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TRIED TO CIRCUMCIZE HIMSELF WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS
With the new year upon us, it's time for Defector's annual reviews of What We Got Stuck In Our Various Orafices and What We Did To Mr Happy for 2022.
Lèse-majesté
Mortals should think mortal and not immortal thoughts.I feel I must point out a serious discrepancy among the membership demographics
Epicharmus of Syracuse
Simply put, we are overloaded with divinities and royals and have too many cooks to spoil the less than enough porridge with a severe deficiency of the salt of the earth.
“I am proud to present West Side Story… I will be playing all the parts”
In 1978, ABC aired a 12-minute version of West Side Story. Cher played all the roles.
(previously in 2008, but all the links have rotted.)
(previously in 2008, but all the links have rotted.)
The Yard Sale Model
Let's take a second to appreciate what just happened.
- You lost the first game.
- You won the second game.
- So you've won 50% of your games.
- But you have less money that you started with.
last dance on the grey
Skeal is a short (about 3-5 minutes) browser game made in Unity. Sound required for the full effect.
Books that pretend to be found objects
I’m fascinated by books that masquerade as unique found objects. Sometimes they pretend to be a collection of separate items (like Dennis Wheatley’s Crime Dossiers); other times, the conceit is that you have found some fictional character’s unique personal copy of a book (as with Ship of Theseus, Battle Bunny, or Quidditch Through The Ages). Can you recommend other examples? And is there a widely accepted term for this kind of book that I can search for? (Note that "metafiction" is not the term for reasons explained below.)
New cookbook for folks out of spoons, time, and money
The recently published Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don’t die, by Zilla Novikov and Rachel A. Rosen, is here to rescue those of us struggling to feed ourselves. "Life is hard. Some days are at the absolute limit of what we can manage. Some days are worse than that. Eating—picking a meal, making it, putting it into your facehole—can feel like an insurmountable challenge. We wrote this cookbook to share our coping strategies."
trying to remember a creepy old side-scroller
What was that creepy indie Windows game from several years back that started out as a sort of generic Super Mario style side-scroller but got weirder and more unhinged the further you got?
A really good musical
Extremely talented singer/songwriter and performer Todrick Hall has written, directed, choreographed, produced and performed in a 1 hour 31 minute long musical film, Forbidden, full of great songs, great choreography, great costumes and great sets which is FREE to watch on his youtube site. The supporting cast includes Cynthia Erivo, Tiffany Haddish, Jade Novah, and RuPaul.
Caligula, ancient tattoos and war elephants.
toldinstone is a podcast by Historian Garrett Ryan who discusses the ancient world. His latest episode is 'Trivia, Ancient and Modern' with Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame.
A Totally Normal Interview with Author Emily St. John Mandel
Exactly what it says on the tin.
A brief, but informative interview with the author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, in Slate, about what she's been up to this year.
Jordan Klepper Fingers The Conspiracy
After spending years engaging with MAGA members, Q followers, and other believers in conspiracies, The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper finally takes stock of all the crazy and tries to understand it. The six-part podcast Jordan Klepper Fingers The Conspiracy [Apple Podcast page with listening links] features conversations with sane people who are experts in different conspiracies, and outlines their origins and how it all fits together. Episodes run around an hour.
ChatGPT: your source for banal songs, stories, and poems
ChatGPT's
transcripts were all the rage
Acoustic Kitty, RIP
Subtitles, rich lifeguards, heavenbanning, and gold-plated Morse Code keys: Tom Whitwell brings us 52 things I learned in 2022. (SLMedium)
Codified Likeness Utility
Using the Midjourney AI, graphic designer Johnny Darrell has come up with some mind-bending imaginings [Facebook link] of a "Tron" directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
21 old films from 1895 to 1902 colorized and upscaled in 60 fps, w/sound
Lumiere films from the very early days of film, subjected to various ML refinements and coupled with foley sounds, and you've got some amazingly modern looking movies from 125 years ago! 21 old films from 1895 to 1902 colorized and upscaled in 60 fps, with sound runs 22 minutes, with the first 4m33s describing the upscaling process.
"we were, in effect, rewriting our own childhoods"
"The songs and stories on "Free To Be" showed kids that they could question the world they lived in, that parents are just people and that emotions are real. And what's on TV might not be."
🔊 🎊 🔊 Announcing MetaFilter Events 🔊 🎊 🔊
The inaugural Metafilter Events is finally here! As one of the closing initiatives under our Metafilter Fundraising Drive, our online events series features presentations, workshops and discussions across a fascinating range of topics, themes and perspectives - from Mefites and friends-of-Mefites that have generously volunteered to speak and/or teach on these subjects. Tickets, bundled passes and gift cards are available now, and you can also sponsor fellow Mefites to attend paid events.
The Simpsons - from the start
Would anyone else be game for a club / regular series of rewatches of classic (single digit season) Simpsons?
MeFiGiftGuide2022 - The Metafilter Gift Guide
Instead of turning to influencers, (sponsored) top-ten lists, or Amazon “sales,” the Metafilter community has collaborated to create gift suggestions by and for real people, who want to have real connections, and make a real difference in the world. Read below the fold for the gift guides, or check out the tag #MeFiGiftGuide2022.
Internet, offline
Kiwix is a utility that allows you to download entire websites
including wikipedia, Khan Academy.....
