The Fun Scale: Understanding Types of “Fun” | REI Co-op Journal:

Type 2 fun is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect. It usually begins with the best intentions, and then things get carried away. Riding your bicycle across the country. Doing an ultramarathon. Working out till you puke, and, usually, ice and alpine climbing. Also surely familiar to mothers, at least during childbirth and the dreaded teenage years.

Adventure = Clusterf**k + Nostalgia

A Drone’s View of the Great Pyramid of Giza:

Alexander Ladanivskyy recently photographed the Great Pyramid at Giza from an unusual vantage point: straight overhead with a drone. The final photo in the series is so close-up that you can see the graffiti on the stones at the tip of the pyramid. (via colossal)

How Loki built a different reality with retro hardware - The Verge:

A somewhat bittersweet effect of watching Loki has been thinking about the technologies — particularly gaming hardware — that we’ve lost to time.

Loki’s retro-tech world is the best 19A0 | Boing Boing:

This haunted place I love, that weird missing decade between the 1970s and 1980s with amber monochrome displays and pyramid-shaped computers and the mangled memories

Two-thirds of Southern Republicans want to secede - by Christopher Ingraham - The Why Axis:

A new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of a democracy watchdog group finds that 66 percent of Republicans living in the South say they’d support seceding from the United States to join a union with other Southern states.

Secession is actually gaining support among Southern Republicans: back in January and February, 50 percent said they’d support such a proposal.

It sure is a good thing there aren’t any troubling historic precedents for what happens when large numbers of Southern conservatives, motivated in large part by a sense of grievance and victimhood, want to break away from the Union.

‘We’ve had enough’: Law enforcement frustrated by continued speeding | MPR News:

toxic individualism, I suppose you could say, you know, where people are really focused on their own needs over the needs of others

Watch Yoko Ono’s incredible “Cut Piece” performance art from 1964:

In Cut Piece (1964), one of Yoko Ono's early performances, she sits alone on a stage with a stoic expression on her face. There is a pair of scissors lying in front of her.

The audience was informed that they could use the scissors to cut a small piece of clothing off of her outfit and keep it for themselves. — Read the rest

Editor’s note: Inclusion at MPR News | MPR News:

On July 26, 2021, MPR News had a staff of 67 full-time and regular part-time employees.  Of those 67 people, 15 identify as people of color and 52 identify as white.  Of those 67 people, 34 identify as female and 33 identify as male.

While there’s room for improvement, and they admit they haven’t looked at lgbtq+ representation yet, this is a good start at recognizing the need for diverse views and how they can bring that to the table.

People who contracted Covid may have “substantial” drop in intelligence, according to The Lancet | Boing Boing:

the deficits were most pronounced for paradigms that tapped cognitive functions such as reasoning, problem solving, spatial planning and target detection whilst sparing tests of simpler functions such as working-memory span as well as emotional processing.

• Great, more GOP voters.

Why it breaks your brain to take a compliment - The Oatmeal:

Boycotts Don’t Work, Do This Instead:

I disagree with the premise - Ask Papa Johns if a boycott can change company behavior… But the graphic does give good ideas on how to extend a boycott with wider behaviors… In particular, Atomic Mass (and by proxy Asmodee slash Fantasy Flight Games) mini games like Star Wars Legion or Marvel Crisis Protocol are really well worth the time.

Peppa Pig: Peppa’s Adventures: The Album Album Review | Pitchfork:

On My First Album, Peppa made a careful study of Brian Wilson’s sunny melodies and progressive pop structure. She hews closely to this formula throughout Peppa’s Adventures, particularly on the wistful “Perfect Day” and on “Recycling,” which evokes Fiona Apple in its percussive use of glass bottles and tin cans. Reaching further into pop’s past, she interpolates British and American folk music on the cheery “The School Bus Song” and the contemplative “Winter Days.”

How Cast Iron Pans Are Made:

For his video series for Eater, Daniel Geneen took a tour of the Lodge Cast Iron factory in South Pittsburg, Tennessee to see how cast iron skillets are made.

I can smell how this would… I miss being around metal work.

Modern Trailers for Classic Films:

In order to promote the classic films available on the streaming service, HBO Max has created a selection of modern-style movie trailers for them. The re-trailered flicks include Dog Day Afternoon, Boogie Nights, Alien, Casablanca, and The Exorcist.

Florida breaks record with more than 21,000 new COVID cases:

Florida reported 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to federal health data released Saturday, as its theme park resorts again started asking visitors to wear masks indoors.

The state has become the new national epicenter for the virus, accounting for around a fifth of all new cases in the U.S.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted mandatory mask mandates and vaccine requirements, and along with the state Legislature, has limited local officials’ ability to impose restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19. DeSantis on Friday barred school districts from requiring students to wear masks when classes resume next month.

The latest numbers were recorded on Friday and released on Saturday on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. The figures show how quickly the number of cases is rising in the Sunshine State: only a day earlier, Florida reported 17,093 new daily cases. The previous peak in Florida had been 19,334 cases reported on Jan. 7, before the availability of vaccinations became widespread.

The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are nearing last year’s peak, and one of the state’s largest health care systems, AdventHealth’s Central Florida Division, this week advised it would no longer be conducting nonemergency surgeries in order to free up resources for COVID-19 patients.

Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld on Saturday became the latest theme park resorts in Florida to again ask visitors to wear masks indoors, with Universal also ordering its employees to wear face coverings to protect against COVID-19, which has been surging across the state.

All workers at Universal’s Florida park on Saturday started being required to wear masks while indoors as the employees returned to practicing social distancing. The home to Harry Potter and Despicable Me rides also asked visitors to follow federal and local health guidelines by voluntarily wearing face coverings indoors.

