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Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
You could call them “sky flowers,” but that doesn’t really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don’t represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there’s a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob’s kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It’s a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?Today marks 25 years since the original broadcast of "Help Wanted" -- the pilot episode of marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg's educational comic that became a delightful romp of "relentless optimism and fundamental sweetness", a hothouse flower of inventive and absurdist imagination, a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, and one of the most iconic and beloved animated franchises of the 21st century. Are you ready, kids?
We Need to Rewild the Internet
The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas and so many more
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.
The most significant hip hop feud in decades
Kendrick Lamar and Drake (aka Aubrey Graham), two of the biggest active hip hop artists and former collaborators, are seriously beefing in a major way that hasn't been seen since Tupac vs Biggie. Last October, Drake dropped a track, First Person Shooter, where his collaborator J Cole named the two of them and Kendrick as "the big three". Kendrick, who has a competitive streak, took umbrage at being put on the same level as the other two and replied in Like That "it's just big me". What might've started as a somewhat professional competition has rapidly gone nuclear since Kendrick took shots at Drake's Blackness, fitness as a parent, and masculinity in his track titled "euphoria" and Drake responded with allegations of domestic abuse, infidelity, and cuckoldry in Family Matters. As of the latest, Kendrick has accused Drake of hiding a 2nd child and being a sexual predator of underaged girls.
Tom Driveimpossiblyquicklyer
Tom Walker tries desperately, with halting success, to complete some very basic missions in Grand Theft Auto 4 while all the cars on the map lose their fucking minds. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Come for the comedy car deaths, stay for the slow evolution of a "this is a horror stealth game" playstyle that makes it at all possible to make progress.
Roofman
Orangutan becomes first wild animal seen using medicinal plant on wound
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.
My life has gone off the map, it seems. Possibly also off the rails.
At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
The children who remember their past lives
What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers? In Louisiana in 2000, 2-year-old James Leininger would wake screaming, repeating the same phrases to his baffled and disturbed parents: “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!” Over the following year, a story unspooled in memories and drawings: He was a World War II pilot whose plane took off from a boat, and he died when he was shot down by Japanese forces. James offered names of people and places, and his account would ultimately become one of the most prominent and thoroughly documented “cases of the reincarnation type,” or CORT, ever recorded.
The survival of this ancient language is as mysterious as its origins
Shakespeare toys with numerous European languages throughout his work, including Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch. Often, these are spoken in thick accents, with comedic pronunciation. The same holds true for his use of the various British dialects—Scots, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish—heard in scruffy taverns or high courts. In Henry V, soldiers fracture the King’s English while the king himself and a French princess descend into a comical Franglais courtship. Yet, no matter how garbled the speech, playgoers can usually identify distinct languages and dialects—that is, until they bump up against what scholars have called the “invented language,” “unintelligible gabble,” and “‘Boskos thromuldo boskos’ mumbo-jumbo” in his comedy "All’s Well That Ends Well." from I Understand Thee, and Can Speak Thy Tongue: California Unlocks Shakespeare’s Gibberish [LARB]
Mirror Mirror On The Ball
The process of making a mirror ball. The last remaining mirror ball manufacturing factory in Japan. [14m30s] Depicts making a mirror ball. Actually pretty interesting.
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]
Brian Potter explains the construction of a semiconductor fab
How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fab . By Brian Potter of Construction Physics.
Claire Re-Recreates
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....
administrators aim to create a more politically quietist university
Who Has the Right to “Disrupt” the University? Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrator-as-disruptor is Gordon Gee, currently the president of West Virginia University (WVU), whose administration pushed through extraordinarily deep cuts to the institution’s academic offerings last fall. During a meeting of the faculty senate, Gee said “I want to be very clear that the university is not dismantling higher education. We are disrupting it . . . And many of you know I am a firm believer in disruption.”
We Sent Ralph Nader Some of Our Favorite Pens. He Dismissed Them All.
Ralph Nader is loyal to one pen: the Papermate Flair. But Nader claims that the pens are drying out quicker then they used to. He reached out to Wirecutter (a NYT property) and they investigated.
Archive.is link: https://archive.is/54jtw
Philosophy doesn’t only matter for the ivory tower
By leveraging a unique large dataset and new techniques for exploring this dataset, our paper highlights the diversity of moral dilemmas experienced in daily life, and helps to build a moral psychology grounded in the vagaries of everyday experience. from A Large-Scale Investigation of Everyday Moral Dilemmas, in which Philosophers are studying Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” [Vox]
In other news, water continues to be wet
I'm warm, therefore I think
Why have philosophers had so little to say about Descartes’s stove, and so much to say about his dreams, his resolve, and his conception of analytic geography on that winter’s night? Suppressing the agency of the stove makes it easier to tell a simple story about the agency of the individual thinker. But it has made it that much harder to discern the subtle yet powerful ways in which modern air conditioning technologies condition thought, culture, and social experience. from Descartes’s Stove by the author of Air Conditioning, Hsuan L. Hsu
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Maybe I have a different perspective because I used to go to live theatre a lot, but colour blind casting has long been a thing there. So I tend to interpret it the same way in TV and movies. In Renegade Nell I just kind of assumed the Earl of Poynton is a white character who happens to be played by a black man.
