At the end of the nineties, technology and the Internet were a playground for young engineers and 'hackers'. Some of them regularly gathered in the w00w00 IRC chatroom on the EFnet network. This tech-think-tank had many notable members, including WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and Shawn Fanning, who logged on with the nickname Napster. In 1998, 17-year-old Fanning shared an idea with the group. 'Napster' wanted to create a network of computers that could share files with each other. More specifically, a central music database that everyone in the world could access. This idea never left the mind of the young developer. Fanning stopped going to school and flanked by his friend Sean Parker, devoted the following months to making his vision a reality. That moment came on June 1, 1999, when the first public release of Napster was released online. Soon after, the software went viral.

Napster Sparked a File-Sharing Revolution 25 Years Ago [TorrentFreak]

Cordcutting.com: The State of Content Piracy in 2024

As streaming services raise prices and crack down on password sharing, one in three Americans say they've pirated TV or movies in the past year.

Billboard: Spotify's Estimated $150M Songwriter Royalty Cuts: Music Industry Reactions Wired: Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?

The app's fan base trends young, and it's popular among high schoolers. In one classroom of sophomores that WIRED surveyed at a Chicago high school, 80 percent used it to stream music. When asked why they liked it, they noted it's free, doesn't interrupt the music to play ads as Spotify's free tier does, and has a broad catalog. The app offers an alternative to the subscription-dominated world of streaming entertainment, one especially appealing to people too young for full-time jobs. Yet while Musi has many trappings of a startup success story, a closer look raises questions about its unusual business model, which the company says involves sourcing music from Google's YouTube. Fans on social media have often asked questions like: "Is Musi legal?" and "What is the catch?" And the legality of Musi is now being questioned by record labels and music industry groups, WIRED has learned, over whether it has the rights to distribute and monetize the music users stream on its platform. Musi did not respond to requests for comment.

Major League Baseball has incorporated the statistics of former Negro Leagues players into its historical records on its website, meaning legendary leaders in some categories like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb have now been replaced in the record books by players who were not allowed to play on the same fields as them during segregation. Josh Gibson, one of the greatest sluggers in the history of the Negro Leagues, is now listed as MLB's new all-time career leader in batting average at .372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb at .367. The MLB website shows Gibson also overtaking Babe Ruth in career slugging percentage.

Top leaderboard changes as Negro Leagues join Major League record [MLB] MLB integrates Negro League statistics into all-time record book with Josh Gibson now career batting average leader [CNN] Josh Gibson becomes MLB career and season batting leader as Negro Leagues statistics incorporated [AP] The MLB's long-overdue decision to add Negro Leagues' stats, briefly explained [Vox] MLB incorporates Negro Leagues statistics, shakes up record books [ESPN] MLB's integration of Negro League stats invites us to explore baseball as never before [The Athletic] MLB Player Comps for Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and More Negro League Legends [Bleacher Report] Seamheads Negro League stats Retro Sheets Negro Leagues site So many previouslies...

Many authors have written stories or novels inspired by RPG campaigns. There is debate about whether or not tabletop RPGs should be used as writing tools. Plenty of folks give the idea a thumbs-down, but save some room in your heart for the LitRPG. B&N has you covered with, of course, a list of novels that started life as RPGs.

P1: The Rule of Law P2: The Dark Dimension P3: The Chaos-Born Tiara P4: The Paper Victory

This is the story of how a low-budget Australian film – The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – changed the course of history, loudly and proudly bringing a celebration of gay culture to the world that continues to resonate 20 years on. Narrated by Terence Stamp, Between a Frock and a Hard Place [57m] is also a social history of gay culture in Australia, drawing on footage from the famous movie as well as Sydney in the 80s.

A time when the AIDS epidemic had taken hold, this time provided inspiration to director Stephan Elliott, who wanted to tell a story about the world of gay people, celebrating in the face of sadness and fear with flamboyant defiance. Includes interviews with the film's key players – director Stephan Elliott, actors Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving, and the creative team, as well as drag artists and members of the gay community.

Once extinct in central Australia, this little kangaroo-looking marsupial is now thriving in a remote desert safe haven. The number of brush-tailed bettongs and burrowing bettongs surveyed at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary in central Australia has nearly doubled since last year.

"Me and monotropism : a unified theory of autism," suggests that attentional differences explain not only the diagnostic criteria for autism, but better yet, they explain the internal phenomenology: inertia, sensory and social overload and insensitivity, stimming, and particularly hyperfocus and intense interest.

