September 2019 Archives

September 30

What Does It Feel Like to Die?

Depictions of death on TV and in the movies are unrealistic; the characters are awake and carry on meaningful conversations, then suddenly close their eyes and die. That’s not how it works. In the days when deaths occurred at home, most people had seen a relative die. And today we have a lot of knowledge about what happens in the body as it begins shutting down. It’s a gradual process.

Harriet Hall, MD, reviews What Does It Feel Like To Die?: Inspiring New Insights Into The Experience Of Dying by Jennie Dear.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:02 PM PST - 50 comments

The Saddest Leafy Green

"My first inkling that kale was in trouble came from the New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt’s recent account of his attempt to love takeout-lunch salad, the purveyors of which dot seemingly every street corner in Manhattan...During Platt’s experiment, someone from Sweetgreen told him that kale sales had waned at its stores, even as its menu had expanded to include grain bowls and warm dishes."

Amanda Mull writes in The Atlantic that maybe America never really liked kale.
posted by noneuclidean at 3:44 PM PST - 146 comments

Michael Chabon asks "What's the Point?"

"These feel like such dire times, times of violence and dislocation, schism, paranoia, and the earth-scorching politics of fear. Babies have iPads, the ice caps are melting, and your smart refrigerator is eavesdropping on your lovemaking (and, frankly, it’s not impressed).

It has all seemed to fall apart so quickly. Looking around, it’s hard not to wonder who or what is to blame. I think it might be me. No, hear me out...." [more inside]
posted by dnash at 2:22 PM PST - 34 comments

“...no better way of telling this story than with one continuous shot.”

1917 [YouTube][Official Trailer] [Behind the Scenes Featurette]“James Bond director Sam Mendes wants to put audiences right in the center of World War I with his new war movie 1917. To do that, he shot the movie in one long, perfectly choreographed shot. In a behind-the-scenes featurette released on Monday morning, Mendes and some of the cast and crew go into detail on the challenge of shooting a movie this way, and why it was worth it.1917 follows two soldiers in WWI on a mission to deliver a message that could save thousands of lives. However, to do so, they have to carry that message across some of the war’s most harrowing battlefields. And Mendes wanted to make sure that the audience got to see every single step of that journey. “From the very beginning I felt this movie should be told in real time,” Mendes says in the featurette. “Every step of the journey, breathing every breath with these men, felt integral.”” [Via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz at 1:07 PM PST - 47 comments

Accessibility under fire at the Supreme Court

Domino’s Wants to Slice Away at the Americans With Disabilities Act The potential consequences of this fill me with genuine terror because the consequences extend far beyond pizza. I’m legally blind, and the internet, phone apps, and e-commerce are more integral parts of my daily life than shopping malls or brick-and-mortar stores have ever been. If the Supreme Court were to eventually rule in the company’s favor, the blind, visually impaired, and others who rely on accessibility tools to use the web could be locked out of the modern economy—and much of modern life. If companies and other organizations are not required to make their websites and apps accessible, people like me would be unable to access our bank accounts, look up or pay our utility bills, or buy household essentials from Amazon or other retailers.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:32 AM PST - 80 comments

The Toll Of #MeToo

Writing for The Cut, Rebecca Traister seeks to talk about the cost of #MeToo - not for the accused, but for those who came forward, as a foreword to the experience of 25 people who came forward to expose their abusers, and the experience in their own words.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Wise Guys

Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino talk movie obsessions, director heroes, process and violence as catharsis.
posted by sapagan at 10:38 AM PST - 27 comments

Tsktsk!

Cheating Hangman [via mefi projects] Avapoet has created an app that perfectly recreates the infuriating feeling of playing hangman with your older sibling who was *definitely* cheating and also knew way more words than you. It is rage-inducing and tremendously fun.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:31 AM PST - 16 comments

People were saying, “You can’t do that.” Well, we did…and people came.

"In 1996, singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan was tipping from alternative icon into something more like traditional pop success. At 26 she had garnered serious momentum—and 2.8 million albums sold in the United States—after her 1993 crossover Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. But as she ascended through the music industry, she kept hearing “no.” No, we can’t play your song—we already have another woman artist in rotation. No, you can’t put two women on the same concert bill—it’s box office poison. Sexism was passed off as age-old industry logic—logic that forced her into competition with other women artists to be the sole exceptional woman allowed opportunity. McLachlan was not alone. So she presented a challenge to her team—let’s prove them wrong" An Oral History of Lilith Fair
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:25 AM PST - 21 comments

From Now On

A girl hears a bump in the night .... From Now On by Worakls - a charming low-budget interpretation of an epically cinematic piece of music. You have to have the sound on for it to make any sense. SLYT
posted by memebake at 9:49 AM PST - 1 comment

“Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?”

Yet another woman comes forward to accuse Al Franken of groping her. The military veteran, who is now a senior staffer at a major progressive organization, says that while working for U.S. Senator Patty Murray and posing for a picture at an event with Franken, he “puts his hand on my ass,” asks the photographer to take another picture to prolong the experience, and “gives me a little squeeze on my buttock.” She is the ninth woman to accuse Franken of inappropriate conduct and the fourth to accuse him specifically of groping her buttocks. [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 9:37 AM PST - 16 comments

If their lips are moving...

Why Europe’s new populists tell so many lies. An article in the Guardian by Catherine Fieschi. Populist lying... is designed to be seen – it is the opposite of a cover-up. In the populist playbook, lying itself is glorified; it is an instrument of subversion, its purpose to demonstrate that the liar will stop at nothing to “serve the people”. ... Above all, though, the lies are about taking one of representative democracy’s creeds – authenticity – and turning it on its head.
posted by tavegyl at 9:33 AM PST - 6 comments

The Real Questions: Who Would Make This And Why?

“Every few months, after I’d dismissed it in my mind as an obvious fraud, someone new would bring the tape up to me. Usually they’d just seen it and wanted to see what I thought. I would retread my initial suspicions and explain that, while it must be a fake, it’s certainly a very good fake. And each time, I’d walk away a little less convinced.” The Pee Tape Is Real, but It’s Fake: There’s a video going around that no one’s really talking about. What makes it most unreal is how believable it is. (Slate) (cw: blurry nudity, possible pee)
posted by The Whelk at 8:31 AM PST - 23 comments

Podunk, based on an Algonquian word meaning ... something?

Podunk was a place name (Wikipedia) long before it became a punchline. The word has Algonquian roots, but Ives Goddard, senior linguist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and a leading expert on Algonquian languages, notes that "you'll be able to find guesses in the sources if you look around. Don't believe any of it." (NPR Codeswitch) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:18 AM PST - 4 comments

Can you microwave lube?

Can You Microwave? is a helpful blog answering questions about what can and cannot be microwaved.
posted by adept256 at 8:17 AM PST - 14 comments

No, "Labradoodle" is the monster, not the doctor

Thirty years ago, Wally Conron was asked to breed a non-shedding guide dog. Looking back, he worries that he created a monster.
posted by Etrigan at 7:36 AM PST - 52 comments

The Climate Crisis, Illustrated

Pejac's drawings clarify the destructive absurdity of the Anthropocene [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 6:12 AM PST - 3 comments

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell author to return after 16-year gap

Out in September 2020, Clarke’s Piranesi will follow the story of its eponymous hero, who lives in the House, a building with 'hundreds if not thousands of rooms and corridors'.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:08 AM PST - 39 comments

September 29

How To Conquer The World In Just 24 Songs

Andrew Ridgely and his friend George Michael enjoyed quite a bit of success as pop stars with their 80s band Wham!. Across two albums and some compilation releases, they changed popular music and launched a defining career. Their first album, 1983's Fantastic, came across both as satirical social satire and an expression of the attitude of a generation - parties, dancing, and living on the dole: Bad Boys [video], A Ray Of Sunshine, Love Machine, Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) [video, substantially different rhymes from the LP version], Club Tropicana [video], Nothing Looks The Same In The Light [George's first experiment in "I played everything" production], Come On, Young Guns (Go For It!) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:00 PM PST - 22 comments

Recipes Endure, across Oceans and Centuries

!שנה טובה Genie Milgrom was raised Catholic in Cuba, but the family recipes passed down to her had a few oddities. They never mixed meat and milk. Her Spanish-born grandmother always insisted she pull off a bit of bread and throw it in the oven to burn. They used potato and corn starch where most kitchens used wheat flour. Genealogical research led her to discover that her ancestors were Converso Jews, who converted to Catholicism (often just on the surface) to avoid the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:05 PM PST - 7 comments

NYT: The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse (CW)

In its reporting the New York Times "reviewed over 10,000 pages of police and court documents; conducted software tests to assess the availability of the imagery through search engines; accompanied detectives on raids; and spoke with investigators, lawmakers, tech executives and government officials. The reporting included conversations with an admitted pedophile who concealed his identity using encryption software and who runs a site that has hosted as many as 17,000 such images." Their shorter "What You Need To Know" article summarizes: reports are increasing, victims are younger and the abuse is worse, the Justice Department has neglected its duties for years, the police and non-profits are overwhelmed, and tech companies are often slow to react if they do at all. Almost 66% of reports were from Facebook Messenger. [more inside]
posted by reductiondesign at 1:35 PM PST - 47 comments

“I am virtually never alone in newer video games.”

The rise of the virtual sidekick, and what it says about the shift in video game storytelling. [Slate] “That “alone” part of the equation for video games has been changing in recent years. Yes, long ago there was an explosion of online gaming’s popularity, giving players the ability to join up with or hunt strangers, friends, and (occasionally) new friends you’d meet through a game. But there’s also a newer, largely unarticulated trend: the end of being alone in video games. Now, even on single-player outings, you’re typically teamed up with a computer sidekick for the duration of the adventure. [...] But this is an interesting and new experiment for video games, one that raises a lot of questions. Or, at least, one question: Why? I have a hunch. The most ambitious examples of the computer sidekick are always plot-critical characters who grow and change and have actual personalities and points of view. They accompany a shift in the sorts of stories told in video games, and how the player takes part in them. ” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 12:17 PM PST - 55 comments

Our Skulls Are Out-Evolving Us

The Hanes family felt they had reached the limits of established medical practice and found no cure to Micah’s sleep and breathing problems. So Hanes did what any modern parent would: she turned to Google. There, she discovered a whole community of researchers and medical professionals who point to abundant evidence that Micah’s experience is increasingly commonplace. To them, Micah represents a perfect case study of an alarming trend in human development with far-reaching implications: over the last 250 years, our skulls have morphed in dangerous and troubling ways.. The problem with Micah, they say, is his face. (Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Medium OneZero)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:16 PM PST - 52 comments

🍳 👩🏽‍🌾🌯 🍜 🍤 🍝

2019 Association of Food Journalists award-winning coverage. Best Food Travel story: Gustavo Arellano at Eater, “The Central Valley Is the Heart and Soul of California”; Best Newspaper Food Feature: Chris Malloy, Phoenix New Times, “A Journey to the Heart of New Arizonan Cuisine”.

Started in 1986, AFJ’s awards competition is the oldest contest for food journalists and recognizes excellence in 15 categories of food journalism including audio journalism, photography, and restaurant criticism. Check out their Awards archive. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:29 AM PST - 4 comments

Violence on the Floor

How Senator Charles Sumner’s speeches condemning slavery and exposing its connection to rape spurred a pro-slavery gang of Senators called the “F Street Mess” to plotting, leading to the near-fatal caning of Sumner by “deeply insecure screw-up” Senator Preston Brooks and “creating the opening for Lincoln’s rise.” Ryan Grim of The Intercept reviews the new volume in Sidney Blumenthal’s extended biography of Lincoln and his times, which explodes the myth that Brooks “chivalrously” beat Sumner for insulting Brooks’ cousin.
posted by sallybrown at 9:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Award winning reporter and Rappler co-founder Maria Ressa Q&A

“Facebook Broke Democracy in Many Countries around the World, Including in Mine” In a Q&A, the Manila-based journalist discusses how Silicon Valley has “forever changed” our societies — and what can be done to stop hate spreading faster than facts
posted by Mrs Potato at 7:54 AM PST - 34 comments

What the future of the American ballpark should look like

"The American ballpark is in decline. Let’s build it back up." (SL SBNation article by architect Scott Hines) [more inside]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:22 AM PST - 35 comments

September 28

Chicano Batman, keeping the Latino rhythm and blues alive and well

“We’re four Latinos breaking through in a market of rock music and succeeding. That’s the face of immigration or migration or however you want to call it. That shifts a lot of people’s preconceived notion of the status quo and that feels good.” From Los Angeles' house band to touring with Jack White (Guardian), Chicano Batman's tropical/ Latino soul sound is getting more recognition, from being picked (Bandcamp interview) for a Johnny Walker spot covering "This Land is Your Land" to bringing the sunshine to sessions on NPR Tiny Desk, KEXP and a song on Conan (YouTube x4). Dive deep into their music on Bandcamp.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:48 PM PST - 9 comments

From Auto Mechanic to Physician...

Carl Allamby graduated from medical school at 47!
posted by dfm500 at 7:03 PM PST - 10 comments

Challenging The Stigma Around Skin Conditions

British photographer Sophie Harris-Taylor hopes to break down the stigma [featureshoot.com] around skin issues with Epidermis, her candid new photo series challenging how we view imperfection. Epidermis [sophieharristaylor.com] features close-up portraits of 20 women from across the UK with varying skin conditions. The models pose in ways familiar from beauty shoots and celebrity Instagram snaps, except they wear no clothing or make-up – and there’s not an airbrush in sight. Via [digg.com]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 4:23 PM PST - 10 comments

Follow the money . . . and stop it!

Bill McKibben and friends show the way to stop fossil fuels.
posted by Mesaverdian at 3:49 PM PST - 7 comments

In my waxed-up hair and my painted shoes

When The Replacements made 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul, their label was pressuring frontman Paul Westerberg to write songs that could get played on the radio. Producer Matt Wallace’s mixes were dismissed and the label hired hit-maker Chris Lord-Alge (Steve Winwood, Chaka Khan) to put an 80s radio sheen on the songs. "I'll Be You" would become the band's only radio hit, but many fans and even the band members themselves hated the glossy sound. 30 years later, The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul gets the second life it deserves with a new box set, Dead Man’s Pop. [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:15 PM PST - 28 comments

Cut from the Same Cloth

Artist Myfanwy Tristram was irritated by her teenage daughter’s extreme fashions — until she took an illustrated journey into their origins. Her influences come from the internet, from fast-spreading pictures on Instagram, from crazy hairstyles on TikTok. Teens’ fashion inspiration is now global, grassroots led, with the commercial interests falling over themselves to catch up... We scroll through her favorite accounts, and I meet the strangers whose fashion tips and product endorsements indirectly result in those Band-Aids in my bed.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:40 PM PST - 28 comments

The Shaw Family Admission Plan

When it came to college admissions, Wall Street legend David Shaw knew how to hedge his bets. Some wealthy parents donate to one elite school to give their children a boost. Dan L. Golden and Ava Kofman write about a hedge fund billionaire who donated to seven. (SLNYM)
posted by crazy with stars at 12:06 PM PST - 21 comments

"woo-ooo-ooo-ooo what is that?... the ghost of PacMan"

The rare and mysterious Deepstaria jellyfish looks like a cross between a plastic bag and a Victorian specter (with resident isopod). (From Nautilus Live. Direct YouTube link) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 11:31 AM PST - 11 comments

It's A Big Bad Beautiful Day

San Francisco band It's A Beautiful Day's [previously] third album was actually two EPs, one on each side of the record: Choice Quality Stuff/Anytime [full album, 33m]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:33 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

🌶️ “Second of all...this is literal inedible gross-ass shit.”

The Great Subway Jalapeño Scandal [YouTube] “In a now-archived post on the r/Subway subreddit, someone asked where he could buy the jalapeños that the chain uses on its sandwiches. "The jalapeños are always the best part of the sub for me, and I absolutely need to know what brand they are or how I can get them," he wrote. [...] But according to comic and YouTuber Gus Johnson, the jalapeños are literally the worst, and he's bitten into so many mid-sub pepper stems that he made an entire video about it. In this Dateline-quality investigation into what he calls "The Great Subway Jalapeño Scandal," Johnson visits four Subway restaurants in the Los Angeles area—via A BIRD SCOOTER, no less—and buys 20 footlong subs that are all topped with jalapeños.” [via: Vice News]
posted by Fizz at 8:54 AM PST - 43 comments

The fight to end Roe v. Wade enters its endgame next week

The Supreme Court could dismantle the constitutional right to an abortion, and all it has to do is sit on its hands.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:30 AM PST - 30 comments

G'day, Chris here

Clickspring Chris (previously) is back at it, this time with a playing card press [YouTube].
posted by noneuclidean at 7:08 AM PST - 18 comments

Weird Tales from the 18th Century

Rictor Norton's Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840 offers representative excerpts from early Gothic novels--which would eventually connect to everything from Surrealism (Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, 26 Feb. 2019: "Dorothea Tanning Review – A Gorgeous Trip Through Gothic Nightmares), to Scooby Doo (Eleni Theodoropoulos, CrimeReads, 13 Sep. 2019: "How Scooby Doo Revived Gothic Storytelling For Generations of Kids"), to innovation in humanities scholarship (Anna Williams, My Gothic Dissertation; Matthew Brown, 9 May 2019, "English PhD completes groundbreaking podcast dissertation")--but lesser-known tales of wonder and terror also appeared in shorter forms throughout the 18th century. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:40 AM PST - 10 comments

September 27

The Illustrated City

From Naiberi to Nairobi: how Kenya's melting pot capital was born – a cartoon
posted by Mrs Potato at 11:52 PM PST - 4 comments

Red to Green

The Christchurch earthquake in 2010 and 2011 rendered unliveable an area of the city twice the size of New York's Central Park. 10,000 people had to move out of the red zone and 7,000 houses were demolished. After a decade, what's happened to that land? The evolution of a city's abandoned areas. [more inside]
posted by happyinmotion at 11:25 PM PST - 20 comments

Sometimes behaves so strangely

Deutsch's 'Sometimes Behave So Strangely' The Speech to Song Illusion. [more inside]
posted by zengargoyle at 5:13 PM PST - 23 comments

Things change, literary edition

The cult books that lost their cool. [more inside]
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:58 AM PST - 321 comments

Barbie's newest neighbor is whoever you want them to be

Fifty years after Mattel debuted Barbie (YT, ad), they are releasing Creatable World, dolls can be a boy, girl, or neither. 'A Doll For Everyone': Meet Mattel's Gender-Neutral Doll (Time Magazine with embedded video). "If you’re among the skeptics out there, please keep in mind that dolls and toys won’t turn kids into something they’re not — they help kids figure out who they already are." (Cool Mom Picks)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:29 AM PST - 36 comments

Little Green Houses For You And Me

"In a theoretical Green New Deal, both zero-energy and passive-house standards could be implemented to ensure that all new construction would be ecologically sustainable. Advancements in architectural thinking and building construction—limiting the use of unsustainable, energy inefficient, and carbon-intensive building materials such as glass curtain walls, concrete, and building materials derived from petroleum, and increasing the use of consumer technologies like composting toilets—could further reduce architecture’s carbon footprint. Architecture already has the means and technology to make this happen. It also happens that the results look good." How A Green New Deal Could Transform Our Homes (Curbed)
posted by The Whelk at 11:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Storm drains are like raccoon superhighways.

"On a balmy morning in mid-August, Timothy Linder lifts the latch on a refrigerated trailer and opens both doors wide, releasing a wave of cold air heavy with the stink of fish guts. After hoisting himself up, Linder wriggles his hands into a pair of blue latex gloves, cuts into one of the stacks of cardboard boxes, and pulls out a plain brown block slightly larger than a miniature candy bar. Thankfully, this snack isn’t for people. It’s for the raccoons. Most people don’t know it, but the U.S. government has been distributing oral rabies vaccines targeted at raccoons since 1997 as part of a massive public and animal health initiative." Jason Bittel writes for National Geographic about raccoons and rabies.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:28 AM PST - 51 comments

I'm a-walkin' in the rain / Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain

The 645 (or so) meanings of the word "run."
posted by Chrysostom at 8:16 AM PST - 10 comments

"I hope he gets impeached before I get to speak to him."

"It's disgusting that the president could inflame hatred against people and be so divisive." With less than a month to go before Canada's October 21st election, Jagmeet Singh comes out strong against the president of Canada's largest trading partner. What else (other than that and that) has been happening in the Canadian election? [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 7:22 AM PST - 101 comments

three parking strategies—meek, prudent, and optimistic

Simple Parking Strategies: A Primer [YouTube] “The next time you're hunting for a parking spot, mathematics could help you identify the most efficient strategy, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics. It's basically an optimization problem: weighing different variables and crunching the numbers to find the optimal combination of those factors. In the case of where to put your car, the goal is to strike the optimal balance of parking close to the target—a building entrance, for example—without having to waste too much time circling the lot hunting for the closest space. Paul Krapivsky of Boston University and Sidney Redner of the Santa Fe Institute decided to build their analysis around an idealized parking lot with a single row (a semi-infinite line), and they focused on three basic parking strategies.” [via: Ars Technica]
posted by Fizz at 6:12 AM PST - 57 comments

Grievous Spectacle Y/N?

Living with Machines is a crowdsourced-history project led by the British Library. Participants help study the effects of mechanization on everyday life, perusing 19th-century newspapers to classify and summarize stories of industrial accidents and workplace injuries.
posted by Miko at 4:11 AM PST - 1 comment

Beowulf: Toni Morrison and the legacy of Tolkien

'The Question of Race in Beowulf' by Dorothy Kim: J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal scholarship on Beowulf centers a white male gaze. Toni Morrison focused on Grendel and his mother as raced and marginal figures. [more inside]
posted by ocular shenanigans at 3:20 AM PST - 17 comments

"Resist full sentimentality! Set fire to the screen!”

Chris Morris is back.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:47 AM PST - 13 comments

September 26

Mister Global 2019 National Costumes

Yesterday, South Korea's Kim Jong-woo was crowned the most "inspiring gentleman" at Mister Global 2019. Imgur Link to contestant national costumes. Mister Global (wiki link) is an annual male beauty pageant held in Thailand.
posted by xdvesper at 11:22 PM PST - 31 comments

The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

From Rolling Stone: Twelve years ago, a catchy New Wave anthem appeared on the internet with no information about who wrote or recorded it. Amateur detectives have spent thousands of hours since trying to figure out where it came from — with little luck. Inside the question that’s been driving the internet crazy for years [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:35 PM PST - 63 comments

first day of March will be slightly noisier than most

A short woodworking video: creating a perpetual flip calendar. Author notes the design was derived from diagrams in US patents 1716222 and 1681235.
posted by cortex at 3:47 PM PST - 12 comments

Dogs, then cats, then more dogs

What makes dogs so special and successful? Love. (non-WaPo link here)

Cats bond with their people too, study finds.
‘He brought me a tissue when I was ill’: the moment readers realised their cat loves them.

