March 18

Everyone has an anecdote about García Márquez

I decided, last year, to turn on my recorder again and ask about these past ten years since Gabo died. As I’ve continued to follow his story, Gabo, always a prankster, continues to surprise. from Ten Years without Gabriel García Márquez: An Oral History [The Paris Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM - 3 comments

March 17

Caught 22

22 of the funniest novels since Catch-22 (SLNYT)
posted by storybored at 10:27 PM - 29 comments

Baleen whale fossil dated to 19 million years

Whale fossil in river sheds light on how pre-historic beasts morphed into today's giants of the sea. A fossil from the distant past is rewriting the narrative of how, when, and where baleen whales — such as the blue whale — became some of the largest animals to have ever lived on the planet.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:23 PM - 1 comment

Neither of them really need any introduction....

Classicist Mary Beard [Wikipedia] is apparently well known for studying Ancient Rome. Comedian David Mitchell has read a lot about the British monarchy. Between them they can cover Julius Caesar to Elizabeth I, and they sat down together for a conversation for How To Academy in Rulers and Power | Mary Beard and David Mitchell [1h13m].
posted by hippybear at 6:26 PM - 13 comments

Sunday Scaries

there's laundry to do and a genocide to stop. A short prose poem by Vinay Krishnan. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:56 PM - 18 comments

There's truly no such thing as a bad mini egg

Move Over Cadbury, We Have A New Favourite Mini Egg (Canadian edition)
posted by sardonyx at 2:49 PM - 58 comments

Building an ancient robot from scratch with handtools

"Revisiting Greek Automata: Clockwork Robots from the Ancient World" is a video from @fraserbuilds, in which John Fraser makes one of 1st century Greco-Roman engineer Hero of Alexandria's self-driving cars self-propelled automata, with some help from a hand made blow-torch powered by olive oil and pit fired pottery.
posted by gwint at 2:05 PM - 3 comments

"A strange Thing written upon a Glass Window in Queen Elizabeth's Time"

Madeleine Pelling (The Telegraph, 3/17/2024), "Seriously scandalous and surprisingly sexy: how the Georgians redefined graffiti" -- archived: "In October 1731, ... 'Hurlothrumbo' set out into the freezing streets of London. Armed only with a pencil and paper, he was on a most peculiar hunt. His quarry? The graffiti that lined the city's many surfaces, left behind by its inhabitants." The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, part 1 and 2, 3, & 4. The play Hurlothrumbo. Pelling on women archaeologists in the 1780s via the Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Pelling's Writing on the Wall, reviewed (archived) and at Goodreads / StoryGraph. Pelling's podcast, most recently discussing St Patrick.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:26 AM - 14 comments

Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth

After 4 nail-biting months of gibberish, Voyager 1 is making sense again. Since November 2023, the almost-50-year-old spacecraft has been experiencing trouble with its onboard computers. Although Voyager 1, one of NASA's longest-lived space missions, has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, it hasn't contained any usable data. Now, there may be hope for recovery.
posted by signsofrain at 9:05 AM - 51 comments

Phreaking the memory care unit

Dementia Patients Used Morse Code Training to Escape From a Senior Living Facility
posted by latkes at 8:22 AM - 38 comments

Geddy Lee's Effin' Life live on stage

In Live at Massey Hall: Geddy Lee [55m, CBC], Geddy spends some time talking to his old friend Alex, and then reads a bit from his book. If you like this kind of thing, maybe you'll like this example of this kind of thing.
posted by hippybear at 7:19 AM - 12 comments

Their Toeses Are Roses

Trevor Tordjman & Jordan Clark get drawn into the greatness of Moses Supposes [via TMN] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:01 AM - 33 comments

March 16

Tiny ants are changing the diet of Kenya's lions

Tiny ants are changing the diet of Kenya's lions. Invasive ants are affecting how lions hunt. The insect invasion has led to the loss of cover for lions to ambush zebra from and forcing them to target buffalo instead. An army of big-headed ants is changing the food chains of the savannah. Though they’re little, these ants are fierce. Their arrival in parts of Kenya has decimated populations of local ants which usually live in and protect the whistling-thorn tree. Without the insects’ protection, these trees are increasingly being eaten by elephants, providing less shelter for a range of species. One animal this has had a particular impact on is the African lion. These big cats usually use the shelter of trees to sneak up on zebras. But with fewer trees, this strategy becomes increasingly risky.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:32 PM - 7 comments

Thoughts and prayers to Ted Cruz in this trying time

As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk. [...] We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification. We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.
Ars Technica: Pornhub blocks all of Texas to protest state law—Paxton says “good riddance” [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:58 PM - 73 comments

Sucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson Duped By YouTubers Into Interviewing Fake Kate Middleton Whistleblower
posted by chavenet at 1:33 PM - 32 comments

Stairway to CG Heaven

Top 100 CG animations of an Eternal Ascent from 2800 submissions [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 12:34 PM - 17 comments

Daniels: How We Pulled Off Everything Everywhere All at Once | SXSW 2024

"We should tell you that we've run out of new things to say about Everything Everywhere All At Once, so although we’ll try our best to stay on topic, we'll most likely go on a bunch of tangents about the state of the world, the impending climate crisis, the collapse of consensus truth, the rise of AI, the importance and impossibility of self care, and our collective responsibility as storytellers to confront the issues of our time, because that's probably going to be what's on our mind, but we can't make any promises, but at times we don’t feel qualified to talk about any of that stuff, anyway we hope you enjoy our SXSW keynote!" [1h] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 11:16 AM - 4 comments

Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart

Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart by Artist, Designer and Educator Nela Dunato: "Behold: the most detailed free art mediums compatibility reference! The chart shows how different art mediums interact together and whether they can be safely layered on top of each other." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 9:43 AM - 14 comments

Which animals cause the most deaths in Australia? Horses

Which animals cause the most deaths in Australia? Horses: 172 total deaths between 2001 and 2017, many of them from falling off a horse. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:53 AM - 82 comments

His invention was instrumental

Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world's first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan. He was 100 years old. [more inside]
posted by snofoam at 4:06 AM - 24 comments

Toward a New Ameri-canon

This list includes 45 debut novels, nine winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three children’s books. Twelve were published before the introduction of the mass-market paperback to America, and 24 after the release of the Kindle. At least 60 have been banned by schools or libraries. Together, they represent the best of what novels can do: challenge us, delight us, pull us in and then release us, a little smarter and a little more alive than we were before. from The Great American Novels [The Atlantic; ungated] [CW: a list which almost by definition lacks your favorite American author or novel]
posted by chavenet at 2:19 AM - 72 comments

March 15

The Sphinx

Solving for the feminist roots of crossword puzzles in a fun article by Sophia Stewart and what looks like a great book by Anna Shechtman on how crossword puzzles, those traditional cultural touchstones in Western English media that are becoming more diverse and contemporary.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:46 PM - 12 comments

Mirror Universe Evil Katsucon

Trans Person Infiltrates CPAC 2024 Part 1, Part 2. Dead Domain, a nonbinary creator who often talks about game design and who you may have seen go undercover at a hate church, decided to create the persona of vaguely right-wing podcaster Keith to attend CPAC, and gifts us with three and a half hours of troubling content and commentary. [more inside]
posted by Mizu at 11:04 PM - 7 comments

Low-End of Market Rental Housing Monitor (LEMR)

About the LEMR Housing Monitor

The Low-End of Market Rental (LEMR) Housing Monitor is a centralized data mapping tool that presents critical information on the location and characteristics of the affordable “low-end” of market rental housing stock in six urban regions across Canada: Calgary, Halifax, Greater Montreal Area, Greater Toronto Area, Metro Vancouver Area, and Winnipeg.” [more inside]
posted by eviemath at 9:54 PM - 61 comments

A matter concerning a square and a circle

Snif & Snüf (five minutes), a cartoon about two friends who find a couple of mysterious shapes, by Michael Ruocco, an animator who's worked on New Looney Tunes, the Cuphead Show and Bojack Horseman.
posted by JHarris at 9:30 PM - 8 comments

In a shocking twist, it wasn't aliens

AARO Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I, February 2024 (PDF): AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence. AARO notes that although claims that the USG has recovered and hidden spacecraft date back to the 1940s and 1950s, more modern instances of these claims largely stem from a consistent group of individuals who have been involved in various UAP-related endeavors since at least 2009.
posted by flabdablet at 9:23 PM - 25 comments

Scientist busts five common arachnid myths

Scientist busts five common arachnid myths. Animal behaviouralist James O'Hanlon is debunking five long-held myths about spiders.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:49 PM - 19 comments

Max's South Seas Hideaway, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Is This The Greatest Tiki Bar In The World? [46m] It probably is because the guy who created it spent YEARS purchasing tiki from all over the history of tiki bars, having some custom made, and designing a space that is a living museum as well as a thriving party joint. Here's NPR from 2016 discussing Let's Talk Tiki Bars: Harmless Fun Or Exploitation? because this is a loaded topic. But I hope we can discuss the amazing bar in Michigan most of all! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM - 25 comments

