09/08/2019
August 8
Uber lost $5 billion in a single quarter
Uber lost more money this spring than it did in any previous quarter, revealing on Thursday a dramatic $5.2 billion deficit in the months before and after its disappointing initial public offering. Uber has never been profitable.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 6:15 PM - 2 comments
Flute and Shoot
Lizzo performs at NPR's Tiny, tiny, little-ass Desk [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 4:12 PM - 6 comments
Shoot! I'd play for nothing.
Next season, on the 31st anniversary of the film, the Yankees and the White Sox will play a game at the site of the Field Of Dreams-inspired farm / baseball diamond, kind of. I doubt they're playing for nothing.
posted by MorgansAmoebas at 3:38 PM - 5 comments
More Than Friends
“The singer and I never “made love,” but we did make love, coax it from the air around us, render it in our folded hearts. . . . These days we have dozens of names for people we have s*x with without any corresponding affection. We call them hook-ups or one-night-stands. We call them f**k-buddies or friends-with-benefits. But unrecognized in our vocabularies is the inverse: What do we call the people with whom we have authentic, passionate intimacy, but no actual s*x?” by Aubrey Hirsch for Roxane Gay’s Gay Mag.
posted by sallybrown at 3:37 PM - 12 comments
Ever thought about how funny mountains are? They’re hill areas.
Over the years, a lot has changed in Geoguessr, the Google Street View game where you're dropped somewhere on the planet and have to deduce where you are. (Introduced here on MeFi in 2013.) The social aspect of the game has improved, with timed challenges and player generated maps. The image quality and reach of Google Street View has also improved: zooming in can now reveal significant details. Of course, it wouldn't be 2019 without a healthy dose of live streaming for your entertainment pleasure. Yes, you too can now watch Geoguessr superstars on Twitch take their sweet, methodical time hunting for that perfect 25,000 score. However, there are some dark clouds on the horizon, so you may want to get your game on soon. [more inside]
posted by jeremias at 3:34 PM - 8 comments
Three nifty unicellular organisms
The extremophile Thermus scotoductus, previously known from hot springs and hydrothermal vents, is nearly ubiquitous in household water heaters. (Wilpiszeski, R.L., Zhang, Z. & House, C.H. Extremophiles (2019) 23: 119. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00792-018-1066-z). [more inside]
posted by clew at 3:06 PM - 2 comments
"Nudie Suits and bedazzled rhinestone and fringe."
Meet Orville Peck, Country Music’s Anonymous Masked Musician. Songs from his 2019 debut album Pony include "Turn to Hate," "Hope to Die," "Big Sky," "Buffalo Run," and "Dead of Night." A recent live KEXP performance, and a live cover of Bobby Gentry's "Fancy" in Brooklyn and Vancouver. Orville Peck on his influences, which include Lavender Country (previously: The Saint of Dry Creek and Don't Sneak).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:11 PM - 12 comments
“I still know their addresses."
