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September 11, 2001: US airspace is closed to plane travel after the WTC attacks, and nearly 40 planes were diverted to the small Newfoundland town of Gander, stranding around 7000 people in a town of ~10,000 for several days. An unlikely subject for a Broadway musical, you might say. But NPR has a first listen of the Original Cast Album for the show Come From Away, and it's a fun, witty, soulful work that is worth a listen.
posted by hippybear at 11:33 PM PST - 23 comments

Follow the bouncing ball, kids, and sing along with 1905's most risqué tune, set to animation in a (pre-Hays-Code-enforcement) 1932 short intended for movie palace singalongs in the earliest days of the talkie: In My Merry Oldsmobile.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:52 PM PST - 12 comments

Actors did a meticulous recreation of excepts from the debates, and there was discussion from the audience afterwards. "Salvatore cast fellow educational theatre faculty Rachel Whorton to play “Brenda King,” a female version of Trump, and Daryl Embry to play “Jonathan Gordon,” a male version of Hillary Clinton, and coached them as they learned the candidates’ words and gestures."
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:39 PM PST - 40 comments

And it is then, fifteen minutes since the belt snapped, as he stands on the ice floe in nothing but his running shoes and underwear, that the situation becomes clear. Sergey Ananov is trapped on a slab of ice in the Arctic Circle. He has no locator beacon, no phone, and barely any water. The fog will hide him from any rescuers. Night will come. Hypothermia will come. And whatever large, powerful creatures that scratch out their existence in this primordial world—maybe they will come too.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:03 PM PST - 5 comments

Tired of reading about the monsters wreaking havoc in Washington, DC? Here are 25 other places to see yetis, sea monsters, Sasquatch, and other cryptids.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:48 PM PST - 18 comments

American Jazz Pianist with a partially-disabled right-hand from polio. NYT and a documentary, Horace Parlan by Horace Parlan
posted by falsedmitri at 4:31 PM PST - 10 comments

On Tuesday, citizens of St. Louis go to the polls to choose their first new mayor in sixteen years. Progressive city treasurer Tishaura Jones is running against the outgoing mayor's legacy, the entrenched culture of the city's Board of Aldermen, and a well-funded front runner who once said panhandlers prefer begging to regular employment because it's "more lucrative." [more inside]
posted by roast beef at 3:49 PM PST - 13 comments

"Ever since I heard of the inclusion of Archie Bunker's chair in a Smithsonian display I have wondered if the Institute might have interest in something of mine.... I have kept the dress I wore with Bob Hope in his 1966 Viet Nam Expedition. (YT, Bob Hope Special January 18th, 1967) Even if I end up in the zoo or with the mammals, I would be honored. Congratulations on your gigantic projects. Godspeed. Phyllis Diller" That's how the National Museum of American History ended up with Diller’s 48-drawer metal filing cabinet, each drawer filled with neatly organized cards that contain 50,000 jokes—give or take a knee slapper or two. And now you can help transcribe Phyllis Diller's gag file.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:24 AM PST - 19 comments

Ten years of instrument-a-day From the original Projects post: Every February, I try to make a new musical instrument (in the loosest-possible sense) every day of the month. Nearly all of them are documented in photos and/or video. I just finished the tenth year of instrument-a-day. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by xingcat at 10:47 AM PST - 5 comments

Deep Elon Musk is a twitter bot and an AI trained on Elon's transcripts.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:18 AM PST - 7 comments

SNAKISMS by Pippin Barr (previously on mefi): 21 variations on the classic game of Snake, based on 21 different philosophical isms. Barr wrote about the process of developing SNAKISMS.
posted by moonmilk at 10:07 AM PST - 14 comments

European honeybees have been seen for the first time "bee-balling" Japanese yellow hornets: swarming around a hornet, forming a tight vibrating ball and then cooking it to death with their own body heat. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 9:34 AM PST - 32 comments

Who are you in 1917 Russia? Товарищи! We are about to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the February Revolution. Time to brush up on your knowledge of the rather eventful months that followed it or, if you find yourself in London, go admire the art that sprung from it. But isn't the most important question to answer, as times of trouble seem to arise again in Europe and America, what would we have done 100 years ago in the unbelievably complex political landscape of revolutionary Russia? Knowing that for sure, wouldn't we be better armed to face today's struggles and determine who to ally with, who to banish and who to summarily execute? Take that test, comrades, and you shall have that knowledge.
posted by susuman at 8:40 AM PST - 56 comments

A new study suggests "the crowded life is a slow life." The study concludes that increased population density may encourage people to adopt a slow life strategy. Such a strategy focuses more on planning for the long-term future and includes tactics like preferring long-term romantic relationships, having fewer children and investing more in education. [more inside]
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:40 AM PST - 20 comments

"When the dust finally settled Saturday on Northern Ireland's snap assembly election, it became clear a new political reality now awaits voters there. . . . The result, which also handed fewer seats to a smattering of other parties, leaves unionists without a firm majority — and thus without veto power — for the first time since Ireland was partitioned in 1921, according to Reuters. The Irish Independent reports that all told, the assembly now has '40 unionists and 39 nationalist/republicans, with the remainder of the 90 MLAs affiliated to neither tradition.'" (via NPR) [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 7:22 AM PST - 37 comments

Das kleine Krokodil - a gentle, 11-minute cartoon from the fondly-remembered German series Janoschs Traumstunde, good for a quiet Sunday morning. You can turn on good German subtitles or adequate automatically-translated English ones. The series ran for years, so there are plenty more if you like. There is nothing extreme, insane, or intense about any of it whatsoever.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:22 AM PST - 11 comments

The Canoe - a film by Goh Iromoto. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave at 5:46 AM PST - 8 comments

Squee! Animals sticking out their tongue.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:37 AM PST - 22 comments