I don't really know how to explain how awesome this website is. It's Web 1.0. It's relevant. It's analog in the digital age. It's Space Jam, it's what u want.
posted to MetaFilter by nikaspark at 8:43 PM on August 2, 2019 (14 comments)

Jump in the pool and step back to 1986 with poolside.fm 2.0, with your music and video clips now infused with classic Mac OS flavor.
posted to MetaFilter by zachlipton at 5:47 PM on July 26, 2019 (10 comments)

Solo artist Elise Trouw plays every instrument in live loop mashups. Foo Fighters Meets 70's Bobby Caldwell. Radiohead Meets The Police.
posted to MetaFilter by adept256 at 9:54 PM on July 1, 2019 (14 comments)

I am looking for projects that recreate/simulate common software UIs with a twist. Specifically, I'm not looking for projects that do anything useful - I'm looking for art projects, games, and the like.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ripley_ at 9:36 AM on July 3, 2019 (17 comments)

I want boring music to listen to. Not even elevator music: hallway music. Dull, faceless corridor music. Cheesy, soothing, soft. Commercial music, the kind of music that men in the 1970s thought would induce people to feel groovy and buy stuff. The music that plays in Animal Crossing while you get your haircut. Ceefax music. Music you'd hear in an old Mad Men episode. Music that just sits there and doopey-doops while I concentrate and get important stuff done.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by glhaynes at 11:20 PM on August 23, 2014 (58 comments)

Mall Music Muzak - Mall Of 1974 "This music was provided on LP's and was played to the general public in shopping malls, supermarkets, clothing stores and just about any other retail related environment. "
posted to MetaFilter by Katemonkey at 7:04 AM on May 2, 2019 (40 comments)

Hi, AskMe. :) I've been listening to the quiet chirping of the birds outside on occasion lately, and that reminded me that one of the things I love hearing, pleasant nature. I know this is an astonishingly diverse genre on Youtube, and would appreciate some recommendations.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Alensin at 2:04 PM on April 28, 2019 (8 comments)

Catriona Shearer: Maths teacher and fan of geometric puzzles.
posted to MetaFilter by Think_Long at 9:25 AM on April 12, 2019 (11 comments)

Years ago I stumbled upon the convex regular 4-polytopes - four-dimensional analogues of the Platonic solids. I did not understand the mathematics behind these structures back then - but recently I decided to figure out how this works. A richly illustrated and interactive page (that probably won't work well on mobile devices).
posted to MetaFilter by Wolfdog at 4:03 AM on April 3, 2019 (2 comments)

Yesterday I saw a guy wearing this t-shirt, but the one he was wearing had Pazuzu holding a cup of coffee. It was hilarious and I'd love to get it for a friend of mine, but can't find it online. Can you help?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ezrainch at 8:36 PM on March 21, 2019

The world is terrible and my chief coping mechanism is indulging my thirteen year-old boy sense of humor. My Dad Wrote a Porno gives me life in these trying times but is sadly on hiatus right now. Please recommend other PODCASTS, AUDIBOOKS, or other non-visual works that feature people good-naturedly mocking terrible writing or other media, especially terrible descriptions of sex and human anatomy. More specifics after the jump.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ActionPopulated at 6:37 PM on March 5, 2019 (21 comments)

Universe, a Short Documentary from 1960 that Inspired Kubrick’s 2001: "In 1960, the National Film Board of Canada released a short documentary called Universe. The film follows the work of astronomer Donald MacRae at an observatory in Ontario, which is accompanied a special effects-heavy tour of the solar system, galaxy, and universe: 'a vast, awe-inspiring picture of the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space'. Universe was nominated for an Oscar in 1961 and also caught the eye of Stanley Kubrick, who used it as inspiration for 2001: A Space Odyssey."
posted to MetaFilter by mandolin conspiracy at 4:07 PM on January 28, 2019 (8 comments)

Looking for documentaries I can watch with my 4 year old daughter.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Potomac Avenue at 6:14 AM on January 29, 2019 (11 comments)

During the window in the late sixties and early seventies in which TTL and microcontroller technologies allowed more complex game logic but before the industry would standardize on the video displays for which it would come to be known, a public, social, and casual genre briefly rose to prominence: the wall game.
posted to MetaFilter by always_implicated at 9:05 PM on January 24, 2019 (25 comments)

Jia Tolentino writes for The New Yorker of The Overwhelming Emotion of Hearing Toto’s “Africa” Remixed to Sound Like It’s Playing in an Empty Mall, which is something you can experience on YouTube thanks to Cecil Robert, but he's not the first. Before him, and more prolific, there's allyson m. who also makes songs sound like you're listening from a bathroom (at a party*) or driving in a car in the rain. There's the false nostalgia for hearing songs in familiar, lonely settings.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 4:09 PM on March 20, 2018 (109 comments)

