MetaFilter

"While in the waters of Lembeh, Indonesia, diver Pall Sigurdsson and friends encountered a tiny veined/coconut octopus who had made a home inside a disposable plastic cup. [...] Rather than leave the octopus to a cruel fate, Sigurdsson and friends spent a great deal of their diving time searching for a new shell. They tried several shells, but the octopus didn’t respond until the perfect one was found." (via Laughing Squid)
posted by katra at 9:04 PM PST - 29 comments

Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu, Part 3: Defunding, Deplatforming, and Detention. After her run-ins with Vice, as she had documented previously, and the fallout from that, Naomi Wu finds herself once again being used by Western entertainment-journalism (this time Hasan Minhaj's show) in a China-critical piece that she had no say over. Sometime later, she was detained. Was it related? Who can say?
posted by cendawanita at 8:55 PM PST - 40 comments

Keith Haring's 'Hidden' Mural Heads To Auction, Sparks Emotion Haring painted a stairwell mural for a NYC kids' organization. The mural has now been removed, and is heading for auction, to fund capital projects at the church at which it was located. [more inside]
posted by Capt. Renault at 4:19 PM PST - 4 comments

An English-language snapshot of what's going on in Latin America: Latin America's Bitter Stalemate (Jacobin interview with Mabel Thwaites Rey); Latin America's Decade-Long Hangover (America's Quarterly); Why Latin America Was Primed to Explode (Foreign Affairs); Latin America’s Protests Are Likely to Fail (Foreign Policy); Latin American left rising? First stop Mexico for Argentina's Fernandez (Reuters) [more inside]
posted by chappell, ambrose at 2:57 PM PST - 60 comments

Have you ever seen the mid nineties live action adaptation of Wallance and Gromit?
posted by MartinWisse at 2:23 PM PST - 51 comments

Let's Read TSR reviews a popular line of Extruded Fantasy Product novels from the early 1990s. These include such hits as R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden and Cleric Quintet novels ("Say what you like about the forces of evil, but at least they’ve put a lot of effort into creating a diverse workplace"). There are also sneaky successes like the Wodehousian The Wyvern's Spur and the thoughtful Elfshadow. And, of course, there are plenty of photorealistic late '80s-style cover paintings.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:08 AM PST - 96 comments

Friends Again......that terrific wee Glasgow band of the mid-late eighties -wiki here- are to have their sole and debut album "Trapped and Unwrapped" given the thirty Year anniversary treatment from those wonderful people at Cherry Red Records [more inside]
posted by Wrick at 7:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Martin Simpson is a British folk/blues songwriter, a virtuoso guitarist & a great raconteur. Here he is relating two of the surprising and touching tales behind songs on his new album Rooted. The capsule descriptions of each song are Simpson's own, taken from this article. "Ken Small salvaged a Sherman Duplex Drive tank from Start Bay in Devon, which led to the story of the tragic Operation Tiger of 1944 off the Devon coast being recognised and told," he explains. "More Than Enough was written by Robb Johnson and it was in the repertoire of my late father-in-law, Roy Bailey for many years."
posted by Paul Slade at 6:10 AM PST - 7 comments

An Afghanistan veteran's struggle with ecology and memory, by Bryan Box (CW: suicide, descriptions of violence in war)
posted by Etrigan at 4:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Concert by Young Marble Giants is a 44 minute live performance shot in black and white on video in Vancouver in November 1980, just weeks before the hugely influential post-punk band split up. [previously on MeFi]
posted by Kattullus at 4:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro
Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco
Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo
posted by growabrain at 2:31 AM PST - 13 comments