~metafilter | Bookmarks (1009)

Give novelists 120 years of packed daily commutes, late night rides home from bars and restaurants, early morning trips to the beach, and now the subway isn't just buried in the bedrock of Manhattan, it's burrowed deep within New York novels of the last twelve decades, a source of wonder, despair, quotidian boredom. Join us as we ride alongside fictional characters plucked from the...

Is there even a "thing" called "language"? "Mistaking the impressive engineering achievements of LLMs for the mastering of human language, language understanding, and linguistic acts has dire implications for various forms of social participation, human agency, justice and policies surrounding them."Link is to coverage in El Reg. Original paper here. Also, previously (just 5 hours ago, so maybe this is too soon, but strikes...

How Japan's black bears became a deadly problem. Japan recorded 219 bear attacks on people in the 12 months leading up to March 2024, including six fatalities. The situation is becoming so severe that government officials have warned some bears are viewing humans as prey.

After 27 years, AnandTech is shutting down AnandTech, a widely read tech magazine is closing its doors after publishing over 21,500 articles and running a lively discussion forum for all things computer related. The site will stay alive and the forums will continue to operate. In a farewell post the editor Ryan Smith mentions Tom's Hardware "". . . for everyone who still needs...

That's it. That's the headline. Reported by Jalopnik, msn.com, Yahoo! News. Months ago TheOnion.com reported on a different story.

The secret inside One Million Checkboxes, a technical and emotional reflection on running the site and unexpected discoveries: "Teens wrote me a secret. I found them." Previously on MeFi and it's now "shutdown" and all the boxes are checked, but you can play locally only at the site. And earlier from the creator: Scaling One Million Checkboxes to 650,000,000 checks.

"Technostalgia can be described as the fuzzy feeling one gets when seeing a device one used to use, having forgotten all its limitations or why it was upgraded. It is the warm endearment toward home computers of the 1980s that one might have encountered as a child, or else an unexplained fetishism for technology that predates one's own lifetime but which represents a certain...

'On its face, asking language to make sense without word order seems impossible. We speak words one at a time, and write and read that way, too. But our intuitions about how language works may not reflect what really goes on inside our heads. "How do you know you're purely sequential?" Vaswani asked me. Anyway, he continued, "why should you impose your restrictions on...

Photos of 2005 Haditha Massacre Finally Published - "On Tuesday, The New Yorker published 10 of the massacre photos—part of a collaboration with the "In the Dark" podcast that joined the magazine last year.' // The podcast's reporting team had filed its public records request four years ago, then sued the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Central Command over their failure to hand over...

Previously, in 2019 a Scottish tourist unexpectedly ends up in the faux-Bavarian town of Leavenworth, WA. Now: 4 Bavarian tourists visited Leavenworth. Here's what they thought (archive)

So what happened to all this ferment and excitement, all of the high-powered theory being done under the banner of Western Marxism? It's the damndest thing, but all of those smart, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that high-powered work, became liberals. Every single one of the theorists at the core of the analytic Marxism movement – not just Cohen, but Philippe van Parijs,...

Steph Tisdell wanted to be a lawyer. But being a comedian, actor and author lets her make more change. Comedian-turned-actor Steph Tisdell (who is a Ydinji woman) takes on a new creative challenge: writing a young adult novel that explores "diversity within diversity."Steph Tisdell is one of my favourite comedians - her stand up comedy is extremely worth watching.

"The Old Way and The New". (slyt.11:00+) 1912. Considered the first presidential campaign film. "This is an example of how politics has long been evolving along with, and in response to, new media," Historian Trygve Throntveit notes "This was quite extraordinary to release a film like this and in some ways it just goes to show that we always have constantly adapted our politics...

Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, died this morning, just days after the Koroneihana celebrations marking his 18th year as king. He was 69 years old.The Kiingitanga itself is not uncontroversial, and not all iwi recognize Te Kiingi as their king. The previous Maaori monarch, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, Kiingi Tuheitia's mother, was beloved by Maaori and Paahehaa alike, and oversaw the settlement...

The new documentary Riefenstahl (YT trailer) argues that famed German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl carefully crafted a narrative absolving herself of responsibility for becoming Hitler's favored cinematic propagandist. (Deadline) Not only was Riefenstahl, despite her insistence otherwise, an enthusiastic Nazi (to the end of her days), she may well have have contributed to a 1939 massacre of Polish Jews. (Guardian)Yes, I know: we do not...

Disturbing object unearthed in California's Mojave Desert mystifies experts Slowly, they began to unearth a corroded metal box resembling a small casket. When they flipped it open, they saw two crimson runes emblazoned on the side that resembled one of the Nazi Party's most infamous symbols: two stark S's that look like a pair of lightning bolts. (SLSFGate)

Mathematical marbling : Marbling refers to painting techniques for creating a stone-like appearance or intricate flowing designs. This page is about generating marbling designs mathematically. [via]

Kites have a long history in Brazil and are particularly popular in Rio's favelas, the poor neighborhoods often clinging to the mountains overlooking and surrounding the city, where a cottage industry uses bamboo and tissue paper to produce kites. For many, kites evoke childhood and light-hearted diversion. And some do fly kites simply to feel the wind's tug upon a harmless cotton string. But...

Warning as bold cassowaries pester north Queensland campers for food. Wildlife rangers are urging visitors not to feed cassowaries after filming video of a pair of the big and potentially dangerous birds getting too close for comfort.

Toxic blue green algae have strangled Lough Neagh here in the North of Ireland - it's our largest body of water and a primary source of drinking water. Stephen Reid, who usually vlogs about outdoor gear, has put together an in-depth YouTube video documenting the spread of the algae, its causes, and the history to how it has gotten so bad.

https://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/ Reported by Gizmodo: For more than 70 years, RadioShack was an electronics hobbyist's paradise. It went bankrupt multiple times in the past decade and now it's been sold for parts. Its X account famously shills crypto with eye-catching NSFW posts. But the glory days of RadioShack live on thanks to the extensive archiving efforts of RadioShack Catalogs—a website that's meticulously digitizing seven decades...

Country singer Patrick Haggerty was a stranger to me—yet attending his memorial meant everything. Patrick Haggerty is my favorite kind of icon. He was legendary to some, and unknown to most. His fame came by releasing the first openly gay country record in 1973 titled Lavender Country. The record was released, not through a major or even an independent label, but rather through Seattle's...

It's Time to Talk About the .08 Drunk Driving Limit in the US (slPasteMagazine)Canada also has a nationwide limit of .08 as well as the UK. (We should rethink it here in Canada, too.) BAC levels in Western Europe If any other MeFite outside of these areas have insight to their BAC limits, holla!