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Spacing out is so important to us as a species that “it could be at the crux of what makes humans different from less complicated animals."

Manoush Zomorodi discusses boredom.
posted by Rumple at 11:25 PM PST - 16 comments

Chris de Burgh's 1986 album Into The Light [50m35s] was released at the height of the Reagan-era Cold War and is a document of its time. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:17 PM PST - 40 comments

Finance isn't just an industry. It's a system of social control - "A system for constraining the choices of other social actors." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:12 PM PST - 20 comments

Approximately US$150M of Ethereum was accidentally burned by someone mucking around with a multisig contract. [more inside]
posted by Coventry at 7:00 PM PST - 217 comments

Larry and Balki meet the Demogorgan in Perfect Stranger Things. [SLYT] [more inside]
posted by Servo5678 at 3:02 PM PST - 48 comments

Roy Halladay, former pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, has died in a plane crash off the Gulf coast of Florida. Halladay is one six pitchers to win a Cy Young award in both the American and National Leagues, and only the second person to throw a no-hitter in the post-season. He was 40.
posted by thecjm at 2:32 PM PST - 43 comments

Threadless made millions by selling out huge runs of crowdsourced T-shirts; now they’re printing almost everything one by one.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:36 PM PST - 74 comments

Hola Papi! is an advice column by "writer, Twitterer, and prolific Grindr user John Paul Brammer", that tackles topics like cultural appropriation, internalized homophobia, and mental health concerns with empathy and humor. [more inside]
posted by ITheCosmos at 12:16 PM PST - 15 comments

What happened when my partner became prime minister? For starters, no curry
posted by Start with Dessert at 12:13 PM PST - 26 comments

Bendik Giske creates incredible solo performances with just himself and a saxophone. He states "By using a number of microphones on my instrument and body, I aim to create an augmented version of the instrument and my voice without any loopers or layers." The result is something unique, abrasive and wonderful.
posted by Field Tripper at 11:09 AM PST - 7 comments

Call of Duty: WWII – War Is Still Kind of The Same [Gaming Bolt] “Since 2003, Activision has released sixteen full-length Call of Duty games, if you count standalone spin-offs like Call of Duty: Finest Hour and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. Games in the series have been created by original developer Infinity Ward, Treyarch (who has made the franchise’s most commercially successful games with the Black Ops sub-series), and newcomers Sledgehammer Games. The series has traveled from the beaches of Normandy to the rivers of Vietnam and even into space. [...] The goal is here is twofold: to return the series to its boots-on-the-ground roots, which were lacking in the last two titles, and to the conflict that defined the series before its excursion to a technology-focused future for a change of pace.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:35 AM PST - 42 comments

In 1990, Bill Watterson created a Calvin and Hobbes storyline in which Calvin is bullied into playing baseball during recess.
posted by rewil at 9:14 AM PST - 121 comments

Princeton University, founded as the College of New Jersey in 1746, exemplifies the central paradox of American history. From the start, liberty and slavery were intertwined. The Princeton and Slavery Project investigates the University’s involvement with the institution of slavery, through a range of primary sources and stories exploring its slaveholding presidents and professors, its African American communities on campus and in town, its first African American students, and the legacy of slavery in its archives and public memorials.
posted by verstegan at 6:14 AM PST - 4 comments

100 years ago today, the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee toppled Russia's Provisional Government, leading to the Bolsheviks' assumption of state power. [more inside]
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 5:51 AM PST - 88 comments

You know you just can't get enough of those juicy, succulent Presidential tweets, so here's the Markov chain bot the world so obviously needed.
posted by loquacious at 5:23 AM PST - 31 comments

When the drugs came, they hit all at once. It was the eighties, one in ten residents slipped into the deep of heroin addiction—bankers, university students, carpenters, socialites, miners—and Portugal fell into a panic.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:19 AM PST - 5 comments

The Guardian's Alexis Petridis anatomises the underground metal scene. This is the most enjoyable bit of music journalism I've read in some time - it has just the right tone of affectionate bemusement which this genre demands. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 2:58 AM PST - 29 comments