No creator has put more LGBTQ characters on TV than Ryan Murphy. His Aaron Hernandez show raises the question of why so many are killers. [more inside]
posted by Pitachu at 10:30 PM PST - 10 comments

Vibrant peacock spiders likened to famous artworks delight photographers. Akin to the famous Van Gogh painting, the starry night peacock spider highlights the rare species' beauty. But some people are concerned not enough is being done to protect the arachnids.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:10 PM PST - 5 comments

Tamsyn Muir -- creator of a queer gothic necromantic space dystopia/paradise from which only she is personally barred -- has nonetheless invited the rest of us back to her world in a new short story. The multi-genre script that is the story occurs midway through Nona the Ninth inside a nested set of souls and also a graduate seminar and also a British country house murder mystery. (Previously and previously).
posted by SandCounty at 4:11 PM PST - 56 comments

Ten children drew their favourite sea creatures. Then Australia¡¯s leading artists responded. Ken Done, Jonathan Zawada, Blak Douglas and others created companion pieces to children¡¯s works celebrating sharks and rays. They¡¯re now on display at the Australian Museum.
posted by goo at 3:17 PM PST - 10 comments

Tishani Doshi (Aeon, 09/16/2024), "Tender, yet creepy": "Tom sits in his box, one blue eye blinkered shut. I reach for him, and I am a girl again, gently rattling his head so his eye can become unstuck." Topics include Freud's "The Uncanny" [PDF], Baudelaire's "The Philosophy of Toys" (a.k.a. "Morale du joujou" and its excerpt "The Plaything of the Poor"), Rilke's "The Unfortunate Fate of Childhood Dolls" (a.k.a. "Puppen" with illustrations by Lotte Pritzel related to her dolls, etc., etc.), Ibsen's A Doll's House, and Mahasweta Devi's Urvashi and Johnny. See also Tishani Doshi's entry at the Poetry Foundation.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:58 AM PST - 1 comments

On Thursday afternoon, (Shohei) Ohtani¡¯s legend continued to grow as he wrote the next chapter of one of the best individual offensive seasons in Major League history with arguably the best single-game performance the sport has ever seen. In an otherworldly game in which he stole two bases and went 6-for-6 with a career-high three homers and 10 RBIs, Ohtani proved he¡¯s in a class of his own once again, becoming the first player to hit 50 or more homers and steal 50 or more bases in a single season in Major League history. from Otherworldly Ohtani creates 50-50 club in a 6-for-6 game for the ages [MLB]
posted by chavenet at 11:46 AM PST - 50 comments

It¡¯s Friday, so it¡¯s a good time to try to Guess the (video/computer) game! Or to go back into the archives and try to guess some of the 859 previous games. (hat tip to Buried Treasure.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:42 AM PST - 8 comments

Which is More Difficult - Violin or Piano? (SLYT)
posted by Gyan at 10:56 AM PST - 34 comments

New York magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi placed on leave after disclosing RFK relationship Nuzzi disclosed that she ¡°had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign.¡± While the magazine did not identify the subject, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN that the relationship was with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who ran for president as an independent candidate and recently endorsed Donald Trump. The person said the relationship was emotional and digital in nature, not physical. A Kennedy spokesperson told CNN, ¡°Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.¡± [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:25 AM PST - 86 comments

Cards Against Humanity is suing Elon Musk for $15 million dollars
posted by Diskeater at 10:21 AM PST - 33 comments

"Google has decided that Forbes is the authority in everything. Credit cards, cockroach removal, and getting too high from gummies. Forbes is now the dominant authority in damn near everything. [...] I know a lot of folks in the SEO industry. Not one person thinks this is normal or okay. I even heard from a source that I deeply trust that Google employees were complaining about Forbes internally. That was two years ago." A deep dive on the underpinnings of Forbes Marketplace, the parasite SEO operation launched in 2019 by Lars Lofgren.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:38 AM PST - 58 comments

Farmer invents machinery that smashes bejesus out of weed seeds. Weeds cost Australia's crop farming industry around $3.3 billion dollars [US $2.25 billion dollars] each year, but a home-grown invention that crushes herbicide-resistant weed seeds could make that a problem of the past.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:37 AM PST - 19 comments

In 2021, House House, the makers of Untitled Goose Game, created a proof-of-concept for an animation series involving the Goose and its hapless victims. It never made it to production, but they've released the proof-of-concept animation to Youtube. So for just four minutes of your time, please journey back to the beleaguered village, and watch the Untitled Goose Programme. (Previously and first on Untitled Goose Game)
posted by JHarris at 5:19 AM PST - 20 comments

"conventional wisdom has been that black hole jets can¡¯t be larger than about a quarter the radius of a cosmic void, and none larger has ever been seen. That all changed with the discovery of Porphyrion..." [bigthink] [more inside]
posted by HearHere at 2:40 AM PST - 14 comments

It is now difficult to imagine the mass of general readers¡ªassuming they exist¡ªbeing reached even by a historian of genius. The exigencies of modern academic publishing, declining levels of general culture among historians themselves, and, in some cases, what occasionally looks less like sloppiness or indifference and more like a positive hostility toward good writing among peer reviewers, above all the atrophying of readers¡¯ own attention spans¡ªfor all these reasons, it seems to me unlikely that we will ever see a classic on the order of Runciman capture the public imagination. from The Rise of Post-Literate History by Matthew Walther [Compact]
posted by chavenet at 12:45 AM PST - 26 comments