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The Big 4 Paper pattern brands: Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls, and Vogue "The brands were owned by IG Design Group, a leading manufacturer and distributor of stationery, crafts, party, and gift products based in the UK. On Friday, the company announced it had sold its US division, IG Design Group Americas (DGA), which owns the sewing pattern brands, to Hilco Capital, a liquidation firm."- craftindustryalliance.org [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 3:17 PM - 12 comments

Toki Pona is the "language of good". It was created to be easy to learn, easy to speak, and to aid in clear thinking. It has only 120-140 words, and very simple grammar (no tenses, no conjugation, no declension). [more inside]
posted by SaltySalticid at 2:37 PM - 6 comments

From John Gruber Bill Atkinson Dies From Cancer at 74.

From Wikipedia -

Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. Some of Atkinson's noteworthy contributions to the field of computing include Macintosh QuickDraw and Lisa LisaGraf (Atkinson independently discovered the midpoint circle algorithm for fast drawing of circles by using the sum of consecutive odd numbers), Marching ants, the Menu bar, the selection lasso, MacPaint (FatBits), HyperCard, Atkinson dithering, and the app PhotoCard. [more inside]
posted by phigmov at 2:11 PM - 21 comments

Everyone should live creatively. It is now recognised that the creative urge – other than sex – is manifest in varying degrees, not only in musicians, writers and painters, but in all human beings…. Creation in the widest sense must surely be adding to what already exists. If you contribute something to others and to yourself you are living creatively. from Miss Margaret Morris’ Merry Mermaids [Flashbak]
posted by chavenet at 2:04 PM - 1 comment

The next game from House House, the makers of Untitled Goose Game, is called Big Walk (Steam). Due out some time next year, it will be about exploring a huge open space cooperatively with friends, where you need to communicate with them in different ways to succeed. There's a demonstration video.
posted by JHarris at 1:57 PM - 9 comments

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has a plan to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life. If the company’s strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot’s voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test. OpenAI dubs its sales pitch “A.I.-native universities.” [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:57 AM - 81 comments

English exhibits network effects remarkably similar to social networks—nearly any random pair of words can reach each other in just a few hops through chains of meaningful associations. This “small world” phenomenon was first measured in word co-occurrence networks, and persists even after we deprioritize superconnector words that might otherwise dominate many paths. To probe this, we randomly sampled 1 million word pairs (4 days processing on 32 cores), to get a strong statistical sampling of the connected core of English. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:55 AM - 15 comments

Recreating the first synthetic pigment, Egyptian Blue circa. 3100BC / 5050BPE. Weaving archaeology, materials science, and lots of chemistry and coloured light, and unearthing many modern applications. Fulltext very readable and graphical paper here [ 8Mb pdf ]. [more inside]
posted by unearthed at 12:21 AM - 7 comments

The actors with disability pushing back on exclusion from theatre. In the media and the arts, representation of people with disability has progressed, but, as actor Hannah Diviney explains, there's still a long way to go. She meets some of the actors pushing representation forward.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:07 AM - 8 comments

"A tiny Pentagon office had spent months investigating conspiracy theories about secret Washington UFO programs when it uncovered a shocking truth: At least one of those theories had been fueled by the Pentagon itself." The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology (Wall Street Journal, archive.is)
posted by JHarris at 9:41 PM - 17 comments

Among the annals of online creepy photos, one of the most famous is the Cooper Family Falling Body, where a body appears to be hanging or falling beside two oblivious women holding small boys at a dinner table. Who or what is this sinister figure? A spirit haunting the house? The nightmares of the children manifested? A well-constructed hoax? Youtuber Jeffiot (with some help) does a deep dive to uncover the definitive truth.
posted by justkevin at 3:55 PM - 18 comments

Mr. Musk set up a program in 2023 to pay creators for their content — one that inevitably rewards incendiary and offensive posts because they garner the most engagement. Now, stoking outrage is effectively Mr. McGee’s job: he starts posting around 9 a.m. and continues until 8 p.m. nearly every day. What he gets in return is less clear. Publicly, he has boasted about owning designer gear, investing in real estate and receiving huge payouts from X. In reality, he has earned an average of about $55,000 a year from X, amounting to less than minimum wage given his hours.
posted by Lemkin at 1:03 PM - 31 comments

