In 133 BC, lands conquered by Rome were being taken over by vast slave-cultivated estates, pushing out the peasants who made a living there. In response, Tiberius Gracchus instituted a highly controversial empire-wide land reform. Such patterns of land appropriation, reform and rebellion have not yet stopped repeating themselves around the world...
posted to MetaFilter by quacks like a duck at 6:11 AM on February 13, 2025 (23 comments)

Last September, the film Amadeus turned 40. Long criticized for its looseness with historical fact (no, Salieri didn’t live a life of chastity as a way of thanking God for killing his father), Amadeus has experienced a critical reassessment in recent years. Mozart’s vulgar laugh is now seen by many as a middle finger to the Soviet Union in what would prove to be the regime’s final years.
posted to MetaFilter by zooropa at 8:36 PM on February 10, 2025 (25 comments)

In a post last Saturday, Substack writer Robert Hubbell provided a partial list and analysis of the situation unfolding within the US government, writing: "Speaking the truth about what is happening is difficult and unpleasant. Hearing the truth is also difficult and unpleasant. But the longer we fail to recognize the current situation for what it is—a slow-rolling coup attempt—the longer it will take for us to recover."
posted to MetaFilter by rcraniac at 8:47 AM on February 5, 2025 (494 comments)

"By the time I received the invitation from Rolex Geneva to visit its four facilities, I had been to just about every other factory one could imagine – ranging from those who are simply packaging up pre-made movements and strapping them into off the shelf cases and dials, to those who are still doing everything by hand (but only producing a few watches per year). What I saw within the halls of Rolex wasn't like either; it was like seeing something brand new being made, something that went beyond a watch. The scale of everything, the detail, the people and perfection, is I think unique in watchmaking, if not all consumer products."
posted to MetaFilter by Lemkin at 6:08 PM on January 19, 2025 (40 comments)

Now the outlines of a popular political movement are becoming clearer, and this movement has no relation at all to the right or the left as we know them. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, whose belief in the possibility of law-based democratic states gave us both the American and French Revolutions, railed against what they called obscurantism: darkness, obfuscation, irrationality. But the prophets of what we might now call the New Obscurantism offer exactly those things: magical solutions, an aura of spirituality, superstition, and the cultivation of fear. from The New Rasputins by Anne Applebaum [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 12:07 AM on January 15, 2025 (45 comments)

While some artists were, not unnaturally, overawed by the vast size of the audience, Miles and the band appeared unfazed and slammed into their set with such ferocity that it jerked the audience around me from its stoned afternoon ennui into a bustle of excited head-turners. ... This was jazz Jim, but not as we knew it.
posted to MetaFilter by Lemkin at 4:51 PM on January 7, 2025 (13 comments)

when people say "enshittification", it's as if their core complaint about capitalism is the customer service, rather than the systematic exploitation of other people. people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues. [...] enshittification is someone experiencing the systematic problems of capitalism for the first time, and not seeing the tip of the iceberg for what it represents. it's walking past a picket line to complain to the manager. it's being mad that the star wars show got cancelled and hoping awareness will fix it.
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 6:32 AM on December 10, 2023 (107 comments)

MeFites with ADHD: what strategies have you found to manage during the plague time?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cosmic owl at 2:17 PM on January 2, 2021 (13 comments)

Where do I find the right ADHD/executive function coach or formal group for adults? Snowflakes inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by bowtiesarecool at 11:59 AM on May 13, 2021 (7 comments)

(CW for sexual abuse). The story of monopolization in cheer is a great example of the problem of concentrated corporate power, because it reveals so much about how our economy actually works. As a quick recap, the company involved is called Varsity Brands, which has monopolized the sport of cheerleading by buying up most major competitions. Varsity is owned by private equity giant Bain Capital. What makes this story so useful is that there are no fancy high tech gadgets in cheer, no possible excuses from economists; it’s just the use of raw power to extract money from teenagers and their families through a business conspiracy.
posted to MetaFilter by Bella Donna at 7:07 AM on September 30, 2020 (17 comments)

After reading this article on Heated, I'm inspired to try more canned seafood. My only exposure to it here in the US has mainly been canned tuna (which I love, especially when lit on fire), anchovies, and sardines. I've never been able to develop a palate for the latter I'm guessing due to the quality of what I've tried. (This is not even mentioning the pickled creamed herring I've seen my FIL eat!) What specific brands and preparations do you recommend? What might help me get over my aversion and learn to love the potted pescado?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by slogger at 10:31 AM on February 26, 2020 (47 comments)

