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It is as if you were on your phone Look at you! On your phone! But you've got a secret! And you won't tell! You're not on your phone! It is only as if you were on your phone! You're just pretending to be on your phone! On your phone!

Corey Robin in n+1. Too wide-ranging for a single pull quote, here is a smattering of topics: the cruelty is not the point, McCarthyism compared to Musk, the role of institutions and elite resistance, fighting as the best solution to fear, the current assault on government as a continuation of the neoliberal project, virtue as a failure state of society.

Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges beginning at 3pm ET TODAY on WFMU (at 2000 UTC on Sat March 8th). Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. They will play listener requests for three hours, and it...

Retired hens revitalise Cyprus olive groves. Organic farmers in Cyprus have recruited hundreds of retired hens to fertilize olive groves in a pilot project they say boosts yields, counters disease, and helps to manage food waste. Saved from slaughter after their egg-laying years, hens peck and poop to their hearts' content among olive trees at the organically certified Akaki Grove, on the green foothills...

"Though it may have felt as if it ended just as soon as it started, Definitive Jux remains relevant even in the modern context of hip-hop through its influence. ...Definitive Jux tried to keep it true to its roots while also developing an alternative lane for artists that is still flourishing today."Def Jux Records: life and death to backpackerism ... but what really matters:...

TerraCollage "Roman De Giuli is a German photographer and filmmaker, specialized in practical effects and experimental fluid art. His compositions mainly consist of fluids, powders and colors which are applied on paper to create vivid, three dimensional scenes" [via]

On March 8, 2022, I went to celebrate International Women's Day with my colleague. On the way back, I visited an acquaintance. If I hadn't stayed there, I would have died because there was an airstrike in our area. [g/truthhounds.org (content note: war inside)][looking at women looking at war]:On March 8, an airstrike destroyed the building where the Red Cross was located. the windows...

You're probably familiar with the tone accompanying these, of gentle incredulity and deep sighs: photos of (gasp) Karachiites drinking alcohol in bars, women in (OMG!) short skirts, hippies in hostels (wow) smoking weed; look, look at how we used to be, how we were so not what we are now. Smartphones no doubt ping similarly in Kabul or Tehran. The majority of the people...

An invasive species from South America is decimating California's crops. Nutria, rodents originally from South America, have been eating their way through Delta vegetation. The mammals can eat up to 25% of their body weight — between 15 and 20 pounds for full-grown nutria — in a single day... Federal wildlife authorities advised those in states with nutria populations to check local regulation for...

It begins as a shuffle but soon becomes an unstoppable march. What ska had imbibed from American jazz and R&B was a musical ESP about where to put the emphasis and where to leave some space. It called out for a new way of moving—picture someone strolling down a city street who suddenly breaks into an agitated, quasi-military trot. Reggae was a slow skank,...

ABC shuts down FiveThirtyEight and pulls the plug on its website. The last 15 or so employees of the once influential data aggregator are set to be laid off by Disney's ABC News Group, according to a Tuesday report by the Wall Street Journal. (Archive.ph) The main URL already redirects to ABC News.

Anosmia, or loss of the sense of smell, is a frequent consequence of COVID-19. Most people recover spontaneously in weeks. However, some do not, and for them anosmia has high impact on quality of life. For the latter there is now hope in a new treatment: Platelet-rich Plasma. Platelet-rich plasma treatment uses the patients own blood to accelerate healing and is used to treat...

BBC: Denmark's state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century. The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company's letter service. Denmark's 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June. Guardian: PostNord Denmark will deliver its last letter...

Saul Steinberg, as a figure in American art, is poised to evaporate. A specificity or worked out theory of admiration for Steinberg, from the rare few who even bother to profess admiration towards the work, is neglected, because not much is said beyond occasional measured and brief praise. Where is Steinberg in contemporary illustration, art or even culture itself? A stroll through visual America...

It is March 30, 1992. Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" has begun its descent from the pinnacle of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs sweeps the Academy Awards. And WordPerfect Corporation, producer of the industry-standard word processing software, fires its Chief Operating Officer.(He will go on to tell his side of the story in Almost Perfect: How...

The Humber estuary is a challenging place to navigate. At high tide, its wide expanse of open water conceals a constantly-shifting network of mudflats, through which ships must follow a uniquely twisting, meandering path marked by a series of floats, to avoid running aground. The mud shifts so rapidly that new charts are published every two weeks. The crew of the H&S Wisdom apparently...

Many people struggle to make tradeoffs between present wants and future wishes, resulting in the tendency to overly discount the value of future rewards. To explain such behavior, past work has pointed to future self-continuity or the perceived connection between a person's current and future selves. Yet, most of this past work has been conducted on small-to-medium size convenience samples, and as such, little...

When you've spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of "innovation," you get pretty good at spotting the pattern.

Endangered eastern quolls released into wild in Tasmanian conservation project. An ambitious conservation effort to boost declining eastern quoll populations in Tasmania is underway, with 24 of the animals released onto a 5000 hectare property. Eastern quolls are marsupial carnivores about the size of a small domestic cat, with adult males measuring 53 to 66 cm (21 to 26 in) in total length, including...

As they politely remind us here, ca 2017, I'm sure we remember why. As I run into things that might help us all I will try to keep them up here.

REI's worker union is asking members to vote "withhold" on all Board candidates Unionized employees of REI, a US-based coop store that sells outdoor gear, are asking members to mark "withhold" on their ballots after a Seattle activist and a top Greenpeace leader were excluded from the ballot.The two were Tefere Gebre, chief program officer at the international environmental advocacy group Greenpeace USA, and...