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The amount and quality of this scholarship can be celebrated — or for conservative critics, decried — but the question here is, does it possess a distinct identity? And what is its impact? An identity to this academic Marxism is difficult to outline since little links the Marxist literary critic and the Marxist sociologist, except left-wing sympathies and occasional shared vocabulary. from American Marxism...

s32 unix clock. A cool visualization of the original signed 32-bit integer Unix time moving toward the 2038 ending of the epoch that began in 1970. More description in David Buchanan's announcement blog post about it (from 2023, but what is time?).

Patti LeConte and her husband were driving home from Ocean City on New Year's morning when they saw traffic slowing near Hebron in Wicomico County. As they got closer, the Ellicott City couple realized the reason why: A 6-foot-tall bird was loping down Route 50.

The prevalence of documentaries about musicians is a curse, because most of these films do a terrible job of showcasing music. One rare and moving exception is the work of the director Robert Mugge, whose film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise -- about the musician and bandleader whose multimedia and pan-cultural activities made him one of the prime artists of Afrofuturism -- is one...

Via her youtube shorts, Shawna The Mom has been providing catharsis and joy throughout the holidays to everyone who is plagued with narcisstic family members. Watch Shawna and her excellent husband John stand up to John's mother Barb and his sister Jen. Watch Jen get her own redemption arc!It begins: Barb and Jen try to manipulate Shawna, the tired mom of a toddler and...

"The study, led by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of California, Davis, is the first to chronicle widespread carnivorous behavior among squirrels." More about this long-term squirrel study.

Giant Pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao play in the snow. The National Zoo in Washington, DC, has a new pair of pandas after returning three pandas at the end of 2023 to China. Bao Li and Qing Bao will be visible to the public beginning January 24, 2025.

The Interim Board of The MetaFilter Community Foundation has moved ahead with creating a moderation oversight committee. Here's more information and how to get involved. If this is not your jam, no worries, there will be additional opportunities to get involved and support MetaFilter. That's it, that's the cross-post. But since this is the blue, some additional links below:Everything in moderation: A case study...

Over the years, Donald E. Knuth has produced a slew of bestsellers on topics that might seem to have only limited appeal, most notably the arts of computer programming and mathematical typography. His latest book takes on a subject so challenging it has to hide behind a coy title: Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About. What is this subject that dare not speak...

No, in the Marvel Universe, Hitler did not die by suicide. He died by being burned alive by the original Human Torch. Though they did Save Hitler's Brain, as Maxwell Yezpitelok's article also explains. (Title taken from Maxwell's skeet about it).

The idea of men who need new stories but refuse to read them is also exaggerated and hyperbolic. It has become its own kind of story. It's a legend, one that's been repeated for years, haunted by zombie statistics and dubious facts. Its continued flourishing says a lot about what our culture worries about and all the things we hope will heal us. from...

Woman allegedly found with 94 reptiles in wildlife trafficking crackdown. Operation Ares leads to the arrest of a 26-year-old woman from Ashfield, Sydney who allegedly tried to export 94 live native reptiles to Hong Kong over a period of four weeks.Authorities allegedly intercepted international mail packages containing 19 blue-tongue lizards bound for China. The lizards were found stuffed in boxes with footwear, travel coffee...

Great snakes! Blow me down! I'm about a week late, but there's still time to make a game for Gaming Like It's 1929, the public domain adaptation game jam! (Techdirt articles one and two, previously (with links to all previous jams and their submissions and winners))Obligatory Public Domain Day articles: Duke (previously), Copyright Lately. Turns out you CAN use that non-pipe, but possibly only...

Keith Jarrett on piano, Gary Peacock on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums have been one of the longest running jazz groups ever. ... Jarrett's aim was to reconnect with the "tribal language" of jazz and to investigate the "non-possessive" side of music making. Apart from a couple of studio visits, the trio has mostly worked live, and significantly, they don't use arrangements. Arrangements...

Digital technology is changing the very face of archival materials, as there emerges a new generation of authors who've never known what it's like to pound out a book on a typewriter or scribble one out longhand.

The Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association (PCPSPA) is currently on an unfair labor practices strike at Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR), the largest ski resort in the US. It has resulted in significant disruption. People are upset, the lines are long, terrain is limited, and Park City's owner, Vail Resorts, is getting a beating in the markets.It's a mess. But the impact of...

In the 1930s, several Japanese companies produced films made on paper ("kami firumu") instead of celluloid. The Japanese Paper Film Project preserves the surviving movies and promotes scholarship about these films. [via]

"In Robert Eggers's new film "Nosferatu" (2024), Nosferatu is the dark Count Orlok, whom the socially alienated young Ellen summons as spiritual company, and the force her older, betrothed self must confront, navigating both attraction and repulsion."Just saw Nosferatu and immediately went looking for reviews and commentary. This is interesting, but FYI spoilers abound.

The Network Of Time is a kind of six degrees of separation (or of Kevin Bacon, if you like) for a growing database of portrait photographs.Original Oracle of Kevin Bacon post from 2001!