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77,000 Young Salmon Were Dumped Into the Wrong Creek After a Truck Crashed in Oregon. The spring Chinook salmon smolts should still be able to find their way to the Pacific Ocean and help boost the threatened population of the fish, officials say, though another 25,000 salmon died in the accident.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on May 2 at 7:54 AM - 5 comments

Boston Dynamics two latest bangers All New Atlas and Sparkles. For once, sort by “top” and definitely read the YouTube comments. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia on May 2 at 5:20 AM - 37 comments

People who care about internet monoculture and control are often told they’re nostalgists harkening back to a pioneer era. It’s fiendishly hard to regenerate an open and competitive infrastructure for younger generations who’ve been raised to assume that two or three platforms, two app stores, two operating systems, two browsers, one cloud/mega-store and a single search engine for the world comprise the internet. (Noema sl) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh on May 2 at 5:19 AM - 28 comments

A bookshop in East Sussex has launched an early morning initiative to help writers. Kemptown Bookshop, in St George's Rd, Brighton, opens its doors at 05:00 BST on the first Wednesday of every month for a silent writing session. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams on May 2 at 3:40 AM - 1 comments

In this episode we'll look at how production notes flat out lie about the making of a film, we'll look at two different sides of Gran Turismo, and we'll check out the history of CGI and why it fell from grace. We'll bust some common misconceptions about CGI, and we'll look at the most notorious "no CGI" project that I know of. the 4th and final episode of "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI [more inside]
posted by chavenet on May 2 at 1:23 AM - 11 comments

What the heck bro! Here are 16 videos of avalanches (no audio needed). Just for fun. [more inside]
posted by Toddles on May 1 at 9:26 PM - 17 comments

Skeleton of famous whale-hunting Orca "Old Tom" reassembled for new museum display. The orca known for working alongside human whalers has been given a new exhibit that museum curators hope pays better homage to its legacy.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on May 1 at 8:19 PM - 9 comments

Nathan Heller on the secretive Order of the Third Bird: There is a long-standing, widespread belief that attention carries value. In English, attention is something that we “pay.” In Spanish, it is “lent.” The Swiss literary scholar Yves Citton, whose study of the digital age, “The Ecology of Attention,” argues against reducing attention to economic terms, suggested to me that it was traditionally considered valuable because it was capable of bestowing value. “By paying attention to something as if it’s interesting, you make it interesting. By evaluating it, you valorize it,” he said. To treat it as a mere market currency, he thought, was to undersell what it could do.
posted by jshttnbm on May 1 at 5:39 PM - 11 comments

His Book Was Repeatedly Banned. Fighting For It Shaped His Life. (Robert Cormier and The Chocolate War, NYT gift)
posted by box on May 1 at 5:21 PM - 7 comments

Biden administration forgives $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former Art Institute students [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol on May 1 at 4:26 PM - 17 comments

You could call them “sky flowers,” but that doesn’t really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don’t represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there’s a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob’s kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It’s a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?

Today marks 25 years since the original broadcast of "Help Wanted" -- the pilot episode of marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg's educational comic that became a delightful romp of "relentless optimism and fundamental sweetness", a hothouse flower of inventive and absurdist imagination, a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, and one of the most iconic and beloved animated franchises of the 21st century. Are you ready, kids? [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on May 1 at 3:55 PM - 20 comments

Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost.... [more inside]
posted by drewbage1847 on May 1 at 1:06 PM - 13 comments

Palm OS and the devices that ran it - a retrospective on the popular PDA and precursor to the smartphone.
posted by Stark on May 1 at 12:54 PM - 35 comments

Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77. [NY Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet on May 1 at 12:22 PM - 21 comments

As part of Secret Base's Patreon based restructuring, Internet video troubadour and oddity explainer Jon Bois has ressurected his long defunct Pretty Good series with a three part video on the rise and fall of Henry Ross Perot's political party/personal vehicle - the Reform Party. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum on May 1 at 11:14 AM - 17 comments

Part 1: From the S Dynasty to the Chin Dynasty. Part 2: From the Chu-Han contention, through the first Chinese golden age of the Han dynasty, to the Warring States, and the Northern and Southern dynasties. To clarify, this YouTube series is NOT about the actual history, but how Chinese history is interpreted through Chinese cinema. This is a continuing series from Accented Cinema. Previously from AccentedCinema. For those interested in the actual history, he recommends Cool History Bros.
posted by toastyk on May 1 at 8:40 AM - 8 comments

Endangered Ocelots May Be Expanding Their Range in Texas. DNA testing of an ocelot killed in 2021 raises the possibility that the creatures may be roaming outside their established South Texas territory, which is currently their only stronghold in the country.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on May 1 at 6:15 AM - 22 comments

At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
posted by chavenet on May 1 at 1:20 AM - 8 comments

Shockingly, the 20th Anniversary of Marillion's album Misplaced Childhood is over twenty years ago! Anyway, FISH - Return To Childhood 20th anniversary tour of misplaced childhood [3h12m] is an odyssey, with Fish's solo career dominating the front half and a full playthrough of Misplaced Childhood and a rundown of other Marillion songs in the second half. It's a really delicious feast of this particular style of prog rock. If you're a fan of early eighties Genesis and don't know about Marillion/Fish, check this out. It's what you're looking for. [more inside]
posted by hippybear on Apr 30 at 8:46 PM - 13 comments

Hundreds of properties bought after Queensland floods start new life as green space. The collective size of the new green space being added to Brisbane's suburbs in the wake of 2022 floods is the equivalent of about 25 rugby league fields.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries on Apr 30 at 6:13 PM - 13 comments