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For female musicians, P. J. Harvey and Björk are important influences.

I’ve also noticed Belle and Sebastian cropping up, like in this interview with Chicago band Horsegirl, who also mention Kim Gordon, Yo La Tengo and My Bloody Valentine. And in this interview they talk about Sterolab.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:27 AM on October 22, 2021

One thing that made The Velvet Underground the Velvet Underground, and differentiated them from bands which could’ve had the same kind of legacy (e.g. Love), is that Lou Reed was a star for decades after he left The Velvet Underground.

Lots of people were obsessive fans of Lou Reed, and they made it feasible to keep the Velvet Underground records in print, which then made them available to people who went looking for them without being Lou Reed fans first.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:06 PM on October 25, 2021

flabdablet: It looks like PKPass files are just a specialized Zip file, so you could try using the Dropbox web interface to make a copy of the file, then rename the copy from blahblah.pkpass to blahblah.zip and see if you can find the document you need inside that (the Dropbox web interface lets you open Zip files as if they were folders).

Sadly, inside the PKPass there are the elements of the document, but disassembled. It seems that I need to be able… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:09 AM on September 28, 2021

In the end I went with tiamat’s plan B, opened it on a borrowed iPhone and sent myself the screenshot of the document which I then saved to my iPad. Hopefully it’s enough.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:23 AM on September 29, 2021

I liked all the games on your list that I have played.

I looked at the Google Play store, and most of the games I've played and liked lately aren't there, except for space RPG Star Traders: Frontiers and remastered 90s one-of-a-kind classic King of Dragon Pass.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:05 PM on August 7, 2021

I would absolutely do what feels right for you, but I wouldn't discount the creative impulse either.

About ten years ago I was making a living as a freelance journalist and translator. It wasn't a great living, but I had fulfilled my dream of being a full-time writer. After about a year and half of that I completely burned out, and I realized that I just didn't have what it took to live as a freelancer.

So I let my contacts know that I was… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:33 PM on August 7, 2021

An article was just posted in The Guardian titled HGV licence fast-track won’t stop UK food shortages, industry warns. Confusingly enough, it doesn't really go into the food shortage bit of the headline, except towards the end the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation (a trade association of companies specializing in moving temperature controlled freight) is quoted as saying: In an industry where we beat ourselves up if we didn’t have 98% fulfilment of our orders to delivery, we are now… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:29 PM on July 20, 2021

Forgot the link to the Wikipedia page on her.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:16 AM on December 10, 2020

I don’t think this is the same name as the identically spelled Italian surname. Here’s a bit about the family history.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:48 AM on December 10, 2020

I thought of writing the library of Lincoln University, where she was a professor, and the scholar who has researched her the most pronounces it “sih-LOAN”. That’s good enough for me.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 7:04 AM on December 11, 2020 marked best answer

Woodroar’s suggestion of an Elliott Smith song made me realize it’s definitely his voice that I hear in my head. I think it’s probably The Biggest Lie, or possibly Christian Brothers (the guitar figure starting 30 seconds or so in). The problem is that I had so many different versions of Elliott Smith songs back in the day, that it might be a demo or an alternate take that my brain keeps dredging up when my daughter listens to that song.

But, as an answer, Elliott Smith is good enough for me.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:39 PM on November 14, 2020

There’s comfort in listening to music radio stations broadcasting in languages you don’t understand or half-understand. Even if they have news bulletins, all you pick out are proper names.

Radio Helsinki is good, and I feel honor bound to recommend the Icelandic Rás 2, but half the fun is looking for new stations from around the world.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:58 AM on August 26, 2020 marked best answer

Okay, so it seems that the image was created for a Ramesses the Great exhibit at the Mint Museum in Charlotte. Which makes sense, because it’s so different from other video game box art.

Still no closer to finding the illustrator.

I’ll send an email to someone at the Mint Museum.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:09 PM on August 7, 2020

The finding aid for the archive of the Ramesses the Great exhibition mentions a few items that use the image of the coffin in profile, including a “mini-poster”, which seems a likely source for the image.

Hopefully I’ll hear back from someone at the Mint Museum archives.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:54 PM on August 7, 2020

Thank you, mmoncur! That is the image, indeed!

I crudely added the attribution to the Wikipedia page for the box art so that the information is readily available somewhere. I’ll put the attribution elsewhere, when I think of good places.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:07 PM on August 7, 2020

As far as I can tell, Vitsky has never been credited with making the box art for Sid Meier’s Civilization. I looked at all the old game documentation I could find, as well as googling my heart out, and nowhere are the two linked.