Honey bees in ultra slow motion
posted by chavenet at 12:34 PM - 18 comments

How a Coney Island sideshow advanced medicine for premature babies

“I couldn’t live on my own, I was too weak to survive … You just died because you didn’t belong in the world.” Horn said. But Horn’s father, who had seen one of Couney’s exhibits on his honeymoon, bundled tiny Lucille up and took her out of the hospital. “I’m taking her to the incubator in Coney Island. The doctor said there’s not a chance in hell that she’ll live, but he said, ‘But she’s alive now,’ and he hailed a cab and took me to Dr. Couney’s exhibit, and that’s where I stayed for about six months.

posted by gwint at 10:10 AM - 12 comments

Edmund White died June 3, after a long and much-loved life as one of America’s great gay writers.

He always saw himself as a gay writer for gay readers, the distinction he drew between his generation of queer writers and those who came earlier, like Gore Vidal and James Baldwin. They might write gay characters, but they never seemed to be writing for gay readers. Ed was.
… Edmund White had no use for shame, and in both life and work, he refused to sand down the edges of queer existence to make it palatable. Acceptance was never the point. Truth was.

[more inside]
posted by Nelson at 9:48 AM - 20 comments

when everything around me seems overwhelming, I drive to the water and make a photograph of the water and the horizon and the sky.
posted by growabrain at 8:05 AM - 10 comments

Most people never think twice about shrimp. But as it turns out, these creatures make up the majority of animals alive on farms at any given time—hundreds of billions every year. And the conditions they endure are often horrifying. Overcrowding, eye mutilation, and inhumane slaughter methods are all standard practice. So why don’t we care? from Shrimp Are the Most Abused Animals on Earth [Current Affairs]
posted by chavenet at 12:09 AM - 16 comments

This is no ordinary ferry. What's inside could transform shipping. Over the centuries ferries have evolved from using paddles to steam engines, to burning diesel and gas. Can the humble ferry go all electric?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:48 PM - 16 comments

Today in one sentence: Trump threatened to cancel Elon Musk’s federal contracts, called him “crazy” and accused him of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome”; Musk responded by saying Trump is “in the Epstein files,” floated creating a new political party, predicted a recession from Trump’s tariffs and tax and spending bill, endorsed impeaching Trump, ordered SpaceX to decommission its Dragon spacecraft used by NASA, and claimed that “Without me, Trump would have lost the election." [more inside]
posted by subdee at 8:28 PM - 182 comments

Andy Griffith- The Darlings-'There is a Time.' (slyt.)
posted by clavdivs at 6:14 PM - 8 comments

Why is a cute little newt poisonous enough to kill multiple humans? And which snake is poisonous without being venomous? I also enjoyed the author's previous post on the evolutionary factors that led to a small male octopus with enough venom to kill a horse.
posted by rishabguha at 5:34 PM - 17 comments

Come for the banking nerdery, stay for the sleuthing. Last year, a financial reporter with The Cut published a widely-read piece about how she was scammed of $50,000. Like quite a few MeFites, but for different reasons, Patrick McKenzie of Bits About Money was puzzled by this withdrawal.
posted by Captaintripps at 1:27 PM - 36 comments

Mechanical Bark is building out a "neural petwork" of dog labour(dor) for minimum wags. The goal is simple: Get them to work like a dog. I will start by seeing if we can track their input and gestures and slowly increase their input until they can book my flights, file my taxes, everything to earn their keep. from My progress in training dogs to vibe code B2B SaaS apps
posted by chavenet at 11:26 AM - 6 comments

YT short with an animated pencil taking liberties with the properties of materials, the laws of physics, and basic propriety. Apparently made in Blender, which must have taken foreeever.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 11:25 AM - 11 comments

The late Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru (previously) was an Ethiopian nun whose unique piano stylings remained largely obscure outside her home country, only finding wider acclaim late in life via the Ethiopiques series. That release comprised her two first albums, originally self-released to raise funds for humanitarian purposes, but this was not all her recorded music! Though Gebru preferred playing live, to small audiences, she did record occasionally, and Mississippi Records has gotten hold of and restored her nearly lost work from the '70s and '80s. [more inside]
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:10 AM - 6 comments