I Spy 🗿

moai.games is a list of 954 examples (and counting) of moai seen in video games, compiled by MeFi's Own game designer gingerbeardman. Why? "Moai are cool. And video games are cool. Oh, and lists are cool too." Read the NintendoLife interview for background on the project, get educated on the history of the grand sculptures (and real-life efforts to preserve them), or if you crave mo' moai, check out MoaiCulture.com's "Popular Culture" page for a comprehensive illustrated guide to 500+ moai in television, film, animation, comic books, literature, poetry, music, board games, magazines, advertising, and more. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:20 PM - 9 comments

Stand In Pride

"A while ago my wife introduced me to Stand In Pride, where queer people can find stand-in family members for support and indeed often for big life events — when their biological families don’t show up. And so it came to pass that a couple of weeks ago I had the singular honour of walking Taylor down the aisle to marry Ruth. Family is what you make it. Love endures." (via @chrisphin on Mastodon, with their permission and featuring lovely pictures of the wedding.) [more inside]
posted by chococat at 2:48 PM - 16 comments

New paper claims that Othello / Reversi is solved

A serendipitous follow up from my previous Othello post, this new paper from Hiroki Takizawa claims that Othello is solved: "It is computationally proved that perfect play by both players lead to a draw. Strong Othello software has long been built using heuristically designed search techniques. Solving a game provides a solution that enables the software to play the game perfectly." GitHub link to C source code included (it's a modified form of Edax.) [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 1:16 PM - 19 comments

The head on the car is a dream

Mexican artist crushes Tesla under giant stone head [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:52 PM - 38 comments

Live Long And Syndicate

Rare Footage Of Leonard Nimoy Hosting 1975 Special Presentation Of Star Trek’s “The Menagerie” In 1975, Paramount produced a special movie presentation for syndication of the two-part Star Trek episode “The Menagerie,” hosted by TOS star Leonard Nimoy. The original Spock recorded introductions for each part of the episode as well as closing remarks for the special presentation. In the special, Nimoy explains how “The Menagerie” uses footage from the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage” and more. Originally recorded February 6, 1983 from KAUT in Oklahoma City.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:15 PM - 12 comments

Time travel movies ranked by scientific logic and entertainment value

The Ars guide to time travel in the movies: a non-comprehensive list and ranking of 20 time travel movies, exploring the plausibility of their time travel mechanics, and also, how entertaining they are.
posted by toastyk at 9:25 AM - 91 comments

Never mind what the fox says.

More importantly, what does the person feeding the fox wear? A wildlife center in Richmond, VA makes the news for an inventive way of preventing human imprinting on a fox kit. Associated Press story and video
posted by emelenjr at 8:00 AM - 7 comments

The Gender Refugees

Escaping Hostile States for Transgender Community (slElle)
posted by Kitteh at 7:07 AM - 29 comments

Safety is no accident

The IATA officially announced: “In a significant achievement, 2023 saw no fatal accidents or hull losses for jet aircraft, leading to a record-low fatality risk rate of 0.03 rate per million sectors.” [more inside]
posted by fairmettle at 2:18 AM - 27 comments

Magnets for fantasists, plutocrats, oddballs, and corrupt businesspeople

The society’s traditions extended to what historian Holger Hoock describes as “an elaborate set of pseudo-Masonic ceremonies and symbolism.” Membership, strictly capped at 24 men, was a coveted privilege, even for George IV, the Prince of Wales, who had to wait his turn. New members underwent highly theatrical initiations, pledging their oath with a kiss on the beef bone of the day, blindfolded and led by a mitre-wearing guide while other members, as Arnold describes in his account, were “all decked out in incongruous and absurd dresses.” from A Rare Look Inside Britain’s ‘Sublime Society of Beefsteaks’ [Atlas Obscura]
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM - 6 comments

March 14

Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:19 PM - 41 comments

They don't make them like they used to

I was on the phone, asking for a theoretical quote to reupholster a five-year-old or so midrange sofa, which cost more than $1,000 when new. That task, the upholsterer told me, would run me several times more than the couch was originally worth, and, owing to its construction, it was now worth nowhere near its sale price. The upholsterer proceeded to lecture me, in a helpful, passionate, and sometimes kindly manner, about how sofas made in the past 15 years or so are absolute garbage, constructed of sawdust compressed and bonded with cheap glue, simple brackets in place of proper joinery, substandard spring design, flimsy foam, and a lot of staples. Until recently, people had no reason to suspect that a $1,200 sofa would be anything less than high quality; the vast majority of the stuff in stores was fairly well made, and you could sit on it to test it. Today, not so much. [...] A combination of factors, including world-altering shifts in labor, manufacturing, transportation logistics, and middle-class American aesthetics, has created a grim scene: a two-year-old, $1,200 Instagram sofa—busted, on the curb, waiting for the large-item trash pickup or an enterprising scavenger who doesn’t realize just how shitty this thing is.
Dwell.com asks: Why Are (Most) Sofas So Bad?
posted by Rhaomi at 8:15 PM - 116 comments

