328 posts tagged with -sidebar-.
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“I could promise it is indeed possible to slip on a banana peel…”
The History of Slipping on Banana Peels is a half hour documentary video essay by Jon Bois about the non-metaphorical act of slipping on a banana peel, as recorded throughout history by American newspapers.
Electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil
"You make me think of many men Once met, to be forgot again"
"In May 1915, Marianne Moore made her first appearance in Poetry. Then twenty-seven-years old...The second time Moore submitted poems to the magazine, Harriet Monroe rejected them. A rather aggrieved Moore fired back, "Printed slips are enigmatic things and I thank you for your criticism on my poems. I shall try to profit by it.""
.."the late nineteen-fifties, when she was in her seventies, Marianne Moore became a star. She went on the “Tonight Show” to talk about the Brooklyn Dodgers with Jack Paar. The elderly poet was profiled in Sports Illustrated and featured on the cover of Esquire, with Jimmy Durante, Joe Louis, and others.George Plimpton picked her up in a limousine at her home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and escorted her to a game at Yankee Stadium." [more inside]
The worst waiter in Seattle
Cafe Minnie's [was] widely considered to have the worst service in Seattle, even winning that category one year in a Seattle Weekly readers' poll. When I worked there for a six month period in 1995, I was the target of more customer complaints than any other server. Thus my claim to have been the worst waiter in Seattle. [more inside]
"Too bad we don't know the whereabouts of this scarf..."
Tom Baker wore several scarves during his seven series as the Doctor. Each one had its own unique characteristics. Select the links above for detailed information about each scarf including patterns, knitting specifications and yarn suggestions. [via]
We must end democracy and civilization forever!
Milton Glaser once said, “There are three responses to a piece of design—yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.” Story after story, page after page, panel after panel: Hanks hit WOW. from Fletcher Hanks: The Most Twisted Comic Book Artist of All Time [Print]
Maya blue
‘Maya blue’: The mystery dye recreated two centuries after it was lost "A ceramicist in Mexico retraces his Maya roots to recreate a long-lost pre-Hispanic pigment for the first time in more than two centuries." [via]
Gallery of Lost and Imaginary Books
The Lost Book Exhibition. "Livres Imaginaires, Reid Byers’ exhibition of Imaginary Books, is a collection of volumes that live only in other books: lost, unwritten, or fictitious books that have no physical existence. [Items include The Giant Rat of Sumatra, The Murder of Gonzago, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as Marlowe's Maiden Holiday whose pages were used by a cook to line pie tins and start fires] Its exhibition at the Fortsas Club has been extended until the end of 2024, when it will move to the Grolier Club in New York....After the exhibition, the books will return to a famed museum in Paris at 145 La Fayette St. [more inside]
The History of Sound Poetry
Poets Without Words is a series of short lectures on sound poetry by Galician poet Xelís de Toro, where he goes through its history and performs a few notable poems. They can be listened to in podcast form but the series benefits from being watched in order: Intro; Zaum – Russian Cubo-Futurism; Hugo Ball – Cabaret Voltaire; Marinetti – Futurism; Kurt Schwitters – Raoul Hausmann; Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Lettrism and Poésie Sonore: Isodore Isou and Henri Chopin; British Concrete Poetry and Bob Cobbing; Paula Claire (British Concrete Poet). The extra videos are worth checking out too.
Did Jimmy Page Play Session Guitar on This Too?
Led Zeppelin II, if it was recorded in the 50s If you ever wondered what Led Zeppelin would sound like if they were contemporaries of Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly and the Crickets, then wonder no more. [more inside]
"Is this real? And does that matter?"
