. Not freedom fighters, but Contras, right-wing death squads.

Smash the Force
posted by griphus at 9:00 AM PST - 123 comments

Star Cops [YT playlist]: A "blast from the past" that is "paranoid in the way only Cold War eighties drama can be." The ISPF's commander "finds himself stonewalled ... while investigating old crimes with new sci-fi spins ... Throughout the series he picks up a motley collection of 'waifs and strays' ... Some of the plots seem eerily prescient today ... The show is both optimistic that we'll get 'out there' tinged with a realisation that we'll take the worst aspects of humanity on the journey. It's flawed brilliance." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:20 AM PST - 7 comments

WaterWigs is a personal project of photographer Tim Tadder. A "Making of" video explains how and why. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:03 AM PST - 6 comments

This groundbreaking new ad [60s] depicts the challenges faced by transgender people in accessing public restrooms—and highlights the lack of state and federal nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. The ad will have its national TV debut on FOX News Channel next Thursday, July 21, during the final night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. It will air nationwide again on MSNBC during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia one week later.
posted by hippybear at 6:47 PM PST - 51 comments

NYT: Congress Releases Secret 9/11 Document Detailing Possible Saudi Ties to Al Qaeda

The 28-page document (.pdf) is a wide-ranging catalog of possible links between Saudi officials and Qaeda operatives. It details contacts that Saudi operatives in Southern California had with the hijackers and describes the discovery of a telephone number in a Qaeda operative’s phone book that was traced to a corporation managing a Colorado home of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

[more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 3:56 PM PST - 55 comments

Home Free ‘You have a guy there who’s really good at the law. We need him in the law library.’
posted by Michele in California at 3:46 PM PST - 9 comments

A condensed history of white rappers
posted by Artw at 3:05 PM PST - 124 comments

"But for her power wheelchair, Jerika Bolen is every bit an active 14-year-old girl – a hopeless romantic with shiny purple hair, a love of alternative music and an addiction to Facebook. She has a maturity and wisdom that belies her age, and on a recent spring day, as other 14-year-olds were finishing their final year of middle school and making summer plans, Jerika told her mother she was ready to die."
posted by AFABulous at 2:30 PM PST - 13 comments

An attempted military coup is underway in Turkey. According to Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, "Some people illegally undertook an illegal action outside of the chain of command." The Turkish military claims they have taken over the government, "in the name of democratic order, adding that all existing foreign relations will continue and human rights will remain." [more inside]
posted by Drinky Die at 2:15 PM PST - 390 comments

Netflix’s sci-fi throwback Stranger Things is Yesterday’s Summer Blockbuster Today [A.V. Club] Stranger Things is stylish, beguiling, and eminently bingeable, but it isn’t skeptic-proof. The Duffer brothers, who previously worked on Fox’s surprisingly compelling Wayward Pines, should know by now that open-ended supernatural mysteries are going to dissuade some viewers, particularly those who have felt duped by such stories in the recent past. But anyone willing to push through their resistance will find a borderline hypnotic show that could be to this summer what USA’s Mr. Robot was to last summer: a hyper-stylized niche series that feels essential even at its wobbliest. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:02 PM PST - 51 comments

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a plan to save endangered black footed ferrets from sylvatic plague by dropping vaccine-laced M&Ms from drones to prairie dogs in Montana. (Guardian) [more inside]
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Marriage and economics have never been independent of one another. The relationship between the two in the affairs of men and women is memorably dramatised in this story by Narendranath Mitra, one of Bengal’s greatest short-story writers. And the narrative time of the story and the arc of the romances within it are marked, too, by the cycle of the seasons in a rural economy, as seen through the life of the protagonist, Motalef, a tapper of palm-trees.
posted by infini at 9:10 AM PST - 4 comments

"We live in the Genius age, where every line of text and every bit of information is now annotated, searchable and definable. The digitization of music has served as a mass cataloging project for anyone interested in dissecting a track down to its molecular makeup. Supernumerary sounds on records, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can usually be traced to its source." - Who Was the Baby on Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?”
posted by nadawi at 9:06 AM PST - 22 comments

Serious Eats' J. Kenji López-Alt has done the math, and Ghostbusters' 35-foot-long, 600lb Twinkie just isn't possible. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 8:49 AM PST - 57 comments

"To me, the great triumph of The Count (the ongoing study, undertaken by The Lilly Awards in partnership with The Dramatists Guild, that asks the question, “Who is being produced in American theaters?”) is that it names and quantifies a reality that without data can be dismissed as speculation. Work by women writers is incredibly underrepresented in the American theater."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:54 AM PST - 8 comments

Democracies end when they are too democratic. - Andrew Sullivan
Britain’s democratic failure - Kenneth Rogoff How American Politics Went Insane - Jonathan Rauch
It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses - James Traub [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:44 AM PST - 70 comments

Channel 4's trailer for the 2016 Rio Paralympics (YouTube) just may be the best thing you see today. Via DangerIsMyMiddleName's twitter.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:39 AM PST - 24 comments

Keeping classic games in print is a surprisingly risky and difficult business... [The] truth is that we've also done a pretty terrible job of maintaining our legacy. We've cheapened our games, to the point where anything older than a decade is assumed free. [...] If we can't keep our history alive, we risk forgetting our roots and losing a part of what made games great. But don't despair! If music can survive MP3s, games can survive this.

"It's Just Emulation!" - The Challenge of Selling Old Games (YouTube)
posted by griphus at 7:02 AM PST - 74 comments

Yesterday, all the episodes of Dan Harmon's new show Harmonquest went up on Seeso. The first episode is on Youtube for free. In Harmonquest, Dan Harmon, Jeff Davis, and Erin McGathy play D&D in front of a live audience, and their hijinks and misadventures are animated. Each week, they're joined by a hilarious comedy guest. Ep. 1's guest is Paul F. Tompkins, and other guests include Patton Oswalt, Ron Funches, and Kumail Nanjiani.
posted by Maecenas at 6:58 AM PST - 26 comments

Culture, not biology, decides the difference between music and noise. “Consonance seems like such a simple phenomenon, and in Western music there’s strong supposition that it’s biological... But this study suggests culture is more important than many people acknowledge.” Study originally published in Nature.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:29 AM PST - 74 comments

The Machynlleth Loop (or Mach Loop or CAD West) is a training area in Wales for low flying fighter jets. The terrain isn't closed to the public so it presents an opportunity to see jets (and the occasional cargo craft) flying by at eye level or below. Youtube compliations one, two, three, four, five. A view of the flight from the cockpit. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 7:23 PM PST - 32 comments

Too Old for Sex? Not at This Nursing Home: When Audrey Davison met someone special at her nursing home, she wanted to love her man. Her nurses and aides at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale did not try to stop her. On the contrary, she was allowed to stay over in her boyfriend’s room with the door shut under the Bronx home’s stated “sexual expression policy [PDF].” One aide even made the couple a “Do Not Disturb” sign to hang outside. [NYT]
posted by Room 641-A at 6:36 PM PST - 30 comments

In the past several years, many scientists have become afflicted with a serious case of doubt — doubt in the very institution of science... So we sent scientists a survey asking this simple question: If you could change one thing about how science works today, what would it be and why? We heard back from 270 scientists all over the world, including graduate students, senior professors, laboratory heads, and Fields Medalists. They told us that, in a variety of ways, their careers are being hijacked by perverse incentives. The result is bad science.
posted by forza at 6:02 PM PST - 39 comments

An impromptu sing-off broke out between two CTA bus passengers late Friday [more inside]
posted by readery at 5:24 PM PST - 13 comments

During Bastille Day celebrations on the Promenade des Anglais, which runs along the Mediterranean, a truck driver plowed through crowds (FR) over a long distance, then exited and began shooting. At time of posting, 60 are feared dead, and many more injured. That it was a planned attack is being evoked by witnesses and police: “People were shouting ‘It’s a terrorist attack, it’s a terrorist attack’, it was clear that the driver was doing it deliberately,” said Maryam Violet, an Iranian journalist visiting Nice. [more inside]
posted by fraula at 4:02 PM PST - 275 comments

In the first quarter of 2016 according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, L.E.D.-lamp shipments in the U.S. were up three hundred and seventy-five per cent over last year, taking more than a quarter of the market for the first time in history. This would seem to be a good thing, but building bulbs to last turns out to pose a vexing problem: no one seems to have a sound business model for such a product.
posted by theodolite at 1:39 PM PST - 86 comments

Six Degrees of Music Separation is a variation on the ever-popular "Six Degrees" game/meme that works out connections between bands via cover versions of songs, mostly. Includes obscure recording artists such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:19 PM PST - 42 comments

Healthy Aperture, a site run by two registered dietitians, allows users to browse healthy recipe links by image (similar to Tastespotting and Tasteologie). You can filter by categories like "gluten-free," "vegan," "sugar-free," "paleo," and "nut-free." From the FAQ: The term “healthy” can be interpreted a number of different ways. We believe that while there are no “off limits” foods in an otherwise balanced diet, this site aims to showcase dishes that are primarily based in minimally processed, whole foods and provide at least one nutritional benefit.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops storm and dismantle the Bastille, a royal fortress that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs. [more inside]
posted by notyou at 11:52 AM PST - 28 comments

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by Melismata at 11:17 AM PST - 112 comments

The Disabled Life is a Tumblr by two Canadian sisters with comics that illustrate how everyday experiences impact people with a disability compared to their non-disabled counterparts. For example: they've heard them all before.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:46 AM PST - 6 comments

Drone racing — Epic drone race at night | Star Wars-style FPV racing | Drone racing dreams
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:38 AM PST - 9 comments

Tim Sommer (MTV, VH1 News, Hugo Largo) writes in The Observer about signing what would become the biggest selling band of 1995 to Atlantic Records.
posted by Maaik at 10:22 AM PST - 71 comments

Roman Inscriptions of Britain is a searchable online database that "hosts Volume One of The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, R.G. Collingwood's and R.P. Wright's magisterial edition of 2,401 monumental inscriptions from Britain found prior to 1955. It also incorporates all Addenda and Corrigenda published in the 1995 reprint of RIB (edited by R.S.O. Tomlin) and the annual survey of inscriptions published in Britannia since."
posted by jedicus at 10:15 AM PST - 5 comments

