MetaFilter

Comics and Cowardice: a twine essay about how those in comics lie about their own work, ignore, excuse, or even celebrate bigotry, and quietly tolerate harassers in their field. Furry writer and comics critic Colin Spacetwinks comes for the comics industry, with receipts, in a 75,000-word Pay-What-You-Want Twine essay.

Cowards made by complicity, cowards made by dishonesty, cowards made by a desire to be praised and an even greater desire to avoid all negative response. Comics runs on cowardice, because it is run by cowards. And I'm hardly the first person to point all this out. This piece doesn't exist without dozens of people pointing out all the problems in comics, on the page and off of it, that have been ritually, systematically, ignored. When you say "comics has problems", people in comics will nod their heads and agree. When you say "and these are specifically the things and people contributing to those problems", everybody can't run away fast enough.

[more inside]
posted by nicebookrack at 10:06 PM PST - 35 comments

There are two instantly recognizable recording studio sounds: Sun & Muscle Shoals. This first link is a playlist from the manager of Sun Studios of the most important songs recorded there. Then there's a CMT series about the nascent days of Sun Studio CMT series, showcasing the glory days with Presley, Perkins, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and more. Then there's the Muscle Shoals studio that drew all sorts of musicians from all the world and now (2013) there a documentary about it Muscle Shoals All music and people I grew up with and still love.
posted by MovableBookLady at 6:24 PM PST - 30 comments

According to detailed analysis of skeletal measurements, Homo floresiensis (previouslies) is most closely related to Homo habilis. "Although the remains of H. floresiensis date to the relatively recent past (roughly 60,000 years ago), their closest relatives appear to have lived two million years ago in Africa." Original paper.
posted by clawsoon at 5:32 PM PST - 6 comments

Translation Fails (SLBFL)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:49 PM PST - 42 comments

dCode is a French and English site that is hundreds of en/decoding, de/cyphering, and other mathematical and puzzle making/ solving tools, from Alberti cipher (Wikipedia) and Navajo code (Wiki), to inverse of a matrix and Knuth's arrows (Wiki).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Updated your mental image of a dinosaur to include feathers? You're probably still not picturing a plausible animal, much less a realistic depiction of a dinosaur. Artist C.M. Kosemen points out that paleoart historically has just "skinned" the fossiled remains, creating improbable creature designs that lack all kinds of soft tissue and features that wouldn't show up in most fossils. To illustrate our collective failures of imagination, he's re-envisioned swans, baboons, elephants, zebras, hippos and rhinos as if they were drawn by future paleontologists working only from fossilized remains.
posted by deludingmyself at 12:35 PM PST - 38 comments

Germany's federal election was held today. Latest projections (in English) indicate drastic losses for chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats and her coalition partner Social Democrats. Far-right Alternative for Germany is to enter federal parliament for the first time. [more inside]
posted by blasser duenner Junge at 11:54 AM PST - 79 comments

Allison Page for Medium: Honest Theatre Awards
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:55 AM PST - 28 comments

Several dozen tradition-minded Roman Catholic theologians, priests and academics have formally accused Pope Francis of spreading heresy with his 2016 opening to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. In a 25-page letter delivered to Francis last month and provided Saturday to The Associated Press, the 62 signatories issued a “filial correction” to the pope — a measure they said hadn’t been employed since the 14th century. [more inside]
posted by aqsakal at 6:01 AM PST - 67 comments

A Short Trip is an interactive illustration by Alexander Perrin. Use left and right arrows to move. Requires WebGL so may not work in all browsers.
posted by gwint at 6:00 AM PST - 31 comments

The hooded grebe is a bird found in isolated lakes in the most remote parts of Patagonia. Sadly, it's critically endangered, but certainly not for lack of an awesome courtship dance (SLYT with rare footage)
posted by Harald74 at 12:15 AM PST - 17 comments