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Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? It's just hit the US appeals courts. But the crested black macaques of Sulawesi have more immediate concerns than copyright law: they are hunted for meat, kept as pets, and threatened by a shrinking habitat. For these monkeys, it’s a fight for survival.
posted by homunculus at 7:15 PM PST - 22 comments

The game Bloodborne (previously, previously, previously) has a feature known as the Chalice Dungeon (some spoilers in that link, and throughout). Chalice Dungeons are procedurally generated content that allows a player to explore unique challenges, pieced together from a large pool of possible room combinations (similar to a rogue-light). In Chalice Dungeons, intrepid hunters face new enemies, find new items, and experience new boss fights not seen in the main game. However, due to the fact that Bloodborne is a PS4 exclusive, hackers have yet to crack into the game to find whatever secrets might be held within unexplored chalices. A group of hunters, nicknamed Tomb Prospectors, have dedicated themselves to the exploration of this mysterious part of the game (link is directed to Reddit). Patricia Hernandez, writing at Kotaku, has a profile of the group with a little more info about their quest to uncover Bloodborne's last secrets.
posted by codacorolla at 6:27 PM PST - 5 comments

"A short version of the story: there’s a landfill, there’s a fire, there’s nuclear waste left over from the Manhattan Project. People are dying of rare cancers."
posted by Lycaste at 4:49 PM PST - 37 comments

The English-language website of Taiwan's National Palace Museum has over two thousand images available from its archive in high quality scans. You can search by keyword or browse by dynasty and category. For instance, you can take a look at Ming-era paintings, Song-era jade craftworks or Ch'ing-era ceramics. You can also download images from recent expeditions. If you haven't had your fill, you can then browse the museum's Chinese language websites for painting and antiquities, which have a combined 70 thousand images. If you don't know Chinese and want to use the search function, Google Translate might be of some help.
posted by Kattullus at 4:35 PM PST - 5 comments

Glamour magazine asks: Does Mainstream Porn have a Race Problem?
Other excellent articles: The Anti-Blackness of Interracial Porn: "Interracial porn is a present day articulation of miscegenation/antimiscegenation." Pornography and Race: "[Pornographic] films... trade in the long-standing racist myth that black men are more animalistic, sexually violent and less evolved than white men. " Why Are Whites Always the Bottom in Interracial Porn?: "The buyer is white, and he doesn’t want to see it. He wants the Mandingo experience: a forceful submission to a hypersexual, superaggressive, hung-like-the-Florida-Panhandle street thug." An Open Letter To Gay Porn Studios About Interracial Videos: "The pressure for a black man to perform as the insatiable 'mandingo' top is a tired and unimaginative stereotype that does not reflect real life." [more inside]
posted by AFABulous at 3:08 PM PST - 66 comments

One author. One topic. Lots of irrigation.
posted by sibilatorix at 2:52 PM PST - 9 comments

The first teaser trailer for A Wrinkle In Time has been released.
posted by hippybear at 1:25 PM PST - 122 comments

A company staffed and run largely by former convicts is now serving some of the best fried chicken in Ohio.
posted by queen anne's remorse at 12:28 PM PST - 17 comments

Dr. Jen Gunter is an MD who is a board-certified OB/GYN and also an active blogger. She recently took on Gwenyth Paltrow's Goop empire in a blog post where she examined a number of its fraudulent medical claims, citing concern for how, when taken seriously, these claims can negatively affect her patients. In a follow-up post, Gunter has called their response to her science-based criticism "a mansplaining, misogynistic hit job." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:49 AM PST - 94 comments

At 4 days old, Brandless sells household products in minimalist packaging online for $3 or less. It has industry veterans at the helm who see the opportunity to disrupt the market and $50 million from willing investors. How do you brand "brandless"? You start by trademarking a white box listing its descriptors like organic, non-GMO, no added sugar, no artificial preservatives, and gluten free. [more inside]
posted by Chipeaux at 9:31 AM PST - 108 comments

Researchers at Facebook realized their bots were chattering in a new language. Then they stopped it.
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:47 AM PST - 42 comments

If You Hear Someone Getting Harassed In An Online Game, Don't Stay Silent by Cecilia D'Anastasio [Kotaku]

“I think we’d do better with a healer,” I suggested to my Overwatch team earlier this week. We were in the spawn room defending the Temple of Anubis and, without a healer, we would quickly forfeit the objective. Not even the slightest pause passed before a teammate told me that, instead, “What we need is another man.”

This frustrating incident was sandwiched between two other matches, and in each, a teammate had snarked on my gender after I had attempted to strategize through voice chat. Earlier, I was referred to as “that fuckin’ bitch” when I asked whether we felt good about our team composition. And, in the spawn room of Horizon Lunar Colony later that night, after wishing my team good luck, I was asked: “Can you play? I just want to know. I’m so curious. Do you know how to play Overwatch?” On no occasion did any other player on these six-person teams say anything about it.
posted by Fizz at 7:41 AM PST - 59 comments

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, known for her exceptional contributions in dynamics, hyperbolic geometry, and the theory of Riemann surfaces (e.g. this collection of papers and the results here (all pdf)), as well as for being the first woman to win the Fields Medal, often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics", has died of cancer, aged 40. One can find her work here.
posted by busted_crayons at 6:07 AM PST - 65 comments

The just-released (and unfortunately Windows-only) Mega Maker allows players to use a simple interface to build and share Mega Man levels using selected assets from the original games. There's a trailer here and you might want to read this interview with the creator about his process, comparisons to Mario Maker, and why he's not concerned about the possibility of a DMCA takedown. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:50 AM PST - 17 comments

Alex Jones rants remixed as a Bon Iver song (slyt)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:27 AM PST - 18 comments