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More podcasts please.
What are some good podcasts about niche/specific interests hosted by comedians/comedy writers/funny people?
More than just parks: tranquil videos of America's National Parks
More Than Just Parks is "a project started in an effort to effect a greater awareness of the treasures that reside within America's National Parks." So far, there are four short videos: Olympic 4K (info) // Smoky Mountains (info) // Joshua Tree (info) // Redwood (info) // the tumblr blog
The Post-S3 Finale Fic Recs thread
A masterpost of recommendations for fanfic, S4 or otherwise. Cannibal Club authors are highly encouraged to link their work here.
You will not be going into space today
The Ballad of Captain Dwight-The story of Ed Dwight, the first black American trained to be an astronaut, via the memory palace
GOP 2016 Presidential Debates: one down, 16 to go
The GOP 2016 presidential candidates will again be split into two sessions for tonight's debates on CNN, but the pool is getting smaller, as Rick Perry suspended his campaign, bowing out before being in the second-tier debates for a second time, and former Virgina governor Jim Gilmore, with a hair above 0% nationally, will participate ... via Twitter*. But the biggest news on the main stage is the inclusion of Carly Fiorina, thanks to her rise in the few polls since the Fox debate (previously).
Where do the natural science geeks hang out?
I'm researching examples of great online engagement focused on the natural world.
Sleep scheduling hacks
I need to go to bed and get up (much) earlier, and be moderately functional in between, asap. What are your tips? (Difficulty level: chronic night owl)
Age of ambition?
At some point in my life, I envisioned myself becoming a leader in the field I was on the path to pursuing. I went from elite overachieving undergrad to elite overachieving graduate program, and now all I want is a life with trees, refreshing sleep, maybe a cat, a cup of tea, and some good books and friends. I can't tell if this shift in goals is because I'm maturing or because I might be in depressed survival-mode from being in my program.
It’s where you’ve been living this whole time.
The True Size Of… is an interactive demonstration of the limitations of the Mercator projection.
My hovercraft is full of Petromyzon marinus
One person's harbinger of river health is another's slayer of kings is another's invasive species. Take, for example, sea lampreys. They are making a comeback
in rivers around the UK thanks to conservation efforts.
Neurotribes published and reviewed
Steve Silberman's new book Neurotribes is out and getting buzzed. Reviewed at New York Times. Reviewed on NPR. Author interview on Erik Davis Expanding Mind podcast. If you are new at metafilter you might be interested to know that Silberman is also known as digaman at metafilter, although his last comment is from October 2012. The book is a greatly expanded version of his work on autism which has previously appeared in Wired as a number of articles including The Geek Syndrome.
everything is on fire forever
There was a fire in my building 2 weeks ago and everything is so smelly, the smelliest, the most smelly.
This rock formation seems safe and stable, yet it is sensitive
We've seen some warped art from Google Earth's 3D rendering in Postcards from Google Earth (previously, twice), but what if you look for the best angles and enhance them? Your Earth Transforms is one such project, by Meike Nixdorf, with additional enhancements by Grit Hackenberg, who have previously worked together on the documentary video for a prior photography project by Meike, In the Orbit of El Teide. (Via Wired)
Lochner? I hardly even know of that legal opinion
Barnett believes the Constitution exists to secure inalienable property and contract rights for individuals. This may sound like a bland and inconsequential opinion, but if widely adopted by our courts and political systems it would prohibit or call into question basic governmental protections—minimum wages, food-safety regulations, child-labor laws—that most of us take for granted. For nearly a century now, a legal counterculture has insisted that the whole New Deal project was a big, unconstitutional error, and Barnett is a big part of that movement today.
How Eric Ripert Became a Restaurant Legend W/O Working Himself To Death
The Le Bernardin chef is a practicing Buddhist who meanders to work in the morning and drinks double martinis in the afternoon. Spend a day with the man who has it all figured out.
Eric Ripert is one of the most highly regarded chefs of our time, and he does something that is increasingly rare - he actually cooks at his restaurant most nights.
#Harperman
Tony Turner worked at Environment Canada. After releasing his protest song Harperman in June, he was recently put on leave for impartiality.
Everything is on fire and no one cares.
This year, my summer visit to Idaho was swallowed, most days, in a thick, gauzy haze. It was as though the sky was overlaid with a bleakest of Instagram filters; the smoke was often so dense, it blocked the blue light spectrum entirely, washing everything in a pale, flat yellow, a creepy, apocalyptic tint that contrasted well with the redness in your eyes and the gray dryness of your throat.
There's no such thing as a pitching prospect
In 2010, a Metafilter post featured a 13 year-old girl who lit up Little League baseball with a killer knuckleball. In 2015, Chelsea Baker is still ringing up batters, and is catching the eye of major league scouts.
Where do you want to go today?
