MetaFilter

From the Atlantic's In Focus:2012: The Year in Pictures
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Dec-4-12

Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.
Bandar kya jaane adrak ka swad?
...and other foodie figures of speech. A few more to nibble on. Or jump to 27:25 of this week's World in Words to hear butchered renditions of the podcast crew's favorites (iTunes link)
comment posted at 7:23 PM on Dec-2-12

Militants versus musicians in Mali. Extremist groups controlling Northern Mali [previously, previously] have been cracking down on musicians. "Western" music has been banned, but so has Mali's age-old griot tradition.
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Dec-2-12

Earlier this month, British Petroleum agreed to plead guilty to 14 violations of law, including negligence causing death and the Clean Water Act.
comment posted at 7:27 PM on Nov-29-12

A woman wanting a mans-style hair-cut was denied one by a Toronto barber because his religion forbids him from touching a woman he is not related to. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is expected to hear the issue if mediation fails, as a competing rights issue where there is a conflict between two individuals exercising their rights. The OBA (warning, cheesy music autoplay) defends some Barbershops as a men's-only space tradition dating back to Ancient Greece, while others point to womens-only spaces like spas that are allowed to continue to operate while discriminating against men.
comment posted at 7:57 AM on Nov-15-12

David Petraeus, Director of the CIA, has resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair.
comment posted at 5:23 PM on Nov-10-12
comment posted at 5:28 PM on Nov-10-12

A Vast Left-Wing Competency: "How Democrats became the party of effective campaigning — and why the GOP isn’t catching up anytime soon." Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab, has been writing a series of posts on Slate that focus on different aspects of "the new science of winning campaigns".
comment posted at 10:40 PM on Nov-8-12
comment posted at 9:42 PM on Nov-9-12
comment posted at 9:53 PM on Nov-9-12

Exit polls for the 2012 presidential election (CNN). The most likely bottom line from AP: "Overall, 53 percent had a favorable opinion of Obama, while only 47 percent felt that way about Romney. And 53 percent felt Obama was more in touch with people like them than Romney was." Initial reactions among the disappointed.
comment posted at 1:24 AM on Nov-9-12

Finally, it's almost over. Obama and Romney tie in Dixville Notch, Obama landslide in Hart's Location. Interactive Infographic: 512 Paths to the White House. More election 2012 infographics. And still more. How to tell who is winning Ohio. Ohio recount plan could take election into overtime. Gandalf speaks: Late Poll Gains for Obama Leave Romney With Longer Odds. Final estimates from Votamatic and Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium. Google's voting education page.
comment posted at 5:32 PM on Nov-6-12
comment posted at 6:26 PM on Nov-6-12
comment posted at 8:43 PM on Nov-6-12
comment posted at 9:41 PM on Nov-6-12
comment posted at 11:55 PM on Nov-6-12
comment posted at 12:04 AM on Nov-7-12
comment posted at 4:29 AM on Nov-7-12
comment posted at 4:49 AM on Nov-7-12
comment posted at 8:38 PM on Nov-7-12
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Nov-7-12
comment posted at 3:00 AM on Nov-8-12

Murder of an Idealist. "For six hours on September 11, the American compounds in Benghazi, Libya, stood siege. When the attack was over, J. Christopher Stevens's body was pulled from the wreckage—the first U.S. ambassador killed by militants in over thirty years. Since then, his death has been politicized and the details of the attack distorted. Sean Flynn straightens out the story of Stevens's last days in Libya—and reveals the true believer we lost that day."
comment posted at 1:23 AM on Nov-6-12

Richard Florida (previously, 2) speaks to leaders [flash 11mins] of the APEC nations, November, 2011.
comment posted at 8:50 PM on Nov-5-12

Last year, after Halloween, Jimmy Kimmel had parents troll their kids for cheap laughs by telling them that they had eaten all their candy. While many observers, including some Mefites, felt that lying to your kids in this way was being willfully-mean, it garnered 34 million hits on YouTube, so naturally, he did it again. Whether you think this is funny or not is definitely debatable; but if you're an old curmudgeon, like me, perhaps 3 year-old Madeline might just restore your hope for humanity.
comment posted at 8:41 PM on Nov-3-12

Last year, folks speculated that the One Laptop Per Child's plan to 'drop laptops from helicopters to isolated villages' in Ethiopia might mean that someone had been reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age a bit too closely. (previously) They had been, and they did it, and it worked really well.
comment posted at 6:51 PM on Nov-1-12

Hurricane Sandy's proximity to Election Day means that the response to it is highly politicized.
comment posted at 11:30 PM on Oct-31-12

Can't get enough Gangam Style? This will fix that.
comment posted at 2:27 AM on Oct-29-12

"A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary Daniel Ellsberg on the merits of the Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day. Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him, lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party. This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves a genuine response."

