MetaFilter

The Big Picture The Boston Globe launches a new blog focusing on a large single image from the day's news. It's kind of surprising how rare it is to see a really big photo on newspaper sites these days and this blog makes the simple concept work. [via mefi projects]
posted on Jun-2-08 at 8:05 AM

Take a photo with your cat, open in photoshop, remove heads from cat and human and switch. Yet another strange but magical internet meme
posted on May-30-08 at 10:53 AM

Just plain beautiful intricate art made from flowers. So simple, but so sublime. [via blort]
posted on May-12-08 at 12:02 PM

Chinese MC Hammer. Move for move nearly perfect redo of the original Hammer video. In someone's living room. While mom knits on the couch. It's a thousand kinds of awesome. via blort
posted on Mar-29-08 at 10:35 PM

The paintings on Nerdkore by Jeremiah Palecek started when he asked readers "What should I paint today?" and they responded. The result (so far) is a bunch of famous YouTube videos captured in oil on canvas, showing stills from some all-time favorites (techno viking, grape stomp, etc oh and NSFW on the oldest entry at the bottom of the page). (via Josh Spear)
posted on Mar-11-08 at 9:48 AM

"It's the first time since Japanese Internment that we've imprisoned children" -- from a post displaying a letter written by a 9 year old Canadian.
posted on Mar-10-08 at 7:15 PM

Uncle Dirty is a fascinating photo essay about a photographer's strange uncle who has lived 86 years obsessed with bodybuilding, penises, and thongs. Not safe for work, but not too crazy, the photos really humanize someone you'd probably cross the street to avoid in real life. (via mjj/blort)
posted on Mar-8-08 at 11:13 AM

Stylish Blight (slideshow of awesome live/work architecture office) The outside says pure urban squalor, while the inside is pure awesomeness. Full story in today's NYT about the project. (via beebo)
posted on Mar-2-08 at 5:31 PM

Marshall ("Major") Taylor was the first black American to be crowned World Champion in any sport, ever. Care to guess the sport? In 1899, he set the world one-mile track record in cycling (and repeated his win in 1900 and 1901. His legacy continues today with an association, a society, a foundation, cycling clubs, and a velodrome.
posted on Feb-2-08 at 1:32 PM

Fuck Planet Earth. The extreme beauty of the popular Planet Earth series comes alive with this comedic bit that simply repeats the F-bomb to great effect.
posted on Jan-26-08 at 2:27 PM

Everyblock has launched. It's local news culled from (any and all available) services, including photos, news, restaurant inspections, classified ads, and civic announcements. Sounds pretty dry, but looking at my old neighborhood in San Francisco, there's a wealth of hyperlocal information that you can't get in one place. They're currently in three major metro areas of the US with many more to come -- their launch announcement has more. This site was spearheaded by Adrian Holovaty, a pioneer of the intersection between journalism and computer science, and winner of a $1million grant last year to build such sites.
posted on Jan-23-08 at 2:07 PM

Food and Beauty is a series of portraits of models with meat (and fish, and other kinds of food). It's strange, it's off-putting, it's sometimes sexy, but mostly ewww. Somehow I bet somewhere there is a Rule 34 site dedicated to weird shit like this (via Serious Eats)
posted on Dec-7-07 at 1:19 PM

Post a controversial comment, get arrested. "Some were disturbed by the post police say James Buss left on a conservative blog, but other observers said it was a sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending."
posted on Dec-4-07 at 4:03 PM

Footloose in America: around the world in 20 years A husband-wife team left their home in June of 2001 to circumnavigate the world by foot, and they took their mule along with them. They haven't gotten very far but it sounds like they've had lots of adventures in the past six years, as they walk from town to town doing odd jobs. [via this flickr photo/story]
posted on Nov-20-07 at 4:52 PM

Slats.org's awesome gallery of QSL cards. QSL cards were like business cards for ham radio and CB nuts. They'd hand them out and trade them with other operators and featured their location and contact info. Bighappyfunhouse bought a boatload at a swapmeet and scanned them in. Great, crude, amusing, folksy art from a bygone era. [via projects]
posted on Oct-15-07 at 6:44 PM

You need organs, they need homes. "We are a domestic and international adoption agency where parents are free to adopt a child who is a perfect match (up to 18 yrs) for the transplant of one or more “non-essential” organs to be donated to one of the adopting parents or your own children. Your new son or daughter would give you their heart, if it was possible, but a lung, eye or three feet of intestine might be enough to prove that love."
posted on Sep-19-07 at 11:16 AM

Miss Teen South Carolina, why are Americans bad at geography?
posted on Aug-26-07 at 1:47 PM

You probably heard the news today and saw earlier threads about Michael Vick, but ESPN has done an amazing job wrapping up the entire case into a handy one-page FAQ. Written by a sports lawyer, it explains all the interesting aspects of the case: what happened, when did it happen, and what results we'll likely see.
posted on Aug-20-07 at 7:33 PM

