~metafilter | Bookmarks (953)

My Unsung Hero is an ongoing NPR series where people tell brief stories of the (mostly) strangers they met who changed, and sometimes saved, their lives.How a stranger's kindness taught a mom to be a 'more accepting person' A husband honors the 4 women who protected his injured wife from oncoming traffic Hungry, cold and alone, a woman's life changed from a kind stranger's...

'Ultimately, Invisible Sun is an amazing roleplaying game. Its production design is breathtaking, and many aspects of its gameplay are brilliant and revolutionary. ... All roleplaying games are escapism; it is a testament to Invisible Sun's creative ingenuity that it both foregrounds its own escapist nature and simultaneously provokes meaningful questions about what a better world might look like — because ultimately, we can't...

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...

New project aims for every Kimberley (Australia) child to speak their grandparents' language. Maureen Deegan's mum had to relearn her own language, Jaru, which she had not been allowed to speak. Now Maureen is helping others to keep their languages alive.

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: Review the MetaFilter guidelines about political and news posts in this new administration Vanity has recommendations on other things to watch. The American Civil Liberties Union suggests...

Under cool conditions, the up-down arrows nudge each other into alignment — all up, say — while the freewheeling arrows point in random directions. As the temperature rises, one would expect the thermal energy to start flipping all the arrows violently, washing out any alignment. But it doesn't. The free arrows pinwheel around more, stabilizing the magnetic order in the up-down arrows. And this...

Only the last iteration of Chic, the greatest rock, soul and funk band ever in its final performance live at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo in 1996. The band died the next day with Bernard Edwards, who was suffering from pneumonia.People go on about Nile Rodgers and well they should but Bernard Edwards was the heart and soul of the band. Not only did he...

"By the time I received the invitation from Rolex Geneva to visit its four facilities, I had been to just about every other factory one could imagine – ranging from those who are simply packaging up pre-made movements and strapping them into off the shelf cases and dials, to those who are still doing everything by hand (but only producing a few watches per...

These sacred artefacts were thought lost forever, but one phone call changed everything. When a German researcher arrived in Yuendumu (Australia) in 1972, the Indigenous community gave him rare access to their customs and culture. Half a century later, an emotional reunion has seen some sacred artefacts he was given returned.

From: 'Make it New', The Ezra Pound Society Magazine', "Gordon Sellar started writing his blog on The Cantos in February 2012. He remembered having read a few in a postgraduate seminar: being a writer himself, with sci-fi and occult leanings, he intended to make Pound the protagonist of a novel. Blogging The Cantos, one at a time, a canto a week, had to be...

Trump has just delivered a masterclass in the ability of a president to turn power into wealth. [Axios; ungated]

Between 1996 and 2002, VH1 had a show called Pop Up Video which paired music videos with trivia and jokes that "popped up" on screen, mostly without controversy. Most of it is unavailable today, but the Internet Archive has a number of episodes taped off televion. Here is a list:Episodes 1, 2 & 3, featuring these videos: Tina Turner, "Missing You"; Sheryl Crow, "Leaving...

Journalist Robert Evans, best known for his sharp, sardonic perspective in everything from Cracked to Bellingcat to Behind the Bastards, live-skeeted his experience of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the annual showcase of the latest tech coming your way (whether you like it or not). Lowlights of the bacchanalia can be found in a series of increasingly pointed episodes of...

"As one of Coltrane's final recordings this duet session with Ali is one of his most essential and unique. ... Coltrane had engaged in earlier duets with Elvin Jones... but in Ali he found a drummer even more willing to abandon terrestrial rhythmic boundaries and set course for uncharted space. Across these duets the saxophonist is at his most visceral exuding an overpowering confidence...

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?I remember traveling before wheeled luggage became common and carrying your suitcase around was exhausting. Today's post is to celebrate the wheeled luggage that we now take for granted! Wikipedia's history of the suitcase History of...

With Amis came a new kind of literary voice, and a public whose taste for it was rapidly inspired. This voice spoke of damage ("Damage is waiting. Soon, damage is going to stop waiting – any day now"), fear ("One of these days I'm going to walk right up to fear"), booze, junk food, pornography, bodily functions ("As I emerged from some X-certificate work...

"TrueFood is a user-friendly interface designed to unveil the degree of processing of food products, powered by GroceryDB, a comprehensive database. GroceryDB is part of a research project [Prevalence of Processed Food in Grocery Stores, Nature Food, 2024 (note:PDF)], that provides the data and methodologies necessary to quantify food processing and analyze ingredient structures within the U.S. food supply. By integrating large-scale data on...

Billionaire couple focus their fortune on conservation — and profit. In the middle of Tasmania (Australia) sits a 5000-hectare property once used for sheep grazing. But when the sheep farmers left, an unlikely buyer moved in.Wedgetail is a private company investing in projects around the world that restore ecologically valuable areas. It was founded by Lisa Miller, who purchased the Quoin in 2021. A...

Max Ochester discovered tapes recorded at Sigma Sound Studios for 'Young Americans. The tapes include an unheard version of a Bruce Springsteen song. He's trying to get the music to the Bowie estate. Back in 2022, when Max Ochester loaded up his car with 15 U-Haul boxes of reel-to-reel tapes he purchased at a Montgomery County estate sale, he had no idea he was...

In an ongoing series of images titled Not What You Saw, photographer Keerthana Kunnath documents a burgeoning community of female bodybuilders in Kerala. Set against common backdrops like beaches, the outside of a traditional Indian home, and lush, green foliage, the collection highlights an alternative vision of beauty grounded in immense female power. from In Kerala, Keerthana Kunnath Photographs the Female Bodybuilders Defying Beauty...

How a Cessna 172 Works A 20-minute animated tour showing the important components of this popular general aviation aircraft, using detailed 3D rendering.