The Emails of Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer by Jonathan Safran Foer [The New York Times] For over a decade, the Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman and the author Jonathan Safran Foer have amassed countless email exchanges about family, creativity and angry koalas — until earlier this year, when their epistolary archive mysteriously disappeared. On the eve of her ambitious directorial debut, the old friends start anew, reconnecting online to reflect on how the times have changed, and how they have changed over time.
posted by Fizz at 9:22 AM PST - 83 comments

I'll mount the air on swallow's wings, to find my dearest dear. And if I lose my labour and cannot find him there, I quickly will become a fish to search the roaring sea; I love my love because I know my lover he loves me.
posted by dng at 8:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Nintendo has shocked the gaming community by announcing the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition, a "new" version of its legendary NES hardware which will cost $59.99 in the US. It connects to your TV via HDMI and comes with that classic NES pad, which can also be used with your Wii or Wii U. [more inside]
posted by porn in the woods at 8:43 AM PST - 136 comments

Make These Fancy Craft Cocktails Using Ecto Cooler! Anyone have any tips on how to refill and reseal a juice box? Uh, asking for a friend.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:58 AM PST - 32 comments

From Alger to Antananarivo – A selection of 78rpm records from Africa A Mixcloud mix.
posted by OmieWise at 7:40 AM PST - 6 comments

The Liberal Democrat Party* won big in the July elections in Japan, giving the coalition of parties led by the LDP a two-thirds majority in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Japanese government, which could allow the party to ram through amendments to the constitution. While Article 9, the antiwar amendment, has long been targeted, it's starting to look much, much worse. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 7:25 AM PST - 46 comments

David Bowie's art collection to be sold by Sotheby's. More than 400 items from Bowie's personal collection, including 200 works by many important British artists of the 20th Century such as Frank Auerbach, Damien Hirst, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, will be sold in a three part auction in November.
posted by kimdog at 6:53 AM PST - 22 comments

White privilege and gentrification in Denver, 'America’s favourite city' (slTheGrauniad)
posted by Kitteh at 5:45 AM PST - 57 comments

An African writer who makes mix tapes of game soundtracks. A Nairobi filmmaker with Nietzsche on his smart phone. A chess champion who loves Philip K Dick. An African SF poet who quotes the Beatniks… meet the new New Wave in Nairobi, Kenya. Part one of our series 100 African Writers of SFF.
posted by infini at 2:12 AM PST - 4 comments

Tired of the fact that the Faroe Islands don't exist on Google Street View, Durita Dahl Andreassen took matters into her own hands, and strapped a 360˚ camera on the back of a sheep (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by rawrberry at 12:59 AM PST - 22 comments

The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games. Just in time for Rio, a trio of scholars led by Bent Flyvbjerg have published their findings on cost data for both Summer and Winter Games, starting with the Rome 1960 Summer and Squaw Valley 1960 Winter Games, and continuing until the Sochi 2014 Winter and Rio 2016 Summer Games. The average cost of putting on the Olympics? US$ 8.9 billion dollars. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:54 PM PST - 26 comments

If, after the media dubbed Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (YT video, Wikipedia) as "Star Wars" (transcript) in 1983, you might quesiton his concerns triggered from another movie mere months later. But after watching WarGames, he was informed that "the problem is much worse than you think." WarGames was that accurate thanks in part to input in the script from an engineer named Willis Ware, who had concerns about network security (PDF) for decades before the movie. Reagan's fears lead to the first cybersecurity directive from any U.S. President and the first concerns about the NSA's potential role in "data base oversight" (Google books preview), as well as an attempt to regulate teenagers and teenaged technology (Gbp) that impacts US internet use to this day. And then there was the USSR computer program that nearly triggered WWIII. What a year. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:23 PM PST - 19 comments

In which the Criterion Collection invites actores and directors to choose some flicks Including Michael "extremely highbrow" Cera, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, Guy Maddin, and Edgar Wright. [more inside]
posted by kenko at 8:25 PM PST - 19 comments

"Generations ago, legends like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and countless others, they set a model for what athletes should stand for. So we choose to follow in their footsteps." In the wake of the violence this week in St. Paul, Dallas, and Baton Rouge, a quartet of NBA stars (Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James) open the 2016 ESPYS with a call to action. (SLESPN)
posted by zebra at 6:46 PM PST - 14 comments

Harley the bulldog almost wipes out but saves it as usual. (Bonus: Harley's highlights) [more inside]
posted by bologna on wry at 5:50 PM PST - 10 comments

"What do you say to a police officer who tells you to stop when you are legally and not obstructively filming their interactions?" [more inside]
posted by triggerfinger at 5:44 PM PST - 99 comments

The South Pole Traverse is a 1600km long, compacted snow road connecting the McMurdo and Amundsen–Scott stations. [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 4:36 PM PST - 20 comments

"Power and Architecture" is the name of the Calvert 22 Foundation's "season on utopian public space and the quest for new national identities across the post-Soviet world." Included in the "curated digital content" being published as part of the season is "Restricted Areas," a series by Russian photographer Danila Tkachenko, who photographs "abandoned buildings of almost inhuman complexity.” [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:00 PM PST - 12 comments

The Supreme Court Database is a comprehensive, Creative Commons-licensed database of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, broken down by justices, issues, votes, and numerous other variables. Yesterday marked the newest release, including comprehensive coverage from 1791 through the recently concluded 2015 term. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 11:14 AM PST - 14 comments

What Alec Baldwin, David Duchovny & Others Told Me About The Paparazzi Problem
posted by poffin boffin at 11:13 AM PST - 97 comments

42 Visions For Tomorrow From The Golden Age of Futurism — selected panels from Arthur Radebaugh's late 1950s-early 60s newspaper comic strip Closer Than We Think. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:22 AM PST - 21 comments

Behold Your Newest Silver-Screen Sex Goddess, Jane Neighbor

Neighbor is twenty-eight and twenty-two, at once. She is a kind of gorgeous that can only be found in or very near rivers. She is blonde but also blond, depending on the spelling. She is tall when she is on a ladder, and medium-tall when she is halfway up the ladder. Her eyelashes spell “glory.” Her naked hands can open wet jars, with just the strength of her slender fingers. She can be sexy and pointy and things that aren’t even adjectives, like glossary, or aren’t even words, like hilabrion. Her voice sounds like a truck full of rain. — Rachel Axler, The New Yorker

posted by Atom Eyes at 9:53 AM PST - 71 comments

The FBI has officially given up on trying to figure out what happened to "Dan Cooper" (a.k.a. "D.B. Cooper"), ending the investigation after 16,303 days. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:26 AM PST - 60 comments

In a recent interview with Financial Times, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie nonchalantly mentioned her new child. She hadn't made it public (or even told all of her friends) because she refuses to "perform pregnancy." [more inside]
posted by slmorri at 9:05 AM PST - 66 comments

The Forbidden Words Of Margaret A. is a science fiction story by L. Timmel Duchamp, first published in 1990, describing a journalist's heavily-vetted meeting with a woman whose words have been declared illegal by the American government. [more inside]
posted by dng at 8:37 AM PST - 26 comments

Skateboarding legend Rodney Mullen has released "Liminal," his first video in over a decade, scored by George Harrison's son Dhani Harrison. Rolling Stone interview. Previously.
posted by porn in the woods at 8:33 AM PST - 14 comments

Samuel L. Jackson summarizes Game of Thrones./
posted by mightygodking at 8:28 AM PST - 11 comments

"I don’t know if a bear [poops] in the woods, but it [poops] in my wife’s truck." [more inside]
posted by tocts at 8:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Marika Rose writes The White Christian’s Burden - "So: we have sinned, we can’t save ourselves, and the gospel isn’t such good news after all. I hope you’re excited!"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:55 AM PST - 28 comments

Cat is going to get booped on the nose [SLTumblr]
posted by a strong female character at 7:32 AM PST - 27 comments

"The past five or six years have seen a massive rise in one particular area of medieval studies – an area that has the potential to give back a voice to the silent majority of the medieval population. New digital imaging technologies, and the recent establishment of numerous volunteer recording programmes, have transformed its scope and implications. The first large-scale survey began in the English county of Norfolk a little over six years ago. The results of that survey have been astonishing." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 8:18 PM PST - 24 comments

Using just the saxophone, violin, and their voices--and with no looping--saxophonist Colin Stetson and violinist Sarah Neufeld create incredibly layered and engrossing aural landscapes on their 2015 album Never were the way she was. Their video for "The rest of us", directed by Dan Huiting, is cinematic in its own right, but it's the driving gallop of the music that will stick with you. [more inside]
posted by yasaman at 6:10 PM PST - 23 comments

"We as a polity seem to think policing is the solution to every social problem." Political scientist Naomi Murakawa's book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America tackles assumptions about how we got to today and what needs to change. In an interview at the Marshall Project, Murakawa argues "those being sentenced under punitive sentencing guidelines it doesn’t make a difference to them that Sen. Ted Kennedy was liberal and overall had a good voting record." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:11 PM PST - 46 comments

Part One: "The British and American spymasters had ordered “Cynthia” to penetrate the Vichy embassy – a fortress of armed guards, steel doors, and locked safes – and make off with its most closely guarded secrets." Part Two: "Betty cut him off. She explained that she’d open the safe. She had the combination, it would be simple." The extraordinary story of Amy Elizabeth Thorpe's most dangerous operation.
posted by clawsoon at 1:24 PM PST - 9 comments

RBC recently became the latest of many independent news organization in Russia to face resignations, restrictions and closures due to mounting pressure from authorities. In May, the editor-in-chief was dismissed, reportedly due to political pressure resulting from stories about Putin's inner circle. Two other chief editors and numerous editorial staff left in protest. The replacement chief editors, brought in from state-controlled media outlet TASS, wanted to introduce themselves to the remaining RBC staff. The Q&A with the new bosses started with a simple request: “Everything we discuss here … doesn't go beyond this room and doesn't end up on social media.” Naturally, the whole thing was recorded, and the transcript was posted online. [more inside]
posted by Kabanos at 12:43 PM PST - 16 comments