Test yourself here.

This gown, from one of Kahlo's long hospital stays, is stained with both paint and [content note:] blood. It is a garment that portrays a very different image than the technicolor Tehuantepec dresses that were the artist's signature style in public. [getty.edu]

Frida & Trotsky ascend (2002), TikTok (Sotheby's), Museo Frida Kahlo previously: a ribbon around a bomb, LINEAGE BEGINS WITH THE AZTECS "La Catrina has been iterated over time," [San Francisco's Mexican Museum curator David de la Torre] said. "It's not just [José Guadalupe] Posada and his work in 1910. There are layers of history." ...an amazing time in history, features "La Catrina in [Diego Rivera']s iconic mural, Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central {Bronx Museum, via Google Arts & Culture} (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central), where she links arms with a likeness of her creator, José Guadalupe Posada, opposite Rivera himself as a child and Frida Kahlo, among many others...", Kahlo was a Marxist and member of the Mexican Communist Party - I suspect she'd find "brand builder" a repugnant label, eyebrows that would make Frida Kahlo jealous, "send me " might return Yasumasa Morimura's An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Collar of Thorns) "i think we broke it", Dalí/nsfw (links to an exhibit that may mirror the above; link's broken), beyond 5 women artists, expressions in the 1930s photos- I can't help but think of what was about to happen to the world, "They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." (link out), [Tina] Modotti had an affair with Diego Rivera and later introduced him to Frida Kahlo in 1927, - the same year she joined the Partido Comunista. The following year Rivera painted The Arsenal where he portrayed the love, the activist known as Frida Kahlo, painting is not only a work of art, it is also an historical document, 300 dresses -- compete with paint stains and lingering cigarette smells, that earned her a photo shoot with Vogue magazine in 1937, La Llorona her tribute to Frida Kahlo, self-reflecting, Could you maybe add a "losangeles" tag?, the portable shrine concept (with LED candles!), Not Dali But An Incredible Simulation, together they have developed (and continue to perform) the long-running Difficult Women, a cabaret theater show, Leonora Carrington "the last surrealist", dollhouse, take back halloween, Somehow, this post won't feel complete without A Room Of One's Own, this is not your grandmother's crafting web site, Maria de los Remedios Varo Uranga: Her paintings combine the surrealist love of the mystical and unconscious with a delicate sense of the mechanical, la real Frida, "I have had two accidents in my life - the streetcar crash and Diego Rivera", Blake Leyh Sound designer for such films as The Abyss; Frida; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Y Tu Mama Tambien, and many others has a music blog, Pain and suffering are common themes in her work keyword in html: At least punk's not dead, right?

Intelligence analysis is a notoriously difficult craft. Practitioners have to make predictions and assessments with limited information, under huge time pressure, on issues where the stakes involve millions of lives and the fates of nations. If this small bureau tucked in the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters has figured out some tricks for doing it better, those insights may not just matter for intelligence, but for any job that requires making hard decisions under uncertainty. from The obscure federal intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right [Vox]

Watch how this twelve year old wins the $50,000 2024 US National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling, among many other insanely difficult words, 'aposiopesis'. When they interview his father he says, 'I have no words' but then, instead of an ellipsis or an em-dash, produces a veritable flood of them.

"Machinery will tend to lose its sensational glamour and appear in its true subsidiary order in human life as use and continual poetical allusion subdue its novelty. For, contrary to general prejudice, the wonderment experienced in watching nose dives is of less immediate creative promise to poetry than the familiar gesture of a motorist in the modest act of shifting gears." 'Hart Crane and the Machine Age'. 1933.

Extinct mountain jewel plant returned to wild in secret location. (BBC) A plant picked for its beautiful flowers then wiped out in the UK mainland makes a return.

States that passed unilateral divorce laws saw total female suicide decline by around 20 percent in the long run. Study.

The Garden of Time is a 1962 short story by J. G. Ballard [archive] which was the theme of this year's Met Gala. Partly because of that incongruous fact, Thomas Jones, who wrote about Ballard back in 2008 [archive], and Edmund Gordon, whose piece on Ballard appeared last week [archive], had a discussion about Ballard on the London Review of Books podcast.

US District Judge permits copyright suit to continue in the case that alleges the beat that largely defines the Raggaeton genre has been used by 100s in infringement of copyright.

given the current discussions around ai and its impact on artistry and authorship, creating a film reliant on the technology is a controversial but inevitable move. however, the software that hustwit and dawes have built may just hit the sweet spot where human meets machine; where the algorithm works to respect the material and facilitate an artistic vision. from B–1 and the first generative feature film.

