Hundreds of Beavers is an indie film made in six weeks for $150,000. It's like a modern combination of 20s and 30s slapstick films and live-action Looney Tunes. It's currently available on Apple and Amazon streaming platforms. A 19th century trapper battles nature and wildlife (depicted by people wearing mascot costumes) to win the hand of a furrier's daughter. It's filled with hundreds of gags. Here's the trailer, the opening, and a clip showing the costumes.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 4:31 PM on May 30, 2024 (23 comments)

After days of testimony and a marathon closing argument from the prosecution, the jury for the Trump hush-money trial begins its second day of deliberations. They have requested a replay of not only some of the crucial testimony, but at least a portion of the hour-long instructions Justice Merchan provided. The specific crime Trump is charged with turns out to be fairly complex, and Lawfare has an explainer.
posted to MetaFilter by mittens at 5:15 AM on May 30, 2024 (145 comments)

James loves working on vehicles but hates spending money. Watch him repair, resurrect, and reimagine old vehicles and machinery with a delightful combination of dry wit, patience, and an impressive collection of junk. Welcome to Low-Buck Garage.
posted to MetaFilter by Alvy Ampersand at 10:47 AM on May 30, 2024 (3 comments)

Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking . A long historical essay by Philip Zelikow, describing the perspectives of past and present US adversaries. "Zelikow warns that the United States faces an exceptionally volatile time in global politics and that the period of maximum danger might be in the next one to three years. Adversaries can miscalculate and recalculate, and it can be difficult to fully understand internal divisions within an adversary’s government, how rival states draw their own lessons from different interpretations of history, and how they might quickly react to a new event that appears to shift power dynamics." Via Noah Smith.
posted to MetaFilter by russilwvong at 9:49 AM on May 29, 2024 (2 comments)

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)

The Tennessee Attorney General is investigating the mysterious investment company that attempted to have Graceland, the late Elvis Presley's mansion that is one of America's most successful tourist attractions, sold at a foreclosure sale.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:37 PM on May 24, 2024 (9 comments)

One of the most unusual heists in America seems to be unfolding at Taco Bell
posted to MetaFilter by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:23 AM on May 23, 2024 (35 comments)

Autonomous car racing is a bit of a mess. A slightly sarcastic overview of the first ever Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League event (previously)
posted to MetaFilter by Stark at 1:06 AM on May 21, 2024 (12 comments)

The story of the 1967 Ferguson Super Sport, the product of a Canadian couple's years of obsessive planning and labour. [Mod Note: if access is denied, try refreshing, opening a second time, or opening in new window]
posted to MetaFilter by gamera at 12:26 PM on May 20, 2024 (24 comments)

Microsoft held a live event today showcasing their vision of the future of the home PC (or "Copilot+ PC"), boasting longer battery life, better-standardized ARM processors, and (predictably) a whole host of new AI features built on dedicated hardware, from real-time translation to in-system assistant prompts to custom-guided image creation. Perhaps most interesting is the new "Recall" feature that records all on-screen activity securely on-device, allowing natural-language recall of all articles read, text written, and videos seen. It's just the first foray into a new era of AI PCs -- and Apple is expected to join the push with an expected partnership with OpenAI debuting at WWDC next month. In a tech world that has lately been defined by the smartphone, can AI make the PC cool again?
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:11 PM on May 20, 2024 (112 comments)

A stolen Willem de Kooning painting was found in the home of Rita and Jerry Alter after they died (a very worth reading previously). New evidence suggests that's not all they stole.
posted to MetaFilter by OrangeDisk at 3:27 PM on May 19, 2024 (8 comments)

