MetaFilter posts tagged with stuff

It's Saturday morning. Grab a bowl of cereal and let's watch cartoons!

Toekneesan — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:23:52 -0800

Stuff You Should Know: The Animated Series is an animated version of bits from the very popular Stuff You Should Know podcast, with Josh and Chuck. Thus far, topics include:
Duels
The Digestive System
How to Start a Country
Lilith and Vampire Myths
Self-Experimenters
How Fear Works
Bonus material: Dont' Be Dumb: Is Cracking Your Knuckles Bad for You? Don't be Dumb: Lemmings Stuff You Should Know Shorts An interview with Josh Clark An interview with Chuck Bryant

Jumbo Fingerprints Made From Random Stuff

Confess, Fletch — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:10:10 -0800

Jumbo Fingerprints Made From Random Stuff

A Culture of Clutter

2bucksplus — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:49:14 -0800

Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors, a new book by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF), is the conclusion of an unprecedented nine-year interdisciplinary study of the middle-class American home. A team of archaeologists, anthropologists and other social scientists studied the home life of 32 two-income, middle-class families in Los Angeles. What they found was a lifestyle struggling with consumerism, and a staggering accumulation of possessions:

“The first household assemblage we analyzed, of Family 27, resulted in a tally of 2,260 visible possessions in the first three rooms coded (two bedrooms and the living room),” and that didn’t include “untold numbers of items tucked into dresser drawers, boxes and cabinets or items positioned behind other items.”

"This is the very first study to step inside 21st-century family homes to discover the material surroundings and vast number of possessions that organize and give meaning to the everyday lives of middle-class parents and children," said co-author Elinor Ochs, a UCLA anthropologist and director of CELF. Added lead author Jeanne E. Arnold: "This is something that's never been done before in a modern society and may never be done again because it was an incredibly labor-intensive enterprise." While the full study is available as a book, CELF identified seven common challenges facing middle-class families at home: Mountains of Clutter

Managing the volume of possessions proved to be a crushing problem for the Los Angeles families. One family was reduced to collecting dirty laundry in an unused shower

The New Junk Drawer

Only 25 percent of garages could be used to store cars because they were so packed with household overflow. Family members said they were parking their stuff while deciding what to do with it. Plans to recoup the cost of unused items by selling them on eBay or Craigslist or at a garage sale rarely materialized.

The Lure of Buying in Bulk

The rise of big-box stores has fueled a tendency to stockpile, which compounds clutter. The trend is so pervasive that close to half of the families kept a second refrigerator or freezer to accommodate all the extra food. Some even had a third refrigerator. With bulk-buying, even cleaning products can contribute to the crush of clutter, CELF researchers found.

The Temptation of Toys

Only 3.1 percent of the world's children live in the United States, but U.S. families buy more than 40 percent of the toys consumed globally. The Los Angeles homes were no exception.

The Call of the Couch

Nearly three-fourths of the Los Angeles parents and about half of the children spent no leisure time in their backyards over the course of the study. They could not manage to carve out time to relax, play, eat, read or swim outside, despite the presence of such pricey features as built-in pools, spas, dining sets and lounges.

Fragmented Dinner Time

Allowing dinner time to devolve into independent, individual mini-meals is threatening a sacrosanct American tradition: the family dinner. Fragmented dinners, in which family members eat sequentially or in different rooms, were commonplace in two-thirds of the Los Angeles households. Just 17 percent of dinners were consumed with everyone together.

The Lure of the Refuge

Upgrading the master bedroom — often with the addition of an adjoining bathroom — was the single most common remodeling project among the families. At the time of the study, the cost of expanding a master bedroom or constructing a suite of modest proportions was a little more than $80,000. The amount approached or exceeded the combined annual salaries for many of the families.

The deer head and the memory card

mippy — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:56:26 -0800

How to Lose A Legacy - a curator writes about the problem of what to do with stuff after death. (via.) Professional organizers give advice. If this intrigues you, Martin Rowson wrote a book on it (I'd link to the Guardian;s review but it's written by a v.bad writer.)

THE PHOTO ISSUE 2010

kliuless — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:56:08 -0800

Still Lifes
"Supposedly the still life came to the fore when religion and the state became replaced by the middle class. Do you know when that was. The world began to be run by people who just wanted a lot of shit. And would go anywhere to get it. The Dutch who invented our own dear New York and this is why it is this way—full of people who want stuff—they were the stars of this moment, collecting shit from around the world and putting big piles of it on shelves, in boats, taking it somewhere else. And making paintings of it. And really this moment never ended. They would paint marketplaces, and the thing that's funny is that if you were a painter and you weren't being paid to paint someone rich you would just probably paint some stuff and sell it in the market and so the place where all this was happening of course got painted too—it's dizzying." (via dd)

Parental Craparoo

Secret Life of Gravy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 06:11:02 -0800

Crap at My Parent's House: Homage to all of the weird crap that everyone's parents have. Via

It's what it says on the tin.

flatluigi — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:40:24 -0800

People Doing Stuff. Strangely compelling.