FUTURE ZONE is a YouTube channel devoted to full length science fiction movies, many of which are Italian - but not all, I think. Of course there is
posted to MetaFilter by wittgenstein at 2:07 PM on January 14, 2019 (12 comments)

"Reeling in the Years" (Donnie and Marie Osmond cover)
posted to MetaFilter by msalt at 5:12 PM on January 11, 2019 (49 comments)

Whether it's a flintlock above your fireplace or a Warhol above your washer, let 1968 Westinghouse refrigerators Match Your Mood! Courtesy of Jam Handy, former Olympic swimmer/water polo player, industrial communications maestro, and MST3K favorite. (Previously: 1, 2, 3)
posted to MetaFilter by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:38 AM on December 31, 2018 (21 comments)

Commodore was a calculator company that, under the leadership of charismatic (and sometimes abrasive) founder Jack Tramiel, bought promising microchip foundry MOS Technologies, got into the home computer business. They made some of the most popular machines of the 8-bit era, especially the hugely Commodore 64. But the C64 was actually part of a line of machines, many of which are much less-known. Have you ever heard of the MAX Machine? The Educator 64? The 64GS? The Commodore 16?
Here is a series of extremely informative videos from The 8-Bit Guy that go through the whole line up to Amiga (which is forthcoming): Commodore PET - VIC-20 (warning: William Shatner) - Commodore 64 - Plus-4, C16, C116 (with guest Bil Hurd, former Commodore engineer!) - Commodore 128 Average video length is 30 minutes.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:19 PM on January 1, 2019 (46 comments)

Jim Copp lived an interesting life, from being invited, at fourteen, to play a Mozart concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to performing around New York City in the 1940s as "James Copp III and His Things." Drafted into World War II, where "during the liberation of Paris, he and another officer took command of the Eiffel Tower, which provided a conveniently tall base for their radio antenna." Back stateside, he moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote a society column for the L.A. Times entitled “Skylarking with James Copp” (PDF, sample), before finding his way back to music. With all that history, this is all just a preamble to his now-faded peak: Jim Copp, the Forgotten Virtuoso of Children’s Storytelling (David Owen for The New Yorker, December 12, 2018)
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 9:08 PM on December 23, 2018 (3 comments)

The Jelle'sMarbleRuns wiki is home to all things Jelle'sMarbleRuns. Here you will find information about the Sand Marble Rally, Hubelino Tournament, and most notably, the MarbleLympics. Jelle Bakker, the Marble Master, isn't new around these parts (Big Marble Run Machine: 11 000 Marbles!!! | Longest sand marble run ever | Sand Marble Rally - 33 competitors! | Betting on Balls of Chaos) but if you haven't seen his 2018 Winter MarbleLympics, take some time to enjoy the well-produced Olympics-style games, featuring unique teams and a calming commentator throughout. The Wikia page for the 2018 Winter games makes it feel all the more official, complete with International Marblelympic Committee.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 10:41 AM on October 27, 2018 (15 comments)

Ms. Venable receives a delivery.
posted to FanFare by kittens for breakfast at 3:29 PM on September 27, 2018 (5 comments)

GOD MODE UNLOCKED - Hardware Backdoors in x86 CPUs (slyt, 50m) A conference talk on sleuthing out a processor vulnerability, from patent-speak to payload.
posted to MetaFilter by fleacircus at 2:04 AM on September 7, 2018 (24 comments)

The RISO-Graph, a machine that duplicates like a mimeograph but dispels ink like a screen printer, turns 60 this year. The copier has come a long way from its humble 1958 beginnings in a small home in Tokyo, where it was a home-grown alternative to expensive emulsion ink imports, thriving until offset-laser-screen-printer hybrids came on the market in the late 1980s. Risographs have found a new, vibrant life as fast, inexpensive art production machines, documented on the Stencil site, a RISO wiki for artists, designers, and printers. With non-standard soy-based ink colors, the Atlas of Modern Risography includes details about which machines and inks each shop carries.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 2:52 PM on August 24, 2018 (14 comments)

NandGame.com will take you though building a working computer, starting from the most basic components.
posted to MetaFilter by zamboni at 12:37 PM on August 13, 2018 (46 comments)

Matt Tomasello AKA "Rodney Mullen on Bath Salts" (SLYT skate video). Gets interesting around 0:40.
posted to MetaFilter by mullacc at 9:48 AM on August 7, 2018 (16 comments)

