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You're now banned from travelling to Germany, kattullus
posted to MetaFilter by infini at 6:11 AM on April 16, 2024

More Herero: (Re)visions of genocide : narratives of genocide in Thomas Pynchon's V. and Gravity's Rainbow
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 5:42 AM on April 16, 2024

Slightly more lowbrow, but no less awesome: Pantera's "Cowboys from Hell" on a hurdy-gurdy.
posted to MetaFilter by Mr. Bad Example at 4:48 AM on April 16, 2024

Asteroids had been out for years before Etak was founded in '83.
They were still developing versions for different platforms through the 1980s
posted to MetaFilter by Lanark at 12:36 AM on April 16, 2024

For more modern gurdy music Patty Gurdy - she also has a bunch of youtube videos about how gurdys work and how to play them
posted to MetaFilter by mbo at 10:40 PM on April 15, 2024

My dad got to test-drive one of these (he was a technology columnist)! I (age 10 or so) clearly remember thinking "I am never going to be able to tell anyone about this, nobody will believe a word of it".
posted to MetaFilter by dmd at 10:45 PM on April 15, 2024

egypturnash, it is not wrong to want to hear that.
posted to MetaFilter by samw at 7:55 PM on April 15, 2024

Regine Chassagne playing the hurdy-gurdy.
posted to MetaFilter by mike3k at 5:25 PM on April 15, 2024

Asteroids had been out for years before Etak was founded in '83.
posted to MetaFilter by torokunai at 10:09 PM on April 15, 2024

Is it wrong that I want to hear a hurdy-gurdy/bagpipe duet?
posted to MetaFilter by egypturnash at 3:11 PM on April 15, 2024

.

This is a total bummer.

That basementful of musicians in Atlanta really created the future.

1000x this
posted to MetaFilter by thivaia at 2:12 PM on April 15, 2024

Donovan has admitted he had no idea what a hurdy gurdy was, he just liked the sound of it. I really would love one but I already play uilleann pipes so have enough tuning issues on my life.
posted to MetaFilter by misterpatrick at 1:39 PM on April 15, 2024

Excellent post!

For a tangential piece of hurdy gurdy history (and the origin of my username): the “hurdy gurdy girls”.
posted to MetaFilter by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:34 AM on April 15, 2024

These....

This guy is awesome ....Andrey Vinogradov
Andrey Vinogradov - Uzh I Ya Li Moloda, Tonkopriaditsa Byla

And this is pretty good too...

Guilhem Desq - Le château magique
posted to MetaFilter by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:56 AM on April 15, 2024

Every time I see someone play the hurdy gurdy I think to myself "I should get a hurdy gurdy" and then I manage to distract myself long enough to not actually do that, but I worry one of these days I will stare too long into that particular abyss and then I'll have to figure out how to actually tune and maintain one.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 8:43 AM on April 15, 2024

> Hurdy-Gurdy

have you seen my laptop?
posted to MetaFilter by genpfault at 7:23 AM on April 15, 2024

I used to think the hurdy-gurdy was mentioned in Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light," given all the mention made of out-of-control music-makers mentioned ("madman drummers," "brimstone baritone," & "go-cart Mozart," plus the "very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing" as the "calliope crashed to the ground").

But no, it was "just little Early-Pearly" ... "in her curly-wurly...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 6:37 AM on April 15, 2024

there was some sleight of hand involved

There is one point early on where he has a glass of water in his hand, cut away, cut back, he has a glass of milk instead.

But mostly I think Conan is just that crazy. I would not want to be his digestive system for the rest of the day!
posted to MetaFilter by praemunire at 12:40 PM on April 14, 2024

"BUMFS," whatever the hell it is, is never going to be the correct answer.

I was fully with you on this but then I looked it up. While the plural form seems redundant, this word is truly one of the greats!

bumf
[ buhmf ]
noun British.

1. Slang. toilet paper.

2. memoranda, official notices, or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by trig at 1:28 PM on April 14, 2024

I'd never heard of Conan O’Brien - but was impressed to see he committed to this in exactly the same way he did to riding the water buffalo.
posted to MetaFilter by rongorongo at 2:14 AM on April 14, 2024

Yesterday I saw an instagram page called something like “if only there was a page dedicated to feminists being put in their place” (not the exact title). I felt sick. It’s unusual for me to be so outright revolted by an online page, but apparently anti-woman bullshit is fine, and climate change stuff is not?

The thing is, not using the product doesn’t change it. If we all walked away from meta now, there would be still be misogynistic content factories pumping out... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The River Ivel at 1:46 AM on April 14, 2024

that we shouldn't be depending on Meta for our news?

