~metafilter | Bookmarks (937)

How Three American Women Translated One of the World's Most Popular Qurans (inspired by chavenet's recent post)You can compare translations here.

Super Bunnyhop (03/28/2025), "Kriegsspiel! How Napoleon Accidentally Invented Strategy Games": "Napoleon's contribution to game history means getting into gaming's ideological history ... Strategy games are the most immediately obvious example of how games are political." Related: Play Ludus Latrunculorum online. Browse the International Kriegsspiel Society's collection of rules, videos, Tabletop Simulator modules, inclusiveness info, and Discord info. Consider other meanings of miniatures games in...

Last month was the 15-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act being signed into law. Which means that anyone born this century probably has no idea what life was like for anyone with a body before the ACA. So let me tell you!

LinkMe, April '25: Come across an interesting link recently that you'd like to share, but don't want to work it up into a full post? Share it here for our perusal, nbd. And if you'd like to post something but need some inspiration, check out the links here to see what other members have found interesting and would like to read more about! Just...

The annual 'Great Lakes Whale Migration 2025 Begins on the Old Mission Peninsula' has begun. 2023. 'Great Lakes Whale Migration Begins – 2 Whales Spotted in Old Mission Harbor' 2021. 'Humpback Spotted in East Bay, Great Lakes Whale Migration Begins'.

A Working Man left me thinking: Where would Statham single-handedly taking down a human trafficking operation fall on the list of his greatest accomplishments? Obviously, the only way to get to the bottom of this mystery is to blog through it. Join me for a thought exercise that has plagued scientists since the aughts: What is the most impressive thing Jason Statham has ever...

Livestream of Senator Cory Booker's Filibuster on the Senate Floor This was linked in the previous US politics post but I thought it was worth posting separately.

"I feel like any job, any creative enterprise, that's the thing you do after the "chore"—you know there's the thing that's paying the rent and there's the thing that just for kicks —those kinds of jobs always have a spirit to them that's ineffable. It's just a great, spirited way to work, and you're just having fun. You can sense it." John Flansburgh and...

"brands and a holiday dedicated to hoaxes are rarely a winning combo." Starting a post to collect "real or not real," well done prank websites, and possible confirmation of what's actually really happening today (sigh).Why we're no longer doing April Fool's Day. Are we too suspicious of a fake story? Tom's Guide prank roundup. USA Today prank roundup. Ad Week Weirdest Brand Stunts. Washington...

This beautiful filming of a performance of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007 would be worth watching even with the sound off. But it also features superlative playing by Lucia Swarts of the Netherlands Bach Society.The Dutch Bach-ery continues with this performance of Invention No. 13 in A minor, BWV 784 by the 9 year old Anna Kuvshinov, who's so...

Marine Le Pen, populist leader of France's National Rally (RN, formerly the National Front or FN), was found guilty on Monday of embezzlement of EU funds and barred from standing for office pending appeal, making it unlikely that she will be able to run for president in 2027. Le Pen was sentenced to a €100,000 fine and four years in prison, with two suspended...

Following the Executive Order of 1 March, President Trump announced today that the English language is to be officially renamed "American". "America is a very popular country," the President said, "when people understand that this is our language, I think you're going to find a lot more of them are going to want to speak it. A lot."Vice-President Vance added "The USA is where...

Eric Ralls (3/30/2025) on "Space missions and human kidneys": "These important organs could face more trouble than previously assumed, including a higher risk of stones and lasting damage." Keith Siew et al. (6/11/2024), "Cosmic kidney disease": "spaceflight associated changes in urinary biochemistry favour kidney stone formation" (also, "the kidney is an exquisitely radiation sensitive organ"). Citations. Wikipedia's list of notable stone passers, e.g. Montaigne,...

Frozen penguin among millions of specimens moved to new home at CSIRO's National Collections Building. The collections include 99 per cent of Australia's native birds as well as exotic bird species, skeletons, mammals, reptiles stored in ethanol, eggs and frozen tissue. (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial...

One of the best baseball videos our friends Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein (of Secret Base) ever made is "How to Score 10 Runs in the First Inning and Lose". It explores what happens when a team gets blown out in the first inning but pulls out a commanding win via their (arguably) worst player having the game of his life.The video description from...

The bats look funny. And they definitely look weird. In fact, some players didn't even think that they were real, at least on first glance.

Anton Solomonik (LitHub, 03/21/2025), "Realistic Fiction": "What I mean is slice-of-life type writing in which it's just people's feelings and observations and no one does anything, there's no plot, no conflict ... My father was a scientist ... he liked to read police and spy novels." And in the Evergreen Review (Spring / Summer 2025), "The Most Dangerous Game": "Magic: The Gathering is a...

What are your beliefs about the nature of reality? Take this quiz to find out (It's a Substack post, so not the greatest format, but a good survey of possibilities)

The origins of many technologies have a somewhat spiritual dimension, and so it is with the Vermont-born industrialist Robert G. LeTourneau, who had the greatest impact on the development of the bulldozer. LeTourneau was an eccentric evangelical Christian who believed that he created his machines in collaboration with God. "God," he declared, "is the chairman of my board." A gifted engineer, he was responsible...

There seems to be 3,187 days between Christmas and Easter holidays this year - but the calendar says there are just 116. Is the calendar wrong? Does time seem just ... the same? Or does it seem non-linear, stretched or compressed? Have there been instances in your life where your sense of time has become warped, unreal, never-ending or accelerated? Or talk about what's...