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Matthew Gleeson (LA Review of Books, 6/26/2020), "... Remembering Amparo Dávila": "She made a name for herself as a writer in Mexico in the 1950s and 1960s, then fell out of sight sometime after the 1970s, only to be rediscovered and lauded, at the beginning of the new millennium, as one of the country's great masters of the short story." Several of Amparo Dávila's stories are available online: "The Houseguest" (audio in Spanish), "The Tomb Garden," "Oscar" (related waltzes), "The Breakfast" (related song), and "The Cell." Interviews with the author in Spanish and the translators in English. Relevant 2018 Worldcon panel on women writing horror in Mexico (plus the free Mexicanx Initiative SF anthology, A Larger Reality, still at Dropbox).
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:25 PM PST - 3 comments

Which AI are you? Janelle Shane (previously; Twitter) led her neural network to produce a somewhat surreal personality quiz. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:56 PM PST - 24 comments

Today, I was introduced to the work of British photographer Ingrid Pollard by our favourite tweeting museum. Diving into her work, I found her doctoral disseration (Westminster, 2016), and the thread pointed to a journal article (Kinsman, 1995) analysing (Bertrand, 2014) her body of work.
posted by infini at 12:27 PM PST - 3 comments

On Sex with Demons. With demon sperm trending in the news, Medievalist Dr. Eleanor Janega takes a brief look back at the rich medieval history of horny devils: "See the devil can’t make his own semen, being as he is incapable of making life, so in order to get his hands on fresh come, he transforms himself into a succubus, has sex with a dude, nabs the semen from said dude, then transforms himself into an incubus, shags a witch and injects the stolen jizz in order to knock her up."
posted by Kabanos at 10:31 AM PST - 99 comments

The University of San Antonio Texas Libraries Special Collections is curating a special collection of historic Mexican recipes as free e-books. This will be a three volume endeavor and they've saved the best for first - Postres (Desserts). [more inside]
posted by brookeb at 8:53 AM PST - 10 comments

Nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica launched The NYPD Files in a hurry - after New York lawmakers repealed a law that kept the public from seeing police discipline records, ProPublica filed a records request, and then police unions sued to keep the records secret, without realizing that ProPublica had those records. Now you can search NYPD complaints for abuse of authority, unnecessary force, and even discourtesy. [more inside]
posted by kristi at 7:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Ibrahim Maalouf is a French-Lebanese jazz trumpeter and composer.
Here are a few concerts from his YT feed:
LIVE IN ISTANBUL - 07/06/2013
Alcaline 1/25/2016
North Sea Jazz Festival Holland 2014
Paléo Festival 2012
[more inside]
posted by growabrain at 4:23 AM PST - 5 comments

Why Every Star Wars Film Has The Wrong Title (1 minute TikTok video) Or watch it here on Twitter if you don't like TikTok.
posted by straight at 11:13 PM PST - 104 comments

In a series of letters sent between Frankfurt and San Diego during the tumult of the late 1960s, German intellectuals Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse debated protest tactics, "left fascism," and the use of force to maintain social order. A half century later, their arguments still resonate amid the unrest sweeping the United States.

These letters between Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were translated by Esther Leslie and originally published as “Correspondence on the German Student Movement” [paywall] in New Left Review, issue 233. [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 5:46 PM PST - 3 comments

Swifts spend all their time in the sky. What can their journeys tell us about the future? (SLNYT)
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:49 PM PST - 31 comments

Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity's new report Not Fit-For-Purpose concludes that multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) to certify food or consumer products as “sustainable,” “fair,” or “ethical” have failed because (1) they were neither designed nor operated to be rights holder-centric, and (2) the inclusion of corporations in the initiatives entrenched the power imbalance between stakeholders such that key drivers of abuse went unaddressed. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:55 PM PST - 5 comments

In late spring of 1996, Porno for Pyros released their second album, Good God's Urge. Unlike the seedy LA vibe of the first album, Urge referenced the South Pacific in mood (not so much the style), and featured traditional Balinese dancing in the "Tahitian Moon" video. This would be the band's last studio release. Members of Love & Rockets and Red Hot Chili Peppers guest on the album, and "Freeway" features a reunion with Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro. [more inside]
posted by SoundInhabitant at 12:56 PM PST - 6 comments

On Every Page May I Present A Lion or An Elephant
A children's poem by Soviet Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsy, illustrated by Futurist artist Kirill Zdanevich, translated by Mayakovsky expert Dr Rosy Carrick.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:11 AM PST - 8 comments

The robotic conquest of Mars continues with 3 new missions officially on the way! The United Arab Emirates launched the first Arab interplanetary probe, called Hope, on July 19, China sent Tianwen-1 off on Jul 23, which includes an orbiter and lander, and NASA has followed up with the Perseverance rover, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter. All of this is paving the way for eventual crewed exploration of the red planet!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:56 AM PST - 27 comments

Starting in 2013, Chapati Mystery (previously) has hosted interviews with scholars about their research in South Asian Studies. "The XQs (Ten Questions) series is a conversation with first-book authors in South Asian Studies (broadly understood). Our aim is not to 'review' but to contextualize, historicize, and promote new scholarship." Recent interviews discuss "jihadism" and the problems of doing anthropological work during the War On Terror, the trading world of the medieval Indian Ocean, demarcation of cities and the stigmas on "slums", and the "fascinating quasi-ethnographer-poet-journalist-reformer" Behramji Merwanji Malabari (1853-1912). [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 7:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Playlists: Series 1, Series 2. This is a PSA via Kottke.
posted by carter at 5:32 AM PST - 20 comments

No Fun Mondays (YouTube playlist) Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong has been releasing YouTube videos with covers he recorded at his home studio. "While we’ve all been in quarantine I’ve been reflecting on the things that matter the most in my life. Family, friends and of course music." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:11 AM PST - 13 comments

Economics is a disgrace - "The indignities are astounding..." Claudia Sahm -- macromom -- a former Fed economist (with her own rule and automatic stabilizer) rips the economics priesthood a new one.[1,2] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:00 AM PST - 48 comments

"... and rock-star self-care" Alanis and Liz were supposed to tour this summer. That's not happening. The LA Times (paywalled, limited articles) brought them together for a conversation about all kinds of things, but mostly about mental health through the pandemic, and songwriting, and the patriarchy within the music business. Article written by Liz Phair.
posted by hippybear at 9:27 PM PST - 11 comments

Segregated By Design examines the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy. Website here.
posted by UhOhChongo! at 7:56 PM PST - 10 comments

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (previously) is streaming 59 episodes of historic PBS series Black Journal. More here about Black Journal.
posted by anshuman at 5:13 PM PST - 2 comments

"A couple of months ago, NPR reporter Lulu Miller tweeted a question. She knew a 5-year-old who was texting exclusively in emoji, and wondered if were there any studies about kids, too young to read, who used emoji to communicate. People wouldn't stop tagging me in the thread, but we couldn't find any existing studies, so I decided to run a survey and make a small corpus of my own." Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language: Children Are Using Emoji for Digital-Age Language Learning (WIRED).
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:11 PM PST - 27 comments

On September 20th, 2019, millions of people around the world took to the streets in the youth-organized and youth-lead Global Climate Strike, protesting against political inaction around the climate crisis. It was the largest environmental protest in history. And yet, it was not even the most impactful action against fossil capital which took place that week. [more inside]
posted by Ouverture at 3:00 PM PST - 11 comments

Ever wanted your very own 1991 Macintosh Quadra running Mac OS 8? macintosh.js is here for you: a free Mac OS 8 virtual machine running in an Electron app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Even better, it comes with games, apps, and demos preinstalled including Oregon Trail, Duke Nukem 3D, Civilization II, Photoshop 3, Premiere 4, Illustrator 5.5, StuffIt Expander, the Apple Web Page Construction Kit, and more.
posted by adrianhon at 12:32 PM PST - 66 comments

Rhiannon Giddens has been named artistic director of Silkroad. Silkroad was founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 1998, and conceived on the question "What happens when strangers meet?". What happened when Rhiannon and Yo-Yo met: They created a piece of music that gives texture to these times. [more inside]
posted by weft at 12:17 PM PST - 15 comments

Their Tube. What Youtube looks like to them. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:46 AM PST - 30 comments

Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land is a memoir by Noé Álvarez that begins his freshman year of college, when raw and lonely and feeling out of place as the working class kid of Mexican immigrants, he dropped out to run with Peace and Dignity Journeys. Every four years, this spiritual run connects Indigenous peoples from across the Americas, with runners starting in Chickaloon, Alaska and in Tierra del Fuego Argentina. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:20 AM PST - 3 comments

Assisted by machine learning, artists and photographers are beginning to flesh out centuries-old paintings, statues and sculptures into portraits of living human beings not seen for thousands of years. In one quarantine project, Dan Voshart used Artbreeder, Photoshop, and meticulous research to create photoreal portraits of the 54 Emperors of the Roman Principate. Using similar technologies, Bas Uterwijk uses art sources to recreate the living people behind them: [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:34 AM PST - 29 comments

Insect art: Eye makeup " I distinctly remember getting some strange looks when I wore my somewhat dramatic Bolivian dwarf beauty tarantula (Cyriocosmus perezmilesi) look to pop out for a pint of milk, but generally people are really nice."
posted by dhruva at 6:41 AM PST - 14 comments

["The UK according to cakes and biscuits"] Wrong! Right! Take a close look; despite the dangers of 1 more biscuit a day (71 more?), and figuring out oddly contradictory advice, Brits choose to splurge and dunk or "suck the melting chocolate" instead. M&S launch the Extremely Chocolatey All-Butter Milk Chocolate, McVitie's the Luscious Blood Orange, and Lotus Biscoff Cream Sandwiches are a thing, as are dispensers and retro ice lolly alikes. And for this Christmas, or those wanting their 5-a-day (related: Jammy Dodgers are also vegan). Questions remain! Who is biscuit man? How do you pronounce Nice? Or this? Is Boris in the pocket of Big Tim Tam and were Penguins involved? Or make your own pinwheel cookies. Other options are available.
posted by Wordshore at 6:03 AM PST - 50 comments

BoingBoing brings us Transfiguration, a walking creature that... changes. Here's the same video broken out into a full window.
posted by hippybear at 8:41 PM PST - 29 comments

"The flowers on my eggplants are getting full." Vivien Sansour, founder of The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, ponders the eggplant, the aubergine—bitinjan (باذنجان).
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:44 PM PST - 11 comments

Biologists Revive 101.5-Million-Year-Old Microbes - "A team of biologists from Japan and the United States has successfully revived aerobic microbes found in 101.5-million-year-old sediments from the abyssal plain of the South Pacific Gyre." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:38 PM PST - 52 comments

Have you ever dreamed of seeing Spongebob Squarepants re-imagined as a seinen anime? Of course you have. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by Anonymous at 4:05 PM PST - 13 comments

Denise Lu listens to transit chimes from Europe, Asia, and North America [SL Medium].
posted by invokeuse at 2:34 PM PST - 20 comments

Australian authorities are warning that “virtual kidnappings” could be on the rise as anonymous criminals seek to exploit Chinese students in the country and their families back home (NYT). Students are convinced, via robocall, that they must check into a hotel and turn off their phone for their safety. Meanwhile, parents receive a digitally-manipulated ransom video of their child.
posted by adrianhon at 12:20 PM PST - 26 comments

The Hood Internet has completed their ambitious '79-'89 project, comprising over 550 songs, ~50 from each year of the eighties (1979 is an honorary eighties year for this purpose), mashed up into roughly half an hour of music. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 12:13 PM PST - 34 comments

"Those laws, artificially restricting what women can do, will not come back. Ever."

Take us back to when you first started, when you wanted to practice as a lawyer but it was difficult for you to do that. In the 1950s, you were attending Harvard Law School. You were one of nine women in a class numbering over 500.

posted by infini at 9:41 AM PST - 21 comments

How memory starts out as an oral process, and then goes into stable records, and mostly fades. "The report, “The universal decay of collective memory and attention,” concludes that people and things are kept alive through “oral communication” from about five to 30 years. They then pass into written and online records, where they experience a slower, longer decline. The paper argues that people and things that make the rounds at the water cooler have a higher probability of settling into physical records. “Changes in communication technologies, such as the rise of the printing press, radio and television,” it says, affect our degree of attention, and all of our cultural products, from songs to scientific papers, “follow a universal decay function.” [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:12 AM PST - 23 comments

“If you’re going to take a moonshot, you may as well do it exactly the way you want to” After Quitting Deadspin in Protest, They’re Starting a New Site (SLNYT)
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:18 AM PST - 40 comments

An American redditor asks: What is the story with that funky orange/red that shows up on Copenhagen walls?
Small discussion ensues, and an architecture student posts an explainer video about Paint and Color in Denmark
posted by growabrain at 5:19 AM PST - 8 comments

The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:55 PM PST - 33 comments

Steven Soderbergh did a black-and-white cut of Raiders of the Lost Ark with music by Trent Reznor and no dialog.
posted by w0mbat at 8:56 PM PST - 67 comments

[BBC] Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto, known for styling musician David Bowie, has died at the age of 76, his family said. Yamamoto designed some of Bowie's most famous outfits including those of the singer's alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The designer had been diagnosed with leukaemia and died last Tuesday, his daughter said in a statement on Monday. Yamamoto was known for his colourful creations and incorporating traditional Japanese designs into fashion. "In my eyes, my father was not only the eclectic and energetic soul that the world knew him as, but someone who was also thoughtful, kind-hearted and affectionate," his daughter Yamamoto Mirai said. "He valued communication and showered me with love throughout my entire life," she added. [more inside]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 7:19 PM PST - 8 comments

An Insane Secret Diary Was Written On The Floorboards Of A French Castle "While crafting the floor between 1880 to 1881, Martin apparently had plenty of free time to take up the art of journaling. He wrote 72 entries over several months, carefully penciling them onto the floorboards before flipping them over and nailing them down." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:49 PM PST - 14 comments

Remember when sourdough was a thing? What was that all about? When We Were Bread Heads.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:33 PM PST - 60 comments

The first ever season of Internet league blaseball ended with a blang yesterday when the fans, given the power to vote new decrees into the sport, chose to open the Forbidden Book (despite intern-turned-commissioner Parker asking them please not to). [more inside]
posted by taquito sunrise at 3:58 PM PST - 55 comments

If your lifelong dream is to hear dril posts read aloud by a stilted, computer-generated Gilbert Gottfried (or Judi Dench, or Dr. Phil, or thirty-odd other celebrities*), vo.codes is the website for you. [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 2:53 PM PST - 15 comments

