Clippy Everywhere (oh god: CLIPPY EVERYWHERE)

barnacles — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:25:18 GMT

"Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries. Naturally, we decided to combine the two." Thanks to Smore, you can now put Microsoft Clippy (or one of its friends) on your websites.

The Last of the Great Chained Libraries

brundlefly — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:01:26 GMT

"On a beautiful sunny day last week, the Turning Over a New Leaf project team decided to take a day off from the office to visit a spectacular chained library in the small town of Zutphen (located in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Built in 1564 as part of the church of St Walburga, it is one of only five chained libraries in the world that survive 'intact'—that is, complete with the original books, chains, rods, and furniture."

Nifty how to get from place to place travel site

nickyskye — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:00:25 GMT

Rome2Rio is a handy travel search engine site where you put in the place you want to start and where you want to go. It shows you the map, the cost of the ticket (air, rail, coach, ferry and mass transit routes), duration of the journey, etc.

The Poetics & Politics of Picturing the World

spamandkimchi — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:11:40 GMT

The atlas is more than a cartographic genre. It is a way of thinking, of ordering, and experiencing the world... In the age of Google Earth, this online exhibition of maps from the 16th to 20th centuries is meant to stir public interest in the history of the atlas and cartography.

$100 Invested in 100 $1 Lottery Tickets

Jasper Friendly Bear — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:33:49 GMT

The thrill and rush of possibly winning started to wear off after about the twentieth losing ticket. Each card had a couple of "Life" symbols on them, and every time you got a second you just dreamed of seeing the third one under the remaining graphite. However it never appeared and never will and it just kind of turned depressing. How could people put themselves through this humiliation and teasing every day of their lives?
The classic criticism of the lottery is that the people who play are the ones who can least afford to lose; that the lottery is a sink of money, draining wealth from those who most need it. Some lottery advocates . . . have tried to defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy—paying a dollar for a day's worth of pleasant anticipation, imagining yourself as a millionaire. But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you're occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero—a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. . . . Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. [via]

It's good to be the king.

Room 641-A — Sun, 19 May 2013 21:19:38 GMT

On June 6th, 2013, Mel Brooks will be presented with the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award, but this post is about his Tomato and Onion Omelette. Bon Appétit talks cooking, coffee, and career with Mel Brooks, Omelette King.

The first time as farce, the second time as panto

MartinWisse — Sun, 19 May 2013 10:42:27 GMT

As Hegel presumably remarks somewhere, all great Tory crises appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as farce, the second as farce. -- Chris Brooke presents a history of "swivel eyed loon" as an insult used against a certain kind of rightwing Tory.

The term has become relevant again when one of David Cameron's closest allies described Conservative Party activists as swivel-eyed loons:

The mystery Tory made the remarks at a party dinner event – allegedly in earshot of journalists – after being asked about the decision of 116 party MPs to defy the prime minister and vote in favour of an amendment regretting the absence of an EU referendum in the Queen's speech.

The unnamed figure is reported as saying: "It's fine. There's really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons."

How The South Kept Slaves Until WWII

blankdawn — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:27:33 GMT

The horrifying, little-known story of how hundreds of thousands of blacks worked in brutal bondage right up to the middle of the 20th century. It was a crime for for a black man to lack employment and a crime to change jobs without his previous employer's permission. It was a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man from whom he rented land. A crime for a black man to speak loudly in the company of a white woman, to walk beside a railroad line, to fail to yield a sidewalk to white people, to sit among whites on a train and, in practice, generally a crime for blacks to be accused of any crime by a white person.

Aliens in 60 Seconds

fuse theorem — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:24 GMT

Animated Aliens in 60 Seconds. (with some barely intelligible NSFW language)

And a bonus Xenomorph.

A taxonomy of high male voices, both classical and popular

rollick — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:45:48 GMT

Men Getting High: Falsettists, Countertenors, Pop, Rock, and Opera

"to restructure your debt is to declare yourself similar to ..."