This is the heart of the question IMO, now that Meta and big media conglomerates have killed off the daily paper, where is the average person supposed to get news? Searching out new sources of information and evaluating their trustworthiness is capital-w Work - this fact was obvious when obtaining information required the physical effort of going to a library or archive, or at... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nanny's striped stocking at 1:43 AM on April 14, 2024

The US may be largely responsible for the climate crisis

The U.S. flatters itself.

...sort of both right:


Global cumulative CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion 1750-2022, by country
Published by Ian Tiseo, Dec 12, 2023

The United States was the biggest emitter in history as of 2022, having released 427 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Reasonably Everything Happens at 9:53 PM on April 13, 2024

This is an example of how knee jerk snobbery can obscure a very real problem.

(General) you might think that Facebook is a waste of time and the people on there should not [be on Facebook /exist].

And you can soothe the cognitive dissonance these ideas bring up (because you consider yourself a good, tolerant person) by reminding yourself that those people are [insert thing you despise. ]

But whether or not it should be... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Zumbador at 8:56 PM on April 13, 2024

I guess also we should be talking about how maybe Meta is censoring climate discussion.

Meta is not a good company and expecting them to do anything good is foolish, and discovering they've done anything good should be regarded as a mistake by some young team member who has since been fired.
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 8:51 PM on April 13, 2024

The thing is, when we say "science", there are several distinct, though interrelated, things we may mean. There's science as a method of inquiry, which is something anyone can do, though the types of questions that individuals can ask may be limited compared to what large teams with access to specialized training and resources can do. There's science as a community of professionals who employ the scientific method in their work, having specific... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biogeo at 8:41 PM on April 13, 2024

that we shouldn't be depending on Meta for our news?

Some background on this comment. I'm Canadian. Due to Canada's Online News Act, Facebook/Meta/Whatever have been blocking pretty much all news links since last summer. Which I'm now thinking has proven more feature than bug. My Facebook experiences have certainly proven less contentious and stupid.

If I want news, I go elsewhere.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by philip-random at 7:59 PM on April 13, 2024

It's wild, all it takes is a significant minority of science deniers and other types of angry ignorati to get anything true labeled as 'controversial'. For some value of 'controversial'.

Science is not a popularity contest, but zuck et al don't know/don't care about that. It's like a partial converse of Einstein's line in response to '100 authors against Einstein': If I were wrong, then one would have been enough.
posted to MetaFilter by SaltySalticid at 6:03 PM on April 13, 2024

This was solid. Still, I think I take Paul Rudd's performance over it.

I’ve seen clips or Hot Ones before but I just watched the full Rudd and Conan episodes. The juxtaposition of the two really reminded me of the bass piece “Failing” by Tom Johnson.

Both are an increasingly improvised spoken performance where the goal is to act normal and natural while doing something increasingly challenging at the same time. You must... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by GammaGoblin at 11:13 PM on April 13, 2024

Tangentially, I loved Conan's Prince story [3:05] on the Tonight Show, also during his press tour this week.
posted to MetaFilter by fairmettle at 5:13 PM on April 13, 2024

Conan goes into an unfiltered "Read Homer, read Mad magazine, go high, go low" schpiel.

At some point during this surprisingly cogent rant, he knocks over the bottle of the Da Bomb, and it is dutifully gurgling out of the bottle the whole time that he is talking. It's chef's kiss perfect.
posted to MetaFilter by ishmael at 5:11 PM on April 13, 2024

The way he handles the sauce throughout is funny, but somehow it's the bones in the pocket that really get me.
posted to MetaFilter by papayaninja at 5:04 PM on April 13, 2024

So, yeah, Conan's appearance was a masterwork what to do on Hot Ones. We watched it tonight, and it was just hilarious.

In Season 22, I went "wow, there are a whole lot of sauces that actually look good here." I actually ordered the set from Heatonist, and played a sort of old, deranged Sean Evans subjecting a few people I knew to this Hot Ones set that I bought, in the Hot Ones fashion (from least hot to most). It was weirdly worth it! Nobody hates me! (Uh,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eschatfische at 4:57 PM on April 13, 2024

Conan takes comedy seriously, which sounds like an oxymoron but really isn't. Not everyone gets it, but for those who do there's no one like him.
posted to MetaFilter by tommasz at 2:48 PM on April 13, 2024

I lived in a 4 story brownstone in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn from 2011-2013. The basement was a weird horrorshow, full of junk and the remnants of previous tenants, along with a dryer that was not vented to the outside and just expelled lint everywhere, creating an enormous fire hazard. It did, however, have a back yard, which when cleared of overgrowth revealed a working grill w/ propane! That back yard was memorialized in a strip of Octopus Pie. Oh, also, our apartment was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grumpybear69 at 12:41 PM on April 12, 2024

Clothing in general has become so shoddy in the last 20 years that young people have no reason to expect better. I see influencers modeling garments that are made of cheap-looking fabrics and that fit terribly and people seem to just accept it.

