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Happy birthday to Siouxsie Sioux, one of the Queens of British Pop* (docu offline currently, clip on Siouxsie), from her start as a member of the Bromley Contingent alongside the Sex Pistols, who she played alongside in 1976, as seen in the London Weekend Show, to a big send-off show in 2008 when her style and sound was much less of a riot, and more of the moody and ethereal end of goth/alt rock. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:35 PM PST - 19 comments

Larry Kramer, AIDS activist, co-founder of ACTUP and The Gay Men's Health Crisis, playwright of The Normal Heart, has died at 84 (NYT) Obituaries are plentiful on the web, and tributes on Twitter. [more inside]
posted by tzikeh at 5:45 PM PST - 72 comments

Marga Griesbach, 92, made it through the Holocaust, and set off for a cruise around the world in February.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:03 PM PST - 14 comments

Mercator: Extreme, by Drew Roos. “A single map encompassing the entire surface of the Earth, yet containing both human scale and global scale.” [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 2:59 PM PST - 8 comments

Just how many people are in this random picture in the 1940 film, "The Great McGinty"? It takes a bit of research.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:32 PM PST - 12 comments

John Barth Deserves a Wider Audience by John Domini for LitHub
posted by chavenet at 2:24 PM PST - 15 comments

The Aromas of Trees: Five Practices. A set of invitations for sensing trees at Emergence Magazine by David G. Haskell, author of The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors.
We begin at home: "Coffee. Pencil shavings. Almond milk. Honey laden with aromatic memories of tree nectar and pollen. Inhale, and remember that we live in the forest, even when this truth is hidden from the eye." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:19 PM PST - 2 comments

GCN tests just how hard was the first ever Tour de France? The 1903 edition of the race started with a 467km stage between Paris and Lyon, a real test of endurance.
posted by rebent at 2:02 PM PST - 21 comments

What is Roam Research and why are researchers and writers losing their minds over this note-taking/knowledge management/productivity app based on Zettelkasten and still in closed beta? [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:33 PM PST - 43 comments

Demo-2 is go for propellant load. At T-45 minutes, the signal was given to start the propellant load and start on a new era of commercial space transportation. For the first time in nine years, a crewed spacecraft will launch from American soil.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:49 PM PST - 87 comments

The hidden demonic horrors of UMass Dartmouth
Paul Rudolph worked in the Brutalist style in his sweeping plans for UMass Dartmouth (then Southeastern Massachusetts University) But was the honored, 'acclaimed and confounding', maligned and forgotten, volatile and visionary Rudolph secretly a Satanist? [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:20 PM PST - 19 comments

Matt Stoller writes about Varsity Brands, and its stranglehold on cheerleading: "The most unpopular extractive arrangement for many of its contests is “Stay to Play,” where non-local teams must book a high-priced Varsity-approved hotel to play in the competition. Staying with a friend or a cheaper place gets a team kicked out of the tournament, and the gym owner fined. These tactics inflated prices in the primary market for cheer competitions, and in the secondary market of apparel and equipment. They also just make cheerleading less fun, or as one person told me, they “kill the spirit of cheer.” [more inside]
posted by benoliver999 at 11:59 AM PST - 14 comments

Wholesome Games Direct 2020 [YouTube][37:09][Trailers & Showcase] “A digital games showcase called the Wholesome Games Direct aired yesterday, dedicated to cute and colorful games. It put the spotlight on over 50 upcoming indie games that run the gamut from train sims to augmented reality adventures. Games showcased will be playable on a variety of gaming platforms.”
posted by Fizz at 10:25 AM PST - 3 comments

Bending Lines: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception "Instead of ranking maps on a linear spectrum with “true and objective” on one side, and “false and biased” on the other, Bending Lines instead encourages you to pay attention to the social, cultural, and political context in which every act of communication is situated. Just because every map is distorted in some way or another doesn’t mean that it’s no longer possible to speak about honesty and accuracy. Thinking carefully about motivations, meaning, persuasion, and presentation helps us to construct trust in an informed, critical manner." from the Boston Public Library's Leventhal Map Center
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:16 AM PST - 1 comments

Anti-fascist news site Unicorn Riot has 2 hours of raw footage taken at the scene of last night's protest of the police killing of George Floyd. @TheQueerCrimer was live-tweeting police radio broadcasts. It's Going Down has a good summary article of what happened. Four officers present at the killing have been fired. What we know about Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao, two of the officers caught on tape, including info about their previous use-of-force incidents, one of which resulted in a $25,000 out-of-court settlement. [more inside]
posted by mediareport at 9:16 AM PST - 1697 comments

I quickly ducked into my bedroom closet, grabbed a small wooden hut filled with 60 buzzing bees, and returned to the group. Sitting under a floor lamp, I used a pair of long, delicate tweezers to grab a squirming insect, then asked Risha to pull up her sweater and straighten out her back. Using the knuckle of my thumb to measure one inch from Risha’s spine, I carefully placed the bee to her skin and gave it a light tap. As the tiny barbed stinger went in, Risha inhaled sharply and I slowly counted to 10. I scraped out the stinger with my fingernail, then turned to my guests, who had come to my house to learn about using live bee stings as a treatment for Lyme disease. “Who’s next?” The Secret Society of Self-Stingers (Narratively)
posted by not_the_water at 9:03 AM PST - 32 comments

General Electric exits the lightbulb business after finally finding a buyer for its lighting unit and will be selling off its last consumer-facing business after more than 120 years of operation. The lighting business is GE's oldest segment, dating all the way back to the company's founding through a series of mergers with Thomas Edison's companies in the late 1880s and early 1890s. [more inside]
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:54 AM PST - 42 comments

Alcohol Funnycar wrote and recorded the song "Someday" from separate homes. The music video shows masked musicians Ben London and Tommy Simpson (separately) visiting Seattle music venues and a lot of pandemic murals & messages.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:52 AM PST - 1 comments

Earlier this year, a first-time academic author published a new mathematical study in the journal Research in Number Theory. The twist? The researcher, Christopher Havens, is also serving a 25-year sentence in the Washington Department of Correction following a murder conviction.
posted by Etrigan at 6:40 AM PST - 19 comments