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An incredibly rare event is unfolding in the outback. In the centre of Australia, there are whispers that Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre is experiencing conditions strangely similar to those that set a record depth of 6 metres [19.6 feet] in 1974. (Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre is a seasonal lake; for months of the year, and sometimes for years in a row, the lakebed is dry. The lake is incredibly important to birds - when the lake has water, pelicans and other birds fly vast distances to the lake to breed.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:22 PM - 1 comment

"Peabody was a cartoon series about a time-travelling dog and his pet boy, Sherman. Using Peabody's "Wayback Machine", the pair would take jaunts through history, and usually wind up instrumental in making events come out "right", i.e., the way they're depicted in history books. The 91 four-and-a-half-minute episodes always ended with atrocious puns."
'Peabody's Improbable History.' (slyt) Captain Kidd
All.91 episodes on Achive.org.
posted by clavdivs at 8:55 PM - 3 comments

International Oscar Favorites Interesting take on depictions of Americans in foreign films. Wondering about the Oscar buzz as well. the Brazilian and Swedish films have done well this year. Seems like the awards have been spread out leading to tomorrow (golden globe, sag, bafta...)
posted by Darnay86 at 7:29 PM - 0 comments

Set the volume. Go ahead. I dare you.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:42 PM - 10 comments

Rachel Maddow recently gave a presentation at the University of British Columbia (youtube link). This past week Rachel Maddow spoke, with a Q&A afterwards, at The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts of the University of British Columbia. The talk is available on youtube (a transcript is available, but I strongly urge everyone to watch the full video). [more inside]
posted by gudrun at 10:56 AM - 3 comments

In search of Banksy With more from Pest Control
posted by adamvasco at 7:35 AM - 14 comments

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back. [more inside]
posted by sickos haha yes dot jpg at 7:28 AM - 7 comments

Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making? [McSweeney's]
posted by chavenet at 7:05 AM - 22 comments

Nunavut MP Lori Idlout leaves the NDP and joins Liberal caucus. $35B investment in Northern defense and infrastructure announced. The PM is travelling again, this time to observe artic joint military exercises, make the first visit to Norway by a Canadian PM since 1980, and then visiting the UK to meet with PM Starmer and King Charles. It has been one year since Mark Carney was sworn in as Canadas 24th Prime Minister. [more inside]
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:55 AM - 12 comments

William Hanson demonstrates the correct methods for eating sweetcorn when served on the cob, eating an orange formally, eating rice, eating a banana formally, eating a burger, and most importantly eating toast. William gives more detailed explanations for these and other methods of maintaining respectable standards when dining in company.
posted by Wordshore at 6:45 AM - 56 comments

Discovery of rare animals captured on wildlife cameras shocks park rangers. Wildlife cameras snap rare pictures of blond echidnas, a tiny white-footed dunnart, and threatened seabirds on a small island off Tasmania's north coast.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:38 AM - 0 comments

BBC: How people woke up before alarm clocks
posted by ShooBoo at 7:31 PM - 24 comments

Survey shows successful reintroduction of eastern quolls to mainland Australia. Once dubbed the Australian native cat, the eastern quoll was abundant before it was completely wiped out on mainland Australia. (Quolls are affected by feral cats; feral foxes; and habitat loss.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:08 PM - 4 comments

Performed by musicians that you know and others that you don't!. Starting with a grab bag: I Shot the Sheriff (Bob Marley) by Ren / Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks) by Shearwater and Sharon Van Etten / Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan) by Afro Fiesta w/Twanguero & I-Taweh / Old Man (Neil Young) by Baskery (Sweden) [more inside]
posted by polecat at 5:44 PM - 23 comments

Sea otters at the Oregon Zoo cracking oysters
posted by Going To Maine at 2:38 PM - 16 comments

EU rules that all EU countries must provide passports as lived gender. [more inside]
posted by Higherfasterforwards at 9:01 AM - 26 comments

Alt weeklies writing about alt weeklies: “The Bay Guardian’s motto was ‘We print the news and raise hell,’” Redmond explains. “The vision was to offer an alternative to the moribund, boring daily newspapers in San Francisco. We always used to say the Examiner and the Chronicle cover the city from the top of the Transamerica Pyramid down, and we covered the city from the bottom up. We looked for the stories they wouldn’t do, and the arts and entertainment they wouldn’t [consider], and we covered San Francisco culture in a way the daily newspapers couldn’t and wouldn’t do.” - From NOW Toronto