Facebook poster Meu Pequeno Pet shows us how sleeping dogs lie.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:23 PM PST - 40 comments

Stories About My Brother

Prachi Gupta on the sudden death of her brother, her deep love and complicated grief, and the MRA mindset that led him to make a fatal decision. (cw: domestic violence, misogyny, suicide attempt)
posted by Countess Elena at 1:06 PM PST - 15 comments

The story of a little-known 19th-century swindle

We are presenting this overlooked chapter in the history of flimflam for two reasons. First, so that if you overhear someone loudly and repeatedly using the word infortunate in your local watering hole you do not wager money with them, and second, as inspiration for any screenwriters who need a plot device for a heist/scam/caper that's not a rehashed version of “charming protagonist steals money from unlikeable villain; hilarity ensues.”
posted by Etrigan at 12:46 PM PST - 21 comments

She Was A Shoo-In

Broadway lights will dim Friday night in honour of Phyllis Newman, who passed away September 15th, 2019. Phyllis (NYTimes obit) won the 1962 Tony for her featured actress turn in Subways Are For Sleeping, playing Martha Vail, with her memorable song “I Was a Shoo-In.” Apparently she was, because she beat out Barbara Streisand for the Tony that year. She was also the recipient of the inaugural Isabelle Stevenson Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Tonys for her decades-long work with the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative, now part of The Actors Fund, which strives to provide funding for women in the entertainment industry facing serious and expensive health conditions. Newman herself was a breast cancer survivor, and wrote a memoir chronicling her life and fight against the illness, called “Just In Time: Notes From My Life.” [Disclaimer - I worked as an archivist for Phyllis’ estate on a grad school internship in 2009-2010.] [more inside]
posted by ilana at 11:24 AM PST - 9 comments

Animal Avengers

A group of veterinarians, a dental surgeon and a designer had just formed a group called the “Animal Avengers” that help animals who have been struck by tragedy. Freddy the Tortoise was their first patient. [more inside]
posted by twilightlost at 10:26 AM PST - 4 comments

Ghosts in the (Genetic) Code, in living bonobos and Denisovan fossils

Genes from an extinct “ghost ape” live on in modern bonobos (Ars Technica). Because apes have their natural habitat in the trees of the rainy tropical forest, with an acidic soil where the organic matter decomposes very quickly, the fossil record for our closest relatives is poor, but genetic data in living bonobos could help fill in gaps (BioTech Spain, paywalled Nature Ecology & Evolution article). Similar, but different: earlier this year, David Gokhman summoned a ghost, using information for 32 skeletal features encoded in DNA that was extracted from a pinky bone. DNA reveals first look at enigmatic human relative, providing more details of the physical structure of Denisovans (National Geographic; full article from Cell).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:30 AM PST - 5 comments

McCarthy Henchman, Nixon fixer, Trump mentor, Reagan White House guest

Roy Cohn, The Most Hated Gay Man in America (The Nib) "Everybody knows, too, that the grotesque qualities embodied by the president are widespread among the Manhattan elite that tolerated and nurtured him, from the real estate sector to the tabloid press and from NBC to Fox News. Just like everybody knows that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile, and everybody knew it when he was hosting VIPs at his Upper East Side mansion and on his private jet. Everybody knows that after his apparent suicide, most of his elite associates will escape any justice. That’s how it goes." Covering for Roy Cohn (New Republic) " At a gay bar in Provincetown, as reported by Cohn biographer Nicholas von Hoffman, a friend described Cohn’s behavior at a local lounge: “Roy sang three choruses of ‘God Bless America,’ got a hard-on and went home to bed.” How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America (Vanity Fair) "But important unindicted people were invited, too. And they went. Large slices of the upper crust of New York and Washington snuggled up to him, laughed and entertained one another with stories about his crimes as though they were choice insiders' jokes, and wrestled for the privilege of partying with Cohn and his crooked and perverse friends." King Cohn (The Nation) How Angels in America put Roy Cohn into the definitive story of AIDS (previously)
posted by The Whelk at 9:09 AM PST - 27 comments

City Of Death at 40

Revisiting Doctor Who’s most-watched story. Den of Geek with a longread about the Douglas Adams penned Tom Baker starred adventure. Featuring Julian Glover (who became the go-to baddie for many movies after this), oh and a cameo from Eleanor Bron and John Cleese.
posted by Webbster at 8:50 AM PST - 19 comments

Time, Space and Causality

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI - "Karl Friston's free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. But to understand it, you need to peer inside the mind of Friston himself." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:32 AM PST - 28 comments

Indelicate

Washing machine delicate cycles put more microfibers into the environment than regular ones. (SLTG) Studies have now shown that using the delicate setting on your washing machine may be nicer for your clothes, but it is worse for the planet. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 5:16 AM PST - 59 comments

Who promotes "scientific" racism?

In March, Evolutionary Psychological Science, a Springer Nature journal, published an article arguing that "Jewish ideologies" such as multiculturalism, Marxism and left-wing political movements promote Jewish group interests by weakening the sense of nationalism, religiosity and ethnocentrism among whites. How could this happen in a seemingly respectable publication? Simon Whitten decided to find out (threadreader) who's behind this. Spoiler: it's Nazis all the way down.
posted by hat_eater at 3:12 AM PST - 34 comments

September 25

Nancy's Workshop

One Sunday a month, Nancy Falaise closes the doors of her Montreal salon to lead a workshop for young girls of color struggling to love their natural hair.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:36 PM PST - 9 comments

choice, coercion, circumstance, deliberate

"I didn't know it at the time, but that fall my body was the site of international debate about sex, work, poverty, and consent." Lorelei Lee writes for N+1 on the consequences and complexity of criminalizing of sex work. content warning: sexual assault
posted by ChuraChura at 3:48 PM PST - 10 comments

This Vancouver urinal has zero privacy and 100 years of history

In the summer of 2013, Matt Straw attended a wedding at Heritage Hall, a brownstone building in East Vancouver known for its elegant ballroom, stained glass chandeliers and historic clock tower. But all anybody could talk about was that urinal.
posted by Etrigan at 12:44 PM PST - 73 comments

MacArthur Fellow Saidiya Hartman

“The afterlife of slavery is not only a political and social problem but an aesthetic one as well.” The writings of MacArthur Fellow Saidiya Hartman "bear witness to lives, traumas, and fleeting moments of beauty that historical archives have omitted or obscured." An excerpt of Professor Hartman's most recent monograph, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments was published on the New Yorker website earlier this year, and Professor Hartman spoke about her work and her working process on the Critical Inquiry podcast in 2018.
posted by mustard seeds at 12:38 PM PST - 3 comments

"I consider tattooing as a medical treatment for my generation"

'A silent act of resistance': the hidden tattoo studios of Tehran: Tattoo artists are regularly arrested in Iran and sentenced to fines, lashes or imprisonment – yet they are in huge demand among young people. “I consider tattooing as a medical treatment for my generation,” [Soheil Aflaki] says. “It’s a way to heal the psychological wounds you sustain while living in a culture in crisis.”
posted by not_the_water at 12:18 PM PST - 4 comments

Britain’s Most Loved Mammal (European hedgehog)

British Wildlife Photography Awards 2019 winners [The Guardian]
posted by readinghippo at 11:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Upon Further Review...

If you saw ESPN's College Gameday broadcast from Ames, Iowa, you might have noticed an Iowa State University football fan holding a sign asking for help replenishing his Busch Light fund. It worked! People sent money to Carson King's Venmo. And then more did. So many, in fact, that he decided one case of beer was plenty, and he was giving the rest to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital. Then Busch matched his donation. Then Venmo matched it. And people kept giving, until the pledged amount topped a million dollars. [more inside]
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:06 AM PST - 21 comments

Vox Media Acquires New York Magazine

New York Magazine is effectively taking a minority stake in the privately held Vox Media Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and Tom Wolfe worked for the magazine, which has won 44 National Magazine Awards and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in criticism.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:36 AM PST - 19 comments

VLOOKUP is dead (not really). Long live VLOOKUP

Microsoft introduces a new, more powerful Excel lookup function called XLOOKUP. [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 9:42 AM PST - 102 comments

Soviet sci-fi bittersweet nostalgia, and more far-right memes

For the soundtrack of sadness and bitter(sweet) nostalgia from Soviet sci-fi films that promised a bright and glorious future, here's 1 Hour Of Melancholic Sovietwave [via Mltshp]. If you check out YouTuber Truckfighter, you'll find three more hour-long mixes of Russian Doomer Music: volumes one, two and three. But who is that bleak looking cartoon dude with the beanie, stubble and a cigarette, and what is a doomer? KnowYourMeme covers doomer, noting some of the memes include antisemitic slurs and ideas, and Mel Magazine takes a deeper dive into 4chan’s ‘doomer’ memes, "a strange frontier in online extremism," with "depressing" music as its soundtrack. And as usual, the far right smuggles ‘ironic’ racism within their memes (where if you scrape away the irony, you're left with racism). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:40 AM PST - 11 comments

Like if Rainbow Road was refracted through Cardcaptor Sakura

Sayonara Wild Hearts is the wickedly neon bisexual fever dream of a pop album I didn’t know I needed [Polygon] “Sayonara Wild Hearts doesn’t waste any time getting the player into its gorgeous, techno-pop-driven dreamscape. The main character is transformed into her strong and fashionable alter ego in the opening moments of the story, as she tries to track down renegade tarot cards, who are also strong and fashionable women. You don’t need to think about any of this much, should you choose not to. According to the voice over (performed by Queen Latifah, would you believe it?), you must chase the tarot deck through obstacle-laden tracks, riding everything from a skateboard to a high-jumping deer and guiding them left and right across a twisting, humming path. Occasionally, you deliver a flurry of timed punches against fabulously posed enemies by tapping buttons in time with the music.” [YouTube][Launch Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:34 AM PST - 26 comments

he comes to battle without armor

"I couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen when I was younger. It’s all my dad would listen to, morning and night, in the car or the house, while cleaning or gardening. He’d sing along and play air guitar, sometimes air harmonica or saxophone when those instruments showed up on a song. Bruce’s voice was synonymous with my father’s. I took no interest and made no attempt to listen, finding it easier to rebel against the music than it would have been to actually rebel against my dad, which I had no reason to do in the first place." Lucy Dacus reflects on The Boss, image, and rebellion, and covers Dancing In The Dark. [more inside]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:33 AM PST - 29 comments

The difference between Watercolor and Gouache

Watercolor is pigment in transparent media. Gouache is pigment in opaque media. Hajra Meeks paints two copies of an art nuevo drawing. Riety paints a face with each. The Art Hive paints two tigers. (youtube links)
posted by rebent at 6:26 AM PST - 8 comments

Clarence Thomas: Conservative Black Nationalist

Clarence Thomas's Radical Vision of Race - "Thomas has moved from black nationalism to the right. But his beliefs about racism, and our ability to solve it, remain the same." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:19 AM PST - 21 comments

The Tibetan Gaze

Behind the beatific image of Tibetan Buddhism lies a dark, complicated reality. But is it one the Western gaze wants to see?
posted by Mrs Potato at 5:49 AM PST - 20 comments

We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen twenty-four...

THERE IS A TAVERN HERE. INSIDE THE TAVERN, YOU SEE VALIS. SELECT AN OPTION:
- GO (N)ORTH
- GO (E)AST
- (R)EVERSE ENGINEER A CUSTOM CPU FROM A SINGLE PROGRAM
[more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 5:39 AM PST - 15 comments

When you die, become a tree

The world is running out of space for cemeteries. It would take a cemetery the size of Las Vegas to hold all those expected to die in the next 20 years in the US alone. What's the alternative? From Australia to Germany to Japan, a new funerary tradition is taking hold: natural burial. [more inside]
posted by rednikki at 3:46 AM PST - 44 comments

September 24

An alcohol cat poses a disease

A German court has ruled hangovers are an "illness", in a case against the maker of an anti-hangover drink. (Title from the charmingly inept Google translation of the court's press release.)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:15 PM PST - 21 comments

technically it's more of a Wibmer's guidelines

Wibmer's Law, an eight minute city biking video from Fabio Wibmer chock full of trials stunts, with a charming amount of narrative throughline.
posted by cortex at 5:20 PM PST - 20 comments

Beth Gibbons / Penderecki / Górecki - Symphony No. 3 Final Movement

Portishead's Beth Gibbons performs the final movement of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 and it is everything.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:53 PM PST - 21 comments

It Begins

In response to the revelation that the Trump administration had used government aid to Ukraine to attempt to force the nation to provide opposition materials against Joe Biden with regards to his son Hunter, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has formally announced the creation of an inquiry to investigate and pursue articles of impeachment against the President. (SLWaPo) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:59 PM PST - 1782 comments

"This is what thought looks like"

For the last year, photographer and FIT professor Jessica Wynne has been photographing mathematicians' blackboards, finding surprising art (SLNYT) in the dusty symbols of conjecture, argument, and speculation. Her book "Do Not Erase" is due to be published by Princeton University Press in 2020. And straight to my wish list, once I figure out where and how to pre-order.
posted by cross_impact at 2:09 PM PST - 16 comments

Cool Worlds

Astronomy, exoplanets, astroengineering, the search for extraterrestrial life & intelligence, futurism and interstellar travel. [more inside]
posted by surlyben at 12:27 PM PST - 7 comments

I have spent my life seeking all that's still unsung

Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, has passed away at the age of 78. In addition to being a formative member of the band, he was a poet and a musician in his own right. Take a moment to explore a thorough collection of his lyrics at dead.net.
posted by vverse23 at 11:34 AM PST - 67 comments

A little conversation about topographical agnosia and self-compassion

"Some people “just know” how to get across campus and back to their car. I have very limited abilities in any of these realms, but I have developed another set of skills. I know how to remain calm. I know how to ask questions. I have my paperwork in order." Heather Sellers, the author of the memoir You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, offers the essay "Where Am I?" (Longreads), a lengthy reflection on recognizing and reckoning with her severe difficulties with respect to spatial relationships and perceiving direction.
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:29 AM PST - 39 comments

No Sniff, Sherlock

What could Holmes (or anyone else) learn from strolling past a house while sniffing DNS queries? Quite a lot, actually. That's why encrypting DNS is important, and why some people aren't keen on it. This short-short story about Watson and Holmes is a nice little introduction to why it matters.
posted by zenzenobia at 9:51 AM PST - 27 comments

A list of wellness myths, debunked

Vice debunks wellness myths, all in one handy list. A look into what the real science says about apple cider vinegar as a cure-all, whether gluten-free food is healthier, whether detoxing is good for you, microwaves and radiation risks, the benefits of colonics, and whether antiperspirant causes breast cancer and Alzheimer’s, to name a few.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:31 AM PST - 117 comments

Tesla and Twain, a shocking friendship

In 1894, Nikola Tesla showed off some of his alternating current experiments and equipment to a couple famous friends (Tesla Society), as he recounted in in a pre-hearing interview with Nikola Tesla by his legal counsel in 1916. In this instance, they were Joseph Jefferson, an actor (Wikipedia), and satirist Mark Twain, who got a bit of electrotherapy to help his bowels (Science Vibe). Irish Times has a bit more on the friendship of Tesla and Twain.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:32 AM PST - 16 comments

Survey of Scottish Witchcraft

A map of Scots women accused and tried for witchcraft, from the University of Edinburgh. [via]
posted by Think_Long at 6:25 AM PST - 14 comments

The Next Administration: Using Presidential Power for Good

The Day One Agenda - "Without signing a single new law, the next president can lower prescription drug prices, cancel student debt, break up the big banks, give everybody who wants one a bank account, counteract the dominance of monopoly power, protect farmers from price discrimination and unfair dealing, force divestment from fossil fuel projects, close a slew of tax loopholes, hold crooked CEOs accountable, mandate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, allow the effective legalization of marijuana, make it easier for 800,000 workers to join a union, and much, much more. We have compiled a series of essays to explain precisely how, and under what authority, the next president can accomplish all this."[1] (via)
posted by kliuless at 6:14 AM PST - 57 comments

Surely you also have your own strange habits.

What's Your Weirdest Video Game Ritual? [Kotaku] On the latest episode of Kotaku's Splitscreen gaming podcast, listener Annie asked our hosts Jason, Maddy, & Kirk the following question:
“I’ll keep this brief, but for context, I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey since I bought it last week (I know, I’m very late to the party). One of my favorite parts of the game is the mercenary/bounty hunter tier system. Since my first mercenary kill, I’ve made it a tradition for myself and my friends that play the game with me to throw the body of every defeated mercenary into the nearest body of natural water as if it were a sign of respect. We also salute the screen and fire a single arrow into the sky. We will do this even if we are in a pretty landlocked territory of the game. There is absolutely no real purpose to doing this, it’s just hilarious to us and we do it solely out of tradition. Do you guys have any weird unscripted video game traditions? (i.e., things that you’ll always do that aren’t required in the game at all?)”
We’ve heard some good ones already—a listener who plays Breath of the Wild solely as a pescatarian, one who does push-ups after every Call of Duty loss, and one who sticks their hand out and makes the peace symbol, à la Mario in Super Mario World, every time they finish a video game level.
posted by Fizz at 5:56 AM PST - 65 comments

Like climbing Everest without oxygen

Digital archaeologists John Aycock and Tara Copplestone investigate the Atari 2600 game Entombed; running it under emulation and disassembling the machine code, only to find that nobody understands how the game's maze generation algorithm works. The algorithm, which runs in the limited space of the 2600 (where storing pre-made mazes would not have been viable), leans heavily on idiosyncrasies elsewhere in the code and is driven by a mysterious lookup table, manages to avoid generating any unsolvable mazes; rewriting the algorithm in Python shed no light on it. The original developer of the algorithm was unreachable, but coworkers recount him having been “a stoner” who came up with the logic while “drunk and whacked out of his brain” and coded it before passing out. [more inside]
posted by acb at 3:58 AM PST - 46 comments

Dorothy Day, Current Candidate For Sainthood

"They also make up the opponents themselves, Reed is focused on rebutting imaginary liberals, quoting liberals piecemeal rather than engaging in actual ideology. To avoid acknowledging there is a centuries old movement that Socialism and Christianity are intertwined through years of scholarship and inquiry, well, he has to make stuff up." Christian Communist DESTROYS PragerU with FACTS AND LOGIC (YouTube) (36:67) (Yaz previously 'Does Alpha Centarui have an Ideology'?)
posted by The Whelk at 2:48 AM PST - 14 comments

Jean genius: how Kojima became Japan’s denim mecca

The birthplace of Japanese denim has nearly 40 specialist shops to browse and gain an insight into the history and craftsmanship behind the world’s best jeans
posted by Mrs Potato at 2:30 AM PST - 4 comments

NEVER turn your back on a f***in' clown when he's talkin' to you

Revered by horror fans and largely unknown to the general public, cult film icon Sid Haig has passed away. [more inside]
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 2:06 AM PST - 21 comments

September 23

PLAN A

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases. [more inside]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 11:36 PM PST - 10 comments

OFFICIAL TRAINING VIDEO

Veterinary Technician Training: Handling a Fractious Cat
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:56 PM PST - 45 comments

Could have made a great section in Fantasia

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor -- African Suite: Danse nègre [6m24s] was composed in 1898, recorded here by Paul Freeman with the Chicago Symphony in 2000. While not African-American (he was English), Coleridge-Taylor toured the US multiple times and is perhaps the "father" of Black American Classical Music. This delightful little diversion serves as a good step into exploring classical music composed by African-Americans. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Will You Still Love Pete, tomorrow…

I get it. You love Tyrion Lannister. He’s amazing. He’s complex. He’s just like you. Only he’s not. Because you’re average height and he’s not. Sitting on the Amtrak at 5:00am I found myself wondering what the future holds for Peter Dinklage.
posted by Etrigan at 6:23 PM PST - 79 comments

Blame mosquitoes, not sonic weapons

Canadian researchers have hypothesised that the mysterious "sonic attacks" at the US embassy in Cuba (previously) were actually symptoms of repeated, low-dose exposure to neurotoxins found in insecticides. The reason for this exposure? Increased fumigation to stop the spread of the Zika virus. The full research report.
posted by Athanassiel at 5:49 PM PST - 16 comments

"Crazy Russian Bluegrass"

Olga Egorova is a mandolin/octave mandolin player from Moscow, and a member of Duo Ro, a guitar and mandolin duet (with Roman Palmov). Some of her tunes: "Mad Mood," ABBA's "Money" (performed on octave mandolin and a scooter), Isaac Albéniz's "Asturia," a "Russian - Ukrainian Medley," "Tarantella," David Grisman's "E.M.D." and some "Crazy Russian Bluegrass." More on her YouTube channel and Duo Ro's channel.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:53 PM PST - 4 comments

“I’m aware of sex”

"I truly didn’t expect the “sapiosexual” discourse to flare up again five years after OkCupid added the term to its list of categories — thus inflicting it upon the mainstream dating world — and two years after the New York Times finally got around to their trend piece." You're Not A Sapiosexual, You're Just Annoying: Miles Klee on knowing when you really need a label (and when yours is embarrassing).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:42 PM PST - 197 comments

Did a genetically modified-mosquito experiment go wrong?

From 2013 to 2015, an English biotech company released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes into neighborhoods in Jacobina, Brazil, in an effort to reduce the number of native disease-carrying mosquitoes. Its strategy: Deploy (nonbiting) male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes bearing a gene that should doom most of their offspring before adulthood. The method has successfully reduced native mosquito populations by at least 85%. Unexpectedly (Live Science), some of the gene-edited mosquitoes passed on their genes to the native insects, fueling concerns that they created a more robust hybrid species (Scientific Reports). The study is now being criticized for making that claim (Science).
posted by not_the_water at 11:29 AM PST - 27 comments

"Here upon I begin the new life which I have chose to live."

Richard Hofmeier made one of the finest videogames of the 21st Century, the outsider art masterpiece Cart Life. Then he disappeared. Now he's back with a new game. [more inside]
posted by Automocar at 10:47 AM PST - 6 comments

The Environmental Movement Needs to Reckon with Its Racist History

Because racism in environmentalism hasn’t gone away, and it’s holding the movement back. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:45 AM PST - 30 comments

I'll put the next one in jail!

