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Battle Beyond the Movies
Roger Corman has left us. The ‘Movies’ as we knew them wouldn’t have reached their heights without him. He jump/kick-started the careers of Coppola, Nicholson, Cameron, Demme, Scorsese and so, so many more. With his passing it feels as if cinema, as we knew it…and perhaps the analog 20th century has truly passed. He also directed Teenage Caveman.
Is Cooking Classist? New video from Hoots
A solution that is only a solution for the people who can afford to be a part of the solution is not a solution
A hour long video about cooking, food, race, gender, class and capitalism.
Green sky at night
On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch -- its first since January 2005.
Coinciding with a new moon, aurorae should be visible (weather permitting) much further than typical. The Northern/Western-specific current predictions from NOAO show the view line extending below 40 degrees Northern latitude.
"It was that welcome feeling that every treehouse was your home."
Set to the music of recent Hawaiian artists, The Edge of Paradise (SLYT) is a quiet, contemplative documentary on Taylor Camp, a treehouse community of war veterans and hippies that thrived on a jungle-backed beach on Kaua'i in the 1960s and 1970s (cw: black and white archival stills of unclothed community members, oral recollections of police actions against the community).
How King’s College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel
How King’s College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel. The project sparked debate over how to decrease carbon emissions while preserving the historic structure’s architectural beauty.
“spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away”
360 Video: NASA Simulation Plunges into a Black Hole
answers the question of what it would look like to fall into a black hole. If you’d rather not, NASA also released 360 Video: NASA Simulation Shows a Flight Around a Black Hole. They also released videos explaining what is going on in the visualizations for the dive into the black hole as well as the flight around it. The press release has more information.
There is no European Google, Tesla or Facebook
Europeans have more time, and Americans more money. It is a cop-out to say which you prefer is a matter of taste. There are three fairly objective measures of a good society: how long people live, how happy they are and whether they can afford the things they need. A society must also be sustainable, as measured by its carbon emissions, collective debt and level of innovation. So which side does it better? [Financial Times; ungated]
Ancient Polished Granite Chambers In India With No Explanation
BARABAR, THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF THE FUTURE [2h] "2,300 years ago, in India, 5 chambers were carved inside enormous granite rocks. According to rudimentary inscriptions engraved at their entrances, they were purportedly offered by a king to serve as monsoon shelters against rain for a sect. WELCOME TO THE HEART OF ANCIENT INDIA, IN A FORGOTTEN CHAPTER OF ITS PAST... THAT COULD VERY WELL CHANGE HISTORY."
Spuds for the Spud God
Turnip28 is a miniatures war game by Max Fitzgerald about Napoleonic tubers. An endless war has reduced the world to mud and muck, and a giant mutant root vegetable has spread ceaselessly throughout the land. Misshapen soldiers emerge and sink into the swamps with rusty bayonets and pole arms seemingly supplied by the root stock itself. It is deliciously weird.
Best printer 2024 for printing printers who love to print in 2024
It’s weird because the correct answer to the query “what is the best printer” has not changed, but an entire ecosystem of content farms seems motivated to constantly update articles about printers in response to the incentive structure created by that robot’s obvious preferences. Pointing out that incentive structure and the culture that’s developed around it seems to make a lot of people mad, which is also interesting! Anyway, here’s the best printer for 2024: a Brother laser printer. You can just pick any one you like; I have one with a sheet feeder and one without a sheet feeder. Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one. Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers / After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale. [Previously]
Awww look at the wikkle murder machines!
Boston Dynamics two latest bangers All New Atlas and Sparkles.
For once, sort by “top” and definitely read the YouTube comments.
Shut Up 'n Play Yer ... Bicycle?
In 1963, a clean-cut Frank Zappa appeared live on the Steve Allen show playing a musical composition on bicycles. The entire 16:28 is worthwhile to watch for the conversation and interaction between the two, but the performance with the show's orchestra starts at 11:56. The show's talent coordinator Jerry Hopkins discusses how the young musician's debut performance came about.
10 PRINT "HELLO METAFILTER"; 20 GOTO 10
For many people, the first time they tried to take control of a computer centered around learning to program in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simple, interpreted programming language designed around easily-understandable keywords and syntax. BASIC turned 60 a couple of days ago, so find one of the many online BASIC interpreters and write yourself a little bit of history.
The Battle for Attention
Nathan Heller on the secretive Order of the Third Bird:
There is a long-standing, widespread belief that attention carries value. In English, attention is something that we “pay.” In Spanish, it is “lent.” The Swiss literary scholar Yves Citton, whose study of the digital age, “The Ecology of Attention,” argues against reducing attention to economic terms, suggested to me that it was traditionally considered valuable because it was capable of bestowing value. “By paying attention to something as if it’s interesting, you make it interesting. By evaluating it, you valorize it,” he said. To treat it as a mere market currency, he thought, was to undersell what it could do.