Life Beyond Faith is a youtube series made by Ex Muslims of North America. "Apostates are hiding no longer, and we at Ex-Muslims of North America are telling their stories. Our mini-documentary series, Life Beyond Faith, pulls back the curtain to show the people behind the label – their lives, their journeys, and their hopes after finding freedom from the confines of faith. It is a celebration of ex-Muslim freethinkers – an exploration into their lives, struggles, and triumphs." It's fourteen 5-10 minutes videos where ex-muslims discuss their lives, why they stopped believing, and difficulties that resulted from leaving Islam.
posted to MetaFilter by brandnewday989 at 7:06 AM on January 17, 2020 (15 comments)

Ad revenue is sharply declining, causing cuts everywhere from Vice to Buzzfeed to mainstream news publications to the beloved Blue. Independent feminist websites, mainstream sites, and other websites across the spectrum are all going under, starved of money. But if they could make a profit off ads 10 years ago, why are they going under now? Why are sites closing in droves when everyone knows the big money is in advertising?
posted to MetaFilter by rednikki at 8:19 AM on September 10, 2019 (111 comments)

Through my support worker, I realised that when I promise to please people I usually create a pattern in my own brain that sets me up to fail. I challenged this and the support worker successfully showed me how when I work to please myself, I actually get things done. When I work to please people, unless I do the work right then and there, I fail and then wait to be sanctioned or yelled at. I need to tell people about this so they know how best to work with me. How do I do this?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 12:42 AM on September 10, 2019 (5 comments)

Say I'm crazy. Imagine that I want to make a mobile propaganda bike with loudspeakers and a small projector. Are there electric bikes with large rechargeable batteries that have power outlets on them that could power said PA systems and projector? Is there another option I should consider? In NYC, if that matters.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by history is a weapon at 6:19 AM on September 3, 2019 (9 comments)

In trying to make sense of Facebook and the numerous scandals that have engulfed the social media giant, it has been difficult to find a good analogy for the firm. As part of a collection of writings on alternative visions of the internet, Bryan Menegus argues that the best comparison is to the slumlords who created the tenements of the Gilded Age - and how the horrific and unsafe living spaces they created were only fixed through regulation. (SLGizmodo)
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 6:45 AM on August 21, 2019 (9 comments)

When I speak before Western audiences about my years covering the war in Iraq as a journalist for McClatchy Newspapers, someone inevitably asks, “What was it like to be a woman over there?”
posted to MetaFilter by Ahmad Khani at 12:13 PM on August 8, 2019 (3 comments)

Historian Eleanor Janega sheds some enlightenment about bodily hygiene in the so-called Dark Ages.
posted to MetaFilter by drlith at 6:54 AM on August 2, 2019 (67 comments)

Ravelry, the eight-million-strong social network for knitters previously, has announced that it will ban its users from voicing support for the Trump administration on the grounds that doing so “is undeniably support for white supremacy”.
The language of the new policy has been adapted from a similar announcement by RPG.net last November.
Further coverage from: USA Today, The Guardian, Business Insider, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Inquisitr, The A.V. Club, and The Mary Sue.
(For a sense of scale: as of February, Twitter has 126 million daily users, Snap has 186 million, and Facebook has 1.56 billion.)
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 8:20 PM on June 23, 2019 (149 comments)

I have a 3 hour block of time and an iPhone to capture key points of my 83 year old mom's life. What strategies/apps will help me with this process?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ms_rasclark at 4:04 PM on June 13, 2019 (5 comments)

Maciej Cegłowski on Facebook, Google, and the absence of "ambient privacy": "This requires us to talk about a different kind of privacy, one that we haven’t needed to give a name to before. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll call it ‘ambient privacy’—the understanding that there is value in having our everyday interactions with one another remain outside the reach of monitoring, and that the small details of our daily lives should pass by unremembered. What we do at home, work, church, school, or in our leisure time does not belong in a permanent record. Not every conversation needs to be a deposition."
posted to MetaFilter by gwint at 5:47 PM on June 13, 2019 (46 comments)

For sixty years, conventional wisdom has told us that women generally did not perform rock and roll during the 1950s. The reality is, however, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years. And many more participated in other ways: writing songs, owning or working for record labels, working as session or touring musicians, designing stage wear, dancing, or managing talent—to give just a few examples. The Women in Rock Project is working to document these musicians, artists, and other women in the first wave of rock'n'roll, from Faye Adams to “The Duchess,” Norma-Jean Wofford, with biographies and partial discographies, and some interviews.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 9:20 PM on June 11, 2019 (8 comments)

How Mobile, Alabama fought urban blight to restore abandoned houses. Why a small group of Government employees, including "a landscape architect, a dreadlocked anthropologist, and an industrial designer with a man bun", fought to change the state constitution to make it easier for the state to seize property - and how they did it. Also featuring the strategic deployment of bright pink stickers, a $22 plate of red beans and rice, and one determined "house-hugger".
posted to MetaFilter by Gin and Broadband at 10:32 AM on June 11, 2019 (14 comments)

