MetaFilter

How do people from religions who rely on the sun for certain events deal with it?
posted by kathrynm at 6:48 PM PST - 82 comments

"He made Belgium bigger and France smaller, it's not a good idea"
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:23 PM PST - 58 comments

biking is (not just) for boys (from peopleforbikes) Roshun Austin grew up poor in Memphis, Tennessee, the middle of five girls raised in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. “Religiously, there were a lot of things that girls could not do,” said Austin. “In the Holiness Pentecostal tradition, whistling was considered sinful, as was skipping. We couldn’t even wear pants, so riding a bike wasn’t that acceptable.”
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 3:21 PM PST - 12 comments

The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer. An AI program that recognizes unwrapped pastries for Japanese bakeries, built before image-recognizing neural networks became widespread, turns out to be useful for recognizing cancer cells. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 9:55 AM PST - 32 comments

How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life [ungated link] - "Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism." (NYT, PBS) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:54 AM PST - 22 comments

Buy Nothing groups are part of the Internet gift economy, currently only on Facebook. The idea is "give where you live" and to "buy nothing". Now they are building a sharing app, currently in beta.
posted by toastyk at 8:37 AM PST - 72 comments

The Brilliant Stupidity of Robert Palmer’s 1986 No. 1 Hit, ‘Addicted to Love’. A brief reflection on the 'utterly ridiculous', 'absolutely iconic', and 'brilliantly idiotic' song on the thirty-fifth anniversary of its hitting #1. [SLVariety]
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:06 AM PST - 81 comments

Ultra-runner Sabrina Verjee is struggling through blizzards even as you read this, on her latest attempt for a record-setting run of the Wainwright Fells Round, after becoming the first woman to do the run continuously last year. Her almost unbelievable effort to climb 214 peaks, without stopping, in less than six days, in the British "spring" weather, can be followed live here. [more inside]
posted by SandCounty at 6:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Sugar in COVID-19 (YT) from the Blue Brain Project at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland [more inside]
posted by daksya at 5:37 AM PST - 23 comments

Factories produced tired workers. A new frontier in fatigue studies followed. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 1:43 AM PST - 6 comments