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My 70s TV. My 80s TV. My 90s TV.
posted by MoonOrb at 11:33 PM PST - 37 comments

How do you compost a human body—and why would you? Earlier this year, the state of Washington legalized human composting. Katrina Spade, the driving force behind this alternative burial method, is gearing up her company Recompose to make the service available by 2021. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:58 PM PST - 15 comments

Irish Chef Makes a Classic Danish Dish - It involves fresh fish, toast, mayo, and pickles. And the best accent that ever should exist to explain how to prepare a traditional Danish dish in the English language.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:48 PM PST - 22 comments

The story line was always simple: Snow White travels the globe in search of Prince Charming and meets assorted mythical, political, and pop culture figures along the way; hilarity (and big, splashy musical numbers) ensues. But what the cast and crew of Beach Blanket Babylon did with that bare-bones premise has become the stuff of San Francisco—and theater—legend.

An oral history: Pulling Back the Curtain on Beach Blanket Babylon. This New Year’s Eve at Club Fugazi, after more than 17,000 performances seen by a total of 6.5 million attendees, the show is ending its 45-year run.
posted by Lexica at 7:43 PM PST - 28 comments

A riot had broken out at the Miami Aerospace Academy, a private military school in Little Havana, where screaming students were said to be “possessed by spirits.” This was no trick-or-treat prank. One teenager was unconscious; others injured. Kids had smashed windows and ripped doors from their hinges. Police and firefighters who raced to the scene found hundreds of hysterical high schoolers fleeing the building as if it were ablaze. The Devil, it seemed, was to blame.
posted by COD at 4:18 PM PST - 42 comments

Oct 24, 1989 [a few days late for the anniversary, apologies], renowned (perhaps revered) performance and recording artist Laurie Anderson released her fourth studio album Strange Angels. A departure from earlier musical styles (much more singing), yet continuing with her observations about humanity and absurdity and sound experimentation, the album served as a bit of a soundtrack release for her performance art show Empty Places [audience bootleg, good quality, 1h33m]. Side A: Strange Angels, Monkey's Paw, Coolsville, Ramon [Leno appearance from 1990 with interview recommend!], Babydoll [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:57 PM PST - 21 comments

Alan Moore's unknown scripts for the Daily Mail's long-running Fred Bassett strip.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:56 PM PST - 4 comments

This essay is just Harry Potter for people who think comparing things to Harry Potter is stupid. Or some shit.
posted by sapagan at 12:39 PM PST - 56 comments

Yesterday, the editorial staff at Deadspin received a notice from G/O Media editorial manager Paul Maidment telling them, essentially, to "stick to sports," eschewing the greater grab-bag of meandering topics (and notably the left-leaning political bent) that had become the site's brand. In response, Editor Barry Patchesky posted old non-sports content on the front page as a "thumb in the eye" of the edict, leading to his firing this afternoon. Deadspin's Drew Magary explains why there's no such thing as sticking to sports.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:30 AM PST - 210 comments

All the Wrong People Love Jesus Is King [The Root] “Like many black folks, I grew up in a deeply religious household. That meant prayers before every meal, three church services a week on Sundays and Wednesdays, and pretending like a lot of gospel rappers weren’t fucking terrible. Thankfully, now I’m a grown-ass man who no longer attends vacation bible school or is coerced into turning a blind eye to Reverend Pastor Deacon Elder’s frequent extramarital excursions. So with my days of church pews and altar calls well behind me, I can say what a lot of lying ass Christians can’t: that this new Kanye album is some bullshit.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:28 AM PST - 46 comments

What happened to Hill could discourage other women — especially younger and LGBTQ women — from seeking careers in the public eye. As Hill acknowledged, she had a serious lapse in judgment, and her resignation wasn’t necessarily unexpected. But her story also appears to be an example of a revenge porn campaign that worked, driving its target from her chosen career. Some say that could discourage women, especially younger women who have dated since the advent of phone cameras, from running for office or seeking positions of power. As Wu put it, “they’re going to look at this situation and say, boy, what if I’m the next one?” [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:26 AM PST - 88 comments

Are you a self-taught software engineer, bootcamp grad, precocious high school student, or just have a few wintry months to kill? Time to Teach Yourself Computer Science with an opinionated list of the best autodidactic resources on a range of CS topics! [more inside]
posted by theodolite at 10:18 AM PST - 38 comments

I could have made specific solutions for each, but I thought “How could I solve this in the most general way possible?” and an idea came to me: I could make a font that uses fancy font shaping features to insert commas in all numbers, everywhere. 2000 words from Tristan Hume for Jane Street.
posted by cgc373 at 9:44 AM PST - 26 comments

“The changes that the Senate Judiciary Committee have made has created a rubber stamp for nominees to sail through,” Buchert said. “Nominee after nominee is either unqualified, or hiding their writings from the committee, or they’ve got clear views on LGBT people that show they aren’t going to provide fair and impartial justice.” How Trump fucked the courts for a generation (Outline) “ In the face of an enemy Supreme Court, the only option is for progressives to begin work on a long-term plan to recast the role of fundamental law in our society for the sake of majority rule—disempowering the courts and angling, when they can, to redo our undemocratic constitution itself.” Resisting the Juristocracy (Boston Review) How Democrats Can Insulate New Laws From a Hostile Supreme Court (American Prospect)
posted by The Whelk at 8:25 AM PST - 29 comments

Malaysia, known by that name or not, has been a vital trading post for huge empires: China, India, the Arabs, the Netherlands, Portugal, England. The indigenous people of Malaysia, called the Orang Asal, practice what the state (and researchers) tend to classify as a type of animism, with various natural objects held as sacred. And all of those empires left their religions—and their more spiritualist aspects—behind, too. [...] There are hundreds, probably thousands of [hantu], ranging from natural spirits ... to vampire-type ghosts to leprechaun-like tricksters. Malaysia Has Good Ghosts, Bad Ghosts, and Gremlin-Babies That Will Steal Your Stuff (Atlas Obscura, talking with Dr. Cheryl L. Nicholas, an ethnographer who enjoys doing research in her homeland, Malaysia) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:21 AM PST - 9 comments

“This was basically where the paradigm that we see now on the internet with linked documents and things like that was first developed,” Duvall says. “We always envisioned that we would have a series of interconnected workstations and interconnected people. We called them knowledge centers in those days, because we were academically oriented.” Within a few weeks of Kline and Duvall’s first successful communication, the ARPA network extended to computers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. And ARPANET grew from there, through the ’70s and much of the 1980s, connecting more and more government and academic computers. And later the concepts developed in ARPANET would be applied to the internet we know today. 50 years ago today, the internet was born in Room 3420 [FastCompany] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:29 AM PST - 6 comments

Having a rough day? At least you’re (probably) not another victim of the West Omaha car-catching rock.
posted by Etrigan at 3:38 AM PST - 103 comments

Some satisfying gifs:
Jelly vs Stairs
Incense making
Drawing an 'S' using spirograph
Destroying a spool of thread
Ceramics
Chinese parade
Spoonful of honey [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 2:46 AM PST - 26 comments