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 19 May 2013 23:12:48 GMT

Lee Buchheit, fairy godmother to finance ministers in distress

Lee Buchheit, a lawyer at US firm Cleary Gottlieb, has been present at all the major debt crises of the past three decades. His reputation among investors is as a fearsome and aggressive litigator, but finance ministers in distress see him as something of a fairy godmother.

He insists he does not make a moral judgement in choosing who he acts for, but rather enjoys working for the debtor nations. "It's just more fun," he says. "If you represent the lender, your client is tiresomely saying things to you like, 'Why don't they just pay us the money back?' When you're on the debtor side, you can say, 'If you want to get it back, why did you give it to us?'"

Frolicking Through Farmer's Markets Is Extra

The Whelk — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:57:06 GMT

Somtimes a guy just wants a curiously asexual sprite to whimsicaly break the chains of his workaday world for an hour or so - cue the Manic Pixie Prostitute!

"Atta Boy Luther!"

timsteil — Sun, 19 May 2013 01:55:20 GMT

How one episode of a TV show, became a movie.

Take Barney Fife, Otis Campbell, Clara Edwards, Homer Bedloe, Grandma Walton, Darren Stevens 2.0, and the oldest motherfucker who ever lived. You know what you got there?

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency

Miko — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:21:04 GMT

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency

If it's consensual, can it ever be wrong?

MoonOrb — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:58:36 GMT

The panda gangbang took place deep in the basement of the Kink armory, where rivulets of the long-suffocated Mission Creek still trace a path between moisture-eaten columns, and the air hangs heavy with a stony dampness. Emily Witt explores the experiences and motivations of participants in acts of extreme pornography. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic considers "Is some sex wrong even among consenting adults?" [Language NSFW, possible trigger warnings, as descriptions and language are graphic]

A002B19B 0003 A002B19D 0023

michaelh — Sat, 18 May 2013 23:45:26 GMT

A recollection of hacking the N64 with Action Replay and posting about it on Codejunkies with a Dreamcast.

we should not confuse a clear view of the future with a short distance

blue_beetle — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:38:43 GMT

Bootstrapping the Industrial Age So you survived the apocalypse. Here's what would it take to rebuild the world.

Andrea was tall and angry. I was a little bit shorter.

Rory Marinich — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:47:39 GMT

Daniel Handler, best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events and his accordion work with Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, reads a chapter from his novel Adverbs, which made Dave Eggers describe Handler as "something like an American Nabakov". An excerpt from another chapter, Immediately, is available courtesy of the New York Times. Handler's first adult novel, the nightmarishly satirical The Basic Eight (think the movie Heathers with a less reliable a narrator), is also well worth a read (excerpt from Google Books).

Wanna see my power bloc?

SkylitDrawl — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:11:42 GMT

Sexts From Marxists (SLTumblr)

"Cheeseburger" is just a word.

Sebmojo — Mon, 20 May 2013 00:56:38 GMT

Daniel Dennett's seven rules for thinking. "A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That's a deepity."

Popular Posts at MetaFilter

Clippy Everywhere (oh god: CLIPPY EVERYWHERE)

The Last of the Great Chained Libraries

Nifty how to get from place to place travel site

The Poetics & Politics of Picturing the World

$100 Invested in 100 $1 Lottery Tickets

It's good to be the king.

The first time as farce, the second time as panto

How The South Kept Slaves Until WWII

Aliens in 60 Seconds

A taxonomy of high male voices, both classical and popular

"to restructure your debt is to declare yourself similar to ..."

Frolicking Through Farmer's Markets Is Extra

"Atta Boy Luther!"

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency

If it's consensual, can it ever be wrong?

A002B19B 0003 A002B19D 0023

we should not confuse a clear view of the future with a short distance

Andrea was tall and angry. I was a little bit shorter.

Wanna see my power bloc?

"Cheeseburger" is just a word.