As far back as the C16th the herring has been a comic fish.

jacquilynne — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:06:26 GMT

The Herripedia. Never before have I been sent a link and so quickly come to the conclusion that I needed to share it with MetaFilter. This is like an old-school web passion project about herring, but it is so, so, so much more than that. My point of entry was the entirely hilarious yet fascinating entry on Thomas Aquinas.

Yes, this entire post is editorializing, but I don't care, because you need to understand how much joy the mere existence of this site is bringing me right now.

World's biggest whale graveyard found in Indian Ocean off Australia

chariot pulled by cassowaries — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:40:28 GMT

World's biggest whale graveyard found in Indian Ocean off Australia. Hundreds of whale fossils, including those from extinct species new to science, range in age from recent to 5 million years old and are also home to undescribed deep-sea creatures. Five whales actively decomposing and 476 cetacean fossils, including a new extinct species dating back 5 million years, were documented.

Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy

chavenet — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:32:58 GMT

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse [The Onion]

Triple webcomic bonus

Lorc — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:53:18 GMT

Sarah Anderson of Sarah's Scribbles fame has TWO completed webcomics for you to read. Fangs is a light comedy about a vampire dating a werewolf. Cryptid club is a little sillier and about exactly what it sounds like. Neither is overlong.

Decades-old trees in Darwin finally flower for the first, and only, time

chariot pulled by cassowaries — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:13:29 GMT

Decades-old trees in Darwin finally flower for the first, and only, time. About 20 Gebang palms have flowered in Darwin in a rare spectacle, reaffirming the local council's plans to foster a new generation of the trees. Like other palms of the genus Corypha, this species flowers once at the end of its lifetime (monocarpy), producing a massive inflorescence up to 5 metres [16 feet] tall containing up to one million flowers.

Rendering Arabic script

Lycaste — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:36:29 GMT

"Once upon a time, a frontend ticket landed on my queue which was not properly mine, but the only other Arabic reader on the team was on leave. It went roughly as follows; a block of mixed-content Arabic prose on the customer-facing dashboard was rendering with a ragged left edge ... I wrote a reply explaining, more or less honestly, that the problem was not a bug in our stylesheet but the state of Arabic typography on the web. The reply took and the closure of the ticket took half an hour or so. The reasons behind it took five hundred years to pile up, and they involve a twice-mutilated vizier, a Qurʾān that vanished for four centuries, a Beirut newspaperman with a deadline, and an Egyptian physician who taught himself font engineering for fun (or that what I imagine about him).

If these trends continue…

Going To Maine — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:38:54 GMT

DataType is a font for your webpage that lets you embed small charts in-line with text using ligatures.

Leftward Progressives v. No Apologies Right

subdee — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:23:25 GMT

Pew Research Center's new political typology [sorts] the public into nine distinct groups based on their political and cultural values, not their party.

The Pew study, conducted every five-or-so years since 1987, uses polling and analysis to reimagine how Americans would cluster around ideas if they were not grouped into two political parties. Pew then created nine ideological categories in an attempt to more clearly define where people actually stand.

"It's an effort to sort the public not just in the Democratic and Republican lanes that we're all so used to," said Jocelyn Kiley, director of research on U.S. politics at the Pew Research Center. Kiley said a core motivating question is "what if people didn't automatically have political parties and you just identified groups based on their political values."

The 9 groups identified are (from left to right, top to bottom of the chart):

Order and Opportunity Left (18%)
Loyal Liberals (11%)
Leftward Progressives (7%)
Pragmatic and Polite Right (11%)
Tuned Out Middle (9%)
Left-Out Left (12%)
No Apologies Right (9%)
Faith First Conservatives (12%)
Unconventional Right (12%)

You can take a cute quiz here that will sort you into one of these 9 groups based on your values.

Diagnosis drives treatment. Treatment is what matters.

sciatrix — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:27:45 GMT

I know this distinction in my body, because my label has changed underneath me. In 2016 I was diagnosed with Bipolar I with psychosis. Three years later, the diagnosis was revised to schizoaffective disorder, bipolar subtype. Here is the thing nobody tells you about that moment: on the day the label changed, I did not change. People talk about the DSM like it's scripture, a taxonomy of fixed disease entities handed down from somewhere. It isn't, and the confession is printed on the cover.

It's not just nuts for us; it's nuts for everyone

chavenet — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:31:50 GMT

Neither Paglen nor Herndon are AI "skeptics"—they both use the various machine-learning technologies discursively bundled up as "AI" throughout their practices—but neither are they full-blown enthusiasts. So how is it changing their sense of what art is, and how we produce it? In the conversation that follows, I posed that question to them.

' The only tab he ever managed to pick up was at the bar.'

