https://www.metafilter.com/favorites/all Posts from across all sites, marked as a favorite most often in the past seven days. Mon, 11 May 2026 14:46:33 GMT Mon, 11 May 2026 14:46:33 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 WKRP is really now on the air in Cincinnati as of this morning.

The deal actually went down a month ago. The smaller North Carolina station announced they were selling the call letter rights back in January, and broadcasters in Cincinnati instantly took notice, hoping to capitalize on the fame of the sitcom of the late 1970s.

The deal was finalized in April, and the Oasis team spent a month in preparation - including tapping original cast member Gary Sandy, who played program director Andy Travis, to pre-record some station announcements. And at midnight today (12:00 am Monday May 4th), the station announced its switchover with a continuous loop of the program's theme song until morning broadcast properly began.

The new WKRP plans to keep up its programming for the most part (which already was similar to the the rock roster from the original sitcom - but station managers are quick to say that their DJs will also not be channeling "Dr. Johnny Fever", and that they also DO NOT plan a turkey drop.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213084/Finally-Livin-On-The-Air-In-Cincinnati www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213084 Mon, 04 May 2026 16:18:45 GMT EmpressCallipygos This makes it clear that blindness itself isn't the deciding factor. Something specific about the visual brain is.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213125/People-who-are-blind-from-birth-never-develop-schizophrenia www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213125 Fri, 08 May 2026 01:06:17 GMT chariot pulled by cassowaries The internet you grew up on isn't dying.
A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213108/You-Damn-Companies-Get-Off-My-Lawn www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213108 Wed, 06 May 2026 17:02:46 GMT Leeway In an act of folly or courage, in December 1982 Rodney Wilkinson walked four bombs into South Africa's only nuclear power station, weeks before it was due to come online. On 17 December, he pulled the pins, made it out of the control room, had a farewell drink with his colleagues, and then disappeared.
The man who blew up a nuclear power station and disappeared, a captivating longread by Stephen Robert Morse in The Guardian. Koeberg powerplant bombing, previously.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213101/Why-send-a-unit-when-you-already-had-a-ghost www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213101 Wed, 06 May 2026 06:36:40 GMT Rumple Youtube: Attenborough's Extraordinary Gorilla Encounter | Making Life on Earth. BBC: Sir David Attenborough's special 100th birthday message. Also BBC: David Attenborough says he is 'overwhelmed' by 100th birthday messages. Guardian: Tiny parasitic wasp named after David Attenborough for his 100th birthday. Palatinate: David Attenborough at 100: the man who taught us not only to look, but watch.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213122/David-Attenborough-is-100 www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213122 Thu, 07 May 2026 18:24:53 GMT Wordshore has blinked out at a hospital in San Diego from side-effects of his treatment for cancer. In another world, with different players, he'd have been a candidate for a Nobel gong from any of three different projects ESTs, HGP, or GOS – so fight me.

He first came annoyingly across my horizon in 1991 when he increased the number of known human gene sequences by 50% through the invention of ESTs expressed sequence tags: crap-quality, partial gene sequences that turned out to be, not noise as I complained, but giving a very informative insight into the where, when and wherefore of gene function. The EST Patent created a huge ethical and financial shit-storm at the time.

In the late 1990s, tired of the glacial progress of the Human Genome Project, CV scared up some VC and founded Celera Genomics to use whole genome shotgun sequencing to generate a 'good enough' human genome that could be mined for therapeutic targets. The Wellcome Trust and NIH? (I forget) counter-funded the HGP so that the public project wouldn't get scooped by commerce. Game On! Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would like us to believe that they delivered the human genome at a trans-Atlantic press conference in early 2000.

2½ years later, Venter's subsidiary The Institute for Genomic Research TIGR took, without informed consent, a blood sample from Venter's poodle Shadow and delivered The Dog Genome.

Single genomes being insufficient of a challenge in 2003 he sent his yacht Sorcerer II round the world on a Global Ocean Sampling Expedition GOS sampling the microbial diversity as the went. Shock: despite being continually stirred by ocean currents up, down and around, microbial communities are different in different locations despite similar salinity and T°C profiles. And indicated again how much genetic activity, wherever you look, is due to viruses. MetaPrev

In 2010, he reported the first bacterial genome whose mother was a computer. They created a complete Mycobacterium + genome sequence from clagged-together nucleotides. "+" because, for japes, the team included 4 mystery cassettes which could be decoded to reveal the authors of the paper and various deep statements incl "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life." by James Joyce. The way in which codons coded for English alphabet letters was left as a challenge to the reader. MetaPrev on copyright. Also MetaPrev 2007.

in 2016, Venter was back in minimal instruction set land, knocking out genes from an already tiny genome to generate an organism with only 473 genes (about 10% of the complement for Escherichia "Bloatware" coli) of which a third had no known function . . . except that they were essential to life.