To "more fully understand why conservative [American] politics [has] become synonymous with no-questions-asked support of Israel," Author Tom Bissell went on a ten day “Stand with Israel Tour” hosted by right-wing Jewish Conservative talk show pundit Dennis Prager. My Holy Land Vacation: Touring Israel with 450 Christian Zionists, is this month’s Harper’s Magazine cover story. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:24 PM PST - 29 comments

Just print money and give it to everyone by Chris Arnade: "The usual answer to why we don't do this is that it isn't politically feasible and there is no precedent. 1) That has never stopped bank bailouts, which often require a great deal of political and regulatory ingenuity to jam through. (TARP cough TARP) 2) It is a symptom of a system built by and for the bankers to benefit themselves. It is the equivalent of saying, 'We can't do it because we have never wanted to do it'. That we don't do it this way isn't just a small economic quibble with no impact. The most visceral anger I hear from voters across the country is directed at bank bailouts, which they see as evidence of a rigged system. They are right. The system is rigged in the sense that our primary method to stimulate the economy also conveniently bails out bankers." (previously; via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Teachers come forward and introduce their workshops—there are close to 100—one by one, which takes well over an hour. There's one on multiple-hand ayurvedic breast massage, a braiding circle, sacred tarot, "mapping feminine wisdom," and something described as "calling the salmon home" (which sounds like a potential sex act, but is in fact about "water healing.") One instructor introduces herself as "a honeybee priestess in the British tradition."
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:01 PM PST - 75 comments

Margaret Hamilton's source code for Apollo 11 on Github! The extraordinary code from the original Apollo 11 guidance computer has been converted to .s files for syntax highlighting and posted to Github. The project was undertaken by Virtual AGC and the MIT Museum. [more inside]
posted by jasper411 at 11:54 AM PST - 22 comments

George Takei, broadcasting on Facebook Live from Heart Mountain Internment Camp, where he and his family and tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry were forced to live in during World War II. Mr. Takei was recently instrumental in convincing the Rago Arts and Auction Center not to auction off artifacts and artworks created in internment camps.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:50 AM PST - 6 comments

The internet has a field day with David Cameron’s sad little resignation song (SLAVClub).
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:38 AM PST - 28 comments

(Almost) Every time [Justin and Griffin McElroy] say "BOY" on Monster Factory. A fan highlights one of the best bits in a keystone of the MCU (McElroy Content Universe). [more inside]
posted by kmz at 10:33 AM PST - 45 comments

“High Times and Low Tide at Reefer Beach”

Forty years ago, six young, Florida beach boys and a shrimper named Bubba smuggled more Jamaican weed into America than the nation had ever seen. Until one night in 1973, when too much weed on too small a boat with too little tide beneath it resulted in a bust that sent them to federal prison. Today, writer, Jodi Cash, takes us down to St. Pete Beach to meet some old weed pirates - and the man who eventually made their way of life a thing of the past. (Photography by Ethan Payne)

posted by ob1quixote at 10:27 AM PST - 4 comments

Which mammal species are suitable to be kept as pets? [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:18 AM PST - 43 comments

Here’s a collection of totally ridiculous vintage postcards and posters dated from around 1900 to 1914 warning men of the dangers associated with the suffragette movement and of allowing women to think for themselves.
posted by aka burlap at 10:11 AM PST - 43 comments

Freefall is a science fiction webcomic that has been updating thrice-weekly since 1998. Yesterday, it finally reached a satisfying conclusion... to its first chapter.
posted by brecc at 9:55 AM PST - 10 comments

St. Vincent recasts the theme to Golden Girls as an instrumental dirge.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:54 AM PST - 6 comments

"Brett knows all the top Chaturbate models and analyzes their shows with the intensity of a film critic. He’s even made a YouTube channel to share tips with potential cammers: Invest in studio lights, keep a consistent schedule and don’t text during a performance. Yet for all his professionalism, Brett is fairly new to the job." - How To Be A Cam Boy - Angelica Chapin profiles one of the most popular men in the online stripping business. (photos slightly NSFW)
posted by The Whelk at 9:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Sanders endorses Clinton. Trump rebukes Ginsberg. RNC prepares for their convention in Cleveland. Pundits debate the best VP choice for Trump.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:07 AM PST - 1760 comments

After being forced to pay out millions in settlements to the victims of former coach and child molester Jerry Sandusky, Penn State University attempted to recover the money through their insurance coverage. But in a twist, their insurer, PMA, instead fought back in court, with a disturbing argument - Penn State officials, including Joe Paterno, had known since 1976 of Sandusky's abuses. Today, their risk assessment was unsealed by the court, including information from past sealed settlements. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:36 AM PST - 129 comments

Night Moves: Preserving the Sublime at One of the Darkest Places in America (slVQROnline)
posted by Kitteh at 7:32 AM PST - 3 comments

Mark R. asks: Where did the whole kids thing of saying “Guess what?” and answering with “chicken butt!” come from? Today I Found Out delves into the history of the greatest joke in the world (if you are seven years old). [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:26 AM PST - 54 comments

Marc Maron Ending His IFC Show “Maron” [Pitchfork Media] Marc Maron’s IFC show “Maron” is coming to an end. Maron (@marcmaron) announced the news on today’s episode of his “WTF” podcast. “I've decided that this is it,” he said. “It's done. There’s ways to do more, but this was the vision. This season was the season. And I couldn't be more thrilled about how it came out—how all four seasons came out.” The show is a fictionalized account of Maron’s life and often features him conducting “WTF” interviews in his garage with celebrity guests.
posted by Fizz at 5:54 AM PST - 16 comments

A takeaway shop owner has spoken about how he “took away the power” of an armed would-be robber by simply ignoring him. Ahmed said he had witnessed years of violence in Egypt before emigrating to New Zealand, and the quiet predictability of his life in Christchurch influenced his low-key reaction. “My heart was beating quickly, I was scared, but I wasn’t going to show him that. That is why my nature is cool. I have been 20 years here and never seen any fighting. In Egypt it happens every day but in New Zealand I am calm because it is a safe country.”
posted by h00py at 11:39 PM PST - 49 comments

People had an unnaturally strong reaction to the arrival of this woman and her promises of life-changing magic. There were people who had been doing home organizing for years by then, and they sniffed at her severe methods. (One professional American organizer sent me a picture of a copy of Kondo’s book, annotated with green sticky notes marking where she approved of the advice and pink ones where she disapproved. The green numbered 16; the pink numbered more than 50). But then there were the women who knew that Kondo was speaking directly to them. They called themselves Konverts, and they say their lives have truly changed as a result of using her decluttering methods: They could see their way out of the stuff by aiming upward. NYT Magazine article, comments mostly worth browsing.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:37 PM PST - 170 comments

Even Doing Academic Research On Video Games Puts Me At Risk: On managing personal information in a risky field.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:20 PM PST - 29 comments

A baby training with Rocky Balboa . Yup.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:44 PM PST - 12 comments

Bitch Flicks offers a number of pop culture related essays (mostly film) from their recent website event, Ladies of the 1980s Theme Week. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:39 PM PST - 7 comments

In 2006, Emma Sky was a 36-year-old working for the British Council in the Middle East when she hired on as Political Advisor to US General Odierno, Corps Commander for Iraq. According to this writer, she is the "Mother of Daesh". A former colleague compares her to le Carre's Little Drummer Girl. Emma Sky speaks for herself in Slate (she blames Obama) and The Atlantic ("Iraq is Finished"). (NB: the first link goes to a very long article, which includes the entire testimony of Emma Sky before the UK Irag Inquiry. At the very end of the linked piece are a number of other links to more info.)
posted by CCBC at 3:31 PM PST - 59 comments

The Sega Saturn is a home video game console that was released in 1994, and in the subsequent 20+ years many of the Saturn CD drives have failed. But a tinkerer known as Dr Abrasive has finally cracked the console's DRM. This in-depth video of his process is technical, but probably/hopefully interesting even for non-programmers.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 3:07 PM PST - 23 comments

Bury It, the latest track from CHVRCHES, featuring Hayley Williams and with an outstanding video by comics artist Jamie McKelvie.
posted by Artw at 2:05 PM PST - 39 comments

On August 8, Crystal Cruises' ship "Crystal Serenity" will depart Anchorage, Alaska for a month-long cruise through the legendary Northwest Passage. Price per person: $120,095. Understandably, not everyone is thrilled with the idea of a 68,870 gross ton, 820-long, diesel-powered luxury liner cruising the fragile Arctic. [more inside]
posted by Scoop at 1:48 PM PST - 61 comments

And a chair as well! There's people with games and stories to tell. It's Play School. The much loved Australian children's television program celebrates 50 years on the air. [more inside]
posted by adept256 at 1:02 PM PST - 15 comments

The Secret Apartments of New York Libraries
posted by boo_radley at 12:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Users come in all shapes and sizes; some tall, some short, some seated. Since the user interacts in a room-scale VR space with a realistic approximation of their body, the physical dimensions of both the space and the user matter. Depending on the design of the space and the dimensions/limitations of that user, they may not be able to interact with the space in an ideal fashion, if at all.
Accessibility in VR: Head Height, first in a continuing series of articles.
posted by carsonb at 12:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Maia Szalavitz [mefi's own maias] talks about her new book, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction on Fresh Air with Terry Gross (transcript) - "We have this idea that if we are just cruel enough and mean enough and tough enough to people with addiction, that they will suddenly wake up and stop, and that is not the case."
posted by kliuless at 11:43 AM PST - 50 comments

Minnesota's nickname is the "Land of 10,000 Lakes." But for local reporter Boyd Huppert and photojournalist Jonathan Malat of KARE-11, Minneapolis, it's also the Land of 10,000 Stories. Their long-running news segment highlights touching, local, human interest pieces, and has won multiple awards for excellence in journalism. A special hour-long compilation of eight popular stories aired last year.
posted by zarq at 11:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Wondering what's going on in space right now? Space Dashboard. [more inside]
posted by zamboni at 11:06 AM PST - 15 comments

