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Yesterday, South Korea's Kim Jong-woo was crowned the most "inspiring gentleman" at Mister Global 2019. Imgur Link to contestant national costumes. Mister Global (wiki link) is an annual male beauty pageant held in Thailand.
posted by xdvesper at 11:22 PM PST - 33 comments

From Rolling Stone: Twelve years ago, a catchy New Wave anthem appeared on the internet with no information about who wrote or recorded it. Amateur detectives have spent thousands of hours since trying to figure out where it came from — with little luck. Inside the question that’s been driving the internet crazy for years [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:35 PM PST - 63 comments

A short woodworking video: creating a perpetual flip calendar. Author notes the design was derived from diagrams in US patents 1716222 and 1681235.
posted by cortex at 3:47 PM PST - 12 comments

What makes dogs so special and successful? Love. (non-WaPo link here)

Cats bond with their people too, study finds.
‘He brought me a tissue when I was ill’: the moment readers realised their cat loves them.

Facebook poster Meu Pequeno Pet shows us how sleeping dogs lie.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:23 PM PST - 41 comments

Prachi Gupta on the sudden death of her brother, her deep love and complicated grief, and the MRA mindset that led him to make a fatal decision. (cw: domestic violence, misogyny, suicide attempt)
posted by Countess Elena at 1:06 PM PST - 17 comments

We are presenting this overlooked chapter in the history of flimflam for two reasons. First, so that if you overhear someone loudly and repeatedly using the word infortunate in your local watering hole you do not wager money with them, and second, as inspiration for any screenwriters who need a plot device for a heist/scam/caper that's not a rehashed version of “charming protagonist steals money from unlikeable villain; hilarity ensues.”
posted by Etrigan at 12:46 PM PST - 21 comments

Broadway lights will dim Friday night in honour of Phyllis Newman, who passed away September 15th, 2019. Phyllis (NYTimes obit) won the 1962 Tony for her featured actress turn in Subways Are For Sleeping, playing Martha Vail, with her memorable song “I Was a Shoo-In.” Apparently she was, because she beat out Barbara Streisand for the Tony that year. She was also the recipient of the inaugural Isabelle Stevenson Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Tonys for her decades-long work with the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative, now part of The Actors Fund, which strives to provide funding for women in the entertainment industry facing serious and expensive health conditions. Newman herself was a breast cancer survivor, and wrote a memoir chronicling her life and fight against the illness, called “Just In Time: Notes From My Life.” [Disclaimer - I worked as an archivist for Phyllis’ estate on a grad school internship in 2009-2010.] [more inside]
posted by ilana at 11:24 AM PST - 9 comments

A group of veterinarians, a dental surgeon and a designer had just formed a group called the “Animal Avengers” that help animals who have been struck by tragedy. Freddy the Tortoise was their first patient. [more inside]
posted by twilightlost at 10:26 AM PST - 4 comments

Genes from an extinct “ghost ape” live on in modern bonobos (Ars Technica). Because apes have their natural habitat in the trees of the rainy tropical forest, with an acidic soil where the organic matter decomposes very quickly, the fossil record for our closest relatives is poor, but genetic data in living bonobos could help fill in gaps (BioTech Spain, paywalled Nature Ecology & Evolution article). Similar, but different: earlier this year, David Gokhman summoned a ghost, using information for 32 skeletal features encoded in DNA that was extracted from a pinky bone. DNA reveals first look at enigmatic human relative, providing more details of the physical structure of Denisovans (National Geographic; full article from Cell).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:30 AM PST - 6 comments

Roy Cohn, The Most Hated Gay Man in America (The Nib) "Everybody knows, too, that the grotesque qualities embodied by the president are widespread among the Manhattan elite that tolerated and nurtured him, from the real estate sector to the tabloid press and from NBC to Fox News. Just like everybody knows that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile, and everybody knew it when he was hosting VIPs at his Upper East Side mansion and on his private jet. Everybody knows that after his apparent suicide, most of his elite associates will escape any justice. That’s how it goes." Covering for Roy Cohn (New Republic) " At a gay bar in Provincetown, as reported by Cohn biographer Nicholas von Hoffman, a friend described Cohn’s behavior at a local lounge: “Roy sang three choruses of ‘God Bless America,’ got a hard-on and went home to bed.” How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America (Vanity Fair) "But important unindicted people were invited, too. And they went. Large slices of the upper crust of New York and Washington snuggled up to him, laughed and entertained one another with stories about his crimes as though they were choice insiders' jokes, and wrestled for the privilege of partying with Cohn and his crooked and perverse friends." King Cohn (The Nation) How Angels in America put Roy Cohn into the definitive story of AIDS (previously)
posted by The Whelk at 9:09 AM PST - 27 comments

Revisiting Doctor Who’s most-watched story. Den of Geek with a longread about the Douglas Adams penned Tom Baker starred adventure. Featuring Julian Glover (who became the go-to baddie for many movies after this), oh and a cameo from Eleanor Bron and John Cleese.
posted by Webbster at 8:50 AM PST - 19 comments

The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI - "Karl Friston's free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. But to understand it, you need to peer inside the mind of Friston himself." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:32 AM PST - 28 comments

Washing machine delicate cycles put more microfibers into the environment than regular ones. (SLTG) Studies have now shown that using the delicate setting on your washing machine may be nicer for your clothes, but it is worse for the planet. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 5:16 AM PST - 59 comments

In March, Evolutionary Psychological Science, a Springer Nature journal, published an article arguing that "Jewish ideologies" such as multiculturalism, Marxism and left-wing political movements promote Jewish group interests by weakening the sense of nationalism, religiosity and ethnocentrism among whites. How could this happen in a seemingly respectable publication? Simon Whitten decided to find out (threadreader) who's behind this. Spoiler: it's Nazis all the way down.
posted by hat_eater at 3:12 AM PST - 37 comments