MetaFilter

The diminutive Wheelie is an Autobot child / But don't let your guard down; he gets pretty wild! He's often sold short and gets called hurtful things / But Wheelie won't suffer such arrows and slings!
Of all of the years he's spent fighting in space / With Sharkticon goons and the Quintesson race. Keeping things peaceful gets a bit tricky / When he hangs out with Daniel Witwicky.
This bot and that child are birds of a feather / And they tend to get into trouble together! Though reasons may differ across his depictions / Young Wheelie speaks always with curious diction.
posted by Foaf at 6:31 PM - 0 comments

For the past three years, Matt Sienkiewicz, an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College, and Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, have immersed themselves in the world of conservative comedy. The findings of their inquiry, which they detail in their new book, That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, might come as a surprise to devotees of the Daily Show: Conservative humorists aren’t merely catching up to their liberal counterparts in terms of reach and popularity. They’ve already caught them — and, in some cases, surpassed them, even as the liberal mainstream has continued to write conservative comedy off as a contradiction in terms. [more inside]
posted by buntastic at 2:28 PM - 48 comments

Can asexuals be part of pride? Who decides? (Single link S. Bear Bergman). Queer identity may sometimes be about who we might be fucking at the moment, or have done in the past, but it is also about our politics, our place of resistance to the forces of compulsory heterosexuality and all the other pieces of the privilege puzzle that come with it. And you, who are doing the thing with vigor professionally and in your spare time, are definitely not the person I think should be quietly excusing yourself from a dry spot under the rainbow umbrella, if you will.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:21 PM - 15 comments

A few memories and reflections on buying bagels in New York City and Döner in Berlin, language, tourists and immigrants, and expectations. "When you move to a country, you have this list of things in your head that you know will make your life easier. If I can just get my Anmeldung, if I can just learn the language, if I can just get my Unbegrenzte Aufenthaltserlaubnis, then everything will be ok. Then, I will be secure. Then, I will truly be able to call this place home. Could you imagine, years later, slowly realising that your efforts to integrate have suddenly depreciated?"
posted by brainwane at 10:42 AM - 30 comments

Tomorrow, Liverpool Football Club take on Southampton. Lose, and the possibility of the Quadruple (English Football League Cup, Football Assocation Cup, Premiership, European Champions League) in the same season is finished as Manchester City will be Premiership champions. A Liverpool draw or win, and it goes to the last day of the Premiership season, and the Champions League final (against Real Madrid, who have a track record in this tournament) on May 28th. Liverpool Football Club is managed by Jürgen Klopp. The odds continue to shorten. Plot twist: Liverpool can only win the Premiership if Manchester City fail to win their final game. Against Aston Villa (who sold Jack Grealish to them for £100,000,000). Who is managed by Steven Gerrard.
posted by Wordshore at 8:07 AM - 19 comments

More and different kinds of people can now aspire to TV’s most important job—but streaming and COVID have set them up to fail.
posted by Etrigan at 6:31 AM - 43 comments

Pop Quiz Time! Who said the following? “Freedom is power. To live a life untamed and unafraid is the gift that I've been given, and so my journey begins.” A: Wei Wuxian ☐; B: Catwoman ☐; C: This Thread ☐ [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:49 AM - 63 comments

Buried in These Hands for Years: Thomas Dolby’s ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’ Turns 40 [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:18 PM - 43 comments

Put your skills to the test and solve thirty-two Wordles at once! You have 37 guesses to solve all 32 words.
posted by geoff. at 2:43 PM - 65 comments

RAMMSTEIN - Amerika (WAY TOO AMERICAN Cover) This is what happens when it two Italian multi-instrumentalist musicians decide to cover big hits in often very unsuitable styles. [more inside]
posted by dominik at 9:24 AM - 13 comments

"The only reason it's sold is to have some alternative [to pseudoephedrine] to offer consumers, even if it's a worthless one." Pharmaceutical blogger Derek Lowe of In the Pipeline (previously) discusses phenylephrine, which does not work as a decongestant and is "indistinguishable from placebo in conditions like allergic rhinitis", saying it is "is of no real use and does not deserve its FDA listing." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 8:12 AM - 59 comments

Imagine you receive an invitation one day from your mayor, inviting you to serve as a member of your city’s newly established permanent Citizens’ Assembly. "You will be one of 100 others like you — people who are not politicians or even necessarily party members. All of you were drawn by lot through a fair and random process called a civic lottery. ... Important decisions have been shaped by everyday people about 10-year, $5 billion strategic plans, 30-year infrastructure investment strategies, tackling online hate speech and harassment, taking preventative action against increased flood risks, improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many other issues."
posted by NotLost at 7:42 AM - 29 comments