Of the more than 20 users I spoke with, many noted that they never thought they were the type of person to sign up for an AI companion, by which they meant the type of person you might already be picturing: young, male, socially isolated. I did speak to people who fit that description, but there were just as many women in their 40s, men in their 60s, married, divorced, with kids and without, looking for romance, company, or something else. There were people recovering from breakups, ground down by dating apps, homebound with illness, lonely after becoming slowly estranged from their friends, or looking back on their lives and wanting to roleplay what could have been. People designed AI therapists, characters from their favorite shows, angels for biblical guidance, and yes, many girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, and wives. Many of these people experienced real benefits. Many of them also got hurt in unexpected ways. What they had in common was that, like Naro, they were surprised by the reality of the feelings elicited by something they knew to be unreal, and this led them to wonder, What exactly are these things? And what does it mean to have a relationship with them?The Verge sensitively explores the fascinating, heartbreaking, and rapidly evolving rise of AI relationship apps and the people who love them. [more inside]
"there are no gray squares, man, it's just in your mind"
thinking of calling this "The Illusion Illusion" [Tomer Ullman on BlueSky]
"We had been respectable, ordinary people until the comet"
Carmen Maria Machado (LitHub and also Conjunctions, 12/04/2024), "Endlings": "Lorraine patted my mother's arm and assured her that she believed her. The comet had been rustling up quite a lot of supernatural activity where you least expected it." Related: Kim Masters, Ashley Cullins (THR, 12/13/2017), "War Over 'The Conjuring': The Disturbing Claims Behind a Billion-Dollar Franchise" and movies based on cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren, e.g. on Fanfare: Annabelle; The Conjuring; The Amityville Horror; The Conjuring 2; and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Also, personal ghost stories by other contributors to Conjunctions. And La Llorona (1960), a classic ghost story relevant to "Endlings" and in this version reviewed on Cinema Cats. CW: children are harmed in La Llorona stories and in the nonfiction article about The Conjuring.
A brazen, targeted attack
A health insurance executive assassinated This morning in New York an unknown person shot dead Brian Thompson, the CEO of health insurance company UnitedHealthcare. Early reports describe the killer waiting for the victim, then leaving the scene, pursued by a growing manhunt. [more inside]
The evils of Big Headlight
“I’m not a very rageful person,” Gatto said, “but for some reason, these lights brought it out of me. And I kind of realized that’s why I had to do something about it. Because no one’s going to come help us.”Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any other topic. A deep dive by Nate Rogers.
The History of Playing Cards: The Evolution of the Modern Deck
風の電話
"The wind phone is an unconnected telephone booth in Ōtsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, where visitors can hold one-way conversations with deceased loved ones."
"In Japan, there is a frontier between life and death, and it’s perched on the steep slopes of a mountain called Kujira-yama, the Mountain of the Whale. That’s where we’re going..."
'How Japan’s Wind Phone Became a Bridge Between Life and Death.'
Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth Is Neither New nor Experimental
Julia Serano compiles over two decades of academic research on gender affirming care for trans youth and summarizes it into a brief, compelling fifteen minute essay with pages and pages of sources. For those who don't know her, Julia Serano is a transgender woman, the author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and activist for LGBTQ causes.
ZoRaK's PaGE of RAISIN' HECK!!!
The time is around 1998, when Cartoon Network had a much much better web presence than they do now (these days it's just a subsite of Max). Then, the Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast people, long before "Adult Swim" or "Williams Street," kept up a web presence for each of the members of the "Council of Doom" league of supervillains. Those sites are long gone now, but a fairly decent backup of them exists on the Internet Archive! So jump into a time machine and catch up retroactively with the affably evil blogs of Zorak, Brak, Moltar, Black Widow, Metallus, Lokar (hisssss) and Tansut. These should be the last versions of these pages that were up; the bottom of each page has links to past entries. [more inside]
'Tis the Season to be Linkin'
LinkMe, December '24: Come across an interesting link recently that you'd like to share, but don't want to work it up into a full post? Share it here for our perusal, nbd. And if you'd like to post something but need some inspiration, check out the links here to see what other members have found interesting and would like to read more about! Just tag the resulting post "LinkMe" and include a nod back to the original suggestion. No self-linking and usual site rules apply, but otherwise feel free to post whatever you like! Holiday links encouraged but not required. Look inside for a round-up from last month! [more inside]
A machine for inducing nostalgia for a brief period not too long ago.
