MetaFilter

30 years and 6 months ago, They Might Be Giants released their first major-label album, Flood. 6 months ago, a number of accomplished musicians spoke to Spin magazine about what the album meant to them, as did John Flansburgh. In addition, Spin republished their original review of the album, which was much more positive than Rolling Stone's dismissive 2/5 star review. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 10:26 PM PST - 55 comments

Orlando Bloom looks at me soulfully, and I can tell that he’s about to kiss me the exact way I want to be kissed, which is by darting his tongue in and out of my mouth like a hermit crab. His body throbs because he knows how smart and good at making friendship bracelets I am.
posted by MoonOrb at 8:14 PM PST - 14 comments

What happens when a maker (Adam Savage) and a Maths Promoter (Matt Parker) get together in Adam's shop and build a thing? Well it's a pretty awesome thing. Lets skip to the 46 minute mark and watch them complete the build and turn it on and share in the glee... Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Rhombic Dodecahedron with Matt Parker! [more inside]
posted by zengargoyle at 6:08 PM PST - 12 comments

There had been paintings of hell before, showing people (much like the people for whom the paintings were made) undergoing various punishments for their sins. But this painting no longer represents generic humanity. Here, the tortured are marked as white Europeans, being punished by mostly swarthy monsters with distinctly exotic trappings drawn from the newly encountered inhabitants of the farthest ends of the world—all the way down the African coast, all the way across the (Atlantic) Western Ocean, and, possibly, as far as India. And the punishments seem to concentrate on the sins unleashed by the European expeditions, the sins of rapaciousness: lust, gluttony, and greed.

Hell is for White People: A painting from 1515 turns a mirror on its viewers
posted by Rumple at 5:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes about the history of black electoral politics and how its complex legacy of progress and backlash has brought about its end and the start of a new era.
posted by Ouverture at 1:06 PM PST - 3 comments

[T]he beloved children’s television show was shaped by the African-American communities in Harlem and beyond
posted by Etrigan at 12:16 PM PST - 27 comments

A Love Letter to All the Overwhelmed White People Who Are Trying (Medium starred article), from That White Lady who shared the video of two black men being arrested at Starbucks for doing nothing.
posted by sunset in snow country at 9:52 AM PST - 25 comments

MeFite simonw has been building tools to liberate photo metadata from Apple Photos. In addition to machine learning labels (it automatically tags photos with categories as detailed as lemur, pelican and seal) Simon also found an intriguing collection of quality scores, with names like ZPLEASANTCAMERATILTSCORE and ZSHARPLYFOCUSEDSUBJECTSCORE. Come see the most aesthetically pleasing photographs of pelicans according to Apple's fancy machine learning algorithms! [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:33 AM PST - 19 comments

Why Ancient Toys Are Elusive Artifacts (Discover): In the past and today, [adult rituals and children’s play] leave similar material traces. They often involve miniatures, like effigies or dolls, carefully arranged — perhaps on an altar or make-believe tea party table. Both create unusual patterns of debris, distinct from everyday acts like tool making and food preparation. And rituals and play generally occur in peripheral spaces, away from the hubbub of daily life. [...] But over the past few decades, scholars have taken more interest in ancient children and developed methods to identify their marks -- traces left from kids' labor, learning and play. Thanks to this research, we now have some sense of the toys and games that amused children of the past.
posted by not_the_water at 9:28 AM PST - 15 comments

Video Games Have To Reckon With How They Depict The Police [Kotaku] “The depiction of police in video games has taken many forms over the years. Officers might appear as antagonists exemplifying corruption and violence, or as benevolent forces doing their best to protect and serve. Recent weeks of protests against police brutality and racism have upended video games’ ability to depict the police as neutral arbiters of justice, which should make game developers reckon with how they will present the police in the future. [...] But given recent events, it is difficult not to reflect back on how Spider-Man and other video games offer a rigidly positive portrayal of police. That uneasiness, born from the game’s utopian depiction of law enforcement, has begun to crystallize for many. Many video games depict police as purely altruistic, not reflecting any of the bitter reality of prejudice and violence. Those that might not have understood that before are now starting to get it, and that might be a problem for future video games.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 8:55 AM PST - 38 comments

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Gorsuch [pdf], the United States Supreme Court has held that "In Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], Congress adopted broad language making it illegal for an employer to rely on an employee’s sex when deciding to fire that employee. We do not hesitate to recognize today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 7:41 AM PST - 144 comments