Diebold Election Systems is no more (at least in name). Taking a page from the cigarette companies, Diebold is changing their name and hoping to reverse the downward spiral after their recent news.
posted on Aug-17-07 at 11:57 PM

The Shoe Project: people and their shoes. Simple and sweet, I don't know why this makes me smile so much but it does. (via swissmiss)
posted on Aug-15-07 at 12:11 PM

Extreme sports have gotten a little, well, extreme as of late. Video games showed a hyper-reality that's now being duplicated in the real world. With the advent of foam pits and foam resi ramps to try new tricks safely, trick progression in skateboard and bmx is moving very fast. While foam practice areas let riders do some pretty amazing stuff, when things go wrong over plywood, they're going really wrong. Witness a double-backflip crash that resulted in broken bones and teeth, Stephen Murray's crash that resulted in paralysis from the neck down, or last night's incredible X games freefall from fifty feet up to flat ground (Jake Brown walked away and only suffered minor internal injuries).
posted on Aug-3-07 at 6:46 PM

Cycling for a cause is the project/site of Canadian college student Michal Brichacek. On May 3rd of this year he set out from Alaska on his bike, aiming to ride all 12,000km (7440 miles) by early August. He's riding to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and he's over halfway done, currently riding across a hot Mexico landscape. His blog has his daily adventures (mostly about having to look for tent spots, supplies, and meeting interesting strangers). He's also posting daily photos of the trip.
posted on Jul-9-07 at 8:19 PM

The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test is a continuation of the standardized testing Texas has been doing for the past 15 years, a good bit of which George W. Bush pushed as a way to measure teacher aptitude and school performance. The company that administers the test claims that cheating is "extraordinarily rare" but the Dallas Morning news found about 50,000 cheating students in 1/3 of all Texas schools. The most prevalent was the 11th grade science exam, also known as the one you must pass to get a diploma. The article even has cool coverflow-like visualizations of what a cheating school exam looks like. [via the journalist's blog, which promises parts 2 and 3 in the next couple days]
posted on Jun-3-07 at 8:56 PM

Peggy a redo of the Lichtenstein modern classic using 2788 hand cut, sanded, and painted dowels mounted on a wall, forming a 3 x 7 foot work of art.
posted on May-29-07 at 1:40 PM

"Even LG Electronics Inc., maker of the handset Elmi uses, initially didn't believe her photos originated from its LG8100 phone when she asked the company to sponsor a recent gallery exhibit of her camera-phone art." (news, gallery works)
posted on May-24-07 at 8:31 AM

A retired construction guy with a large property was bulldozing a new driveway and noticed some shiny rocks. He excavated carefully, revealing an entire forest of upright, undisturbed petrified trees (photo gallery). Soon he began cataloging and selling pieces to museums but has since stopped. More about his find. (via girlhacker)
posted on May-4-07 at 7:13 AM

This lip sych of Flagpole Sitta is all kinds of awesome. An old favorite made new again by the office staff of Collegehumor et al in one take. It's a little slow to start, but it hits pure joy by the end.
posted on Apr-27-07 at 9:57 AM

Challenge of the Super Duper Friends looks great, judging from the teaser trailer. Obama as Captain United is probably my favorite.
posted on Apr-21-07 at 7:41 AM

Linking to someone's store usually isn't kosher, but Etsy user elloh's work is pretty unique. Featuring prints of her watercolor work for fairly low prices, her paintings focus on pop culture. There are moments from Office Space, Little Miss Sunshine, and Bob Ross immortalized in her art. But the cream of the crop is her series of portraits from The Office. Kevin, Creed, and Stanley are my faves and she even includes the UK version players as well.
posted on Apr-9-07 at 10:14 AM

Do The Right Thing (youtube) performed by little people muppet figures, set in Sesame Street.
posted on Apr-7-07 at 6:19 PM

Artist Ya Ya Chou works in several materials, the most interesting being gummi bears. The Mommy, The Candelabras, and sculptures are nice, but the Bear Rug is not to be missed. The best piece is the Chandelier, which apparently is perfectly fine after two years.
posted on Mar-9-07 at 7:25 AM

The Great Firewall of China connects to a server within China, and lets you know if your site is blocked or not, per the government's internet censorship.
posted on Feb-28-07 at 12:00 PM

The Prisoners of YouTube is a pretty good longish article on all the reluctant internet video celebs, including Star Wars Kid, Afroninja, the Numa Numa Kid, and more. It's an interesting look at the downside of unwarranted attention and how a few people have turned these embarrassing moments in the sun to their advantage.
posted on Feb-19-07 at 6:05 PM

Inveneo is a non-profit bringing technology to the developing world. They've got several projects going in Africa to connect, train, and equip villages but their latest push is an interesting one: The Thumb Drive Drive. In the era of $50 2Gb USB drives, many of us probably have discarded 16-128Mb drives sitting around. Send them to Inveneo and they'll get used in places where broadband isn't an option and quick storage is necessary.
posted on Dec-13-06 at 9:43 AM

