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The simplicity of a rasam is a decoy for its depth. At first sip, you may only discern the faint sweetness of a ripe tomato. Then comes the punch of tamarind. You reel momentarily from this affront, but you will soon be soothed by the nutty richness of mustard seeds fried in ghee—called the thalippu, or tempering that crowns this trellis of flavor. For eons, South Indians of all stripes have claimed an intimate understanding of rasam, a broth (not unlike a stock) that teases complexity out of even the most minimal ingredients.

Rasam Digest, an encyclopedic book by Usha Prabhakaran, is set to give the ancient, versatile, culture-melding dish its due.
comment posted at 1:46 PM on Oct-8-20

"Now More Than Ever" is a short absurdist story by Zadie Smith about shunning, denouncing, and philosophical stances and etiquette rules (The New Yorker, July 16, 2018 - available in text & audio). "I bumped into someone on Bleecker who was beyond the pale. I felt like talking to him so I did. As we talked I kept thinking, But you’re beyond the pale, yet instead of that stopping us from talking we started to talk more and more frantically..." Related: her October 2019 essay "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction" (previously). "...we seek to shore up the act of writing with false defenses, like the dubious idea that one could ever be absolutely 'correct' when it comes to representing fictional human behavior."
comment posted at 9:37 AM on Sep-18-20

Colornames is "A collaborative effort to name every color in the RGB/web space." Here are their latest submissions.
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Apr-10-20

Magical Rainbow Sponge (SLYT)
comment posted at 2:04 PM on Apr-2-20

OKAY. The Princess Bride. Super well known and beloved film, and I have absolutely no idea what it's about. Now I did initially think it was the one (also not seen) where the lady comes down on a meteor or something but apparently not so, and I think I also got it mixed up with Zorro? Idk i've not seen that one either. So my best guess is 1) there's a princess and 2) she's a bride. Now this seems, to me, pretty standard so idk why this movie is so beloved. […]

So... let's dive in? Twitter | Threadreader
comment posted at 10:46 PM on Jan-19-20

My mum has six brothers. They all live in Pakistan- as does the rest of her family. I went there recently after ten years and saw them all. For the first time in my life, I believe I’ve seen true and undeniable love.

comment posted at 2:33 PM on Jan-16-20

Ten years after Bela Kosoian refused to hold the handrail on an escalator, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that police officers have a professional responsibility to act reasonably and know the law. The officer who arrested Kosoian is personally liable for half of the $20,000 award for damages, even though he acted in good faith and in accordance with his training.
comment posted at 4:23 PM on Nov-30-19

On October 22, 2011 Michael Rother, Camera and Dieter Moebius appeared together at the HBC in Berlin. Video artist Christian Garcia has posted a 26-minute clip of the jam on the web.
comment posted at 3:47 PM on Nov-30-19

In February 1860, the Wiyot people were massacred during an annual ceremony on Duluwat island, and in other locations around Humbolt County (American Cowboy Chronicles, with some graphic descriptions), as part of a brutal land-grab by white settlers. On March 28-30, 2014, the Wiyot Tribe held its first World Renewal Ceremony since February 1860 (Lost Coast Outpost), and finally with five simple words on Oct. 21, 2019, it became official — the island was being returned to the Wiyot people (North Coast Journal). "Unanimous yes vote. Motion carries." [via Atlas Obscura]
comment posted at 8:12 AM on Nov-22-19

This ground-breaking album seems to not be available for sale or streaming anywhere. So I’d purchased a used LP and digitized it for all to enjoy! Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos on Internet Archive (via Sarah Wallin Huff on MltShp). The first classical music LP ever to be certified for a Platinum Record Award, by selling to hundreds of thousands of mostly younger listeners who didn't normally buy classical recordings. Carlos saw the Moog voice as valid on its own terms, which may be one reason why this album still stands out today, when compared with some of the more flamboyant work that followed from others (AllMusic review). More on the album from Wendy herself.
comment posted at 10:02 AM on Nov-10-19

The relationship between religious exemption laws and racial discrimination is not new. As the venue owners attempt to minimize the fallout and backlash to their business, the incident has also called new attention to a 2016 Mississippi law that protects “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” about same-sex marriages, premarital sex, and gender identity. The law does not allow a person to discriminate based on race or ethnicity. Federal law prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations.
comment posted at 2:20 PM on Sep-4-19

Pizza Hut Training Video 1988 "I was the single camera operator for this instructional video series from 1987-88, that was produced in a Chicagoland area, industrial test kitchen for Pizza Hut/PepsiCo.. Original recording on 3/4 inch U-Matic videotape."
comment posted at 10:42 PM on Jul-10-19