It’s incredible how an artist’s name can vanish, even from such a famous piece of art.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:02 AM on August 8, 2020

What I’ve found so far is that it was commissioned for the International City Management Association annual conference, held in Charlotte in 1988.

And you’re right, I should contact her.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:42 PM on August 8, 2020

She confirmed that it was her work. She was happy that it had been attributed to her, and that so many people like it.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:07 AM on August 9, 2020

It has no handle, incidentally.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 6:20 AM on December 18, 2019

I was given the cup in the mid-eighties.

And that’s definitely the same image, Glomar Response, but a completely different sort of cup. It’s quite heavy, and doesn’t have any identifying marks on it, and I would like to get a couple more, but I’ve never seen anything resembling it.

There used to be a similar cup, which I think my sister got, with a image of a goose on it, but that broke a long time ago.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:49 PM on December 18, 2019

In case someone else comes looking for music which resembles Noname, Tank and the Bangas’ album Green Balloon is hitting some of the same sweet spots.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:56 AM on October 28, 2019

These Icelandic traffic signs are all real, though the captions are jokey.

Tourists sometimes steal them.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:02 PM on October 21, 2019

That sounds very plausible to me. Thank you!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:03 PM on June 19, 2019

Thanks, Trivia Newton John, that seems to be the correct answer.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:57 AM on May 28, 2019

Of course! The contrail! Thank you, ellenaim!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:26 AM on January 2, 2019

Did you used to have a different pre-sleep routine? I had a similar problem with fitful sleep in my bed.

I realized that this started when I couldn’t read books in bed anymore before going to sleep. So I started reading books again before sleep, but changed it to reading in the living room and then going to bed. That was enough like my old routine that my brain accepted it and I had restful sleep again.

Oh, and I also found another routine,… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:57 PM on October 18, 2018

Here’s the singer of Half Man Half Biscuit nitpicking the song Gertcha by Chas & Dave for incorrectly saying that England was dumped out of the 1974 World Cup by Poland, when it was that England didn’t get enough points from its qualifying group.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:39 PM on June 4, 2018

eirias: What about a word like acreage?

"Acreage" isn't made up of individual units in the same way that "area" isn't made up of individual units.

fancyoats: forest?

A forest is a collective noun (a forest of trees).

peep: Wait, I was assuming largest NUMBER of individual units. Do you mean largest in size of a single unit?… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:39 PM on May 20, 2018

Kutsuwamushi: If you do reject both of those, then bamboo is at least bigger than a stalk of wheat or a slice of bacon, when full grown.

"Furniture" and "housing" are like "trash", mass nouns that can refer to a number of disparate things.

"Bamboo" is a good candidate. Some people use it as a count noun, but it's also a mass noun and some species of bamboo are very large.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 6:20 PM on May 20, 2018

meaty shoe puppet: If I understand your criteria, ordnance? In the sense of the artillery pieces themselves, and not the projectiles fired from them, the smallest unit of ordnance is a few hundred pounds.

Ordnance and artillery refer to many different, disparate things. If you have one piece of ordnance, it's a field gun, or a howitzer, or a mortar. A single piece of rice is still rice.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 6:30 PM on May 20, 2018

trig: But it could be brown rice, wild rice, cooked rice, short rice, sticky rice, prehistoric undomesticated rice, basmati... This feels like a fairly fuzzy/idiosyncratic distinction, as to which differences are big enough to count.

If I have a bowl of cooked rice and eat every grain of cooked rice except one, I still have cooked rice. The whole mass of cooked rice is made up of individual units of cooked rice

In the furniture… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 7:25 PM on May 20, 2018

nomis: I don't think your bamboo example works for the same reason bacon doesn't, because there's no non-arbitrary unit involved (unlike e.g. rice or sand). A piece of bamboo is an arbitrary unit, and at least for me, it doesn't refer specifically to a single plant.

The question is whether, if you cut down a copse of dragon bamboo, you have much dragon bamboo or many dragon bamboos. From googling I can see that people use bamboo both as a mass noun and… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 7:35 PM on May 20, 2018

I think bamboo is probably the best answer. Individual stalks of bamboo can be huge, and would be referred to simply as "bamboo" in speech.

But the 20-lb rock example is interesting. My main problem is that it probably fits in the category of "furniture" and "trash", something which can refer to many disparate things. I would be more comfortable with it if it was, say, "2000 lbs of 20-lb granite" (or basalt or feldspar).… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:11 PM on May 21, 2018

Yes, but specific kinds of bacon and bamboo have relatively uniform, discrete units. If you have a heap of slab bacon, each unit of slab bacon looks basically the same. If you have a pile of common bamboo, each stalk of common bamboo looks the same.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:13 PM on May 22, 2018

As for cattle, it's not a mass noun, but a plural noun (i.e. you can say "many cattle") without a corresponding singular noun.

