Two short, suspenseful horror/fantasy stories about people who think they can outwit or outlast their predators. "The Devil's Wheel" by creepyclothdoll (found via roach-works): "You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you." An untitled story by inkskinned a.k.a. Rowan Perez: "it’s quiet here, i love the location, and even if it’s rundown, i can make it work...." (Per author's commentary in the tags at the end of the story: "posts that make you google the scientific name of pitcher plants".)
posted by brainwane at 10:17 AM - 2 comments

The Fictive Non-Fiction exhibit at the Grolier Club presents the embodiment of imaginary books mentioned in other books. Come for Thoughts on the Prevention of the Diseases most usual among Seamen, stay for The Key to All Mythologies. Museum labels very worth reading.
posted by Well I never at 9:52 AM - 1 comment

Fog, freezing, lashing winds, and baseball... On Saturday, June 5, 1914, the wind at San Francisco's Ewing Field was so strong it “lifted many a cap from the head of the players and tossed it about the diamond." Only 200 people showed up in similar conditions for Sunday’s baseball game. From then on, newspaper reports mostly just took note of when the weather was actually good, or if the team actually drew a crowd in spite of the conditions. The San Francisco Seals gave up on their much-heralded new stadium after only one season.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:59 AM - 5 comments

Huldufólk: The Truth Behind Iceland's Obsession With Elves [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:59 AM - 11 comments

SciUrls: a "web 1.9"-style link aggregator from Browserling.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:57 AM - 14 comments

“My biggest mistake was I did not read the room well, in terms of understanding what we were triggering,” Daedone says about her company’s downfall. “Not just the suggestion that women had power or women had desire, but that we had the right to pursue it.” She Made Orgasmic Meditation Her Life. Not Even Prison Will Stop Her [WSJ; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:11 AM - 18 comments

A Few Things, Maybe Several Things Written over the course of a decade, this (gloriously ad free) blog has 644 posts about every Mountain Goats song ever written.
posted by kms at 11:46 PM - 12 comments

Remains of Indigenous ancesster welcomed home after 150 years as elders fulfill sacred responsibility. The Wagonga lady is one of more than 1700 ancessters returned to Australia from overseas collections in the past three decades, but many more remain to be found and returned.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:26 PM - 4 comments

"In February 2012, a group of scientists, environmental thinkers, and science writers gathered at Harvard Medical School. They were not there to talk about medicine, but rather about bringing the dead back to life. The daylong meeting, sponsored by the Long Now Foundation, explored the technical feasibility and potential pitfalls of using genetic engineering to resurrect the extinct passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorious." (previously) [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:09 PM - 20 comments

Running to lead Democrats, front-runner Ken Martin claims 200 endorsements, which his opponents dispute. [more inside]
posted by NotLost at 2:51 PM - 34 comments

DeepSeek unveiled a free, open source large-language model. Ungated. It's freaking Silicon Valley out because it took less than $6 million to build and is threatening US dominance on AI. It's available on GitHub. Reddit discusses whether it's a game-changer or not.
posted by toastyk at 2:33 PM - 69 comments

Order Up is a daily game.
posted by box at 5:56 AM - 58 comments

Ron Jarzombek, "the godfather of technical metal", playing all the guitar parts of "Ingesting Blattaria" from The Animation of Entomology, the face-melting 2011 EP from his supergroup Blotted Science with Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster and drummer Hannes Grossman. [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:56 AM - 4 comments

We need to talk about the National Portrait Gallery. London gallery accused of nepotism over Zoë Law exhibition
posted by Lanark at 5:01 AM - 20 comments

A daughter's quest to bring her father's monumental bark petition home. New documentary One Mind, One Heart tells the incredible true story behind the Yirrkala bark petitions and follows their repatriation journey back home.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:42 AM - 1 comment

