Tell me more about Xul Solar's invented game and language, please?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by taltalim at 9:32 AM on January 23, 2012 (7 comments)

Gamasutra's Top 10 Indie Games of 2011
posted to MetaFilter by OverlappingElvis at 10:07 AM on December 16, 2011 (19 comments)

A mixed (superpositioned?) state of buzz among those working in quantum foundations over a new paper by Matt Pusey asserting that quantum states are real physical objects and not simply statistical probability distributions. Matt Leifer does a balanced contextualization and explication. A giddy article in nature news and David Wallace support and summarize.
posted to MetaFilter by wjzeng at 2:11 PM on December 5, 2011 (42 comments)

How new words are created - just one section of a site that charts 'How English went from an obscure Germanic dialect to a global language'.
posted to MetaFilter by unliteral at 4:29 PM on December 1, 2011 (37 comments)

Some interesting things have recently happened in the world of solar power: Evergreen and Solyndra have gone bankrupt, panel cost has gone sub $1.00/watt, and China has vastly increased production capacities.
posted to MetaFilter by thewalrus at 6:51 PM on November 17, 2011 (101 comments)

Saveur Magazine picks 55 great global food blogs.
posted to MetaFilter by carrienation at 11:47 PM on November 7, 2011 (27 comments)

French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius wrote and "directed" the film La Classe Americaine (YT clip/full) in 1993, comprised entirely of scenes from Warner Brothers movies. Warner agreed to let the French TV channel Canal+ use its 4000-movie catalog free of charge and rights for a month, resulting in a pastiche parody of Citizen Kane, in which two journalists investigate the cryptic meaning Orson Welles' last words.

After La Classe, Hazanavicius directed two films lampooning the James Bond ouevre : OSS 117 - Nest of Spies and 0SS 117 - Lost in Rio, both starring actor Jean Dujardin. Which brings us to 2011 - Hazanavicius and Dujardin have just released a new film (via Warner Brothers in America) entitled The Artist, a heartfelt, old-school romance without the aid of spoken dialogue or sound, [p]rojected in black-and-white in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio...
posted to MetaFilter by obscurator at 10:55 PM on November 4, 2011 (14 comments)

"Visiting the Library is by introduction. Its location is not advertised, and it does not reveal its whereabouts on the internet." So where is the Arcadian Library and how do I get to see it? And are there any other secret libraries like this?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by verstegan at 3:00 PM on November 4, 2011 (7 comments)

For centuries, Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio's "Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno", an enormous setting of the Mass for 40 and 60 voices, was thought to be lost to the ages. A few years ago, UC Berkeley musicologist Davitt Moroney discovered that a copy of the work, attributed to a non-existent composer, was hiding right under our noses, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In an hour-long lecture titled "The Pope, the Emperor and the Grand Duke", Professor Moroney recounts the story of the Mass's disappearance and rediscovery, describes the historical significance of the music, and unravels the intriguing geopolitical landscape of 16th century Italy.
posted to MetaFilter by archagon at 7:55 PM on September 28, 2011 (7 comments)

Twilight Zone San Francisco - "Why Is Everybody Here? Doesn't anybody works in this town?" (From a show Killing My Lobster Conquers the Galaxy)(SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by growabrain at 11:16 PM on September 22, 2011 (44 comments)

Did you know that two guys once flew a Cessna for 64 days, without landing? They apparently refuelled from a moving pickup truck with a hose. Did you also know of the monks from Mt. Hiei, Japan who run 900 marathons in 6 years? To qualify, they do 30 km. a day for 100 consecutive days. I did not know these things when I woke up on Friday, but Now I Know.
posted to MetaFilter by Cobalt at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2011 (27 comments)

Migrations Map elegantly visualizes migration data for every single country using an interactive world map.
posted to MetaFilter by Foci for Analysis at 7:11 AM on September 18, 2011 (32 comments)

“It’s misery, misery, misery, misery, euphoria.” (NYMag) Code kids break out of basement. Love the photos.
posted to MetaFilter by maggieb at 9:32 AM on September 16, 2011 (39 comments)

A year ago this August, 72 migrant workers -- 58 men and 14 women -- 'were on their way to the US border when they were murdered by a drug gang at a ranch in northern Mexico, in circumstances that remain unexplained. Since then, a group of Mexican journalists and writers have created' a "Day of the Dead-style Virtual Altar" Spanish-language website, 72migrantes.com, to commemorate each of the victims, some of whom have never been identified. The New York Review of Books has English translations of five of their profiles.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 9:18 AM on September 7, 2011 (7 comments)