The Partition Archive has been preserving oral histories of the 1947 Partition since 2010 through crowdsourcing and through collection by scholars. Over 7,500 oral histories have been preserved on digital video. Many are available on the Partition Archive's Youtube channel or through the archive's partnership with Stanford University. The generation that still remembers the birth of modern India and Pakistan are now elderly men and women, and it's a race against time to record as many stories as possible. “That segment of the population is disappearing really, really fast,” said Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the Berkeley, Calif.-based executive director and driving force of the archive, speaking by telephone. “Within the next five years the vast majority of what's remaining is going to be gone." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:17 PM - 2 comments
Lessons From a Decade Reporting on Women During the Iraq War
When I speak before Western audiences about my years covering the war in Iraq as a journalist for McClatchy Newspapers, someone inevitably asks, “What was it like to be a woman over there?” [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 12:13 PM - 3 comments
Sometimes we win, private prisons out of Denver
Private prison contracts have been canceled in Denver thanks to the efforts of one woman. [more inside]
posted by sotonohito at 10:28 AM - 18 comments
As old as Methuselah
A new paper explores what “supercentenarians” have in common. Turns out it’s bad record-keeping.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:55 AM - 55 comments
Resistance
“Amazon has built a vast logistics empire by subjecting its workforce to extreme forms of technological discipline — designed to keep workers isolated, fearful, and maniacally productive. This piece sets out to surface the “weapons of the weak” wielded by workers to resist this regime. I talked to current and former Amazon employees, spoke with warehouse worker organizers, read exit interviews on Indeed and Glassdoor, and visited online forums where Amazon workers congregate to complain, commiserate, shoot the s**t, and seek and offer advice. I learned a great deal about the regime of total surveillance and bodily control that Amazon has built to manage its growing logistics workforce. And I learned about the counter-strategies that workers deploy to resist the dehumanization, boredom, pain, and mental anguish that Amazon’s disciplinary apparatus exacts.” Surviving Amazon
posted by The Whelk at 9:27 AM - 14 comments
Bank Error in Your Favour
Chase cancels all outstanding debt for Canadian credit cardholders. The error was apparently entering the Canadian market in the first place. Now, to get out of the market, Chase is simply cancelling all the debts owed by their Canadian cardholders.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:21 AM - 25 comments
The Wild West Meets the Southern Border
“An interesting paradox of the reënactment scene’s obsession with authenticity and historical accuracy, this “getting it right,” is that accuracy is measured in terms of the minute details of a particular event, which does not necessarily amount to historical accuracy in the broader sense … When I went to Tombstone for the first time, with my family—all of us born in Mexico—we quickly noticed that there were no Mexicans being portrayed in the reënactments. No Native Americans, either. Non-whites seemed to have been completely erased from the popular narratives.” Valeria Luiselli on the re-enactors of Tombstone (The New Yorker) [more inside]
posted by adrianhon at 7:48 AM - 10 comments
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News [more inside]
posted by JeffL at 7:11 AM - 27 comments
Baklava P**n
Do you like Baklava? You are not alone.
(Some of those posts get 100,000 likes)
posted by growabrain at 6:07 AM - 33 comments
One Woman’s Mission
They Call Her The Savant Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens? [cw: descriptions of crime / violence / s*xual assault] [more inside]
posted by hilaryjade at 5:48 AM - 32 comments
The People Who Love to Watch Other People Clean
The world is a mess. “Cleanfluencers” are here to help. [The Atlantic] Meet the 'cleanfluencers', the online gurus who like things nice and tidy. [The Guardian] [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 3:35 AM - 16 comments
Arctic fox restoration in Norway
The arctic fox population worldwide is doing fine, but in the mountains of Scandinavia it's under threat. However, conservation and restoration measures have been taken and seem to be effective. This PDF from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research gives a good overview. As individuals, arctic foxes are robust creatures, shown by this GPS-equipped individual that walked from Norway to Canada in 76 days. [more inside]
posted by Harald74 at 12:32 AM - 8 comments
August 7
You’re not going to go into dire straits buying an octopus
Nicolas Cage on his legacy, his philosophy of acting and his metaphorical — and literal — search for the Holy Grail. (NYT)
• I would hope there are ways of teaching nouveau shamanic acting that don’t involve acquiring ancient artifacts.
• The cat — a friend of mine gave me this bag of mushrooms, and my cat would go in my refrigerator and grab it, almost like he knew what it was. He loved it.
• I don’t know if I’m going to say that’s why I bought the Rhode Island property. But I will say that is why I went to Rhode Island, and I happened to find the place beautiful. [...] What I ultimately found is: What is the Grail but Earth itself?