There are a lot of gift guides for the holiday season, but Make Magazine's open source gift guide skews towards the cool, techy, but also hackable products. Lots of great things listed including: display images in your bike spokes with a POV kit, an open source media server, control your house lights with perl, and free planetarium software.
posted on Nov-27-06 at 10:57 AM

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. With just a week to launch, the PS3 and Wii are almost here and there is plenty of help out there if you want to try scoring one on launch day. For the Wii, read up on this guide, or try this one for the ps3. The Wiiseeker and PS3seeker will tell you exactly how many units your closest Target, Walmart, and Gamestop will have ready to sell. Ask MeFi also offers help: 1, 2, 3. And the latest MeFi Project helps those that are sticking it out at Console Camp.
posted on Nov-10-06 at 9:48 AM

This short NPR interview with two guys that do negative campaign ad voiceovers is not to be missed. They cover buzzwords, types of delivery, and then riff on nursery rhymes. [via notmartha]
posted on Nov-7-06 at 1:15 PM

This is probably a viral ad for a car and looks slightly digitally altered but it's still quite amusing and amazing at the same time. If only drivers could actually do this. The qashqai car games site has more.
posted on Oct-26-06 at 6:38 PM

Julian Dibbell, the same journalist that lived off virtual cash for a year, gives Calorie Restriction a 9-week test drive and tells all about it in this long New York Mag piece. Sure preliminary evidence says you could lengthen your life by 50 years, but is 150 years of starving yourself worth it?
posted on Oct-24-06 at 12:19 PM

H.R. 4411: The Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act is a bill aimed at making online gambling illegal by blocking any US funds to foreign servers from American banks and credit cards. It passed the House on Saturday and sent British gambling stocks tumbling. I was kind of surprised at the swift passing of this bill, given that online poker is a pretty serious business, but one poker site says they'll be in the clear as poker is a game of skill and not just chance (good luck with that). Oh, and this is just one cog in the 10 tooth wheel of The American Values Agenda, the republican attempt to push socially conservative issues in time for the election.
posted on Oct-2-06 at 10:51 AM

The online confession of a childhood murderer. The story behind a trolling comment that caught notice here long ago and I never stopped wondering about.
posted on Sep-25-06 at 8:32 AM

Ed Felten shows a hacked Diebold voting machine (youtubesday) in action, on Fox News of all places. Yeah, that Ed Felten.
posted on Sep-19-06 at 1:37 PM

Andy Baio blows the lid off a disturbing new trend: sex baiting on craigslist. The story is pretty simple: man makes up fake Casual Encounters ad posing as a woman looking for a good time, then he publishes any and all responses in a public forum. All hell breaks loose.
posted on Sep-8-06 at 7:17 AM

Musicast turns your iTunes (mac only) into a music sharing server that conveniently spits out a podcast feed for your friends to subscribe and download all your mp3s from. Download this quick before the RIAA kills the server something might happen to this wonderful app.
posted on Aug-30-06 at 6:23 PM

Flight Patterns (watch the overview video) is a cool visualization based on FAA flight records for one day. You can see the overnight lull, then the morning sweep across the country in a series of short videos. It's like cabspotting, but on a much larger scale. This is from the same guy behind The Sheep Market.
posted on Aug-26-06 at 9:08 AM

The Trailer Mash is the spot for movie trailer recuts and mashups. We've done the subject before, but now the subject has its own blog. Current new favorites: Garden State as a murder thriller and School of Rock as a kidnap film. [via mefi projects]
posted on Aug-25-06 at 9:56 AM

ook asked for a list of big things in America to go out and take photos of. We gave him a list, and he went out and shot it: Big Things in America. I love it when a plan comes together. [via mefi projects]
posted on Aug-5-06 at 10:36 AM

laundryroom swapmeet "I live in an apartment building. We have a laundry room. The laundry room has a table. People put things on the table, and other people take those things away later. It's a laundry room swapmeet. I take pictures of the things and write about them. Hilarity more-or-less ensues." Awesome. [via mefi projects]
posted on Aug-3-06 at 10:58 AM

Yes, it's another Snakes on a Plane promo but this one is different: it's fucking awesome. Drop in your friends name (hopefully it's semi-normal and they have it in the db), then fill out some info about your friend, then have it place a call to them. Watch friend freak out when Samuel L. Jackson calls them up and knows all sorts of shit about them. Trust me, it totally freaked me out when someone did it to me today.
posted on Aug-2-06 at 8:53 PM

Work Friendly is the greatest website ever for people trying to get away with web browsing at work. You enter a URL, it launches a new window styled to resemble a Word Document window. It even includes a "Boss" key to convert the page to regular text. Check out MeFi in it. [via waxy]
posted on Aug-2-06 at 11:43 AM