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Tired of barramundi and cod? A new white fish species is on the way. The CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, a scientific research organisation funded by the Australian Federal Government] unveils new fish variety that could one day make a splash on dinner tables across Australia. They are working on developing a sustainable, profitable and eco-friendly farmed fish using an Australian native white fish few have heard of.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:57 PM - 2 comments

Lorenzo’s descendants finally built Earth’s largest, most famous disability access ramp. It’s name is the Vasari Corridor, the elevated walkway I discussed last week as conquering Duke Cosimo I’s project of architectural domination, the tyrant’s assassin-proof walkway piercing the city’s heart. Diversity celebration or tyrant’s monument? It’s the same piece of architecture but feels completely different depending on what question we ask about it: Why was it built? For power? For chronic pain? Yes. Both. from History’s Largest & Most Famous Disability Access Ramp [Ex Urbe]
posted by chavenet at 2:23 PM - 4 comments

His daughter was America's first measles death in a decade An outbreak—even one this big—should not have come as a surprise. Vaccination rates have dipped in many states, including Texas, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In Gaines County, where Seminole is located, the measles-vaccination rate among kindergartners is just 82 percent, well short of the estimated 95 percent threshold for maintaining herd immunity. Even that alarming figure would appear to undersell the local problem. Many children from the county’s Mennonite community, which numbers in the thousands, are unvaccinated, but they won’t get picked up in state tallies, because they are either homeschooled or enrolled in nonaccredited private schools, which are not required to collect such data.
posted by stillmoving at 1:50 PM - 23 comments

if this is all there is, I hope you live, I hope you live
posted by Sebmojo at 1:40 PM - 6 comments

You might need a cuvette or that plastic scintillator or photomultiplier that you've always wanted, but someone else has already written up the lab report in English or Italian, illustrated the setup, graphed the results, and done the math. [more inside]
posted by the Real Dan at 12:34 PM - 5 comments

The tight curls of black hair are considered difficult to mimic in animation. But A.M. Darke, a black female artist, developer, and professor aims to fix that by breaking the process down into algorithms, as covered in this PDF of the research paper she co-authored, "Curly-Cue: Geometric Methods for Highly Coiled Hair", and with the Open Source Afro Hair Library, which was co-created by Darke.

Three major elements of animating black hair (phase locking, period skipping, and switchbacks) are explained verbally and visually in this fantastic and quick Instagram reel by popculturebrain
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:23 AM - 13 comments

"The wistful nineteen-minute epic that closes out one of the band’s 90s-era highlights in Washing Machine, is pathologically treasured like few favorite songs by few favorite bands. ... Besides containing some of Thurston Moore’s most gorgeously delivered vocals, the downright elegant guitar interplay throughout is a splendid reminder of the shadow Sonic Youth that had always dwelled beneath the surface pose of snotty NYC hipster brats making feedback with screwdrivers jammed into guitar strings. As was more and more evident as the 90s and 2000s wore on, Sonic Youth grew to embody a band as beautifully melodic as they once were crushing." - Zachary Corsa [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 8:57 AM - 4 comments

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation. It has been used in the most recent past to detain Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. It is being used in the present by Trump to deport Venezuelan nationals; most recently a federal judge has ordered a hold on the deportations and ordered planes to turn around while the case is being considered. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 7:01 AM - 46 comments

Today, Allegro’s theory is remembered as a quintessential example of academic suicide, like a Cambridge egyptologist suddenly confessing a belief in ancient aliens. He was soon forced to resign from his position at the University of Manchester. Amid a conservative backlash to the drug-fuelled counterculture of the ‘70s, his work faded into obscurity, a laughingstock remembered only by a loyal band of fringe conspiracists. And yet, 50 years later, Allegro’s work suddenly seems oddly prescient. from Is God a Mushroom? [Long Now]
posted by chavenet at 2:59 AM - 63 comments

Dam removal on the Klamath shows immediate returns

Within 10 days of completing the final in-water work at Iron Gate Dam – an earthfill structure farthest downstream – more than 6,000 Chinook salmon were observed migrating upstream into newly accessible habitat over a two-week period

posted by Mitheral at 7:59 PM - 8 comments

Robert McGinnis (born February 3, 1926) is an American artist and illustrator. McGinnis is known for his illustrations of more than 1,200 paperback book covers, and over 40 movie posters, including Breakfast at Tiffany's (his first film poster assignment), Barbarella, and several James Bond and Matt Helm films*. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:25 PM - 7 comments