Blacksmith vs. Minotaur - BattleBots
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:00 AM PST - 52 comments

"Oscar Wilde’s long-suffering wife is supposed to be buried in Italy. So what’s her gravestone doing in a cemetery in Spain, and who lies under it?" [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:39 AM PST - 4 comments

Want to teach your kitty the proper way to use the toilet? Viiru the cat shows you how it's done. (SLYT)
posted by Metroid Baby at 10:01 AM PST - 23 comments

Would you like to see a video profile for every country in the world? Alphabetically?
posted by bq at 9:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Postcards from the Great Divide: political stories from a divided America, is a nine part short film series from across the country telling stories of our politics and our culture. (Washington Post article on the series.)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:03 AM PST - 1 comment

In Zarrilli's view, there is no time to waste. By 2030 or so, the water in New York Harbor could be a foot higher than it is today. That may not sound like much, but New York does not have to become Atlantis to be incapacitated. Even with a foot or two of sea-level rise, streets will become impassable at high tide, snarling traffic. The cost of flood insurance will skyrocket, causing home prices in risky neighborhoods to decline. (Who wants to buy a house that will soon be underwater?) - Can New York City Be Saved In The Era Of Global Warming? - Rolling Stone.
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM PST - 34 comments

Finally going to get that independent film project off the ground? Think you're ready to go into production? A 1st Assistant Director Tells You What Mistakes To Avoid When Shooting An Independent Film. The main takeaway? It's all about planning, planning, and more planning.
posted by hippybear at 8:37 AM PST - 8 comments

Dive down the rabbit hole of vintage (American) pocket watches with the Pocket Watch Database.
posted by jedicus at 7:49 AM PST - 6 comments

BBC: Theresa May set to be UK PM after Andrea Leadsom quits - "Theresa May is set to become the UK's next prime minister after Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the contest to become Conservative Party leader. The timing of the handover of power from David Cameron is currently being discussed, but could be within days." And over at Labour.... BBC: "Labour leadership: Angela Eagle says she can unite the party" - "Angela Eagle has said she can provide the leadership "in dark times for Labour" that Jeremy Corbyn cannot, as she launched her leadership challenge." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 7:43 AM PST - 869 comments

How modern tech saved my 'Dragon's Lair' arcade game
posted by griphus at 6:39 AM PST - 15 comments

One year out: On July 13, 2015, President Obama commuted the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders. Here’s what their lives are like now. [The Washington Post] Few aspects of the Obama administration have been uncontroversial. Yet releasing 348 people from prison early provoked remarkably little criticism. To date, President Obama has commuted more sentences than his seven predecessors combined; when the president granted clemency to 46 nonviolent drug offenders last July, many of whom were sentenced under laws that no longer exist, critics mostly complained that he hadn’t let more people go free.
posted by Fizz at 5:49 AM PST - 14 comments

Women Were Included in the Civil Rights Act as a Joke And a racist joke, at that. But working women and black civil rights lawyers had the last laugh when they brought women’s workplace rights to the courts and won.
posted by infini at 5:33 AM PST - 14 comments

While Pynchon has been placed firmly into the masculine canon of the previous century, Oedipa is his breakout character: a woman who, against all odds, strives to remake the world into a place of meaning and structure. It is the men in Pynchon’s California who are secondary: they are duplicitous, flighty, and weak .... In our present moment, it is necessary, rather than radical, to be paranoid. Paranoia is now the result of being aware and observant. We are being watched, tracked, traced, and catalogued. Oedipa’s nightmare has become our reality. Therefore, 50 years later, we should allow her to become our guide. Nick Ripatriazone on Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
posted by chavenet at 3:35 AM PST - 14 comments

"We collected data on each of the 127,000 Meetup events created in the United States since 2002 and analyzed this data to understand what people care about across the country. What we found confirmed several city stereotypes: the Bay Area is the home of tech, New York is the epicenter of fashion, and D.C. reigns supreme in multiculturalism. We also looked into what Meetup data tells us about the other homes of tech, and the cities most interested in music, and finding love."
posted by ellieBOA at 2:55 AM PST - 15 comments

interviewing.io is a platform where people can practice technical interviewing anonymously and find jobs based on their interview performance. Women historically haven’t performed as well as men—specifically, men were getting advanced to the next round 1.4 times more often than women, and had a 20% higher average technical score from interviewers. In an attempt to erase this difference, interviewing.io added voice modulation to their online interviews.
posted by Rangi at 1:05 AM PST - 15 comments

Megaplex is an 80-minute mix of music and "thousands of cuts from more than 80 movies", edited to be "dense enough to pressurize these diamonds in the rough into gleaming treasures" (complete with an "Epilepsy Trigger Warning"; NSFW for brief nudity, violence and extreme grossness), from SmashTV, dedicated to "long form entertainment for a generation of Youtube junkies looking for their next fix".
SmashTV content previously posted here: "Skinimax", "Memorex", and their most impressive shorter piece "Christopher Walken Dance Now" (with dead link; here's where it is now).
If 80 minutes is too long for one big bite, they have broken it up into somewhat smaller pieces: [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:55 AM PST - 3 comments

Introducing the Chordelia. Tim of the utterly charming WayOutWestBlowinBlog Youtube channel has invented a device to assist in guitar playing for people who find all that chord business "tricky."
posted by emjaybee at 9:46 PM PST - 29 comments

Spanish photographer AnaHell specialises in... unusual portraits. Her latest series, Secret Friends, depicts "strange and wonderful creatures from another world, the kind that children create when they’re alone." [more inside]
posted by motty at 8:19 PM PST - 6 comments

Peter Doig Says He Didn’t Paint This. Now He Has to Prove It. Scottish artist Peter Doig is renowned for his somewhat surreal, eerie, haunting landscapes and scenes of ordinary life. His paintings have sold for millions of dollars -- his White Canoe fetched a record-setting $26 million at auction in 2015. Now, Doig is tasked with proving he did not create a particular work, in a case that has stunned art-law experts. (Previously.
posted by sarcasticah at 8:17 PM PST - 34 comments

The inimitable Laurie Penny (previouslies) writes about our current economic and political climate, "the language of self-care and wellbeing almost entirely colonized by the political right," "progressives, liberals, and left-wing groups [beginning] to fetishize a species of abject hopelessness," and a third way with promise. [SLBaffler] [more inside]
posted by coolname at 7:07 PM PST - 38 comments

In the 1990s, a group of Australian misfits who made anti-rave music [NSFW audio, present elsewhere, too], influenced by their local Newcastle industrial heritage and the international sounds of gabber. In 1994, they bashed out some tunes and pulled together enough money to make 102 hand-stamped records, officially starting Bloody Fist Records. The label gained recognition world-wide, but abruptly closed shop in 2004, and a decade later Bloody Fist was celebrated in Newcastle with Fistography, an exhibit to the history and legacy of the label. If you missed any of this the first time around, you can stream and buy much of the label's catalog on their Bandcamp page. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 5:18 PM PST - 18 comments

So, apparently there's now a StackExchange for table top roleplaying games. Featuring questions like, "What is the easiest way a Wizard can copy-protect the scrolls he makes?" and "Managing a Medieval Low-Orbit Ion Cannon." And a bunch of generally good (though less comical) advice in the sorted by votes page.
posted by kaibutsu at 3:14 PM PST - 15 comments

Europe's next crisis: Italy's teetering banks. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 1:08 PM PST - 31 comments

"Autism is seen like some sort of mental superpower where we can see math in the air. In my experience, this isn’t really the case." - Dispelling some myths about the autistic wunderkind programmer. Also: Why you might not want to get TOO excited about autism employment initiatives. Autism FAQ
posted by Artw at 12:41 PM PST - 29 comments

Do you find bookish people sexy? You may be sapiosexual. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:32 AM PST - 117 comments

If so, you can revel in the continual treachery and political confusion of the long history of England in its assorted forms via the History of England Podcast. The genial and enthusiastic David Crowther works his way through the tumultuous course of events, only occasionally enlisting his children to put on amateur theatricals to illustrate some dramatic moment or other. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:15 AM PST - 12 comments

It was a late winter night in 1966 and a fully loaded B-52 bomber on a Cold War nuclear patrol had collided with a refueling jet high over the Spanish coast, freeing four hydrogen bombs that went tumbling toward a farming village called Palomares, a patchwork of small fields and tile-roofed white houses in an out-of-the-way corner of Spain’s rugged southern coast that had changed little since Roman times. Part one: Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident [NYT] Part two: Even Without Detonation, 4 Hydrogen Bombs From ’66 Scar Spanish Village [NYT]
posted by skycrashesdown at 7:27 AM PST - 50 comments

"In countries key to the president’s legacy, people express profound disappointment in a man from whom they expected great things." [more inside]
posted by Sir Rinse at 7:03 AM PST - 91 comments

Degas is best-known for his paintings of dancers - but he also photographed them. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:11 AM PST - 3 comments

Ma’agalim, a bitter-sweet music video by the Israeli band Jane Bordeaux [Youtube]
(N.B.: first link includes sketches and models.)
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:57 AM PST - 8 comments

Good news for Oz: AIDS epidemic no longer a public health issue in Australia, scientists say. The nation's top scientists have declared "the end of AIDS" as a public health issue, as Australia joins the ranks of a select few countries which have successfully beaten the epidemic.
posted by valetta at 12:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Tea Party activist Norm Novitsky crowd-funded for the production of his movie "In Search of Liberty" (preview here), a movie on the US Constitution . Last week, after the crew was dissatisfied with their wages and working conditions, they voted to have the IATSE represent them and went on strike. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 10:38 PM PST - 34 comments

Lost Animations is a Youtube channel compiling various hard-to-find animated shorts, advertisements, and the occasional full-length. [more inside]
posted by solarion at 8:48 PM PST - 7 comments

