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TreeTV is a five-hour video from Adult Swim of footage of trees and mellow music.
Created adjacent to Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera.
“Axolotl” by Julio Cortázar
posted by Going To Maine at 10:47 PM PST - 3 comments

“It’s a one-time shift in technology. After this, it’s going to stay like this forever,” says Saurabh Bajaj, CEO of Swiftlane, a Silicon Valley touchless startup using facial recognition. He says that Covid-19 had enabled technology to leapfrog into an immediate future of touchless elevators, doors, and trash cans. Our Economy Was Just Blasted Years Into the Future (Marker.Medium.com) More than interacting with the physical world at a distance, the article covers the increased focus on, and fights against facial recognition technology (STAT News), work-from-home becoming more widely adopted and supported (The Guardian), but researchers estimate that 42% of recent layoffs will result in permanent job loss (NBER). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:33 PM PST - 27 comments

T. Greg Doucette, regular member of #LawTwitter and Vic Migonga/Ty Beard commentator par excellence, gets asked what might we do to stop the takeover of the police and the judiciary by white supremacy. Greg replies with an epic 15 point thread.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:24 PM PST - 44 comments

The listing for this forest-encircled house in California includes some interesting photos. The reclusive resident generally keeps to herself, but trying to shift a property in these times means you have to put yourself out there.
posted by smoke at 6:23 PM PST - 22 comments

In February, the Canadian Museum of Nature asked Canadians to vote for their favourite lichen. Behold the star-tipped reindeer — Canadians' top pick for a national lichen. Watch Dr. Troy McMullin, lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, present the Star-tipped Reindeer Lichen as the top vote-getter from the national lichen vote. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:12 PM PST - 12 comments

An oral history of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. (sli09).
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:55 PM PST - 22 comments

This Word Does Not Exist. Thomas Dimson, former Instagram engineer, and interpreter of emojis, brings us computer-generated plants, chemical technobabble, fashion trends, and more.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 4:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Lessons From Operation "Denver," the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign: Historian Douglas Selvage talks about what the Russian government did in the 1980s to spread a conspiracy theory about the origins of HIV, and how that reverberates to the effects of misinformation campaigns currently promoted about the novel coronavirus
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:26 PM PST - 2 comments

A nothing short of triumphant stop motion renovation of an engine [SLYT]. LKW-Werksatt in Niederlauer, Germany, rebuilds a Mercedes Benz Actros OM471LAtruck engine.
posted by bouvin at 1:32 PM PST - 37 comments

Harry Lee Kassen at Comics Bookcase looks hard at the structure of layouts in The Wild Storm by Warren Ellis & Jon Davis-Hunt
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:55 PM PST - 6 comments

In a veritable firework display of digital self portraits, hundreds of quaint, embarrassing and dread-fully disturbing selfies were arranged in a unique short film composition. Single photos, artistically reworked, consolidate to form a ghastly grin that outshines the abyss of human existence. [Possibly NSFW]
posted by dobbs at 12:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Why now is the time to embrace video games for kids [CNN] “Before the pandemic, video games were a weekend-only activity in our house, allowed for one hour a day, Saturday and Sunday. It was a compromise that worked for our family. My 7-year-old had a chance to dig in to his favorite games, and we parents felt like we were putting reasonable limits on an activity about which we were somewhat ambivalent. But now he's playing them daily — and I wouldn't have it any other way. In this lonely pandemic world, we still want our kids to get together to play, and they do, too. Unlike us boring grown-ups, they don't get much out of chatting in group texts or through FaceTime (or even those work Zoom meetings). They want to enter collective imagined spaces and discover the elastic possibilities that await. Only there, somewhere deep in the unreal, are they likely to start exploring, creating and, importantly, connecting. Like most kids around the world, it's been a long time since my son has been able to battle bad guys, travel to faraway lands or rescue animals with his friends in person. But, thanks to video games, all is not lost.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 10:41 AM PST - 43 comments

Hello son, this is booking agent Bobby Romeo and I'm calling to offer your band Yo La Tengo an opportunity to open for the reunited Beatles! [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 10:23 AM PST - 10 comments

In 1998, Lucy Lawless brought down Studio 8H with an impression of the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman imagined as the owner of a bad Mexican restaurant. The sketch is not one of ‘SNL’s’ most famous, but in the two decades after its airing, it has garnered a cult following.
posted by Etrigan at 7:27 AM PST - 78 comments

Vote Save America, a project from Crooked Media, has developed the Adopt A State program, which allows Americans in blue states (and elsewhere) to help win the Senate and White House in 2020 by working remotely to help get out the vote and support Democratic candidates in additional ways. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:13 AM PST - 30 comments

"I will say, it is something I'm a little hesitant to canonise, because, honestly, I would have cast a trans actor if that was something I wanted to [do]. If I wanted that character to be very canonically trans, I think that would have been a really cool thing to do," she said. "It's just something I want to be a little cautious around, because I don't want to be adding to things after the fact"

She-Ra showrunner Noelle Stevenson responds to the fan theory of Bow as a trans man. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 3:09 AM PST - 30 comments

If you believe in 5G conspiracy theories but aren't comfortable committing arson, there is an alternative - a device which claims to protect against the 'negative health effects' of 5G. It's a USB stick and it retails for £339 (three hundred and thirty-nine pounds sterling). [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:47 AM PST - 80 comments