You want squares in triangles? Erich's got 'em! You want triangles in squares? Erich's got 'em! Squares in squares?? Erich's got those, too! How about L's in circles? Triangles in circles? Right triangles in squares? You know Erich's got 'em! Packing! Tiling! Covering! Come on down to Erich's Packing Center for all this and related problems!
posted to MetaFilter by Lirp at 10:33 PM on March 17, 2023 (16 comments)

The Algorithm That Transformed The World - "The Fast Fourier Transform is used everywhere but it has a fascinating origin story that could have ended the nuclear arms race."[1,2,3,4]
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 11:11 PM on March 16, 2023 (11 comments)

If the suit still fits… “This year, we’re bringing Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking 1984 Talking Heads concert film STOP MAKING SENSE (newly remastered in 4K!) back to theaters worldwide.”

In honor of the re-release, here's a newly remastered version of my original post from 2011, with updated links and additional info.
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 1:02 PM on March 16, 2023 (54 comments)

Don’t tell Locke what he can’t do.
posted to FanFare by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:02 AM on March 25, 2023 (3 comments)

A plane crashes on a remote island. Mysteries ensue.
posted to FanFare by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:36 AM on March 19, 2023 (22 comments)

I’m just back from an amazing trip to Italy. I’d like to read a vivid, informative, popular history of Rome.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cheapskatebay at 6:16 AM on March 15, 2023 (7 comments)

OpenAI announce ChatGPT (alt via nitter.net) with ... an unquantifiable amount of more.
posted to MetaFilter by k3ninho at 1:16 PM on March 14, 2023 (154 comments)

If you saved $1 a day for a year, do you know how much money you'd have? Roughly $30.000.
posted to MetaFilter by signal at 11:19 AM on March 14, 2023 (40 comments)

The rise of EMPRESS - How one woman turned the pirate underworld on its head, waged a solo war against the entire game industry (and won), went mad with power, started a messianic cult based on high school-level philosophy, and faked her own arrest to spite her rivals and haters
posted to MetaFilter by buffy12 at 7:26 PM on March 13, 2023 (44 comments)

Come see how the Academy handles the Will Smith elephant in the room, whether anyone dances in the aisles to "Naatu Naatu", and count up how many Oscar's go to EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.
posted to FanFare by EmpressCallipygos at 3:46 PM on March 12, 2023 (142 comments)

In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried is a short story by Amy Hempel. It is about friendship and its sad, exhilarating limits.
posted to MetaFilter by storybored at 8:51 AM on March 10, 2023 (8 comments)

Kasey Chambers covers Lose Yourself (h/t to CoverMe)
posted to MetaFilter by Gorgik at 9:12 PM on March 8, 2023 (17 comments)

On a secluded part of the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD, is a large stone wall. But it’s not just any stone wall, it is the Wall of Many Stones, a long running stone weathering experiment. Can’t get enough stones? There is a searchable catalog where you can explore the stones from your home state ( and some countries)
posted to MetaFilter by rockindata at 12:35 PM on March 7, 2023 (21 comments)

Sumplete is a math-logic web browser game where you delete numbers so the rows and columns in the grid correspond to the totals. Sumplete was apparently designed, coded and named by ChatGPT; more in Neowin and Gigazine.
posted to MetaFilter by Wordshore at 8:40 AM on March 7, 2023 (33 comments)

Actor Jake Phillips does Mark Antony's "Brutus is an honorable man" eulogy from Julius Caesar in a US Southern accent and people from the South comment on what that lends the monologue. And: several Tumblr users collaborate to translate the eulogy: "Friends, mutuals, countrymen, do not scroll past; I come to cancel Caesar, not to stan him..... But Brutus says he was problematic; And Brutus is an honourable man." (via hobo-rg)
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:55 AM on March 6, 2023 (26 comments)

The Best of the Worst Cartoons Ever was an episode of the early Cartoon Network show Toon Heads, it is said to have been unaired for posing several Hanna-Barbera productions as bad in some way. It had been preserved by animation historian Jerry Beck (who co-wrote it) and recently uploaded to YouTube by Jerico Dvorak. Here it is, 43 minutes of tremendous cringe.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:05 PM on March 4, 2023 (132 comments)

So I read an article that stated Disney made a contract blocking takeover by the Florida government. The article states: That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to the document. Why? Is it a joke? Is there some legal reason?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Literaryhero at 4:10 PM on March 29, 2023 (14 comments)

[TRAILER] Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life.
posted to FanFare by hanov3r at 8:39 AM on February 28, 2023 (14 comments)

Curious about what exactly goes on during a surgical procedure but too squeamish to watch a video of the real thing? Doctor/Youtuber TheBreakfasteur (and her 3-year old assistant) has you covered with her Playdough Surgery series. Total knee replacement. Hernia repair. Cochlear implant. Coronary artery bypass.
posted to MetaFilter by gottabefunky at 12:57 PM on February 27, 2023 (38 comments)

