There are three main methods for using the trees to find your way. We can look for how the tree’s growth is influenced by the sun and how their shape is altered by the wind. The third method is to use a tree's preferences to work out the nature of the terrain ahead of us.

Now let's add a fourth: follow trail marker trees, those trees that were purposely bent by Native Americans as navigation aids.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 10:05 AM on January 12, 2016 (21 comments)

I do not like to cook or prepare food. It's a character flaw, I realize, but for whatever reason I don't like to spend time on food. This leads to me eating out a lot, just because it's simple. I'm looking for foods that are healthy, filling, but also have the lowest prep time possible. Non-perishables would be a plus. I'm also fairly active, so high energy foods would be good as well. Am I asking too much, or are there foods that fit the bill?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by holmesian at 7:49 AM on January 6, 2016 (44 comments)

I recently left my 9-to-5 job and have a lot of guilt about setting my own schedule! Help?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by easter queen at 9:57 PM on January 4, 2016 (11 comments)

"From culinary scholarship to crowd sourced culinary brands emerging, 2015 has given us so much to be proud of. The following is a year in review that highlights some of the best parts of the sea change we’ve seen in the world of black foodways." Chef Therese Nelson presents "Black Culinary History Year in Review 2015." Via Michael Twitty.
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 3:18 PM on December 28, 2015 (3 comments)

Zelda Day 2015:

• If you love the NES original but are sad you know where everything is, try the Zelda Randomizer! (Windows EXE, requires ROM). Tries to guarantee solvable games! YouTube play.
• Did you know that, in the original releases of N64 Ocarina of Time, if you hold the R button down when you get a certain item, you get a different one instead? Info with more OoT glitches.
• From Double Fine! Devs Play The Legend of Zelda, four parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
• Fan animation, "Racing For Rupees".

posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 6:06 PM on December 26, 2015 (32 comments)

Anyone interested in doing a readthrough of Philip K Dick books?
posted to FanFare by hobgadling at 4:49 PM on December 16, 2015 (7 comments)

Lou Milione, a senior official at [the DEA], told me, “One of the things the DEA is kind of in the business of is almost all of our investigations are proactive.” But Russell Hanks, a former senior American diplomat, who got a firsthand look at some of the DEA’s narco-terrorism targets during the time he served in West Africa, told me, “The DEA provided everything these men needed to commit a crime, then said, ‘Wow, look what they did.’” He added, “This wasn’t terrorism — this was the manipulation of weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest records."
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 12:54 PM on December 15, 2015 (16 comments)

Killer Mike interviews Senator Bernie Sanders at The SWAG Shop for about an hour, in six parts:

1. Economic Freedom
2. Social Justice
3. Rigged
4. Free Health Care: It Ain’t A Big Deal
5. This Country Was Started AS An Act Of Political Protest
6. Democrats Win When People Vote

posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 11:19 AM on December 15, 2015 (110 comments)

Go about 50 miles east of Death Valley and you'll find Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a detached unit of Death Valley National Park. This complex of desert oases includes one significantly protected tiny body of water, both physically and legally. Known as Devil's Hole, a small portion of this underwater cave is home to the tiny Devil's Hole Pupfish, the smallest of the desert pupfish and one of the world's rarest fish with a wild population of 35 at it's low point in 2013.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 1:15 PM on December 9, 2015 (11 comments)

When Nothing Is Cool is an insider critique of English academia's culture of critique.
posted to MetaFilter by grobstein at 1:24 PM on December 8, 2015 (29 comments)

Judaism's core texts grew out of millennia-long conversations and arguments across generations, with interconnected dialogues, source citing and (re)interpretation. Now, it's all going digital: Sefaria is creating a massive public domain, interactive "living library of Jewish texts and their interconnections, in Hebrew and translations." Their goal is to build a reference resource and community that "gives a better learning experience than anything that comes before it," from ancient to modern texts and "all the volumes of commentary in between." Read texts, browse submitted public source sheets on dozens of topics or visualize associations between texts.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 6:54 PM on December 7, 2015 (22 comments)