Dance, Dance, while the hive collapses. A poem by Tiffany Higgins.
posted by storybored at 2:33 PM PST - 2 comments

Sure, Batman and Iron Man are out there working for the public good, but Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are still filthy stinking rich and have been since birth. With that, they no doubt take advantage of every tax break, deduction and loophole they can get their hands on. As Batman and Iron Man spend their time stopping purse snatchers, pummeling the mentally ill and saving the city from rogue nuclear bombs, I want to know how they’re cheating the public via their accountants and tax lawyers. And so, I spoke to three tax experts to see what exactly these two are getting away with. Three Tax Experts on the Tax Breaks Batman and Iron Man Must Have Gotten
posted by chavenet at 1:09 PM PST - 47 comments

Wilson’s Phalarope forages in the water
Wilson’s Phalarope forages in the mud
Wilson’s Phalarope forages in a pool (more normally)
Wilson’s Phalarope forages on a log (more normally)
All about Wilson’s Phalarope according to Cornell, according to Audubon [more inside]
posted by Going To Maine at 12:29 PM PST - 11 comments

Kleric (previously) posts entertaining YouTube videos showing off glitches and tricks in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Tricks like, how physics changes during 'bullet time' and how to make a 'spaceship' out of a Guardian and a boat, how to make a stable flying machine out of two minecars, information on causing 'glitched blood moons', shield sliding, hold smuggling, creating a flood of Ancient parts, what 'skew' is and how to take advantage of it, menu overloading basics and a better way to do it, how to ensure the day/night timer never begins, and how to make as many horses as your little equine-loving heart desires. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 12:17 PM PST - 6 comments

Only 3 games into an already shortened season and baseball is in trouble again. At least 14 players and coaches on the Miami Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19, cancelling the home opener and inviting further questions if having a season is a good idea this year during a nationwide pandemic (it's not). [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 11:25 AM PST - 103 comments

An access ramp as an artistic object. In 2004, then medieval studies scholar Alice Sheppard saw disabled dancer Homer Avila (2002 performance) take the stage. That performance and his dare that she take a dance class led to her current life as a choreographer and artistic director of Kinetic Light production company. Her dance piece DESCENT imagines a queer love affair between Andromeda and Venus. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:14 AM PST - 3 comments

The kids in the playground whirled faster and faster around each other. By the time Eric and Sandra caught a break in the traffic and made it across the street, the game had turned ugly. They were moving almost too fast to see, but from the glimpses he got, the kids had already begun catching one another. Each had sunk at least one arm into the back of the child in front of them, their bodies fusing haphazardly. One poor girl’s leg seemed to have melted into that of the boy she followed, and their stumbling gait made the whole kid-circle wobble unevenly. "Everything's Fine": a short story by Matthew Pridham to encapsulate a year of collapse. [more inside]
posted by Lonnrot at 10:36 AM PST - 9 comments

Japanese Firemen’s Coats (19th century) "Each firefighter in a given brigade was outfitted with a special reversible coat , plain but for the name of the brigade on one side and decorated with richly symbolic imagery on the other."
posted by dhruva at 5:09 AM PST - 20 comments

"Romance centers stories of love and connection and belonging, but it's also about accountability." In her keynote speech for this year's virtual Spring Fling conference, Alyssa Cole highlights what it really means to demand happily ever afters for everyone. "America is the protagonist that refuses to grovel, refuses to admit the sins of the past, and refuses to make amends. I don't know about you, but I think that I'm allowed to expect as much from this country as I would from a repentant rake." Need a recommendation for romance novels continuing to push us forward? Carole V. Bell writes about finding Black joy in romance novels and the special alchemy of African-American history and historical romance.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 8:37 PM PST - 8 comments

Just a few weeks after turning 104, actress Olivia de Havilland - one of the last surviving performers from Hollywood's "Golden Age" - died yesterday in her home in Paris. She is most likely best known for her role as Melanie in Gone With The Wind, but personally preferred some of her other works - including pursuing the lawsuit that put the first crack in the old Hollywood studio system and granted greater freedom to screen actors in her wake. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:15 PM PST - 52 comments

Chanson Profonde. A world-weary yet passionate cat artiste sings from the heart (in French, of course). Cello played by Yo-Yo Ma, piano played by Michael Ford, accordion played by un invité surprise. Brought to you by singer (and animatreuse) Sandra Boynton
posted by Mchelly at 7:45 PM PST - 13 comments

30 years today, The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by then-President H. W. Bush. The ADA has had powerful impacts on the lives of disabled people, opening up public spaces and mandating communication access for all. But the law was not simply gifted like alms to the pitable. The ADA came to be after decades of struggle and activism, notably the 1990 Capitol Crawl and the 1988 Deaf President Now protests [previously]. Today, on the 30 year anniversary, Alice Wong reflects: we may have come a long way, but we still have far to go.
posted by sciatrix at 2:03 PM PST - 40 comments

It’s got a metal cover, a song ft. Bon Iver, a song about the people who used to live in her house, an uncanny resemblance, a secret bonus song, an isolation manifesto, a cardigan for Natalia Bryant, 8 deluxe vinyl editions and 8 deluxe CD editions, huge initial sales, and rave reviews. It’s folklore [Spotify link, but there are others], the [surprise] new album from Taylor Swift.
posted by chavenet at 12:40 PM PST - 47 comments

Verity Lambert is remembered mostly for the role she played in bringing Doctor Who to the screen, but her legacy runs far deeper. She defined a generation of British TV. [more inside]
posted by adrianhon at 12:37 PM PST - 4 comments

David Nicol (Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! 2/14/2019), "14 February, 1595 - Long Meg of Westminster": "The most important repository of Long Meg tales is a jest-book (a collection of short, funny stories) entitled The Life of Long Meg of Westminster, which was first published in 1590, although the earliest surviving copy dates from 1635 ... Meg at first works in a tavern in Westminster, but then sets up her own in Islington ... She frequently cross-dresses and beats up men who annoy her. Later she goes to the wars in France and performs valiant acts as a soldier." See also Patricia Shaw's "Mad Moll and Merry Meg" [PDF] or Patricia Gartenberg's "An Elizabethan Wonder Woman" [preview only]. Henslowe's Diary is on hiatus until Oct. 27 because "increase of sickness is feared."
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:59 AM PST - 4 comments

"This Girl Makes is an [UK-based, non-binary and trans-inclusive] on and offline community of designers and makers with events and DIY kits that celebrate and promote women in craft and design."
posted by jedicus at 10:14 AM PST - 2 comments

For nonprofit news site Rest of World, which covers global tech stories, Morris Kiruga reports on a popular fintech app in Kenya and Nigeria that shames users who are late with their payments. The absence of regulation has many perks for the sector and one major liability: As companies soon discovered, if a user does not pay back what they have borrowed, plus interest, there is little a digital lender can do. ...(but) flag defaulters to one of Kenya’s three credit reference bureaus (CRBs), effectively locking them out of the credit market. ... Between 2014 and 2017, about 2.7 million Kenyans were negatively listed with a CRB, 15 percent of them for defaulting on loans of less than about $2. Last year, “how to check CRB status” was among the most-Googled questions in Kenya, between “how to be successful in life” and “how to get pregnant.” [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:06 AM PST - 7 comments

Asia's vital rivers - "The headwaters of 10 major rivers originate near some of Earth's highest points. Known as the world's 'third pole', the land of Mount Everest and other peaks holds the largest concentration of perennial ice outside of the polar regions. Along with snow and rain from the mountains, this ice helps supply the river basins below that support the water, food, and energy needs of almost two billion people." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:11 AM PST - 6 comments

From AVClub: "John Saxon has died. A veteran actor, whose battles alongside Bruce Lee, and against Freddy Krueger, were just two major highlights of a 60-plus year career, Saxon appeared in nearly 200 films and TV shows. He played killers, teen heartthrobs, cops—a lot of cops—and many other parts during his long tenure in Hollywood and abroad, exploring pretty much every angle on genre cinema in the process. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Saxon died of pneumonia earlier today. He was 83."
posted by valkane at 9:10 PM PST - 45 comments

Many expected my rise in the adult world, including many in the adult world itself, to be a flash in the pan. It was a stunt. I wasn’t serious. No one from mainstream ever is—like mainstream is a place you go and can never look back. But that’s what makes this story different: my genuine love for adult performance and for colorful cinema. My story is a journey rather than a cautionary tale. And I was ready to prove the naysayers wrong. How Porn Saved Me From Hollywood by Maitland Ward [Article is SFW, but it's about the porn industry]
posted by chavenet at 12:34 PM PST - 27 comments

Beyond Moldy Jam: The Inside Story of What Went Wrong at Sqirl. A story of gentrification, stolen recipes, a derailed jam empire, and the making and breaking of a burgeoning celebrity chef: perennial LA hotspot Sqirl's "Genius of Jam" Jessica Koslow. [more inside]
posted by joechip at 12:29 PM PST - 44 comments

Peter Green, the founder of Fleetwood Mac has died. Back in the day, there was graffiti in London claiming that "Clapton is God". They were wrong.
posted by epo at 11:15 AM PST - 43 comments

Tom Scott visualises a million dollars vs a billion dollars in a one-dimensional way. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 11:10 AM PST - 25 comments

Experimental Blood Test Detects Cancer up to Four Years before Symptoms Appear [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:32 AM PST - 33 comments

Poet Jillian Weise on living as a Common Cyborg. "Maybe this feeling of trial-and-error, repetition and glitch, is part of the cyborg condition and, by extension, the disabled condition." Included in the fantastic new anthology Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the 21st Century edited by Alice Wong. Weise's satirical persona Tipsy Tullivan, a "nondisabled Southern writer who has really good intentions," was created out of exasperation and frustration after her complaints to a writer’s conference about access were repeatedly ignored. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:48 AM PST - 9 comments

Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase unveiled trailers this week for Forza Motorsport, Tell Me Why, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, Avowed, The Medium, Psychonauts 2, Fable, and more. Their flagship, Halo Infinite, was met with decidedly cool reactions – and while some lauded Microsoft for including every game in its Xbox Game Pass subscription bundle, others suggested Microsoft still hasn't made the case for Xbox Series X.
posted by adrianhon at 6:47 AM PST - 32 comments

Social Darwinism from AIDS to Covid-19
posted by latkes at 9:58 PM PST - 10 comments

An Oral History of Big Mouth Billy Bass This is absolutely priceless and a must read for sheer hilarity. Take a guy who'd rather make silly toys than work in Washington. Have his wife come up with a silly idea. Add a fish head that turns and a few songs and it's magic. The fish has made it to movies, television, to the Bush family. There's a restaurant that will adopt your Big Mouth Billy Bass and give it a good home. There's an art car. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:14 PM PST - 39 comments

"But information is physical. Modern research shows that it requires energy and occupies space. Any volume of space is known to have a finite information capacity (with the densest possible information storage happening inside black holes). The universe’s initial conditions would, Gisin realized, require far too much information crammed into too little space. “A real number with infinite digits can’t be physically relevant,” he said."Physicist Nicolas Gisin is seeking to describe a physics that doesn't presume infinitely precise knowledge of initial conditions. (Atlantic) [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 6:46 PM PST - 42 comments

Spend More on Society and Get More for Yourself - "The coronavirus crisis demonstrates a basic truth. American individualism has made individuals unhappy and, too frequently, sick. There is another way, an economist says." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:09 PM PST - 19 comments

@Bigger6Romantix (7/23/2020, Twitter), "Looking for a great (and free!) teaching resource? Transatlantic Romanticism: An Anthology of British, American, and Canadian Literature 1767–1867 (eds. Lance Newman, Joel Pace & Chris Koenig-Woodyard) is now online!" [as a PDF from 2006--"a #Bigger6-inflected" 2nd ed. is planned]. Somewhat related: Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, Amy R. Wong (LA Review of Books, 7/10/2020), "Undisciplining Victorian Studies": "This essay challenges the racism that undergirds Victorian Studies and maintains it, demographically, as an almost entirely white field"; and Nathan K. Hensley (blog, 7/21/2020), "The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 10th Edition: Volume E, The Victorian Age. Reader's comments": "Any anthology freezes into solidity a certain vision of the field of inquiry it delimits. So what is the vision of the field marked out by the Victorian Norton's 10th edition?"
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:28 AM PST - 3 comments

An engineer, in fine engineer fashion, decides to save time making perler bead sprite art by hand by spending nine months iterating on a modified perler bead 3D printer.
posted by cortex at 9:47 AM PST - 25 comments

When records are not replayed, they become fleeting fads in the eyes of history. In the case of “Wild Wild West,” the only people who understood its importance were those who were there in 1999, at peak Will Smith. But, some songs will survive—the ones most recognized by Gen Z. Defining the ’90s Music Canon, Part II of "How Music is Remembered" from The Pudding. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 8:05 AM PST - 184 comments

Harpist playing outdoors receives an unexpected visit from a new fan.
posted by merriment at 7:47 PM PST - 47 comments

These, then, are three distinct questions that the current debate over “free speech” runs together in a sloppy fashion: is the state engaging in acts of censorship? Are social sanctions against speech or beliefs too harsh? Is our media ecosystem sufficiently open? Failure to disentangle these questions has resulted in the current abysmal state of the conversation.

