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The MIT International Students Office offers a guide to cultural adjustment. Besides for a breakdown of the phases of cultural adjustment, it also offers extensive primers on Americanisms and idioms. The contents may be of interest to Americans as well. [more inside]
posted by cosmic owl at 8:52 PM PST - 321 comments

A year later, the Drop Kick Murphy's live stream their St Patrick's day show. [more inside]
posted by Carillon at 4:24 PM PST - 6 comments

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asks Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into matters which precede Garland's tenure "but have evaded oversight" -- including Justice Brett Kavanaugh [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:00 PM PST - 54 comments

Shrimp eating broccoli | carrot | watermelon and other peaceful meditations on the planted aquarium
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:19 PM PST - 11 comments

Perfume Genius has released Immediately Remixes, a set of remixes from his 2020 album Set My Heart On Fire Immediately. A.G. Cook's remix of Describe is accompanied by a video [content warning for flashing lights] by the animator Jack Wedge
posted by hermanubis at 1:59 PM PST - 2 comments

Literature and History is a podcast by Dr. Doug Metzger about the literature of the English speaking world from the year 2000 BCE until … well, in the five years since he's now up to 300 CE, and in about a year's time, in episode 100, he'll get to the first Anglo-Saxon books. The plan is to cover all the major influences on Anglophone literature, and the main influences on those influences, before diving into literature written in that language. The episodes are generally between an hour and two hours and half long, and leaven serious literary history with jokes and silly songs. All episodes have transcripts and quizzes available, and if you've listened to all the free episodes, 84 so far, you can also buy some more. [via Emma Hine in The Paris Review]
posted by Kattullus at 1:37 PM PST - 18 comments

Sickening as it is watching Larnell Lewis hearing "Enter Sandman" for the first time and immediately nailing the drums when you yourself struggled for three years learning to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on the guitar --badly--, you can't deny the man's talent, not just in being able to play a song perfectly after hearing it once, but also in how he breaks it down beforehand while listening to it. (Via.)
posted by MartinWisse at 12:33 PM PST - 57 comments

Dear EMSTBC, No one is taking care of you, and it hurts. Normally I’d start with something much more empowering than that. Because most of us don’t have anyone taking care of us! We don’t each get our own private Mommy who listens and empathizes and makes things better. Hell, many of us don’t even get that when we’re babies. But you know what? It’s still so sad to feel like you’re completely on your own. And when you’re enraged, sometimes that’s just the sadness of needing so much that you don’t have.
posted by snerson at 11:55 AM PST - 40 comments

Ben Eater builds the world's worst VGA video card and installs it in a puny computer that he also built himself. [more inside]
posted by dmh at 11:48 AM PST - 29 comments

Xavier Lozano playing a flute made from a street barricade. Check out the TED talk which is in Catalan but includes lots of fun fluting on unconventional flutes.
posted by latkes at 10:53 AM PST - 4 comments

Visit wttr.in (or curl it) to get the weather where you are
Visit wttr.in/somewhere to get the weather somewhere
Visit wttr.in/moon to get the phase of the moon.
This website turns wego and pyphoon into services.
Thanks, @schachmat and Igor Chubin!
posted by Going To Maine at 10:28 AM PST - 15 comments

Celebrated racecar driver Sabine Schmitz, Queen of the Nürburgring Ring and two time winner of the 24 hours of Nürburgring but probably best known for embarrassing Jeremy Clarkson with a sub ten minute lap at the wheel of a Ford Transit, has died of cancer. She was 51. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 9:16 AM PST - 43 comments

The Charming Hostess lost its frontwoman, Jewlia Eisenberg, last week. An article in the Forward (originally known in Yiddish as the Forverts) provides a good introduction to the life of Jewlia Eisenberg, who created music she called "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" by blending blues, folk music, and Jewish piyyut. [more inside]
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:12 AM PST - 10 comments

Apparently anyone can put anything in the Bitcoin blockchain, including illegal material, and it can't be removed without forking the chain and thus diminishing the coin value. This could be the downfall that stops the immense waste of energy maintaining the blockchain. Maybe start by adding in pictures of Winnie the Pooh?
posted by hypnogogue at 8:12 AM PST - 69 comments

A year alone in a forest in Sweden, building a log cabin [YouTube, ~2 hours]. [more inside]
posted by Westringia F. at 7:10 AM PST - 11 comments