Writing for FACT, Laurent Fintoni and John Twells have compiled a list of the fifty best trip-hop albums. (Before you freak out, realize that particularly big artists all only get one entry, and the list is confined to the 1990s.) The list is reproduced inside, with links to entry pages, artist info, and (when available) Youtube streams.
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 12:38 PM on August 8, 2015 (92 comments)

Microsoft accounts have a feature called family accounts. And with Windows 10, Microsoft automatically emails parents a weekly activity report that includes all websites visited by the child, time spent in apps, etc. if they have a family account set up.
posted to MetaFilter by floatboth at 6:12 AM on August 25, 2015 (116 comments)

"Let me begin by saying that I believe this is the greatest and most important event ever captured on film. I saw it live, but I was alone, sadly, and had no one with whom to share it. For a while, I wasn’t even sure I had seen what I thought I had seen, and I couldn’t go back to double-check. This was in 2000 — before TiVo became a verb, kids. This document is essentially prehistoric. It might as well be printed on papyrus." Michael Schur, The Greatest Moment in the History of the Triple-A All-Star Game
posted to MetaFilter by everybody had matching towels at 7:51 AM on July 15, 2015 (40 comments)

The surprising ways that loops steer... and sometimes derail... our lives.
posted to FanFare by Gin and Broadband at 2:07 PM on June 17, 2015 (2 comments)

Why do I keep getting attacked by crows? Can I do anything to stop it?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by noxperpetua at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2015 (31 comments)

Somehow the idea of doing an alternate podcast theme riffing on Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger got into my head a while a go, and here it is.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:25 AM on June 3, 2015 (10 comments)

Francis Harris and Anthony Collins air their Breakaway edits on an exquisite house session.
posted to FanFare by Going To Maine at 1:27 PM on May 10, 2015 (3 comments)

A one-of-a-kind hip-hop producer steps up. Although Guillermo Scott Herren has released music under a plethora of different names in his time – including early work as Delarosa & Asora, the drone-informed group Risil, his folk-influenced Savath y Savalas project and the exceptionally titled Diamond Watch Wrists and Piano Overlord – he’s best known for his groundbreaking records as Prefuse 73.
posted to FanFare by Going To Maine at 10:17 AM on May 22, 2015 (3 comments)

Welcome to the first episode of the Slack Variety Pack, a podcast brought to you by Slack. This is a show about work, life, and everything in-between. In this episode, we go inside a $10 million quantum computer, talk productivity with BJ Novak at an NHL game, meet up with a Mars One candidate, hear about an epic fist fight in an office, and invent Audio Emojis.
posted to FanFare by jazon at 9:17 PM on May 20, 2015

Hey hey hey, it's episode 104 of the podcast. Recorded Wednesday May 6th, Matt and Jessamyn and I yammer for nigh on two hours about a bunch of great stuff from the last month and also complain about cell phone reception.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 5:11 PM on May 6, 2015 (79 comments)

"I think we might have made a little bit of history tonight." Alberta, Canada's most conservative province, the home of the oil/tar sands, and most of Canada's oil and gas industry, has elected a majority NDP government. And one run by a woman, at that.
posted to MetaFilter by jrochest at 5:54 PM on May 6, 2015 (137 comments)

Mihai's legacy is that there are hundreds of millions of people using a product, Firefox, that Mihai contributed to, hundreds of thousands of them of them spend a significant proportion of their time in the console that was his responsibility. And there are billions of people using websites created by people directly helped by Mihai's work.
posted to MetaFilter by CrystalDave at 10:51 PM on April 27, 2015 (28 comments)

It was just a dumb thing. Then we put a chip in it. Now it's a smart thing.
posted to MetaFilter by koeselitz at 6:41 PM on April 19, 2015 (96 comments)

Photographs of America’s most powerful men throwing the ceremonial first pitch gives some indication of why they got into politics. via NPR's Tumblr
posted to MetaFilter by sacrifix at 7:38 PM on April 6, 2015 (47 comments)

