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If you are having a tough time right now, here is Dolly Parton watching people cover her songs on YouTube and being, well, completely Dolly Parton about it.
posted by mightygodking at 10:58 PM PST - 43 comments

Such dream-sharing societies seem to possess a great deal more self-consciousness about the nature of dreaming—a much greater ability to make use of it, manipulate it, interrogate its function and purpose—than we do. We have been blinded to the splendor of their achievement by the dismissive judgment, so long promulgated in the West against other societies, that to assign dreams a cosmological and spiritual significance is to be enslaved to superstition.

Dreams are instances where the imagination unfurls its full power over us: An essay by Matthew Spellberg about societies in which dreaming is a shared, social act.
posted by Rumple at 3:37 PM PST - 17 comments

“His handlers, who are basically all old Obama staffers, believe in something called the Great Reset of capitalism,” Ingraham said in a November episode of her show. “It’s a plan to force a more equitable distribution of global resources.” from The Biden Presidency Already Has Its First Conspiracy Theory: The Great Reset [Daily Beast] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:42 PM PST - 101 comments

Inspired by late nights on the Tristate area MTA system, Nightline (Win/Mac/Linux) is a gorgeous procedural subway experience by @colorfiction, free for the next three days.
posted by adrianhon at 2:13 PM PST - 15 comments

The Poetry Map of Scotland has more than 350 poems, each linked to a specific place in Scotland. The map is a standard Google map, and you can zoom in and click on the title of poems, which takes you to the poem itself. The map is a project of the Stanza Poetry Festival, and the poems have been submitted by living poets.
posted by Kattullus at 12:47 PM PST - 5 comments

Which optical illusions can animals see? "Visual illusions remind us that we are not passive decoders of reality but active interpreters. Our eyes capture information from the environment, but our brain can play tricks on us. Perception doesn’t always match reality. Scientists have used illusions for decades to explore the psychological and cognitive processes that underlie human visual perception. More recently, evidence is emerging that suggests many animals, like us, can perceive and create a range of visual illusions."
posted by dhruva at 12:27 PM PST - 8 comments

DJ Cummerbund: A purveyor of cursed, powerful mashups such as The Devil Wap Down to Georgia and Play That Funky Music Rammstein (2020 Webby Award). Come for songs that you may not know how to feel about individually yet are strangely compelling when bound together, stay for the restrained yet hilarious video editing and persistently recurring Macho Man. [more inside]
posted by automatic cabinet at 11:07 AM PST - 18 comments

Residential Schools were part of a system set up to "assimilate" First Nations people in Canada by taking their children to schools where they lived and were taught and were often abused. Some children died and were buried in unmarked graves. Started in the 1800s, the last residential school closed in 1996. The government has officially apologized but not everyone thinks residential schools were a bad thing [tiktok].
posted by aclevername at 10:15 AM PST - 26 comments

As we enter this holiday season, this resource is intended to support educators and families as we address the true story of Thanksgiving. This guide provides resources that range from lesson plans to narratives that uplift the perspectives and contributions of the Native American community.
posted by aniola at 9:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Midwest Nurses Say Their Hospitals Are On The Verge Of Collapsing — And Leaders Aren’t Listening. For Tammy Tate, a nurse at a Missouri hospital, this wave is like watching a train about to crash, knowing that it could be stopped in time — if people would listen. [more inside]
posted by supercrayon at 9:09 AM PST - 44 comments

Versatile building blocks make structures with surprising mechanical properties - "The subunits could be robotically assembled to produce large, complex objects, including cars, robots, or wind turbine blades." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:08 AM PST - 7 comments

By the end of its second episode, I knew that Netflix’s new series “Emily in Paris” was not a lighthearted romantic travelogue but an artifact of contemporary dystopia. [SLNewYorker]
posted by litleozy at 5:38 AM PST - 43 comments

From CityLab: The still-raging pandemic means social activities will stay outdoors as the temperature plummets. Here’s what experts say about the art of keeping warm.
posted by Bella Donna at 5:35 AM PST - 27 comments

What it says on (and about!) the tin | In which the estimable Mr. John Moon reveals that he Has Opinions On This Topic.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:27 AM PST - 75 comments

It is that time of the year, it is tweeting and it is reborn! Through webcam, see the 2020 Gävle Goat being constructed and guarded. After last year (larger goat survived, smaller goat did not), the Wikipedia page details the various attacks on (both) Yule straw goats over the decades ("2005: Burnt by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and the gingerbread man, by shooting a flaming arrow at the goat"). Some previously on MetaFilter: 2017, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009.
posted by Wordshore at 3:22 AM PST - 40 comments

A lovely paper animation [more inside]
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:18 AM PST - 5 comments