"The opposite of doomscrolling: Every two weeks (roughly) I [Clive Thompson] send you a collection of the best Internet reading I've found -- links to culture, technology, art and science that fascinated me. Full, free archives here." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:03 AM Sep 24 2025 - 10 comments [63 favorites]

Pat Kahnke on Culture, Faith, and Politics - "I used to believe what Charlie Kirk believes. And that's why I need to speak out now." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:22 AM Sep 28 2025 - 73 comments [54 favorites]

A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. [more inside]
posted by deeker at 1:32 AM Sep 16 2025 - 99 comments [51 favorites]

House Arab — Ismail Ibrahim
posted by Klipspringer at 1:30 AM Sep 19 2025 - 22 comments [51 favorites]

"This barbaric incident will leave a lasting stain on Korea-US relations." [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 1:30 PM Sep 15 2025 - 67 comments [49 favorites]

Make very tidy boxes, drawers, hinges out of corrugated cardboard. Carve little stamps from pink rubber erasers; make a tiny book of the tiny prints. Make a nice envelope out of scrap paper. [more inside]
posted by clew at 6:00 PM Sep 12 2025 - 8 comments [46 favorites]

The linguist Sonya Mathews has a website where they blog about language-related matters, such as a miscarriage of justice in 19th Century Ireland against people who spoke only Irish, the mysterious Hand of Irulegi, the Scots letter yogh and the spelling of Shetland and why ain't ain't wrong. Mathews also makes videos which they post to YouTube and TikTok, including on such topics as Proto Indo European, the lazy magic of the prefix un- and why the distinction between cow and beef, pig and pork, deer and venison, and so on, doesn't go back to the Norman conquest.
posted by Kattullus at 1:52 PM Sep 19 2025 - 33 comments [43 favorites]

Alexis Nikole Nelson (@BlackForager on Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok) is a popular video creator focusing on teaching Americans about food foraging, especially in Ohio, where she is from. She often uses tiny, sung-along game shows like "Poison or Snack" to teach people about both foraging risks and rewards. But Nelson's educational work goes deeper than simply talking about which wild-growing foods are tasty: she also wants to connect Americans to the Black and Indigenous cultural context and history that shapes North American foraging and our relationship to the food growing around us.
posted by sciatrix at 7:10 AM Sep 21 2025 - 12 comments [43 favorites]

Ordinary people and local groups in the US can research candidates for local elections and make endorsements. For example, Kelly Jensen explains how to build a voter's guide for public library board elections, and Frank Strong does similarly for school board elections (more details in the introduction to this Google Doc, "The Book-Loving Texan¡¯s Guide to the May 2025 School Board Elections"). Naomi Kritzer has written several useful guides as well (below), having researched and published endorsements in Minnesota for decades. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 9:32 AM Sep 25 2025 - 3 comments [41 favorites]

Dear Mr. Borges, which translation should I read? [more inside]
posted by infinitewindow at 4:15 PM Sep 28 2025 - 23 comments [40 favorites]

An engineer restores pay phones for free public use. (Orange County, Vermont)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:09 AM Sep 5 2025 - 20 comments [39 favorites]

Maru (¤Þ¤ë) - the beloved Scottish Fold boy with a penchant for (among other things) boxes, fish bowls and swings - has passed over The Rainbow Bridge after a short illness. [more inside]
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:51 AM Sep 6 2025 - 93 comments [38 favorites]

Semafor's exclusive: Nika Soon-Shiong, daughter of LATimes owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, will become the publisher of DropSiteNews, launched on Substack by alums of the Intercept. There's interest in new, progressive media, as sites like Zeteo and Breaking Points have gained in popularity with the second term of the Trump administration. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 8:22 AM Sep 19 2025 - 42 comments [38 favorites]

Steamed Hams, but it's a 44-minute live action parody of My Dinner With Andre. Full of references to the first seven seasons of The Simpsons. From Tyrone Deise, who's trafficked in this kind of meme in the past.
posted by JHarris at 4:17 AM Sep 23 2025 - 24 comments [38 favorites]

Daniel Schreiber believes the correlation between people living alone, sans partner, and being lonely has traditionally been overestimated. "Society understands better now that romantic love is not the only model to live by, or something to wish for," he adds. "There are different ways of life, and it's not as necessary to be in a traditional romantic relationship." from 'Humans need solitude': How being alone can make you happier [BBC]
posted by chavenet at 2:23 PM Sep 14 2025 - 58 comments [37 favorites]

Blort is old. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 10:29 PM Sep 25 2025 - 21 comments [37 favorites]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address at the 80th UN General Assembly - "If a nation wants peace, it still has to work on weapons. It's sick, but that's the reality. Not international law, not cooperation -- weapons decide who survives." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:26 PM Sep 26 2025 - 25 comments [37 favorites]

It's a FREE online drum machine you can use to make beats on any device - phone, tablet, or computer. No downloads or sign-up is required to start making music. Beat Maker is not an LLM or GPT and does not rely on the musicianship of others. It has not been trained on external data or copyright works. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:55 AM Sep 23 2025 - 9 comments [35 favorites]

Angela Collier on how the rise of pop science conspiracy is fueled by the audience. It's a long watch, but she breaks down how the audience responds to science content and how the media fuels bad faith arguments and the actors that capitalize on them.
posted by finalbroadcast at 7:46 PM Sep 30 2025 - 34 comments [35 favorites]

The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, read by Lauren Bacall. Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn't go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. [more inside]
posted by Zumbador at 11:21 AM Sep 14 2025 - 16 comments [34 favorites]