~metafilter | Bookmarks (1009)

I don't know if it was the lack of tourists or the subdued surroundings, but when we hit the Ocklawaha, time seemed to dilate, to spread out along the edges, to submerge into the river's unseen depths. More or less, it came to a creeping halt. As we floated up through central Florida along the Ocklawaha's surface, I imagined something about the river led...

I had one cultural advantage. I owned a 1955 Ford Fairlane, which I had bought for $100. Gas was twenty cents a gallon. Jim and I drove all over Southern California, which is admittedly something teenage boys don't mind doing, to attend free concerts and performances. It was the age of high print-culture, each Sunday the Los Angeles Times listed every forthcoming concert in...

Valve has just updated and rereleased Half-Life 2 in honor of it's 20th anniversary. Included are the add-ons Episodes One and Two, many bugfixes, developer commentary and much more. There's also a 2 hour documentary. And it's free on Steam.

Wildlife rescuers say virtual fence saving hundreds of kangaroos on Victoria's Surf Coast. Removing wildlife carcasses from the road is a usual morning for Jason Cichocki but he says a new technology has more than halved the number of animals colliding with vehicles.

"we opened a portal and were blessed, and on that journey we received the name 'two-spirit.' A lot of people think it refers to sexuality or gender, but over 34 years now, it's more than that. For me, my community's knowledge about history, tradition, language, and philosophy is [one] spirit. The second spirit is about love: nurturing for my siblings, my parents, my grandparents,...

An enterprising MFA student at East Tennessee State University created a Baba Yaga "collectible figurine" as a thesis project. Ariel Adams' project involved designing the character, building it, and painting it, using a variety of analogue and digital tools. Her style and interpretation of the figure are interesting, not a 1:1 with the conventional depictions we most often see of Baba Yaga, and her...

Violet said that those first sessions in the library at Pakenham Hall marked the start of a conversation that lasted for the rest of their lives. They had spent roughly three weeks together when they decided to get married, which they did shortly afterwards with minimal fuss, throwing a boozy party for their many friends the night before. Parties were Violet's natural element. from...

Having an extra thumb on one hand may massively boost your manual dexterity, but wouldn't it be hard to learn to use? Not according to a new study, which found that the majority of a wide variety of people got the hang of the thing in just one minute. Study in Science: Evaluating initial usability of a hand augmentation device across a large and...

For a young couple at risk of homelessness, a community garden is helping hope bloom. Residents at an affordable apartment complex in Adelaide are taking part in a greening project intended to improve the wellbeing of young people who have spent time in state care, and reduce the amount of heat trapped in urban spaces.

As weed resistance to herbicides is becoming widespread, there is an urgent effort to find new solutions. [MIT Lab Review] These could range from high tech methods like using AI and lasers to more traditional ways of working with nature.

Refuge In Kakistocracy "... in a month with few bright spots, here is a glimmer of hope: Team Trump's most human failings may thwart some of their most evil plans."

PBS explains the cozy mystery. Cozy mystery is alive and kicking. Cozy mysteries, serially. Katharina Vester's "Bodies to Die for: Negotiating the Ideal Female Body in Cozy Mystery Novels" gets to the bones of the matter.There are many posts touching on cozy mysteries on MetaFilter, but no actual posts on the blue so tagged.

London musician So Good (Sophie Bokor-Ingram) makes music she calls "ignorant brat pop" that's a rough mix of drill, hip hop and punk. HATE is about the things she fucking hates, but her hate for America gets its own song. She kicks off I Hate It Here with "We had the worst prime minister EVAR/And then we had the worst prime minister EVAR/And now...

Play the Hidden Book Game.Prizes appear to be UK only, but the game is available everywhere. Books seem to trend toward popular and classic books, as defined by UK booksellers; a skim of the BBC Big Read list or similar might be helpful. Past years (with answers!) are also available.

The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) celebrates science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. Recommendations are open for the 2024 award - the deadline is November 15.The Otherwise Award has a long history honoring a ton of great works, including: Light from Uncommon Stars — Ryka Aoki They Will Dream In the Garden...

In this time of madness, Heather Cox Richardson shares wisdom and small seeds of hope* regarding the days to come. "The rift between the pre-2016 leaders of the Republican Party and the MAGA Republicans is still obvious, and Trump's reliance on Elon Musk and his stated goal of deconstructing the American government could make it wider."While Trump is claiming a mandate to do as...

[Ars Technica] Sep 2024 "Software fixes are now responsible for more than 1 in 5 automotive recalls. That's the key finding from a decade's worth of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recall data, according to an analysis from the law firm DeMayo Law. While that's a sign of growing inconvenience for drivers, the silver lining is that a software patch is usually a much...

I've been reading about Magentic-One: A Generalist Multi-Agent System for Solving Complex Tasks,and thinking I could use it for an image segmentation task (tree canopies in aerial images), but maybe this is not a system to let run unwatched ... Even more concerning were cases in which agents, until explicitly stopped, attempted to recruit human assistance by posting on social media, emailing textbook authors,...

Koala intruder in bedroom startles couple getting home from work. Something soft and cuddly on a bed can be a welcome sight if that something is inanimate, like a pillow — but in the early hours of Wednesday morning an Adelaide couple were forced to contend with a friendly, if unexpected, intruder.

My great-aunt went on to earn her master's degree at Smith College School for Social Work, and then settled in a teaching position in the newly formed Richmond Professional Institute at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. That's where she briefly mentioned meeting "Anne, a newcomer from Ohio" in 1929. The two would be together for the rest of their lives. from...

'About Sensations', 1948 Aviator film (slyt, 5:30) ((CW warning, sexism)) "In 1943, Lt. Robert Osborn, in collaboration with Commander Seth Warner, created the "sage of safety" character for a column in the BUAER News Letter produced by the Bureau of Aeronautics to address the increasing aircraft mishap rate. Osborn's illustrations commingled with Warner's narrative accounts of aircraft accidents." " Case in point: this 1945...

Content Warning: Incredibly ugly upcoming U.S. Politics. Stephen Miller and Donald Trump's public promise for a "bloody story" - plans for sweeping raids and mass deportations of 10 to 20 million people living in America are expected to start when Trump assumes office and begins on day one.People living all across the United States, from farm camps in the backwaters of Florida to the...