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To capture not only the facts of a narrative as foreign as the whaling voyage, but also its affect, is a deeply difficult task for any author in 2025, when we are more removed than ever from the material and symbolic grammar that would allow a novel like North Sun to appear “naturally.” It is only through a focused effort to inhabit an older, beastlier worldview that Rutherford manages to pull off the feat, laying aside the formal and ethical strictures that govern contemporary literature in the hopes of communing with those of the nineteenth century. from Whaling Upwards [The Baffler; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:12 PM - 1 comment

The song in question? Oz band Daddy Cool's Eagle Rock. a 1971 release. It also inspired the "Eagle Drop" a tradition where men drop their trousers and dance whenever the song comes on in a public place. [more inside]
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 2:02 PM - 7 comments

Canadian metalcore powerhouse Spiritbox's Tsunami Sea dropped last week. Listen here. [more inside]
posted by signal at 1:38 PM - 4 comments

Shemp is a music teacher navigating the affections of his unattractive and musically challenged student, Miss Dinkelmeyer, while Larry serves as his musical accompanist. Moe then interrupts Shemp's classroom session with news of his uncle Caleb's demise, provoking Shemp's initial disparagement of his late relative. However, Shemp's demeanor swiftly shifts upon learning of his unexpected inheritance of $500,000, prompting a sudden change in his disposition towards his deceased uncle. However, Shemp's windfall comes with a caveat: he must marry within a mere 48-hour window to claim his newfound wealth.* [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 12:33 PM - 8 comments

together they founded the Data Rescue Project to preserve the enormous data sets that website-focussed efforts had missed. Its tracker now catalogues more than four hundred publicly accessible volunteer backups of government repositories… By mid-February, the Data Rescue Project was recruiting from r/DataHoarder and a few related networks. Majstorovic and others began teaching the less experienced members how to back up government data with ArchiveTeam Warrior—an app whose creators have launched a data-rescue campaign—and to upload it to a secure public repository called DataLumos [newyorker/archived]
posted by HearHere at 11:37 AM - 9 comments

America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – China's Dominance Playbook, General Purpose Robotics Is The Holy Grail, Robotic Systems Breakdown, Supply Chain Hardships, The West
posted by Fupped Duck at 9:37 AM - 26 comments

Another record expected as more captive-bred orange-bellied parrots released. Almost 30 of the critically endangered birds have been released from captivity, buoying expectations for a record-breaking winter migration this year.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:36 AM - 2 comments

A couple of weeks ago, @pbs.org ran a great new (and free) NOVA episode on “Pompeii’s Secret Underworld.” featuring epigrapher & classicist Rebecca Benefiel, from W&L One of her specialties? Ancient Graffiti. Back in 2011, Prof. Benefiel starting developing an idea for a Pompeii and Herculaneum database for graffiti. It turned into the digital humanities project known as the Ancient Graffiti Project. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:25 AM - 12 comments

Love video games? Can't remember how to reference? Then Western Sydney University has the game for you. Refquest. Defeat the ghouls, gremlins and orcs. Save your campus and get your distinction!

Accelerate your students referencing understanding 2020, Western Sydney University, viewed 14 March 2025, https://refquest.westernsydney.edu.au/ [more inside]
posted by Bluepenguin05 at 3:10 AM - 8 comments

The US federal government is about to run out of cash to operate (or not). Democrats hoped a House Republican budget plan would faceplant, but Speaker Mike Johnson improbably held his razor-thin majority together to pass a blueprint that would further slash social spending, boost defense, and reinforce an ongoing executive power grab. After House Democrats united (save one) to oppose this, it initially looked like the Senate Dems would follow suit, leveraging their 47 seats to deny the GOP cloture on the continuing resolution (CR) and trigger a government shutdown. But this proved to be an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to finesse a symbolic protest vote that would ultimately allow the budget bill to pass. His gambit's messy and very public unraveling has led to a fracture in the caucus: on one side, Schumer and a coterie of establishment figures insist that a shutdown would further empower Trump and Musk to gut the civil service, with no clear offramp. On the other hand, the progressive wing (and even some centrists) believe that endorsing the Republican budget would be political malpractice, weaken attempts to challenge DOGE's moves in court, and do nothing to stop Trump's seizure of the spending power. With the final vote scheduled today, both sides see a defining moment for what Democratic opposition to Trumpism will look like over the next few years. And it's not too late to make your voice heard.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:07 AM - 196 comments

