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On the evening of September 8, 1948, young Dorothy Nixon and her grandmother heard a car approach their home and heard two white men calling for her father. The white men had grown up near the Nixons and were well known to the family: Johnnie Johnson arrived with a shotgun, and his brother, Jim A. Johnson, carried a pistol. Jim called up to the Nixon’s house, demanding Isaiah Nixon come outside. When Nixon stepped onto the porch, Johnson asked Nixon how he voted that day...

Buried Truths is a podcast that grows out of an Emory University history class, deeply exploring a Civil Rights era murder that was never prosecuted, giving a window into the history of the voting rights movement, Georgia politics and much more. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 8:51 PM PST - 6 comments

Bob Dorough has died, and with him an essential part of the early education of tens of millions of children in math, grammar, and United States civics. Here he is in 2011, doing an extended version of "Three is a Magic Number"... [more inside]
posted by ardgedee at 6:46 PM PST - 57 comments

For the Good of the Species - "Whether group selection is an important evolutionary force, or not, is a highly controversial question in evolutionary science. A substantial proportion of evolutionary scientists still think that it is not." (via)
posted by kliuless at 5:55 PM PST - 18 comments

Writer Kelly Conaboy (previously) home-tested her dog's DNA so she could settle arguments at the dog park. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:47 PM PST - 59 comments

Eugene Grant on dwarfism. "I promise you: the best thing to call someone with dwarfism is *their name*. If you don't know their name, ask yourself why you need to refer to their body before knowing who they are." [more inside]
posted by bitmage at 4:16 PM PST - 14 comments

Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real.

After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. "Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education," wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.

Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn’t respond to additional inquiries.

posted by Atom Eyes at 3:29 PM PST - 13 comments

"Climate change often evokes images of smokestacks, and for good reason: The single largest source of carbon emissions related to human activity is heat and power generation, which accounts for about one-quarter of the carbon we put into the atmosphere. Often overlooked, though, is how we use land, which contributes almost as much. The erosion and degradation of soil caused by plowing, intense grazing and clear-cutting has played a significant role in the atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gases." [more inside]
posted by Lycaste at 2:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Complex thoughts and emotions arise... when contemplating death and immortality. The reflexive 'fight' against aging and death may have unforeseen consequences.
posted by CheapB at 2:25 PM PST - 42 comments

Japanese rental roles aren't new, but this New Yorker piece is the best take I've read on them.
posted by ecourbanist at 2:02 PM PST - 19 comments

The Big Data Panic. "Cambridge Analytica said it could move the minds of American voters. Science tells a different story."
posted by storybored at 1:13 PM PST - 25 comments

The Evolution of Pet Names [single-link Bored Panda].
posted by chainsofreedom at 1:02 PM PST - 119 comments

Nicaragua protested. People were killed. Changes to decrease pension benefits were rolled back. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 11:58 AM PST - 27 comments

Play Saturn's Rings Like a Harp [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 9:01 AM PST - 8 comments

This Map Shows The Most Famous Book Set In Every State (Business Insider; sorry-not sorry, Washington; previously) | The Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State (Brooklyn Magazine; both a map and a vision test) | The Most Popular Book in Each of the 50 States (Scribd, via Parade Magazine, in 2014) | 50 States, 50 Novels: A Literary Tour of the United States (Qwiklit belies its name and provides extra thought in their list) | 100 Books Across America: Fiction and Nonfiction for Every State in the Union (A Reading List for Your Last-Second Literary Road Trip from Lithub, who are good with words but bad with math, as they include a pick per state in fiction, non-fiction, and a famous title) | 50 State Booklist (National Education Association throws out limits and lists 329 titles in total)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:50 AM PST - 57 comments

"Lil" Miquela Sousa is a Spanish-Brazilian American model and musician from Downey, California who was recently featured in a V Magazine editorial spread. Her Instagram account, @lilmiquela, has more than a million followers. Miquela's selfies show her wearing designer clothes, posing with other models, musicians and activists -- and she even launched Prada's Instagram Gifs last fashion week. But there's just one catch: Lil Miquela is not a human being. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:44 AM PST - 90 comments

There is something near-miraculous about the organ donation system, which allows tens of thousands of Americans a year to give up parts of their body they no longer need to extend lives There are about 660,000 people in the United Stated being treated for kidney failure. One donor's story.
posted by pjern at 6:26 AM PST - 17 comments

The innovative Channel 4 conspiracy drama series Utopia, is to be remade by Amazon.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:22 AM PST - 26 comments

Officially branded as terrorists by the authoritarian regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, alternately supported, disregarded and threatened by the US in this era of incoherent strategic policy, the autonomous citizens of Rojava — or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria — have been left to fend for themselves in the face of a brutal and largely indiscriminate onslaught by the Turkish military. Now a selection of prominent American academics and public intellectuals has launched the Emergency Committee for Rojava, with an urgent call to support and defend this unique experiment with popular control and self-management. [more inside]
posted by adamgreenfield at 5:19 AM PST - 5 comments

It is a premise that could not possibly belong to anything good: years after their breakup, the members of a beloved band find themselves suddenly reunited, restored to youth and sent to undertake a quest in another world. Except that this is a completely serious epic fantasy novel (albeit with many moments of humor). Indeed, there's a lot of self-awareness - one of the advanced aliens responsible seems to have a bit of a thing for the Beatles. This is With Strings Attached, or, The Big Pink Job. The first half is available for free, as is the first chapter of the first volume of the sequel, The Keys Stand Alone, Book One: The Soft World. Backstory on the book's creation can be found at its TVTropes page. (Content warnings that I'm aware of: mentions (at minimum) of violence, mentions of sex, mentions of rape, drug use) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 5:06 AM PST - 5 comments

We Sent Garlic Bread to the Edge of Space, Then Ate It [SLYT] [5:23] [subtitles]
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 3:32 AM PST - 15 comments

Sheryl Crow stares at you from the cover of her 1996 eponymous second album and dares you. It was a largely a personal project, writing and producing basically everything. Cassette Side A:Maybe Angels, A Change [video], Home [video], Sweet Rosalyn, If It Makes You Happy [video], Redemption Day [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:58 AM PST - 17 comments