'eno' is the first documentary about the pioneering artist brian eno, and the first generative feature film. the narrative is structured at the whim of 'brain one', the proprietary generative software created by hustwit and digital artist, brendan dawes. using an algorithm trained on footage from eno's extensive archive and hustwit's interviews with eno, it pieces together a film that is unique at each viewing. as the order of scenes perpetually changes and what's included is never certain, the version you see is the only time that iteration will exist. "in some ways, the film is kind of like exploring the insides of his brain... it's different memories and ideas and experiences over the 50-year plus time frame." ENO Teaser: Australian Premiere of Brian Eno Film @ Vivid Sydney Opera House Sundance 2024: Generative AI Changes Brian Eno Documentary With Every View [Forbes] 'Eno' Review: A Compelling Portrait of Music Visionary Brian Eno Is Different Each Time You Watch It [Variety] 17-track Brian Eno compilation to accompany new doc [Uncut]

Leaked Documents Reveal How Google Search Gatekeeps the Internet This week, a 2,500-page leak, first reported by search engine optimization (SEO) veteran Rand Fishkin, gave the world an insight into the 26-year-old mystery of Google Search.

One of those rare videos from The Dodo that isn't unapologetically sappy. This one is more Far Side, I think. Watch This Fish "Drive" To His Mom To Get Treats [3m] is about university researchers who have set goldfish free to drive on land.

In the summer of 2023, Ursula Vernon (aka T. Kingfisher, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously) was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thus began The Saga of Cancer Bob.

Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight

Magnolia wood is great for building, as it resists splitting and glues well. It's so good that Japan built the LignoSat probe out of the wood, which will be better for Earth when the satellite inevitably reenters the atmosphere.

Could my desire to be rag-dolled by a big, strong man be a symptom of some sort of patriarchal Disney brain virus contracted during childhood? Do I want to be romantically rescued by a man? Saved by love? Yeah, unfortunately. Like honestly, that sounds fucking great. Is that gross? Sure. Okay, let's sit with that for a minute. It's not like I want to be a trad wife or anything, but there's a reason a bunch 20-something TikTokers are singing the virtues of baking all day. Life is hard. Jobs are hard. I could never give up my sense of self-worth for the trade-off of being a large adult dependent, but maybe that's what the fantasy is really about — having a brief moment where someone else is responsible for me again. from Pick Me Up by Lauren Bans [The Cut; ungated] [via The Morning News]

They were Black veterans of World War II and Korea who had fought for freedoms abroad that they were denied at home. They were champions for LGBTQ rights at a time when each of those initials stood for moral corruption and political subversion. They were feminist activists in the left wing, some in the U.S. Communist Party, who confronted sexism, racism, and class prejudice as inseparable wrongs and barriers to solidarity, which prepared the way for a feminism beyond the Second Wave. And there were scientists prepared to denounce their colleagues' ingenious new biological, chemical, and military technologies as potential threats to the natural world, including humanity itself. [James R. Gaines, The Fifties]

an underground history

More than a dozen locations bear this racist term and relic of colonial oppression. It's time to change the place names. There is a small sign in Western Victoria — one of 15 locations around the country, from creeks and waterholes to bores and mountains — that is a racist slur in plain sight.

Last summer, the California coast had an unusual threat for surfers in the form of Otter 841, who had a passion for stealing surfboards while evading the authorities. With the start of the 2024 season, Otter 841 is back, and just as ready to cause havok as she was last year.

The 24 Universal Melodic Figures [of Western music] "Have you ever found yourself humming along to a song that you'd never heard before? How is this even possible? Could it be that you possess some musical superpower? You may indeed be an extraordinary person, but this particular skill is unexceptional. Every melody you know—plus every melody you don't yet know—draws from just 24 melodic patterns or "figures." You see, there are just so many ways to arrange the notes in a major or minor key into patterns that "make sense"—that "sound like music.""

Australian scientists have developed a method of brewing coffee by blasting ground beans with sound waves – and it produces a powerful cup "The ultrasonic method sends lots of tiny bubbles into the water and coffee. When they implode, they make mini shockwaves that can pierce the inside of the coffee grinds in a phenomenon called acoustic cavitation. According to Trujillo's 2020 research, this method extracts more flavour and caffeine from the coffee."

