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"Greetings, citizen! Are you getting enough oxygen?"
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.
☆彡 ☆彡 ☆彡 ☆彡 It was like fireworks. ☆彡 ☆彡 ☆彡
It is the late 1800s. You are an innovative fireworks manufacturer in Yokohama, Japan, with an increasingly international audience (including, on at least one occasion, Ulysses S. Grant). But how to demonstrate to your worldwide customers what, exactly, you have on offer? Introducing the beautifully minimalist Hirayama Fireworks' Illustrated Catalog of Night Bomb Shells.
Cake!
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Real or Cake? [37s, CW]
How easily & cavalierly the works of decades & centuries are demolished
It seems there is only one model for today’s ‘man of action’, and that is Shock and Awe. Overwhelming force deployed suddenly and overwhelmingly. A theatrical performance with no audience as such, only a houseful of victims. The lions eat the circus and then tweet about it. Ask no questions, tell only lies, and double down, triple down, quadruple down. The ineffably stupid ‘move fast and break things’ that has so much to answer for in our time. Our new ‘Innovation Hub’ has an asinine three-word slogan: ‘Grow Ignite Disrupt’. It would make just as much sense to have ‘Paper Scissors Stone’ for a motto. And rather more to have ‘Smash Grab Run’. from In Florida by Michael Hofmann [London Review of Books] [CW: DeSantis]
"so many tech demos end up hiding an ugly truth deep down"
Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
and we'll all go together
Jacob Collier, Laufey and dodie perform a stunning rendition of the Scottish/Irish folk song "Wild Mountain Thyme" together with the National Symphony Orchestra and some delightful audience participation, for the series Next at the Kennedy Center, in an episode presented by Ben Folds.
Food Origins: Why Jesus never ate a banana
69 percent of the global diet is "foreign," says a study that pinpoints the origin of 151 food crops (interactive map)
Since the mid-20th century, diets around the world have become more diverse and more homogenous, with supermarkets and other retail outlets the world over increasingly offering a similar range of food options.
NPR Is a Mess. But “Wokeness” Isn’t the Problem.
NPR, the great bastion of old-school audio journalism, is a mess. But as someone who loves NPR, built my career there, and once aspired to stay forever, I say with sadness that it has been for a long time.Alicia Montgomery talks about the history of NPR and how things came here, especially regarding her former NPR colleague Uri Berliner's commentary blaming 'wokeness' and Democratic partisanship for the apparent loss of confidence in the once-unimpeachable institution and similar conversations around this issue.
And that story is that NPR has been both a beacon of thoughtful, engaging, and fair journalism for decades, and a rickety organizational shit show for almost as long. If former CEO John Lansing—the big bad of Uri’s piece—failed to fix it, or somehow made it worse, that’s a failure he shared with almost every NPR leader before him. But if, as Uri charges (albeit in a negative way), Lansing genuinely managed to break the network loose from the grasp of self-righteous white liberal identity politics, even in an imperfect way, that would surprise the hell out of me. Especially given the well-reported exodus of top journalists of color, and the loss of a diverse group of journalists during last year’s podcast layoffs.
This trend isn’t really about food or health. It’s about performance
Hosting a lavish banquet or ordering lobster is no longer a sufficient signifier of status; today, a sign of true wealth is the ability to forgo food entirely. Eating essentially betrays a person’s most basic human needs; in an era obsessed with ‘self-optimisation’, not eating suggests that a person is somehow ‘beyond’ needs and has achieved total mastery of their body with a heightened capacity for efficiency and focus. from Why don’t rich people eat anymore?
