Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Representatives Hank Johnson (GA-04), Jerry Nadler (NY-12), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Adam Schiff (CA-30) have cosponsored The Judiciary Act, not just calling for Supreme Court reform, but introducing (again and again, since 2021 if I'm reading this correctly) actual legislation to make it happen.
posted by ZakDaddy at 11:48 AM Jul 26 2024 - 18 comments [34 favorites]

In an interview with noted right wing figure and transphobe Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk attacked his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, proceeding to deadname her while calling her "dead" because she transitioned, and saying he was "tricked" into signing off on her gender affirming care. In response, Wilson has given an interview with NBC News in which she details how Musk was both an abusive and absentee father while she was growing up, and how he lied about her interests growing up as well as his signing off on her care.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:27 AM Jul 26 2024 - 72 comments [29 favorites]

This short gen fic from a cat's point of view amused me: If Comfy, Warm, and My Size, Why No Sit: A Meta-analysis of Research into the Warm Flat Rectangle by Dr Fluffy Jones
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:56 AM Jul 26 2024 - 21 comments [28 favorites]

More than 38,500 people registered to vote in the US in the 48 hours following President Biden's announcement Sunday - a nearly 700% increase in daily registrations (and more than the 34,000 who registered after Taylor Swift urged them to) - and younger voters, those between 18 and 34, make up 83% of them. The Alliance for Youth Action is here to help young people vote.
posted by kristi at 2:38 PM Jul 25 2024 - 31 comments [59 favorites]

In California's Central Valley, 2100 acres of farmland have been changed from farmland into rain-water catchment. It refills the aquifers and prevents floods. "In addition to these two functions, the restored swamp also sequesters an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that produced by thousands of gas-powered vehicles. It also provides a haven for migratory birds and other species that have faced the threat of extinction."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:47 PM Jul 25 2024 - 14 comments [19 favorites]

Generating sudokus for fun and no profit – Once upon a time, I decided to create a complete Sudoku application as my grandma wanted to play some Sudokus on her computer, and I wasn't satisfied with the free offers available. The project went on for some years and finally led to sudoku.tn1ck.com - a free and open source Sudoku app without any tracking. While working on it, I went down the rabbit hole of generating Sudokus of a specified "human perceived" difficulty and accidentally created a quite thorough analysis of it...
posted by Wolfdog at 4:58 AM Jul 26 2024 - 6 comments [17 favorites]

Marsh Family Songs: "Didn't like the way this J.D. Vance bloke (newly picked as Trump's running mate) slagged off the UK lately. Looked into him. Not great. Made a parody song inspired by ABBA called "Vance VP""
posted by valkane at 6:32 AM Jul 26 2024 - 71 comments [16 favorites]

"France's easy-to-make yoghurt cake recipe relies on volume measures facilitated by the ubiquitous 125g terracotta yoghurt pot." Bringing Up Bébé’s Yogurt Cake Recipe. Yogurt cakes seem to do well with citrus. Yogurt research continues[SLPDF], as does functional cake research. There is also cake research, of course, which is not to be confused with cake ingredient science.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:04 AM Jul 26 2024 - 19 comments [15 favorites]

Like many other filetypes (Office, OpenDocument, EPUB, JAR), WinAmp skins (WSZ) are secretly just ZIP files with specific contents and their own file extension. Jordan Eldredge, the creator and maintainer of the WinAmp Skin Museum (previously, again), investigated a variety of corrupt skins, and from there found a wide variety of interesting stuff, including text and audio files, images, a simple game, and other WinAmp skins, many previously unknown.
posted by JHarris at 12:23 PM Jul 26 2024 - 9 comments [15 favorites]

The high court in the Buckeye State ruled 4-3 that bones are not a foreign substance and that the customer should have assumed a boneless chicken wing may still have bones.
posted by Marky at 12:18 AM Jul 26 2024 - 56 comments [14 favorites]

In Japan, Turning the Tables on Rude Customers NYT: in Japan, there's a word, "kasuhara" that translates into "customer harassment." Customers harassing workers have gotten so extreme that now businesses are fighting back instead of kissing customer booty.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:57 AM Jul 26 2024 - 20 comments [12 favorites]

A (not-so) Quick and Dirty Guide for 4-Year Fans of Rhythmic Gymnastics Back in May, Reddit user freifraufischer posted a detailed look at the runup to the Olympics for rhythmic gymnastics, with dozens of links to gorgeous routines with the ball, hoops, ribbon and clubs, as well as info about RG's byzantine scoring system, recent judging scandal and years of domination by the horrifically brutal (and recently banned) Russian coach Irina Viner.
posted by mediareport at 9:21 PM Jul 25 2024 - 5 comments [11 favorites]

Raising his paddles in every major auction, Philbrick became a constant presence at all of the stops in the “circus,” as art collectors call it: the Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips auctions; Art Basel Miami and Switzerland; Frieze London; the New York art fairs; and beyond. He became the darling of what one observer calls “the new collecting class,” to whom he offered something as coveted as the art itself: the VIP treatment. “You don’t want to buy a ticket,” the observer says. “That’s déclassé…. He was offering access to a lifestyle.” from The Confessions of Inigo Philbrick, Art Fraudster Extraordinaire [Vanity Fair; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:06 AM Jul 26 2024 - 13 comments [9 favorites]

“The mentality, almost a weird reflex, in Washington has just become: If something bad happens, anywhere in the world, the U.S. is going to sanction some people. And that doesn’t make sense. We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war. But we should.” From the Washington Post: How Four US Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.
posted by mittens at 9:31 AM Jul 25 2024 - 14 comments [23 favorites]

As the 2024 Paris Olympics opens (with sabotage by unknown actors), it's time to look back at one of the biggest marketing missteps of the Olympics - the McDonald's "When the US Wins, You Win" campaign of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:47 PM Jul 26 2024 - 11 comments [6 favorites]

This year's British Airways Safety Video alludes to period dramas and literature in various eras.
posted by needled at 11:32 AM Jul 25 2024 - 14 comments [12 favorites]

The National Trust offers an alphabetical examination of its many bums
posted by jacquilynne at 5:10 AM Jul 26 2024 - 10 comments [5 favorites]

Flaming Puck Hockey is a thing.
posted by Xurando at 5:33 AM Jul 26 2024 - 8 comments [5 favorites]

Al-Andalus y la Historia [English] focuses on the history of Muslim Iberia/al-Andalus/Andalusia c. 711-1609. A public-facing site, it features accessible articles by scholars working on the region and sprang from a topical 2016 seminar. Sample articles cover new research on and approaches to Vikings in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, the Reconquista, and El Cid Campeador.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:40 AM Jul 25 2024 - 11 comments [25 favorites]

Moira Donegan, creator of the Shitty Media Men list, reviews and reflects on Christine Blasey Ford's memoir One Way Back, for Bookforum: "There are two ways to explain the moral wrong presented by Kavanaugh’s confirmation...Ford saw it the second way: she thought Kavanaugh wasn’t suited for the Court because what he did to her meant he wasn’t good enough for it. Perhaps her most revealing and tragic mistake is that she assumed that other people would agree.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:58 AM Jul 25 2024 - 24 comments [26 favorites]