In "An Edwardian Package Holiday," Kirsty Hooper mentions the role that "lively representations" in illustrated travel books such as Spain Revisited: A Summer Holiday in Galicia and A Corner of Spain played in promoting northwest Spain to British tourists (more here). Many other richly illustrated travel books from the same period are available online, perhaps most notably the "Beautiful England" and "Beautiful Ireland" series published by Blackie & Son and the wide variety of titles published by A & C Black. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:00 PM PST - 8 comments

Police estimate that 2,500-5,000 people marched in the parade, in a small town in the heart of Canada's Bible Belt. "We kind of thought that if we got all of our friends together and family members maybe we would get 200 people," McHale said. The town's MP, MLA and mayor did not attend, but Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted his support, and participants were expected from as far away as Florida and France. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 5:16 PM PST - 13 comments

Don't sleep on a squirrel. (SLYT, >2m)
posted by Diablevert at 5:01 PM PST - 15 comments

Syrian Refugees in small town Canada A feel good story about Syrian refugees settling in small town Canada [more inside]
posted by troll on a pony at 2:53 PM PST - 17 comments

#1 Making a Cherry Wood Fountain Pen [YouTube, 12:25, Martin Saban-Smith]
Turning A Cigar Pen [YT, 25:31, Steve Lindsley]
Turning a Banksia Pen With Dyed Epoxy #10 [YT, 17:39, I Turn Two]
Circuit Board Ink Pen [YT, 24:28, RJBWoodTurner]
Beginning Pen Making, Make a Cigar Pen. Stars and Stripes America Style. [YT, 10:16, Chad Schimmel]
20 Steps to Turning Better Pens, by Kurt Hertzog for Woodturning
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:37 PM PST - 28 comments

The Subtle Genius of Elena Ferrante’s Bad Book Covers by Emily Harnett [The Atlantic] With their sandy beaches and windswept women, the U.S. editions of Elena Ferrante’s novels look familiar even if you’ve never seen them. That’s because they look like virtually every other book authored by a woman these days—not to mention like bridal magazines, beach-resort brochures, and even “Viagra ads.” On Twitter and beyond, readers have described Ferrante’s covers as “horrible,” “atrocious,” “utterly hideous,” and as a “disservice” to her novels. At Slate, one commenter approvingly mentions a local bookstore’s decision to display one of Ferrante’s books in plain brown paper, reviving a practice used for Playboy and the infamous issue of Vanity Fair with a pregnant Demi Moore on the cover. The implication, of course, isn’t that Ferrante’s covers are obscene in the traditional sense—just obscenely bad. Previously.
posted by Fizz at 10:08 AM PST - 46 comments

Something to take one's mind off this hard month in a hard summer in a hard year. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:54 AM PST - 43 comments

When can Facebook take down your post?
Five days ago (July 4), Ms Teo Soh Lung – an activist and former ISA detainee – had her post “Police Terror” removed “for violating community standards”, according to freelance journalist Kirsten Han. Shortly after (July 7), Ms Han herself received a notice that her post – in support of Ms Teo and a reproduction of “Police Terror” – had been taken down for the same reason. This sparked a ban on her posting for 24 hours. In late June (June 23), blogger Andrew Loh had his post about violations of Cooling-Off Day rules taken down by Facebook – but in his case, Facebook restored the post and issued him an apology just three days later (June 26). [more inside]
posted by destrius at 6:00 AM PST - 57 comments

Tim Wong is an aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, but in his off-hours he raised pipevine swallowtail butterflies in his back yard in San Francisco, where the butterfly was now hard to find. His efforts have been successful to reintroduce Battus philenor to a region where the species is much less common than it used to be. You can join Tim and the folks in the North American Butterfly Association in improving backyard biodiversity by creating butterfly habitats, or even raise your own swarm or kaleidoscope of butterflies. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:47 PM PST - 15 comments

In this time of tragedy, #carefreeblackkids2k16 offers some comfort. [more inside]
posted by Deoridhe at 7:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Kanye West has released the new music video for his song "Famous," (warning: explicit, NSFW) featuring disturbingly lifelike wax likenesses of celebrities lying next to eachother naked in a large bed. The celebrities? Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Ray J, Caitlyn Jenner, Bill Cosby, Amber Rose, Anna Wintour, and, of course, Kim & Ye himself. The video has unsurprisingly garnered strong reactions. Kanye's equally unsurprising Twitter response? "Can somebody sue me already #I'llwait". [more inside]
posted by bologna on wry at 5:36 PM PST - 199 comments

In a national investigation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined documents that described disturbing acts of physician sexual abuse in all 50 US states. What they found was a broken system that forgives sexually abusive doctors. Everywhere.
(Some may find descriptions of abuse in the links in this post disturbing.) [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:59 PM PST - 27 comments

Caesar, now: a man angry, valourous, fair, bulky, madly-bold, high-spirited, very difficult, haughty, dour and grievous, vehement-natured, firm, strong, contemptuous, self-willed, unsimple, severe, keen, unloved, famous, wrathful, cunning, eloquent, unashamed, indefatigable, venomous, hostile. A king in kingship and a soldier in deeds of valour and bravery, a battle-tower in courage, a soldier in activity. In the floodtide of his grace and his age was he then.

In Cath Catharda is a medieval Irish epic about the Roman civil wars. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:57 PM PST - 15 comments

Nivea is worried that your kids aren't wearing enough sunscreen and their new ad aims to fix that from above.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:50 PM PST - 66 comments

Long Ma Jin Shen, a "large-scaled production where a dragon-horse encounters a giant spider in a downpour of sound and special effects," created by French production company La Machine, will be making its first North American appearance in Ottawa during Canada Day celebrations in 2017. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:39 PM PST - 19 comments

A/V Artifact Atlas [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:30 PM PST - 14 comments

A Simple Truth [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 11:50 AM PST - 20 comments

The Arabian Sea has a special place in Indian business history. For centuries the cities and settlements on the Arabian Sea littoral traded with each other, exchanging Indian textiles for horse, armaments, pearls and ivory. In turn, some of the textiles were passed on to the Atlantic slave trade in Africa as a medium of exchange, or sent overland to European markets. Coastal merchants* indigenous to the region bordering the sea engaged in this business and developed sophisticated systems of banking and shipbuilding to support the mercantile enterprise. The Hindu and Muslim traders of Kachchh were examples of such groups of people. text via [more inside]
posted by infini at 11:06 AM PST - 7 comments

Police, Prosecutors, and Judges Rely on a Flawed $2 Drug Test That Puts Innocent People Behind Bars [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:44 AM PST - 33 comments

Fakespot uses an algorithm to spot fake product reviews on Amazon. To use it just paste in your Amazon product listing link. Watch it in action. Here are the products with the worst fake reviews. A search engine for the best products with the most authentic reviews. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:20 AM PST - 74 comments

A glimpse into the world of independent professional wrestling [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 7:53 AM PST - 4 comments

The board game Clue (a.k.a. Cluedo outside North America) is a perennial favorite, a first-ballot entry into the Games Magazine Hall of Fame, with more than a hundred variant versions. It is even arguably the first game to spin off a movie, complete with three different endings and eventual cult status. But even good things must change, and original suspect Mrs. White (played by Madeline Kahn in the movie) has been replaced by the enigmatic Dr. Orchid, who a Hasbro VP called "a brilliant new character with a rich backstory and links to the Black fortune." (Mr. Black is the owner of the mansion in which the game takes place, and in Cluedo versions is the victim of the murder that drives the "plot" of the game.) [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:19 AM PST - 83 comments

"We can and should have a moratorium on trade agreements. The process by which they’re negotiated is undemocratic, they uplift investor rights over sovereign rights, they reverse the order in which certain challenges should be tackled, and they fail to deal with currency issues. But globalization cannot nor should not be stopped. Done right, it delivers great benefits to advanced countries through the increased supply of goods, and it helps improve the living standards of workers in developing countries through profits made from trade with wealthier nations. [...] So how can we best realize that potential?"
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:20 AM PST - 64 comments

Okay, so Amy Grant is a bit insecure on her first album 1977's Amy Grant, with the song I Know Better Now. Written by an angst-filled 17 year old who is couching her insecurity within her faith in Jesus, it's only one in a long line of songs Amy has written and/or recorded that show true struggle with being human in a difficult world. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:02 AM PST - 56 comments

Five years ago, comic/singer Danny Roque wrote a song about his favorite part of his daily routine and started performing it. However, it took him a while to get permission to make the accompanying video on location. But now here it is: "Lunch at Costco".
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:43 AM PST - 15 comments

And, here you have the full concert. Enjoy... [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 8:37 PM PST - 19 comments

This August, American audiences will once again endure a time-honored sports tradition: inane, often sexist coverage of Olympic women's gymnastics. Most media outlets only cover gymnastics during the Olympics, and then they treat it more as soap opera than sport. Elspeth Reeve at The New Republic profiles "the gymternet," a network of fan-run blogs, podcasts and social media streams that treat women's gymnastics with a seriousness that the sport is often denied by mainstream American media coverage. [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:52 PM PST - 72 comments

Kidlington is a quiet little suburb in Oxfordshire, England. Well, it was quiet until tourists mysteriously started showing up for no reason.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:08 PM PST - 64 comments

How strong is the Thing? [more inside]
posted by vrakatar at 7:05 PM PST - 51 comments

This robot stingray is powered by genetically engineered rat heart cells. It has an elastomer body and a stiff gold skeleton. Rat heart cells are grown in a specific pattern on the underside, and are activated by pulses of light -- allowing the robot to be remote controlled as it navigates through a liquid with suspended nutrients that keep the cells alive. More details from Science. Even Popular Mechanics doesn't need to do much sensationalizing to this story.
posted by cubby at 6:54 PM PST - 12 comments

Spoiler. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:49 PM PST - 86 comments

Fencepost rocks. Fencepost banks. Fencepost errors. Old fencepost errors. Fencepost riddle.
posted by metaquarry at 4:08 PM PST - 10 comments

Gretchen Carlson of Fox News Files Harassment Suit Against Roger Ailes [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 3:20 PM PST - 115 comments

Martin Shkreli - He of the 5,500x price increase for a lifesaving drug; he who is the only person on Earth with access to The Wu-Tang Clain's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin - has a new hobby - Magic: The Gathering! [more inside]
posted by Tomorrowful at 2:52 PM PST - 78 comments

