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Following a weeks-long walkout, several dozen game developers at Raven Software have formed the Game Workers Alliance Union. [more inside]
posted by ®@ at 7:58 PM PST - 11 comments

Literature Clock tells the current time (or close enough) in the form of a literary quote. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 7:37 PM PST - 18 comments

Silent Pictures

Version 1 -- Paris Review: Art Spiegelman on Lynd Ward

Version 2 -- Vulture: Art Spiegelman on Forgotten Comics Pioneer Lynd Ward

From Jan-Peter Semmel's Pinterest: Art by Lynd Ward

and.... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 6:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Astra and Sunaura Taylor on veganism: When [Joaquin] Phoenix’s remarks entered our newsfeeds, we confess we cringed like countless others — but not because we thought his observations were hysterical or overwrought. We cringed because Phoenix violated an unstated precept we have spent decades trying our best to live by: to not be annoying vegans. By crashing a party of millions with talk of animal abuse, he did the very thing we have desperately attempted to avoid, albeit on a much humbler scale. While both of us have been public about our veganism, we have tried not to antagonize people lest we inadvertently hurt the cause. At countless social gatherings and restaurant outings people have asked us, “Do you mind if I eat this?” before chomping down on what was, until recently, someone else’s wing, leg, breast, or rump. Feeling it better to be disingenuous than discomfiting — lest we reinforce the stereotype that vegans are, in fact, insufferable and arrogant ascetics — we have always said no, choking back our honest thoughts to permit others to eat in peace. [more inside]
posted by jshttnbm at 5:14 PM PST - 57 comments

One week ago today, an underwater volcano whose 5km-wide caldera sat 150 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean erupted, sending a plume of ash into the stratosphere and across most of the Kingdom of Tonga, an island nation of 100,000 people. Its sonic boom was heard 9,000km away in Alaska, the atmospheric shockwaves circled the world twice, and it caused a tsunami which reached New Zealand, Peru, California, and other Pacific nations—but most badly affected Tonga itself, just before most of the country was blanketed by ash. [more inside]
posted by rory at 1:49 PM PST - 38 comments

The Future of E-Bikes "The best feeling on a bike is cruising down a hill, barely pedaling, and taking in the surroundings. E-bikes are like that all the time. "How do you know if someone has an e-bike? They'll tell you!" goes the joke." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:10 PM PST - 92 comments

How Palestine’s Radio Alhara is taking a grassroots approach to shaping a new landscape for protest, culture and local journalism online. Hunched down in front of a DJ console, Yousef Anastas assiduously manages the decks, preparing the mix and adjusting the atmospherics of the ambient track he is playing. It is haunting and trance-like: the drone-like synthesiser he has programmed melds into the repeated strumming of an oud – a Middle Eastern stringed instrument – with increasing intensity. It feels as if it is urgently attempting to break free within the mix. It seems like an apt sonic metaphor for life in the 33-year-old’s native Palestine. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:23 AM PST - 4 comments

You just need to sneak it in yourself like Dillon Helbig. The 8-year old from Boise always wanted one of his stories to end up in the library and he made that happen because he "always be sneaky."
posted by vespabelle at 9:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Igor skates
posted by chavenet at 9:03 AM PST - 3 comments

We have jetpacks and we do not care... For decades, humans have said they want jetpacks, and for thousands of years we have said we want to fly, but do we really? Look up. The sky is empty. Dave Eggers writes in the Guardian on flying and the time he took a jetpack training course.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:46 AM PST - 47 comments

"Old books are socially and culturally fascinating...Still, sifting through old books can be a hassle. You have to go to those search sites and filter for the right vintage (and public-domain-status). It’s a pain. So: I decided to partly automate this — by making my own search tool. Behold the Weird Old Book Finder." Clive Thompson has built A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books (Medium).
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Robot vacuum cleaner escapes from Cambridge Travelodge. (BBC) "Staff said it just kept going and "could be anywhere" while well-wishers on social media hoped the vacuum enjoyed its travels, as "it has no natural predators" in the wild."
posted by fight or flight at 8:08 AM PST - 19 comments

What it says on the tin (SLYT)
posted by clawsoon at 7:56 AM PST - 30 comments

Overview of how scapegoating can make the people doing it feel better and which children get chosen The rebel (in authoritarian families, this can take very little). The sensitive one The outlier--described as a child who has a personality very different than the parent, but this can also happen to children who are low status by ethnic appearance. A reminder of someone the parent hates. [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:51 AM PST - 12 comments

The 500-acre Singing Wind Ranch in Arizona is for sale at $1.5M. For decades it has been the home of one of the Southwest's best bookstores. After Winn Bundy earned her master's in library science from the University of Arizona in the early 1970s, she decided to open a bookshop—on the family cattle ranch north of the small town of Benson in southeast Arizona. Her family has tried to keep the 30,000-volume shop running since her death last year, but have decided it's time to sell the ranch. [more inside]
posted by Creosote at 6:21 AM PST - 6 comments

So you can Wordle. But can you wordle... TWICE? (Thus made Zaratustra, who you might know from a certain game about a flower that starts with a warning.) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 4:49 AM PST - 37 comments

Comic and actor Louie Anderson passes away at 68 from complications from Lymphoma.
posted by rhizome at 2:50 AM PST - 35 comments