Hi MeFites. After many years of overthinking a plate of beans, I made a thing! I'm pleased to share my PhD dissertation about MetaFilter with you all. A simple question of how we pronounce our own nickname has unfolded into many years of research. This time spent would not have been as enriching or meaningful to me and to the field of sociolinguistics without the support and enthusiasm of my fellow MeFites. I say I made a thing, but really, you made this. Thank you.
posted to MetaTalk by iamkimiam at 10:49 AM on April 3, 2015 (180 comments)

A friend's high-school aged daughter is looking for a book for her English class. The story has to be set in the present day but where a different reality exists and is discovered by the main character. They are thinking 'science fantastique' I think. I suppose it's something like Harry Potter or The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. Any suggestions?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Steakfrites at 6:28 AM on March 20, 2015 (61 comments)

ok, this is kind of a complicated question and I'm not even sure how to ask it. But I do feel like something is Wrong about how I read. Details below.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by starcrust at 6:48 AM on March 14, 2015 (23 comments)

How Wednesday Addams Would React To Catcalling went viral a few weeks ago with its darkly-humorous, sweet-revenge take on the issue. But it's only one episode of Melissa Hunter's "Adult Wednesday Addams" webseries - and season 2 concludes today.
posted to MetaFilter by flex at 7:16 AM on March 11, 2015 (37 comments)

This is where Norris has chosen to live while he tries to win a job in the Blue Jays' rotation: a broken down van parked under the blue fluorescent lights of a Wal-Mart in the Florida suburbs.
posted to MetaFilter by stinkfoot at 2:23 PM on March 5, 2015 (31 comments)

After 16 years of doing a bit of everything under the sun here, I’m stepping away from the day to day of running MetaFilter and moving into the background. Never fear, I’m leaving it in the best of hands and things are looking good for the future.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 1:03 PM on March 4, 2015 (948 comments)

Dave's Mapper automatically generates tiled RPG/adventure game maps by recombining tiles submitted by artists, with a pile of customization map generation options. Have fun and be inspired, or submit your own tiles.
posted to MetaFilter by Jimbob at 7:17 PM on January 28, 2015 (14 comments)

Are you interested in making ambient, drifting, densely-layered electronic music? But don't know where to even start? This is the most thoughtful and gentle introduction I'm aware of, from a fine musician. It's a 45-minute video workshop from Rich Vreeland aka Disasterpeace, composer of the gorgeous, acclaimed Fez soundtrack. Rich composes a Fez-like track on the fly, explaining what he's doing in the process. While he uses Logic and the softsynth Massive in this workshop, his general approach and attention to sound design and synthesis will be applicable to whatever software or hardware you choose to use. (Hat tip to sparkletone for the link. Fez previously on Metafilter.)
posted to MetaFilter by naju at 12:28 PM on February 16, 2015 (36 comments)

If you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t believe it all happened in the space of about five weeks in the summer of 1978. But it did happen. In those five weeks, Bill Murray played professional baseball and established himself as a bona fide movie star and the Grays Harbor Loggers – representing the twin cities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, Washington – posted the best winning percentage in America and won the Harbor’s only professional sports championship in living memory.
posted to MetaFilter by Chrysostom at 1:03 PM on February 16, 2015 (11 comments)

Just checking for interest. The 3rd season of this Netflix original drops on the 21st.
posted to FanFare by lawliet at 12:16 PM on November 15, 2014 (1 comment)

Jackie Robinson West Stripped of Its National Little League Title [New York Times]

An investigation revealed that the Chicago team, which captured the attention of the country last summer, had falsified boundaries to field ineligible players.

posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 11:25 AM on February 11, 2015 (117 comments)