Sadly, the San Franciso Bay Guardian no longer exists in any kind of relevant form. [more inside]
posted by ashbury at 8:58 AM - 34 comments

"At 42, with young kids, I got a devastating diagnosis. I knew I was in for a harrowing journey. I didn’t know quite what kind." Chris Ingraham, the former Washington Post data journalist who gained some fame for naming a Minnesota county the worst place to live in America, and then moved there with his family, tells a simply amazing story. In Slate, and ungated. [more inside]
posted by martin q blank at 8:24 AM - 18 comments

This is what the culture has normalized: outcomes without understanding, solutions without models. And the response when you point this out is “okay but who has time for that,” as if understanding were a productivity cost rather than the entire point.

posted by postcommunism at 7:58 AM - 78 comments

Smoked crocodile on pub menu brings fame to north Queensland town. Tourists are travelling hundreds of kilometres to the small town of El Arish in far north Queensland to get a look at its smoked crocodile.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:49 AM - 10 comments

The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet, two Doctor Who episodes that were last aired in the 1960s and never seen outside of the UK have been recovered from a private collection. The episodes were never seen overseas because the effort was not seen as worth it when New Zealand and Australia declined to air them for being too violent.
posted by Mitheral at 7:31 AM - 5 comments

“Everything dies,” he concedes. “We’re upset by change and by things dying and passing away, but sometimes they really need to.” [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:21 AM - 16 comments

Wardle wanted to make a game that could teach the rules of cryptics, just as Mazin had taught him. The idea was vague, germinal; the prospect of actually releasing a follow-up to Wordle felt “paralyzing,” he said, and for a time he worked as a consultant, helping others on game prototypes, which freed him creatively. Then he began to sense an appetite. from The Creator of Wordle Tries to Solve the Cryptic Crossword [The New Yorker; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:56 AM - 15 comments

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has scanned 140 of its art objects in 3D
posted by storybored at 10:41 PM - 13 comments

Scientists tagging 10,000 bogong moths to solve mystery. The project's success largely relies on citizen scientists spotting a distinct white dot on the wings of moths.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:19 PM - 6 comments

An Entire MFA in One Conversation Mavis Gallant's Art of Fiction Interview. A true writer's writer, over 100 stories published in the New Yorker, but most have never heard of her.
posted by Darnay86 at 6:22 PM - 12 comments

If you want a song that takes you on a journey from slowly-building anxiety to full-on the world is on fire klaxons going off in your head while you desperately attempt to self-soothe, finally culminating with falling into bed utterly spent but with a feeling that maybe tomorrow won't be so horrible after all, Droodle is here for you with ur doing just fine. (YTL) [more inside]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:47 PM - 3 comments

Moss Moss is a short platformer game with a simple goal: spread moss wherever you can and collect the golden leaf. [more inside]
posted by pwnguin at 3:16 PM - 19 comments

Combinatorics can be a bit weird sometimes: the number of ways to arrange N Tetris pieces into a 2-by-2N rectangle is the Nth Fibonacci number squared.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:31 AM - 15 comments

Thousands of endangered frogs released after travelling 500km [310 miles]. Hidden in the dark of night, more than 1000 endangered frogs have been released back into waterways in north-west NSW.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:24 AM - 1 comment

I discovered Ballot Guessr this morning, and I really enjoyed it so far.

How to play:
1. Analyze the Google Street View image
2. Guess how the residents voted in 2024
3. 30 seconds, 5 rounds, 1000 pts max

Good luck guessing whether that scrubby tract of undeveloped land at the end of the cul-de-sac is secretly red- or blue-coded! [more inside]
posted by limeonaire at 7:40 AM - 26 comments

Bread. Sourdough bread. Cut with a clean/unclean knife (AskMe, Guardian, Tiktok). Which is good for you, and has risen again. If you make your own, then keep it simple. An Iowa teacher teaches it. In Oxford, head to Hamblin. Fight off: Finland vs France. And more on AskMeFi: Help me find a delicious sourdough bread starter and bread recipe and Dough for two ... and two for dough and Now that my sourdough starter is successful....
posted by Wordshore at 7:30 AM - 22 comments

[more inside]
posted by fleacircus at 6:31 AM - 11 comments

The Golden Age of Thomas Dolby – the Singer-songwriter on his music, and parenting queer kids [The Bay Area Reporter]
posted by chavenet at 4:06 AM - 17 comments