20 years ago: August 24, 1995 was the release date of Microsoft Windows 95. Its legacy was vast....
Crazy like a (Fire)Fox
While it used to be the leading alternative to Internet Explorer (and others), Firefox has seen its market share erode steadily since the 2008 debut of Google Chrome. The Mozilla Foundation has made several oft-controversial bids at relevancy, including native video chat, Pocket integration, a mobile browser (and OS), a UI overhaul, and a rapid release schedule that's reached version 40 (and counting). But the latest proposal -- part of a reboot of the stalled Electrolysis multiprocessing project -- will prove the most daunting. Although it will modernize the browser's architecture, it also deprecates the longtime XUL framework in favor of more limited and Chrome-like "web extensions" -- requiring Firefox's vast catalog of powerful add-ons to be rewritten from scratch or cease functioning. While developers will have until 2017 to fully adapt, opinion is divided -- NoScript's Giorgio Maone reassures doubters, while the DownThemAll! team says "it feels like I just learned my dear old friend Firefox is going to die."
The most efficient way to move around in the forest canopy
'Base Jumping' Spider Soars from Rainforest Treetops
"They immediately right themselves, which means they turn dorsal side up [back facing the sky], and they essentially sail over towards the tree trunk — kind of like a Frisbee that's not spinning," Yanoviak said. The spider glides down headfirst for about 16 to 26 feet (5 to 8 meters), before hitting the trunk of the same tree from which it just leaped, he added.
Slow Poison
Even if the police don’t kill me, a lifetime of preparing for them to just might. By Ezekiel Kweku in Pacific Standard.
Movie: Synecdoche, New York
CRFC8: Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York centers on a theater director named Caden Cotard. Caden, coming off an award winning production of Death of a Salesman, is given a MacArthur grant for his work. With the newfound money he strives to make the most realistic piece of theater ever.
“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.”
Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor and Head of the Department of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, explains that the American Civil War was fought over slavery. (Via)
Ferguson Remembers
One year later:
- A year after Michael Brown’s fatal shooting, unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire
- Ferguson and beyond: how a new civil rights movement began – and won't end.
- In Ferguson, Anniversary of Killing Begins Mostly Quietly
- 11 Striking Photos That Show A Forever-Changed Ferguson.
- A Year After Ferguson: Obama Tells NPR He Feels 'Great Urgency'.
- 'Things will never be the same': the oral history of a new civil rights movement.
A 'constant chorus of skepticism' about the"establishment."
"They Don’t Give a Damn about Governing...
Once allied with but now increasingly hostile to the Republican hierarchy, conservative media is shaping the party’s agenda in ways that are impeding Republicans’ ability to govern and to win presidential elections."
"I’ll be 25. I can’t rent my first car as a virgin. They’ll know."
The Atlantic: On "Late"-in-Life Virginity Loss. Vice's predictably Vice-ier take. Meanwhile, Dr. Nerdlove and Gawker's After Hours have advice.
"...then I'll give them back ridiculousness in kind."
"...the undersigned (Luthmann) respectfully requests that the court permit the undersigned to dispatch plaintiffs and their counsel to the Divine Providence of the Maker for Him to exact His divine judgment once the undersigned has released the souls of the plaintiffs and their counsel from their corporeal bodies, personally and or by way of a champion."Lawyer seeks trial by combat to resolve lawsuit (Previously)
The state of being both kid and squid simultaneously
Nintendo's quirky squad shooter Splatoon, which sold 1.6 million worldwide copies in two months of release, is their first real new property since the Gamecube era. People are calling it the game that could save the Wii-U.
it's raining, it's pouring / the old man is snoring / now is our chance
Across the Internet, it was a time of peak misandry. Know Your Meme attributes the popularization of the term to various cultural artifacts few enthusiastic current misandrists will recognize. But, hilariously, the word (and the attendant attitude) seems to have gained visibility thanks to anti-feminists treating the concept as a real, widespread ideology, and therefore a personal threat. When feminists noticed the notion was a useful tool for poking the buttons of an especially nasty brand of sexist, a meme was born.The Meme-ification of Misandry
Point of no return? Passed that already.
Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. [...] London reached 98ºF during the hottest July day ever recorded in the UK. [...] In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.
BRRRRRRRRRRRTTTT
New tensions between Russia and NATO have led the US to commit additional military resources to Eastern Europe. 9 reasons we love the A-10 European Theater Security Package.
#FieldWorkFail
"Accidentally glued myself to a crocodile while attaching a radio transmitter."
The #fieldworkfail hashtag reveals the hilarious perils experienced by the Science side of Twitter.
Non-monetary rewards
How do you reward yourself (for achieving goals big or small) without spending money?
What books seem to have been written to be re-read?
What books hold up so well to re-reading that it makes you suspect they were engineered that way? Are there examples of books that seem to be MUCH better on second reading? What kind of things did the author do to achieve that?
