MetaFilter

Outside of a rarefied top tier, it can be extremely hard to make money in creative fields online. Writers are continually asked to work for pennies or, even worse, “exposure.” Artists may have it even worse. ... But there is still at least one online community that treats artists with respect and pays fair prices for original work — one community that artists can rely on when editors, publishers, and social networks make it more and more difficult to get paid. When it comes to commissioning original works of art, nobody can match the furries.
posted by hippybear at 11:58 PM PST - 56 comments

FRAMED: A Mystery In Six Parts. The LA Times' Christopher Goffard brings you a truly bizarre bit of true crime, involving planted drugs, PTA moms, sexy firemen, self-published novels, cold-blooded revenge, and a whole lot more. [more inside]
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:52 PM PST - 103 comments

The New York subway exposes riders to noise as loud as a jet engine. (SLGuardian)
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 7:46 PM PST - 48 comments

Exactly what it says on the tin. Model trains delivering food! Let's start with Prague's Výtopna restaurant; more below. [more inside]
posted by duffell at 7:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Finder of Lost Recipes
posted by aniola at 5:36 PM PST - 14 comments

BBC: "Unlike the big cats many people recognise, such as lions and tigers, many wild cat species are small, rare and little-known. But they are just as deserving of our adoration as the pets we keep at home, and far more endangered. So to help raise their profile, we thought we would create our own cat challenge. Can you spot which of the following are wild cat species, and which are breeds of everyday moggy?" [more inside]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 4:25 PM PST - 59 comments

In the summer of 2001, Tim Smith threw himself a 40th birthday party. If you know Tim Smith—and you should know Tim Smith (previously)——it won't surprise you that this silly, square little event was attended by some of the most brilliant musicians on the planet. The psychedelic, proto–math rock Monsoon Bassoon—the lead singer/songwriter of whom went on to form Knifeworld—opened the show. Sidi Bou Said, sometimes called the all–woman Pixies, followed. Next up was a shockingly young Stars in Battledress, who you should probably also know, and then William D Drake took the stage, playing rough drafts of songs that in fourteen years' time would form the core of 2015's best musical release. Finally, and this might be the best treat of all, Drake and North Sea Radio Orchestra's Sharron Fortnam took the stage as Lake of Puppies, who never released an album and whose bootlegs are exceedingly difficult to find. (Some of LoP's songs wound up on the Shrubbies album Memphis in Texas, which incidentally is stunning.) The performances are rough and lighthearted, and the recording is mediocre, but this recording is a marvelous treasure trove of musical talents, many of which are still now coming into fruition.
posted by rorgy at 3:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Photographer Laura Izumikawa's baby turned out to be a great sleeper, so she used the opportunity to dress her napping baby in pop culture costumes and post the photos to Instagram.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:09 PM PST - 19 comments

A nine hour radio adaptation of John Milton's Paradise Lost, starring Linus Roache as Adam and Ian McDiarmid (Dragonslayer, Return of the Jedi) as Satan. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:31 PM PST - 18 comments

Thanks to Sci-Fi and Horror fiction podcasts are finally a thing. or perhaps they've been a thing for a bit longer than that.
posted by Artw at 11:15 AM PST - 59 comments

Subway Reads: Free E-Books, Timed for Your Commute [The New York Times] “On Sunday, Subway Reads started delivering novellas, short stories or excerpts from full-length books to passengers’ cellphones or tablets. The idea is for riders to download a short story or a chapter and read it on the train. Subway Reads will even let riders choose what to read based on how long they will be on the subway — a 10-page selection for a 10-minute ride, a 20-page selection for a 20-minute excursion, a 30-page selection for a 30-minute trip. Delays not included.”
posted by Fizz at 11:01 AM PST - 6 comments

Anon and his hermit crabs is an emotional roller coaster and might even be true. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:55 AM PST - 21 comments

Why are so many BASE jumpers dying? The answer [warning, graphic description] is more complicated than "because they are jumping off cliffs". [more inside]
posted by jeather at 9:40 AM PST - 134 comments

New York's highest court has redefined parenthood in a same-sex parenting case. (SLNYT) The Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in In the Matter of Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A. C.C. and Matter of Estrellita A. v. Jennifer D., that the non-married, ex-partner of a biological parent may seek custody or visitation rights of children they once agreed to conceive and raise as co-partners with their exes. The Court, in a 6-0 vote, said that given the legalization of same-sex marriages and other societal changes that have upset the notion of "parents" as being a married man and woman, it was time for it to abandon the precedent of its 1991 ruling in Matter of Alison D. v. Virginia M. [more inside]
posted by holborne at 8:20 AM PST - 27 comments

Emma Allen reports from deep inside improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. (SLNewYorker) The UCB improv empire takes in millions a year. "Pyramid-scheme theories have been floated: if U.C.B. is charging so much for classes, does not compensate performers, and makes them pay for practice space and coaches, where's all the money going?"
posted by Flexagon at 7:37 AM PST - 87 comments

The moment I realize I have skunks living in my yard, I become obsessed with them. Within a few weeks, I have the skunk skull on my desk, a stack of articles on skunks, and a copy of The Biology of the Striped Skunk, by B. J. Verts—the definitive textbook on the animal, published in 1967. (In fact, it’s the only textbook on the striped skunk.) I’m waiting for a bottle of skunk essence to arrive in the mail...

[more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 7:37 AM PST - 31 comments

It's the middle of the night in tropical Costa Rica, and you're wandering in the forest. Suddenly, you hear a sound like a jaguar having a really difficult bowel movement. But no! Actually it's a bird that looks like Jim Henson was asked to design a stoned alien. [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 3:54 AM PST - 17 comments

It may not have set the charts alight when it was first released in 2003, but it’s entirely possible that Maps by New York art-punk outfit Yeah Yeah Yeahs has been the single most influential song of the 21st century so far. How? Let’s look…
posted by chavenet at 2:49 AM PST - 23 comments

Hallig Hooge is a tiny German island in the North Sea. It's been occupied since 1593 and it's quite pretty. Lots of German tourists come visit for the day (video of Hooge). The Germans call it a Hallig instead of an island though, because unlike an island, it floods (2 minute video) every time there is a very high tide. [more inside]
posted by colfax at 2:04 AM PST - 17 comments

International investors have a private court of appeal even in criminal matters - "A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. [ISDS] operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 39 comments

Among the lesser-known post-Milne works involving Winnie the Pooh is Disney's syndicated comic strip, running from '78 to '88 (following all but one of the theatrical featurettes, preceding the first animated series and beginning before the live-action Welcome to Pooh Corner). It is most well known for its characterizations, as seen in a series of examples aptly named Poohdickery. You can read much more of the comic starting here (earliest comic in archive with working image). And apropos of this post about online Russian movies, the beloved and brilliant Soviet adaptation, Vinni Puh (One, Two, Three Part 1, Three Part 2) (Wikipedia: One, Two, Three).
posted by BiggerJ at 11:58 PM PST - 7 comments

Kevin Gilbert gives us the 1995 track Waiting, a song based on or in tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem I Am Waiting (a truncated version performed by him here with jazz background) [revised text from A Coney Island Of The Mind]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:36 PM PST - 10 comments

12 Incredible Artificial and Man-Made Beaches [more inside]
posted by little_dog_laughing at 8:40 PM PST - 18 comments

Because most people think of work like customer service when they think of remote jobs, these jobs are usually classified as clerical. 911 dispatchers are no exception. Unlike most clerical workers, though, 911 dispatchers often have to handle talking citizens through traumatic situations, often risking compassion fatigue and trauma themselves in the process. In order to get 911 dispatchers access to mental health services and support, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials are openly campaigning to reclassify 911 dispatchers as first responders. As part of that campaign, 911 dispatchers have been speaking out this week about some of the more harrowing experiences they've talked people in crisis through.
posted by sciatrix at 8:05 PM PST - 18 comments

Deep Sadness is an artwork.
posted by escabeche at 7:24 PM PST - 22 comments

Zoo. Season Two. "...But anyway, the sloth and the ants: The evil four-star general — who has his own plan to save the world, which is called the Noah Objective and involves releasing a gas that kills off all the infected animals, and actually seems kind of reasonable if you think about it, because, like, look at the list of things the animals have done — storms the science plane and starts detaining everyone. But the earthquake sloth gets free and shrieks and ...." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 6:18 PM PST - 40 comments

Let Spike and Margaret take you to Kenzo World. (SLVimeo; alternatively, YT)
posted by progosk at 3:16 PM PST - 37 comments

This year, Somaliland is celebrating its silver jubilee (though there are concerns and disappointments), and recently held its 9th annual Hargeysa International Book Fair in the (unrecognized) country's capital. The theme this year was leadership, and its connection to art, culture, and creativity. HIBF is the biggest annual event in Somaliland, drawing 11,000 attendees this year, it's an advertisement for a republic that showcases itself as a kind of "anti-Somalia." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:18 PM PST - 5 comments

"Dancing in the Street"
Bowie + Jagger - music + hand claps = laffs [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:10 PM PST - 68 comments

'Freaks on the peaks': the lonely lives of the last remaining forest fire lookouts (slTheGrauniad)
posted by Kitteh at 12:54 PM PST - 49 comments

As of August 3rd, it is again legal to play Daily Fantasy sports in New York State. But having spent a fortune on legal bills (and even more on marketing) it may be too late for the two major players in the DFS world, DraftKings and FanDuel (previously) to ever become profitable. ESPN and Outside the Lines go into what went wrong (Spoiler alert: "The implosion of the daily fantasy industry is a bro-classic tale of hubris, recklessness, political naïveté and a kill-or-be-killed culture.")
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:50 PM PST - 27 comments

ITT Tech has ceased enrolling new students. On August 26, the US Department of Education prohibited ITT Tech from enrolling new students who receive federal financial aid. Less than 1 week later, the embattled school will no longer enroll new students at all. Current students may continue their studies this year. [more inside]
posted by LizBoBiz at 12:38 PM PST - 60 comments

A quadcopter one inch in diameter can carry a one-gram charge. You can write some code to say: ‘Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target’. A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They could be here in two to three years.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:06 PM PST - 78 comments

A Canadian newspaper peppers its front page with comments from Internet trolls. [more inside]
posted by sardonyx at 11:34 AM PST - 31 comments

Blokdust is a browser-based music, instrument and sound creation thing. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Inside NYC's Social Club For The Formerly Devout [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:46 AM PST - 12 comments

The death of the Buzzfeed crossword puzzle after less than a year leads FiveThirtyEight Senior Writer Oliver Roeder to survey the state of indie crosswords ("The Times is a Budweiser lager; the indies are small-batch saisons and IPAs."). [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:34 AM PST - 32 comments

"Takamatsu went out with [the] regular dive customers -- the ones who dove for fun. They had no idea Takamatsu was searching for a body." [SLNYT] [warning: some graphic details re body decomposition]
posted by trillian at 10:31 AM PST - 12 comments

The Secret Nazi Attempt to Breed the Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts. [Longreads] The bestselling author of ‘The Eighty Dollar Champion’ describes the Nazis’ secret stud farm, where dubious visionaries imagined a breed of perfect (and perfectly white) horse. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:18 AM PST - 31 comments

Object Dreams is a blog that catalogs the output of varying text prediction algorithms. Here's part of a Batman: The Animated Series episode it wrote, "The Penguin makes things worse by killing Batman. He has happened to Batman and he is visibly criminal. Batman isn’t still around. Batman is in a cloud. The Penguin finds that he is astounded by killing the man who loves him most. He feels responsible for the death of Gotham’s prominent Batman. He loves the man that Batman isn’t." These programs create Yelp! reviews of the Paris Catacombs, IMDB content warnings, and scripts for Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown - among other things. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 7:30 AM PST - 45 comments

Jimmy Maher of The Digital Antiquarian tells the story of Sierra Entertainment's gamble on the MS-DOS/IMB platform shaped PC gaming as we know it: from creating the first game with a cinematic score (and later helping to make the Sound Blaster a standard feature of home PCs); to pioneering the genre of adventure games with rich storytelling; to a female-friendly marketing and design strategy that was decades ahead of its time.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 6:27 AM PST - 60 comments

The Real Bob Ross [more inside]
posted by unannihilated at 2:56 AM PST - 19 comments

Nanowire Mesh Monitors Mouse Brains - "Injectable 'neural lace'* brain-computer interface works in mice for months at a time." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 31 comments

"No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization, but it is certainly worth further study. Working out the strength of the signal, the researchers say that if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization. If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization. The possibility of noise of one form or another cannot be ruled out, and researchers in Paris led by Jean Schneider are considering the possible microlensing of a background source by HD164595. But the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target." [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:04 PM PST - 127 comments

Beyond Spam: Hormel's secret weapon for predicting the future of food Around 2007, Hormel quietly embarked on a venture that would take it deeper than it had ever been into the cupboards and kitchens of Americans, many of them immigrants, many of them young. It led to a series of acquisitions and a blitz of research and development that helped round out its pantry of products and inoculate it against the fickle modern food trends of a kale-and-quinoa world.
One of the first things it did was hire an anthropologist. [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 2:03 PM PST - 77 comments

Following an admission yesterday by the government of Uzbekistan that its president, Islam Karimov, had suffered a stroke, it is now being reported that he has died. He was the only person to have led an independent Uzbekistan and it is unclear who might succeed him, as his once-popular (at least as far as her father was concerned) daughter Gulnara has been under house arrest since 2014 after a feud within the family. Last year, Daniil Kislov, whose Ferghana news agency was among the first to report Karimov's illness and death, had some reflections on Karimov's last few years of authoritarian rule.
posted by Copronymus at 1:53 PM PST - 18 comments

Rudy Van Gelder, best known for his work at legendary Bluenote Records, influential sound engineer, dead at 92. (Previously on Metafilter, RVG) Spotify playlist of his recordings.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:58 PM PST - 40 comments

Gene Wilder has died at age 83. Gene Wilder, who regularly stole the show in such comedic gems as “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Stir Crazy,” died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said he died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. [more inside]
posted by holborne at 12:34 PM PST - 294 comments

Can smiling make you happier? Maybe not. We have no idea. ... The basic finding of Strack’s research—that a facial expression can change your feelings even if you don’t know that you’re making it—has now been reproduced, at least conceptually, many, many times. ... In recent years, it has even formed the basis for the treatment of mental illness. An idea that Strack himself had scoffed at in the 1980s now is taken very seriously: Several recent, randomized clinical trials found that injecting patients’ faces with Botox to make their “frown lines” go away also helped them to recover from depression. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 12:19 PM PST - 19 comments

It’s not that “exposure” doesn’t exist. It does, sort of, but it’s more along the lines of “networking.” [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 11:32 AM PST - 66 comments

A Tiny Jellyfish Relative Just Shut Down Yellowstone River [more inside]
posted by quaking fajita at 10:02 AM PST - 23 comments

Donny is flopping about on immigration and his "deportation force," and the view of Donald as a bigot are solidifying, as Hillary's camp keeps up the race-themed attack on Donnie. Meanwhile, Donny bought $10 million in ads for this week, his biggest buy yet, focusing on the economy. Ads will air in battleground states, including Colorado and Virginia, where Clinton’s top aides — citing the growth in minority communities and college-educated white voters — feel confident enough to pull local ads. And to keep things lively, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton trade jabs over their health. With a bit more than 70 days to go, it's too soon for Hillary to run out the clock, so let's go, get back on your feet!
posted by filthy light thief at 8:52 AM PST - 3490 comments

Meet Octobot: Squishy, Adorable and Revolutionary [The New York Times] “This squishy eight-armed machine is the world’s first fully autonomous soft-bodied robot. Researchers at Harvard University created the octopus by three-dimensional printing, using silicone gel, which gives it its flexible, rubbery texture. On Wednesday, they unveiled their adorable step toward the robot uprising in the journal Nature [.PDF]. The scientists said in their paper that their creation could be a foundation for the future of soft-bodied robots.”
posted by Fizz at 6:41 AM PST - 30 comments

The end of WTF D&D's epic saga of 90's music stars and cosmic horrors has finally begun, half a year after that post (which contains links to the entire story so far). Zack and Steve's zany game logs from the interim: Death Star plans on Naboo (1, 2), Dark Heresy: The Lost Dog Detectives (1, 2), a redneck WWE wrestler, a 90's Marvel character trapped in the Cinematic Universe (1, 2) and a Ghostbusters franchise in North Dakota (1, 2). As evidenced by the site's archives, much pointing and laughing at sourcebooks did indeed also ensue.
posted by BiggerJ at 6:38 AM PST - 3 comments

After conspicuously not standing up during the National Anthem played at a preseaon NFL game on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick explained that his actions were a tribute to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Moreover, he went on, the song itself has a racist history. If you unfamiliar, here is Jason Johnson of the Root to explain: Lt. Francis Scott Key and the history of the US National Anthem's racist 3rd Verse.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:07 AM PST - 216 comments

In their struggle for survival against killer mites, bees get an unlikely ally: Monsanto. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 5:36 AM PST - 12 comments

Nakul Krishna on the ethics & morality of Malory Towers. [more inside]
posted by terretu at 2:03 AM PST - 22 comments

Following the success of previous BBC Four 'slow TV' programmes, including All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride & Canal Trip, and Slow Week, BBC4 is inviting viewers aboard for a very special journey through one of the most spectacular and beautiful bus routes in Britain. The 'Northern Dalesman', as the bus on the route is called, has been rigged with specialist cameras as it travels on its journey, snaking across the iconic landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Filmed in real time, the cameras capture the road unfurling, the passing scenery and the occasional chatter of local passengers. Two hours of scenery and quiet, no ads, no idiot voice-over ... all television should be this way. (Previously)
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:06 AM PST - 45 comments

DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels show us the potential future of international diplomacy
posted by beukeboom at 7:47 PM PST - 34 comments

32 covers from twelve years of Mojo tribute albums [more inside]
posted by maggieb at 6:23 PM PST - 6 comments

Free Soviet movies, with English subtitles. Cartoons! Comedy! Sci Fi! Melodrama! Drama Drama! Adventure! Everything!
posted by idiopath at 5:42 PM PST - 20 comments

Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:34 PM PST - 31 comments

"Eating his stolen sandwiches in the stairwell, the grad student contemplates how his life has come to this." The Grad Student: A hollow head struggling to make it through a blocky world.
posted by lazuli at 4:02 PM PST - 59 comments

As the UK continues to absorb the implications of the Brexit referendum vote, further splits open due to the (possibly overcooked) arguments between TV cooking show hosts. The declaration of one, that “no family should own a deep-fat fryer” leads to the reply that “...the UK was built on chips and spam fritters.” Host hostilities are further inflamed by the cultural flashpoint of whether Jaffa Cakes should, or could, be dunked in tea, with the retort of “We don't do that in the south, you know.” (Previously [1] and [2]) [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 10:38 AM PST - 91 comments

What was Thor up to during the Captain America: Civil War slap-fight between Thor's earthly comrades? "I guess I'm just taking a break." Starring Thor, Thor's roommate, Mjolnir, and a special Avenger guest. (alternate video link) [more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 10:23 AM PST - 66 comments

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the best of "worldly cinema" according to Reddit users. The individual country threads provide alternate suggestions. The list is as idiosyncratic as can be expected from a Reddit poll: entries on Niger, Nigeria and Palestine had to be deleted because the threads were downvoted to death, Vietnamese cinema does not exist at all and the Best Swedish Movie Ever is [spoiler]. It is, however, a powerful reminder that movies are made everywhere. [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 8:08 AM PST - 48 comments

Food Manga: Where Culture, Conflict And Cooking All Collide [NPR.org] “In Japan, nearly every interest has a manga dedicated to it, whether it's sports, music or shooting pool. So it's no wonder that food, which has always been tied to Japan's cultural identity, has skyrocketed as a genre of manga, which represents about 40 percent of all books published in that country. Food manga first appeared in the 1980s, when the Japanese economy was strong, says Nancy Stalker, professor of Japanese history and culture at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the first, Oishinbo, ran for more than 20 years and became the basis for an anime series, as have many manga since. Conflict and cooking are at the heart of many food manga: Food Wars, Soldier of Food, Wakakozake, Detective Glutton, Solitary Gourmet, Criminal Grub, Cooking Master Boy, Antique Bakery, High Plains Gourmet.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:10 AM PST - 38 comments

"Babies" made from flour sacks or eggshells have been used for to teach children about the responsibilities of parenthood, but a new study using lifelike simulated babies in Western Australian schools had a surprising result: girls enrolled in the Virtual Infant Parenting Program (VIP) were twice as likely to give birth in their teens.
[original report in The Lancet]
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:53 PM PST - 100 comments

68 years after the first modern Olympic Games, a fourth medal was added to recognize athletes who displayed exceptional sportsmanship. Awarded on rare occasions, the Pierre de Coubertin medal, also known as the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal, was inaugurated at the 1964 Winter Olympics. It was there that Eugenio Monti's kind gestures lead to two gold medals, for the two- and four-man bobsled, but for the other teams. The medal has now been awarded 18 times, with the latest medal going to New Zealand's Nikki Hamblin and US's Abbey D’Agostino, after the pair tangled in their 5,000m race in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, but got up to complete the race together. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:52 PM PST - 17 comments

else Heart.Break() (trailer) is simultaneously one of the most delightful, and most melancholy, games in recent memory. Welcome to Dorisberg, a town in which reality itself can be reprogrammed—using a variant of BASIC, no less!—and in which a group of aimless twentysomething rebels suffers under the watch of the all–seeing Ministry. The story is short, but the town is ridiculously complex, as hinted at by the sheer length and breadth of its soundtrack. There are secrets within secrets. And sadnesses within sadnesses, too. Users have been writing delightfully complex scripts, too, rewiring the entire city to suit their purposes. eH.B() was created by Erik Svedang, whose ultrashort Blueberry Garden has been one of my favorite games for close to a decade.
posted by rorgy at 2:25 PM PST - 21 comments

It's hard to believe America has never had a woman President, considering that in 1932, theaters across the country were showing the campaign film "Betty Boop for President", which contained many gags that seem just as relevant today. Then in 1948, the same animation studio recycled some of the content for the Popeye cartoon "Olive Oyl for President".
via Miss Cellania, who should have been elected Blog Queen years ago
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:23 PM PST - 15 comments

What toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation
posted by dinty_moore at 1:10 PM PST - 44 comments

"Whatever [the ingredients] taste like together is not particularly relevant." Terry Gross interviews married culinary historians Jane Ziegelman and Andy Coe on the culinary history of the Great Depression and their new book 'A Square Meal' (37:00 audio, transcribed sections)
posted by The Whelk at 11:07 AM PST - 50 comments

Stressed Out is a song from Blurryface, the fourth studio album by Twenty One Pilots. Released in April 2015, the song reached #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, #1 on Hot Rock Songs and Mainstream Top 40, and is certified 4x platinum The video features many relatives of the band, and was filmed mostly in the Ohio childhood home of the drummer. The lyrics, a recent NYT review of the band at Madison Square Garden and a New Yorker piece, and a previous mention in MetaFilter.
posted by Wordshore at 8:35 AM PST - 50 comments

The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace: Among the Most Accurate Renditions of Prehistoric Life Ever Made - a longish read by Darren Naish of the tetrapod zoology blog in Scientific American.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:30 AM PST - 9 comments

“When I closed my eyes this sensation of flying was quite delightful, and strange beyond description.” British actress Fanny Kemble provides a spirited account of the first passenger railroad trip in 1830.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Why did Yankee Doodle put a feather in his hat and call it "macaroni?" As you've probably guessed, the song is not about noodles; macaroni refers to a fashion trend in high-society England of the late 1700s. NPR's All Things Considered looked into the history of the rhyme with librarian and author Chris Roberts. But what happened to the macaroni trend? Atlas Obscura tells a story of youth culture, old men yelling at clouds, and social panic over the erosion of gender norms. (Previously: The Etymological Evolution of Dude)
posted by duffell at 7:04 AM PST - 25 comments

Pastor Rich and the Ministry of Fun "We live in the age of hipster Christianity, a time of multiplying ministries with one-word names, such as Status, Mosaic, Reality, and, most famously, Hillsong, an Australian Pentecostal megachurch whose New York City branch is led by Rich's friend and fellow pastor to the stars Carl Lentz. Most leave untouched fundamentalism's core convictions—opposition to abortion and sex outside of marriage (which is between a man and a woman) and also to false gods (meaning all of them but their own)—but they rebrand the presentation. Rich is only the most mediagenic of whatComplex has described as this "new wave of stylish pastors," just as a young Billy Graham was before him and Billy Sunday before him, stripping away the Bible's subtler teachings to draw the masses. Rich is the latest avatar of a tradition common to Christianity and capitalism, the so-called new-and-improved. His new is burnished with vestiges of the artisanal; "vintage," Rich likes to say, meaning that which is artfully rendered to reference an idea of the old. It's like he's sampling from a song he's never actually heard."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:26 AM PST - 40 comments

Season six of American Horror Story premieres in the US on September 14th. Unlike previous seasons of the anthology, however, FX is keeping this season's theme under wraps, teasing the audience with no fewer than 19 promos, each depicting a different potential show (which themselves reference different horror movies.) [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 11:51 PM PST - 37 comments

Syria’s Paradox: Why the War Only Ever Seems to Get Worse. " The average [civil war] now lasts about a decade, twice as long as Syria’s so far. But there are a handful of factors that can make them longer, more violent and harder to stop. Virtually all are present in Syria." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 10:39 PM PST - 45 comments

A brief history of chairs by architect and professor Witold Rybczynski covers the fascinating (really) history of chairs, the subject of his new book Now I Sit Me Down. He has also written about the lack of thoughtful design in airline seats and how architects have struggled to create the perfect chair (researching this article apparently inspired the book). Don't miss the photographs of the 7 chairs that changed the world.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:29 PM PST - 24 comments

Yesterday, "A crazed woman trying to sell crickets and worms on a D train suddenly threw them all over the crowded car, sending it into chaos during the evening commute." "The air conditioning shut off and the screaming passengers were all stuck inside the sweltering car with the woman, who then treated them to antics for half an hour as the crickets jumped on passengers. The worms just wriggled on the floor." Today, actress Zaida Pugh admits she staged the incident, calling it a "a performance art piece meant to highlight the way people with mental and emotional health issues are treated."
posted by sallybrown at 4:06 PM PST - 209 comments

This Brazilian duo of guitar and parrot are pretty good, but birds and guitars are not unusual. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:54 PM PST - 7 comments

The Legend of the Choco Taco [Eater] “For just about everyone other than the French inventor of the Cronut, the Choco Taco [wiki] is the stuff of nostalgic summer sweet tooth obsession — the most beloved and innovative of all the American ice cream "novelties." Its acolytes are legion. Restaurant pastry chefs and boutique scoop shop owners regularly pay homage.”
posted by Fizz at 3:42 PM PST - 30 comments

Poet Max Ritvo has died at 25. His "Poem to my Litter" appeared in the New Yorker in June. His debut collection, Four Reincarnations will be published in October by Milkweed Editions.
posted by larrybob at 12:56 PM PST - 35 comments

“I grow old…I grow old…” [more inside]
posted by standardasparagus at 12:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Need to move a ship? Or several ships? Try a Float-In/Float-Off Heavy Transport Vessel.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 11:31 AM PST - 23 comments

Most of the media focus on Transgender rights up until now have been on "Bathroom Bills" that are being presented across the country, yet in doing so, we are, as Chase Strangio, Staff Attorney for the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project states, ...ceding the terms of this conversation to the people who want to expel trans people from public life and write us out of existence."

But is that really happening? Are there people who want to write trans people out of existence? [more inside]
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:51 AM PST - 66 comments

Known as much for his flamboyant style as his prolific output, rapper, singer and weirdo Young Thug [prev] has released a new commercial mixtape (can we call commercial mixtapes albums already?). The project title No, My Name Is JEFFERY asserts a new identity, and the music continues to twist the Atlanta trap sound in new and strange directions. "I always had a Michael Jackson mentality…The message is to go back to who I really am. I really am Jeffery. That’s really my swag." Oh, and the cover art is wild.
posted by so fucking future at 10:26 AM PST - 22 comments

First, there was the extrovert/introvert binary. Then, came ask culture vs. guess culture. Now: are you round or pointy?
posted by katie at 10:09 AM PST - 150 comments

NYT: "Declines in state support for public universities have helped reshape the geography of public college admissions, leading many students to attend universities far from home, where they pay higher, out-of-state tuition. An analysis of migration patterns among college freshmen shows the states students leave each year and where they go." How does your state measure up? [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 9:05 AM PST - 44 comments

These days, everybody's betting on Uber. In the firm's seven years of existence, it has attracted nearly $15 billion dollars in funding via a nearly-unprecedented 14 rounds of investment. While Uber's management have made it intentionally difficult for small investors to own shares of the company, big investors are betting on Uber in droves. All this led Quartz's Steve LeVine to wonder — What if they're wrong? Can somebody make the opposite bet? Is it even possible to short Uber? [Spoiler: Basically, no.]. Earlier this year, Uber announced its expansion into subprime lending, and on Thursday, announced that it had lost $1.2 billion in the first half of 2016.
posted by schmod at 8:25 AM PST - 83 comments

Up until last year, the Newseum in Washington, D.C. had a YouTube channel (preserved at NewseumArchives) that uploaded every video made by visitors who went the the museum's "Be a Reporter!" exhibit and recorded themselves doing a TV news segment. Or practicing their golf swing. Or saying hi to their moms. Or contemplating the abyss. Sage Boggs of Mic has been tweeting out some of the highlights.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:03 AM PST - 10 comments

Time to Statham Punch is a helpful reference if you want to know how long it takes in a given movie for Jason Statham to punch someone, "ideally in the face". [more inside]
posted by Stark at 8:02 AM PST - 20 comments

The Hollywood Reporter takes a longform look at the history and current status of little people in Hollywood, from the 124 dwarfs (not dwarves) who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz to Peter Dinklage's Golden Globe speech where he called for viewers to google Martin Henderson, a little person who was paralyzed after being picked up and thrown to the ground by a drunk outside a bar. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:35 AM PST - 31 comments

The Food Lab teams up with Adam Savage's (MeFi's own) Tested to find the perfect method for searing steaks.
posted by Harald74 at 6:58 AM PST - 18 comments

Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is home to one of the few remaining "split-flap display" departure boards. The flipping, clicking board, which is managed on four desktop computers running Windows 95, will soon be replaced by a digital display. Other stations' split-flap display boards have been replaced by digital displays that try and mimic the look and sounds of the original. Aficionados and nostalgics, take note: the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg may be acquiring 30th Street's board. Interested in seeing a split-flap board in action before they're all gone? Wikipedia has a list of remaining boards around the world.
posted by duffell at 6:33 AM PST - 60 comments

Fart Touch
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:32 AM PST - 15 comments

The University of Chicago does not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces'. [more inside]
posted by heyho at 4:52 AM PST - 295 comments

Salt Lake City progressive doom band SubRosa play a three-song set at Hellfest 2014. [Fat of the Ram, 0.04; Ghosts of a Dead Empire, 15.40; The Usher, 27:50.] [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:28 AM PST - 4 comments

A truly horrendous zero-day exploit has been revealed which targets the iPhone. Apple has issued an emergency update to correct it and advises all iPhone users to update immediately. The latest OS version, and only safe one, is 9.3.5. (More coverage)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:23 PM PST - 130 comments

From a spot price of around $6 per ounce in early 1979, the price of silver shot up to $50.42 in January of 1980. In the same week, silver futures contracts were trading at $46.80. Film companies like Kodak saw costs go through the roof, while the British film producer, Ilford, was forced to lay off workers. Traditional bullion dealers, caught in a squeeze, cried foul to the commodity exchanges, and the New York jewelry house Tiffany & Co. took out a full page ad in the New York Times slamming the “unconscionable” Hunt brothers. They were right to single out the Hunts; in mid-January, they controlled 69% of all the silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX) in New York.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Tom Kiefer was named one of the 50 best emerging photographers for 2015 in the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards based on his El Sueno Americano project, which emerged from his work as a janitor at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Over an 11-year period, he salvaged and cataloged hundreds of personal items thrown away in the facility. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 6:57 PM PST - 6 comments

“I wanted to create images that portray black women in a way that would inspire them not to be necessarily pretty, which is what most beauty stuff is about, but to kind of embody that and more within themselves,” Ms. Crowe said [NYT]. “Everything starts within you and how you feel about yourself. It’s just trying to glorify black women and make them imagine themselves beyond their wildest dreams.” [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 5:09 PM PST - 4 comments

The Slow & Sad Death of Seattle's Iconic Teriyaki Scene (Thrillist) But new Seattle -- with the locals priced out of the area, those that remain forgetting teriyaki exists, and newcomers ignoring it -- risks losing those real shops for good. Teriyaki could be heading the direction of deep-dish… just ask a Chicagoan about it and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s for tourists.” Teriyaki is from a different era, and it’s fading as fast as traffic-free days on I-5. Since teriyaki came to town, Seattle’s waved goodbye to the Kingdome, Kurt Cobain, and the Sonics. A signature stadium, a signature musician, a signature team -- and now, perhaps, a signature dish. [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 3:32 PM PST - 79 comments

Because sometimes, when the stresses and hardships of earthly existence threaten to overwhelm, you just really need to see two Pokemon dancing to Orinoco Flow.
posted by garius at 3:31 PM PST - 39 comments

New York City's Karen Barbarossa is reading the Biblioteca Adelphi catalogue, in order, from 1965 through now. All of it. That's 653 titles, to date.
posted by adamgreenfield at 12:58 PM PST - 7 comments

"Delay of audience gratification has been a staple of episodic storytelling for a long time, but no show advanced the practice more than the grandfather of plotblocking, Lost. No matter how well-written the various flashbacks often were, the writers knew that what kept us hooked was the mystery of the island — and that storyline was illiberally meted out like capfuls of water to a thirsty man. Just enough to keep us alive. I’ve actually found that the shows that are the most “binge-worthy” are the most narratively stingy. You start each new episode almost out of frustration, hoping it will deliver a morsel of satisfaction, an inch of forward progress." Writer-director Andrew Matthews on Stranger Things and his idea of "plotblocking".
posted by gucci mane at 12:43 PM PST - 88 comments

Where the Death Penalty Still Lives. In the U.S., 20 states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment and four others have imposed a moratorium on executions. Of the 26 states that remain, only 14 handed down death sentences last year for a total of 50 across the country — less than half the number six years before. California, which issued more than one-quarter of last year’s death sentences, hasn’t actually executed anyone since 2006. A new geography of capital punishment is taking shape, with just two percent of the nation’s counties now accounting for a majority of the people sitting on death row. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 12:33 PM PST - 17 comments

In Sweden, they dice it and pour coffee over it, while in Minnesota they dice it and smother in crushed seasoned tortilla chips (previously). Some people add a banana on the side, or perhaps some blackberries. Other people turn it into waffles, or put it inside vegetables. TV chefs bake it with paprika, or turn it into a pinwheel. In Florida, it is hidden in pie crusts, while others hide it inside bread, and others drizzle honey on their balls. But how do you eat yours? [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 11:50 AM PST - 81 comments

Ledington continues to leaf through the family scrapbook, pausing here and there to share a memory or an anecdote about his uncle [Harland Sanders]....But what I'm really interested in is the handwritten note on the back of the document. At the top of the page, in blue ink, it reads, "11 Spices — Mix With 2 Cups White Fl." That's followed by an enumerated list of herbs and spices. Eleven herbs and spices. And the measurements for each. [more inside]
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:43 AM PST - 57 comments

Bethany Hamilton: surfing with only one arm isn't as hard as beating the stigma (Guardian)

In Bethany Hamilton’s mind, winning the ESPY award for best female athlete with a disability would have been like “rewinding back to square one”—square one being the fateful day 13 years ago when she was attacked by a 14ft tiger shark and lost her left arm.

Which is why, this year, she withdrew her name from consideration. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:33 AM PST - 4 comments

Microsoft Excel blamed for gene study errors. [G]ene symbols such as SEPT2 (Septin 2) and MARCH1 [Membrane-Associated Ring Finger (C3HC4) 1, E3 Ubiquitin Protein Ligase] are converted by default to ‘2-Sep’ and ‘1-Mar’, respectively.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 11:23 AM PST - 135 comments

What do we call people of multiple backgrounds? Leah Donnella writes about the complexities of naming yourself and being named by others. She also links to Evoking the Mulatto, a project to explore black mixed identity in the 21st century. [more inside]
posted by cubby at 11:23 AM PST - 10 comments

In the wake of Sears Holdings' reorganization of its assets, which included the liquidation of several of its brick-and-mortar outlets (including its former flagship store in Chicago), the Canadian arm of the retailer announced it was following in the stead of Yahoo! by revealing an in-house redesign of its logo as a reflection of the future, and its expected perseverance amid online competition.
posted by Smart Dalek at 10:29 AM PST - 24 comments

"If you watch a lot of television and you don't know what could happen to lesbians if they don't die, this is a show about that. I promise you, no lesbians die in this show." Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito play a lightly fictionalized version of themselves -- a married couple who co-host a standup comedy show in Los Angeles -- in their new sitcom, Take My Wife. [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets at 9:52 AM PST - 13 comments

How Nextdoor.com is Tackling Its Racism Problem [more inside]
posted by almostmanda at 9:40 AM PST - 61 comments

One Third of Parents Avoid Reading Children Scary Stories, Study Finds [The Guardian] “A survey of 1,003 UK parents by online bookseller The Book People found that 33% would steer clear of books for their children containing frightening characters. Asked about the fictional creations they found scariest as children, a fifth of parents cited the Wicked Witch of the West from L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with the Child Catcher from Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang in second place. Third was the Big Bad Wolf, in his grandmother-swallowing Little Red Riding Hood incarnation, fourth the Grand High Witch from Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and fifth Cruella de Vil, from Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians.”
posted by Fizz at 9:39 AM PST - 57 comments

Loomings.net , not to be confused with loomings.com
posted by holmesian at 9:32 AM PST - 10 comments

Margaret Atwood (and artist Johnnie Christmas) have created Angel Catbird, a comic book about a winged human/cat/bird hybrid. It will be published by Dark Horse, and chronicles the adventures of a genetic engineer whose DNA is mixed with that of a cat, and an owl. The comic is part of her advocacy work for Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird Lives.
posted by Shepherd at 9:05 AM PST - 6 comments

In Russia's Arctic north, a new kind of gold rush is under way: With the sale of elephant tusks under close scrutiny, “ethical ivory” from the extinct woolly mammoth is now feeding an insatiable market in China. This rush on mammoth ivory is luring a fresh breed of miner – the tusker – into the Russian wilderness and creating dollar millionaires in some of the poorest villages of Siberia. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:36 AM PST - 16 comments

Zoe Quinn's new game (SLYT).
posted by brevator at 4:11 AM PST - 52 comments

The Most Exclusive Restaurant in America
Damon Baehrel’s methods are a marvel, and his tables are all booked until 2025. Or are they?
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:25 AM PST - 93 comments

For years, passengers on Washington State ferries have spent their trip working on communal jigsaw puzzles. It is a delightful, adorable thing. Here are some pictures. Here are a few more. The New York Times is on it.
posted by duffell at 3:04 AM PST - 31 comments

Best Supporting Weirdo is a movie mashup of " interesting, eccentric, and iconic characters", introducing themselves, making famous moves and saying famous quotes, and reacting to everything (often with NSFW language).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:50 AM PST - 18 comments

John V. Muntean's magic angle sculptures: The Shape of Imagination | Knight Mermaid Pirate Ship | Dragon Butterfly Jet
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:36 AM PST - 2 comments

Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, discusses his new book: "We have to be willing to let go of the things that we think that we like about ourselves because if they are things that deny others access to respect and dignity and humanity, then they're not things worth having. So we have to be willing to let go." (MDS: previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM PST - 2 comments

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an Alaska-based research facility that studies an energetic and active region of the upper atmosphere. It is a group of high-frequency radio transmitters that send a focused beam of radio-wave energy into the aurora zone. Last year, instead of shutting it down, the US Military sold HAARP to the University of Alaska Fairbanks . But conspiracy theories abound: for example, HAARP caused the Haiti earthquake, or controls the weather” This weekend, HAARP's new owner will hold an open house to prove the facility 'is not capable of mind control’
posted by leahwrenn at 8:22 PM PST - 64 comments

The light had to be wound up like a giant grandfather clock every 30 minutes. Every 20 minutes we pumped up the air pressure to the paraffin. This was a subtle ruse to keep us awake and alert, as was the little hammer that banged away on the brass every second through the night. At the highest level the light itself burned and the giant mirrors, the reflectors, turned like a slow-motion merry-go-round supported on a huge bath of mercury. To light the paraffin you had to cause a mini explosion in the light room, allowing a small cloud of paraffin vapour to form in the air, shielding your face while igniting the gas with a burning taper.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:06 PM PST - 36 comments

What "Selling Out" Allows a Craft Brewery to Do (Serious Eats) Far be it from me to act as a propaganda arm for a $200 billion company headquartered in...uh, is it Belgium at the moment? But I thought it was time someone went to the original founders and employees of the numerous craft breweries that have been acquired, not just by ABI but by other corporate beverage behemoths, like Constellation Brands, Heineken, and Mahou San Miguel, to try to get the full story. What's been going on since these acquisitions—for better or for worse? Does anything actually improve when Big Beer buys you? [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 3:00 PM PST - 71 comments

Rings is a movie that is a sequel to the movie Ring, a heart-warming tale about a little girl who falls in a well. Here, she gets out of the well again and gets to meet lots and lots of people, including everybody on a plane! I mean she kills them all, but those are the times we live in.
posted by angrycat at 2:06 PM PST - 76 comments

VictorianSerialNovels.org is a project by Dr. Robyn Warhol and her student Colleen Morrissey that helps you read Victorian novels in serial, as they would have been experienced by readers at the time. The site currently covers three time periods: 1846 - 1848, 1859-1861, and 1864-1866. Texts are sourced from project Gutenberg and Librivox (when available).
posted by Going To Maine at 2:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Green Homes That Will Make You Want To Go Off The Grid And Live In A Forest If living in a tropical bamboo home nestled inside a green village on the island of Bali doesn't sound better than a skyrise apartment in a concrete jungle, then I just can't even.
posted by Michele in California at 1:51 PM PST - 33 comments

After almost two weeks of speculation, it has been announced in Nature: At a distance of 1.295 parsecs, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri is the Sun’s closest stellar neighbor and one of the best-studied low-mass stars. Here we report observations that reveal the presence of a small planet with a minimum mass of about 1.3 Earth masses orbiting Proxima with a period of approximately 11.2 days at a semi-major-axis distance of around 0.05 astronomical units. Its equilibrium temperature is within the range where water could be liquid on its surface. (paywalled article w/ abstract) [more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 11:56 AM PST - 81 comments

The Cuban CDN El Paquete is a weekly service where someone (typically found through word of mouth) comes to your home with a disk (usually a 1TB external USB drive) containing a weekly download of the most recent films, soap operas, documentaries, sport, music, mobile apps, magazines, and even web sites. [more inside]
posted by srboisvert at 11:53 AM PST - 7 comments

"Welcome to Five Course Trivia! Five days a week, we’ll post five questions about something from the culinary world, from soup to nuts and all dishes in between."
posted by Iridic at 11:28 AM PST - 10 comments

"Just as we reject the mini-mansion in favor of the city, refuse the automobile in favor of the train, JUMPSUIT offers a way to forego the insular logic of self-expression in favor of forming communal bonds." [more inside]
posted by enn at 11:13 AM PST - 110 comments

Many adults and children with severe allergies rely on the EpiPen for emergencies. However, since 2008, the cost for a package of two has gone from $95 to $608, a price jump of more than 450%. This jump coincides with the purchase of the device by Mylan Pharmaceuticals. But why has the price of EpiPens skyrocketed? (NYT) [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 10:32 AM PST - 157 comments

"By elevating the otherwise ordinary experience of eating breakfast into a social event, even if that socializing is all digital, the solitude of many breakfasts becomes more bearable." Breakfast on Instagram Is Magical and Insanely Popular, by Alana Massey for Extra Crispy.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:13 AM PST - 21 comments

"...there's no lasting glory there, in the middle of a dude entourage. Sometimes you feel like the smartest of the lot, the funniest, the most insightful, the most interesting. But then you realize you're just the girlfriend. And after that, you're just the ex-girlfriend. You don't matter at all. Everyone pledged to be friends forever, but you were the one who didn't matter."
posted by amnesia and magnets at 9:50 AM PST - 25 comments

The Best and Worst of Olympics Reporting on Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
The international media is aflutter with assessments of the Olympic Games, but how did the media themselves fare in reporting on the city of Rio and its favelas?
posted by adamvasco at 9:01 AM PST - 4 comments

Brockville, Ontario is the newest place to add an Internet Purchase Exchange location to their municipality -- this one in a video surveilled section of the police parking lot. The idea seems to be relatively recent, but catching on, starting with one of the first in Mobile, Alabama and now with locations in Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, Utah, and across Canada. With over 100 murders now linked to Craigslist, is this an idea whose time has come?
posted by Shepherd at 8:26 AM PST - 24 comments

The Sega Digitizer System, a tool used by graphic designers in late 80s/early 90s.
posted by griphus at 7:49 AM PST - 12 comments

‘OK, this is it,’ ” Stanley recalls. “I said to myself, ‘This is where the rubber hits the road. The technology has finally arrived, and Big Brother, which everyone has always talked about, is finally here.’