I remember comments on a story about a pair of Levi jeans that were over a hundred years old. People doubted that the story was true because the only jeans they'd ever known probably wouldn't last five years.
posted to MetaFilter by LindsayIrene at 9:45 AM on April 11, 2024

> I feel like the overwhelming theme of life now is pollution.

Kind of feel like it always has been. Lots of religions with doctrines about avoiding spiritual pollution and other types of purity laws.
posted to MetaFilter by I-Write-Essays at 7:58 AM on April 11, 2024

Relevant social media thread about OJ and racism, from Mekka Okereke:

"It's still not about OJ. Please don't try to say anything about OJ today if you don't know everything in this thread. Not a word.

Because what you say will almost certainly be wrong."
posted to MetaFilter by cyrusdogstar at 7:52 AM on April 11, 2024

It was uncanny to bounce between videos: here was a girl showing off her new halter, here was another girl giving a litany of reasons why it was unconscionable to buy clothes for so little money. Didn’t these TikTokers hear one another? But then again, how could they? “This is what we keep missing here in the whole conversation about sustainability in the industry,” Nick Anguelov, a professor of public policy from UMass Dartmouth, said to a Slate journalist writing about SHEIN in June.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 4:49 AM on April 11, 2024

I just wish the cheap manufacturing problems didn't extend so far

I recently did a huge closet purge, in which I finally let go of the wardrobe of my 20s. And one thing I was really astonished by was how well made those clothes were. I had a bunch of work dresses from H&M, which I would have purchased in oh, 2004? Maybe even earlier. And these things were still in absolutely perfect shape. Fully lined, well-cut, zippers still working smoothly,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:50 PM on April 10, 2024

The sooner the government starts distributing gray, unisex jumpsuits, the better off we'll all be.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:23 PM on April 10

I think the Grey jumpsuits have overthrown the government, to wit::

Deep in the product reviews for a pair of $15 gray sweatpants, one commenter writes, bafflingly: “I love these grey sweatpants ever since i received them out of the shein package. They go with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eustatic at 7:37 PM on April 10, 2024

Accepting all of the issues that have been raised, here is what I need other companies to do that they do - they provide all of the measurements for every single item of clothing. That includes measurements for the garment itself, and also for the size of the person that would go into said garment. Not for the website, or for a brand, but every garment. Why can't other stores do that? I feel like it would save so much need for returns and disappointment when things don't fit.
posted to MetaFilter by bizzyb at 5:53 PM on April 10, 2024

Oh come on, magenta
posted to MetaFilter by trig at 3:32 PM on April 10, 2024

The sooner the government starts distributing gray, unisex jumpsuits, the better off we'll all be.
posted to MetaFilter by Faint of Butt at 3:23 PM on April 10, 2024

I somehow ended up with a shein "overcoat" which I purchased second hand from an online consignment shop - it was marked as "other brands" not as shein, so I suppose that's how come I happened to pick it. Holy mother of god I have never touched a fabric as uncomfortable as the one this coat is made of. On the website photo it looked like wool. It is of course made entirely of plastic, but made to look like wool, so it's prickly plastic, which is somehow... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MiraK at 3:03 PM on April 10, 2024

Non-Canadians may struggle to understand just how off-putting Poilievre is: imagine a slightly less bombastic Trump whose charisma is so truncated that even the fervent supporters are doing a lot of work to convince themselves he's the one. He is a bully and a twat in the worst possible way. And he stands to win an election.

So, this person is the Canadian Ron Desantis?
posted to MetaFilter by NoMich at 7:34 AM on April 10, 2024

I first read My Life in 2010, for a class, and graphed the repetitions in the book, to try to understand the book better. "The obvious analogy is with music": X-axis is section number; Y-axis is number of sentences in the section.
posted to MetaFilter by what does it eat, light? at 10:40 AM on April 9, 2024

I remember reading this, together with some explanation of the physical impossibility of it all. That might have been Asimov's own notes then, according to phooky.

Quindar Beep's first comment above links to a paper that seems pretty convincing about the plausibility of the astrophysics involved. That same paper also observes, echoing phooky, "Nightfall is an example of what was known as 'hard science fiction' which aimed to have a realistic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by How the runs scored at 9:39 AM on April 8, 2024

It suddenly occurs to me that this story and "The Nine Billion Names of God", by Arthur C. Clarke, have exactly opposite premises.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:03 AM on April 8, 2024

I definitely think museums should be trying to get regular people through the door; the question is: what do you do with them when they are there? Having them shuffle in reverent silence past paintings with no context except what they bring with them is more of a chore than a pleasure, but shoving them into a gallery just to glance at a famous image or two for the thrill isn’t satisfactory either. The best shows (in my opinion) are those that help every viewer make a little extra connection.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 7:36 AM on April 8, 2024