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It isn't lost and it isn't a masterpiece

Apparently back in 1975, Graham Chapman of Monty Python and Douglas Adams not quite yet of Hitchhiker's Guide wrote a television show. It's an incomprehensible mess that's entirely worth watching. Out Of The Trees [32m]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 11:43 AM on September 26, 2023 (25 comments)

Maybe We're Fished For

Pynchon and Gaddis are “wild talents” not in Fort’s original sense, but in their daring willingness to incorporate such exotic material into their novels, which previously had been confined to science fiction, fantasy, and occult novels. At any rate, it is an extraordinary coincidence that two of the greatest American novels of the 20th century evoke Charles Fort, of all people, despite what he thought of coincidences. from Wild Talents: Pynchon, Gaddis, and Charles Fort by Steven Moore
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 4:52 PM on September 7, 2023 (5 comments)

Friday Flash Fun Forever

Still mourning the death of Flash, and with it an entire era of online gaming? Enter ooooooooo.ooo (9o3o), the new searchable (and playable!) web frontend for the incredible Flashpoint preservation project. Browse over 145,000 preserved Flash games powered by the Ruffle emulator, and share your favorites with a simple link. Highlights: DICEWARS - Fly Guy - Alien Hominid - Samorost - Crimson Room - Nanaca Crash! - Line Rider - Don't Shoot the Puppy - Bloxorz - Gimme Friction Baby - The Impossible Quiz - Portal: The Flash Version - Feed the Head - Sprout - Achievement Unlocked - QWOP - Cursor*10 - Dino Run - Grid16 - Meat Boy - SHIFT - You Have to Burn the Rope - 6 Differences - Canabalt - Don't Shit Your Pants! - Nevermore 3 - Small Worlds - Don't Look Back - Redder - VVVVVV (demo) - Synopsis Quest - The Room Tribute - The Scale of the Universe - Mitoza - Wonderputt - Bullet Bill 3 - Frog Fractions - Dys4ia - Snakes on a Cartesian Plane - Want (gulp) more? Download Flashpoint Infinity to stream over 156,000 games from 70+ platforms (including Shockwave, Java, and Unity) plus over 27,000 animations... or clear some space for the monster 1.76 terabyte Flashpoint Ultimate to store every single file locally. So much more inside!
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:04 PM on July 14, 2023 (71 comments)

Decrapifying Youtube

If you hate how Youtube's home page is lately full of clickbait thumbnails and titles desperate for you to load them, you might want to take a look at DeArrow, written by Ajay Ramachandran (Chrome, Firefox), an extension that can replace them with crowdsourced alternatives, or in their absence provide de-emphasized titles and random thumbnails. Ramachandran also produces SponsorBlock (Chrome, Firefox), a crowdsourced system for skipping past the sponsorship ads in videos, as well as the non-music portions of music videos.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:19 PM on June 25, 2023 (96 comments)

Children's cartoon drawing TV show from early 90s?

Looking for the name of a children's TV show from the early 90s that taught cartoon-style drawing. Details inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by aquamvidam at 1:35 PM on June 25, 2023 (9 comments)

The McCallister Clan is Riding a Shooting Star

A family moves their inn from the Earth to outer space in a failed 1979 TV pilot. Obviously inspired by a certain scene Star Wars, "Starstruck," on YouTube (27 minutes), starring Beeson Carroll, Lynne Lipton and Roy Brocksmith, may remind you of a certain holiday special from the year before.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 8:12 AM on November 26, 2022 (33 comments)

universal radio

Radio Garden - This is a globe. It has green dots. Each green dot represents a radio station somewhere in the world. This website plays those radio stations. There are a lot of radio stations.
posted to MetaFilter by aniola at 3:58 PM on December 29, 2022 (15 comments)

"we were, in effect, rewriting our own childhoods"

"The songs and stories on "Free To Be" showed kids that they could question the world they lived in, that parents are just people and that emotions are real. And what's on TV might not be."
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 7:21 AM on November 26, 2022 (53 comments)

Now you know your A-B-Trees

Occlusion Grotesque is an experimental typeface that is carved into the bark of a tree. As the tree grows, it deforms the letters and outputs new design variations, that are captured annually. The project explores what it means to design with nature and on nature's terms.
posted to MetaFilter by secretdark at 8:15 AM on May 13, 2022 (31 comments)

Baby, I'm the whole damn meal

I'm looking for songs to fill out a roller-skating playlist. Right now the foundations are: Lizzo's "Juice," Dua Lipa's "Levitating," Megan Thee Stallion's "Sweetest Pie," and Doja Cat's "Kiss Me More." What other self-assured ladies' pop/hip-hop/R&B songs can I skate to?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fiercecupcake at 12:21 PM on May 6, 2022 (19 comments)

