I'm celebrating my 40th birthday next month, and it'll be an homage to my own Arrested Development. Fans of the show, help me come up with some AD-themed cocktail names!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 11:53 AM on March 29, 2017 (77 comments)

"Ice, driftwood, foamy waves and skateboards? Four skaters head north to the cold Norwegian coast, applying their urban skills to a wild canvas of beach flotsam, frozen sand and pastel skies. The result is a beautiful mashup — biting winds and short days, ollies and a frozen miniramp."
posted to MetaFilter by not_the_water at 4:02 PM on March 27, 2017 (5 comments)

Somewhere in Russia, a man calls for a car. Somewhere in New York City, a stranger's phone buzzes.
posted to FanFare by radioamy at 9:22 AM on March 16, 2017 (8 comments)

The Merci Train was a train of 49 French railroad boxcars filled with tens of thousands of gifts of gratitude from French citizens sent to the US in 1949. They were showing their appreciation for the 700+ American boxcars of relief goods sent to them by Americans in 1948 via a project calledFriendship Train. Each of the 48 American states at that time received one of the gift-laden box cars. Many of those boxcars still exist.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 2:53 PM on March 23, 2017 (28 comments)

Scrubbing a Stranger
posted to MetaFilter by R.F.Simpson at 5:29 PM on February 20, 2017 (59 comments)

On February 6th, 1840, New Zealand's founding document was signed. The Treaty of Waitangi was a contract between the British government and the chiefs of the iwi (tribes) of New Zealand (although many didn't sign). It has a complicated history.
posted to MetaFilter by reshet at 4:29 PM on February 5, 2017 (13 comments)

The best meme of 2016 — and let’s be real, probably any year — should be the one that was born from people arguing about dogs on the Internet. The Washington Post talks to @dog_rates and Brent Brant Walker , who had one of the best Twitter exchanges of the year.
posted to MetaFilter by Metroid Baby at 9:07 AM on January 5, 2017 (75 comments)

Musician Evan Desautels remixed Barenaked Ladies' hit, One Week, replacing every instrument with its earworm opening lyrics,"It's been." He previously remixed the theme to Star Wars, replacing all the instruments with the first orchestral hit.
posted to MetaFilter by Room 641-A at 5:03 AM on January 3, 2017 (69 comments)

In which we meet an adorably-described Mac SE/30 known as the Mother Gopher. The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol.
posted to MetaFilter by duien at 9:42 PM on January 1, 2017 (55 comments)

The Guardian has a new series on uplifting culture for 2017 that includes films that are uplifting (rather than the often cliched 'inspirational' genre).
posted to MetaFilter by ellieBOA at 4:45 AM on January 2, 2017 (24 comments)

Still File, by Skrekkøgle, is a series of photographs staged to resemble e.g. unconvincingly photorealistic raytraced 3D graphics. Making-of photos included. Skrekkøgle hijinks previously.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 10:10 PM on January 2, 2017 (20 comments)

2016 was a very, very bad year no matter how you slice it. In tough times, comedy is often a form of escape that people turn to when they need comforting. With that in mind, [Splitsider] asked our contributors to pick the one piece of comedy in any form that they turn to when they really need cheering up. We’ll be sharing their choices throughout the week in a package we’re calling “The Best Medicine.”

posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 9:44 AM on December 28, 2016 (11 comments)

The farmer who built her own broadband
posted to MetaFilter by Michele in California at 8:06 AM on December 26, 2016 (31 comments)

Jim Estill put up $1.5 million to bring 58 families to Canada. He found them homes, gave them jobs and even bought one man a dollar store. How the mild-mannered CEO of an appliance company became the Oskar Schindler of Guelph. [slTorontoLife]
posted to MetaFilter by cichlid ceilidh at 6:50 AM on December 21, 2016 (14 comments)

