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What sort of noises do you make? Do you make music like Alice Coltrane? Are you a cross-linguistic onomatopoiea fan? Or are optical sound effects more your thing? Ever enter a yodeling contest, like they have at the Iowa State Fair? Or is the groan more your thing, as with groaning boards, groaning ghosts, or plain groaners? Perhaps your noises are more fundamental? There's more to life than noise, though. How are you doing? What's happening this week in your life?
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:09 AM - 0 comments

The secretive annual migration of Christmas Island's blue crabs. You've heard of the Christmas Island red crab migration. But what about the blue one? Christmas Island's blue crab migration is low key, even for locals. The blue crab species Discoplax celeste is only found on Christmas Island. It is one of more than 20 species of land crab on the island. The blue crab migration to the coast happens around January or February each year.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:41 AM - 3 comments

Blaming nature or the climate for disasters deflects responsibility. It is largely human influence that produces vulnerability. Pointing the finger at natural causes creates a politically convenient crisis narrative that is used to justify reactive disaster laws and policies. For example, it is easier for city governments to blame nature instead of addressing human-caused social and physical vulnerability. A deflection of responsibility also leads to a continuation of an unequitable status quo where the most vulnerable people in society are worst affected repeatedly in every disaster. A discourse that attributes disasters to nature paves a subtle exit path for those responsible for creating vulnerability. from Stop blaming the climate for disasters [Nature; pdf]
posted by chavenet at 1:08 AM - 1 comment

Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in Trek canon. Mary Sue founder Susana Polo writes, "either Section 31 is a betrayal of everything the Federation stands for, or the Federation isn’t utopian.".
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 9:37 PM - 20 comments

Infinite View, Shuffle View, and Catalogue View are three ways to explore the Public Domain Image Archive recently announced by The Public Domain Review. Coverage at Open Culture and Hyperallergic. More details about the project. Bluesky account to follow for updates. Also at The Public Domain Review this week: "The public airing of grievances continues in the next and final issue of 391 ... Picabia describes Surrealism as 'Dada disguised as an advertising balloon for the house of Breton & Co.', and Breton as 'an actor who wants all the leading roles in the theatre of illusionists'"--Daisy Sainsbury on "Perpetual Movement: Francis Picabia's 391 Review (1917–1924)." Bluesky account for The Public Domain Review.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:01 PM - 1 comment

So, you want to demonstrate the speedrunning of one of the greatest arcade racing experiences ever, but there's a small problem with the music licensing. The answer - speedrun Crazy Taxi with a live band doing the backing. (SLYT)
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:39 PM - 19 comments

At a time when many American movies pump up every fugitive emotion into a clanging assault on the audience, Soderbergh’s Solaris is quiet and introspective. There are some shocks and surprises, but this is not Alien. It is a workshop for a discussion of human identity. It considers not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others. - Roger Ebert [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 4:35 PM - 21 comments

Peter Thiel wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times: A time for truth and reconciliation; Gizmodo and The Daily Beast respond. Even the Daily Mail is baffled.
posted by chavenet at 2:06 PM - 62 comments

As many as two billion people suffer from chronic pain, can science finally bring us relief? [NYT / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:54 AM - 41 comments

YouTube user tontarotaro's "community" page is a wall of short, cute Pokémon animations.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:26 AM - 5 comments

In Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’, historical blogger Bret Devereaux takes a dive into historical coinage and accounting to explain why, when you get down to it, Dungeons & Dragons and most other historical/fantasy RPG settings are out of their goddam minds if they think people were lugging gold coins around on a daily basis.
posted by cortex at 8:41 AM - 52 comments

"In Hong Kong, skilled armies of scaffolders can erect enough bamboo to engulf a building in a day — even hours — using techniques that are thousands of years old, and have been passed down through generations."
posted by moonmilk at 7:55 AM - 21 comments

"A battery that needs feeding instead of charging? This is exactly what researchers have achieved with their 3D-printed, biodegradable fungal battery. The living battery could supply power to sensors for agriculture or research in remote regions. Once the work is done, it digests itself from the inside." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:22 AM - 10 comments

