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Will California Create Nation's First Universal Health Care System? [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Is a website that tells you how many people are currently viewing it. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:56 PM PST - 54 comments

The great Barry Cryer has died. Barry Cryer, comedy writer, has died at the age of 86. He wrote for many of the giants of British comedy but is possible best known for the long-running BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, the antidote to panel games.
posted by stanf at 3:14 PM PST - 29 comments

"Why is a typeface named Jim Crow? In the digital era we use typography effortlessly, scrolling through hundreds of options, serif and sans serif, bold and thin, choosing fonts for their aesthetics and legibility. Oftentimes software makes font choices for us, and we go along with the default. It can be easy to think of typography as neutral, disassociated from politics and culture. But of course, typography is made by people, and thus cannot be separated from human history." Sarah K. Kramer on typography, race and the story of J for Jim Crow (The Believer). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:53 PM PST - 7 comments

In 2006, John Cameron Mitchell (writer and director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) released Shortbus, a movie that famously features a whole lot of unsimulated sex. Mark Harris revisits the early days of the making of that film. (NSFW) (archive link)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:15 PM PST - 36 comments

What happened at The Root? Since April, 15 of the site's 16 staffers have quit—the latest in a series of collapses at G/O Media, most recently the AV Club and Jezebel, formerly Deadspin (previously). See also: the mass deletion of pictures from posts across G/O Media in October. For more context, you'd have to go back to the death of the site that eventually became G/O Media: Gawker Was Murdered by Gaslight, and How Things Work (also previously). [more inside]
posted by rorgy at 9:07 AM PST - 44 comments

… for some very important information. Our train, up until just now, consisted of two parts going to different destinations… (SLYT, audio in German, English subtitles available)
posted by wachhundfisch at 8:14 AM PST - 46 comments

"The thousands of hikers who brave Hungary’s Blue Trail each year must face down unexpected obstacles, a bureaucratic, socialist-era stamp system, and a litany of rules. Which begs the obvious question: why bother at all?" [more inside]
posted by kmt at 2:41 AM PST - 10 comments