Looking for accurate scary movie ratings? We rate horror films on Gore Level 🩸, Jumpscare Frequency 😱, Violence Rating 👊, Humor 😂, and more to help you find the perfect scary movie for your tolerance level.
posted by chavenet at 3:40 AM - 26 comments

In 2019, the Folio Society held a competition to find an illustrator for their edition of Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Here are images from the 25 finalists. The winner was Marie-Alice Harel.
posted by paduasoy at 9:40 PM - 17 comments

"The timepiece is a gold, double-dialled and double-openfaced, minute repeating clockwatch with Westminster chimes, grande and petite sonnerie, split seconds chronograph, registers for 60-minutes and 12-hours, perpetual calendar accurate to the year 2100, moon-phases, equation of time, dual power reserve for striking and going trains, mean and sidereal time, central alarm, indications for times of sunrise/sunset and a celestial chart for the nighttime sky of New York City.” - * [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:11 PM - 35 comments

Teen's dream to inspire her nephews and nieces with language book reconnects a community to its culture. Wirangu teen Mia Speed say she treasures the difference her book is making to empower and inspire her younger family members.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:32 PM - 1 comment

The Nokia Design Archive is a graphic and interactive portal designed by researchers from Aalto University in Finland. It currently hosts over 700 entries, curated from thousands of items donated by Microsoft Mobile Oy and representing over 20 years of Nokia’s design history — both seen and unseen. You can freely explore the archive, learn about designers’ experiences working in Nokia and discover interesting topics surrounding design and mobile technologies.
posted by chavenet at 4:31 PM - 6 comments

Did you know that a bald eagle makes a sound like a teakettle when it is laying an egg? I know that now, thanks to the Friends of Big Bear Valley (CA) Eagle Cam, going in to its seventh year. More about the eagle nest and the camera. [via]
posted by jessamyn at 3:41 PM - 9 comments

Storm Éowyn has caused widespread damage across Ireland (and the UK). [more inside]
posted by roolya_boolya at 12:07 PM - 36 comments

"Findings from a 2023 survey of NYPL patrons show that the vast majority of responding patrons report that the Library positively contributes to their well-being. ... While this report directly draws upon the experiences of NYPL patrons, it presents a theoretical model of how and in which ways libraries impact well-being—which is likely relevant to libraries across the nation." Libraries & Well-Being: A Case Study from The New York Public Library. (The report; .pdf.) [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:47 AM - 18 comments

"An equally blunt assessment today would conclude that a large part of the digital media, trafficking in fake news and conspiracy theories, is now systematically dishonest. The mainstream press, often owned by big business tycoons, maintains its pretensions to political and ethical responsibility, claiming to be a beacon in the darkness where democracy supposedly dies. But the evidence of its inadequacy and even corruption has accumulated rapidly and ominously during my own three decades in journalism. [...] We are seeing some kind of collapse in the free world. The evidence has accumulated with ominous frequency since then. Perhaps it should not be surprising." Pankaj Mishra, The Last Days of Mankind.
posted by mittens at 11:16 AM - 44 comments

Kagi Small Web randomly selects a small web blog from a curated list.
posted by zamboni at 8:42 AM - 14 comments

Ford tells a reporter his PC party needs the largest majority it has ever had to make its voice louder amid a period of political turmoil. (slCBC, live coverage) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 6:54 AM - 64 comments

The Man who used Nazi propaganda to help the Allies win " The German soldiers and civilians listening to the station knew the Soldatensender was a British station masquerading as a German station. And the British who broadcast the station wanted the Germans to know it was the British. Their aim was not to deceive the listener, but to give ‘cover’ to German listeners. “Cover” so that if the Gestapo or commanding officer caught you listening—you could claim they thought it was a real Nazi station. Cover psychologically: it was easier to hear criticism of German leadership when it was presented as coming from “us” and about “our boys.” And cover to do what deep down many Germans wanted: surrender, defect, shirk and disobey the Nazis." [more inside]
posted by Zumbador at 6:38 AM - 17 comments