A bright, penniless girl of eighteen who found herself admired by a rich older man had good reason to be excited. The role laid down by her society were suddenly reversed: having been always powerless, she now began to be in command. In Nelly's case the man she might command was also brilliant and famous, a charming and entertaining companion, and in a position to transform her life, which in any case held few counter-attractions.
posted by Lemkin at 5:18 AM - 12 comments

"If you have taken on a complex subject and try to engage with it too soon, the writing will be off, with a hard, raw tang. That applies to matter that hasn’t yet been fully digested, and includes subjects, like your childhood if it’s recent or your social scene if you’re in the middle of it, that might need years or decades of marinating; much depends on individual temperament." Author, chronicler, critic and essayist Lucy Sante is writing about writing [substack]. [more inside]
posted by Joeruckus at 4:07 AM - 3 comments

We need to talk about the doomers and the attention economy they’ve built. Not because they’re entirely wrong — from climate change to political extremism, a lot of their concerns are valid — but because they’ve created something extraordinary: a perpetual motion machine powered by anxiety. Let’s call it the Doomscroll Industrial Complex (DIC). It operates on a simple principle: bad news is good business. But unlike traditional doom-peddlers who simply predicted the end times and waited to be proven right or wrong, today’s digital prophets have discovered a much more sustainable model. from How Anxiety Became a Business Model [Joan Westenberg] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:58 AM - 38 comments

Migraine molecules may drive endometriosis pain. Existing drugs might help. Pain-sensing neurons exchange signals with immune cells that drive endometriosis, sparking the pain associated with the condition, new research suggests.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:35 AM - 4 comments

Sam Moore of the legendary soul duo Sam & Dave passed away aged 89. Obituaries in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NME, New York Times, Washington Post. His partner in the duo, Dave Prater passed away in 1988. [more inside]
posted by phigmov at 12:21 AM - 19 comments

Behind the Old Guard: Sentinels [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:32 PM - 6 comments

The pineapple is a tropical plant indigenous to South America. After being brought to Europe, techniques were developed to grow it in colder climates including the use of fermenting horse dung to keep the plants appropriately toasty. Pineapple contains protein-degrading enzymes and so is good at tenderizing meat and ruining Jell-O desserts. It's also fairly acidic, which makes its juice useful for kicking off a sourdough starter. There's a lot to be said about their taste, but are pineapples really delicious?
posted by a feather in amber at 3:44 PM - 31 comments

It’s one of those things everyone’s heard of, but few truly understand. It sits quietly in the corner of the bathroom (or as an attachment to the toilet itself), radiating mystery and a slight sense of intimidation. Ask someone about it, and you’ll usually get a shrug or a vague explanation that trails off into awkward silence. Why? Because nobody really wants to get into the nitty-gritty of how, why, or when you’re supposed to use one. For centuries, the truth about the bidet has been elusive, tucked away behind a veil of cultural quirks, taboos, and plain old disinterest. from Let’s Talk About the Bidet, the Bathroom’s Best-Kept Secret [MessyNessy]
posted by chavenet at 3:17 PM - 77 comments

John Sheppard's Media Vita is a monumental work of choral music written in the 1500s. It has been recognized as such only relatively recently with the 1989 recording by the Tallis Scholars led by Peter Phillips. The music and its composer are shrouded in mystery. Only five of the six vocal parts survive and the original manuscript has been lost. Sheppard died in 1557, likely in a flu pandemic. A history, background and musical analysis. Says Phillips: "“It’s seductive, it draws you in, and you just can’t leave it alone; you have to go with it.”" [more inside]
posted by storybored at 2:58 PM - 7 comments

"Eggers first announced his intention to remake “Nosferatu” 10 years ago, but his affinity for the landmark 1922 horror goes back much further. Growing up in New Hampshire, Eggers first encountered Orlok as a 9-year-old, on a VHS copy of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” made from a faded 16-millimeter print. He was so compelled by Max Schreck’s performance of the titular vampire, which felt all the more eerily authentic within the degraded version of the film he saw, that in high school, he directed a stage adaptation—later staged professionally—that was both silent and black-and-white, with music playing and actors painted monochrome. (Orlok was played, of course, by Eggers himself.)" [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:29 AM - 31 comments

