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Save Harald with the The Historic Tale Construction Kit (Previously, Previouserly) which has been revived (sort of) and open-sourced, for all of your imitation-medieval-embroidery needs.
posted by pompomtom at 10:42 PM PST - 3 comments

The Class of 1946–2018: Twenty-seven school-shooting survivors bear their scars, and bear witness. "Over a half-century's worth of school shooting survivors share their memories of life-changing trauma, as well as insights from living with the scars — physical and mental — of gun violence." [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 8:10 PM PST - 17 comments

"The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Our goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library. Our scope includes all state courts, federal courts, and territorial courts for American Samoa, Dakota Territory, Guam, Native American Courts, Navajo Nation, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Our earliest case is from 1658, and our most recent cases are from 2018." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:29 PM PST - 22 comments

Adler, S. 2018. A MORAL DEFENSE OF CHIDI'S SWOLENESS: An ethical examination of abs in 'The Good Place.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:45 PM PST - 37 comments

Since it is National Cat Day, I thought an update on the adventures of Vancouver, BC area rescue TinyKittens (Previously) would be in order. [more inside]
posted by Meghamora at 4:10 PM PST - 19 comments

How do you live with a true heart when everything around you is collapsing? Hayao Miyazaki’s Cursed Worlds
posted by Artw at 3:05 PM PST - 17 comments

From the Guardian, Jan. 2018: Bitcoin’s electricity usage is enormous. In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It’s now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru, according to estimates from Digiconomist. That’s commensurate with CO2 emissions of 20 megatonnes – or roughly 1m transatlantic flights. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:50 PM PST - 80 comments

Calculators Calculators Calculators Calculators Calculators Soviet Calculators Calculators Calculators (via) (previously) (previously)
posted by bq at 2:02 PM PST - 26 comments

Romaine was interested in nightmares, how terror never truly disappears, but evolves the camouflage of routine. Romaine Fielding stepped off the train at Silver City NM in 1918 and settled his top hat the way he always did, with some of that conniving charm. He knew he had his finger on the country’s pulse. And he was ready to unsettle something in its soul. Soon he would fit his 28 horsepower Buick with military search lights and a massive machine gun. Soon he would strap a canon to an airplane. Soon he would gather thousands of pounds of explosives, gather and arm thousands of dispossessed laborers. Soon he would orchestrate an apocalyptic uprising the likes of which the world had never yet seen.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:48 PM PST - 16 comments

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K. (SLNYT)
posted by box at 12:24 PM PST - 117 comments

Google, with its Environmental Insights Explorer, is estimating greenhouse-gas emissions for cities in part of the company's ambitious new plan to share its geographic information to support climate-concerned local leaders. It's just starting with five cities, Buenos Aires, Melbourne City, Victoria, Mountain View (Calif.), and Pittsburgh, and plans to expand the program gradually to cover more municipalities worldwide. As part of this initiative, Google says it will also release its proprietary estimates of a city’s annual driving, biking, and transit ridership, generated from information collected by its popular mapping apps, Google Maps and Waze. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:08 PM PST - 6 comments

How to Read Infinite Jest
posted by OmieWise at 9:01 AM PST - 102 comments

The quick-thinking young women informed the taxi driver that their clothing had been stolen while they were at Coney Island, and directed the driver to the apartment of a boyfriend on Madison Avenue.

From kottke.org via This Week in Scams, Emily Brooks brings us the tale of five teenaged women who escaped the Brooklyn "shelter" of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1944. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 8:26 AM PST - 14 comments

Much of Pi’s considerable publicity centered on its special effects—perhaps logically, considering that the film had no stars, apart from Gérard Depardieu, who makes a cameo as a ship’s cook. What it sold was illusion: Of the film’s 960 shots, 690—one and a half of its two hours—employ visual effects. And which of its illusions was more potent than Richard Parker, a triumph of digital engineering that also chewed the scenery? Because Life of Pi is based on what is essentially a philosophical novel, the big cat was, in the words of one commentator, “a visual representation of a philosophical abstraction.” But it was a representation that throbbed with life. You could hear it breathing. You could smell its catty stench. I couldn’t guess what percentage of the picture’s audience came expressly to see the tiger, as opposed to the cataclysmic storm, the sinking freighter, the phosphorescent breaching whale, the island of meerkats. The tiger was an essential part of the movie’s spectacle, maybe the synechdoche for that spectacle, and it was spectacle that people came to see.

Inside the Tiger Factory, Peter Trachtenberg
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:25 AM PST - 16 comments

How Warren and Sanders approach empowering the working class - "In the simplest possible terms, Warren wants to organize markets to benefit workers and consumers, while Sanders wants to overhaul those markets, taking the private sector out of it." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 6:14 AM PST - 57 comments

Why Is It So Hard For Native Americans To Vote In This Utah County? [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 5:53 AM PST - 12 comments

Red Hat, the software company that produces an enterprise-grade Linux distribution, contributes to projects like GNOME, LibreOffice, and also sponsors the Fedora Project is being acquired by a company known only as IBM.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 5:03 AM PST - 137 comments

Boy Scouts in a war zone: There are more boy scouts than peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Even in the midst of a civil war, the scouts are arguably more effective.
posted by PenDevil at 4:02 AM PST - 5 comments

Ross MacDonald is a creator of fake period paper props - books, documents, packaging etc - for use in movies and television.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:16 AM PST - 14 comments