Charge your phone battery. Head for your nearest church and pray that the servers stay up. Just try not to get run over. Pokémon Go has been released (previously).
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:36 PM PST - 843 comments

"Elevated walkways are the darlings of architectural dreamers and science fiction writers alike." - Christo Hall [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:03 PM PST - 40 comments

Simon Burgess, an economist at the University of Bristol, "analysed the school’s exam results in the years after Mrs Obama’s visits. The 15- or 16-year-olds sitting their GCSEs did much better than girls in the previous year. ... [The] improvements were much bigger than the average increases in performance across London state schools."
posted by clawsoon at 11:58 AM PST - 13 comments

In 1937 actress Leona W. Chalmers filed a remarkable application at the Philadelphia branch of the United States Patent Office: a funnel-shaped receptacle of vulcanized rubber inserted low into the vagina to collect menstrual fluid, rather than soak it up like a Kotex pad did. This invention was later sold as the Tasette, but it never gained commercial success though it had a few devotees. It wasn't until 50 years later that a similar device called The Keeper emerged. We have now entered the age of the menstrual cup, with multiple brands easily purchased online and in stores like Whole Foods, and reviews and comparisons on YouTube and blogs in every corner of the internet. But why did it take so long for them to become mainstream?
posted by apricot at 11:16 AM PST - 191 comments

At 600 cubic centimeters and 26 horsepower an internal combustion engine under development by Roush Fenway Racing is among their smallest and least powerful. It also will be the first internal combustion engine to go into outer space.
posted by Rob Rockets at 9:50 AM PST - 44 comments

Devil Is Fine is the second album by Zeal and Ardor, a.k.a. Birdmask, a.k.a. Manuel Gagneux. For a taste of its "spiritual black metal blues," have a loud listen to "Blood In The River." The vocals are so gritty and authentic that he was accused of using unattributed samples from Smithsonian field recordings. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:19 AM PST - 51 comments

Africa In The New Century

An essay by the Cameroonian philosopher and post-colonial theorist Achille Mbembe. Entitled “Africa In The New Century”, the essay advances one of the most profound arguments yet for the growing—if still marginalised—hypothesis that the future of humanity is being subsumed by the future of Africa.

text via
posted by infini at 6:52 AM PST - 15 comments

During the 1940s, Harvard University's psycho-acoustic laboratory--installed in the boiler room under Memorial Hall--was a center of secret, government-directed wartime research into the effects of sound on the human ear and mind. One obscure product of this work became known as the Harvard Sentences, a set of "phonetically balanced" sentences containing a mix of phonemes typical to conversational English. These sentences are still used today by Verizon's baseline engineers, among others. Gizmodo's Sarah Zhang has more on the history of the Harvard Sentences. Meanwhile, over at Tedium, Ernie Smith offers a T-Mobile test number (858-651-5050) where you can listen to a recording of several Harvard Sentences, calling it "pretty much the most poetic, automated thing I’ve ever heard." A full list of the Harvard Sentences can be viewed here. [more inside]
posted by duffell at 6:51 AM PST - 45 comments

Fifty years ago, Rona Barrett forged a Hollywood gossip empire. Then she left it all behind, her innovations attributed to others, her legacy almost entirely overlooked. But as she nears 80, there’s very little Miss Rona regrets. [sl Anne Helen Petersen@BuzzFeed]
posted by ellieBOA at 6:30 AM PST - 29 comments

[Soda_Jerk vs The Avalanches] Jerry Seinfeld, Daria, Jay and Silent Bob and many more rub on-screen shoulders in The Was, an eye-and-ear-catching 14 minute collage short. The visual remix splices together scenes and characters from 129 different films and TV shows, and is made by NYC-via-Sydney art collective, Soda_Jerk. Fittingly, the short appears to be soundtracked by audio sampling maestros, The Avalanches, using tracks from The Avalanches' recently-released album Wildflower and alternative mixes. [more inside]
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 10:20 PM PST - 19 comments

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (previously) administers operating grants to researchers in areas of basic, clinical, and population health research. Recent changes to the way CIHR reviews and awards grants have many scientists warning that "there is little hope that the best ideas and projects will be funded" and calling for a rollback of the changes. [more inside]
posted by quaking fajita at 9:30 PM PST - 7 comments

"I don’t know how to feel that my life matters when there is so much evidence to the contrary." [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 6:51 PM PST - 1844 comments

Sometime in the 1850s, when the legendary Victorian actor William Macready was leasing Sherborne House, his family got together with that of his good friend Charles Dickens to produce a very Victorian craft object: a folding screen. The screen has now been restored and the "over 500 images" on eight panels digitized. (Via VICTORIA.) [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise at 5:45 PM PST - 2 comments

Poaching Leaves Elephant Daughters in Charge. "As illegal hunting thins out the ranks of matriarchs, their daughters are taking over as leaders of their social groups."
posted by homunculus at 5:38 PM PST - 5 comments

A Starkly Different Iron Man: Black, Female, And 15 Years Old [NPR.org] Her name is Riri Williams. She reverse-engineered her own version of the Iron Man battlesuit in her MIT dorm room, got kicked out, and struck out on her own to do the superhero thing. Clumsily at first, but she's learning fast. So fast she's impressing Tony Stark, who's questioning his status as the Marvel Universe's go-to, super-powered Campbell's soup can. Readers first met her in the March issue of Invincible Iron Man. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:02 PM PST - 66 comments

Photographer Johnny Miller uses drones to portray scenes of inequality in South Africa.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:46 PM PST - 11 comments

"What, exactly, is a women’s picture? It’s a genre that lasted from 1930 to 1960 during Hollywood’s golden age. [...] for less than a buck, you could go to a theater and watch Hollywood’s greatest actresses transgress the ever-present social norms that suffocated women in real life. [...] Hollywood’s film industry is no longer interested in producing the sort of films the genre turned into a curious art, or backing stars like Bette Davis, whose prowess and willingness to portray female anger still frightens audiences when they discover her. Instead, a new form of the genre is emerging on television." Including The Good Wife, UnREAL, Jane the Virgin, Outlander, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Scandal, Orphan Black, and more. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:28 PM PST - 23 comments

Metaknowledge is knowledge about knowledge. Metaknowledge means you are aware of what you know or don’t know, and of where your level of knowledge stands in relation to other people’s. [more inside]
posted by NoRelationToLea at 1:09 PM PST - 48 comments

There was a reason none of the teens in the legendary director’s films were real rebels, but rather outsiders with an eye on upward mobility. - Soraya Roberts
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:49 AM PST - 70 comments

Should the United States Save Tangier Island From Oblivion? (New York Times) "...she built the house in a place where the bay was steadily advancing on her backyard every year, usually by about a dozen feet."
posted by freakazoid at 11:21 AM PST - 67 comments

At his final Ham4Ham show (for now – we can always hope), Lin-Manuel reads a 1780 letter from Alexander to Eliza. Miranda leaves Hamilton this weekend. Here's what's next for him. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:40 AM PST - 94 comments

"Contemporary Christian pop music might be taking Psalm 100’s command to 'make a joyful noise unto the Lord' a little too far," writes Leah Libresco at 538. Libresco analyzed the lyrics from Billboard's year-end top 50 Christian songs for the last five years and compares them with traditional American hymns from the shaped-note tradition. Richard Beck at Experimental Theology notes that the psalms themselves contain much more lamentation than the hymnbooks used by contemporary U.S. protestants.
posted by Alluring Mouthbreather at 10:37 AM PST - 57 comments

Mmm. Waffles.

A brief history of the humble and beautiful waffle from Mental Floss.
posted by Etrigan at 10:13 AM PST - 21 comments

“We decided to do an action during the parade because Pride itself is political." (slBuzzfeed) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:57 AM PST - 292 comments

There’s this frustration, this anxiousness, not knowing who I actually am without the medication. When I go off it now, I can’t get through simple chores, errands, tasks, anything. The biggest thing I hate about it is that I’m a drug addict. If I’m being completely honest, I’m dependent on it. There’s a lot of anger and self-loathing that comes with that. These are the thoughts that plague the medicated, the adults in their twenties who take prescription stimulants for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and have done so since childhood. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 8:53 AM PST - 113 comments

Thomas the Tank Engine has included dozens of songs over 19 seasons and counting. Express your adoration for Thomas. Have an accident. Enjoy the bustle of the docks. Learn to never, never give up. Be spooked. Be brave.
posted by clawsoon at 8:32 AM PST - 36 comments

The Strange Perils of Running a Novelty Item Empire: Seattle’s Archie McPhee is one of the largest and oldest novelty designers and manufacturers in America, providing the average Joe with items that seem like they were designed in some other dimension where the laws of practicality and common sense no longer apply. They have a long, colorful history of bringing weird and unfathomable items to an unsuspecting world. But it’s not all screaming pickles and wind-up teeth. Running one of the most successful novelty operations in the world can lead to some pretty bizarre disasters.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:26 AM PST - 46 comments

Zen and the Art of Fountain Pen Maintenance - "Some fountain pen owners are fastidious about cleaning their fountain pens. They keep an ongoing record of which pens are inked, the date of inking, the color, when the pen needs to be cleaned, and the date the pen moved out of rotation. They typically have only a small number of pens inked at any given time. Then, each week or so, on an appointed day, they clean out their inked pens, dry them carefully, and choose a new set of pens to ink and use. I am not one of those people."
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:22 AM PST - 55 comments

David Lee Roth's No Holds Bar-B-Que, long only available in bootleg form was released on Roth's youtube channel recently. Featuring surreal covers, low rent effects work, Benny Hill-esque skits, and Japanese sword arts. Dive in and get a taste.
posted by Ferreous at 7:08 AM PST - 38 comments

Today the long awaited Iraq Enquiry (universally called The Chilcot Enquiry) is released as the cherry on the knickerbocker glory of recent British Politics. The enquiry is intended to investigate the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to establish the way decisions were made, to determine what happened and to identify lessons to ensure that in a similar situation in future, the British government is equipped to respond in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country. Here's what we can expect to see. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:02 AM PST - 153 comments

Ning Ken's 4000-word essay translated by Thomas Moran. In the 1980s, when China was starting to open up to the world, Latin American literature, with Gabriel García Márquez as the representative, poured into China. When we read “magic realism,” it seemed familiar, it seemed close to us, and that is because in their suffering and their difficult, incredible histories, Chinese people and Latin Americans have a lot in common. Indeed, in the 1980s we often spoke of China as a place of “magic realism.” But since the 1990s, and especially in the past dozen years or so, China is no longer that place; it is now a place of the “ultra-unreal.” [more inside]
posted by cgc373 at 11:38 PM PST - 19 comments

Making a Robot Dance to Music Using Chaotic Itinerancy in a Network of FitzHugh-Nagumo Neurons "We propose a technique to make a robot execute free and solitary dance movements on music, in a manner which simulates the dynamic alternations between synchronisation and autonomy typicallyobserved in human behaviour."
posted by lucasgonze at 11:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Early in his career cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst was offered several years salary to sit on bad data. He explains to Spiegel Online why he declined:

The patients that took part in our research did this on the expectation that their data would be used. In this study the participants had had cardiac catheterization. They had risked their lives for the study! So you cannot hush up the results!