The 1922 New York City Straw Hat Riots SLYT, 10:40
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:13 AM PST - 11 comments

Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones sprouted from failure

Unix, the operating system that in one derivative or another powers nearly all smartphones sold worldwide, was born 50 years ago from the failure of an ambitious project that involved titans like Bell Labs, GE, and MIT. Largely the brainchild of a few programmers at Bell Labs, the unlikely story of Unix begins with a meeting on the top floor of an otherwise unremarkable annex at the sprawling Bell Labs complex in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Unix at 50, Richard Jensen (Ars Technica) recaps the era from Multics (MIT; Multicians) to GNU and Linus Torvalds, pulling heavily from science historian Michael S. Mahoney's interviews (Princeton).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:37 AM PST - 65 comments

It's a joke

If we find ourselves moving dizzily from outrage to outrage from week to week, we should consider that being outrageous has never cost so little or earned professional contrarians and provocateurs so much. When they’re not weeping into plates of hors d’oeuvres about Twitter, they may well be writing for the Times or The Atlantic, finishing up a forthcoming best-seller, or taking up a standing invitation to join Bill Maher on national television. Such is life under cancel culture. It is mostly good.
--Osita Nwanevu: The “Cancel Culture” Con [cw: descriptions of jokes about sexual assault, bigoted speech and violence against marginalized people]
posted by zombieflanders at 7:01 AM PST - 88 comments

gourmet ero guro by kazuo ishiguro

The Gourmet is a 1987 television drama and a neglected early work by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro - rarely repeated and never released on video, it is now available* on YouTube. Directed by Michael Whyte from Ishiguro's screenplay, The Gourmet is an absurdist gothic satire about a world of competitive international gourmets, who search for new tastes to excite their jaded palettes. But when human flesh (dried or fresh) becomes hum-drum, how is our hero to banish his boredom? [more inside]
posted by inire at 5:27 AM PST - 3 comments

WHERE IS METROID PRIME!??!?!

The 50 best video games of the 21st century. [The Guardian] “Want to build worlds, become a crime kingpin, get lost in space, or enter the afterlife? Then our countdown of the 50 best games of the era has something for you.”
posted by Fizz at 4:52 AM PST - 115 comments

Equinoctial, Old Hundredth, Roog and Chun the Unavoidable

Equinoctial PDF by John Varley

Old Hundredth by Brian Aldiss

Roog by Philip K. Dick

Liane the Wayfarer by Jack Vance [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:37 AM PST - 17 comments

September 22

Prepare To Drop

Following the cancellation of Neill Blomkamp's Halo movie and Peter Jackson's Halo Chronicles, a team at Bungie had a chance to take Halo in a different direction. First known as "Recon", ten years ago today Bungie released Halo 3: ODST. [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 6:14 PM PST - 18 comments

Crazy Horse Memorial

Who Speaks for Crazy Horse? "Is the Crazy Horse Memorial, in South Dakota, a tribute to the Lakota warrior, or the strangest and crassest historical irony in a region, and a nation, that is full of them? ... The world’s largest monument is decades in the making and more than a little controversial." [Previously, Via]
posted by homunculus at 4:58 PM PST - 13 comments

Their 7-year-old Border collie, Katie, was no longer in the room.

She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog. A couple combed a rural Montana community for their Border collie, Katie. [SLNYT]
posted by hippybear at 4:12 PM PST - 36 comments

the entire park was a monument to the memory of his young body

Veijo Rönkkönen was a recluse who spent his days between the paper mill where he worked for 41 years, and his farm, tucked away in a Finnish forest. By all accounts, he didn’t like to talk to people, and he never took an art lesson in his life. But by the time of his death in 2010, Rönkkönen had covered his land with around 550 sculptures. Nearly all of them depicted human figures: people of all ages and ethnicities, frozen in moments of play, athleticism, and even agony.
posted by cardioid at 3:28 PM PST - 27 comments

Mary When You Follow Her

In the autumn of Maria’s eighteenth year...

So begins a story by Carmen Maria Machado, of multiple lives, of a single moment, told in one sentence.
posted by Etrigan at 12:21 PM PST - 10 comments

Otter Appreciation Station 2019

It's Sea Otter Awareness Week, but since river otters are sadly missing a week of their own this will be your all-in-one otter shop, so let's dive in! [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 12:09 PM PST - 10 comments

Let’s go flying!

Dave Pecotta collects flyable antique balsa-wood toy aircraft. He posts images and descriptions of many, including Oregon-made aircraft from North Pacific, Massachusetts-made specimens from Guillow, and many more.
posted by mwhybark at 11:56 AM PST - 11 comments

TASTES GREAT! LESS FILLING!

A massive brewery with a new light beer brand to market. But how to market it? Chemist Joseph Owades, working for Rheingold Breweries in New York City, broke apart beer’s long carbohydrate chains to produce the world’s first “light” beer in 1967. Marketed nearly exclusively to diabetics, it went nowhere. Thus, the development of “light” beer came with a commensurate marketing challenge: how to persuade the traditionally masculine beer-drinking audience to try a lower-calorie version of their favorite brew.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:36 AM PST - 40 comments

this post is full of neon

How Youtube’s Algorithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japanese Song Into an Enormously Popular Hit Building on the video essay by Stevem ("What Is Plastic Love?"; 10m SLYT), a short explainer on the song that was probably cropping up in your Youtube recommendations for most of 2018. But an unusual copyright claim took it off the internet (10:40m SLYT), further amplifying its Streisand Effect popularity, though an amicable agreement was soon reached (6:39m SLYT), restoring the song that's now become the face of the City Pop genre. [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 9:28 AM PST - 19 comments

Aron Eisenberg (1969-2019)

Best known for playing Nog in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, actor Aron Eisenberg passed away at the age of 50.
posted by KTamas at 7:53 AM PST - 79 comments

My father was IBM’s first black software engineer.

First black software engineer The racism he fought persists in the high-tech world today
posted by robbyrobs at 7:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Goddamn biogenic, silica-based, uh... mud.

Some Sunday nature walk'n'chat: A Blue Collar Slob's Introduction to the Rare Oakland Manzanita [SLYT]
posted by slater at 6:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Untitled goose game

The most highly anticipated goose simulator of 2019 is here. RPS. Previously.
posted by adept256 at 4:45 AM PST - 174 comments

September 21

"The most distinctive and promising American symphonic proclamation"

Dvořák once predicted that American classical music would be rooted in the black vernacular. Why, then, has the field remained so white? [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:12 PM PST - 22 comments

Prepare to be disappointed in yourself.

The moral and emotional failure of the jerk is obvious. The intellectual failure is obvious, too: no one is as right about everything as the jerk thinks he is. He would learn by listening. And one of the things he might learn is the true scope of his jerkitude – a fact about which, as I will explain shortly, the all-out jerk is inevitably ignorant. Which brings me to the other great benefit of a theory of jerks: it might help you figure out if you yourself are one. (Eric Schwitzgebel, Aeon) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:53 PM PST - 46 comments

A video of Holland in the winter, 1917

1917 - Winter Scenes in Holland (speed corrected w/ added sound) - note, the "added sounds" are terrible; we suggest muting [via my mom]
posted by jjray at 5:49 PM PST - 15 comments

ButtyStock - the number one site for free crisp sandwich photos

ButtyStock - the number one site for free crisp sandwich photos [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 5:24 PM PST - 16 comments

You thought they'd be gone in a day or two

(Inspired by a recent previous post) A large portion of the mammoth success of a-ha's first single Take On Me was because the music video was so simply magical. It still is. Hand drawn animation blends with live action in an entertaining comic-book-intersects-with-reality story. a-ha went on to do a LOT of innovative music videos (to great songs!), and those released between 1985 and 1991 were assembled into the DVD compilation Headlines And Deadlines: The Hits Of a-ha. Covering the first four of their albums (they have released 10, the most recent in 2015), the second of their 1985 videos was The Sun Always Shines On TV. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:08 PM PST - 27 comments

The Real Paleontologists of Orange County

Welcome to the Cooper Channel, archival YouTube home of the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center! Let's hearken back to the glorious yesteryear of 2012-2014, when Cal State Fullerton and OC Parks were partners and made videos about science. Here you can guess the Friday Fossil Mystery, learn about archaeological artifacts, meet some scientists and watch them work, view archaeology and paleontology lectures*, and even delve into the mysterious flavors of a monkey chow pellet. [more inside]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 3:44 PM PST - 2 comments

Imagine not being screwed with while you play mobile games.

Apple Arcade Is Mobile Gaming Without All The Bullshit [Kotaku] “The Apple Arcade service is an all-you-can-play offering of more than 70 new games that is available starting today for $5 a month, with a one-month free trial.. It runs on iPhones and iPads now and will soon also work on iMacs and other devices including Apple TV. Because of the way the games are being offered, there’s no need for the developers to include any of the aggravations typical of modern gaming. There are no timers designed to stop you from playing the game you’re enjoying unless you pay extra. There are no ads. There are no energy meters, and no microtransactions. There are, simply, none of the manipulative systems that have contaminated nearly all of mobile gaming.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:42 PM PST - 111 comments

Iglooghost: Kinda like when a kid's cartoon hits you with something deep

Iglooghost is Seamus Malliagh, an English artist who makes noises (Bandcamp) & pictures (Instagram, Tumblr) & creatures (YouTube) & tiny gods (interview with The Fader). He's signed to Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label, so his defiance of genres is to be expected (Pop Matters interview), "[splicing] divergent and disparate sounds together [...] From grime and garage to Japanese ambient techno, from rave to dancehall, [...] [showcasing] his eclectic tastes as well as his talent for layering intricate sounds and textures." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Ba duda, ba duda, ba duda, badu

That's today, again! (Previously, and previouslyer)
posted by octothorpe at 11:26 AM PST - 24 comments

The unkillable, oh-so-profitable afterlife of a-ha’s '80s classic

The first time a-ha singer Morten Harket heard the now-famous synthesizer hook in “Take on Me,” a bell rang in his head. He knew the fleet, perky melody would launch him into a noteworthy music career.
posted by Etrigan at 11:23 AM PST - 25 comments

Mini Milky Way

I build miniatures and shoot them with real milky way to create realistic scenes. What it says on the tin. And now I need to have a new miniature model building hobby. Dang it.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:05 AM PST - 11 comments

6:50 of "Happy to be Alive"

People dancing to "Let's Groove" (SLYT) Happy Weekend, everyone!
posted by dfm500 at 8:09 AM PST - 19 comments

September 20

Obligatory

Let Mr. Autumn Man officially welcome you to September.
posted by koavf at 9:02 PM PST - 40 comments

English Channel, just once?

Sarah Thomas completes the first quadruple crossing of the English Channel. On Sunday morning Sarah Thomas stepped into the chilly ocean waters outside of Dover and started to swim to France. Just over 54 hours later, on September 17th, 2019 she became the first person to swim and complete a quadruple English Channel crossing. [more inside]
posted by Dalton Luceria at 6:35 PM PST - 22 comments

A Developer Deletes His Code to Protest Its Use by ICE

On Monday, activist Shanley Kane highlighted a contract between Seattle-based software company Chef and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Chef develops and sells open source software for configuring servers and cites Alaska Airlines, Google, Facebook, and Capital One as customers. The ICE contract created a minor stir on Twitter, but by Thursday morning, Chef hadn’t made a public statement about the controversy. Discouraged by the company’s silence, former Chef employee Seth Vargo removed several Chef-related open source tools that he had hosted on two code repositories. They included Sugar, a tool designed to make it easier to work with Chef’s software that’s widely used by Chef customers, though it’s not clear if ICE uses it. "I have removed my code from the Chef ecosystem," Vargo wrote on the code hosting site GitHub. "I have a moral and ethical obligation to prevent my source [code] from being used for evil."
[more inside]
posted by Cogito at 6:09 PM PST - 48 comments

Toby Roland-Jones not mentioned

The rise of hyphenated last names in pro sports
posted by Chrysostom at 4:45 PM PST - 23 comments

This is how you make an entrance

Billy Porter offers a master class in making an entrance...a little Friday pick-me-up (literally)!
posted by agatha_magatha at 1:53 PM PST - 37 comments

also would make some good Desert Golf levels

Hey, here's a methodology for a nice set of graphs visualizing the distribution of the letters a-z across the start, middle, and end of English words, using the Brown Corpus as a source. Quicker summary here.
posted by cortex at 1:40 PM PST - 7 comments

least restrictive environment

The Flores Exhibits In this video series, artists, lawyers, advocates, and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of children held in detention facilities at the U.S. / Mexico Border. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 1:38 PM PST - 5 comments

"i hate it, and boy do i love hating stuff"

One Scottish tourist travelling through the Pacific Northwest finds themselves in Leavenworth, WA - and promptly loses their mind. (SLTwitter) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:14 AM PST - 80 comments

The Vexillology Version of "If They Mated"

@FlagsMashupBot is a twitter bot that randomly takes two flags, combines them, and invents a new country based on the flag. Sometimes the results are interesting, such as Geoouti (Georgia + Djibouti). Sometimes there's no apparent change, such as Ausada (Austria + Canada). Sometimes you just get France, as in Itana (Italy + China (1912-1928)). And sometimes they're inflammatory: witness United Ireland (UK + Ireland) or Islamic Republic of Israel (Iran + Israel). As the creator of the bot has said, "Seriously thinking of turning off the bot while im sleeping".
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:53 AM PST - 27 comments

Sex Workers Make Great Therapists – But They're Locked Out of the Job

People in sex work say that the two roles have huge amounts of overlap, but they're shunned by the therapy profession.
posted by Etrigan at 10:22 AM PST - 19 comments

Reef manta rays, social butterflies of the sea

Although many sharks are solitary creatures, their manta ray relatives are surprisingly social (American Association for the Advancement of Science): They copy one another’s movements, play together, and will even curiously approach nearby humans. Now, scientists have discovered they also form “friendships” with their fellow rays (National Geographic)—loose associations that can last for weeks or months at a time. [...] Females were more likely to form lasting associations with each other than males, who tended to avoid other males, the researchers report [...] in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (abstract only on Springer, article paywalled)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:11 AM PST - 5 comments

The Christmas Shoes: A Study in Dialectic Materialism

The Christmas Shoes: A Great Movie That Makes No Sense (SLYT)
posted by all about eevee at 10:10 AM PST - 15 comments

Choux And Solidarity

The Great British Bake Off isn't just wonderful entertainment. By prizing cooperation over cutthroat competition and solidarity over selfishness, it's also quietly radical. The Great Socialist Bake-Off (Jacobin)
posted by The Whelk at 9:41 AM PST - 60 comments

"I paint monsters."

WeFail paints British politicians like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg in a style recalling both Ralph Steadman's Paranoids and the savage portraits of Francis Bacon. Sometimes he turns his attention to other monsters of the modern age, such as Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. His banknotes are particularly good, I think, and also I like his Tarot cards.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:10 AM PST - 8 comments

Soccer at the Edge of the World

Soccer at the Edge of the World: inside Greenland’s week-long football championship tournament, a surprisingly intense affair held each summer in a town of 5500 on the inhospitable western shore of the world’s largest island. [slnyt]
posted by killdevil at 7:38 AM PST - 5 comments

Spreading propaganda, 5 minutes at a time

Parker Molloy spent a week watching PragerU videos to write an article about it that you’re invited to read and share "so my brain didn’t turn to mush for nothing": PragerU relies on a veneer of respectability to obscure its propagandist mission (MediaMatters).
posted by bitteschoen at 7:38 AM PST - 13 comments

Season 3, Episode 10

Some candy hearts comics [Tommy Siegel] drew, a [twitter] thread
posted by tocts at 6:20 AM PST - 4 comments

"First position," indeed

The Canadian Brass performed their Tribute To The Ballet at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto Canada in 1988.
posted by bunderful at 4:50 AM PST - 6 comments

World's first vagina museum opening in November

Museum in London aims to decrease shame and stigma around genitals Inspired by the phallological museum in Iceland, the forthcoming Vagina Museum in London aims to "'erase the stigma around the body and gynaecological anatomy'" for everyone, regardless of their race, sex or gender."
posted by stillmoving at 1:40 AM PST - 12 comments

September 19

Oratorio, "The Seasonings", S ½ tsp.

P.D.Q Bach is the 21st of Johann Sebastian Bach's surviving twenty children, and his surprising oratorio The Seasonings just might be worth ~23m of your time (including warm-up informational lecture). Classical music at its most entertaining! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:44 PM PST - 52 comments

This is what it sounds like

The population of birds in North America has dropped 30% since 1970, according to a Cornell study published today in Science. A summary of the study here. [more inside]
posted by Theiform at 8:19 PM PST - 44 comments

They/Them/Theirs

This has been a big week for singular they/them pronouns. Merriam-Webster included the "singular they" for the first time. Singer Sam Smith, who'd previously come out as non-binary (instagram link), announced that their pronouns are now they/them - and The Associated Press somehow got it wrong in an article about that very pronoun announcement (they later corrected it). Queer, queer, non-binary journalist Ashley Dye brought this to light in a viral tweet and then wrote about how this error exposes journalism's failings when it comes to writing about LGBTQ issues and people.
posted by the sockening at 6:49 PM PST - 77 comments

Reaching out is a sign of strength and courage

Living with Schizoaffective Disorder (22:27 YT). In a frank and disarming interview Special Books by Special Kids has a conversation with Daniel about living with schizoaffective disorder, including complex PTSD, borderline personality disorder, psychosis, paranoid delusions and hallucinations. [more inside]
posted by bonehead at 2:54 PM PST - 9 comments

Client: We accept the risks of you testing in prod.

Fast-forward to today, and many utilities have now embraced the concept of trimming trees from a helicopter. They have found the technology works safely and efficiently, particularly in mountainous terrain, rural locations, wetlands and sensitive areas where environmental or regulatory issues are encountered” [Viral Tweet from today containing video] [more inside]
posted by ambrosen at 2:13 PM PST - 30 comments

This man knew how to live.

What Did Monet Eat in a Day?
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:24 PM PST - 14 comments

#boysdancetoo

In light of the recent controversy surrounding Lara Spencer's remarks about Prince George's love for ballet, it is particularly timely to note that for the first time in history, the National Ballet School of Canada will graduate a class of more young men than young women.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Flying to conclusions

As FAA administrator Steve Dickinson prepares to meet with Boeing executives to assess changes to the 737 Max 8, both the New York Times and The New Republic have published detailed reports on the 737 Max crashes. William Langewiesche writing for the New York Times: "What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max? Malfunctions caused two deadly crashes. But an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty." Maureen Tcacik, writing for New Republic: "Crash Course: How Boeing's managerial revolution created the 737 MAX disaster."
posted by ChuraChura at 12:01 PM PST - 40 comments

"A prostitute hunting men...is a deeply comforting story."

How Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos Became a Cult Hero sl vice
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:59 AM PST - 27 comments

"Need to find different words for unprecedented."

The Washington Post breaks the news that the whistleblower complaint at the center of a tense showdown between Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and the House Intelligence Committee involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader that included a “promise” regarded as so troubling, it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The New York Times reports today, "During a private session on Capitol Hill, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, told lawmakers he was unable to confirm or deny anything about the substance of the complaint, including whether it involved the president." This morning on Twitter, Trump denied he said anything inappropriate but did not dispute he made such a promise. [more inside]
posted by katra at 10:38 AM PST - 572 comments

It seemed like just a lot of cocaine and hair!

Maggie Mae Fish (formerly of Cracked) is doing film analysis on Youtube. She's looking at what Robocop has to say on gender roles, learning empathy with Rugrats, exploring what Tim Burton is really saying about the suburbs, and all those bad daddies in superhero films.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:19 AM PST - 14 comments

How Two Kentucky Farmers Became Kings Of Croquet

Clay-court croquet arose in Kentucky and Tennessee during the Depression. It was cheap and open to anyone. And despite its bourgeois roots, croquet—in the South or elsewhere—is one of the few sports where age and sex don’t matter in tournament play. The basic rules are the same in all versions of the game: each player has to hit his or her balls through a series of wickets in order, and then finish by “staking out,” or hitting a post. Against skilled opponents, though, Archie was ruthless. He could pull off trick shots to make a pool shark weep. But his real talent was in the game’s complex strategy and Machiavellian mind games: blocking opponents’ balls, always thinking three or four shots ahead.
posted by Carillon at 8:55 AM PST - 22 comments

To every warrior, their Valhalla.

I have the sad duty to report that Grandpa Mason, the resident curmudgeon, hair stylist and kitten wrangler at TinyKittens HQ, will be leaving them and us very soon. [more inside]
posted by delfin at 8:46 AM PST - 60 comments

Country maps with dancing pixels

PixelDanc3r, or just Danc3r, is an Argentinian artist named David who makes pixelated art and pixelated game graphics as seen on Twitter and Instagram, as well as Deviant Art. He also makes animated maps, like this map of the world, and these much more detailed, static map of Córdoba, Argentina, as well as animated maps of Argentina, Venezuela, Brasil, and United States of America.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:36 AM PST - 7 comments

Liberals fail to vet Montreal candidate.

Justin Trudeau Wore Brownface at 2001 ‘Arabian Nights’ Party While He Taught at a Private School. Trudeau admits to 2nd incident where he donned makeup and sang 'Day O' in high school talent show. Global News has obtained video showing [Prime Minister] Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in blackface, the third instance of racist dress to come to light in 12 hours. The photo, the fallout and the folly of Trudeau’s brownface disgrace.
posted by Fizz at 7:33 AM PST - 189 comments

Parched Future

250 million people rely on the Nile for water that may not exist by 2080
posted by Etrigan at 7:28 AM PST - 6 comments

Ferns 2.0

Tim Heidecker takes you into the kitchen & teaches you how to make a variety of meals with some help from Eric Wareheim in Tim's Kitchen Tips
posted by growabrain at 5:58 AM PST - 11 comments

‘Okra is the most foul thing ever grown’

Chefs on their most hated ingredients (SLGuardian).
posted by smoke at 5:00 AM PST - 143 comments

September 18

I Just Want What Everyone Wants

A new trailer for Judy. Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland. Judy Garland sings the Battle Hymn Of The Republic.
posted by The Whelk at 11:55 PM PST - 8 comments

"Naturally, although I find Thibault cancels out Capoferro, don't you?"

