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A well-stocked and carefully curated medicine cabinet conveyed care and successful home management, while an overstuffed or unconsidered one ran afoul of received ideals of motherhood. Yet while women were responsible for the cabinet’s care and contents, certain products essential to their own health and hygiene were long thought to be inimical to it.

A feminist cultural history of the medicine cabinet, an interview with Dr. Deanna Day.
posted by Rumple at 11:02 PM PST - 18 comments

Pilots and flight attendants on flights longer than about 10 hours are required to have places to sleep. On the longest-haul flights, these are required to be flat and isolated from passengers. Want to take a peek at where your flight attendants and pilots sleep when taking you from New York to Mumbai or Dubai to Panama? I'll bet you do! [more inside]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:42 PM PST - 21 comments

Preposterous — a short about absurdity, by Florent Porta. Here's another: Dance Dance Dance.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:03 PM PST - 3 comments

"If you can’t take a trip to the Land Down Under, come enjoy the Australia-like Yamaguchi Prefecture!"
posted by No-sword at 6:36 PM PST - 14 comments

The Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, operating since 2006, trains women to become Jewish ritual leaders by tapping into earth-based spiritual practices that they believe harken back to pre-rabbinic Judaism. While it has attracted its share of criticism for being kind of "pagany,", its graduates regularly go on to positions of leadership, communal or religious, and bring the lessons they learned while studying there.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:22 PM PST - 16 comments

For most of its 146 years, Deutsche Bank was the embodiment of German values: reliable and safe. Now, the once-proud institution is facing the abyss. SPIEGEL tells the story of how Deutsche's 1990s rush to join the world banking elite paved the way for its own downfall.
posted by gen at 4:51 PM PST - 20 comments

The World in 2500 by "GREYS" cigarettes ca. 1921 (via)
posted by griphus at 4:11 PM PST - 26 comments

On January 15, 1919, in Boston's North End, a 50-foot-tall tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, unleashing a deadly wave that rose nearly 25 feet high at one point. The disaster killed 21 people and injured another 150. Nearly one hundred years later, an analysis carried out by a group of Harvard fluid dynamics physicists explains how "cold temperatures and unusual currents conspired to turn slow sticky goop into a deadly speeding wave." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:00 PM PST - 24 comments

NSFW: a bit sweary; also reminders of bad 2016 things. Flo and Joan are British-born and Canadian-based sisters Nicola and Rosie Dempsey who improvise, write and play songs (Wanderlust, Save the Bees, It's Alright) on the comedy circuit. Their latest, The 2016 Song, has quickly gone viral. [Facebook][Twitter]
posted by Wordshore at 12:54 PM PST - 22 comments

Historian Mike Dash explains just how awful medieval cities smelled.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:58 AM PST - 52 comments

'Bripe' A Coffee Brewer for Outdoor Enthusiasts in the Shape of a Pipe [CBC.ca] Two Ottawa-area entrepreneurs have created a coffee brewer for outdoor enthusiasts in the shape of a pipe, or as they call it, a bripe. The coffee machine is made of copper with a stainless-steel filter and stem. It requires a blue flame lighter or a candle to heat water to brew coffee or tea. Tim Panek got the idea while hiking in Costa Rica. "I was dying for coffee," he said. "I wanted to make something you could use with just a lighter."
posted by Fizz at 9:51 AM PST - 38 comments

Going West is a short stop-motion film by Anderson M Studios for the New Zealand Book Council. Based on Maurice Gee's novel of the same name, it uses paper cut from the actual book to highlight an excerpt in stunning detail.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:59 AM PST - 4 comments