When Cindy Stowell was called by the Jeopardy producers about having earned a chance to audition, she told them it would have to be fast; she had Stage IV colon cancer and an estimated six months to live. Stowell passed away on December 5, eight days before the first day of her winning streak began to air. After Tuesday night's show Cindy’s six-day total is $103,803 (U.S.), which she donated to cancer research.
posted to MetaFilter by roomthreeseventeen at 1:14 PM on December 21, 2016 (42 comments)

French dancer Marie-Laure Agrapart performs beautifully choreographed routines that most notably involve her dance partner, an exceptionally trained black crow.
posted to MetaFilter by _Mona_ at 2:55 PM on December 21, 2016 (6 comments)

Touted as the first indigenous voice to the emoji application, the app contains some 200 Māori and Kiwi cultural icons.
posted to MetaFilter by vac2003 at 5:01 PM on December 21, 2016 (12 comments)

Washington Post writer Monica Hesse ruminates on an annual office party snack tradition (The giant tri-flavor holiday popcorn tin sends a message, which is, “I was thinking of you, but not until I was already in the checkout aisle of Big Lots.”) and speaks with the CEO of one of the major producers (“If you lined up all of our holiday popcorn tins that we produced in 2016, you could start at the White House and end at Fenway Park in Boston.”). Meanwhile, Post staffers compare an expensive tin to a cheap one to answer the culinary question "Is there really a difference between holiday popcorn brands?" (video, no captions).
posted to MetaFilter by Johnny Wallflower at 11:29 PM on December 21, 2016 (95 comments)

Spanish architect David Romero is rebuilding lost Frank Lloyd Wright masterworks in new color visualizations, created using 3D rendering software and Photoshop. So far he has posted highly realistic color pictures of Wright's Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, and the Rose and Gertrude Pauson House in Phoenix.
posted to MetaFilter by beagle at 8:33 AM on December 22, 2016 (5 comments)

I'm in my early thirties and I don't think I've ever been creative. I just don't think I have much imagination for those kinds of things. But it's something I think I'd like in my life, and I'm a little bewildered where to start. Is creativity or imagination something I can learn (or be taught), or is it more innate?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by A Robot Ninja at 7:50 AM on November 30, 2016 (15 comments)

A short song on a new ukulele about a thing I saw from a helicopter in Hawaii.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:08 AM on September 22, 2016 (6 comments)

I am taking up a new management position this month and I have been enjoying asking these two questions of my friends to help me prepare mentally. Can the Green help too?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Toddles at 7:46 AM on September 2, 2016 (81 comments)

23 months after Metafilter solved my grandma's coded messages, and we briefly went viral, the HLN network has produced a short video segment about the true hero of this story: Metafilter's own harperpitt, her code-breaking skills, and the power of the hive mind in tackling web mysteries. Article & YT Video.
posted to MetaTalk by JannaK at 1:06 PM on December 14, 2015 (63 comments)

If you live near an active volcano, and are willing to help someone out, I'd like to mail you a small item (and some USD to cover your expenses), and have you video yourself putting that item in molten lava for me. * this is not a joke * I'm not trying to get anyone to break any laws. * it's a very small object that would not harm a volcano * thank you
posted to MetaFilter Jobs by popechunk at 8:01 PM on September 28, 2015

How can I make beautiful Powerpoint slides like those in this example presentation, titled "Steal this Presentation"? I can't download the presentation as a powerpoint file, only as a pdf. I have no graphic design skills, so I was hoping to find a template or powerpoint file somewhere, so I can just borrow the fonts, layouts, etc. Thank you for any help or example presentations you can link me to!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by surenoproblem at 4:53 AM on August 25, 2015 (21 comments)

Herself.com (NSFW)
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 7:27 AM on August 7, 2015 (12 comments)

Twitter joke that turned into an actual country song an hour later. I'm in Huntsville with nothing but my ukulele, so this didn't get the full band treatment I'd otherwise do, but it works pretty well like this.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:06 PM on July 4, 2015 (9 comments)

