January 28

Y'all mind if I complain for 15 minutes?

JaidenAnimations makes several relatable complaints about modern living (subscriptions, customer service, appliances that require apps, rent seeking for car seat heaters) in her latest video [SLYT 15-min]. (She also says the C-word.) [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 4:01 PM - 2 comments

Landholders versus stockholders

Catherine Nichols asks why rural area lean right and urban areas lean left in the modern world, and finds a possible answer in David Hume.
posted by clawsoon at 3:34 PM - 3 comments

The Big Lie Will Never Die

FBI executes search warrant at Fulton County Elections office near Atlanta Yes, this is about the 2020 election. Yes, that was 6 years ago. Yes, Donald Trump has inexplicably won another election since then. But no, he will not let this go.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:15 PM - 8 comments

Confirmed: The fleece will be released

The fleece will be released. [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:22 PM - 3 comments

Adventures in JRPG World

TerminalMontage is an animator on Youtube best known for the "Something About" series of parody video game fan videos (examples: one - two). Recently though they've diversified into a more generalized fantasy series called The Fruitless Quests of Naibu, that are less edgy, less fannish, and have more character and are just generally better, I think, while still playing around with the tropes of JRPGs. Other than a handful of shorts (note: a couple selling merch), so far there's been two major installments, the pilot and episode 2.
posted by JHarris at 12:25 PM - 3 comments

No one reads "Easy Travel to Other Planets" anymore

They seem like irreconcilable opposites, but we now live in both of these models, fully and simultaneously. Tank: increasingly isolated from IRL social worlds, we’re called upon as never before to be our selves, to develop and perform them. Chamber: through the reinforcement mechanisms that populate our screens, we’re not only called upon, but conditioned to these selves; persons that are also puppets, and the more puppets the more personal they become. This is the paradox of our time: isolation tank and conditioning chamber—self and control—now go hand in hand. from Tank and Chamber [n+1] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:02 AM - 6 comments

We need to understand that this is a serious civilisational challenge

The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI. 19,000-words on AI risk by Dario Amodei, a co-founder and the chief executive of the company Anthropic and the AI chatbot Claude. [more inside]
posted by mazola at 8:45 AM - 53 comments

TikTok accused of censorship under US ownership

The transfer of TikTok's ownership and control over to a group of US and Saudi investors, led by Oracle, which is owned by Trump supporter and billionaire Larry Ellison, was completed on January 22, 2026. Since the transfer, users have claimed that their content has been censored when they have addressed any political content, including ICE and Epstein; TikTok has blamed any issues on power outages. Meanwhile, users have been jumping ship to UpScrolled, a fairly new social media app created by Palestinian-Australian-Jordanian technologist Issam Hijazi. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 7:11 AM - 67 comments

“This is going to age like milk”

Peter Stefanovic (Bluesky thread): Free AI training will be offered to every adult in the UK, with short courses to teach people how to use simple AI tools effectively in the workplace [a few responses below the fold]. BBC: The online lessons give advice on things such as how to prompt chatbots or use them to assist with admin tasks. Manchester Evening News: Ms Kendall said: “We want AI to work for Britain, and that means ensuring Britons can work with AI. Change is inevitable, but the consequences of change are not.” [Post title] [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 6:16 AM - 23 comments

Spectacular sea of red as millions of baby crabs clamber up island beach

Spectacular sea of red as millions of baby crabs clamber up island beaches. Wildlife officials on Christmas Island, the remote territory 2600 kilometres north-west of Perth, are welcoming the final chapter of its famous red crab migration — the return to shore of millions of baby crabs. (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:44 AM - 6 comments

Cracking down on corruption isn't radical, it's good politics

How Orban went from invincible to underdog in Hungary - "It's taken a perfect storm of political scandals, economic mismanagement, official graft, fatigue with the ruling elite and the emergence of a credible alternative leader."[1,2] (Viktor Orban previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:34 AM - 7 comments

The only axe I have to grind is my own idiosyncratic taste

This website celebrates the world-wide literary novel since approximately the beginning of the twentieth century, arranged by nationality. It is a personal but extensive survey of literary fiction since around 1900, which will continue to grow. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:00 AM - 11 comments

January 27

Hot off The Press.

'It is 85 seconds to midnight.' By Sarah Starkey | January 27, 2026 Via. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 5:07 PM - 33 comments

"I could sell shit to an ass."