... Todd Carty, Mark Fowler from EastEnders, Ali Campbell, Marty Stuart, General Ratko Mladic, 1930s Tarzan, and Morrisey again, have let themselves go. After being ditched by the BBC, Stewart Lee took a new show, Content Provider on the road. Slightly ironically a filmed version of the show has been broadcast by the BBC and is now available on IPlayer (and no doubt elsewhere). Lee also published a collection of this newspaper columns, slightly confusingly also called, Content Provider. As part of his mandatory digital marketing he talks about it with, Gandalf, Father Christmas, 'a wizard' etc have let themselves go etc... Alan Moore.
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry at 12:20 AM on August 2, 2018 (19 comments)

68-year-old artist/musician Lonnie Holley has released the video for his new single, "I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America."
posted to MetaFilter by mykescipark at 2:16 PM on July 17, 2018 (7 comments)

A family created a small scholarly museum of bugs in nowhere Colorado. Driving along a nondescript section of Highway 115 a few miles south of Colorado Springs, it’s hard not to swerve at the sight of a gigantic Hercules beetle, its horns as tall as a house, standing beside a sign for the May Natural History Museum.
posted to MetaFilter by MovableBookLady at 6:48 PM on July 16, 2018 (8 comments)

Pioneering Animation Soundtracks From Poland: "From the 1960s onwards, the Polish Radio Experimental Studio created a sonic alphabet for the imagination through sound effects that transformed the world of children's films in Poland, and influenced animation soundtracks for generations to come. Culture.pl looks at some of their most fascinating and important works."
posted to MetaFilter by sapagan at 5:52 AM on July 12, 2018 (2 comments)

Let's say you had a toddler (for argument's sake, a 4 year old). What board games would you play with them. Y'know, actually fun (I mean, maybe you need to start at Snakes and Ladders, but do you really?) AND THEN What would you play with a 5 year old. A 6 Year old. A 7 year old etc.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Just this guy, y'know at 3:04 AM on July 9, 2018 (27 comments)

I have never done anything like this before but I am interested in some GitHub packages which need a server to be self hosted (Wallabag, RSS Bridge and others). Is there a simple way to get into this stuff? I am pretty tech savvy but in Windows not Linux so it would have to be relatively straightforward What self hosting solutions do any of you use (I am thinking AWS or Linode?) and what do you do with it? Which packages would you recommend?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by mrbenn at 2:44 AM on July 7, 2018 (9 comments)

"But it [machine learning algorithms] doesn’t always work well. Sometimes the programmer will think the algorithm is doing really well, only to look closer and discover it’s solved an entirely different problem from the one the programmer intended. For example, I looked earlier at an image recognition algorithm that was supposed to recognize sheep but learned to recognize grass instead, and kept labeling empty green fields as containing sheep." - Janelle Shane
posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 9:59 PM on April 17, 2018 (34 comments)

Andrea Tomingas (MetaFilter's Uncle Glendinning) prepared this how-to-negotiate-salary doc (on Google Docs) for some family and friends and is now sharing it with the world! "I'm a woman in tech and I had to kinda figure out how to negotiate salary on my own (but see note inside) so wanted to share my experience to level the playing field a bit." [via mefi projects]
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 1:25 PM on March 16, 2018 (25 comments)

I've stumbled across two jazz albums that, to my great surprise, have something akin to the chugging, playful, noise-funky tunes I loved on the first Lounge Lizards record from many years ago. They are Francesco Bearzatti Tinissima Quartet's first two CDs: Suite for Tina Modotti (YT) and X (Suite for Malcolm) (YT).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by progosk at 1:50 PM on March 4, 2018 (10 comments)

The one-liners were impeccable, unimprovable. Dangerfield spent years on them; he once told an interviewer that it took him three months to work up six minutes of material for a talk-show appearance. If there’s art about life and art about art, Dangerfield’s comedy was the latter — he was the supreme formalist. Lacking inborn ability, he studied the moving parts of a joke with an engineer’s rigor. And so Dangerfield, who told audiences that as a child he was so ugly that his mother fed him with a slingshot, became the leading semiotician of postwar American comedy. How someone can watch him with anything short of wonder is beyond me. - Letter of Recommendation: Rodney Dangerfield (SL NYTIMES)
posted to MetaFilter by beisny at 4:39 PM on February 3, 2018 (60 comments)