Monte Reel at Bloomberg in his article "Secret Cameras Record Baltimore's Every Move from Above" about how Persistent Surveillance Systems Inc. brought an air force surveillance system from Fallujah to Balitmore.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:54 AM PST - 31 comments

According to the NYT, Bandcamp has "hired a smart staff to create about 20 times the amount of editorial content that had been there previously, writing about music that had just been posted as well as parts of its deep and woolly catalog, in a feature called “Bandcamp Daily.”" [more inside]
posted by rebent at 6:29 AM PST - 24 comments

BBC: Awarding the Olympic Games to the Brazilian city of Rio in 2009 was viewed as a gamble by some critics. However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) saw it as the perfect opportunity to re-emphasise its core message of taking the spirit of sport to as many people as possible. IOC president Thomas Bach maintains it was a risk worth taking. "The Brazilians were great hosts and really united behind these Games," he said. "They turned this great competition into a party for everybody."
posted by marienbad at 6:02 AM PST - 55 comments

The 50 Most Segregating School Borders In America [NPR.org] “The grass is greener ... if you're a student in Detroit, looking across your school district's boundary with the neighboring Grosse Pointe public schools. Nearly half of Detroit's students live in poverty; that means a family of four lives on roughly $24,000 a year — or less. In Grosse Pointe, a narrow stretch of real estate nestled between Detroit and Lake St. Clair, just 7 percent of students live at or below the poverty line. To recap, that's 49 percent vs. 7 percent. Neighbors. Which is why a new report from the nonprofit EdBuild [Fault Lines] [.pdf] ranks the Detroit-Grosse Pointe boundary as "the most segregating school district border in the country."”
posted by Fizz at 5:32 AM PST - 53 comments

IKEA's 2017 Catalog Is A Terrifying Glimpse Into The Tiny Apartments Of The Future
posted by acb at 1:32 AM PST - 170 comments

For four years now, artist Piper Thibodeau has created a charmingly cute painting every day and posted it to her Deviant Art gallery and her Tumblr, as well as a Twitter account showing 'work in progress'. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Harvard Art Museums has made available a searchable digitized collection of over 32,000 Bauhaus artifacts: including paintings, photographs, drawings, textiles, sculptures, periodicals. [more inside]
posted by cwest at 12:33 AM PST - 3 comments

 In March of 2011, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez was taken into an interview room at a Jacksonville, Florida, police station and interrogated by Michelle Soehlig, a ponytailed female officer. Before Soehlig began questioning him, she told the child, “These are your constitutional rights,” and slid over a document listing the Miranda warnings, familiar to anyone who’s seen an episode of Law & Order. [more inside]
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 12:09 AM PST - 37 comments

At 3.36AM local time a 6.2 quake hit between the Rieti and Ascoli Piceno provinces. [more inside]
posted by romakimmy at 12:01 AM PST - 17 comments

"In the long-run, this can't end well." Previously on Metafilter: A sadness for those who lived not too wisely, but too well.
posted by The otter lady at 9:57 PM PST - 10 comments

Looking to buy Boardwalk and Park Place? How about Torrance, California's Mulligan Family Fun and Golf Practice Center or the dental offices of Gary D. Weber in Sterling, Colorado? If you've spent time in the board game section of your local thrift store, you might be familiar with Wheeler Dealer, a Monopoly-like board game designed by a Michigan production company and localized for over 1,200 cities and towns across North America (long before localized editions of Monopoly existed). Marketed to rotary clubs, chambers of commerce, and other civic organizations as a fundraiser that would boost civic pride while supporting local business, the game board featured small ads, complete with businesses' phone numbers, on each space. But did the idea pan out? A resident of Brookfield, IL isn't so sure. [more inside]
posted by duffell at 9:36 PM PST - 5 comments

Will somebody please give Norm Macdonald another TV show? by Geoff Edgers, Washington Post
"If we could have, we would have had Norm on every damn week,” Letterman says. “He is funny in a way that some people inhale and exhale. With others, you can tell the comedy, the humor is considered. With Norm, he exudes it. It’s sort of a furnace in him because he’s so effortless. The combination of the delivery and his appearance and his intelligence. There may be people as funny as Norm, but I don’t know anybody who is funnier.” -- David Letterman
(Norm Macdonald, most recent previously: 1, 2, 3, 4)
posted by Room 641-A at 7:47 PM PST - 31 comments

After a near 5 year hiatus the diverse and devious puzzles of M have returned. As of yet, we don't know how frequently we'll be given our next challenge from the shadowy M. Previously puzzles were posted weekly, while further puzzles lurked within the seals. All the puzzles, prior to the interregnum are still up and waiting for you to have a crack at them.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 6:14 PM PST - 11 comments

But just as linguists were substantiating its existence, HSL stood on the brink of extinction, remembered by just a handful of signers. Unless the language made a miraculous recovery, Lambrecht feared that her announcement might turn out to be HSL’s obituary.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:01 PM PST - 5 comments

"Our concern was an intuitive one about a potential future world in which we'd have to report our every economic move to a bank, and the effect this could have on marginalised people."
posted by Lycaste at 2:05 PM PST - 58 comments

"“A lot of our audiences are kids and teens, and they want to be in on the joke. And they’ll listen again. We’re just a little looser with this stuff than most traditional first ladies.”" -- Michelle Obama, interviewed by Variety.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:29 PM PST - 15 comments

If you tweet @NYPLEmoji an emoji, it will respond with a related image from NYPL’s digital collections. (It’s not same fancy algorithm -sadly?- but rather a diligently-curated list - feel free to contribute!)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:53 PM PST - 17 comments

In response to the recent conviction of Stanford student and rapist Brock Turner, Stanford University has revised their alcohol policy, claiming to be doing so to combat sexual assault. But as observers and critics point out, the revisions place the blame on women and alcohol consumption, while protecting rapists. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:17 PM PST - 49 comments

A new case study of a 61-year-old bagpipe player who died of hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a chronic inflammatory lung condition, found that it was likely caused by fungi growing inside his bagpipes. The study also notes that "there have been previous case reports of HP in saxophone and trombone players attributable to isolated fungi and Candida." [more inside]
posted by fraula at 11:50 AM PST - 45 comments

The Legacy Of Lynching, On Death Row - "In Alabama, Bryan Stevenson is saving inmates from execution and memorializing the darkest episodes of America’s past."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:32 AM PST - 5 comments

The National Labor Relations Board ruled today that graduate students at private universities can unionize, reversing a previous decision in 2004. [more inside]
posted by Hactar at 11:14 AM PST - 60 comments

Masai Graham has won the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival's best joke competition, with "My dad has suggested that I register for a donor card. He's a man after my own heart." [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:20 AM PST - 49 comments

A post to celebrate the ascension of Sir Nils Olav III to Brigadier. The UK and Norway have a long history of mutual support. Not long after Norwegian independence explorers from each country raced for the South Pole. The UK had a lead role in efforts to liberate Norway in WW2, including hosting the king in exile, as commemorated by the annual gift of a Christmas tree from the people of Oslo to the people of London, another goes from Bergen to Newcastle, and there are numerous others. [more inside]
posted by biffa at 9:07 AM PST - 4 comments

"Toots" Thielemans died in his sleep in Brussels on Monday, August 22, 2016. He was 94. [more inside]
posted by gauche at 7:56 AM PST - 29 comments

Fear of the light: why we need darkness [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Compare and contrast:
The new The Tick (Amazon, ep 1)
The old The Tick (YouTube, ep 1)
From the middle The Tick: vs. a vending machine
posted by JHarris at 12:54 AM PST - 59 comments

The South Bank Show, 1982, Peter Gabriel documents the recording of his fourth album. [49m] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:16 AM PST - 18 comments

All 65 episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater are available in full. (via boingboing) It ran on HBO 1985-1986 for two seasons and on the USA Network 1988-1992 for four more seasons. "All 65 episodes were written by Ray Bradbury and many were based on short stories or novels he had written..." The DVD set is available on Amazon.
posted by cwest at 12:10 AM PST - 10 comments

Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, study finds. The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:33 PM PST - 33 comments

The 100 greatest films of the 21st century (so far), as determined by 177 film critics from around the world.
posted by imaginary_mary at 8:45 PM PST - 143 comments

High School Students' Test Results Are Being Sent to Military Recruiters Without Consent
Data released by the Department of Defense on August 1st shows the military administered its 3-hour enlistment exam to nearly 700,000 students in 12,000 high schools during the 2013-14 school year, a 2% increase over the prior year. [...] For instance, North Little Rock High School tested 680, almost all of its juniors and seniors. All of the data was shipped to recruiters without mom and dad in the loop, while the Pentagon’s database reports that the students took the test voluntarily
posted by Room 641-A at 7:36 PM PST - 58 comments

Nick Denton's Final Gawker Post.
posted by Talez at 7:30 PM PST - 153 comments

Why do beer steins have lids? Steve will set you straight.
posted by zennie at 6:14 PM PST - 38 comments

Christopher Knowles (author of Our Gods Wear Spandex) has a remembrance of rock producer Sandy Pearlman (Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash), who died July 16, on his Secret Sun blog: Read Us the Book of the Names of the Dead. [more inside]
posted by bukvich at 5:55 PM PST - 5 comments

An estimated 1,500 Americans illegally and unexpectedly washed up in Canada late Sunday after strong winds blew them across the St. Clair River near Sarnia, Ont.
posted by adamcarson at 4:00 PM PST - 103 comments

I found this after giving my 9-year-old daughter the apparently incorrect version of the story. ”However it really came about, we can be pretty sure that it’s bugger all to do with medieval archers.”
posted by dfm500 at 3:42 PM PST - 35 comments

On June 14th, 1991, Morrissey appeared on The Tonight Show to perform "Sing Your Life," and "There's a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends," as part of his Kill Uncle tour. This is the story of how Morrissey (and his fans) upstaged and perplexed Johnny Carson and now-disgraced celebrity guest Bill Cosby. 25 Years Ago, Morrissey Ruined Bill Cosby’s Appearance on ‘The Tonight Show’ [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 2:04 PM PST - 43 comments

U.N. Admits Role in Cholera Epidemic in Haiti [The New York Times] “For the first time since a cholera epidemic believed to be imported by United Nations peacekeepers began killing thousands of Haitians nearly six years ago, the office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged that the United Nations played a role in the initial outbreak and that a “significant new set of U.N. actions” will be needed to respond to the crisis.” [Previously.] [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:32 PM PST - 12 comments

In its Aurora, Colorado production facility, MycoTechnology is fermenting mycelia, later blast-drying them into an odorless, tasteless powder called ClearTaste—what marketing manager Hahn would call “the world’s first organic universal bitter blocker.” Not a black coffee drinker? You could be with just a tiny sprinkle of the stuff. It works on the molecular level, bonding to taste receptors on your tongue and blocking signals to your brain that translate to perceiving bitterness. Such a substance could have big implications for the health of the United States’ sugar-addicted society. But like all food additives, it has its mysteries—and no one is sure exactly what your body does with it once it’s inside. (SLWired)
posted by not_the_water at 12:31 PM PST - 93 comments

In April, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order reinstating the voting rights of 200,000 convicted felons who had completed their sentences. [previously] Gov. McAuliffe's plan produced some unintended consequences, and incurred the ire of the General Assembly's top Republicans. The Supreme Court of Virginia overturned the original order in an opinion that rejected the Governor's "blanket use" of his restoration authority. Gov. McAuliffe is now proceeding in accordance with the Court's ruling, signing the first 13,000 individual orders with the assistance of an autopen.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 12:09 PM PST - 43 comments

As Homeless Find Refuge in Forests, ‘Anger Is Palpable’ in Nearby Towns To millions of adventurers and campers, America’s national forests are a boundless backyard for hiking trips, rafting, hunting and mountain biking. But for thousands of homeless people and hard-up wanderers, they have become a retreat of last resort. [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 10:23 AM PST - 76 comments

The story of Grimes [slvimeo]
posted by holmesian at 9:47 AM PST - 14 comments

U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds - "The Defense Department's Inspector General, in a [July 26 (pdf)] report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up... The report affirms a 2013 Reuters series revealing how the Defense Department falsified accounting on a large scale as it scrambled to close its books. As a result, there has been no way to know how the Defense Department – far and away the biggest chunk of Congress' annual budget – spends the public's money."
posted by kliuless at 9:41 AM PST - 46 comments

Body Anomaly Tattoos compiled by Miss Cellania.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:41 AM PST - 8 comments

Dr. Donald Ainslie "D.A." Henderson, the Chief Medical Officer of the World Health Organization's fight against smallpox, has died at the age of 87. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:12 AM PST - 13 comments

The San Francisco Opera, in a coproduction with the Dallas Opera, the Dutch National Opera, and Venice's Teatro La Fenice, will premiere Girls of the Golden West in November 2017. The new opera by composer John Adams and librettist Peter Sellars tells the story of "mining camps in the Sierra Mountains during the California Gold Rush of the early 1850’s. The libretto texts are drawn from first hand accounts by Mark Twain, newspaper articles, letters, journals, original Gold Rush song lyrics and political speeches and slogans."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:20 AM PST - 44 comments

When he crossed the marathon finish line as a silver medalist, in 2 hours, 9 minutes and 54 seconds, earning a silver medal, Feyisa Lilesa put his hands above his head in an "X." He later explained that the gesture was meant to demonstrate his solidarity with his Oromo people in Ethiopia. "Amnesty International reports that at least 97 Oromo were killed in peaceful anti-government protests earlier this month. This is the latest in a string of protests that Human Rights Watch estimates have resulted in over 400 deaths in all. In addition to the killings, many more have been arrested and detained by the government."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:46 AM PST - 7 comments

Mapping the Mercantilist World Economy Our current globalized capitalist world economy was built on Mercantilist foundations, put in place in the first phase of global European expansion, the second phase being that of the formal European empires of the industrial age. In the case of the “New World” in the Americas, Europe’s Mercantilists were creating entirely new trade networks and hinterlands. In the Old World of Afro-Eurasia however, Europe was rearranging the existing, much older, world economy it had been part of since the Middle Ages. I wanted to illustrate this first phase of global capitalism with thematic maps.
posted by infini at 6:26 AM PST - 12 comments

76 trombones days to go in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and the candidates have a lot on their minds: Clinton makes a $95 million ad buy; Trump and his band of Steves yearn for calmer days when they'll be able to discuss Morning Joe gossip in peace, as Minion "9/11" Rudy spreads Clinton conspiracy theories; Egg McMuffin continues to do his thing.
posted by sallybrown at 6:00 AM PST - 3287 comments

An older man who has been watching the entire time approaches me and tells me that he’s sorry that I lost control of my boat and that he’s sure it’ll wash up on the beach somewhere. I assure him that the boat is on autopilot, going exactly where it’s supposed to be going. “And where is that?” he asks. “Hawaii.” [more inside]
posted by notyou at 5:52 AM PST - 32 comments

If Locke is viewed ... as an advocate of expropriation and enslavement, what are the implications for classical liberalism and libertarianism? The most important is that there is no justification for treating property rights as fundamental human rights, on par with personal liberty and freedom of speech.

In an essay in Jacobin entitled John Locke Against Freedom, Australian economist John Quiggin argues that Locke's "classical liberalism offers no guarantee of freedom to anyone except owners of capitalist private property." [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:05 AM PST - 9 comments

Wandering New York is a blog where amateur photographer Joseph Raskin posts new photos of various New York City neighborhoods every night.
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 3:42 AM PST - 5 comments

It's the one election that truly matters: General Mills Monster Cereal Election. A three-way race with Boo Berry, Count Chocula and Franken Berry. So far, the Count is winning with 42% of the total vote and leading in 43 states. (registration required to vote, but there are prizes for participating, unlike other elections... no, you may not write in the Lucky Charms Leprechaun - I tried)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:41 AM PST - 51 comments

‘I think that an important concept to understand why does life suck so often is Kakonomics, or the weird preference for Low-quality payoffs’—Gloria Origgi. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 1:34 AM PST - 40 comments

The “Millennial Whoop” is a sequence of notes that alternates between the fifth and third notes of a major scale, typically starting on the fifth. The rhythm is usually straight 8th-notes, but it may start on the downbeat or on the upbeat in different songs. A singer usually belts these notes with an “Oh” phoneme, often in a “Wa-oh-wa-oh” pattern. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:14 AM PST - 73 comments

Through an online contest, six fans are selected to film Dinosaur Jr. performing Bug in its entirety at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC, June 2011. Experience the fans' joy as they witness a classic performance and meet their heroes face to face in an exclusive interview with the band. Under the direction of Dave Markey (The Year Punk Broke), In the Hands of the Fans brings the fans closer to the band and the music closer to you. Includes bonus footage of Henry Rollins speaking candidly to Markey about the the band, and interviewing them on stage before the show. Single link Youstoobe so well recorded.
posted by vrakatar at 6:11 PM PST - 12 comments

The Nine Circles of Hell for Adjunct Faculty
posted by dfm500 at 3:38 PM PST - 64 comments

Vintage Indian Clothing, a blog by Anu Moulee (tumblr) [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:17 PM PST - 15 comments

A poem, in tweets, about Marge Simpson by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, show runner and co-creator of Bojack Horseman.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:15 PM PST - 15 comments

Matthäus Schwarz was a 16th Century German accountant with a taste for fine clothing who managed to parlay his fashion sense into a noble title. He documented his life and clothing in an illuminated manuscript that has been recently translated, annotated and republished as The First Book of Fashion by Professor Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward, and includes reconstructed outfits by Jenny Tiramani. The process of remaking one of Schwarz's outfits is shown here. As befits a scholarly tome about a work often likened to modern style blogs, there is a First Book of Fashion Tumblr. Schwarz's son, Veit Konrad, also made his own illuminated style diary, but did not continue after his father's death in 1574. A slightly inaccurate copy was made in the 18th Century, a scan of which is available on Wikimedia Commons. Prof. Rublack puts Schwarz in context as a man of the Renaissance.
posted by Kattullus at 1:44 PM PST - 4 comments

The Ladies (previously) have survived the demise of The Toast and will be releasing a book in 2018.
posted by lunasol at 11:09 AM PST - 11 comments

As TGI Friday's goes minimalist, signalling the demise of restaurant Americana kitsch, what happens to all the antiques? Containing a pretty fascinating and comprehensive history of the development of the "good-time" chain restaurant/bar and the antique-picking and design work that created its signature feel. Previously.
posted by Miko at 9:39 AM PST - 206 comments

What We Lose When POC Entertainers Crack Into The Mainstream [Buzzfeed] How Lilly Singh’s Superwoman and Jasmeet Singh’s JusReign navigate between two worlds.
posted by Fizz at 8:01 AM PST - 5 comments

BeamNG.drive is "a dynamic soft-body physics vehicle simulator capable of doing just about anything." Nick Robinson and Griffin McElroy are two guys who looked at that description and thought "...anything?" Welcome to CAR BOYS! (Currently there are only four episodes of this, but I hope and dream that there will be dozens or hundreds more.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:50 AM PST - 71 comments

"I was twelve, in that liminal state between childhood and womanhood, still playing with dolls but also shopping for training bras. Eager to soak up lessons about what it meant to be a woman, I watched, and learned, never once questioning why a woman who had a job had to hide money from her husband." (Previously somewhat related on mefi: The Fuck Off Fund.)
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:09 AM PST - 67 comments

The bleak tale behind graffiti on a bridge in Sheffield.
posted by mippy at 1:02 AM PST - 27 comments

Instead of inevitable forces, the New Liberal Economics argues that these changes are the result of the changing rules of the economy. The way that markets are structured and enforced, what the Roosevelt Institute calls the “rules” of the economy, are powerful determinants of who the economy works for.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 10:23 PM PST - 18 comments

You are a stick figure. In 3D. On squares. Don't fall down.
posted by slater at 6:51 PM PST - 21 comments

On Thursday, the 1941 Retro-Hugo Awards were presented at the 74th Worldcon. Relevant material online includes Slanology: An In-Depth Guide to A.E. van Vogt's Slan, "A Study of 'If This Goes On--'," 1950s radio adaptations of "The Roads Must Roll", comments/links on "Robbie", and Batman #1, as well as a review round-up of many finalists. The 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony set for 8pm CDT this evening will have both video and text coverage (see also #MAC2 on Twitter). The nominees have been broken down by slate at File 770, and Alexandra Erin offers timely remarks in anticipation of the outcome.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:12 PM PST - 164 comments

"A darkroom retreat is the modern day version of a yogi meditating in a cave in total darkness for an extended period...We got to reconnect with something the modern human race has completely lost touch with: just BEING. Not DOING anything…just being." [more inside]
posted by velvet winter at 1:00 PM PST - 40 comments

How natural are nature documentaries?
posted by ChuraChura at 11:34 AM PST - 56 comments

Joining such cities and Berlin, Copenhagen, and — of course — New York, London inaugurates 24-hour Tube service (weekends only, limited lines).
posted by dame at 11:00 AM PST - 41 comments

Saturday Morning Cartoons: Feed the Kitty (1952) "This brief moment of black humor is a perfect example of how sophisticated Jones’ cartoons really were under the surface." by Brandie Ashe, The Retro Set
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:59 AM PST - 31 comments

In 2005, junior Harvard historian Caroline Elkins's controversial first book, Imperial Reckoning: Britain's First Gulag, resurfaced the history of Britain's brutal internment camps for the ethnic group the Kikuyu, believed to be supporters of the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. She then found herself working for survivors of the camps in a landmark case seeking reparations from the British government. The plaintiffs were aided by the stunning discovery at the time of their case of massive archives--1.2 million files worth--held in illegal secrecy by the Foreign Office which included files systematically removed from former colonies as the British withdrew. (Note: many of these links contain descriptions of violence against civilians.) [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 9:41 AM PST - 24 comments

Inside the World's Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:34 AM PST - 11 comments

MAMBO! with Luciano Rosso and Yma Súmac. Perhaps you prefer the Macarena? Don't miss his duet with a charming young lady.