Matt Stoller lays out a progressive case for why one should not vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing state.
comment posted at 7:19 AM on Oct-28-12

London's River Fleet may be the best-known buried river, but there are examples around the world, including the Bievre in Paris, the Wein in Vienna (as featured in The Third Man), the Neglinnaya in Moscow, the Tank Stream in Sydney, the Minetta Brook in New York and the lost streams of Los Angeles. Some buried rivers are now being restored to the urban landscape. Why bury a river? Well, Ben Jonson's On the Famous Voyage gives an idea of what the Fleet was like in the 17th Century.
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Oct-24-12

President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will have the final debate of the US Presidential race tonight. Yawning at the thought of a formulaic back and forth, while secretly hoping for a rap battle? Then look beneath the fold for examples of explicit lyrical parodies.
comment posted at 8:02 PM on Oct-22-12
comment posted at 9:35 PM on Oct-22-12
comment posted at 9:42 PM on Oct-22-12
comment posted at 12:46 AM on Oct-25-12
comment posted at 6:33 AM on Oct-25-12

Outlawed by Amazon DRM: A couple of days ago, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. Leaving her without recourse. [via]
comment posted at 5:52 PM on Oct-22-12

"But the technique that all of us in Aden listened to agape was a method that had been developed allegedly very recently, which was to suspend the prisoner in a tank of liquid gelatine which was at 94.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Naked. With your arms and legs tied and your head encased in a sort of diver’s helmet, through which you were breathing. You were hung into this tank, so all you could hear was the [breathing noise] of your own breath. And in theory you would go bonkers. Because you didn’t know which way was up, you had no sense." -Interview with British Interrogator #1
comment posted at 12:50 AM on Oct-22-12

This afternoon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne got on a train from Cheshire to London. Despite only having a Standard Class ticket, he headed straight to First Class, because (obviously) he couldn't sit with the Standard Class herd. So he sent an aide to tell the ticket collector that he was going to sit in First Class, but was unwilling to pay. Sadly for him, the discussion took place right next to a journalist, who tweeted the whole thing. This comes hot on the heels of Plebgate, of course: the protagonist in that embarrassment resigned soon after Osborne's gaffe, apparantly in an attempt to distract attention.
comment posted at 4:40 PM on Oct-20-12

Omaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure every day. "The Dundee Elementary School third-grader comes to school dressed as a different historical figure or character — Every. Single. Day. And she's done that since the second day of second grade, when this all started."
comment posted at 8:07 PM on Oct-17-12
comment posted at 9:21 PM on Oct-17-12

Ever since the first televised general election presidential debate was held on September 26, 1960, between U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, and Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee the vast majority of moderators have been men. "Why haven’t women moderated a presidential debate in the past 20 years, especially when women vote more than men?"*
comment posted at 12:36 AM on Oct-17-12

The Biden/Ryan showdown is upon us.
comment posted at 10:29 PM on Oct-11-12

Nine minutes of gameplay of the upcoming SimCity reboot. RPS has more.
comment posted at 8:09 PM on Oct-11-12

Mo Yan has been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature. A Chinese novelist, born as Guan Moye, his pen name means "don't speak." His most famous novel, Red Sorghum: A Novel of China, was turned into an acclaimed film in 1987. Here are some interviews with Mo Yan: Granta, National Endowment for the Humanities and Paper Republic. Speculation was rife in China before the announcement whether Mo Yan would receive it, and the matter was controversial. For people who haven't read any books by Mo Yan, the Swedish Academy recommends Garlic Ballads [NYT]. For more news over the day, keep an eye on The Literary Saloon and The Guardian's liveblog.
comment posted at 5:11 AM on Oct-11-12

"Two people. I call them "Rummy Couples", dressed allmost alike. The last 5 years I managed to photograph 56 of them."
comment posted at 7:31 PM on Oct-8-12
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Oct-8-12

Recently Confirmed: A Rothko painting has been defaced at Tate Modern today.
comment posted at 8:46 PM on Oct-7-12

SLYT - Two Norwegians mock America for its puny alphabet, with disastrous consequences
comment posted at 1:46 AM on Oct-8-12

Female executives at Twitter, Yahoo and Google discuss work/life balance at the top of the tech industry, how women should negotiate at work, and whether women view job satisfaction differently than their male colleagues.
comment posted at 8:34 PM on Oct-6-12

High and Dry: How Sabrina De Sousa, a former US diplomat of Indian origin, was swept up in the undertow of the war on terror "Sabrina De Sousa was among those convicted in absentia in Italy in November 2009—wrongly, she says, and based only on circumstantial evidence. She was an accredited diplomat at the US consulate in Milan at the time, but claims she was not in Milan on the day of the kidnapping ... Sabrina has argued that she should have been protected from prosecution because of diplomatic immunity. The US government thought otherwise."
comment posted at 9:26 PM on Oct-4-12