I just used the edit window to close a parenthetical statement I'd left open by accident, and I was just thinking about how much I have appreciated it since its introduction. Hooray for the edit window! Saving mefites everywhere from the shame of inadvertent typos! Thanks, mods, for having implemented this incredibly useful feature.
posted to MetaTalk by ocherdraco at 10:45 AM on February 2, 2015 (130 comments)

Elevator Saga is a game in which you write Javascript to control a bank of elevators.
posted to MetaFilter by alby at 11:27 AM on February 6, 2015 (23 comments)

Podcast 101 clocks in around 90min and covers all our favorite bits from January, and was recorded yesterday, Feb 2.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 11:54 AM on February 3, 2015 (30 comments)

Today we're rolling out a new feature that allows you to add a thread to Recent Activity even if you haven't commented in it.
posted to MetaTalk by pb at 1:58 PM on February 3, 2015 (157 comments)

Lot's of interesting things you can do with static. For the January Challenge.
posted to MeFi Music by TheNegativeInfluence at 2:58 PM on January 29, 2015 (5 comments)

Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks has died at 83.
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 8:46 PM on January 23, 2015 (42 comments)

What's the caffeine content of coffee made in an Aeropress?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cheapskatebay at 9:12 AM on February 13, 2009 (4 comments)

Pitchfork interviews Björk about the inspiration for and methods behind her newest album. Awesomeness ensues.
posted to MetaFilter by Ipsifendus at 12:18 PM on January 21, 2015 (32 comments)

[For a fiction project] Tell me about signifiers of present-day life in a very small U.S. town.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by BlahLaLa at 5:15 PM on December 29, 2014 (96 comments)

I get it. The show is impenetrable, watching the whole thing takes 178 hours. It’s also extremely silly — nearly every episode has a moment when grown men in pajamas throw themselves around in their chairs

But I want to make the case Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is important and worth your time in 2015, and I want to suggest about 40 hours of Star Trek viewing that will cover all of the great episodes.
posted to MetaFilter by MartinWisse at 4:35 AM on January 7, 2015 (218 comments)

"Hello! I am going to answer your question, and then I am going to talk a little bit about GENDER IN COMEDY…"
posted to MetaFilter by overeducated_alligator at 6:02 AM on January 8, 2015 (193 comments)

Neil Gaiman talks about writing "Good Omens" - "Terry Pratchett and I met in February 1985, in a Chinese restaurant. I was a young journalist. He was a former journalist and Electricity Board PR, and a writer who had just published his second Discworld novel. I was the first journalist who had ever interviewed him."
posted to MetaFilter by marienbad at 11:54 PM on December 21, 2014 (50 comments)

Seattle's unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck — "In short: There is no plan to resolve the dispute over cost overruns, which are ubiquitous on projects like this; at $4.2 billion, it's the most expensive transportation project in state history. The tunnel will have no exits - no ingress or egress - throughout the entire downtown core (which makes the support of downtown businesses all the more mystifying). It won't allow transit, only cars. It will be tolled, highly enough, by the state's own estimates, to drive nearly half its traffic onto the aforementioned side streets. It will be a precarious engineering feat, the widest deep-bore tunnel in history, digging right between a) Puget Sound and b) the oldest part of Seattle, with vulnerable buildings and God-knows-what buried infrastructure. Also: Pollution. Climate change. It's the 21st f'ing century. On and on. People said all this and more, in real time, to no avail."
posted to MetaFilter by tonycpsu at 12:34 PM on December 16, 2014 (160 comments)

Most-favorited comments get highlighted throughout the year. Now it's time for their wonderful but overlooked cousins to shine. Which terrific comments made by fellow MeFites in 2014 deserve a little more attention? This is the place to share your own Best Of.
posted to MetaTalk by MonkeyToes at 5:07 PM on January 3, 2015 (130 comments)

After recently adding podcasts to FanFare, we decided to add a meta-feed of all currently discussed podcast episodes into one unified feed.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 2:56 PM on December 9, 2014 (16 comments)

