https://www.metafilter.com/ The past 24 hours of MetaFilter Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:19:40 GMT Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:19:40 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 "The largest clean energy investment in North American history, let's just put this in context...that's more than the entire generating capacity of BC hydro. It's more than double the output of Bruce Power, the largest nuclear plant on this continent. It is the equivalent of 18 Hoover Dams" - PM Carney.

The deal will see Federal investment help build the generation and transmission infrastructure to triple power production at Churchill Falls, build transmission lines, develop complimentary wind power infrastructure, and partner with the Innu Nation of Labrador. More on the Churchill Falls Generation Station and it's messy history. Press releases: Federal Gov't, Newfoundland & Labrador, Hydro-Quebec CBC: New Churchill Falls agreement could have bigger impact than oil in N.L., says financial analyst Global: Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador announce Churchill Falls energy deal CTV: Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador reach tentative energy agreement worth billions Response from the Canadian Climate Institute: "Today's announcement from the provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador and the federal government promises to unlock an enormous amount of new reliable clean power and transmission to the benefit of people and businesses across Atlantic Canada, Quebec, and beyond. This is the scale of clean energy ambition that is necessary across the country in order to meet the Prime Minister's commitment to doubling the size of Canada's electricity grids and electrifying more of the national economy. It demonstrates that positive outcomes can be achieved through co-operation between governments, including Indigenous communities, that drives investment and leads to more interconnected provincial electricity markets."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214199/Churchill-Falls-Agreement-Reached tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214199 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:19:40 GMT mrjohnmuller AtlanticCanada ChurchillFalls ClimateChange Hydroelectricity InnuNation Labrador MarkCarney Newfoundland Quebec RenewablePower https://www.metafilter.com/214199/Churchill-Falls-Agreement-Reached/rss Once he arrived, though, his plans changed.

A copy of the patent can be seen online. Acknowledgement: The Homestead Acts caused significant displacement of Native Americans across the mainland; and this was also the case for Native Alaskans.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214198/The-last-person-in-US-history-to-get-a-homestead-patent tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214198 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:50:10 GMT DarlingBri alaska displacement homesteadact homesteading landpatent patent UShistory https://www.metafilter.com/214198/The-last-person-in-US-history-to-get-a-homestead-patent/rss innovative jazz quartet GEORGE during Covid to address social justice issues by focusing his compositions on people with the name George. Oh, like YOU never came up with any weird ideas during lockdown?

Named after George Floyd and performing compositions with titles invoking such historical figures as George Washington Carver, George Clinton and Georgia O'Keefe, Montreal-based GEORGE uses intricate, eccentric and melodic vibes to inspire thought about art and politics. Keyboardist Chiquita Magic supplements the rhythms of drummer Hollenbeck in this bass-less group, so reed player Anna Webber's tough tenor sax and tender flute can soar along with voice artist Sarah Rossy's outer space vocalese above the pulsing beats. Along with tributes to such Georges as music educator George Lewis and political theorist Henry George, the combo's new album Looking for Consonance also contains not-particularly-George-related material such as arrangements of a Cuban folk tune and a Lebanese pop song to demonstrate the quartet's global perspective. It wraps up with a song dedicated to Wayne Shorter on which the whole band really lets the GEORGE out.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214197/GEORGE-by-name-Jazz-by-nature tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214197 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:21:34 GMT Fritz Langwedge activism jazz Montreal music politics https://www.metafilter.com/214197/GEORGE-by-name-Jazz-by-nature/rss is really hard for some people to hear. Especially where we come from.

Related: How Internet Trolls Helped This Detroit Couple Amplify Their Message for LGBTQ+ Rights & Kris and Dave on Instagram]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214196/I-was-making-things-awkward-but-for-the-right-reasons tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214196 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:11:11 GMT chavenet Detroit KrisCravensHutton LGBTQ Politics Pride South USPolitics https://www.metafilter.com/214196/I-was-making-things-awkward-but-for-the-right-reasons/rss China has successfully tested an experimental rocket retrieval system, state media reported, in the hope of breaking United States dominance in reusable rockets.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214195/China-achieves-first-ever-controlled-rocket-recovery tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214195 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:23:21 GMT chariot pulled by cassowaries ControlledRecoveryOfOrbitalClassRocket ControlledRocketRecovery OrbitalClassRockets https://www.metafilter.com/214195/China-achieves-first-ever-controlled-rocket-recovery/rss Froggy the Gremlin, unhallowed be his name, who would often puncture a talk given by some pompous lecturer or ethnic stereotype. Froggy could appear by "plucking his magic twanger," and disappear at will, but his chief power was his ability to make people do silly things by completing their sentences. Here's 6½ minutes of Froggy's antics. (CW: 1950s attitudes, annoyed animals)

