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I cannot tell you how or why, but at some point a few years back I discovered that Instagram Stories not only allows you unlimited emojis, it ALSO allows you to enlarge them to an apparently infinite degree. And so, may I present: FAMOUS PAINTINGS RECREATED USING ONLY EMOJIS! All on one page: Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. Klimt's The Kiss, Wood's American Gothic, Michaelangelo's The Creation of Adam and more, all moulded from shaded yellow spheres.
posted by ambrosen to MetaFilter on May 13 at 1:19 PM
79 users marked this as a favorite

Pastel cities trapped in a timeless future-past. Empty apartments drenched in nostalgia. Classic convertibles speeding into a low-res sunset. Femme fatales and mutated monsters doing battle. Deep, dark dungeons and glittering star ships floating in space. All captured in a eerie palette of 4096 colours and somehow, you’re sure, from some alternate 1980s world you can’t quite remember… Drawn painstakingly one pixel at a time, with a palette of 4096 possible colours, pushing the limits of these 80’s era machines memory, these early graphic artists and hackers alike have left an indelible mark on the world of digital art and internet culture, only to be forgotten in the passing of time. But what made this boring business computer from Japan so special?

The strange world of Japan’s PC-98 computer [contains some NSFW pixel art] / More striking imagery: Incredible pictures from an era of games we never got to experience [CW: flashing lights] - Tumblr: High quality [SFW] pixel art from PC-98 games - Pixelation.org: The Art of PC98 - Amino: The world of PC-98 Pixel Art - Galleries from @noirlac, @item, and @densetsu.ch
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on May 14 at 11:10 AM
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Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, an English comedian with an interest in geography and a former geography teacher who's also very funny, are the Map Men ("...Map Men, Map Map Map Men Men" 🎵 ), whose highly entertaining YouTube channel is chock full of educational cartographic goodness. Try any of their (27) videos at random, or all of them—even the ads are worth watching. Their recent episodes on undersea internet cables and country codes wouldn't be a bad place to start for the extremely online.
posted by rory to MetaFilter on May 10 at 1:28 PM
42 users marked this as a favorite

A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum. The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. - Her fellow Republicans were not relieved to hear this news.
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 15 at 11:55 AM
40 users marked this as a favorite

[B]ooks in the public domain—books anyone with a digital file, a printer, and a dream can produce and sell—can be a sweet side hustle for people looking to make a quick buck, and they are free to make their own choices when it comes to the cover art they select, but this one cracked me up because it is not even close to representing the contents or the tone of the book. I decided to do a deep dive into the world of public domain publishing, to see what else was out there… (Karen T. Brissette) Bonus: 50 Very Bad Book Covers for Literary Classics (LitHub)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl to MetaFilter on May 12 at 1:12 PM
38 users marked this as a favorite

A comedian’s only responsibility is to make the audience laugh. If you’re not making the audience laugh, then you’re failing at your job. You want to speak truth to power, you want to make a political statement, you want to be confessional—none of that is more or less valid than doing ventriloquism or doing an impression of Christopher Walken. They’re all equal, so long as they make people laugh. If it’s more important to you to do something that doesn’t make the audience laugh, fine, but it’s not comedy. It’s something else. from Two Guys Walk into a Bar: Kliph Nesteroff on the Evolution of American Comedy [The Sun Magazine]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 13 at 1:29 AM
33 users marked this as a favorite

Greatest human alive today, Bobby Fingers, has released another video, researching and creating a diorama of the 1999 incident where heartthrob Fabio came back bloodied after participating in the inaugural ride of the "Apollo's Chariot" roller coaster at Busch Gardens.
posted by maxwelton to MetaFilter on May 15 at 1:39 PM
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OpenAI unveils GPT-4o, a new flagship "omnimodel" capable of processing text, audio, and video. While it delivers big improvements in speed, cost, and reasoning ability, perhaps the most impressive is its new voice mode -- while the old version was a clunky speech --> text --> speech approach with tons of latency, the new model takes in audio directly and responds in kind, enabling real-time conversations with an eerily realistic voice, one that can recognize multiple speakers and even respond with sarcasm, laughter, and other emotional content of speech. Rumor has it Apple has neared a deal with the company to revamp an aging Siri, while the advance has clear implications for customer service, translation, education, and even virtual companions (or perhaps "lovers", as the allusions to Spike Jonze's Her, the Samantha-esque demo voice, and opening the door to mature content imply). Meanwhile, the offloading of most premium ChatGPT features to the free tier suggests something bigger coming down the pike.
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on May 13 at 12:14 PM
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The Bloggess (Jenny Lawson) has posted about finding art made by a woman, Laura Perea, who was in a psychiatric hospital from the 1940s. She describes what she has discovered about Laura Perea's life and family, and reproduces her art, in three posts: Help me solve a haunting art mystery?; Art mystery possibly solved?; Uncovering the mystery of L. Perea and trying to erase the stigma of mental illness. Content warning: death by suicide of one of Laura Perea's family members.
posted by paduasoy to MetaFilter on May 15 at 11:57 PM
32 users marked this as a favorite