How are you logging and tracking your memories? One app? Lots of apps? Swarm? A journaling App like Day One? Instagram? A mix of apps? Evernote? Something else? What works for you? What would you recommend?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by andoatnp at 4:25 PM on June 10, 2019 (12 comments)

“Working- and middle-class people have a vested interest in infrastructure investment. They depend on good public roads, schools, and parks. Wealthy people don’t. If public services frazzle, they can opt out to private alternatives. And the more wealth concentrates, the more our political leaders tilt the wealthy’s way. The wealthy do not like paying for public services they don’t use. Political leaders don’t make them. They cut taxes and deny public services the funds they need to thrive.” The World Would Be a Better Place Without the Rich (Jacobin)
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 5:45 AM on June 9, 2019 (98 comments)

“As to how a changing business model has served to disempower and erase the American working class, Martin posits that a shift in the 1960s and 1970s towards an advertising model aimed at an upscale middle-class readership is the primary culprit. With the rise of television, the newspaper industry grew ever more consolidated and concerned with addressing and reflecting the interests and lifestyles of a predominantly middle-class audience. ” The Real Working Class Is Invisible In The Media (Jacobin) “There is a solution, however, and it’s something that the devils in the corner office would never have dreamed of allowing to happen (they got mad enough when we started unionizing everything). In my estimation, the only true way forward for digital media is to blow it all up, and start again. It’s time for the fourth estate to seize the means of production.” (Commune)
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2019 (8 comments)

In January, the Asbury Park Press (APP) published "The Shield" -- a 19-part investigation of police corruption and lack of accountability in New Jersey. The exposé took two years to complete and revealed that municipalities across the state had collectively spent about $43 million in taxpayer money to cover up the brutal actions of rogue cops who had killed, beaten and stalked more than 200 citizens. In many cases, the cops were not only protected from punishment, but even kept their jobs and received promotions.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 8:25 AM on March 15, 2018 (16 comments)

The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down — in which Aaron Gordon, writer of Signal Problems, the best newsletter on the subway, and Village Voice MTA reporter finds a report from 2014 and the best facebook group ever, and gets to the heart of what really be slowing down the trains in New York.
posted to MetaFilter by dame at 9:25 AM on March 14, 2018 (64 comments)

Crusty real estate blogger Garth Turner begins the year with his rules. He's had a good year: winner of a "top personal finance blog" poll; exposing the shenanigans of Canadian real estate statistics. [previously]
posted to MetaFilter by anothermug at 6:47 AM on January 1, 2014 (106 comments)

The only Liberal Party MP to lose her seat in the 2013 Australian Federal Election... Like many people around Australia, a group of Indi locals watched the past three years of politics – one of the ugliest and most negative in the country’s history – in despair. Feeling alienated from what they saw in Canberra, and from their own MP's part in it, they began meeting quietly at the Wangaratta Library. So constrained was political discourse in the area – and so strong was Sophie Mirabella's grip on the seat – that these meetings began with a distinctly clandestine edge.... The unseating of Liberal maverick Sophie Mirabella.
posted to MetaFilter by mattoxic at 10:06 PM on September 12, 2013 (119 comments)

Not even Democrats still use the phrase “the public good.” Public goods are now, at best, “public investments.” Public institutions have morphed into “public-private partnerships” or, for Republicans, simply “vouchers.”
posted to MetaFilter by Obscure Reference at 5:49 PM on August 26, 2013 (64 comments)

To start with the beginning: Jack Sheppard was a notorious English robber who inspired John Gay to write The Beggar's Opera (1728). Two centuries later, the German composer Kurt Weill and dramatist Bertolt Brecht adapted it into a musical as a socialist critique of capitalism and the modern world: Die Dreigroschenoper. It was about to open when the lead actor demanded a song to introduce his character. It was this song that would open the play and at its premiere, it was Kurt Gerron who would be the first to sing the Moriat of Macky Messer as the street singer setting the scene.
posted to MetaFilter by MartinWisse at 1:20 PM on August 16, 2013 (20 comments)

(SLYT) Not your average flashmob.
posted to MetaFilter by Aizkolari at 10:36 AM on December 19, 2012 (30 comments)

Sitting is hazardous to your health. "The research, published in separate medical journals this month, adds to a growing scientific consensus that the more time someone spends sitting, especially in front of the television, the shorter and less robust his or her life may be."
posted to MetaFilter by roger ackroyd at 10:25 AM on October 17, 2012 (115 comments)

I've just been diagnosed with ADHD, and have started an initial stimulant-based management plan. I'm in my mid-forties, and work in a very traditional industry and come from a not-very-accepting Old World culture. How open do I need to be with colleagues and friends that I'm doing this?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 7:57 AM on October 13, 2012 (11 comments)

Moyers & Company presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge. [previously]
posted to MetaFilter by troll at 11:44 AM on October 6, 2012 (21 comments)