Good Enough Ancestor - "This is the story of Taiwan's democratic transformation as seen through Audrey Tang's eyes, amid a global crisis for democracy." (Taiwan, Sunflower Movement, Audrey Tang previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM - 1 comment

Mathematics is extremely precise, but it’s limited to a specific domain. Scientists who speak different languages can use the same mathematics, but they still have to rely on their native languages when they publish a paper; they can’t say everything they need to say with equations alone. Language has to support every type of communication that humans engage in, from debates between politicians to pillow talk between lovers. That’s not what mathematics is for. We could be holding this conversation in any human language that we both understand, but we couldn’t hold it in mathematical equations. As soon as you try and modify mathematics so that it can do those things, it ceases to be mathematics. from Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem, an interview with Ted Chiang [LARB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:47 AM - 10 comments

Everything is terrible, so for a few moments of levity, how about revisiting Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam, Vanessa Bayer, Bobby Moynihan, and Abby Elliott doing a joyful 4:30 AM interpretation of Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" back in 2011? And yes, this was posted about here more than a decade ago, but surely it's worth revisiting. Especially since the gang did a follow-up video in 2020, featuring "Dancing On My Own"!
posted by Synesthesia at 10:53 PM - 5 comments

700 years ago, an eagle with a snake in its mouth landed on a cactus growing on an island in a marshy lake in the mountains of Mexico. This was a sign foretold by the god Huitzilopochtli and so the Mexica people founded a city there: Tenochtitlán, meaning prickly pear cactus growing on a stone. [more inside]
posted by ssg at 6:09 PM - 11 comments

When other bands cite us as an inspiration or an influence, [the theme of 2112 is] what they're talking about, more than anything. I've often read when we're mentioned as an influence for a band they'll say, 'We're big Rush fans, because they did it on their own, they did it their own way, and that told me that I could do the same thing. If I stick with it, persevere, I can do things the way I want them to be.'" via NPR

‘2112’ can be considered many things – a band manifesto, a conceptual landmark, maybe even the birth of prog metal – but above all, it was the band’s play for creative independence. via udiscovermusic [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 5:44 PM - 14 comments

Graham Greene: The great revival of interest in Patricia Highsmith continues with the publication of this legendary, cultish short story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbors into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In the darkly satiric, often mordantly hilarious sketches that make up Little Tales of Misogyny, Highsmith upsets our conventional notions of female character, revealing the devastating power of these once familiar creatures — "The Dancer," "The Female Novelist," "The Prude" — who destroy both themselves and the men around them. This work attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension". [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 4:45 PM - 7 comments

Reported by Slate [archive.org]: “I remember r/LuigiMangione got banned, then r/LuigiMangione2, then r/LuigiMangione3, and I think it went up to r/LuigiMangione6 before people were like, ‘We’re not going to keep doing this,’ ” she told me in a phone conversation. “I’d made one called r/LuigiFever, which was just photos of him, and that got banned too.”
posted by AlSweigart at 4:01 PM - 50 comments

The German musician der schaelm specializes in the art form of manualism—the art of squeezing air between one’s hands to produce melodious sounds. But back when we (yes, I’m including you) were doing this at eight years old, we called it “hand farting.” There’s a lot that goes into hand farting. The musician must precisely arrange his or her hands and engage differing levels of tightness in order to achieve higher or lower or shorter or longer notes. It can take decades to master the craft and der schaelm has done the work.
posted by chavenet at 12:59 PM - 16 comments

PBS American Masters Season 39, Ep 1 Learn about jazz virtuoso and screen superstar Hazel Scott, the first Black American to have their own television show. An early civil rights pioneer, she faced down the Red Scare at the risk of losing her career and was a champion for equality. The film features interviews with Mickey Guyton, Tracie Thoms, Amanda Seales, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as the voice of Hazel Scott.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:41 PM - 1 comment

Mediterranean monk seals make a remarkable comeback. Once on the brink of extinction, the rare marine mammal's populations are rising, thanks to conservation efforts. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:05 PM - 2 comments

An unexpected discovery in the age of planned tech obsolesce: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) hardware appears to be running faster and faster as the devices age.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:45 AM - 31 comments

“Make no mistake, they’re not doing these renovations out of the kindness of their hearts." [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:56 AM - 60 comments

