A hosting company's attack on the premier anti-spam watchdog has grown so huge that it threatens to slow down the Internet at large.
posted to MetaFilter by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:23 PM on March 27, 2013 (124 comments)

Metafilter's own Shannon Larratt has passed away.
posted to MetaTalk by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:27 PM on March 15, 2013 (126 comments)

I've had it, I'm done.

Callouts for excellence: Pope Guilty, Drinky Die, Malor, Mayor Curley, delmoi, lupus_yonderboy, Meatbomb, AElfwine Evenstar, hippybear, BitterOldPunk, Civil_Disobedient, thsmchnekllsfascists, ioerror, loquacious, Joe Beese, Trurl, Blazecock Pileon, and orthogonality. I may have forgotten some.
posted to MetaTalk by dunkadunc at 3:47 PM on March 26, 2013 (1 comment)

West Coast Rave Pioneer Scott Hardkiss has passed away. He put together one of the earliest must-have Essential Mixes in 1997, and produced some of the all-time classic rave anthems.
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 7:16 PM on March 26, 2013 (28 comments)

Braiding machines can be used to create automobile parts, wiring harnesses, and art, among other things. It turns out watching them is pretty hypnotic.
posted to MetaFilter by selfnoise at 6:42 PM on March 20, 2013 (14 comments)

Travellers passing through the Beauce region in France may have noticed this strange, lonely concrete structure raised on pillars over the fields. This is the 18-km long elevated track built in the 1960s for testing the Aérotrain (WP, video compilation turn off your speakers unless you love Queen), a propeller or jet-and-rocket driven high-speed (400 km/h) monorail that was supposed to revolutionize train travel (a visit by Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell). However, the French government preferred the less expensive and less futuristic TGV and the project was mothballed in 1975. The Aérotrain's inventor, Jean Bertin, died a few months later. All Aérotrain prototypes were destroyed except one.
posted to MetaFilter by elgilito at 3:24 PM on March 11, 2013 (32 comments)

Photographer Hiroyuki Ito remembers his cat.
posted to MetaFilter by lalex at 5:38 AM on March 9, 2013 (73 comments)

What are the very small things you carry around that pack a lot of functionality into a little space?
posted to Ask Metafilter by tel3path at 6:12 AM on January 4, 2013 (84 comments)

In 1987, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu hit the British music scene with a collage of unauthorised samples, beatboxing, and cryptic, political Scottish-accented raps titled "All You Need Is Love".
posted to MetaFilter by dunkadunc at 12:45 AM on March 8, 2013 (74 comments)

Mike Ryan was asked to re-watch The Wizard Of Oz in advance of the upcoming James Franco feature, Oz the Great and Powerful. So he went to iTunes, scrolled through six seasons of the other Oz, and bought the film. One problem: he actually bought the 1985 sequel, Disney's Return To Oz, featuring a young Fairuza Balk. Liveblogging ensued.
posted to MetaFilter by maryr at 10:06 PM on March 5, 2013 (155 comments)

Trippy animated GIFs generated by Mathematica code. via
posted to MetaFilter by OmieWise at 10:08 AM on February 28, 2013 (20 comments)

Master swordsmith Tony Swatton forges Finn's sword from Adventure Time!
posted to MetaFilter by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:34 PM on February 25, 2013 (58 comments)

This week's Essential Mix features the 23 year old musical prodigy Mat Zo who takes you on a 70-track tour through almost every genre of uptempo dance music over the course of two hours, beautifully tied together with poetic quotes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 2:34 AM on February 13, 2013 (24 comments)

telegeography.com has a nice gallery of zoomable maps of global telecommunications and IT infrastructure, such as submarine cables (1 2), and internet backbones.
posted to MetaFilter by carter at 8:00 PM on January 31, 2013 (9 comments)

There is a universe of recorded DJ mixes to sort through, enough to keep you entertained and dancing for years. Souncloud user R_co fills a pocket of this cosmos with thousands of mixes and some live shows to stream and download, spanning styles and decades, from Bob Marley and the Wailers live in 1975, to a Shep Pettibone Mastermix Danceparty from 1983, Mark Farina live in Los Angeles, 1996, or Masters at Work live in Miami at WMC, 2003, and Carl Craig in Ibiza, 2012.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 3:29 PM on January 12, 2013 (25 comments)