If It Feels Like a New Dark Age Is Falling… That’s Because It Is. Why We’re Entering a Dark Age Between Civilizations.
What’s Happening to America? A Theocratic-Fascist Revolution. When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution.
Umair Haque - love him or leave him. That his writing output is prolific is an understatement.
He has been described as a Master of Catastrophe who speaks in apocalyptic jazz scat (thanks clavdivs).
posted by adamvasco at 5:21 AM - 54 comments

These days you don’t need to worry about not knowing stuff. Just type your personal failings into YouTube and there’ll be a big, beardy American come along to explain that, hey, you simply fire up charcoal to about 4,000 degrees, then brush all the charred gunk off when it’s cooled down. Another Guardian list of small ways to improve your life.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:42 AM - 42 comments

In last night's Eurovision Song Contest [Fanfare], the UK came second with the entry sung by Sam Ryder. Previous to this, the most recent UK finishing positions were 26th, 26th, 24th, 15th, 24th, 24th, coming last five times since 2005. BBC: How Sam Ryder turned things around for the UK. Andover Advertiser: "The new strategy included ensuring Ryder’s single, Space Man, got played on BBC Radio 1 instead of Radio 2, and targeting smaller countries such as San Marino, Serbia, Croatia and Malta, which have the same voting powers as larger countries such as Germany."
posted by Wordshore at 10:40 PM - 37 comments

Windows XP - 2022 Edition [more inside]
posted by glonous keming at 4:19 PM - 15 comments

Challenging the school PTA fundraising norm, 12 of south Seattle's most diverse and low-income (Title 1) schools agreed not to compete against one another but instead to pool their earnings and share in them equally. The approach was designed to lessen the potentially disparate impact of fundraising and to support schools without sophisticated fundraising arms. “This isn’t equitable,” cofounder Christina Jiménez, a Graham Hill Elementary parent and Seattle Public Schools (SPS) teacher, told the Emerald at the time, “but this is a move in the right direction.” (SLSouthSeattleEmerald, long-form article worth reading in full)
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:08 PM - 10 comments

Olivia Colman Greatest Award Speeches | Compilation is ~17m long, but is an entire human journey of emotions several times over. It's pure and joyous and to be honest, I feel somehow cleansed after watching this. #VideoTherapy
posted by hippybear at 2:21 PM - 10 comments

Dinosaur Apocalypse Newly found fossils may reveal an unprecedented snapshot of the day the dinosaurs died. A two-part PBS NOVA (preview w/audio interview, written preview) featuring Sir David Attenborough. [more inside]
posted by box at 2:13 PM - 13 comments

US grocery retailer Trader Joe's this year announced the winners of its 13th Annual Customer Choice Awards (podcast audio and PDF transcript; podcast is silly and includes a cooking segment). The podcast hosts mentioned that this year's overall winner has been "on the list as either the Favorite Frozen Product or the Favorite Entree, the favorite of whatever category in which it fits every year, since we've had the Customer Choice Awards" so let's look at the historical winners! [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 5:42 AM - 81 comments

What The Kids in the Hall Taught Me About Feminism
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:37 AM - 42 comments

The World’s a Mess. So They’ve Stopped Saving for Tomorrow. “No, I’m not saving for retirement. I’m going to spend my money now, while we still have a supply chain at all.” - archive.org mirror
posted by simmering octagon at 7:17 PM - 110 comments

Last February, Polygon published an article about the Video Game History Foundation's search for the creator of an Atari 2600 game, "Wabbit". Now, their search has come to fruition. [more inside]
posted by hanov3r at 7:14 PM - 6 comments

A year after their surprise reveal at Glastonbury, Radiohead pandemic spinoff project The Smile have finally dropped their much-anticipated debut album: A Light for Attracting Attention [full album on YouTube]. Featuring Yorke, Greenwood, Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, longtime RH producer Nigel Godrich, and an assist from the London Contemporary Orchestra, the album's heady mixture of funk, post-punk, math rock, soaring ballads, and themes of passion, alienation, and melancholy make it (perhaps) a worthy successor to 2016's elegant A Moon Shaped Pool. Music videos: angry #MeToo rocker "You Will Never Work in Television Again" [lyrics] - abstract animation for orchestral odyssey "Pana-Vision" [lyrics] - subliminal lyrics for swanky groove "The Smoke" [lyrics] - trippy stop-motion nightmare "Thin Thing" [lyrics] - an occult ritual framed by hopeful elegy "Free in the Knowledge" [lyrics] - Thom ventures into a coal mine for the beautifully ethereal "Skrting on the Surface" [lyrics], a fan favorite 20+ years in the making. Full tracklist (including a complete live set list!) inside. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 2:28 PM - 7 comments