posted by CrystalDave at 11:23 PM - 35 comments
"Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration"
Families "Are Scared To Death" After A Massive ICE Operation Swept Up Hundreds Of People (BuzzFeed). ICE arrested about 680 people in a series of workplace raids at agricultural plants in Mississippi. Children of those arrested were "left alone in the streets crying for help" as local schools instructed bus drivers to ensure they weren't dropping off children at empty homes. This is a topical US politics thread focusing on immigration. [more inside]
posted by zachlipton at 10:01 PM - 46 comments
Constellations from Around the World
Eleanor Lutz (July 29, 2019): "To make this map I used data from Stellarium, an open-source planetarium software ... Some of my favorite constellations were the Stars of Water, Rabbit Tracks, and the Hippopotamus, and I also really liked the star names The Oath Star, Lady of Life, and The Hand of the Mouse." Image. Source code. See also Lutz's ongoing series of maps covering Mercury, Martian topography, Martian geology, the Solar System, and more. Lutz previously. Stellarium previously.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:28 PM - 4 comments
Fear Inoculum
13 years since their last release, TOOL has released the first song from their new album Fear Inoculum.
posted by adept256 at 7:52 PM - 45 comments
David Berman (Silver Jews, Purple Mountains) Dead at 52
The beloved poet and singer-songwriter returned this year with a new album and was about to begin touring.
posted by misterbee at 4:35 PM - 59 comments
The Scam-Baiting Art of Kitboga
Kitboga is the streamer who exposes callcenter scammers. Over the years, he's role-played at Edna, Nevaeh, Chad and others characters pretending to fall victim to scammers but ultimately exposing them on live streams. Like today's stream where Kitboga played two characters in conversation, "drove" to Walmart Walgreens and discovered that Edna had a totally not fabricated grandson who lives in... Idaho, New York. Enjoy his best clips and Youtube channel. Obviously there's a remix or two to listen to.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:39 PM - 5 comments
'I am really shy'
introducing Phoenix, the world’s first hijab-wearing champion wrestler
posted by Mrs Potato at 1:37 PM - 6 comments
Coming Soon to the US: Negative Yields?
“There may come a time in the not-too-distant future when investors don’t expect to collect fixed interest payments from sovereign debt obligations, nor do they expect to earn anything from parking their cash in a savings account.” Brian Chappatta of Bloomberg explains a blog post by Joachim Fels proposing “It is no longer absurd to think that the nominal yield on U.S. Treasury securities could go negative.”
posted by sallybrown at 1:25 PM - 31 comments
Toxic In-Laws
My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy! Ask Polly (Heather Havrilesky) goes off on what she dubs the worst in-laws ever.
posted by larrybob at 1:01 PM - 203 comments
"Waiter, there's a squash in my guac!"
The high price of avocados in the US this summer is caused by a combination of an increasing demand plus California's smallest crop in over a decade, partly due to last year's heat wave. This has caused some taquerias to resort to surreptitiously substituting avocado in their guacamole with Mexican grey (or calabacitas) squash and tomatillos. [more inside]
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:31 PM - 48 comments
This leash demeans us both!
There were no cars near us when J. made a run for it [into a busy street], but what if there had been? Suddenly, I understood why people use child leashes—and I wondered why I’d always assumed I wasn’t the sort of parent to buy one. [more inside]
posted by devrim at 12:19 PM - 75 comments
Anatomy of a failure: How an XQ Super School flopped
An ambitious new high school, concentrating on practical application. A $10 million grant from Steve Jobs' widow. A mayor and school district that had bought in. So what went wrong?
posted by Etrigan at 12:18 PM - 10 comments
Awww... such a pwecious subversion of boundaries
How to explain the pervasive power of cute? What accounts for the persistence of Pokemon, Minions, emojis, depressed egg characters, fingerless Japanese kitties as a phenomenon? Is it the cuteness response that draws out our natural tendency to protect and nuture? Or is it a bit darker, fudging familiar boundaries like childhood and adulthood, or a play to subvert our own sense of power?
