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[[btw, this wonderful post has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]]
posted to MetaFilter by taz at 3:56 AM on April 23, 2024

The remarkable preservation of the art of Dendera has led to various folks to get confused by the elements they see, leading to pseudoscience concepts of like the ancient functional lightbulb "depicted" as the Dendera Light. Luckily, sassier researchers like Miniminuteman are here to debunk the nonsense.
posted to MetaFilter by FatherDagon at 7:46 AM on April 22, 2024

I hope it will not be too silly to provide in this context a link to Why I Buried the City of Luxor.
posted to MetaFilter by praemunire at 5:36 PM on April 21, 2024

Excellent post! No notes. Thank you for putting this together.

Paul Smit's website with all his Features from around the world is beautiful and I really appreciate the fact that he captions everything in pleasant detail.

Berrera's scan of the ceiling at Dendara is a wonderfully clean piece of photogrammetry. Just looking at the physical arrangement, I'm guessing there were no fewer than 22 camera setups. And the only hint of software/visual... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cult_url_bias at 12:04 PM on April 21, 2024

Incidentally, Savage appears to be "MeFi's own", and he recently mentioned reading "a MetaFilter thread" in this clip from a January 2024 stream.

At least I assume it's January, because the date made it look like it was recorded in September and I guess that has to just be weird unsorted US date formats.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:53 AM on April 20, 2024

you on the other hand appear to be in some academic field related to legacy ML, which I consider more or less completely irrelevant to current discourse

I’l feel like I’ve written about this too many times, but I’m on break with a full engine rebuild kicked off, so here’s my very stupid story (a lot of you might want to skip this comment):
I was in RPI’s Minds & Machines cognitive science program in the late 90s because I basically got... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ryvar at 11:04 AM on April 12, 2024

Amazing. Also, the creator of Trimming The Herbs apparently confessed to using a tool assisted run to create his completion video in the first place, something previously thought not possible on the Wii U. From the site:

101% Clear
Originally, it was believed that a level called Trimming the Herbs would be the final uncleared level. However, after over seven years, the creator of Trimming the Herbs revealed that the level was, in fact, a convoluted sort of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jermsplan at 8:41 AM on April 11, 2024

𓅦 𓌝

👍
posted to MetaTalk by lalochezia at 6:12 PM on April 7, 2024

Trimming The Herbs now has been manually cleared!!! \o/
posted to MetaFilter by anastasiav at 6:46 PM on April 5, 2024

Did you know that you don't do enough housework? It's true! Experts recommend that you do more cleaning than you are doing now. Run your finger along the top of the nearest picture frame. See all that dirt and dust? Living inside of that dirt are six trillion bacteria, and they're all judging you. When was the last time you disassembled and disinfected your thermostats? Last month? Last year? God help you, never? Do you even own an erotic robot vagina that keeps your phone... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by phooky at 2:58 PM on April 2, 2024

And people will be rationed the amount of things they can have, because if they had too many things, they'd just squash their houses and there just wouldn't be room for them.

Gosh, the British kids are ... look, I don't want to indulge in national stereotypes, but I will say they are remarkably clear-eyed and know not to expect the best.

I've heard it said that the best science fiction "isn't about predicting the car,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Countess Elena at 10:58 AM on April 1, 2024

"Severely reduced pay all around!"

"The corner… of course!"

"I've *not* heard of them" remains one of my favorite line reads of all time. It shouldn't work, but Billy West… he found a way. [sorry for yarn.io link]

"She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro."

"Once again, the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Eideteker at 1:59 PM on March 29, 2024

Futurama is a massively significant show to me because when I was getting started with writing science fiction it showed me that good science fiction didn't have to be a didactic room-temperature demonstration of a vaguely interesting thing à la Asimov and Clarke. Sci-fi could have character and colour and comedy and heart. Ken Keeler in particular is a real inspiration to me.