Do you remember the sword-fight scene in The Princess Bride? And how Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts kept up a discussion about their various strategems? Turns out those are real, historic fencing references. [Threadreader]
posted by Chrysostom at 10:14 PM PST - 30 comments

California just passed a landmark law to regulate Uber and Lyft

Drivers will likely get health care and paid time off under the law. California just disrupted the gig economy. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a controversial bill Wednesday, known as AB 5, after months of uproar from businesses and gig companies like Uber and Lyft. The bill will require businesses to hire workers as employees, not independent contractors, with some exceptions. That will give hundreds of thousands of California workers basic labor rights for the first time. And despite an aggressive lobbying campaign, Uber and Lyft are not exempt.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:27 PM PST - 142 comments

Spanish Stonehenge

Drought Reveals Dolmen of Guadalperal, Popularly Dubbed ‘Spanish Stonehenge’
posted by BekahVee at 2:08 PM PST - 9 comments

This is just to say

Poems William Carlos Williams Revised After Being Told By His Agent To Do More Plums Content [SL McSweeneys]
posted by Mchelly at 1:50 PM PST - 54 comments

They're good dogs Brent

Twelve years ago, 47 dogs were rescued from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation and allowed to live. They've enriched the lives of countless humans and altered the course of animal welfare. (SL Washington Post, includes pictures of 47 good dogs.) [more inside]
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:39 PM PST - 30 comments

"The truck was undamaged, having made its saving throw."

Truck Carrying Gaming Dice Spills Onto Highway, Rolls A Perfect 756,000 (Kotaku) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:51 AM PST - 70 comments

A prop is any object the actors handle or touch onscreen

I looked at Harvey and said, “I don’t care what you have to do, man. This box has to function in three days. And if you don’t have that done, we are both straight down the shoot.” Various prop masters talk about The Hardest Prop I Ever Made
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:27 AM PST - 51 comments

Proudhon hangs his head

The 100 largest private property owners have 40 million acres, roughly the size of Florida. With the United States' large and growing inequality, is it time to upend the idea that land is private property?
posted by holmesian at 10:38 AM PST - 30 comments

Baby, talk to me

When babies babble, they are communicating exactly what they want. Even if they don't know it, parents are listening. (Fatherly summary) “Infants are actually shaping their own learning environments in ways that make learning easier to do,” study co-author Steven Elmlinger, a psychology graduate student at Cornell University, said in a statement. The report -- The ecology of prelinguistic vocal learning: parents simplify the structure of their speech in response to babbling (Journal of Child Language; full PDF) More from Cornell's B.A.B.Y. Lab from prior studies.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 AM PST - 27 comments

"Eating is a prerequisite for life"

How To Feed Yourself When You're Depressed For those of us who occasionally (or more than occasionally) struggle to find the energy to refuel ourselves, here are a small handful of ways to get some nutrition.
posted by hanov3r at 8:19 AM PST - 78 comments

Forging a Path

Black Horse Forge helps veterans hammer away stress. James Scott Baron reports for Fredericksburg, Virginia’s Free Lance-Star on blacksmithing as therapy and craft.
posted by sallybrown at 8:13 AM PST - 4 comments

Stuntmen React to Bad and Great Hollywood Stunts

Behind the scenes discussion of the making of iconic Hollywood stunts featuring stuntmen Eric Linden (Avengers, Daredevil) and Guix Dasilva (Black Panther) with Corridor Digital (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)
posted by roaring beast at 8:07 AM PST - 21 comments

“Sometimes it pays to just be along for the ride.”

The joy of being a passenger in video games [Polygon] “The question I’m interested in today is what you’re missing out on due to always wanting to drive in games. And modern gaming has multiple ways it can make us a passenger. So what happens when the virtual wheel is taken out of your hands? A lot of good things, it turns out. [...] These rides are an important chance to have a few introspective moments during single-player games, or to let the tension build in multiplayer titles. Being a passenger allows the player to make a deeper connection to the world, or the other players in it. Giving up control to an NPC or another player while in a vehicle isn’t a flaw, as long as game designers know how to give you something else in return. It’s that trade-off that I find so fascinating, and being a passenger so often in real life has given me a deep appreciation for the games that do this well. So pay attention the next time a game takes away control while you’re in a vehicle, and ask yourself what the game is trying to achieve by doing so.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 7:22 AM PST - 9 comments

Guys Are Reporting Women on Tinder for the Crime of Not Being Into Them

Why can’t the platform seem to stop this vindictive behavior — resulting in lifetime bans for the women targeted?
posted by Etrigan at 7:13 AM PST - 35 comments

Clean baseload

A report by Helen Czerski, from EVs-and-more channel FullyCharged, who visits First Light Fusion in Oxford, UK - who are working with pulsed power fusion. They give her a quick demonstration - starting with a children's xylophone but becoming a lot louder.
posted by rongorongo at 4:51 AM PST - 12 comments

That otherwise inaccessible sweet spot between formality and insouciance

How the turtleneck became the iconic look for the creative genius; a brief history of the aforementioned long-necked garment and its connotations, from its origin as utilitarian clothing for 19th-century labourers and sportsmen, through its adoption by Noël Coward and Marlene Dietrich, its soaring popularity amongst Parisian existentialists and American beatniks (and subsequent fall to a signifier of laughable pretentiousness), to the days of Steve Jobs and, um, Elizabeth Holmes.
posted by acb at 3:41 AM PST - 40 comments

“Lust, plain and simple—if lust were ever simple.”

...these books are artifacts. There is every sort of forbidden subject in forbidden books, what was then illicit sex, but also, all things taboo—drugs, various subcultures, descriptions of parts of cities there was no reason to go to otherwise. There is an honesty that rises from there being little reason for lying: emotional states, cultural criticism about art and politics at the time of the writing, blind items, gossip, maps—the stuff we call today “creative nonfiction” ... These books served as community. My First Library Was a Library of Porn by Brian Bouldrey [NSFW text] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:03 AM PST - 6 comments

September 17

Time out!

Watch out, preppy! The Saved By the Bell reboot is coming, featuring...Zack as the evil governor of California?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:09 PM PST - 40 comments

"And I remember us thinking... Like we'll EVER make SEVEN albums!"

Pet Shop Boys. Documentary. The Parlophone Years. [BBC2 link] Neil and Chris talk about their ELEVEN albums released on Parlophone Records between 1986 and 2012 in a documentary radio show, presented by Graham Norton. Covers 52 PSB songs covering every album. Available for about a month. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:07 PM PST - 13 comments

🇮🇳 "Throw some melanin up in your Late Night" 🇨🇦

Lilly Singh’s NBC series debut proves late night TV and YouTube need each other Lilly Singh is the first queer woman of color to get her own late night talk show on a major network, and at 30, she’s one of the youngest late night hosts in NBC history. Check out her cold open from the debut episode: Hello my name is Lilly and I ain't a white man/My skin has some colour and it ain't a spray tan/I know you're only used to Jimmys up in the spotlight/But I'm gonna throw some melanin up in your late-night. [more inside]
posted by nightrecordings at 7:04 PM PST - 9 comments

Based on True Events

Two brothers battle over the future of the family, but it will be a young girl who changes her fathers SUBSTANCE and the fate of generations. (Animated Short, Single Link Vimeo) [more inside]
posted by DigDoug at 5:43 PM PST - 1 comment

This is where the antelope range

Sagebrush Sisters is a short film (7 minutes) about three women and their hike along a migration corridor between two pronghorn antelope refuges. [more inside]
posted by compartment at 4:23 PM PST - 3 comments

Novel Fencing Material

Maybe you're a knitter. Maybe you like knitting lace. Maybe you should modify a couple of curtain rods into gigantic knitting needles and knit a fence out of fishing net twine. Maybe the local lace museum is so taken with it they'll have you do one for them!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:48 PM PST - 18 comments

We need body rockin' not perfection

"Dead bodies move while decomposing, a significant find for death investigations," according to researchers who have used time-lapse photography to study the phenomenon at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER). [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:42 PM PST - 29 comments

Welcome...To The Fumble Dimension

Many of you may recall internet sports statistical bard Jon Bois' adventures in taking sports games and seeing how far he could twist the knobs until everything breaks, such as Breaking Madden, or murdering a virtual NBA with horrible players. Well, he's back at it with compatriot Kofie Yeboah, in a new series for SBNation. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:40 AM PST - 23 comments

"I'm a Mad TV guy anyway"

Even before its new season begins on Sept. 28, Saturday Night Live has fired new cast member Shane Gillis for "offensive, hurtful and unacceptable" language Gillis used on his podcast. The Good Good Comedy Theatre in Philadelphia chimed in with a tweet saying the establishment chose not to work with Gillis because of his "overt racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia - expressed both on and off stage." Other new cast members joining the show's 45th season are Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang.
posted by Clustercuss at 10:25 AM PST - 93 comments

Global Climate Strike 20 September

Our house is on fire — let’s act like it. We demand climate justice for everyone. This September, millions of us will walk out of our workplaces and homes to join young climate strikers on the streets and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels. On Friday the 20th – three days out from the UN’s Emergency Climate Summit -- take the day off to show our politicians that we’re serious about climate action. The world isn’t waiting, so neither are we. ​ [more inside]
posted by Acid Communist at 10:13 AM PST - 47 comments

#IAmNotABitch #SexistDictionary

Have You Ever Googled ‘Woman’? Nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition to change Oxford Dictionary’s sexist definition of "woman" and cut entries that "discriminate against and patronise women". The dictionary staff are taking the points raised in the petition "very seriously" and OUP is now investigating a possible update to its definition of "woman". [more inside]
posted by bitteschoen at 9:52 AM PST - 69 comments

Relax. Don't Worry. Visit the Smithsonian.

Curator Theresa McCulla has led the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, amassing a collection of brewing artifacts that will debut on October 25 when the Museum's exhibition, FOOD: Transforming the American Table reopens.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:44 AM PST - 2 comments

Restorative Practices and Policy

“ A decarbonized food system, on the other hand, demands that we build a system on smaller, local scales, shorter supply chains, and ecologically sound principles that are far more robust in the face of literally every single disaster a broken climate can throw at us. But what would it mean to decarbonize food?” Lifecycle Of A Leaf (Current Affairs) Supply management, absent from discussions for decades, is now back in policy proposals. Can it help to pay people what it actually costs to produce food? (Civil Eats) Reckless farming is destroying the planet (CNN) “The report rejects the idea that subsidies are needed to supply cheap food. It found that the cost of the damage currently caused by agriculture is greater than the value of the food produced. New assessments in the report found producing healthy, sustainable food would actually cut food prices, as the condition of the land improves.” (The Guardian) Pod Damn America talks to a leftist pig farmer about agricultural co-ops and why every organic farmer is on food stamps . (1:27:00)
posted by The Whelk at 9:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Why Can't Introverts Be Introverts?

The happiest introverts are extroverts "If you are an introvert, force yourself to be an extrovert. You'll be happier." "According to all measures of well-being, participants reported greater well-being after the extroversion week, and decreases in well-being after the introversion week. Interestingly, faux extroverts reported no discomfort or ill effects." [more inside]
posted by kathrynm at 9:19 AM PST - 93 comments

Cokie Roberts, 1943 – 2019

Supreme Court coverage will never be the same. Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, who joined an upstart NPR in 1978 and left an indelible imprint on the growing network with her coverage of Washington politics before later going to ABC News, has died. She was 75. Roberts died Tuesday due to complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement.
posted by jquinby at 8:49 AM PST - 50 comments

Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism

34 years after founding it, Richard Stallman has been driven out of the Free Software Foundation after objecting to the phrase "sexual assault" in reference to Marvin Minsky who may have been the perpetrator of a sexual assault. [more inside]
posted by sfenders at 8:08 AM PST - 231 comments

Dark crystals

Dark crystals: the brutal reality behind a booming wellness craze. A Guardian article by Tessa McClure on the healing crystal industry.
posted by tavegyl at 8:02 AM PST - 17 comments

Someday the only forests on Earth will exist in a stadium

Nature as a spectator sport: For Forest is a temporary landscape installation in the Wörthersee Stadium, a football (US: soccer) stadium in Klagenfurt, from 8 September until 27 October 2019, when it will be Austria's largest public art installation. Its designer, Klaus Littmann, was inspired by "The Unending Attraction of Nature" (1970/71) by Max Peintner, turning a dystopian vision of the 1970s into a spectacular work of land art [via BoringPostcards on MltShp]. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 AM PST - 10 comments

Lausan 流傘 - Sharing decolonial left perspectives on Hong Kong

Lausan 流傘 is a collective of writers, researchers, activists and artists from Hong Kong and its diasporas, engaging with the city’s political struggle. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 7:09 AM PST - 3 comments

Don’t be condescending. Don’t backseat game. Don’t laugh at them.

How To Get Your Significant Other Into Gaming [Kotaku] “You play games, but your significant other does not. It’s a common scenario that can be a point of contention in an otherwise healthy relationship. To relax after work, you load up Overwatch on the living room Xbox. Your beau, on the other hand, wants to cook dinner with you. An hour watching you gun down virtual enemies is, to them, the definition of boring—even disrespectful of their time. [...] Here’s a guide on how to introduce your significant other to the wide world of gaming. Remember—compromise is key. If your significant other takes the time to game with you, make sure you try out their favorite hobby with them, too.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:35 AM PST - 90 comments

Does Scrabble Need To Be Fixed?

An experiment in controlling how much of Scrabble is luck.
posted by Etrigan at 6:10 AM PST - 44 comments

September 16

Tell the Moon-dog, Tell the March-hare

It's legendary. If there five albums which define progressive rock, this is always going to be one of them. Yes' 1971 release Fragile never really had a strong chart presence. (A truncated version of its lead song made it to #13 in Billboard.) But growing up (of a certain age *cough), I'd bet everyone knew someone who owned a copy, or whose older brother or sister owned a copy. It was inescapable. Perhaps you've escaped it until now. Or perhaps you've not really listened for a long time. Well, here's your chance. Side A: Roundabout, Cans And Brahms (Extracts From Brahms' 4th Symphony In E Minor, Third Movement) [featuring Rick Wakeman], We Have Heaven[ featuring Jon Anderson], South Side Of The Sky [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:03 PM PST - 44 comments

Everyday Carry

Emergency services vehicles and their gear, neatly [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 8:26 PM PST - 37 comments

"They didn’t think I’d go out there and pitch with it"

In case you missed it, now you know about baseball pitcher Mike Fiers' short-lived beard.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:34 PM PST - 26 comments

Speech after the Removal of the Larynx

Smithsonian Folkways Records, 1964, ctlg. FW06134 The album was recorded by physician Harm A. Drost at the Phonetic Laboratory of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Dept. of the University Hospital, Leiden, in the Netherlands, working under the direction of Professor H. A. E. van Dishoeck. As the advances were fairly new and surprisingly varied, Drost felt a phonograph album demonstrating the techniques would be useful for those in the field. Buccal speech (limited to certain consonants), parabuccal speech (collecting air in a space between the upper jaw and the cheek), glosso-pharyngeal speech (a method deemed obsolete where air is forced between the tongue and the palate), esophageal voice (made by reconditioning one's esophagus via swallowing, suction, or injection), various injection techniques and devices such as the larynxophone, pipa di tichioni, and "western electric" are all explored here, along with other aspects of the larynx and its absence. [YouTube Playlist | Spotify] [more inside]
posted by nightrecordings at 6:22 PM PST - 5 comments

"How Do You Impeach a President?"

Last Friday, Donald Trump fired off a falsehood-filled tweetstorm defending his record against impeachment, but today House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler told WNYC that, although he personally thinks Trump ought to be impeached, the committee is "concentrating our resources on determining whether to impeach the president [...] for the next few months." With Congress back in session, it began by passing a resolution to set procedures and rules for future impeachment investigation hearings, is negotiating with Jeff Sessions over his testimony, and will be hearing from a scheming Corey Lewandowski on Tuesday. [more inside]
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:43 PM PST - 198 comments

The thing is, come out, give love to your neighbor.

Block Parties NYC [SLNYT]
posted by jjray at 5:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Mother of Dragons(ounds)

Paula Fairfield is the sound designer behind the more fantastical elements in Game of Thrones. She’s given a voice to dragons, direwolves, white walkers, and more. But the story behind these voices goes much deeper than you might think. Hear how Paula’s personal journey played a part in creating some of the most iconic fantasy sounds of the day, and how Game of Thrones helped restore her spirit.
posted by lola at 2:05 PM PST - 1 comment

Introducing: Multilingual Nuns

What multilingual nuns can tell us about dementia A strong ability in languages may help reduce the risk of developing dementia, says a new study. The research examined the health outcomes of 325 Roman Catholic nuns who were members of the Sisters of Notre Dame in the United States. The data was drawn from a larger, internationally recognized study examining the Sisters, known as the Nun Study. [more inside]
posted by bq at 1:25 PM PST - 21 comments

What’s interesting about American redstarts?

They’re very pretty. But that’s not all. They’re a great example of how much scientists have learned about birds and how many questions remain unanswered. There’s a lot of information in the chemical composition and color of those pretty feathers. Their bright wing and tail patterns seem to be useful for startling and flushing insects. Studies in other species indicate it’s an effective technique. First-year males have coloration more like females. Why? Maybe to cut down on attacks from older males. Or maybe not. Like most birds, redstarts are socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous, with about 40% of nestlings fathered by a bird outside the pair. Why do birds want multiple partners? A lot of thought and research has gone into answering that question.
posted by Redstart at 12:28 PM PST - 13 comments

But in the end, the poop knives simply didn't make the cut

What a Waste! Frozen Poop Knives Are Crappy Cutters, Scientists Find (Live Science): An anthropologist reported in the 1990s that there was "a well-known account" of a stranded Inuit man crafting a knife from his own, frozen excrement that was sharp enough to kill and butcher a dog. [...] A team of researchers in a laboratory that reverse-engineers ancient tools was intrigued by the story and decided to put it to the test. In the name of science, the lab's co-directors generated the experiments' raw materials and then crafted their own frozen poop knives, describing the process — and the disappointing outcome — in a new study (Science Direct). [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 12:01 PM PST - 71 comments

people of the stony shore

Long Island’s Shinnecock Fight Sea Level Rise By Using Nature Itself [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 11:10 AM PST - 5 comments

Saudi Sisters In Hiding in Istanbul

Inspired by Rahaf Mohammed, sisters Dua and Dalal fled their family while in Turkey. They've been trying to obtain asylum for months now, all while hiding from Saudi intelligence. (The Saudi consulate in Istanbul is of course where Jamal Kashoggi was killed, so the threat is very real.) The women report being beaten and abused by their family, who tried to marry them off to older men. That Dua is gay caused even more problems. Despite help from a British human rights lawyer and a Saudi activist, they remain at risk.
posted by serathen at 9:28 AM PST - 2 comments

September Strikes

UAW workers on strike. 46,000 workers at the nation’s largest auto manufacturer walked out after negotiations collapsed Sunday. CNN Live updates. Workers pour out of GM plant in Rochester. (Twitter) Working People Podcast interviews people on the massive layoffs and cutbacks that lead to the strike conditions and the need for international solidarity 1, 2, 3, 4 (Patreon) Grocery workers ready to walk in 3 states . Oregon University Workers set to cast strike vote. Kaiser healthcare workers plan for nation's largest strike since 1997. How To Support The Global Climate Strike Sept 20-27th. [more inside]
posted by The Whelk at 8:34 AM PST - 37 comments

Why Black Athletes Should Leave White Colleges

The two marquee college sports - football and men's basketball - see major revenues created on the labor of a significant population of black athletes - revenue that then goes to colleges that are predominantly white. Jemele Hill, writing in The Atlantic, argues that black athletes should be making the decision to play for historically black colleges and universities, bringing that money and exposure back to the black community. (SLAtlantic) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:14 AM PST - 38 comments

Magpie Alert!

Australia's social website to track aggressive swooping magpies in your area. If you are a cyclist, walker, runner or maybe a concerned member of the public then help protect others and share swooping magpie attacks: Australia's Magpie Swooping Map 2019! [more inside]
posted by peeedro at 7:51 AM PST - 9 comments

YYMilk

YYMilk. The boys are waiting. (slyt) [more inside]
posted by bondcliff at 7:36 AM PST - 15 comments

Hollywood, Georgia and House Bill 481: a complicated story

The Georgia Film Tax Credit brings hundreds of productions—and billions of dollars—to the state each year. But this past spring, a new anti-abortion law (previously) inspired a number of protests, and major Hollywood studios threatened to move their filming elsewhere. Will a boycott happen? Would it have any political effect? And what would it mean for the people who live and work in Georgia? Can Hollywood Change Georgia? Or Has It Already? Max Blau writes for The Ringer, recapping how Georgia became the "3rd coast" for movie and TV production, Hollywood's apparent indifference to other instances of weakened or lacking laws in Georgia or elsewhere, and how pro-choice states are targeting Georgia’s $10 billion film business (Bloomberg; Newsmax mirror/ copy)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:34 AM PST - 18 comments

Tetromino Slide

Tetris crossed with Threes in a browser game that is beautifully frustrating.
posted by frimble at 4:59 AM PST - 13 comments

All the Rocky Training Montages, Ranked by Intensity of Workout

Eye of the tiger? Russian hay cart? Chicken chasing? Which one’s really going to get you ready to go a few rounds with the Italian Stallion?
posted by Etrigan at 4:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Breaking Good

Breaking Bad but they're synthesizing insulin: Walter White, a 40-year-old teacher with limited health insurance can't afford to pay for his diabetic son's insulin... (continues). Not a joke: Biohackers with diabetes are making their own insulin – it’s the Open Insulin Project, "a team of Bay Area biohackers working on newer, simpler, less expensive ways to make insulin", and "who believe that insulin should be freely available to anybody who needs it". [more inside]
posted by bitteschoen at 2:59 AM PST - 52 comments

The invention of (synthetic) central bank digital currency

The Fed is going to revamp how Americans pay for things. Big banks aren't happy. "America's central bank plans to build its own real-time payment system, much to the chagrin of big commercial banks. The news: The Federal Reserve has announced that it will create 'FedNow', a system that will allow real-time bank-to-bank payments, all day every day."[1,2,3,4] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM PST - 47 comments

September 15

The time each kitten spent scratching each scratcher was compared.

"Preference of kittens for scratchers" in Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, Vol 21, Issue 8, 2019.
Two-choice preference tests were conducted to compare scratchers and preferred scratchers with or without additives (ie, catnip, catnip oil, cat hair) in six studies. Kittens (n = 40, <8 weeks old) had access to two scratchers on the floor of a simulated living room for 20 mins and interactions were video-recorded.
[more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:30 PM PST - 34 comments

"I wish I were a dog, so you could photograph me."

