Favorites from Fizz
Subscribe:
Displaying post 201 to 250 of 3073
Making A Life Out In The Wasteland
It's a hostile world, but you're determined not just to survive, but thrive. Come meet The Weird and Wonderful Fans STILL Playing Fallout 76 [43m], an MMO game panned on its release but years later is home to Elizabethan actors, any number of outlaws, and even a cannibal cult (in a world where death is irrelevant). Even in the irradiated wastes, community will be found.
Time Management for Freelancers
[ADHD Filter] I started working as a freelance editor earlier this year, and I've been pretty successful so far. However, I'm still working out the angles when it comes to work/life balance (see snowflakes below the fold). Freelancers of Metafilter: regardless of your industry, what practical steps do you take to manage your freelance workload so that you maintain a steady stream of work and income, but aren't consistently overwhelmed?
"Turn it into a k-k-kaSLAM!"
Atlanta comedian Mark Kendall pitches an ad for Craig's Bronze Bron Barn, an opportunity to own statuary in the likeness of LeBron James AND to recontextualize Confederate monuments! A win-win!
Cooking with a Cheiranthus cheiri
Hi!Welcome to my site! My name is Andrea, and I'm a registered dental hygienist, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a major obsession with food as you can probably already guess. Stay, browse, and I hope you'll find something you'll want to try.
Better approaches to posts about trans people and transphobia
We need to talk about how trans issues are handled on MetaFilter.
It's just a silly name that I came up with on the bus!
Despite its tagline of "A Heartless Card Game", Abandon All Artichokes is a cute game with a twist on the deck-building mechanic -- you are given a pile of 10 artichoke cards, and the winner is the first player to draw a five-card hand with no remaining 'chokes. Game designer Emma Larkins takes us through the entire process of creating the game, from idly writing down goofy titles on the bus to getting a shout-out as a "brilliant game" [Forbes] at the New York Toy Fair.
Baby carrots are not baby carrots
Baby carrots are not baby carrots (Washington Post): They're milled, sculpted from the rough, soiled, mangled things we call carrots, and they serve as an example, though perhaps not a terribly grave one, of how disconnected we have all become from the production of our food. In Case You Didn't Already Know, Baby Carrots Are A Big Fat Lie (HufPo): In fact, baby carrots were originally one farmer's ploy to sell more carrots. The late Mike Yurosek, a California carrot farmer, invented baby carrots in 1986 because most full-grown carrots were too ugly to sell. The Origin and Evolution of Baby Carrots (World Carrot Museum):
Real baby carrots (miniature version of full size) are what they are, about 3 or 4 inches in length. Baby "style" cut carrots (those whittled down from larger carrots) started off by the "inventor" as being approx 2 inches in the 1980's, and have remained so, more or less, ever since. Why Are Baby Carrots Always Wet? (MEL): Water is literally added to the bag. Without it, the carrots would dry out. Baby Carrots – 3 Myths You Need to Know (Craving Health): Myth: Baby Carrots are unsafe to eat because they are soaked in a toxic chlorine bath.
“...it’s a chaotic, desperate age and therefore has to produce art.”
Ben Wittes and Kate Klonick of LawFare interview Renaissance historian, science fiction writer and anime consultant Ada Palmer on their YouTube channel In Lieu of Fun.
“Tell your friends that the Vikings are gay”
Vikings Are Gay
is a podcast about Norse culture and history from a queer perspective by Old Norse scholar Amy Jeffords Franks. Besides an introductory episode, so far she’s touched on the subjects of bottom shaming and female magic, Odin’s gender, Thor having to act the role of the bride, and an episode in response to Black Lives Matter about the links between Viking studies and white supremacy.
Metafilter Podcast Guests
Has there been any consideration given to inviting Mefites to join in on the monthly podcasts? It would be fun to hear from many of our community members about anything ranging from their FPPs to their own experiences on Metafilter. I wanted to put this out to the community so that others here have an opportunity to give their input.
