"To be sure, the worry is not that the AMOC is on the verge of a complete stop. The fear is that it will cross a pivotal threshold, and then begin a decline that is unstoppable. ... It follows, then, that you’d wonder how close we humans are to that threshold. Perhaps you’d heard about the AMOC’s frailty; the shutdown threat; maybe even the decades of fighting among scientists as they try to fathom this gigantic, interconnected, barely understood current. But it was only rather recently that someone dared to go right to the core and ask: How much time do we have left before the AMOC breaks?" How Soon Might The Atlantic Ocean Break, in Wired (archive), on the work of Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen to understand the timing of what's happening to the AMOC. - 1 comments

As the 2024 Paris Olympics opens (with sabotage by unknown actors), it's time to look back at one of the biggest marketing missteps of the Olympics - the McDonald's "When the US Wins, You Win" campaign of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. - 10 comments

The Tour Divide is an unsupported race of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, a 2,745 mile/4,418 km route with over 200,000 feet/61,000 metres of climbing stretching from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. This year 15 year-old Edyn Teitge became the youngest finisher ever completing it in 19 days, 13 hours, and 14 minutes. - 8 comments

Like many other filetypes (Office, OpenDocument, EPUB, JAR), WinAmp skins (WSZ) are secretly just ZIP files with specific contents and their own file extension. Jordan Eldredge, the creator and maintainer of the WinAmp Skin Museum (previously, again), investigated a variety of corrupt skins, and from there found a wide variety of interesting stuff, including text and audio files, images, a simple game, and other WinAmp skins, many previously unknown. - 9 comments

Welcome to the Agora of Flancia! - 5 comments

Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Representatives Hank Johnson (GA-04), Jerry Nadler (NY-12), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Adam Schiff (CA-30) have cosponsored The Judiciary Act, not just calling for Supreme Court reform, but introducing (again and again, since 2021 if I'm reading this correctly) actual legislation to make it happen. - 17 comments

In an interview with noted right wing figure and transphobe Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk attacked his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, proceeding to deadname her while calling her "dead" because she transitioned, and saying he was "tricked" into signing off on her gender affirming care. In response, Wilson has given an interview with NBC News in which she details how Musk was both an abusive and absentee father while she was growing up, and how he lied about her interests growing up as well as his signing off on her care. - 71 comments

In Japan, Turning the Tables on Rude Customers NYT: in Japan, there's a word, "kasuhara" that translates into "customer harassment." Customers harassing workers have gotten so extreme that now businesses are fighting back instead of kissing customer booty. - 20 comments

This short gen fic from a cat's point of view amused me: If Comfy, Warm, and My Size, Why No Sit: A Meta-analysis of Research into the Warm Flat Rectangle by Dr Fluffy Jones - 21 comments

Marsh Family Songs: "Didn't like the way this J.D. Vance bloke (newly picked as Trump's running mate) slagged off the UK lately. Looked into him. Not great. Made a parody song inspired by ABBA called "Vance VP"" - 67 comments

Flaming Puck Hockey is a thing. - 8 comments

The National Trust offers an alphabetical examination of its many bums - 10 comments

Generating sudokus for fun and no profit – Once upon a time, I decided to create a complete Sudoku application as my grandma wanted to play some Sudokus on her computer, and I wasn't satisfied with the free offers available. The project went on for some years and finally led to sudoku.tn1ck.com - a free and open source Sudoku app without any tracking. While working on it, I went down the rabbit hole of generating Sudokus of a specified "human perceived" difficulty and accidentally created a quite thorough analysis of it... - 6 comments

"France's easy-to-make yoghurt cake recipe relies on volume measures facilitated by the ubiquitous 125g terracotta yoghurt pot." Bringing Up Bébé’s Yogurt Cake Recipe. Yogurt cakes seem to do well with citrus. Yogurt research continues[SLPDF], as does functional cake research. There is also cake research, of course, which is not to be confused with cake ingredient science. - 19 comments

Raising his paddles in every major auction, Philbrick became a constant presence at all of the stops in the “circus,” as art collectors call it: the Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips auctions; Art Basel Miami and Switzerland; Frieze London; the New York art fairs; and beyond. He became the darling of what one observer calls “the new collecting class,” to whom he offered something as coveted as the art itself: the VIP treatment. “You don’t want to buy a ticket,” the observer says. “That’s déclassé…. He was offering access to a lifestyle.” from The Confessions of Inigo Philbrick, Art Fraudster Extraordinaire [Vanity Fair; ungated] - 13 comments

The high court in the Buckeye State ruled 4-3 that bones are not a foreign substance and that the customer should have assumed a boneless chicken wing may still have bones. - 56 comments

A (not-so) Quick and Dirty Guide for 4-Year Fans of Rhythmic Gymnastics Back in May, Reddit user freifraufischer posted a detailed look at the runup to the Olympics for rhythmic gymnastics, with dozens of links to gorgeous routines with the ball, hoops, ribbon and clubs, as well as info about RG's byzantine scoring system, recent judging scandal and years of domination by the horrifically brutal (and recently banned) Russian coach Irina Viner. - 5 comments

In California's Central Valley, 2100 acres of farmland have been changed from farmland into rain-water catchment. It refills the aquifers and prevents floods. "In addition to these two functions, the restored swamp also sequesters an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that produced by thousands of gas-powered vehicles. It also provides a haven for migratory birds and other species that have faced the threat of extinction." - 14 comments