[more inside]
posted by mark k at 9:42 PM PST - 30 comments

As you can see, the corner that sits on the North American plate has slid past the section of the curb that sits on the Pacific plate. When the concrete was poured, the sidewalk was even with the curb! [more inside]
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:59 PM PST - 27 comments

lonelygirl15 was a prolific poster of youtubes back in 2006, where she angsted for the world to see. It was later revealed that the whole thing was performance art (to be polite). "Bree" was actually named Jessica Lee Rose and she was an acting student in NYC, originally from New Zealand. Now they're bringing her back!
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:43 PM PST - 39 comments

Famous landmarks photographed from the "wrong" direction
posted by BaffledWaffle at 2:00 PM PST - 53 comments

Sir Patrick Stewart sings cowboy classics.
posted by pjern at 1:15 PM PST - 40 comments

The cult film Highlander celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with the release of a restored 4K DVD (Trailer). The restored film had a debut screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in late June, prompting some retrospective looks at the film: “Add in the fact that it was the eighties in general, and you've got the campiest, period-specific film with giant hair and questionable fashion choices ever committed to film.” [more inside]
posted by nubs at 11:07 AM PST - 140 comments

What is a queer kitchen? Is there a recognizable queer style or sensibility that can be expressed through food? These questions and more were at the heart of a recent conversation hosted at the Williams Sonoma flagship store in San Francisco's Union Square during the city's Pride Weekend.
posted by BekahVee at 10:30 AM PST - 47 comments

Actress and writer Louise Linton wrote the book In Congo's Shadow, excerpted in an article titled How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare. Apparently it was plagued with inaccuracies and outright lies, and Zambian twitter dragged the "delusional white woman" with the hashtag #LintonLies. [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 10:04 AM PST - 102 comments

What no "Apollo 13"? The Complete List of Movies and TV Shows on the International Space Station. Spoilers, at least they had "Alien"
posted by ShawnString at 9:49 AM PST - 32 comments

A court has ordered Spark Networks (which runs ChristianMingle, JDate, and a wide variety of other religious and non-religious dating sites) to facilitate same-sex connections. As of the initiation of the suit in 2013, the various sites under Spark simply did not allow such connections, asking users for their gender and assuming they were looking for opposite-sex dates. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:25 AM PST - 101 comments

Maybe people have changed, and today we want different things from games than the ancient Egyptians wanted from Senet. Maybe they found the shuffling rhythms of the game of passing to be thrilling, or at least true: the smallness of human life captured against the unchanging vastness of the landscape of the gods.
posted by curious nu at 7:25 AM PST - 55 comments

For perhaps the final time, Cabel Sasser photographs the wacky packaging of fireworks available in Vancouver. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:22 AM PST - 38 comments

The pop culture site DigitalSpy ran a poll to determine the most popular science fiction TV series of all time (not including animated or 'comic book based' shows). The winner, with almost 5,000 out of 50,000 votes, was perennial British show Doctor Who (not surprising since it is a British site). But the runner-up, just a hundred votes behind, WAS surprising: '90s space station epic Babylon 5. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:52 AM PST - 67 comments

Previous title holder Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, 32, has eaten his way back to victory by downing 70 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes at this year's Nathan's Famous annual Fourth of July hot dog competitive eating contest -- and it's the most hot dogs and buns ever eaten at the Coney Island event. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut regains title as top dog at eating hot dogs.
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:04 AM PST - 24 comments

Acclaimed Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami has passed away. His better known films include Taste of Cherry (wikipedia) and The Wind Will Carry Us (wikipedia), the former of which, Ebert famously loathed.
posted by juv3nal at 12:15 AM PST - 20 comments

Rufi Thorpe writes about being an artist and a mother in Vela.
posted by bardophile at 9:48 PM PST - 18 comments

The translation of science into laypeople's terms is now a well-established part of our culture; so is the idea that we should make science exciting for children. Michael Faraday (d. 1867) figured this out earlier than most; like Richard Feynman, he was not only a world-class researcher, but a world-class educator. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (previously) he initiated remain an annual tradition, almost two centuries years later. Recently, Bill Hammack (previously) created a beautiful, verbatim re-enactment of one of Faraday's most simple and elegant series of lectures on The Chemical History of a Candle, together with a series of commentary videos (though the lectures themselves remain remarkably clear).
posted by Dr and Mrs Eaves at 6:51 PM PST - 12 comments

Bangladesh Attack Is New Evidence That ISIS Has Shifted Its Focus Beyond the Mideast [The New York Times] Friday night’s assault on the Holey Artisan Bakery in the diplomatic district of Dhaka, in which at least 20 hostages and two police officers were killed, marks a scaling up of ambition and capacity for Bangladesh’s Islamist militancy, which has until now carried out pinpoint assassinations, mostly of critics of Islam and members of religious minorities. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:39 PM PST - 36 comments

15-time WWE World Champion, actor (and Mandarin speaker) John Cena has a message for you this Fourth of July: loving America means loving all Americans.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 2:51 PM PST - 92 comments

While OK Go's progression from treadmill to unicycle to zero-gravity has broken all kinds of ground in ambitious, creative, music video, the new video for LA band AJJ's Goodbye, Oh Goodbye takes the form to entirely new places. Planned and choreographed over the course of six months, and shot in a single take in an LA warehouse, the video centers around a judicious use of... well, it's best left unspoiled. (Here's a making-of video, for the curious.)
posted by rorgy at 1:04 PM PST - 100 comments

Scientists have created a microscopic, real life-or-death version of Pac-Man
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:56 AM PST - 13 comments

Bonhams is hosting an auction of Space History on July 20th. Now is the time to get that full scale Sputnik model for your living room.
posted by agatha_magatha at 8:53 AM PST - 15 comments

Enjoy thirteen versions of "The Stars And Stripes Forever", wince with self-recognition at The Oatmeal's America Explained To Non-Americans and schedule a trip to one of ten distinctive July festivals and events. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:04 AM PST - 44 comments

Author Stephen Marche celebrates (?) his hometown of Toronto. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:42 AM PST - 93 comments

Mission Juno Tonight, Earth species Homo sapiens sapiens, with ongoing support from photosynthesizing relatives in the Plant kingdom, will attempt the delicate task of inserting a large machine into polar orbit around the highly radioactive gas giant Jupiter. After using a slingshot maneuver around Earth and Jupiter's tremendous gravitational pull to become "one of the fastest human-made objects ever built," it is hoped Juno will collect data for 20 months, shedding light on the composition of the planet and what it can tell us about the origin of the Sol system 4.6 billion years ago. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 5:25 AM PST - 194 comments

The latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary is online and on its way to print. With more than 1,000 new words and nearly 2,000 revised or expanded entries, the latest additions include more of the "initialisms" either originated or popularized on the internet like tl;dr and ROFL as well as indicators of cultural direction like Starter Marriage, Goldilocks Economy and something that has been hanging around pop culture for over 45 years, the Scooby Snack. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:02 AM PST - 16 comments

This past Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed new gun control legislation for California, enacting bills that limit magazine capacity to 10 bullets; require a background check for those purchasing ammunition; and restrict the lending of firearms, and other effects from the six bills he signed, while vetoing five others. These laws further set California as one of the top states for gun laws, though gun rights activists area already saying they won't comply with the laws. But California wasn't the only state to act, with a recently passed law Hawaiian law placing gun owners into a national database, which expands the existing federal system known as "Rap Back" to track ongoing criminal history reported on individuals holding positions of trust, such as school teachers.
posted by filthy light thief at 6:05 PM PST - 165 comments

HALLELUJAH [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 5:57 PM PST - 27 comments

Nuclear Family presents: Underwritten Female Character: the Movie.
posted by frumiousb at 3:54 PM PST - 35 comments

$7 for Corn Flakes? Cereal Gets Makeover at Kellogg’s Store in Times Square [The New York Times] In a brave new world of breakfast food, replete with to-go bars and microwaveable sandwiches, companies like Kellogg’s and General Mills have seen their cereal sales decline over the past decade. Now, in hopes of helping its customers to rethink cereal, Kellogg’s plans to open a branded boutique in Times Square on Monday, charging Manhattan prices — as much as $7.50 — for bowls of Frosted Flakes and Raisin Bran. The cereal will be garnished with foodie flair — like lemon zest and green tea powder — to help justify those prices. “It’s all about honoring tradition but looking differently at a bowl of cereal,” said Anthony Rudolf, who will operate the store, called Kellogg’s NYC.
posted by Fizz at 3:14 PM PST - 125 comments

This is a thing: Hot Cross Buns feat. poplocking Ironman ~ Batman Finger Family ~ Spider-Man, Captain America, and KeanuHulk get their Wee Willie Winkie on ~ Wheels come off the bus on a superhero field trip ~ Spider-Man and Hulk fight and sing. Meanwhile, Superman makes a difficult phone call.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:30 PM PST - 46 comments

Dale Sanderson is a third generation map nerd (and professional cartographer) and the creator of USEnds.com an extensive site full of photos of and trivia about US highway endpoints. Submit your own!
posted by jessamyn at 11:17 AM PST - 34 comments

Relax during this long weekend in the US by getting a baby to do your housework. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:55 AM PST - 27 comments

Heavy Metal and Natural Language Processing - Part 1 Consider the lyrics of metal music as a dataset. What can we learn?