Photographer Vincent J. Musi (Instagram) chose almost two years ago to end his years of travel for National Geographic assignments to be home with his wife, Callie, and his then 16-year-old son, Hunter. He built "The Unleashed Studio" in the back of a pet food store and began making extraordinary portraits of our furry best friends in Charleston, S.C. (WaPo)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:02 PM PST - 7 comments

Dance all night with everyone/ Don't let nobody pick your fun

RIP Ric Ocasek: For all the road trips in all the states and all the dancing in the seat. [more inside]
posted by frumiousb at 7:54 PM PST - 122 comments

“therefore inclined to “see only those who fought for slavery”

Charlottesville Confederate Statue Defender Sues Paper, Prof, for Reporting His Family’s Slaveholding History (SL Daily Beast)
posted by Caduceus at 6:18 PM PST - 31 comments

Cave music

"Cave and Bat-Inspired Recorded Music and Spoken Word (An International Discographical Database 1905 – 2005)" [more inside]
posted by foodeater at 6:13 PM PST - 5 comments

FIGHT LIKE A GIRL

River City Girls Is Like River City Ransom But With Girls [Kotaku] “For decades, old-school beat-em up fans have been following the adventures of River City Ransom heroes Kunio and Riki, a pair of high school tough guys with a knack for rescuing their girlfriends from thugs. Wayforward’s River City Girls turns that tired formula on its head. It’s an utterly charming old-school brawler where the girlfriends get to rescue the boys, and lord have mercy on anyone who gets in their way. [...] It’s mainly River City Girl’s style that sets it apart from its progenitors. This River City is bright, colorful, and modern, peppered with fashion plate background characters deftly dodging errant attacks. Boss battles are introduced with gorgeous animated cutscenes, while flashbacks are presented as black and white manga volumes.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:03 PM PST - 12 comments

The best music visualizer, online!

ButterChurn is a version of Winamp's famous Milkdrop 2 visualizer that runs directly in your browser. Play a song or set from Soundcloud or upload your own!
posted by joedan at 4:00 PM PST - 27 comments

It’s true, Big Brother is watching

The case for universal US healthcare is made by eliminating employee wellness programs. Employee wellness programs are increasingly draconian and punitive. Unsurprisingly, employers prize cost-cutting benefits over actual health benefits. [more inside]
posted by natasha_k at 1:12 PM PST - 73 comments

Wild Nights with Harvard University Press

"Please, please, I’ll tell you anything I can, but I can’t afford to be on the outs with Harvard!" There's been renewed focus on Emily Dickinson, with fictionalized treatments of her life in last year's Wild Nights with Emily and in the upcoming Dickinson series. But the real-life drama over control of Dickinson's writings -- including "theft, adulterous affairs, a land deal gone wrong, a feud between families, two elite colleges, and some of the most famous poems in American literature" -- could go toe to toe with either of them.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:16 AM PST - 12 comments

A Murderer Who Kills Murderers Tells His Story

In Mexico's cartel country, a murderer who kills for "good" tells his story. The reality of vigilante justice is a lot different than it looks from the comic books. "Capache" describes being conscripted into the cartels as a teenager, the brutal training and initiation he went through, and how he switched "sides" to "protect" the people who can't protect themselves.
posted by toastyk at 10:16 AM PST - 11 comments

September 14

WE CAME FOR THE SEANCE BUT WE STAYED FOR THE GUN SHOW

YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED TO SEE PIX OF FLEXING VICTORIAN BABES BUT YOU DID (Twitter | Threadreader). See also: Charmion's Trapeze Striptease (SFW) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:15 PM PST - 31 comments

Answering mathowie's question about the real life Simpsons house

I stumbled across this interesting site, covering the old Simpsons House giveaway from a couple many years ago. Here's what the house looks looked like, I wonder if the neighborhood allowed the owners to keep it looking that way. [Update: it was re-painted, but hints of its cartoony past remain]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:49 PM PST - 16 comments

"There is a danger of “apocalypticism,”

said Jon Christensen, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who has written extensively on the use and misuse of dystopian environmental scenarios. It’s important, he said, to provide people with potential solutions and reasons to be hopeful: “There’s definitely a danger of people taking dire measures when they feel there’s no way out of it.”" [more inside]
posted by katra at 8:47 PM PST - 43 comments

Attaching Doll Hair

The machine. The full doll-making process from 1968 (this valley, it is uncanny), from 1963 (very similar). Anna from Frozen gets hair. Barbie gets hair. Large-scale Barbie gets two-tone hair. Another small-scale fashion doll gets hair.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:48 PM PST - 19 comments

My Terezín Diary

On a freezing day in January, 1944, after my family and I had been confined at Terezín for six months, my mother was arrested by the S.S. and placed in a basement cell in the dreaded prison at their camp headquarters. Not even her lover, who was a member of the Terezín Aeltestenrat, or Council of Elders—the Jewish governing body—could get her released. I was twelve years old, and I was afraid that I would never see her again. But on February 21, 1944, all I wrote in my diary was “Mommy was away from us.” What is most striking to me today about the diary I kept in the camp, seventy-five years ago, is what I left out. [SLNewYorker]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:24 PM PST - 11 comments

👷🏽🔥🍄🌱🧱🛁

The Original Super Mario Bros. Launched On NES 34 Years Ago [Nintendo Life] “The original Super Mario Bros., one of the most celebrated and adored video games in history, was first released 34 years ago today, on 13th September 1985.It was on this day that the game launched for Nintendo's Famicom console in Japan, a system which would soon go on to release as the NES or 'Nintendo Entertainment System' across North America, Europe, and more with a copy of Mario never far behind. You likely don't need us to tell you, but it went on to be the best-selling game for the console, selling an estimated 40.24 million copies worldwide.” [YouTube][Super Mario Bros. Retrospective by Jeremy Parish]
posted by Fizz at 5:24 PM PST - 28 comments

RIP MoviePass

As of Saturday September 14, 2019, MoviePass has moviepassed on. The not-quite-all-you-can-watch film screening subscription service shut down at the age of 8, after a long battle with theater chains, competitors, customers, and itself.
posted by Etrigan at 12:24 PM PST - 63 comments

NYC Luxury Living in Movies and TV

"The way luxury has been defined in New York City has changed drastically over time. And I think that's really reflected in the spaces we looked at today"- Architect Michael Wyetzner breaks down NYC luxury homes as they appears in 'Mr. Deeds,' 'Gossip Girl,' 'Billions,' 'Cruel Intentions,' 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Big.'
posted by Mouse Army at 11:54 AM PST - 15 comments

That's one way to get flush

"America", an 18 karat gold working toilet and conceptual sculpture has been stolen. The work, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, had been on display at Blenheim Palace.
posted by gwint at 10:55 AM PST - 42 comments

a fair enough trade

here’s a story about changelings. Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood...
posted by sciatrix at 10:16 AM PST - 11 comments

The Queen's (Weight Loss) Gambit

In October 2018, Polar, a U.S.-based company that tracks heart rates, monitored chess players during a tournament and found that 21-year-old Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov had burned 560 calories in two hours of sitting and playing chess -- or roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:13 AM PST - 28 comments

Stop,

Doopee Time [more inside]
posted by Panthalassa at 9:30 AM PST - 6 comments

“Ask Literally Any Fat Person”

Late Late Show host James Corden responds to Bill Maher’s claim that fat shaming “needs to make a comeback.” (single link YouTube)
posted by sallybrown at 7:42 AM PST - 95 comments

L'Obvs: "It's time to go beyond capitalism"

Economist Piketty's latest book a 1,200 page tome about abolishing billionaires - "The new book, called 'Capitalism and Ideology', tops 1,200 pages and delves into the political ideologies behind income inequality, while providing radical solutions for reversing the world's wealth disparities." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:23 AM PST - 45 comments

September 13

Ig Nobel 2019

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes (previously) are here. The winner attracting the most media attention this year was a study about the testicles of French postmen, but there are many other unworthy winners.
posted by clawsoon at 5:03 PM PST - 19 comments

"I guess it was 37 and a half cents an hour for women, 52 cents for men"

Union Maids: Women Activists Share their Experiences (1976, 52 min) "This is the story of three women who were part of the rank and file labor movement during the tumultuous 1930s. Their lives were like many other young working women. But all three rose to the demands of their time and became militant organizers for their class." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:50 PM PST - 3 comments

Who doesn't love animal pictures?

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year finalists have been announced, as have the finalists for Comedy Wildlife Photography. (Wildlife photography previously)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:32 PM PST - 9 comments

Milton's Shakespeare

Earlier this week a Cambridge University scholar announced an astonishing literary discovery: John Milton's annotated copy of Shakespeare's First Folio, hiding in plain sight in the Free Library of Philadelphia. If the identification is confirmed (and the scholarly reaction on Twitter, initially cautious, is now becoming increasingly positive), it will be only the tenth book (or eleventh, if you count his family Bible) known to survive from Milton's personal library.
posted by verstegan at 2:50 PM PST - 18 comments

Salafi Islamic economics and a different definition of capitalism

An answer to the question: "what is ISIS's economic policy?" discusses the Salafi view on capitalism, Zakat (a wealth tax to fund welfare programs) and Jizyah (a tax punishing non-Muslims), the prohibition of Riba (interest), anti-trust laws, women in the workplace, labor unions, and more. (Single Tumblr link, found via thetransintransgenic)
posted by brainwane at 2:03 PM PST - 5 comments

On Chandler Bing’s Job

Twenty-five years ago, Friends anticipated a time that would both romanticize and mistrust the culture of work. "Chandler Bing entered his profession in that most relatable of ways: He got a job because he had to, and he failed to get a better one, and that failure extended over a period of years, and soon enough, through inertia’s bland inevitabilities, Chandler’s job became his career."
posted by asnider at 12:34 PM PST - 75 comments

Zhaaarrr

A full minute of Alex Trebek saying "genre", assembled by Jeopardy! champion Alex Jacob, because he hates everything and everyone.
posted by Etrigan at 11:47 AM PST - 57 comments

Edited By: Women Film Editors

A survey of one hundred and thirty-nine editors who invented, developed, fine-tuned and revolutionized the art of film editing (via Criterion).
posted by sapagan at 11:06 AM PST - 11 comments

On having sufficient complexity to allow for arbitrary computation

Surprisingly Turing-Complete: A catalogue of software constructs, languages, or APIs which are unexpectedly Turing-complete; implications for security and reliability
posted by cortex at 10:34 AM PST - 19 comments

Restrictions in Canada's assisted-dying laws struck down

Medical assistance in dying (MAID), known elsewhere and previously as physician-assisted death, assisted suicide, and voluntary euthanasia, has been legal in Canada since 2016, following the historic Supreme Court decision in Carter v. Canada, in which two women, Gloria Taylor and Kay Carter (represented by her family posthumously), successfully challenged the government's restriction on MAID. But that was not the end of the story. [more inside]
posted by greatgefilte at 9:44 AM PST - 21 comments

“It’s just not a comfortable work environment.”

Inside The Ghosting, Racism, And Exploitation At Game Publisher Nicalis by Jason Schreier [Kotaku] “For this story, Kotaku spoke to four external developers who worked with Nicalis and seven former Nicalis employees, most of whom requested anonymity because they were afraid the company would retaliate against them. (Some of those employees left the company out of frustration; others were let go.) Some shared anecdotes about the company ignoring them for months on end. All described Nicalis’s founder and president Tyrone Rodriguez as a friendly but often difficult boss, prone to behavior that some called controlling and exploitative. Multiple former Nicalis employees said Rodriguez pressured them to drink heavily, made racist jokes in the workplace, and would oscillate between berating them and ignoring them. A few shared Skype logs of Rodriguez using racial and ableist slurs, racist jokes, and antisemitic comments during work conversations. (We’ve included some of those logs later in the piece.)” [Nicalis Founder Tyrone Rodriguez Responds to Investigation into His Racism and Mistreatment of Employees] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:04 AM PST - 10 comments

Freeing ourselves from the unfree will

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked. "The notion that our brains make choices before we are even aware of them... pop[s] up in cocktail-party conversation or in a review of Black Mirror. It’s covered by mainstream journalism outlets, including This American Life, Radiolab, and this magazine. Libet’s work is frequently brought up by popular intellectuals such as Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari to argue that science has proved humans are not the authors of their actions." .... [more inside]
posted by storybored at 8:36 AM PST - 113 comments

RIP Eddie Money (1949-2019)

Eddie Money Dies at 70 [more inside]
posted by hanov3r at 8:19 AM PST - 54 comments

National Geographic likes to describe spiders by what they could hug

Sri Lanka is home to a new[ly discovered] species of tarantula—and its females are fuzzy, turquoise-tinged, and big enough to comfortably hug a donut (National Geographic), as recently reported in the British Tarantula Society Journal, with more pictures of Chilobrachys jonitriantisvansicklei. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:49 AM PST - 33 comments

He finds rare, unusual cuts from great artists, creates new albums.

Albums I Wish Existed A web site jam packed with albums that could have been made, perhaps should have been made, and now they are made, by a man who just seems to be doing what he can to make the world a better place for those of us who love music. [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 4:54 AM PST - 24 comments

Now This, Back Then

Venturing beyond the first page of search results for a term (like webobjects) can result in felicitous finds. “WebObjects offers every benefit for … Internet applications” quotes Steve Bogart’s blog post for August 11, 1999. Yes, Now This is one of the original weblogs. (Just ask the Chicago Tribune in their September 7, 1999 article.) [more inside]
posted by Monochrome at 4:08 AM PST - 3 comments

To kill with the point lacked artistry.

Dune is a massively influential novel that also had many influences. Khalid Baheyeldin maps the Arabic and Islamic themes and the etymologies of words. Some words have shifts in meaning or spelling, some probably intentional, others surprising. Why is a Kindjal - a dagger - spelled like that? Baheyeldin locates this spelling on the Indian subcontinent, but then there's this article by Will Collins about Dune and The Sabres of Paradise, "a half-forgotten masterpiece of narrative history recounting a mid-19th century Islamic holy war against Russian imperialism in the Caucasus." Herbert borrowed liberally from the book's language and its description of fierce people fighting in unforgiving lands.
posted by Zarkonnen at 3:30 AM PST - 20 comments

September 12

Arnold Schwarzenegger Isn't Competitive.

He Just Likes to Win. Schwarzenegger may be in his 70s, but as he proves fighting costar Gabriel Luna in fall’s hot movie Terminator: Dark Fate, he’s as driven as ever. A lengthier than you might imagine profile in Arnold from Men's Health [Where else?] but I read it to the end.
posted by hippybear at 10:08 PM PST - 7 comments

The bees and the birds

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been shown to threaten bees and other pollinators, but a new study shows they can also harm seed-eating birds.
posted by blue shadows at 7:08 PM PST - 14 comments

“Our Talmud book,” he said, “is kind of a story about our life.”

How the Talmud Became a Best-seller in South Korea
posted by Chrysostom at 5:22 PM PST - 35 comments

Debate #3: Heated hectoring at the Houston hustings

Ten candidates will appear tonight at the third Democratic primary debate in Houston as the US Presidential campaign continues. [more inside]
posted by zachlipton at 3:30 PM PST - 372 comments

This is why we don’t use poop in any of our work.

Thousands of property managers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are enforcing dog poop surveillance programs to ensure tenants clean up after their dogs or face a stiff fine. This seemingly-trivial practice brings up a larger question: what else will these services be used for? (Sarah Emerson, Medium OneZero) [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:35 PM PST - 38 comments

Deep Learning is Neither

If Computers Are So Smart, How Come They Can’t Read? This is an accessible presentation of the inherent lack of understanding in artificial "intelligence." It's amazing how much mileage the field has gotten out of pattern matching and probabilistic models, but the authors argue that it's time for an "entirely new approach."
posted by bbrown at 2:01 PM PST - 28 comments

Gizapon my works and despair

A history of the Pyramids of Giza and the people who explored them. Jimmy Maher (The Digital Antiquarian) with an extensive history on the Pyramids at Giza and the people who explored them.
posted by GnomePrime at 1:23 PM PST - 5 comments

CROOOFFMEE

If you hard, then you hard: object lessons in readability
posted by overeducated_alligator at 1:10 PM PST - 29 comments

Wild idea for new Space Elevator we (claimed) can build now.

From MIT Tech Review, a new Space Elevator called "Spaceline". The difference is this elevator has its anchor point not on the earth but on the moon. And it just dangles "close" to earth. [more inside]
posted by aleph at 10:17 AM PST - 78 comments

Heroes and monsters: school shootings and Ancient Greek stories

The ancient Greek story of a school massacre is a lesson we need to learn. “We labor in part with the misunderstanding of what the word hero means. And there is dangerous beneath that cornerstone of every college myth class, “the heroic pattern”, perhaps most well-known popularly in the form of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, the heroic journey. The “heroic pattern” is a crass oversimplification of narrative myth and a naive perpetuation of its limitations.” A long, critical read. [more inside]
posted by mrcrow at 10:16 AM PST - 14 comments

💪🏾🎮🏋🏾‍♀️

Nintendo’s Ring Fit Adventure is Wii Fit meets Final Fantasy on the Switch [The Verge] “It sounds like a typical role-playing game, but Ring Fit Adventure is far from typical. You don’t explore and battle by using buttons and joysticks: instead, you exercise your way through a lush fantasy landscape. It’s like Wii Fit crossed with Final Fantasy, and it sits alongside Labo as one of Nintendo’s most unexpectedly interesting experiments. Ring Fit Adventure, which Nintendo teased last week, launches in October for the Switch. It consists of three main pieces. There’s the game itself and two accessories: a leg strap and a flexible ring that Nintendo has dubbed the Ring-Con, which is essentially a high-tech resistance band. In order to use both, you need to slot a Joy-Con controller inside of each, and then you control the game primarily through your movements.” [YouTube][Teaser][Annoucement Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:53 AM PST - 27 comments

"I love footprints because they’re a moment in time"

We know what we know about Neanderthals from a sparse fossil record and a healthier lithic one, but a new discovery, published [recently] in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract only), has advanced our knowledge by baby steps—many, many baby steps. Ossified in the escarpments of Le Rozel, in Normandy, France, are hundreds of footprints of our close relatives (Anthropology.net), including those of children. [...] Formed 80,000 years ago, the prints were made by about a dozen Neanderthals, who occupied the site seasonally. Found: A Windfall of Neanderthal Footprints in France (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Rubber bands

Fast. Medium. Slow.
posted by clawsoon at 6:35 AM PST - 14 comments

Rice cakes from the moon

In Korean folklore, there is a rabbit on the moon pounding rice with mortar and pestle in order to make rice cakes. Deriving its name from this legend, 달방앗간 (dalbangatgan), or Moon Rice Mill, shows how to make traditional Korean rice cakes (떡, tteok), as well as modernized variations. [more inside]
posted by needled at 5:00 AM PST - 16 comments

Tie a Yellowhammer Round the Old UK

If a week is a long time in politics, the two weeks since Boris Johnson's government announced the prorogation of the UK Parliament (previously on Mefi) has been an age. Johnson has lost his majority, lost (and/or ejected) 22 Conservative MPS, and lost six out of his first six votes in Parliament. Since the dramatic scenes at the close of Parliament on Monday night, we have learned that the government's act of prorogation is unlawful (subject to an appeal to the UK Supreme Court to be heard next Tuesday), and that even the barest of outlines of Operation Yellowhammer, the government's contingency plan for a No Deal Brexit, is enough to demonstrate that Project Fear was always Project Reality. [more inside]
posted by rory at 2:03 AM PST - 727 comments

September 11

Tori Amos B-Sides

Look, I'm not going to fancy this up with some kind of framing. I own a few early Tori Amos singles. They have really great B-Sides. I thought some of you might want to hear them, so here they are. They're more interesting than you might expect. From Silent All These Years: Upside Down, Thoughts [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 10:03 PM PST - 38 comments

How Fan Culture Is Swallowing Democracy

We are witnessing a great convergence between politics and culture, values and aesthetics, citizenship and commercialism. Here, civic participation is converted seamlessly into consumer habit. Political battles are waged through pop songs and novelty prayer candles and evocative emoji. Elizabeth Warren is cast as a “Harry Potter” character and Kamala Harris is sliced into a reaction GIF. This is democracy reimagined as celebrity fandom, and it is now a dominant mode of experiencing politics. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:25 PM PST - 35 comments

Songs of Pain

Daniel Johnston, singer/songwriter died of heart attack last night. Johnston, recorded 17 full-length albums of original music. His trio of home-recorded tapes from the early 1980s, Songs of Pain,More Songs of Pain, Yip/Jump Music, and Hi, How Are You were incredibly influential in the indie-music and low-fi scene. His songs were covered by Yo La Tengo, Tom Waits and Pearl Jam to name a few. Kurt Cobain was a notable fan. Johnston was also a visual artist who created murals, paintings, comic books and more. Johnston had bipolar disorder and his life and struggles were explored in the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. He was 58. [more inside]
posted by jeremias at 3:25 PM PST - 97 comments

Who was the falling man from 9/11?

"The Falling Man: An Unforgettable Story" by Tom Junod for Esquire [CW: pictures of the iconic falling man] [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:18 PM PST - 63 comments

Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Crisis at MIT

News of Jeffrey Epstein's donations to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), more extensive than previously admitted, have led to the resignation of the Media Lab's director, Joi Ito. MIT is hiring outside counsel to investigate Epstein's involvement with the university. However, a former MIT administrator, now on leave from his post at Brown University, now claims that the donations were made with the "full knowledge of MIT central administration." [more inside]
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 2:06 PM PST - 201 comments

A Dating Sim With 11 Herbs And Spices.

KFC has seen a number of odd marketing campaigns, but their newest one definitely comes out of left field. Titled I Love You Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, this dating sim from KFC Gaming looks to hit Steam on September 24th. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:41 AM PST - 49 comments

Electric Zine Maker

Electric Zine Maker, a downloadable (beta) zine maker for Windows and macOS
posted by curious nu at 10:34 AM PST - 10 comments

Libraries Battle Over eBooks

Publisher Macmillan announced a new policy for eBooks: libraries can only buy one copy for the first eight weeks of a release, which can only be lent to one person at a time. This is the latest in licensing struggles libraries face in eBooks. The American Library Association (ALA) has chosen to push back, announcing a petition for eBooks for All.
posted by MrGuilt at 10:27 AM PST - 50 comments

SAR dogs at ground zero.

