Bookmarks (944)

Billionaire couple focus their fortune on conservation — and profit. In the middle of Tasmania (Australia) sits a 5000-hectare property once used for sheep grazing. But when the sheep farmers left, an unlikely buyer moved in.Wedgetail is a private company investing in projects around the world that restore ecologically valuable areas. It was founded by Lisa Miller, who purchased the Quoin in 2021. A...

Max Ochester discovered tapes recorded at Sigma Sound Studios for 'Young Americans. The tapes include an unheard version of a Bruce Springsteen song. He's trying to get the music to the Bowie estate. Back in 2022, when Max Ochester loaded up his car with 15 U-Haul boxes of reel-to-reel tapes he purchased at a Montgomery County estate sale, he had no idea he was...

In an ongoing series of images titled Not What You Saw, photographer Keerthana Kunnath documents a burgeoning community of female bodybuilders in Kerala. Set against common backdrops like beaches, the outside of a traditional Indian home, and lush, green foliage, the collection highlights an alternative vision of beauty grounded in immense female power. from In Kerala, Keerthana Kunnath Photographs the Female Bodybuilders Defying Beauty...

How a Cessna 172 Works A 20-minute animated tour showing the important components of this popular general aviation aircraft, using detailed 3D rendering.

A group of biologists based at Stanford has discovered a new form of life, unrelated to any known animal, plant, bacteria, archea or virus. Known as obelisks, they consists of tiny circular fragments of RNA, without a protein coating (like viruses have). These were discovered by computer-aided searching through tens of thousands of RNA sequences and according to the authors "they define the working...

Two short speculative stories in which pairs of women figure out some things about their relationships. "Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station" by Ann LeBlanc, published 2021 in Mermaids Monthly: "Riles Yalten has approximately thirty minutes before she dies, and that's just enough time to try the new gravlax place on level sixteen." "The Freedom to Decide" by W. L. Bolm, published...

A deliciously "naughty" (but SFW) examination of long, pointy-toed shoes and the moral panic they provoked. "Aside from the sinful association of fleshly pleasures, clerics were concerned that the long toe-pieces prevented people from kneeling in the approved obeisant manner."Can it be said they weren't responsible for the pestilence?!

A short comic about a farmer and a god of small things, based on a tumblr writing prompt and several collaborative replies.

Before being Rednoted (recently), but after sabotaging attendance at Donald Trump's 2020 campaign rally, TikTok users discovered Donghua Jinlong is the only choice when you're looking for High Quality Industrial Food Grade and New Pharmaceutical Glycine (and then going full dada). What does this meme say about TikTok, the future of free speech and the internet? Depending where you are, you may now or...

Indigenous doctors from across the globe point to the benefits of first languages in health. Hundreds of Indigenous doctors have converged from across the globe to share their tips for good health.

I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is a dangerous — and that's the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally...

I'd Rather Be Sick Than Eat Progresso Soup Drops Ever Again you may ask. is this real? but what is reality anyway

The 80s were long ago and, in terms of socially acceptable comedy, far away. (CW: Brett Kavanaugh and screen piggishness)Private Lessons (1981) Goin' All the Way! (1982) Porky's (1982) with Kim Cattrall Zapped! (1982) Class (1983) with Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe Losin' It (1983) with Tom Cruise My Tutor (1983) Private School (1983) with Matthew Modine and Phoebe Cates Spring Break (1983) Bachelor...

Is there something you can do on your phone that's the opposite of doom-scrolling? It would probably need to be cute and encouraging and maybe it somehow allows friends to support each other... That's basically what Finch is trying to do. Sadly, their own website provides very little information about what using the app is like, so I've selected some reviews to give you...

Israel and Hamas have agreed a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal following 15 months of war, mediators Qatar and the US say. The ceasefire deal will take effect on 19 January, but a long-term truce is still being negotiated. BBC live coverage. Al Jazeera live coverage.

Andreas Wannerstedt is a Stockholm based artist and art director who crafts unique 3D sculptures and mesmerizing looping animations. The imagery of Andreas is both sophisticated and whimsical, featuring simple and playful geometric shapes in balanced compositions, together with organic textures and harmonizing color palettes.

Until 2020 Diamond Comic Distributors had a decades-long near-monopoly as supplier of comics & merchandise to the North American direct market. This changed following the arrival of COVID-19 when many of the biggest publishers signed deals with new distributors. Yesterday Diamond announced that it had filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.Over the years Diamond has...

"[Joe] Strechay has a unique role in the entertainment business: making sure people with visual impairments are portrayed realistically -- well, at least as realistically as they can be in a sci-fi show about a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is sightless."

Queer, HIV-Positive, and Running Out of Medication in Gaza If you want current updates on the situation in Gaza, please check the current I/P thread. This post is to focus on the story of one queer Palestinian trying to survive under very extreme circumstances.

Alice is Missing is a stunningly beautiful storytelling game that delivers an utterly unique and unforgettable experience. ... A high school student named Alice has gone missing, and the players will take on the roles of her friends as they try to figure out what happened while dealing with the emotional trauma of her disappearance. The central conceit of the game is this: You...

"Sections of the Alphabet, a guide" is a short Tumblr post that describes the 26 letters as belonging to 5 distinct neighborhoods. "The heavy lifters in this area draw a sharp disparity with Q, which is unique for its specialist role."

"The famous king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II was lately enthroned when a group of Phoenician sailors watched their boat sink in shallow water off the coast of Spain ... The sailors would have been beside themselves watching the boat go down in just 7 feet of water, but before they could recover it and bring it to the shore around 65 yards away, a...

Vietnam fines reckless drivers half the average annual salary. Vietnam, where 11,500 people die in traffic accidents every year, has introduced severe new penalties for those who break road rules as well as bounties for those who dob them in.