Arctan — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:42:07 GMT

Service members and vets, what's your opinion of Pete Hegseth? This Reddit thread seeking opinion of our Secretary of Defense is very illuminating and bears reading. The opinions are mostly negative, with some saying he should be in military prison for releasing top secret info, and others saying problematic tattoos kept him from serving on the honor guard during President Biden's inauguration.

Classic comments: "He was attached to my unit for 3 months. No one liked him, and he absolutely fucking sucked at his job. Pure fucking talentless psycopath that one."
"the idea that this moron puts such an emphasis on manliness and then installs a makeup station in the pentagon is fucking embarrassing.
The whole administration is run by a guy that never leaves his home without a full face of makeup and a guy that wears eyeliner.
By their fan base' standards, they are practically drag queens."
"I'm so glad I wasn't in a unit with him, then. I can ignore a lot of shit, everyone has different beliefs and upbringing, that's fine. I can not stand someone who is ineffective at their job, though. For that, there's no excuse.
ETA: As for my opinion of him, he can get the Hitler treatment from 'Little Nicky' and I'd still say it wasn't enough."

To the left, to the left

stillmoving — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:29:10 GMT

People tend to rotate counterclockwise. Why? A variety of studies show that adults and children will automatically drift towards the left whilst walking. But why? Are there implications for traffic, civil engineering, or astrophysics? (Gift article NYTimes)

Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

Bella Donna — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:05:17 GMT

Hyper-commercialism is nothing new, in music or anywhere else. (See, for instance, the band KISS' officially licensed Kiss Kasket). People who bemoan our era of "late capitalism" rarely realize that phrase is 100 years old. The only thing that's unprecedented about these craven cash-ins is how well they seem to be working. Selling out no longer carries a stigma—if anything, fans are excited for tie-ins between their favorite bands and their favorite brands, no matter how shameless. Experimental History's Adam Mastroianni offers thoughts on selling out.

The Chromatica Oreos reportedly flew off the shelves, earning a thumbs-up even from the Washington Post's food critic. Some people complained about the texture and the color, or how it was simply a re-release of the much-hated "golden" Oreo, but they did not complain that it is cringe, perhaps even depraved, for a musician to collaborate with an international food conglomerate to stick her name on a million mass-produced sandwich cookies. And if that doesn't send Kurt Cobain spinning in his grave, wait until he finds out that Gen Z thinks Nirvana is a clothing brand.

My soundtrack for pride this year

Kitteh — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:22:39 GMT

Tony & the Kiki making me feel fabulous and making me feel good

Holy XTC was the track that got me

Oh boy, they do super fun covers too:

Journey - Separate Ways

Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Chaka Khan - I Feel For You

AC/DC - Back in Black

Happy Foot Sad Foot

martin q blank — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:40:28 GMT

Happy Foot Sad Foot began as a sign for a podiatry clinic in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, but became a landmark and legend as locals (half seriously, half joking) endowed it with prophetic powers-- like how the musician Beck and his friends regularly consulted it when deciding whether to go out carousing. The sign's folklore eventually found its way into three novels as well as a music video, a documentary film, and an animated TV show. MeFi's dreamyshade tells the story of the sign, the people and the businesses of the neighborhood in a Wikipedia article that she wrote with affection for the city where she grew up. [via mefi projects]

dreamyshade has extended the story of Happy Foot Sad Foot into a fascinating rundown of anthropomorphism in art, time-based media and more, but rather than just repeat it here, hop over to her comment on the project!

Welcome to the Heir's Game

Pallas Athena — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:16:18 GMT

Heir's Game is a completed webcomic by brilliant Finnish author/artist suspu featuring swordplay, LGBTQ romance, Baroque fashion, courtly politics and a brewing revolution.

If historical swashbuckling isn't your thing, you may enjoy suspu's earlier webcomic, ShootAround, a tale of a high school girls' basketball team trying to survive the apocalypse. It's being made into a movie!

suspu's current project is The Tattletale Fool, a comical tale of an utterly incompetent elf sent to spy on a human kingdom.

(I've avoided using suspu's pronouns because I can't find them listed anywhere & don't want to get them wrong)

Anyway... beautiful epic queer comics!! Happy Pride everyone.

Doctor Who is cancelled again, probably

Ursula Hitler — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:17:05 GMT

The BBC has announced that it's putting its classic sci-fi series Doctor Who in competitive tender, and longtime show-runner Russell T. Davies (whose return to the struggling series was announced with much fanfare back in 2021) has announced his own departure and the show's production company, Bad Wolf, has also left the show.

There had been a Christmas special planned for this year which would have presumably resolved the recent cliffhanger that saw the Doctor somehow regenerate(?) into his former companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), but all plans for that special have now been scrapped. At this point the only Doctor Who still in production is an animated series for CBeebies.

