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Ever wondered what a comptroller does? Crimefighting, at least if you're Susana Mendoza, comptroller of the State of Illinois, who leapt off her bike to chase down mobbed-up felon Johnny "Quarters" Boyle to prevent him from getting away with a hit-and-run.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:59 PM PST - 15 comments

Bethany Yellowtail is a fashion designer from the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations in Montana. Her designs are influenced by her grandmother's beadwork, elktooth dresses worn by powwow dancers on the Crow Reservation, old black and white photos of her family, and her political activism. "For me, it's about showing people in the mainstream fashion world -- our buyers may not be Native -- sharing a way that our women wear their regalia". [more inside]
posted by Grandysaur at 9:15 PM PST - 12 comments

The Gentle Oraclebird is a Twitterbot that dispenses beautiful tarot-style readings from an original deck designed by Shing Yin Khor, aka @sawdustbear.
posted by snortasprocket at 7:34 PM PST - 6 comments

“This has been my go-to brownie recipe for 30 years. In the ’80s, an acquaintance in Germany to whom I brought some of the brownies, and who considered herself a great cook, asked for the recipe but was never able to get it to work. She kept asking me what she was doing wrong and I was never able to solve her problem. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and stole my husband!” The Story Behind the Greatest Internet Recipe Comment of All Time
posted by everybody had matching towels at 4:42 PM PST - 61 comments

Not drinking or driving, teens increasingly put off traditional markers of adulthood. "...teenagers are increasingly delaying activities that had long been seen as rites of passage into adulthood. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Child Development, found that the percentage of adolescents in the United States who have a driver’s license, who have tried alcohol, who date and who work for pay has plummeted since 1976, with the most precipitous decreases in the past decade."
posted by MythMaker at 4:32 PM PST - 192 comments

Autumn arrives and with it comes a cornucopia, but pumpkins, real pumpkins! Utah oh, and maybe everywhere has a fascination with large pumpkins, and the Utah State Fair has a yearly contest. Usually these pumpkins are not so much pumpkin like, but rugged and gnarly, not the pumpkin of a Halloween doorstep. However, this one is a ~2000 lb chunk of punkin' perfection, grown in a hot house not by a farmer, but by a guy with a passion.
posted by Oyéah at 4:13 PM PST - 5 comments

The online people-who-love-to-smoke community is one of the most supportive and kindly corners of the internet I have ever encountered, especially for a group entirely preoccupied with the abetting of a habit that is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. I’m not sure if this is a particularly illuminating observation, whether it says something profoundly terrible about humanity and where it is headed, or whether this is something we should find solace in. I change my mind about it a lot.

*present company excluded
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:30 PM PST - 36 comments

Don't eat the random melons growing in the middle of Amsterdam Avenue. That is all.
posted by Mchelly at 2:12 PM PST - 80 comments

Deadspin: There’s no use trying to skirt around this, so let’s cut straight to the chase: A Colorado Springs woman has been taking big craps in front of someone’s house for a few weeks now. They’re calling her the Mad Pooper and she won’t stop. The cops are involved. It appears to be some sort of revenge pooping. I hope you enjoy this report from local CBS outlet KKTV as much as I did. [more inside]
posted by rewil at 11:37 AM PST - 156 comments

Kirk vs. the Gorn is one of the all-time great fight scenes. Therefore, it starts with the future's greatest offensive hand-to-hand maneuver: the double-punch.
posted by Etrigan at 11:15 AM PST - 61 comments

Just a few months shy of 50, Rolling Stone has been put up to sale by co-founder and publisher Jann Wenner. Better known as a reference in music journalism, it also fostered a number of political writers, becoming one of the main features on the magazine during the second GW Bush term and the 2008 Financial Crisis, as smaller internet outlets occupied their place as trendsetters in music.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:45 AM PST - 66 comments

Scientists Can Now Repaint Butterfly Wings - "Thanks to CRISPR, scientists are studying animal evolution in ways that were previously thought to be impossible." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 3:11 AM PST - 29 comments

The Vietnam veterans who became the crafting kings of the county fair "The first time Rod won a blue ribbon at the Montgomery County Fair, in 2010, it was Nathan who had secretly submitted Rod’s handmade blanket. After that, Rod submitted entries on his own every year. He had never mentioned anything about entering his final project at the fair. But seven months after he died, Nathan decided to do it anyway."
posted by halcyonday at 1:13 AM PST - 35 comments