The American Dialect Society has selected rawdog as Word of the Year for 2024."The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members' expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion."

Now the outlines of a popular political movement are becoming clearer, and this movement has no relation at all to the right or the left as we know them. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, whose belief in the possibility of law-based democratic states gave us both the American and French Revolutions, railed against what they called obscurantism: darkness, obfuscation, irrationality. But the prophets of...

For many, Hungary's Victor Orban is the contemporary patron saint of autocratic rule. Certainly, he leaves "little doubt over what his model calls for," A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times noted in a Washington Post op-ed this fall citing, "loud applause from attendees of a Republican political conference held in Budapest in 2022," when Orban said, "Dear friends: We must have our...

The YouTube channel of AlmazanKitchen is technically a series of advertisements for its fancy-pants chef's knife. It is also the most intense, voice-free, music-free, 4K food porn you will ever see. Suggested starting points: Pork Belly with Crispy Skin. Carbonara with Handmade Pasta and Dry-Aged Bacon. Cheese and Egg Toast. Carolina Reaper Triple Chili Chicken Wings. Szechuan Pork Noodles.

"We've eaten 11,501 snacks spanning 87 categories from 2056 companies in 96 countries. That's 164 major brands and 163 flavors." (previously) (more previously) (even more previously)

Richard Raffan is a long-time wood turner with a large number of videos on YouTube. They might be too inside-baseball to be of general interest, but if you like watching things made by a master craftsman and artist, you may enjoy them. This is Richard's YouTube home page .Since retirement, I've been learning wood turning. At the end of COVID this was a bit...

"I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music." If it's been more than 24 hours since you last flew into a rage about tech-bros who want to "disrupt" art without understanding the first thing about art, have I got an interview for you!Entire interview if you swing that way.

Eagle-eyed teen helps capture rogue frog on Tassie lavender farm (Tasmania, Australia). A 13-year-old girl found and helped capture an invasive Peron's tree frog after a tourist's photo posted online alerted authorities of the biosecurity threat. Tasmania is an island, so it does not have the same frog species and frog diseases which are found on mainland Australia.The amphibian, which turned out to be...

"Six People to Revise You" by J.R. Dawson, a short and moving science fiction story published January 2025 in Uncanny Magazine (available in text and audio), begins: A parent or guardian Someone who has known you since childhood A mentor or teacher An employer or coworker A spouse, partner, or close intimate friend Someone who does not consider themself a loved one

There Is No Safe Word. How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. [Non-paywalled link. Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and sexual assault and emotional/sexual abuse.]

FANFARE THIS WEEK... New movies: everyone's Criterion Closet buddy Pamela Anderson stuns in The Last Showgirl; "Holocaust tours, with lunch" in A Real Pain; a Hungarian-born architect immigrates to the US in bladder-busting 215 minute epic The Brutalist; running, quips in hit sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 3; a biopic of UK pop star Robbie Williams with a CGI chimp in the title role in...

[Content Warning: a lot of blood, brief glimpses of body horror, there is an image of a character in one film starting to be enveloped in flames.] Indiewire's chief film critic, David Ehrlich presented his annual, and expertly edited, montage of his 25 Best Films of 2024 (Vimeo).While not completely corresponding to the video's 25 films, Indiewire team of critics argued these as their...

Did you even consider every possible lived experience before recklessly posting your chili recipe on social media?

(slCBC) The Canadian government announced on Oct. 24, 2024 that it is scaling back on immigration targets for the next three years, immediately cutting 2025's target by 21 per cent, and more for the years after. The number of temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers, will also be considerably reduced.

This is important: We exist in time. Whenever someone is born, it opens a window into time, a glimpse of the universe that stretches from the moment your eyes first blink open until they finally shut. This is about to be your window. (WaPo column by Alexandra Petri, gift link)

"The Heavenly Music Corporation". "Swastika Girls".Julian Cope: "A boundless album of fulfilled vision, and the most psychedelic impressionist painting I've ever heard." Robert Fripp: "It's also very, very sexy. If you're on a hot date - and I'm assuming now we're speaking to younger members of the public - perhaps try playing side one."

What sort of noises do you make? Do you make music like Alice Coltrane? Are you a cross-linguistic onomatopoiea fan? Or are optical sound effects more your thing? Ever enter a yodeling contest, like they have at the Iowa State Fair? Or is the groan more your thing, as with groaning boards, groaning ghosts, or plain groaners? Perhaps your noises are more fundamental? There's...

The secretive annual migration of Christmas Island's blue crabs. You've heard of the Christmas Island red crab migration. But what about the blue one? Christmas Island's blue crab migration is low key, even for locals. The blue crab species Discoplax celeste is only found on Christmas Island. It is one of more than 20 species of land crab on the island. The blue crab...

Blaming nature or the climate for disasters deflects responsibility. It is largely human influence that produces vulnerability. Pointing the finger at natural causes creates a politically convenient crisis narrative that is used to justify reactive disaster laws and policies. For example, it is easier for city governments to blame nature instead of addressing human-caused social and physical vulnerability. A deflection of responsibility also leads...

Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in Trek canon . Mary Sue founder Susana Polo writes, "either Section 31 is a betrayal of everything the Federation stands for, or the Federation isn't utopian.".

Infinite View, Shuffle View, and Catalogue View are three ways to explore the Public Domain Image Archive recently announced by The Public Domain Review. Coverage at Open Culture and Hyperallergic. More details about the project. Bluesky account to follow for updates. Also at The Public Domain Review this week: "The public airing of grievances continues in the next and final issue of 391 ......

So, you want to demonstrate the speedrunning of one of the greatest arcade racing experiences ever, but there's a small problem with the music licensing. The answer - speedrun Crazy Taxi with a live band doing the backing. (SLYT)