Clays & Birds twitter thread: "Every year as we move away from the events of 9/11, I find the images of the towers falling don’t impact the way they use to. I now try to focus on individual stories from that day to help remind me of the emotions I felt. This year I want to focus on the dogs of 9/11."
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:50 AM PST - 17 comments

Candlesticks always make a nice gift

Due to advanced training and analytics, maybe we don't need minor league baseball anymore. Or maybe we do.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:39 AM PST - 41 comments

America is in danger of losing its “measles-free” status

If an outbreak in New York state continues, the US will no longer be considered a nation that eliminated measles. Too many people have forgotten how serious measles is, and they’re opting out of vaccines. Because of that, we all have to worry about measles again. At the beginning of September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded more than 1,200 measles cases in the US. That’s the largest number for any year since 1992. It’s also a huge uptick compared to 2018, when 372 cases were reported. As a result, on October 2, the US could lose its measles-elimination status. That status is conferred on countries without continuous measles transmission for at least one year, where all measles cases can be linked back to a traveler who brought the virus from another place where it’s been circulating. If an outbreak in New York state marks its one-year anniversary at the beginning of October, our elimination status will go with it.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:25 AM PST - 71 comments

Brett Kavanaugh, in Florida, with the Hand Recount

Post 9/11 thread for people to post the wildest shit they remember from 01 to 06 I'll start: People thought Osama had an entire mountain hollowed out that he was using as his base and that's why AQ was hard to find and that somehow a group of like 30 dudes arranged this.” (Twitter) Thread of reminders of the various scandals, current connections, and WTFery of the first G. W. Bush administration.
posted by The Whelk at 9:21 AM PST - 108 comments

Students help remove racist covenant from Vancouver Island house

Sarah Higginson and Justin McFadden had no idea property ownership could be race-restricted until they enrolled in their high school's social justice class and found themselves in the middle of a real-life history lesson. In 2018, a local homeowner had bought a Port Alberni heritage house only to learn that it still had a racist covenant on the title forbidding anyone of Asian descent from living in it unless they were servants of the owner. The two teenagers decided their class project would be to help the homeowner get the racist covenant removed. CBC Radio interview with Sarah Higginson and Justin McFadden. More on teacher Anne Ostwald and her provincially-acclaimed social justice class.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:07 AM PST - 12 comments

SCP-3008, Object Class: Euclid

Police Foil a 3,000-Person Hide-and-Seek Game at an IKEA
posted by Etrigan at 8:52 AM PST - 23 comments

Even the item menu has a dark backstory

Blasphemous: In for a penance, in for a pounding [Polygon] “The easy way out is to define what Blasphemous does by dropping in a series of game names you may already be familiar with, but which often sound like gibberish to the uninitiated. But it’s worth starting simply: Blasphemous is equal parts Soulsborne game mixed into a healthy helping of Metroidvania. [...] This is a game about pain, illustrated in striking detail, to skillfully communicate the shock value that’s inherent in the religious imagery it plays with. As The Penitent One, I have to take my silent protagonist throughout the far corners of a serpentine map and back. My side-scrolling, 2D quest through ravaged cities and defiled dungeons brings me closer to fulfilling my penance.” [YouTube][Launch Trailer][NSFW: GORE/VIOLENCE] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:39 AM PST - 12 comments

The Troll-in-Chief: Brad Parscale, “Donald Trump’s Michael Bay”

“‘How the heck did you get from East Topeka, Kansas, 43 years old, to become the right-hand man to the Trump family?’ That’s a truly remarkable tale, although much, as it turns out, is not quite as Parscale describes it.”
posted by sallybrown at 7:43 AM PST - 6 comments

Climate change is here.

Vox today completed a series of stories on worst case scenarios that could be happening now due to climate change: a heat wave in Arizona, wildfires in California and a hurricane in Florida.
posted by Bee'sWing at 7:41 AM PST - 21 comments

"The next national security adviser of the United States is going to be

Donald Trump." According to the New York Times, "In recent weeks, it had been increasingly clear that the United States and the Taliban, after nine rounds of painstaking negotiations in Doha, Qatar, had ironed out most of the issues between them. [...] The deal called for a gradual withdrawal of the remaining 14,000 American troops over 16 months, with about 5,000 of them leaving within 135 days. In return, the Taliban would provide counterterrorism assurances to ease American fears of a repeat of Sept. 11 from Afghan soil. But the negotiations left out Afghanistan’s government, and Mr. Ghani’s officials criticized it for lacking measures that would ensure stability. At home, Mr. Trump was cautioned by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina; Gen. Jack Keane, a retired Army vice chief of staff; and Gen. David Petraeus, the retired Afghanistan and Iraq commander. Mr. Bolton was the leading voice against the deal on the inside as Mr. Pompeo’s allies increasingly tried to isolate the national security adviser." [more inside]
posted by katra at 7:24 AM PST - 45 comments

🎶3 eggplants peeled and thinly sliced 6 cups of spaghetti sauce is nice

Eggplant parm recipes (and others) set to Hallelujah (SLTwitter)
posted by lharmon at 6:31 AM PST - 14 comments

The World's First Gay Rugby Club

“Straight teams come to play us with preconceptions of what we will be like. They think we won’t be aggressive, that we’ll be rubbish and running around really camp,” he says. “Our mission is to change attitudes just by turning up and playing a killer game whether we win or lose." London-based Kings Cross Steelers, the World's First Gay Rugby Club [more inside]
posted by alasdair at 5:51 AM PST - 7 comments

If You Think Fentanyl Is Bad...

The second to last thing the world needs now is a more efficient way to make fentanyl—the "super heroin" that is killing heroin addicts like never before. The very last thing we need ... [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 5:14 AM PST - 31 comments

September 10

This routine gyno procedure could mean you never orgasm again

Thousands of people with cervixes undergo LEEPs every year without being informed of a potentially devastating result: the loss of their ability to enjoy sex. Cosmo investigates why doctors aren’t taking this side effect more seriously.
posted by Ragini at 11:19 PM PST - 31 comments

the protagonist and the punch-up writer

"When I was a sophomore in college, I took a creative-nonfiction workshop and met a girl who was everything I wasn’t. The point of the class was to learn to write your own story, but from the moment we met, I focused instead on helping her tell her own, first in notes after workshop, then later editing her Instagram captions and co-writing a book proposal she sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems obvious now, the way the story would end, but when I first met Caroline Calloway, all I saw was the beginning of something extraordinary." I Was Caroline Calloway
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:41 PM PST - 64 comments

A Russian agent is extracted to the U.S., and we are "flying blind"

CNN broke the news on Monday. In 2017, the U.S. extracted a spy who "had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader's desk." The agent, who was recruited decades ago, had been one of the CIA's most important assets, providing crucial information about Russian interference in the 2016 election. [more inside]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 9:10 PM PST - 26 comments

Why do I take photos?

Josh C. Simmons quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened.
posted by rufb at 6:58 PM PST - 49 comments

Rapper's Delight - Performed by Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant

Rapper's Delight - Performed by Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant How does this have less than 10,000 views on YouTube? [via mefi projects]
posted by COD at 6:36 PM PST - 10 comments

Frank "sucked a sad poem right out of America on to film."

Robert Frank, the American artist whose photographs captured the lives of everyday people and influenced a generation with his raw and evocative style, has died aged 94 (The Guardian). [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:44 PM PST - 27 comments

"It tastes like hot bread that a strawberry sneezed on"

The hot thing on the internet is super-easy cooking "hacks"—weird food tricks using a few ingredients that are just intriguing enough to share, but not actually try. They're often delivered in the form of sped-up videos or GIFs, leave out key details, and are interesting precisely because they don't seem like they should work. But they do ... right? I mean, you can't lie on the internet. It's against the law. In the name of science, I picked out ten of these and actually tried the ones that seemed at least somewhat plausible.The results were predictably disastrous. (SLCracked)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:33 PM PST - 80 comments

Hurry up, Gilead

Big pharma fails to deliver, again One year after announcing a price reduction in a critical drug used for treating people living with advanced HIV, Gilead has still not lowered the price, and even raised it in some places. An MSF/Doctore Without Borders pharmacist calls them out.
posted by stillmoving at 11:50 AM PST - 9 comments

She Said

Harvey Weinstein and his predation on young women looking for a break in Hollywood was one of the inciting points for the #MeToo movement, but much of his conduct required keeping his abuses an open secret, using the law and the media to enforce the silence. In a new book, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey discuss the work put into breaking the story, as well as the lengths that his counsel went to protect him from the accusations. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:15 AM PST - 26 comments

The Tale of Dirty, Old, Leaky Zalinski

A Second World War-era shipwreck is a haunting reminder that you can never fully clean up an oil spill. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:48 AM PST - 9 comments

The output is always the same: Admit more rich kids.

What College Admissions Offices Really Want: Elite schools say they’re looking for academic excellence and diversity. But their thirst for tuition revenue means that wealth trumps all. (SLNYT by Paul Tough)
posted by crazy with stars at 8:27 AM PST - 51 comments

Ad supported websites are dead or dying. Here's why.

Ad revenue is sharply declining, causing cuts everywhere from Vice to Buzzfeed to mainstream news publications to the beloved Blue. Independent feminist websites, mainstream sites, and other websites across the spectrum are all going under, starved of money. But if they could make a profit off ads 10 years ago, why are they going under now? Why are sites closing in droves when everyone knows the big money is in advertising? [more inside]
posted by rednikki at 8:19 AM PST - 111 comments

[CELL]IVIZATION

A Basic Version Of Civilization, Running As An Excel Spreadsheet [itch.io] “As part of a coding jam, s0lly decided to build a version of Civilization...a version based on the original 1991 video game, and which was made and runs inside a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. [...] it’s really just approximating the very early days of Civilization, with a handful of early-game units and the ability to settle cities or explore a map covered in the fog of war. As such, it’s missing essential Civ stuff like diplomacy and the ability to move through the ages.” [via: Kotaku] [YouTube][Trailer]
posted by Fizz at 8:04 AM PST - 7 comments

What Happened the Day a Giant, Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Hit the Earth

Using rock cores from Chicxulub crater, geologists piece together a new timeline of the destruction that followed impact
posted by Etrigan at 7:36 AM PST - 12 comments

“What’s country?” and “Who’s country?”

"Ken Burns’ latest marathon documentary for PBS, 'Country Music,' tells America a plain truth: If your vision of country music is good old boys in pickup trucks, then your vision is way too shallow." (SL Bitter Southerner)
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:59 AM PST - 62 comments

"Nothing looks worse than faded-out DayGlo."

Day-Glo masterpieces are fading. A conservator and her team are racing to save them - an article by Sonja Sharp for the Los Angeles Times. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 4:23 AM PST - 13 comments

September 9

The Underground Men

When an aspiring tech entrepreneur met a self-styled crypto guru online his search for funding would end up underneath a suburban Maryland home. How 4chan-fuelled paranoia and a homemade nuclear bunker lead to tragedy. (CW: graphic description of death by fire). [more inside]
posted by Gin and Broadband at 11:59 PM PST - 25 comments

even the straight and sober might like this music

When the Grateful Dead were actually good: the 6 night run at Port Chester, New York, Feb. 18-24, 1971 [more inside]
posted by msalt at 10:50 PM PST - 14 comments

Marx for Cats

Marx for Cats... Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.
posted by spitbull at 10:37 PM PST - 6 comments

“We’re not a school; we’re a real estate hedge fund”

‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence | More than two dozen current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:00 PM PST - 51 comments

Epilepsy and SUDEP

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is comparatively little known, even among people with epilepsy or families. More than 1 out of 1,000 people (and 1 out of 4,500 children) with epilepsy die each year from SUDEP (CDC). It's hard to know for sure due to current stigma and misreporting. In adults, if seizures are uncontrolled that risk can rise to 1 out of 150. In July, Cameron Boyce (Wikipedia), Disney star of the Descendants movie series and other movies and TV shows, died from what was initially described as a "seizure" but was later confirmed to be SUDEP. J. R. Storment, co-founder of Cloudability, recently lost his 8-year old son to SUDEP. Medical professionals actively debate about how much to share with patients and parents about SUDEP. Although the trend is toward more disclosure. There is on-going active research and SUDEP and SIDS may be related.
posted by skynxnex at 1:07 PM PST - 25 comments

Political ad meets Burn Notice

Valerie Plame makes her political debut and what a debut it is. SLYT.
posted by bz at 12:00 PM PST - 62 comments

crocs know better than to make a hippo angry

Hippos Use Crocodiles as Chew Toys [Roaring Earth] "While baby hippos separated from their mothers are easy prey for crocs, when mama hippo is around, baby hippos are quite safe and can even lick and chew on crocs like teething rings without repercussions. That’s because crocs know better than to make a hippo angry — especially a mother hippo."
posted by readinghippo at 11:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Foo the Flowerhorn's Aquarium Videos

YouTuber Foo the Flowerhorn makes hypnotic videos of aquarium setup and maintenance.
posted by saladin at 10:57 AM PST - 5 comments

Can snails fart?

How does my tummy turn food into poo? Why are burps so loud? Why does my snot turn green when I have a cold? Why doesn't lava melt the side of the volcano? Why don't dogs live as long as humans? Do butterflies remember being caterpillars? How do the clouds stay up in the sky? Can chimpanzees turn into people? Can snails fart? For the past two years The Conversation's Curious Kids series has been answering kids' amazing science questions. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 10:37 AM PST - 27 comments

Ctrl Alt Delete: a workplace comedy set in an abortion clinic

Like “The Office” if it were set in an abortion clinic: Actors Roni Geva and Margaret Katch created the web series Ctrl Alt Delete—now in its second season and with two Emmy nominations under its belt—after reflecting on their own abortion experiences years earlier. Now, the show has support from veteran actors Ed Begley Jr. (who plays an abortion doctor in the second season) and consulting producer Amy Brenneman. “Most women we talked to had zero guilt or shame and if they did, it was because other people made them feel that way,” says Katch. “Most women feel relief. That is really something we wanted to bring to light.” All episodes of seasons one and two are available on Vimeo.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:25 AM PST - 21 comments

Infrastructure Films (2019), a collaborative build

"This list of films is intended as a resource for anyone and everyone interested in infrastructure and society, broadly defined. I [Ashley Carse] compiled it based on recommendations that others made in response to my tweet on 14 Aug 2019: “#Infrastructure folks: What are your favorite films about infrastructure and society (or culture, politics, gender, etc.)? I'm asking for teaching purposes, so I'd particularly like films that are compelling and less than 75 minutes.”" (SLGoogleDoc; via The Prepared, link includes archived newsletters.)
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:08 AM PST - 11 comments

Cheat Sheet

“Other files provide new details about Hofeller’s work for Republicans across the country. Hofeller collected data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, as far back as 2011. Hofeller was part of a Republican effort to add a citizenship question to the census, which would have allowed political parties to obtain more precise citizenship data ahead of the 2020 redistricting cycle. State legislative lines could then have been drawn based on the number of citizen voters, which Hofeller believed would make it easier to pack Democrats and minorities into fewer districts, giving an advantage to Republicans.” The Secret Files of the Master of Modern Republican Gerrymandering (New Yorker)
posted by The Whelk at 9:52 AM PST - 10 comments

The anti-liberal moment

Critics on the left and right are waging war on liberalism. And liberals don’t seem to have a good defense. On the right, the anti-liberals locate the root of the problem in liberalism’s social doctrines, its emphasis on secularism and individual rights. In their view, these ideas are solvents breaking down America’s communities and, ultimately, dissolving the very social fabric the country needs to prosper. Left anti-liberals, by contrast, pinpoint liberal economic doctrine as the source of our current woes. Liberalism’s vision of the economy as a zone of individual freedom, in their view, has given rise to a deep system of exploitation that makes a mockery of liberal claims to be democratic — an oppressive system referred to as “neoliberalism.” [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:08 AM PST - 179 comments

September 8

"I have a friend who puts ketchup on cake."

Recently, Reddit user u/jordwumble asked other users, "What is a clear and objective food crime that people are getting away with because we're fighting about pineapple pizza?" A bunch of people started ratting out themselves or other people for the heinous food crimes they've committed. Here are the most disturbing replies. (Buzzfeed)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:38 PM PST - 278 comments

A Very Brady Renovation

“It’s a strange kind of place between fiction and reality..." Brady house is getting redone to its original state - by the Brady kids. This is making me very happy.
posted by thirdring at 10:20 PM PST - 57 comments

Ellmann has long delighted in provocation

The 1000+ page book that consists of a single sentence.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:49 PM PST - 26 comments

MTB video - Parallel

Dual downhill MTBs [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 8:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Miniature Cities of Wooden Towers

Uli Kirchler carves multistory towers into unique pieces of wood, castles which pop into being and disappear again. Many more at his instagram
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:21 PM PST - 14 comments

We were liars in love

It seemed like everyone in the 80s owned a copy of The Hooters' 1985 album Nervous Night. With several strong singles and a sort of Americana approach to 80s rock, it was hard to escape for a while. You probably haven't even thought about it in years -- here it is back again! Side A: And We Danced [video], Day By Day [video], All You Zombies [video], Don't Take My Car Out Tonight [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:48 PM PST - 52 comments

"I'll be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone"

The Soul Mates Project (previously 1 2) is a mashup project by Amerigo Gazaway that traces the roots of hip-hop and the history of music by imagining “collaborations that never were.”

Lots of stuff on the bandcamp and youtube but of the stuff I've listened to I'm digging the Lauryn Hill x Nina Simone and the Yasiin Bey x Marvin Gaye 1, 2.

I think there's other stuff on Amerigo's personal bandcamp which isn't on the Soul Mates one, but I haven't checked it all out yet.
posted by juv3nal at 4:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Anyone who says cross is a cop.

We've all been calling the DualShock's X button the wrong name. [Eurogamer] “That symbol in the southernmost position of the four buttons on your DualShock controller. What do you call it? If you're of rational mind, you'll probably call it the "Ex" button, right? That's what I call it. That's what my pals call it. I mean, we've all seen detractors, those unsettling people who call it - wait for it - "Cross"! Ha! - but they're just being contrary. We all know the truth. We know we're right. Except we're not.” According to @PlaystationUK: [Twitter] “🔺⭕❌🟥 If Cross is called X (it's not), then what are you calling Circle? 🤔”
posted by Fizz at 3:36 PM PST - 60 comments

if there’s a picture, the person obviously exists.... right?

Which Face Is Real trains viewers to discern between computer-generated faces and actual people's faces.
New adverserial machine learning algorithms allow people to rapidly generate synthetic 'photographs' of people who have never existed. Already faces of this sort are being used in espionage. Computers are good, but your visual processing systems are even better. If you know what to look for, you can spot these fakes at a single glance — at least for the time being. The hardware and software used to generate them will continue to improve, and it may be only a few years until humans fall behind in the arms race between forgery and detection.
[more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:15 PM PST - 48 comments

Set your timer

Trailer: the Limetown podcast is entering television. In mid-October the video version of Lia Haddock's investigation (previously) will appear on Facebook Watch. Jessica Biel stars and produces.
posted by doctornemo at 1:16 PM PST - 12 comments

Old Russian lady playing Hungarian Rhapsody no 2 in the street

It's amazing the amount of history that's in this video. While she had the means and station to be educated in music, she likely learned this in an era when the piano was the in-home entertainment. She probably remembers times and places in her life, either her home, or rustic family getaway, when electricity wasn't ubiquitous. She remembers learning how to perform from friends or uncles who were paid to play in bars for entertainment. She remembers the phonograph, and later the record player taking over these jobs. She's played piano for over half a century, likely performed much, taught some, and lived her quiet and happy existence. So imagine her joy, of being able to share this little moment, this nostalgic reach to the 1950's in Russia when family would gather, and play all of their old favorites, from Tchaikovsky symphonies, to Liszt, to folk songs at the piano, all witnessed by children on their iPhones, witnessing a simple piece of history that they'll never fully comprehend.
posted by growabrain at 9:12 AM PST - 31 comments

A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPod. These Are The Deleted Years.

Now Let Us Praise Them. From 2003 to 2012, music was disposable and nothing survived. [more inside]
posted by holborne at 7:32 AM PST - 115 comments

"osteologically real, but culturally fake"

Under U.S. law, there's no way to keep your loved one's skulls after they die, even if they wanted you to. Caitlin Doughty investigates why. Meanwhile, there's a thriving trade in human skulls—often carved and decorated—on Instagram. [more inside]
posted by daisyk at 4:15 AM PST - 37 comments

September 7

Willi’s dream came true. We are global.

"Kimiyah says she dances, 'more hip-hop-ish. More with the swag. I like that.' And even though she is comparatively so young she, like other young dancers I spoke with, says it’s important to understand the lineage. 'You can’t be in the ballroom scene and not know your history,' she said. 'You can’t walk a category and not know who started the category and who paved the way for you to walk the category." Jocelyn Winter writes for Dazed on the legacy of ballroom culture 27 years after Paris is Burning.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:25 PM PST - 2 comments

A Young Person's Guide to Unseen Worlds, mixed by Visible Cloaks

Unseen Worlds is a record label releasing quality editions of unheralded and revolutionary, yet accessible, avant garde music. For a convenient introduction, Spencer Doran (Visible Cloaks) put together a sixty minute survey of the Unseen Worlds label catalog, as A Young Person's Guide to Unseen Worlds, free to stream on Bandcamp, or download at at a price of your choice. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:57 PM PST - 3 comments

There is clearly an epidemic that begs for an urgent response

As cases of vaping-related lung illnesses surge, the CDC has advised consumers to "consider not using" e-cigarette products, especially with cannabis, until scientists better understand what may have sickened more than 450 people and killed five people across 33 states, while "public health experts have been urging the government to tell consumers to stop vaping any product until scientists can clarify the cause or causes of the outbreak." [more inside]
posted by katra at 8:45 PM PST - 115 comments

Magic Eraser Juice

Some days everyone is just dying and coming back left and right like junkie whack-a-mole.
He stares at his hands for what seems like a long time. “No,” he says finally. “I don’t think there’s anything that would help. It’s a hell of an addiction.”
posted by bitmage at 6:34 PM PST - 39 comments

🎵 Roll up / and put down your controller 🎵

The Stupendium usually raps about video games, but when challenged to rap about a less digital pastime, he went above and beyond. Meet The Chairman of the Board.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:48 PM PST - 3 comments

“He didn’t even realize what he had done till we started screaming.”

