~metafilter | Bookmarks (930)

"We've eaten 11,501 snacks spanning 87 categories from 2056 companies in 96 countries. That's 164 major brands and 163 flavors." (previously) (more previously) (even more previously)

Richard Raffan is a long-time wood turner with a large number of videos on YouTube. They might be too inside-baseball to be of general interest, but if you like watching things made by a master craftsman and artist, you may enjoy them. This is Richard's YouTube home page .Since retirement, I've been learning wood turning. At the end of COVID this was a bit...

"I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music." If it's been more than 24 hours since you last flew into a rage about tech-bros who want to "disrupt" art without understanding the first thing about art, have I got an interview for you!Entire interview if you swing that way.

Eagle-eyed teen helps capture rogue frog on Tassie lavender farm (Tasmania, Australia). A 13-year-old girl found and helped capture an invasive Peron's tree frog after a tourist's photo posted online alerted authorities of the biosecurity threat. Tasmania is an island, so it does not have the same frog species and frog diseases which are found on mainland Australia.The amphibian, which turned out to be...

"Six People to Revise You" by J.R. Dawson, a short and moving science fiction story published January 2025 in Uncanny Magazine (available in text and audio), begins: A parent or guardian Someone who has known you since childhood A mentor or teacher An employer or coworker A spouse, partner, or close intimate friend Someone who does not consider themself a loved one

There Is No Safe Word. How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades. [Non-paywalled link. Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and sexual assault and emotional/sexual abuse.]

FANFARE THIS WEEK... New movies: everyone's Criterion Closet buddy Pamela Anderson stuns in The Last Showgirl; "Holocaust tours, with lunch" in A Real Pain; a Hungarian-born architect immigrates to the US in bladder-busting 215 minute epic The Brutalist; running, quips in hit sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 3; a biopic of UK pop star Robbie Williams with a CGI chimp in the title role in...

[Content Warning: a lot of blood, brief glimpses of body horror, there is an image of a character in one film starting to be enveloped in flames.] Indiewire's chief film critic, David Ehrlich presented his annual, and expertly edited, montage of his 25 Best Films of 2024 (Vimeo).While not completely corresponding to the video's 25 films, Indiewire team of critics argued these as their...

Did you even consider every possible lived experience before recklessly posting your chili recipe on social media?

(slCBC) The Canadian government announced on Oct. 24, 2024 that it is scaling back on immigration targets for the next three years, immediately cutting 2025's target by 21 per cent, and more for the years after. The number of temporary residents, including international students and foreign workers, will also be considerably reduced.

This is important: We exist in time. Whenever someone is born, it opens a window into time, a glimpse of the universe that stretches from the moment your eyes first blink open until they finally shut. This is about to be your window. (WaPo column by Alexandra Petri, gift link)

"The Heavenly Music Corporation". "Swastika Girls".Julian Cope: "A boundless album of fulfilled vision, and the most psychedelic impressionist painting I've ever heard." Robert Fripp: "It's also very, very sexy. If you're on a hot date - and I'm assuming now we're speaking to younger members of the public - perhaps try playing side one."

What sort of noises do you make? Do you make music like Alice Coltrane? Are you a cross-linguistic onomatopoiea fan? Or are optical sound effects more your thing? Ever enter a yodeling contest, like they have at the Iowa State Fair? Or is the groan more your thing, as with groaning boards, groaning ghosts, or plain groaners? Perhaps your noises are more fundamental? There's...

The secretive annual migration of Christmas Island's blue crabs. You've heard of the Christmas Island red crab migration. But what about the blue one? Christmas Island's blue crab migration is low key, even for locals. The blue crab species Discoplax celeste is only found on Christmas Island. It is one of more than 20 species of land crab on the island. The blue crab...

Blaming nature or the climate for disasters deflects responsibility. It is largely human influence that produces vulnerability. Pointing the finger at natural causes creates a politically convenient crisis narrative that is used to justify reactive disaster laws and policies. For example, it is easier for city governments to blame nature instead of addressing human-caused social and physical vulnerability. A deflection of responsibility also leads...

Star Trek: Section 31 is about the most dangerous idea in Trek canon . Mary Sue founder Susana Polo writes, "either Section 31 is a betrayal of everything the Federation stands for, or the Federation isn't utopian.".

Infinite View, Shuffle View, and Catalogue View are three ways to explore the Public Domain Image Archive recently announced by The Public Domain Review. Coverage at Open Culture and Hyperallergic. More details about the project. Bluesky account to follow for updates. Also at The Public Domain Review this week: "The public airing of grievances continues in the next and final issue of 391 ......

So, you want to demonstrate the speedrunning of one of the greatest arcade racing experiences ever, but there's a small problem with the music licensing. The answer - speedrun Crazy Taxi with a live band doing the backing. (SLYT)

The Transcendence of Turiya: Alice ColtraneAlice Coltrane: the high priestess of spiritual jazz 1970 documentary 1981 interview and performance with Marian McPartland Or just listen to this.

Kate Wagner (many prevs), of McMansionHell and many other projects, is not feeling optimistic about the future of journalism. "Really, what other word is there to describe what is coming our way than atavism? I don't feel like waxing poetic about the good old days of getting work because there is enough of that and those days are over. The only way out of...

The latest from Dan Olson (previously, and previously, and previously, and etc.) is "a True Story of Fake Fossils" - discussing how fossil hunter Roland Bird's chance discovery of some obviously-faked "fossilized human footprints" in 1938 lead to both a major discovery of actual dinosaur footprints, as well as a major expansion of creationist science.Fair warning that like all Dan Olson's recent works, it's...

Joi Massat has collected every cartoon show bible they could find on archive.org and collected them here. Some of these were used to pitch their shows, some were used during production, but all offer an insight into the making of their shows. A handful of highlights (many more links at the site and inside this post): Adventure Time, Dungeons & Dragons, He-Man internal and...

In an interview with Bloomberg, outgoing San Francisco Muni director Jeffrey Tumlin discusses his experience with autonomous vehicles as part of his role managing SF's transit systems. (SLBloomberg)Overall, Tumlin feels that robotaxis have produced no real benefit overall for SF transit as a whole, and serve to displace the use of public transportation both in ridership and funding. He also notes that with autonomous...

Now, see this colored chart? Represented by about twenty-five colored lines is a diagram of my life. Gray is for vagueness. Everything, for me, has to be put in diagram or spatial form. The chart is a means of remembering. from A Diagram of My Life by Gerald Murnane [The Paris Review; ungated]