Caller Number Nine! A telemarketer with a severe anger problem accidentally calls into a radio show. He wins a radio contest and enters a standoff with the unhinged host.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:22 PM - 8 comments

THE DILDO DISTRIBUTION DELEGATION

The revolution did not arrive with speeches, pamphlets, or a carefully moderated Zoom call about optics. It arrived in a cardboard box full of clearance-bin dildos, under purple neon light.
posted by growabrain at 1:23 PM - 36 comments

An inherent spikiness

The crowd was unimpressed. By some accounts, partygoers politely shrugged; others swear that the audience grew irate about this group of interlopers making commercial-sounding music about their culture. (It did not help that the Beach Boys, at that point, barely knew how to play their instruments.) Another apocryphal story holds that onlookers booed the Beach Boys offstage after two songs because they dared to sing over chugging surf instrumentals—the music merely backup to their harmonies. Whatever really happened, no one in that long-gone dance hall, not even the Beach Boys, understood the magnitude of that first performance. from Sunshine Pop: When the Sun Goes Down [Alta]
posted by chavenet at 11:02 AM - 7 comments

Anna Krauthammer writes about not reporting rape

From the piece: “The simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons.”
posted by Ideefixe at 9:34 AM - 96 comments

"Fury over this killing has flooded [...] reflecting a growing outrage"

In the Washington Post, Outrage over ICE has spilled into typically apolitical online spaces
(ungated) [more inside]
posted by Rash at 8:19 AM - 92 comments

Ancient DNA may reveal clues to origin of syphilis

Ancient DNA in Colombian skeleton may reveal clues to origin of syphilis. A previously unknown strain of syphilis bacteria has been discovered in human remains in Colombia, dating back 5,500 years.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:52 AM - 2 comments

🤘🤘🤘 We have new Masters 🤘🤘🤘

Nemophila covering Master of Puppets. [more inside]
posted by signal at 6:36 AM - 6 comments

No, not *that* shitshow.

Want Nirvana? Try a Colonoscopy. slNYT. Archive link . Previously 1, 2.
posted by lalochezia at 6:27 AM - 49 comments

Affordable childcare isn't radical, "it's good politics"

Hochul and Mamdani spent months quietly crafting a plan to expand free child care - "Mamdani gets to claim a major milestone on the way to delivering his signature campaign pledge while showing his haters the left can achieve results. Hochul, who's facing reelection challenges from both her left and her right, instantly created problems for her adversary in the Democratic primary. And by launching the childcare plan without tax increases, she blunted what would have become a central attack line from GOP forces mustering on Long Island." (2-Care for All)
posted by kliuless at 1:01 AM - 18 comments

There will be next things, but they won't be big

We are all — collectively, culturally — looking for the Next Big Thing, and we keep not finding it. It wasn’t 3D printing. It wasn’t crowdfunding. It wasn’t smart watches. It wasn’t VR. It wasn’t the Metaverse, it wasn’t Bitcoin, it wasn’t NFTs. It’s also not AI, but this is why so many people assume that it will be AI. Because it’s got to be something, right? If it’s got to be something then AI is as good a guess as anything else right now. from The Next Thing Will Not Be Big [Deciphering Glyph]
posted by chavenet at 12:00 AM - 43 comments

January 26

The Future is an Empty Room

The Future is an Empty Room
posted by Bottlecap at 11:19 PM - 9 comments

Allowed fish to pass obstacles like roads, weirs and dams

Machine Learning fish passage results promising but can it stop another ecological disaster? The $6.5 million Menindee fish passage trial is now in year two and results are promising, but not everyone is buoyed by confidence in the project's ability to prevent another mass fish kill. Using Machine Learning to identify and transport native species from the Darling River in far west New South Wales into the Menindee Lakes, results have so far proved promising. Fishheart's Mika Sohlberg said the technology allowed fish to pass obstacles like roads, weirs and dams and complete their migratory life cycle and find spawning areas further north. "We're taking the water from the reservoir, through a pipeline into our unit, [where we] collect the fish and take them over the dam to a reservoir with water pressure," he said. (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:40 PM - 2 comments

Free Thread: You may not believe me, but ________ is actually very good

This afternoon, I found myself posting Spice World (the Spice Girls movie) to FanFare, because you know what? I think it's a pretty fun movie. What are some movies/shows/books/whatever that are commonly derided as pure junk that you would insist are pretty good, actually? This is your weekly #freethread.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:09 PM - 185 comments

