~metafilter | Bookmarks (989)

Two short scifi stories about the pain, hope, and fear that we carry. "What was it you told me that 'dysphoria' meant, etymologically?" "Something that cannot be carried. Cannot be borne." "A Dragon in Two Parts" by Kiya Nicoll (published in audio and text in Escape Pod in 2021): a disabled person has reservations about biorefurbishment. "Hello aliens, I am scared of you so...

This old saloon tells the story of a small Central Texas town. The McDade Historical Society operates the museum, which was also a former Post Office, doctor's office and drug store.

When Boston went 'Basket Case' On this day, 30 years ago (aka 1994), Boston's WFNX (101.7 - Boston Phoenix Radio) threw a "Welcome Back Weekend" concert series to celebrate the return of the college crowd to the city. Booking months in advance, they put together a pop punk show at the famous Hatch Shell. They booked a little known opening act (The Meices) and...

Tennis is making bets on its future — one driven by data, sports betting, and foreign investment. But how big of a swing is it willing to take? [via]

"You're doing a play, got something to say So you sing it? It's absurd!" In honor of finishing Something Rotten, one of the best musicals I've ever been in (and guess what song is still rolling through my head today), here's your free thread.Suggested topics: musicals! Love 'em? Hate 'em? Watch them? Scorn them? Perform in them? Or ignore the topic altogether and talk...

"We should rid our writing of the domestication of atrocity, rid our writing of the tense that insists on the innocence of its perpetrators, the exonerative tense of phrases like 'lives were lost' and 'a stray bullet found its way into the van' and 'children died.' We should rid our writing of this dreadful innocence. We should refuse the logic that produces a phrase...

Information foraging is the fundamental theory of how people navigate on the web to satisfy an information need. It essentially says that, when users have a certain information goal, they assess the information that they can extract from any candidate source of information relative to the cost involved in extracting that information and choose one or several candidate sources so that they maximize the...

ProPublica is doing another set of stories on healthcare and insurance failure in the United States. This one, entitled America's Mental Barrier: How Insurers Interfere With Mental Health Care is specifically on mental health care, the "ghost networks" - where providers are listed on sites, but have left the network for various reasons, and the providers, in this example Ambetter, never remove them -...

Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now — pregnant with her fifth child — she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother. Then she ate a salad from Costco. The Marshall Project reports on how faulty drug tests have lead to mothers losing custody of babies after their birth even though the moms had done nothing...

After five years in Steam Early Access (previously), the automation marvel that is Satisfactory receives a 1.0 release tomorrow.A factory-building sim that some might consider a "Dad Game". You start off as a new employee with a chisel and a dream on an alien planet with a sumptuous first-person view, and end up the architect of grand industry spanning the continent. Sometimes a bit...

How to beat roulette A good story about the cat-and-mouse hunt for someone who, in typical casino anti-hero style, is able to beat the odds and (at least for a time) walk away with a substantial sum of money from a high-end British casino. [archive link], via the amateur

I joined Jordan Peterson's online school to dispel "woke nonsense": This is what I learned. (slTorontoStar) (archive.ph link here)

Machine Yearning is a 26 minute demo album by Linus A which consists of just 4096 bytes of machine code. You can read how it was made here. This follows on A Mind is Born, an infamous 256 byte demo. [previously]Bonus piano midi cover of A Mind is Born, which kinda slaps.

Minimus sum, mus sum. (I am Minimus, I am a mouse.) I live at Vindolanda (and in Suffolk) with my family. I'll help you to learn Latin. sequere me! (Follow me!)Minimus home page.

This giant burrowing cockroach could be the key to protecting undisturbed coastal reserve. There is a push to protect Queensland's Reedy Creek Reserve by having it recognised under a special state conservation law. The charity hopes that the giant burrowing cockroach, Macropanesthia rothi and a potentially new crayfish species of the Tenuibranchiurus genus will help to elevate Reedy Creek Reserve to the status of...

Manning Fireworks by MJ LendermanMJ Lenderman Keeps It Raw - "The artist discusses resisting the neutering effects of technology, his breakup with a bandmate, and his new album, Manning Fireworks." This month, Lenderman will release "Manning Fireworks," his fifth album in five years. He is often described—accurately—as the next great hope for indie rock, or however one might now refer to scrappy, dissonant, guitar-based...

Some people say rereading is the only reading, but sometimes I think first readings are the only rereading. This isn't total nonsense. First readings are when I pay the most attention, do the most doubling back. They're when I have the most capacity for shock and joy. When I reread I am always comparing my experience to my first impression, a constant distraction; I...

"Semenov had never belonged to a labor union before coming to Sweden. Now, he sits on the board of the country's most rapidly growing and undoubtedly most unique labor union: Builders in Solidarity. Founded in 2021, it unites migrant construction workers, most of whom hail from post-Soviet countries and have no previous labor organizing experience." A story from The Beet, Meduza's newsletter on Eastern...

If you're not familiar with the mystery of Celebrity Number Six, catch up here. In short, the internet has been looking for a photo for around three years.Earlier today, Reddit user IndigoRoom posted what appears to be the original photo. Or did they? Some users are suspicious that it could be generative AI. In response, IndigoRoom posted more details on how they got the...

Newport Art Museum Left Without a Single Curator After Layoffs. The layoffs follow on the heels of a mass resignation started by the departure of the Museum's DEI person and the unveiling of a surprisingly vague new strategic plan. Pro publica estimates they have been running at a deficit of a half a million dollars a year, which has probably put a pretty big...

The LARB's "Group Chats" (08/26/2024) gathers thoughts like Daniel Lavery's: "My experience of being in group chats has largely been one of a resentful sense of being corralled and press-ganged into consensus. To clarify: Whenever I create a group chat, I am Danny Ocean assembling a crack team ... for a daring heist." Also: US Magazine's "Celebrity Group Chats"; Kurt Ostrow's essay on friendship...

Las Thursday, Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo became the first man to score 900 career goals. Here are all 900. Here's an X thread with Cristiano Ronaldo's 1st, 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, 500th, 600th, 700th, 800th, & 900th Goals.Top 5 Ronaldo "Siu" moments [TikTok]