We're taking a meandering musical trip through late 60's musical Canada starting in Toronto's Yorkville, where hippies and draft dodgers like "Bill" (William Gibson) were gathering. In one attempt to make sense of it all, in 1968 the NFB (National Film Board of Canada) gave cameras to a group of kids and made Christopher's Movie Matinee - check out this great scene which refers to Yorkville and makes some timely observations.
posted to MetaFilter by parki at 6:45 PM on January 30, 2018 (18 comments)

I've been meaning to learn keyboard for ages. I have a 49 Key USB MIDI Keyboard, and it works in various music apps and GarageBand if I plug it into my iPad via the Lightning to USB A adapter in the Camera Connection Kit. Are there any piano lesson apps for iPad that also support MIDI keyboards over USB?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by SansPoint at 11:08 AM on January 9, 2018 (2 comments)

Dinner for one is a comedy sketch, recorded for the German Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963. It went on to become a New Years' Eve tradition, not only in Germany, but also in other European countries. Despite being in English, written by a British author and performed by British actors, it is mostly unknown in the English-speaking world. Happy New Year.
posted to MetaFilter by frimble at 2:48 PM on December 31, 2017 (12 comments)

Dancer, French Resistance spy, Philanthropist, Civil Rights activist: she did it all. Her story is full of astonishing events. The main link is a good overview with some good videos, illustrating her spoofing stereotypes of "savages" and her comedic style. Then there's her cheetah, her rainbow tribe, her secret messages, her castle, her speech at the Washington March with Dr. King, her honors from the French government, and more. This next link is from a magazine for teenagers but the story on Ms. Baker is well done with a few details not in the main link. Hero
posted to MetaFilter by MovableBookLady at 11:49 AM on December 10, 2017 (5 comments)

50 years ago, the hot new TV show was "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour". Many of the people involved (Tom, Dick, the producers, writers Rob Reiner, Steve Martin, Mason 'Classical Gas' Williams, Bob Einstein before Super Dave, and a host of others) have contributed to an 'oral history' of the show, most famous for being cancelled after 3 seasons for being "too controversial".
posted to MetaFilter by oneswellfoop at 2:35 AM on December 6, 2017 (24 comments)

Gizmodo: Don't buy anyone an Echo A light switch also doesn’t keep track of everything you’re doing and send the data to Amazon or Google or Apple. What happens between you and the switch stays with you and the switch.
posted to MetaFilter by selfnoise at 10:29 AM on December 5, 2017 (198 comments)

Japanese family crests are known for their tasteful design and simplicity, but what might surprise you is the incredibly simple geometric principles used to create even complex ones. (No English in the narration, but give it a moment and you won't need it.)
posted to MetaFilter by DoctorFedora at 3:04 PM on December 5, 2017 (17 comments)

This is an amazingly detailed and smart overview of what to do in the face of identity theft.
(pre,viou,sly posts on business and programming from kalzumeus)
posted to MetaFilter by spbmp at 4:00 PM on September 18, 2017 (12 comments)

A family attempts to subdue a bat on the loose in their kitchen (SLYT).
posted to MetaFilter by mandolin conspiracy at 2:29 PM on September 5, 2017 (54 comments)

Which lucky city will take the 2017 title of Sorriest Bus Stop in America? Coming out of round one, Tampa's (probably) alligator infested stop defeated Prince George's County, and looks to take on Chapel Hill's freeway bypass framing stops (which thoroughly trounced San Juan's sad strip mall stop).
posted to MetaFilter by Tentacle of Trust at 4:50 PM on September 5, 2017 (36 comments)

"If you agitate cream enough, you will make whipped cream. Continue agitating it and skim off the liquid, and you will make butter. Put that your coffee, and you have now wasted a lot of energy to put cream into your coffee." Gizmodo considers the science and health claims behind bulletproof coffee.
posted to MetaFilter by jenkinsEar at 10:09 AM on September 6, 2017 (67 comments)

9 years ago last week, my all-time favorite video of amateur strength, courage, and stupidity was posted by user carjumper2008 to the video-sharing website YouTube. I present it here without further commentary. "Insane Jump by a Buick La sabre".
posted to MetaFilter by stinkfoot at 9:36 AM on September 6, 2017 (33 comments)

Stanford press release: "A new survey of DNA fragments circulating in human blood suggests our bodies contain vastly more diverse microbes than anyone previously understood. What’s more, the overwhelming majority of those microbes have never been seen before, let alone classified and named..."
posted to MetaFilter by aleph at 10:18 AM on September 6, 2017 (35 comments)

Watering a Flower (花に水) is a cassette of ambient synthesizer music by Haruomi Hosono, commissioned by MUJI in 1984 for use as store background music. Well, sort of.
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 8:14 PM on September 6, 2017 (31 comments)