Physics professor and family man Jason Dessen is abducted from everything he loves.
posted to FanFare by Kyol at 6:46 AM on May 10, 2024 (8 comments)

Melanie and Sugar get caught in a dicey situation - and make a new enemy. Sugar reunites with old friends, but he senses some are keeping secrets.
posted to FanFare by Molesome at 8:39 AM on April 12, 2024 (5 comments)

Sugar suspects Melanie's not telling the full story. Meanwhile, he and Ruby may not be the only ones looking into the mysterious body in Olivia's trunk. Streaming on AppleTV
posted to FanFare by Molesome at 12:41 PM on April 6, 2024 (3 comments)

Kendrick Lamar and Drake (aka Aubrey Graham), two of the biggest active hip hop artists and former collaborators, are seriously beefing in a major way that hasn't been seen since Tupac vs Biggie. Last October, Drake dropped a track, First Person Shooter, where his collaborator J Cole named the two of them and Kendrick as "the big three". Kendrick, who has a competitive streak, took umbrage at being put on the same level as the other two and replied in Like That "it's just big me". What might've started as a somewhat professional competition has rapidly gone nuclear since Kendrick took shots at Drake's Blackness, fitness as a parent, and masculinity in his track titled "euphoria" and Drake responded with allegations of domestic abuse, infidelity, and cuckoldry in Family Matters. As of the latest, Kendrick has accused Drake of hiding a 2nd child and being a sexual predator of underaged girls.
posted to MetaFilter by ndr at 7:07 AM on May 5, 2024 (99 comments)

Following a trail of blood, Team Touden travels to the sixth floor - the castle waterways, and the site of their loss to the red dragon. But when a surprising chill forces them to take shelter in an abandoned oubliette, they soon find that me's a crowd as there's now a bunch of copies - both credible and not...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:37 AM on May 3, 2024 (7 comments)

'An evening with Pet Shop Boys' 22-04-2024 [Guardian Live, 1h23m] "To celebrate the launch of their highly anticipated new studio album, Nonetheless [Wikipedia], join Pet Shop Boys in conversation with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis - live in London, with an exclusive album playback, and livestreamed globally."
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 9:26 PM on April 25, 2024 (9 comments)

For many people, the first time they tried to take control of a computer centered around learning to program in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simple, interpreted programming language designed around easily-understandable keywords and syntax. BASIC turned 60 a couple of days ago, so find one of the many online BASIC interpreters and write yourself a little bit of history.
posted to MetaFilter by hanov3r at 9:25 AM on May 3, 2024 (98 comments)

“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is now available as a free download! Written by Christopher Schwarz and first published in June 2011, “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is revered by many as a philosophical tome as well as a how-to book. The book includes instructions for building your own tool chest, as demonstrated here by MetaFilter's Own™ and JimCoin™ creator bondcliff!
posted to MetaFilter by slogger at 8:25 AM on April 15, 2024 (17 comments)

The X-Men must unite to face a new threat.
posted to FanFare by 1970s Antihero at 5:15 AM on May 1, 2024 (2 comments)

For more than two years, the world of lost media has been flummoxed by 17 seconds of grainy audio uploaded to a small name-that-song site. Tentatively titled "Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)" based on the apparent lyrics, the clip's energetic retro 80s vibes defied all attempts by music ID apps and various hive-minds to track it down, soon becoming the holy grail of the "lostwave" community of enthusiasts for obscure unidentified "rare grooves." The search inspired articles, video essays, Youtube and TikTok memes, ambitious reconstructions (including multiple music videos), and whole wikis, but the song itself remained unsolved... until now.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:52 PM on April 28, 2024 (24 comments)

"Our new librarian is very....organized."
posted to FanFare by jenfullmoon at 1:52 PM on March 15, 2024 (4 comments)

Ava and Gregory are invited to speak on a panel about public schools, while the other teachers must complete CPR training; Janine faces challenges securing district approval for her librarian extension program.
posted to FanFare by ellieBOA at 2:33 PM on April 18, 2024

Jacob is shocked when he finds out his colleagues are not invested in his frequent email messages and haven't even been writing their own replies; Gregory turns to Janine for help with a former student.
posted to FanFare by ellieBOA at 2:35 PM on April 18, 2024 (2 comments)

Ava Fest is back, and with the help of the teachers, Ava's set on outdoing last year by any means necessary; after Janine accepts the offer for a position at the district, she just has to check off one last thing to make it official.
posted to FanFare by ellieBOA at 2:36 PM on April 18, 2024 (5 comments)

The X-Men find Sentinel inventor Bolivar Trask, realizing they’ve been played by a mastermind.
posted to FanFare by 1970s Antihero at 4:58 AM on April 25, 2024 (5 comments)

Laios and Shuro's discussion/fight is cut short by an attack by harpies - and a much greater threat, one that leaves the parties shaken. And in the aftermath, two allies let it all out for once...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:41 AM on April 26, 2024 (8 comments)

The short science fiction story "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones (published March 2024 in Clarkesworld) begins:

I express greetings and most joyful salutations!