This Is What Being in Your Twenties Was Like in 18th-Century London. A newly restored collection of letters describes a 27-year-old’s office job, social life and financial concerns beginning in 1719.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries to MetaFilter on May 10 at 11:42 PM
32 users marked this as a favorite

Musk is not a tech visionary with a side interest in politics these days, nor is he just another bored billionaire with a nativist streak; the political activism and the technological ambitions are inseparable. He believes his work is part of a civilizational struggle in which woke progressives pose an existential threat to humanity. And he spends most of his days inside a feedback loop that’s radicalizing him even more. from I Read Everything Elon Musk Posted for a Week. Send Help. [Mother Jones; ungated] [CW: Elon Musk]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 12 at 2:19 AM
31 users marked this as a favorite

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a ubiquitous markup language for describing the layout and design of a webpage separate from the content, typically specifying things like text formatting, background color, page alignment, etc. But as with emoticons and ASCII art before it, CSS can be repurposed to become the content. Enter CSS drawing, an intricate art form that uses the conventions of the language to create illustrations and even animation using only standard design elements. Some standout examples from around the web: A Single Div, where every new illustration is contained within one <div> tag; designer Lynn Fisher also has a previous version along with a whole catalog of "weird websites, niche data projects, and CSS experiments" - Another collection of single-div projects - Start a digital bonfire - The Simpsons (animated!) in CSS - 173 CSS drawings on Dribble - How I started drawing CSS Images - css-doodle, a web component for drawing patterns with CSS - Creating Realistic Art with CSS - The CSS Zen Garden, a collection of beautiful CSS stylesheets - CSS previously on MeFi
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on May 12 at 12:35 PM
31 users marked this as a favorite

"The average smoker loses 10 years of life. Which means some lose, like, 5 years and some lose like 25. You don't know which one will be you." Smoking is Awesome by Kurzgesagt and How "Anti-Vaping" Ads Trick You Into Vaping by Maggie Mae Fish are two sides of a coin: Maggie Mae Fish explains the media literacy needed to determine what makes effective anti-smoking ads and how tobacco (and now vaping) companies direct policy towards ineffective anti-smoking ads. Kurzgesagt has an informative and effective anti-smoking video.
posted by AlSweigart to MetaFilter on May 15 at 7:39 AM
30 users marked this as a favorite

A tour of a 300 year old business that makes pastels in nearly 2000 colors [youtube - 2024/05/12 Business Insider]
posted by ursus_comiter to MetaFilter on May 12 at 5:30 PM
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Remnants of a Legendary Typeface Have Been Rescued From the River Thames
posted by jacquilynne to MetaFilter on May 15 at 11:50 AM
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Words About War. "From George Orwell’s critique of the language of totalitarian regimes to today, discussions of war and foreign policy have been full of dehumanizing euphemisms, bloodless jargon, little-known government acronyms, and troubling metaphors that hide warfare’s damage. This guide aims to help people write and talk about war and foreign policy more accurately, more honestly, and in ways people outside the elite Washington, DC foreign policy “blob” can understand." Link to the PDF.
posted by Saxon Kane to MetaFilter on May 14 at 2:47 PM
29 users marked this as a favorite

WHAT YOUR FAVORITE ’90s BAND SAYS ABOUT THE KIND OF BORED SUBURBAN MOM YOU ARE TODAY
posted by supermedusa to MetaFilter on May 11 at 12:35 PM
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The USDA has updated their plant hardiness zone maps. The 2012 USDA hardiness zones were calculated using the average lowest winter temperature for the observation period of 1976-2005. The new zones are calculated using the years 1991-2020. These two observation windows overlap. Colors show the difference between the two 30-year averages for each place on the map. Choose a city or region to see what's changed over 44 years.
posted by fader to MetaFilter on May 13 at 9:12 AM
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In her essay ‘The Double Standard [PDF] of Aging,’ Susan Sontag explores how a “visceral horror felt at aging female flesh” is entrenched in our visual culture, manifested in caricatures of viragos and witches. “Rules of taste enforce structures of power,” she wrote, “the revulsion against aging in women is the cutting edge of a whole set of oppressive structures (often masked as gallantries) that keep women in their place.” Reclaiming elderly sexuality is an act of defiance, a rebellion against a youth-obsessed culture, fuelled by misogynistic gender norms. from The Untold Lives of Mature OnlyFans Performers [Huck] CW: NSFW language, it's about OnlyFans and has pictures of women in lingerie.
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 14 at 11:22 AM
27 users marked this as a favorite

Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement’s leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.