The first four seasons of the show are just one unforgettable banger of a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by qntm at 6:05 PM on March 28, 2024

Wernstrom in italics - nice!
posted to MetaFilter by Greg_Ace at 2:43 PM on March 28, 2024

Thank you everyone for your excellent suggestions! The party went smashingly—I like to think it was due to all the banana-themed music. Here's the final playlist in case anyone is interested.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by miltthetank at 8:35 AM on March 29, 2024

About a week ago I wrote a long post on social media (to friends only) lamenting this final death of Twitter, and expressing my sadness over the four accounts that I was now cut off from regularly checking. Immediately after posting that, I discovered that TWstalker is still working. For example, here's my #1 destination, for space launch updates.

TWstalker is not a Nitter instance per se, so is using a different mechanism, and I don't know if That Techbro Guy will... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by intermod at 1:41 PM on February 28, 2024 marked best answer

Ian is the living embodiment of 'You're not wrong, but you're just an asshole.'

um... Ian is also an occasional poster on MetaFilter (me).
posted to MetaFilter by Peevish at 2:59 PM on March 21, 2024

Things I get free with my library card other than the right to check out books:
e-books & audiobooks through Hoopla, Libby, and Boundless
special e-book collection access through O'Reilly, LOTE (for kids), and Biblioboard
free streaming movies through Hoopla, Kanopy
free streams of music docs and concerts through Qello
more kids stuff from Kanopy Kids, Hellosaurus, ABCmouse
eMagazines through Libby &... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:55 AM on March 20, 2024

I saw a thing that said:

If you don't remember the moon landing, you're Gen X.
If you don't remember the Challenger disaster, you're a Millennial.
If you don't remember 9/11, you're Gen Z.
If you don't remember Harambe's death, you're Gen Alpha.

I thought that was kind of an interesting way of doing it.
posted to MetaFilter by nushustu at 7:49 AM on March 20, 2024

(This post is great thanks)
posted to MetaFilter by tiny frying pan at 8:44 AM on March 20, 2024

Thanks for a great post. Classic Metafilter long-form
posted to MetaFilter by xtian at 4:51 AM on March 20, 2024

hippybear, that makes sense, and I'm sorry if I came on too hard. You contribute a lot to MetaFilter and make it a better place. I'll try to read and respond a little more generously myself.
posted to MetaFilter by cupcakeninja at 4:41 AM on March 21, 2024

Regarding the framing of this post, always a fraught practice here on MetaFilter:

Mary Beard was not known to me before I watched this video. That's why I included a link to her Wikipedia profile, because she's a giant in her field and I was ignorant of her and didn't want anyone else approaching this post to also be ignorant about her. I tried [and failed] to make a joke about how Mitchell isn't a scholar but instead read a few things and wrote his book. I was striving... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 6:31 PM on March 20, 2024

I had seen this poem on Twitter and saved it. I'll spend some time this week commiting it to memory. It perfectly captures the feelings of helplessness and spiteful hope that many activists feel.

This may very well be the greatest post I've ever seen on this website. Thanks.
posted to MetaFilter by AlSweigart at 3:22 PM on March 18, 2024

Full poem at the end of the post: We Lived Happily During the War
By Ilya Kaminsky

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by foxfirefey at 1:24 PM on March 18, 2024

Text version:

there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop

there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop.
I have to eat better and also avoid a plague. my rent went up $150. I’ll need to pick up more shifts.
Twenty people died in Rafah this morning and every major news outlet is stretching the limits of passive voice to suggest whole families may have leaped up through the air at missiles that otherwise had the right of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Lanark at 1:51 AM on March 18, 2024

Also: holy shit everyone should see Lola (2023). Set in 1941, it's a bout a pair of sisters who invent a device they call the chronovisor that lets them pick up radio and TV broadcasts from the future. Initially, they use it to rock out to David Bowie and win at bets, but then they decide it will best be used to help fight the Nazis. Butterfly effects abound. Extra bonus fun: this is a found footage style film shot on vintage Bolex cameras.