Solutions for a Living Harbor: In Seattle, Singapore, and other waterfront cities around the world, engineers are creating life-enhancing designs to encourage marine biodiversity.
comment posted at 11:21 PM on May-21-19

Rory Sutherland for Entrepreneur Magazine discusses psychological magic tricks in advertising
comment posted at 7:18 PM on May-16-19

It'd be a pity not to recognize what's at stake..... ....Deadwood The Movie, Full Trailer.
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Apr-26-19

SonicFox Steals The Show at The Game Awards [YouTube] Dominique “SonicFox” McLean took home the award for Best Esports Player tonight at The Game Awards in Los Angeles. The 20-year-old full-time student and fighting game ace gave a candid acceptance speech that was one of the night’s more heartfelt moments. Stepping on stage in his now-iconic fursuit, McLean gave an acceptance speech that was funny, honest, and worth watching. [via: Kotaku] [YouTube][The Game Awards Full Show]
comment posted at 10:00 AM on Dec-8-18

This is a fun and fascinating read, even/especially if you don't know anything about computer memory. It's wonderful to see someone chase down a question and leave such great trailsign for any who might want to follow.
comment posted at 11:21 AM on Nov-25-18
comment posted at 9:37 PM on Nov-29-18

Want to Know Where Intersectional Queer Radicalism Is Thriving? Look to Appalachia.
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Nov-14-18

The Very Best of Jiminy Glick
The Jon Stewart interview (with the donut)
All Youtube videos
Wikipedia
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Oct-28-18

Over 10,000 years ago, weapons at White Sands were aimed at giant sloths -- Pleistocene tracks record humans stalking and confronting giant ground sloths. (Kiona N. Smith for Ars Technica) Records of footprints, or ghost fossils, reveal life and death story from the ice age (Kelly Carroll for National Park Service), according to recent research at the White Sands Trackways, which may represent the largest concentration of Pleistocene trackways in the United States, where most (but not all) tracks pre-date humans in the area, which is adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. (Full research article from Science Advances)
comment posted at 9:34 AM on Apr-26-18

Into the Breach [YouTube] [Launch Trailer] “Into the Breach is a turn-based strategy game, along the lines of the Advance Wars series, where players control futuristic mechs fighting off an invasion of giant, bug-like alien monsters. It’s basically Pacific Rim crossed with XCOM, and it’s from the creators of the addictive spaceship simulator FTL: Faster Than Light. If any of those words sound appealing to you, you’re going to like Into the Breach a lot. The game takes place in a future on the brink of disaster. Much of humanity has been decimated by the kaiju invasion, with isolated pockets of survivors strewn across four different islands. You control a team of three mechs traveling to different districts across the islands, clearing them of bugs before moving on to the next.” [via: The Verge]
comment posted at 9:38 PM on Feb-26-18

Thirty-four years ago today, NBC premiered The Master (publicity still), a ninja action series starring Western film veteran Lee Van Cleef (as the ninja) and Timothy Van Patten, half-brother of Dick Van Patten, as his hot-headed young sidekick. Each week, Max and The Master drive into a new town (in Max's custom van) and end up protecting/rescuing a damsel in distress from greedy land developers, union-busters, crimelords and their thugs, a surprisingly high number of other ninjas, and the occasional terrorist. (Here's Van Cleef promoting the show on Carson.) Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 know the show from Master Ninja I and II, repackaged video versions of the first four episodes. Cancelled after 13 episodes, the entire series is viewable on YouTube:
comment posted at 4:45 PM on Jan-20-18

How to Make Biscornu Make a complicated looking octagonal pincushion out of two simple squares. They can be made with embroidered or plain fabric and you can add a button in the middle to make it look more like a doughnut biscuit spaceship. Biscornu is a French term that means 'bizarre' or crooked.
comment posted at 8:25 PM on Nov-30-17

Timbuktu has long been Africa's El Dorado. Located on the southern edge of the Sahara and north of the Niger river (Google maps), what was initially a small river-side settlement bloomed as a trading hub for salt, gold, slaves, ivory and later, books. While its academic prominence has never returned to its peak of centuries past, it is still a treasure trove of ancient manuscripts from western Africa, maintained and protected through the years by families who have kept these works safe from numerous regime changes. These are the lost (and found) libraries of Timbuktu (hour long documentary on Vimeo from documentary producer; more info from BBC Four and stream if you're in the UK).
comment posted at 2:14 PM on Nov-16-17

A simple list of charming terms from libraries/archives. [special appearances by MeFi's Own jessamyn]
comment posted at 11:36 PM on Nov-15-17