It's been a long journey for a carefree California surfer who was so traumatized as a 21 y.o. Navy corpsman during the Tet Offensive (1968) that he swam out to sea to end it all -- but then reckoned he was more useful alive than dead.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213086/The-Sorcerer-is-dead www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213086 Mon, 04 May 2026 17:13:10 GMT BobTheScientist "If we want to save the parts of the internet worth saving we have to evolve. We have to find some sort of ethical code that says: just because I can do something and it makes money, that is not sufficient justification to unleash it on the world."

Forseeing the future, in 1997 Langdon Winner wrote "Cyberlibertarianism [is] a collection of ideas that links ecstatic enthusiasm for electronically mediated forms of living with radical, right wing libertarian ideas about the proper definition of freedom, social life, economics, and politics in the years to come. Any attempt to philosophize about computers and society must somehow come to terms with the wide appeal of this widespread perspective, its challenges and shortcomings."

Thirty years later, Matt Dugan argues the hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism remains intolerable:

"People did not get better because they went online. Giving everyone access to a raw, unfiltered pipeline of every fact and lie ever produced did not turn them into better-educated people. It broke them. It allowed them to choose the reality they now inhabit."

"If we want to save the parts of the internet worth saving, we have to evolve. We have to find some sort of ethical code that says: just because I can do something and it makes money, that is not sufficient justification to unleash it on the world."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213146/The-Intolerable-Hypocrisy-of-Cyberlibertarianism www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213146 Sun, 10 May 2026 16:05:26 GMT Skeuomorph redesigned her personal library under a strict set of self-imposed constraints.

What's interesting is watching her break her rules, gradually and then completely, over time. (The oldest covers are at the bottom of the Unsolicited section.) The Published and Unused sections are worth your time too.

More covers that didn't make it: designer Nathaniel Roy's A Book Designer's Notebook, where he regularly posts his rejected work alongside what was chosen, and why.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213104/The-Unsolicited-Book-Cover-Library www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213104 Wed, 06 May 2026 13:03:15 GMT Laura in Canada For many people, these outfits are not art but signs of social decay. [a BlueSky thread by Derek Guy]]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213113/Its-notable-to-me-that-the-Met-Gala-gets-compared-to-the-Hunger-Games www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213113 Wed, 06 May 2026 22:39:02 GMT chavenet A single point of failure. A hacking group attacked Instructure, the maker of leading learning management system Canvas.

This occurred around the end of semester for many schools, creating extra stresses and chaos in the time of final exams, projects, and grades.

ShinyHunters claimed to have copied a great deal of private data, then attacked again, demanding ransom for the return of individual campus Canvas instances. As of this writing many Canvas instances are back up, although it's not clear how many were damaged, nor who might have paid ransom.

Instructure's status page and incident report.

Reports from 404 Media, Inside Higher Ed, The New York Times, local KSL.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213133/the-biggest-student-data-privacy-disaster-in-history www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213133 Fri, 08 May 2026 19:59:25 GMT doctornemo BACK is a complete fantasy western webcomic by Anthony Clark (of Nedroid) and KC Green. A woman breaks out of her coffin and meets four^h^h^h^h three witches who send her off to end the world. Comedy and some surprisingly strong action ensues.

It's not new (not even to Metafilter) but I hope I can be forgiven an eleven-year double.]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213130/Three-is-a-better-number-to-start-with-anyhow www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213130 Fri, 08 May 2026 14:59:13 GMT Lorc 5/5 is 5th Element day! Inaugurated as prank during the 2020 lockdowns, SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) repeatedly broadcasts The Fifth Element on its World Movies channel in celebration of ... Bruce Willis, camp, supermodels, alien sopranos, LeeluDallasMultipass, Gary Oldman's confusing accent, trip hop legend Tricky in a minor supporting role, whatever, as a movie it contains multitudes. Join the celebration, put on a brightly coloured tank top, and immerse yourself in the fever dream.
The Fifth Element on FanFare]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213095/Its-that-magical-time-of-year-SBS-Australia-hosts-5th-Element-day www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213095 Tue, 05 May 2026 13:02:52 GMT threecheesetrees Life tip: Hang out more with socionauts. "Our trip helped me realize that the world isn't like one of those games with predetermined levels; it is a game of generated landscapes where the world keeps growing the further you go. You can go out and talk to people and do stuff, and the world opens up vista after vista.