Why are autumn leaves mostly yellow in Europe and red in North America? The colour of a British wood in autumn is predominantly yellow. There are relatively few European trees which have red leaves in the autumn....Autumn is much redder in North America and east Asia than it is in northern Europe, and this can’t be explained by temperature differences alone.
posted to MetaFilter by caddis at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2015 (25 comments)

I don't remember buying these gaudy mother fuckin shoes but am i gonna wear em? you bet your ass
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 12:18 PM on November 25, 2015 (92 comments)

The Organization for Transformative Works, a fan-run organization that hosts significant fandom-culture projects including one of the biggest fanfiction archives around, a fandom wiki, and a peer-reviewed academic journal, just had their 2015 Board elections, the first since 2011 - and, like its predecessor, was very contentious before, during, and after the election.
posted to MetaFilter by divabat at 4:47 AM on November 25, 2015 (30 comments)

When Fiona Ingleby took to Twitter last April to vent about a journal’s peer-review process, she didn’t expect much of a response. With only around 100 followers on the social-media network, Ingleby — an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK — guessed that she might receive a few messages of support or commiseration from close colleagues. What she got was an overwhelming wave of reaction. Social media has enabled an increasingly public discussion about the persistent problem of sexism in science.
posted to MetaFilter by sciatrix at 9:30 AM on November 20, 2015 (11 comments)

[Megan] Phelps-Roper spent the summer and the fall in an existential spiral. She would conclude that everything about Westboro’s doctrine was wrong, only to be seized with terror that these thoughts were a test from God, and she was failing. “You literally feel insane,” she said. Eventually, her doubts won out. “I just couldn’t keep up the charade,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to do the things we were doing and say the things we were saying.” - How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs. (content warning : extreme homophobic & anti-Semitic language)
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 9:24 AM on November 16, 2015 (61 comments)

More than perhaps any creature, salmon epitomize modern wildlife management. We are willing to bend over backwards, to the point of comedy, to recover species we cherish: We captive-breed black-footed ferrets; we shoot barred owls to save spotted owls; we patiently teach whooping cranes to migrate behind aircraft. Yet coexistence occurs strictly on our terms — and there is always at least one term left non-negotiable. We spend millions on wildlife crossings over highways, yet would never close the highways themselves; we relocate imperiled trees to help them weather climate change without daring to retool our carbon-based economy. In the Columbia Basin, the dams, and their power, are the inviolable condition, the infrastructure that fish and managers must turn cartwheels to accommodate. We will give salmon everything, except what we don’t want to give.

The great salmon compromise: High Country News' Ben Goldfarb explores the complicated legal and biological tradeoffs in federal and tribal salmon recovery efforts in the Columbia Basin.
posted to MetaFilter by Dip Flash at 11:43 PM on November 15, 2015 (7 comments)

You were taught in school that the rain forest is like the lungs of our planet.

It’s not that simple.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 4:09 PM on November 12, 2015 (16 comments)

My preference is for heavy, rich food. It's too much for me lately, but that's what I'm in the habit of eating and making. What would I like that feels / tastes a bit lighter?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cotton dress sock at 8:18 PM on November 11, 2015 (25 comments)

Rewrite the rules to benefit everyone, not just the wealthy - "If there's one thing Joseph Stiglitz wants to say about inequality, it's that it has been a choice, not an unexpected, unfortunate economic outcome. That's unnerving, but it also means that citizens and politicians have the opportunity to fix the problem before it gets worse." (via)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 2:34 AM on November 11, 2015 (111 comments)

An anthem for a hero for our age. An anthem... for Rowsdower.
Also from the same guy, songs for The Pumaman and Mitchell, and Idiot Control Now.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:34 PM on November 10, 2015 (50 comments)

A short film: The winter stories of the Ojibwe are vital narratives that offer a historical and moral guide for understanding the environment and our people’s place within it. One of these stories tells of the first maple sugar gathering. A tree offered its life-force (sap) for use by the people to help keep them alive through a difficult winter when many were starving to death. This tree asked to be cared for in return and to be thanked properly for this gift. Each spring the students at Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School open the school sugar bush with a retelling of this story and an opening feast of thanks.
posted to MetaFilter by rtha at 8:18 PM on November 9, 2015 (6 comments)