There's more. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:25 AM PST - 2 comments

"I was so used to driving and flying, my understanding of North America had become distorted. Then I took a slow boat through four Great Lakes. I saw every mile." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:40 AM PST - 28 comments

"Sexual pleasure as a theme in heavy metal largely died out with glam, but Type O revitalized the topic by turning the tables on the idea of the male frontman as mere sexual conqueror." Invisible Oranges: Type O Negative's October Rust turns 20.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:57 AM PST - 10 comments

You’ve always wanted to be a chess master! But you aren’t one! Are you! Now you can at least look like one! Pretend you’re playing chess! Make moves! Act like you feel things! Smirk! Frown! Weep! Chess!
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:23 AM PST - 8 comments

[This post includes links to names, images and audio of Aboriginal Australians who have died.] It is fifty years this week since the start of the Wave Hill Walkoff of 1966-1975, which led to the first victory of the land-rights movement in Australia. Indigenous workers went on strike at the Vestey mega-station in Australia's Northern Territory. Walking off the job and sitting down in Daruragu country, the Gurindji people began a nine-year campaign to regain control of their land. To mark the occasion, I give you Gurindji Blues, recorded during that struggle in 1971 by Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Vincent Lingiari and written by Ted Egan. I have long lost my copy of this single and wanted to hear it again tonight. Thanks internet! [more inside]
posted by valetta at 3:47 AM PST - 14 comments

A series of pictures of food as eaten in world famous scenes in literature. Charles Roux creates these fictitious meals, photographs them and then eats them. His goal is to collect the photographs in a book, putting the meals back on paper, where they belong.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:05 AM PST - 47 comments

John O'Leary Hawthorne and Andrew Cortens: TOWADS AN ONTOLOGICAL NIHILISM (JSTOR, Springer, Academia.edu )

In this paper, we wish to motivate a radical cluster of metaphysical pictures that have tempted philosohpers from a variety of traditions. These pictures share one important theme - they refuse to accord countable entities any place in the fundamental scheme of things. Put another way, they all suggest that the concept of an object has no place in a perspicuous characterization of reality. Such pictures suffer from a number of fairly obvious prima facie difficulties. They seem to fly in the face of common sense. They seem to suggest that just about everything we say is false. They seem to gesture at a noumenal reality that human language is unable to describe. And so on. Our aim is to meet such difficulties head on, and by doing so, vindicate this sort of radical picture as one that deserves to be taken seriously.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:23 AM PST - 42 comments

A Suggestion on How to Spend a Day at Home (Or: A Breakfast Manifesto). By Mouse Reeve.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:48 PM PST - 28 comments

Wondercore Island is a Melbourne-based label/ artist management and PR company label that supports a range of future soul, alternative and hip-hop acts, including Clever Austin, Ainslie Wills, Jaala, Oscar Key Sung, Vulture St. Tape Gang, Hiatus Kaiyote, and Sampa the Great, to name a few groups and artists. You can check out more from this umbrella group/ thing on Vimeo, YouTube, Soundcloud and perhaps most conveniently on Bandcamp, where they have a number of mixtapes and other musical collections available to stream and download for free.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:51 PM PST - 2 comments

American photographer Freddy Fabris created unusual versions of famous Renaissance paintings.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 9:12 PM PST - 13 comments

Macrotrends has tons of economic graphs. Interactive historical charts of the Dow Jones Industrials Index, gold, crude oil not to mention oats, wheat, silver and aluminum. Also US unemployment perspectives, US debt-to-GDP, US National debt by President and everyone's favorite the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The data and the graphs are free to download.
posted by storybored at 8:49 PM PST - 4 comments

Marble sculptures by Ortwin Gruettner.

• Cheese, Mice, Marbles, Surprise!
• Murmi Does Not Like His Food
• Dragon Castle, Land, Village
• Marble Run Palace

[more inside]
posted by rouftop at 8:49 PM PST - 7 comments

The people who measure the race courses for the Olympics.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:48 PM PST - 16 comments

"More than 43 million Americans have depression, anxiety, or another mental health condition. But more than half never get help. Recent laws were supposed to make it easier for Californians to access treatment, but many still face roadblocks, even with insurance. In this special series by KQED's The California Report and State of Health we travel across the state to find out why it’s so difficult to get mental health care." A half-hour radio special by April Dembosky. (Links with written versions of the individual stories inside.) [more inside]
posted by lazuli at 6:24 PM PST - 41 comments

Frank Ocean Releases Visual Album Endless: Frank Ocean has released a 45-minute long video titled “Endless.” A representative from Apple Music calls it his new “visual album.” The rep also told Pitchfork to “keep an eye out this weekend for more from Frank.” It features new Frank songs and takes place in the same warehouse where Ocean has been hosting a web stream. The new songs feature contributions from Jonny Greenwood, James Blake, and more; two songs were recorded at Abbey Road. The status of Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry and its long-reported accompanying print publication are currently unclear. Find the tracklist below, and watch “Endless” here (iTunes). [via: Pitchfork Media] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:11 PM PST - 32 comments

NASA’s new online archive is a treasure trove of free research articles: NASA launched a free online archive for science journal articles that were funded by the space agency. The archive, which was announced this week, is called PubSpace, and it will make available research and data that are often hidden behind the subscriptions and paywalls of scientific journals. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 4:23 PM PST - 2 comments

One Hundred Diaries is a map with links to a selection of a hundred short personal essays that have appeared in The London Review of Books throughout the years. The essays revolve around a place somewhere in the world , including Neal Ascherson writing about Ilullilat in Greenland, Jenny Diski writing about Christchurch in New Zealand, Perry Anderson writing about Nantes in France, Rebecca Solnit writing about New Orleans in the US, Hilary Mantel writing about Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Anneke van Woudenberg writing about Kilo in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
posted by Kattullus at 3:13 PM PST - 3 comments

Ornitographies by Xavi Bou. [more inside]
posted by signal at 1:26 PM PST - 29 comments

A Family Matter. Each year, California’s child protective services agencies remove thousands of kids from their homes. Some parents decided to fight back.
posted by zarq at 11:51 AM PST - 64 comments

Jason Shiga makes a paper calculator.
Shiga previously, previously, previously.
posted by latkes at 10:45 AM PST - 14 comments

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson writes for the New York Times: "Disability is everywhere once you start noticing it. A simple awareness of who we are sharing our public spaces with can be revelatory. Wheelchair users or people with walkers, hearing aids, canes, service animals, prosthetic limbs or breathing devices may seem to appear out of nowhere, when they were in fact there all the time."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:24 AM PST - 23 comments

"To desire effort from a man, we are taught, is to transgress in several ways. (This is true even if you’ve never had or wanted a romantic relationship with a man.)... For a woman who has learned to make herself physically and emotionally small, to live literally and figuratively on scraps, admitting that you have an appetite is a source of cavernous fear."
posted by Lycaste at 10:03 AM PST - 41 comments

Fantasy Test Cards is a YouTube channel that features dozens of fake television test patterns, each accompanied by an hour of relaxing music. [via] [more inside]
posted by schmod at 10:03 AM PST - 20 comments

Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out things weren’t as they appeared — and her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all.
posted by xingcat at 8:39 AM PST - 75 comments

The Story of Baseball In Zambia. Courtesy Now I Know.
posted by appleses at 8:06 AM PST - 5 comments

NativLang, brainchild of linguist Joshua Rudder, has a series of videos dealing with various aspects of language, orthography, and so forth. For example: What Latin Sounded Like and How We Know. Kanji Story - How Japan Overloaded Chinese Characters... The Tribe That Cursed Too Much ... How Korea crafted a better alphabet... India's awesome hybrid alphabet thing... Semitic's vowel-smuggling consonants... The Hardest Language To Spell [more inside]
posted by BWA at 6:35 AM PST - 18 comments

In the 1920s the US industrialist wanted to found a city based on the values that made his company a success – while, of course, producing cheap rubber. The jungle city that bore his name ended up one of his biggest failures

Drew Reed, Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon, The Guardian (19 August 2016). [more inside]
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:13 AM PST - 18 comments

The most boring video ever? [more inside]
posted by asok at 1:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Artsy presents a well-edited 4-part series of videos on The Art Market: Auctions, Galleries, Patrons, and Art Fairs
posted by Theta States at 9:22 PM PST - 3 comments

Side effects of growing up with Bull Mastiffs, this cat thinks she is one. She's cute, but she's no Rosie. As a kitten, she was save by the maternal Lilo the Husky (Facebook), a cat-loving Husky (YouTube) who lives in a household (Instagram) with other feral cats that are trapped, neutered and released (TNR) or raised and a couple more Huskies. Now a much larger cat, Rosie likes to walk and hike with the Huskies.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:07 PM PST - 26 comments

"They believed the power of a film, and the potency of Parker’s narrative, would be enough to “deflect” from the events “17 years” in the past. . . . But a different mode of accountability is necessary: on the part of those who perpetuate the abuse, but also from those within the industry whose machinations have, in the past, made it disappear and, in so doing, effectively enabled its continuation. To “spin” a story, after all, is to discredit, erase, or deflect so that one’s client’s viability within the industry remains unfettered — which is exactly what has happened to victims of sexual assault for decades." Anne Helen Peterson on Nate Parker's Alleged Rape and The Limits of Hollywood Damage Control (tw: rape, suicide) [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 4:40 PM PST - 90 comments

"After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week." [more inside]
posted by alexoscar at 2:52 PM PST - 114 comments

Why Am I So Fat? Sara Benincasa answers a fan's question.
posted by Uncle at 2:50 PM PST - 68 comments

The world’s most popular pesticide probably killed England’s wild bees [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 1:11 PM PST - 21 comments

New Merck ad for Gardasil is sparking controversy - do they tell the hard truths, or are they guilt-tripping parents? Earlier this summer, Merck began airing new commercials for Gardasil. These commercials (which show an adult man and an adult woman talking about how they had cancers caused by HPV, and then show video clips in a "rewind" to a child actor who asks if their parents knew that their cancer could have been prevented), have upset some who say that the ad bullies parents. Proponents of the ads say the ads give parents the facts necessary to hold them accountable. [more inside]
posted by honeybee413 at 11:52 AM PST - 87 comments

Lindsay Ellis' (previously) new video series 'Loose Canon' (Previously) takes a look at the different media takes on the same cultural character or property. She takes on the longest and most detailed one yet with the media reaction to and portrayal of the 2001 9/11 attacks. Part 1 (21:21) Part 2 (27:37) (Warning for photos and video of attacks)
posted by The Whelk at 11:28 AM PST - 2 comments

I'm going to imagine you have the basics: over ₤10M in the bank, a yacht, luxury London apartment, second home in Monaco, offshore bank account, and if not a private jet, at least access to one. Good, are you sitting comfortably in your designer Italian armchair? Then we can begin. -The Banker's Guide To Art
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Justice Department to end use of private prisons. The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:58 AM PST - 64 comments

Explain To Me is an automatic text summarizer, that utilizes TextRank, a graph based algorithm to scan through the contents of a website and extract a concise machine generated summary. Python Code
posted by signal at 9:03 AM PST - 23 comments

"A long-running undercover police operation in the Bedfordshire town of Luton, which has contributed evidence to two recent counter-terrorism trials, helped build up an incredibly detailed picture of the depths of loathing for Britain felt by the men at the heart of the investigation. Kamal switches on the recorder and speaks into the microphone, stating the date, the time and where he's about to go. And then he leaves the house, leaves his true self behind, and walks towards danger."
posted by marienbad at 8:10 AM PST - 7 comments

A new wave of Lovecraftian stories confront, rather than ignore, the racism and antisemitism that permeated Lovecraft's work, and, indeed, served as the basis for much of the horror. This roundtable of authors discussing how they address the problems of Lovecraft is worthwhile. Some authors are explicitly using Lovecraft as a lens on contemporary racism, such as in Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country [PDF preview], while others mine Lovecraft's fear of the other to examine bigotry, as in Ruthanna Emrys's lovely Litany of Earth [full story] (Emyrs is also part of the Lovecraft Reread, which looks at both the Mythos-building and uncomfortable aspects of Lovecraft's stories). Previously, on the World Fantasy Awards and Lovecraft.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:05 AM PST - 34 comments

Candacy Taylor spent seven years studying American beauty shop culture. Her 20,000-mile journey among salons catering to African-American, Appalachian, Cajun, Dominican, Gullah, Jamaican, Japanese, Orthodox Jewish, Lumbee Indian, Pakistani, and LGBT communities led her to this conclusion: "[R]ace matters, you know? And more specifically it's about hair texture....Practically every ethnicity has developed a specialized product or procedure to change their hair texture, and as a result, beauty shop culture is a window into contemporary understandings about race, segregation, and integration." Transcript [txt doc] of her 2014 lecture, from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:27 AM PST - 5 comments

My 20-Year Quest To Find Carmen Sandiego
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:49 AM PST - 30 comments

“An African City” features music from Ghanaian hip-hop artists like Jayso, chic home décor from Ghanaian interior designers highlighted in detail on the show’s Instagram page, and clothing from fashion designers like Christie Brown, Archel Bernard, Kiki Clothing, Osei-Duro and Afrodesiac. The vibrant colors and pop patterns have been the toast of the series, especially as members of the African diaspora have begun to incorporate kente cloth crop tops into their wardrobes and wear traditional patterns to big events like prom. Vogue cannot get enough of them. Previously
posted by infini at 6:42 AM PST - 2 comments

The Normandy Tank Museum is selling it’s entire collection.
posted by dfm500 at 6:35 AM PST - 32 comments

Can Anyone Save the New York Times from Itself? "In 2014 the New York Times Media Group generated just over half the advertising revenue it did in 2002. The organization now generates more revenue from its subscribers than its advertisers. And while the Times now has more than 1 million paid digital-only subscribers, an estimated 70 percent of the company revenue still comes from print subscriptions and advertising. (... the Times’s individually paid weekday print circulation as of September 2015 was 528,000, compared to over 1 million for The Wall Street Journal and 330,000 for The Washington Post. Its Sunday circulation is more than 1.1 million...) In other words: digital revenue is nowhere near enough to support a 1,300-person newsroom—a number that even [executive editor] Dean Baquet has acknowledged must shrink." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:03 PM PST - 153 comments

Was the N.S.A. Hacked? A group calling itself The Shadow Brokers [Google cache], widely supposed to actually be Russian state-backed hackers, released an archive of purported NSA Tailored Access Operations/'Equation Group' malware, including zero-day exploits on commercial routers. NSA insiders confirm likely legitimacy. The archive dates to mid-2013, shortly after the Snowden revelations, leading him and others to ponder whether the resulting cleanup operation shut out the hackers. Schneier guesses the timing was meant to signal the Obama administration against sanctions for the DNC hack.
posted by p3on at 8:34 PM PST - 50 comments

Trailer for Arrival, the new Denis Villeneuve film based on a Ted Chiang short story, starring Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker and Jeremy Renner. Ted Chiang on seeing his stories adapted to the screen. Previous Ted Chiang.
posted by Artw at 6:23 PM PST - 50 comments

Reductress Is Devoting Its Entire Site to Rape Jokes That Punch Up: "In response to a sexual assault controversy that’s currently engulfing the New York comedy scene, women’s satire site Reductress has devoted its entire landing page to humor articles (primarily written by women) about rape." [warning: pointed satire about rape, rape culture, and abuse] [more inside]
posted by palindromic at 5:10 PM PST - 20 comments

FiveThirtyEight's "Science Questions from a Toddler" series aims to "use the curiosity of kids ages 5 and younger as a jumping-off point to investigate the scientific wonders that adults don’t even think to ask about. The answers are for adults, but they wouldn’t be possible without the wonder only a child can bring." Their most recent article is "How Big is a Fart?" [more inside]
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:06 PM PST - 39 comments

John McLaughlin, TV Host Who Made Combat of Punditry, Dies at 89 [The New York Times] John McLaughlin, a former Roman Catholic priest who became an aide to Richard M. Nixon in the White House and parlayed his fierce defense of the president into a television career as host of “The McLaughlin Group,” the long-running Sunday morning program of combative political punditry, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 89. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:57 PM PST - 37 comments

George Ohr: The Mad Potter of Biloxi. Visit the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi, where his twisted, flowing, lumpy, misshapen, crimped, dented, folded, and shimmering ceramic pieces are on display. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:48 PM PST - 7 comments

makeitstranger.com is a toy that lets you generate Stranger Things-style logos with the text of your choice. Spaces, alas, are forbidden.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:12 PM PST - 37 comments

Stealing Bitcoins with Badges: How Silk Road’s Dirty Cops Got Caught. Ars Technica explores the investigation into two federal agents/contemporaries who were, unbeknownst to one another, simultaneously robbing the online drug marketplace they were tasked with bringing down. [more inside]
posted by joechip at 1:27 PM PST - 10 comments

In 1996, Jeffrey Wood was sitting in a getaway car, when, inside a convenience store, his friend Daniel Reneau shot and killed a clerk during a botched robbery. Wood was sentenced to death in Kerr County in March 1998, and will be executed next week in Texas. He was sentenced to death under Texas’ felony murder statute, commonly known as the law of parties, which holds that anyone involved in a crime resulting in death is equally responsible, even if they weren't directly involved in the actual killing. Under the law, prosecutors are not required to prove that a defendant had any part in committing a crime, or even intended to commit it. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:14 PM PST - 32 comments

As of August 23rd, NPR.org is discontinuing its Disqus-based comment system and will not replace it. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 1:05 PM PST - 68 comments

World-record-holding balloon fiend Twinkie hunts down ghosts and balloons (but mostly balloons) in Pac-Dog
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:56 PM PST - 11 comments

"Her hair is done. Her makeup is flawless; her coat, luxurious. She’s single...We love her and we hate her in equal measure. We feel that way because she revels in being all the things that we are told we aren’t allowed to be."
posted by Lycaste at 12:21 PM PST - 34 comments

Beach bans on the Burkini in France sparks widespread debate. Burkinis (or burqinis) are a type of swimwear for women that offers full coverage. They are mostly, but not exclusively, worn by Muslim women. Now three French cities have banned the burkini from their beaches: Cannes, Villeneuve-Loubet and Sisco on the island of Corsica have done so, and Le Touquet on the Atlantic coast is planning to do the same. This has understandably lead to a lot of discussion. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:40 AM PST - 254 comments

The Guardian wonders about why queer characters are coming along on the big screen so slowly and attempts some answers drawing on recent examples like Star Trek Beyond, Deadpool and Ghostbusters.
posted by katta at 11:15 AM PST - 33 comments

"He started passing up water to Criquielion and his team mates. Then others saw him handing up bottles and wanted some too. He could hardly say no." [more inside]
posted by selfnoise at 11:06 AM PST - 5 comments

“[John Landis] thought it would be really great box office,” director Jonathan Lynn told BuzzFeed. “He thought that what would happen was that people, having enjoyed the film so much, would then go back and pay again and see the other endings.” Here’s The Odd Way Audiences Experienced ‘Clue’ 30 Years Ago (Andrew Husband, Uproxx) Previously: Mrs. White, in the marketing office, with a focus group
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:19 AM PST - 45 comments

Are you an app developer? Are you covert as hell? Do you think we should all throw our privacy cautions to the wind? Boy, does the FBI have the job for you: design an app to help the government spy. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 8:08 AM PST - 19 comments

Ruminations on art, bad ankles, Michaelangelo's David, and perfection (SLNYT)
posted by pt68 at 8:04 AM PST - 7 comments

With his campaign chair Paul Manafort mired in scandal and polls showing Arizona and Georgia on the brink of going blue, an increasingly agitated Donald Trump has launched a major shake-up of his political staff. Reportedly infuriated by talk of being "tamed," the Republican nominee has rejected Manafort's moderating sway in favor of Breitbart News CEO Steve* Bannon, an alt-right firebrand who Bloomberg has called "the most dangerous political operative in America." Washington Post reporter Robert Costa foresees a vicious campaign in the making, a prospect further suggested by rumors that disgraced Fox News founder Roger Ailes will be advising Trump ahead of next months' debates with Hillary Clinton (whose odds of a landslide are currently on par with that of any Trump victory). [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 8:00 AM PST - 2445 comments

On August 16, major healthcare provider Aetna announced that it was pulling plans in exchanges under the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") in 11 states, claiming they were losing (and expecting to lose) too much money under the new law. But the story doesn't end there. [more inside]
posted by zombieflanders at 7:39 AM PST - 137 comments

"But knives and booze, yoga and booze, 13 mile runs and booze? What’s next to be liquored up: CPR training? Puppy ballet class? (Not really a thing, but someone should get on it.) Is there nothing so inherently absorbing or high-stakes or pleasurable that we won’t try to alter our natural response to it? Maybe women are so busy faking it — to be more like a man at work, more like a porn star in bed, more like 30 at 50 — that we don’t trust our natural responses anymore. Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become." Writer Kristi Coulter on making it to "the other side of the pool."
posted by sallybrown at 7:03 AM PST - 54 comments

15 Funky Things Chinese People Burnt for their Ancestors A quirky look into a mainstay ritual of the Hungry Ghost Festival. What's that? From the Straits Times: All You Need to Know and Heed about the 7th Month Celebrations. From The Beijinger: Everything You Need to Know About this Year's Ghost Festival. And maybe you're familiar with the festival and all its taboos. Or are you?
posted by cendawanita at 6:37 AM PST - 7 comments

152 published authors of speculative fiction, of Asian descent. (includes links to stories by the authors, if available online.)
posted by Cozybee at 6:24 AM PST - 12 comments

Australiafilter: MeFi fave and science hearthrob Professor Brian Cox responds to climate change denier, sovereign citizen and Australian senator-elect Malcolm Roberts on ABC panel show Q&A. [more inside]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:11 AM PST - 32 comments

Hot Wheels Road Trip. You really want to hang on until the second minute. [more inside]
posted by philip-random at 12:11 AM PST - 32 comments

'In 2006, Dr. Nick Terry from the University of Exeter bemoaned that “professional historians have left the internet wide open for colonisation by deniers”. Ten years on, the situation is worse. The belief that ignoring an idea will make it go away is no longer viable in a digital society.'
posted by Panthalassa at 9:52 PM PST - 43 comments

World of Dance is a dance competition that's been running for a few years. Fik-Shun is a professional dancer, a regular in the competition and on So You Think You Can Dance. Here are three of his World of Dance performances: Las Vegas 2014, and Bay Area 2015, Hawaii 2016.
posted by curious nu at 7:58 PM PST - 14 comments

Francis Su is a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and the first non-white president of the Mathematical Association of America. In 2013, he presented his Haimo Teaching Award lecture, The Lesson of Grace in Teaching. For Su, when we learn the lesson of grace—that we have dignity irrespective of accomplishments—and when we impart that lesson to our students, we make good teaching, enthusiastic learning, and honest evaluation possible. [more inside]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:36 PM PST - 20 comments

One hundred years ago, a soldier named Hector Hugh Munro was shot in the head as he crossed no-man’s-land. The night had been dark. Some of the soldiers accompanying him had lit up when they stopped to rest, and the glowing cigarettes attracted a German sniper’s attention. His last words were reported to be: ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’ The soldier was perhaps the wittiest writer Britain had; his other name was Saki.