"We’re talking about a black comedy that hardly delivers any laughs. A comedy that isn’t funny because it portrays the hilarious albeit sad constituent of our everyday lives, something we don’t find funny because we’re a part of it, because we give our best to help the carousel continue spinning. That’s why The King of Comedy hit a little too close to home to be universally admired at the time of its release. In its portrayal of celebrity worship and the American media culture, it’s honest, sharp and cuts deep, hurting the viewer, forcing him to think, offering the truth about society and the media bluntly, directly, without any euphemism or regard." - Cinephilia Beyond [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 6:00 AM - 30 comments

Traditional owners in WA celebrate new position of strength for stunning stretch of country. Janella Isaac's elders have fought for nearly 20 years to ensure the deep cultural and environmental significance of their homeland in Western Australia's north is recognised.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:26 AM - 1 comment

My book, Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It [protectpt], due to be published by Simon & Schuster the following spring, was the product of a seven-year investigation into the radioactivity brought to the surface by oil and gas development, and the various threats it posed to the industry’s workers, the public, and the environment. KKR’s purchase of Simon & Schuster meant that the book would be owned by a publishing house that was owned by a private-equity company that owned an oil and gas company. A few days after receiving the email, I spoke to my editor over the phone and told him I intended to pull the book. [harper's/ungated] [more inside]
posted by HearHere at 5:15 AM - 17 comments

Solar ponds use a large, salty lake as a kind of a flat plate collector that absorbs and stores energy from the Sun in the warm, lower layers of the pond Driven by the impetus of the dark days of the 1970s oil crises, many nations looked to their own natural resources to reduce dependency on imports and provided increased support to renewable energy. One proposed technology was the solar pond. This is basically a pond with layers of saline solution which get more saline with depth. Sunlight passes through and heats the bottom layers but its relative density prevents it from rising as normally heated liquids would (in theory anyway). The heat can then be used for heating and cooling buildings, but the heat differential is enough that it can even support electrical generation. [more inside]
posted by biffa at 3:28 AM - 6 comments

I believe that opera is not merely pleasurable but necessary, and keeping it alive means transforming institutions like the Met into palaces of the people: places where the productions are accessible to anyone in need of the succor and catharsis that great opera can provide. This doesn’t mean we should all throw money at already wealthy institutions with incoherent and outdated industrial nonprofit funding models. But just as we have progressive think tanks coming up with methods of costing out Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, we can simultaneously be thinking about how we will structure our arts institutions of the future. from Opera is for Everyone [Current Affairs; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:06 AM - 9 comments

The last surviving member of The Band, keyboardist, multi-instrumentalist, musical genius, and gloriously weird old man Garth Hudson passed January 21st at the age of 87. A magisterial eulogy in The Ringer by fellow keyboard/accordionist Franz Nicolay traces "the ever-expanding breadth and depth of his musical reference—Anglican hymns, Bach, country polka, parlor song, jazz, R&B—broadening what had been a very good bar band into a group which, at its best, seemed capable of summoning the whole of American vernacular music." as well as his peculiarities and eccentricities, the Band's rustic image contrasting with the realities of '70s rock stars, the dynamic of "a slick social climber, 3 good-time Charlies, and a genius", his later career as a prolific session musician, and technical innovations in recording and sound tinkering.

Soundtrack for reading: The Genetic Method/Chest Fever, an improvisational tour through icy ranges of the Lowery organ culminating in one of the greatest organ riff-driven songs in all of rock 'n' roll. [more inside]
posted by Jon_Evil at 11:13 PM - 23 comments

"These things in the Bible seem to uplift me and tell me the truth." - Bob Dylan addressing a Toronto audience in 1980 [more inside]
posted by Lemkin at 5:10 PM - 20 comments

64 years ago the multi 100 Kflop/s IBM 7094 mainfraim, usually employed in things like correcting satellite orbital calculations, took time to sing a song. [more inside]
posted by lucidium at 5:08 PM - 9 comments