"We end up drinking three more samples, all made from different beans. They taste distinct – it's not the ultrasonic process we're tasting, but a more intense version of whatever is in the bean. By the end I find myself agreeing with Trujillo's description of the coffee: it has the "acidity and fruitiness of a filter coffee, with the body and the mouthfeel of an espresso but with less bitterness and a clean finish". After some refinement from the original large noisy prototype, the entire mechanism "fits neatly into an espresso machine."

Hundreds of Beavers is an indie film made in six weeks for $150,000. It's like a modern combination of 20s and 30s slapstick films and live-action Looney Tunes. It's currently available on Apple and Amazon streaming platforms. A 19th century trapper battles nature and wildlife (depicted by people wearing mascot costumes) to win the hand of a furrier's daughter. It's filled with hundreds of gags. Here's the trailer, the opening, and a clip showing the costumes.

The jury has reached a verdict and is currently filling out paperwork until about 5:15 Eastern. Trump was looking cheerful and relaxed, sharing smiles and laughs with his lawyers, as they prepared to leave for the day. As soon as the judge announced that instead we had a verdict, his demeanor changes dramatically. He crossed his arms and knitted his brows. He continued to whisper with attorney Todd Blanche, but no longer cheerfully.

Live updates from Talking Points Memo as well.

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.

So stated an anonymous 2019 thread on 4chan's /x/ imageboard -- a potent encapsulation of liminal-space horror that gave rise to a complex mythos, exploratory video games, and an acclaimed web series (previously; soon to become a major motion picture from A24!). In the five years since, the evolving "Backrooms" fandom has canonized a number of other dreamlike settings, from CGI creations like The Poolrooms and a darkened suburb with wrong stars to real places like the interior atrium of Heathrow's Terminal 4 Holliday Inn and a shuttered Borders bookstore. But the image that inspired the founding text -- an anonymous photo of a vaguely unnerving yellow room -- remained a mystery... until now.

...turns out it's from a 2003 blog post about renovating for an RC car race track in Oshkosh! Not quite as fun a reveal as for certain other longstanding internet mysteries, but still satisfying, especially since it includes another equally-unsettling photo (and serendipitously refers to a "back room"). Also, due credit to Black August, the SomethingAwful goon who quietly claims to have written the original Backrooms text. Liminal spaces previously on MeFi:

Discussing the Kane Pixels production (plus an inspired-by series, A-Sync Research). Note that as the Backrooms movie takes shape, Kane is continuing work on an intriguing spiritual successor: The Oldest View The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces A Twitter thread on being lost in a real-life Backrooms space Inside the world's largest underground shopping complex A 2010 post about Hondo, an enigmatic Half-Life map designer who incorporated "enormous hidden areas that in some cases dwarfed the actual level" MyHouse.WAD, a sprawling, reality-warping Doom mod that went viral last year AskMe: Seeking fiction books with labyrinths and other interminable buildings

My personal favorite liminal space: the unnervingly cheerful indoor playground KidsFun from '90s-era Tampa -- if only because I've actually been there as a kid (and talked about its eeriness on the blue before). Do you have any liminal spaces that have left an impression on you?

Atlanta police surveil people opposing Cop City. Police have been carrying out continuous surveillance and harassment of protestors, their families, and neighborhoods for months now.

The IRS announces that "Direct File will be a permanent, free tax filing option." Despite years of lobbying from the likes of Intuit and H&R Block, the IRS ran a successful pilot program of its Direct File program with 12 states. Today, they announced that the program will be permanent and invited all states to participate.

The FBI and Interpol announce Operation Endgame, the "largest ever operation against botnets". And they made some animated videos to go with it!

Regional property owners turning unusable land into money through solar energy leases. With upheavals in the agriculture industry making some farms unviable, a landowner in South Australia is encouraging others to consider repurposing their properties for renewable energy projects.

The 20 country, 55 match tournament is hosted through June 2024 by the West Indies and the USA. Guardian: "Khan's first delivery back bowled Shakib off his inside edge. His fourth was a yorker, which pinned the new batsman lbw. His 10th, delivered in the final over, was edged and caught by the wicketkeeper. The three wickets cost 11 runs and USA won the game by six. "It was a big achievement to take down a top ten T20 side," Khan says, two days later. But he believes there are even bigger ones ahead. The T20 World Cup starts with their [USA] opening match against Canada in Grand Prairie, Texas, this Saturday." Official World Cup website, Wikipedia page. Scorecard for USA vs Canada from 23rd September 1844.

