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Halo. Parhelic Circle. Sundog. Parry Arc. Upper Tangent Arc. Sun pillar. Crepuscular rays.

Steve LeBaron of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation’s Highway Design Bureau captured a stunner of a sky atop Cannon Mountain while skiing.
posted by ShooBoo at 9:19 PM PST - 22 comments

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to your records again, along comes another roller coaster ride through the torturous labyrinth of West Coast group members. This is the story of the Sabers, Chavelles, Valiants, Untouchables, Electras, Alley Cats, Africa, and a few other things along the way. Just the intro to the story of The Valiants, from Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks, based on interviews with Rip Spencer .... except as Africa, a bunch of former doo-wop cats came together to make some slinky Latin-tinged psychedelic soul covers on the album Music From "Lil Brown", putting their own twists on The Rolling Stones and The Doors, mashing up Richard Berry and Bobbie Gentry, and spinning some original cuts (YouTube; Spotify). [via Johnny Wallflower].
posted by filthy light thief at 8:09 PM PST - 3 comments

Drew Magary, writing for GQ’s Men of the Year brings us The Last Curious Man, an oral history take on the life and death Anthony Bourdain as told by friends, family, and colleagues.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:05 PM PST - 19 comments

I love Hue: a "gentle journey into colour and perception" The makers, Zut! games, say "I Love Hue is a minimalist, ambient puzzle game [...]The game has a very simple concept - players must arrange grids of coloured tiles into perfectly ordered spectrums. It was designed from the start to be a meditative, chilled experience with no timers, no move limits and no punishments for failure. " [more inside]
posted by prewar lemonade at 4:24 PM PST - 43 comments

Internet Boy Band Database
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 4:00 PM PST - 10 comments

A thought experiment has shaken up the world of quantum foundations. That quantum mechanics is a successful theory is not in dispute. It makes astonishingly accurate predictions about the nature of the world at microscopic scales. What has been in dispute for nearly a century is just what it’s telling us about what exists, what is real. There are myriad interpretations that offer their own take on the question, each requiring us to buy into certain as-yet-unverified claims — hence assumptions — about the nature of reality. [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 2:48 PM PST - 51 comments

Justin and Griffin return to Polygon as guests to make a new Monster Factory. You KNOW it’s Soul Calibur 6.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:12 PM PST - 43 comments

“This Is Just So Sh**ty, We Gotta Watch”: The Beautiful, Inspirational Disaster of ‘Cabin Boy,’ 25 Years Later
posted by Chrysostom at 12:59 PM PST - 46 comments

The Cheesecake Factory's free cheesecake deal ends in chaos, furious customers, and reports of battling delivery people
posted by Etrigan at 12:25 PM PST - 57 comments

UK MP publishes internal Facebook documents, including correspondence between Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:58 AM PST - 40 comments

The question and answer website Quora has been hacked, leaking data on over 100 million user accounts. But there are other reasons not to use the service argues MeFi's own Andy Baio.
posted by gwint at 10:49 AM PST - 48 comments

It is my profound regret to present you with yet another installment (so, so many times previously) of Clickhole's "An Oral History of..." series: "The Most Wanted Man In History: An Oral History Of The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden." It is certainly Not for Everyone™, but I hope that current fans of the series and uninitiated lovers of the absurd may delight in this nonsensical, wholly fictitious account of the hunt for bin Laden and, more importantly, John Wayne's ruby.
posted by Krazor at 10:38 AM PST - 12 comments

Front Burner is a new(ish) podcast from CBC that goes in-depth on a issue currently in the news. Being from CBC, there is a focus on Canadian news, but many of the stories cover global issues. [more inside]
posted by kmkrebs at 9:25 AM PST - 4 comments

In western Washington, a nation looks to rodent restoration as a natural, ecological engineer. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 AM PST - 19 comments

Music Software & Bad Interface Design: Avid’s Sibelius [YouTube] - In this video, I take a detailed look at the design of Avid's Sibelius - a popular music notation application. Sibelius is the embodiment of what not to do as a user experience designer and this video covers a range of examples of inappropriate design patterns and bad user interface choices. Then I go insane. [more inside]
posted by Wolfdog at 8:08 AM PST - 45 comments

These waves didn't just zip by; they rang for more than 20 minutes. And yet, it seems, no human felt them. Was it a meteor strike? A submarine volcano eruption? An ancient sea monster rising from the deep?
posted by Mr.Pointy at 7:30 AM PST - 21 comments

“There is a solution, however, that could gain immediate popular support: Abolish the Senate.” I Served in Congress Longer Than Anyone. Here’s How to Fix It. John D. Dingell, former Michigan Representative. (Atlantic)
posted by The Whelk at 7:26 AM PST - 106 comments

The remarkable story of a woman diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, who manages to find her voice again through poetry. Amy Willans is now an award winning social support worker herself, and has given the radio program 'White Coat, Black Art' this candid interview about how writing helped her rediscover herself.
posted by TruthfulCalling at 7:19 AM PST - 3 comments

20 years ago, Cyndi Lauper released her delightfully sensitive, playfully zydeco, also rather traditional [full album, 42m] sixth studio album, Merry Christmas... :P Have A Nice Life! It's mostly original songs with a few very strong covers or traditional carols mixed in. Quality stuff, IMO! (When has Cyndi ever NOT released quality stuff?) Side A: Home On Christmas Day, Early Christmas Morning, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, Christmas Conga, Minnie And Santa, Feels Like Christmas [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Edward Gorey's enigmatic world. Article in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella. Lots of Gorey previously.
posted by paduasoy at 5:19 AM PST - 20 comments

How to Get Growth in the Places That Need It Most - "The 2017 tax reform law gave the wrong kinds of incentives to help struggling urban areas and regions." (thread) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:59 AM PST - 15 comments

Alexandra Rowland writes about Hopepunk “But once in a while, the people toward the middle of the heap manage to look down and see the mass of wretched bodies below, the base of the pyramid that’s supporting them, and for a moment, they see the instability of their own position, that their pyramid isn’t built on solid ground but on human flesh and human pain. For a moment, they see, and the illusion of niceness is wrenched away from them, and they weep, but still, still not for the people below them whose suffering has gone on so long. They weep like children over the teddy bear that’s been snatched out of their hands. They weep only because the world suddenly isn’t as nice as they thought, and it’s hard to deal with that.“
posted by Gilgongo at 12:11 AM PST - 19 comments