The Criterion Collection, a revered distributor of classic and arthouse cinema, built a vast library of 3,500+ films over the last 40 years. It can be overwhelming, even for cinephiles. Want a savvy friend to guide you? Enter Criterion's Closet Picks, a lo-fi YouTube series which invites top filmmakers, actors, musicians, and other artists into the vault to freely sample while musing about core influences, all-time favorites, and hidden gems. Highlights: Willem Dafoe - Maya + Ethan Hawke - The Daniels (EEAAO) - Richard Ayoade - Comic Patton Oswalt - Yo La Tengo - Cinematographers Roger + James Deakins - Charlie Day - Nathan Lane - John Waters - VG designer Hideo Kojima - Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) - Dan Levy (Schitt's Creek) - Cauleen Smith (Drylongso) - Animator Floyd Norman - Jane Schoenbrun - Paul Giamatti - Marc Maron - Wim Wenders - Cate Blanchett + Todd Field - Hari Nef - Photographer Tyler Mitchell - Molly Ringwald - Peter Sarsgaard - Udo Kier - Gael García Bernal - Pixar's Lee Unkrich - Singer St. Vincent - Critic Elvis Mitchell - Anna Karina - Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) - Flying Lotus - Agnès Varda - Alfonso Cuarón + Paweł Pawlikowski - Mary Harron - Saul Williams + Anisia Uzeyman - Carl Franklin - Roger Corman - Michael K. Williams - SNL's Bill Hader // Watch the full playlist, or see this cool database of picks (info), including the most popular.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:07 AM on May 19, 2024 (32 comments)

In 1586, Jacques Bellot published one of the earliest printed phrasebooks for refugees, the Familiar Dialogues: For the Instruction of The[m], That Be Desirous to Learne to Speake English, and Perfectlye to Pronou[n]ce the Same. [...] The book, in 16mo, is laid out in three parallel columns: English, French, and a quasi-phonetic transcription of the sounds of the English text. [...] Bellot says “I have written the English not onely so as the inhibaters of the country do write it: But also, as it is, and must be pronoun[n]ced”. [...] While men had contact with the local community through their work and would have developed enough spoken English to get by, their wives and other family members who were mostly at home had limited opportunities to learn the local language. At this time, there was significant local hostility to foreigners in England, and [...] “a knowledge of everyday English was some protection against mindless scare-mongering” [...] The content of the Familiar Dialogues belies its audience in that it caters to the immediate language needs of refugees and deals with everyday interactions. These include going to school, shopping and eating a meal [...] Indeed , this little book, with its focus on domestic situations rather than travel/touristic situations, anticipates the refugee phrasebooks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Jacques Bellot’s Familiar Dialogues: An Early Modern Refugee Phrasebook // Read the book on Project Gutenberg // The history of Huguenot refugees in England // Linguist Simon Roper has a neat video exploring (and re-enacting) the book's practical "Street English"
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:19 AM on May 18, 2024 (9 comments)

'Cardboard’s ubiquity rests on simple claims: I can hold that, and I can go there'.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:52 PM on May 15, 2024 (23 comments)

Greatest human alive today, Bobby Fingers, has released another video, researching and creating a diorama of the 1999 incident where heartthrob Fabio came back bloodied after participating in the inaugural ride of the "Apollo's Chariot" roller coaster at Busch Gardens.
posted to MetaFilter by maxwelton at 1:39 PM on May 15, 2024 (33 comments)

OpenAI unveils GPT-4o, a new flagship "omnimodel" capable of processing text, audio, and video. While it delivers big improvements in speed, cost, and reasoning ability, perhaps the most impressive is its new voice mode -- while the old version was a clunky speech --> text --> speech approach with tons of latency, the new model takes in audio directly and responds in kind, enabling real-time conversations with an eerily realistic voice, one that can recognize multiple speakers and even respond with sarcasm, laughter, and other emotional content of speech. Rumor has it Apple has neared a deal with the company to revamp an aging Siri, while the advance has clear implications for customer service, translation, education, and even virtual companions (or perhaps "lovers", as the allusions to Spike Jonze's Her, the Samantha-esque demo voice, and opening the door to mature content imply). Meanwhile, the offloading of most premium ChatGPT features to the free tier suggests something bigger coming down the pike.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:14 PM on May 13, 2024 (148 comments)

A tour of a 300 year old business that makes pastels in nearly 2000 colors [youtube - 2024/05/12 Business Insider]
posted to MetaFilter by ursus_comiter at 5:30 PM on May 12, 2024 (8 comments)

Does what it says on the tin
posted to MetaFilter by Gorgik at 8:28 AM on May 12, 2024 (6 comments)

Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism, goes on a deep, deep dive into AdVon, a fine purveyor of content slurry.
posted to MetaFilter by ursus_comiter at 4:29 PM on May 9, 2024 (48 comments)