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been acquired by Must Read Magazines, a division of a new publishing company, Must Read Books Publishing. All editorial staff from the magazines have been retained in the acquisitions. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 7:53 AM - 12 comments

This sounds spectacularly self-centered: that you can only quit a thing, or modify your usage of it, when it fails to serve you. But if we think of our phones and social media as addictive products, which they certainly are, then the classic addiction model makes sense: you only consider quitting when the negative impacts (the dead feeling of the soft-brain scroll, the loss of attention span, the weight of comparison, the exposure to trolls, the lack of control over the algorithm) outweigh the positive benefits (the distraction, the serotonin hit, the semblance of connection, the loose ties, the business benefits). from The Social Media Sea Change by Anne Helen Petersen
posted by chavenet at 1:47 AM - 48 comments

Most wombats are shy, gentle, and timid unless you make them angry, but they are very muscular and have sharp claws. A man in 2010 had the misfortune of accidentally startling a wombat that had sought shelter from a bushfire under his caravan: 20 minutes later, he was in a condition that resulted in him being admitted to hospital with significant injuries to his arms and legs. (And yes, if this had happened to the influencer who kidnapped a baby wombat, I would have been on team wombat.) Meanwhile the woman who kidnapped a baby wombat is having her visa reviewed and may not be allowed back into Australia again. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:43 AM - 22 comments

While it's self-proclaimed, it's easy to believe that this is the largest collection of links to free sites on the internet.
posted by JHarris at 9:02 PM - 19 comments

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:42 PM - 12 comments

Leonard Maltin’s Animation Faborites from the National Film Board of Canada! The National Film Board of Canada is such an amazing wealth of riches! This movie has 9 short animations that start with a brief description by Leonard Maltin, and they are all amazing. Some of them have been staples of Canadian school curriculums for half a century and many Canadians will watch these, as I did, with the realization that they have seen them before but forgotten. With a runtime of 1:34, it’s well worth the time either all at once or in little snippets. [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 8:21 PM - 25 comments

The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes is a grueling, fascinating experience only made bearable by our sense of the real human being gripping the camera for dear life. There’s a moment when Brakhage brings the camera around to take in the newly emptied cranium of one of the autopsied corpses, peering down into the gaping skull, where I felt that he and I were experiencing exactly the same great and horrible feeling of dumbstruck awe at what had become of a human life. It’s enervating but surprisingly humanist in its aspirations -- if it’s ultimately despairing, it remains clearly the work of a master exploring the human condition in every facet. - Bryant Frazer (h/t: languagehat)
posted by Lemkin at 6:14 PM - 9 comments

Wikipedia portraits are famously bad, so much so that there's an Instagram page dedicated to them. They're amateurish. They're old. Sometimes, like in the case of English footballer Kyle Bartley, they're just weird. (Is that a referee’s finger in his mouth?) WikiPortraits, a group of volunteer photographers, has been covering festivals and shooting celebrities specifically to improve images in the public domain. (404Media)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:11 PM - 19 comments

The office of London design studio DUDE was vandalized... so they turned the graffiti into a free* typeface for everyone to use. [more inside]
posted by 40 Watt at 1:50 PM - 10 comments

the letter S is never included — the editor Sam Ezersky said that using an S would make the puzzle way too easy Today's (March 12, 2025) New York Times Spelling Bee Puzzle is #2,500. It has an "S." [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:29 PM - 33 comments

Terrifying reporting from ProPublica about the SSA describes a meeting held by acting head of the Social Security Administration Leland Dudek in which he seems to admit that the "DOGE kids" may very well actually break the social security payments process and tries to disavow all responsibility because he is clearly alarmed by what he is being asked to do. [more inside]
posted by Frowner at 11:43 AM - 55 comments

Canadian Geographic explores Canada's national symbol. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 10:36 AM - 9 comments

elodieunderglass (previously quoted on MeFi) and derinthescarletpescatarian wrote a moving, funny composite narrative about human biology: “Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post... That link won't work well unless you're logged into Tumblr, so here's a repost that everyone should be able to read.
posted by brainwane at 8:52 AM - 20 comments

Plans are underway to create "Freedom Cities" around the United States on large open tracts of protected federal lands, following in the footsteps of California Forever, Próspera, Yatai New City and other law and regulation free Special Economic Zone safe-havens for anarcho-capitalists, libertarians and criminals. [more inside]
posted by rambling wanderlust at 8:43 AM - 81 comments

Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an ICC warrant for crimes against humanity in Manila. According to his daughter, who is currently the country's vice president, “As I write this, he is being forcibly taken to The Hague tonight. This is not justice – this is oppression and persecution.” Internal Philippine politics made the arrest possible, as a former power-sharing agreement between the Marcos family currently in power and the Dutertes broke down.
posted by toastyk at 7:43 AM - 26 comments

1,891 different flight attendant uniforms from 632 airlines (previously) (previouslyer) (previouslyest) [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:01 AM - 19 comments

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Addresses General Assembly, 78th Session (pdf) - "Terrorists have no right to hold nuclear weapons." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:55 AM - 16 comments

A Message of Love is a long interview with Danish photographer/activist Jakob Holdt. Long haired hippy Jakob Holdt hitchhiked in the US for 5 years in the early 70's, documenting the lives of the most marginalized people, as well as some of the most affluent. His "adventures" resulted in an output of 15,000 harrowing photographs, which he later published as the book "American Pictures". (CW: Abuse, Racism, Deprivation, Poverty, KKK). [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 5:05 AM - 5 comments

Don't pick up wild baby wombats. Picking them up can injure them; can cause their mother to abandon them (a death sentence if they are still breastfeeding); and could cause you to get seriously injured by an angry mother wombat (wombat claws can disembowel a person if the wombat gets angry.) US influencer criticised for temporarily taking joey wombat from mother. A US influencer is under fire after posting a video of herself capturing a wild baby wombat off the side of the road. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:17 AM - 21 comments

“Not many people come out in the rain,” says Goody, with a smile. “But we just batter on. You never know, we could pull out Rob Roy’s sword, fingers crossed”. They fish “for the history,” he adds. A lot of this history seems to be embodied by weaponry, judging from the list Goody reels off. Unexploded ordnances are a particular pain. “We’re a bit scared of pu’ing them oot — feart in case the police will do us wi a public disorder or suhhin like that. It becomes a bit of nuisance when you have to phone the polis and get the MOD out.” from Magnet fishing is supposed to be a wholesome hobby. Why all the beef?
posted by chavenet at 1:06 AM - 15 comments

"By depicting the rich and the poor in their respective environments, we see life as it is lived by our means, which tells a far different story than would portraits taken outside of these contexts. Jim Goldberg’s other key innovation in this book is how he has allowed his subjects to attempt to capture themselves. As part of his process, he asks for their commentary on their own photos, giving the subject an opportunity to add context, personality, and self-perception to each photo in handwritten reflections. These annotations change not only the meaning of the book, but also the meaning of the act of taking the photos." - Abbey Lee
posted by Lemkin at 6:00 PM - 10 comments

What the size of your book collection - potentially - says about you "Are you a minimalist or a mini-librarian? Do you let your books pile up around your home, or do you treat your collection like a carefully curated gallery of your best self? Time to find out." [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 2:22 PM - 108 comments

You may be wondering: What makes a villain “best”? That, friends, is really up to you. You can vote for the most iconic villains, the most memorable villains, or the most villainous villains. You can vote for the villain you enjoyed reading about the most, or the one that kept you up at night. You can vote for the cutest villain, if that’s your thing. The point is, there are no rules. Villains are rule-breakers, and so are we. from The Best Villains in Literature Bracket: The Not-So-Sweet 16 [LitHub]
posted by chavenet at 1:22 PM - 42 comments

After a very positive reception at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight, Carson Lund's directorial debut Eephus is opening this week to very good reviews, touted as "the best baseball movie since ‘Moneyball’". [more inside]
posted by smcdow at 12:41 PM - 5 comments

A short doc about a musical obsession, perseverance and git'n r done ...The Mystery of the Dirty Cowboy
posted by foodeater at 12:17 PM - 1 comment

In a triumph of graphic design and branding, Major League Baseball’s new ‘Overlap’ hats are going viral for all the wrong reasons.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:57 AM - 56 comments

AT&T Workers: Drugged, Bugged and Coming Unplugged; Moving the Indiana Bell Central Office; History of Engineering and Science at Bell Labs; How the Telephone Helps the Farmer; and much more of the lore of telecommunications from the library of Telephone Collectors International.
posted by ContinuousWave at 8:45 AM - 14 comments

A six minute video illustrating Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel with cute blobby monsters.
posted by Lemkin at 6:33 AM - 55 comments