Generalist Academy, a new topic every day
June 1, 2019 6:46 PM   Subscribe

The Generalist Academy is MeFite Paragon's blog where they share one interesting thing every day, like Thailand's culinary diplomacy (also known as gastrodiplomacy), 16th century German artillery master Franz Helm's proposed "rocket cat" ("This sounds like a terrible idea."), Samoan independence, and Poggio Bracciolini's Renaissance-era fart jokes. [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief (19 comments total) 46 users marked this as a favorite
 
Heck, the rocket cat guy was ahead of his time.
posted by tau_ceti at 6:52 PM on June 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


That is really neat! Great work on Paragon's part, and thank you for posting it. :)
posted by mordax at 6:52 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I love it!
posted by greermahoney at 7:11 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Fuckin’ best of the web right here
posted by schadenfrau at 8:04 PM on June 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


This is delightful! I salute Paragon for the excellent blog and can only add that “rocket cat” calls to mind the Elton John mashup of “Rocket Man” and “Honky Cat” that is suddenly now playing in my head.

And maybe in yours as well.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:05 PM on June 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


Hey, thanks for posting FLT! The gastrodiplomacy post was inspired by this excellent comment on Metafilter.
posted by Paragon at 8:17 PM on June 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I like! Thank you.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:18 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Huh. So I ended up wandering to a page on rinderpest, which had the line "measles is actually descended from rinderpest". Which sounded bizarre to me, but a bit of hunting for confirmation turned up confirming webpages and the original paper. So measles as a distinct disease is only about a thousand years old.
posted by tavella at 8:43 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Great fun and complete with an RSS feed...
posted by jim in austin at 9:07 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Uh-uh. I see. Paragon holds out on spreading the cool stuff here to post it to their blog instead. I'm very glad to see their terrible plan for denying Metafilter the pleasures of their findings has now been thoroughly blown up. Good job filthy light thief!

(And of course many thanks to Paragon for the blog, it's great!)
posted by gusottertrout at 9:28 PM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


Well this is just freaking great!
posted by obfuscation at 4:20 AM on June 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


Short New Yorker article on and scan of the joke book.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:34 AM on June 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


Chess boxing, a real thing inspired by a performance art piece. Had no idea. Thanks for the post, OP. Thanks for the blog, Paragon.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:21 AM on June 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


This should be a podcast.
posted by panama joe at 8:02 AM on June 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is just the kind of blog I search fruitlessly for. It seems like five years ago you could look at the Bloggies or some other award thing and find ten great blogs. Now you read all the "best blogs" links on the googs and instead of well-written personal efforts like this you find chumbox-filled ugly bags of mostly videos.

I am enjoying it but, minor quibble, at least on the desktop the site takes the left third of my screen to display a fixed image. Not that it isn't a nice picture, but I think I've chewed all the life out of it already. Minor cane-waving quibble aside, good job and thanks much for the quality content. I think this will be in my regular blog rotation.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:52 AM on June 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


gusottertrout: Uh-uh. I see. Paragon holds out on spreading the cool stuff here to post it to their blog instead.

Or it's seeds for others to make their own posts, if you make posts anything like I do (with a handful of links, at least ;) ).


Gilgamesh's Chauffeur: This is just the kind of blog I search fruitlessly for.

There is MeFite madamjujujive and Everlasting Blort, a lovingly hand-crafted blog of fantastic things. And MeFite Miss Cellania lives up to her name with her own blog.

Often seen on MetaFilter: Pleated Jeans, which upon review today is mostly picdumps, which ... meh. Bored Panda is more varied. This Is Colossal has a pretty good collection of art and design, some of which is pretty unusual.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:20 AM on June 2, 2019 [7 favorites]


Also futilitycloset and TYWKIWDBI deserve love and wider recognition.
posted by hat_eater at 10:42 AM on June 2, 2019 [5 favorites]


I feel like someone with the title of artillery master one should have better ideas than stealing a cat and strapping a flaming bag of gunpowder to its back.
posted by rodlymight at 1:37 PM on June 2, 2019 [3 favorites]


Loved and subbed!
posted by endotoxin at 1:46 PM on June 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


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