In 1996, a family of German tourists went on vacation in the desert Southwest of the US. They disappeared in Death Valley sometime late July of that year, and despite repeated searches, their remains were not found until 2009. Tom Mahood details how that happened.
posted to MetaFilter by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:23 AM on January 3, 2013 (168 comments)

I love you all. Please continue rocking in the new year.
posted to MetaTalk by BitterOldPunk at 1:36 AM on January 1, 2013 (126 comments)

Because sometimes you just want to watch a huge tire roll down a hill
posted to MetaFilter by clearly at 2:29 AM on March 28, 2012 (64 comments)

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake has been recorded off the west coast of Northern Sumatra in the Indian Ocean at 2012 April 11 08:38:38 UTC. A Tsunami Warning has been issued spanning the entire Indian Ocean.
posted to MetaFilter by clearly at 2:51 AM on April 11, 2012 (52 comments)

I'd like to see a change in attitude towards Scottish people on Metafilter.
posted to MetaTalk by sgt.serenity at 2:48 PM on December 11, 2012 (199 comments)

“I stole this book from the library ages ago…”
“Fourth grade” I say, watching them huddled together in the mirror.
“…one of those Marvin K. Redpost books. He kisses his elbow one day and when he wakes up the next morning he's a girl.”
“I meant to make you take it back but I bet we still have it.”
“My mom's cataloging fifteen years of gender-bending in one week.” She says, rolling her eyes.... “Seriously Mom, how did you NOT know?”
She will ask me this a hundred times. I will ask myself a hundred more and still never I didn't have a good answer then and I don't now. Perhaps we simply see what we expect to see and write off anything that doesn't fit into the little boxes we put people into. Or perhaps she'd learned to mask and over-correct, to hide so well that by the time those distinctions matter, I could not see her until she tore down that wall. I wish I'd known sooner.

Behind the Curtain (AKA OMG Marvin K. Redpost is a girl!) is one of the funnier excerpts from The Complicated Geography of Alice, a memoir in progress.
posted to MetaFilter by carsonb at 7:15 AM on November 25, 2012 (16 comments)

The Beautiful Daughter: How My Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition
posted to MetaFilter by roomthreeseventeen at 1:31 PM on November 25, 2012 (29 comments)

17 euphemisms for doing it taken from the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. And previously on the blue.
posted to MetaFilter by Isadorady at 6:51 PM on November 20, 2012 (38 comments)

Airing in 1979, The New Sound of Music was a BBC documentary which depicted and demonstrated the history of recorded and manipulated music, from the earliest paper rolls to electronic synthesizers and the cutting and manipulation of tape.
posted to MetaFilter by Pope Guilty at 3:35 AM on November 19, 2012 (13 comments)

Pete Namlook, electronic music producer and ambient pioneer, has died.
posted to MetaFilter by Otherwise at 7:12 PM on November 15, 2012 (39 comments)

"I am here because when I was young, I wanted very badly to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I couldn’t find anyone like me in the world and it felt like my dreams were foreclosed simply because my gender was less typical than others."

On Saturday, Lana Wachowski (co-director of the "Matrix" franchise and "Cloud Atlas") received a "Visibility Award" from the Human Rights Campaign for her recent decision to publicly come out as transgender. In a powerful 25-minute acceptance speech, Lana spoke about the pain she went through growing up and how she developed self-acceptance. Video. Transcript. Q&A with the Hollywood Reporter.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 10:10 AM on October 24, 2012 (76 comments)

A user on Soundcloud has posted 458 full John Peel shows. The shows range from 2004 BBC episodes all the way back to several 1967 Radio London shows. Some of the shows playlists can be found on the John Peel wiki as well. John Peel has, of course, been mentioned on the blue before.
posted to MetaFilter by BigHeartedGuy at 5:04 PM on September 11, 2012 (32 comments)