Just look... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 12:01 PM on March 15, 2024

Game over! Unsatisfying, but here's the statement from Ahoyo, the creator of Trim the Herbs:

TTH was made to be unreasonably difficult and to cause a ruckus. I put effort into promoting it in 2017 so that it could be played, dissected, and scrutinized. Once that would happen I would announce that TAS existed for SMM. I did not expect that it would go unnoticed or perceived as easy from watching the video, or that it would take nearly seven years to be uncovered.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lubujackson at 3:03 PM on March 22, 2024

Blogger Fred Clark writes about Senator Britt's State of the Union Response in a recent post in his Slacktivist blog. Clark, who writes about social and religious issues as viewed through the lens of his own evangelical upbringing, covers a lot of the ground we've already gone over but does it well and has a few things to add that I think make his post worth the read, particularly his conclusion:It was an audacious, bald-faced lie — one that involved further exploiting a woman who was horribly... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nerd of the North at 11:39 PM on March 10, 2024

my naym is pee
an wen i drip
frum wiggly wobbly
weener tip
i mayk u think
of probably how
u should have gone
and dropped the trou
posted to MetaFilter by grumpybear69 at 12:36 PM on March 8, 2024

so about five minutes ago i found myself bored with metafilter and the rest of my standard web loop (which i really should spend less time in) and instead of doing the sensible thing and getting off the Internet, i flipped over to the “ask historians” subreddit and displayed top all time, which has historically been if not a useful then at least an enlightening way to spend a few minutes.

anyway, most of the entries at the very top of that list are meta posts about (for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:02 PM on March 6, 2024

An interesting article. I remember the erosion of the private register becoming evident to me in the earlier days of the knitting website Ravelry. It had a pretty robust discussion forum. Registered Ravelry account holders could become members of individual discussion groups (kind of like subreddits), but as long as you had a Ravelry account you could read or post as a guest in any group.

There was a group called Rubberneckers whose members would read other groups’... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:06 AM on March 4, 2024

”I feel like people don't talk enough about how James Bond is controlled by the Broccoli family, of broccoli fame. They're not named after broccoli, broccoli is named after them!!!!!!!!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rongorongo at 3:08 PM on March 2, 2024

There's apparently a movement afoot to name an Aubrey Plaza Plaza in Wilmington, DE and I am sad this hasn't happened yet.

You’ll be pleased to know that after a change.org petition, Edmonton City Hall was renamed to honour a hometown hero: the Nathan Filllion Civilian Pavilion. Looks like it was just for 24 hours, though. Booo.
posted to MetaFilter by ricochet biscuit at 2:41 PM on March 2, 2024

If I were the editor, I would have gone with the caption "Ferrous Wheeler's Pay Off"
posted to MetaFilter by milnak at 9:38 AM on March 1, 2024

[[btw, this post and Kathryn's comment have been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]]
posted to MetaFilter by taz at 3:13 AM on March 5, 2024

[I]n January of 1998 a complaint was filed by the Dubai Islamic Bank alleging Sissoko had bought his jumbo with funds that were stolen from the bank using black magic.

Yeah, that definitely needs a bit more elaboration.

And here it is! (holy fucking shit!!)
posted to MetaFilter by Naberius at 2:23 PM on February 26, 2024

I don't want to talk about plants. Instead, I found out that Unicode now has a limited range of coloured blocks in it ...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 7:51 PM on February 28, 2024

The "effort" dimension is a strange one. What if the person spent 50 hours learning how to install Stable Diffusion on their PC and customizing it with ControlNet and various LORAs, and getting proficient at using the different settings and using different models? And they had upgraded their PC with $4,000 of hardware in order to run it, then spent a few hours thinking about some unique style that captured the nature of your friendship and personality and curated the best one that did?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by xdvesper at 12:24 AM on February 24, 2024

Seen from one pole, it looks like the planet is rotating anti-clockwise; this is the "north" pole.

This leads to a fun little conjecture: most planets with intelligent life, when viewed from above, rotate the opposite direction as a typical clock on that planet. This sounds silly because both "above" and "typical clock" seem arbitrary. But...