Behold a word cloud of an awful lot of metal lyrics, swear words plotted against readability, and a denogram of metal bands' comparative lyrical groupings. Brood upon lists of most and least metal words. Wonder at the term frequency -Inverse document frequency of "Orgasmatron." And don't miss the lurking haikus. (via) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 7:31 AM PST - 24 comments

The Best Strawberry You've Never Had - "The strawberry is native throughout the northern hemispheres. It is, weirdly enough—along with the apple and stone fruits like the peach—a member of the rose family... It is an incredible-tasting fruit. A fraise de bois tastes like you've never really eaten a strawberry before. Everything is magnified: It's both much more acidic and much sweeter than any supermarket strawberry. It's rich and powerful, reminding you why the Greeks saw the strawberry as a symbol of Venus." (via)
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 71 comments

As previously announced, Garrison Keillor (previously on the blue) has stepped down from hosting A Prairie Home Companion a public radio show which he has hosted (with some substantial breaks) for 42 years. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:09 PM PST - 110 comments

Pyrotechnic Party of Legend, Killed Off by Social Media “We were strictly illegal, until the end,” Mr. Schjeldahl told me recently. “The cops and firemen brought their families. This is libertarian country.” Last year, the pyrotechnics hewed more closely to legitimacy — a technical supervisor was even on the premises — but that party turned out to be the last, after approximately 2,000 people showed up, word of it having reached a vast universe of Brooklyn millennials via social media, a means of communication Mr. Schjeldahl and his wife have never employed.
posted by dersins at 3:22 PM PST - 38 comments

‘The Arrangements’: A Work of Fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [The New York Times] The New York Times Book Review asked the acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to write a short story about the American election. A second work of election fiction — by a different writer — will follow this fall. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Israel news website Haaretz.com reports on the death of Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust and went on to become an influential author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has died, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem said on Saturday. Born in 1928, Wiesel wrote extensively of his imprisonment in Nazi camps and in 1986 won the Nobel Prize for peace. [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 1:11 PM PST - 134 comments

Matthew Kirschenbaum talks to The Atlantic about his book on the history of word processing, what early word processing looked like, early adopter Len Deighton, and how writers of all kinds adapted to the new technology.
posted by Artw at 11:41 AM PST - 28 comments

If you have a small kid they have probably spent countless hours with characters such as Barbie, Dora the Explorer and Frozen's Elsa. Now you can scar them for life and instill some valuable life lessons about personal hygiene and healthcare in general with gross and weird video games such as Dora dentist day, Dora hair care, Elsa Arm Surgery, Barbie Sore Throat, Nail Surgery And Foot Spa 2, Sole Surgery, Jimmy At The Doctor, Barbie Shave, Cinderella Pumpkin Accident, Hello Kitty Care, Justin Bieber At The Doctor, Pregnant Ariel Injured, Dentist Fear, Ladybug Skin Doctor, Elsa Brain Doctor.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:53 AM PST - 33 comments

The 50 Best Animated Films of the 21st Century Thus Far from The Film Stage is the kind of list that will raise discussions about whether certain films deserved to be at the top of the list and whether some near the bottom deserved to be on the list at all, but it shows the impressive diversity of quality recent animation: 2D, 3D, stop-motion, and even rotoscopes and supermarianation, from American studios other than Pixar, Japanese studios other than Ghibli, other countries entirely, animation auteurs and filmmakers best known for NOT animation. Argue away about specifics, but just see how cool it is that at least 50 great animated films have just gotten made in the last 15 years. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:10 AM PST - 93 comments

Remember how Gay Talese was writing a non-fiction book about Gerald Foos and his voyeurism? Well, not so fast on the non-fiction part. Talese will no longer promote the book, and blames Foos, calling him a dishonourable man.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:58 PM PST - 47 comments

Washington's Department of Transportation (WSDOT)is making the best of event-related traffic closures/slow downs/traffic by unleashing their best staff artists on Twitter. [more inside]
posted by vespabelle at 9:56 PM PST - 12 comments

Overwatch, Blizzard's new game, incorporates a 'play of the game' highlight after each match. How does it work, and what gets picked?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:52 PM PST - 62 comments

"The very term 'country' can be controversial. Who decides what is a country and what isn't? The criterion used in this document is simple: if the USPS lists it in its Index to Countries and Localities, we treat it as a country. Thus some localities (such as Reunion Island) that are not distinct countries are listed, whereas other localities that consider themselves countries (such as Western Sahara) are not listed (but still discussed). Rationale: if you address mail from the USA to WESTERN SAHARA, the USPS won't know what to do with it. If you want to send mail to SAINT PIERRE AND MIQUELON (a part of France that is in Canada) from the USA, it doesn't make sense for the mail to go all the way to France and back." Frank's Compulsive Guide to Country Addresses
posted by threeants at 6:43 PM PST - 29 comments

"I don't know why it's so hard for you to believe I could be happy." The official trailer for season three of Bojack Horseman is out now, following the release of the teaser trailer in May. Bojack Horseman previously: 1, 2, 3 and in FanFare.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:48 PM PST - 22 comments

You don't need to learn How To Be Canadian to participate, but it couldn't hurt. Pick a delicious dish from What To Eat and enjoy the classic Canadian, Please by honeychip and gunnarolla (gunnarolla previously).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:33 PM PST - 50 comments

Furry musicians FoxAmoore (previously and previously) and PepperCoyote (also making music as Look Left) debut their new album #hashtag live at Anthrocon. [1h5m] Recorded July 1, 2016, just about an hour ago. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:53 PM PST - 22 comments

So why is it we still call him an idiot? Why is it when a semi-professional footballer is done for drug dealing, Sterling’s face is used to sell the story on social media?

Carl Anka: We need to talk about Raheem Sterling.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:21 PM PST - 21 comments

On May 7th, 2016, Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was driving via the Autopilot feature of his 2015 Model S in Williston, FL, when it collided with a tractor-trailer making a left turn. This marks the first known fatal accident involving an autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle, and is being investigated by NHTSA. Tesla declined to answer if it will disable Autopilot, noting that, "...[t]his is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles.” In light of recent accidents (Wired, Geekwire), who's to blame when a self-driving car crashes? And how should autonomous vehicles respond to an impending collision (Science, open access)? [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 1:08 PM PST - 126 comments

Comics colorist Jordie Bellaire on the art of coloring and stealing from the greats
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:58 PM PST - 6 comments

On May 23, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella addressed the Yale Law School. She told the graduating students the very relevant story of her father's experience before, during and after the Holocaust.
posted by bearwife at 12:28 PM PST - 9 comments

"The personal essay format demands that women reveal everything, often to the point of absurdity, while also allowing men to get away with vague metaphors and platitudes. On one end of the spectrum you have “I’m Glad My Friend Killed Herself,” and on the other end you have, "I Did Some Bad Shit, But All You Need To Know Is That I’m Dealing With It, Manfully."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:56 AM PST - 19 comments

Marble machine maker Martin Molin (previously) is back, with two new instruments and one song [SLYT]
posted by effbot at 11:53 AM PST - 5 comments

Interview with Barack Obama (NPR's Steve Inskeep). "And I believe that our politics — when our politics are at our best — is not based on identity politics, but it's based on a sense that everybody should have a fair shot and everybody should get a fair shake. Everybody should be responsible for doing their fair share, and you know, that theme you'll see in every speech that I've given since I was running for the state Senate, and it hasn't changed much now that I am nearing the end of my political career."
posted by bluesky43 at 11:03 AM PST - 48 comments

This candid 2011 talk about the history of OpenSolaris fork Illumos doubles as a history of the late Silicon Valley giant Sun, its engineering and corporate culture, its disastrous acquisition by Oracle, and the rise of open source in the 2000's. [more inside]
posted by whir at 10:53 AM PST - 21 comments

Happy Friday! Here's a video of a bear procedurally dancing to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer". [nsfw Trent Reznor singing]
posted by naju at 10:25 AM PST - 42 comments

A Brief History of Terrible Yogurt Commercials Targeted at Women [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:43 AM PST - 96 comments

To mark the website's final day, The Toast posted a note from Hillary Clinton about the site. [SLToast] [more inside]
posted by sgranade at 8:20 AM PST - 124 comments

A list of extremes of conventional music notation. "Conventional Western music notation is far more complex and subtle than most people think. In particular, it does not have well-defined borders; it just fades away indefinitely in all directions."
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:18 AM PST - 25 comments

The ambiguous cylinder illusion (youtube) - finalist for Illusion of the Year 2016. More up-to-date illusions!
posted by moonmilk at 8:15 AM PST - 29 comments

Johnny Bench, the Chicken and an oral history of The Baseball Bunch [more inside]
posted by The Gooch at 7:33 AM PST - 4 comments

Buzzfeed is currently coming under fire from various creators: Akilah Hughes claims that Buzzfeed plagiarised her videos, Gaby Dunn speaks up against the no-compete clause that led to 2 colleagues being fired for appearing in another websseries (response by Buzzfeed Motion Pictures head Ze Frank), and Kat Blaque talks about the exploitation of intellectual labour from marginalized people for Buzzfeed content.
posted by divabat at 7:24 AM PST - 42 comments

What's wrong with worshipping a tree?
posted by Dumsnill at 5:50 AM PST - 13 comments

BBC: Commemorations are taking place to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme in World War One. Guns were fired in central London ahead of a two-minute silence at the time the battle commenced at 07:30 on 1 July 1916. Ever wondered what life would have been like for you 100 years ago?, Why was the first day of the Somme such a disaster? [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 2:56 AM PST - 33 comments