Luna Cryptocurrency Collapse: How UST Broke and Why It Matters [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:23 AM - 194 comments

The border between Mexico and the United States is a fluid cultural region with so much shared history that each side is often remarked to be more similar to the other than to the rest of its host country. Among many traditions is a legendary series of horse races unique in the world for being run in two nations simultaneously.
posted by thoroughburro at 10:15 AM - 5 comments

Films based on Marvel Comics superheroes have made billions. Yet the artists and writers who created these characters get a pittance, if that. it doesn’t seem just for them to extract what Steve and Ed put into this and create a multi-billion dollar franchise … just because it’s in a contract doesn’t make it right.
posted by bq at 8:47 AM - 41 comments

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 by secretdark at 8:15 AM - 32 comments

Celebrating Bitch Magazine: A Reading List Longreads' A.H. Reaume picks ten favorites from the extensive archives of the late (previously) Bitch Magazine.
posted by box at 7:51 AM - 2 comments

The proprietor of one of the longest regularly updated static web blogs, kottke.org, has announced that he is taking an extended break. After 24 years, Mefi's own (#109) Jason Kottke says his fiddle leaf fig tree "is not ok. And neither am I — I feel as off-balance as my tree looks. I’m burrrrned out." Starting back with post 78 there have been hundreds of posts and thousands of comments referencing Kottke, and Jason has featured Metafilter a number of times as well. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 7:48 AM - 16 comments

On TikTok, the woman briefly known as Pornhub’s No. 1 performer is amassing a more supportive, more female fanbase. Creeps and jerks will be blocked.
posted by Etrigan at 7:33 AM - 7 comments

Big: The Role of the State in the Modern Economy with Richard Denniss is a 1 hour webinar recording from the YouTube channel of The Australia Institute in support of the launch of a new book by its chief economist Richard Denniss (author of the indispensable Econobabble).
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 AM - 2 comments

On April 6th at around 4:30, the Las Dispensas controlled burn (North of Las Vegas, New Mexico) got out of control and was declared the Hermits Peak fire by the US Forest Service. On April 19th, the fire had burned 7500 acres and was 80% contained; when a new fire began west of the Hermits Peak... the Calf Canyon fire. The 2 fires merged and by week’s end grew to 65,000 acres. As of today; May 13th, the fire has burned 259,810 acres or roughly 406 square miles (the fire perimeter is over 472 miles long). The fire has caused evacuations in Las Vegas, Mora and is expected to make a run at Red River and even Taos. The Calf Canyon / Hermits Peak fire is now the largest in New Mexico history and the state leads the US in acreage burned so far in 2022. [more inside]
posted by jabo at 11:49 PM - 23 comments

Cookingflavr.com may be the worst-disguised food advice site run by an AI. In fact, let's not stop at food. There are a few dozen questions posted (by itself) every day, and almost each answer semantically confuses itself out of correct or useful advice. [Via Janelle Shane's AIWierdness blog] [more inside]
posted by not_on_display at 11:10 PM - 30 comments

Swear-y mashup silliness of George Carlin's regular stuff with his Thomas the Tank Engine dubbing [SLYT] [NSFW]
posted by slater at 9:20 PM - 13 comments

Researchers from The Children's Hospital Westmead in Sydney appear to have identified the cause of SIDS (Sudden infant death syndrome), which accounts for about 37% of sudden unexpected infant deaths a year in the United States. This could potentially lead to screening and/or other interventions. [more inside]
posted by gemmy at 8:35 PM - 10 comments

While the $800-a-month rent may seem steep for a stacked bunk bed pod, the average rental rate for a studio apartment near Stanford University, is currently around $2,400. Co-founder Christina Lennox has lived in a pod herself for the past year. "The wood kind of allows for relaxation, rather than like going inside of this futuristic-looking plastic object."
posted by geoff. at 5:54 PM - 76 comments

Naomi Judd, one-half of the musical duo The Judds with her daughter Wynonna, died April 30, 2022, one day before The Judds were to be inducted into The Country Music Hall of Fame. (CW: suicide) [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:45 PM - 30 comments