1) The first tool that an intelligent species will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Hatashran at 11:29 AM on February 23, 2024

We’re introducing a new offering called Gemini Business, which lets organizations use generative AI in Workspace at a lower price point than Gemini Enterprise, which replaces Duet AI for Workspace Enterprise.
— Thomas Kurian (@ThomasOrTK) February 21, 2024

I think my favorite part of any google product announcement these days is that you could casually just drop the phrase "Bames Nond's having a stronk, call a Bondulance" into the middle of it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 10:26 AM on February 23, 2024

On a now-defunct tumblr blog, swanjolas posted:
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by autopilot at 11:51 PM on February 21, 2024

Oh hey, in the previous freethread, I mentioned that our kid was making an absurd, 4 foot birthday hat. He finished it. It's three levels tall and telescoping and ends with a concial birthday hat and a loofah as a giant pom. It features a bunch of weird in-jokes in text beads, three hands (a left, a right, and in between, a five fingered, no thumbs third hand) labeled "I am this many" and the words "BRITHDAY BOY" (sic).

Here is the promised photo. It... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on February 20, 2024

I'm in a room with a very large spider in the corner. I don't know if the spider is dangerous or not but it looks like H. R. Giger, by which I mean the actual guy. it's making that face.
the room is otherwise empty, including furniture. I passed out last night keeping an eye on the spider, when I woke up it was in the same spot, but there's a spent cigarette butt near my foot. I don't smoke.

I am typing very carefully. the neighbors have been arguing for 45... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dong_resin at 1:51 PM on February 19, 2024

In some far distant future, maybe there'll be fairy tales about our civilization, except instead of magic, the supernaturally powerful driving force woven through all the stories will be money.

You want a supermodel girlfriend, a palatial home, to eat and drink only the finest and rarest delicacies, to be waited on hand and foot for a lifetime? Trivial, you just need money. You want an unsustainable monument to capitalism and greed, the tallest tower on earth, in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 7:13 PM on February 18, 2024

sometimes stashing useful items away inside such as handkerchiefs and money

Thus leading to hand-written signs on store entryways every summer: "Thine crotch-coin be not accepted by ye keeper of this shoppe"
posted to MetaFilter by Greg_Ace at 8:55 AM on February 14, 2024

So back in my Limo days, I was working at the planning desk and received this call from Vince McMahon's personal assistant, who wanted to schedule a limo to pick him up at International Arrivals to transfer him to the rental car lot to pick up his car.

I explained that this was a waste of time, money, and resources, as the car rental lots at the YVR at the time were directly across the roadway from the International Arrivals concourse. We're talking a zebra-striped,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:54 AM on February 13, 2024

if you don't won't "low information voters" thinking "both sides are the same" then maybe give people a fucking pube's worth of effort differentiating yourself and enact policies that make material changes in peoples lives.

Like expanding overtime guarantees to boost the wages of millions of workers, or delivering hundreds of millions of dollars to schools to address mental health and gun violence, or taking unprecedented action... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Method Man at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2024

Our kid celebrated his 14th birthday last year by making himself a two foot tall (64 cm) conical blue hat that said "BRITHDAY BOY" and had an illustration of two seven fingered hands below which was written "I AM THIS MANY." He wore it to school and his party. Because why not.

For his 15th this year, he decided he needed to outdo last year. So he made himself a four foot tall (1.22m) telescoping hat with tiers like a wedding cake. The highest level is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 8:24 AM on February 12, 2024

I'm partway through a wilderness medicine textbook from NOLS (formerly National Outdoor Leadership School).

Something from the section on burns keeps ringing in my head because it's interesting in its literal truth but also figuratively resonant.

Burns that injure only the epidermis, or that go deeper into the dermis, are generally painful. But deeper ("full-thickness") burns penetrate deeper, injuring the subcutaneous tissue as well.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 4:40 AM on February 12, 2024