–Ferrets can be gods, a short essay by Katherine Rundell on the Edwardian short story writer Saki. His stories are available online.
posted by Kattullus at 5:13 PM PST - 38 comments

Behold Rossia pacifica, the googly-eyed stubby squid.
posted by homunculus at 4:44 PM PST - 28 comments

It is time once again for Denali's Sled Dog Puppy Cam. 'Nuff said.
posted by agatha_magatha at 4:40 PM PST - 3 comments

As Thailand is discovering, the smartphone — for all its indispensability as a tool of business and practicality — is also a bearer of values; it is not a culturally neutral device. And if digital imperialism is happening — if smartphones and other gadgets are bearing cultural freight as they cross borders — there is little doubt as to which nation’s values are hiding in the hold.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:15 PM PST - 17 comments

Kyle MacLachlan gives a summation of Dune in one tweet using only emojis. (twitter) [more inside]
posted by cwest at 3:03 PM PST - 66 comments

Fifty years ago, a few months before they released their third studio album, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel took to the stage in Holland on a TV Show called 'Twien' with just their two voices and one guitar. Here's 23 minutes of music and some interludes with information about selected songs. Playlist: 'Richard Cory,' 'Homeward Bound,' 'Leaves That Are Green,' 'I Am A Rock,' 'A Most Peculiar Man,' 'A Poem On The Underground Wall,' 'He Was My Brother,' and 'The Sound Of Silence.' [Alternative link - slightly longer, but watermarked video.] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 2:02 PM PST - 21 comments

Harry Potter and the Possible Queerbaiting: [The Guardian] JK Rowling’s Cursed Child has drawn fire over its story of male friendship, which some readers feel flirts coyly with gay romance – but it is a change from the usual stereotypes. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:57 PM PST - 28 comments

On July 27, Abby Ohlheiser at The Washington Post explained how “the Internet won’t let Harambe rest in peace”, and Brian Feldman at New York Magazine tried to characterize “the dark internet humor of Harambe jokes.”
As of today, the fact that over 60,000 people now want Harambe to be a Pokémon has prompted another hot take from Ben Guarino at the Post. For a business angle, Fruzsina Eordogh at Forbes explains how Harambe can grace indie tees but remain “too dark for brands”. Meanwhile, Brett Milam of Cincinnati.com has a rundown of the gorilla’s appearances, and Kaitlyn Tiffany at The Verge reviews recent memes and declares Harambe to be one of three Memes of the Summer.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:13 PM PST - 68 comments

Tired of the gelato crises? Let me share the joys of the Cupcake ATM (also in Chicago!) It was a long day at a local anime convention, and my comic creating friends and I hopped into a van and trekked out to the cupcake atm on 50 east walton street. [more inside]
posted by dreamling at 11:47 AM PST - 27 comments

Sex pigs halt traffic after laser attack on Pokémon teens. Tiny Insjön in central Sweden isn't known for pig mask-wearing couples shooting lasers at Pokémon hunters before having sex against a waterwheel. But that could be about to change. (SLSwedishlocalnews)
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:10 AM PST - 72 comments

Are rotisserie chickens a bargain? The short answer is "probably not," except for Costco (and Smart and Final, which I have never heard of). The long answer is an interesting detour through Boston Market, chicken sourcing, and Mark Bittman's famous simple roast chicken recipe. Which rotisserie chicken is the best is subject to somewhat more debate. If cost efficiency isn't your thing, you can dive right in with the $79 version at The NoMad - with foie gras and black truffle.
posted by blahblahblah at 11:08 AM PST - 118 comments

Clothes aren’t just something one puts on a character to stop her from being naked. Done right, clothes are everything.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:55 AM PST - 40 comments

Libby Anne has a well researched and sourced post about stand your ground laws and how they apply, or rather don't apply, to the victims of domestic violence The TL;DR is that in 11 states stand your ground laws explicitly do not apply to the victims of domestic violence (unless they have a restraining order). As a result many women nationwide are serving long prison sentences for defending themselves.
posted by sotonohito at 10:46 AM PST - 32 comments

The last scene of the sixth season of The Walking Dead was a cliffhanger in its purest (if not most literal) sense -- the newly introduced villain Negan (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) bashed his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat (a.k.a. "Lucille") repeatedly into one of the good guy's heads, presumably killing that person. But who was it? AMC doesn't want you to know, arguing that it is "the most critical plot information in the unreleased next season of The Walking Dead" and sending at least one cease-and-desist letter to a fan site, claiming copyright protection against the release of spoilers.
posted by Etrigan at 10:21 AM PST - 42 comments

Go Hack Yourself: Richard Marshall interviews Samir Chopra, CUNY Philosophy professor, cricket writer, and more. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Poetic Botany is a new exhibition from the New York Botanical Garden devoted to the transformation of botanical science into both verse and illustration. Using examples from nine different plants, the exhibit traces the ramifications of poetic botany for both science and eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century culture. [more inside]
posted by thomas j wise at 8:37 AM PST - 1 comment

"When the first stampede began, my plane had just landed" - NY Magazine features a personal experience with Sunday's false reports of a shooting at JFK airport in New York City. "Horrifying" video of the police response, which is being investigated.
posted by AFABulous at 6:45 AM PST - 123 comments

Bill McKibben asks us for a WWII-scale climate change mobilization. Maybe it's time to think of climate change as a war, argues Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org).
posted by doctornemo at 6:11 AM PST - 42 comments

Generating fantasy maps - source code
posted by a lungful of dragon at 3:17 AM PST - 30 comments

The end of internationalism: Are rich nations turning their back on the world? is a piece covering the World Food Programs report: A World At Risk: Humanitarian Response At A Crossroads. [more inside]
posted by gen at 11:04 PM PST - 12 comments

The Detectives Who Never Forget a Face
London’s new squad of “super-recognizers” could inspire a revolution in policing.
[Super recognizers previously]
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:58 PM PST - 38 comments

"With neighborhoods in Brooklyn along the L line — among the city’s busiest subway routes — in anguish over losing their train to Manhattan for 18 months, New Yorkers living in so-called subway deserts have a message: Welcome to the club." [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:43 PM PST - 68 comments

"...it seems pretty ridiculous for the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to freak out so much about an academic librarian just mentioning Sci-Hub while on a panel discussion, that it would send an angry letter to that librarian's dean. But, that's exactly what AAP did." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:25 PM PST - 28 comments

In the ’70s, she motorcycled around the world. Today, she’s fashion’s unlikely new muse. Meet Chloé’s freewheeling inspiration, Anne-France Dautheville. [NYT] [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:06 PM PST - 3 comments

The NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer is currently livestreaming its exploratin of the uncharted deep sea ecosystems and seafloor the Wake Atoll Unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Tune in between 0830 and 1630 Fiji time for coverage; come for the corals, stay for the scientist banter. (Previous voyages from 2013 and 2014.)
posted by fight or flight at 5:45 PM PST - 7 comments

In the days before widespread cable TV with electronic menus, people relied on print guides to know what to watch and when to watch it. The regional New York paper Newsday had its resident staff artist Gary Viskupic provide illustrations for the movies, specials, and day-to-day programs. Nostalgia blog don't parade on my rain has a collection of scans showing Viskupic's trippy, macabre line art, giving a certain amount of panache to the rather pedestrian world of TV Scheduling. Part 1 (including: Kubrick's 2001, NBC Reports: But is this Progress?, Hellstrom Chronicle) and Part 2 (including: Rosemary's Baby, The Marx Bro's Coconauts, Bunny of the Year Pageant). [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 4:12 PM PST - 30 comments

Neill Duncan is a jazz saxophone player who lost an arm in 2012. He now plays a saxophone designed for one-handed players by Maarten Visser. Two of Visser's designs for tenor and soprano saxophones won this year's One Handed Musical Instrument Trust instrument competition. But Duncan isn't the only player using one, Visser isn't the only one designing them, and saxophones aren't the only instruments adapted for one-handed players. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:07 PM PST - 5 comments

A month ago, forces loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quashed a coup attempt by the some members of the military that began on the evening of July 15, 2016, and ended with at least 290 dead and more than 1,400 injured. Over the month since the attempted uprising, more than 23,000 people have been detained and nearly 82,000 have been suspended or removed from their jobs. Amidst the series of dismissals and detainments and the five straight days of rallies by Erdoğan supporters, Erdoğan declared a three-month long state of emergency. What it's like living in Turkey after the failed coup: pride and fear one month on. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:52 PM PST - 20 comments

The X-Men Made Me Gay - comic by MeFi's own The Whelk. [more inside]
posted by Artw at 12:26 PM PST - 20 comments

"I want to see a gender-swapped remake of every movie. Literally every one. And some television shows. I will elaborate."
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 12:07 PM PST - 125 comments

Richard Carter hand-makes magic wands for sale at Mystical Moments in Slaithwaite, England. And these are not toys for Harry Potter fans, he will have you know. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:05 AM PST - 154 comments

From Abe Davis's PhD work at MIT comes Interactive Dynamic Video, a technique that uses video recording and vibration analysis to produce interactive estimated interactions. (slyt)
posted by fings at 9:55 AM PST - 4 comments

In 1967, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (known as the Kerner Commission) started with the mandate to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again?

Milwaukee resident Reggie Jackson explores those questions in light of systemic issues affecting Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the most segregated metropolitan area in the US, in light of the civil unrest following a police shooting on Saturday.
posted by larrybob at 9:41 AM PST - 48 comments

MusicMap is an interactive music infographic developed by Kwinten Crauwels that traces the evolution and influences of several genres/sub-genres in contemporary popular music, ranging from Gospel from the 1870s to the electronic music of the late 70s. Very much like the classic Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music (previously), zoom in from the super-genres and clicking on a genre gives you its' genealogy, as well as a brief history, historical context, and samples (here, full videoclips).
posted by lmfsilva at 8:49 AM PST - 6 comments

"As New York City continues to wilt its way through a stifling heat wave, it's appropriate to remember that things could be worse: 13 years ago [yesterday], a massive 30-hour blackout began, thanks to an overgrown tree branch in Cleveland." [more inside]
posted by griphus at 8:39 AM PST - 63 comments

There's a crisis in Chicago. A gelato crisis.
posted by phunniemee at 8:33 AM PST - 104 comments

Political Animals Last summer, after a decades-long hiatus, Berkeley Breathed resurrected his beloved, prescient comic strip ‘Bloom County’ — on Facebook. Can a Reagan-era political cartoon make sense of the internet age? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:25 AM PST - 28 comments

"In the midst of a wild and unpredictable presidential campaign, Comedy Central is upending its late-night lineup and canceling Larry Wilmore’s show." "The cancellation makes Mr. Wilmore, 54, an early casualty of a television late-night comedy slate that has been vastly reordered over the last two years. With the retirement of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert’s move from Comedy Central to CBS, a series of new hosts have stepped into the spotlight, including James Corden, Samantha Bee and Mr. Noah. Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show,” has most formidably filled the power vacuum left by his predecessors, with the highest ratings of any late night show." [more inside]
posted by General Malaise at 8:12 AM PST - 69 comments

Microsoft Branding Generator [warning: autoplaying audio]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Fruits of labor: sunny California is no paradise for farm workers (slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 5:42 AM PST - 16 comments

If you wanted to see the Beatles when they came to DC in 1966, you could stand outside their hotel to catch a glimpse. Or, you could impersonate the opening act.
posted by hawkeye at 3:36 AM PST - 17 comments

A fan made trailer for Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie [more inside]
posted by kittensofthenight at 12:21 AM PST - 47 comments

Last summer, the Rocky Fire, followed by the Valley Fire, followed by the Jerusalem Fire, tore through Lake County, California. Yesterday, the Clayton Fire began. Now, just over 24 hours later, the fire is at 2000 acres with 5% containment, and has destroyed most of Lower Lake. Thousands are evacuating in a small community that is primarily low-income families, and there are reports that the elementary and high school are burning. Once again, the traditional news organisations are less useful than Twitter in distributing updates, videos, and devastating pictures. Many people following the fire on Twitter have had to teach the traditional media how to use Twitter. [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers at 6:21 PM PST - 24 comments

President Obama's Summer Reading List [The Guardian] The White House released [whitehouse.gov] Barack Obama’s summer reading list on Friday as the first family vacationed in Martha’s Vineyard. It’s a mix of prize-winning novels and the memoir of a surfer who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, something the president can appreciate. [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:49 PM PST - 59 comments

Explore the Peutinger Map is a website companion to Prof. Richard J. A. Talbert's Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Google Books, Amazon). It presents The Peutinger Map in different ways, including with overlays and lists of geographical features. But what's The Peutinger Map? Also known as Tabula Peutingeriana, it is a Medieval copy of highly stylized 4th Century map of the Roman road network, extending to India. Jacob Ford explains why it is often compared to modern public transit maps [pdf] and then redraws one section as a New York Metro map. Euratlas has scans of the Medieval manuscript stored at the Austrian National Library and Wikimedia Commons has a high quality scan of Konrad Miller's authoritative 1888 facsimile edition.
posted by Kattullus at 12:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Why Does Hollywood Have A Problem With Unfeminine Girls? [spoilers for Stranger Things]
posted by AFABulous at 12:38 PM PST - 94 comments

Moirai is 10-minute-long free game that you should play without reading anything about it besides maybe this RPS article. [more inside]
posted by Memo at 12:28 PM PST - 44 comments

Hard Times in Venezuela Breed Malaria as Desperate Flock to Mines. "With the economy in tatters, at least 70,000 people from all walks of life have been streaming into this mining region over the past year, said Jorge Moreno, a leading mosquito expert in Venezuela. As they hunt for gold in watery pits, the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread the disease, they are catching malaria by the tens of thousands." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Nicky Siano is an iconic disco DJ credited with being the first person to beat match successive songs. He was a founder of seminal disco club, The Gallery. Here is 4+ hours of his Last Party playlist, from his 60th birthday bash.
posted by OmieWise at 11:16 AM PST - 3 comments

William "Barry" Brockett of Tallahassee, FL, is the 34rd grand-prize winner of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges writers to concoct the worst opening sentence of a hypothetical novel. (Or, to look at it another way, the best sentence in the genre of "bad opening sentences.") The full list of winners, runners-up, and dishonorable mentions. [more inside]
posted by Shmuel510 at 10:08 AM PST - 19 comments

L Delaney is an artist who creates miniatures that look like they belong in a haunted house. [more inside]
posted by ilovewinter at 9:54 AM PST - 5 comments

Every Joke in Airplane!, Ranked. We rated each joke only in reference to other Airplane! jokes. Airplane! threes and fours are probably equivalent to most other movies’ nines and tens.
posted by EmGeeJay at 9:03 AM PST - 78 comments

A 500-year rainstorm is currently underway in Louisiana with record flooding and daring rescues of life. [more inside]
posted by guiseroom at 11:20 PM PST - 74 comments

How many ways have his enemies tried to kill Fidel? A whole bunch.
posted by dfm500 at 8:53 PM PST - 20 comments

Jason M. Yu analyzes music from Cave Story, Undertale (Part 1, Part 2), and Chrono Trigger at a friendly, hand-holding pace. (Major spoilers for Undertale!) [more inside]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 7:00 PM PST - 19 comments

In the newest episode of Pretty Good, Jon Bois talks about the worst Olympic marathon of all time. [slyt], Jon Bois Previously
posted by brecc at 1:53 PM PST - 13 comments

Rock climber Alex Honnold (previously), the most famous and daring free solo climber in the history of the sport, undergoes an MRI to see whether he even has an amygdala. Spoiler: yes, but with caveats.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 1:46 PM PST - 43 comments

Kashmir, where over 50 civilian protesters have been killed in recent days and where the Indian government has imposed a physical curfew in places to prevent more protests, has also been subjected to a total "e-curfew": both mobile and broadband internet have been shut down by the Indian government, the former for over a month now (link, link, link). [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:59 AM PST - 12 comments

The New Face of India Is the Anti-Gandhi - "The violence, insecurity, and rage of Narendra Modi." (via)
posted by kliuless at 11:42 AM PST - 23 comments

My Virtual Brunch With Dolly Parton is an autobiographical essay by Heather Hogan of Autostraddle about growing up as a gay, southern Dolly Parton obsessive. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 11:25 AM PST - 22 comments

Steve Blank has been writing an occasional series: The Secret History of Silicon Valley, on Uncle Sam's most successful startup. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:59 AM PST - 4 comments

After a long illness and declining health actor Kenny Baker has passed away today. He was active in film making for over 50 years and will be best remembered for his portral of droid R2-D2 in the Star Wars series.
posted by samworm at 10:39 AM PST - 68 comments

Make-up artist Lisa Eldridge recreates David Bowie's make-up from the final Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars concert at the London Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. [more inside]
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 10:11 AM PST - 2 comments

This nifty app colorizes black and white photos. Background.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:40 AM PST - 17 comments

I am Star Man! This is my latest audio transmission, pairing Tori Amos' 'Winter' with Smash Mouth's 'All Star'! God help us all. [more inside]
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:25 AM PST - 37 comments

In a 91-page decision, a federal judge today overturned Brendan Dassey's conviction in Teresa Halbach's murder. (Full opinion available here.) The Teresa Halbach case recently made headlines in the popular 2015 Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, which focused primarily on the case, circumstance, and trial of Dassey's uncle Steven Avery. The case against Brendan Dassey was based in large part on a confession that documentary filmmakers, lawyers, and ultimately a federal judge deemed to be involuntary and coerced. In granting the writ of habeas corpus, the federal judge ruled that the State has 90 days to either release Dassey, or schedule the case to be re-tried by a jury, presumably without the inadmissible confession.
posted by likeatoaster at 9:21 PM PST - 31 comments

The Story of Feminist Punk in 33 Songs: From Patti Smith to Bikini Kill, the songs that have crushed stereotypes and steered progress (Pitchfork). More than a list of songs, it's an overview of feminist expression through raw music, from 1975 to 2015, with an introduction by Vivien Goldman. "Because nothing beats jamming and singing with your sisters. That is punk. Punk freed female musicians. It is yours. Sing it, play it, live it now." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 PM PST - 48 comments

Today, the Hillary Clinton campaign launched a new "With Her" podcast, chronicling her historic run for office. Clinton also released her 2015 tax returns while Sen. Tim Kaine released 10 years’ worth of his. With just 87 days until Election Day, 538's "Election Forecast" looks dire for Republican nominee Donald Trump, who continues to rely on wild, desperate claims to capture each news cycle.
posted by zarq at 5:10 PM PST - 2633 comments

Worst of the McMansions If you love to hate the ugly houses that became ubiquitous before the bubble burst (1980s-2009) you've come to the right place. Highlights include: McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad?, and this brief opinionated history of the garage.
posted by dis_integration at 3:03 PM PST - 174 comments

"The PT Cruiser: The official car of getting your 9-year-old son a balloon-tired mountain bike to make up for pawning his DS Lite in order to buy 'loose tobacco' and zigzags." [more inside]
posted by bologna on wry at 2:05 PM PST - 95 comments

An Open Letter To Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara About Layoffs, Zack Snyder, and Donuts from a very disgruntled former employee. [more inside]
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:38 PM PST - 88 comments

A TR-808 browser-based emulator. You may need the tutorial.
posted by OmieWise at 1:38 PM PST - 16 comments

How Worm Warriors Are Beating An Unbeatable Worm When the program began, in some areas the disease was so widespread that riverbank communities had been abandoned, he says. Now, "people are suffering less," and people and agriculture have returned to areas where the disease was eliminated. (TW: Graphic medical descriptions.) [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 1:34 PM PST - 10 comments

Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of the founding of what would become known as the the Gay Men's Health Crisis. On August 11, 1981, Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Lawrence Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White met with Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien and discussed the "gay cancer" that was affecting their friends and lovers. "In 1983 Larry Kramer, one of the founders of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, was kicked out of the organization he helped create, due to his loud and often controversial methods of raising public awareness about the AIDS epidemic." Today, GMHC serves more than 10,000 people per year. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:06 PM PST - 14 comments

"TECHNOLOGICAL TENTACLES CONTROL US:
In the form of likes, hashtags, imagery and sounds.
It’s our turn to wake up and recognize.
It’s time to think for ourselves and #CONSUME our own thoughts, not what they tell us.
We must CONSUME or we will be CONSUMED."