The chili cookoff is so profound an American culinary tradition that one would assume its origins to be lost in the mists of history. Instead they trace clearly not just to a single man but to a single piece of writing: “Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do", by H. Allen Smith [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:27 AM - 35 comments

Kelp is changing the seafloor in Melbourne (Australia) from a desert to a forest. Kelp forests decimated by sea urchins are being replanted in Port Phillip Bay in an attempt to rebuild the ecosystem.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:02 AM - 5 comments

Mattie travels through her past with such a steely countenance that I often found myself stopping and doubling back, imagining what she doesn’t describe, creating an unwritten text alongside Mattie’s. I found myself moved and troubled by the adult narrator’s attempt to write her younger self into stoicism. We’re invited, I think, to fill the novel’s unnarrated spaces with this psychology, and to understand that Portis has given Mattie this moralizing, allegorizing impulse for reasons that have to do with character: writing this story is her way of making it tolerable. from He Got Away With Everything: Reading True Grit After the Reelection of Donald Trump [LitHub]
posted by chavenet at 3:09 AM - 10 comments

The Transcendence of Turiya: Alice Coltrane [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 4:37 PM - 3 comments

Kate Wagner (many prevs), of McMansionHell and many other projects, is not feeling optimistic about the future of journalism. "Really, what other word is there to describe what is coming our way than atavism? I don’t feel like waxing poetic about the good old days of getting work because there is enough of that and those days are over. The only way out of this bind is the hope that such competition does not foreclose us from building together something new, something stable, something that is large-scale rather than a gaggle of one’s old friends; perhaps most importantly, something formally organized. The time is running out for what is left of social media to be utilized to this end."
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:17 PM - 45 comments

The latest from Dan Olson (previously, and previously, and previously, and etc.) is "a True Story of Fake Fossils" - discussing how fossil hunter Roland Bird's chance discovery of some obviously-faked "fossilized human footprints" in 1938 lead to both a major discovery of actual dinosaur footprints, as well as a major expansion of creationist science. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:40 PM - 18 comments

Joi Massat has collected every cartoon show bible they could find on archive.org and collected them here. Some of these were used to pitch their shows, some were used during production, but all offer an insight into the making of their shows. A handful of highlights (many more links at the site and inside this post): Adventure Time, Dungeons & Dragons, He-Man internal and selling to networks, Batman TAS, Gravity Falls early and later, The Real Ghostbusters Season 2 and Ren & Stimpy (very thorough). [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 12:39 PM - 21 comments

In an interview with Bloomberg, outgoing San Francisco Muni director Jeffrey Tumlin discusses his experience with autonomous vehicles as part of his role managing SF's transit systems. (SLBloomberg) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:26 PM - 17 comments

Now, see this colored chart? Represented by about twenty-five colored lines is a diagram of my life. Gray is for vagueness. Everything, for me, has to be put in diagram or spatial form. The chart is a means of remembering. from A Diagram of My Life by Gerald Murnane [The Paris Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:54 AM - 2 comments

Food writer Dennis Lee ("whose main goal is to ruin food for everyone") attempts a recipe for "Blue Cheese Chicken Italiano" from a cookbook found in a thrift store. The secret ingredient? A Totino's pizza flipped upside down on top to act as the "crust." slSubstack, but you can also peruse past experiments like No Knead Gatorade Bread (previously) and The Olive Garden Hot Dog, which I previously thought that I had invented.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:08 AM - 49 comments

"..there’s no beating the game, no cheat code or special technique — you always die." Toronto artist Marie LeBlanc Flanagan created a video game in response to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's plan to rip out three busy bike lanes out of the Toronto core. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:20 AM - 42 comments

Scotland has a proper, properly managed program to re-introduce Lynx to Scotland to help control overpopulation of deer, which can cause loss of trees, erosion and possible landslides. That's great! Unfortunately, an irresponsible person illegally released some Lynx into Scotland without the proper quarantine etc checks, which could have caused the death of two Lynx, or introduced new diseases. Fortunately, the Lynx have now been recaptured.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:38 AM - 28 comments