Through LEGO Compositions, Katherine Duclos Grounds Chaos in Color [Colossal]
posted by chavenet at 2:31 PM - 10 comments

Made a tiny laundromat in the house wall. How to make a miniature beef bowl shop in the wall. DIY How to make a miniature bathroom in the wall. And many more clever miniature spaces at MOZU Studios
posted by gwint at 11:42 AM - 11 comments

Climate action is becoming less of a priority around the world. Single link CBC.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 10:21 AM - 24 comments

John Gruber, writer of Daring Fireball, creator of Markdown syntax, and one of the world's preeminent Apple apologists, has lost his religion. "Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that to address and rectify this Siri and Apple Intelligence debacle. If such a meeting hasn’t yet occurred or doesn’t happen soon, then, I fear, that’s all she wrote. The ride is over. When mediocrity, excuses, and bullshit take root, they take over. A culture of excellence, accountability, and integrity cannot abide the acceptance of any of those things, and will quickly collapse upon itself with the acceptance of all three."
posted by Lemkin at 7:22 AM - 81 comments

While we might point to violent video games or sexually explicit films as potentially dangerous and corrupting influences on tender or vulnerable minds, the novel is treated as uplifting and salutary, regardless of its content: a kale smoothie for the soul. When we do talk about books being ‘dangerous’, it is usually with a knowing nod and a wink: and the implication is that those of us in the know know better. In a recent [2015] Guardian interview, the controversial British writer Melvin Burgess insists that ‘like most “dangerous” books, [Junk, his novel for young adults] is in fact a threat only to people who are themselves dangerous – people who want to control others’. Any suggestion that a book might be dangerous is, in other words, only ever a manifestation of bigotry or fear. But it was not always thus. from Dark books by Tara Isabella Burton [Aeon; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:19 AM - 14 comments

Common Side Effects [FF] - "Marshall meets his old high school classmate Frances and lets her in on a world-changing secret." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM - 10 comments

Megan Williams (Had, 3/13/2025), "M.A.S.H": "SPOUSE: ... 4. marriage is for the birds, you say, & turn into a sparrow." The game MASH, nostalgic for generations, has been on Only Murders ... (screenshot; Fanfare), Yellowjackets (screenshot; Fanfare), and A Black Lady Sketch Show (full sketch; Fanfare). GennaRose Nethercott's "The Literature of Cootie Catchers" contemplates more children's fortune games. Still more appeared in 1833 (by poet / novelist / abolitionist Lydia Maria Child), 1858 (and often later), 1867, 1898, 1900, 1909, 1925, 1927, and 1929. But in English, fortune games date to the 13th and 15th C. (mss 1; mss 2), and a translation of The Dodechedron of Fortune in 1613 points to a rich tradition in Europe (1482, 1526, 1540, 1630, 1633, 1649, 1655, and 1663), also evoked by games in A Treatise on the Sports of Wit (1675).
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:48 PM - 3 comments

The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League "Today, we typically think of coalitions in the context of modern electoral politics. So it might be surprising that one of the greatest case studies in the history of coalitions is a community of medieval German merchants known as the Hansa...Without corporate structures, they built supply chains that distributed goods between Northern Europe’s major ports, with capillaries that spread into each city’s hinterlands. Without formal territory, their laws governed trading hubs spanning thousands of miles, from London all the way to Western Russia. And, despite being composed of hundreds of member cities, the Hanseatic League had no head of state. Yet the Hansa still managed to sign treaty after treaty with foreign rulers and, a few times, even fought (and won!) wars...The Hanseatic system lasted for nearly 500 years." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:28 PM - 13 comments

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 - 8 comments

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 - 19 comments

Canadian metalcore powerhouse Spiritbox's Tsunami Sea dropped last week. Listen here. [more inside]
posted by signal at 1:38 PM - 5 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 - 13 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 - 34 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 - 13 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 - 9 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 - 273 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 - 11 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 - 6 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 - 13 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 - 56 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 - 66 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 - 52 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 - 27 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 - 20 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