Unless you knew modern Chinese history well, you probably have no idea what I am talking about. Most people only knew that "after Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists, or KMT, was defeated by Mao Tse-tung Communists, Chiang took his army to Taiwan and settled there and turned it into an economic powerhouse..." What most people do not know is that a portion of the KMT Eight Army, under General Li Mi, comprised of KMT 26th and 93rd Divisions, actually remained in Yunnan after after Chiang's retreat, and in order to grow their support, they, with permission from Chiang, allied themselves with the the Karen National Defense Organization and tried to help them take over Myanmar / Burma. Those of you who watched Rambo (2008) may recognize "Karen", as in the Karen Rebels. Yes, it's the same people, still fighting the Myanmar government decades later. And there are a lot more involvement of the Lost Army...
posted to MetaFilter by kschang at 3:44 PM on May 25, 2024 (8 comments)

Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web [46m] "Patreon CEO Jack Conte explains how the current internet algorithms are killing the traditional "follower" for creators, threatening their creative freedom and livelihoods."
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 3:09 PM on April 13, 2024 (10 comments)

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.
posted to MetaFilter by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:40 AM on April 14, 2024 (12 comments)

An early graphic novel. Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (1445–1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He is perhaps best known (now) for creating one of the most famous paintings in the world, "The Birth of Venus", but strangely, it was some of his long-lost unfinished drawings that struck the imagination of the Pre-Raphaelites of Victorian England who championed him and revived his reputation.
posted to MetaFilter by acrasis at 12:00 PM on December 31, 2023 (5 comments)

This study will discuss the building history of the monumental enclosures in the main area of Göbekli Tepe, as well as the chronological relations between them
posted to MetaFilter by cupcakeninja at 3:39 AM on January 1, 2024 (9 comments)

Lucy Scholes (Prospect, 01/25/2023), "Meet the archive moles": "There's a growing band of people digging through library stacks and second-hand bookshops in search of lost classics. I'm one of them." A reading list of reissues accompanying the article includes titles from Boiler House Press, Pushkin Press, Daunt Books, Faber (Memoir), Lurid Editions, Handheld Press, Another Gaze Editions, Penguin Modern Classics, British Library Publishing, and Vintage Classics. The article also mentions The Neglected Books Page, Virago Modern Classics, Persephone Books, Faber (Classics), and McNally Editions, where Scholes is an editor. Scholes previously and previouslier.
posted to MetaFilter by Wobbuffet at 3:22 PM on February 3, 2023 (10 comments)

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, has organized a blockbuster exhibition this spring featuring the paintings of Johannes Vermeer—the largest ever—bringing together 25 of the 34 works that can be firmly attributed to the Dutch Golden Age master, whose paintings are rarely loaned out from the lucky handful of collections that possess them. Three additional works with disputed attribution will also be included, following a recent and somewhat controversial authentication by Rijksmuseum curators [previously]. Despite record-breaking ticket sales and extended museum hours, countless Vermeer enthusiasts won’t be able to attend. Fortunately for them the museum has also commissioned a virtual exhibition featuring ultra high resolution photos of Vermeer’s paintings. Click on a thumbnail to peruse specific works on your own, or take an in-depth guided tour with your choice of docent: Stephen Fry (in English) or Joy Delima (in Dutch).
posted to MetaFilter by theory at 7:47 PM on February 2, 2023 (17 comments)

Donald Westlake/Parker fans, what have you found that scratches a similar itch? I'm looking for something where a criminal is at the center of the story: no cops, wannabe cops or vigilantes. Like a police procedural, but for the other side. A few dead bodies are fine but I'm mostly looking for property crimes or scams (would consider espionage), not serial killers or anything like that. As little moralizing or valorizing as possible.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Not A Thing at 2:53 PM on January 30, 2023 (23 comments)

toldinstone is a podcast by Historian Garrett Ryan who discusses the ancient world. His latest episode is 'Trivia, Ancient and Modern' with Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame.
posted to MetaFilter by clavdivs at 4:31 PM on December 18, 2022 (1 comment)

The climate crisis will spiral out of control unless the world applies “emergency brakes” to capitalism and devises a “new way of living”, according to a Japanese academic whose book on Marxism and the environment has become a surprise bestseller. [SL Guardian] The message from Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, is simple: capitalism’s demand for unlimited profits is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.
posted to MetaFilter by Ahmad Khani at 4:07 PM on September 9, 2022 (78 comments)