—Hal Hefner
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments

"More than‭ ‬her actual portraits‭ ‬of Jews‭, ‬what comes through‭ ‬most clearly‭ ‬is the‭ ‬confused urgency of‭ ‬her emotions about them‭.‬" -- For Moment, Amy E. Schwartz looks at How Dorothy L. Sayers treated her Jewish characters. Some spoilers, some antisemitic quotes.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:24 AM PST - 38 comments

A Chinese Opera cover of 'Rolling in the Deep', by Chinese actor Jia Nai Liang
posted by cendawanita at 10:51 AM PST - 7 comments

F-22 Raptor grounded by 20,000 bees
posted by bq at 10:20 AM PST - 36 comments

This robot does tattoos. Appropriate Audiences has modified a 3D printer to tattoo human flesh. [more inside]
posted by cmoj at 8:09 AM PST - 58 comments

Stan Winston School of Character Arts celebrates the 30th anniversary of James Cameron's Aliens with fascinating behind the scenes videos of alien creation and animation.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:41 AM PST - 16 comments

How Spiders Eat. Infinite Spider Blog is a science and nature blog aimed at nature lovers, naturalists, and outdoor educators.
posted by sfenders at 7:27 AM PST - 10 comments

PSY 607: Everything is Fucked. What does it mean, in science, for something to be fucked? Fucked needs to mean more than that something is complicated or must be undertaken with thought and care, as that would be trivially true of everything in science. In this class we will go a step further and say that something is fucked if it presents hard conceptual challenges to which implementable, real-world solutions for working scientists are either not available or routinely ignored in practice. [more inside]
posted by srboisvert at 6:56 AM PST - 14 comments

Jezebel dives deep on whether the sex scene in Titanic could have physically happened as portrayed.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:48 AM PST - 18 comments

Reinventing the Hebrew language, so transgender campers can fit in. When Zev Shofar, a 14-year-old from Takoma Park, started going to Jewish summer camp seven years ago, the children all learned the Hebrew words to introduce themselves. “Chanich” means a male camper; “chanichah” means a female camper. But what if Zev didn’t feel male or female — neither a chanich nor a chanichah? Zev’s camp didn’t have a word that worked for Zev. In fact, the Hebrew language doesn’t have any words. Like many other languages — Spanish, French and Russian, for example — Hebrew assigns each noun a gender. In Israel, or anywhere else that Hebrew is spoken, there’s no linguistic solution, either. But now there is at camp. Zev is a chanichol.
posted by Mchelly at 3:59 AM PST - 53 comments

The The Katering Show is back for season two! Join food intolerant, Kate McCartney and her intolerable smug foodie co-host, Kate McLennan for their 2nd Season, as they take a Sassy Swipe™ at the Food Culture Revolution and make a range of vaguely edible recipes. [more inside]
posted by h00py at 2:04 AM PST - 20 comments

Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices - "The city had more housing starts in 2014 than the whole of England. Can Japan's capital offer lessons to other world cities?" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:02 AM PST - 40 comments

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer (Official) [SLYT]
posted by kirkaracha at 8:56 PM PST - 222 comments

A detailed play by play breakdown of a very short gif. Featuring a cute doggy. [more inside]
posted by idiopath at 8:48 PM PST - 30 comments

Dr. Robert Zubrin with a brief, passionate, and well-articulated answer to the question: why should we go to Mars?
posted by swift at 6:49 PM PST - 36 comments

"Bodies do have a sort of wisdom but it’s easy to lose track of how that wisdom is not moral. It’s the stories we tell about bodies that overlay them with moral values."

"Monstrous Births: Pushing back against empowerment in childbirth" is an essay by Sarah Blackwell on the moral valence of birth, what we tell ourselves about empowerment, and a side of historical narrative. (SLHairpin)
posted by MsMacbeth at 5:59 PM PST - 35 comments

"Joanne the Scammer lives for drama. Branden Miller is just trying to live." Performer and comic Branden Miller is a quiet young man who collects fragrances. His comic persona Joanne The Scammer is a fur-wrapped con artist moving from one stolen credit card to another and a Twitter sensation. The Fader talked to Miller about racial indenity, growing up gay, sex work, the fragility of internet fame, and getting scammed.
posted by The Whelk at 5:49 PM PST - 6 comments

"She was born during the reign of James I, was a youngster when René Descartes set out his rules of thought and the great fire of London raged, saw out her adolescent years as George II ascended the throne, reached adulthood around the time that the American revolution kicked off, and lived through two world wars. Living to an estimated age of nearly 400 years, a female Greenland shark has set a new record for longevity, scientists have revealed." [more inside]
posted by brundlefly at 4:11 PM PST - 32 comments

According to 10 high-level former employees, the social network’s long history with abuse has been fraught with inaction and organizational disarray. Taken together, these interviews tell the story of a company that’s been ill-equipped to handle harassment since its beginnings. Fenced in by an abiding commitment to free speech above all else and a unique product that makes moderation difficult and trolling almost effortless, Twitter has, over a chaotic first decade marked by shifting business priorities and institutional confusion, allowed abuse and harassment to continue to grow as a chronic problem and perpetual secondary internal priority. On Twitter, abuse is not just a bug, but — to use the Silicon Valley term of art — a fundamental feature.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:50 PM PST - 69 comments

Over three years, those never treated with antipsychotics had much better outcomes – 8 per cent relapse versus 62 per cent for the drug-treated. I could cite other, more recent studies with similar findings. This is why we may be holding the tail of a tiger. We may be unwittingly turning an acute and generally time-limited condition into a chronic disability.
posted by latkes at 3:36 PM PST - 45 comments

You know Mac, the beach weakling. Now read his new adventures. Based on the often spoofed old comic book ad, The Insult puts "Mac" facing a change in lifestyle after his unfortunate incident on the beach. Watch him become an Improv Performer, a Vinyl Collector, a Jedi Knight, a Tudor King, or a Muppet. (via).
posted by lmfsilva at 2:27 PM PST - 13 comments

In the Great Lakes region there are people with roots in Finland and among indigenous North American peoples. It’s impossible to know how exactly many of these so-called ‘Findians’ exist, but their numbers are estimated in the hundreds. Author Katja Kettu, journalist Maria Seppälä and photographer Meeri Koutaniemi documented their lives over the course of three years. Their experiences form the basis for their book, ‘Findian country’.
posted by infini at 2:19 PM PST - 7 comments

There's something weird going on beyond Neptune - A mysterious object has been discovered with an inexplicable orbit.
posted by marienbad at 1:58 PM PST - 53 comments

What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists My clients read way too much into pictures, measuring every angle, scrutinising every colour, counting every dash. Illustrators should be more careful to point out what is relevant information and what is artistic freedom.
But the most important lesson I’ve learned is that journalists are so successful at making physics seem not so complicated that many readers come away with the impression that they can easily do it themselves. How can we blame them for not knowing what it takes if we never tell them?
posted by CrystalDave at 1:32 PM PST - 46 comments

The splendid word "incarnadine" for example, who can use that without remembering "multitudinous seas?" "In the Only Surviving Recording of Her Voice, Virginia Woolf Explains Why Writing Isn’t a “Craft” (1937)"
posted by OmieWise at 1:26 PM PST - 15 comments

In the fall of 1988, Massachusetts Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Michael Dukakis needed a way to demonstrate to the American people that he, as President, would be committed to building up the nation's conventional military. So, before a speech on national security at a Michigan factory, he put on a military helmet and rode in on a battle tank. Spoiler Alert: It didn't go well for him. [Remember when all it took was a bad photo op to destroy a presidential campaign?] [more inside]
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:03 PM PST - 39 comments

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart "The geography of this catastrophe is broad and its causes are many, but its consequences — war and uncertainty throughout the world — are familiar to us all. Scott Anderson’s story gives the reader a visceral sense of how it all unfolded, through the eyes of six characters in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Accompanying Anderson’s text are 10 portfolios by the photographer Paolo Pellegrin, drawn from his extensive travels across the region over the last 14 years, as well as a landmark virtual-reality experience that embeds the viewer with the Iraqi fighting forces during the battle to retake Falluja."
posted by lauranesson at 12:23 PM PST - 10 comments

There are fewer Pokemon Go locations in black neighborhoods, but why?
posted by MrGuilt at 12:22 PM PST - 13 comments

Slightly more than 100 exceptional works of journalism.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:56 AM PST - 8 comments

Live-Action Trailer for Great Detective Pikachu (Only a videogame (｡•́︿•̀｡) )
Nick Statt at The Verge: “The first ever live-action Pokémon movie will be Detective Pikachu” ヾ(＠^∇^＠)ノ
Jeff Grubb at VentureBeat: “‘Detective Pikachu’ movie was in the works long before Pokémon Go”
posted by Going To Maine at 11:44 AM PST - 10 comments

A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:43 AM PST - 16 comments

Virtual Reality and Exoskeleton Help Paraplegics Partially Recover, Study Finds One patient, previously unable to stand due to a spinal cord injury, became capable of walking using a walker, braces and the assistance of a therapist, according to the study. This was all the more surprising because of the severity of the patients' injuries.
posted by Michele in California at 11:20 AM PST - 5 comments

When NBC commentator Al Trautwig felt it necessary to point out that U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles' parents are biologically her grandparents, some on Twitter pushed back. Trautwig briefly dug in, tweeting "They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents.", then deleted the tweet and apologized. Cece Lederer of the Daily Dot says that this is just another example of how we still don't know how to talk about adoption.
posted by Etrigan at 11:12 AM PST - 28 comments

Among the Lizard People: Silent Connections at the Reptile Expo
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:00 AM PST - 22 comments

On the heels of reports of Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche models being outfitted with firmware designed to fool environmental emissions tests, there now comes news that a vulnerability in keyless entry mechanisms of 100 million VWs made within the last 21 years can permit the cars to be unlocked by intruders carrying an Arduino kit.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:55 AM PST - 42 comments

Pharmaduke: bot combining Marmaduke comics + Erowid trip reports at random. (Previously, Previously)
posted by griphus at 8:22 AM PST - 11 comments

Canadian musician Danny Michel has a vintage 1978 Star Trek van, in which he interviews musicians in the front seat, before having them perform in the red velvet back of the van. Guests have included The Milk Carton Kids , astronaut-guitarist Chris Hadfield, and many other (mostly Canadian) musicians.
posted by easternblot at 8:05 AM PST - 11 comments

Rocky Mountain Construction designs some of the best roller coasters in the world. Here are some first-person POV videos, from newest to oldest: Wildfire, Kolmården (T); Lightning Rod, Dollywood (T); Joker, SF Discovery Kingdom (IR); Storm Chaser, Kentucky Kingdom (IR); Wicked Cyclone, SF New England (IR); Twisted Colossus, SF Magic Mountain (IR); Goliath, SF Great America (T); Medusa Steel Coaster, SF Mexico (IR); Iron Rattler, SF Fiesta Texas (IR); Outlaw Run, Silver Dollar City (T); New Texas Giant, SF Over Texas (IR). [more inside]
posted by clorox at 4:11 AM PST - 14 comments

Cancer is not a problem or an illness – it's a gift. Or so Barbara Ehrenreich was told repeatedly after her diagnosis. But the positive thinkers are wrong, she says: sugar-coating illnesses can exact a dreadful cost
posted by neworder7 at 9:01 PM PST - 77 comments

Building Ikea furniture is hard. Building it under the influence is much, much harder.
posted by juv3nal at 5:20 PM PST - 77 comments

"The Rag Man," a review of Edward Berlin's King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (2nd edition): "As such, to Mr. and Mrs. America circa 1908, ragtime was not “The Entertainer,” but peppy little songs with peppery little lyrics, that you could get up and dance to. Only through these could one make a living, and Joplin had other ideas...." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:40 PM PST - 24 comments

In 1967 political cartoonist Pat Oliphant drew an editorial cartoon just to win the Pulitizer - "one of the worst cartoons I've ever drawn" - trying to appeal to the judges' tastes and prevailing political opinion. And guess what happened.
posted by The Whelk at 4:07 PM PST - 37 comments

Melrose Place served as a covert yet visible exhibit by Mel Chin called In The Name Of The Place, shown in 1997 at MoCA as part of "Uncommon Sense."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto performs and has the audience perform with him a Finnish folk song My Darling is Beautiful (Minun kultani kaunis on).
posted by severiina at 3:20 PM PST - 5 comments

How Did People Migrate to the Americas? Bison DNA Helps Chart the Way [The New York Times] “Two teams of scientists have succeeded in dating the opening of the gateway to America, only to disagree over whether the Clovis people — one of the first groups from Siberia to reach the Americas — ever used the gateway to gain access to the New World.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:06 PM PST - 11 comments

NO BS, JUST SHOOTING - DOOM overview is a heartfelt game review from Life of Boris. Boris will inform you about many aspects of Slav life, including How to squat like slav and Why Slavs wear Adidas. Also Russian language. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:48 PM PST - 11 comments

"Remote killing outside of war zones, it seems, has become business as usual [...] a remarkable development [for] Obama, who came who came to office as an antiwar president" "The question for President Obama is whether he wants to be remembered as the leader who ushered in the era of permanent, low-level drone warfare. His actions will be looked to for justification by those that follow, here and abroad. As David Reisner, former head of the Israel Defense Forces legal department, has said, “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it…. International law progresses through violations.”"
posted by OmieWise at 1:13 PM PST - 89 comments

The sudden closure of the Port of Churchill leaves Canada without an Arctic deepwater port, and a tenth of the town's population without work. Manitoba's premier thinks the port's private owners are trying to get more money from the government. Others see the closure as a response to changing economic conditions (including the end of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly), leading to questions about the future economic viability of transportation infrastructure development in the North.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:36 PM PST - 14 comments

Humpback whales are rescuing seals and other animals from orcas. Are the humpbacks being altruistic? Or do they just really hate orcas? National Geographic tries to explain.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 12:19 PM PST - 44 comments

A Visual History of Which Countries Have Dominated the Summer Olympics
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:13 AM PST - 31 comments

Once upon a time there was a tiny brown ant who lived by a swamp at the end of the Paraná River in Argentina. Her name, Linepithema humile, literally means “humble” or “weak”. Some time during the late 1800s, an adventurous L. humile crept away from the swamp where giant river otter played and capybaras cavorted. She stowed away on a boat that sailed to New Orleans. And she went to war.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:26 AM PST - 17 comments

In 2000, Irom Sharmila began a hunger strike to protest the Malom Massacre and India's statutory immunity from judicial oversight for military and paramilitary personnel in "disturbed areas". After years of detention (attempted suicide is illegal in India), forced feeding, and recognition from human rights agencies, Sharmila ended her hunger strike with a lick of honey and a declaration that she will run for office to work against the Armed Forces Special Powers Acts. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:04 AM PST - 2 comments

Designer babies, the end of diseases, genetically modified humans that never age. Outrageous things that used to be science fiction are suddenly becoming reality. The only thing we know for sure is that things will change irreversibly. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 9:52 AM PST - 53 comments

"Mr. Bertling, 56, said in an interview that he had not heard what he considered sexist remarks in his decades of practice. But after the fine, he asked a lawyer in his office if she had. She showed him inappropriate comments in deposition transcripts, but said she did not seek penalties for them because, like many female lawyers, she thought doing so was futile." As of this Monday, after months of debate, that may no longer be the case: Goodbye to 'Honeys' in Court, by Vote of American Bar Association. [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets at 8:10 AM PST - 37 comments

Anamorphic 3D graffiti by Sergio Odeith.
posted by carter at 6:22 AM PST - 4 comments

"He talks about music in a way that makes you believe that maybe it can do some good in the world." Damien Abraham, lead singer of Toronto punk band F*cked Up, recounts coming to terms with loving the Hip and his unexpected friendship with Gord Downie. (slVice) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:37 AM PST - 100 comments

Spaceplan A new incremental/idle browser space-based potato-powered web game thingy by Jake Hollands.
posted by fight or flight at 5:03 AM PST - 46 comments

We need a new approach to supporting independent media — especially in partially free societies We all know how this story ends. In some cases, especially in Eastern Europe, the influx of foreign investors into the media market instead led to the appearance of collusion between the new media owners and the government (a sell-out hardly worth making for many, who ended up losing money and fleeing those markets a few years later). Many media properties that stayed in local hands fared even worse, bought up and reduced to hand-puppets by well-connected business people. [more inside]
posted by instinkt at 4:26 AM PST - 3 comments

Who would win in a knife fight between all the philsophers. Unlike the United States Presidency, Philosophy has been going on for thousands of years, so instead of 44 contestants there are a whopping 89. Don’t be afraid of the numbers, for I guarantee you won’t get bored; philosophers are a very interesting bunch of people, and the most rewarding part of this post has been researching their lives and finding out how crazy they all are. This will be a wild knife fight. [more inside]
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:26 AM PST - 54 comments

Anime Baseball [SLYT]
posted by metaquarry at 4:18 AM PST - 7 comments

If you live in the US, EU or Japan, and feel like economic growth today has not been like it was for your parents' or grandparents' generation, you are correct. Growth in mature markets has been very slow since the late 1960s. Economist Robert J. Gordon calls 1870-1970, the "Special Century" because of how abnormally strong the growth was in that period. [more inside]
posted by gen at 2:27 AM PST - 44 comments

By my calculation, over the past 15 years, the American government has spent $100 billion to $150 billion on failed or unworthy homeland-security programs and on acquiring and maintaining equipment that hasn’t worked. However, as with the equipment procured for port inspections, launching the TSA, and grants for protecting New York’s subway tunnels and running emergency drills in Boston, much more than that was well spent. Steven Brill takes a deep dive into the post-9/11 security state. [SLATLANTIC]
posted by chavenet at 1:44 AM PST - 21 comments

60 Essential Science Fiction & Fantasy Reads. Though you might want to quibble with the "essential" as it's somewhat biased to more recent books but a valuable introduction to the genres nonetheless, the occasional tokenism not withstanding.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:57 PM PST - 152 comments

If you've been feeling like 2016 might be some harbinger of a coming Apocalypse with all the bad things happening this year, here's another symbol for you to add to your growing list: America's pungent corpse flowers are all mysteriously blooming at once [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:20 PM PST - 42 comments

Marie Curie Got Her Start At a Secret University For Women
posted by Michele in California at 4:29 PM PST - 4 comments

Are internet populists ruining democracy for the rest of us? by Vyacheslav W. Polonski, Network scientist, University of Oxford
posted by infini at 2:02 PM PST - 21 comments

A widespread lack of understanding of the market — and its role in education, in social unrest, in campaign finance, in economic stability, in protest votes of the disenfranchised against entrenched elites — is one of the greatest threats to modern democracy.
posted by bq at 2:01 PM PST - 22 comments

Break My Body: "What I’m trying to unravel is the difference between merely existing in a body and truly inhabiting it—to untangle passivity from receptivity. My woman-body has never been as easy for me to love, with its big breasts and disorienting cycles, as the girl-body that hurled me so beautifully through the air. To be sure, the woman-body has been good for sex, for attracting my husband’s touch, but sex is just one aspect of the whole—one that for me has never felt like a primary purpose. And as I find myself choosing not to use the body to create a child, it now seems that the one act its whole design evolved toward will be one it never performs. I’m looking for a new working definition." -- an essay by Marin Sardy [CW: suicide, mental illness]
posted by Room 641-A at 1:14 PM PST - 11 comments

Just a kid playing makeshift drums in the subway. Oh, and he's bloody amazing.
posted by billiebee at 1:09 PM PST - 25 comments

Of Thee I Read: The United States in Literature [The New York Times] Reporters and editors on the National Desk of The New York Times were asked to suggest books that a visitor ought to read to truly understand the American cities and regions where they live, work and travel. There were no restrictions — novels, memoirs, histories and children’s books were fair game. Here are some selections. Recommend a book that captures something special about where you live in the comments, or on Twitter with the hashtag #natbooks. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:29 AM PST - 53 comments

Speed Enforced by Aircraft. A tale of tragedy, triumph, death, and new life. [SLYT]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:37 AM PST - 13 comments

"One thing most flat Earthers have in common: They found the movement through the internet, though some had already come to the conclusion on their own.:
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:00 AM PST - 99 comments

This past May on Metafilter, we looked at “Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls”, a wildly popular variety show that was broadcast every Wednesday night in the 1930's and 1940's from the state prison in Huntsville, TX. It featured performances by male and female prisoners. No recordings of the show have ever been found. In the early forties, eight inmates of the Goree State Farm prison unit formed one of the first all-female country and western acts in the country and their performances were broadcast on Thirty Minutes. The Goree All Girl String Band captured the hearts of millions of radio listeners but never cut a record or went on tour and have thus been ignored by music historians. When they were paroled, they nearly all vanished forever. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:23 AM PST - 2 comments

Martha's Vineyard is well known as an idyllic summer vacation spot, but all is not well on the island. Affordable housing is hard to find. Housing for seasonal workers is hard to find. 57% of the dwellings on island are seasonal... [more inside]
posted by vrakatar at 8:02 AM PST - 40 comments

Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname is one of history’s greatest travelogues - Edward White, The Paris Review. [via]
posted by Think_Long at 7:57 AM PST - 4 comments

What is your privilege? (Singapore edition) On the occasion of Singapore's 51st Independence this month, UNSAID -- a youth-led arts collective -- staged their country's own version of checking their privilege [original Buzzfeed video] [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 7:53 AM PST - 8 comments

"Five years ago I wrote something that became kind of popular.... It was bizarre to see my name in pink fonts, being sold as a commodity when the entirety of my work has been against the commodification of feminist ideas and the misuse, appropriation and subsequent lack of credit of feminism of color." (SL Medium, by Flavia Dzodan)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:16 AM PST - 34 comments