Remembering Ian Dury on what would have been his 80th birthday.
Shall I mourn your decline/With some Thunderbird wine/And a black handkerchief? - Sweet Gene Vincent - Lyrics
As national treasures go, Ian Dury was one of the unlikeliest. A cantankerous cripple with a penchant for pills and puns, he was a living breathing saucy seaside postcard, a master of the double or even triple entendre; a Cockney caricature with cleverly constructed couplets coming out of his Aris.
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 4:19 PM - 18 comments

Set to be released in 2024, 40 years after the original 'Spinal Tap': ‘Spinal Tap II’ On Tap As Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest & Harry Shearer Back For Encore: “They’ve played Albert Hall, played Wembley Stadium, all over the country and in Europe,” Reiner said. “They haven’t spent any time together recently, and that became the premise. The idea was that Ian Faith, who was their manager, he passed away. In reality, Tony Hendra passed away. Ian’s widow inherited a contract that said Spinal Tap owed them one more concert. She was basically going to sue them if they didn’t. All these years and a lot of bad blood we’ll get into and they’re thrown back together and forced to deal with each other and play this concert.”
posted by ShooBoo at 2:45 PM - 38 comments

Ethel Cain, Hayden Anhedönia's dark, evil twin, has released her first album, Preacher's Daughter, described by Paste as "a breathtaking account of a woman, her mysterious partner and her troubled family", and by thelineofbestfit as "If Flannery O’Connor had listened to more Witch House and spent time on r/FlorenceAndTheMachine, she might have ended up making a record as perfectly beautiful and haunting as Preacher’s Daughter." Previously
posted by signal at 2:02 PM - 4 comments

The story of the Nation State in five biscuits: Parle G, Milk Bikis, Karachi Bakery’s Fruit Biscuit, Hide & Seek and Little Hearts by Sharanya Deepak for Vittles
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:34 AM - 9 comments

“I send barrels home every six months,” says Niko Bristol, who relocated from Grenada to Brooklyn two years ago. “I’ve sent laptops, juicers, generators, crockpots, clothes, groceries, and a bunch of other stuff back home.”
posted by MollyRealized at 10:48 AM - 34 comments

The band Sub Sub, with Melanie Williams on guest vocals, scored a hit with Ain't no love (alternate). Then, life happened (dropped by label, studio burns down, the usual). But rather than staying with their old style, changes in direction happened. Kingdom of Rust (alternate), their 2009 single which also appeared in the film Zombieland.
posted by Wordshore at 10:07 AM - 3 comments

Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller, and Polly Smith are among this year's inductees for the US National Inventors Hall of Fame because they created the first sports bra. Jogbra started in 1977 -- five years after Congress passed Title IX. This BBC article details the story and includes cool photos of old advertisements.
posted by brainwane at 9:02 AM - 6 comments

Upon casual listening, a magnificent spontaneity seems to permeate The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (released 5/12/72). A closer perusal of the sixty-seven some minutes, however, reveals an unnerving sense of psychic dislocation. But then, that’s not in the least surprising given the circumstances of the album’s recording: although began in 1969, most of the work took place outside the iconic group’s native England. The imposition of burdensome tax laws prompted the group’s move to France in 1971 and an impending tour commitment compelled vocals and overdubs completed in the United States late that year and early next. Yet, as a direct result of their disenfranchisement, the double album is arguably the Rolling Stones’ most personal work.
posted by Etrigan at 7:29 AM - 43 comments

The "earth-size" Event Horizon Telescope has captured a second image of a black hole and this time it's the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Sure, it looks a little blurry, but that's probably for the best, considering what a black hole sounds like.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:27 AM - 34 comments

La Conquista is an opera based, more or less, on a lost an score by Vivaldi about Moctezuma II and Cortés. It was performed in Nahuatl/Spanish/Mayan/etc in Mexico City in 2019. Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli is a contemporary opera that uses traditional instruments and was performed by people who probably grew up speaking Nahuatl.
posted by eotvos at 6:31 AM - 0 comments

I Don't Exercise (my city does that for me) [SLYT]
posted by lazaruslong at 3:35 AM - 30 comments

What Makes a Great, or Terrible, Audiobook Performance? The case for doing less. Those of us who listen to audiobooks have our personal preferences, but one thing a lot of people seem to find grating is when the narrator seems to think their job is acting, not reading. [more inside]
posted by Megami at 12:46 AM - 61 comments