Posts with Recent Comments
Henry Moore
Gone With the Wind?
Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act... the U.S. wind industry, especially manufacturing, has been enjoying a renaissance. ... That growth is now in question, as just this week, [Donald] Trump stated that he plans to ensure "no windmills" are built during his term in office. [more inside]
The Milestone Society
... was formed in 2004 "to identify, record, research, conserve and interpret for public benefit the milestones and other waymarkers of the British Isles". They have a history of milestones on their site, and link to a more detailed one. Last year members found a stolen milestone listed for auction in Welshpool, and got it restored to its site in Derbyshire. [more inside]
Do Not Obey In Advance
1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom. - Historian Timothy Snyder from On Tyranny with 20 rules for resisting tyranny
Mothership RPG
Brief encounter
You meet all kinds of interesting people on the train. Frederick Joseph, a Black writer born and raised in the USA, writes unforgettably of his post-2024-election trip across country on the Amtrak Zephyr. [more inside]
The Food Ranger
Trevor James, a.k.a. The Food Ranger, has had many Asian culinary adventures, but perhaps none as adventuresome as the DEATH LEVEL SPICY HOT POT CHALLENGE!!!.
Around the world in 180 beans or less
Beans, beans, the musical fruit been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and are mentioned in the Illiad. They were cultivated in Peru as early as the second millennium B.C.E. (Warning: Raw beans of the Phaseolus genus have a toxin (phytohaemagglutinin) that requires cooking at high temperatures to neutralize). [more inside]
Fix Your Hearts or Die!
FANFARE THIS WEEK... A special event thread for live commenting on the US inauguration. New movies: apocalypse musical The End; a queer examination of Kevin Smith's 90s romcom in Chasing Chasing Amy; Barry Keoghan and Nykiya Adams in the social realist drama Bird; and a woman becomes romantically entangled with her stepson in French drama Last Summer. In TV, Severance is back, Silo season two is wrapping up, and Stephanie Hsu's ex-lovers are dropping dead, in order in Laid. Also inside: FF's complete David Lynch wrap-up... [more inside]
Brrrrr.
I'll tell you about turtlenecks. In honor of the Polar Vortex currently hitting much of the US, "Derek Guy", menswear writer (Die, Workwear!, Put This On) and social media raconteur, gave us a short but comprehensive BlueSky thread on the history of the turtleneck sweater and how to wear it in contemporary life.
Sometimes you have to play with your food...
Theo Rooden is an artist who does a lot of work with optical illusions and geometric patterns in weaving. Usually fabric. Sometimes Pringles.
Space is the Place
Everyone Who Has Ever Been to Space, Charted, a set of visualizations by Clara Moskowitz, senior editor at Scientific American, along with graphics intern Zane Wolf. Related: How many people are in space right now?
Nah, let's just skip the ceremony today
It's Inauguration Day in the United States, so let's take a look back with various AP reporters. But if this American tradition doesn't interest you this particular year, here's a few other things you can do today: [more inside]
Some clichés are like planets, their gravitational pull too strong
For all that creative labor across the past century, the English-speaking world has been largely resigned to the idea of middle age as a dreadful, isolating crisis. This is likely due in part to the midlife crisis’s amazing elasticity – the way it stretches to accommodate shifting cultural contexts and the rise of whole new artistic forms. Few other topics seem to lend themselves so generously to esoteric offerings and crowd-pleasing genre fare, to the page and the screen. from How midlife became a crisis [The Conversation; ungated]
you don't say
questions like these tend to be associated with Benjamin Lee Whorf, a fire-insurance analyst who studied linguistics at Yale in the nineteen-thirties. History has been both kind and unkind to him. On the one hand, his name has become synonymous with a theory about how language affects thought, though it predated him by at least a century. On the other hand, the version of the theory often attributed to him is so radical that few modern scholars would want the honor, anyway [newyorker/archive] (previously)
No Chains Can Bind The MeFite! Your Weekly Thread, Freed
What have you broken free from? Have you shed an extra obligation or an anxiety that's stalked you for years? Are you finally putting on the weight you want and having to let go of too-tiny clothing? Have you freed a link? Have you freed yourself from Free Willy? Have you freed yourself from "Free Bird?" If free is not free, is it still free, and for whom? This is your weekly MetaFilter free thread, so how do you do, fellow kids?
Was this useful for me? For you? For anyone? Probably not.
Most Mario games with polygonal logos have a different color per letter, but the sequence of colors in Mario’s name is rarely the same sequence across games. This captivated me—for some reason—and I set out to analyze every Mario video game logo to see if I could find a pattern for specific arrangements of colors and to determine the “most Mario” color scheme: The Most Mario Colors
The Dark Souls of Minesweepers
Infer your way to killing the dragon in Dragonsweeper, a delightful and slightly maddening roguelike Minesweeper-alike in which figuring out the rules is half the challenge. (The other half of the challenge is killing the dragon.)
Leonard Peltier granted clemency
Joe Biden has granted clemency to Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, in one of his last actions as president. Clemency isn't a pardon--the conviction stands--but the 80-year-old Peltier will be released from prison.
Help, my luggage is running away!
Wheeled luggage has become the one true luggage and makes traveling so much easier, but when and where did they come from? And how did sexism affect their acceptance? [more inside]