~metafilter | Bookmarks (1009)

Charlet Takahashi Chung, voice actress for Overwatch and other video games as well as films, documents and recounts (TW: trauma, PTSD, racism, misogyny, classism) in a series of Instagram posts her recent harrowing ordeal aboard a 4+hour long, Canada-U.S. flight on WestJet Airlines, where in the first-class cabin she was subjected to implicit racism and misogyny perpetrated by its entire flight crew and the...

The Microscope Museum is an on-line 'collection of antique microscopes and other scientific instruments' (also available in Portuguese).

"Disinhibition" is a word that has recently migrated from the lexicon of psychology into that of American politics. It refers to a condition in which people become increasingly unable to regulate the expression of their impulses and urges, and this year it very obviously applied to Trump's increasingly surreal, vituperative, and lurid rhetoric. But it now must also apply to the institutions of American...

Hundreds of modified trees on outback property in outback New South Wales described as a national treasure. You may have heard of scar trees, but how about trees-in-trees? These different types of modified trees tell a story about Indigenous culture, if you know how to read them.It was Gamilaroi elder Allan Tighe who would first point out what Jane calls a "tree-in-tree" on one...

But making a breakfast cereal was not the original intention of Charles William Post, the founder of the Postum Cereal Company (better known these days as Post). After a stint at the Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek, Post started his own local company to sell health drinks, namely the caffeine-free coffee substitute called Postum. Grape-Nuts were actually intended to become a beverage, as well....

February, 2003: Following the smashing, console-defining success of Halo: Combat Evolved, developer Bungie was facing a conundrum. Fan and media interest in the long-anticipated sequel was at an all-time high, thanks to the release of an epic cinematic teaser in September. But despite a veteran team of top-tier designers bursting with new ideas, the game was not in a remotely playable state... and a...

Ancient Egyptian Wooden Funerary Figures Utilising stylistic traits to create a taxonomy of ancient Egyptian wooden funerary figures."This online catalogue aims to record all known examples of ancient Egyptian wooden funerary figures found in UK institutions as part of an ongoing PhD research project undertaken by Sam Powell at the University of Birmingham."

"Every time I sit down to write, I have a great fear that anything I write will reveal me as the monster I was always told I would be. But that fear is personal, something I must face in everything I do, every act I contemplate. Writing is an act that claims courage and meaning, and turns back denial, breaks open fear." Dorothy Allison,...

Strike-friendly games from the NYT tech guild "New York Times tech workers are still on strike after walking out one day before the presidential election. That means they're still asking people to skip their usual Crossword, Wordle, or Connections routines. But now, the union has released its own offerings for games lovers that could keep them from crossing the digital picket line." - Fast...

"Compensate the Losers?" Economic Policy and Partisan Realignment in the US by Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet-Marx, and Suresh Naidu (thread @ dead bird, graph)We argue that the Democratic Party's evolution on economic policy helps explain partisan realignment by education. We show that less-educated Americans differentially demand "predistribution" policies (e.g., a federal jobs guarantee, higher minimum wages, protectionism, and stronger unions), while more-educated Americans differentially...

"It's smart to plan for the future. But the seed vault assumes that we know enough to plan effectively and that people will pay attention to what we know. History shows this is often not the case."See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm currently reading the SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz. A significant part of the plot revolves around preservation of parts...

Why shower with your nose when you can use a hose? Zoo elephants adopt garden tech. Elephants in the Berlin Zoo were captured on video using a sophisticated tool — a hose — to take a shower and prank each other.

The Most Insane Weapon You Never Heard About - "At the height of the Cold War, a terrifying concept emerged: a bomb so powerful it wouldn't need to be dropped. Known as Project Sundial, this doomsday device would have left a 400-km radius in flames and plunged the world into darkness. It was a bomb that would destroy everything – not a weapon, but...

In the early 19th century, German naturalist Lorenz Oken quickly established himself as a leader in the Naturphilosophie [wiki] movement, a current of Idealism, which attempted to comprehend a total view of nature by investigating its theoretical structure—a precursor to the natural sciences as we know them today. Oken's seminal work Allgemaine Naturgeschichte Für Alle Stände, or General Natural History For All Classes, was...

Jadie Stillwell & Nicole Blackwood (LitHub, 11/2024), "Among the Sleuths": "the fictional detective became a mythic figure long ago. She's also, fittingly, something of a mystery herself." Related: the song "Nancy Drew" by Tuscadero. r/NancyDrew on most / least favorite, love-hate, & favorite game, and issues with newer games. Gab Smolders (previously) plays Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake and Mystery of the Seven Keys....

Watching Rocky IV in 2024, however, was clarifying to me in the ongoing debate around "21st century cultural stasis." The basic argument is that culture is less healthy because there are fewer significant aesthetic changes. This implies a healthy ecosystem produces a large quantity of relics, as new styles outmode old ones. Songs that are "so Eighties" imply that the Nineties rejected all of...

The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time ...just what it says on the tin.Before the onslaught of end of the year Best-Of lists, here is a solid top 100 for your palaver pleasure. Big bonus points to Paste Magazine for publishing it on a single web page, rather than over a 25 page ad-filled link schmozzle.

Via the Video Game Weather ASMR YT channel & This Week in Sound: Eight hours with no loops, "driving around the city of Los Santos in a thunderstorm on a lonely night . . . GTAV ASMR. Grand Theft Auto V recorded using an Elgato 4K60 Pro capture card with OBS and edited with Wondershare Filmora 11. Video game weather ambience for ASMR." No...

Housing model that's gold for women fleeing domestic violence. The model turns empty buildings into homes for vulnerable women and a shelter organisation wants it expanded to give more people a safe place to sleep at night amid the housing crisis.

If you're visiting MetaFilter for the first time in a while because whoa, US election, just a friendly reminder that MetaFilter depends on member support in order to keep running. Additionally, MetaFilter is moving to a community-run model, so you might want to check out the latest update about that. But because this is a weblog, a few additional links about communities below the...

Elwood Edwards, the voice behind AOL's You've Got Mail has passed away at 74.His voice is synonymous with the web 1.0. Steve Case, former CEO of AOL, wanted to add a voice to the user experience. He recorded, in 1989, on a cassette player at home, the six phrases used by AOL, "Welcome", "You've got mail", "You've got pictures", "You've got voicemail", "File's done",...