I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your movement has been aimless, and I express concern!

posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:21 AM on April 26, 2024 (32 comments)

Emil Dziewanowski is a technical artist in the gaming industry who excels at using inventive techniques to create compelling visual effects. His latest blog post, Flowfields, walks you through the process of animating the complex whorls and vortices of Jupiter without using traditional fluid dynamics, using lessons learned from such prior art as Contra's color-cycling, frame-by-frame animation, and the trippy lava effect in Quake, ultimately using a combination of clever tricks to design a "universal" flow simulator that can render appealing fluid effects in just half a millisecond.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2024 (4 comments)

The backside of the moon as it transits across Earth. That is all.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 1:32 PM on April 24, 2024 (38 comments)

Edward Zitron has been reading all of google's internal emails that have been released as evidence in the DOJ's antitrust case against google.

Zitron concludes that Google Search died on February 5th, 2019
posted to MetaFilter by zenon at 11:40 AM on April 23, 2024 (150 comments)

Auggie's countdown jeopardizes her nanotech work. Jin becomes engrossed in an otherworldly VR game. Ye Wenjie follows through on a radical idea.
posted to FanFare by ActingTheGoat at 5:46 PM on March 26, 2024 (5 comments)

I know life can't have been easy up here.
posted to FanFare by drewbage1847 at 9:46 PM on April 12, 2024 (32 comments)

Coachella's 6 stages are streaming on YouTube (most countries?). Let's watch some live music.
posted to FanFare by fiercekitten at 9:29 PM on April 12, 2024 (7 comments)

Unsettling events put a group of brilliant friends on edge as a mystery unravels with origins tracing back to China during the Cultural Revolution.
posted to FanFare by jeoc at 12:33 PM on March 23, 2024 (18 comments)

After some observation, Chilchuck has figured out a pattern to the shifting of the floor's configuration, leading Team Touden to the exit - and to Teams Kabru and Shuro. However, the reunion between allies may not be a happy one when Shuro finds out what happened with Falin...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:16 AM on April 19, 2024 (9 comments)

Storm is forced to face her worst fears in order to free herself. Meanwhile, Charles is forced to make nice with his future in-laws.
posted to FanFare by 1970s Antihero at 2:53 PM on April 18, 2024 (12 comments)

Adult Swim is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Space Ghost: Coast To Coast by showing all the episodes in no particular order on YouTube right this very moment. Relive the early days of Cartoon Network's dimwitted dadaist superhero insanity, or become enthralled for the first time.
posted to MetaFilter by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:45 PM on April 18, 2024 (26 comments)

A short fantasy story about a beastkeeper and what happens after the royal palace lets them go. By bixbythemartian.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:49 PM on April 19, 2024 (5 comments)

The maker of a "Fuck the LAPD" t-shirt received a takedown notice from the Los Angeles Police Foundation on the grounds that the shirt infringed its trademark on "LAPD". Their lawyer's response was nothing if not concise.
posted to MetaFilter by Horace Rumpole at 12:14 PM on April 19, 2024 (24 comments)

The world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose. There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography. The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data. If, hypothetically, all these cables were to simultaneously break, modern civilization would cease to function.
posted to MetaFilter by the duck by the oboe at 5:48 PM on April 16, 2024 (20 comments)

A reclusive author who writes espionage novels about a secret agent and a global spy syndicate realizes the plot of the new book she's writing starts to mirror real-world events, in real time.
posted to FanFare by jenfullmoon at 5:21 PM on April 13, 2024 (12 comments)

Trapped in the Mad Mage's ever shifting labyrinth, Team Touden is on the verge of starvation - until finding a nest of dryads provides a potential meal - and miserable allergies. And then, the party is forced to deal with a monster that makes the basilisk look tame...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 12:28 AM on April 17, 2024 (4 comments)

The Mad Mage makes his presence known, and his magic seems to have the power to control Falin, as Team Touden challenges the elven master of the dungeon. And when things go awry, the party is found by an orc warband - whose captain finds the halffoot's seeming cowardice distasteful...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 12:53 AM on April 13, 2024 (7 comments)

Flanked by his efficient assistant Alex Horne, Greg Davies returns to remorselessly judge five quaking comics desperate to get their hands on his fabled golden head trophy.
posted to FanFare by merriment at 7:39 AM on March 30, 2024 (50 comments)