IMG_0001: "Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. [...] I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly." [more inside]
An exceptionally unexceptional life
“When I find myself dipping into the dark, I know that I can call up a Nelson town on the computer, and I begin to do the research, and I begin to conduct the interviews, and I start reaching out to people, and it just brings me back.” Then it is onto the next town, the next dot on a map, where Nelson is waiting for him. from In every Nelson he visits, Jeff Truesdell finds the man he loved [The Nelson Star]
Nelson Photographs LoveStory
Funny Books: Classic (?) Edition
The Center for Fiction has a list of six classic novels that bring the laughs. Esquire's list of 45 of the funniest books ever written suffers from recency, but does include a classic or ten. A handful of writers reveal in a Guardian article their favorite funny books. Goodreads has you covered with 1415 Funniest Novels of All Time (some of which I assume are dreck, self-published, AI content, or whatever).
The Invisible Man
A first hand report on homelessness in the US by someone who can really fucken' write.
"Hey, excuse me, would you mind taking a photo of us?"
The museums and heritage institutions of the city of Antwerp
The Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp has put a collection of 14,000 woodblock prints online as Public Domain / CC 0 high resolution TIFF images with tags and search capabilities. Faves: a lumpy fish, a happy fetus, the earth is spherical, a view of the sky, a priestly (?Vulcan) blessing. Aside from woodblocks, there is a large collection of other images and objects from their collection here, although most of these seem not to be tagged. [more inside]
Mrs. French's cat is missing
As the man says in Pontypool, "In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kinds of superfluous things appear related to each other. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen." Has reality ever seemed to bend right in front of your eyes? For me, it might have been when I found out last week that Build A Bear now makes a mothman. Reality is collapsing. There are no rules.* This is your weekly free thread. [more inside]
Tell me what you cook, and I will tell you what you are.
"When we initially reached out to scores of chefs, recipe writers, historians, and food luminaries for nominations for their most important American recipes of the past 100 years—Which written recipes were the most influential, pivotal, or transformative for American home cooking between 1924 and 2024?—we expected strong opinions, but we didn’t anticipate the philosophical quandaries that adjudicating and assembling them would bring up."
The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years, from Dan Kois and J. Bryan Lowder at Slate. [more inside]
The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years, from Dan Kois and J. Bryan Lowder at Slate. [more inside]
Got a poem? Leave a poem! Need a poem? Take a poem!
During the pandemic, the town of Bremerton, Washington installed a little Take A Poem, Leave A Poem box. Liminal Garrett bemoaned the fact that there's never any poems to take. So they took the box's plight to the internet: use this form to send them a poem, they'll print it out and put it in the box for others to take!
“It’s a miracle that this painting survives.”
A Man of Parts and Learning by Fara Dabhoiwala [archive link] is the text of a lecture about the portrait of 18th Century Jamaican polymath Francis Williams, the first Black man to be proposed for election to the Royal Society, which became the subject of popular interest last month when it was revealed that the painting celebrated Williams’ great scientific triumph. In his lecture, Dabhoiwala recounts the process by which the discovery was made, as well as explaining the context. You can watch it here.
For holiday shopping or spending down those gift cards
An Argentinian ghost story, climate fiction for a better future, guidance on writing and the writing life, a satellite murder mystery, a resource for parents of children undergoing gender affirming care, the 2024 GG's, and more: a roundup of more than 50 new and forthcoming small press books (previously). [more inside]
Homebrew LLMs and Open Source Models
With a decent local GPU and some free open source software like ollama and open-webui you can try "open source" LLM models like Meta's llama, Mistral AI's mistral, or Alibaba's qwen entirely offline. [more inside]
A grizzly scheme
The footage is shocking. A brown bear — and there hasn’t been one of those in Southern California for more than a century — breaks into a 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost, seemingly using the door handle. Then it lumbers around inside the car, raking the leather seats with its mighty claws.
