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The Art Of Nature. For his photo series The Hidden Beauty of Seeds and Fruits, Biss immersed himself in the collections housed at Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden , sifting through its 3,500 historical specimens. “I was stunned by the variety of designs that exist to disperse seeds. Some are truly ingenious,” he says, singling out the hairy-stemmed electric shock plant, “an innocent-looking seed pod until an animal (or human) decides to bite!” Some glorious images.
posted by IndelibleUnderpants at 11:03 PM PST - 4 comments

Question: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done in the name of science? "Administered enemas made of raspberries to mice." (Twitter thread found via Nature Index)
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:12 PM PST - 18 comments

Tralala Blip are a band of differently-abled musicians from northern NSW who have overcome a range of individual challenges to create a sonic universe together fuelled by their post-electro pop melodies and diarised lyrical poems. Their last album Eat My Codes If Your Light Falls was released in 2019 and is available on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and Youtube. Their single and official video Pub Talk, features band member and lyric writer, Lidian Dunbar. Enjoy.
posted by Thella at 6:11 PM PST - 2 comments

How America Failed Afghanistan. "We checked the box when it came to saying that we had trained our partners, spun a rosy narrative of progress, and perhaps prioritized the safety and well-being of our troops over the mission of buttressing partner capacity. (When our Afghan partners shot at us, killing our comrades in the now infamous “green on blue” incidents, we tightened up our security procedures but didn’t address the hard questions of why they were shooting at us in the first place.) We didn’t send the right people, prepare them well, or reward them afterward. We rotated strangers on tours of up to a year and expected them to build relationships, then replaced them. We were overly optimistic and largely made things up as we went along. We didn’t like oversight or tough questions from Washington, and no one really bothered to hold us accountable anyway." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:03 PM PST - 264 comments

Strangejuice is a multi instrumentalist and video artist. The ZeFrank of of YouTube indie.
- Fishing Line 1000 Miles Deep (Official Music Video) is a later track
- Calling Luci is the track that made all the indie collection downloads.
posted by Buntix at 3:53 PM PST - 1 comments

Spider Bridge - "There is a beautiful new bridge in Ottawa, Canada. It's lit up at night, so it's a stunning way to cross this canal and see a gorgeous sunset at the same time. But there's a wee problem." (via)
posted by kliuless at 2:56 PM PST - 29 comments

Floating origami Floating Micro-Origami that Magically Unfolds in Water
posted by kathrynm at 2:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Stephen Sondheim is mostly known as a musical theater composer, but he did do one project for television -- Evening Primrose [Wikipedia]. A musical Twilight Zone-is story in which Norman Bates falls in love with Liesl Von Trapp while living in a department store, the story is full of outdated gender roles, but some really beautiful songs. It's available on YouTube. [50m]
posted by hippybear at 11:30 AM PST - 9 comments

The Co-Founder Of Snopes Wrote Dozens Of Plagiarized Articles For The Fact-Checking Site [BuzzFeed] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 9:50 AM PST - 34 comments

[H]ere's the problem and the shocking discovery: Each of these sports is the best sport in the Olympics. Some are the most beautiful, some are the most surprising, some have the most tremendous life lessons lurking just under the surface, and some are simply stunning examples of people who do extraordinarily hard things almost unimaginably well. I cried at some, I smiled at most, and I learned a lot. So here they are, from Archery to Wrestling: all the best sports in the Olympics. [Mefi's own Linda Holmes on All Things Considered]
posted by ellieBOA at 6:35 AM PST - 32 comments

How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare (Time) Scammers and cyberstalkers are increasingly using the Goodreads platform to extort authors with threats of “review bombing” their work–and they are frequently targeting authors from marginalized communities who have spoken out on topics ranging from controversies within the industry to larger social issues on social media.
posted by bitteschoen at 3:57 AM PST - 80 comments

The Gospel of Phillip K. Dick from thepostarchive, the latter of which is an incredible and ongoing labor of love compiled by a self described ''NB PoC trying archivist collecting between and through institutions." [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 1:06 AM PST - 4 comments