The Interdimensional Jukebox
Dune the Broadway Musical [Showtunes] -
Baby On Board [Barbershop] -
Carolina-O [Indie Country] -
Sabrosito Amor [Latin] -
Rising Sun Gospel [Soul] -
Allegro Consort in C [Classical] -
You Spilt a Coffee on my Dog [R&B] -
Potion Seller [60s Folk] -
I'm Not Your Star [Screamo] -
SNES Greensleeves [Chiptune] -
Syncopated Rhythms [Jazz] -
Tavern Serenades [Fiddle] -
My Tamagotchi died in '98 [Country Pop] -
Senna Tea Blues [Bluegrass] -
Unexpected Item in Bagging Area (A Cowboy's Lament) [Americana] -
Herb's Whisper [Hip-hop] -
Metropolis Pt. 3 [Prog metal] -
F**k You Elmo [Acoustic Guitar] -
Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet [Orchestral] -
ムーンライト【.】【3】【1】[Vaporwave] -
Dreaming Miku [Vocaloid] -
The Deku Tree’s Decree [Broadway] -
Website on the Internet [50s A Capella] // Meet Udio — the most realistic AI music creation tool I’ve ever tried
Sorry for ruining Wordle for you
What if your Wordle strategy was to always start with the same 4 words, all with unique letters? That would use 20 letters, with the exception, of J, K, Q, V, X, Z. Slate's "The Fastest Wordle Winning Strategy Ever" (archive).
All those who wander are not lost
Why do some people always get lost?
"While it’s easy to show that people differ in navigational ability, it has proved much harder for scientists to explain why. There’s new excitement brewing in the navigation research world, though. By leveraging technologies such as virtual reality and GPS tracking, scientists have been able to watch hundreds, sometimes even millions, of people trying to find their way through complex spaces, and to measure how well they do. Though there’s still much to learn, the research suggests that to some extent, navigation skills are shaped by upbringing."
Faith Ringgold, 1930-2024
Faith Ringgold passed over the weekend.
A crafter, an artist, a thinker, a mentor. I am maybe not the best person to eulogize her, but her life and work have touched so many and deeply influenced generations of Black artists. Her passing is a loss, her memory will be a blessing.
A Free Download Now and Forever
“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!
The Backdoor To The Entire Internet That Didn't Happen
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
Dogs And Language
Here's a summary of various studies that look at dogs and language. A couple of videos are included, one of them is this video: Dogs understand words as we do [2m20s] which is a summary of this paper, one of several linked in the first link in this post.
Region 9 has thrown up a detective story for archaeologists.
Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city
A wide residential and commercial block, known as "Region 9", is being cleared of several metres of overlying pumice and ash thrown out by Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.(Pompeii previously)
Lost Boomer Classic "The Space Explorers" - Rediscovered after 70 years!
"The Space Explorers" was a series of animated, educational Sci-Fi shorts shown on morning kids' TV in the US, around 1961. Astronomy enthusiast Jimmy Perry stows away on the Polaris II, flying to rescue his Dad who crashed on the moon on his way to Mars, in the Polaris 1. Set in 1978, each episode had little bits of this story padded out with educational lessons about astronomy. A very few sequences from the show are available at the Internet Archive, but there's much
More D&D Info Cartoons
Six years ago (really? wow) I posted about Zee Bashew's terrific D&D explainer videos. Well he's still making them, and is trying to do one a week for the next few months! Here are some he's made since I last told you all about them: What is a grognard? - Ceremony - Encumbrance in 5E - The Awful Way I Ran 5E Survival - Magic Mouth - Oops! All Wizards - 5E Players Try 1E (AD&D) - Healer Feat - The Problem With The Awaken Spell (sad/funny) - Dangers of Metagaming - Option: Quantum Inventory - Grappling in 1E. If you enjoy D&D, or just learning or watching videos about it, Zee Bashew's Channel is great.
Neither a good shield nor a good shovel: The Hughes Shield Shovel
The MacAdam Shield Shovel, also known as the Hughes Shovel, was designed and patented by Sam Hughes, the Canadian minister for the Department of Militia and Defence in 1913, to be staked in the ground for alternate use as cover. It was thicker and heavier than normal spades but failed to stop even small caliber bullets. It also had a large sight hole in the shovel blade for a rifle to poke through, making it a poor shovel. In 1914, 25,000 shield-shovels were ordered and shipped to Europe for use by the 1st Canadian Division, and then later scrapped. Sam Hughes had a string of failed inventions: "Hughes equated masculinity with toughness, and argued that militia service would toughen up Canadian men who might otherwise go soft living in an urban environment full of labor-saving devices."
