MetaFilter

Only Italians Will Understand This In a world tipping towards monoculture, it’s not hard to understand the nostalgic appeal of regional accents, local food, and traditions. But when exaggerated to the point of caricature, Italian American culture becomes little more than engagement bait. While Italian Americans have long been generally integrated in the United States, the internet cannot resist the cultural cachet—and hearty follower counts—that comes with emphasizing difference.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:56 PM PST - 86 comments

Asking for Love was a music video made by Egill Eðvarðsson in 1973 for a song by Jóhann G. Jóhannsson, who was filmed walking backwards around downtown Reykjavík, and then reversed to make it seem everyone else’s walking backwards. Now, fifty years later, Guðmundur Kristinn Jónsson and Ívar Kristján Ívarsson have recreated the video with singer-songwriter Árný Margrét, walking the same route backwards, for her song Waiting.
posted by Kattullus at 2:31 PM PST - 17 comments

The tension at the heart of the natural proofs barrier is that the task of distinguishing high-complexity functions from low-complexity ones is similar to the task of distinguishing true randomness from the pseudorandomness used to encrypt messages. We’d like to show that high-complexity functions are categorically different from low-complexity functions, to prove P ≠ NP. But we’d also like for pseudorandomness to be indistinguishable from randomness, to be confident in the security of cryptography. Maybe we can’t have it both ways. from Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge
posted by chavenet at 1:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Mapping where the earth will become uninhabitable. By the year 2100, all areas that are red in the visualisation will become “uninhabitable”. Extreme heat, tropical cyclones, rising sea levels, water stress or a combination of those are projected to make it difficult or impossible to live there.
posted by johnxlibris at 11:05 AM PST - 42 comments

Online merchants changed the way we shop—and made “reverse logistics” into a booming new industry. (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan at 9:42 AM PST - 32 comments

Mulgaras (tiny carnivorous marsupials) return to island home. Mulgaras were one of 11 native animals wiped out on Dirk Hartog Island, off Western Australia, after Europeans arrived. Now the little marsupials are making a comeback, with the help of scientists and Indigenous rangers.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:18 AM PST - 7 comments