Except it wasn’t a terrifying beast — it was a person in a bear costume using a kitchen tool designed to shred meat, authorities said. (LATimes, archive)
A line
Rhythmical Lines "When he was eighty-five, Wacław Szpakowski wrote a treatise for a lifetime project that no one had known about. Titled “Rhythmical Lines,” it describes a series of labyrinthine geometrical abstractions, each one produced from a single continuous line." [via]
What is your happy place?
Everybody needs a happy place. What's yours? What's a place you can visit or even just think about that gives you a sense of calm and relaxation? If yours is the semi-regular #freethread on MeFi, boy do I have good news for you... You are there.
Up to 100 million red crabs have begun their annual march to the ocean
"One of the most amazing things to see": Rain kickstarts Christmas Island's red crab migration. Up to 100 million red crabs have begun their annual march to the ocean ahead of mating season on the remote Australian island, after dry weather delayed last year's migration.
Seeking community in the face of the US election
If you're visiting MetaFilter for the first time in a while because whoa, US election, just a friendly reminder that MetaFilter depends on member support in order to keep running. Additionally, MetaFilter is moving to a community-run model, so you might want to check out the latest update about that.
But because this is a weblog, a few additional links about communities below the fold. [more inside]
Wigging Out
Wigmaker, a relatively active incremental game about making wigs, completable over the course of hours.
☑️ The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes (🇺🇸)
Election Day is finally here. (*gulp*) Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, after replacing a Biden campaign killed by an abysmal June debate, has run a historic sprint to the finish, promising (with Coach Tim Walz) "A New Way Forward" focused on reproductive rights, middle class economics, and protecting American democracy. Former President Donald Trump, saddled with myriad felonies, a historically unpopular running mate, and a platform that ranges from fascistic to incoherent, leads a darkly authoritarian counterculture that tried once to subvert the popular will and aims to do so again. Dozens of key House and Senate and ballot races hang in the balance, and the outcome has titanic implications for human rights, climate change, the international order, and the future of liberal democracy around the world. But despite the stark contrast, a lingering economic malaise (and suspiciously close polling) make this look like the closest contest in modern history. So let's give it a push in the right direction, yeah? Voting resources:
🪪 Check your registration -
🗳️ Find your polling place -
💭 Make your plan -
📆 States with same-day registration -
🗹 See what's on your ballot - 🏛️USA.gov voting guide -
Volunteer to get out the vote:
🚪Knock on doors -
📞 Phonebank -
📱Textbank -
🚗 Carpool -
👋 Neighbor2Neighbor -
❤️🩹Help cure ballots -
Follow the returns: ⌚ Poll closing times - 🚨DecisionDeskHQ results - 📈 538 benchmarks - 📺 Live coverage - 📰 Politico Liveblog - 🐀Preparing for post-election subversion - ⌛Timeline through Inauguration Day [more inside]
The Five Boxing Wizards Jump Quickly
Every day, the online game Letroso picks a secret word of up to 10 letters Your task is to guess the secret word. Letroso will tell if your guess has any letters in common with the secret word, and if those letters within the secret word are adjacent, non adjacent, or are in the same order. Letroso will also tell you if you've correctly matched the beginning or ending letter of the word. Settings include Português, English, and Español.
What games will you be playing during the New York Times strike?
Break Your Streak, Not the Strike
After two and a half years of negotiations, The New York Times Tech Guild has gone on strike (NYT Gift Link). "The guild said it was asking readers to honor its digital picket line by not playing Times Games products, such as Wordle, and not using the Cooking app." "Nearly 750 New York Times journalists and Times Guild members signed a new pledge pressing the Times’s management to bargain and reach a contract deal with the Times Tech Guild by Election Day." More coverage: The Verge, The Washington Post, NBC News.