We praise canonical authors for their boundless imagination. Then why do all their plots feel the same?
posted to MetaFilter by Pyrogenesis at 3:01 AM on May 11, 2022 (58 comments)

Marginalia Search is "an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of." Clive Thompson describes Marginalia (also known as Edge Crawler and Astrolabe) as "a search engine with a fascinating design — rather than give you exactly what you’re looking for, it tries to surprise you... By up-ranking web sites that are text-heavy, and downranking ones that are highly visual, loaded with modern web cruft, and SEO-optimized. The upshot, as the creator suggests, is that you wind up with a lot of weird results very different from the usual fare coughed up by Google or Bing or even DuckDuckGo.... Call it 'serendipity engineering.'"
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 4:44 PM on March 9, 2022 (27 comments)

"Old books are socially and culturally fascinating...Still, sifting through old books can be a hassle. You have to go to those search sites and filter for the right vintage (and public-domain-status). It’s a pain. So: I decided to partly automate this — by making my own search tool. Behold the Weird Old Book Finder." Clive Thompson has built A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books (Medium).
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 8:18 AM on January 22, 2022 (13 comments)

Oscar Peterson teaches Dick Cavett what other piano players' styles are like. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by sardonyx at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2021 (22 comments)

La Campagne is a newsletter about the upcoming French presidential election by French economist Manu Saadia (best known for his book Trekonomics). He was fed up with the inaccuracies of English language coverage of French politics, and decided to remedy that. He started with the basics, explaining voting procedures and why it is that French politics are so dominated by the office of the presidency. He's also written about the legacy of French defeat in Algeria, Covid's effect on the campaign and the rise of far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. The newsletter will continue until the election and its immediate aftermath.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 4:08 AM on October 28, 2021 (18 comments)

I need a cheap laptop PC (under $350, the cheaper the better) for writing papers, notes, and exams for class. It needs to be Windows 10 or higher to be compatible with the exam software. Typing and navigation ease are my top priorities.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rue72 at 6:53 AM on October 12, 2021 (14 comments)

After having been completely flurked over by GoDaddy, I am looking for another domain name registrar.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Flock of Cynthiabirds at 7:05 PM on August 23, 2021 (14 comments)

Ebla, the Official Site of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria gives details about the excavation of Ebla, the capital of a bronze age empire in what is now northern Syria which flourished in the third millennium BCE. Archaeologist Paolo Matthiae first explored the Tell Mardikh mound in 1963, but the site didn't receive global attention until 1975, when the discovery of Ebla's state archives was announced, an ancient library with over seventeen thousand clay tablets, casting light on life in Ebla. Outside the Ebla website, besides Wikipedia, there is historian Trevor Bryce's short overview of the history of Ebla, an interview with Matthiae from 1978 by Tor Eigeland, and archivist Greg Bradsher's essay about the Ebla archive and how it compares to modern archives.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:47 PM on August 20, 2021 (6 comments)

What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by limon at 5:40 PM on September 8, 2007 (237 comments)

A globe with radio stations, just click to hear what they're doing This has been posted on the blue a couple of times before, but the most recent one was in 2017, so I think it's worth mentioning again.
posted to MetaFilter by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:47 PM on February 8, 2021 (42 comments)

A nice, playable way of visualising scales and chords
posted to MetaFilter by domdib at 1:29 AM on January 26, 2021 (18 comments)

"You're three or four months on the boat... you're three or four months alone... and you're in the most rough and inhospitable areas in the world. You sail past the point... that is the furthest away from land." Pieter Heerema talks about competing in a previous edition of the Vendée Globe, a quadrennial round-the-world solo sailing race.
posted to MetaFilter by clawsoon at 3:42 PM on December 9, 2020 (11 comments)

I took piano lessons as a kid/teen and was playing well enough to be learning challenging classical pieces. It's been a couple of decades since I've played regularly and I want to regain the ability play at that level again.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by burntflowers at 2:45 PM on July 9, 2020 (6 comments)

Having just read Romantic Outlaws and been blown away by it, can anyone recommend other biographies or autobiographies that are written in such a gripping, page-turning style, please? I'm looking for books about any subject or time period, but they should be well-written and the subject should be likeable.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by hazyjane at 6:57 AM on November 16, 2019 (10 comments)