Adam Gurri tries to unravel some of the free speech/'cancel culture' debate.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:57 AM PST - 142 comments

High resolution footage from Mars [more inside]
posted by Transl3y at 8:36 AM PST - 33 comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Responds to Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) A powerful speech from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the inexcusability of dehumanizing language against women and not accepting non-apologies.
posted by toastyk at 8:34 AM PST - 129 comments

...is Welsh for "The Coronavirus job retention scheme". Shielding is gwarchod, which means protection, while continuous cough is the romantic-sounding peswch parhaus. These are in a mini-dictionary of the most commonly used coronavirus terms in Welsh. Meanwhile in Cardiff, PhD student Bedwyr Ab Ion Thomas, carrying out research into fatal diseases, formed Welsh words to explain his studies. Note: Everyone needs a cwtch.
posted by Wordshore at 8:22 AM PST - 13 comments

MLYT: 3 locations, 300 classic cars, an anonymous owner. Larry Kosilla has been asked to detail several cars ahead of an auction of rare, unique and custom cars collected over the last 50 years; Bizzarrini P538, '67 Corvette Stingray, with a promise of access to the third warehouse full of even more exotic vehicles. [more inside]
posted by Molesome at 7:04 AM PST - 33 comments

To me, queerness is about all of these things: transformation, growth, family, love, solidarity, self-determination, collective strength, and building a better world. Taken to be true, it makes perfect sense that magical girl and idol anime felt queer to their very core ten years ago, and feel exactly the same to me now. [more inside]
posted by one for the books at 10:41 PM PST - 7 comments

Most schools already struggle from a lack of resources; how could they possibly afford the mountain of safety measures that will need to be in place? Dave Grohl on remote learning in the Fall
posted by dfm500 at 8:01 PM PST - 21 comments

1D Chess. 2D Chess. 3D Chess. 4D Chess. 5D Chess.
posted by aspo at 7:56 PM PST - 26 comments

In the early 20th century, open air schools became fairly common in Northern Europe, originally designed to prevent and combat the widespread rise of tuberculosis that occurred in the period leading up to the Second World War. Schools were built on the concept that exposure to fresh air, good ventilation and exposure to the outside were paramount!
posted by rebent at 5:52 PM PST - 30 comments

The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy. Jenny Nicholson dissects the Brony Fandom in an easily digestible list, as she is known to do. She tracks the beginnings of Bronydom on 4chan as ironic fandom and its evolution into a community of genuine fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that are mostly male. [more inside]
posted by Megustalations at 1:46 PM PST - 28 comments

On Tuesday, the US reported more than 1,000 coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since May 29, and on Monday, Axios reported on the surge in coronavirus hospitalizations. Also on Tuesday, The Guardian reports Trump said the pandemic “will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better,” and urged Americans to wear masks, but laid out no strategy for how to reverse the country’s recent rise in new cases. In the meantime, the Guardian reports on a recent Axios-Ipsos poll finding the US public is increasingly skeptical of the Covid-19 death toll, even as public health experts, including those interviewed by Scientific American, explain how coronavirus death tolls are likely an underestimate. However, USA Today reports we'll need enormous numbers of Americans to test COVID-19 vaccines, and a 'very encouraging' 138,600 have signed up. [more inside]
posted by katra at 11:34 AM PST - 811 comments

Photographer Barbara Karant's project "820 Ebony/Jet" is a visual time capsule of the "core essence of the Johnson Publishing Company, the most influential African American–owned corporation of its day, and home to Ebony and Jet magazines. The 11- story building in downtown Chicago was designed by Black architect John Moutoussamy and the custom interiors showcased in the September 1972 issue of Ebony. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:27 AM PST - 8 comments

Tim Smith, the charismatic frontman of influential British rock band Cardiacs, has died at the age of 59.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 7:32 AM PST - 20 comments

[adult swim]'s Off the Air is now on the webtubes and having a 🆓 ②/㊼ 𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕙𝟘𝕟‼❣️ They're also hosting all ten seasons of the series' episodes. [previously–ly—...ly]
posted by not_on_display at 10:56 PM PST - 12 comments

How right-wing is the nationalist alternative AfD for Germany?
BfV agency says there are more than 32,000 far-right extremists in the country.
In January, the head of Military intelligence s confirmed hundreds of new investigations into soldiers with extremist right-wing leanings. 'An Enemy Within' and will now reform an elite army unit from the inside out. The far right has infiltrated green groups with a call to protect the land.
[more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 1:43 PM PST - 14 comments

In such a complicated numerical landscape as a 60-game season, advanced stats might approach their greatest hurdle—but also, counterintuitively, their greatest opportunity to aid understanding above and beyond traditional stats. from The Ultimate Baseball Stat Confronts Its Ultimate Test [The Ringer] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:04 AM PST - 31 comments

There are two things you should understand about my dog, Daisy. First, she hates walking. She’ll get excited if you take out the leash, but it’s a farce. She just wants to pop out and then go immediately back inside. This is partly because she doesn’t understand that if you go all the way around a street block, you will end up back at home. Second, she is wily and stubborn. She’s faked a limp, made herself vomit, or pretended to faint more times than I can count just to get out of a walk. I have the vet bills to prove it.

She is the absolute worst dog to put a fitness tracker on. Which is exactly why I did it. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:30 AM PST - 30 comments

DeepMind researchers propose rebuilding the AI industry on a base of anticolonialism - "The researchers detailed how to build AI systems while critically examining colonialism and colonial forms of AI already in use in a preprint paper released Thursday. The paper was coauthored by DeepMind research scientists William Isaac and Shakir Mohammed and Marie-Therese Png, an Oxford doctoral student and DeepMind Ethics and Society intern who previously provided tech advice to the United Nations Secretary General's High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:01 AM PST - 38 comments

Remembering Michael Brooks; Rest in Power, Brother In some devastating news, Michael Brooks has passed away due to a sudden illness. He has followers here on Metafilter where he has been quoted and referred to with respect, and has united thinking and feeling people across the world.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 9:18 PM PST - 27 comments

Because “now, more than ever, it might be important for you to try” to reach loved ones deep in the web of conspiracy theories, John Cena, Catherine O'Hara, Billy Porter, Paul Rudd, and Alex Trebek have worked with John Oliver to create videos asking people to think more critically about information they find on the internet.
posted by katra at 8:59 PM PST - 62 comments

Scientists accidentally create 'impossible' hybrid fish They call it the sturddlefish. [SLLiveScience, short-ish read]
posted by hippybear at 8:47 PM PST - 26 comments

A couple of developers (Johan & Johan) have made Pico Driller, a free, simplified rendition of arcade classic Mr. Driller, in Pico8! It's a good introduction to the Ways of the Drill. Good luck! [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:56 PM PST - 22 comments

Yogetsu Akasaka is a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk who creates music for meditations. But not the kind most people are familiar with. In videos uploaded on YouTube, he stands in the middle of a white background, grabs a mic, and beatboxes to a loop machine.
posted by hanov3r at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments

Dan Killiam lays out some wild clam facts and some tricky clam research. Ecology, paleogeobiochemistry, stable isotope fractionation, some great pictures.
posted by clew at 2:33 PM PST - 9 comments

As racial disparities in health come into the spotlight amid COVID-19, we explore how the legacy of racism affects maternal health in the United States. [more inside]
posted by infini at 1:01 PM PST - 6 comments

Oh my goodness gracious! How clumsy of me. Reading is more dangerous than I thought. Oh no… What about my precious kitties! Stuck in this apartment , how will they survive? I must get the front door open so they can run free!
In the little point-and-click browser game Six Cats Under, you must resolve your unfinished business on this plane by helping Frederick, Mr. Spock, Baroness, Pumpkin, Ponyo, Clancy, Pickle, Geoffrey, Edgar, Sniffles, Rufus, and Deborah escape your home.
By Miles Äijälä, Robin Swift, Tomas Beržinskas, and Alex Martin.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:06 AM PST - 20 comments

Footage has been colorized, set to sound and in 60 fps. Original source.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:56 AM PST - 46 comments

OnThisDay 1973: Willie Rushton railed against the Metrication Board, who had come for his beloved British yard. (SL Twitter)
posted by Think_Long at 7:20 AM PST - 66 comments

We thought this bear was out cold. We were mistaken. Changing the radio collar on a 350-pound hibernating bear should have been a routine task—if he'd been sleeping soundly.
posted by bonehead at 6:43 AM PST - 24 comments

The Science Museum in London has a question for the public: "Do you know what this is? No, seriously, can you tell us?" [more inside]
posted by MattWPBS at 6:27 AM PST - 34 comments

The hero and the villain of this story are both scientists. It's a parable about the importance of careful and precise work, of not fooling yourself. It's the true story of why we no longer use leaded gasoline, and how the oil industry resisted that change. And in the end the hero almost certainly prevented more murders and violent crimes than any law enforcement officer in history or most superheroes in fantasy.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:11 AM PST - 23 comments

Asheville, North Carolina, approves reparations for Black residents - "In a historic move, the city of Asheville, North Carolina, voted unanimously this past week to approve a reparations resolution for Black residents and formally apologized for the role it played in slavery and implementing racist policies." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 11 comments

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar delivers a masterclass on the history of Los Angeles Jazz. [slLATimes]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 8:30 PM PST - 7 comments

Krista Tippett, host of On Being, talks with Pauline Boss, who coined the phrase "ambiguous loss," about loss and grief in the time of pandemic. "And I feel like it’s really settling in now, the losses. And they’re large and small, as you say. People have lost loved ones. But there’s also this loss of going to the office; of certainty, like that your kids will go to school....there are all these losses, large and small, all at once. And we’re carrying them individually, but we’re also carrying them at the same time." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:55 PM PST - 28 comments

In the radio episode "Indigenous memory code," science writer Lynne Kelly and Indigenous health scholar Karen Adams share their perspectives on Aboriginal songlines as technologies of remembering. Prefer visual to audio? In 2016, Sydney Opera House's "Lighting the Sails" featured indigenous artists commissioned to create work on songlines. More context from the Opera's head of Indigenous Programming. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Jennifer Spitzer (LA Review of Books, 7/19/2020), "Me and Mrs Dalloway: On Losing My Mother to COVID-19": "This passage, which shows Clarissa observing the omnibuses at Piccadilly, seemed to me a classic moment of modernist alienation. I read this passage differently now. Clarissa has been transformed not only by war but by her own illness and proximity to death. War and pandemic have altered her perception, have identified the dangers in everyday living." See also Virginia Woolf (The New Criterion, 1926), "On Being Ill" [PDF], and her situational appreciation for "the worst" in literature during sub-optimal times, e.g. Augustus Hare's The Story of Two Noble Lives (vol. 2; vol. 3). Mrs. Dalloway previously.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:33 AM PST - 5 comments

Can I interest you in TEE luxury? A tale of two alpinists and their railway posters? Travel for foreigners across the Soviet Union? Spend your Sunday delving into the history and design of Europe's railways with https://retours.eu/.
posted by dame at 2:17 AM PST - 9 comments

Mr. Jason Wilson is a martial arts teacher in Detroit, MI.
He teaches young (and old) men to 'Cry like a men'.
(Main account).
posted by growabrain at 1:33 AM PST - 18 comments

Frank B. Wilderson III sketches a map of the world in which Black people are everywhere integral but always excluded. [slTheNewYorker]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:44 PM PST - 3 comments

"Poison is lethal all on its own - as are arrows - and together, they can take down the strongest opponents." A new dual mechanism antibiotic being developed promises to be highly effective, safe, and immune to resistance. [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 1:23 PM PST - 34 comments

"With the pandemic and a global uprising against racial injustice to be explained away, conspiracy communities are bleeding into each other, merging into one gigantic mass of suspicion." [Anna Merlan, for Vice] [more inside]
posted by redct at 11:28 AM PST - 127 comments

How the '15-Minute City' Could Help Post-Pandemic Recovery - "A new C40 Cities report touts Paris's model for putting essentials within close walking or biking distance as an economic boost for coronavirus-ravaged municipal budgets." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:06 AM PST - 28 comments

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - Alice was tired of studying for the CFA exams, the figures in the spreadsheet were blurry, she laid her head on the desk...
posted by sammyo at 9:02 AM PST - 21 comments

Windows task manager runs Doom. (slyt)
posted by MartinWisse at 7:29 AM PST - 24 comments

John Lewis, a civil rights icon who went on to a career of more than three decades in Congress as a Democrat representing Atlanta, died Friday night. He was 80 years old and was in treatment for pancreatic cancer. (Roll Call) Americans from across the political spectrum and all walks of life honored Lewis, who died late Friday night at the age of 80. Lewis carved his place in history with a lengthy career advocating for civil rights, from being beaten to within an inch of his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on “Bloody Sunday” to serving 17 terms representing an Atlanta-area district in Congress. (The Hill) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:04 AM PST - 145 comments

10s' kids get She-Ra. 00s' kids get Avatar. 90s' kids get Disney Afternoon. But 80s' kids get Hasbro's YouTube channel with a livestream of GI Joe episodes.
posted by Katemonkey at 2:59 AM PST - 27 comments

Author Susan Orlean is living her best quarantine life right life now by being very publicly drunk on Twitter.
This delightul event is being memorialized by The AV Club (to which Orlean has linked), meaww.com, and nj.com
posted by Going To Maine at 10:19 PM PST - 46 comments

Solderpunk named the Gemini project after the American space race program because, like the space program, it has (not too small, not too large) intermediate goals. What goals? The Gemini protocol and the Gemini document format aim to bridge the gap between the austere Gopher protocol (previously) and the modern multi-megabyte web (previously). [more inside]
posted by Monochrome at 5:51 PM PST - 13 comments

Doctors Without Borders Responds To Charges Of 'Racism' From Its Staff Over the last month more than 1,000 current and former staffers with the aid group Doctors Without Borders have signed a letter with an explosive accusation: The vaunted organization, they say, is built on a mindset of "white supremacy" that perpetuates "racism by our staff, in our policies, in our hiring practices, in our workplace culture, and through the imposition of dehumanising 'humanitarian' programmes by a privileged, white minority workforce."
posted by Toddles at 4:23 PM PST - 17 comments

After 50 nights of sustained protest in Portland, Oregon, President Donald Trump has sent in federal police agencies to “quell violence”. The response has been immediate, with protestors and passers by being “disappeared” into unmarked vans by militarized federal police forces. [more inside]
posted by gucci mane at 12:20 PM PST - 456 comments

Iceland Invites the World to Scream It Out. You’ve been through a lot this year and it looks like you need the perfect place to let your frustrations out. Somewhere big, vast and untouched. It looks like you need Iceland. Record your scream and we’ll release it in Iceland’s beautiful, wide-open spaces. And when you’re ready, come let it out for real. You’ll feel better, we promise.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:57 AM PST - 36 comments

Home Movie: The Princess Bride Oh look, Quibi is good for something! A bunch of (yeah, ok, famous) folks recreate a classic section of a classic movie.
posted by gwint at 11:52 AM PST - 12 comments

For as long as I’ve been raising my own family, my mother has brought rogan josh to me, in frozen bricks, whenever she visits. Periodically, I’d ask her for the recipe. Each time, my mother would hem and haw, saying that she cooks with her eyes. “This much,” she’d say, gesturing to a pile of fennel powder. “Stir until it’s red enough.” Recently, I called my mother to ask her again for the recipe. I reminded her that we had gone without the dish for half a year. She murmured something about shipping me a batch. I pushed back, invoking Kashmir’s disappearing culture. I emphasized the importance of preserving our cuisine, especially since I’d married outside of the community. I used all of the same guilting tricks that mum has been known to wield against me, and eventually she broke: she would walk me through the recipe over the weekend, on Zoom. (New Yorker)
posted by ChuraChura at 10:38 AM PST - 42 comments

The history of Europe: 1000-2020, Agario style, as long as we're doing hypnotizing map animations; here's East Asia too.
posted by Melismata at 8:50 AM PST - 7 comments

Here's a hypnotic animation of the top trending Google search in every state, for every day, in the last decade.
posted by theodolite at 8:18 AM PST - 44 comments