Hearts and minds?
posted to MetaFilter by PeterMcDermott at 4:04 PM on June 6, 2007 (32 comments)

Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman started Toronto's Trampoline Hall, a non-expert lecture series. Heti has recently written a book entitled The Chairs Are Where The People Go, a 72-chapter long interview with Glouberman, whom some of us know as ManInSuit.
posted to MetaTalk by ricochet biscuit at 9:51 AM on September 1, 2011 (23 comments)

New Wave Time Warp is a tumblr featuring video of songs exactly thirty years after their release. Thirty years ago today: Pete Shelley, Homosapien.
posted to MetaFilter by escabeche at 5:57 PM on August 24, 2011 (28 comments)

First time in Copenhagen. I'm flying to Copenhagen this week, staying Friday 'till Tuesday. If you have been before please can you help me with: What is the best way to get from the airport to the center? What are the things I should get done? What treasures are hidden away? Anyway I can avoid spending a fortune on food, heard it's pretty pricey. Thank you.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by 92_elements at 9:00 AM on August 16, 2011 (21 comments)

I'm looking for music that feels like a breezy, tropical, disco-tinged dance party.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by naju at 5:37 PM on August 10, 2011 (18 comments)

In October of 1951 a fan snuck a color 8MM camera into a taping of I love Lucy. The footage has resurfaced, here intercut with the actual episode.
posted to MetaFilter by pjern at 11:18 AM on August 6, 2011 (50 comments)

Can I get Bernachon (Lyon, France) chocolate shipped to the U.S.?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ASoze at 11:45 AM on August 2, 2011 (3 comments)

Why doesn't anyone make wedding bands made of carbon nanotubes?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Capa at 6:20 AM on August 2, 2011 (17 comments)

UCSD physicist Tom Murphy inaugurates his blog Do the Math with two posts on the thermal limits of energy use on earth and the related absurdity of infinite economic growth.
posted to MetaFilter by adamdschneider at 7:23 AM on August 1, 2011 (58 comments)

Circa 1850. A curious document that had been filed away in a box for over a century. Hundreds of pages of strange, crudely drawn figures, resembling stick figures, many of them appearing to be urinating, copulating, whipping each other, and displaying enormously swollen genitals. An extremely important document that revealed much that was previously unknown about Native American history and culture?? The scribbling book of a German child, "the leisure pencillings of a nasty-minded little boy"?? We may never know.
posted to MetaFilter by ecorrocio at 8:33 AM on July 28, 2011 (43 comments)

"I play a CD of a long Evan Parker sax solo while they [enter the theatre]. I figure if people can’t put up with that then they will probably not be able to put up with me." Quoth Benito Strauss, in the context of the Daily Mail's crusade against cruelty to millonaire stand-up Michael McIntyre: Yeah, I'd love it if someone would do a post on Stewart Lee. So:
posted to MetaFilter by running order squabble fest at 2:57 PM on July 25, 2011 (28 comments)

For fans of gaming and pure delight: Katmari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi has joined the team behind the upcoming Glitch, from the makers of Flickr (and Game Neverending!)
posted to MetaFilter by KatlaDragon at 7:52 AM on July 9, 2011 (23 comments)

Even if you calculate that on average away teams only ever had a 10 per cent chance of beating one of Mourinho’s sides (for some, like Gijón, it might be a lot less, but for others, like Sporting Lisbon, AC Milan, Manchester United or Barcelona, it would be a lot more), the odds against going unbeaten for 150 matches are more than seven million to one. The London Review Of Books on the home advantage in sports.
posted to MetaFilter by veedubya at 2:21 AM on July 5, 2011 (39 comments)

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest prospective study of mental and physical well-being ever conducted. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 824 individuals through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Designer Laura Javier took ten of those cases and visualized them in the Elements of Happiness. [via flowingdata]
posted to MetaFilter by anifinder at 4:38 PM on June 27, 2011 (13 comments)

A handful of complete Harold Lloyd films on YouTube:

A Sailor-Made Man (1921)
Why Worry? (1923)
Safety Last (1923)
Girl Shy (1924)
The Freshman (1925)

From the splendid F*** Yeah Harold Lloyd
posted to MetaFilter by shakespeherian at 7:24 AM on June 16, 2011 (19 comments)