Land of Linkin'
LinkMe, November 2024: Come across an interesting link recently that you'd like to share, but don't want to work it up into a full post? Share it here for our perusal, nbd. And if you'd like to post something but need some inspiration, check out the links here to see what other members have found interesting and would like to read more about! Just tag the resulting post "LinkMe" and include a nod back to the original suggestion. No self-linking and usual site rules apply, but otherwise feel free to post whatever you like! Eerie, creepy, and horror-themed links encouraged but not required. Look inside for a round-up from last month! [more inside]
The Karate Christ
Nazareth, 29AD. A rage-filled fighter becomes an apprentice to a mysterious Carpenter, compelling him to pursue his greatest potential. An adopted viking orphan* becomes a carpenter's apprentice to Jesus. The orphan, Oren, fights as a side hustle. His experience training as a carpenter with Jesus as his mentor changes his lifestyle. This is a real trailer, for a real movie. (SLYT)
*Who owns a time machine, presumably
How not to freak out about the US election
Some readers may recognize ... the Stoic idea of the “dichotomy of control” – the notion that you ought to confine your concerns to things you can influence, while cultivating detachment from everything you can’t. But to be honest, and perhaps unfairly to Stoicism, I’ve always found this slightly bloodless and intellectual. Hard as I’ve tried, I apparently can’t just divide the world up into these two categories, then use my reason and willpower to decide not to care about one of them. I find it more effective to feel my way into the reality of my finitude. It’s like I’m standing here, on a tiny island of time and space, a miniscule outcrop in the middle of the ocean; and yet for all sorts of reasons, I find myself constantly leaning out over the water, attempting to fiddle with things that are outside my reach – and losing my balance in the process. From The Imperfectionist: How not to freak out about the US election by Oliver Burkeman. [more inside]
An effortless way to improve your memory.
A surprisingly potent technique can boost your short and long-term recall – and it appears to help everyone from students to Alzheimer’s patients. When trying to memorise new material, it’s easy to assume that the more work you put in, the better you will perform. Yet taking the occasional down time – to do literally nothing – may be exactly what you need. Just dim the lights, sit back, and enjoy 10-15 minutes of quiet contemplation, and you’ll find that your memory of the facts you have just learnt is far better than if you had attempted to use that moment more productively. [more inside]
The busiest Busytown book is Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, cartoonist Chris Ware pens an appreciation of the great Richard Scarry [more inside]
No Middle Sliders™
MONSTER FACTORY is a long-running, beloved comedy video series that is a strong contender for one of the funniest goddamn things ever published on the internet. Each episode features brothers Griffin and Justin McElroy (of MBMBAM fame) diving headlong into the character creator of a random game -- Griffin controlling the sliders, Justin providing color commentary. Over the next half-hour or so of relentlessly quotable banter, strange noises, and *painfully* hilarious shenanigans, they sculpt weirdly beautiful creatures of bizarre and improbable proportions, inventing a rich (and loving) backstory along the way. (Some personal favorites:
The Final Pam [Fallout 4] -
Truck Shepard [Mass Effect 2] -
Knife Dad [Champions Online] -
Trüllbus the Crime Eater [Saints Row 3] -
Super Saiyan Dennis Farina [Tiger Woods '08] -
Dr. Sexgun [SoulCalibur VI] -
jIM jELLY [Pro Gymnast Simulator] -
Snack Braff [WWE 2K20] -
Pismokio [Woodworking Simulator] -
Count Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice Beetlejuice [Crusader Kings 3] -
the phenomenal "Boy-Mayor of Second Life" saga). The series inspired a wave of animations, supercuts, think pieces, and art from adoring fans. Sadly, production slowed after the brothers left original host Polygon, with only the occasional new entry once or twice a year... until now. Prepare for eight straight weeks of new Monster Factory episodes every Wednesday across three different games, starting with a livestream edition played earlier today on the latest McElroy Family Clubhouse.
Clogging Cargo Crime
Bedrock Sandals was about to launch their new Mountain Clog. The shipment arrived at US shores, but disappeared on its way to their Montana location. As they tried to find them, they discovered their little sandal company had become one of many targets of an international crime ring. A factual article that reads like a good mystery story.
A four-tonne machine just printed a house in the US
A four-tonne machine just printed a house in the US. Texas just opened its biggest 3D-printed neighbourhood as a solution to its acute housing problem.
Surviving Pompeii
Records of Pompeii’s survivors have been found—and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives. [more inside]