Buster Brown was a comic strip that ran from 1902 to, variously, 1911 or 1923. (It's complicated.) The Brown Shoe Company adopted foppish Buster and his bug-eyed dog Tige as mascots in 1904, and kept using them into the 90s. The company has dropped them now, and has since taken up the boring name Caleres. The comic strip had ended long before Smilin' Ed's Gang began on the radio. Buster Brown in the show's opening is played by Jerry Maren, one of the Lollipop Guild performers from The Wizard of Oz. "Smilin'" Ed McConnell was a religious singer on the radio, but he became best known as the host of Smilin' Ed and his Buster Brown Gang, a footwear-hawking kids show where he told culturally-insensitive adventure tales out of a huge tome titled "Smilin' Ed's Stories." Every episode of Ed and Andy's shows ended with an exhortation, yes, to buy shoes, but also not to forget "church and Sunday School." Smilin' Ed passed away suddenly in 1954, to the inheritance of a replacement host, Western star Andy Devine, who kept much of the format. Both had a couple of extremely annoyed real animals, Midnight the Cat and Squeaky the Mouse, "play music" and "sing." After that, it was Froggy Time. If this bizarre show interests you then you're a freak after my own heart. And if it doesn't that's okay, just know that, some day, everything you think is as natural as the air you breathe will seem similarly ridiculous and nonsensical. It'll happen to YOU. The two Gangs are still fondly remembered by those old enough to have grown up with them, and there are a number of surviving episodes scattered around Youtube. Try searching for "Smilin' Ed's Gang" or "Andy's Gang." For my part, I'm trying to preserve the legend of the infernal Froggy the Gremlin as best I can. TV today is full of buffoons to puncture; will we ever see Froggy's like again? Some extra links: A full episode when it was Smilin's Ed Gang (30m). The story involves Little Fox, the Sioux "Indian" boy with an unsettling inability to use contractions, together with a friend pursuing mostly separately-filmed footage of a puma (or "pewma"). Then Midnight the Cat plays the accordion very badly while Smilin' Ed expresses his unlikely approval. Along the way shoes are pitched repeatedly. A surviving full episode of Andy's Gang (26m), with 'The Man-Eater of Jog, set in "India" and starring Gunga and Rama, Midnight and Squeaky performing Spanish music as badly as ever, and Froggy messing up Andy's card tricks. BTW: the audience with the kids are said to have been added in editing during Andy Devine's tenure, but the crowd's laughter in Ed's time also seems to be looped. The easily-flustered Mr. Gymnasium gamely tries to explain golf, but a rogue amphibian keeps sabotaging him. Another episode of Andy's Gang (34m), with story "The Leopard Hills" set in pseudo-India, commercials that have nothing to do with shoes, but they do have to do with toy machine guns, puppets (possibly Muppets!) selling candy bars, Colorforms and the horrifying Penny the Poodle "by Marx!" Midnight and Squeaky play Oh Beelzebub Suzanna. "Pasta Fazooli" tries to give a singing lesson, I don't know maybe he'll succeed this time but it seems doubtful. More Andy's Gang (26m), there seems to be a conflict around this time whether it's "The Buster Brown Show" or "Andy's Gang." The song about everybody's gotta have shoes has had its lyrics changed to everybody's gotta have a gang. The story is The Monkey's Temple, again in India-ish. The opening clips seem reused here from a different episode. Midnight the Cat's in a sailor dress, but when she and Squeaky actually play it's even more fake than usual. Froggy's voice is different! We also get some Gremlin lore: Gremlins are all magic, and all look different, and Froggy has a cousin, Harry, who's an Orangutan, a real one (though they seem pretty chill), who appears by plucking his "Orangutwanger." It's a fun segment (thought not as fun as the looped crowd noises suggest), shame about Froggy's voice though. Midnight and Squeaky play "Three Blind Mice" in 2½ minutes of the most excruciating television I have ever witnessed. Midnight and Squeaky play "Jesus Loves Me," (2½m) which is the audio/visual equivalent of eating paint. Another of Froggy's battles with Pasta Fazooli (4m) which has the hapless Italian stereotype desperately trying to explain tubas to the kids at home while derailed at every turn by a mischievous frog-god. Here's some more random episodes from Youtube, they're all from 24-30 minutes long: Tiger Shark, Village of the Nets, War Bonnet and The Wild Ponies, There aren't many episodes of Smilin' Ed's TV show on Youtube, but here's some radio episodes: one, two, three, four, five. There's more to find out there, but I think my patience with building links is just about gone. Yep, there it goes. Right out the window. See you!]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214194/Hiya-kids-Hiya-hiya-hiya tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214194 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:30:56 GMT JHarris 50s AndysGang BatshitInsane FroggyTheGremlin megapost SmilinEdsGang television https://www.metafilter.com/214194/Hiya-kids-Hiya-hiya-hiya/rss CORGI ORGY ]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214193/CORGI-ORGY tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214193 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 06:29:13 GMT Going To Maine corgi internet orgy https://www.metafilter.com/214193/CORGI-ORGY/rss Lawrence Gostin: 1) Seeking to Prosecute Fauci Is Disgraceful and 2) Scapegoating Fauci Won't Protect Us From the Next Pandemic

The war on Dr Fauci previously on metafilter.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214192/Scapegoating-Fauci-Wont-Protect-Us-From-the-Next-Pandemic tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214192 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 02:09:53 GMT subdee CDC covid19 fauci NIH pandemic uspolitics https://www.metafilter.com/214192/Scapegoating-Fauci-Wont-Protect-Us-From-the-Next-Pandemic/rss B612 is an highly legible open source font family, designed and tested to be used on aircraft cockpit screens.