Thanks, chariot pulled by cassowaries
This is a public thank you to chariot pulled by cassowaries for their frequent posts of good news from the natural world. It brightens my day to read about plants and animals recovering adversity, and people being not-terrible in helping them. Cheers to you.
The war between humanity and its oldest, archest of enemies: pain.
Mark Chrisler's podcast "The Constant" just concluded a 3 part series, "Comfortably Numb". Part 1 is about the horror and trauma due to the pain of surgery before anesthesia started being used in the 1840s, and ends with the question of why no one thought of using anesthetics before then despite their existence for decade(s) (nitrous oxide, chloroform) or centuries (ether) and their recreational use. Part 2 is about how anesthesia was introduced for surgery. Part 3 is about the fight between the men claiming to invent anesthesia led to their ruination.
“Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle.”
“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”
"It was 2017, and a YIMBY activist invited me to talk about my book Nixonland with his book club, which also happened to be Marc Andreessen’s book club."
Social media is neither inherently beneficial or harmful to young people
The Coddling of the American Parent
by Mike Masnick (TechDirt) debunks Jonathan Haidt's panicky new book on teens & the internet. Developmental psychologist & scholar Candice Odgers' article for Nature: The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.
High-Speed Rail from (Almost) LA to Vegas Finally Happening
Brightline West is ready to start breaking ground
this week, according to The Washington Post. The southwest endpoint will be in Rancho Cucamonga, where it will connect to Metrolink. (Which is definitely better than Victorville, which had been suggested a few years ago.) Connecting to the existing lines here will make it simpler to build than trying to connect all the way to Los Angeles proper. (gift link)
Ukraine war heading into third summer
As Congress has finally passed the Ukraine aid bill, hope is returning to the frontline, where Ukrainian troops are increasingly struggling to hold out against a numerically superior Russian force that also has a lot more ammunition to spend. This post has some status updates and commentary on the war at present.
“members of the Voyager flight team celebrate”
NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
reports NASA. After pinpointing the issue with the space probe, the mission team have devised a workaround. Previously, previouslier, many more previouslies.
"Greetings, citizen! Are you getting enough oxygen?"
Adult Swim is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Space Ghost: Coast To Coast by showing all the episodes in no particular order on YouTube right this very moment. Relive the early days of Cartoon Network's dimwitted dadaist superhero insanity, or become enthralled for the first time.
Friday Itch.io Fun: Neltris
Neltris
is a small in-browser game by Hempuli, creator of Baba is You, Environmental Station Alpha, and scores of tiny indie games as seen on that itch.io page. It's just Tetris, but with additional Tetris.
The Lost Symphony of Jean Sibelius
A century ago saw the premiere
of Jean Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony, the culmination of decades of experimentation and refinement of the form, as Alex Ross explains (with musical examples). A few years later, he started work on an eighth symphony, which he never completed to his satisfaction, and eventually he burned his manuscripts of it. In 2011, after sifting through the Sibelius manuscript archive, it was possible to record roughly two and half minutes of the thirty minute work. Despite some subsequent hints from correspondence with Sibelius’ copyist, no further fragments have been uncovered, and the Eighth Symphony remains lost.
The Oldest Boats Ever Found in the Mediterranean
Five Canoes Discovered Northwest of Rome Are the Oldest Boats Ever Found in the Mediterranean. The 7000-year-old vessels offer evidence of advanced seafaring technology and an extensive regional trade network, a new study suggests.
Apparently, Meta deems climate change too controversial for discussion
How Meta Nuked A Climate Story, And What It Means For Democracy, David Vetter, Forbes, April 11 2024
Wide Awakes in America
And that Northern strength, to many, looked like the Wide Awakes. The Republicans, after all, had performed best in states where the movement was largest, among exactly the kind of young, laboring moderates the Wide Awakes mobilized. In the final assessment of the New York Tribune, the most popular Republican newspaper, the election was decided by the Democratic Party’s internal divisions and by the massive Wide Awake movement. That organization “embodied” the Republican cause, the Tribune argued, becoming a concise symbol for millions who hated the Slave Power. from The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln—and Spark the Civil War [Smithsonian]
Wagon breaks down
In 1971, three student teachers in Minneapolis, MN created a little computer game about westward expansion in the United States.
Over 50 years later, The Oregon Trail series has sold more than 65 million copies and has been inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. But the original creators never made a penny off the game. This is a lovely, slow-placed documentary about how the game was made and spread, with background information about the state of the computer industry and education in MN at the time.
