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In fashion news, apparently, Merman colour is the next big thing in men’s hair. This styling and particular coloring replaces "man buns" as the in-thing for the man-about-town. Radiant blues and purples predominate, with the occasional green, and the occasional very green. The effect also used on beards and mustaches for that rainbow-hipster identity. Headwear co-ordination is a possibility, and age is not a barrier; neither is being a merman when in a serious boardroom meeting. Yellow is also a choice, and many bright colors at once are possible. For MeFites wanting to make a statement, some do's and dont's. And finally, a personal favorite: you can be very old and still cool.
posted by Wordshore at 9:49 PM PST - 159 comments

"While Friday marked a historic victory for the LGBTQ community, it turns out there’s another advancement to celebrate: Last week, the Oxford English Dictionary released a list of 500 new entries, and among the more notable additions was cisgender. The word —which is defined as 'designating a person whose sense of personal identity matches their gender at birth'— is seen as an opposite and complementary term to transgender." Why the Oxford English Dictionary's Addition of Cisgender Matters (Anna Diamond, Slate) [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:46 PM PST - 214 comments

The Gloria Swanson Saga: Part One

Gloria Swanson wasn’t here to make friends. She wasn’t “just like us.” She didn’t take out the garbage or “wear cotton” or go to the bathroom. Lady had a gold-plated bathtub. She married a Marquis. She was 4’11,” wore a 2 ½ in shoes, and had a waist approximately the size of my neck. She looked most beautiful when frowning. And for a period in the 1920s, she was the biggest star in the world. Swanson wasn’t evil, and she probably wasn’t even a bitch, but she just knew how to run that game. She was of a different set of stars — a different breed than Garbo, Dietrich, and other classic idols — that truly lived like demi-gods. And when Hollywood began to change the way it made and distributed films in the late ‘20s, she was one of dozens destined to remain a relic of an earlier time.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:38 PM PST - 43 comments

In a world-first for conservation a tree kangaroo has been raised by a rock-wallaby surrogate mother [SLYT] When Makaia, a Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo, was only five weeks old, he lost his mum. He needed a nice warm pouch to grow big and strong in, so Adelaide Zoo tried something that had never been done before... a Yellow-foot Rock-wallaby was found to be his surrogate mum. Up until now this special breeding technique, known as 'cross-fostering', has only been done with closely related wallaby species. (Includes footage of a baby tree-kangaroo unravelling a toilet-roll dispenser)
posted by coleboptera at 7:37 PM PST - 20 comments

After nine years, 222 episodes, 100 panelists and three governments, Sandi Toksvig hosts the News Quiz for the final time (autoplaying video). Sandi is leaving her most dysfunctional family at the New Quiz (autoplaying audio) to help lead the Women's Equality Party. Miles Jupp will be the next host.
posted by gladly at 7:10 PM PST - 51 comments

@Pixel_Dailies gives you a theme or subject every day for you to draw. They retweet and blog their favorites each day. The art club just had its first birthday.
posted by curious nu at 5:54 PM PST - 2 comments

This morning, The New Yorker's Rachel Aviv exposed the case of Louisiana death row inmate Rodricus Crawford, a possibly innocent 23 year old man prosecuted by notorious Caddo Parish assistant district attorney Dale Cox; at the same time, the Supreme Court refused to halt lethal injections in Oklahoma (or, as some had hoped, nationwide) and recently exonerated and freed former death row inmate Glenn Ford lost his life to lung cancer. [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 5:29 PM PST - 64 comments

"A recurring complaint is that not enough of our young people and adults have the kinds of competence the coming century will require, largely because not nearly enough are choosing careers that require the skills of STEM...The US has all the high-tech brains and bodies it needs, or at least that the economy can absorb."
posted by Lycaste at 3:42 PM PST - 119 comments

On conscience, morality, and Theodore Parker in part. "Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice." -Theodore Parker, 1853.
posted by shenkerism at 2:33 PM PST - 18 comments

Yes co-founder and bassist Chris Squire has died. [more inside]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:30 PM PST - 109 comments

Spotting real-world architecture in Monument Valley
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Why Disney Marriages Never Work: [SLYT] What happens after the credit roll is the truly depressing part.
posted by Fizz at 11:59 AM PST - 36 comments

License plates Massachusetts won't let you have.
posted by jessamyn at 11:15 AM PST - 96 comments

How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think (SLVox).
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:38 AM PST - 108 comments

Green is the new black: the unstoppable rise of the healthy-eating guru (slGrauniad) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 10:20 AM PST - 88 comments

In June, 1994, a man goes missing. His wife makes a series of interviews with police. Those interviews form the basis of the recently released title Her Story, an FMV-style game that tasks the player with digging through hours of video to determine what happened, and how, and why. [more inside]
posted by ZaphodB at 9:23 AM PST - 65 comments

The Exit Interview: I spent 12 Years in the Blue Man Group

"In our conversation with Issac Eddy, we found that he was far from silent about his experience as a Blue Man. From the struggles of learning drumming for the audition, to how the behavior of dogs informed his performance, to his portentous final show, Eddy let us in on just about every aspect of his time under the Blue, and why he decided to be a human again."