You've been eating trash
The Official Apple Rankings
with accompanying scores and reviews. 100% accurate. Sample: "The Cameo Apple tastes like a juicy dog fart wrapped in used Whole Foods napkins." How apples are ranked.
We knew this was coming 😭
From the creator of Best of Nextdoor comes Best of Dying Twitter, a chronicle of the bird site's current Elon Era.
While Best of Dying Twitter retweets some informative threads (Threadreader links here and here), most of the account is devoted to the lulz.
Bubbles
If you like waving bubble wands and/or putting bubble wands in front of a fan or even popping bubbles then this bubble simulator may please you.
Movie: Knives Out
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.
Rick and Morty: Full Meta Jackrick
A brain wrinkler.
Civilization reboot: Imagine post-capitalism instead of the world's end
An Economic History of the ('Long') Twentieth Century
- "Slouching Towards Utopia is a rise-and-fall epic—but it is better at depicting the rise than explaining the fall."[1,2,3]
Road trip!
Let's take a drive in the country
Slow Roads is a casual, procedurally-generated driving game which lets you disconnect from life for a while and run endlessly toward the distant horizon. Set the scenery to suit your mood, throw on some music, andFrom the developer.
just drive.
Biomechanical horror adventure
H.R. Giger's biomechanical landscapes are a disturbing fusion of decaying flesh, bone and machinery. Slideshow. Animation. Inspired by his work, SCORN challenges you to explore and survive within these nightmarish visions. RPS. Full walkthrough. (CW: horror).
Divergence: Compute vs Capability
Jim Keller on AI Generated Software
- "It won't be that long until you start looking at all the software that has ten years of legacy in it and go 'Why would I want old software? Why wouldn't I want software that was generated this week?'. And there are a whole bunch of really interesting changes that come with that."[0,1]
I Have Nothing To Hide
A TikTok by Alex Falcone
Why does this 1909 portrait look contemporary?
A self portrait by Zinaida Serebriakova, painted in 1909, featured in this twitter thread today. Many people commented that it looks contemporary. Are there technical reasons why? Is it something specific to the composition, the palette, her facial features lining up with current tastes?
Speech-to-text with Whisper
Whisper, from OpenAI, is an open source tool you can run on your own computer that "approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition"; "Moreover, it enables transcription in multiple languages, as well as translation from those languages into English." Instructions on how to download, install, and run it. (I have successfully used Whisper and the results were very good. However, it is not fast enough to run during recording of an interview and give you live captions/transcripts; it runs after the fact, on already-recorded audio.)
Andor: The Eye
With cover from a spectacular local festival, the Aldhani mission reaches a point of no return.
For a solid decade, Rod McKuen was the most sincere man in America.
“As a teenage boy, I felt sad about lots of things,” McCloud told me. “Life seemed to be sad. And by George, Rod McKuen was sad too, and we could be sad together.”
Rod McKuen sold millions of poetry books in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a regular on late-night TV. He released dozens of albums, wrote songs for Sinatra, and was nominated for two Oscars. He was a flashpoint in the battle between highbrow and lowbrow, with devotees revering his plain-spoken honesty and Dick Cavett mockingly calling him “the most understood poet in America.” Every year on his birthday, he sold out Carnegie Hall.
But by the time I was a teenager, he had completely vanished from the cultural landscape.
- By Dan Kois, Slate Magazine
Advertising a text based website in 2023
I made a TikTok about the user sponsored Metafilter post that Jessamyn created from my suggestion and I'm posting it here in new thread to help spur ideas about putting this text based website on modern day social media.
“[F]or parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original.”
Anthony Novak made a parody facebook page of the City of Parma’s police department.
The cops arrested him, charged him with a felony, and lost. Novak sued the cops for ignoring that his site was a parody. He lost his case. He appealed to the sixth circuit and lost again.. Now, it’s on the docket for this Supreme Court term.
Most importantly (to me), The Onion has filed an amicus brief in support of Novak that jokes around but makes a serious argument.
The cops arrested him, charged him with a felony, and lost. Novak sued the cops for ignoring that his site was a parody. He lost his case. He appealed to the sixth circuit and lost again.. Now, it’s on the docket for this Supreme Court term.
Most importantly (to me), The Onion has filed an amicus brief in support of Novak that jokes around but makes a serious argument.
Movie: Men in Black
After a police chase with an otherworldly being, a New York City cop is recruited as an agent in a top-secret organization established to monitor and police alien activity on Earth: the Men in Black.
The World We’re Losing by Larissa Diakiw
The first time I saw these swaths of burnt-pumpkin, dead forest, I felt a pain in my chest, though I will admit that I still hadn’t accepted or allowed myself to reveal this to others, consider it legitimate, or let myself feel it, so it became a stunted obscure pain. A pain I considered immature, juvenile, weak. This is the first time I can remember my own eco-grief. An elastic tight feeling inside my chest. I will always equate the orange colour of dead pine needles with the colour of death.
Movie: Bullet Train
Unlucky assassin Ladybug is determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug's latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe--all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives--on the world's fastest train.
Twenty years of Languagehat
A slightly belated congratulations to MeFi's own Languagehat, AKA Stephen Dodson, on the twentieth anniversary (July 31) of his blog Languagehat.com. Languagehat explores linguistics, with excursions into literature (especially Russian literature), grammar, etymology, languages and more. I venture to guess that exceedingly few blogs launched in 2002 are still active, and perhaps none active to the degree that Languagehat has been, with posts on a daily basis virtually all of those twenty years.