After more than 15 years on hiatus, the punk-spawned, world-music-defining Dead Can Dance released their eighth album Anastasis one month ago. The reunited act are on a world tour.
posted to MetaFilter by Mezentian at 7:04 AM on September 9, 2012 (36 comments)

Though it might sound like a marriage made by management,* but the collaboration between The Orb and Lee "Scratch" Perry on The Orbserver in the Star House has been widely praised for unfettered vitality that is not always achieved when legends from different genres meet in the studio, as a proper collaboration between the 75 year old godfather of dub and veteran ambient electronica stalwarts, complete with a nod to 1991 with Golden Clouds. Hold Me Upsetter was the first track released from the album, and you can listen to the whole album on Soundcloud.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 1:22 PM on September 4, 2012 (39 comments)

Trade-offs between inequality, productivity, and employment - "The poor do not employ one another, because the necessities they require are produced and sold so cheaply by the rich. The rich are glad to sell to the poor, as long as the poor can come up with property or debt claims or other forms of insurance to offer as payment..."
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 12:20 AM on September 4, 2012 (45 comments)

All noises made from my face, wrangled by various Ableton effects.
posted to MeFi Music by Moistener at 5:32 PM on August 29, 2012

LoseThos is an operating system written by a schizophrenic programmer.
posted to MetaFilter by dmd at 6:56 AM on August 29, 2012 (255 comments)

"I guess it started for me when, as a young sci-fi movie fan, I did a fanzine at age 12 to 15... that’s when I learned how relatively cheap and easy it was to self-publish, at least for a small circle of weirdos. Later, after comics went up to 50¢, I started collecting stuff equally weird but much cheaper than comic books: kook literature." - Rev. Ivan Stang

You may know of the Church of the SubGenius, that parody religion that worships the almighty "Bob" and was a fixture of MTV and Night Flights back in the day. But do you know of its SECRET ORIGINS? Co-founder Ivan Stang corresponded with hundreds of "mad prophets, crackpots, kooks & true visionaries," from sincere cults to winking charlatans to utter nutjobs to hate groups to independent artists and musicians, with some respected names thrown in, and synthesized them into a half-joking, half-serious celebration of the kook spirit. These days of course the forward-thinking crackpot looking for sheep goes directly to the internet. But while it lasted Stang and co-authors Mike Gunderloy, Waver Forest and Mark Johnston collaborated to document this vanished scene in the legendary book HIGH WEIRDNESS BY MAIL. (All links within may quickly lead someplace NSFW by the nature of the beast.)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:05 PM on August 27, 2012 (133 comments)

Computer-based musicians have a wealth of free VST (Windows) and Audio Units (Mac) plugins to use in their favorite DAW software. Here are some of my favorites (primarily Mac, though most are available for Windows as well). If you share my passion for this stuff, you are likely already a fan of the excellent website KVR Audio, the ultimate resource for plugins of all stripes.
posted to MetaFilter by dbiedny at 9:19 AM on August 14, 2012 (54 comments)

They were a couple of blokes from a small city in in England who started out messing around with instruments. Paul played the guitar and drums, and Phil the saxophone, but both were interested in electronic music by the likes of Kraftwerk. Phil also liked hip-hop, and Paul got into acid house in the late 1980s. One afternoon, Paul slapped together a happy little song based on a sample from a now-forgotten instrumental cover version of some pop hit, and called the little ditty Chime. Even before it was pressed on vinyl, DJs were asking for it, and Orbital was born.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 8:05 AM on August 12, 2012 (64 comments)

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has been appearing in public lately with a mysterious female companion. Speculation (and apparently gambling) continues to surround the matter of her identity, but the prevailing theory at present seems to be that she is one Hyon Song-wol, of Bochonbo Electronic Music Band fame. The internet presents us with her 2005 single "Excellent Horse-like Lady", offering a rare glimpse into the world of North Korean pop music.
posted to MetaFilter by passerby at 8:26 PM on July 14, 2012 (87 comments)