US Veterans Affairs and Department of Justice moved to establish legal guardianship over homeless and at risk of being homeless veterans (NYT archive), which could be used to force more of them into involuntary or institutional care by establishing more complete and permanent legal control over the rights of veterans. It goes beyond the executive order which established civil commitment over veterans. [more inside]
posted by rubatan at 10:48 PM - 25 comments

Australian-made AI detects breast cancer risk previously missed. A new Australian artificial intelligence tool could transform breast cancer screening by offering a more personalised and accurate way to identify risk.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:07 PM - 16 comments

The World Baseball Classic is going on, and while it's given us sights like Shohei Ohtani serving up a meatball for a grand slam, the big news is a demonstration of hubris - because the US team paid no attention to the stats and thought their progression was secured, they are now in the position that Italy and Mexico can manipulate their final match to end the US' run. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:01 PM - 40 comments

I've spent years dreaming with doing this experiment, and wondering how the geometry would turn out. I chose not to identify the pieces (except by their initial positions).
posted by chavenet at 12:03 PM - 10 comments

We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting his tongue stuck to the surface. It’s practically a childhood rite of passage. A 1996 case study coined the term “tundra tongue” to describe the phenomenon. But how dangerous is it, really? And what’s the best way to free one’s tongue with minimal damage? (Ars Technica - CW: photos of injured tongues) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 11:49 AM - 19 comments

The masked Quebec band taking the world by storm! Plus à l'intérieur! [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 9:50 AM - 30 comments

"Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs. If you’re still employed…You Could Be Next". Also available via New York Magazine. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 9:28 AM - 78 comments

I figured we could use some positive USA news lately, so here's three good stories: 1) Medpage Today: Autism Scientists Form Independent Committee to Counter RFK. Former NIH institute directors, autism researchers, and advocacy leaders established an independent board today to coordinate work among nongovernment autism research funders and create a scientific agenda for the autism community. 2) The Washington Post: RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Advisers Drop Proposal To Revisit Covid-19 Shot A key federal vaccine advisory panel has abandoned an attack on the covid-19 mRNA vaccines — a shift that comes as some Republicans warn that any more changes to vaccine policy could damage the party in the midterms. 3) Paul Offit: The "V" Word. In early 2025, a child died from measles—the first measles death in more than 20 years. Thirteen months later, a public health official finally said the “V” word. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 9:24 AM - 13 comments

An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants. [more inside]
posted by signal at 7:04 AM - 52 comments

I’ve been trying to increase the lasting power of my hobbies by designing them to fit me and my life, instead of happening upon them by accident. And that brings me to my current hobby, which has been my obsession for the last five months, and which I feel like has a good chance of lasting for a while: gardening. Author Ijeoma Oluo of the Behind the Book newsletter discusses her ADHD, her many hobbies, and how she came to gardening. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:16 AM - 14 comments

Pygmy possum with long fingers rediscovered in remote rainforest. A possum and a glider long thought extinct have been rediscovered in New Guinea by a group including Australian mammalogist Tim Flannery. (West Papua, the part of the island of Papua New Guinea that is politically controlled by Indonesia.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:02 AM - 4 comments

Amongst emerging food trends such as cabbage, baked potatoes and fricy flavours, Burnt Butter is getting media attention. BBC: “...the French technique of beurre noisette (browned butter) sees butter melted and cooked until browned, nutty and aromatic.” Good Housekeeping: “...we're seeing a shift towards the toasted, caremalised, savoury flavour of burnt (or brown) butter.” Garden and Gun: Brown Butter Ice Cream. Today: Brown Butter Cinnamon Roll Focaccia.
posted by Wordshore at 12:08 AM - 52 comments

What's My ΔE(OK) JND? "You see two colours. Click on the line between them. That's it. It starts easy. It does not stay easy. Each round the colours get closer together until we find your Just Noticeable Difference - the smallest colour change you can actually see.
posted by dhruva at 6:55 PM - 128 comments

Unbelievable urban bowling green temperature stuns emergency services. Drones are measuring the temperatures of common surfaces in regional cities and the results have stunned emergency services, with Mount Gambier's lawn bowls turf recording a temperature of 86 degrees Celsius [186.8 Fahrenheit]. (Australia)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:45 PM - 14 comments

The Shape of Paris is a terrifically shot and edited short of Andy Anderson skating through the city. Directed by Brett Novak and found on Kottke.org.
posted by dobbs at 4:21 PM - 6 comments

Stampede by Funki Porcini. A.I. (Via). SLYT.
posted by growabrain at 2:12 PM - 17 comments