Does The Handmaid's Tale hold up? , Adi Robertson for The Verge:

"A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I was in the middle of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. 'It’s like 1984 for feminists, right?' he asked. Sort of, I said. But it's a lot scarier. It's about how you'll lose every right you have, and none of the men you know will care. Then I said he would probably betray me if they froze all women's bank accounts. That was the peak of my paranoia, but it held on for several more days, as I read on the subway while half-consciously figuring out how I might theoretically escape to Canada. 1984 was for lightweights."

posted to MetaFilter by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:53 AM on December 28, 2014 (182 comments)

We want our tools to sing of not just productivity but of our love of curiosity, the joy of wonderment, and the freshness of the unknown. —Eric Paulos, “Manifesto of Open Disruption and Participation”

In his essay “Walking in the City,” the French scholar Michel de Certeau talks about the “invisible identities of the visible.” He is talking specifically about the memories and personal narratives associated with a location. Until recently, this information was only accessible one-to-one—that is, by talking to people who had knowledge of a place. But what if that data became one-to-many, or even many-to-many, and easily accessible via some sort of street-level interface that could be accessed manually, or wirelessly using a smartphone?

posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 10:20 PM on December 16, 2014 (28 comments)

Darius Kazemi, aka @tinysubversions, is a bot-maker extrordinaire. Known for his inspiring talk on creativity and the lottery at XOXO last year, Kazemi has founded NaNoGenMo and the Bot Summit, created such wonderful Twitter Bots as Olivia Taters, (actually by @robdubbin) For My Real Friends, Miraculous Pictures and Two Headlines. Today he posted about his process in creating Content Forever, a writeup which covers many angles in creating readable bot writing, including escaping phenomena as the Wikipedia philosophy phenomenon.
posted to MetaFilter by dame at 3:03 PM on December 17, 2014 (15 comments)

"I am extremely grateful that Major League Baseball has always judged me on my work and nothing else"

In a "very quiet and understated way", 29-year veteran MLB umpire Dale Scott has become the first active official in any of the major US sports to come out as gay.
posted to MetaFilter by The Gooch at 9:49 AM on December 3, 2014 (33 comments)

I turned four years worth of voicemails from my brother into this song, and I gave it to him for his 39th birthday.
posted to MeFi Music by jeffxl at 1:42 PM on November 23, 2014 (16 comments)

The 99th(!!!) podcast was recorded earlier today and runs about 1h45m as we cover November on MeFi, Thanksgiving fun, and other upcoming events.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 9:04 PM on December 2, 2014 (56 comments)

I often obsess in my head about how many of X item I should buy at a time. What is your process for deciding this with maximum end satisfaction for any given category?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by vegartanipla at 5:23 PM on November 29, 2014 (16 comments)

MLB.com's StatCast dissects the World Series Game Seven double play seen as key to the San Francisco Giants win over the Kansas City Royals.
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 2:35 AM on November 5, 2014 (20 comments)

Too Many Cooks (slAdultSwim, nsfw)
posted to MetaFilter by Cash4Lead at 3:58 PM on November 6, 2014 (226 comments)

The Economist examines the cult of the genius GM.

In sports, just like the rest of life, the rich keep getting richer. Anyone who saw or read Moneyball knows that the deck is stacked against small-market Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. Their only hope of competing, Michael Lewis’s story goes, is to acquire brilliant, innovative general managers (GMs) like his protagonist Billy Beane, who have mastered the “art of winning an unfair game” by outmaneuvering wealthier clubs. The problem with this narrative is that there is nothing to stop the sport’s plutocrats from hiring the finest minds money can buy, just as they sign the best athletes.

The deep-pocketed Dodgers have lured away small market Tampa Bay's heralded GM Andrew Friedman to find out what happens when a man who consistently builds winners with one of the smallest revenue streams in the game can do with a payroll in excess of $200 million.
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 11:12 AM on October 15, 2014 (32 comments)