College Radio for Your Eyes

Why is Phyllis so excited? Perhaps because it's time for another broadcast from The Museum of Home Video, a found-footage channel dedicated to unearthing the strangest possible video ephemera for its audience of "stoners, seekers, archivists and drinkers." Over the last year, the channel's hosts have aired everything from Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves workout tape to an entire bat mitzvah, interspersed with the best of local news, public access, cursed commercials, CHiPs freeze-frame supercuts, Richard Lewis' BoKu adult juice box ads, Carol Channing, and much, much more.
posted to MetaFilter by crosley at 2:33 PM on August 30, 2021 (7 comments)

Curated, non-commercial, omnivorous film selections and chill

Cinephobe.TV: New York's First & Only TV Channel. Born of the pandemic and out of a shit posting insta account, The Cinephobe is programmed like a television channel, with a set schedule each day posted online guided by a passionate, discerning, and decidedly inclusive approach to movies.

Want more streaming movies?
posted to MetaFilter by latkes at 7:33 PM on August 28, 2021 (11 comments)

Mechanisms at Play: The Audio-Kinetic Sculptures of George Rhoads

May I interest you in a moment of mechanical joy? George Rhoads, the man who designed delightful kinetic sculptures made of twists and turns and gears and track, died on July 9, 2021. His audio-kinetic ball machines can be found across the United States, from the New York Port Authority (42nd Street Ballroom; YT), to the Radys Children's Hospital in San Diego, California, and beyond. He spoke about his life's work in an interview in 2015.
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 7:55 PM on August 11, 2021 (19 comments)

"overlapping Earths along whose linking axis a person can somehow move"

In 1977 at a science fiction convention in Metz, France, Philip K. Dick delivered a lecture about his concept of orthogonal time titled "If You Find This World Bad You Should See Some of the Others". The audience was described as leaving the auditorium looking like they'd been hit with a hammer. The event was filmed, and you can see the whole thing complete with French interpretation (except for a sentence or two at the end) or a version with the translator cut out (and missing a bit of the intro). Or you can read the longer, unexpurgated essay online. On an episode of their podcast Weird Studies, J. F. Martel and Phil Ford put the lecture in context of Dick's life, and larger currents of thought. Finally, a comparatively normal interview with Dick was filmed in Metz (transcript here).
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:36 AM on August 10, 2021 (27 comments)

It happened to a friend of a friend of mine...

In the late 90's and 2000, YTV aired Freaky Stories, an animated series using a diverse variety of art styles to depict 140 urban legends across its 35 episodes. Not all countries to which the show was exported got to see the host segments, live-action puppet sequences which starred a bug and a maggot living in a greasy-spoon diner. Much of the show was lost until the entire run was rediscovered in 2020. Note: contains - hoo boy - death, gross-out humor, insects, spiders... everything they could get away with in a kid's show, basically. And remember: just because they never happened doesn't mean they ain't true! [MLYT]
posted to MetaFilter by BiggerJ at 7:34 PM on July 17, 2021 (9 comments)

What are some less famous movies I would see at a drive-in in the 1970s?

Sure, if I went to the drive-in in 1978 I'd likely see Grease and perhaps a re-release of Star Wars and if I was lucky (unlucky depending on one's point of view) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but what are some deeper cuts?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Senor Cardgage at 3:33 PM on July 16, 2021 (50 comments)

You can go ahead and skip this one...

Shields and Yarnell, Captain and Tennille, The Carpenters, Donny and Marie. One toke over the line.... Why? I don't know. It just seemed important for some reason. That kinda day
posted to MetaFilter by GernBlandston at 1:36 PM on March 16, 2021 (129 comments)

Toward a unified theory of the exurbs

The Republican Party’s most Pro-Trump members have been elected by higher income white homeowners in the fast-growing exurban fringe. They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded and that left wing political movements pose a threat to their livelihoods and political power.
posted to MetaFilter by latkes at 9:58 PM on January 16, 2021 (151 comments)

Yes Yes Yes

The Creatures of Yes
I can't explain it, so I'm not going to. Puppets. That's all you really need to know…puppets.
posted to MetaFilter by cjorgensen at 11:41 AM on May 2, 2016 (17 comments)

what would you even do with a brain if you had one?

