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"I do not hate my body, because such a thing would be pointless, shortsighted. You cannot hate an animal for what she is, especially one who bears your ungrateful mind through this terrible world. And anyway, how do you hate something who marks her territory so dramatically, with such violence and panache? Who reminds you, with each step, I am here, I am here, I am here?" Carmen Maria Machado on her unruly body. [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 11:40 PM PST - 7 comments

US-based socialist magazine Jacobin's recent Childhood issue featured a novel insert: Jacobin's first children's book, More Bats, written by Jacob Kramer and illustrated by Malina Omut. Kramer says, "More Bats is a playful reimagining of what might happen if our society prioritized maximizing bat populations, instead of our current model, which allocates most resources to the military industrial complex." He has since collaborated with illustrator K-Fai Steele on Noodlephant, a kids' book about elephants, kangaroos, rebellion, power, and community action. Book trailer here.
posted by duffell at 7:41 PM PST - 12 comments

The clampdown on opioid prescriptions is hurting pain patients. "A report released last month by Human Rights Watch paints a cautionary and at times harrowing picture of what pain patients are experiencing today. Because of well-intended efforts to address the overdose crisis, many doctors are severely limiting opioid prescriptions. Patients who rely on opioid analgesics are being forcibly weaned off the medication or seeing their prescriptions significantly reduced. Other patients are unable to find doctors willing to treat them at all." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 2:32 PM PST - 117 comments

You may know True Stories as a 1986 movie by Talking Heads with an accompanying album. What isn't widely known is there is a second album, released on vinyl and cassette only -- Sounds From True Stories: Music For Activities Freaks, a score album from the movie [41m]. It's worth a listen! Side A: Cocktail Desperado (Terry Allen And The Panhandle Mystery Band), Road Song (Meredith Monk), Freeway Son (David Byrne), Brownie's Theme (David Byrne), Mall Muzak: Building A Highway / Puppy Polka / Party Girls (Carl Finch), Dinner Music (Kronos Quartet) [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:15 PM PST - 23 comments

Which way do you draw an X? Colored line being the first stroke. [Twitter]
posted by Fizz at 2:03 PM PST - 158 comments

With a win at the PGA Green Book is now the lead contender for 2019's Academy Award for Best Picture. Oh dear.
posted by Artw at 1:53 PM PST - 55 comments

The Fable Cottage - classic fairytales retold in modern English, French, Spanish, Italian and German, with native-speaker audio and other nice features for language learners. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 12:33 PM PST - 3 comments

"The Plot Against George Soros." Hannes Grassegger (Twitter) describes how two American political consultants launched an anti-Soros campaign, and how it then went viral. (SLBuzzfeed; originally appeared in German and with some differences)
posted by doctornemo at 12:26 PM PST - 20 comments

Cloughmills Crochet Club has been astounded by the attention their wool creation has attracted. Members of the close knit County Antrim group have been interviewed by national and local media and now their story has reached American online magazine, Atlas Obscura, based in New York. [more inside]
posted by cynical pinnacle at 11:41 AM PST - 17 comments

This Science Fiction Novelist Created a Feminist Language from Scratch - "Can a language be designed specifically to express the thoughts and feelings of women? In 1984, the linguist Suzette Haden Elgin wrote a science fiction novel to test this question. The result was Native Tongue, a dystopian tale of a future America that has been widely compared to The Handmaid's Tale. It was a pioneering feminist experiment, sold as a paperback original with a big green alien on the cover." (via; previously)
posted by kliuless at 11:11 AM PST - 24 comments

Shoshana Zuboff has a new book published which welcomes us to the age of surveillance capitalism. (LA Times)
The Guardian's tech editor John Naughton has a 10 question and answer session with her.
Once we thought of digital services as free, but now surveillance capitalists think of us as free.
posted by adamvasco at 11:06 AM PST - 13 comments

if you only look at one picture of a duck today, let it be this one [twitter] [threadreader] [more inside]
posted by moonmilk at 8:16 AM PST - 41 comments

“I remember one day, my son, who was 7 or 8, had drawn me a picture of a hybrid robotic football-player-slash-cowboy. He was really sold: ‘You should do this! It would be so cool!’" The secret history of Cleatus, Fox Sports’s bizarre football robot.
posted by How the runs scored at 4:28 AM PST - 25 comments

Eels eat pizza
posted by not_the_water at 12:51 AM PST - 69 comments