Free, Printable USGS Quads National Geographic (the one now owned by Fox?!) has put together a website where you can download USGS (previously) maps that have been processed to print on standard letter paper.
posted by DigDoug at 5:52 AM PST - 33 comments

"Untold thousands of patients misdiagnosed as vegetative are actually aware. Theirs is the civil rights fight of our times." By Joseph J. Fins, a professor of medical ethics and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Previously.
posted by bryon at 4:03 AM PST - 54 comments

How to beatbox by speaking Polish.
posted by acb at 3:47 AM PST - 7 comments

90's dub by moonlight, Bartkira trailer by daylight, 300+ animators (you heard right), a new collab of Sailor Moon! (Japanese with English subtitles. Previously, Akireviously.)
posted by BiggerJ at 12:00 AM PST - 1 comment

In order to help people get out and vote this coming election the VLogBrothers havre created How To Vote In Every State: a YouTube channel with videos detailing how to register and vote in each state (as well as military personnel, unincorporated territories and abroad, and DC residents.) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:56 PM PST - 16 comments

What Works: The Train That Saved Denver - "How Denver overcame regional factionalism to build a rail system that is a model for 21st century growth... it all happened, Hickenlooper and others note, because Coloradans across the base of the Front Range were willing to set aside crippling rivalries and make some big collective investments in themselves." (viz. Spain, cf. California & Florida; via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 9:54 PM PST - 17 comments

Fuck Yeah Tarot Decks (SLTumblr)
posted by curious nu at 8:43 PM PST - 30 comments

Get ready for the Kitten Summer Games, Hallmark’s catty, pun-filled Olympics counter-programming, complete with cat-thletes named Felina Williams, John MacNMeow, and Pawdre Ag-Hissy—and that’s just in tennis. In the same style as the Puppy Bowl (another video, previously), which the Hallmark Channel matched with Kitten Bowl in 2014. Kitten Summer Games is going for the gold in groaner puns. Watch a preview of Road to the Kitten Summer Games: Track & Field (KTRK), exclusive videos and more.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 PM PST - 5 comments

Greetings everyone, Tyrone here to tell you about the only true eSport: Quake! [con Grand Finals 2016--greatest Quake Duel of all time!! ...] I suggest you stop playing your filthy-casual baby tier MOBAs, and bow to the king. Quake.
posted by Chuckles at 7:27 PM PST - 10 comments

48 infomercials of the late Billy Mays playing simultaneously. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 6:38 PM PST - 17 comments

Because there's nobody else to do it, every year the Curiosity Rover sings itself a happy birthday song.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:54 PM PST - 57 comments

How to Give Rural America Broadband? Look to the Early 1900s
posted by Michele in California at 2:29 PM PST - 18 comments

A Silver Bullet for Dental Cavities. "Nobody looks forward to having a cavity drilled and filled by a dentist. Now there’s an alternative: an antimicrobial liquid that can be brushed on cavities to stop tooth decay — painlessly. The liquid is called silver diamine fluoride, or S.D.F. It’s been used for decades in Japan, but it’s been available in the United States, under the brand name Advantage Arrest, for just about a year." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 2:22 PM PST - 54 comments

Dredding Every Minute of It: MeFi's own Artw lays down the law on Dredd at the Seattle Review of Books, lightly framed as a review of John Wagner's Judge Dredd: America. As a Judge, I sentence you to READ, CITIZEN!
posted by mwhybark at 2:09 PM PST - 23 comments

To celebrate the 50th birthday of The Beatles’ Revolver, Larry at the Funky 16 Corners blog has assembled a track-for-track mix of funk, soul and jazz covers: Revolving in Soul. He also calls out Amd Whah over at the Any Major Dude With Half A Heart blog for pulling off a similar trick: Beatles Recovered: Revolver.
(Larry has actually done the funk-soul-jazz-Beatles-covers stunt six times before. Back in 2010, for John Lennon’s 70th birthday, he reposted all of the old mixes, and the links still work fine. Previously)
posted by Going To Maine at 1:34 PM PST - 11 comments

Morbotron: From the folks who brought you Frinkiac, here's a nifty tool for making screencaps and GIFs from every Futurama episode and movie.
posted by Cash4Lead at 1:17 PM PST - 28 comments

Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik has an idea. And it's one of those ideas that is definitely close to one of the ends of the brilliant-stupid spectrum: I Have Invented The Ultimate Food To Eat While Driving. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 12:40 PM PST - 92 comments

How to Make Fire by Rubbing Sticks is the latest video in the Polynesian How-To Series. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:36 PM PST - 9 comments

Why was Turkish Delight the ultimate temptation in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
posted by Chrysostom at 12:08 PM PST - 65 comments

The high-end diamond game is played on a very small field by only a few players. Not many diamantaires have the financial muscle or the nerve to cut big diamonds. If they did not want to “contend in the open arena,” where would they contend? Well, they would contend in the shadows. Even before I had set out to see the diamond—when not a soul outside Lucara had yet seen it—I had heard dealers put it down. (slVanityFair)
posted by Kitteh at 11:55 AM PST - 15 comments

During the late-night coverage of the 2004 Athens coverage of Olympic Badminton, Mary Carillo delivered a rant for the ages.
posted by pjern at 11:46 AM PST - 26 comments

Evan McMullin, former policy director, ex-CIA agent, and devout #NeverTrump-er is running for president. Why should we care? Because he could help turn Utah blue.
posted by Anonymous at 9:37 AM PST - 3570 comments

It's 1996 week over at the AV Club, and they're taking a look at the year alternative rock died. In non-AV Club news @bestalbum95 has rolled over a year and has started polling for Best Album of 1996 - the first face-off being Belle and Sebastian verus John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey.
posted by Artw at 9:34 AM PST - 114 comments

Manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult for individuals or independent repair people to fix electronics. A growing movement is fighting back. -- The Fight for the "Right to Repair"
posted by Room 641-A at 8:34 AM PST - 49 comments

The Misanthropic Genius of Joy Williams [The New York Times] The writer’s new story collection establishes her as one of the greatest chroniclers of humanity’s insignificance. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:34 AM PST - 10 comments

"How will legal marijuana affect our children? Our jobs? Our relationships? Or how about our sex lives? That latter question inspired a research project by Joseph Palamar and his colleagues at New York University. "Since the landscape is changing, and marijuana continues to increase in popularity, research is needed to continue to examine if and how marijuana use may influence risk for unsafe sexual behavior," they write in the July issue of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior." [sl-wapo]
posted by marienbad at 7:58 AM PST - 32 comments

There are so many to choose from: cats that sound like humans, very angry cats, cats who hate cats that aren't really cats, narc cats, epic cat fight featuring arsehole birds, keyboard cat, ceiling cat and so many more. [more inside]
posted by h00py at 7:33 AM PST - 28 comments

The Moral Machine: Welcome to the moral machine! - you are a self-driving car, unfortunately something has gone horribly wrong - who put that wall there? Regrettably, you are now about to crash and must choose the lesser of two evils. Do you kill your passengers or that old lady and her cute little doggy crossing the road? - A new MIT project provides a public exploration of the kinds of trolley problem style dilemma's that self-driving cars may have to face and allows us to compare our shared moral intuitions.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 7:18 AM PST - 69 comments

" I’d create true fusion one mouthful at a time, using chopsticks to eat strips of T-bone and codfish eggs drenched in sesame oil, all in one bite. I liked my baked potatoes with fermented chili paste, my dried cuttlefish with mayonnaise."

Michelle Zauner writes on how Korean food helped her connect with her mother after her death, winning Glamour's 11th essay contest.
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:03 AM PST - 8 comments

"Passengers who stopped to get their hand luggage put 300 lives at risk last week, after a fire broke out on an Emirates airliner in Dubai. Luckily, everyone escaped before the plane was consumed by flames - but it could have been different. What can be done to make people leave their bags behind?"
posted by Catseye at 5:57 AM PST - 136 comments

The Definitive Oral History of the Lobster Roll
posted by valkane at 5:52 AM PST - 41 comments

A letter of thanks for an unusual gift, a poem about a dying queen (with audio of the poet reading it), and a short story about a devoted couple with a shocking secret (with an introduction by Edith Pearlman): all are from the pen of the English novelist, short-story writer, poet, musicologist, translator & biographer; feminist, lesbian & communist Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978). [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 2:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Carlos Fuente Sr. has passed away. The patriarch and longtime chairman of Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia., died on Friday night in Tampa, Florida, after a battle with stomach cancer. He was 81 years old. Fuente ran one of the world's largest handmade cigar companies, presiding over such storied brands as Arturo Fuente and Fuente Fuente OpusX, and making many brands for others, among them all Ashtons and Diamond Crowns. More here.
posted by bongo_x at 9:20 PM PST - 7 comments

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: a role model for the modern feminist "After more than a decade of reading Buffy academia, to which Patricia Pender’s I’m Buffy and You’re History is a very laudable addition, I’m starting to know why this show continues to inspire sincere and thoughtful devotion among intellectual people who need to talk about gender and about what it means to be a woman in our world." ~ Naomi Alderman, The Spectator [more inside]
posted by pjsky at 8:17 PM PST - 75 comments

The Perseids is said to promise the best show in a decade. They say is gonna be a very good one. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 5:34 PM PST - 39 comments

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem played Outside Lands today. (SLYT) The world-famous Muppet band played their first festival gig today — San Francisco's Outside Lands. Aside from "Can You Picture That," the opening number, they also did a number of covers, ending with "With A Little Help From My Friends" done with the Oakland Tabernacle Choir. Hotcha!
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 5:11 PM PST - 36 comments

The Internet Archive's Amiga Software Collection -- runs emulated in the browser, so you don't even have to load Workbench!
posted by lkc at 9:42 AM PST - 35 comments

What It Takes for an Independent Record Store to Survive Now [Pitchfork Media] Even as legacy music shops continue to shutter across the country, Midwestern institution Used Kids has managed to stay afloat for the last 30 years and counting. How do they do it?
posted by Fizz at 7:53 AM PST - 64 comments

Marianne Ihlen, 81, died in Oslo on 29 July. She was an old friend and sometime lover of Leonard Cohen, whom she met in the 1960s on the Greek island of Hydra, and was the inspiration for his songs So Long, Marianne and Bird On A Wire. Before she passed away, Cohen wrote her a letter.
posted by acb at 6:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Over the course of its company history, Hampton Creek Inc. encountered many controversies in its attempt to market an eggless alternative to mayonnaise; from an intense battle with the Egg Lobby of the U.S. food industry to accusations from disgruntled staff concerning the startup's questionable research and work environment, comes the revelation that Hampton Creek instructed its own employees to purchase its product from store shelves in bulk quantities to drive up sales figures. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:47 AM PST - 76 comments

​In the Mara region of northern Tanzania, Abigail Haworth discovers an empowering tribal tradition undergoing a modern revival
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:31 AM PST - 7 comments

It's been a month since Pokemon GO was first unleashed in a few countries. Now with most of the world going outside, the servers somewhat stable, yet tracking eliminated and a bug that make the game harder, how's your Pokedex coming along?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:14 AM PST - 503 comments

Indian cooking doesn't get any more genuine than this guy cooking all kinds of delicious dishes in his village: chicken kulambu, prawns, fish kulambu, octopus kulambu , duck. There's also these street food videos on nendran chips, making biryani for 500 people, egg noodles for 40 people.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:14 AM PST - 19 comments

"After all the arguments, lack of tips and constantly sending back food I finally learned the name of my worst customer, Coleman Sweeney. And I'll never forget it." More from Forbes, Adweek, The Drum, UPROXX. Organ donor websites: USA, UK, Canada, Australia.
posted by Wordshore at 2:57 AM PST - 30 comments

Liquid Shard is a massive public art installation in L.A.'s Pershing Square by artist Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:31 PM PST - 16 comments

Engineers Create The First Dust-Sized Wireless Sensors That Can Be Implanted Into The Human Body. Relevant paper here.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 11:45 AM PST - 70 comments

To forestall a German blockade, at the beginning of World War II the Royal Navy built huge, multimegalitre subterranean oil storage tanks across the country. In 2009, the facility at Inchindown in the Scottish Highlands opened for visitors - and something remarkable came to light. [more inside]
posted by Devonian at 11:08 AM PST - 39 comments

We started watching Orphan Black last night and were suitably impressed by Eileen's German take on Nancy Sinatra's classic These Boots were Made For Walking. This led to a discussion of how such a clipped song would be hard to do in Italian. [more inside]
posted by BWA at 9:03 AM PST - 14 comments

Filmmaker Corinne Anderson was bored on a cruise and decided to shoot a short film about a dreamworld starring her little sister. (via)
posted by octothorpe at 8:54 AM PST - 11 comments

Crossing the Atlantic in a Beechcraft 76. "In 2013 the flight school I worked at in Sweden decided to sell their two old Beech 76's in favor of a new DA42. The buyer was in San Diego, Cali. So me and three friends had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to fly them across the Atlantic and through the US. These are some of the pictures I took on that trip."
posted by blue_beetle at 7:15 AM PST - 29 comments

The Deaf Poets Society is an online literary journal that publishes poetry, prose, cross-genre work, reviews of disability-focused books, interviews/miscellany, and art by writers and artists with disabilities. Founded in 2016, our mission is to provide a venue for disability literature and art, as well as to connect readers with established and emerging talent in the field. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:32 AM PST - 2 comments

Modelling and 3D printing an anatomically correct clitoris (Vimeo) . Sociologist Odile Fillod teamed up with photographer Marie Docher and digital mediator (and Blender user) Mélissa Richard (from the Cité des Sciences) to create the first downloadable, printable and open source 3D model of the complete structure of the clitoris. The model was created specifically to be 3D printed in schools (in French) in order to provide science teachers with a more accurate and less anachronistic representation of the organ during sex education classes. Short text in English about the project. (All links potentially NSFW) [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 6:37 PM PST - 38 comments

Nearly four years after Shinichi Mochizuki (previously, previously, previously) unveiled an imposing set of papers (1, 2, 3, 4) that could revolutionize the theory of numbers, other mathematicians have yet to understand his work or agree on its validity — although they have made modest progress. [more inside]
posted by stinkfoot at 5:35 PM PST - 44 comments

Top 10 least-loved emojis [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:35 PM PST - 89 comments

Xtreme Eating Awards 2016 If you're thinking of giving yourself heart disease this weekend, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has compiled this handy list of highly salted and calorific dishes available in many great restaurants across the U.S.
posted by 1head2arms2legs at 2:12 PM PST - 49 comments

John Tromp is a computer scientist whose interests include mazes (playable: 1, 2), chess problems, Go (previously), graphical representations of combinatory logic, Connect-4, code obfuscation, darts, pop music, and much, much more.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 1:47 PM PST - 8 comments

Electric & Musical Industries was formed in 1931, initially releasing classical music, but went on to launch the Beatles, who changed the record label's operations and funded the company for years and years. The label's recording rules were further broadened by Queen and Pink Floyd. EMI ushered punk into the mainstream with Sex Pistols, and then embraced the New Romanticism and the polished excesses of Duran Duran. They made music videos big with Pet Shop Boys and made Brit Pop a thing with Blur, and were home to Radiohead. This is the inside story of EMI, one of the greatest British brands in recording history, as told by people involved with the record label's storied history, augmented by company and performance footage. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:38 PM PST - 14 comments

Citylab: "Launched last week, Collage, The London Picture Map allows you to trace London’s visual history street by street. Supported by the City of London Corporation, it’s the result of two full years of digitizing and mapping images from the London Metropolitan Archive and the Guildhall Art Gallery, which together possess the largest collection of London images in the world." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Florida Company Gets Approval to Put Robotic Lander on Moon. Moon Express, a small startup based in Florida, is the first private enterprise to receive approval to land on a celestial body. If successful, such a feat would win the Google Lunar X Prize. [more inside]
posted by Existential Dread at 12:44 PM PST - 53 comments

"Starter Squad" is a Pokemon parody series created by Pierce Shipp (Shippiddge). [more inside]
posted by randomnity at 12:22 PM PST - 2 comments

How to Save a City Through a Website There was a make-a-payment button, and I thought, What if we collected the PDF full of account numbers? What if we built a website to find people who were having problems paying their bills and we get their account numbers and we say we'll log into their account and just pay some bills for them? That's pretty much how we've paid the bulk of the first early bills.
posted by Michele in California at 11:48 AM PST - 18 comments

1. How old is my bottle? 2. Where did my bottle come from? 3. Where can I go for more information? [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 11:39 AM PST - 19 comments

Four years ago, the US Olympic swim team sang "Call Me Maybe." (Previously) For the 2016 Olympics, they hit the road again for carpool karaoke.
posted by zarq at 10:15 AM PST - 15 comments

Tiny Feminists is a set of three very short films about three very short feminists: Juliette, Yasmine, and Linda are three middle schoolers who are mad as hell and ready to take down the patriarchy. Created and directed by Yulin Kuang (previously on MeFi: the Lizzie Bennet Diaries).
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:03 AM PST - 11 comments

Originally known as Maneuver Seven, the Fastball Special -- wherein a superhero throws another superhero at a villain -- was made famous by Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men, particularly using the combination of Colossus (thrower) and Wolverine (throwee). However, plenty of other strong (or telekinetic or suchlike) superheroes have chucked Wolvie at bad guys too, and even My Little Pony got in on the action.
posted by Etrigan at 9:34 AM PST - 22 comments

A British man set out to run a grueling seven-day, 250-kilometer marathon across the Tian Shan mountain range in northwestern China called the "Gobi Desert March." Dion Leonard had his sights set on racing to the finish line as fast as he could, or at least that was the goal until he met a friend along the way... [more inside]
posted by slmorri at 8:55 AM PST - 56 comments

Quebec waiter may be the first in Canada to be charged with criminal negligence after a nearly fatal error with customer's meal. (slCBC) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:48 AM PST - 293 comments

At the Belmont Stakes in 2011, someone threw a can of beer at him, and he caught it one-handed, opened it, chugged some, lobbed it back from the victory stand, and proceeded with his interview of the winning jockey and trainer.

--The chaos of the Olympics has arrived. Fortunately, we have Bob Costas.
posted by almostmanda at 8:39 AM PST - 37 comments

Meet the "the Dominican Snow White" and the deer family he befriended. "In the span of a week, Kelvin Peña has made deer bffs, become an internet sensation, and flexed his entrepreneurial skills. It all started when the 17-year-old visited his cousin, who fed a deer named Canela."
posted by TwoStride at 8:30 AM PST - 12 comments

"My vantage is unusual: As a consulting doctor, I think I have seen more cases of possession than any other physician in the world."
posted by Bob Regular at 8:21 AM PST - 50 comments

When I became pregnant four years ago, I was writing a book about 19th-century British poetry and war while teaching classes about the history of war literature. I began to think about the discrepancy between how we narrate these experiences. We have a rich, challenging, and complex canon of war literature...The same cannot be said about a literature of pregnancy or childbirth or parenting, though these are also extreme experiences that stretch our understanding and push us beyond comfort or even comprehension. [more inside]
posted by jebs at 7:01 AM PST - 20 comments

Bruce Wayne Vs. The World (SLYT)
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:00 AM PST - 6 comments

The Alternates [Victory Journal] “Coaches and staff do their best to prepare them, and former alternates often give them advice. They’ve heard the stories: autograph seekers pulling their pens away when they hear the word “alternate”; security guards barring them from locker rooms, fields, and athlete lounges. Then there’s the tale of the 2008 women’s gymnastics alternates who not only weren’t allowed to stay in the Beijing Olympic Village, they didn’t even stay in China, but instead found themselves in Tokyo due to visa complications. “We knew we had a really important role,” says gymnast Anna Li. “But we weren’t going to be treated the same.” Yet until they live it, they can’t really understand it.”
posted by Fizz at 6:15 AM PST - 14 comments

"I was trying to clarify why, to me (and, I generalized, to liberals), “equal opportunity” alone wasn’t a satisfactory goal and that we should somehow take into consideration equality of outcomes (i.e., fairness or equity). I thought the easiest example of this concept is kids of different heights trying to see over a fence. So, I grabbed a public photo of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, a stock photo of a crate, clip art of a fence, and then spent a half-hour or so in Powerpoint concocting an image that I then posted on Google+... [Afterwards], my original graphic was being adapted, modified, and repurposed in a mind-blowing variety of ways, and then shared and redistributed all over the place."
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:24 AM PST - 39 comments

David Huddleston, who portrayed the Big Lebowski as well as the mayor in Blazing Saddles and countless other character parts in movies and tv, passed away Tuesday in his Santa Fe home at 85. [more inside]
posted by jabo at 8:06 PM PST - 61 comments

The life and death of each person murdered this year in the 40th precinct is examined with surprising care by the New York Times, along with the surrounding issues that contribute to the 40th precinct's status as the most deadly precinct in a city where crime has fallen to historic lows.
posted by bunderful at 7:46 PM PST - 9 comments

"In 2012, photographer Abigail Ekue embarked on a mission to photograph the unclothed male body in a truthful, expressive and direct manner, a style Ekue saw was lacking in the larger cultural lexicon." (NSFW)
posted by griphus at 6:35 PM PST - 43 comments

This exhaustive list of useful mental models from the founder of DuckDuckGo, drawing on Charlie Munger's concept of mental models is well worth exploring. It contains a surprising amount of interesting jumping-off points to rules-of-thumb and insights from various fields, from Hanlon's Razor to the critical concept of BATNA in negotiation; and including such useful startup ideas as technical debt, organizational debt, and hunting elephants or flies.
posted by blahblahblah at 3:43 PM PST - 20 comments

"Sophia Bishop was laying out the body of Dr James Barry, on July 25, 1865, when she screamed. Her master was a woman." [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:18 PM PST - 28 comments

How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world

Every time Schwarzmann alights in a foreign city he checks the app, which lists food, nightlife, and entertainment recommendations with the help of a social network-augmented algorithm. Then he heads toward the nearest suggested cafe. But over the past few years, something strange has happened. "Every coffee place looks the same," Schwarzmann says. The new cafe resembles all the other coffee shops Foursquare suggests, whether in Odessa, Beijing, Los Angeles, or Seoul: the same raw wood tables, exposed brick, and hanging Edison bulbs.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:08 PM PST - 84 comments

