July 22, 2018

Nukey Poo

Not as adorable as you may think. Remembering Antarctica's first and only nuclear reactor.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 8:23 PM PST - 20 comments

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists

What's more fun than watching huskies frolic and complain? Nothing, that's what: Exhibit 1 | Exhibit 2. And because no post is complete without cats*, here are some noisy cats [all videos contain howling and/or yowling].

*Not true. I'm just saying that to be nice.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:12 PM PST - 10 comments

The tragic, true, ongoing story of a Detroit myth, White Boy Rick

If you're not from the Detroit area, or if you're not familiar with Kid Rock's second album, particularly the single "Back from the Dead" [explicit lyrics], the name White Boy Rick probably doesn't mean much to you. But if you are, he may be more of a myth, the baby-faced mega-dealer who drove white jeep with the words THE SNOWMAN emblazoned on the rear. In 2014, Evan Hughes reported at depth on the unlikely story of the youngest informant for the FBI, who at that time was still behind bars despite the Supreme Court banning mandatory life sentences for minors that saw others released, as earlier reported by Seth Ferranti in The Fix. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:50 PM PST - 8 comments

12% of a plan

In a single day, James Gunn went from acclaimed writer/director of one of Marvel’s most successful and beloved franchises, to fired. And, of course, Twitter is to blame.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:54 PM PST - 249 comments

This is about generating joy, and embodying joy

Meet the Subversive Sirens. These 5 women are bringing joy and inclusivity to synchronized swimming. The Subversive Sirens (Twitter) are committed to black liberation, equity in swimming/ aquatic arts, body positivity in athleticism & queer visibility. Check out short video interviews of the members and practice clips.
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:35 PM PST - 5 comments

D&D Kenku cosplay

It's always a really fun surprise. More on the costume by the creator, illustrator H. Esdaile, here.
posted by curious nu at 4:25 PM PST - 13 comments

“No Restrooms, No Bare Feet, No Directions to the Solzhenitsyn Home.”

A Tiny Village in Vermont Was the Perfect Spot to Hide Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn didn’t actually write about Vermont. But the Russian author spent almost the entirety of his 20 years in exile here, in the tiny village of Cavendish, before returning to Russia in 1994." [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:02 PM PST - 4 comments

...give it a few seconds, then yank

Do you really need to properly eject a USB drive before yanking it out? Popular Science says probably not. The internet rebuts. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 11:02 AM PST - 103 comments

LBJ orders a pair of pants.

Please listen to President Lyndon B. Johnson order a pair of slacks. SLYT
posted by Grandysaur at 9:33 AM PST - 29 comments

The Octonions (Real Numbers Are Trivial)

The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature - "As numbers go, the familiar real numbers — those found on the number line, like 1, π and -83.777 — just get things started. Real numbers can be paired up in a particular way to form 'complex numbers', first studied in 16th-century Italy, that behave like coordinates on a 2-D plane. Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing is like translating and rotating positions around the plane. Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D 'quaternions', discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin's Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton's, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an abstract 8-D space." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:11 AM PST - 29 comments

Economics professor suggests Amazon books & Starbucks replace libraries

Via Forbes.com Described on Twitter as a C- Econ 101 essay, the author continues to defend his position.
posted by k8t at 7:54 AM PST - 113 comments

Dank Simpsons Remixes

- B L U R S T - O F - T I M E S -, - S N R U B -, - P U T - I T - I N - H -, - D I S S I N - Y O U R - F L Y - G I R L -, and other dank Simpsons remixes.
posted by milquetoast at 7:17 AM PST - 12 comments

“It’s not just a game… it’s a Gayme!”

Caper in the Castro was probably the first LGBTQ computer game. The player takes on the “the role of a lesbian private detective, Tracker McDyke, in search of a kidnapped drag queen, Tessy LaFemme.” The adventure mystery game was designed for Apple’s HyperCard, by C. M. Ralph, and released in 1989 as CharityWare, which meant that if people enjoyed playing, they were encouraged to “make a donation to an AIDS Related charity of your choice for whatever amount you feel is appropriate”. Adrienne Shaw of the LGBTQ game archive wrote about the game and interviewed Ralph last year.
posted by Kattullus at 7:09 AM PST - 14 comments

“But these are all tools of expression.”

Sheldon County: A Nothing Place [Soundcloud] [Episode 1]James Ryan, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, uses code to tell stories. Sheldon County is his current project (a proof-of-concept released to Soundcloud earlier this year can be listened to here.) Named in honour of Sheldon Klein, an early pioneer of expressive artificial intelligence, Sheldon County is an AI-powered podcast capable of generating an infinite number of procedural stories. Sheldon County tells the story of a fictional American town and the people who inhabit it over the course of 150 years. It is the result of two programs that run in parallel: Hennepin, which simulates each day and night in the history of a fictional American county over 150 years, and Sheldon, which in turn sifts through this accumulated history to find the interesting storylines and dramatic nuggets that have actually emerged over the course of the simulation based on narrative patterns authored by Ryan.” [via: Eurogamer]
posted by Fizz at 4:34 AM PST - 9 comments

Face off

Bian lian is the ancient and secret Chinese art of 'face changing'
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:51 AM PST - 18 comments

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