So, each episode of the Simpsons is dubbed into two different versions for French markets. There's a Quebec French version, and a France French version. Fans of the Quebec dub hate the European dub, and vice versa.
posted to MetaFilter by Orange Pamplemousse at 6:46 AM on August 7, 2019 (71 comments)

I need your gripping-est, creepiest, twistiest, most fiendishly puzzling murder mystery novel recommendations please! I have included examples of what I mean below the fold.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by unicorn chaser at 10:52 PM on January 2, 2019 (22 comments)

Art History for All is a young podcast by independent scholar Allyson Healey (pronouns they/them), devoted to making visual art accessible by exploring "a global history of art and material culture in a casual, conversational way. [...] This podcast is dedicated to accessibility in the practical sense, as well, providing episode transcripts for those who find the podcasts difficult to listen to or understand in audio form, or those who want to be able to access citations and sourcing. Both audio podcasts and transcripts will include verbal descriptions of the central works discussed, for the benefit of those who cannot view them." Podcast listening bonus: the soothing sounds of ambient electronic music and Healey's calm, crisp voice.
posted to MetaFilter by nicebookrack at 11:10 PM on September 23, 2018 (9 comments)

The battle of the "Bois de la Brigade de Marine". One hundred years ago United States Marines fought the brutal Battle of Belleau Wood. As the Allies struggled to contain the German spring offensive (previously), a Marine force and a French unit turned back a German attack, then drove them out of a dense, small forest, suffering nearly ten thousand casualties. Ever since Belleau Wood has been legendary in American military culture.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:53 AM on June 10, 2018 (11 comments)

Archivio Segreto Vaticanum, or the Vatican Secret Archives contain 85 km (~53 mi) of shelving, but is limited to physical access only... for now. But digitizing alone isn't enough - even with an index, how can you search this volume of material? Digitized text would be ideal, but automated digital transcription through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) only works with typed text because of a need for consistent shapes and clear spaces between characters. Add artificial intelligence and now you might have something. In Codice Ratio is the research project that is trying to recognize character segmentation, which is fed into a convolutional neural network to recognize characters and language models to compose word transcriptions.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 1:03 PM on May 16, 2018 (5 comments)

We love Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian India cookbook, but our one complaint: Not enough dishes with thick, flavorful sauces as you might find in an Indian restaurant. What are your most mouth watering, naan-dippingest vegetarian Indian dishes where the veggies/paneer/etc. are floating in a pot of delicious sauce?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by coffee and minarets at 11:35 AM on April 19, 2018 (16 comments)

I'd like to read more about how communities in bombed areas went about the process of rebuilding after WWII -- specifically from the perspective of local government, urban planning and architecture. A few questions that interest me: How did these projects get funded? How long did they take? What kinds of controversies arose? Were there battles between "traditionalists" and "modernists"? How did these play out? Thanks in advance for your recommendations!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Trespassers William at 11:33 AM on March 4, 2018 (11 comments)

Dear Mefi, another ‘books with a feel like…’ post. This time I’m after novels set by the sea (or by a lake if we must), but with a fabulist, magical or eerie feel. Not looking for out and out horror, just a feeling of strangeness in the air. Ambiguity a plus, and many bonus points if set in a run-down seaside town. Examples below the line...
posted to Ask MetaFilter by reynir at 10:40 AM on August 6, 2016 (34 comments)

In 1909, Julian Hawthorne (Nathaniel H.'s dashing, reckless son) released a wildly eclectic anthology called The Lock and Key Library: ten shotgun blast volumes of mystery, detection, horror, suspense, crime, decadence, and romance, comprised of stories, novel excerpts, folktales, and memoirs gathered from Russia, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, Tibet, Iran, the Ottoman Empire, India, Arabia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Germany, France, England, Ireland and the United States.
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 1:55 PM on July 27, 2016 (6 comments)

The Arabian Sea has a special place in Indian business history. For centuries the cities and settlements on the Arabian Sea littoral traded with each other, exchanging Indian textiles for horse, armaments, pearls and ivory. In turn, some of the textiles were passed on to the Atlantic slave trade in Africa as a medium of exchange, or sent overland to European markets. Coastal merchants* indigenous to the region bordering the sea engaged in this business and developed sophisticated systems of banking and shipbuilding to support the mercantile enterprise. The Hindu and Muslim traders of Kachchh were examples of such groups of people. text via
posted to MetaFilter by infini at 11:06 AM on July 8, 2016 (7 comments)