A bale of hay is indeed some hay, but for the purposes of referring to it as "some hay" it's no different from the same amount of hay in a pile. In which case the discrete unit is the stalk of hay.

Paper is a plausible answer, though. I've spent some time around printing presses and I feel that most of… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:37 PM on May 22, 2018

Pig iron is a good one! That definitely goes on the list. As far as Google tells me, pig iron can be up to a hundred pounds in weight. I'm having a hard time finding out what a single dragon bamboo plant weighs, but I assume that a 100 foot plus plant probably weighs considerably more than a hundred pounds.

As for track, stock, block, rope and cable, none of these words are mass nouns.

Rock is borderline, and I can see the argument for including… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:37 AM on May 23, 2018

That's a good point. However, a single unit of rolling stock isn't referred to as rolling stock, but as a carriage or locomotive, and so on.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:55 AM on May 23, 2018

clawsoon: "There are six pines in the forest." - Doesn't work.

A pine, in the sense of a pine tree, is a count noun. So "there are six pines in the forest" is perfectly cromulent. However, pine can be a mass noun in the sense of the building material, so that would work (I'm assuming that people would talk about the last plank of pine as simply "pine").

LobsterMitten: Some brainstorming… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:19 PM on May 23, 2018

Nineteenth hole.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:10 AM on February 21, 2018

The Icelandic word for a young puffin is “pysja” (the plural is “pysjur”).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:34 AM on February 11, 2018

Jahaza: The anchor is an ancient Christian symbol and particularly appropriate for a funeral because of its reference to Hebrews 6:19-20: "We have this hope [in Christ] as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf." This verse speaks specifically to the idea that Christ has already entered heaven "behind the curtain" or sometimes rendered "beyond the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:15 AM on January 16, 2018

wenestvedt: (As a lifelong Catholic, and a resident of Rhode Island, I can't believe that I never put this together before. Awesome lesson for me!)

Oh good grief... I lived in Providence for five years and never put it together either.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:21 PM on January 16, 2018

The closest I can think of is the 1946 independence referendum in the Faroe Islands. I don't think there was any state violence but the Danish government declared the referendum null and void. I vaguely remember reading that the Danish navy sailed to the islands to demonstrate the state's military capabilities, but I think there was no violence as such.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 11:40 AM on October 1, 2017

P.S. I just realized that the first photo is an airbrushed version of the second photo.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:24 AM on July 22, 2017

Here's brief footage of Fitzgerald where he seems to have that hairdo. The upturned sidelock (or whatever the proper hair terminology is) seems to move free of the rest of the hair, making Bumstead's hair wings (or whatever the proper hair terminology is) look like an approximation.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:30 AM on July 22, 2017

I once had a similar "assignment". I was quitting a very hard (but fulfilling) job. Not because I was fed up, but because I was moving away. My girlfriend said I should celebrate after the end of my last day. It honestly took my a whole day to figure out that what I wanted to do was go to a bookstore with a café with her, have a cappuccino, and then spend a good while browsing and selecting a few books to buy. It was quiet, nice and celebratory.

Oh, and… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:05 AM on February 18, 2017

Thanks everyone! It seems that KEXP's podcast fits best. All the other suggestions were very good too.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:04 PM on September 29, 2016

It's often quite nice to chill brennivín (some people keep their bottles in the freezer or, during winter, outside) so adding some ice to the resulting cocktail could be very nice. Also thematically appropriate, I suppose.

I haven't tried it myself, but I've often thought that a dash of chili pepper might go well with a brennivín concoction. A cold bloody mary with brennivín and chili might be nice. And maybe one with carrot juice instead of tomato juice.… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 12:13 AM on September 7, 2016

Thanks for the answers, everyone!

scruss: A friend from Kenya studying in Glasgow phoned me in a panic the first time she experienced May in Scotland: “Why is the sun not setting? The sun sets at 7 pm, and it's not going down!”. Living close to the equator, there's not much variation in sunrise and sunset times.

Oh, that reminds me of a friend from Kenya who got into trouble during his first trip to Northern Europe during… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:06 PM on August 19, 2016

The Gospel of the Redman by E. T. Thompson and Julia Seton, linked to above, was originally published in 1937. I don't know if the quote you're searching for was in that edition. The J. J. Mathews mentioned in the footnote is John Joseph Mathews, an Osage writer and tribal leader.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:43 PM on August 11, 2016