Banksters this story stretches far beyond Britain. Barclays is the first bank in the spotlight because it offered to co-operate fully with regulators. It will not be the last. Investigations into the fixing of LIBOR and other rates are also under way in America, Canada and the EU. Between them, these probes cover many of the biggest names in finance: the likes of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Employees, from New York to Tokyo, are implicated.
The rotten heart of finance. A scandal over key interest rates is about to go global.
Naomi Wolf: The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. This global financial fraud and its gatekeepers.
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 9:44 PM on July 14, 2012 (127 comments)

As the world gets warmer from global warming more people use air conditioning which increases Co2 emissions which increases the warmth of the world which causes more people to use AC... this positive feedback loop turns out to be non-trivial. Cooling a Warming Planet: A Global Air Conditioning Surge. Some facts about air conditioning and the environment, by Stan Cox.
posted to MetaFilter by stbalbach at 11:13 PM on July 10, 2012 (112 comments)

The First Photo on the Web: A story of crossdressing, particle physics, humorous science-based novelty songs, and terrible photoshop.
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 4:31 PM on July 10, 2012 (14 comments)

Guerrilla art group hacks dozens of Astral info pillars. The city's new, redesigned info pillars that have been rapidly popping up around Toronto have made plenty of enemies: road users claim the large, flat sides block sight lines, pedestrians say their positioning blocks sidewalks, and many others are concerned about the large amount of space given over to advertisers. A team of artists, cARTographyTO, hacked into roughly 35 of the signs' ad spaces over the weekend and installed maps, artwork and other visual displays.
posted to MetaFilter by netbros at 1:43 PM on July 10, 2012 (50 comments)

When Lolcats meets Go Fug Yourself, hilarity ensues. From the highly entertaining Jezebel. Oh, hai Anna!
posted to MetaFilter by Space Kitty at 10:02 PM on March 18, 2008 (33 comments)

Depressed? Has all the negativity in the media got you down? Can't take one more awful news story? Me too. Maybe what you need is a new #1 news source for breaking news and investigative journalism fluffy animals!
posted to MetaFilter by Space Kitty at 10:11 PM on November 16, 2011 (26 comments)

Your squee for the day! Today's dose of sanity does just what it says on the tin.
posted to MetaFilter by Space Kitty at 6:42 PM on March 1, 2012 (60 comments)

The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class (via The Billfold)
posted to MetaFilter by peacheater at 1:58 PM on June 27, 2012 (83 comments)

There is a critical shortage of acute mental health services throughout the nation that is making it increasingly difficult for people who don't meet standards for "imminent danger" to receive adequate care. Barring a dramatic change in the systems that provide care, what alternatives are there for seriously mentally ill people? Incarceration has often become a form of care provision, but behavioral courts are an emerging alternative. (Previously.)
posted to MetaFilter by liketitanic at 1:33 PM on June 23, 2012 (18 comments)

Happy 100th birthday, Alan Turing! 2012 is the Alan Turing Year, with celebratory academic events around the world all year. BBC News has a set of (brief) appreciations, including one in which two of Turing's colleagues share memories. Google has an interactive Doodle of a Turing Machine today (that article has some explanation and links to a useful video if the doodle's confusing).
posted to MetaFilter by LobsterMitten at 9:53 PM on June 22, 2012 (27 comments)

Gou Miyagi - overground broadcasting skate video
posted to MetaFilter by Cloud King at 9:38 PM on June 22, 2012 (14 comments)

Painter of Light: Two Letters Worth $15mil, or more, Under Dispute (previously)
posted to MetaFilter by snaparapans at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2012 (97 comments)

"With AC power, aren't both the wires of the pair interchangable? Why is one wire called 'neutral?' What's all this stuff about 'grounding?' Why are three prongs needed?"
posted to MetaFilter by koeselitz at 11:22 PM on June 3, 2012 (73 comments)

Boggle is worried about you! Boggle is also an owl. A cartoon owl offers advice about depression, anxiety and surviving abuse.
posted to MetaFilter by The demon that lives in the air at 8:56 PM on June 3, 2012 (49 comments)