MetaFilter https://www.metafilter.com/ The past 24 hours of MetaFilter Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:04:26 GMT Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:04:26 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 A footprint in the sand on the Island of Despair The End of Style: Defoe to DeWitt by Chapman Caddell

On Helen DeWitt and Your Name Here, previously]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213477/A-footprint-in-the-sand-on-the-Island-of-Despair tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213477 Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:04:26 GMT chavenet Argentine Borges HelenDeWitt IlyaGridneff Literature Review Style YourNameHere https://www.metafilter.com/213477/A-footprint-in-the-sand-on-the-Island-of-Despair/rss Return subject to Non-proliferation Policy I built an Amazon Delivery Missile. "...Then I remembered I had this thing called a tap extension. Tap extensions. And with that, I was able to tap the collars and slide them onto the mid tube. Then I needed uh a way to attach the front fins. And so I....". A how-to by novelty artist Sunday Nobody.

"....But there was a another big issue which is a government agency in the US called ITAR which is the international traffic and arms regulations and they're the government agency responsible for making sure weapons aren't shipped around willy-nilly. And this shipment from China, it was definitely going to get flagged. And so the workound that I did was I shipped all the missiles disassembled. And I made sure that the sculptures were fully non-functioning missiles so that I wouldn't be breaking any international or US laws. And that worked."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213476/Return-subject-to-Non-proliferation-Policy tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213476 Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:39:23 GMT storybored amazonMissile diy SundayNobody youtube https://www.metafilter.com/213476/Return-subject-to-Non-proliferation-Policy/rss Ocarina of Time versus GTA VI a 'reborn' version of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (OOT) for the Switch 2. Often considered the greatest, and certainly the most generously reviewed game of all time, Nintendo have long been rumoured to be reimagining the game for the 3rd time, now almost 30 years after its original release. Speculation is rife as to whether the new Ocarina of Time will release on, or close to, its original US release date of 21st November 1998, a date which this year aligns almost precisely with the release of the most expensive entertainment product ever created: Rockstar's GTA VI. As the game industry clears its calendars to make way for Rockstar's entertainment Goliath, perhaps only Nintendo is brave (or stupid) enough to adopt the roll of the plucky David.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213475/Ocarina-of-Time-versus-GTA-VI tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213475 Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:00:09 GMT 0bvious gtavi nintendo november ocarinaoftime rockstar videogames https://www.metafilter.com/213475/Ocarina-of-Time-versus-GTA-VI/rss Endangered turtle found to have survived record-breaking flood Experts are relieved to see the number of endangered Manning River turtles holding steady, a year after devastating flooding in northern New South Wales.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213474/Endangered-turtle-found-to-have-survived-record-breaking-flood tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213474 Wed, 10 Jun 2026 13:24:08 GMT chariot pulled by cassowaries ManningRiverTurtles Turtles https://www.metafilter.com/213474/Endangered-turtle-found-to-have-survived-record-breaking-flood/rss Welcome to the Big Show return to the hosting chair of ESPN's SportsCenter for the first time in more than two decades, and to create a show looking back at the history of ESPN's flagship news program. The first two episodes of This Was SportsCenter have dropped, featuring hourlong conversations with longtime hosts Dan Patrick and Chris "Shelley" Berman. One further bonus was the chance to return to SportsCenter's iconic commercials.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213473/Welcome-to-the-Big-Show tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213473 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 22:32:29 GMT Horace Rumpole ESPN Podcasts Sports Television TV https://www.metafilter.com/213473/Welcome-to-the-Big-Show/rss Helping big personality marsupial recover after bushfires Artificial habitats are giving the Kangaroo Island dunnart a chance at recovery, after bushfires left them largely homeless.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213472/Helping-big-personality-marsupial-recover-after-bushfires tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213472 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 22:21:04 GMT chariot pulled by cassowaries Dunnarts KangarooIsland KangarooIslandDunnarts KartaPintingga https://www.metafilter.com/213472/Helping-big-personality-marsupial-recover-after-bushfires/rss Giving fascists power in the name of protecting children These age verification laws aren't about keeping kids off social media, they're about surveillance, control, and locking LGBT people out of public discourse. It's a fascist power play. Centering Children on Social Media as the argument for mandating IDs to use computers is a smokescreen, so that we're spending time arguing about how to best solve this very complicated problem, instead of talking about all the ways that this legislation will be used to facilitate the abuse of children and marginalized people.