Mulder and Scully have been sent to investigate.

SansPoint — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:09:18 -0800

A mysterious black blob of something is floating along the Alaskan coast... and it's biological. According to the Coast Guard, "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind." The strange goop even has a taste for flesh... "[S]omeone turned in what was left of a dead goose -- just bones and feathers..."

No real issues. Just stuff and nonsense

jtron — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:09:58 -0800

Nothing To Do With Arbroath Part Cute Overload, part News Of The Weird, almost always the highlight of my RSS feed.

Why A Recession Might Be A Good Thing

ThePinkSuperhero — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:29:26 -0800

The Upside of the Downside "I never imagined I’d find myself in the curious position of having so much more than my parents ever had, of having more, frankly, than I ever thought I would have—and yet simultaneously feeling like I’m falling behind, that I need to earn more, save more, invest more, acquire more. When did I begin to feel this anxiety of acquisition? How did I become such a jackass?"

Tis the season for stuff.

allkindsoftime — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:19:31 -0800

...you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely. The story of stuff.

Doesn't quite look to be a Chu-Chu Rocket, but...

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 05:47:37 -0800

The Japanese Trailer to Kokoro Scan. Japanese game trailers always seem pretty interesting and fun. And, well, most often more-or-less nonsensical. This is for the new game Kokoro Scan, which, um, looks like it might be a dating sim of some sort? Maybe? The animation and segues are pretty interesting, and, though it's 6 minutes -- awfully long for a trailer, particularly one sans any gameplay (I think) -- it's interesting/off-the-wall enough to be engaging. What do cartoon nipples, pixellated white things and bananas have in common? (via)

"When I hear the word 'designer', I reach for my chainsaw."

hydrophonic — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:44:30 -0800

The backlash against design. Are you Anti-fluff or Anti-stuff?

New Scientist Short List of Fun Materials

furtive — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:59:41 -0800

Walking on liquids, corn starch rocking out to the beat of a subwoofer and materials that expand as they stretch are just some of the cool videos mentioned in The Stuff of Dreams (plenty more links in the last link).

365 Days II: 365 MORE Days, The Bloodening

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:54:34 -0800

It's BACK! Otis F. Odder (of The Bran Flakes and Comfort Stand Recordings is reviving his 365 Days project on the WFMU Beware Of The Blog! Hot damn! He opens it with the complete recordings of the Michael Mills Satanic Messages Radio Show and the complete Beatles Forever recordings (previously excerpted in the first incarnation). (Previously on Me Fi)

like, you know, totally

mendel — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:32:14 -0800

iliketotallyloveit is what you get if you apply the digg algorithm to stuff. Users submit their favorite stuff, new or old, and if enough other members agree with its awesomeness their favorite gets posted to the front page (along with where to buy it, of course).

Stuff and Me

brownpau — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:15:02 -0800

Buy an ad, and Aric posts a funny photo of himself and your product. Another entry in the "million dollar homepage" series of viral-advertising-as-content sites. [via mefi projects]

subtle interest

The Jesse Helms — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 14:50:01 -0800

Top 10 Things I Like in My Apartment by Jaime Stewart of Xiu Xiu.

It's ten PM. do you know where your firefox is?

wheelieman — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 05:25:12 -0800

Ever wonder what your browser is really like? Does it lurk in the shadows of the local pub or pool hall? Does it give too many 404s then it gives really cool websites? Look no further, introducing BrowserSpy, all the scoop you need to know but were afraid to ask.

It's not only the size of the boat, but also the motion of the ocean.

holloway — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 18:41:47 -0800

Remember small scissors? Big scissors! Remember small chocolate? Big chocolate! Small clipboards? Pfaff... Big clipboards! ... such is life at Great Big Stuff (thanks John)

What's that stuff?

talos — Thu, 20 Feb 2003 06:19:23 -0800

Did you know what's behind that "new car smell"?
These apparently.
"What's that Stuff" explores the chemistry of everyday stuff.

A radio DJ's prank on travelling friends.

holloway — Mon, 02 Oct 2000 20:08:55 -0800

A radio DJ's prank on travelling friends. ...involved faking an Interpol officer and the suggestion of "concealed" bird eggs. [More inside...]