The Newspaper Map: browse thousands of local, regional and national newspapers from around the world, based on geographical location. Filter and translate languages, see newspaper archives back to the early 19th century, and find fourth estate Twitter and YouTube feeds. A mobile version is also available. via
posted to MetaFilter by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 10:52 AM on June 7, 2011 (7 comments)

Leonora Carrington, one of the few living links to the movement that counted Dali, Ernst, Tanguy, and Man Ray as its members, passed away Wednesday at the age of 94. Born in Britain, she earned her surrealist credentials primarily as a painter, but also as a novelist. Forced to flee Europe during WWII, she ended up in Mexico, where she championed another expat European female artist, Remedios Varo. Though both were overshadowed by the more flamboyant Frida Kahlo, all three were strongly influenced by the culture of Mexico, and took surrealism in a new, and decidedly feminine direction.
posted to MetaFilter by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:48 PM on May 26, 2011 (15 comments)

Claude Shannon and Marvin Minsky collaborated to create the concept of The Ultimate Machine, a device capable of shutting itself off after activation. Out of the numerous and often transparent homages to the invention, a new variant has emerged, with more rigorous defenses. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by Smart Dalek at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2011 (15 comments)

I've found my ideal music for reading and studying - Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo piano albums (BTTB and Playing the Piano). The pieces are unobtrusive and calming, and there aren't too many elements that draw my attention away from what I should be doing. Yet they're also melodic and carefully composed, not just ambient tones. Draws me into that certain headspace that is conducive to reading and focusing. Where do I find more music like it?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by naju at 8:02 PM on April 7, 2011 (30 comments)

How does Venice work? Short Vimeo documentary on the practicalities of Venice's architecture and civil engineering. More at Venice Backstage.
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry at 9:13 AM on April 4, 2011 (23 comments)

"cleans, sets, and casts splendour" is the motto of the Real Academia Española, the 300-year-old institution tasked with keeping the natural evolution of the Spanish language both coherent and true to its character, reflected in print through the publication of the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española (online).
posted to MetaFilter by valdesm at 9:31 AM on March 22, 2011 (5 comments)

I'll be spending three months in London this spring, and I'm looking for more novels or stories--mysteries, thrillers, or other variations of crime fiction--that offer a really great sense of London but that aren't historical fiction. Barbara Vine's King Solomon's Carpet, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Dickens's Bleak House all work, but I don't much care for Anne Perry novels or Bruce Alexander's Blind Justice, for example. Suggestions for crime fiction that gives a great sense of London?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jkinkade at 6:07 PM on January 30, 2011 (20 comments)

Quote Investigator
posted to MetaFilter by jtron at 9:29 AM on January 6, 2011 (24 comments)

You are in a warm, dark, comfortable place. This has been your place since you became aware that you are alive. It's almost time to enter a different world now. In 1986, Activision published a roleplaying computer game called Alter Ego. Unlike the action and fantasy titles that ruled the day, this game simulated the course of a single ordinary life. Beginning at birth, players navigated a series of vignettes: learning to crawl, reacting to strangers, getting a first haircut. The outcome of each scenario subtly influenced one's path, and with every choice players slowly progressed through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Graphically minimalist -- one's lifestream is represented by simple icons, and the scenarios are all text -- the game was nevertheless engaging, describing the world in a playful, good-natured tone tinged by darkness and melancholy. And it had quite a pedigree; developer and psychology PhD Peter Favaro interviewed hundreds of people on their most memorable life experiences to generate the game's 1,200 pages of material. Unfortunately for Dr. Favaro, the game didn't sell very well. But it lives on through the web -- PlayAlterEgo.com offers a full copy of the game free to play in your browser, and the same port is available as a $5 app for iPhone and Android. More: Port discussion group - Wishlist - Vintage review - Original game manual (text or scans)
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:51 AM on December 31, 2010 (46 comments)

"This is a subject of but small importance; and I know not whether it will interest any readers, but it has interested me."-C. D. Quick... what was Darwin's most popular book? If you answered The Origin of Species, you were wrong. It was his last book, published the year before he died, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observation of Their Habits (illustrations [first presented 1 Nov. 1837, as noted in the record of the Royal Geological Society]). Darwin noted when he was beginning his career that worms churned up soil, causing heavier objects to sink slowly in the soil. He noted that all soil had passed through the alimentary duct of worms. It started off a fashion of cultivating worms by gardeners that continues to the present day. -We recently learned that we owe an element of our unique cerebral cortex, or pallium to our marine worm ancestors. (In amphibians, the cerebrum includes archipallium, paleopallium and some of the basal nuclei. Reptiles first developed a neopallium, which continued to develop in the brains of more recent species to become the neocortex of mammals." [&, ultimately, you and you and we])
posted to MetaFilter by infinite intimation at 1:20 AM on December 30, 2010 (11 comments)

