Meet the 2026 #IgNobelPrize winners
Established in 1991, #IgNobel are a good-natured parody of the #NobelPrize; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and “24/7 lectures,” whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words
They range from candy snatching, to snake bites, to a splash-free urinal!
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners/

Today, I am trying to clone the world's largest rodent, to create a copybara.

@Satsuma @aschmitz @wallhackio @Lady The point I'm trying to get here is not my-judgement-of-the-kashrut-status of something in general -- I've e.g. eaten food cooked by friends who don't have separate sets of cookware, which I would hold as "not kosher" --

but that, from how I was raised with that kashrut practice and what sense of "what food is" that brought up in me,

my reaction to seeing someone cooking chicken and as part of that process pouring milk on it is the same as my reaction to if they had poured bleach or elmer's glue on it instead.*
It passes in that moment from "food or ingredients capable of becoming food" to "this is not and is not capable of becoming something edible".

(* I want to make it really clear that I, like, know how to separate that one instinct about the-food-itself from my actual thinking about, like, other people eating it. I have a lot of practice doing that. In any practical sense this just applies to me/my experience.)

@hyc @heidilifeldman Maybe. I don't know. I don't think canceling the election is something the vast majority of the country actually wants, however.

"It’s not that we killed play; we captured it and harnessed it to a productivity framework. Then we packaged and sold it for passive consumption."
https://aeon.co/essays/play-is-doing-its-work-even-if-were-not-keeping-score

@ErikUden

? Isn t this the promised future for all of us?

This is a picture of a cat who is not supposed to be on my pillows.

@danyork I took it as a summer class sometime before high school. Yes, I remember all the IBM Selectrics.

@mattblaze @heidilifeldman and yet, preventing the election has been trump's agenda all along. "That'll never work" doesn't matter to him. He doesn't want any of it to work, that's the point.

WE DID IT. WE WON. 💜✊

Wikimedia Foundation workers voted 158 YES to 14 NO: 91.9% of ballots cast, with 81% turnout.

We’re so proud of everyone who built this union, and this win belongs to our whole community. We could not have done it without the solidarity of Wikimedia volunteers.

This is just the beginning. We stand with our UK siblings in their recognition process now, and with future organizing efforts across WMF’s global workforce. 🌍
[union needed]

@siracusa FIOS? I had ghosts in the machine to specific IP blocks with an otherwise rock solid FIOS connection. For cost reasons switched to inferior Xfinity but the ghosts also disappeared. Nothing else changed in the home network (which was Eero except for the gateway router). Voodoo nonsense, except it really happened.

He's still going in email. "I've been nothing but polite! You should be better than this".

I think this ends up with pistols at dawn.