Not a prophecy of American collapse; a mirror

What Americans can learn from this external perspective is not a list of policy prescriptions, but a reframing of the problem itself. The Kill Line exposes how deeply American culture has internalized the idea that survival must be earned continuously, without interruption. It reveals how quickly empathy collapses once someone falls out of productivity. It shows how social trust erodes when people know that one misstep can erase decades of effort. from The Kill Line: What America looks like on Chinese social media [Julian Scaff; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:02 AM - 42 comments

Jet Lag: The Game

Jet Lag: The Game is a silly and nerdy Youtube travel game show by the creators of Wendover Productions where the contestants use various forms of public transit to play games of Hide and Seek, Tag, Capture the Flag across countries and continents including the US, Japan, and Europe that often involve funny Taskmasker style challenges.
posted by roaring beast at 10:34 AM - 12 comments

Is It Dangerous to Let Kids Be Free?

From bus rides to playgrounds, we are raising our children in a culture of fear. (slTheWalrus) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:43 AM - 89 comments

Ain't That a Trip - James Hunter & Van Morrison

This is my favourite track from the new James Hunter Six album. I thought Metafilter might enjoy it too.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:39 AM - 3 comments

Joe Rogan called out - Joseph Welch moment by former 60 Minutes Producer

Jeff Newton goes full on Joesph Welch calling out Joe Rogan's complicity Reminiscent of the legendary General Joseph Welch speech during the McCarthy hearings, Joe Rogan is called to accountability by former 60 Minutes producer Jeff Newton for his enabling of the Trump regime.
posted by jcworth at 7:56 AM - 21 comments

David Ehrlich's Best 25 Films of 2025

Head film critic for Indiewire, David Ehrlich has once again gifted the world with his annual Best 25 Films countdown video. Even if you may disagree on the choices or rankings, Ehrlich craft at weaving together cinematic moments and song is entertainment in itself. Last year's post on Erhlich's 2024 best films. Ehrlich's previous videos can be found here. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 7:10 AM - 31 comments

Time to revisit Tom Nook and company

Over 4 years after declaring that Version 2.0 would be the "last major content update" for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo announced and dropped Version 3.0 in early January 2026. 3.0 incorporates a hotel (a kind of free-to-play version of the Happy Home Paradise DLC), the much-awaited bulk crafting to help support DIY Donations, multiplayer Slumber Islands, functional Nintendo consoles that play emulated versions of old NES games, collaborations with Splatoon, LEGO, and The Legend of Zelda, and various other updates, including some features exclusive to the Switch 2. The update has received mixed reviews from players: some discource around hotel tourists "ruining the aesthetics" of carefully designed islands, the positives and drawbacks of Slumber Islands, and whether the new update was too little too late. Many players are excitedly returning - if you are one of them, and would like some island inspiration, or just want to see the lengths people have gone through in this game, come dream with Luna: [more inside]
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:32 AM - 13 comments

Some of the greatest novels are about how reading ruins lives

It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice. This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up. from Reading Is a Vice [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:01 AM - 25 comments

January 25

Crops and chicks grow together in Murray-Darling study on water sharing

Crops and chicks grow together in Murray-Darling study on water sharing. Can breeding birds and growing rice combine to help both conservation and agriculture in the basin? (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:20 PM - 1 comment

Dr. West used complex algorithms to account for Earth's distorted shape

Gladys West, mathematician whose work paved the way for GPS, dies at 95 - "West is credited with astounding accomplishments in mathematics, playing pivotal roles in charting orbital trajectories and creating accurate mathematical models of the Earth's shape that would eventually be used by the GPS satellite orbit." (previously, Wikipedia) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:49 PM - 18 comments

A real startup, run by fake people

Shell Game is a podcast by journalist Evan Ratliff. I came across part of the first season on This American Life, I believe, but I just finished listening to the second season in its entirety. It's the story of how Evan creates a startup using AI agents as his main employees, and I found it fascinating and terrifying.
posted by cider at 3:20 PM - 12 comments