Have you had to prep for the arrival of a major VIP (eg a Queen? a Head of State? the head of the United Nations) to your office or factory? What did you have to do?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by almostwitty at 8:45 PM on June 22, 2015 (14 comments)

The headlines are exciting: "Clocks to read 11:59:60 as time lords add leap second" and "Global markets spooked by looming 'leap second'," as June 30, 2015 will be extended for one second to keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) close to the mean solar time, or UT1 because the Earth is constantly undergoing a deceleration caused by the braking action of the tides. So why are markets bracing for trouble and some suggesting you avoid air travel at that time? There are always a few more bugs to work out, as seen when the extra second "crashed the web" in 2012, and global outage of computerised check-in systems used by Qantas and Virgin Australia.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 7:52 AM on June 29, 2015 (76 comments)

Jim Obergefell and John Arthur had been together nearly two decades when John was stricken by terminal ALS. With their union unconstitutional in Ohio, the couple turned to friends and family to fund a medical flight to Maryland, where they wed, tearfully, on the tarmac [prev.]. After John's death, however, Jim found himself embroiled in an ugly legal battle with his native state over the right to survivor status on John's death certificate -- a fight he eventually took all the way to the Supreme Court. And that's how this morning -- two years after U.S. v. Windsor, a dozen after Lawrence v. Texas, and at the crest of an unprecedented wave of social change -- the heartbreaking case of Obergefell v. Hodges has at long last rendered same-sex marriage legal nationwide in a 5-4 decision lead by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:03 AM on June 26, 2015 (1227 comments)

I've recently gotten back into podcasts because my commute has changed and become more amendable to podcast-ing. Help me discover some new favorites.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rainbowbrite at 7:05 AM on June 11, 2015 (24 comments)

This is such a silly question, but I would appreciate AskMe's perspective. My boyfriend and I are long distance, and yesterday I stumbled on "wedding" photos of him and his ex that were taken two weeks ago. He told me that it was from a video that his university is making for new students to show how glamorous graduate school life can be (he's a professor and an alum). Am I being irrational in doubting him?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by sockpuppetry at 6:11 PM on June 19, 2015 (233 comments)

Name a purchase of yours that was worth every penny!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by smorgasbord at 4:37 PM on June 4, 2015 (134 comments)

I love snarky restaurant reviews. Classic example. Another. Give me your favourites.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by quaking fajita at 11:37 AM on May 29, 2015 (15 comments)

I'd like to dabble more in graphic novels and comics for "grown ups". I like Julia Wertz and Allie Brosh--so basically I'm looking for stuff that is kinda gritty yet also kinda funny, preferably with a female's point of view. Who else might I enjoy?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by oceanview at 2:34 PM on June 22, 2015 (31 comments)

In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, The Hour Record was hotly-contested. The best bike racers in the world tried to be the person to ride a bicycle the furthest on a track in one hour. It's so grueling that Eddy Merckx said it burned three years off of his life.
posted to MetaFilter by entropone at 6:59 AM on June 9, 2015 (38 comments)

"In the simulation, an average game [of Chutes and Ladders] lasts 26.5 turns, but it is a right-tailed distribution, so the longest game lasted 146 turns! If only there was a way to give each game a more consistent and shorter length. Then, it hit me. There are nine ladders and ten slides. There is a ladder missing! What if I placed a new tenth ladder on the board that consistently shortened the game? Yes, but where?!"
posted to MetaFilter by yeti at 1:44 PM on June 9, 2015 (58 comments)

Jerry Seinfeld, in an interview, is unhappy about the current state of comedy. (slESPN) "They just want to use these words: 'That’s racist;' 'That’s sexist;' 'That’s prejudice.' They don’t know what the f--k they’re talking about.”
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 10:45 AM on June 9, 2015 (428 comments)

It’s been a busy year on Metafilter, with some big changes over the last twelve months.  Some of the hardest changes were the result of the financial difficulties that came to a head last May with significant staffing cuts.  And the best thing to happen for the site was the tremendous outpouring of generosity from Metafilter’s members in response to that financial crisis, through voluntary funding of Metafilter.  