It’s a Thursday morning, and you’re sitting around with nothing to do. You had a job, but it exploded, so now you’re stuck here in your boring house. Suddenly, your phone rings. Murder, Cheat, and Fuck Your Way Through Boston
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 10:32 AM on November 8, 2015 (45 comments)

Bernie Sanders (comedian James Adomian) joins Dr. Ben Carson (Jerry Minor), Lincoln Chafee (Seth Morris, previously), Hillary Clinton (Heather Campbell), and others for Decision Election 2016 All-Star Clusterfuck, a bi-partisan debate, live at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. [SLYT, NSFW]
posted to MetaFilter by Room 641-A at 4:49 PM on November 7, 2015 (13 comments)

Walter Benjamin’s legacy, 75 years on : The First Pop Philosopher
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 8:06 PM on November 4, 2015 (10 comments)

I was lucky that he merely threatened me. A journalist from Newsweek actually was deported from a different tax-haven island (Jersey) for her reporting there, and was banned from re-entering the island, or any part of the U.K., for nearly two years. Even though her story was unrelated to the financial-services industry, it was expected to bring negative publicity to the island, threatening its reputation as a place to do business. The message was therefore quashed by banishment of the messenger. The wealth-management industry does not mess around. Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 4:14 PM on October 29, 2015 (23 comments)

How to Spot Manipulation - PsychCentral
How to Pick Up on Manipulative Behavior - Basic guide from WikiHow
Are You Being Manipulated? Keys to Hidden Aggression - Good Therapy.org
Psychological Manipulation Resources - Band Back Together
Eight Ways to Spot Emotional Manipulation - cassiopaea.com
Subtly Controlling Behavior - Abuse and Relationships
posted to MetaFilter by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:48 AM on October 29, 2015 (85 comments)

Put Your Makeup On So They'll Like You (slMedium)
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 8:27 AM on October 28, 2015 (98 comments)

Twitter user and occasional Metafilter poster leyawn has created a choose-your-own-adventure game in tweets and GIFs using his own pixel art. Click the profile links to advance the story!
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:35 AM on October 28, 2015 (6 comments)

Depending on whom you ask, the use of the active voice over the passive is arguably the most fundamental writer’s maxim, thought to lend weight, truth, and power to declarative statements. This absolutist view is flawed, however, because language is an art of nuance. From time to time, writers may well find illustrative value in the lightest of phrases, sentences so weightless and feathery that they scarcely even seem to exist at all.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:00 AM on October 27, 2015 (30 comments)

The Lost Girls: 'Misdiagnosed, misunderstood or missed altogether, many women with autism struggle to get the help they need.' Part of Spectrum's Sex/Gender in Autism special report.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 9:09 AM on October 27, 2015 (33 comments)

When relationships end, it’s often said the thing you do is recommit to the things you really care about. I can’t retreat to what I care about.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 9:07 AM on October 22, 2015 (9 comments)

In FieldWorkFail, scientists working in the field share their more embarassing stories !
posted to MetaFilter by Blasdelb at 6:05 AM on October 22, 2015 (34 comments)

Black Deaths Matter: A Generation of African Americans Are Buried in Racism

In Richmond, Virginia, two nearby African-American cemeteries, East End and Evergreen, are obscured by creeping kudzu. The cemeteries are within view of Richmond’s city-owned Oakwood Cemetery, which holds the remains of an estimated 17,000 Confederate soldiers. Brian Palmer, a journalist, is working on a film that follows a group of local volunteers who hope to reclaim East End. He learned that the gulf between the neglect in East End and the meticulous perpetual care in Oakwood is supported by contemporary public policy: The state government allocates funds to the Daughters of the Confederacy, a private group, to provide for the maintenance of Confederate soldiers’ graves in Oakwood and dozens of other state cemeteries.

posted to MetaFilter by zombieflanders at 8:16 AM on October 19, 2015 (26 comments)