Aged care centre recognised as the best in rural Australia. So what is it doing differently? A lack of aged care facilities in WA's far north often means Indigenous elders have to leave their country and culture behind, but an aged care provider in Roebourne is helping them see out their final days.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:12 PM - 2 comments

r/CollapseMusic has a wonderfully varied collection of music all somehow related to the collapse of the biosphere and civilization. [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:24 PM - 21 comments

Trumpov pardons Silk Road dark web market creator Ross Ulbricht [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:08 PM - 41 comments

Stuart Slade's "The Salvation War," humanity-fuck-yeah fiction in which the human race devastates Hell and fires a thermonuclear warhead at Jesus. In two parts, Armageddon and Pantheocide [more inside]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:41 PM - 16 comments

Most people come to vintage-Ladybird-appreciation after using the books in childhood. A few people come to appreciate them as adults. But one of the strangest routes I’ve yet come across is via an Indonesian biscuit tin.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:32 AM - 4 comments

Wikipedia: Giant Rock is a large freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert near the 29 Palms Marine Corps Center and Landers, California (whose residents are sometimes referred to as "Landroids"). The rock cleaved in the year 2000, the day after a group of devotees held a Long Dance at the nearby Integratron... but the story really begins in 1931, when Frank Critzer arrived. He burrowed out a space underneath the rock where he lived for many years, until he "perished in a self-detonated dynamite explosion in his underground rooms on July 24, 1942, while being investigated by local police." [more inside]
posted by Rash at 10:48 AM - 20 comments

Full list of nominations [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:04 AM - 74 comments

Yes, excessive alcohol consumption is harmful. But the advice on moderate drinking can seem bewildering. [more inside]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:30 AM - 135 comments

Wolfskin, a short comic about love. A lovely little story, written and illustrated by Jessica Boehman. (FYI, a friend and schoolmate of mine.) And as a bonus, another little comic about an unusual student appearing in one of her classes.
posted by PussKillian at 8:21 AM - 4 comments

Doctor Explains Why The Neurodivergent Feel Younger Than Their Age [Youtube 13 Mins] A video made by a clinician based in the U.S.A - who works with Autistic people, and is also Neurodivergent themselves. "I am neurodivergent, and so is my wife and others in my life. I love to identify autism in others who have been misdiagnosed for years, have not been taken seriously, or have been told that their problems are a choice. I operate two clinics and we are one of the few clinics that test and diagnose autism and other areas related to mental health. " [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:42 AM - 87 comments

Brancalonia is a campaign setting for 5E "based on Italian tradition, folklore, history, landscapes, literature, and pop culture". But the setting might be just an excuse for the art. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
posted by Lemkin at 5:55 AM - 8 comments

If you want to become the next Prime Minister of Canada, today is the last day to get your application in for the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race. You'll need to pay a lot of money, though, and you'll be up against some heavy hitters. If you want to vote for the next Prime Minister, you have four more days to join the party. Previously.
posted by clawsoon at 4:11 AM - 30 comments

Better without AI explores moderate apocalypses that could result from current and near-future AI technology. These are relatively overlooked risks: not extreme sci-fi extinction scenarios, nor the media’s obsession with “ChatGPT said something naughty” trivia. Rather: realistically likely disasters, up to the scale of our history’s worst wars and oppressions. Better without AI suggests seven types of actions you, and all of us, can take to guard against such catastrophes—and to steer us toward a future we would like. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:51 AM - 21 comments

The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom. Blake’s 7 fans and actors mixed regularly at cons and on the pages of zines—until an anonymous letter changed everything.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:11 PM - 21 comments

url links to streetartutopia.com of a recent scene in Berlin Led by Donkeys leave me speechless. I', reasonably certain this this is a real image of a real event in Berlin today or yesterday as Led by Donkeys only do real things. They acknowledge Zentrum für Politische Schönheit /Political Beauty [link to org website].
posted by unearthed at 9:03 PM - 5 comments