Just suspend your disbelief.... [more]
posted by TheophileEscargot to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 12:39 PM
95 users marked this as a favorite
posted by TheophileEscargot to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 12:39 PM
95 users marked this as a favorite
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Paul Auster had a real profound effect on me. I knew of him early, because my dad really liked his works. Sometime in the early 90s, my dad interviewed him for Icelandic radio, and Auster said he should be in touch when he was in New York. My dad didn’t really think much of it, but once when he was headed to New York for a conference, he sent... [more]
posted by Kattullus to MetaFilter on May 1 at 2:15 PM
86 users marked this as a favorite
posted by Kattullus to MetaFilter on May 1 at 2:15 PM
86 users marked this as a favorite
The 'trad wives' I knew growing up in the 60s/70s wore polyester elastic-waisted pants around the house and only put on lipstick for (maybe) church. They did not coo about how they loved serving their husbands; their expressed emotions about their spouses ranged from mild annoyance to contempt to fear. Kids were just tossed outside and ignored as... [more]
posted by LindsayIrene to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:34 AM
83 users marked this as a favorite
posted by LindsayIrene to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:34 AM
83 users marked this as a favorite
You couldn’t do that joke today because it’s a business model for at least five start ups. [view]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:19 AM
81 users marked this as a favorite
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:19 AM
81 users marked this as a favorite
It's pure bullshit. [view]
posted by ovvl to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:27 PM
80 users marked this as a favorite
posted by ovvl to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:27 PM
80 users marked this as a favorite
A more skeptical look at the Leininger case. [view]
posted by interogative mood to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:13 PM
74 users marked this as a favorite
posted by interogative mood to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:13 PM
74 users marked this as a favorite
yes it is and it's binding both ways if you stop eating the shrimp you have breached the contract. [view]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:30 AM
73 users marked this as a favorite
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:30 AM
73 users marked this as a favorite
“If you draw a doughnut around that Circuit City,” a Charlotte police captain later said, “I bet he talked to everyone within a mile.”
I'm sorry, what? A doughnut? That's what we're drawing? [view]
posted by charismatic megafauna to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 3:20 PM
70 users marked this as a favorite
posted by charismatic megafauna to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 3:20 PM
70 users marked this as a favorite
Ctrl-F p-r-i-v-a-t-e e-q-u-i-t-y
Found the problem. Put the corpse over there next to Toys 'Я' Us, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sears, RadioShack, etc. [view]
posted by JoeZydeco to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:50 AM
68 users marked this as a favorite
posted by JoeZydeco to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:50 AM
68 users marked this as a favorite
Unless you can get an HP LaserJet 4+. I killed a man by throwing one out a seventh story window and then used it to print out his death certificate. [view]
posted by charred husk to MetaFilter on May 5 at 12:03 PM
62 users marked this as a favorite
posted by charred husk to MetaFilter on May 5 at 12:03 PM
62 users marked this as a favorite
Disruption by laying off faculty and closing programs: A-ok!
Disruption by having a small tent encampment in the quad: Send in the goons! [view]
posted by Dip Flash to MetaFilter on May 6 at 4:03 PM
58 users marked this as a favorite
posted by Dip Flash to MetaFilter on May 6 at 4:03 PM
58 users marked this as a favorite
Ten months ago when the Supreme Court rejected a loan forgiveness plan for technicalities, Biden quickly revised it and announced $39 billion in student debt relief. But you didn't hear too many people credit him for it, because it's difficult for them to admit how successful Biden is as a leftist president. [view]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta to MetaFilter on May 1 at 6:08 PM
56 users marked this as a favorite
posted by The Pluto Gangsta to MetaFilter on May 1 at 6:08 PM
56 users marked this as a favorite
To raise enough cash to make the deal happen, Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster's real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back.
Yep, that’ll do it every time.
We’re only hearing about all you can eat because shoplifting doesn’t... [more]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:06 AM
55 users marked this as a favorite
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:06 AM
55 users marked this as a favorite
Endless shrimp didn't sink the seafood chain. Wall Street did. (Business Insider) [view]
posted by box to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:49 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite
posted by box to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:49 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite
I'm honestly starting to think none of these guys care about cultivating the buddha nature. [view]
posted by The Manwich Horror to MetaFilter on May 5 at 8:37 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite
posted by The Manwich Horror to MetaFilter on May 5 at 8:37 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite
Apparently, Shakespeare did not put all his Basques in one exeunt. [view]
posted by Ishbadiddle to MetaFilter on May 4 at 4:35 AM
51 users marked this as a favorite
posted by Ishbadiddle to MetaFilter on May 4 at 4:35 AM
51 users marked this as a favorite
Red Lobster misjudged just how many seafood lovers would pour into restaurants around the United States and fill up their stomachs with pounds of sweet, juicy crab legs drenched in lemon and dipped in melted butter.
Did a Red Lobster marketing team write this article? [view]
posted by moonmilk to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:45 AM
51 users marked this as a favorite
posted by moonmilk to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:45 AM
51 users marked this as a favorite
This whole thing is just so weird to me. Especially when they cosplay in 1950s housewife clothes.
This is what happens when you remove all traces of rocking from rockabilly. [view]
posted by FatherDagon to MetaFilter on May 3 at 9:33 AM
50 users marked this as a favorite
posted by FatherDagon to MetaFilter on May 3 at 9:33 AM
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some of the lines in his songs about this are already legendary.
Seriously. "you not a colleague, you a fuckin' colonizer".
I think one thing that I find genuinely interesting about this is kind of how the rap/hip-hop scene has changed, as well - like, these accusations would not have been effective twenty years ago. But... [more]
posted by corb to MetaFilter on May 5 at 8:55 AM
48 users marked this as a favorite
posted by corb to MetaFilter on May 5 at 8:55 AM
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Wow, the all-you-can-eat stuff was just a small part of the problem, which even went beyond the usual private equity vultures cashing out while making the restaurants start paying rent:
Thai Union was a top supplier of shrimp to Red Lobster for more than 20 years. In 2016, Thai Union took a $575 million minority stake in the brand. In 2020,... [more]
posted by mediareport to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:52 AM
47 users marked this as a favorite
posted by mediareport to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:52 AM
47 users marked this as a favorite