Life is a Rock (and the Radio Rolled Me) is a song by a group named Reunion. If you want to know what was going on in 1974 in rock radio music world, you'll get a good idea if you listen to the lyrics. Better yet, read the lyrics. 
comment posted at 8:55 PM on Oct-29-17

"Husband pretended to throw a white ball for her. When she went looking for it, she looked up and thought the ball was stuck in the sky." [SLT48SOPOYT (Single Link To 48 Seconds Of Purity On YouTube)]
comment posted at 2:42 PM on Oct-4-17

Kim Gordon was not bitten by a coyote at Whole Foods.
comment posted at 9:47 PM on May-31-16

Galactic Warfighters
comment posted at 4:20 PM on May-8-16

Through Silver In Blood turns 20. Invisible Oranges reflects on the dense, white-hot cornerstone of Neurosis' 30 year career. A marriage of ritualistic drumming, suffocating noise, and crushing distortion, best exemplified in this profound live rendition of Locust Star.
comment posted at 3:08 PM on Apr-24-16
comment posted at 11:51 AM on Apr-25-16

That time Solzhenitsyn made a presentation to Timofeyev-Ressovsky on American atomic weapons, in the gulag.
comment posted at 12:52 AM on Feb-16-16

The Leap: The Improbable Transformation of a Punk Pioneer (mp3) - "James Williamson is a successful tech executive who's been working in Silicon Valley for decades. But it turns out Williamson had a secret, something that no one working with him knew. He was a pioneer in a type of music that is about as far from the tech world as you can get."
comment posted at 12:52 AM on Feb-1-16

Peggy O'Brien and Steve Rosenthal made a commercial for everyone who’s sick of touchy-feely commercials about hipsters. Peggy and Steve, previously on MetaFilter.
comment posted at 6:41 PM on Jan-19-16

"Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counterintuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered."
comment posted at 7:44 AM on Jan-7-16

CBGB Is Reopening… As a Restaurant in Newark Airport Serving 'American fare in a fun environment recalling the legendary music venue.'
comment posted at 5:07 PM on Dec-21-15

Teleotheism and the Purpose of Life - "Please give this sermon a try. I think it has much in it that will be of interest to a wide range of readers: philosophy, cosmology, evolutionary theory, and science fiction, as well as theology. And nothing in it depends on believing in God at all." Abstract: As an enlightened form of atheism, I turn to teleotheism. Teleotheism is the view that God comes at the end, not at the beginning, where I am defining “God” as “the greatest of all things that can come true.” In this view, the quest to discover what are the greatest things that are possible is of the utmost importance. The best of our religious heritage is just such an effort to discover the greatest things that are possible. (via; previously)
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Jun-7-15

As doctors, we are taught to do no harm. It may be time to redefine what we really mean by harm. Two surgeons from the University of Wisconsin’s transplant program explore whether we should allow terminal patients to donate their organs.
comment posted at 11:00 AM on Mar-22-15
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Mar-22-15

David O'Reilly (previously), animator and creator of the indie game Mountain, and Kim Laughton, post-internet artist, have started the tumblr blog #HYPERREALCG. It's dedicated to "showcasing the world's most impressive & technical hyper-real 3d art." A number of tech outlets have picked up on the project, apparently (?) taking it at face value: Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Laughing Squid. A fun bit of trolling and perception for your Saturday afternoon.
comment posted at 11:23 AM on Mar-1-15
comment posted at 11:23 AM on Mar-1-15

There’s a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece Dr. Strangelove in which Jack D. Ripper, an American general who’s gone rogue and ordered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, unspools his paranoid worldview—and the explanation for why he drinks “only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure grain alcohol”
comment posted at 9:54 AM on Feb-16-15
comment posted at 10:04 AM on Feb-16-15
comment posted at 10:13 AM on Feb-16-15
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Feb-16-15

"The couple everyone believed was golden and normal and eternally intact, who gave younger musicians hope they could outlast a crazy rock’n’roll world, was now just another cliche of relationship failure – a male midlife crisis, another woman, a double life."

comment posted at 8:39 PM on Feb-8-15

Google's romance with librarians is over. By MeFi's own Jessamyn.
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Feb-2-15

Song name haiku Pop in an artist, and it will generate haiku based on their song titles. Reload for more. [via mefi projects]
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Jan-20-15

Labour's Shadow Culture Minister Chris Bryant has said the art world must address lack of diversity “I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for best actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk,” James Blunt has replied. Bryant has replied in turn. The dog from Downtown barks up.
comment posted at 10:00 AM on Jan-19-15