璇璣圖

"I stumbled upon an image on the internet — a square block of Chinese characters, densely packed, colour-coded, visually austere. It did not immediately read like a poem. It looked closer to a schematic, or perhaps a data structure waiting to be queried....Only later did I learn what it was: 《璇璣圖》 (Xuanji Tu), traditionally attributed to 蘇蕙 (Su Hui), created sometime around 379 CE during the Former Qin dynasty, in what is now Shaanxi Province."
A Poem That Behaves Like a Machine. On Su Hui’s 璇璣圖, Mathematics, and the Kinds of Intelligence we Keep Missing [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 3:03 PM - 10 comments

Seize the means of fermentation

Delightfully wry posts by an Italian Dublin baker on the early life of their sourdough starter: Robespierre Each stage or event delivered urgently as if from a telegraph STOP
posted by unearthed at 2:53 PM - 9 comments

Visualizing Language

Interactive explorations of the world's 7,370 languages. Data sourced from Glottolog with 18 levels of hierarchical depth by Luke Steuber. See the Network; Proto-Indo-European; World Language Tree; Constellation and many more data poems
posted by chavenet at 12:59 PM - 5 comments

Music for Pieces of Wood

In this video, musical ensemble Sō Percussion performs Steve Reich’s “Music for Pieces of Wood” inside the exhibition Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage), 1992, at Gagosian, New York.
posted by sapagan at 10:49 AM - 2 comments

Epaulette sharks can make and lay eggs without spending extra energy

These "walking" epaulette sharks can make and lay eggs without spending extra energy, scientists say. Known best for their ability to "walk" on the sand and coral where they usually live, new research shows epaulette sharks could also defy assumptions in other ways.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:39 AM - 3 comments

MAMA MIA THAT'S A SPICY MEATBALL

Meatball is a new comedy short by talented new director Alexandra Robinson. Cece tries to come out to her traditional Italian-American family during a Sunday dinner. The trailer. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 1:17 AM - 8 comments

Systems built during crisis 1 determine whether you survive crisis 4

Every major attack in this analysis started the same way: a person. Kyivstar: likely a compromised employee account. Viasat: a VPN misconfiguration someone didn’t catch. The GRU exploits from 2018 and 2019 still work because someone hasn’t patched systems that have had fixes for five years. Nation-state attackers don’t need zero-days when humans provide the access. from The First Full-Scale Cyber War: 4 Years of Lessons [From the Trenches]
posted by chavenet at 1:15 AM - 24 comments

January 24

White whale spotted off NSW coast in unusual summer sighting

White whale spotted off New South Wales coast in unusual summer sighting. Researchers are asking for the public's help to learn more about the health of the albino whale, which was seen from Crescent Head on the Mid North Coast. (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:29 PM - 9 comments

Please Help Us

A Massacre in Mashhad. "The government announced that people who have Starlink disks need to hand them over. If you keep it hidden, if you don’t report it and they discover it in your home, they will arrest you. The sentence is two years. But, if they discover that I am speaking to foreigners, they will execute me. I have no doubt about that. Still, if I don’t speak about it, it will be as if it didn’t happen." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:28 PM - 57 comments

Boot Straps of Sisyphus.

Fred Dibnah MBE- Steeplejack.
"Dibnah comes across as a joyful 20th-century Sisyphus, laughing through the work even as it’s demanding, repetitive and dangerous. With the camerawork capturing the extraordinary size disparity between the man and the task at hand," Mr. Dibhah with chiesel and fire topples tower in this excellent extended 49 minute film. (Slyt) [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 3:32 PM - 10 comments

Ain't gonna play Sim City

IsoCity is a open-source isometric city-building simulation game
posted by chavenet at 1:10 PM - 8 comments

💺🧘🆗 ➡️ 💨😷🧘‍♀️👶 ➡️ 💺⬇️🦺🌊 ➡️ 🚪🏃✈️🛝 ➡️ 🚭📵⚠️

In an unassuming office park a 90-minute drive south of Seattle, one company is churning out dozens of the trifold safety cards travelers find tucked into their seat back pocket after boarding a flight... CEO Trisha Ferguson credits The Interaction Group’s founders with researching, designing and printing the first illustrated safety card, ushering in a switch from text-heavy pamphlets to hand-drawn illustrations meant to help passengers in an emergency. (Seattle Times, archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 12:04 PM - 10 comments

Be a Revolutionary - Get some Sleep

They’re stealing our sleep and getting rich from it. Netflix says their biggest competitor is sleep, and they’re not alone in trying to make sure we get less of it. The sleep industry is big business and we’re getting less of it than ever.
posted by Bottlecap at 6:03 AM - 31 comments

« Older posts