The comics legend lurking in a Sunderland basement
The BBC profiles comic artist and writer Bryan Talbot, following the recent announcement that he will be inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame.
Dan's Space Van
Canadian musician Danny Michel has a vintage 1978 Star Trek van, in which he interviews musicians in the front seat, before having them perform in the red velvet back of the van. Guests have included The Milk Carton Kids , astronaut-guitarist Chris Hadfield, and many other (mostly Canadian) musicians.
Hey, There's Science In This
I wrote a book! "Hey, There's Science In This" is a short collection of essays about unexpected science links to everyday topics. Rubber ducks at sea, a Japanese TV show, food-based paint techniques, hiking trails and much more all reveal their hidden science. The book started out as blog posts written between about 2007 and 2023, but they've been updated and rewritten for this collection.
The Art of the Benshi: "Full-fledged artists in their own right"
The Art of the Benshi: World Tour trailer. Tour dates (Brooklyn, this afternoon; DC, Apr. 12-14; Chicago, Apr. 16-17--sold out?; LA, Apr. 19 and 20-21; Tokyo, Apr. 26): "During the silent film era in Japan ... film screenings were accompanied by live narrators, called benshi ... [who] enlivened the cinema experience." Films include The Dull Sword (1917; animated); Jiraiya the Hero (1921; see fights at 3:48, 11:37 to see frog magic, and 14:09 for frog vs. snake); A Page of Madness (1926; one of "The 100 Best Horror Movies"; helpful screenplay [PDF] co-authored by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata); and The Golden Flower (1929; animated). Previously. See also Jess Nevins's 2020 Twitter thread on Japanese horror movies, 1898-1949.
Women literary/intellectual figures
I was just reading an article about Susan Sontag, and was somewhat surprised to realize I've never read any of her writing. I also just recently read Joan Didion for the first time. What other significant women literary figures or public intellectuals have I missed out on? From any era. I'm not asking about women writers generally, but the kind of writers who create "culture" (in the old fashioned use of the term), about whom magazine profiles are written, and who are asked to comment on the zeitgeist. Anne Fadiman is probably another example.
How about you recommend a movie for ME this time?
Hi! I'm that MeFite who likes to recommend movies to people. A friend IRL asked for a highly specific recommendation that actually has me stuck. She asked for "optimistic, not-sad movies about robots for grown-ups." And you know what? Robot movies, it turns out, are usually pessimistic, sad, or for children. Frequently, they are at least two of these things. This request actually has me stuck. Ideas?
After Dinner Board Games
I am looking for games to play with 4 people. One of the people is a 9 year old. One of the people's has ADHD and doesn't like complicated games.
Gonna get downright MetaFiltered tonight
The English language is famous for its large number of drunkonyms, i.e. words that can be used to refer to the state of drunkenness – from blind and hammered to pissed, smashed and wasted. Various lists of words have been compiled in the past (e.g. Levine 1981). However, most of the terms seem to be relatively infrequent, and they also appear to fall out of use relatively quickly. In view of Michael McIntyre’s (2009) claim that it is possible to use any word to mean ‘drunk’ in English, this contribution therefore approaches the issue from a constructionist perspective. In a corpus-based study, we tested whether it is possible to model the expression of drunkenness in English as a more or less schematic (set of) construction(s). Our study shows that while corpus evidence for truly creative uses is scarce, we can nonetheless identify constructional and collostructional properties shared by certain patterns that are used to express drunkenness in English. For instance, the pattern be/get + ADV + drunkonym is strongly associated with premodifying (and often strongly intensifying) adverbs such as completely, totally and absolutely. A manual analysis of a large wordlist of English drunkonyms reveals further interesting patterns that can be modelled constructionally.“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness, a spirited academic paper from the Yearbook of the GCLA
"No meaning, no magic, just the work of it: the work of art"
Adam Moss (Vulture, 04/04/2024), "How'd You Make That? Three masterpieces from glimmer through struggle to breakthrough": "So I began talking to creators ... here are three of those conversations with the artists Cheryl Pope and Kara Walker and the poet Louise Glück." Of related interest: Dungeons & Dragons (early draft; see the upcoming book). A first draft of Finnegans Wake. The first page of 1984. Story Synopsis and Rough Draft [PDF] for Star Wars. The Creative Process: A Symposium. For checkout, The Making of The Pré. Plus "Work in Progress: Notes, Drafts, Revision, Publication," "... Check Out These Drafts From Famous Authors," "Surprising secrets of writers' first book drafts," and "First drafts of famous novels."