"Caste prejudice and discrimination is rife within the Indian communities in the United States and other countries. Its chains are even turning the work culture within multibillion-dollar American tech companies, and beyond." [more inside]
posted by MiraK at 7:35 AM PST - 37 comments

Hammerhead Shark Song, from the album Domingo, by Chip Tanaka (aka Hirokazu Tanaka, aka Hip Tanaka, composer for Metroid, Kid Icarus and some of Earthbound), video programmed by Toby Fox (Undertale, Deltarune) with help from Temmie Chang and others.
posted by JHarris at 6:24 AM PST - 2 comments

Mae Dean, creator of venerable webcomic Real Life Comics, has come out as transgender in a new series of strips (06/29/20-07/17/20) depicting a long overdue conversation among her ego, id and superego.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:30 AM PST - 61 comments

Why Singapore Has One of the Highest Home Ownership Rates - "Singapore's affordable housing program worked so well that some of its subsidized apartments now resell for more than $700,000." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 15 comments

You know that girl who fell through a portal to the surreal future of year 3000 and has been Instagramming from it ever since (previously)? She's still there (seriously, President Prez refuses to let the year number change), and she's just uploaded an EP of music from the future: Unanimous Girth's Shard of Girth (list of other services it's on). It is... extremely 'Normal'. More audio from weird worlds after the jump. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 10:41 PM PST - 11 comments

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is in the neighborhood this month and it's giving the best performance by a comet visible in the Northern Hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. NEOWISE — named for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the telescope which first spotted the comet on March 27th — is certainly a very good comet, though it remains to be seen if it’s what astronomers would call a ‘great comet’. There actually isn’t a settled definition for a 'great comet' aside from it having an exceptional brightness, but astronomers assure us they know one when they see one. So let’s revisit the acknowledged greats of the 21st Century so far before getting into more detail on our current, quite nice visitor. [more inside]
posted by theory at 8:45 PM PST - 31 comments

As the National Basketball Association looks to resume its season inside a protective "bubble" in Orlando, FL, the Philadelphia 76ers' rookie Matisse Thybulle has been doing YouTube videos that he records and edits and publishes. The 3rd installment of "Welcome To The Bubble", where he gets his ankles taped for practice, discovers Florida weather, and battles teammates while trying to solve a rubix cube went up today.
posted by cashman at 5:16 PM PST - 25 comments

But most of all, Applegate said, they cried about the realization their dream job of working in the NFL came with what they characterized as relentless sexual harassment and verbal abuse that was ignored — and in some cases, condoned — by top team executives.

The Washington Post reports that 15 women experienced widespread sexual harassment while working for the soon-to-be-renamed washington football team. [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 4:21 PM PST - 12 comments

In a massive hack, the Twitter accounts for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Apple and others were taken over to promote a bitcoin scam yesterday. As part of their response, Twitter silenced verified accounts, leading to general rejoicing as the “blue checkmark” accounts were reduced to retweeting @everyword to spell out distress messages. While some were thankful the hackers didn’t attempt to start WW3, others wondered why the hackers didn’t try to manipulate the stock market (hint: it’s harder than it looks).
posted by adrianhon at 2:30 PM PST - 66 comments

No MILFs, No Squirting, No Gang Bangs: How the Porn Industry Is Changing During COVID-19 by EJ Dickson, Rolling Stone [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:28 PM PST - 37 comments

Prepare for Artificial Intelligence to Produce Less Wizardry: A paper by MIT research scientist David Thompson et al. argues that the deep-learning approach to AI is "rapidly becoming economically, technically, and environmentally unsustainable".
posted by Cash4Lead at 2:17 PM PST - 25 comments

The astounding 646 tracks isn't the only thing that makes Jacob Collier's newest single absolutely remarkable - the second chorus modulates to C half-sharp major, a key most of us have never heard. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski at 2:16 PM PST - 30 comments

Harmony, an emotional doodle from multidisciplinary artist Michal Levy.
She is remembered from her 2001 animation short, Giant Steps, which captured a part of her synesthesia, and showed a bit how she sees music.
But there were other jazzy animations
Giant Steps previously on Metafilter
(Via) [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 11:59 AM PST - 5 comments

Meet Sarah Shook, Country Music’s Radical And Ordinary Hero (Fader): "The other thing that is really important to me is having a very diverse audience. This genre of music attracts a certain kind of person sometimes who is very close-minded and I want to tell those people, 'Look, you're welcome to be a fan. But full disclosure, I'm a fucking civil rights activist, and I'm a bisexual, and I'm an atheist, and I'm a vegan,' you know what I mean? That's a whole lot of non-redneck shit right there." (Rolling Stone) [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 11:47 AM PST - 8 comments

The next Mars rover, named Perseverance, is approaching its launch window of July 30 - Aug. 15, 2020; in addition to having a full dance ticket of its own, will be carrying a passenger: Ingenuity, a helicopter, the first extraterrestrial powered aircraft (that we know of, or of human origin), set to make its first flight on the Red Planet in the spring of 2021. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:59 AM PST - 15 comments

Gary Foley was sitting in his home in the Sydney suburb of Redfern one Summer afternoon when ‘some Pommie bloke rings up and says he’s Joe Strummer from the Clash’. [more inside]
posted by prismatic7 at 6:41 AM PST - 5 comments

Composer Adam Neely looks at how the world's second most covered song came to be seen as a national cultural icon, as kitsch elevator music and as a work of daunting harmonic complexity - all at the same time (and as to why it matters culturally whether you play it in F or D flat): The Girl from Ipanema is a far weirder song that you thought. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 3:42 AM PST - 84 comments

US passports are now much less valuable than they used to be. Thanks to...this (gestures around), US citizens aren't welcome in as many countries as we used to be, and that's not changing any time soon.

Also: CNN context, IATA map of restrictions, Fox (shared CNN link) [more inside]
posted by lon_star at 2:10 AM PST - 152 comments

The house used for the exterior shots of Blanche Devereaux's Miami home in the The Golden Girls television series is on the market for the first time ever. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:00 AM PST - 21 comments

WikiDelia - an exhaustive wiki devoted to electronic musician Delia Derbyshire, best known for her work for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, including the Doctor Who theme tune (with Ron Grainger). Includes many links to her work through her career.
(Previously, previously, previously, previously)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:43 PM PST - 5 comments

There are around 500 species of Meliponini stingless bees (Wikipedia), which are found in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. 47 live in Mexico, and the most famous bee in the Yucatán peninsula is Melipona beecheii (Apicultura fandom in Spanish, Google auto-translate), known by the Mayans as Xunan Kab, or the Regal Lady Bee. The hives of these and other bees are more frequently found in urban areas, including homes and businesses, in Playa del Carmen. Enter Efrain Cab, third generation bee keeper and the protector of Mexico’s hidden hives of stingless bees (Atlas Obscura). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:12 PM PST - 2 comments

"All you do is place coloured blocks, then Townscaper translates them into apartments, steps, terraces, gardens, towers, and so on based on the shapes they form with other nearby blocks, then fill the whole place with lovely little decorative details." (Rock Paper Shotgun review) (Youtube Trailer)(Steam early access)
posted by rebent at 6:15 PM PST - 27 comments

Ten Simple Rules for Building an Anti-Racist Research Lab

As the societal reckoning over systemic racism reaches into the halls of universities, two researchers, who are heads of ecology and Earth science labs, wrote a paper with recommendations for how professors can take steps to protect their students and create a more welcoming environment. The paper, "Ten simple rules for building an anti-racist lab," is currently in review with PLOS Computational Biology. The authors, V. Bala Chaudhary and Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, emphasise that the list is a simple starting point and not meant to be comprehensive.

[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 3:11 PM PST - 6 comments

Ghost of Tsushima, an open-world adventure where you play a samurai during the first Mongol invasion of Japan, launched today [Eurogamer, Polygon, Guardian reviews]. One of the last major PS4 exclusives, it's been praised for its beautiful art but criticised for rote game design. Unusually, the game features Kurosawa Mode, a black-and-white filter “inspired by the movies of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa."
posted by adrianhon at 2:03 PM PST - 21 comments

GPT-3 Creative Fiction: Writer/researcher Gwern Branwen showcases the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-3 model, including dialogue, jokes, poetry and fiction in the style of particular authors, and much, much more.
posted by Cash4Lead at 1:50 PM PST - 16 comments

World Population Could Peak Decades Ahead of U.N. Forecast, Study Asserts (NYTimes) A study published in The Lancet Tuesday (link to press release, not paywalled), suggests that the forecasts used by the UN till now, predicting a peak in the global population at just under 11 billion in 2100, may not be accurate. Instead the population may peak already in 2064 at 9.7 billion and decline to 8.8 billion by 2100. In some countries, the populations will also age considerably. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 9:44 AM PST - 51 comments

Oliver Sacks remembers his bodybuilding days on Venice, California’s Muscle Beach. (Via)
posted by growabrain at 9:37 AM PST - 25 comments

Code-loving designer J. Peter presents A Graphical Analysis of Women's Tops Sold on Goodwill's Website.
posted by jedicus at 8:31 AM PST - 13 comments

Why do people behave immorally when drunk? Moral philosophers look at drunkenness. If morality is based on emotion, why would intoxication cause immoral behavior?
posted by russilwvong at 11:19 PM PST - 60 comments

New England Journal Of Medicine article An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report gets detailed like you want it to be if you like reading this kind of thing. It's written in pretty understandable english with context clues to help the slightly stupid like me, but it's super interesting where they're at with this single (out of a zillion?) being developed.
posted by hippybear at 8:38 PM PST - 44 comments

How Showgirls exposed the rot of our misogynistic culture. (BBC) [more inside]
posted by signal at 8:03 PM PST - 32 comments

Swan Lake Bath Ballet. Exactly what it says on the tin. I wonder where that one guy got all those feathers and how the hell he got them OFF himself afterwards?!
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:57 PM PST - 10 comments

what did our food look like hundreds of years ago? For a few decades, plant geneticists have studied the historical genetic composition of modern foods in several ways, highlighting certain genetic mutations that were responsible for transformations in appearance. These approaches haven't offered many answers for what some plant-based foods actually looked like (....) So worldwide art collections, the old-time equivalents of the modern-day photograph, might serve as a massive historical database of how modern plant foods have fluctuated in their looks. And they're asking the public to send in what they find.
posted by bq at 6:49 PM PST - 11 comments

How One Man Turned The Busiest International Border Crossing In North America Into The Centerpiece Of His Empire : “Manuel “Matty” Moroun died on Monday at 93 years old. That name might not mean much to you if you’re not from metro Detroit or Windsor, Canada, but around these parts, he was known mainly as the billionaire who owned, among other things, the Ambassador Bridge, which just happens to carry roughly 27 percent of all merchandise trade between Canada and the U.S.” - Erin Marquis tells the story of the Ambassador Bridge for Jalopnik [more inside]
posted by ambrosen at 4:42 PM PST - 17 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. [more inside]
posted by waxpancake at 1:53 PM PST - 143 comments

For almost 20 years, top U.S. women gymnasts would pack a bag, say goodbye to their parents and take a monthly trip that ended with a long drive down a dirt road to a remote compound in a Texas forest. “You drive through the woods for like 15 miles and then you see this green gate,” says 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber. “That’s when I knew we were pulling up to the Ranch. I started getting this pit in my stomach.” ESPNW and 30 for 30 have collaborated on a podcast series exploring The Karolyi Effect. (cw: sexual assault) [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 11:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Atlanta comedian Mark Kendall pitches an ad for Craig's Bronze Bron Barn, an opportunity to own statuary in the likeness of LeBron James AND to recontextualize Confederate monuments! A win-win! [more inside]
posted by Maaik at 11:20 AM PST - 6 comments

Scientists explain why the viral trend tickles the brain [Inverse.com]
posted by Etrigan at 10:37 AM PST - 26 comments

African twitter is aflutter with @sugabelly's creation - the Ńdébé Script: "a writing system that addresses the tonal peculiarities of Nigerian languages, pleasing to the eye, which might carry the burden of our literary and academic aspirations".
posted by infini at 8:28 AM PST - 23 comments

The Audubon society presents its top 100 bird photographs of 2020 with behind-the-shot info from photographers. Plus award-winning birbs.
posted by Hypatia at 8:15 AM PST - 8 comments

Guardian cartoonist David Squires pays tribute to England World Cup winner and Republic of Ireland hero Jack Charlton (May 8, 1935 - July 10, 2020).
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Grant Imahara, animatronics engineer, model maker, and MythBusters co-host, died yesterday at age 49 from a suspected brain aneurysm.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:18 AM PST - 190 comments

An overview of The Lincoln Project (experienced campaigners making ads) and Republican Voters Against Trump (videos made by actual Republican voters against Trump) History from the Never Trumpers to The Lincoln Project. ## Argues that The Lincoln Project is militarist. ## Argues that The Lincoln Project isn't likely to accomplish anything. I can see a case that RVAT is aimed more directly at voters and more likely to be effective.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:11 AM PST - 180 comments

A genius comedy group on youtube, posting new sketches every other weekend. [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 5:02 AM PST - 5 comments

“What Nespresso have done is create a lot of benign bullshit around coffee ...but people enjoy the bullshit.” Ed Cumming tells the story of how Nespresso's rise and, perhaps now fall. The story of how scum became crema. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 1:32 AM PST - 66 comments

I've Seen a Future Without Cars, and It's Amazing - "Why do American cities waste so much space on cars?" (previously: 1, 2) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 42 comments

How the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a rock band.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:47 PM PST - 6 comments

"On Tuesday November 11th, 1975, the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed Malcolm Fraser as a caretaker Prime Minister." Now, "A new row over the republic is set to ignite as secret letters reveal the role of Buckingham Palace in the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975, with a key historian expecting the papers to expose decades of false claims." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:46 PM PST - 18 comments

Jumping Hoppers in SLOW MOTION! “ Leafhoppers, treehoppers, planthoppers, and froghoppers are all insects in the order Hemiptera that are some of the fastest jumping animals on earth! They are also super-common, so I collected a bunch and filmed their jumps in slow-motion!”
posted by dhruva at 10:22 PM PST - 6 comments

Andean condor can fly for 100 miles without flapping wings: World’s largest soaring bird flaps wings only 1% of time in flight, study shows. " “The finding that they basically almost never beat their wings and just soar is mind-blowing,” said David Lentink, an expert in bird flight at Stanford University, who was not involved in the research."
posted by hippybear at 8:24 PM PST - 12 comments

The John Muir Laws blog features lots of educational resources about nature journaling and sketching in a variety of mediums, intermixed with conservation information. Also offers resources for educators. [more inside]
posted by Cozybee at 6:36 PM PST - 5 comments