Nearly everything you own, including the clothes you're wearing and the device your're reading this on, was delivered by a container ship. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:34 AM - 32 comments

Global temperature increases breached 1.5°C for the first time in 2024. Today the European Union's Copernicus Climate Service posted its 2024 Annual Climate Summary, which showed temperatures 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 5:05 AM - 24 comments

Beloved duo Wallace & Gromit returned to our screens at Christmas, 34 years after their first appearance, in their second feature-length film, Vengeance Most Fowl (Fanfare thread). Group blog (-slash-arts-magazine) It's Nice That recently interviewed creator and director Nick Park, co-director Merlin Crossingham and supervising animator Will Becher about the plasticine pair's legacy and creating their new adventure.
posted by rory at 2:02 AM - 26 comments

Tired of seeing paintings of countless puffed-up toffs rendered in oils for posterity, German visual artist Volker Hermes breathes life into the boring old routine with his updates on Old Masters paintings. His Hidden Portraits use digital technology and collage to refocus our gaze on symbols of self-representation and social status embedded in such paintings.
posted by chavenet at 12:48 AM - 9 comments

'"The thing to remember is that Anita Bryant won that battle initially, but she did not win that war,” said the historian Julio Capó Jr'. 'Bryant's public victory became her private devastation. Students listed Bryant as the "woman who had done the most damage in the world" in a 1978 Ladies Home Journal poll. The man they picked was Adolf Hitler.' Anti-gay rights campaigner Anita Bryant has died at the age of 84.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:57 PM - 84 comments

Indefinite Backpack Travel. "In 2015 I got rid of everything I owned that didn’t fit in a laptop backpack, and I’ve been living at this level of minimalism since. The idea is to only own what I need, which allows me to focus more, spend less, travel spontaneously and simplify my life." Jeremy Maluf posts yearly summaries of his backpacking adventures. In this overview, he lists the contents of his one travel bag. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:19 PM - 71 comments

The Church of Saint Coltrane [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 4:57 PM - 11 comments

Edgar Maddison Welch, who shot up a DC pizzeria because of an online conspiracy theory that it was a front for a child sex slavery ring, was killed by police when he pulled a weapon on them during a traffic stop. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:19 PM - 53 comments

No-buy 2025 offers other ways to fill the void (WaPo gift)
posted by box at 10:02 AM - 42 comments

"At CES 2025, a company called Sybran Innovation showed off the Code27 Character Livehouse. It's an AI-powered digital purgatory that you can trap a small anime girl in, forever."
posted by JHarris at 9:23 AM - 113 comments

Sakiori is a hobby of making new cloth out of strips of old fabric salvaged from worn clothes. It comes from a time and place when cotton was a scarce commodity, but it lives on today because the result is a fabric with a unique aesthetic. [more inside]
posted by ambulocetus at 9:19 AM - 17 comments

From Awesome Games Done Quick 2025, four speedrunners play Super Mario Brothers at the same time, superimposed.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:33 AM - 12 comments

"In his one-hour stand-up special, D.J. Demers: Interpreted, Demers is raising the standard of accessible comedy with two versions of special, one complete with closed-captioning subtitles and an onstage American Sign Language interpreter, as well as descriptive captioning for the visually impaired." Canadian-born Demers is a Deaf comedian who does his stand-up in English (as opposed to ASL) and discusses some of the choices he's made about how much of his disability to turn into comedy. See also: Tonight Show debut, YouTube channel, an impromptu joke with his interpreter, Jennifer Lees.
posted by jessamyn at 8:17 AM - 4 comments

A Twinge of Saudade is an essay by Norwegian-British music critic Chal Ravens about Abba, going from their beginnings, through their glittering career, and their afterlife. She discussed the band, and the cultural moment in Sweden from which they hailed, and why they were at odds with Anglophone pop culture, with Thomas Jones on an episode of the LRB Podcast.
posted by Kattullus at 8:07 AM - 8 comments

... is Tom Gauld's upcoming collection of his New Scientist cartoons. You can see ten pages from it on the Drawn & Quarterly site I've linked.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:19 AM - 18 comments