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"Being in someone’s wedding is a special privilege. It’s also often a ton of work and includes paying more money than one expected for clothes, bachelorette parties, and other assorted wedding activities. And it’s also frequently time-consuming and an emotional commitment (especially if the bride becomes difficult) (and almost all brides do). So does a bridesmaid ever owe the bride a gift besides his/her time, love, and understanding?" From the etiquette section of Gizmodo's "I Thee Dread" section: Angry Bride: How Do I Confront a Bridesmaid Who Didn't Give a Gift? [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:37 PM PST - 208 comments

Baseball, perhaps more than any sport, is always straddling that delicate line between old school and new.
posted by MoonOrb at 9:11 PM PST - 5 comments

How Snoopy killed Peanuts. "By the end of its run in 1999, Peanuts was an institution. It had become an omnipresent part of American culture, and that’s not a compliment."
posted by goatdog at 8:13 PM PST - 121 comments

Courtesy of Turkish YouTube user Burç Arda Gül, highlights from This is Tom Jones, a variety show that ran on ATV in the UK and ABC in the US from 1969-1971.
Raise Your Hand, with Janis Joplin
Delta Lady, with Joe Cocker
Medley, with Stevie Wonder
Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home, with Tony Bennett
I Walk the Line, with Johnny and June Carter Cash
Hard to Handle, with some enthusiastic audience members.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:25 PM PST - 30 comments

There are two routes to literary immortality: [Pepsi-Infinite-Blue] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:40 PM PST - 33 comments

In 2013, if you were a man between the ages of 20 and 49 who’d died, the most likely cause was not assault nor car crash nor drug abuse nor heart attack, but a decision that you didn’t wish to live any more. [more inside]
posted by bswinburn at 12:15 PM PST - 186 comments

Ann Coulter is a human being
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:14 PM PST - 138 comments

The criminals' alphabet (UK edition). You want some or what, Charlie Big Spuds?
posted by the quidnunc kid at 11:19 AM PST - 15 comments

Angry eagle attacks UAV: How do drones affect wildlife? "This is the last thing a small bird sees when a Wedge-Tailed Eagle decides that you are dinner"
posted by Michele in California at 11:12 AM PST - 31 comments

On August 5th, EPA workers and contractors from Environmental Restoration accidentally released 3 million gallons of mine wastewater -- including massive amounts of arsenic, cadmium, and lead -- into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River and part of the Colorado River Basin. The visible toxic plume took nearly a week to dissipate, and the EPA says that the river nearest the spill "has returned to pre-event water quality levels." [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:51 AM PST - 21 comments

The White House released two Spotify playlists of songs on Friday morning, one for day and one for night, that were hand-picked by President Barack Obama. [more inside]
posted by adept256 at 10:31 AM PST - 35 comments

"The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions."
posted by box at 9:52 AM PST - 219 comments

In the United States, only 22 states require that sex education should be taught in their schools. Of those, only 13 insist upon medical accuracy. There is no federal standard. As a result, classroom lessons that teach purity culture – the idea that virginity is a state of moral accomplishment – are pervasive. John Oliver's Last Week Tonight covers Sex Education in America. (NSFW) The end of the segment features a modern sex education video created by LWT, narrated by several celebrities (including Laverne Cox, Nick Offerman, Jonathan Banks, Kristen Schaal and Aisha Tyler) that touches on topics outdated lessons may be ignoring. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:11 AM PST - 45 comments

There is this profound dissonance between what the administration is saying about its desire to close Guantanamo and what it is actually doing.
In an extremely rare legal manoeuvre, the Obama administration has challenged a legal request to free a hunger-striking Guantánamo Bay detainee entirely in secret.
Meanwhile the Guardian reveals that it is the The Pentagon that is blocking the return of UK permanent resident Shaker Aamer and two other longtime Guantánamo Bay detainees for whom the US Department of State has completed diplomatic deals to transfer home.
The contravention of the president’s orders indicates that there is a profound problem with the state of democracy in America.
posted by adamvasco at 7:47 AM PST - 57 comments

Alternative nation’s last stand: Lollapalooza 1995, an oral history (WPost)
posted by OmieWise at 4:53 AM PST - 32 comments

Attractive entrepreneurs get more funding – but only if they're male. The research paper "Investors prefer entrepreneurial ventures pitched by attractive men", written by researchers at Harvard, Wharton School and MIT, found the gender and attractiveness of entrepreneurs have a significant effect on whether their business ventures will receive funding. [more inside]
posted by modernnomad at 3:46 AM PST - 22 comments