I have been a series of unsuccessful relationships where my feelings disappeared over time. I cannot feel love for my long term partner, but also no longer feel love for family members. I have a history of severe depression, which is clearly an issue, but am not currently feeling particularly depressed (by my own standards, if not those of most people). I don't know how to proceed in my current relationship, as I don't know if my feelings are masked, possibly recoverable or just gone forever. I have posted here before about other emotional issues, but I’m keeping this anonymous because the other threads would link this one back to me. The MeFi community was *amazing* last time. This is a much more complex issue, but I would still appreciate your views. Can I learn to love - my partner, myself, anyone?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 9:39 AM on October 16, 2015 (8 comments)

The Drone Papers-The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars.
posted to MetaFilter by nevercalm at 6:17 AM on October 15, 2015 (52 comments)

The short version of how I got here – love my husband but fell in love with someone else. It’s not fair to him but I just don’t know how to say what I need to say. (Much) longer version inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by outoftime at 6:38 AM on June 10, 2013 (51 comments)

I'm looking for upbeat feminist resources--blogs, comics, music, film, Twitter accounts, Tumblrs, etc, that are celebratory, happy, and proud.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rhythm and booze at 8:23 AM on October 13, 2015 (11 comments)

Patrick Haggerty was a teenager in rural Dry Creek, Washington, in the late 1950s. He remembers the day he first had a conversation with his father about being gay.
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 5:58 PM on October 12, 2015 (8 comments)

Special Meta callout of JHarris: normally a valued MeFi member, what with incisive comments and the MST3K Club and such. But he made a kickass post EVERY SINGLE DAY OF SEPTEMBER.
posted to MetaTalk by Chrysostom at 4:15 PM on October 12, 2015 (49 comments)

Michael Twitty is becoming one of the most transformative figures in the world of food. Reinterrogating and recreating African-American history in the context of American culinary history through his blog Afroculinaria, Twitty argues for "culinary justice" in food writing and the conversation on food history. His project (and forthcoming book of the same name) The Cooking Gene is in part a product of his Southern Discomfort Tour, a journey retracing the preservation and transmission of culinary knowledge before, during and beyond slavery.
posted to MetaFilter by Miko at 9:58 AM on October 11, 2015 (8 comments)

Which over the counter medicine is available in Canada that isn't in the U.S.?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Unred at 5:41 AM on April 23, 2010 (24 comments)

The risk here is not that millions of people in Britain are suddenly going to die of thirst. It is that after all those years in which humans settled by rivers and thrived, we are now locked in conflict with our natural surroundings. Either the humans or the rivers have to suffer. At the moment, it is the rivers, although in the longer term a sick river will produce less water, so the humans will end up in trouble as well. (longformGrauniad)
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 11:43 AM on October 8, 2015 (12 comments)

I can't work at work and I don't know why. I can only get work done after the day's over while sitting on my couch. This isn't sustainable. Help!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by theraflu at 1:54 PM on October 8, 2015 (13 comments)

The Sherlock special trailer (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry at 1:55 PM on October 7, 2015 (56 comments)

I am on a quest to find recipes for things that are somewhat "salads" but that can function as a refrigerated snack that lasts for a few days after preparation. I don't know if there's a better term for this than "snack salads," but that's the purpose it would serve for me.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by bananana at 2:00 PM on October 1, 2015 (39 comments)

I have been a heavy user of Evernote for several years, but increasingly I find it is unreliable and performs poorly. I need to handle notes which include different media formats, which I don't have to explicitly organize, and which can be large. I don't want to interact with the file system directly. I would prefer an open solution that does these things well and doesn't do other stuff. Help me find a substitute with the features I need -- and migrate my data.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by grobstein at 11:36 AM on October 1, 2015 (14 comments)

Have you found that a basic idea around CBT simply doesn't ring true for you?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by tcv at 8:07 AM on September 27, 2015 (19 comments)

What are some "single add-ins" to ANY kind of spirit or liquor that makes it an interesting drink?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ersatzkat at 10:24 AM on September 25, 2015 (62 comments)

Let’s talk about expanding our ideas of boyzone-type derailing and how to be the best Metafilter we can be.
posted to MetaTalk by shakespeherian at 11:55 AM on September 25, 2015 (531 comments)