Osaka trains derailed by giant cats
posted to MetaFilter by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:20 AM on May 9, 2024 (13 comments)

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.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 3:44 AM on May 8, 2024 (9 comments)

The Chair is a 24-minute NSFW short horror film with a strong sense of the uncanny which begins when a man picks up a chair from the street.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 9:13 PM on May 7, 2024 (4 comments)

A rare archaeological object – thought to be the only one of its type in the former Roman Empire – has been discovered in Carlisle, England. The remnants of the Roman bathhouse at the Carlisle Cricket Club have revealed an extremely rare chunk of Tyrian purple dye, the first of its kind ever discovered in northern Europe and possibly the entire Roman Empire. [...] Known as “imperial purple,” tyrian purple was an extremely valuable dye in ancient Rome because of its rich, vivid color, which denoted imperial authority, wealth, and status. It took a lot of resources and labor-intensive procedures to produce even small amounts, as it was made from thousands of crushed sea snails (Bolinus brandaris) from the Mediterranean. This rarity and exclusivity meant that it was more valuable than gold, sometimes up to three times as much by weight.

Fun fact: If a buyer wanted to know if there was something fishy about their exquisite dye, they could always see if it passed the smell test -- read the straight poop inside.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:58 AM on May 8, 2024 (16 comments)

a video review by Patrick Boyle Well, what it says on the tin...
posted to MetaFilter by mumimor at 12:57 PM on May 7, 2024 (44 comments)

Motown Junkies is a blog where Steve Devereux is reviewing the entire Motown singles discography in sequential order from the beginning. You can also browse tracks by songwriter, label and artist. He’s currently up to 1966, though he’s been on hiatus for a few years. He also used to present Discovering Motown on Radio Cardiff, and the archive is on Mixcloud.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 9:05 AM on May 6, 2024 (23 comments)

An interview with the Japanese comedian about the upcoming documentary (NYT gift link) on Hulu, The Contestant. Previously on Metafilter, "Staying alive became my full-time occupation" we were introduced to the strange tale of the 1998 Japanese reality show Susunu! Denpa Shonen which was famous for taking an aspiring comedian, placing him naked in a room, and telling him that he needed to acquire 1 million yen worth of items via sweepstakes. Now, there is a Hulu documentary (YT trailer link) coming out about how the Eggplant is doing.
posted to MetaFilter by Word_Salad at 5:22 PM on May 3, 2024 (8 comments)

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.
posted to MetaFilter by ShooBoo at 7:57 AM on May 3, 2024 (15 comments)

Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost....
posted to MetaFilter by drewbage1847 at 1:06 PM on May 1, 2024 (16 comments)

Part 1: From the S Dynasty to the Chin Dynasty. Part 2: From the Chu-Han contention, through the first Chinese golden age of the Han dynasty, to the Warring States, and the Northern and Southern dynasties. To clarify, this YouTube series is NOT about the actual history, but how Chinese history is interpreted through Chinese cinema. This is a continuing series from Accented Cinema. Previously from AccentedCinema. For those interested in the actual history, he recommends Cool History Bros.
posted to MetaFilter by toastyk at 8:40 AM on May 1, 2024 (8 comments)

Entertainment Made By North Korea [5h30m] is an overview of... entertainment made by North Korea. It begins well before the founding of the country to give the cultural background, and then gets into post-Korean War entertainment. It's an interesting history lesson combined with a fascinating glimpse into a world not seen much outside it's own borders.
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 3:43 PM on April 28, 2024 (14 comments)

Helen Vendler, perhaps the preeminent contemporary American poetry critic, has passed away at 90.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 9:44 PM on April 25, 2024 (13 comments)

The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness , signed by 88 researchers, asks us to consider more non-human creatures as capable of subjective experiences.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:42 PM on April 25, 2024 (33 comments)

The Poetry of Actor William Smith. You may be familiar with William Smith as a "that guy" from hundreds and hundreds of movie performances, usually the heavy, such as bare-knuckle brawler Jack Wilson in 1980's Any Which Way You Can. But his poetic contributions have gone largely unnoticed, and courtesy of his still-up website -- Williams passed in 2021 -- you can read poems like The Reaper or thrill to these poems read in Williams' own roadworn voice.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:01 PM on April 22, 2024 (9 comments)