90's Festival Line-Up Generator Randomly generates a line-up for a UK Rock festival from the nineties. Refresh for a new set. Click on a band name for some live footage of the band.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:36 PM PST - 24 comments

Betsy Hodges, former mayor of Minneapolis: "Democrats have largely led big and midsize cities for much of the past half-century. Yet the gaps in socioeconomic outcomes between white people and people of color are by several measures at their worst in the richest, bluest cities of the United States. How could this be?" [more inside]
posted by Ouverture at 4:13 PM PST - 20 comments

Across the United States, sites with dramatic partisan slants purport to be local and state news media as seen here. Left-leaning sites focus on state news, while hard-right sites are filling the gap created by the collapse of local newspapers. Many of the 450 sites on this list are operated by just 5 business entities. Is there a site like this near you? Check the map to find out.
posted by rednikki at 2:40 PM PST - 23 comments

Ryan Nanni of the college football website Banner Society says, "The football part’s not safe until the college part is." [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:57 AM PST - 24 comments

Lee Maxwell, the owner of the most comprehensive collection of washing machines walks us through the overlooked history of this iconic appliance. He runs the Washing Machines Museum in Eaton, Colorado with over 1600 washing machines. Videos here.
posted by ShooBoo at 3:50 PM PST - 50 comments

Check out the view from a window in a random home somewhere else in the world.
posted by COD at 2:30 PM PST - 68 comments

How to Sound Like Different Composers in 3 Steps (SLYT). Classical violinists Brett Yang and Eddy Chen of TwoSetViolin have fun with the musical tendencies of twelve composers. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:27 PM PST - 11 comments

After posting cryptic images on Instagram (Meaww), Massive Attack recently released ‘Eutopia’, a new audio-visual EP featuring three different collaborations, recorded in three different cities during lockdown, with three different messages: Massive Attack x Young Fathers + Professor Guy Standing (CNBC), a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (Wired.co.uk) and long-time proponent of Universal Basic Income (UBI) // Massive Attack x Saul Williams + Professor Gabriel Zucman (The Hill), inventor of the US “Wealth Tax” policy (Ekathimerini) // Massive Attack x Algiers + Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate change convention when the Paris agreement was achieved in 2015 (The Guardian). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:10 PM PST - 5 comments

We don't know how to navigate parasocial relationships. (SLMedium) Are you, or someone you love, a member of a fandom? More specifically, a fandom of a personality on the Internet? Then you're part of a parasocial relationship -- a relationship that involves an audience. And chances are, at one point or another, that person you follow, who may hold more power over you than you realize, will fall. It's happened before, as it did with podcaster Alastair Stephens, and it will happen again. Here's some advice on recognizing the potential problems and establishing boundaries to to protect yourself. (CW: talk of sexual and other misconduct.)
posted by lhauser at 12:09 PM PST - 26 comments

There are a lot of old corporate training videos on Youtube, but only one stars Joan, the demon checkout clerk of Elmhurst, Illinois.
posted by theodolite at 10:57 AM PST - 48 comments

A Dangerous and Evil Piano Piece - "In the years that followed its début, [Erik Satie's] 'Vexations' outgrew its status as a curiosity. It became a rite of passage." (previously: 1, 2)
posted by kliuless at 9:56 AM PST - 18 comments

Bohemian Rhapsody | A Synchronized Roller Coaster (via Kotaku)
posted by Etrigan at 8:45 AM PST - 12 comments

What they watched didn't really qualify as entertainment; Meyer stated he had no desire to make a "good" movie but a deeply affecting public service announcement. "It has Lawrence, Kansas, wiped out in a nuclear war with Russia. It is powerfully done—all $7 mil. worth. It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed. ... My own reaction was one of our having to do all we can to have a deterrent and to see there is never a nuclear war." Ronald Reagan, writing in his journal, having seen the movie before it aired on ABC. [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 7:15 AM PST - 151 comments

1985 was a ridiculously strong year for music. This past week, we missed the July 6, 1985 release of Heart's first album for Capitol Records, Heart [YT playlist]. It was the band's biggest hit album release, eventually being certified quadruple platinum in sales. Side A: If Looks Could Kill, What About Love [video], Never [video], These Dreams [video], The Wolf [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:09 AM PST - 29 comments

Ever wonder how we made all these crazy machines do all their crazy machine things before computers came along? Wonder no more as Alec (AKA, Mr. Connectify) from “Technology Connections” explore the inner workings of a Wurlitzer 3400 series jukebox from 1970. (23 min long YT vid).
Found via a post of an open side view of an antique calculator from here
His Youtube channel
A second channel
posted by growabrain at 5:04 AM PST - 15 comments

On the Judy Garland show (1964), six dancers do their thing to Shirley Ellis's The The Nitty Gritty (gif) (longer version). One is Bobby Banas, who would dance in West Side Story, appear in Mary Poppins and Down and Out in Beverley Hills, dance The Leopard in Get Smart, would kiss Marilyn Monroe, and dance again to Bill Haley and his Comets.
posted by Wordshore at 2:41 PM PST - 15 comments

A stranger than fiction Roman ring mystery thread. In which a golden signet ring portraying the Goddess Venus and belonging to one Silvianus is (allegedly) stolen by one Senicianus, a curse tablet to that effect deposited at the Temple of Nodens, and the ring subsequently lost and found again, possibly inspiring one of the greatest tales of all time.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:42 PM PST - 18 comments

Turkey turning Hagia Sophia back into mosque Hagia Sophia was built as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire and was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453 and changed the city's name to Istanbul.
posted by TRAJAN at 1:40 PM PST - 38 comments

In lockdown at his home in Tennessee, Steve Earle, the original hardcore troubadour, tells us about his guitar collection. This is a series of short, YT videos by Steve Earle where he picks a guitar from his collection to tell us about, he rambles a bit about stuff and sings a song which highlights the properties of the particular guitar he's chosen to showcase. His occasional failure to switch between cameras is endearingly incompetent, but the man sure knows his gee-tars. [more inside]
posted by essexjan at 1:18 PM PST - 11 comments

You can own your own Scottish isle for £500,000 — the price of a London flat (House Beautiful). Specifically, Inchconnachan Island (Google maps) in Loch Lomond, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Glasgow. That price includes permits to replace the derelict 1920s timber bungalow (Forbes) with a 5-bed lodge house, boathouse and pier, but residency is limited to 60 days per year. Also, your neighbors will be feral wallabies (Atlas Obscura). [Via Mltshp, and an article from The Guardian]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:22 PM PST - 27 comments

The UK's week of online celebrations of archaeology starts today. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 11:48 AM PST - 1 comment

Julie Murphy on how the Little Mermaid’s Ursula is her ‘Revenge Body’ icon. "The revenge-body trope asserts that for a fat woman to avenge herself and to prove to her bullies once and for all that they were wrong about her, she must lose weight. Only then will her vengeance be fully realized. Essentially, the fat woman must become something she is not in order to prove that she was worthy all along. With her tentacles, back rolls, and red lips, Ursula isn’t waiting for a revenge body. She already has one." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:10 AM PST - 13 comments

Over a number of days in July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces systematically murdered around 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys.
Even as remains continue to be identified, denialism is moving from far-right fringe into mainstream . It is time to fight back against Bosnian Genocide denial.
Bosnian Muslims feel shunned by Europe. AlJazeera spoke with some survivors.
Srebrenica ~ Genocide in eight acts. (TRIGGER WARNING). A brief encapsule.
posted by adamvasco at 7:49 AM PST - 21 comments

Bigtop Burger is a clown-themed food truck. These are their adventures. Stove Elk Kid Zomburger [more inside]
posted by rodlymight at 6:50 AM PST - 5 comments

In a momentous decision, the Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that about half of the state of Oklahoma is "Indian country", jurisdictionally within a Native American reservation, and thus that the state must honor the treaties which set aside this land for Native peoples, last establishing Creek Nation boundaries in 1866. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 1:53 AM PST - 35 comments

[Festool] German maker, designer and YouTuber Laura Kampf delights half a million fans all over the world on YouTube with her unique and individual creations, which all follow the same motto: "The process is the product". There is a new video every week – and a new project to marvel at on YouTube and Instagram. Laura Kampf previously on Mefi.
posted by ellieBOA at 1:35 AM PST - 14 comments

Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies - "Elites are a small proportion of the population (on the order of 1 percent) who concentrate social power in their hands."[1] (via; previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:11 AM PST - 20 comments

“I surprised my two cats with a huge ball pit filled with 500 multi-colored balls!”
posted by brook horse at 8:47 PM PST - 39 comments

Really, it all depends on how you like your soundtrack album for 1984's The Terminator. The original (rather limited run) release was 35 minutes long (YouTube album link, not a playlist) and was half score and half weak 80s pop. The 1994 "Definitive Edition" (Definite Edition?) (YT album link) was entirely the score, and runs about 72 minutes.
posted by hippybear at 8:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Nick Cave on his nomination for MTV's Best Male Artist (SLYT)
posted by dfm500 at 6:34 PM PST - 13 comments

Hi!Welcome to my site! My name is Andrea, and I'm a registered dental hygienist, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a major obsession with food as you can probably already guess. Stay, browse, and I hope you'll find something you'll want to try. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:10 PM PST - 11 comments

A "fizz" is a mixed drink variation on the older sours family of cocktail. Its defining features are an acidic juice (such as lemon or lime) and carbonated water. There are a few variations on this recipe: Gin fizz, Sloe gin fizz (purple fizz). Here's a bit more about the history of the Ramos gin fizz, and here's how to make one. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:21 PM PST - 52 comments

"I’m leaving Sleeping Giants, but not because I want to. ... I want to show you how a woman of color almost disappeared from the movement she built, and what you can achieve when you refuse to follow the rules your white male “leader” sets for you," she writes in her Medium post that details how co-founder Matt Rivitz denied her the title of "co-founder", refused to create an email address for her, left her out of meetings, campaigns, and even award ceremonies. At her lowest point, she wanted to quit. But in a stunning strategic move, she took control of her own brand instead. [more inside]
posted by MiraK at 12:41 PM PST - 32 comments

Does Wearing a Mask Make You Look Hot? (GQ): A semi-scientific investigation.
posted by not_the_water at 11:54 AM PST - 56 comments

Many schools have been shut down to limit the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing parents to quit their jobs (if they work outside the home), or to juggle child care and distance learning while working from home. How can schools be reopened safely? Eight Steps to Reopen Schools, by a former CDC head and two former US secretaries of education. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 11:32 AM PST - 94 comments

"I think Carol was probably the second-best marketer in the history of the business, behind only Stan Lee. Carol's greatest strength in being in charge of the then-nascent direct sales department was in building up and stabilizing the retailers." An oral history of Carol Kalish, who made an indelible impact on the comics industry as Marvel's Direct Sales Manager in the 1980s. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:28 AM PST - 11 comments

The Royal Institution in London has been hosting a series of science lectures. The next two deal with quantum mechanics and space weather respectively. In September it will be the science of fireworks. The lectures, held in the Institution's venerable lecture hall regularly sold out pre-pandemic. These online lectures are donate-what-you-can. Previous lectures covered the mathematics of gambling, black holes, superconductors, the neuroscience of consciousness, science & racism, body illusions, the myth of magenta..... [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:46 AM PST - 7 comments

"After an hour in a holding cell, the handcuffs still on, somebody again put leg irons around my ankles, and connected the two with a piece of chain pulled tight around my stomach." UK newspaper The Independent’s Chief US Correspondent Andrew Buncombe describes what happened to a journalist covering the shutdown of Seattle's CHOP protest. [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:45 AM PST - 16 comments

According to the BBC, "pop music is getting faster (and happier)." [SL BBC, evidence is from the UK pop charts]
posted by chavenet at 8:57 AM PST - 8 comments

MARMOSET KNOCK YOU OUT [more inside]
posted by springo at 8:12 AM PST - 19 comments

Infamous anonymous music collective, The Residents, have released their 47th (or so) album, Metal, Meat, and Bone: The Songs of Dyin' Dog. The album is a collection of re-interpretations of blues songs by little-known Louisiana blues musician Alvin Snow, AKA Dyin' Dog, who had a connection with the group from their early days in Shreeveport... or, is it? [more inside]
posted by SansPoint at 8:07 AM PST - 4 comments

Despite its tagline of "A Heartless Card Game", Abandon All Artichokes is a cute game with a twist on the deck-building mechanic -- you are given a pile of 10 artichoke cards, and the winner is the first player to draw a five-card hand with no remaining 'chokes. Game designer Emma Larkins takes us through the entire process of creating the game, from idly writing down goofy titles on the bus to getting a shout-out as a "brilliant game" [Forbes] at the New York Toy Fair.
posted by Etrigan at 7:55 AM PST - 7 comments

Last month Anderson .Paak released a new video / single, "Lockdown" (directed by Dave Meyers). "Set against an easy-rolling funk groove characteristic of the artist's summery sound, the song relates .Paak's own experiences attending recent protests and voices his belief in the righteous motivations behind them."
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 10:58 PM PST - 5 comments

"¿Qué motiva a una joven de 17 años a cantar en su idioma ancestral? Renata Flores, cantante, compositora y activista del idioma quechua revaloriza y promueve la lengua natal de sus antepasados a través de la música, mezclando sonidos andinos con géneros modernos." Quien Soy (Who I am) is a short Spanish documentary about Renata Flores, who started singing in Quechua covers, first House of the Rising Sun (original; subtitled) and went viral with The Way You Make Me Feel, and now blends other styles like trap and electric/dance to promote Quechua while also bringing attention to issues of femicide and the treatment of rural people. Renata Flores Brought Quechua to YouTube, and Then Everything Changed (Vice) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:00 PM PST - 13 comments

However it was that you first learned about Mandy Patinkin, you might not know that he recorded a really great album in the late 80s. Appropriately titled "Mandy Patinkin", it was released in 1989. The YouTube playlist unfortunately does not preserve the nature of the medleys on the album, but it's still an amazing listen. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:21 PM PST - 30 comments

Native South Americans were early inhabitants of Polynesia "DNA analysis of Polynesians and Native South Americans has revealed an ancient genetic signature that resolves a long-running debate over Polynesian origins and early contacts between the two populations."
posted by dhruva at 8:04 PM PST - 42 comments

In the video series State of Grace, Grace Baldridge explores the lives of LGBTQ+ people in celebrity-endorsed megachurches, the contemporary Christian music industry, and the reception of trans people in the church.
posted by clawsoon at 5:57 PM PST - 3 comments

Most people now described themselves as Falkland Islanders first and British second, but it was hard to say what that meant. Britishness was easy to proclaim—the Union Jacks, the red post boxes. Symbols were enough because everybody knew what Britain was, and there was too much of it to capture, anyway. But what a Falkland Islander was, was harder to describe.

