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A German court has ruled hangovers are an "illness", in a case against the maker of an anti-hangover drink. (Title from the charmingly inept Google translation of the court's press release.)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:15 PM PST - 25 comments

Wibmer's Law, an eight minute city biking video from Fabio Wibmer chock full of trials stunts, with a charming amount of narrative throughline.
posted by cortex at 5:20 PM PST - 20 comments

Portishead's Beth Gibbons performs the final movement of Górecki's Symphony No. 3 and it is everything.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:53 PM PST - 21 comments

In response to the revelation that the Trump administration had used government aid to Ukraine to attempt to force the nation to provide opposition materials against Joe Biden with regards to his son Hunter, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has formally announced the creation of an inquiry to investigate and pursue articles of impeachment against the President. (SLWaPo) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:59 PM PST - 1949 comments

For the last year, photographer and FIT professor Jessica Wynne has been photographing mathematicians' blackboards, finding surprising art (SLNYT) in the dusty symbols of conjecture, argument, and speculation. Her book "Do Not Erase" is due to be published by Princeton University Press in 2020. And straight to my wish list, once I figure out where and how to pre-order.
posted by cross_impact at 2:09 PM PST - 16 comments

Astronomy, exoplanets, astroengineering, the search for extraterrestrial life & intelligence, futurism and interstellar travel. [more inside]
posted by surlyben at 12:27 PM PST - 9 comments

Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, has passed away at the age of 78. In addition to being a formative member of the band, he was a poet and a musician in his own right. Take a moment to explore a thorough collection of his lyrics at dead.net.
posted by vverse23 at 11:34 AM PST - 68 comments

"Some people “just know” how to get across campus and back to their car. I have very limited abilities in any of these realms, but I have developed another set of skills. I know how to remain calm. I know how to ask questions. I have my paperwork in order." Heather Sellers, the author of the memoir You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, offers the essay "Where Am I?" (Longreads), a lengthy reflection on recognizing and reckoning with her severe difficulties with respect to spatial relationships and perceiving direction.
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:29 AM PST - 40 comments

What could Holmes (or anyone else) learn from strolling past a house while sniffing DNS queries? Quite a lot, actually. That's why encrypting DNS is important, and why some people aren't keen on it. This short-short story about Watson and Holmes is a nice little introduction to why it matters.
posted by zenzenobia at 9:51 AM PST - 27 comments

Vice debunks wellness myths, all in one handy list. A look into what the real science says about apple cider vinegar as a cure-all, whether gluten-free food is healthier, whether detoxing is good for you, microwaves and radiation risks, the benefits of colonics, and whether antiperspirant causes breast cancer and Alzheimer’s, to name a few.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:31 AM PST - 117 comments

In 1894, Nikola Tesla showed off some of his alternating current experiments and equipment to a couple famous friends (Tesla Society), as he recounted in in a pre-hearing interview with Nikola Tesla by his legal counsel in 1916. In this instance, they were Joseph Jefferson, an actor (Wikipedia), and satirist Mark Twain, who got a bit of electrotherapy to help his bowels (Science Vibe). Irish Times has a bit more on the friendship of Tesla and Twain.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:32 AM PST - 16 comments

A map of Scots women accused and tried for witchcraft, from the University of Edinburgh. [via]
posted by Think_Long at 6:25 AM PST - 14 comments

The Day One Agenda - "Without signing a single new law, the next president can lower prescription drug prices, cancel student debt, break up the big banks, give everybody who wants one a bank account, counteract the dominance of monopoly power, protect farmers from price discrimination and unfair dealing, force divestment from fossil fuel projects, close a slew of tax loopholes, hold crooked CEOs accountable, mandate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, allow the effective legalization of marijuana, make it easier for 800,000 workers to join a union, and much, much more. We have compiled a series of essays to explain precisely how, and under what authority, the next president can accomplish all this."[1] (via)
posted by kliuless at 6:14 AM PST - 57 comments

What's Your Weirdest Video Game Ritual? [Kotaku] On the latest episode of Kotaku's Splitscreen gaming podcast, listener Annie asked our hosts Jason, Maddy, & Kirk the following question:

“I’ll keep this brief, but for context, I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey since I bought it last week (I know, I’m very late to the party). One of my favorite parts of the game is the mercenary/bounty hunter tier system. Since my first mercenary kill, I’ve made it a tradition for myself and my friends that play the game with me to throw the body of every defeated mercenary into the nearest body of natural water as if it were a sign of respect. We also salute the screen and fire a single arrow into the sky. We will do this even if we are in a pretty landlocked territory of the game. There is absolutely no real purpose to doing this, it’s just hilarious to us and we do it solely out of tradition. Do you guys have any weird unscripted video game traditions? (i.e., things that you’ll always do that aren’t required in the game at all?)”

We’ve heard some good ones already—a listener who plays Breath of the Wild solely as a pescatarian, one who does push-ups after every Call of Duty loss, and one who sticks their hand out and makes the peace symbol, à la Mario in Super Mario World, every time they finish a video game level.
posted by Fizz at 5:56 AM PST - 65 comments

Digital archaeologists John Aycock and Tara Copplestone investigate the Atari 2600 game Entombed; running it under emulation and disassembling the machine code, only to find that nobody understands how the game's maze generation algorithm works. The algorithm, which runs in the limited space of the 2600 (where storing pre-made mazes would not have been viable), leans heavily on idiosyncrasies elsewhere in the code and is driven by a mysterious lookup table, manages to avoid generating any unsolvable mazes; rewriting the algorithm in Python shed no light on it. The original developer of the algorithm was unreachable, but coworkers recount him having been “a stoner” who came up with the logic while “drunk and whacked out of his brain” and coded it before passing out. [more inside]
posted by acb at 3:58 AM PST - 46 comments

"They also make up the opponents themselves, Reed is focused on rebutting imaginary liberals, quoting liberals piecemeal rather than engaging in actual ideology. To avoid acknowledging there is a centuries old movement that Socialism and Christianity are intertwined through years of scholarship and inquiry, well, he has to make stuff up." Christian Communist DESTROYS PragerU with FACTS AND LOGIC (YouTube) (36:67) (Yaz previously 'Does Alpha Centarui have an Ideology'?)
posted by The Whelk at 2:48 AM PST - 19 comments

The birthplace of Japanese denim has nearly 40 specialist shops to browse and gain an insight into the history and craftsmanship behind the world’s best jeans
posted by Mrs Potato at 2:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Revered by horror fans and largely unknown to the general public, cult film icon Sid Haig has passed away. [more inside]
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 2:06 AM PST - 21 comments