Glyph, the creator of Twisted, on the LLM programming moment: “I Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now”

My goal with this post is not to convince anyone of anything in particular… but rather: to set out my current understanding in one place… so I can stop repeating it elsewhere; to explain why I cannot build a case that I think should be particularly convincing to anyone else, particularly to someone who actively disagrees with me; to give myself… permission to just peace out of this nightmare quagmire corner of the noosphere. But first, just because I can’t prove that my interlocutors are Wrong On The Internet, doesn’t mean I won’t explain why I feel like they are wrong.

posted by Going To Maine at 10:50 AM - 58 comments

Ross Douthat, of all people, interviews Tony Gilroy, creator and showrunner of "Andor"
posted by smcdow at 9:33 AM - 25 comments

Once again, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition is attempting to break the humanitarian blockade in Gaza by sailing the Madleen to bring food and supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. Partnering with Forensic Architecture, you can track their journey online. The unarmed 12 person crew includes climate activist Greta Thunberg, and Rima Hassan, French-Palestinian member of European Parliament, among others. The IDF has confirmed that they will not be allowing the Madleen to dock in Gaza, even though they have determined that it did not pose a threat. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 8:18 AM - 8 comments

HIV's ability to conceal itself inside certain white blood cells means there is a reservoir of the virus in the body, capable of reactivation, that neither the immune system nor drugs can tackle. Now researchers in Melbourne have demonstrated a way to make the virus visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body. “We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was – from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow’.” Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’, The Guardian.
posted by kristi at 7:51 AM - 14 comments

Miss Manners says, "No." But Seinfeld says it counts. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 7:34 AM - 65 comments

Under the fold, Atlantic small presses Breakwater, Éditions Bouton d'or Acadie, Galleon Books, Moose House, and SSP Publications. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 5:43 AM - 2 comments

The most successful version of the most powerful tool humanity has ever created was born in a place where war now rages. That tool is human language, without which we would never have achieved the social organization and transmission of knowledge that have made us masters of the planet. Although the tongue called Proto-Indo-European hasn’t been used in 4,000 years, about half Earth’s inhabitants speak its more than 400 descendant languages: English, the Romance languages of Europe, the Slavic and Baltic languages, the Celtic languages of Wales and Ireland, Armenian, Greek, and languages spoken in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. from Mankind’s Greatest Invention [Slate] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:21 AM - 23 comments

Van Morrison In Conversation with Dylan Jones, June 2025 My first ever Metafilter post was Some interviews with Van Morrison (previously, previously, previously). This is just a single interview, but it's wonderful, sympathetic, in-depth, and with a non-grumpy Van! [more inside]
posted by maupuia at 9:18 PM - 25 comments

Clever cockies not only open bins, they can use water fountains too. The behaviour has spread among a mob of more than 100 sulphur-crested cockatoos that roost in the Western Sydney Parklands. (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:41 PM - 6 comments

Administration officials blocked publication of written analysis that normally accompanies the (farm trade) report because they disliked what it said about the trade deficit......namely, that it is rising, not shrinking, under Trump's tariffs. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 6:48 PM - 31 comments

Julia Reagan was the matriarch of the Reagan Outdoor Advertising company family. She died almost a year ago in June 2024. Then it got weird. [more inside]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:07 PM - 20 comments

French Bulldog in a baby stroller, French Bulldog in a baby stroller, French Bulldog in a baby stroller, French Bulldog in a baby stroller, French Bulldog in a baby stroller
posted by joannemerriam at 3:51 PM - 19 comments

ABA, prodigious creator of plenty of awesome short games like the one-dimensional Pac-Man variant PAKU PAKU, has just released a new game, free to play in your browser on itch.io: BLASNAKE. Start with Snake. Add enemies that try to get in your way. Give the snake the ability to destroy enemies by surrounding them! Collect dollar signs to become longer. At $30 though, the snake reduces in length and gets an extra life! And then there's THE MUSIC. Give it a try?
posted by JHarris at 12:54 PM - 15 comments

The Luck Factor I was wondering if luck could be quantified and measured? Who is the luckiest person alive? Came across this interesting read.
posted by ianhorse at 12:29 PM - 27 comments