– How Prosperity Transformed the Falklands by Larissa MacFarquhar, with photos by Maroesjka Lavigne.
posted by Kattullus at 4:50 PM PST - 8 comments

the zodiac as IPA symbols. nerdy silliness from writer S. Qiouyi Lu
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:00 PM PST - 25 comments

The all-white country band formerly known as Lady Antebellum has filed a lawsuit to use the name Lady A, which Black Seattle blues, funk and gospel singer Anita White has used for more than 20 years. [more inside]
posted by heatherlogan at 12:45 PM PST - 142 comments

The return of the $70 video game has been a long time coming [Ars Technica] “Last week, 2K made waves by becoming the first publisher to set a $70 asking price for a big-budget game on the next generation of consoles. NBA2K21 will cost the now-standard $60 on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but 2K will ask $10 more for the upcoming Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of the game (a $100 "Mamba Forever Edition" gives players access to current-generation and next-generation versions in a single bundle). It remains to be seen if other publishers will follow 2K's lead and make $70 a new de facto standard for big-budget console game pricing. But while $70 would match the high-water mark for nominal game pricing, it wouldn't be a historically high asking price in terms of actual value. Thanks to inflation and changes in game distribution, in fact, the current ceiling for game prices has never been lower.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:51 AM PST - 71 comments

AirNow "is your one-stop source for air quality data." This mapper "provides results from the largest-ever assessment of water-quality changes in the Nation's streams and rivers." The National Transportation Noise Map "facilitates the tracking of trends in transportation-related noise, by mode, and collectively for multiple transportation modes." "Finding a pristine sky is not as easy as it once was. But you can use the Map on this site to help you." Clear Dark Sky "shows at a glance when, in the next 48 hours, we might expect clear and dark skies for one specific observing site."
posted by fedward at 10:50 AM PST - 8 comments

They’ve been crucial for supermarkets, but germ fears might make them a pre-pandemic memory. One solution is Sally, a 6-foot robot. [Bloomberg]
posted by Etrigan at 7:35 AM PST - 76 comments

is a thing I would say if I didn't acknowledge that princess is a fundamentally patronizing epithet! A dad discovers feminism and admits his areas of challenge and growth in letting his daughter be, you know, her own human being, allowing her to have her own emotional growth and make her own choices because that's what treating her as her own person means. Secondarily, Jon Hamm narrates this and adds humor to an important message. (Single link New Yorker Video warning - SLNY-erV?)
posted by foxywombat at 7:31 AM PST - 29 comments

A couple of days ago, Harper's Magazine published an open letter - A Letter on Justice and Open Debate - it had had in the works for a few weeks, signed by 153 authors and academics. The ensuing reaction and commentary and has been swift and intense. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 7:13 AM PST - 204 comments

Made of wood, tortoise shell, celluloid, nylon, thermoplastic, metal, felt, graphite, among others, guitar picks have had an interesting evolution. [more inside]
posted by sciencegeek at 6:35 AM PST - 35 comments

M Neelika Jayawardane writes for the Guardian & Mail in remembrance of the complex legacy and important record left by South African George Hallett, "a trickster figure — a chameleon who knew how to blend in with the background, and observe his photographic subjects’ burdens and most vulnerable states" who passed away July 1. [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:27 AM PST - 1 comment

The biggest lie we ever told ourselves about the Japanese reality show was that it wasn't like all the other ones. - 'When I first pitched this piece, I wanted to know what it would take for Terrace House to return to television. Not because I wanted the show to continue, but because I wanted to know: what could Terrace House have done that might have prevented Hana’s death? [...] It is, to be clear, an absolutely futile and perhaps even offensive suggestion that, in a different world, things would be different. I also pitched the story weeks before Kyoko began speaking to the press, fighting to defend her daughter’s legacy and seek justice for her death. But I began digging, looking for so-called solutions to the mental health ramifications of sudden fame imposed by reality TV.' [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 5:52 AM PST - 5 comments

Summary page and link to YouTube episode. “During the June 30 and July 3 meetings of the Sid City Social Club, Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson did a live reading of the first episode of a fanfic script titled Alone Together: A DS9 Companion. The first episode, “These Days”, introduces us to Dr. Julian Bashir and Elim Garak some 25 years after we last saw them. We begin the story as Bashir goes to visit his old friend on Cardassia…“
posted by sacchan at 4:03 AM PST - 16 comments

Over the course of two decades, white-throated sparrows across western and central Canada have changed one of their songs, replacing a three-note call with a two-note one. [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 6:38 PM PST - 22 comments

"CBS wasn’t sure the country was ready for an interracial television sitcom about a fiery American redhead and a Cuban fellow. To quell the studio's concerns, Ball and Arnaz formed their own company and became their own bosses, producing the I Love Lucy show on their own and selling it to CBS." Screen Prism goes on to note that the couple's refusal to shoot inferior quality kinescope (The Jerry Lewis Show 1960 Color Videotape and B&W Kinescope Comparison), set them up to invent the rerun when Lucy was pregnant (Terrence Moss blog). Desilu Productions (Wikipedia) went on to become the the second biggest independent TV production companies of the time. The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (Wikipedia) lead to The Untouchables [intro], and set up The Twilight Zone with the episode "The Time Element." Also, Lucille Ball is the reason we have 'Star Trek' (Business Insider), another Desilu production.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:50 PM PST - 24 comments

When it finally happened, as an indie directed by Michael Hoffman, with a cast that included Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine O’Hara, Bebe Neuwirth, Ari Graynor, and Dunne, Game 6 suffered an unfavorable rollout. After premiering at Sundance in 2005, the movie opened on a handful of screens in March 2006 before practically disappearing. The only film written by one of the most celebrated and influential figures in American letters, a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, isn’t available to stream on Amazon or Hulu or Netflix or HBO Max or the Criterion Collection. For most people in 2020, Game 6 does not exist. A movie’s journey from creation to audience is beset with all sorts of obstacles, illustrating just how vulnerable the ecosystem of movie viewership really is. The story of Game 6 is an object lesson in just that. From “The Trivia Is Exceptional”: The Making and Disappearance of Don DeLillo’s ‘Game 6’ [The Ringer]
posted by chavenet at 2:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Rhythm & Blues Review (1955)
posted by y2karl at 2:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Humor/pop culture website Cracked has gotten their hands on the animation guidelines for King of the Hill, which are mix of practical advice, character observations, and snark. (SLCracked)
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:01 PM PST - 36 comments

Renowned cartoonist Joe Sacco has a new book of graphic journalism out called Paying the Land. Perhaps best known for his two books on Palestine (Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, respectively), his new book focuses on the indigenous Dene people of North America, "resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world". [more inside]
posted by Corduroy at 12:02 PM PST - 9 comments

“If the criteria is that the subject of the statue owned slaves, then what’s next; taking down the statues of the Founding Fathers? Denigrating the memory of the Founding Fathers?”

[T]he protestors have shown they were not bluffing. Statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been removed by protestors... Attention should be brought to the Founding Fathers, not because they were white slave owners (although that should be enough), but because the entire narrative about their intentions regarding creating the United States is not history, but mythology. Traditionalism has consequences. Myths have consequences. And these myths must be dismantled as much as any statue. — Renegade Cut, The Cult of Tradition [more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:35 AM PST - 16 comments

The first real symptoms were not mine, but my cat’s. Miette, who kisses me on the lips each morning to see if I have become food yet, became deathly ill with a stomach virus two days after my return; my other cats soon contracted it as well. I know what you’re thinking, but please let my husband have this. It pleases him so much to believe that our cats might have had coronavirus “before those cats in Belgium”.
Patricia Lockwood writes a plague diary for the London Review of Books: “Insane after coronavirus?”
posted by Going To Maine at 10:18 AM PST - 25 comments

Over the past few days, Senator Tammy Duckworth (IL) has been smeared as a “vandal” and “coward” in nativist attacks (NYT) by Fox News host and bow-tied racist Tucker Carlson, which were shared by current U.S. President and former victim of bone spurs, STD warrior, and liker of soldiers who aren’t captured Donald Trump. Purple Heart recipient Duckworth lost her legs and the use of one arm (NYT) when the helicopter she was piloting in combat near Baghdad in 2004 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 10:08 AM PST - 93 comments

Hamilton. Muppets. (SLYT)
posted by Stewriffic at 9:54 AM PST - 30 comments

Baby carrots are not baby carrots (Washington Post): They're milled, sculpted from the rough, soiled, mangled things we call carrots, and they serve as an example, though perhaps not a terribly grave one, of how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food. In Case You Didn't Already Know, Baby Carrots Are A Big Fat Lie (HufPo): In fact, baby carrots were originally one farmer's ploy to sell more carrots. The late Mike Yurosek, a California carrot farmer, invented baby carrots in 1986 because most full-grown carrots were too ugly to sell. The Origin and Evolution of Baby Carrots (World Carrot Museum): Real baby carrots (miniature version of full size) are what they are, about 3 or 4 inches in length. Baby "style" cut carrots (those whittled down from larger carrots) started off by the "inventor" as being approx 2 inches in the 1980's, and have remained so, more or less, ever since. Why Are Baby Carrots Always Wet? (MEL): Water is literally added to the bag. Without it, the carrots would dry out. Baby Carrots – 3 Myths You Need to Know (Craving Health): Myth: Baby Carrots are unsafe to eat because they are soaked in a toxic chlorine bath.
posted by not_the_water at 9:48 AM PST - 75 comments

Pro Publica has a searchable database of all the recipients of PPP bailout loans greater than $150,000.
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:47 AM PST - 38 comments

These amphibians, they act in complicated ways to each other, but the friendship is the only thing standing between them and despair.” For the uninitiated, reading such deep psychodrama into a story about a couple of anthropomorphic polliwogs might seem a bit much. But anyone who’s spent time in the world Lobel built for these two critters knows that, if anything, it’s almost an understatement. Bonus.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:15 AM PST - 35 comments

Is Unschooling the Way to Decolonize Education? "As more and more people across the nation call for an end to institutionalized racism, the realization is that for equity to take root, every level of our society needs to change. Institutions that perpetuate white supremacy, including schools, will need to change or be abolished in their current form."
posted by ruetheday at 4:52 AM PST - 62 comments

Mathematician Ronald L. Graham died July 6th. Ron Graham was among the most prolific living mathematicians, a leader in discrete mathematics and one of the creators of the field of modern theoretical computer science. He was a close collaborator with many mathematicians, notably his wife Fan Chung and the illustrious Paul Erdős (whose practical affairs he and Fan also managed for many years). He served as director of information sciences at Bell Labs for decades, and had been president of both the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. [more inside]
posted by jackbishop at 4:14 AM PST - 26 comments

The Empire Of All Maladies, Nick Estes writes in The Baffler.
Colonial contagions and Indigenous resistance
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:42 PM PST - 3 comments

Coming Out is a stop-motion short film by Cressa Maeve Beer, officially endorsed by Toho.
posted by brook horse at 5:40 PM PST - 19 comments

Could San Francisco, capital of anti-Blackness, become a sanctuary city for Black lives?: I dream that privileged San Francisco parents would fight for adequate funding and staffing in schools serving Black and Brown children, and would do it with the same energy and doggedness they use to ensure high quality education for their own children. San Francisco, did you even know your schools have the lowest African-American achievement rates in the state? And that was pre-COVID. [more inside]
posted by sunset in snow country at 5:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Wolf Totem and Yuve Yuve Yu have racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube, which isn’t bad for Mongolian folk metal band. The HU released their first album, The Gereg, last year. Their YouTube channel has all kinds of content, from a benefit concert for Covid-19 relief in Mongolia, to HU’s in the Kitchen, a series of food-making videos by various members of the band and crew. The band sings in Mongolian and aims its message at a Mongolian audience, but interpreters in the west have wondered about their politics. Mongolia experts Niels Hegewisch and Julian Dierks did a deep dive on that topic (tl;dr not fascist). For a good introduction to The HU, read Katya Cengel’s NPR piece and an interview with the band by Jim Farber in The Guardian.
posted by Kattullus at 4:21 PM PST - 23 comments

How place names reveal the history of the UK.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:12 PM PST - 14 comments

Gary Larson has some new stuff. Supposedly inspired by a clogged pen, Larson, creator of the comic strip The Far Side, has released three new cartoons drawn with a digital tablet, featuring a modern look but very classic style and humor.
posted by biogeo at 2:25 PM PST - 78 comments

National Lampoon’s Animal House [trailer] was a box-office hit in July of 1978, and the brains behind that film split up and made two competing films. "In the summer of 1980, [they] were only two big-studio comedies that anyone was buzzing about. Neither one of them was Airplane!" (Esquire) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:24 PM PST - 73 comments

Ikigai is a short autobiographical documentary by Lucius Williams IV "centered on rock climbing with the intention of promoting diversity and environmental awareness." The People of Climbing is a short documentary by Josh Greenwood presenting "a candid look at race and equity in the outdoor industry from the perspective of people of color attending the 2018 Color The Crag Festival in Steele Alabama." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 1:39 PM PST - 5 comments

America needs a reckoning over racism. Punishing people who did not do anything wrong harms that important cause. [more inside]
posted by Ouverture at 1:31 PM PST - 171 comments

Hundreds of the iconic Post Office delivery trucks have caught on fire in recent years, thanks to a 30-year-old fleet and a manufactured budget crisis. [Vice] [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 11:36 AM PST - 29 comments

Ranking of every movie with ‘Night of the’ in the title [Polygon] “One night, I was thinking about how weird it was to wander the empty streets during the pandemic, which made me think about 1984 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie Night of the Comet, which made me think of other movies that use “Night of the” in the title. Then some guy on Twitter said I should rank them. I said I would. This was a foolish choice. There are a lot of movies that use “Night of the” in the title, even if you cut out short films and TV movies. But, hey, I’m in lockdown. This brings us here: a ranking of every single movie that starts with “Night of the,” from worst to best. Horror classics rub shoulders with serious dramas and the occasional ’70s porno to create one long, bizarre night. The sun’s going down, so let’s get to it.”
posted by Fizz at 10:58 AM PST - 30 comments

Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU's top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism.