Dark days for democracy in Hong Kong
Massive protests last year in Hong Kong (previously, previously, previously, previously) succeeded in getting an extradition bill scrapped. But now the Beijing government has passed a sweeping security law for Hong Kong which has led to immediate arrests, the purging of social media accounts and disbanding of protest groups, support from businesses including British banking giant HSBC, and fears that the new law covers everyone on earth. If you've been critical of Chinese or Hong Kong authorities, some legal experts are saying, don't board a Cathay Pacific flight or travel to countries which have an extradition treaty with Hong Kong.
Contracirculation
On rewriting the terms of engagement with images of Black suffering.
Images of Black suffering, death, and protest have widely circulated on the internet before: for example in 2012 after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman, or in 2014 after Michael Brown was shot in the back by Ferguson police officers. One difference this time is that it’s not just that people who already saw themselves as activists who have called their online followers to take to the streets and participate, but formerly nonactivist users have become politicized and seized upon the feed as a politicized space to engage in an activism of their own.
Movie: Certain Women
The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.
The Tony Hill Rig
In 1984, filmmaker Tony Hill created a contraption, the 'Satellite Crane', to revolve a camera around a subject. He used it to create an experimental film, 'Downside Up', and a music video for Cabaret Voltaire: 'Sensoria'.
Intergalactic Fishing
Intergalactic Fishing (PC) is "a fishing RPG that makes use of procedurally generated content and graphics. Travel to lakes all over the universe and catch unique fish, explore uncharted lakes and sell data, complete quests, upgrade your gear, compete in fishing tournaments, design your own lures, and more!"
A better world than this is possible
The Republican Choice
- "How a party spent decades making itself white."
"Why don’t we have space to do longform?”
The Messengers: One Small Magazine’s Fight for the Indian Mind (The Virginia Quarterly Review): "The implications, if true, meant major election fraud in the world’s largest democracy. Did they want to look into it? Jose glanced at me, almost helplessly. He had never imagined that his little magazine, with limited funding, a staff of thirty-eight people, and an inclination toward fiction and poetry, would ever become one of the only outlets breaking major, sensitive political stories in a country of over one billion people. “This is the job for leading newspapers and weeklies, but nobody was stepping in to cover them,” he told me after hanging up the phone. He couldn’t help but feel obligated. “How are you supposed to respond to stories which are journalistic but nobody else is doing them?”
The Power of Olive Morris
Today's Google Doodle celebrates what would have been the 68th birthday of Olive Morris, a community leader and activist in the feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s in the UK.
Alicia Keys -- Tiny Desk Concert
If you want to be Happy, if you want to feel Joy, if you want a blast of Pure Art and Beauty, see this video.
I'd never heard her name prior to seeing this Tiny Desk Concert mentioned on Kottke.org but I trust that most Tiny Desk Concerts are at least interesting and often spectacular. (Hello Adele.) So I staggered over there yesterday afternoon and my internet connection kept flopping so I downloaded it, watched it just before going out on my bicycle ride, couple hours ago. Alicia Keys had tears coming down my cheeks, just such a great artist. She's beautiful but that's easy, what's not easy is her kind of beautiful, smiles that make it all the way into her eyes. And her band absolutely kicks ass.
"...the single most tired Southeast Asian cliche"
In response to this rather tasteless NYT piece on 'Southeast Asian' fruits (that among other things, compared the rambutan fruit to resembling the coronavirus), Twitter user @amirulruslan breaks down and documents the history of western media (NYT in particular) trafficking in racist cliche about Southeast Asia through its food coverage. [threadreader link]
Let's start a Mefi BIPOC advisory board
Hi all, I want to thank you for your patience. After some conversation with staff, I’m going to take the lead on initiating some things that I am hopeful will change the way we handle things on the site.
*I am encouraging this thread to remain a space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color only.*
I’d like to hear from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color about their feelings on creating a community advisory board consisting of 5-10 rotating voluntary members. Our first meeting could consist of drafting community agreements to follow for meetings, creating an agenda with topics to cover, and ending the meeting with a summary of agreed-upon action items. I’m 100% open to suggestions and specificities around the structure of these meetings.
