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Who will win the French presidential election? According to current polls, center-left outsider Emmanuel Macron is likely to become the next French President, winning 60-65% of the votes against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, but many things could happen between now and April 23. French presidential elections used to be a simple thing, decided by a run-off between the candidates of the two major (socialist vs conservative) parties. The system was upset in 2002 when Le Pen's father trounced the socialist candidate in the first round, only to be crushed in the second round by Chirac. The situation was back to normal in 2007 and 2012 (with Sarkozy embracing far-right rhetorics), but in 2017 the two candidates most likely to win are outsiders unaffiliated to mainstream parties. A round-up of the main candidates below the fold. [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 7:32 PM PST - 36 comments

The pioneering 1898 novel The War of the Worlds has inspired many tributes. There was the infamous 1938 radio play by Orson Welles. The rocket scientist Robert Goddard was inspired by it's concepts of space travel. Many films have been made, from the Sputnik era classic to the Tom Cruise era film in which Dakota Fanning screams. In 1978 it was set to music in the best-selling Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. And now you can read the official sequel. Authorized by the HG Wells Estate, The Massacre of Mankind is by Stephen Baxter.
posted by adept256 at 7:30 PM PST - 27 comments

Vancouver Bar’s Poorly Poured Guinness Draws Ire [The Toronto Star] A Vancouver restaurant provoked the ire of the Irish after sharing a photo of a poorly poured pint of Guinness to promote their St. Patrick’s Day party. Railtown Café’s photo of an overflowing drink with foam oozing down the glass was meant to be artsy, said owner Dan Olson. But it “was a little too artsy and it really struck a chord with some of our Irish clientele out there,” admitted Olson, who woke up Tuesday morning to a barrage of emails and comments on the restaurant’s social media profiles. What they thought was an inoffensive photo had quickly caught the attention of Guinness connoisseurs from as far away as Ireland, the home of the beloved brew.
posted by Fizz at 7:03 PM PST - 81 comments

When The Great British Bake-Off moved to Channel Four, it lost both color hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins and baking queen and UK treasure Mary Berry. (Insert sad baking pun here.)
At long last, their replacements have been announced: for color, we have Noel Fielding of frenetic comedy show The Mighty Boosh and current-host-of-QI-but-also-many-other-things Sandi Toksvig; for baking expertise we have Prue Leith. (That’s two CBEs in exchange for one OBE, for those keeping score.)
One take from Radhika Sanghani at The Telegraph, another from Marissa Martinelli at Slate.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:32 PM PST - 42 comments

Impoverished Cambodia is being pressed to repay a half billion dollar debt dating back to the US mass bombings of the early 70s. The debt was incurred by a US-installed dictator, allegedly in the form of (mostly dumped) food supplies. But Cambodia's food supplies were being disrupted by a "secret" US bombing campaign against the neutral nation. Nearly as many tons of explosives were dropped on mostly civilian targets, causing two million to flee rural areas and according to most analysts leading directly to the rise of the brutal Khmer Rouge insurgency.
posted by blankdawn at 4:47 PM PST - 34 comments

A Musical History of the Search for Exoplanets
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:58 PM PST - 15 comments

David Dockery brings us Pepe Silvia with drums.
posted by komara at 2:38 PM PST - 16 comments

A long, detailed look at L. Ron Hubbard as science fiction author.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:19 PM PST - 49 comments

Mrs. Porter's 2nd Grade Class Survey
posted by OverlappingElvis at 1:46 PM PST - 108 comments

Tricking is a training discipline that combines martial arts, gymnastics and breakdancing. Ingun Yoo, a.k.a. Kick Gun, is a master of the taekwondo form [music and voiceover] whereas Michael Guthrie and Jacob Pinto go for the flash [driving music and cheering]. Tricking previously. BONUS: how to clear some room for yourself in a crowd [whooshing and cheering].
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:31 PM PST - 12 comments

See highlights from the 2017 Whitney Biennial, which opens to the public later this week.
posted by bq at 1:19 PM PST - 7 comments

365 Luncheon Dishes, a cookbook from 1902. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 11:55 AM PST - 75 comments

Norway has unveiled its new banknotes, which have a sea motif (50 krone, "The Sea That Binds Us Together"; 200 krone, "The Sea That Carries Us Forward") and "digitized" reverses designed to follow the Beaufort wind force scale, with the blocks lengthening as the denomination rises. (via kottke)
posted by Etrigan at 11:50 AM PST - 40 comments

Any day can be Do-Mi-Do Day. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 10:22 AM PST - 11 comments

It’s thought that oil-paper umbrellas originated in China over 1,000 years ago, but they quickly spread throughout Asia, including to Thailand and Japan (where umbrella culture is a pretty big deal). [more inside]
posted by cellar door at 10:07 AM PST - 9 comments

