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Why humans need stories - "From fireside folk tales to Netflix dramas, narratives are essential to every society – and evolutionary theorists are now trying to figure out why." (via)
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM PST - 16 comments

@hillarydale:

life update: i recently made a claim that lorde & jack antonoff are 2gether & it's taken me on a strange journey to the Truth, which i present to u in the way i best express myself - powerpoint:

Someone made a PowerPoint to prove Lorde and Jack Antonoff are dating and it's...remarkable [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:28 PM PST - 33 comments

“Five Men And A Limo” is an advertisement for the 1997 The Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards in which Don LaFontaine, John Leader, Al Chalk, Mark Elliot, Nick Tate, and Hal Douglas say things in their sweet, sweet voices.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:27 PM PST - 12 comments

Google's Attempt at Fixing Autoplay Videos Has Broken Countless Games [Waypoint] “Here’s what happened. Over the weekend, Google pushed out a series of changes to its enormously popular Chrome web browser, hoping to fix one of the Internet’s great annoyances: autoplaying videos with sound. A noble quest, but one with unexpected consequences; as soon as the feature went live, it broke all kinds of web content that relies on audio, including games. A key component of those games—sound—now doesn’t work, unless the designers intervene. In trying to address the legitimate problem of autoplaying videos—a shitty marketing and advertising tactic to trick you into “viewing” a video—Google messed with and changed the open standards all sorts of other developers had been working with.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 9:19 PM PST - 38 comments

mytolkienbooks.com is a classic single-serving web 2.x personal site, serving simply as a catalog of one Tolkienist bibliophile's collection. I came across it cross-searching a poorly-sourced Facebook reference to the 1977 Rankin-Bass book edition of The Hobbit.
posted by mwhybark at 7:16 PM PST - 14 comments

“Recently, Lil Tay entered into this fray. Tay is—as far as we know—a 9-year-old girl, an ostensible recording artist, the self-described ‘youngest flexer in the game,’ a possessor of some truly above-grade-level curse words, and the cause of my near-breakdown as I’ve tried to determine just who the hell put her up to this.”
I Drove Myself Nuts Trying to Unravel the Mystery of Seemingly Unparented 9-Year-Old Instagram Shit-Talker Lil Tay, from Jezebel
posted by Grandysaur at 7:08 PM PST - 35 comments

Link together a bunch of kites and hoist a camera up several hundred feet, and voila! There are several links in the article to different deposits of aerial photos by the enterprising George R. Lawrence.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:11 PM PST - 4 comments

After your rocket bicycle hits 207 mph in 4.8 seconds, beating a Ferrari at the drag strip, what do you do next? If you're mad inventor François Gissy, you build a tricycle that tops 5 gees.
posted by drdanger at 2:24 PM PST - 23 comments

Joseph Herscher makes videos of Rube Goldberg machines. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 1:49 PM PST - 2 comments

Toniann Fernandez is a writer based in Brooklyn. She still has not met Bruce Springsteen.
posted by Etrigan at 12:19 PM PST - 6 comments

THINGS TO SAY WHEN SOMEONE FARTS:

• EXCUSE YOU
• SHUT YOUR BUTT
• SOMEONE RANG THE TACO BELL
• GOD BLESS YOU
• EVEN THAT SMELLED LIKE ASPARAGUS

This Guy’s Been Doing The Same Writing Warmup For 3 Years, And Some Of Them Are Gems
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:04 PM PST - 78 comments

Researchers at The University of Manchester have trained a spider (named Kim) to jump on command in order to better understand the extraordinary jumping capabilities of these spiders. Some of these results will help engineers design spider-like robots. The work has been published in the Journal Nature Scientific Reports. [more inside]
posted by blurker at 11:07 AM PST - 31 comments

The Harpy (Village Voice) columnist Talia Lavin calls out Ross Douthat for his recent NYT column on the April 23rd Toronto van attack that killed 10 people and injured 16 (CW for rape & assault in Lavin's column). Instead of admitting that the perpetrator (a self-defined "incel," "involuntary celibate") belonged to a misogynist terrorist group, "Douthat...posit[ed] that the idea of sex as a redistributable resource is 'entirely responsive to the logic of late-modern sexual life,' and blam[ed] 'sexual liberation' for inceldom and its victims." Lavin also calls out George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson for his blog post arguing that incels "might have a salient point to contribute to the national discourse." [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:36 AM PST - 204 comments

"With their Game 6 win, of course, the Capitals also did a service for the entire region. They ended a narrative that made no one happy, that wasn’t cute or goofy, that failed to interest the rest of the country, that had no redeeming charm or quirks and no catchy nickname. They were playing their B-team, and they were sizable underdogs. But they did not choke, gag or falter. They did not blow a four-goal lead after a player accidentally skated into a sinkhole. They just won." The stupidest streak in sports is dead, thanks to the Caps. Bye. [more inside]
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:24 AM PST - 17 comments

The Weird Science Behind Chain Restaurant Menus A corporate restaurant consultant tells the inside story of how they developed a new "lighter, brigher, fresher" menu for an unnamed nationwide US fast-casual chain that serves Pan-Asian food. (SL Vice Munchies) [more inside]
posted by Umami Dearest at 9:34 AM PST - 68 comments

"The first two records I ever owned were a Flatt & Scruggs and a Johnny Cash record, and the only two jobs I ever had were for Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash....Your life is never the same after you hang out with characters like that." Marty Stuart—maker of country music and keeper of many of its memories—has a new album out. "Time Don't Wait" is an introduction to its jangly psychedelic desert sound, a creative turn from a veteran of the country music scene. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:00 AM PST - 5 comments

"Univision Is A Fucking Mess." A special long form report/distress signal from the Gizmodo Media Group, a subsidiary of Univision.
posted by Iridic at 7:58 AM PST - 36 comments

The Boston Public Library has digitized their collection of prints and drawings by M.C. Escher. View the full collection here. (h/t Kottke.org)
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:56 AM PST - 10 comments

PERÚ Featuring psychedelic cumbias, funk, the world’s first punk band, guitar driven heavy psych and psychedelic Peruvian electronic music. [more inside]
posted by sfenders at 7:54 AM PST - 1 comments

The tiniest addicts: How U.P. babies became part of opioid epidemic
posted by riruro at 6:09 AM PST - 5 comments

Where does the food at your farmers' market come from? In Peterborough, Ontario, much of it is from agribusiness resellers. This made some local farmers upset, and they spoke up to ask for clear labelling of who was and wasn't a local grower. The market was not happy about the attention and kicked out the "dissident" members.
posted by clawsoon at 5:29 AM PST - 66 comments

Very Legit will take any URL & make it look dodgy as hell. [more inside]
posted by scalefree at 1:02 AM PST - 32 comments