The Brain Radio is a long-running music podcast hosted by Eva and Pascal Lebrain and (probably) doesn't sound like much else you've heard...
posted to MetaFilter by deeker at 2:12 PM on September 3, 2020 (7 comments)

lofi variational autoencoders to relax/study to

Produce your very own infinite stream of lofi hip hop beats (previously) with a little help from magenta.js. More info and the nitty gritty.
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 7:23 AM on September 2, 2020 (7 comments)

First Person Soother

LIKELIKE ONLINE, the online games... space? neo-arcade? museum? is going 3D with an exhibition of six games experimenting with the first person perspective. From diaristic stop motion to abstract soundscapes, all the pieces are playable in just a few minutes and from the comfort of your home. Opening Friday September 4th!
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon at 1:35 PM on August 29, 2020 (3 comments)

Do NOT watch these if you have photosensitive epilepsy.

The Flicker is a legendary 1966 experimental film by Tony Conrad that uses alternating black and white frames to produce digital stroboscopic effects. (The Flicker at archive.org)

Noisefields is a 1974 experimental video by Steina and Woody Vasulka that visualizes the deflected energy of an analog video signal. (Noisefields at archive.org)

Do not watch these if you have photosensitive epilepsy.
posted to MetaFilter by Johnny Wallflower at 9:14 PM on August 15, 2020 (12 comments)

5 Shorts Project/Projet 5 courts

The National Film Board of Canada's 5 Shorts Project "explores the short documentary genre by working with artist-run centres or production centres throughout the various regions of Quebec," and the fourth edition consists of films "created by a filmmaker-sound artist duo: Attuned (Steve Verreault and Sébastien Dave Tremblay) [NFB | YouTube], Mounds (Nicolas Paquet and Tom Jacques) [NFB | YouTube], It'll Be Nice Out Tomorrow (Guillaume Lévesque and Antoine Létourneau-Berger) [NFB | YouTube] and Night Fair (Cynthia Naggar and Gueze) [NFB | YouTube]."
posted to MetaFilter by mandolin conspiracy at 12:24 PM on August 7, 2020 (2 comments)

Should this have been a native app? Absolutely.

Ever wanted your very own 1991 Macintosh Quadra running Mac OS 8? macintosh.js is here for you: a free Mac OS 8 virtual machine running in an Electron app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Even better, it comes with games, apps, and demos preinstalled including Oregon Trail, Duke Nukem 3D, Civilization II, Photoshop 3, Premiere 4, Illustrator 5.5, StuffIt Expander, the Apple Web Page Construction Kit, and more.
posted to MetaFilter by adrianhon at 12:32 PM on July 29, 2020 (66 comments)

A tenebrous paradigm shift raises all rafts of measure

The kids in the playground whirled faster and faster around each other. By the time Eric and Sandra caught a break in the traffic and made it across the street, the game had turned ugly. They were moving almost too fast to see, but from the glimpses he got, the kids had already begun catching one another. Each had sunk at least one arm into the back of the child in front of them, their bodies fusing haphazardly. One poor girl’s leg seemed to have melted into that of the boy she followed, and their stumbling gait made the whole kid-circle wobble unevenly. "Everything's Fine": a short story by Matthew Pridham to encapsulate a year of collapse.
posted to MetaFilter by Lonnrot at 10:36 AM on July 27, 2020 (9 comments)

You see the sign? Well can you read it??

There are a lot of old corporate training videos on Youtube, but only one stars Joan, the demon checkout clerk of Elmhurst, Illinois.
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 10:57 AM on July 12, 2020 (48 comments)

The Existential Threat is Drawing Near

MetaFilter favorite Cyriak (previously) is back, and teaming up with legendary band Sparks for their newest music video: "The Existential Threat".
posted to MetaFilter by SansPoint at 11:16 AM on July 3, 2020 (27 comments)

ElectronicosFantasticos

Ei Wada and collaborators make delightful musical instruments by hacking familiar, analog consumer electronics.
posted to MetaFilter by eotvos at 8:03 AM on June 28, 2020 (8 comments)

Best light coding make your own game system for 9 yo?

My daughter wants to make her own video game but has no idea what kind of game she wants to make. She is not into plaformers but really enjoyed some smaller games like World of Goo and Donut County. She knows how to do Scratch style gui coding. We are on Win10 or Android. What are the best all in one game creation systems? I don't care if they are pay or open source, only that they are age suitable and don't require everything to be hand crafted. She is not very into LEGO or Minecraft.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by benzenedream at 12:48 AM on April 7, 2020 (9 comments)

Free audiobooks from the entertainingly weird world of Daniel Pinkwater

Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and young adult titles of the wonderfully weird and punny sort, and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. Goodreads lists 128 distinct works, and from this extensive library, he's made 24 titles into audiobooks available to freely download from his website [via Mltshp]. Want even more audio adventures? Webmaster Ed and Daniel collaborated on the Pinkwater Podcast between 2007 and 2017, producing over 500 episodes of recorded books, short stories, interviews, skits, and other random nonsense [Ducks! previously].
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 3:28 PM on March 18, 2020 (28 comments)

6 Years of Weeks

A YouTube playlist with dozens upon dozens of made-for-TV movies from ABC's Movie of the Week series (1969-1975).
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 8:38 AM on March 4, 2020 (28 comments)

"I hope you can see this, because I am doing it as hard as I can."