The Bobcat Comics series features collaborations between artists and UC Merced scholars. The comics explore research on colonial Alta California, how Latinas use "journey" rather than "war" metaphors when talking about breast cancer, unruly patriarchs and failed women and more. One stand-out is How to Read an Aztec "Comic": Indigenous Knowledge, Mothers' Bodies, and Tamales in the Pot, a collaboration by artist Jordan Collver and Chicana Studies scholar Felicia Rhapsody Lopez about women's representation in the ancient Mesoamerican text, Codex Borgia/Yoalli Ehēcatl.

Another stand-out is the bilingual Sed por Cambio: Una Guía Visual para Involucrarse en la Política del Agua / Thirsty for Change: Visual Guide to Getting Involved in Water Politics.

James loves working on vehicles but hates spending money. Watch him repair, resurrect, and reimagine old vehicles and machinery with a delightful combination of dry wit, patience, and an impressive collection of junk. Welcome to Low-Buck Garage.

(2014) WaPo (archive) article about Gregg Deal's performance art piece in which he dresses up in stereotypical costume in public. Last spring, Deal came up with his own performance concept in which he'd dress up in a brash getup to physically embody what he believes many non-indigenous people envision when they think of a Native American. The mostly prefabricated outfit is a costume, not authentic regalia; is intentionally over-the-top; and holds no personal significance for Deal. (...) Suspicion is (...) displayed by a security officer at Potomac Mills mall who demands to know what Deal is doing (Deal's response of "Shopping" irking the officer all the more).

2020: Colorado Spring mural honoring missing Indigenous 2021 Exhibit: Gregg Deal's Paintings Challenge Stereotypes And Champion Visibility Of Indigenous People 2022: Biking the Tahoe-Pyramid Trail in Bicycling Magazine. 2023: Exhibit guest curated by Deal at Longmont Museum. "I accidentally started a band": Dead Pioneers.

Bill Pruitt's NDA, that is, from his time 20 years ago creating the entertainment show featuring Donald Trump, known as The Apprentice. Pruitt explains what he saw and what he let happen in a piece for Slate.

B's Music Shop has announced the Meowdulator ($199.99) which is a guitar effects pedal that meows and purrs (0:24 Instagram video).

Some videos from B's Music Shop: They finally did it. A cat guitar pedal that meows(7:42) The Meowdulator: World's First Guitar Cat Synthesizer by B's Music Shop & Cusack Music (12:24) (Via BoingBoing)

After days of testimony and a marathon closing argument from the prosecution, the jury for the Trump hush-money trial begins its second day of deliberations. They have requested a replay of not only some of the crucial testimony, but at least a portion of the hour-long instructions Justice Merchan provided. The specific crime Trump is charged with turns out to be fairly complex, and Lawfare has an explainer.

The Stasi files offer an astonishingly granular picture of life in a dictatorship—how ordinary people act under suspicious eyes. Nearly three hundred thousand East Germans were working for the Stasi by the time the Wall fell, in 1989, including some two hundred thousand inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or unofficial collaborators, like Genin. In a population of sixteen million, that was one spy for every fifty to sixty people. In the years since the files were made public, their revelations have derailed political campaigns, tarnished artistic legacies, and exonerated countless citizens who were wrongly accused or imprisoned. Yet some of the files that the Stasi most wanted to hide were never released. In the weeks before the Wall fell, agents destroyed as many documents as they could. Many were pulped, shredded, or burned, and lost forever. But between forty and fifty-five million pages were just torn up, and later stuffed in paper sacks. from Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi [The New Yorker; ungated]

"In the life of a poet, of course, there is no Election Day to distinguish the visionaries from the also-rans. So Stevens's response, when it came, trickled down in dribs and drabs. Scholars argue over this: some see him as returning, defensively, to conservatism, particularly since in a 1940 letter he declared that "Communism is just the new romanticism," and referred to "my rightism."" 'What Mitt Romney Might Learn From Wallace Stevens' [archive link]

Good Samaritans joined by green sea turtle for unexpected outback road trip. After spotting a request for help on social media, Emily and Callum helped Squirt the turtle make the 600-kilometre (372.8 miles) journey from Port Hedland to Broome.