Radioactive Trailers
COMING SOON TO OUR THEATER! Monsters! Aliens! Bikers! Vampires! Witches! Dinosaurs! Barbarians! Zombies! Natives! Swordsmen! Devil worshipers! Cool cats! Ass-kicking soul brothers! Sorceresses! Sharktopi! Action! Horror! Mystery! The occult! Low production values! Nonsensical editing! Cheesy acting! Cheap special effects! Ed Wood! Roger Corman! Bert I. Gordon! The Asylum! And much more! Please visit our snack bar! Movies are your best value! And now--OUR SHOW (NSFW in places) Extra: Drive-In Intermissions!
A Thousand Thundering Thrills Await You!
Radioactive Trailers!
Metafilter's own MST3K Club on Fanfare collects trailers for the zero budget, obscure, cult and bonkers movies you love, from Manos The Hands Of Fate to the Prince Of Space. [via mefi projects]
Outsider by choice: how to become more active?
I find it very hard to find the motivation to get involved in social interactions or group activities. I am happy observing, only speaking up when I feel I have something unique to contribute, like when I see nobody else is saying what I have to say or is able to perform something I can do. I don't want attention for the sake of attention and am used to being an observer, but I need to change as this behavior is beginning to have a toll on my life. Details inside.
Black American Motherhood
“I love you so much, I want to carry you around all day in my pocket”
. Emily Bernard writes about being the mother of brown-skinned daughters after Ferguson.
Greenpeace vs. Shell Oil: the Portland edition
A standoff between Greenpeace and Shell Oil is happening right now high above the Willamette River in Portland, Ore. Yesterday, using mountaineering equipment, thirteen protestors lowered themselves down from the magestically large St. Johns Bridge in a bid to prevent the passage of Shell's icebreaking ship MSV Fennica, which had been undergoing repairs in Portland and was scheduled to depart to assist Shell's oil drilling activities in the Arctic. The protesters have supplies to stay awhile. For now, the ship has turned around and a judge has ruled that Greenpeace will be charged $2500 for every hour the protest continues.
“The Germans were not there; the Lithuanians did it themselves.”
Double Genocide: Lithuania wants to erase its ugly history of Nazi collaboration - by accusing Jewish partisans who fought the Germans of war crimes.
"After Lithuanians got independence,” he told me, “we hoped that Lithuania would give us help.” But it was not to be. In one of its very first independent actions, before even fully breaking free of Moscow, Lithuania’s parliament formally exonerated several Lithuanian nationalists who had collaborated in the Holocaust and had been convicted by Soviet military courts after the war. The right-wing paramilitaries who had carried out the mass murder of Lithuania’s Jews were now hailed as national heroes on account of their anti-Soviet bona fides.
Jessamyn West's Mossarium Emporium
"Mossariums are simple, low maintenance and fun.
They're durable and will last a long time. You can get moss from your backyard, from your favorite trips, or delivered in the mail. Here's all you need..." From Mefi's own jessamyn. [via mefi projects]
On the death of Sandra Bland
As she's laid to rest, questions remain about whether her arrest was good policing, a bail system that is especially harsh on the poor, the stigma of marijuana use, treatment of depression and, of course, the long history of American racism, as seen in Waller County, Texas, were the initial incident occurred.
Should I seek an autism diagnosis?
Should I seek an autism diagnosis? I was assessed for aspergers ten years ago, which was negative for a stated reason that I believe was incorrect, based on my own research into how autism presents in females. Is it worth trying again?
Viewer Discretion Advised
Animal Planet presents The Cute Channel, with clips from their show Too Cute. Caution: With this much concentrated cuteness, you may be rendered temporarily speechless.
Where do Grad Students Hang Out Online?
Where do graduate students (especially in STEM disciplines) hang out online for the purpose of complaining about grad school and/or getting support for common grad school challenges?
TreeMail
In the last decade, some cities have created unusual municipal projects using personal and institutional technologies and Open Data, to keep things running smoothly. In Chicago, there’s a text-based pothole tracker. Pittsburg, Chicago, NYC and other cities have snowplow trackers during winter storms. Boston asked people to adopt-a-hydrant and shovel them out after snowstorms. In Honolulu, you can adopt a tsunami siren. In 2013, the city of Melbourne assigned email addresses to 70,000 trees as part of their Urban Forest Project, so citizens could report problems. Instead, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favorite trees, and in many cases, the "trees" wrote back.
Once you let yourself see it, it’s there all the time.
I, Racist
"Here’s what I want to say to you: Racism is so deeply embedded in this country not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it openly, it exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal America."
Home
Japan’s new geostationary satellite Himawari-8 captures an image of Earth every 10 minutes. The New York Times combined some of them into a spectacular view of a single day over the Pacific Ocean.