Eleven years ago, Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters invaded Boston and the city was shut down (YouTube, 4 minutes) in the 2007 Boston Mooninite panic (Wikipedia). If the whole thing is a blur, here's a 14 minute video (Vimeo), capturing the media mania, and the subsequent press conference on haircuts in the 70s (YT, 6 minute Fox News clip), and looking back, 10 years later (YT, 10 minutes), with more context to the events.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 3:16 PM on February 1, 2020 (36 comments)

Can someone explain Docker for Windows?

I'm going to play a bit dumb here, I've been using Docker extensively. I have an environment that requires Windows and Linux containers, things have been evolving very fast and I want to reaffirm things. Some of these questions can be answered more broadly, "how do large organizations like Amazon use microservices and prove their code works?" and i do not mean so much in an integration test/unit test way but presenting to someone in upper management or other stakeholder that doesn't realize that passing integration tests / using proxies should work. Sorry for the broad nature of the topic, it will make more sense inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by geoff. at 12:21 PM on December 26, 2019 (7 comments)

“The first website debuted only a couple years prior to my retirement”

The Far Side has a new website, Gary Larson explains why now in a letter. While the website is in its beginning stages, there is a daily selection of comic strips, plus sections for themed collections and scans from Larson’s sketchbooks.
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 1:28 PM on December 17, 2019 (81 comments)

"Ethics is the Esthetics of the Future" - Lenin

"Songs for Lines/Songs for Waves" (1977), an early performance work by Laurie Anderson is on YouTube thanks to MinimalEffort. The performance showcases Laurie's work with film and tape manipulation, including her tape-bow violin, with compositions that would become parts of her landmark United States I-IV. The video also includes At the Shrink's (a fake hologram).
posted to MetaFilter by SansPoint at 4:34 PM on December 17, 2019 (6 comments)

What's your favorite obscure olde timey slang?

I like throwing the occasional anachronistic slang into my speech to throw a bit of outdated folksiness into the modern world. What's your favorite under-used slang from the 60s or before?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by gregoryg at 3:11 PM on December 6, 2019 (92 comments)

Family bonding ideas with an only child

My husband and I have a nine year old daughter. The three of us all have great 2-way relationships, but I find it hard to feel a sense of cohesion as a family. When the three of us are together, it's hard to all feel connected. Do other families of 3 find this? What has helped develop a sense of cohesion for parents with a single child?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by beccyjoe at 1:29 PM on November 29, 2019 (14 comments)

One man made this game. A single person. Think about that and cry.

A short French documentary (Part 1). (Part 2). on the making of the classic platformer, Another World (released in the US as Out Of This World).
posted to MetaFilter by mediocre at 2:56 PM on March 4, 2013 (45 comments)

Limited edition release and is not licensed for public sale

If you, like many others, bought the 1982 soundtrack album for Blade Runner and found it disappointing (as it wasn't a full score and wasn't the music used in the movie), then you might be delighted to know about the Blade Runner Esper Edition soundtrack [Full album, 2 cds, 2h6m]. Lovingly assembled from various sources, this fan-made bootleg [track listing and "production notes"] continues to stand as the definitive musical score recording for this landmark film.
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 1:58 PM on November 3, 2019 (17 comments)

HeavyMetalFilter

Please help me establish mental reference points for the many subgenres of heavy metal music by recommending exemplars.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by prize bull octorok at 10:00 AM on August 21, 2019 (20 comments)

San Francisco Disco Preservation Society

The mission of the San Francisco Disco Preservation Society is to collect, restore, digitize, preserve, and present historic audio and video recordings pertaining to DJ and nightclub history in San Francisco and internationally, as well as educate, inform, and entertain the public and future generations through its archives, public events, screenings, and online access to its resources. Hours and hours of themed disco! ENJOY! (Via WFMU)
posted to MetaFilter by Capt. Renault at 9:50 PM on August 19, 2019 (4 comments)

Books with pictures for my 8 year old

My 8 year old loves reading. She just finished Nimona and thought it was great (and hilarious in parts. I agree.) She also liked Lumberjanes. She does fine with books that have pictures. But, she won‘t read books without pictures, which rules out some really great recommendations like Harry Potter and Tiffany Aching. Can you recommend books with sophisticated content (not for 5 year olds) that have a picture on every page?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Omnomnom at 12:46 AM on August 3, 2019 (22 comments)
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