Analyzing my text messages with my ex-boyfriend by Teresa Ibarra

As reported previously on the Blue, the the Reykjanes peninsula had an eruption in the proximity of the town of Grindavík several months back, however the emergence had settled down after about a week of activity...until a new emergence opened up in the Sundhnuk crater. (SLYT live feed)

The Town of McClellanville, South Carolina revolves around seafood: Shrimp, Fish, Oysters, Crabs, and Clams. Shrimp are the bread-and-butter of the industry. Each year they celebrate the Blessing of the Fleet, with it's own underground anthem referenced in the post title ([4m14s], Some NFSW Lyrics) Vimeo or YT. The industry is threatened by more than imported shrimp (previously, previously): the owner of the fish house is ready to retire, with no one in line to take over.

The town is in danger of losing the fish house

As many traditional working waterfronts become vulnerable to high-end residential development, commercial activity, and climate change, much of the South Carolina commercial seafood industry has been affected by changes in waterfront property use. The changes make it increasingly difficult for commercial fishermen to secure dependable and affordable docking space, fuel, and ice. This is cause for concern among McClellanville, S.C. watermen and their community, as the town's largest seafood business owner is approaching retirement and the future of the working waterfront along Jeremy Creek is uncertain.

So they have set up a foundation and developed a Master Plan to preserve the industry in the Town.

The speculative value of the waterfront property upon which Carolina Seafood sits likely exceeds its use value as an ongoing business. That is, it is worth more as vacation or resort property than as Carolina Seafood ... Providing the watermen with fuel and ice on credit against future delivery of harvest is an ordinary practice by Carolina Seafood and Livingston's both. This benefits the wholesalers and allows harvesters to maintain cash flow. Watermen also described that Mr. Leland would extend credit for unexpected expenses. This ranges from "slack" in payment time to fronting the cost of important engine parts or equipment for the boats, and so forth, against future payment. After Mr. Leland's retirement, his successor at Carolina Seafood may not be inclined – or financially able – to provide this sort of financial cushion.

They have also started an apprenticeship program with the SC Sea Grant Consortium. Before you sign up, check the list to see if this adventure right for you:

• Do not get seasick or motion sick
• Are able to work outside in bad weather
• Do not mind getting dirty and smelling of fish and rancid smells

Don't forget the less-adventurous bullet points:

• Are financially responsible and able to make sure your taxes get filed
• Are comfortable getting your own health insurance coverage

Disclaimer: I have friends and family who work in and adjacent to the industry. I live 40 miles away and am an enthusiastic consumer. Bonus Lowcountry Oystering Video: Mud and the Blood [12m]

Interview with Tracey Emin in the Guardian. Emin talks about art, social class, cancer, her philanthropy, love, her film Why I never became a dancer (previously), politics, her stoma and urostomy, the establishment's unacceptable treatment of her as a younger woman, her exhibition at the Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, her cat Teacup, her work being dismissed as "moaning", the different phases of her life ...

[CW: So much penis] The Cut: As Bustamante injects five vials first into the sides of the shaft, then six more around the glans (if you're picturing a mushroom as the head of a penis, that's the glans, and he is injecting around the base rim of the dome), he sweeps the needle slightly from side to side, then uses his thumbs to massage out any filler lumps, sculpting through what he calls "transitional zones" like a potter smoothing an edge of clay. "It goes beyond just filling up a penis," Bustamante says. "I really do think that there is an artistry to it, to making it look good: aesthetically pleasing, no lumps, smooth, consistent, looks natural, feels natural - all those things." [Previously: post title]

As he finishes up on Tommy's penis, Bustamante injects a little extra filler into the left side to help correct its slight curve. And he makes sure not to put any filler on the top of the penis, only the sides, so as to ensure it doesn't end up resembling a "sausage" when erect. He also wants to avoid "the baseball-bat effect," so he tries to work toward a thicker base that tapers slightly up, rather than the reverse. If anyone isn't happy with the result, Bustamante can inject Hylenex to dissolve the filler, but he says he's never had to do this on penises he's worked on, just ones on which other providers haven't done their best work. Before he leaves, Tommy also has some injections of Botox into his anus ("Holetox"), which can make bottoming easier by relaxing the anal sphincter muscles, but which for Tommy, a top, is more to help with anal fissures. It's just one of a number of below-the-belt services that Bustamante offers, including chemical peels to clear up skin on the butt, an "instant" Brazilian butt lift that makes use of fillers, Botox for the penis to make it look larger when flaccid, Botox for the scrotum to help it hang lower and prevent sweating, and shockwave therapy to help with erections.