The show was already struggling and this news leaves its future in limbo. Many fans are assuming this is effectively a cancellation. The long-running, beloved series may well be finished until somebody inevitably revives it in 10 or 15 years. But (taps nose)... Who knows, eh? Davies, ever the franchise's hypeman, insists this is not the end. In his Instagram post, he said he was "as excited as anyone to see what comes next! (...) Will they keep the theme tune? Will they lose the blue box? Will they bring back the Drahvin?! It's all up for grabs, which is so Doctor Who, exciting and unpredictable and new! Here comes the future."

Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles

brundlefly — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:29:30 GMT

"From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they've become a greater and more integrated part of systems."

Giving fascists power in the name of protecting children

JHarris — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:45:17 GMT

These age verification laws aren't about keeping kids off social media, they're about surveillance, control, and locking LGBT people out of public discourse. It's a fascist power play. Centering Children on Social Media as the argument for mandating IDs to use computers is a smokescreen, so that we're spending time arguing about how to best solve this very complicated problem, instead of talking about all the ways that this legislation will be used to facilitate the abuse of children and marginalized people.

From later in the thread:

"[...]Anyone who sees a conversation about how age verification laws are going to cause widespread significant harm to lots of different groups of people and decides instead to talk about how social media is harmful to children is doing the work of disinformation spreading propagandists.

They might not *be* disinformation spreading propagandists, they might have just been duped by disinformation spreading propagandists, but either way they are doing the *work* of disinformation spreading propagandists.

This is a propaganda and PR technique that is in common use today.

This is how it works:

Person 1 makes a point that is harmful to the narrative the PR firm has been paid to protect.

One or more accounts on the payroll of that PR firm, who usually just posts innocuous stuff but who *always* has an opinion on the topic of the day, chimes in with an indirectly related smokescreen argument, usually accompanied by an accusation or an emotional appeal.

Person 1 then gets bogged down with that argument, tacitly approving that the two topics are in fact one topic.

Lots of people then see the argument, and come to associate the smokescreen with the real issue. Some of them will be swayed specifically by the emotionally appeal ("think of the children") and some of them will genuinely believe in the smokescreen issue ("social media is bad for children") and accept that the smokescreen is important enough to justify accepting whatever the original post was arguing against.

There are lots of these PR accounts floating around out there. They're sockpuppets. They look like real people, sometimes they *are* real people, but they're also sockpuppets.

The end result of that is a bunch of people popping in to conversations about Age Verification laws to talk about separate and legitimately important issues as if those issues and Age Verification laws are the same thing.

And some of those people might be paid PR Sockpuppets, but some of them are definitely real people who really care about the harm social media might have on children.

And so we spend so much time talking about the nuance and potential solutions to this much more complicated problem that the real issue (these proposed Age Verification Laws are actually tools of fascist surveillance and control which will be used to suppress dissent and harm marginalized communities) gets lost."

also (responding to someone):

"'I'd rather give my 13 year old child a bottle of whiskey than access to Roblox' is a hell of a take, y'all.

I'm not here to argue that Instagram or Roblox are good for kids (the opposite!) but

1) these arguments are still just providing cover to normalize laws that mandate sending government IDs to 3rd parties (like Peter Thiel) in order to use a computer or phone, which we have decided to allow politicians to call "age verification"

2) What the fuck? That's a hell of hot take.

But! It's *exactly* the kind of hot take you'd get from a PR firm sock-puppet or propagandist who is trying to distract from the issue at hand.

It provokes such a clear and immediate negative emotional response that it completely re-frames the conversation away from the very real threat of increased and increasingly inescapable mass surveillance and towards what is more harmful for kids!"

Andrew Roach, a.k.a. ajroach42 (Mastodon, blog, website, newsletter) is an interesting figure, who among other things is responsible for New Ellijay TV, a real community television station in the mountains of north Georgia (US) with a strange and eclectic array of programming, much of it produced locally.

"The 2026 World Cup, then, represents the apotheosis of sportwashing"

migurski — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:23:54 GMT

It's almost World Cup time! Defector's Patrick Redford is here to help you understanding the wonderful world of sportwashing present and historical: "You can find analogs in the 1934 World Cup hosted by Benito Mussolini's Italy, Francisco Franco's 1964 European Nations' Cup, and the 1978 World Cup hosted by Argentina's military junta. Trying to answer the question of when sportswashing began or which particular events qualify assumes a purity tainted from the outside, which is not quite right. ... The largely Gulf-centric sportswashing that has brought so much recent attention to the practice is distinguished by its speed and magnitude." (defector.com, archive)

Popular Posts at MetaFilter