Death of a Satanic Panicker
"I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it," said one of Bennett Braun's patients, later in life. Braun, a psychiatrist specializing in repressed memories, was a leading figure in the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, and now he is dead (NYT obit; archive link here).
the philosophy of absolute extinction
Philosopher Ben Ware has been giving some thought to the politics of the end of the world, and has written a new book, On Extinction (Verso), to talk about it. But the end is coming fast and maybe you don't have time for a whole book, so let's read some essays instead! "Nothing but the End to Come" brings together Walter Benjamin, Kafka, de Sade and Extinction Rebellion to suggest that all our language about the end feeds "into a politics of passive annihilation."
Dear {Person's name}
The USPS declared April to be National Card and Letter Writing Month… 23 years ago. American Library Association has some ideas on epistolary fun within games. The Chicago Public Library has suggestions for epistolary novels. The Universal Postal Union has a letter writing competition for writers aged 9 to 15 on the theme: "Write a letter to future generations about the world you hope they inherit." The Smithsonian National Postal Museum has an epistolary fiction project which includes an extensive if not exhaustive list of novels, starting with Xenophon of Ephesus.
Scientific American November 1986
A fascinating glimpse of what was going on in the science world 38 years ago in the November 1986 issue of Scientific American and what has changed and what has remained the same: Voyager 2's visit to Uranus cover story and how a fix had to be made from Earth • Affordable housing problems - "The Shadow Market in Housing" • Learn about the Higgs boson long before it was found (RIP Peter Higgs) • Galileo, Bruno and the Inquisition • Computer Recreations - "Star Trek emerges from the underground to a place in the home-computer arcade" • The Amateur Scientist - "... experiments on three-dimensional vision" • All the 1986 ads, including "Texas Instruments brings the practical applications of AI to your business. Now." (p 15)
50 birds, the exhibition (a custom LEGO letterpress technique)
The Eurasian Wren, the Barn Swallow, the Northern Goshawk, the Little Owl, the Great Tit. Artist Roy Scholten has created prints of 50 different birds using LEGO bricks as the printing matter. The exhibit opens April 14 at the Grafisch Atelier Hilversum in Hilversum, Netherlands.
Herring do?
From Andrew Gregory in the Guardian: Swapping red meat for forage fish such as herring, sardines and anchovies could save 750,000 lives a year and help tackle the climate crisis, a study suggests. Mounting evidence links red meat consumption with a higher risk of disease in humans as well as significant harm to the environment. In contrast, forage fish are highly nutritious, environmentally friendly and the most abundant fish species in the world’s oceans.
"You better not throw like that in a mud ball fight kid!"
"The invention of the dunk tank clown shows just how far the line of what is considered appropriate for a society has moved over the decades."
'The Last of the Dunk Tank Clowns.'. (archiveorg) "This attraction is now virtually obsolete. Outdoor Amusement Business Association president Greg Chiecko was quoted as claiming he polled his members about dunk tank clowns and that “most say they don’t know of any that still exist today.” (medium) 'Chicago’s Riverview Park and the Racist Dunk Tank'. {CW: Racism. Clowns.}
What is a secret?
In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous. Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.Dark Matter: For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure.
Gonna get downright MetaFiltered tonight
The English language is famous for its large number of drunkonyms, i.e. words that can be used to refer to the state of drunkenness – from blind and hammered to pissed, smashed and wasted. Various lists of words have been compiled in the past (e.g. Levine 1981). However, most of the terms seem to be relatively infrequent, and they also appear to fall out of use relatively quickly. In view of Michael McIntyre’s (2009) claim that it is possible to use any word to mean ‘drunk’ in English, this contribution therefore approaches the issue from a constructionist perspective. In a corpus-based study, we tested whether it is possible to model the expression of drunkenness in English as a more or less schematic (set of) construction(s). Our study shows that while corpus evidence for truly creative uses is scarce, we can nonetheless identify constructional and collostructional properties shared by certain patterns that are used to express drunkenness in English. For instance, the pattern be/get + ADV + drunkonym is strongly associated with premodifying (and often strongly intensifying) adverbs such as completely, totally and absolutely. A manual analysis of a large wordlist of English drunkonyms reveals further interesting patterns that can be modelled constructionally.“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness, a spirited academic paper from the Yearbook of the GCLA
"High school isn't a very important place."
For the 50th anniversary of Stephen King's debut novel Carrie (original review), the New York Times Book Review offers: an appreciation by Margaret Atwood; an essay by Amanda Jayatissa; a collection of reflections from various luminaries; a King reading guide; and a podcast with Grady Hendrix and Damon Lindelof about King's works and influence (NYT gift links throughout).
How A Sleepy Pennsylvania Town Grew Into America's Mushroom Capital
The beds are covered
with a mass of pure white, like bubbling foam: thousands of white button mushrooms. These are the mushrooms — along with other strains of this same species, the brown and portobello mushrooms — that account for the vast majority of all mushrooms that Americans eat.