posted by cross_impact at 11:27 AM - 7 comments
Whim on the Lintels
There is something of the jealous monogamist about fandom, something of the checker for digital traces of the beloved’s secret life. Who hasn’t been there? But wouldn’t it be better if we hadn’t? A short essay by Emily Ogden on fandom and amateurism. [more inside]
posted by gusottertrout at 10:54 AM - 22 comments
In Syria, War and Modernity Are No Match for the World’s Oldest Soap
The artisans of Aleppo keep plying their ancient trade, one bar at a time. [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 10:37 AM - 6 comments
Dragons To Slay
“It is perhaps this undercurrent of moral logic that made fairy tales such ripe fodder for British socialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the recent collection Workers Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain, editor Michael Rosen notes that fairy tales show their politics “less overtly, often as personified social conflict.” The literary tales gathered in Rosen’s collection, by contrast, were adapted and written purposefully to “alert, reform, enlighten, provoke, and educate.” Seizing the Means of Enchantment: What Fairy Tales Can Teach Us About Class and Wealth in the Age of the Mega-Corporation (Catapult)
posted by The Whelk at 9:21 AM - 12 comments
I'll take "trivia questions" for $200, Alex
Ever wanted to roll your own trivia quiz? Get advice from quizbowl master Yogesh Raut or get it from professional quiz-writer Paul Paquet.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:12 AM - 11 comments
take one picture a day and keep it no matter how it turned out
Starting 40 years ago, before it was common in the age of digital photos, blogs and social media, Jamie Livingston took one Polaroid photo a day, until the day he died in October 1997. The collection was a private archive until Hugh Crawford digitized the images and posted them online. "Initially it wasn't meant to be looked at by anyone. A group of us were putting on an exhibition of the photos and the site was a place where we could look at the pictures while we talked on the phone." Because it's a site for friends, and a posthumous collection, there aren't descriptions or even captions, just a timeline and the photos. Other people found the site, and discovered Jamie Livingston's life through his photos (Mentalfloss, 2008). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:01 AM - 5 comments
why do you build me up
The Brick Experiment Channel does wordless, lightly-annotated build experiments with lego bricks and gears and motors. How fast a wheel? How heavy a weight? What if you built a submarine inside a plastic pitcher? [more inside]
posted by cortex at 8:54 AM - 4 comments
“Symbolizing, like, just how far this nation has fallen ..."
The Surreal Story of a Trump-Loving Artist’s War With the Smithsonian. In which an evangelical artist turns pro se litigant in his quest to display his Trump mural at the National Portrait Gallery.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:15 AM - 42 comments
Straight up self-insert fanfiction
A visual novel-esque smartphone game conducted via text chats, phone calls, and social media feeds, BTS World sees you manage the South Korean boy band BTS in its early days. "After winning a ticket to see the band in concert, you find yourself whisked back from 2019 to 2012, the year before the group’s debut ... What struck me the most while playing, however, was how much the game itself reads like straight fanfiction."(Polygon)
posted by adrianhon at 7:20 AM - 12 comments
Les Simpson
So, each episode of the Simpsons is dubbed into two different versions for French markets. There's a Quebec French version, and a France French version. Fans of the Quebec dub hate the European dub, and vice versa. [more inside]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:46 AM - 69 comments
Silver sweetness: adopt a senior pet from the shelter
The benefits of adopting a senior pet: This series of print ads from The Animal Protective Association of St. Louis featuring shelter animals has an adorable and silly theme: “Grown-Ass Adult." Along with the hashtags and , this campaign showcases all the reasons why adult animals make great companions. I used to volunteer at the Humane Society of Huron Valley in Ann Arbor and fondly remember the day that someone adopted three bonded elderly kitties that needed a new home together. Here's to our companion animals and all the ways they make our lives better. [more inside]
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:06 AM - 39 comments
Move fast and break butts
"I’m excited to share with you the design process behind Buttsss, the most daring collection of round and beautiful butt illustrations in the universe. You can use these graphics in your pitch deck, product screens, marketing campaigns, business presentations, and motivational speeches." Intro video.
posted by jklaiho at 12:26 AM - 35 comments
August 6
Everywhere You Look
Full House of Mustaches
posted by oulipian at 6:36 PM - 24 comments
shoving his bottlenose dolphin sister out of the way
Researchers Document First Known Case of Dolphin Mom Adopting Whale Calf [Smithsonian.com] [more inside]
posted by readinghippo at 4:01 PM - 5 comments
We all are struggling, just doing our best
Björk has released a video for losss, from 2017's Utopia, featuring the work of Tobias Gremmler.