Its design makes it particularly suitable for degraded contexts (ensuring legibility and readability of data), with a positive effect on reducing visual fatigue and cognitive load. Particular attention was given to the uniformity of the typeface, whether being used for isolated terms, reading information on a map, mixing capital letters and numbers, waypoint lists, long or abbreviated texts, specific terms and data in the aeronautical field. It is very legible on a Kindle or other reader. There's a mono spaced version too. Previous discussion on Hacker News.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214191/B612-the-font-not-the-fictional-asteroid tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214191 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 01:26:56 GMT furiouscupcake b612 font glyph typography https://www.metafilter.com/214191/B612-the-font-not-the-fictional-asteroid/rss Simon Fraser University's Pipe Band wins the World Pipe Band Championships. The championships, held in Glasgow, Scotland, had more than 200 bands from around the world taking part. BBC Scotland has posted the winning medley to YouTube (7:18 min) CBC YouTube news story (2:11 min)]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214190/SFU-Wins-World-Pipe-Band-Championships-for-7th-Time tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214190 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:53:05 GMT nuclear bessel bagpipes Canada PipeBands SFU https://www.metafilter.com/214190/SFU-Wins-World-Pipe-Band-Championships-for-7th-Time/rss New Spanish nanomaterial cools surfaces by up to 12.9C without electricity [snip]: The research, led by the Functional Nanoscale Devices for Energy (FINDER) group and published in the journal Nanophotonics, is based on daytime passive radiative cooling, a technique that exploits a peculiarity of the Earth's atmosphere: there is a band in the infrared spectrum, between 8 and 13 micrometres, through which heat escapes directly into space without being trapped. A material that emits well in that window and also reflects solar radiation can end up colder than the surrounding air, with no plug or compressor involved.

[snip] The theory was put to the test last summer, with outdoor trials on the centre's rooftop in Tres Cantos, Madrid. After the material was subjected to ultraviolet light treatment that whitens it and improves its solar reflectance, the results came in: on the hottest, driest and sunniest days, the treated surface stayed up to 12.9°C cooler than a sample without coating. The researchers themselves stress that the technology is still under development, but emphasise that the manufacturing process is relatively cheap and compatible with existing industrial processes.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214189/New-material-does-passive-cooling-ie-no-electricity-needed tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214189 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:02:41 GMT aleph GlobalWarming PassiveCooling https://www.metafilter.com/214189/New-material-does-passive-cooling-ie-no-electricity-needed/rss Atomic Robo is a long-running comic by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener. Robo is a robot, a pulp adventurer and a physics phd. Over the course of his long existence, he's faced off with giant ants, interdimensional vampires, nazis, Dr Dinosaur, kaiju, Stephen Hawking and more. Issues are mostly standalone; a mix of the present day adventures of Tesladyne Industries and his historical escapades, so feel free to dip in with any of the links in the previous sentence. Originally released in print, the series has been published online for free since 2015.

Clevinger's earlier comic is the (internet famous) final fantasy sprite comic 8-bit theatre, which ran 2001-2010. He also wrote the short office anticomedy, Warbot with Zack Finfrock.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214188/The-fightin-scientists-of-Tesladyne tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214188 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 18:26:11 GMT Lorc 8BitTheatre AtomicRobo BrianClevinger comic comics FinalFantasy Pulp Robots ScottWegener Warbot webcomic webcomics ZackFinfrock https://www.metafilter.com/214188/The-fightin-scientists-of-Tesladyne/rss #FreeThread.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214187/Free-Thread-Name-your-worst-earworms tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214187 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:00:47 GMT DirtyOldTown earworms FreeThread FreeThreads music https://www.metafilter.com/214187/Free-Thread-Name-your-worst-earworms/rss animefeminist.com] "Likewise, Coco's journey repeatedly demonstrates that there is not a single, universal pathway to knowledge, and the greatest obstacle she faces is not a lack of intelligence or moral character but the simple fact that she was born outside the magical community. Once she receives access to education, she grows into a capable apprentice through persistence, curiosity, and reflection. Her success suggests that exclusion often creates the very inequalities it later uses to justify itself. If people are never allowed to learn, their lack of knowledge cannot fairly be treated as evidence that they were unfit to learn in the first place."

(I have not personally read Witch Hat Atelier or seen the animated version. I don't think you have to be into anime to enjoy this article though.)]]> https://www.metafilter.com/214186/Witch-Hat-Atelier-Who-Gets-to-Learn tag:metafilter.com,2026:site.214186 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:46:09 GMT AlSweigart anime education feminism manga pedagogy witchHatAtelier https://www.metafilter.com/214186/Witch-Hat-Atelier-Who-Gets-to-Learn/rss