~metafilter | Bookmarks (968)

"How Whisky Is Made" is a charming 3D animation that helped me understand the process better than any written description had.

TIL there's a Japanese brand of tampon named for Anne Frank. The reason why is actually not as strange as you might think.

This was dissociative, diminutive work, and time passed vertiginously, minutes and seconds overlapping on my teammates' unsynchronized doomsday clocks until the day concluded with a final collective effort at preservation. All quality assurance analysts—not Cindy, for hierarchical reasons—would convene in the photocopy room to ensure that, come what may on December 31, 1999, the deliverables from our day's labor would be archived, in print,...

Inside the creation of a First Nations superhero universe. Gooniyandi man Scott Wilson grew up superhero-obsessed, but he never saw his own culture in the comic books he'd get lost in. So he decided to create his own.

Walking Around In Locations with Philomena Cunk returns to explain the meaning of life. Somehow, this will all make sense.I'm looking forward to her tripping on a stone, in Philomena fashion.

The story of Team Fortress 2 (as told through its comics) has been concluded in a really long comic titled "The Days Have Worn Away." You can read it online, or download the (3/4 of a gigabyte!) CBR.

Welcome to the human doom loop "Throughout the pandemic, the media focused on the idea of the "urban doom loop," in which remote work would kill downtowns, triggering a downward spiral of reduced services that would cause people to leave cities. What went overlooked has turned out to be the bigger and even more consequential story: the human doom loop, a cycle in which...

Classical KING FM 98.1 (playlist)Classical KING FM is presently playing Christmas music in their own eclectic way. Earlier it was vocal choirs in intricate murmurations, now it's punched up. It plays what John Fahey famously once called Western High Art. But the palette of their programing has broadened to emphasize women and composers and performers of color. It broadcasts this reach of music 24...

Today, Keith Richards turns 81. It's a hopeless cliche to talk about all the stuff that Richards has survived, so I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to say that Keith Richards is now 81 years old. He is one year younger than Joe Biden and three years older than Donald Trump. To celebrate Richards' big day, Susanna Hoffs and Elvis Costello...

Southern sea otters are an unexpected solution to invasive European Green Crabs that have been ravishing eco systems on the west coast of North America.

Commuting to work by bicycle in the winter can be a challenge - especially in the (arguably) coldest city in Canada. But that doesn't stop Daniel Perry, professional double bassist in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.Please note that I do not bike to work in the winter, although I'm finding this inspiring, and it is just fine not to.

At just a few millimetres in length, tiny handfish babies delight scientists. They may look a little like popcorn, but these baby red handfish are giving hope for the species' survival.

Netflix's movies don't have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don't have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats (sln+1)I did mention a long time ago that a friend of ours, an author, had a pitch meeting with Netflix. The executive told him point blank his...

Tasmanian tigers are extinct. Why do people keep seeing them?+ Maybe because they... aren't extinct? As well as searching for thylacines himself, Forrest Galante has been reviewing sightings of them for years. Tiger sightings have a long history in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland. Could it have been hiding out in New Guinea all along?Bonus 19th-century thylacine photographs. Colourised 1933 footage of the...

Beefsteak Charlie promised, "You're gonna get spoiled". Beefsteak Charlie promised, "I'll feed you like there's no tomorrow." And with unlimited shrimp - plus unlimited beer, wine, or sangria - there wouldn't be.The Washington Post, 1982: I stopped in at the Bethesda branch one cold Sunday with my daughter and her friend, a fellow shrimp fanatic. Exercising no restraint whatever, we polished off seven heaping...

First, an unelected businessman tanked the budget proposal that would keep the government's lights on a bit longer, prompting ecstatic talk of promotion to Speaker of the House. Next, a businessman who is not yet President made a budget proposal, but like most of his businesses, it fell through. Deep divisions are already beginning to show. Now the race is on: Can Congress come...

It's Friday in the Muslim world, and that means... it's time to read or recite Surah al-Kahf (the Surah of the Cave) !Friday, or "jumu'ah" as we Muslims call it, actually starts at sunset on Thursday night. So Muslims have till sunset on Friday evening to put Surah al-Kahf into their day. Any day is a good day to read or recite Qur'an, but...

At the prehistoric passage tomb of Newgrange, built around 3200 BCE, the light from the rising sun at the winter solstice shines along the 19m passage to the wall of the tomb, illuminating the triple spiral carvings. There is a livestream of the event from 8.40am on the 21st (I think that's 3.40am Eastern Standard Time and 12.40am PST). Last year's recording is here.The...

Once in a Lifetime: Argentina is a four-part documentary look at fan culture in Argentina in the lead up to the country's World Cup win in Qatar. It's the latest work by Eli Mengem who has done stellar previous work in documenting football culture with his Derby Days series. If the 2+ hours for Once in a Lifetime: Argentina is too big an ask,...

These crises never seemed to outstrip the capacity of Melville's story to offer some illustration and commentary, if not relief. One routine assignment was to formulate a conceptual question about the primary text, then to analyze the way two literary critics have approached dimensions of the question, and finally to propose an analytical response to the question which converses with these critical views. This...

StreetComplete: OpenStreetMap surveyor app. An Android app that gives you a friendly interface to help build OpenStreetMap by answering questions as you walk around. Populate surface types, where crosswalks are, if there are trash cans, and so on. (The FAQ mentions both that an iOS version is in the works and there are some alternatives there.)

"Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with 'music we benefited from financially,' but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform." Liz Pelly investigates the growing problem with so called ghost artists on Spotify for Harper's.

Tracking collars uncover secrets of critically endangered Aussie icon. The habits of the northern hairy-nosed wombat have been a mystery until now, thanks to the animal equivalent of a fitness tracker.