Songs about emotional labor?
What are some songs about emotional labor?
Hierarchies of Fountain Pen Friendly Paper
“So as a baseline, what needs to happen before I will publicly recommend something as “fountain pen friendly paper”? My standard is fairly simple: No bleed-through or feathering with any fountain pen nib that can be reasonably used for everyday writing. (Because I mainly use my paper for drafting and notetaking, as opposed to drawing, wet ink samples, or flex-nib calligraphy, my standards may be more lenient than some.)”
Well, I for one, really really wanna go
I used to want to be a part of the media party circuit so bad.
As a young person aspiring to be a writer, I would zoom into certain Instagram Stories of interest, wondering how everyone there got to go. Now, as a person attending them, I am pissed off! I was lied to. Bamboozled. Swindled. Hoodwinked
What is a secret?
In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, he’d drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, he’d approach strangers. “Hi,” he’d say. “I’m Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didn’t have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions he’d left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets they’d never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous. Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.Dark Matter: For twenty years, PostSecret has broadcast suburban America’s hidden truths—and revealed the limits of limitless disclosure.
Rude Britannia
What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? by Sam Knight in The New Yorker
Tomorrow's World
From the BBC Archives: Schoolchildren in 1966 Predict Life in the Year 2000 [6:17]
"If something's gone wrong with their nuclear bombs, I may be sort of coming back from hunting in a cave." "I don't like the idea of sort of getting up and finding you've got a cabbage pill to eat for breakfast or something." "Computers are taking over now, computers and automation. And in the year 2000, there just won't be enough jobs to go around, and the only jobs there will be will be for people with high IQ who can work computers and such things, and other people are just not going to have jobs." "I don't think I'll still be on Earth. I think I'll be under the sea."[transcript, via Tildes]
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled
Based on the 1972 BBC series and comprised of 7 essays, 3 of which are entirely pictoral, Ways of Seeing by John Berger is a seminal work which examines how we view art.
I need book recommendations for a teenager
I tutor at a school, and am working with a bright sixteen year old girl who has been out of the habit of reading for pleasure for several years (she says she stopped reading for fun at eleven or so, after switching schools) but is keen to get back to it. I'm looking for books to recommend to her.
Edumacating My Child
I have an amazing 12-year-old son finishing grade 7 who loves to read YA dystopian literature like The Hunger Games and lots of sort of media tie-in books. He is capable of grappling with big ideas. Please help me come up with some really well-written, engaging books that use language beautifully, classic texts welcome if they are not sexist, that we can read together over the summer for our new Family Book Club.
YA girl soldier genre
Help me understand and avoid the YA genre that includes The Hunger Games (2008), Divergent (2011), and The Poppy War (2018).
How to find common literary ground: Dostoevsky vs Rick Riordan
Without a bunch of unnecessary back story, I used to be an avid reader, read many of the classics, but these days I tend to only enjoy teen drama/sci fi with quick pacing like Hunger Games, the Magicians, Percy Jackson, etc. I always preferred more contemporary stuff as soon as I was far enough in college to specialize (e.g. Thomas Pynchon over Austen), but now I feel like my taste is not on par with my education, and mostly I don't care about that because I like what I like, but part of me does care, and I wonder about trying to get back to some more literary/learned media. I say "media" because ideally I'd like to expand my tastes for tv shows and movies also.
What was this essay that explained the economically bleak US via movies?
Years ago, I read a lengthy essay that used the Hunger Games/dystopian films to explain someone in an economically depressed area would vote for Trump. I CAN'T FIND IT AND AM GOING CRAZY.