IN Gear, swinging London of 1960s and SOHO bohemian Coffee Bars of London, 1959. These are a few of the 500+ vintage documentary shorts called "Look at Life" that ran at the Odeon and Gaumont cinemas during the 50s and 60s. (via Dangerous Minds)
posted to MetaFilter by madamjujujive at 6:41 PM on December 29, 2010 (15 comments)

"Among medieval artistic media it was the microchip": the historian Alexander Murray on ivory carving. The Gothic Ivories Project, a new website launched this week by the Courtauld Institute in London, aims to build a database of every surviving ivory sculpture made in Europe between 1200 and 1530. The 400 objects currently on the site, ranging from combs to chesspieces, include some images of astonishing beauty and intricacy.
posted to MetaFilter by verstegan at 3:09 AM on December 17, 2010 (10 comments)

GoogleFu Failure Filter: Help us find specific legislation excluding Tootsie Roll Inc from paying sugar tariff
posted to Ask MetaFilter by nanhey at 5:13 PM on December 9, 2010 (13 comments)

Thanksgiving dinner and bowling in London! All Star Lanes Bowl, Brick Lane branch, 8:30 pm for dinner and bowling to follow.
posted to MeFi IRL by Gordafarin at 3:41 AM on November 16, 2010

Remember Worms? Well, Funky Pear (the guys who made playing golf in space fun) has another version of that, but the worms are replaced with guys in space suits, and the landscape is now a small planetary system. Use gravity to sling your rockets around planets, and build up the damage multiplier. Play Gravitee Wars. Warning: addictive.
posted to MetaFilter by Old'n'Busted at 5:00 AM on November 12, 2010 (20 comments)

Slaves of the moment: "The Mexican Agustín Víctor Casasola, with the intermittent help of his brother Miguel, began to set up around 1900 one of the most important photographic archives for the history of a country. However, the international recognition of these almost 500,000 photos has not matched its importance. Born in 1874 and raised in the years of the Porfirio Díaz government, Agustín Casasola was a direct witness to all the adversities that led to modern Mexico, and breathed as nobody else the air of a country and a city that developed during the first third of the 20th century at a runaway pace."
posted to MetaFilter by puny human at 1:36 PM on November 11, 2010 (8 comments)

Molecular gastronomy - the use of industrial and scientific processes in the culinary arts - has been discussed before, but in the last few years a number of tools and techniques have appeared that make some of the fancy pantsy schmanzy creations of molecular gastronomy possible for the home cook...
posted to MetaFilter by twoleftfeet at 3:35 AM on November 7, 2010 (26 comments)

The Digital Comic Museum, a site for downloading free public domain Golden Age Comics.
posted to MetaFilter by nickyskye at 6:58 PM on September 8, 2010 (17 comments)

Soundmaps are field recordings of the unique audio ecology of a particular place and time. Often they are cities: New York, Berlin, Montreal, New Orleans, Barcelona, London (previously), Madrid, and many others. Sometimes they move through space: Ramallah. Sometimes they are mixable (probably my favorite, from Portugal). They might be of entire countries (Spain, the United States (previously), the United Kingdom, or continents (Africa, while on a bike!). Sometimes they cover the entire world: aporee (you may prefer the map interface). Some attempt to preserve sounds that are in danger of being lost. And sometimes soundmaps are of the deep ocean. Most of the sounds are, appropriately, licensed under Creative Commons.
posted to MetaFilter by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 5:38 PM on September 6, 2010 (8 comments)

The Rub have completed their Hip Hop History series, creating a mix for every year between 1979 and 2009. Most mixes are average two hours in length. For some golden age hip hop, try a mix from 1987, 1994 or 1996.
posted to MetaFilter by mattgeeknz at 10:03 PM on August 20, 2010 (38 comments)

Global Broadband Statistical Porn (SFW) (via)
posted to MetaFilter by crunchland at 5:29 AM on July 29, 2010 (22 comments)