I’m imagining the advisory board as an intentional space and tool for addressing the ongoing concerns of the site. It'll be a space for solutions and changes to be implemented with a transparent and community-focused structure. You all deserve the space to have conversations with each other and with mod staff that produces tangible and sustainable results.
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one—until now.
It’s quarantine day 637 or something like that and a new sport is born...the American Hedgehog Bowling Association...Pepper and Tuck go head to head in 5 frames of nail biting hedgehog bowling with only one turn per frame so every pin counts....who can knock down the most pins? Don’t worry, it’s totally safe and not what you may be thinking....Check it out and comment if you’re Team Pepper or Team Tuck!
Hard Lads
Hard Lads is a new, free downloadable masculinity simulator by Robert Yang (Windows, Mac, Linux). Based on the viral video British lads hit each other with chair, Yang describes how his game echoes it in revealing “how straight mate energy is actually quite fragile ... [and] that queer love is also the force that honors masculine vulnerability, and so only we have the power to reclaim these lads.”
Miss Major is not your token.
Trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy's life and work is celebrated in the 2016 award-winning MAJOR! from Stonewall, to HIV outreach in the 1990s to ongoing support for trans women in prison. The trailer includes this quote from a younger activist on how Miss Major has been genderqueer long before the concept: "Someone will be like 'you're a woman' and she'll be like 'I'm a Wonder Woman. Wonder what kind of woman I am.'" (Film available on demand at Vimeo)
The FDA just approved the first prescription video game for ADHD
After seven years of clinical trials, the United States FDA has approved the EndeavorRX mobile video game as a prescription-only neurofeedback alternative therapeutic treatment for children (ages 8-12) diagnosed with ADHD. But is neurofeedback therapy a reliable alternative method for treating ADHD?
X-Wing franchise: the reimagining?
EA returns space dogfighting to Star Wars. Star Wars: Squadrons (coming Oct. 2, 2020) will have cross-platform support between players on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and VR headset compatability for PS4 and PC. Official Reveal Trailer - EA official site
You will make mistakes. Don't give up.
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.
leftovers of some occult ceremony or just a place where children play?
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.
Bostock v. Clayton County
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."
Drive and Listen
Drive and Listen is a mashup of YouTube city driving videos with the same city's local radio stations. Pick a location, sit back and relax.
How do you get to Inaccessible Island? You probably don't walk.
Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (Wikipedia) are British Overseas Territories located in the South Atlantic and consisting of the island of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha. More than 1,500 miles (2,4600 km) west from the coast of Namibia, and 2,000 miles (3,270 km) east of Brazil (Google Maps), the island group includes Inaccessible Island (Wikipedia), which is home to world’s smallest flightless bird, the Inaccessible Island Rail (Oiseaux Birds). How did the little birds get there? (Atlas Obscura)
Mastery of the self translated into control of the world
The European man who showed command over his own body would surely also be successful in dominating a “savage wilderness”—which was, of course, neither savage nor unpopulated.Postcolonial Bodies: a short essay by David L. Chapman.
Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
Itch.io's bundle for racial justice and equality ($5+)
already includes 1000 projects at the time of this post, with more to come, with all proceeds being donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund.