From later in the thread: "[...]Anyone who sees a conversation about how age verification laws are going to cause widespread significant harm to lots of different groups of people and decides instead to talk about how social media is harmful to children is doing the work of disinformation spreading propagandists. They might not *be* disinformation spreading propagandists, they might have just been duped by disinformation spreading propagandists, but either way they are doing the *work* of disinformation spreading propagandists. This is a propaganda and PR technique that is in common use today. This is how it works: Person 1 makes a point that is harmful to the narrative the PR firm has been paid to protect. One or more accounts on the payroll of that PR firm, who usually just posts innocuous stuff but who *always* has an opinion on the topic of the day, chimes in with an indirectly related smokescreen argument, usually accompanied by an accusation or an emotional appeal. Person 1 then gets bogged down with that argument, tacitly approving that the two topics are in fact one topic. Lots of people then see the argument, and come to associate the smokescreen with the real issue. Some of them will be swayed specifically by the emotionally appeal ("think of the children") and some of them will genuinely believe in the smokescreen issue ("social media is bad for children") and accept that the smokescreen is important enough to justify accepting whatever the original post was arguing against. There are lots of these PR accounts floating around out there. They're sockpuppets. They look like real people, sometimes they *are* real people, but they're also sockpuppets. The end result of that is a bunch of people popping in to conversations about Age Verification laws to talk about separate and legitimately important issues as if those issues and Age Verification laws are the same thing. And some of those people might be paid PR Sockpuppets, but some of them are definitely real people who really care about the harm social media might have on children. And so we spend so much time talking about the nuance and potential solutions to this much more complicated problem that the real issue (these proposed Age Verification Laws are actually tools of fascist surveillance and control which will be used to suppress dissent and harm marginalized communities) gets lost." also (responding to someone): "'I'd rather give my 13 year old child a bottle of whiskey than access to Roblox' is a hell of a take, y'all. I'm not here to argue that Instagram or Roblox are good for kids (the opposite!) but 1) these arguments are still just providing cover to normalize laws that mandate sending government IDs to 3rd parties (like Peter Thiel) in order to use a computer or phone, which we have decided to allow politicians to call "age verification" 2) What the fuck? That's a hell of hot take. But! It's *exactly* the kind of hot take you'd get from a PR firm sock-puppet or propagandist who is trying to distract from the issue at hand. It provokes such a clear and immediate negative emotional response that it completely re-frames the conversation away from the very real threat of increased and increasingly inescapable mass surveillance and towards what is more harmful for kids!" Andrew Roach, a.k.a. ajroach42 (Mastodon, blog, website, newsletter) is an interesting figure, who among other things is responsible for New Ellijay TV, a real community television station in the mountains of north Georgia (US) with a strange and eclectic array of programming, much of it produced locally.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213471/Giving-fascists-power-in-the-name-of-protecting-children tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213471 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:45:17 GMT JHarris AgeVerification AndrewRoach children control ID internet law NewEllijay surveilance https://www.metafilter.com/213471/Giving-fascists-power-in-the-name-of-protecting-children/rss It's OK if you're not ready. Maybe one day you will be. Not gonna lie, I braced. I mentally ran through the spiel I've prepared for when someone complains about a display. Especially a Pride display. It doesn't happen often, but it happens enough. Freedom to read. Something in the collection for everyone. Here's my supervisor's card.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213470/Its-OK-if-youre-not-ready-Maybe-one-day-you-will-be tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213470 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:01:41 GMT chavenet Age Books Librarians Library Pride Ready https://www.metafilter.com/213470/Its-OK-if-youre-not-ready-Maybe-one-day-you-will-be/rss PFAS are a problem, micro plastics maybe not so much... A bombshell': doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body
It appears that much of the research on micro plastics has a false positive issue
Previous on the Blue

Good general summary if you would rather watch a video: YouTube video discussion on micro plastics and PFASs: Claims starting from 2019 about the amount of micro plastics are people are consuming and that it is showing up in all parts of the body including the brain: Daily Consumption: No Plastic In Nature: Assessing Plastic Ingestion from Nature to People We consume up to a credit card's worth of plastic *every* week Estimation of the mass of microplastics ingested – A pivotal first step towards human health risk assessment Accumulation in the body: Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains Levels of microplastics in human brains may be rapidly rising, study suggests Worries about false positives starting in 2025: Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics, U-M study reveals Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact Assessing the Efficacy of Pyrolysis–Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry for Nanoplastic and Microplastic Analysis in Human Blood PFAS still appear to be an issue, so it's not all good news: Our Current Understanding of the Human Health and Environmental Risks of PFAS TLDR: A common material used in Nitrile and latex gloves, called Stearates, has been contaminating research on the amount of micro plastics in nature. Also, the most common test used for detecting polyethylene aka plastic can be faulty due to human fat generating false positives. Caveat: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. More research is needed.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213469/PFAS-are-a-problem-micro-plastics-maybe-not-so-much tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213469 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:57:30 GMT KaizenSoze microplastics https://www.metafilter.com/213469/PFAS-are-a-problem-micro-plastics-maybe-not-so-much/rss Strait of Hormuz - the global impact. The Cost of Closing the Strait of Hormuz. "Most critically for food security, the chemicals flowing through Hormuz are essential inputs to global food production—a vulnerability that standard analyses of chokepoint risk consistently overlook. Qatar and Iran are among the world's largest exporters of urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer. The Gulf's cheap natural gas feeds the Haber-Bosch process that converts methane into ammonia and then into the granular fertilizer that sustains crop yields for billions of people."

Also: Helium Supply Shock and Semiconductor Volatility in the Context of the Iran War.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213468/Strait-of-Hormuz-the-global-impact tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.213468 Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:40:11 GMT storybored energyCrisis Iran persianGulf straitOfHormuz supplyShock https://www.metafilter.com/213468/Strait-of-Hormuz-the-global-impact/rss