A rather large drama unfolded a couple of weeks ago when it was discovered that someone had installed a backdoor into an installation utility used by much of the Open Source community. Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility targets encrypted SSH connections [Ars Technica] This was found by accident, a worker was maintaining his own code and found discrepancies in computer performance and investigated. How one volunteer stopped a backdoor from exposing Linux systems worldwide [The Verge] This seems to have been largely the work of one online account that spent years gaining trust in the group that maintain this tool. THE OTHER PLAYERS WHO HELPED (ALMOST) MAKE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BACKDOOR HACK [The Intercept] The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind [WIRED] Today, Fedora announced its own systems all clear of this thwarted backdoor attempt. CVE-2024-3094: All Clear
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 10:58 AM on April 15, 2024 (53 comments)

After solving a case in Japan, private eye John Sugar returns to LA to help find a missing woman with ties to a Hollywood legend. Streaming on Apple TV
posted to FanFare by Molesome at 12:25 PM on April 6, 2024 (9 comments)

Okey dokey..
posted to FanFare by drewbage1847 at 12:30 PM on April 11, 2024 (59 comments)

“So when I started working on the story that turned into All Systems Red, I realized right away I wanted to write an AI that didn't want to be human…I was thinking a lot about what an AI would actually want, as opposed to what a human might think an AI would want…. I think it would want that connection to other systems, that vast, astonishing, multiplicity of vision.”—Martha Wells, from her keynote speech at the annual Jack Williamson Lecture at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico.
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 5:28 PM on April 12, 2024 (41 comments)

“This was a catch-and-kill,” I told Alpert. “What’s a catch-and-kill?” he asked. I went on to explain the tabloid practice of buying stories to bury them. Alpert already had the outline of the story, I learned, and I filled him in on more: how Howard had flown out to Los Angeles that summer to buy McDougal’s story for $150,000, with the direction from Pecker to kill it to protect Trump. I stressed to him the importance of the term “catch and kill” and told him that if The Journal included it, it would give me some breathing room. I went back to my office and closed the door. My heart was racing, and I was sweating. from What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise by Lachlan Cartwright [NY Times; ungated] [CW: Trumpland]
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 2:05 AM on April 5, 2024 (14 comments)

Team members hit Genosha as UN honorees while a press event risks exposing the team’s dirty laundry.
posted to FanFare by 1970s Antihero at 4:09 PM on April 10, 2024 (13 comments)

Jubilee must relive the X-Men’s greatest adventures when she’s transported into a 16-bit video game. Meanwhile, Storm hooks up with Forge in Texas.
posted to FanFare by 1970s Antihero at 4:06 PM on April 10, 2024

The red dragon has been slain, and Falin's remains recovered. All that's left is to ressurect the young tallman woman - but doing so will have her friend make some grave choices...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 3:07 AM on April 11, 2024 (5 comments)

This is it. This is what all the adventures, all the trials, all themeals have been leading up to. For Team Touden, it's do or die - for Falin's sake, the red dragon must fall...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:29 AM on April 9, 2024 (4 comments)

Refreshed physically, emotionally, and manawise, Team Touden begins the descent to the castle town - and to their confrontation with the red dragon. Unfortunately, the path downward will not be an easy one, with the stairwell down full of dangers. Meanwhile, Tansu reports his findings to the (nominal) head of the island, while Namari looks to see if by some miracle Falin's corpse has made it back for revival. One thing is clear - things are coming to a head, in several ways...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 11:45 AM on April 7, 2024 (5 comments)

With Marcille weakened from the undine's assault, Team Touden is surprised when another adventuring party comes upon them - with a familiar face in tow. But the realities of how dungeoneering works forces Laios to trade his labor for healing. And the enraged undine is still out there - but Marcille has a plan to kill two birds with one stone, and use it to replenish her mana...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:03 AM on April 5, 2024 (4 comments)

Marcille thinks back on how she and Falin first met at school, and how she taught the elf valuable lessons about how there's more to the world than what's in books. Unfortunately, her ablutions wind up creating a very angry water spirit with murder on its mind...
posted to FanFare by NoxAeternum at 1:58 AM on April 3, 2024 (3 comments)

A high ranking Iowa hospital systems administrator has plead guilty to identity theft after stealing his former coworker's identity - for thirty years. (SLArs Technica)
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 9:50 AM on April 4, 2024 (36 comments)

The High Highs and Low Lows of Alan Ritchson
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 4:39 AM on April 4, 2024 (6 comments)

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? by Sam Knight in The New Yorker
posted to MetaFilter by rhymedirective at 12:33 PM on April 3, 2024 (61 comments)

The long and short of it is that Swisher is not a good journalist—or, framed more generously, that she thrived in an industry with remarkably low standards for which we are still paying the price. from The Miseducation of Kara Swisher, a review of Burn Book by Edward Ongweso Jr. [The Baffler; ungated]
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 12:06 AM on April 3, 2024 (29 comments)