I've always wanted to become intimately acquainted with the Greek tragedies, but there's a huge part of me that says, "If you're not going to learn Greek, what's the point?" So, are there translations that truly do justice to the source material? Perhaps more to the point, are there longstanding translations which have themselves become more or less a part of the Western canon? If so, can someone recommend any particular editions? I'm particularly interested in Antigone, The Bacchae, and The Oresteia. And finally, does anyone have experience learning Classical Greek later in life for the purpose of reading the plays and epics? Was it worthwhile?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jwhite1979 at 5:52 AM on June 27, 2016 (19 comments)

In Erasmus' De Copia, "students learned how to vary a given idea in manifold ways by putting it into different forms and figures (developing copia, or abundance, of words and expressions). [...] Erasmus provided extended examples of copia in his text, the most famous of which includes several hundred variations upon the same, initially insipid sentence, 'Your letter pleased me greatly.'"
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 2:29 PM on April 8, 2016 (30 comments)

What are some great descriptions of boats and ships from literature? I'm especially looking for descriptions from classic books in the public domain. Novels, stories, plays, poetry etc. are all welcome.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Prunesquallor at 9:03 AM on May 1, 2015 (15 comments)

Many are sure that one of Judaism's central events never happened. Evidence, some published in this Mosaic essay for the first time, suggests otherwise. Joshua Berman, Was There an Exodus?
posted to MetaFilter by paleyellowwithorange at 8:59 PM on April 5, 2015 (95 comments)

I just ordered a custom framing job at Michael's, the chain art/craft supply store. I had a 60% off coupon. The counter guy was very nice, and spent a good while with me figuring out the right frames and mats etc. The selection was ok, not great, but I was able to find something that worked for the print. I chose a fairly basic frame (neither clearance nor obviously high end... right around the middle) with the best glass, and two standard mats (you know, with one thin edge and one a couple inches wide.)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fingersandtoes at 1:18 PM on January 3, 2015 (24 comments)

People hate cash. I need to reluctantly enter the world of swiping cards and tapping phones in order to continue making a living. Help!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by crazylegs at 7:02 AM on January 4, 2015 (24 comments)

Digital Classicists: Scholars who study the ancient Greek and Roman empires are creating a growing array of 21st-century interactive, multidimensional presentations about people, places and events from the world of antiquity. If you dig around you'll uncover some deep and meticulous work by geographers, historians, archaeologists, and art historians working in digital space.
posted to MetaFilter by GrammarMoses at 8:52 PM on July 5, 2014 (34 comments)

The Valley of the Shadow is a digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War. Here you may explore thousands of original documents that allow you to see what life was like during the Civil War for the men and women of Augusta and Franklin. Presented by the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia.
posted to MetaFilter by disclaimer at 8:31 AM on July 5, 2014 (4 comments)

The meaning of life according to Boomhauer. (Original scene.)
posted to MetaFilter by MartinWisse at 3:07 AM on July 9, 2013 (33 comments)

After years of stubbornly insisting that I liked paper books and regular computing, I'm sorta kinda considering getting an e-reader and/or a tablet. Should I bother?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 11:26 AM on July 8, 2013 (71 comments)

After 63 years, Lt. Col. Don Carlos Faith, Jr. has come home.
posted to MetaFilter by Rangeboy at 11:04 AM on April 25, 2013 (9 comments)

What cultural figure might you compare someone to (individual or group) if you wanted to portray them as bumbling and incompetent? E.g. Keystone Cops, Inspector Clouseau, the Washington Generals... I'm particularly interested in international examples that Americans (like me) might not know about.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by pete_22 at 7:05 AM on March 16, 2013 (26 comments)

NYC Past Large-format historical photos of New York City.
posted to MetaFilter by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:20 PM on March 5, 2013 (13 comments)

It's an old book yet famous at the time, maybe 17th to early 19th century, that deals with debunking myths, superstitions and the like. It was probably one of the earliest such books, at least one written with the Enlightenment mindset. I think. Author's last name may perhaps begin with B. Had stuff in it about how beavers don't bite off their testicles and that [insert group you dislike] do not actually smell. I know this is vague, but that's all I can remember unfortunately.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Pyrogenesis at 3:14 PM on January 13, 2013 (6 comments)

Book People: what are the best resources to hear about new books?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by moons in june at 3:18 PM on August 15, 2012 (20 comments)