posted by boo_radley at 2:38 PM - 12 comments
The Paradox at the Heart of Abbas Kiarostami’s Early Films
The making of images was at the heart of Kiarostami’s work from the start; in his 1974 feature “The Traveler,” the young protagonist raises money for a bus ticket to go see a soccer match by setting himself up as a local portraitist, and scams residents out of change by taking their pictures with no film in the camera. Yet, soon, Kiarostami would go further, rendering his own image-making central to his movies. [slNYer]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 12:25 PM - 7 comments
August 5th, 2019: The Day of the Feral Hogs
So, here's what happened: A guy on Twitter tried to make the argument that he needed an assault rifle in order to stave off the "30-50 feral hogs" that allegedly swarm his yard within 3-5 minutes every time his kids play outside. The idea that this man was fighting off upwards of 50 hogs every time his kids went outdoors sent Twitter into a meme frenzy, and just about everyone had a Feral Hog Tweet™.
posted by Etrigan at 10:37 AM - 292 comments
I am becoming what she wanted me to be: myself.
RF Jurjevics: My Mother, Myself: To My Mom, Who Wrote For Allure About Parenting Me in 1991. In 1991, when she was 47 years old and I just seven, my mother, Laurie Colwin, published an article for Allure Magazine titled “My Daughter, My Self.” In it, she wrote of parenthood, of her attempts to raise an independent and free-thinking little girl in a world of Barbie dolls and television — both banned from our household — and the other gendered pressures of modern life in the 1990s. Just a year later, however, nearly everything in my world would change: I would be eight, and my mother would be gone, dead from a sudden aortic aneurysm two months after I started the third grade. Gone, too, would be most traces of the daughter, as I emerged into the summer of ’92 a husky, short-haired boy named Felix.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:32 AM - 23 comments
The legendary cat suddenly appears!
A group of fishermen make a friend. Next time they visit her, they come prepared. [more inside]
posted by brook horse at 8:56 AM - 15 comments
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US Politics
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New & Noteworthy
August 2
It's episode 154 of the MetaFilter podcast, with cortex and jessamyn
July 31
There's a Metatalk discussing how members with neurodivergence and/or mental illness experience the site; come on in and share your experiences.
More Peeps like Pepys?: Alensin asks, I've begun reading the Diary of Samuel Pepys, and was curious if similar sources exist for other historical periods?
July 30
1:1 With Your Manager: What are ways to communicate accomplishments in a conversational way, that doesn’t sound like bragging?
July 29
Things people do to make them seem uberhuman & thus uniquely capable? mrmanvir is looking for examples of "well-known professionals performing strangeness, otherness, or superhumanness to promote perceptions of their unique abilities."
July 28
Percussion Eruption: spamandkimchi draws our grateful attention to Senegalese musician Salliou playing the cas cas (also known as the aslatua, aslato, kashaka, cascas, televi, kasso-kassoni...)
July 27
Lots of great reading recommendations by members in the 50 Must-Read Fantasy Books by Women thread
July 23
We're ceasing the US politics megathread practice, moving back toward single-topic posts as a focus for that topic. Details in MetaTalk.
Following on the suggestion from last month's discussions, an open Metatalk thread for Mefites of color.
July 22
I’m looking for the most delicious, “see, [vegetable] isn’t scary!” recipes: bananacabana asks for gateway vegetable recipes in Ask Metafilter.
July 21
If you haven't checked it out yet, Cozybee has collected 50+ bookmarks for writers and aspiring writers, including worksheets, where to submit, advice for outlining, plotting, breaking through writer's block, worldbuilding, character development, and much more!
July 20
El pregunta es ... what do mis-gendered nouns sound like to bilingual people?
Built systems such as water heaters can harbor extremophiles similar to those residing in natural hot springs, but the extent of colonization is not well understood. To address this, we conducted a...