Corgi Races. (SLYT, ~12 min). (But trust me you will not have 12 happier minutes today.) [more inside]
posted by Diablevert at 9:22 AM PST - 29 comments

Vaseline Glass, gets its name from the Vaseline color typically associated with the original pieces. It’s original name was Uranium Glass, as Uranium dust was typically ground up and added to the glass as a colorant. Josef Reidel is the name often thrown around for inventing it in 1830, however this is up for debate. Oh, also, yes, URANIUM DUST IS IN DECORATIVE FLATWARE [more inside]
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 8:55 AM PST - 27 comments

"The U.S. Women's National Hockey Team — the reigning world champions — won't be defending their title this year. They announced Wednesday that they will be boycotting the championships later this month as a protest against USA Hockey, citing stalled negotiations for "fair wages and equitable support" from the organization."

Twenty-one players tweeted a statement announcing the boycott yesterday along with the hashtag #BeBoldForChange. In the words of star forward Hilary Knight, "Good luck getting a suitable No. 1 competition to represent our country on a world stage. I kind of dare them."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 8:52 AM PST - 93 comments

The Trump Administration's NASA budget request cancels four climate science missions [more inside]
posted by Major Clanger at 8:35 AM PST - 51 comments

The Wellcome Book Prize announced its 2017 shortlist, recognizing the best books--across all genres of non-fiction and fiction--actively engaged with the life-defining forces of medicine, health, and illness. Commenting on the books honored this year, Chair of Judges Val McDermid says, "What these six challenging, diverse and enriching titles have in common is their insight into what it means to be human. Together they form a mosaic that illuminates our relationship with health and medicine. It spans our origins, our deaths and much that lies between, from activism to acts of human kindness." [more inside]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 8:04 AM PST - 5 comments

The Loving Project talks with interracial couples about their experiences with race and being together. We are the Fifteen Percent, inspired by the Cheerios ad, [previously] publishes user-submitted photos of interracial families on its tumblr. [more inside]
posted by Margalo Epps at 7:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Gerard Vlemmings, a long-time blogger from the Netherlands, was the one behind Presurfer, a daily dose of diversion for more than a decade, and mentioned around here many times over the years. He took a short vacation, his first in 16 years, back in January, and then there was another hiatus in early February, which turned out more serious than anyone hoped. On February 25, 2017, Gerard passed away, and his final post on Presurfer has become a memorial wall of sorts, with readers and fellow bloggers paying their respects.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:00 AM PST - 17 comments

The best German discount grocery store commercial featuring cats you will see all day
posted by Kitteh at 6:53 AM PST - 26 comments

As we face what has become an epidemic of anxiety disorders, we must confront the social conditions behind it.
posted by ellieBOA at 4:22 AM PST - 87 comments

"How to survive gaslighting: when manipulation erases your reality" "Right now, many Americans listening to their president are experiencing what I experienced frequently a child. Nothing means anything, and reality is being canceled. There is confusion, there is chaos, everything is upside down and inside out. When facts and truth are being discredited, how is it possible to know what to believe, especially when it comes from someone we expect to embody both ethics and etiquette?"
posted by HuronBob at 4:02 AM PST - 49 comments

Guardian long read: "It is such a long time since the death of a monarch that many national organisations won’t know what to do. The official advice, as it was last time, will be that business should continue as usual. This won’t necessarily happen. If the Queen dies during Royal Ascot, the meet will be scrapped. The Marylebone Cricket Club is said to hold insurance for a similar outcome if she passes away during a home test match at Lord’s. After the death of George VI in 1952, rugby and hockey fixtures were called off, while football matches went ahead. Fans sang Abide With Me and the national anthem before kick off. The National Theatre will close if the news breaks before 4pm, and stay open if not. All games, including golf, will be banned in the Royal Parks." [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 3:19 AM PST - 68 comments

But I Don’t Know If I Want Them Anymore [more inside]
posted by moody cow at 2:35 AM PST - 4 comments

As its subtitle suggests, part of the project of Brenda Stevenson’s The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Race, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots is to recover the central role that Harlins’s death and Du’s light sentence played in the lead-up to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.  Although a different legal ruling — the not-guilty verdict for the LAPD officers who were filmed brutally beating Rodney King — provided the riots’ immediate instigating event, Rodney and Latasha’s names were often invoked in the same breath: “Tell me what’s a black life worth / A bottle of juice is no excuse, the truth hurts […] Ask Rodney, Latasha, and many more,” Tupac Shakur rapped in “I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto". -- Common Ground: Brenda Stevenson’s “The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins” By Rachel Monroe [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 1:42 AM PST - 3 comments