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LOC Serendipity: Curated and Randomly Generated Selections from the Library of Congress is a website that simulates the experience of exploring a library and skimming eye-catching or interesting titles using the vast troves of digital resources held by the Library of Congress. It was designed and created by Metafilter's own metasunday. [via mefi projects]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:18 PM PST - 18 comments

The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well. Ten years ago, the tax agency formed a special team to unravel the complex tax-lowering strategies of the nation’s wealthiest people. But with big money — and Congress — arrayed against the team, it never had a chance. (SLProPublica by Jesse Eisinger and Paul Kiel; previously in this series)
posted by crazy with stars at 2:48 PM PST - 48 comments

As if it was a plagiarism
posted by avi111 at 1:04 PM PST - 36 comments

Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Danger Mouse have released an album called Lux Prima. The film clip for Woman, directed by Spike Jones and performed live on The Late Show. Full album on youtube.
posted by adept256 at 12:22 PM PST - 19 comments

If you use your smartphone for GPS navigation, or pretty much any other GPS receiver released in the past decade you can probably ignore this next link -- but if you have an older GPS receiver, it may malfunction on or around April 6, 2019. (Liliputing) GPS “rollover” event on April 6 could have some side-effects -- GPS’s UTC clock, used for more than navigation, is about to reset. There might be some surprises. (Ars Technica) It's no Year 2000 Problem (Wikipedia) ... well, it is, in a way. It's another time formatting and storage bug (Wikipedia), and this particular GPS hiccup already happened, at 23:59:47 on Saturday 21 August 1999 (more details from 1998, PDF). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:04 PM PST - 26 comments

She’d been looking at me and I hadn’t really noticed. Her lips were barely moving, but I took out one earbud and said “pardon?” And she said “are you getting off soon?” And I said yes. The train was mostly empty. But then I noticed she was holding a laminated sheet of paper out.
At the top it said “my seizure plan” [more inside]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:47 AM PST - 42 comments

How To Get Strong. A guide from the NYT.
posted by storybored at 10:44 AM PST - 55 comments

An infant did not have any hospital visitors for five months. So this nurse adopted her. WaPo | MSN [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:38 AM PST - 9 comments

Immersed is a podcast about board games by Chris and Suzanne Zinsli, the designers and bloggers of Cardboard Edison. Each episode delves into a single game, its play and design and inspiration -- as well as an interview with someone who works in the real-world field that the game distills into an hour or so of tabletop enjoyment. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 10:27 AM PST - 2 comments

“ Four recent studies found that older Americans are more likely to consume and share false online news than those in other age groups, even when controlling for factors such as partisanship. Other research has found that older Americans have a poor or inaccurate grasp of how algorithms play a role in selecting what information is shown to them on social media, are worse than younger people at differentiating between reported news and opinion, and are less likely to register the brand of a news site they consume information from. “ Old, Online, and Fed On Lies (Buzzfeed) YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant (Bloomberg) “I might recommend adding Facebook poisoning to the diagnoses as well. In the tiny town in which I grew up, there’s no local paper anymore and nothing in the way of culture or things to do period. “
posted by The Whelk at 9:41 AM PST - 59 comments

The Boy Band Con [YouTube] is a new documentary about Lou Pearlman, the man who created the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC then ripped them off for millions, told by the boy band members themselves. [more inside]
posted by Gin and Broadband at 9:32 AM PST - 22 comments

The first is how it’s always been told, as a joke, as dark comedy, making her out into a villain, a vixen, a barfly, an object of derision and then, later, pity .... The other way—the way I want, I need, to tell it—is as a story of trauma. Of tragedies never fully recovered from, of terrible decisions leading to other terrible decisions, of alcohol as self-medication, and of some degree of contentment achieved after the largest possible toll. A sensational story, yes, but underneath the sensation was something more complicated, and thus, more interesting. Sandy Fawkes: The Reporter and The Serial Killer by Sarah Weinman [CW: Murder, Rape, Abuse, Suicide, Alcoholism]
posted by chavenet at 9:15 AM PST - 10 comments

"Accessibility is more than whether a door frame is wide enough for a wheelchair. It’s equally about the hospitality diners with disabilities receive when they come in for a meal, including whether employees are nimble in accommodating them so they can have the same experience as other diners. One in four U.S. adults—61 million people—have a disability that impacts major life activities, according to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. The most common disability type, mobility, affects one in seven adults."
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:47 AM PST - 43 comments

Dean Nicholson was planning to explore the world solo by bike. Little did he expect when he crossed paths with a scruffy little companion in Montenegro that she would worm her way into his handlebar bag and his heart.
posted by drlith at 6:59 AM PST - 34 comments