The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States
posted by y2karl at 10:08 AM PST - 12 comments

After two decades of Brazilian military dictatorship, Brazilians were inspired by a football club which made a point of voting on absolutely everything. Socrates and Corinthian Democracy. It was the "greatest team I ever played in because it was more than sport." [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 9:58 AM PST - 4 comments

Christopher Schwarz (prev.) has finished a book on workbenches, which you can download for free.
posted by zamboni at 8:24 AM PST - 17 comments

This is an unusually extra lengthy essay, because the issue is so complex, sensitive, and nuanced that it deserves an appropriate level of patience and attention. It includes my deeply honest, personal, and some would say risky perspective on the topic of diversity in high-performance careers, including tech entrepreneurship; and my concern, as a latino, that the decision by some to “weaponize” diversity is backfiring and causing harm to under-represented minority groups.
posted by infini at 3:43 AM PST - 78 comments

Complementary currencies for municipal finance - "It is an act of criminal malfeasance that the United States' federal government has not eased the tremendous fiscal pressure on states and municipalities, enabling them to prioritize public health and long-term economic wealth over immediate maintenance of tax revenue. Misgovernance of the United States presently rises to the level of war crime (and that is not just Donald Trump). A recent article by Rohan Grey, aptly titled Monetary Resilience, highlights one way this national misgovernance might be circumvented. Municipalities could issue complementary currencies..." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 42 comments

How “Starship Troopers” Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat (single link new yorker) Verhoeven told Empire, in 2014, that he couldn’t finish reading it. With the possible exception of Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” it’s hard to think of a film adaptation that’s more invested in refuting and satirizing its source. The anti-Fascism of “Starship Troopers” is mordant and merciless, but Verhoeven advances his argument by making its every frame lavishly, overbearingly Fascist. [more inside]
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:54 PM PST - 158 comments

A short comic about the unusual 2018 art theft involving 'A View of Hampstead Heath' by John Constable - notable because the thieves never even touched the painting (SL Bloomberg).
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:51 PM PST - 17 comments

MiuMiu Guitargirl is a 7 year old in Nanjing. Her parents have been posting her performances to YouTube during the last few months: multi-instrumental covers, song lessons, guitar playing tips and originals. Some of her earliest posts were I Wish You Love, Fly Me to the Moon and Moon River. I looks like musicians around the globe have time on their hands right now and have decided - to - accompany - her - performances.
posted by bonobothegreat at 5:28 PM PST - 9 comments

Spend a pleasant ninety minutes watching beardy, distractible Irish sword-maker Michael Cthulhu build a massive slab of sword called The Wrektangle.
posted by cortex at 3:22 PM PST - 29 comments

Last November, Daniel M. Lavery -- cofounder of the Toast and Metafilter favorite author -- abruptly and publicly broke with his entire family of origin. Lavery's father is the influential evangelical author John Ortberg, pastor at the prominent Menlo Church, and his sister Laura Turner is also a Christian writer. Lavery had written warmly about his family before. What could have happened?

Megachurch pastor John Ortberg kept a family member’s attraction to children secret. Then his son blew the whistle. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 2:55 PM PST - 41 comments

Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. "Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.” [more inside]
posted by storybored at 1:35 PM PST - 62 comments

A year after creating "arguably the most famous landmark in the Texas panhandle," Cadillac Ranch (Trip Advisor; 1974/1994 short documentary; MoMA; Texas Monthly), Ant Farm (Wikipedia) set up a different sort of temporary event/mixed media piece called Media Burn (original video), whose centerpieces was when a modified Cadillac drove through a burning (smouldering?) wall of televisions (Mltshp; MOMA; MOCAtv short documentary). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:42 AM PST - 5 comments

Childhood friends Kati Horna and Robert Capa became lovers and she went with him to Spain, becoming the woman who captured his Heart.
She documented mostly away from the front lines.
After marrying the Sculptur Jose Horna they fled to Mexico, where she formed a close and lasting friendship with the Surrealists Remedios Varo & Leonora Carrington and her husband Chiqui Weisz (see Mexican Suitcase). As well as photographing Frida Kahlo's studio and Portraits of Leonora Carrington and Varo she played with collage and masks.
A lost archive of her Civil War photos only appeared last year (2019). During her long life she produced a large and varied body of work. See pdf.
posted by adamvasco at 10:09 AM PST - 3 comments

When a decomposing, century-old film becomes a haunting meditation on memory (Aeon): Created using a decomposing 35mm print of the crime drama The Bells (1926), the experimental short Light Is Calling (2004) depicts a dreamy encounter between a soldier and a mysterious woman.
posted by not_the_water at 8:22 AM PST - 6 comments

Ben Wittes and Kate Klonick of LawFare interview Renaissance historian, science fiction writer and anime consultant Ada Palmer on their YouTube channel In Lieu of Fun. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 8:04 AM PST - 5 comments

Vikings Are Gay is a podcast about Norse culture and history from a queer perspective by Old Norse scholar Amy Jeffords Franks. Besides an introductory episode, so far she’s touched on the subjects of bottom shaming and female magic, Odin’s gender, Thor having to act the role of the bride, and an episode in response to Black Lives Matter about the links between Viking studies and white supremacy.
posted by Kattullus at 3:16 AM PST - 18 comments

Italian composer Ennio Morricone, best known for his scores to over 500 films and television programs, has died in Rome at the age of 91. Winner of numerous awards, including two Oscars, six BAFTAS, four Grammys, and three Golden Globes, he gained international recognition in the 1960s for the music he wrote for a series of spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone. Over the next five decades Morricone worked with some of the world’s most acclaimed directors and many others who were lesser known. In addition to his film and television work, he also composed music for advertisements, collaborated with singers, and recorded avant-garde improvisational music as a member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. [more inside]
posted by theory at 2:38 AM PST - 92 comments

In a world where dogs are people too, Huxley feels like he's the chewtoy of the universe. His latest indignity: being unable to afford his mother's funeral. He thinks he's found a way to win without his brother's help in this animated short film, Condolences from the Vulgar Tongue or (Boner).
posted by BiggerJ at 1:16 AM PST - 1 comment

He was a Broadway actor who went through extreme complications of coronavirus before finally dying today. "Since being diagnosed with what was thought to be pneumonia in late March, the Canadian actor spent weeks in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, had his right leg amputated, lost more than 60 pounds and was hoping to receive a double-lung transplant." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:59 PM PST - 38 comments

“안녕~! (Annyeong!) Dollightful is a channel where old toys are transformed by the power of art into unique, one-of-a-kind characters. Whether you're here for a tutorial, or just to laugh and have fun with the ups and downs of a creative process, there's something here for everyone. "Come for the dolls, stay for the cats" as they say.” [more inside]
posted by brook horse at 8:16 PM PST - 3 comments

In these uncertain times, it is reassuring to hear that a proven case of voter fraud has been corrected. I am referring, of course, to Kellogg's releasing Green Onion Flavor Chex in South Korea. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:29 PM PST - 41 comments

"Owen Simmons' 1903 'The Book of Bread', is famous in the book world as, arguably, the first photobook" (threadreader version) Thus begins @incunabula's brief paean to this remarkable, but rare object. Luckily, a scan of the book is available at the Wellcome Collection website.
posted by gwint at 4:02 PM PST - 7 comments

What the historian’s account of an ancient plague taught me when my father died 8,000 miles away "In the slow, turbid dive of the pandemic, Thucydides’ account of the Athenian plague has been my distance line through the compound shocks of public catastrophe and private bereavement. And in the still greater depths of the urgent, unfinished history of racism that kills with both sly neglect and dehumanizing violence, I recall Thucydides’ interpretation of another epidemic as a metaphor for the health of the body politic. "
posted by hippybear at 3:20 PM PST - 5 comments

MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー |. MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (Drum Cover). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (Guitar cover). Macintosh Plus - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー(kazoo/guitar cover). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (8bit C64 cover). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (Otamatone cover). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (bottle cover\DeJoy). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (marimba cover). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (but it's a sad keyboard cover). MACINTOSH PLUS リサフランク420 / It's All In Your Car. MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー (on a worn out reel-to-reel tape). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー | ( KALIMBA COVER ). MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー | (out of tune records cover). MACINTOSH PLUS On A Real Macintosh Plus. [wiki]
posted by Fizz at 1:40 PM PST - 24 comments

Lockdown has changed a lot of things about the way we present ourselves to the world, and for many women, ditching their bra has been a particularly popular one. (Emine Saner, Guardian) “I just don’t see bras making a comeback after this,” tweeted the Buzzfeed writer Tomi Obaro in May. Her tweet has been “liked” more than half a million times. The feminist satire website Reductress ran a headline last week reading: “Bra furlough extended.”
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:29 AM PST - 116 comments

A number of companies were selling HIV-contaminated blood factor for treatment of hemophilia, first from ignorance and then from irresponsibility. I first ran across this about Bayer's complicity, and was pointed at The Origins of AIDS. The first review (by John P. Jones) pointed me at Haemo-Caribbean, a Haitian company which was part of the problem. [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:32 AM PST - 7 comments

Thomas Pynchon Predicted the Pandemic in ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’—Now Aren't You Sorry You Didn't Read It? by Tom LeClair
posted by chavenet at 4:34 AM PST - 35 comments

Darrell Maclaine is an impressionist who has been making videos in lockdown singing UK TV themes in the style of famous artistes. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:27 AM PST - 4 comments

An Oral History of the Great San Diego Fireworks Fail of 2012 (previously)
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:32 PM PST - 23 comments

How well do masks work? (YouTube: It's Okay To Be Smart). Quite well, of course, if worn properly, and Schlieren photography (Wikipedia) gives a great visualization of just how well they do.
posted by biogeo at 11:17 PM PST - 36 comments

Descendents of Frederick Douglass read his 4th of July speech. In this speech, to an abolitionist group, Douglass questions the celebration of freedom, for in 1852, was not granted to him. [more inside]
posted by zabuni at 7:52 PM PST - 6 comments

My relationship with Jordan has taught me more about race than any protest or rally ever could.

Genevieve Roth on unknown privilege.
posted by dfm500 at 6:48 PM PST - 24 comments

"...the bailout ‘has been described as a stimulus’ but it is ‘more accurately’ for ‘stability and relief’. It is better understood, that is, as an instrument for enabling non-financial and financial businesses to continue along the path they had already been taking—to the extent indeed they wished to do so—by placing money in their hands without conditions on how they should spend it, rather than burdened by conditions designed to set them on another path." Robert Brenner, NLR
posted by blue shadows at 5:59 PM PST - 6 comments

Jay and Josh from Red Letter Media talk about UHF, the only feature film vehicle for Weird Al Yankovic.
posted by Pendragon at 4:32 PM PST - 36 comments

Pet Shop Boys recently released remastered HD versions of 5 of their classic videos: Domino Dancing, West End Girls, What Have I Done To Deserve This?, It's A Sin, Go West. YouTube Playlist
posted by hippybear at 12:50 PM PST - 20 comments

The pandemic and the protests inspire works of lamentation and rage. African-Americans are severely underrepresented in classical music, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the frequency with which people of color are now featured in promotional brochures. Online discussions in the wake of nationwide Black Lives Matter protests have made clear how uncomfortable the role of a black classical musician can be. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:49 AM PST - 5 comments

Seriously, all about bison. Exactly what it says on the tin. Bison!
posted by mygothlaundry at 11:24 AM PST - 15 comments

The Last of Us Part 2 proves gaming doesn’t know how to deal with muscular women by Patricia Hernandez [Polygon] “Abby, a new character introduced in The Last of Us Part 2, does not fit the mold. Her face is anchored by a square jaw, which gives her visage a wider look — at least, compared to the heart-shaped face that defines most women in games. Perhaps most notably, Abby is buff. Your eyes are drawn to her chest and muscular arms, which, according to The Last of Us Part 2, she worked very hard across multiple years to beef up. [...] It’s been baffling to see some of the popular dissenting opinion on the game, which often directed against Abby. Part of the dislike seems unavoidable: The Last of Us Part 2 asks you to play as a character who is fundamentally opposed to the heroes we’ve spent hours learning to love and protect. Abby is a hard sell, and that would be true no matter what she looked like. But much of the hate visible on social media isn’t just about the story and Abby’s likability compared to Ellie and Joel, it’s fixated on Abby’s jacked-up body. [And the voice actor who played her]” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:44 AM PST - 73 comments

Massive protests last year in Hong Kong (previously, previously, previously, previously) succeeded in getting an extradition bill scrapped. But now the Beijing government has passed a sweeping security law for Hong Kong which has led to immediate arrests, the purging of social media accounts and disbanding of protest groups, support from businesses including British banking giant HSBC, and fears that the new law covers everyone on earth. If you've been critical of Chinese or Hong Kong authorities, some legal experts are saying, don't board a Cathay Pacific flight or travel to countries which have an extradition treaty with Hong Kong. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 10:34 PM PST - 64 comments

The international foot is exactly 0.3048 of a meter, whereas the U.S. survey foot, 1200/3937 of a meter, has an unending decimal. This means that anyone working in multiple U.S. locations or with different agencies must keep careful track of which foot is in use.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:41 PM PST - 127 comments

Musician/ sculptor Bichopalo builds complex music machines from unusual objects. The machines feature plants where possible as well as other natural elements like sticks and water. They also include small spherical elements that double as bird houses to host Bichopalo’s two pet birds, Pico and Verdi. (Designboom) (Instagram) (short videos re-posted to Imgur)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:33 PM PST - 5 comments

Happy (Belated) Pollinator Week! US Forest Service's Pollinator of the Month includes Bats, Bees, Beetles, Birds, Butterflies, Flies, Moths, Mosquitos, and Wasps. What what? Yes, snow pool mosquitos, flower flies, and pollen wasps are all important pollinators (Pollen wasps look like yellow jackets but "are more like Ferdinand the Bull, who was more interested in smelling flowers.") And don't forget the cacao pollinator, the chocolate midge. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Optical Arts conceived this video as a “live action musical animation” of cups, plates, and glasses smashing and un-smashing accompanied by the toccata section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous organ piece, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I thought it was fully CGI at first (as The Morning News reported), but then I found the making of video on the project page and it’s not — they filmed all the glasses and dished smashing at extremely high speeds between 1000 and 5000 frames/second on Phantom cameras.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:39 AM PST - 16 comments

MetaFilter favorite Cyriak (previously) is back, and teaming up with legendary band Sparks for their newest music video: "The Existential Threat".
posted by SansPoint at 11:16 AM PST - 27 comments

How is Duran Duran's Simon LeBon staying busy during the pandemic lockdown? In late April he started up a podcast WHOOOSH!. It's available to listen to online. So far there are 11 episodes, and they are full of interesting music and discussion. No RSS feed, but here's a YouTube playlist (audio only) of the episodes thus far, I assume it will continue to be updated.
posted by hippybear at 10:13 AM PST - 5 comments