Not only does it includes indie heavy-hitters like Night in the Woods, Cook Serve Delicious 2, Minit and Oxenfree but it also includes a selection of LGBT friendly games like A Mortician's Tale, Highway Blossoms, EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER and Serre; tabletop rulebooks like Glitter Hearts, Blades in the Dark and Lancer; along with many many other games and software. (Previously)
Eakins' The Gross Clinic: between gore of surgery and sublimity of art
"These last two months I’ve grown obsessed with one American painting: a bloody masterpiece of pain and healing, made in Philadelphia nearly a century and a half ago. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was still a young artist when he completed 'The Gross Clinic' (Wikipedia) an in-action, up-to-the-minute depiction of the vanguard of American medicine that feels particularly relevant right now." Critics initially hated it, but now praise it. Jason Farago reviews the painting, in detail, in an interactive New York Times article
Human Flesh Story: Donuts
How about some weird stop-motion animation: Human Flesh Story: Donuts
Two more sources of old-new and new-new music
If your music playlists or collection is getting stale, here are two more sources for your enjoyment. The first: Terminal Passage on YouTube, who uploads and shares a wide variety of sounds, from Japanese prog Flied Egg (Discogs) from 1972 to modern chillhop from Channel Aria Sound (linking to their YouTube channel), there's something new every day. If you're looking to support Black artists and labels in general, or in the last few hours of this Bandcamp Friday (if you're reading this too late, it'll be back on July 3, 2020), here's a volunteer-managed spreadsheet of 1000+ Black Producers / Artists / Labels, with notes on where the artist or label resides, and the style(s) of music to expect, from well-established groups to up-and-coming artists.
Pietra Dura: Painting in Stone
"Though it’s today one of the lesser-known ‘decorative arts’, the technique of pietra dura is highly prized and widely used, and can be found in settings ranging from antique jewellery boxes to the walls of the Taj Mahal."
Lessons from History
After an Egyptologist Tweeted Instructions on How to Knock Down an Obelisk, Protesters Tried It Out on a Confederate Monument. It Worked.
Art history doesn’t usually have much to offer in the way of practical, directly actionable lessons. But Sarah Parcak, a renowned professor of Egyptology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, recently plumbed humanity’s cultural past to offer some very concrete advice. On Sunday, she posted detailed, step-by-step instructions on Twitter (including a helpful diagram) for how to tear down an obelisk, culled from her research into ancient Egypt. (For every 10 feet of monument, you need 40 or more people; use rope attached to a chain; everyone should wear gloves; pull hard in unison from either side.)
Mental Health Check-In Thread
As eluded to by the most recent podcast, it has indeed been a rough week. In cities all over the US and the world, the hits just keep coming, and not just from COVID-19. I know personally that it is taking a toll on me and I didn't see another thread that wasn't location-specific, so I am opening this up to anyone and everyone that needs someplace to vent and share their joys and struggles as the world convulses under the weight of fascism and pestilence and the ongoing fight to eliminate both. Be kind to each other. We are all hurting.
ABOUT... FACE!
Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men.
The evolution of The Punisher, big trucks, and militarized toxic masculinity as an illustrated webcomic.
Resources for Anti-Racism/BLM Activism and Funding
Lets's share links and spread the word on anti-racism community resources and anti-racism fundraising. I've seen some fantastic threads on Twitter that cover some of this, but it would be useful if Mefites could aggregate links for their local bail bond/mutual aid funds, as well as links to protest/anti-racism toolkits from around the world. Here's a great list of mutual aid funds (Threader link of an original Twitter thread, for easier reading).
This post should serve as a catch-all thread for a broad range of resources that will enable and embolden Mefites to get involved in the continuous work that is anti-racism activism, whether they're protesting in-person, donating from home, or want to help in other ways if they're unable to protest in-person or donate.
"Much requested walk around of my 48 square feet of woodshop hacks"
8x6 Tiny Workshop Tour (Youtube): A calming, 15-minute walkthrough of a woodworker's tiny, immaculately organized workshop
"The difficult challenge is figuring out why they do it."
Inside every dog there’s a hero waiting to be unleashed, or at least, that’s what we’d like to believe about our canine companions. New research suggests dogs truly want to rescue us when we’re in a bad situation, but they have to know how to help. […] At the same time, however, the new study still leaves us wondering if their heroic actions are prosocially motivated or if their behaviors are driven by other factors.
Resources for Parents on Talking to Children About Racism & Violence
Difficult conversations with children have to happen.
A resource list for parents (caregivers, teachers, therapists, etc) around speaking plainly with children about race, racism, and racialized violence.