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Meet 5 of Australia’s tiniest mammals. One mammal, the long-tailed planigale, can weigh less than a 10-cent coin. But it’s ferocious, bringing down far larger prey with persistent, savage biting to the head and neck.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:24 PM PST - 10 comments

Puzzmo is webgame site that I came across somewhere on the Internet. I was delighted at the prospect of having to solve a puzzle in order to get access to the site at this time! Turns out I'm really bad at Really Bad Chess but got in anyway. [more inside]
posted by juliebug at 5:09 PM PST - 49 comments

Twenty Minutes of Adorable Puppies

Need I say more? [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 4:20 PM PST - 14 comments

I had to know more about how this rustic wonder was created, so I reached out to Logan Bench, CTO of the MAiZE, a firm out of Utah ... that designs sophisticated custom mazes for over 300 farmer clients across the U.S. and Canada. We talked about the art and science of maze creation, the future of the “agritainment” industry, Bench’s personal design Holy Grail, and just how a blank, tasseled canvas of corn makes him feel. (Slate - archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 3:24 PM PST - 16 comments

On November 15, 1966, five police officers entered the Psychedelic Shop, in San Francisco, and purchased a thin volume of poetry, “The Love Book,” for a dollar. This sequence of erotic poems celebrating a woman’s sexual pleasure was by the Beat poet Lenore Kandel. As soon as the money exchanged hands, the deputy arrested the clerk for selling obscene material.

–The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial by Joy Lanzendorfer. A poem, and another, and some poems and prose. Here are videos of Kandel reading a poem and being interviewed.
posted by Kattullus at 1:05 PM PST - 8 comments

Two years ago, a kayaker saw a sheep on a beach at the bottom of cliffs on the north-east coast of Scotland. Jillian Turner said "She saw us coming and was calling to us along the length of the beach following our progress until she could go no further". Turner kayaked the route again recently, saw the sheep again and went to the media for help. The sheep has been rescued by a group of farmers, including The Hoof GP and TheSheepGame. They posted a video about it. Since then, the sheep (Fiona), has been moved to a secret location after activists protested. [more inside]
posted by paduasoy at 12:46 PM PST - 30 comments

CBN, RBS, and not really the BBC Mockumentary or pseudodocumentary Nuclear Confrontation between Russia and NATO (2018) uses fake/semiplausible BBC news programs and archival footage to tell the story of how such a conflict might occur.

It's the latest example of the genre. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM PST - 35 comments

What it says on the tin This BBC video clip is from Spy in the Ocean, narrated by David Tennant. Thanks to hidden cameras and robotic “spy creatures,” the four-part nature series can explore animal intelligence up close. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 3:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Equally refreshing is the fact that le Carré's protagonists are not the dashing heroes of typical spy narratives; instead, they grapple with ethical dilemmas, are haunted by personal sacrifices, and left run down and poverty-stricken by the relentless psychological toll of their work. Leamas is genuinely one of British fiction's most hopeless and pessimistic characters. from Why John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the ultimate spy novel [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:18 AM PST - 37 comments

... by The Guardian. With YouTube links to let you see and/or hear the performances for yourself. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:01 AM PST - 32 comments