What tree should we plant in our small front yard? We're in DC, and the area gets full sun. We'd like something beautiful and maybe blossomy, but that grows relatively quickly and is somewhat idiot-proof. Also, any good books or sites out there on tree care?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by yarly at 4:58 PM on September 26, 2012 (14 comments)

A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self
posted to MetaFilter by jjray at 11:32 AM on July 5, 2012 (40 comments)

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the handful of orchestras for which musicians the world over will drop everything to scramble for a job, and the audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Mike Tetreault has spent an entire year preparing obsessively for this moment. He's put in 20-hour workdays, practiced endlessly and shut down his personal  life. Now the percussionist has 10 minutes to impress a selection committee and stand out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. A single mistake and it's over.  A flawless performance and he could join one of the world's most renowned and financially well-endowed orchestras at a salary of more than $100,000 a year. The Audition.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 12:28 PM on July 5, 2012 (85 comments)

Summer is not just the time for a MetaTalk queue. It also brings June 13.
posted to MetaTalk by bardophile at 1:34 AM on June 12, 2012 (93 comments)

Apparently, the USHOR Appropriations Committee feels uncomfortable about permitting convenient bulk access to THOMAS database of bills.
posted to MetaFilter by jeffburdges at 9:42 AM on June 8, 2012 (31 comments)

FDA Rules Corn Syrup Can't Change Its Name To Corn Sugar
posted to MetaFilter by TangerineGurl at 5:21 PM on May 30, 2012 (97 comments)

As they become more readily available to consumers, LEDs will undoubtedly replace CFLs as the primary light source for residential and commercial, inside and out, due to their dramatic efficiency gains. In an unexpected turn of events, however, MIT researchers have developed an LED with 230 percent efficiency. Previously
posted to MetaFilter by CynicalKnight at 6:00 PM on May 30, 2012 (69 comments)

Neighbor is using an ultra-high-frequency device against us at very high decibels. It causes constant low-grade nausea and a long-lasting ringing in the ears afterwards. Problem is, it can't really be heard because its such a high-frequency. Cops have come to our house, felt the nausea and ear-ringing themselves, but refuse to do anything about it because they can't "hear" it and we have no way of recording it. My question is: Can you point me towards a device that can record high decibel sound in very high frequencies so we can show objectively that this is happening?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by captain cosine at 9:53 PM on May 28, 2012 (48 comments)

I'd always been fascinated by the trope of the doppelgänger and its long literary life, from Dostoyevsky to Nabokov to Spider-Man. Often, in books, these physical doubles represent the worst a character is capable of. Lately, though, perhaps because at age 41 I'd begun feeling less like the captain of my life and more like its deckhand, I'd started wondering if there was someone out there who embodies not your worst self, but your freest one—a person who encapsulates everything you've ever dreamed of becoming. Let's call him your Cooler Self. All those dreams that got lost along the way, the ones that were casualties of chance or duty or cowardice: There's a "you" out there—a mountain climber or war photographer or race-car driver—who brought them to fruition.

So I vowed to hunt down my Cooler Self.
posted to MetaFilter by AceRock at 8:54 PM on May 13, 2012 (64 comments)

"In other words, credit has become America’s welfare policy," says Sheldon Garon, Princeton University professor and author of Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves. The US savings rate currently = 3.8%, while the Euro Area savings rate = 13.7%[pdf].
posted to MetaFilter by airing nerdy laundry at 9:17 AM on May 3, 2012 (106 comments)

They have carefully chosen their clothes and they have spent time in front of mirrors trimming hair from nostrils and tonight is about sex and status and supply and demand and have and have not. . . . The celebrities and the athletes and the tycoons are the ones for whom this world is zealously designed. A rung below . . . are the money guys . . . guys like that one over there in a Boss suit and John Lobb shoes, standing beside the table that cost him $3,000. Standing very close to it, like a Little Leaguer who wants to steal second but has never done it before. This gentleman’s not dancing, but he’s thinking about it. Soon Beyoncé will call all the single ladies to action and they will channel toward him in a centripetal swoosh.

Bottle girls, half-hookers, Tiger Woods, Rachel Uchitel, and the 21st-century courtesan economy. New York magazine takes a look at how America's elite nightclubs operate.
posted to MetaFilter by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:21 PM on May 1, 2012 (166 comments)

"From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex." (Teju Cole, The Atlantic)
posted to MetaFilter by naju at 7:36 AM on March 21, 2012 (93 comments)

The beginning of the end of "he said, she said" journalism? NPR decides to be "Fair to the Truth" instead of simply reporting both sides of an issue.
posted to MetaFilter by asavage at 11:50 AM on February 28, 2012 (64 comments)

I know what will make my life better. So why don't I do what it takes?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by miltoncat at 10:10 PM on September 12, 2011 (33 comments)