On rewriting the terms of engagement with images of Black suffering. Images of Black suffering, death, and protest have widely circulated on the internet before: for example in 2012 after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman, or in 2014 after Michael Brown was shot in the back by Ferguson police officers. One difference this time is that it’s not just that people who already saw themselves as activists who have called their online followers to take to the streets and participate, but formerly nonactivist users have become politicized and seized upon the feed as a politicized space to engage in an activism of their own.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 9:30 AM PST - 4 comments

An Impossible Poison is a seven minute long horror film by Bidisha.
posted by Kattullus at 5:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Islamic history and medicine in trans Muslim lives. A post by Shireen Hamza on the Journal of the History of Ideas blog, on uncovering sex and gender in pre-modern Islamic law, medicine and society. [more inside]
posted by tavegyl at 4:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Elin Thomas makes corals, petri dishes, and moldy stuff using embroidery and crochet, along with other art.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:39 AM PST - 4 comments

How To Hand-Feed Hummingbirds
posted by Going To Maine at 10:30 PM PST - 46 comments

"Ruth Marten started out as a tattoo artist (Sang Bleu Magazine interview), working on the fringes of the art world in her Native New York, long before tattooing became the socially acceptable, ubiquitous phenomena it is today. She then moved to working on paper and a long and prolific period working as an illustrator for a diverse range of clients (Flash gallery) including Jean Paul Goude, the renowned French graphic designer, producing illustrations for books, magazines and album covers. She then started to make and exhibit her own, very particular, works on paper." (Inhale Magazine) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:01 PM PST - 4 comments

The Icelandic national football team introduced its new crest today with an absolutely epic, goosebump-inducing video (directed by their goaltender, no less). Visit the micro site to learn more.
posted by schoolgirl report at 5:31 PM PST - 37 comments

"Dogs do not simply age at seven times the rate of humans, scientists have found in a study that reveals young dogs might be “older” than previously thought" [more inside]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:59 PM PST - 28 comments

Long-form article by Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson. Reading it, I got the feeling that caste has been a missing link in my vocabulary.
posted by kconner at 3:23 PM PST - 29 comments

Charles Webb Enters Heaven [Counterpunch] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:06 PM PST - 2 comments

"[Dollar] stores are throughout our community, but they have no interest in the community. They’re not giving nothing back. They give nothing back.” [more inside]
posted by southern_sky at 2:38 PM PST - 89 comments

Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth sits down to speak with Al Jaffee at 99.
(previously.)
posted by Catblack at 2:27 PM PST - 4 comments

NYT technology reporter Taylor Lorenz covers internet culture including The End of Friendly Generational Relations, influencers posting fake brand deals, and Instagram's harassment problem (all on Mefi). Today, it emerged she's been the target of threats and harassment by prominent tech VCs on the private Silicon Valley social network Clubhouse. Notably, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z, has declined to help.
posted by adrianhon at 2:00 PM PST - 37 comments

What if animals were...round? Rollin' Safari. Rollin' Wild. Rollin' Christmas.
posted by gottabefunky at 1:46 PM PST - 5 comments

Ghislaine Maxwell arrested by FBI and accused of 'setting trap' for Epstein victims. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire and an FBI indictment charges her with several crimes[NYT link , disturbing content]. [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 12:05 PM PST - 122 comments

Fairest Of The Faire: The 1963 Renaissance Pleasure Faire & May Market [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:05 AM PST - 7 comments

Writing in Medium, Laurie Penny provides a backgrounder on the rise of left wing transphobia in the UK, and its damaging impact both in Britain and internationally.(SLMedium) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:54 AM PST - 58 comments

How to Pick a Perfect Watermelon. The Best Way to Cut a Watermelon. An Ode to Watermelon. When Bad Watermelons Explode on Good People. 21 Watermelon Recipes to Make This Summer. The Health Benefits of Watermelon. The Reason Why Southerners Love Putting Salt on Watermelon. What Is Yellow Watermelon? Watermelon Varieties – Common Types and Their Tastes. Five of Our Favorite “Watermelon” Scenes in Movies. A Game Where You Slap A Watermelon To Learn About The Existential Horror Of Being A Watermelon. The 5,000-Year Secret History of the Watermelon. How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope. 18 Super Cool Watermelon Tattoo Ideas. The Heaviest Watermelon. How to Eat a Watermelon. How to Carve a Watermelon T Rex Dinosaur. Just eat some watermelon, okay?
posted by Fizz at 10:04 AM PST - 59 comments

In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both. As the nation begins to make plans for reopening schools this fall, there is a looming childcare crisis. Many families are struggling with decisions about whether to send children to reopened child care and how to balance work and schools that may be opening on a part-time basis. [more inside]
posted by kellygrape at 9:48 AM PST - 56 comments

The Problem of ‘Colonial Science’ (Scientific American): "This was my first experience with "parachute science" or, as some might call it, "colonial science" -- the conservation model where researchers from the developed world come to countries like mine, do research and leave without any investment in human capacity or infrastructure. It creates a dependency on external expertise and cripples local conservation efforts. The work is driven by the outsiders' assumptions, motives and personal needs, leading to an unfavorable power imbalance between those from outside and those on the ground. [...] If we acknowledged that working anywhere other than our own home country is a privilege and not a right, and if we all looked to learn and share equally and were equally equipped to do research based on the needs on the ground, then we would be better off than we are right now."
posted by not_the_water at 9:21 AM PST - 10 comments

The Free Black University is a hub for radical and transformative knowledge production. "The Free Black University exists to re-distribute knowledge and act as a space of incubation for the creation of transformative knowledge in the Black community. We firmly believe education should centre Black people healing and it should be free, anti-colonial, and accessible to all – so we will provide it." [more inside]
posted by Balthamos at 9:20 AM PST - 6 comments

"Kharkovchanka" were giant snow tracked vehicles built by the soviets for use in Antarctic exploration from the 1950s onwards. They were designed and assembled (in 3 months) to act in the manner of a giant tracked spaceships - housing crew and towing supplies. Following a successful initial overland journey to the South Pole they have been in successful deployment for decades since. Youtuber Calum tells their story. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 8:27 AM PST - 17 comments

On Friday, June 26, First Peoples Worldwide and members of the Yethiya wihe’ / Investors & Indigenous Peoples Working Group (IIPWG) sent letters to three major sponsors of the Washington, DC NFL football team—Nike (PDF), PepsiCo (PDF), and FedEx (PDF)—signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion, asking the sponsors to cut any support to the team until they Change The Name. “We need to remember that the franchise name is not just a word, it is a symbol that loudly and clearly signals that Native Americans are not worthy of respect.” [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 7:38 AM PST - 58 comments

Last week a football match in the UK was the backdrop of a particularly racist episode: while players took the knee in support of BlackLivesMatter, some "fans" of the local team flew a banner above the stadium that read "White Lives Matter"*. Cambridge academic (and Guardian contributor) Dr Priyamvada Gopal tweeted in response "white lives don’t matter" (with the qualifier "as white lives"), and found herself the target of racist abuse. Her colleague Nicholas Guyatt, professor of American history at Cambridge University, shared in this thread on Twitter [Threadreader] a few insightful observations about the whole episode and the reactions to it, specific racist attitudes in British media & politics** and white privilege in general. [more inside]
posted by bitteschoen at 7:38 AM PST - 23 comments

International cooperation between police forces enabled them to spy on an encrypted phone network, Encrochat, since the 1st April 2020. The result is a massive operation arresting 746 suspects in the UK alone. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 6:21 AM PST - 33 comments

Last week, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Singapore's 13th Parliament dissolved. [more inside]
posted by destrius at 2:27 AM PST - 38 comments

I originally wrote this because I was a little irritated at reading books in which the heroine left London in the morning and had tea in Devon. Presumably she shoehorned a V-8 into her carriage and the horses were just for show.
posted by larrybob at 10:09 PM PST - 33 comments

"It’s not just that heartless people are more likely to become rich. I’m saying that being rich tends to corrode whatever heart you’ve got left." Terrific summary of research covering the corrosive effects of inequality, how we can (and should) resist it, and ultimately talking about the fact that rich people aren't assholes, rather being rich makes us all assholes.
posted by smoke at 7:39 PM PST - 55 comments

In May 1997, the same month that The Lost World: Jurassic Park (trailer) debuted in the United States, the U.S. Postal Service released (Virtual Stamp Club) 15 stamps depicting various dinosaurs and extinct reptiles (paleophilatelie.eu). Except, as sharp-eyed paleontologist Christopher Brochu (Univ. of Iowa) noted, Goniopholis (Wikipedia) was actually based on the contemporary Nile crocodile (National Geographic). The Rise and Fall of the Living Fossil. The idea that some species are relics that have stopped evolving is finally going extinct. (Nautilus) Come for the re-consideration of ancient crocodilians and crocodyliforms, stay for the re-discovery of the "tame" desert crocodiles (Reptiles Magazine).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Aram Bedrosian plays amazing music on solo electric and acoustic bass guitar (with occasional collaborations). My current favorite - Weightless. His YT Channel. [more inside]
posted by carter at 4:25 PM PST - 6 comments

Ruth Goodman (of Victorian-Farm-and-many-other-historical-series fame, previously and previously), Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold have traveled across the Channel to help build a French castle using 13th century tools.
posted by clawsoon at 3:31 PM PST - 26 comments

Complexity 2020 is the biennial exhibition from Complex Weavers featuring brain-melting technically challenging, but lovely, handweaving (possibly computer-assisted weaving or design or both or neither). You'll have to click around a bit on mobile to get to the detail shots. Previous Complexity exhibitions are here.
posted by janell at 2:34 PM PST - 14 comments

Fred Schneider (of the B-52's) sings Lime in the Coconut on Conan O'Brien, 1995 [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 2:22 PM PST - 32 comments

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-form content platform has struggled to make an impact with bad reviews, lack of interest and legal issues swirling [TheGuardian]
posted by Etrigan at 12:53 PM PST - 50 comments

Oumi Janta dances on rollerskates in Berlin. (All links to Instagram posts) [more inside]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:07 PM PST - 5 comments

The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Hyakki Yagyō) is a thousand-plus-year-old Japanese folkloric tradition, in which a series of demons parades — or explodes — into the ordinary human world. Kyōsai’s version was one of the artist’s most popular volumes, offering “a spectacular visual encyclopedia of supernatural creatures of premodern Japanese folklore.” Narratively, it paves the way for the fantastic parade with two woodblocks: the first depicts a group of adults and children gathered around a coal fire to hear ghosts stories, the second a man (probably Kyōsai) setting down his calligraphy brush and extinguishing the lamp in preparation for the night in which the demons will appear.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:14 AM PST - 7 comments

Constance Grady at Vox: This summer, a debate is looming over the words we use when we talk about the people who are disproportionately the victims of police brutality. When do we use the phrase “people of color”; when do we say “BIPOC,” which stands for Black and Indigenous people of color; and when do we just say “Black”? [more inside]
posted by Ouverture at 10:16 AM PST - 23 comments

Rare 'branched flow' phenomenon seen for the first time in visible light. "For the first time, researchers have created the 'branched flow' phenomenon in visible light, previously only seen in other types of wave like sound. Using nothing but a laser and a simple soap bubble, scientists caused light to twist and fork along its path."
posted by dhruva at 10:07 AM PST - 10 comments

“See?” People say, after a Black woman dares to feel anger after experiencing the one-thousandth micro-aggression of the day. “She’s so aggressive.” To the racist world, the Black woman is not soft. - @Ashia Monet
posted by simmering octagon at 9:43 AM PST - 3 comments

“Everybody was sort of left-footed,” Hall says. “We were all like, Whoa, what are we doing? Everybody had to figure out how to relate to each other. So everybody started to act like they were in the eighth-grade chorus. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever experienced. All these superstars, whatever you want to call them, we all turned into junior-high kids in chorus, and Quincy became Mr. Jones. That’s how it shook out. Laughing like kids.” 'We Are the World': Inside Pop Music's Most Famous All-Nighter [SL Esquire]
posted by chavenet at 9:37 AM PST - 25 comments

The Thrilling Tale of How Robert Smalls Seized a Confederate Ship and Sailed it to Freedom
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:06 AM PST - 15 comments

You know those plants and weeds you see every day growing outside your home? They may not look like much, but if prepared properly, they can be transformed into a delicious and nutritious meal. [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by querty at 7:37 AM PST - 23 comments

The New York Times has announced it will start using uppercase “Black” to "describe people and cultures of African origin, both in the U.S. and elsewhere"; so has the Associated Press, which is updating its writing style guide accordingly; and other newsrooms have been following suit. Here’s the story of how long it took and some of the people who made that happen, why this is "far more than a typographical change", how "the question of how to properly refer to Black people in print has deep historical roots", and why "saying 'Black' with a capital B isn't enough" .
posted by bitteschoen at 7:02 AM PST - 24 comments

He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita. Amia Srinivasan reviews What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron at the LRB.
posted by misteraitch at 6:25 AM PST - 25 comments

Celebrate Canada by celebrating 'Original people' of the land by Sheila North [CBC] “Dear Canada, dear Canadians, You are beautiful. True, north, strong and free. So why are you mean, so ignorant, rude and hateful?! Not all the time and not all of you. But when you are, you really are to a point that people die. To a point where certain people, your neighbours, go missing or are murdered at alarming rates. Why can't you stand up and put an end to that pandemic that's persisted for many generations? I know you care about human rights. In fact, you are known by other countries as a state that fights for human rights. And yet you fight the original people of this land when they stand up and assert their basic human rights for clean water, proper resources to care for children and access to their own lands, for example. You have more than enough now for you and your next generations to live comfortably. The benefits you have access to and have stored up are remarkable. But don't you see what getting all of that has done to the original people of this land? Surely you see the injustices, the poverty, the high incarceration rates, children in care and illnesses among the people who agreed to share this land and its resources with you, so you and your families could have a good life.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:33 AM PST - 19 comments

In 1984, filmmaker Tony Hill created a contraption, the 'Satellite Crane', to revolve a camera around a subject. He used it to create an experimental film, 'Downside Up', and a music video for Cabaret Voltaire: 'Sensoria'. [more inside]
posted by Italian Radio at 2:49 AM PST - 8 comments

Donald said at the time that he supported a cutoff of medical coverage that had been provided by a family company for Fred III’s son, William, who had cerebral palsy. Donald Trump told the New York Daily News that when he and his siblings were sued by Fred III and Mary, he felt, “Why should we give [William] medical coverage?”

Mary Trump is telling the story.

Mary Trump continued her studies at Adelphi University, where she earned a master’s degree in psychology in 2001, a master’s in clinical psychology in 2003, and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology in 2010, a school official said. She has written Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. [more inside]
posted by bendy at 2:02 AM PST - 53 comments