The Worst Ways People Have Lost Their Saved Games [Vice Gaming] “I am hardly the only person with a saved game horror story. I started thinking about the topic after stumbling upon a reddit thread where a father had accidentally deleted his son’s save for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and hoped someone could help out. One person even offered to play the game, if the father didn’t have the time. [...] That got me thinking about what other people have encountered, and so I put out a call on Twitter. Hooo boy! The stories that came back were monstrous, infuriating, heartbreaking...hilarious? Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re terrible! Your parents are terrible! Your brother and/or sister is terrible! Those poor saved games...” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:00 PM PST - 46 comments

"Some will literally do a dance routine that looks like the YMCA"

Gaggles of tarantulas are emerging from their burrows across the western US on a quest to mate, hunting for love in prairies, foothills and a garage belonging to Kim Kardashian West. From August to October, the eight-legged crawlers go on a walkabout for a once-in-a-lifetime foray to find a partner. The phenomenon is now occurring on a unusually large scale from northern California to Colorado and Texas, shining a light on the arachnids’ remarkable mating behavior, which can involve dancing and cannibalism.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:46 PM PST - 18 comments

dominicana de nacimiento, miembro de su sindicato

Even after Carmen Castillo won election to Providence City Council, she kept her job cleaning hotel rooms. The documentary Councilwoman looks at her first term in office, and how democracy (and public policy) could change when we elect a working-class immigrant. The film is available to watch for free until Oct 3. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Whirling Darvish

An overwhelming number of pitchers in the database -- 92% -- have thrown between 3 and 6 pitch types in their careers. Only 99 pitchers, or about 4%, have been tracked as throwing seven or more pitch types. Just 11 have thrown eight or more. And then there's Yu Darvish. Not a typo: Yu Darvish throws 10 pitches [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 10:42 AM PST - 18 comments

Cognitive effort, and learning more but feeling like I'm learning less

According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies" (solving sample problems with peers and with help from the instructor). As the lead author says, "Deep learning is hard work. The effort involved in active learning can be misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning.... On the other hand, a superstar lecturer can explain things in such a way as to make students feel like they are learning more than they actually are." The research studied Harvard students in a physics class; instructors on Twitter share their similar experiences in other settings.
posted by brainwane at 8:51 AM PST - 86 comments

John Landis, "the asshole from Animal House"

A bold artist acts first and thinks later. In the case of Orson Welles, one of the boldest artists produced by 20th-century America, that habit also found its way into his speech. This became especially true in the interviews he gave later in life, when he freely offered his opinions, solicited or otherwise, on the work of his fellow filmmakers. The man who made Citizen Kane didn't hesitate to roast, for instance, the European auteurs who ascended after his own career in cinema seemed to stall, and whose work he elaborately satirized in the posthumously released The Other Side of the Wind. His considered remarks include the following: "There's a lot of Bergman and Antonioni that I'd rather be dead than sit through." No, Orson, tell us what you really think.(Via)
posted by growabrain at 8:30 AM PST - 29 comments

desperate times, creative measures

Creating a material record of Trump’s presidency is the mission of Tiny Pricks Project. People are protesting Donald Trump by making embroidered art out of his most outrageous quotes. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 7:59 AM PST - 19 comments

"A bowl of clear, gelatinous bird spit sits on the kitchen table."

Swiftlet Farming in SouthEast Asia: While travelling in Vietnam's Can Gio, your boat may pass a great grey building surrounded by a cloud of birds. The building is remote from nearby towns, and speakers blast even louder bird song out to the river. What are you looking at? [more inside]
posted by frumiousb at 4:35 AM PST - 6 comments

September 6

We were creating space for ourselves, centering our own positive stories

As black marketers and curators, what do you think the mainstream is missing when it comes to creating events for our demographic? J, ONE MusicFest: Trick question. We are the mainstream. “They” are just good at repackaging it. WakandaCon, ONE MusicFest and The Culture LP on Taking Ownership Of Our Creativity (#blkcreatives) // The Women Behind WakandaCon Are Total Bad Asses: Geeky Girls Guide to WakandaCon // This isn’t another horror story about black motherhood. Coverage of the community has revolved around high maternal mortality rates, but I needed to read an article about joy. This is it. -- D.C.’s ‘Momference’ and sister circles celebrate black motherhood despite statistics (Washington Post)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:02 PM PST - 2 comments

The eyes have it

Opthalmologist and self-described comedian Dr. Glaucomflecken on Twitter: "Let’s learn about eye infestations. If you don’t want to hear about Loa Loa or what happens when Botfly larvae get into your retina, now is the time to mute this thread. Everything from here on out will be horrifying" [CW for close-ups of eye-related medical procedures and infestations]. Thread reader version here.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:53 PM PST - 32 comments

Uncle Nearest Whiskey

Meet The Black Woman Who Is Honoring The Legacy Of Enslaved Man Who Taught Jack Daniel How To Make Whiskey Nathan “Nearest” Green, was the one who first taught a young Jack Daniel how to distill whiskey and who is thought to have perfected the Lincoln County Process that defines Tennessee Whiskey. And his name will now never be forgotten, because it’s being brought to life with Uncle Nearest.
posted by NedKoppel at 2:47 PM PST - 16 comments

CA SB 206, Mark Emmert's California Nightmare

California Senate Bill 206, better known as the Fair Pay To Play Act, is a proposed bill currently being pushed through the California legislature which would give players legal authority to use their name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights for their own benefit. The push to get the bill passed received a major push with basketball superstar LeBron James publicly supporting the bill, calling it a "game changer" for California college athletes. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:46 PM PST - 34 comments

Baltimore Jack (1958-2016)

The Legend of Baltimore Jack A look back on the life of an AT antihero.
posted by maggieb at 1:50 PM PST - 4 comments

R.I.P. ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress is shutting down today (Daily Beast), after failing to find a new publisher. [more inside]
posted by bitteschoen at 1:15 PM PST - 30 comments

Sort by: approximate quantity of shame expressed

Other orders allows you to sort your twitter feed, or other texts, by various categories that may be different from Twitter's usual algorithms. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 12:56 PM PST - 10 comments

An "extremely heavy" bronze hippo

Hippo sculpture stolen from Chilstone ornament makers [BBC article from January] [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 11:35 AM PST - 16 comments

Geldwäsche

U.S. congressional investigators have identified possible failures in Deutsche Bank's money laundering controls in its dealings with Russian oligarchs (Reuters, Sept. 6) Here is what might be lurking in Deutsche Bank’s electronic vaults about the president, his family and his businesses (NYT, updated Sept. 4) [more inside]
posted by box at 11:00 AM PST - 22 comments

Raising the Titanic

California boat fire to put spotlight on Titanic's legal defense , Reuters, Tom Hals, September 6, 2019 — "The company that owns a scuba dive boat that caught fire and sank off California, killing 34 people, has sought to avoid liability by invoking a 19th-century law [Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 (overview)] that has shielded vessel owners from costly disasters such as the sinking of the Titanic." [more inside]
posted by cenoxo at 9:26 AM PST - 53 comments

Life, the Universe, and Everything

We know the answer is 42 but what is the question? Well, in the sum of three cubes mathland, it's: 42= (-80538738812075974)³ +80435758145817515³ +12602123297335631³ Full story: NEWS: The Mystery of 42 is Solved - Numberphile
posted by zengargoyle at 9:25 AM PST - 28 comments

“The hillbillies are a rich seam of grant money“

“Depopulation, vocational training, growth centers: these kinds of schemes might have made sense to a handful of glassy-eyed bureaucrats, but as you can imagine, they didn’t go over well with the people who still lived in dying hollers and towns. In 1974, Whitesburg’s Mountain Eagle newspaper spoke with a former coal miner in Hazard, Kentucky, “wheezing with black lung but denied disability compensation,” who explained that a local ARC bureaucrat had suggested he retrain as an elevator operator. The miner was confused about how this would work: Hazard had only one building with an elevator, “but the damn thing is push button.” The anecdote was a perfect illustration of how disconnected the commission was from the region they were supposed to be helping.” Hollowed Out, against the sham revitalization of Appalachia (The Baffler)
posted by The Whelk at 9:13 AM PST - 40 comments

H is for Hypersphere

Joseph Nebus is (once again) blogging about mathematics from A-Z: So far this fall, Abacus and Buffon's Needle. You can follow along with the Fall 2019 series as it appears (at about two topics per week), and you can browse through past years' mathematical A-Z's (there's a partial index of old topics for your convenience).
posted by Wolfdog at 9:11 AM PST - 2 comments

Manga artist raises question online about false perspective

". . . when I was a student I applied a ruler to a scene from My Neighbor Totoro. Even though it was supposed to be a one-point perspective drawing there were actually two vanishing points. I remember really worrying about what this meant.” [via]
posted by Think_Long at 8:48 AM PST - 25 comments

Trudeau promised Camelot and delivered, well, Ottawa.

The Two Sides of Canada | Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj [YouTube] “In the latest episode of his satirical news show Patriot Act, comedian Hasan Minhaj lays bare Canada’s hypocrisy on the environment, Quebec’s secularism bill on religious symbols, and the arms deal with Saudi Arabia. He calls out Trudeau on the disparities between the prime minister’s progressive sound bites and his actual policy. The episode, aptly called “The Two Sides of Canada,” switches back and forth between Minhaj in studio and a one-on-one interview between Minhaj and Trudeau.” [via: Vice News] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:06 AM PST - 91 comments

ook

Orangutans and siamangs live in the same exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. The siamangs had a surprise premature baby. Now the baby siamang, Sela, and the juvenile orangutan, Aisha, spend a lot of time hanging out.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:02 AM PST - 27 comments

Afrikan Boy

Afrikan Boy, the London-based afro-grime artist of "One Day I Went To Lidl" fame and one-time M.I.A. protégé, writes songs centered on themes of immigration, identity, and the search for belonging, sometimes with wryly hilarious send-ups like "Ancestry", sometimes with a more serious bent such as with "Border Business", which was shot at the migrant camp near Calais in 2015 (brief documentary). [more inside]
posted by dmh at 3:59 AM PST - 3 comments

September 5

Tobacco use in episodic programming is rising

The popularity of streaming combined with the pervasive rise of smoking in episodic content points to an emerging threat to a new generation of Young Americans. Truth Initiative® first reported on this issue in 2018 with the study “While You Were Streaming: Tobacco Use Sees a Renormalization in On-Demand Digital Content, Diluting Progress in Broadcast & Theaters.” In the year since then, the danger has only grown. While you were streaming: smoking on demand. Netflix adopts a new smoking policy in response to Stranger Things backlash (Decider)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:57 PM PST - 111 comments

I gained glory, not without many trials.

Alexander the Great’s death is an unsolved mystery. Was he a victim of natural causes, felled by some kind of fever, or did his marshals assassinate him, angered by his tyrannical ways? An autopsy would decide the question, but it is too late for that.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:32 PM PST - 34 comments

"When you listen to the birds, they can tell you a lot"

One of the great conservation success stories is the reintroduction of Atlantic puffins to islands off the coast of Maine, with a record-setting number of breeding pairs reported in summer 2019. However, like all good things in life, puffins are threatened by climate change. The problem? In recent years when the water has gotten a few degrees warmer, the fish that the puffins can find to feed to their young is the wrong shape: [more inside]
posted by puffyn at 2:29 PM PST - 5 comments

Don't Drive Like My Brother

Car Talk's Long Goodbye: an interview with Ray Magliozzi, former cohost of the NPR mainstay Car Talk, on the show's history, its legacy, and his relationship with his departed brother. And for dessert, a podcast interview with Ray on the brothers' surprisingly conflicted feelings about cars and car culture.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:09 PM PST - 49 comments

…he has revealed how scorpion venom targets the “wasabi” receptor TRPA1

What Chili Peppers Can Teach Us about Pain: U.C. San Francisco researcher and Breakthrough Prize–winner David Julius talks about capsaicin, opioids and snake vision (Scientific American) [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 1:23 PM PST - 2 comments

WINFILE.EXE

This morning when you woke up, did you even slightly suspect that today you would find out that Microsoft has re-released the classic Windows 3.1 File Manager, updated and working on Windows 10, on both GitHub and the Microsoft Store? [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 12:36 PM PST - 78 comments

“It’s hard to tell the truth about ourselves,” Phair writes.

Liz Phair has _Horror Stories_, the first of two planned memoirs, being released next month. She sat down with former Blender editor Rob Tannenbaum to talk about the book, her music, her image, and her family.
posted by hanov3r at 11:55 AM PST - 12 comments

and sends the hippo back out again

Humans playing Hungry Hungry Hippos is a thing. Usually with baskets or buckets on some form of wheeled platform, sometimes with each human attached to a bungee cord. [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 11:31 AM PST - 17 comments

Contextualizing a scientist's work for understanding

Sabine Hossenfelder reflects on the role of contextual information (historical and social) in communication in science.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:23 AM PST - 7 comments

Look, up in the sky! It's a flying squirrel! No, wait--a sugar glider!

They're small, they're furry, and they can glide from tree to tree at distances of 50 meters or more thanks to patagium, the same connective tissue structure that allows bats to fly. Yes, it's the sugar glider! Using its patagium as a parachute, the sugar glider will coast through the air from tree to tree, using its tail as an adorable rudder. "But wait," you say, "isn't that a flying squirrel?" While similar, sugar gliders evolved independently and are more closely related to their fellow marsupials (such as possums) than to placental mammals--an example of convergent evolution at work. Want more convergent evolution? Past FPPs include the hummingbird hawk-moth, often mistaken for its avian namesake, and the thylacine, an extinct marsupial with a strikingly canine bone structure. Bonus sugar glider content: a 19-second slo-mo gliding video.
posted by sugar and confetti at 10:59 AM PST - 25 comments

How to clean your dangling whale

It's annual cleaning time for the whale at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Livestreaming of the cleaning starts soon [FB] (1:30pm Eastern time).
posted by Mchelly at 10:35 AM PST - 14 comments

The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained

Known as TERFs, trans-exclusionary radical feminist groups are working with conservatives to push their anti-trans agenda. Online roots of the term TERF originated in the late 2000s but grew out of 1970s radical feminist circles after it became apparent that there needed to be a term to separate radical feminists who support trans women and those who don’t. Many anti-trans feminists today claim it’s a slur, despite what many see as an accurate description of their beliefs. They now prefer to call themselves “gender critical,” a euphemism akin to white supremacists calling themselves “race realists.” A long form article about the origins and current tactics of TERFs.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:55 AM PST - 105 comments

Goes around, comes around

In primo article "Soul on Wheels:How music for the roller rink impacted the club" online-EM-gossip site Resident Advisor takes a long look -- through the eyes of veteran DJs like Big Bob Clayton and Moodyman -- at how skating long-predated the dance club scene ... and lives on. [more inside]
posted by Twang at 9:46 AM PST - 4 comments

Drawing Criticism

Where there were more than 2,000 staff cartoonists at work a century ago, and 180 as recently as the 1980s, contemporary estimates are grim: a 2011 survey by The Herb Block Foundation, an educational nonprofit, estimated that fewer than 40 such jobs still exist.
posted by Etrigan at 9:45 AM PST - 9 comments

The secrets of covering a well stocked library

“Man in Fog” delivers exactly what the title promises—a shadowy figure, noir to the grayscale bone, smoking a pipe in the inky foreground. An image like “Man in Fog” can be quite evocative, Morrison said, until you start seeing it everywhere. “And the more I looked, the more books featuring it I found,” he said. “This would have been around 20 years ago. It was only when I started blogging, very late in the day, that I had an outlet to inflict this on other people.”
posted by gusottertrout at 9:20 AM PST - 11 comments

What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time on Windows

When I launched Google Chrome for the first time (and let it sit for a minute), 32 requests were made, and 7.26 MB of data downloaded. [SLTwitterThread] [more inside]
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 9:13 AM PST - 32 comments

Forces of Chaos

How can chaos be used as a political force? Chaos has long been recognized as a potent weapon in warfare. New research has revealed the role it plays in political battles, essentially by tapping marginalized groups whose goals are to gain status by disrupting or destroying the existing political structures. These chaos-inducing actors may have no agenda other than dragging down political "elites," which may explain why some may find both Trump and (Bernie) Sanders viable options. It may also explain phenomena like Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, despite his rejection of the comparison to Trump. The study ties the impact of this phenomenon to social media disinformation campaigns. [more inside]
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:57 AM PST - 19 comments

Who Benefits From Market Fundamentalism?

“The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society’s most powerful people—as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab.” Neoliberalism: Political Success, Economic Failure (Prospect) “To anyone who lived through the Clinton years — or merely remembers the Obama era — the discrediting of neoliberal ideas that were once sacrosanct among Democrats is nothing short of astonishing.” The Sunset Of Neoliberalism (Jacobin)
posted by The Whelk at 8:28 AM PST - 30 comments

"Learn. Fight. Win."

"There are a lot of people doing excellent work documenting the rise of white supremacy and fascism in research, journalism and activism. When I pitched this piece to my editors at NationofChange, I was thinking a quick 700-word piece that I could pretty much write off the top of my head. That was not to be. I asked twitter about who they follow for info about anti-hate anti-fascist news and activism and my shortlist was, shall we say enlargened. So with the urging of NationofChange, I decided to do something a little bit more comprehensive." A guide to the people, books and sites that you should be following to become educated on the real threat of white extremist violence in the USA, put together by photo journalist Zach D Roberts for nonprofit news and activism organization NationofChange.
posted by bitteschoen at 7:50 AM PST - 4 comments

It Didn't Start with the Bedbugs

In New York Times Columnists vs. the Haters: A brief history of overreaction, Ashley Feinberg details NYT opinion pieces reacting to criticism.
posted by an octopus IRL at 7:25 AM PST - 33 comments

Which birds can’t play cricket? Ducks

Earlier this week, a rather eccentric cricket match between two British sports clubs was 'won' by the Island Sailing Club. What's unusual about this annual competition is that it takes place in the middle of of one of the UK's busiest shipping lanes. [more inside]
posted by atlantica at 6:14 AM PST - 8 comments

You’re the Best, [Insert Character Here]

As Daniel LaRusso finds his tournament rhythm in The Karate Kid, we watch him plow through a number of challengers in a montage set to music: "you're the best...around...nothing's gonna ever keep you down!" That song is now iconic - it’s a popular callback reference - but it was written for a different fighter. [more inside]
posted by AgentRocket at 6:13 AM PST - 25 comments

“...the teacher yelled at me for painting the sun green.”

How A Colorblind Artist Makes Magic Cards & Video Games [Kotaku] “Paul Scott Canavan is one of the best artists working in entertainment today, with a list of clients and employers ranging from Wizards of the Coast to Valve to Games Workshop. He also used to be an art director at Axis Animation, a company responsible for cinematic video game trailers and intros. So if you’ve ever played Magic, or Destiny, or League of Legends, you’ll likely have seen something he’s worked on. Canavan is also colorblind, and shared the news of his condition recently on Twitter, to the shock and amazement of peers who had no idea. Which was kind of the point; he’d decided that it was time to show that, hey, despite whatever superficial hangups others might have about a colorblind person working as an artist, it actually wasn’t an obstacle to pursuing a successful career in the field.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:36 AM PST - 10 comments

The mystery of Geedis has been solved

The podcast Endless Thread has solved the mystery of who or, or what, is Geedis (previously).
posted by audi alteram partem at 5:08 AM PST - 15 comments

The Early New Testaments

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's hotly-anticipated followup to The Handmaid's Tale, is only five days away from release – unless you're one of 800 Amazon customers who received the book early. Indie booksellers are incensed that Amazon has broken the strict embargo with likely zero consequences. As Rachel Cass of Harvard Book Store noted, "[Customers] won't know or care about embargoes; they will just see that Amazon can supply them a book and we can't. They might not come in next time."
posted by adrianhon at 3:42 AM PST - 28 comments

A Library for Bartenders

"The bartending profession has a rich and varied history that only recently has come to light during the past two decades. Vintage cocktail and distillation books filled with recipes, techniques, and management procedures are being unearthed and collected at an unprecedented pace." These volumes may be out of the reach of most bartenders, but the EUVS Digital Collection has you covered. [more inside]
posted by daisyk at 1:49 AM PST - 11 comments

September 4

Reclaim Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Time

Hong Kong has been embroiled in protests for over two months now. Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam moved to withdraw the controversial extradition bill that would have allowed extradition to mainland China in an attempt to defuse tensions with the Hong Kong population, two days after Reuters released a special report capturing Lam's admittance in English that she feared her ability to resolve the crisis was very limited. For protesters, it may be too little, too late, as protesters have expanded their requirements to include "five demands, not one less", among them: "an independent probe into the use of force by police; amnesty for arrested protesters; a halt to categorising the protests as riots; and the implementation of universal suffrage". [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 9:03 PM PST - 21 comments

Inside the Terror

"Parks Canada has released the first film taken inside of the wreck of the HMS Terror. A remotely-operated vehicle explored the interior of the ship, recording high-definition video of the cabins and the astonishingly well-preserved artifacts still in place. " ... [more inside]
posted by pt68 at 8:40 PM PST - 29 comments

Can't wait to see what Trent and Atticus wear to the CMAs with Lil Nas X

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were recently included in a Country Music Association nomination (Spin), which they celebrated by Photoshopping their faces onto an image of Brooks & Dunn (Instagram). They earned the CMA nod from their producer credits, alongside YoungKio, on Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” remix with Billy Ray Cyrus (5 minute "official movie"), as the track samples “34 Ghost IV” (YouTube), a 2008 Nine Inch Nails song from Ghosts (previously; Discogs).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:39 PM PST - 10 comments

Draw your OC [Original Character] like this

"Draw your OC like this", an epic twitter thread of fun and varied drawings that keeps on giving and is pretty damn entertaining.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Listen to Wikipedia

Listen to Wikipedia:
Listen to the sound of Wikipedia's recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. You can welcome him or her by clicking the blue banner and adding a note on their talk page.
posted by XtinaS at 7:25 PM PST - 15 comments

This is not your grandfather’s Dolly...

For King & Country and Dolly Parton “God Only Knows “
posted by HuronBob at 6:19 PM PST - 7 comments

"it’s not ‘free’ at all”

“Why would you expect free shipping from the nice lady in Iowa who hand-knits afghans? Why would you think that she would be able to do that for you?” Sandberg asks, hypothetically, of the customers Etsy says it has polled in robust surveys over the past few years. “If I were sending something to her, it would cost me $12. I understand that. I’m a grown-up.” The lady hand-making afghans in Iowa has enough working against her, you know? Plus, as Sandberg explains, channeling the sentiment of Etsy’s 2 million sellers: “Etsy was supposed to be different.” Was Etsy too good to be true?
posted by everybody had matching towels at 3:41 PM PST - 64 comments

The King is dead

Richard Booth, who turned the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye into the world's largest used bookstore, has died at 80.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:26 PM PST - 21 comments

We Hurt Where We Care

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, said like the word “act”) is an evidence-based psychotherapy that has been shown to be an effective treatment in randomized clinical trials for people who are struggling with a wide range of traditional mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, eating disorders, etc. This week ACT originator Steven C. Hayes released a new book for general audiences, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters. Part self-help book, part intellectual history, and part personal memoir of his own history of panic disorder, the book provides a useful introduction to the concept of “psychological flexibility.” [more inside]
posted by soonertbone at 10:58 AM PST - 37 comments

it's the cars, stupid!