This is the first in a new series from Atlas Obscura called Exit Interview, where people leaving interesting jobs talk about their work and what they're doing next.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:17 AM PST - 28 comments

This was a world that never quite fit me. I was unnaturally hungry and never found something that could satisfy that hunger. No job kept me. From desks to barns to the muffling din of factories, the concept of a profession was foreign. No drug quieted me for more than a few hours. No friend or lover ever lasted for more than a few days. My family had long since receded into the gray haze of memories.

Thomas Ligotti reviews the new Hot Dog Bites Pizza from Pizza Hut. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 9:09 AM PST - 65 comments

Science with Bez [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:07 AM PST - 12 comments

The headlines are exciting: "Clocks to read 11:59:60 as time lords add leap second" and "Global markets spooked by looming 'leap second'," as June 30, 2015 will be extended for one second to keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) close to the mean solar time, or UT1 because the Earth is constantly undergoing a deceleration caused by the braking action of the tides. So why are markets bracing for trouble and some suggesting you avoid air travel at that time? There are always a few more bugs to work out, as seen when the extra second "crashed the web" in 2012, and global outage of computerised check-in systems used by Qantas and Virgin Australia. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:52 AM PST - 76 comments

Unsure of what to do with your CSA share? Enter the Contorni Matrix.
posted by slogger at 7:43 AM PST - 43 comments

Facebook's "authentic name" policy drew protests this weekend. Zip@Medium: A woman responsible for expanding Facebook's gender categories was blocked for using the name she used on the job. Nads@Wired: "All I’ve gotten for my troubles are nearly two dozen emails from Facebook informing Nads about everything she’s missing out on by not logging in, and a request for feedback about my experience." The Guardian: Radical Faeries and #MyNameIs protest Facebook's sponsorship of San Francisco Pride. [more inside]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:23 AM PST - 69 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Transgender Rights is your new go-to on transgender 101. (SLYouTube)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:16 AM PST - 106 comments

Recent genetic discoveries are revealing this is a more accurate analogy for human origins than the "branching tree" model. John Hawks discusses the role of connectivity in human evolution in a clip from the new PBS series First Peoples.
posted by ChuckRamone at 7:08 AM PST - 7 comments

As much as we wish it weren't so, the queer world still exists apart -- discrete, you might say -- from the straight world, and to be a bisexual woman on OKCupid is to travel back and forth between them, bicoastal, bilingual, bicultural, always apologizing to one on behalf of the other.

The Two Faces of Bisexual OKCupid, by Frankie Thomas at the Hairpin.
posted by Stacey at 6:15 AM PST - 37 comments

The launch of Progress M-28M, now set for July 3rd, 2015, 0055 EDT has become critical to the sustained manning of the ISS. [more inside]
posted by eriko at 5:48 AM PST - 65 comments

‘I Don’t Believe in God, but I Believe in Lithium’ My 20-year struggle with bipolar disorder.
posted by almostmanda at 5:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Call of Tutu is a Lovecraftian short film by Aaron Vanek. An old man describes his cat... but is it really a cat? (SLYT)
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:11 AM PST - 6 comments

Please don't think
that I'm begging you for love.
posted by metaplectic at 12:35 AM PST - 2 comments

The Romenesko journalism blog has become aware of some links to nytimes.com.co for some - interesting - stories that are currently getting Facebook 'link juice', including:
WI Gov. Scott Walker Challenges Supreme Court Justices to Fist Fight
Marcus Bachmann Files For Divorce, Fresh on Heels of SCOTUS Ruling
Kanye West Calls Brown v. Board Of Education ‘Best Supreme Court Decision Of All Time’
The unlabeled parody stories are re-postings of material from the equally unlabeled parody site National Report, with over 300 stories going back four months.
Previously, the Newspaper of Record had only taken 36 hours to C&D nytimes.cat [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:22 AM PST - 16 comments