Troll hunters: the Twitterbots that fight against online abuse (New Scientist, h/t TrollBusters) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:53 PM PST - 6 comments

Fracking Memes [more inside]
posted by alby at 12:02 PM PST - 44 comments

A blind eye to sex abuse: How USA Gymnastics failed to report cases. [more inside]
posted by Talez at 11:12 AM PST - 60 comments

For over three decades, children across the U.S. spent their summers hunting fireflies for profit. The Sigma Firefly Scientists' Club, a subsidiary of the Sigma Chemical Company (now Sigma-Aldrich), paid kids a penny for each lightning bug they captured and returned to the company before quietly shuttering in the mid-1990s. Today, one of Sigma-Aldrich's few remaining jars of desiccated firefly tails (lanterns) can be yours for the low, low price of 392USD. But what did they want all those fireflies for in the first place? [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets at 10:41 AM PST - 39 comments

A painting at Christie's sheds new light on how watermelons have changed over time. Depictions of The Last Supper tell us how portion sizes have changed over time. Medieval paintings of Noah's Ark tell us how ships have changed over time. Can you think of other examples in this genre?
posted by dzkalman at 8:22 AM PST - 42 comments

Tired of dealing with oldfangled frameworks and hopelessly uncool databases? Want to get on board with the newest technology for making web sites?
posted by signal at 7:27 AM PST - 87 comments

SL Glamour. "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like" by Barack Obama
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:57 AM PST - 46 comments

A very nice collection of 55 photos taken by White House photographer Peter Souza. "Since 2009, Souza has compiled an annual “Year in Photos” gallery; a collection of 75-100 of his favorite photos from the previous 12 months. I went through all of the albums and have compiled 55 highlights. "
posted by OmieWise at 6:56 AM PST - 50 comments

Something*Positive creator R. K. Milholland reflects on learning about the death of his readers.
posted by divabat at 6:06 AM PST - 8 comments

Minotaurs, charging things. From the surprisingly excellent if questionably monikered Total War: Warhammer. Contains blood (contents under pressure).
posted by Sebmojo at 2:18 AM PST - 24 comments

Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath of Teaneck finishes her father’s Yiddish dictionary: Yiddish has a word for it
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:35 AM PST - 25 comments

Comedian Billy Domineau has written a spot-on spec script that takes place 3 years after the show went off the air: "Seinfeld - The Twin Towers".
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:43 PM PST - 76 comments

A Jezebel Pictorial of 70's Model Rooms [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 8:38 PM PST - 83 comments

Rufus Harley debut jazz recording in 1965 was unexpected, mostly because one featured instrument was bagpipes. In seven tracks: Bagpipe Blues, Kerry Dancers, Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me), More, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Sportin', Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child.
posted by hippybear at 8:15 PM PST - 17 comments

The Bedazzling of the American Gymnast [The New York Times] So it begins: the flag-waving excitement, the teeth-grinding anticipation, the blinding sparkle. The Olympics. Wait … hang on. The sparkle? Indeed. Because if Simone Biles — the 19-year-old American who is often called by sports pundits the best female gymnast ever, and whose performance in Rio de Janeiro will be among the most watched of these Olympics — does what most everyone seems to expect and makes off with multiple gold medals, it is very likely that when she climbs the podium, the shininess of the discs around her neck will pale in comparison to the shininess of something else. Her leotard.
posted by Fizz at 8:09 PM PST - 45 comments

POSSIBILIA is an interactive love story set in the multiverse.
posted by juv3nal at 5:39 PM PST - 6 comments

The last anyone heard of Robert Kennicott was his cheerful hum as he strolled into the Alaskan wilderness early on the morning of May 13, 1866.
posted by dfm500 at 5:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Listening to a Jai Paul song sounds like a tuning into a pirate radio station being broadcast directly from someone’s brain. [more inside]
posted by holmesian at 3:59 PM PST - 12 comments

As the (northern hemisphere) summer rapidly disappears, the nights draw in and temperatures plummet, so the English are Christmas shopping. Seasonal foods appear on shelves, while the Selfridges Christmas store is now open and big supermarkets flag the approaching holiday. At Harrods, the Christmas range has been launched, while in Derbyshire Christmas pudding production is ramping up, and inns and hotels in towns such as Durham compete for Christmas Day meal bookings. For shoppers too impatient to wait, the 2014 British video game "Christmas Shopper Simulator" (play through). Days to go.
posted by Wordshore at 3:21 PM PST - 43 comments

As authorized by law, the director of the Missouri State Public Defender office just used his authority to appoint the state's governor, Jay Nixon, as public defender counsel to an indigent. The director is authorized to appoint *any* member of the state bar to represent indigent defendants as a public defender; Jay Nixon is a member of the Missouri bar. This move is the latest in a battle over the governor's big cuts to the public defender department: $3.5 million cut from a $4.5 million budget, leaving the public defender system unable to provide anything other than brief, cursory counsel, which may not meet the requirements of the law.
posted by Mo Nickels at 3:19 PM PST - 62 comments

President Obama:

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

The Intercept: A series exploring how money from abroad has entered the 2016 presidential election thanks to Citizens United. [more inside]
posted by kyp at 2:42 PM PST - 67 comments

Among the many weird manifestations of Kim Il Sung’s tyranny was a prohibition of romance in the works of North Korean culture ... Growing up on the very best of Soviet and Hollywood movies, Kim Jong Il comprehended that romance could be an essential spoon of sugar to help people better swallow the bitter medicine of social mobilization and various other political campaigns. “People love love,” he once claimed in his characteristically laconic manner. “We must show it on the screen”.

[more inside]
posted by Small Dollar at 1:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Vestige, a set of person-shaped mirrors placed in the Scottish woods, is one of the Reflective sculptures by U.K.-based artist Rob Mulholland.

The six male and female figures represent a vestige, a faint trace of the past people and communities that once occupied and lived in this space…They create a visual notion of non-space, a void, as if they are at one moment part of our world and then, as they fade into the forest, they become an intangible outline.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:05 PM PST - 6 comments

A visualization of every character in every Star Trek series and movie through 2013
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:15 PM PST - 17 comments

The 2016 US general election is fully underway now. In 96 days, Americans will go to the polls. Current opinion polls show a significant bump for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton coming out of the major party conventions, and according to most polling aggregators she is currently on track to win the election. [more inside]
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:01 AM PST - 3004 comments

China has created a Transit Elevated Bus or "straddle bus" and just unveiled a working prototype in Qinhuangdao, Hebei province. Be sure to scroll down for the video of it in action.
posted by agatha_magatha at 10:58 AM PST - 58 comments

The film London Road [trailer], based on the stage production of the same name, is a verbatim musical by playwright Alecky Blythe All dialogue and lyrics are drawn word for word from Blythe's 2006 interviews with residents of the street, as Ipswich police tried to solve the murders of five local women: Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls (previously on MeFi). The play and film both focus on residents' attempts to regain neighbourhood pride after the media coverage of the murders. However, the musical has not been without controversy. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:46 AM PST - 5 comments

Set it and forget it. "When your willpower is depleted, you are even more likely to make decisions based on the environment around you. After all, if you're feeling drained, stressed, or overwhelmed then you're not going to go through a lot of effort to cook a healthy dinner or fit in a workout. You'll grab whatever is easiest. And that means that if you take just a little bit of time today to organize your room, your office, your kitchen, and other areas, then that adjustment in choice architecture can guide you toward better choices even when your willpower is fading."
posted by amnesia and magnets at 10:37 AM PST - 27 comments

"Single, childless, I’m all I’ve got: me – and the accumulated external markers of who I am, which are also narrative prompts for the ongoing story of my life. These stories connect me to the past, present, future, and live in nearly everything I own. " Lee Randall explores the anchoring of self-identity in possessions. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 10:05 AM PST - 21 comments

Last month, UFC, the largest mixed martial arts promotion in the world, was sold for $4 billion. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:51 AM PST - 6 comments

Brand New Subway is a browser game that lets you build the New York City subway system, either starting from scratch or working from an existing model (including a few past and future plans). Predictably, this leads to all sorts of idiosyncratic designs which score poorly on the game's metrics for ridership and cost, but do much better on metrics such as Number of Figure 8s Through Hoboken. [more inside]
posted by Copronymus at 8:47 AM PST - 57 comments

🔥This is not fine🐕 a comic by KC Green (previously)
posted by rebent at 8:08 AM PST - 39 comments

Manus VR brings arm, hand and finger tracking to VR (SLYT)
posted by griphus at 7:10 AM PST - 25 comments

" When everyone’s building a fence, isn’t it a true fool who lives out in the open?" Author Zadie Smith (lotsa previously on the Blue) ruminates on Brexit, as well as class, race, and an uncertain future. (slNYRB)
posted by Kitteh at 5:48 AM PST - 19 comments

In China: Chinese dialects fight for survival. Outside China: Meet the Hong Kong academics fighting to safeguard the Cantonese language (Hong Kong); Taiwanese: a doomed language? (Taiwan); Do you speak Singlish? || The Death of Dialects in Singapore (Singapore); Penang Hokkien will be ‘dead’ in 40 years if people stop using it (Malaysia) [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 12:07 AM PST - 40 comments

Lionel Powell is an artist, a teacher, and TREEMAN — a Plantlike Amphibious Celestial Being in Venice Beach. [Vimeo, 2:47] [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 5:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Male bivalve looking for female (no hermaphrodites – I’m not prejudiced, just know what I like). Please be into drawing lots of water containing my sperm through your inhalant siphon. Reproduction not the goal for now.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:41 PM PST - 22 comments

"During one of the hikes, she sat down in the middle of the trail and refused to go any further. She was screaming and crying, and then the trainer sat down next to her and realized she was high. Later, the program directors discovered she had a cache of pot brownies in her room. (Edible marijuana products were not on the DO NOT PACK list, specifically.)" Inside The Ranch 4.0 "wellness retreat" where celebrities and the wealthy drop in for long weekends of brutal exercise and just enough food deprivation to feel ecstatically light-headed.
posted by The Whelk at 4:40 PM PST - 73 comments

Pressman has released a card game based on the popular computer game Oregon Trail.
posted by soelo at 3:25 PM PST - 32 comments

will blow your mind.
Joey Alexander is an Indonesian jazz pianist and child prodigy. He released his first album, My Favorite Things, on May 12, 2015, at age 11. Joey is the youngest person to ever take the stage at the Newport Jazz Festival. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:15 PM PST - 18 comments

"Q: ...the barely-banked contempt they — the professional-class whites, I mean — have for poor white people is visceral, and obvious to me. Yet it is invisible to them. Why is that? J.D. Vance: I know exactly what you mean. My grandma (Mamaw) recognized this instinctively. She said that most people were probably prejudiced, but they had to be secretive about it. “We”–meaning hillbillies–“are the only group of people you don’t have to be ashamed to look down upon.” An interview with J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a family and a culture in crisis. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 3:02 PM PST - 109 comments

"Biologists have found that human language, like bird song, may evolve to accommodate its environment through acoustic adaptation. In the internet, a similar phenomenon happens to our visual languages: our memes hold something of the digital landscapes they proliferate in. In China, the digitally-active keep folders of 表情 (biǎo qíng) [gifs], which literally means “facial expression.”

An introductory field guide to the Chinese biaoqing.

posted by joshwa at 2:59 PM PST - 11 comments

30 Years Saving Lives from Volcanoes VDAP was established in 1986 in response to the tragic eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia that killed more than 23,000 people. Recognizing that the tragedy could have been averted with assistance before the eruption, the USGS and USAID/OFDA formed VDAP.
posted by Michele in California at 1:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Jon Lee Anderson on an Amazonian tribe and their increasingly frequent contact with outsiders. (SLNewYorker)
posted by kevinbelt at 1:54 PM PST - 6 comments

Matthew Perpetua​​ ​of the mp3 blog Fluxblog has curated a "series of survey mixes designed to give more context to the music of the 1980s. The frustrating thing about [how] we typically deal with cultural history is to focus on specific niches and canons, but in doing that, we lose track of parallel and overlapping cultural trends. I hope to create a set of collections that will give you – and me! – a better understanding of chronology for the music of this era, and to highlight a lot of music that for whatever reason usually gets cut out of retrospectives today." [more inside]
posted by danabanana at 1:05 PM PST - 15 comments

Archive dot org and Jason Scott have released the complete collection of Nintendo Power magazines, searchable and readable online.
posted by boo_radley at 12:37 PM PST - 41 comments

Death metal band Dead Territory performs John Cage’s seminal avant-garde work 4’33”. A significantly different version, performed by EntertainmentMIG, demonstrates the range of expression and emotion that the work makes possible. Finally, drummer Edo Animus offers notes and outtakes on his solo performance. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:42 AM PST - 22 comments

Welcome to The Nightmare World of Leo the Lion, Netflix's Worst Movie.
posted by burgerrr at 11:40 AM PST - 88 comments

Musician Paul Kalkbrenner, perhaps best known for the (hard-to-get in region 1 but fantastic) movie Berlin Calling (trailer, Sky and Sand video, Revolte scene) grew up in East Berlin listening to electronic music on East-German Youth Radio DT64 (German wiki info, soundcloud archives). While reconnecting with memories of this time he has spent 18 months compiling a free 3-part mix series with 2 released so far, constructed from online recordings of DT64 broadcasts from the late 80s and early 90s, mostly from the years immediately after the wall fell until the station closed in 1993. [more inside]
posted by advil at 9:49 AM PST - 7 comments

As of 2018, Massachusetts will bar employers from asking for salary history before making a job offer as part of a law mandating equal pay for comparable work. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:40 AM PST - 67 comments

Nora Samaran writes on men, autonomy, and how it is created, not taken. "Emotionally immature men who believe that autonomy is something you take, rather than something you create, may live their lives in a continual nightmare of ‘needs they can’t meet’ that they never come to understand." Part Two: The Tricks of Shame and Hope
posted by Shepherd at 9:34 AM PST - 67 comments

Do trees communicate with each other? "If you're a mother and you have children, you recognise your children and you treat them in certain ways. We're finding that trees will do the same thing. They'll adjust their competitive behaviour to make room for their own kin and they send those signals through mycorrhizal networks."
posted by jillithd at 9:31 AM PST - 21 comments

The Linguistics of My Next Band Name [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:39 AM PST - 38 comments

In a letter to the Associated Press, the US Department of Health and Human Services was unable to provide any evidence that flossing is an effective way to prevent gum disease or cavities. Its Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are required by law to be based on scientific evidence, had removed the section on flossing earlier this year.
posted by Copronymus at 8:14 AM PST - 163 comments

When the deputy sheriff’s patrol cruiser pulled up beside him as he walked down Broad Street at sunset last August, Martee Flournoy, a 32-year-old black man, was both confused and rattled. He had reason: In this corner of rural Georgia, African-Americans are arrested at a rate far higher than that of whites. But the deputy had not come to arrest Mr. Flournoy. Rather, he had come to challenge Mr. Flournoy’s right to vote. - From the county and town level to the state level, voter suppression in America is all about race.
posted by Artw at 7:42 AM PST - 55 comments

Toddler Grandma Style, like any style, does have a message. The message is “boys, this isn’t about you.” [more inside]
posted by explosion at 7:29 AM PST - 94 comments

[Nate Wooley, T]he New York trumpeter and composer celebrates the USA’s lesser known maverick composers. "So here I attempt to give positive form and definition to this term while presenting some music that exemplifies the work of those American weirdos that have inspired me in the past 15 years. I define the artists below as having committed themselves to working outside of an established musical dialectic. Instead, they hurl themselves into the void of an idea with only their personal context and history as aesthetic anchor points. The starting point of their work is self-contained. Tradition, history, theory be damned. "
posted by OmieWise at 6:58 AM PST - 11 comments

Tony Fitzpatrick's blog, No. 9: An Artist's Journey, is a gorgeous collection of drawing/collages from a former tattoo artist and boxer turned maker. His self-taught style will be familiar to fans of Steve Earle's albums; the Chicago-based artist's works also hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:40 AM PST - 4 comments

Porta Polonica is a site (courtesy of the Westphalian State Museum of Industrial Heritage) devoted to the culture and history of Poles in Germany. Some examples of the dozens of articles therein: an account of the novelist Witold Gombrowicz’s year in Berlin; a biography of the pioneering harpsichordist, pianist and composer Wanda Landowska; a piece about Jan Łukasiewicz, who devised what was once known as ‘Reverse Polish Notation’; a brief account of Rosa Luxemburg’s career; an article about star of stage & (silent) screen Pola Negri; and a piece about the letter ‘P’ worn by the millions of Polish forced labourers in wartime Germany.
posted by misteraitch at 6:03 AM PST - 1 comment

A few months back, Chance the Rapper released Coloring Book mixtape (Soundcloud), "one of the strongest rap albums released this year, an uplifting mix of spiritual and grounded that even an atheist can catch the Spirit to." (Pitchfork) That mixtape features a ton of guests, including Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Future, Justin Bieber ... and Noname. Who? She's a Chicago rapper, formerly known as Noname Gypsy, and with her own mixtape, Telefone (Soundcloud), she "has only further solidified her reputation as a deft and hyper-intelligent young rapper, at first a one woman Digable Planets for the melodic Chicago contemporary, but quickly something wholly unique." (Noisey/Vice)
posted by filthy light thief at 5:00 AM PST - 10 comments

An Iranian student visiting Isfahan's Masjid-e Shah, or Shah Mosque, also known as the Imam Mosque, takes advantage of the mosque's excellent acoustics to sing a brief and lovely song. [more inside]
posted by yasaman at 10:41 PM PST - 12 comments

Raised by a paranoid father in the foothills of California's Sierra Mountains, 15 year old Eliot Emory has grown up in isolation with records and VHS tapes as his only connection to the outside world [...] But when his father mysteriously vanishes, Eliot is propelled into a world far greater than he ever imagined...and far more perilous.

So begins Echo's Rift, a graphic novel by Jennifer Potter. New pages featuring her beautiful artwork appear 3x a week. It's 3 months and 35 pages old so far, and 'spans many worlds and encounters monsters, aliens, telepaths, mad scientists, and the occasional adorable bunny.'
posted by bluefly at 7:37 PM PST - 17 comments

Explore.org's live webcams have become wildly popular over the last few years, allowing viewers to watch, from the comfort of their home or office, livestreams of grizzlies, walruses, belugas, puffins, eagles and more in their natural habitat. Truly the best of the web. But there is a danger in becoming too attached. Today at a little after 7 pm Eastern time, fans of the osprey cam in Bremen, Me., watched nature in its most brutally real. [Warning: nature.] [more inside]
posted by stargell at 7:36 PM PST - 57 comments

The Anarchist Sailor “Imagine if there were an alternate dystopian reality where law enforcement was 100 percent effective, such that any potential offenders knew they would be immediately identified, apprehended, and jailed,” he wrote. “How could people have decided that marijuana should be legal, if nobody had ever used it? How could states decide that same-sex marriage should be permitted?”
posted by bitmage at 6:38 PM PST - 35 comments

Vaults are large, barrel shaped protein complexes. Found in most eukaryotic cells, their exact function is currently unknown. [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 4:09 PM PST - 17 comments

As the sun begins its downward descent on summer, we pause to take a deep breath of humid air with Pablo Grossi, Argentinian grandmaster-level vinyl digger and selector. 50 miles out from Buenos Aires, Pablo has discovered and traded in thousands of records around the region so that "people from here can know them and have them". Comprised mostly of his vinyl recordings, this exemplary showcase of Exotica is warm to the touch. Best served with ice and lime garnish.
posted by rebent at 1:09 PM PST - 8 comments

Seymour Papert, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Logo Foundation went PENUP today. Many of us who learned programming in the 1980s started with LOGO, which spawned other langauges like StarLogo. Today, its spiritual successor is probably Scratch.
posted by dmd at 12:41 PM PST - 69 comments

VINU'S INOVATIVE CAR PARKING INVENTED 6 YEARS BACK STILL WORKING [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:31 AM PST - 36 comments

"Steve Roskoski, a library assistant, said he and his fellow librarians (some with their own tattoos) came up with the idea to match readers with books based on their tats. It’s Portland after all. “Book recommending and finding people good reads is something we do every day here at the Multnomah County Library,” Roskoski said. “Social media is a great way to interact with those people - and we’ve seen a great response. We had over 150 awesome tattoos sent in.” That number will continue to grow, Roskoski suspects, as the word gets out." [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer at 10:09 AM PST - 27 comments

"Below are sixty wee puzzles. I’ve tried to provide a heads-up where there’s a whisper of off rhyme or a slight shift of emphasis. The one consistent exception I’ve allowed to perfect rhyme is that at the center and fulcrum point of the puzzle, there may be a possessive “s.” The answer to “White whale’s home haircutting gizmo,” then, would be “Moby[’s] Flowbee.”" [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:34 AM PST - 117 comments

Tokyo elects Yuriko Koike as first female governor Ms Koike is a member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but it did not endorse her so she ran as an independent. (SLBBC)
posted by infini at 8:27 AM PST - 46 comments

A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice. (Platform, Downloads/Briefing)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:12 AM PST - 16 comments

The world’s most famous and damaging nuclear meltdown is now being considered for the world’s largest solar power plant. “The Chernobyl site has really good potential for renewable energy,” Ukraine’s environment minister Ostap Semerak, 44, said at an interview in London. “We already have high-voltage transmission lines that were previously used for the nuclear stations, the land is very cheap and we have many people trained to work at power plants.”
posted by sammyo at 7:31 AM PST - 32 comments

A group of Science YouTubers got together to perform a tribute to a scientist Hamilton, in the style of his political musical namesake.
posted by divabat at 5:24 AM PST - 14 comments

"British politics has never seen a purer example of the Overton window than the referendum on membership of the EU." Brexit Blues, John Lanchester for LRB [more inside]
posted by cwest at 12:48 AM PST - 27 comments

...all good fights have to be between blue and red, that’s how wars work. (Even bean wars.) Literal beans.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 12:04 AM PST - 31 comments