January 3, 2022
"I advise everyone to find an island in this life."
"I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality..." -- — The RZA
Wait, not that island? Or this one, or any of these? [more inside]
The Results of Your Test Have Returned
スーパーマリオブラザーズ
The moral costs of dieting
"But if dieting is a practice that causes a great deal of harm — in the form of pain, suffering, anxiety and sheer hunger — and rarely works to deliver the health or happiness it has long advertised, then it is a morally bad practice. " [SL NYTimes, Archive link] [CW for discussion of dieting methods]
Panel's top picks from the 400,000 audio recordings going public domain
Ten (actually, dozens) Of Notable Pre-1923 Recordings selected by members of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections They even picked out separately a few songs and speeches specifically on social issues (mostly women's suffrage, and the war). If you've seen other highlights from this year's awe-inducing audio trove, please post 'em!
"Garbage gets picked up"
Ashton Applewhite (previously) is a blogger and anti-ageism activist. She was also, in the 1980s, the first person to have four books on the NYT bestseller list at the same time. But it wasn't under her own name; instead, the books were by Blanche Knott, author of the Truly Tasteless Jokes book series.
On the Decoder Ring podcast of December 7 (link with transcript available), Willa Paskin examines the politics of "filthy speech" from the '60s to the '80s and speaks to Applewhite, who undergoes a slow epiphany about the cost of her work.
(cw: racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic language) [more inside]
On the Decoder Ring podcast of December 7 (link with transcript available), Willa Paskin examines the politics of "filthy speech" from the '60s to the '80s and speaks to Applewhite, who undergoes a slow epiphany about the cost of her work.
(cw: racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic language) [more inside]
"It’s like people who try to clone their dogs"
"For decades, only black-and-white photographs of [Klimt's painting] Philosophy existed. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we can see the work in full color. But does the re-creation really look like the original? Does it even look like a Klimt?"
Toddler meets dog for first time
Toddler meets dog for first time due to pandemic
Pee Wee Herman version:
14th month old meets dog for first time.
Pee Wee Herman version:
14th month old meets dog for first time.
URLs, maintenance, and history
"That’s when I first ran across the idea of the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator or PURL ....I guess PURL is the original URL shortener. But it was created not to abbreviate otherwise long and otherwise cumbersome URLs, but to make them more resilient and persistent over time." Ed Summers discusses the history of a piece of web infrastructure developed in the 1990s to mitigate broken URLs and still used by some organizations today, such as the Federal Depository Library Program.
Free thread!
Free thread! No link, no topic. This is an experiment for the new year, a place on the front page to chatter about the stuff that there's no post for or that doesn't really feel like it needs a dedicated post. Come on in and say howdy to other MetaFilter members, share a link, talk about web stuff, etc. [more inside]
You've got to fight for your right to focus.
Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. In an excerpt from an upcoming book, Johann Hari examines the societal influences that are eroding our ability to focus on . . . [excuse me my phone just buzzed] . . . one thing for a significant length of time.
The Speed of Science
Saloni Dattani and Nathaniel Bechhofer on replacing the traditional research paper with something that's living. [more inside]
"This book is just sad."
Is the Human Impulse to Tell Stories Dangerous? Evpsych-influenced literature scholar Jonathan Gottschall's latest book did not impress historian Timothy Snyder much. Leading to perhaps the most sustained dressing down of a literary work since Mark Twain bodied James Fenimore Cooper. [Archive link]
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