One week ago, Microsoft unveiled Bing Chat, a web search interface based on a “next-generation” version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology (previously). Now Bing Chat is getting weirdly defensive and lying when presented with evidence about its own nature.
posted to MetaFilter by mbrubeck at 5:27 PM on February 14, 2023 (109 comments)

Browse around the Infinite HD to see what using a Mac in the mid 1990s was like.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:01 PM on February 12, 2023 (63 comments)

This page generates nonsense words based on a frequency list of phonemes as they occur in legitimate English words. Generated words are checked against a list of approximately 500,000 English words. An actual word may slip through occasionally but it should mostly generate pronounceable gibberish.
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 12:04 PM on February 10, 2023 (66 comments)

Modern D&D leaves much of the world building to the DM these days. But back in the era of First Edition AD&D, the DM had a chart for everything, as this collection of charts from the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide illustrates. (SLGizmodo)
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 2:23 PM on February 8, 2023 (46 comments)

What the Hell is Going On Inside Those Neural Networks? Chris Olah: "...the question that is crying out to be answered is, how is it that these models are doing these things that we don’t know how to do?...How do these systems accomplish these tasks? What’s going on inside of them? Imagine if some alien organism landed on Earth and could go and do these things. Everybody would be rushing and falling over themselves to figure out how the alien organism was doing things. You’d have biologists fighting each other for the right to go and study these alien organisms. Or imagine that we discovered some binary just floating on the internet in 2012 that could do all these things. Everybody would be rushing to go and try and reverse engineer what that binary is doing. And so it seems to me that really the thing that is calling out in all this work for us to go and answer is, “What in the wide world is going on inside these systems??” Related: How Chat-GPT Actually Works
posted to MetaFilter by storybored at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2023 (61 comments)

How the Internet filled up with wrong ideas about the origins of the iconic dummy text.
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 2:00 PM on February 5, 2023 (23 comments)

Change - "Think about how you think. You can fluidly look at something, identify and modify it in your head, move it around, describe it ... What we call understanding isn't the sum of knowledge, it's the sum of the relationship to all of that information. Knowledge is the layer above information, which is transformative." (previously)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 11:56 PM on February 4, 2023 (31 comments)

When held up to the light no useful information can be gained through a security envelope. […] What is kind of mind boggling to me is just how many different patterns there are. If you think about it, five to ten patterns could have been created and that would have satisfied any security needs. There seems to be a lot more than ten patterns…
posted to MetaFilter by cardioid at 4:24 PM on February 3, 2023 (28 comments)

That's it. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by Ipsifendus at 11:25 AM on February 3, 2023 (17 comments)

For the 20th anniversary of Dinosaur Comics, creator Ryan North posted a special giant-size update.
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 1:34 PM on February 2, 2023 (14 comments)

The '70s Ends On a Cliffhanger (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by Meatbomb at 10:55 AM on February 2, 2023 (5 comments)

I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year. Here’s what I learned
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 7:22 AM on February 2, 2023 (58 comments)

A short surreal animated film by Felix Colgrave: DONKS.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 8:40 AM on February 2, 2023 (14 comments)

He has never interviewed a scientist for any of his stories despite the fact that, because of their fidelity to scientific ideas, they often read like they were written by one. “My understanding of science comes entirely from the written word,” Chiang says. Just as SFI’s scientists can’t predict what fresh perspective they might glean from conversations with Chiang, Chiang can’t predict whether those conversations will spur him to write new stories. 1000-word press release via MeFi's own Nelson's linkblog
posted to MetaFilter by cgc373 at 2:58 AM on February 2, 2023 (5 comments)

Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices - "The city had more housing starts in 2014 than the whole of England. Can Japan's capital offer lessons to other world cities?" (via)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 2:02 AM on August 12, 2016 (40 comments)

Bay Area Cities To Lose ALL Housing Zoning Powers [today; thread] - "Old law proposes to turn the Bay Area's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days."[1,2,3,4,5] (previously)
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 12:12 AM on February 2, 2023 (32 comments)

Wonders of Street View
posted to MetaFilter by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:02 AM on February 1, 2023 (47 comments)

AI has been generating an endless Seinfeld episode for more than a month now [Reid McCarter, AV Club]
"At the time of writing, Nothing, Forever showed Elaine and Kramer sitting on a couch, just having clipped into each other and melded into a strange new creature. The scene changed to show George talking to Elaine about a restaurant that won’t allow people to use ketchup on steak. "Rules, rules, there are always rules," Elaine replies, prompting the laugh track. She recalls there being rules about trying to order a decaf coffee once in the past and the laughs play again. The pair then stand together in silence for a while, nary a synth bass slap or pop to end their hilarious bit. After a while, George sits down on the couch and Elaine slowly falls diagonally into a wall." [Link to the Twitch stream]
posted to MetaFilter by Atom Eyes at 12:59 PM on January 31, 2023 (75 comments)

WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER | JUNIOR DOUBLE TRIPLE WHOPPER | FLAME-GRILLED TASTE WITH PERFECT TOPPERS | I RULE I RULE I RULE THIS DAY | LETTUCE MAYO PICKLE KETCHUP | IT'S OK IF I DON'T WANT THAT | IMPOSSIBLE OR BACON WHOPPER | ANY WHOPPER MY WAY WHOPPER MY WAY
posted to MetaFilter by creatrixtiara at 9:05 PM on January 29, 2023 (32 comments)

Chronophoto is a game in which you guess the dates of some photos — the closer the guess, the higher your score. That's it!
posted to MetaFilter by swift at 4:31 PM on January 27, 2023 (76 comments)

This Guy Noticed Jigsaw Puzzle Companies Use The Same Patterns, So He Made Some Mashups. "Jigsaw puzzle companies tend to use the same cut patterns for multiple puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable. As a result, I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make a surreal picture that the publisher never imagined. I take great pleasure in “discovering” such bizarre images lying latent, sometimes for decades, within the pieces of ordinary mass-produced puzzles. As I shift the pieces back and forth, trying different combinations, I feel like an archaeologist unearthing a hidden artifact." Via shepgo@mastodon.social
posted to MetaFilter by taz at 11:50 AM on January 22, 2023 (29 comments)

Cory Doctorow on why we can't have nice (Internet) things
posted to MetaFilter by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:58 PM on January 21, 2023 (93 comments)

To celebrate the pioneering electronic music experimentation of Radiohead
and the roughly 15-and-a-half birthday of their pioneering pay-what-you want release of their album In Rainbows
please enjoy this pioneering (and surprisingly upbeat) pay-what-you-want release of In Rainbows covered using samples from N64 games (mostly Mario 64)
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 10:38 AM on January 20, 2023 (8 comments)

Elden Ring GeoGuessr game tests your knowledge of The Lands Between [lostgamer.io] “Elden Ring players can now test their knowledge of the game's world in a fan made GeoGuessr game. For the unfamiliar, GeoGuessr is a browser game that drops players somewhere in the real world and tasks them with pinpointing their exact location on a map. Now, thanks to reddit user TheEdenChild, there's an Elden Ring version that drops players into The Lands Between. [...] After being dropped into the world, players must pin their location on a newly created satellite map of the world. There are also custom settings - you can select specific areas, length, and timers - plus a leaderboard and support for multiplayer, with more features planned in the future. BONUS: There are also Genshin Impact, GTA 5, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, and Fortnite versions of the game, with Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy 14, and others coming soon.” [via: Eurogamer]
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 6:36 AM on January 18, 2023 (19 comments)

Remember the time that Channel 4 sent some reality TV contestants to space for five days? Probably not, because they didn't, but they spent millions of pounds on tricking the contestants into thinking that they had. The resulting show, Space Cadets, is not fondly remembered -- or much remembered at all -- but a YouTube retrospective by science/culture vlogger Chris James has recently been making the rounds. It shows the highlights and the painstaking detail that went into the hoax, from embedded method improv actors to "spacecraft" constructed by Hollywood engineers. Whether it was a greater cruelty than I Wanna Marry Harry is a matter for debate.
posted to MetaFilter by Countess Elena at 8:16 AM on January 15, 2023 (17 comments)

David Cronenberg's Galaxy of Flesh (1985) Keith Schofield used AI art generator Midjourney to produce images from another movie which never existed. (CW Cronenberg body horror, obviously)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:05 AM on January 13, 2023 (48 comments)

Find That Meme, by Matthew Bryant provides full text search for memes.
How it’s made
h/t Today in Tabs, by rusty
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 1:35 PM on January 12, 2023 (9 comments)

I remember seeing a short film on the internet some time ago. I want to say it's comedy horror, or maybe just comedy.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by KChasm at 9:09 AM on January 5, 2023

If you looked at this post title and thought, that is some hyperbole, I would have agreed with you if I had not already watched it. He Thought He Had Friends. They Were Paid Actors is a YouTube video by channel T1J that popped up in my feed and which I tried to ignore, because it sounds like a horrible mean-spirited thing I would not enjoy. But finally I couldn't help it, I had to know the ending. Reader, I cried. And you might.
posted to MetaFilter by Glinn at 10:35 AM on December 31, 2022 (20 comments)

Gamespot has an epic series of videos covering various bits of esoterica concerning The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Here's a playlist of all of them. Youtube channel Looygi Bros has a similar playlist covering Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and Wind Waker. Added together, it totals 841 miscellaneous pieces of Zelda lore! By the time you've finished watching them all, it'll probably be Zelda Day 2023!
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 12:14 AM on December 26, 2022 (14 comments)

Stable Diffusion can generate images from text. Spectrograms are graphical representations of audio. Riffusion mixes the two. rock and roll electric guitar solo, lo-fi hiphop beats, the sound of metafilter
posted to MetaFilter by simmering octagon at 12:35 PM on December 17, 2022 (17 comments)