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.
posted to MetaFilter by Harald74 at 6:32 AM on April 22, 2024 (119 comments)

Enclosed within its rugged mud brick walls the temple precincts at Dendera seem to be an island left untouched by time. Particularly in the early hours of the morning, when foxes roam around the ruins of the birth house or venture down the steep stairs leading to the Sacred Lake. Stepping into the actual temple is like entering an ancient time machine, especially if you look up to the recently cleaned astronomical ceiling. This is a vast cosmos filled with stars, hour-goddesses and zodiac signs, many of which are personified by weird creatures like snakes walking on long legs and birds with human arms and jackal heads. On the columns just below the ceiling you encounter the mysterious gaze of the patron deity of the temple: Hathor.

It might not have the iconic status of Giza or the Valley of the Kings, but the Dendera temple complex north of Luxor boasts some of the most superbly-preserved ancient Egyptian art known, ranging from early Roman times back to the Middle Kingdom period over 4,000 years ago. Most breathtaking is the ceiling of the temple's grand pronaos, which is richly decorated with intricate astrological iconography. But you don't have to travel to Egypt to see it -- thanks to photographer and programmer José María Barrera [site], you can now peruse an ultra-HD scan of the fully-restored masterpiece in a slick zoomable scroller. Overwhelmed? See the captions in this gallery for a deep-dive into the symbolism, or click inside for even more.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:52 AM on April 21, 2024 (10 comments)

Willie Nelson Outlaw Tour 2024

I would have posted this to IRL if I knew how. Considering the principals and the age of some, this presents a last chance opportunity to see them. And as someone here I've already notified said about the front row tickets, those are stupid cheap prices.

Indeed, indeed.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 1:29 PM on April 21, 2024 (59 comments)

Negative Space - "a short film by Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter, was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film."
posted to MetaFilter by pracowity at 4:37 AM on April 21, 2024 (4 comments)

In “A Proposal for the Unification of Psychotherapeutic Action Understood as Memory Modification Processes”, Bruce Ecker lays out the case for a unifying account of therapeutic processes, and why that matters. (Link is to a publicly available pre-print copy of the article.)
posted to MetaFilter by concinnity at 10:39 AM on April 19, 2024 (11 comments)

It is the late 1800s. You are an innovative fireworks manufacturer in Yokohama, Japan, with an increasingly international audience (including, on at least one occasion, Ulysses S. Grant). But how to demonstrate to your worldwide customers what, exactly, you have on offer? Introducing the beautifully minimalist Hirayama Fireworks' Illustrated Catalog of Night Bomb Shells.
posted to MetaFilter by nobody at 5:33 AM on April 19, 2024 (24 comments)

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Real or Cake? [37s, CW]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 7:56 PM on April 17, 2024 (46 comments)

Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:24 PM on April 17, 2024 (72 comments)

There are clear continuities between the two German genocides. Many of the key elements of the Nazi system – the systematic extermination of peoples seen as racially inferior, racial laws, the concept of Lebensraum, the transportation of people in cattle trucks for forced labour in concentration camps – had been employed half a century earlier in South-West Africa. Heinrich Göring, the colonial governor of South-West Africa who tried to negotiate with Hendrik Witbooi, was Hermann Göring’s father.

–From the essay Three Genocides by forensic architect Eyal Weizman.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:35 AM on April 16, 2024 (23 comments)

In her article Th'infernal Drone: In Praise Of The Hurdy-Gurdy Jennifer Lucy Allan notes that in "Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights the soundtrack to hell is a giant and infernal hurdy-gurdy". She discusses, among others, Stevie Wishart, who can be seen here giving a quick introduction to the hurdy-gurdy, and performing her composition Vespers for St. Hildegard and duoing with daegeum player Hyelim Kim. Corinna de Fonseca-Wollheim profiled Matthias Loibner in the New York Times [archive link] and his performance with Nataša Mirković of Schubert's Winter's Journey. For an overview of the history of the instrument, hurdy-gurdy player Fredrik Knudsen made a half-hour video or you can read A Brief History of the Hurdy-Gurdy by Graham Whyte.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 5:35 AM on April 15, 2024 (24 comments)