"Acapella" is what happens when two musical strains that have produced plenty of "worst song ever" contenders on their own—theater kid energy and white hip hop—come together to produce something truly foul. But it is not the worst song ever, because enough people just haven't heard it. If you can't elicit a roomful of groans on mention alone, are you really in WSOAT territory? from Worst Song Ever [Dirt]
posted by chavenet at 11:45 AM - 98 comments

An article on Defector about reselling to the resellers, and the detritus of modern production. Jen Kinney writes about her new neighborhood store: on global sludge products and their afterlives. [more inside]
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:56 AM - 40 comments

Beloved Yolnu statesman who brushed shoulders with royalty dies aged 64. Senior Rirratjinu elder M Marika, who devoted his life to protecting the natural environment and his people, has died at 64 years old in north-east Arnhem Land. If you are thinking that 64 is a shockingly young age for someone to die in 2025, there is an appalling gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non-Aboriginal Australians, because of a variety of factors that limit access to healthcare, including living in extremely remote areas with limited availability of healthcare services and long travel times [8 hours or even several days] to healthcare services; low incomes creating a barrier to healthcare services; and racism by healthcare staff [both conscious racism and unconscious racism]. There has been a campaign for several years now to "Close The Gap" in healthcare access and life expectancy for Aboriginal Australians.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:24 AM - 9 comments

Telepathy Tapes are one of the top podcasts on Spotify. Have you heard about it? What do you think? I listened to the first episode of this podcast while at the gym and my inner skeptic came out. In short, the Telepathy Tapes claim some nonverbal autistic people are telepathic. The Telepathy Tapes are produced by a documentary filmmaker, Ky Dickens. Curious to hear about people's thoughts about this pop-science trend. [more inside]
posted by ichimunki at 8:01 AM - 83 comments

Author and writer Dr. Julia Skinner is founder and director of Root, a fermentation and food history company that bridges the gap between modern people and historic food. Her substack, Root: Historic Food for the Modern World, is about "rediscovering the magic of everyday life through food, nature, and the creative process, plus recipes, writing tips, and stories." She has authored Wayfinding, a series on the history and design of cookbooks: [more inside]
posted by wicked_sassy at 7:56 AM - 1 comment

“If you’re a storyboard artist,” one studio executive said, “you’re out of business. That’s over. Because the director can say to AI, ‘Here’s the script. Storyboard this for me. Now change the angle and give me another storyboard.’ Within an hour, you’ve got 12 different versions of it.” He added, however, if that same artist became proficient at prompting generative-AI tools, “he’s got a big job.” [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:31 AM - 52 comments

I Am So Fucking Tired of Listening To Women My Age Complain About Being Old and Washed
posted by ellieBOA at 6:14 AM - 30 comments

Under the fold, Prairie small presses Durvile & Uproute, Great Plains, Freehand Books, Frontenac House, NeWest, Radiant, Red Barn Books, Renegade Arts Entertainment, Shadowpaw, Stonehouse, and Summerthought. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 3:31 AM - 4 comments

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a report showing that Musk’s net worth has increased by more than $100 billion since Election Day. The report (12 pages) lists the many ways in which he used his position in the federal government to stop investigations into his companies, undercut regulations, win federal contracts, gain access to data and sensitive information, attack his enemies, meddle in elections, and secure foreign deals, all without informing the American people of his conflicts of interest. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 2:32 AM - 60 comments

The FBI still considers Tylenol an open, active case. Despite a nationwide manhunt, thousands of hours of police work and an unsolicited confession from the only enduring suspect, no one has ever been charged for the poisoning that killed Mary Reiner, Paula Prince, Mary McFarland, Adam, Stanley, and Theresa Janus, or a 12-year-old girl named Mary Kellerman, a singular set of serial murders. James and Leann Lewis are now in their 70s and living in Massachusetts. There is no statute of limitations for the crime of homicide nor for the recurring grief that persists in its wake. from Poison Pill
posted by chavenet at 12:44 AM - 19 comments

From opposite sides of the world, Indigenous groups unite to save ancient languages. The Yuchi tribe from Oklahoma and the Pertame people of Central Australia have joined forces to help ensure their traditional languages are passed on to the next generation.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:30 PM - 7 comments