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Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, died this morning, just days after the Koroneihana celebrations marking his 18th year as king. He was 69 years old.The Kiingitanga itself is not uncontroversial, and not all iwi recognize Te Kiingi as their king. The previous Maaori monarch, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, Kiingi Tuheitia's mother, was beloved by Maaori and Paahehaa alike, and oversaw the settlement...

The new documentary Riefenstahl (YT trailer) argues that famed German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl carefully crafted a narrative absolving herself of responsibility for becoming Hitler's favored cinematic propagandist. (Deadline) Not only was Riefenstahl, despite her insistence otherwise, an enthusiastic Nazi (to the end of her days), she may well have have contributed to a 1939 massacre of Polish Jews. (Guardian)Yes, I know: we do not...

Disturbing object unearthed in California's Mojave Desert mystifies experts Slowly, they began to unearth a corroded metal box resembling a small casket. When they flipped it open, they saw two crimson runes emblazoned on the side that resembled one of the Nazi Party's most infamous symbols: two stark S's that look like a pair of lightning bolts. (SLSFGate)

Mathematical marbling : Marbling refers to painting techniques for creating a stone-like appearance or intricate flowing designs. This page is about generating marbling designs mathematically. [via]

Kites have a long history in Brazil and are particularly popular in Rio's favelas, the poor neighborhoods often clinging to the mountains overlooking and surrounding the city, where a cottage industry uses bamboo and tissue paper to produce kites. For many, kites evoke childhood and light-hearted diversion. And some do fly kites simply to feel the wind's tug upon a harmless cotton string. But...

Warning as bold cassowaries pester north Queensland campers for food. Wildlife rangers are urging visitors not to feed cassowaries after filming video of a pair of the big and potentially dangerous birds getting too close for comfort.

Toxic blue green algae have strangled Lough Neagh here in the North of Ireland - it's our largest body of water and a primary source of drinking water. Stephen Reid, who usually vlogs about outdoor gear, has put together an in-depth YouTube video documenting the spread of the algae, its causes, and the history to how it has gotten so bad.

https://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/ Reported by Gizmodo: For more than 70 years, RadioShack was an electronics hobbyist's paradise. It went bankrupt multiple times in the past decade and now it's been sold for parts. Its X account famously shills crypto with eye-catching NSFW posts. But the glory days of RadioShack live on thanks to the extensive archiving efforts of RadioShack Catalogs—a website that's meticulously digitizing seven decades...

Country singer Patrick Haggerty was a stranger to me—yet attending his memorial meant everything. Patrick Haggerty is my favorite kind of icon. He was legendary to some, and unknown to most. His fame came by releasing the first openly gay country record in 1973 titled Lavender Country. The record was released, not through a major or even an independent label, but rather through Seattle's...

It's Time to Talk About the .08 Drunk Driving Limit in the US (slPasteMagazine)Canada also has a nationwide limit of .08 as well as the UK. (We should rethink it here in Canada, too.) BAC levels in Western Europe If any other MeFite outside of these areas have insight to their BAC limits, holla!

Harris, Walz to participate in first joint interview since launching campaign (WaPo), point their campaign bus to rural Georgia (NYT), launch Project 2024 ad blitz (The Hill, including this ad).A presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 10 on ABC, but negotiations about muting microphones are ongoing. Previously in the Kamala Harris campaign: "The whole world is watching."

The Romans, and later Italians, loved and used coriander and its leaves... until they didn't. What happened?

"...Noam Chomsky himself did not come to left-libertarian or anarchist thinking as a result of his disillusionment with liberal thought. He quite literally started there."This piece appeared recently on Arts & Letters Daily, and it caught my attention because I recently read both Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London for the first time.

Precision wheelbarrowing from the Hassocks Red Barrows (video, 2 min). And a three-part video from 2009, one (8 min), two (5 min) and three (7 min). Short article about one of the Red Barrows groups in the Suffolk News. Interview (5 minutes) on Radio Devon. The retirement of the Suffolk group.Previously in a comment by fearfulsymmetry.

Wiggly Paint is an in-browser itch.io program built with Decker (previously) with a sort of Kid Pix vibe (also previously) that lets you paint simple images and save them as wiggly gifs. It was created as part of the Deck Month Jam in December 2023. Here are some Pokemon drawings done with it, but personally all I've done is made odd, abstract shapes, which...

Fifty years after the original walk, watching Petit gesticulate in an air-conditioned room with One World Trade Center behind him, it was hard not to feel that if the original event had been emblematic of the raw, unsupervised downtown New York of the seventies, this event perfectly encapsulated the downtown New York of today: every facet of life contained within a billion-dollar real estate...

"It's very rare that you can gender fossils": How scientists discovered a 425-million-year-old penis. When a UK palaeontologist examined rocks collected from rural west England in the 1990s, he found something unexpected: a tiny fossil with a perfectly preserved penis.

That person was in there. I kept digging in the dirt, trying to find him, trying to get my real father out from under the wreck he'd made of himself, and I never did. [cw: death, emotional abuse, suicide]

In a thread on BlueSky, political science professor Dave Karpf dissects Nate Silver's new doorstop of a book on gambling and risk, and finds several interesting - and disturbing - things within.Probably the biggest (and where the thread title comes from) is the revelation that Silver was betting 7 figures on the NBA at the same time that 538 under his leadership was undergoing...

Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the LA Zoo This Year. The successful breeding season offers more hope for the endangered species, which has come back from the brink of extinction due to captive breeding efforts. "This is a historic moment for the California Condor Recovery Program and the Los Angeles Zoo's animal care team," Rose Legato, curator of birds at the LA...

Finding a therapist who takes your insurance can be nearly impossible. NPR reports on a ProPublica investigation into why therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists are leaving insurance networks and only accepting cash for treatment.You may not be surprised to learn that the primary cause is that insurance companies are actively trying to avoid paying for mental health treatment. As insurance networks add more ghost therapists...

Operation Desperado: The long con of Vivek Ramaswamy A local muckraker who covers the Ohio state legislature plays a long con on the former presidential candidate.

'The Simpsons': 34 Times the Fox Comedy Successfully Predicted the Future or, 50 Predictions From 'The Simpsons' That Came True or, The Simpsons 17 Predictions for 2024 Is Insane!. However, don't forget The Simpsons conspiracy theories that AREN'T TRUE including False 'Simpsons' prediction resurfaces after Trump shooting