“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is now available as a free download! Written by Christopher Schwarz and first published in June 2011, “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is revered by many as a philosophical tome as well as a how-to book. The book includes instructions for building your own tool chest, as demonstrated here by MetaFilter's Own™ and JimCoin™ creator bondcliff!
posted to MetaFilter by slogger at 8:25 AM on April 15, 2024 (17 comments)

A rather large drama unfolded a couple of weeks ago when it was discovered that someone had installed a backdoor into an installation utility used by much of the Open Source community. Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility targets encrypted SSH connections [Ars Technica] This was found by accident, a worker was maintaining his own code and found discrepancies in computer performance and investigated. How one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide [The Verge] This seems to have been largely the work of one online account that spent years gaining trust in the group that maintain this tool. THE OTHER PLAYERS WHO HELPED (ALMOST) MAKE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BACKDOOR HACK [The Intercept] The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind [WIRED] Today, Fedora announced its own systems all clear of this thwarted backdoor attempt. CVE-2024-3094: All Clear
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 10:58 AM on April 15, 2024 (53 comments)

Gaza in a Million Pieces - Arwa Damon, founder and president of the charity INARA, writes for New Lines Magazine of her observations now that she's able to enter Gaza || Le Monde: Despite promises, Israel still restricts aid to Gaza (ungated) || Washington Post: Crutches and chocolate croissants: Gaza aid items Israel has rejected (ungated) || New Yorker (Isaac Chotiner interview with Yuval Abraham): Inside Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza || Haaretz: Israel Has Declared Record Amount of West Bank Land as State-owned in 2024 || Mondoweiss: ‘Come out, you animals’: how the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital happened || Sydney Morning Herald (12 April): Australian former reporter, now aid worker, shot at in Gaza
posted to MetaFilter by cendawanita at 9:25 AM on April 13, 2024 (389 comments)

Dune the Broadway Musical [Showtunes] - Baby On Board [Barbershop] - Carolina-O [Indie Country] - Sabrosito Amor [Latin] - Rising Sun Gospel [Soul] - Allegro Consort in C [Classical] - You Spilt a Coffee on my Dog [R&B] - Potion Seller [60s Folk] - I'm Not Your Star [Screamo] - SNES Greensleeves [Chiptune] - Syncopated Rhythms [Jazz] - Tavern Serenades [Fiddle] - My Tamagotchi died in '98 [Country Pop] - Senna Tea Blues [Bluegrass] - Unexpected Item in Bagging Area (A Cowboy's Lament) [Americana] - Herb's Whisper [Hip-hop] - Metropolis Pt. 3 [Prog metal] - F**k You Elmo [Acoustic Guitar] - Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet [Orchestral] - ムーンライト【.】【3】【1】[Vaporwave] - Dreaming Miku [Vocaloid] - The Deku Tree’s Decree [Broadway] - Website on the Internet [50s A Capella] // Meet Udio — the most realistic AI music creation tool I’ve ever tried
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 3:17 PM on April 13, 2024 (33 comments)

Here's a summary of various studies that look at dogs and language. A couple of videos are included, one of them is this video: Dogs understand words as we do [2m20s] which is a summary of this paper, one of several linked in the first link in this post.
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 2:14 PM on April 12, 2024 (40 comments)

Finding independence in a perfectly cooked egg I found it while walking through the home-goods section of T.J. Maxx, the American retail equivalent of the Garden of Earthly Delights, at 8:00 on a Tuesday night in 2015.... Somewhere among these novelties I spotted a carelessly abandoned gadget calling itself the Dash Rapid Egg Cooker. The cashier who rang me up did not share my enthusiasm for the cheery cockiness of its packaging, which proclaimed that it “Perfectly Cooks 6 Eggs at a Time!” Baffled, she asked me a question, the answer to which would have embarrassed anyone but me: “Don’t you know how to boil water?”
posted to MetaFilter by Toddles at 8:19 PM on April 11, 2024 (103 comments)

Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city A wide residential and commercial block, known as "Region 9", is being cleared of several metres of overlying pumice and ash thrown out by Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.(Pompeii previously)
posted to MetaFilter by bq at 11:59 AM on April 11, 2024 (22 comments)