The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on May 9 at 3:26 PM
27 users marked this as a favorite

[more posts]

I wonder how much of the drop in sales is attributable to right-wing backlash, and how much is attributable to Target's steadfast refusal to hire anyone to clean the stores, stock the shelves and staff the registers. [view]
posted by Faint of Butt to MetaFilter on May 13 at 3:31 PM
109 users marked this as a favorite

A perpetual problem with the liberalism debate is this: Joe Biden, etc are not liberals in the way that your nice aunt is a liberal, and this muddies the conversation. To some degree, Joe Biden et al subscribe to "liberal" ideas - sorta-free markets (except for their buddies), sorta free borders (as long as you have a good... [more]
posted by Frowner to MetaFilter on May 9 at 5:26 PM
87 users marked this as a favorite

Michael Cohen testified yesterday that NYT reporter Maggie Haberman would write whatever he and Trump wanted her to write. Text message receipts in court show Haberman was collaborating with Michael Cohen to use her reporting as a mouthpiece for Trump’s lies. Then she received a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Trump... [more]
posted by orange swan to MetaFilter on May 15 at 7:32 AM
83 users marked this as a favorite

I think he really might be just a very, very dumb guy who doesn’t understand anything. I worked with Jack at the start of Twitter. He's not dumb. At the time I knew him best he was very smart, and capable, and had a strong product intuition. I used to defend him more on Metafilter but don't anymore. He's too far gone and it's been years... [more]
posted by Nelson to MetaFilter on May 13 at 10:32 AM
74 users marked this as a favorite

Sorry, wrong moral panic Of course automation and globalization did in fact totally shatter economies and towns as recently as the eighties and nineties, and many people whose careers had been built in those towns simply never got a good job again, especially middle aged people - it's grim up North, etc. Nobody wants a... [more]
posted by Frowner to MetaFilter on May 13 at 12:57 PM
71 users marked this as a favorite

I thought the sea of red symbolized the massive amount of blood shed in the course of empire but, okay, there's a butterfly so it's all cool. [view]
posted by JoeZydeco to MetaFilter on May 15 at 7:26 AM
70 users marked this as a favorite

Short answer nope. Long answer nnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooope. [view]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace to MetaFilter on May 15 at 8:22 AM
67 users marked this as a favorite

I would just like to shout out the fact that the author of this article, whose name is Gordon, has a blog about his life as a cheese expert and that blog is named Gordonzola and that is pun so gouda that you all need to stop and appreciate it, after which you can go back to arguing about whatever this article is actually about. [view]
posted by jacquilynne to MetaFilter on May 10 at 1:09 PM
62 users marked this as a favorite

"We not only negotiate with terrorists, we capitulate to them!" -Target, 2024 [view]
posted by Pope Guilty to MetaFilter on May 13 at 3:29 PM
60 users marked this as a favorite

But also... since when are writing professors discriminated against for wearing dresses? I work in academia and you can absolutely tell a great deal about people's jobs, education level and class status by how they dress and how they're built because there is great structural and immediate bias in who gets to be powerful in academia, and... [more]
posted by Frowner to MetaFilter on May 10 at 10:15 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite

Sammyo, redpilling was co-opted a long time ago to mean waking up to the "truth" of the manosphere, Q-Anon, and any other execrable right wing/chud ideology. [view]
posted by TheKaijuCommuter to MetaFilter on May 12 at 4:40 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite

People really have to get into the habit of assuming the police and prosecutors lying is the most likely explanation of any outlandish accusation without evidence rather than treating that as an outlier. [view]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 11 at 11:59 AM
52 users marked this as a favorite

ensign_ricky “E Pluribus Unum” means “Out of many, one” though [view]
posted by SansPoint to MetaFilter on May 13 at 3:55 PM
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I would be curious to see Target's market research on which stores get pride month merch and which ones don't because I think it would be a great guide to which spots to avoid when I travel. [view]
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model to MetaFilter on May 13 at 3:31 PM
51 users marked this as a favorite

If anybody else has gotten a "sign up for voice-only authentication!" email from their financial institution, DO NOT OPT IN to it. Do not bet your savings that AI's vocal deepfakes can't fool the bank's authenticators. This has been your AI-thread PSA. [view]
posted by humbug to MetaFilter on May 13 at 1:21 PM
51 users marked this as a favorite

They Might Be Giants: You used to be a hopeless autistic teenage nerd, but now you're a hopeless autistic middle-aged nerd. Also, congratulations on coming out! [view]
posted by Faint of Butt to MetaFilter on May 11 at 12:51 PM
51 users marked this as a favorite

You don't vote for kings! well, not with that attitude you don't [view]
posted by allegedly to MetaFilter on May 15 at 7:49 AM
49 users marked this as a favorite

Sorry, wrong moral panic. Lots of stupid moral police going on right now; concern at capitalism using this shit to mulch everything down to nothing sure isn’t one of them. [view]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 13 at 1:18 PM
47 users marked this as a favorite

@VessOnSecurity (responding to a prompt of "Explain Bitcoin as completely as possible in a single tweet"): It's like if idling your car 24/7 occasionally produced solved Sudoku puzzles that you could then exchange for heroin. [view]
posted by DirtyOldTown to MetaFilter on May 10 at 12:48 PM
46 users marked this as a favorite

Apparently we're at the at the mirror the image to find Baphomet phase of the discourse as well. I did like what someone had to say about that: Listen, dorks, the most evil part of any picture of the King of England is that the King of England is in it. It's pre-eviled! This is like playing Fuck Tha Police backwards to try and find... [more]
posted by NoxAeternum to MetaFilter on May 15 at 7:51 AM
44 users marked this as a favorite

[more comments]