I want to thank all of you again for your support, and give you an update on where site finances are now, how funding has helped, and how we’re trying to make it easier to support the site in a way that works well for you—including a new alternative to PayPal.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 9:40 AM on June 8, 2015 (220 comments)

You might have seen this image floating around, if you frequent the likes of Tumblr. One of many simple speculative choice pictures - here's eight pills that give you superpowers, which one would you take?

Well, Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex decided to do a write-up about how each choice might go. And how they might go wrong.
posted to MetaFilter by kafziel at 4:35 PM on June 7, 2015 (88 comments)

The Agency is every online community member's worst fears come to life: a real honest-to-goodness troll/noise factory where dozens of employees using hundreds of accounts post thousands of highly targeted and coordinated attacks as awful comments on Twitter, Facebook, and forums in order to sway public opinion about geopolitics. From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities...
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 7:55 AM on June 2, 2015 (76 comments)

The Messy Business of Reinventing Happiness. The story behind FastPass+ at DisneyWorld.
posted to MetaFilter by blue_beetle at 6:53 AM on June 2, 2015 (40 comments)

Joe Stiglitz on Inequality, Wealth, and Growth: Why Capitalism is Failing (video; if you don't have 30m, skip to 20m for discussion of political inequality, wealth, credit and monetary policy) - "If the very rich can use their position to get higher returns, more investment information, more extraction of rents, and if the very rich have equal or higher savings rates, then wealth will become more concentrated... economic inequality inevitably gets translated into political inequality, and political inequality gets translated into more economic inequality. The basic and really important idea here is that markets don't exist in a vacuum, that market economies operate according to certain rules, certain regulations that specify how they work. And those effect the efficiency of those markets, but they also effect how the fruits of the benefits of those markets are distributed and the result of that is there are large numbers of aspects of our basic economic framework that in recent years have worked to increase the inequality of wealth and income in our society... leading to a society which can be better described, increasingly, as an inherited plutocracy."
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 2:02 AM on June 2, 2015 (27 comments)

The Case:  Andrea's a writer no one reads. Then she makes a shocking discovery.
posted to FanFare by Tevin at 8:45 AM on May 30, 2015 (25 comments)

Why do I keep getting attacked by crows? Can I do anything to stop it?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by noxperpetua at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2015 (31 comments)

If you love kung fu and hate Nazis, then today is your lucky day. Kung Fury has been released on Youtube. (Previously, Previously)
posted to MetaFilter by rebent at 5:41 PM on May 28, 2015 (56 comments)

Are you alarmed about these new snake people? No?! You should be! So, here's a bot that gathers news about their doings for you.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by ignignokt at 3:42 PM on May 19, 2015 (5 comments)

What would a culture that doesn't hate women look like? I'm looking for books, movies, works of fiction and non-fiction in various formats/media, and your own musings and imaginings.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by gakiko at 11:39 PM on May 14, 2015 (19 comments)

I made a web toy that simulates a doodling and animation toy from an alternate timeline 1990s. Create 2 color, 32x16 pixel, four frame animations. Then transform your creations into gifs resembling a cheap LCD, an LED matrix, a vacuum fluorescent display, and more. (Source on github)
posted to MetaFilter Projects by umrain at 6:58 AM on May 20, 2015 (7 comments)

I'm a web developer. I'm almost 40, and I'm starting to wonder how much longer I can expect to sling code in the trenches with the youngsters. I mean, I still have a number of years of relevance left in me—but it's hard to imagine that I'll remain competitive as a developer as I enter my 50s and 60s. I need to start thinking about the long game. So...what does the long game look like?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by escape from the potato planet at 5:56 PM on May 6, 2015 (15 comments)