Merry And Pippin As Ros And Gil

In another interesting interview for Q on Canadian radio, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd on LOTR, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and their incredible friendship [33m] explores how Dom and Billy have talked about doing the Stoppard play since filming The Two Towers, and they're finally doing it. Other things are also talked about.
posted by hippybear at 7:36 PM - 11 comments

Netanyahu has 'lost his way'

In a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the U.S.’s highest ranking politician of Jewish descent, offered the greatest departure from support of Israel’s Netanyahu government to date. Full speech (DoubleLYT).
posted by rubatan at 4:33 PM - 290 comments

Takin' It To The Streets

If, like me, you saw the recent Rick Beato interview with Michael McDonald and thought "I could use more Doobie Brothers in my life right now," then you could do worse than this 1982 outdoor concert in Santa Barbara, California during the band's "farewell" tour. Apparently ripped directly from SelectaVision VideoDisc, the concert is presented in glorious 480p and has excellent sound. Bonus: footage of McDonald on a Christopher Cross session. [more inside]
posted by swift at 3:06 PM - 28 comments

Echidnas caught eating the eggs of endangered turtles

Echidnas caught eating the eggs of Queensland's bum-breathing turtles, potentially endangering the reptile's future. Echidnas are known for laying eggs and eating ants, but it turns out a few have developed a hunger for the eggs of endangered turtles. There are six different species of freshwater turtle found in the Fitzroy, Burnett and Mary catchments. But it's the two threatened species that breathe oxygen underwater through their bums, whose eggs have been most predated by echidnas. Ms Robinson said the the difference in depredation might be because the Fitzroy River turtles' burrows are shallower. The distance from the burrow opening to the top egg is just 14.2 centimetres (5.5 inches) which is about the same length as an echidna beak.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:56 PM - 13 comments

At least Ru told us her plan, which was also her mistake

RuPaul is building a bunker, and Kate Middleton has gone missing. One of these things is definitely confirmed. RuPaul is taking things to a place of societal collapse. He said so while promoting his forthcoming memoir “The House of Hidden Meanings.” He’s fortifying his compound in Wyoming for him and his hot rancher husband with morally ambiguous wealth to ride out the civil war he believes is imminent.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:52 AM - 127 comments

Big rocket go up

In about 24 minutes from, Space X will attempt the third launch of its Starship rocket. YouTube Live, Space X live feed
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:01 AM - 76 comments

Solidarity and strategy

In 1977 in San Francisco, about 150 disabled radicals occupied the fourth floor of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 25 days. “Blind people, deaf people, wheelchair users, disabled veterans, people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities and many others, all came together,” leader Judith Heumann later recalled. “We overcame years of parochialism.” A long read published in The Guardian, adapted from Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:58 AM - 5 comments

Rodeo Clowns of the Sky

The aircraft they are following, the one they have been looking for, is not like the others in the group. She wears a paint scheme any other Liberator would think humiliating—white from chin turret to trailing edge, covered in a pox of bright red and blue polka dots about 18 inches in diameter. Aft of the trailing wing edge, she is army green, but the pox extends down her flanks in garish red and yellow dots. And she has a face... perhaps it was meant to be that of a shark, but it grins like a dim-witted dachshund. It seems to pant in the heat of the turbulent air. The spotted markings make her look like a massive flying bag of Wonderbread. from Polka Dot Warriors – The Assembly Ships of the Mighty Eighth
posted by chavenet at 2:43 AM - 18 comments

March 13

The strange world of crocodile hairballs

The strange world of crocodile hairballs and the Queenslanders who collect them. Anyone with a pet cat will have borne witness to the nauseating process of hairball expulsion, but it is also necessary for crocodiles. (The fur that they are expelling is from furry creatures that they have eaten, like wallabies or kangaroos.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:03 PM - 16 comments

"Polio Paul" Has Died

"Polio" Paul Alexander spent 70 of his 78 years alive inside of an iron lung. He was paralysed from the neck down due to complications from Polio. Despite this he became an author and lawyer.
posted by robotmachine at 8:58 PM - 29 comments

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