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Last summer, the Rocky Fire, followed by the Valley Fire, followed by the Jerusalem Fire, tore through Lake County, California. Yesterday, the Clayton Fire began. Now, just over 24 hours later, the fire is at 2000 acres with 5% containment, and has destroyed most of Lower Lake. Thousands are evacuating in a small community that is primarily low-income families, and there are reports that the elementary and high school are burning. Once again, the traditional news organisations are less useful than Twitter in distributing updates, videos, and devastating pictures. Many people following the fire on Twitter have had to teach the traditional media how to use Twitter. [more inside]
posted by guster4lovers at 6:21 PM PST - 24 comments

President Obama's Summer Reading List [The Guardian] The White House released [whitehouse.gov] Barack Obama’s summer reading list on Friday as the first family vacationed in Martha’s Vineyard. It’s a mix of prize-winning novels and the memoir of a surfer who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, something the president can appreciate. [Previously.] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 3:49 PM PST - 61 comments

Explore the Peutinger Map is a website companion to Prof. Richard J. A. Talbert's Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Google Books, Amazon). It presents The Peutinger Map in different ways, including with overlays and lists of geographical features. But what's The Peutinger Map? Also known as Tabula Peutingeriana, it is a Medieval copy of highly stylized 4th Century map of the Roman road network, extending to India. Jacob Ford explains why it is often compared to modern public transit maps [pdf] and then redraws one section as a New York Metro map. Euratlas has scans of the Medieval manuscript stored at the Austrian National Library and Wikimedia Commons has a high quality scan of Konrad Miller's authoritative 1888 facsimile edition.
posted by Kattullus at 12:45 PM PST - 22 comments

Why Does Hollywood Have A Problem With Unfeminine Girls? [spoilers for Stranger Things]
posted by AFABulous at 12:38 PM PST - 96 comments

Moirai is 10-minute-long free game that you should play without reading anything about it besides maybe this RPS article. [more inside]
posted by Memo at 12:28 PM PST - 45 comments

Hard Times in Venezuela Breed Malaria as Desperate Flock to Mines. "With the economy in tatters, at least 70,000 people from all walks of life have been streaming into this mining region over the past year, said Jorge Moreno, a leading mosquito expert in Venezuela. As they hunt for gold in watery pits, the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread the disease, they are catching malaria by the tens of thousands." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:29 AM PST - 7 comments

Nicky Siano is an iconic disco DJ credited with being the first person to beat match successive songs. He was a founder of seminal disco club, The Gallery. Here is 4+ hours of his Last Party playlist, from his 60th birthday bash.
posted by OmieWise at 11:16 AM PST - 3 comments

William "Barry" Brockett of Tallahassee, FL, is the 34rd grand-prize winner of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges writers to concoct the worst opening sentence of a hypothetical novel. (Or, to look at it another way, the best sentence in the genre of "bad opening sentences.") The full list of winners, runners-up, and dishonorable mentions. [more inside]
posted by Shmuel510 at 10:08 AM PST - 19 comments

L Delaney is an artist who creates miniatures that look like they belong in a haunted house. [more inside]
posted by ilovewinter at 9:54 AM PST - 5 comments

Every Joke in Airplane!, Ranked. We rated each joke only in reference to other Airplane! jokes. Airplane! threes and fours are probably equivalent to most other movies’ nines and tens.
posted by EmGeeJay at 9:03 AM PST - 79 comments