Report: Texting While Walking Isn't The Scourge It's Made Out To Be [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:14 AM PST - 104 comments

Venue turned down an interracial wedding, citing “Christian belief.”

The relationship between religious exemption laws and racial discrimination is not new. As the venue owners attempt to minimize the fallout and backlash to their business, the incident has also called new attention to a 2016 Mississippi law that protects “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” about same-sex marriages, premarital sex, and gender identity. The law does not allow a person to discriminate based on race or ethnicity. Federal law prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:39 AM PST - 52 comments

let piece = ['I', 'J', 'L', 'T'][Math.floor(Math.random() * 4)];

The history of Tetris randomizers
posted by alby at 9:38 AM PST - 11 comments

"The status quo is unacceptable"

Walmart , the United States' largest retailer and employer, announced that it will stop selling ammunition for handguns and short-barrel rifles, stop selling handguns in Alaska, and ask customers to not open-carry weapons into Walmart or Sam's Club, even in open-carry states. They also ask national leaders to strengthen background checks, remove weapons from people who pose imminent danger, and debate reauthorizing the Assault Weapons ban. [more inside]
posted by box at 8:16 AM PST - 83 comments

Live Through This

Courtney Love at 55 - why she deserves to be the girl with the most cake. Via a response from k8t in the AskMe question "Famous women you learned to like... after recognizing societal misogyny"
posted by ellieBOA at 5:49 AM PST - 67 comments

🥚🐦

Birdspotting [YouTube][Game Trailer]
“The player explores a lush beautiful valley. Home of birds. Using an old binocular and journal you set out to spot the surrounding wildlife, discovering the local species and secrets hidden around the hills, rivers, and lakes. Through listening, observation, stealth, and timing the player strives to collect all species and their behaviors. Collect feathers, find nests and eggs. Endure the weather and uncover the hidden secrets of a Norway inspired scenery.”
Birdspotting, a new video game from developers Joram van Loenen and Khalil Arafan. [via: Vice Gaming]
posted by Fizz at 5:06 AM PST - 36 comments

The effect of focal length on emotion and atmosphere in film

Accomplished Cinematographer Tom Sigel eloquently demonstrates how focal length influences mood in cinema (SLYT). [more inside]
posted by smoke at 4:24 AM PST - 14 comments

September 3

The coming death of just about every rock legend.

Behold the killing fields that lie before us: Bob Dylan (78 years old); Paul McCartney (77); Paul Simon (77) and Art Garfunkel (77); Carole King (77); Brian Wilson (77); Mick Jagger (76) and Keith Richards (75); Joni Mitchell (75); Jimmy Page (75) and Robert Plant (71); Ray Davies (75); Roger Daltrey (75) and Pete Townshend (74); Roger Waters (75) and David Gilmour (73); Rod Stewart (74); Eric Clapton (74); Debbie Harry (74); Neil Young (73); Van Morrison (73); Bryan Ferry (73); Elton John (72); Don Henley (72); James Taylor (71); Jackson Browne (70); Billy Joel (70); and Bruce Springsteen (69, but turning 70 next month). A few of these legends might manage to live into their 90s, despite all the … wear and tear to which they've subjected their bodies over the decades. But most of them will not.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:23 PM PST - 204 comments

Democracy dies in daylight, too

With 426 days until the 2020 U.S. Election (days.to countdown), you may be wondering about the state of election systems around the country. If so, NPR recently provided what you need to know about U.S. election security and voting machines, which can be paired with EFF's 2016 general article on e-voting machines and elections around the world. Meanwhile, as FEC nears shutdown, priorities such as stopping election interference on hold (NPR, Aug. 30, 2019). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:38 PM PST - 24 comments

Juke

Southern University’s Human Jukebox is your favorite marching band’s favorite marching band. The sight of the sound of the Human Jukebox [YT Channel] is something else. It is home, something visible even in the dark of a buggy Louisiana night that doesn’t want to let the moon shine.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:52 PM PST - 5 comments

The Book of Prince

“Now, let me stop you right there,” Prince said. “Why did you write that?” It occurred to me that he might have flown me in from New York just to tell me that I knew nothing of his work. “The music I make isn’t breaking the law, to me,” he said. “I write in harmony. I’ve always lived in harmony—like this.”
The Beautiful One is an essay by Dan Piepenbring about his collaboration with Prince on a memoir, which had barely started when Prince passed away.
posted by Kattullus at 1:33 PM PST - 13 comments

"he trotted merrily after his keeper"

Obaysch, the Hippopotamus, London Zoo 1852 [Photograph, The Royal Collection Trust]. Obaysch "was obtained by the London Zoological Society" ... he "arrived in May 1850". ["HRH (His Rolling Hulk)", Cemetery Club post]
posted by readinghippo at 11:13 AM PST - 6 comments

"This book is not visually stimulating nor is there any real prose."

The 50 Best One-Star Amazon Reviews of Goodnight Moon
posted by Etrigan at 10:31 AM PST - 150 comments

Leviathans in the Harbor

More and bigger cruise ships are crowding coastal destinations. When is enough, enough? Who gets to decide? [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:11 AM PST - 68 comments

In US cities, poorer neighborhoods are hotter

As rising heat bakes US cities, the poor often feel it most (NPR). "[T]he hottest neighborhoods in Baltimore can differ by as much as 10 degrees from the coolest. [...] NPR analyzed 97 of the most populous U.S. cities using the median household income from U.S. Census Bureau data and NASA's thermal satellite images. In more than three-quarters of those cities, we found that where it's hotter, it also tends to be poorer." [more inside]
posted by biogeo at 9:54 AM PST - 27 comments

"Dozens of false Renners had sprouted up, sowing chaos"

"What this means, as you’ve probably figured out by now, is that if you post 'Lookin’ good, Mr. Renner!' under a blurry video of Jeremy driving a dump truck and someone named football_jersey97 replies with 'There is diarrhea shooting out of my penis,' your phone will buzz and you will receive a notification with the words 'Jeremy Renner: There is diarrhea shooting out of my penis' next to a little picture of Jeremy Renner’s face."

I Broke The Official Jeremy Renner App By Posting The Word "Porno" On It
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:38 AM PST - 58 comments

Trebek Affirmation Soundboard

THE TREBEK AFFIRMATION SOUNDBOARD For those distressing moments in life when you could use an audible nudge of encouragement.
posted by ColdChef at 9:38 AM PST - 16 comments

the potent placenta

"In the hospital with pre-eclampsia, I asked the doctors and nurses caring for me for an explanation. My pregnancy was normal, and I was healthy. Why was this happening? Their responses were vague: “It’s something with your placenta.” “It’s not well understood.” I became obsessed with placentas in the hospital, when no one could tell me what went wrong with mine." Daniela Blei writes for The Cut on the promise of the Human Placenta Project.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:25 AM PST - 26 comments

The Green Sweater

In 2003, Lea Stern saw a green sweater on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The sweater was worn by one of Poland's hidden children, Krystyna Chiger, as she successfully hid from the Nazis in the sewers of Lvov for over a year (click on 'About this Object' to read more of the story). Stern has recreated the pattern, making it available to a new generation of knitters and helping people learn about Krystyna's story. Pattern sales have raised $3000 for the USHMM so far. [via Ravelry's blog]
posted by jacquilynne at 9:14 AM PST - 6 comments

SF lies about unfilled beds for mentally ill

Last month, a hue and cry was raised in response to a plan from the mayor and Department of Public Health to repurpose scores of beds on the San Francisco General Hospital campus reserved to permanently house the severely mentally ill into temporary beds for the homeless. Temporary respites are good. But permanent housing is better. And the Department of Public Health’s rationale for transforming permanent housing into temporary shelter unearthed an even more disturbing fact. In the midst of a homeless crisis that often relegates San Francisco’s vulnerable mentally ill to the streets, dozens of the beds created to permanently house them at the city’s Behavioral Health Center weren’t being used. From Mission Local [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 8:42 AM PST - 9 comments

US rehab industry does not provide evidence-based, effective care.

Kim Blake keeps a folder in her house, swollen with papers. Each document represents yet another try at helping her son Sean recover from a decade of drug addiction... But none of the treatments stuck. In August 2017, Sean died of a drug overdose involving alcohol and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. He was 27 years old. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:24 AM PST - 47 comments

Prostitution Thrives in Antarctica, Local Currency Only

Though penguins are known for their bonded pairings, researchers studying Adélie penguins have found that some female penguins will copulate with other males in exchange for rocks used in nest-building. Video (SFW, even penguin offices). Oh, and it's not just penguins.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:52 AM PST - 12 comments

The Less Sexyback

The Less Sexyback is a superbly groovy mashup of Timbaland's "SexyBack" and Tame Impala's "The Less I Know The Better". It seems to have appeared on the internets somewhere around March, with no definitive provenance, like a gesture of grace from Spiritus Mundi. Then over the course of several months, the beautiful beast slouched towards YouTube, to become the soundtrack for a wildly infectious video edit of dancing memes. All references without referent, here for your enjoyment.
posted by dmh at 3:40 AM PST - 6 comments

September 2

We control the vertical. We control the horizontal.

Destin of Smarter Every Day with the help of Hansi and Jerobeam from Oscilloscope Music explains how it's done. Includes lasers, fog machines, and some sick beats. Drawing with Sound (Oscilloscope Music) - Smarter Every Day 224
posted by zengargoyle at 8:30 PM PST - 5 comments

break open the chamber, two dozen angry triangles throb out

take in the black and white cyberpunk mood of lvl374, all pixels and chromatic aberration and android dystopia, scenes from a game that never existed and you can't forget playing
posted by cortex at 8:06 PM PST - 19 comments

▁ ▂ ▃ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ ▉

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey – Beautiful Concepts And Disastrous Execution [Game Informer] “I adore the notion behind Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey: Follow not one individual, but an entire evolving clan of hominids as they navigate the vagaries of survival and evolution across an inconceivable stretch of prehistory. However, deep and fundamental faults riddle the experience that stems from that idea. As a simulation, it creates rare moments of discovery and reflection about the miracle of life. As a game, it collapses under the weight of history, the ambition of its own concept, and a gameplay model that offers too little reward at the cost of far too much frustration and routine.” [YouTube][Launch Trailer][Gameplay] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:13 PM PST - 17 comments

The Historical Significance of Black Queer Films

[These films] centered the experiences of Black queer people not only to communicate how Black LGBT folks endured further marginalization within Black communities because of their queerness but also to interrogate the ways that the conflation of queerness and whiteness attempted to exclude Black queers from the bonds and protection of community. [African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS)] [more inside]
posted by nightrecordings at 11:48 AM PST - 7 comments

Strike! Strike! Strike!

As we celebrate the fruits of our labor this Labor Day, let us remember the single most important tactic that gives workers the ability to negotiate with teeth and strength: the strike. Strikes are used by workers all over the world, from Taiwanese flight attendants to Appalachian teachers to Iranian truck drivers, and they are returning because they work. [more inside]
posted by sciatrix at 11:02 AM PST - 26 comments

What really happened to Butch & Sundance in Patagonia

Everything comes to an end, even a tango party in Argentina. Fifty years after the Oscar-winning movie, Patrick Symmes, author of Chasing Che and The Day Fidel Died, tells the true story of the six years the infamous outlaws spent trying to start a new life in South America.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:57 AM PST - 9 comments

Modern Day Pinkertons

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, along with 700,000 other federal and DC workers, are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (affiliated with the AFL-CIO). While ICE and Border Patrol unions support draconian immigration measures (In These Times), the AFL-CIO supports UFCW workers targeted in ICE raids (DailyKos), the AFGE files friend-of-the-court briefs (WaPo), and union stewards write op-eds (WaPo), against stricter asylum protocols. How to resolve this conflict? Abolish ICE's union (Kim Kelly, The New Republic). [more inside]
posted by box at 10:35 AM PST - 27 comments

Why Teens Are Creating Their Own News Outlets

Claiming young adults are zoning out on current events instead of zooming in ignores the fact that they’re digital natives, who grew up navigating an increasingly tech-reliant culture. Instead of staring at cable news, they’re pioneering new ways to engage with the stories that meet them where they are.
posted by Etrigan at 10:28 AM PST - 15 comments

All Power To All Workers

“If enacted it would be the most dramatic change to labor law since the 1947 passage of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and would arguably match the changes from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, or “Wagner Act”) in scope and ambition.” The Workplace Democracy Act, Explained - Beyond Labor Day : 3 Ways Unions Have Benefited America (Time) - “We’ve had to adapt to a much more aggressive employer class and figure out how unions survive when employers no longer think they have a right to exist.” Labor Notes At 40 - Anti-Union Propaganda - The Dual Power Map The Black Socialists Of America’s map of worker cooperatives, coummity land trusts, and small business inatatives (Interview with The Nation) - “The National Writers Union is proud to announce a division created specifically for freelance media workers, one that aims to build off our history while adapting to the conditions specific to writers and workers today.” The Freelance Solidarity Project.
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM PST - 5 comments

You can automate a lot of things. Sewing isn't one of them.

This is your occasional reminder that robots can't sew clothes, and that every garment you own - yes, even that $5 t-shirt - was stitched together by a person. [Twitter threadview on Threadreader] [more inside]
posted by bitteschoen at 4:11 AM PST - 81 comments

incorrect horse battery staple

The forum for webcomic XKCD has suffered a data breach that leaked the usernames, emails, IP addresses and passwords for 562k subscribers. The top password was, predictably, "password". Number two? "correct horse battery staple"
posted by adrianhon at 3:51 AM PST - 63 comments

September 1

Why the Periodic Table of Elements Is More Important Than Ever

The August 28, 2019 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek is a bit unusual for the publication, both in content and presentation: it celebrates 150 years of the periodic table’s formulation by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (previously), arguing that it’s more important than it’s ever been: why matter still matters, looking at how the elements are used today, with short summaries or links to longer articles, for helium, fluorine, sodium, sulfur, chromium, germanium, bromine, rare minerals in Greenland, lutetium and ytterbium, rarest elements around the globe, osmium, mercury, radium, and making new elements.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:52 PM PST - 19 comments

The Egg 🥚

[SLYT] From a science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt and science fiction author Andy Weir... The Egg. Original story here.
posted by k8t at 9:10 PM PST - 23 comments

The Human Body in Flight

Enthusiastic photographer Jordan Matter has been filming 10-Minute Photo Challenges with dancers and acrobats, including World of Dance stars Charity and Andres, contortionist Sofie Dossi, Dance Moms' Nia Sioux and Charlotte and Nicolas from Cirque du Soleil. Jordan is often hoarse and his crew frequently run afoul of security guards. The photos are spectacular (and he started showing them together at the end if you want to skip ahead). [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 9:00 PM PST - 6 comments

Rocky Mountain High

His theory didn’t catch on until he and his colleagues published a 2011 paper that looked at all 2,584 counties in the U.S. and found a correlation between average altitude and suicide rate over the previous 20 years. They found that if a county was below 2,000 feet, their suicide rates were about half of counties at 4,000 to 5,000 feet. The counties with the highest suicide rates were above 9,000 feet.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:00 PM PST - 25 comments

how I became friends with a Twitter troll called Angus Gallagher

An epic tale in 58 tweets of a three month friendship (of sorts) with a (Russian? Saudi Arabian?) troll account via direct messaging, told by Middle East studies scholar Marc Owen Jones:
Despite exclusively tweeting about Qatar, Saudi & Iran, & having very strong opinions, he would always say via DMs that he 'didn't know much about that stuff'.... It wasn't all business though, sometimes he'd send me Ariana Grande gifs or talk about K Pop..."
Unrolled via Thread Reader App, unrolled via ThreadReaders.com.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:51 PM PST - 7 comments

"All I have are negative thoughts."

Joker [YouTube][Final Trailer] "‘Joker’ First Reactions: Joaquin Phoenix Loses His Shit in a Bold But Incel-Friendly Origin Story" [IndieWire] Audiences at the Venice Film Festival have finally seen Todd Phillips' revisionist DCEU origin story. [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 6:13 PM PST - 130 comments

friendship ended with DOMINOES, now Civ 3 is my best friend

Constructing Logic Gates, Circuits, and Adders in Civilization 3 Using Barbarians
posted by cortex at 3:35 PM PST - 14 comments

"Oh, I can sing in my brain; I sing in my brain all the time."

Linda Ronstadt's Parkinson's disease silenced one of the greatest singing voices of our time. Earlier this year she spoke before a sellout crowd about her life and the concurrent release of her first-ever live album—Linda Ronstadt: Live in Hollywood—made from newly-uncovered tapes of a made-for-TV concert in 1980. This week she spoke with the New Yorker about the upcoming documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:54 PM PST - 13 comments

I was a monkey looking at a lemur.

Happy International Primate Day! Aye-Aye Conservation thinks that you should Know Your Primates (Twitter). What's an aye-aye, you ask? "[T]he Aye-aye is a very very peculiar animal. It looks like the agglomeration of all sorts of other different animals. So, for instance, it has a sort of foxy ears, and it has a little sort of bitty rabbit’s teeth, and it has a kind of ostrich feathered tail, and it has very weird eyes," according to Douglas Adams, who ventured to Madagascar (lecture transcript, embedded video) in search of these rare primates. True Facts about the aye-aye (YT); more facts, videos, and cute photos from the Duke Lemur Center. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:45 PM PST - 5 comments

“The Wine Aunt does not have a build. She is a lifestyle.”

An Ode to the Wine Aunts: Enough with the Dad Builds and Dad Games [Paste Magazine]
“Overworked and underpaid, she hasn’t made it back home in years. But when she does, it’ll be with a rolling suitcase filled with boutique presents for her niece, black leggings, bodysuits, her vape pen, a large bottle of wine to split with her mom, and her battered, venerable Playstation Vita (shit, she forgot to pack underwear again). She drinks six-dollar pinot grigio with six ice cubes from a red wine glass, because they were on sale at Target, and her galley kitchen only has so much cabinet space. The Wine Aunt sneers at the “Dad Build” talk, Dadification, and the burgeoning someday-Dads who are already upset when they’re not exclusively catered to, when marginalized non-Dads dare to ask for inclusion in this hobby, in more thoughtful ways than they clamored for a new Mass Effect 3 ending.”
Dia Lacina pushes back from the edges against the industry-wide reflex to make everything in games for and about men.
posted by Fizz at 2:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Drums, Marimbas, Glockenspiel, Piccalo, Singing, Whistling -- Drumming

Steve's Reich's seminal 1971 work Drumming [1h21m] begins with animal hide, moves on to wood, then metals, and finally a joyous union of all of the above in a resounding finale. It's a piece which received acclaim when it premiered, and which has only grown in stature across the decades. It's a source of amazement and joy. It's worth anyone's time.
posted by hippybear at 1:32 PM PST - 16 comments

"Finally straight people will have their voices heard"

"We thought this was a good time to stick it to the collectivist, idealist identitarian left."
On Saturday afternoon, a collection of self-described free speech advocates brought the own-the-libs internet into the real world, marching through historic Boston. Purportedly intended as parody of an LGBTQ Pride Parade, the march featured Pepe the Frog cosplayers, members of the far-right street gang the Proud Boys, and alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos as grand marshal riding atop a Trump 2020 float. It ended with a confrontation between attendees and counter-protesters and law enforcement armed with batons and pepper spray.
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:59 AM PST - 80 comments

The mystery inside an Enigma

This notebook simulates an Enigma Machine and visualizes how it works.
posted by zamboni at 10:15 AM PST - 15 comments

Harvard Art Museums begin to address their racist, sexist history

The project shifts which works are displayed side by side in the museums and changes, sometimes dramatically, the words on the walls alongside them. Since February, the museums have been working their way through the collections, rewriting the wall labels that accompany virtually all of their historical works with a mind to presenting a more inclusive, holistic view of art history. A John Singleton Copley portrait of Nicholas Boylston now describes him as having “amassed a fortune sending enslaved Africans and foreign goods to the Americas.”
posted by nightrecordings at 8:43 AM PST - 19 comments

POTUS RPF: Poignant Nostalgia for Libmerica

The Adventures of Barry & Joe: Virginia Heffernan reviews the strange, nostalgic world of Obama-Biden fanfiction. “To clarify: None of this is slash. That’s a blessing. . . . And before we introduce delusions about what might have been, we have an urgent challenge in the present—Trumpism, which can be stopped only with something other than naked cartoons.” [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 8:35 AM PST - 8 comments

Beyond Cyntoia Brown- Criminalized Survivors

These women survived abuse and assault. Now they’re behind bars. Should they be? The case of Cyntoia Brown has sparked a national reassessment of the ways the criminal justice system deals with survivors of abuse...Female, trans, and gender-nonconforming survivors of gender violence who have harmed or killed their abusers are often swept into the penal system with their history of abuse largely ignored. There is no agency that collects official data on the number of survivors incarcerated for defending themselves and no national statistics that track the rate of this criminalization. But according to a 2016 study published by the Vera Institute of Justice, 86 percent of women in jail are survivors of sexual violence, and 77 percent are survivors of intimate partner violence.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:02 AM PST - 4 comments

The Landlord Game

“Klossner said the techniques allegedly used by Tominovic and his network to evade Airbnb and city agencies are common among those operating illegal short-term rental empires. “People are engaging in anti-detection techniques like establishing fake host accounts, so it doesn't look like it is all one person, and using multiple phone numbers, even though it is one person operating multiple units,” said Klossner. “And in this case, clearly there was coaching going on.” How 9 People Built an Illegal $5M Airbnb Empire in New York (Wired)
posted by The Whelk at 5:40 AM PST - 31 comments

Donald was the first child ever diagnosed with autism.

Donald was the first child ever diagnosed with autism. Identified in the annals of autism as “Case 1 … Donald T,” he is the initial subject described in a 1943 medical article that announced the discovery of a condition unlike “anything reported so far,” the complex neurological ailment now most often called an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. At the time, the condition was considered exceedingly rare, limited to Donald and 10 other children—Cases 2 through 11—also cited in that first article. [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 2:39 AM PST - 18 comments