April 4, 2019

He Stopped Counting at 4500

The joke that has ended thousands of relationships (SLYT). Here's a follow-up interview.
posted by zaixfeep at 6:41 PM PST - 77 comments

How does a person lose track of their diary?

“The act of the diary strikes me as so deeply human.” a longform comic on lost and found diaries.
posted by Grandysaur at 4:55 PM PST - 20 comments

"I briefly amuse myself by mashing the Help and Please buttons"

“The ten hour shifts can be pretty grating on your mind. What worked for me was trying to completely zone out — think about nothing — and let my cerebellum take over.” Advice given to a new Amazon warehouse employee. In his own words, Postyn Smith recounts the roll-out of games on the warehouse floor designed to help keep workers "engaged" and lower turnover. Not to be confused with the similarly dystopian game that came out earlier this year where you play as an Amazon warehouse worker, created by Australia's ABC News.
posted by Snacks at 1:50 PM PST - 37 comments

Bird conservation in the Great Lakes

"Fight for Flight" is a 15 minute video about conservationists helping birds in the Great Lakes region (SLVimeo)
posted by rebent at 12:54 PM PST - 2 comments

“...but how realistic is it really?”

Could We Blow Up the Internet? [Motherboard] “About six years ago, when I told people I was writing a novel about a group of activists destroying the internet, they would always ask me two questions. The first was always “why?” Tellingly, that’s not a question I get asked anymore. More often than not I’m met with a “nice,” a “right on,” or just a knowing, appreciative nod. It seems like everybody has their own reasons for destroying the internet: Trump, gamergate, Brexit, Facebook, the alt-right, revenge porn. Take your pick, it’s been a wild six years. The second question remains the same though: “how?” [...] It’s both an exciting and frightening idea, that activists and protest groups—rather than military, paramilitary, or nation state forces—might be able to cause disruption and chaos via DIY methods of attacking internet infrastructure,”
posted by Fizz at 12:13 PM PST - 70 comments

the futility of all human striving

The Unintended Impact of Academic Research on Asset Returns: The CAPM Alpha, Alex R. Horenstein - "This paper explores a channel whereby asset-pricing anomalies can appear as investors alter portfolios according to findings in academic research. In particular, I find that assets with low realized CAPM alphas [wiki] outperform those with high ones, but only after the CAPM’s publication in the 1960s." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:03 PM PST - 40 comments

Delores: love story of how a man who had gas in his veins went electric

Rich Benoit, who is a mix of a gear-head and a techie, fell in love with an electric car, but wanted to rebuild a Tesla instead of buying one. So he did. (Boston Globe) “We’re in a society where if you need to know something you Google it, but there was nothing out there, no one who knew how to fix them.” Benoit started with one flood-damaged car, then got a second that had been totaled in a crash. He figured it out from there, posting his progress to YouTube as Rich Rebuilds. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 11:11 AM PST - 26 comments

will dispense free one, three and five-minute stories

Short story vending machines to transport London commuters [The Guardian]
posted by readinghippo at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research would it?

From squeaking sand to the etymology of the word "abracadabra" to whether time really moves in one direction, Wikenigma: An Encyclopedia of Unknowns has been established to catalog the "known unknowns" -- things we don't (yet) understand about the world around us and our places in it.
posted by Etrigan at 9:58 AM PST - 17 comments

My Adoptive Parents Hid My Racial Identity From Me For 19 Years

Melissa Guida-Richards's parents told her and her brother that, like them, they were ethnically Italian and Portuguese, and did not tell them they were actually adopted and had been born in Colombia.
posted by larrybob at 9:31 AM PST - 47 comments

“When You’re Poor, Everybody Thinks You’re Lying”

“Hayes and Burton want to create a service that not only offers more humane treatment of its creative community but also gives leftist and left-curious viewers a single home for everything from animated comedy to scripted and reality shows to quick explainers, produced explicitly without the kind of restrictions or corporate watering down more prevalent elsewhere. Means TV will be a subscription streaming service that will cost $10 per month, but it plans to publish content across social and YouTube to counter the legions of right-wing content creators on those platforms.” The team behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s viral campaign is aiming to create a home for quality leftist entertainment and media without a corporate leash. (Fast Company) “ “Basically, it’s a cooperatively-run, anti-capitalist Netflix,” said co-founder Naomi Burton, the goal of which is “to help create the cultural foundation and support needed to build socialism in the U.S.” (The Intercept) MEANS TV: For All Of Us - Parenting under Capitalism - Slavery, Colonizlism, And Capitalism - Lifehacks! How to literally stay alive! - Health Justice Is What We Deserve - Freedom Under Capitalism with Streetfight Radio - Youtube Channel
posted by The Whelk at 9:30 AM PST - 20 comments

They called her Felicia. She cost $35.

Why Physicists Tried to Put a Ferret in a Particle Accelerator
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:33 AM PST - 52 comments

They're Not White!

In which Full Frontal With Samantha Bee gets The Lucas Brothers to go to The Met to investigate how Greek and Roman white marble statuary has fed into white supremacist thought without any historical basis. [6m30s]
posted by hippybear at 7:00 AM PST - 32 comments

"Cats understand human cues better than many people think"

Researchers in Japan have demonstrated that cats can recognize their own names in a string of words. However, they noted that "it was not clear the cats realised their name was a name. 'There is no evidence that cats have the ability to recognise themselves. So I think they just associated words—here, names—with rewards or punishment.'"
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:47 AM PST - 52 comments

Fifty Shades of White

For the Guardian, Lois Beckett does a deep dive into recent efforts to address racial exclusion in the romance novel community. [more inside]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:05 AM PST - 33 comments

You're it!

World Chase Tag is the playground game of tag made competitive and played out using parkour techniques one on one in a closed jungle gym-like arena with 20 seconds on the clock. Medium interview with Damien Devaux, brother of founder Orlando. Their youtube channel has a ton of videos as does their instagram.
posted by juv3nal at 1:06 AM PST - 5 comments

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