Or, as Werner Herzog likes to say, "the world reveals itself to those who travel by foot." "

"This was, looking back, classic exposure training. I was afraid to go out into the world, talk to people, and do things, so we came up with playful ways of practicing these skills until the anxiety went away."

---

"What all of these experiences had in common was that they expanded my world. By tagging along with people bolder than me, I learned that it wasn't dangerous to reach out to and talk with people and make stuff happen. You could be playful with it. It wasn't dangerous to fail. The TV series never happened, for instance, but it didn't matter, because now that move in social space was part of the game, and we could play around with it and see what would happen (a year later, we ended up securing money to do a feature-length documentary instead)."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213112/To-infinity-and-beyond www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213112 Wed, 06 May 2026 22:16:57 GMT storybored one of the most translated books in human history, and quietly helped teach Italians their own language. [Storica]]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213127/Pinocchio-is-weirder-than-you-remember www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213127 Fri, 08 May 2026 09:44:06 GMT chavenet can we, how can we, live with men after the Pelicot trial? [LARB; cw: rape, abuse, horror]

Gisèle Pelicot, previously]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213123/You-have-to-be-very-fond-of-men-Otherwise-theyre-simply-unbearable www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213123 Thu, 07 May 2026 22:36:35 GMT chavenet Taken ]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213138/You-opened-this-page-It-already-knows-the-following www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213138 Sat, 09 May 2026 14:05:27 GMT NotMyselfRightNow This is one of the best ads I've ever seen [SLYT] ]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213080/Never-just-a-period www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213080 Mon, 04 May 2026 07:25:48 GMT goo a stark new study has concluded.' Oliver Milman in the Guardian, "Point of No Return."]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213093/decades-rather-than-centuries www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213093 Tue, 05 May 2026 11:04:37 GMT mittens Canadian sues U.S. Homeland Security, which allegedly sought his Google data after critical social media posts

Related: Canadians Are Continuing to Avoid Travel to the US, StatsCan reports

Where are all the Canadians going?


Maine tourism suffers as Canadians continue to steer clear of U.S.

U.S. border crossings from Canada down 24 per cent as U.S. projected to lose billions]]> https://www.metafilter.com/213105/John-Doe-was-not-seeking-entry-to-the-US-and-has-not-done-so-since-2015 www.metafilter.com,2026:site.213105 Wed, 06 May 2026 15:32:11 GMT Kitteh
A couple of days a week, she likes to walk to the local Dunkin Donuts to get a beverage before school. Apparently the .9 mile round trip at 6:30 am on weekdays is more than enough time for unknown-to-her older male folks to make her feel super uncomfortable. She reports that there are other patrons at the Dunkin' Donuts that offer to buy her drinks, and won't take no for an answer. Said creepy guys then try to strike up conversations with her, or make "accidental" contact with her. Others will engage her in conversation on the sidewalk, and not respond to any of the social cues she's learned to use to end conversations.

Obviously this is not ok. Physically she can probably pass for a high-schooler, but I don't want to tell her to change how she dresses or acts to appease creepy random men—this is a creepy-dude problem, not a her-problem. As a generally low-intensity parent, this is something that fills me with both confusion and rage. In my 40+ years on this earth, I have never had anyone offer to buy my coffee in line. I don't think I've ever even seen it happen to someone else. But then, I am emphatically not a teenaged girl. My first instinct is to follow her at a distance, wait for it to happen, and then offer to tear off the offender's arms and beat him with the wet ends, but I also recognize that that's a me-problem and not likely to help anything.

I've talked to her about this a couple of times to ask what (if anything) I can do to help, but she doesn't have any specific requests. It also feels unreasonable to expect a middle-school-aged girl to be able to ask for specific ways a parent can help. I can accompany her on her walks, but that's not a long term solution. The cops don't care—this is a big city, there are more pressing concerns, the dudes aren't doing anything overtly illegal, etc etc. This still feels (to me) like a problem that the adults in her life ought to be able to swoop in and solve—but maybe I'm wrong.

So, broadly, what can I do to both show her this is a serious issue that I'm taking in a serious way, but also not smother her or remove her sense of agency?]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389641/Teenaged-daughter-creepy-dudes ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389641 Thu, 07 May 2026 13:07:46 GMT Mayor West