“The health and safety of our guests and team members is always our top priority,” Universal said in a statement.

Health officials on Friday announced that coronavirus cases in Florida had jumped 50 percent over the past week with COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state nearing last year’s peak.

SeaWorld on Saturday posted on its website that it was recommending that visitors follow recently updated federal recommendations and wear face coverings while indoors.

The change in policy this week at the theme park resorts came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.

Crosstown rival Walt Disney World started requiring employees and guests older than 2 to wear masks on Friday, but it also went a step further. The Walt Disney Company said in a statement that it will be requiring all salaried and non-union hourly employees in the U.S. who work on-site to be fully vaccinated.

Disney employees who aren’t already vaccinated will have 60 days to do so and those still working from home will need to show proof of vaccination before returning. Disney said it was discussing the vaccine requirements with the union, and added that all new hires will be required to be fully vaccinated before starting work at the company.

A research vessel found SpongeBob lookalikes a mile under the ocean’s surface | MPR News:

Not quite a pineapple under the sea…

"These are literally animals that the public might not have ever even seen before. They live at almost a 2,000-meter depth," he notes.

Dorset photographer shoots Star Wars Lego in cinematic style - BBC News:

Not content with merely building his Star Wars Lego kits, photographer Daniel Sands has found another use for his collection. The 34-year-old Dorset photographer tested his creativity during lockdown by putting his models into the action of the movie universe.

Tencent Is World’s Worst Stock Bet With $170 Billion Wipeout:

This worries me a little because Tencent owns a slice of nearly every video game company that’s not part of EA or Microsoft now.

China's unprecedented crackdown on its technology industry has turned Tencent Holdings from a market darling into the world's biggest stock loser this month. From a report: The Chinese Internet giant had tumbled 23% in July as of Wednesday, set for its worst month ever after erasing about $170 billion of market value. That marks the fastest evaporation of shareholder wealth worldwide during this period, Bloomberg data shows. Nine of the top 10 losers in shareholder value this month are Chinese companies, including Meituan and Alibaba Group Holding. Tencent's shares rebounded by 7.1% on Thursday morning, tracking broader gains in Chinese stocks after Beijing intensified efforts to alleviate concerns about its crackdown on the private education industry. The Shenzhen-based firm is one of the key casualties of an official campaign that targets some of the nation's tech behemoths considered posing a potential threat to China's data security and financial stability. The selloff in its shares intensified earlier this week after Beijing broadened the regulatory clampdown to include other once high-flying industries such as private education.

Inside the Insurrection on Congress:

Most of the videos we analyzed were filmed by the rioters. By carefully listening to the unfiltered chatter within the crowd, we found a clear feedback loop between President Trump and his supporters.

As Mr. Trump spoke near the White House, supporters who had already gathered at the Capitol building hoping to disrupt the certification responded. Hearing his message to “walk down to the Capitol,” they interpreted it as the president sending reinforcements. “There’s about a million people on their way now,” we heard a man in the crowd say, as Mr. Trump’s speech played from a loudspeaker.

When We Have Come to This Place: The Aliens Series as Cosmic Horror | Tor.com:

All the same, I’m drawn to certain types of horror in both writing and reading. With my novels Beneath the Rising and its sequel A Broken Darkness (as well as a couple dozen short stories), I told everyone I was simply writing fantasy with monsters and gods; ‘dark fantasy,’ probably. “Nope,” people told me again and again. “These are horror.” As I began to read more about it, I realized that swathes of my writing might not only be horror, but fall into a specific sub-genre of horror: cosmic horror.

8 SFF Books That Reimagine Literary Classics | Tor.com:

One of the most fun turns in culture has been watching writers from a variety of backgrounds take established Western classics and treat them like glorious playgrounds. I personally like many of the books that are considered classics, or part of “the canon”—especially when I was still a student, I enjoyed the sense of testing myself against the books my teachers assigned, and I found that in top-down structure rewarding. I think an agreed-upon canon is an absolute, non-negotiable foundation for a healthy culture. But: the most vital phrase there is “agreed-upon.” Since…well, forever, really, the canon was populated by as many dead white men as U.S. currency, ignoring or actively quashing voices that didn’t agree with a specific narrative about Western civilization.

Cryptocurrency Explained:

imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin

The Advantages of Political Buffoonery:

1) It leads opponents to underestimate the ability and intelligence of the buffoon.

2. It provides deniability — “it was only a joke.”

3. It appeals to core supporters (many Africans loved Amin’s teasing of the former colonial masters).

4. It serves as a distraction from the more serious, perhaps frightening or incompetent, actions of the leader, what we now call the “dead cat” tactic.

5. It leads to ambiguity (was it a joke or not?), producing confusion and uncertainty about how to respond.

Behind all this is clearly what Freud recognized as the aggressive nature of joking. I suggest that buffoonery is, at root, a quintessentially masculine characteristic.

Sound familiar?

Animated Folding Screen of Painted Sekigahara Landscapes:

Riffing on a byōbu folding screen of the Battle of Sekigahara painted in the 1700s, Yusuke Shigeta made a pixel animated version for a recent exhibition. The video above is a tantalizingly short preview of the work — I could have watched these tiny pixel vignettes all day.

The Rules of Dozens of Sports Explained in Short Videos:

On his YouTube channel, Ninh Ly has created almost 100 short videos that clearly and simply explain the rules of all kinds of different sports. Basketball? Explained. Cricket? Explained. (I feel like I finally understand cricket!) Snooker? Explained. Jai Alai? Explained. Curling? Explained. Quidditch?! Explained! The rules of some sports are more complex than others and the explanations move along at a pretty good clip, so decreasing the playback speed (click on the gear at the bottom of the video player) is advised.