Best Of MetaFilter

Photo by Wendy Laurel at Lomography Magazine

Film soup is an experimental analog photography technique where you soak a roll of film in different liquids to add fun, crazy colors and effects: oulipian's post Recipes for Rainbows from last month.

A robot draws itself, by OpenAI's DALL·E 2

Please do not miss Rhaomi's Opus DALL·E 2 on "the extraordinary new AI that creates anything you can imagine in a matter of seconds," including examples, explainers, demos, other projects and breakthroughs, fun stuff, deep fakes and more from the new age of synthetic media that will "hit you like a digital blitzkrieg."

cake house by masha_k_sh (cc by-nc-nd)

Oh, look, the new Mefi newsletter has a name! And a second edition! Whee! 📰

Also, the latest Metatalktail Hour asks members to tell the least plausible story about yourself, and it's so, so great. 🕴🏼

Also, also, don't forget, it's the second theme week of August fundraising month, and this time around, we want to see some sweet, sweet art (any interesting art find that you like, in any medium). Search tags for "sweetart" to see what people are posting, and/or tag your art-themed post with "sweetart." 🍭

Yale Art Gallery - Heart by m01229 (cc by)

Weird Science theme week has ended (see all the excellent weird science posts here!), and for the second theme of our August fundraising month, Sweet Art week has begun! Please help us make a spectacle of ourselves by posting all your favorite arty sites, works, and stories. 💖

ocschwar's A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors

This stuff is crazy, it's like someone found a alien spaceship in the desert and hooked the warp engine to its own tailpipe to answer questions about the universe. — RobotVoodooPower

Cash4Lead has posted Alien Dreams: An Emerging Art Scene about AI generated art based on text prompts, and mefites have been dipping a toe in.

screenshot from "Top 100 3D Renders from the Internet's Largest CG Challenge, Alternate Realities"

Animated fabulosity from jontyjago: "Based on the same 3 second model, 2400 CGI artists submitted their own interpretation. These are the 100 best."

by mefi's own elgilito, currently at #10 for Dinosaur Parked on Elephant

It's Mefites vs the AI in not on display's posting of paint.wtf, a game in which participants must convince an artificial intelligence that they are the best artist.

Louis Renard fish illustrations

The Go-Go's: "a kinetic effervescence, with a pulse that shimmered and spangled"; Glorious psychedelic fish illustrations, many of actual fish; Remember those brights spots on the Dwarf Planet Ceres?; All of James Sowerby’s mineralogy compendium illustrations arranged by color; DIY hologram chocolate?; Resurrecting the art of China's dragon scale bookbinding

Moasic Monday : feb 25 by ali edwards (cc by-nc-nd)

carlypennylane asks Where are the Visual Inspiration Websites These Days?

Waiting to come home by mripp (cc by)

Dame posted Retours, "a digital magazine on the intersection of railway history, design and photography."

Filthy light thief made a great post about Denise Murrell's student thesis that became "a groundbreaking show about how black people have been pictured across art history," and which is now an exhibit at Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where French masterpieces are renamed after black subjects.

e-werk_1996-09 by saintsebastion (cc by)

... Unlike the stereotype, we were all straight-edge kids. No drugs. No alcohol, even. We just showed up at the club before 9pm for free entry, drank water all night, and then drove home. The only money out of pockets might be a slice of greasy pizza at 3am. It was a fantastic way to be young for a while. — bl1nk

Mefites reminisce in the Rave Flyer Archive thread.

©REX Photo credit: Everett Collection/REX Stars Wearing The Pink Panther 1993

It's like some 1970s middle class couple one day decided, "Hey honey, why don't we do some criming and heisting? Wouldn't that be fun?" — jonp72

The Art of the Steal: "They were a quiet couple that kept to themselves"; running the jewels (HT: gwint); the world's top art forgery detective; hunting the con queen of Hollywood; how to steal a shark, baby; how to steal it all.

I hear you by Gustav Klim (cc by)

Warrnambool's wombat; NESS not NEZ; Commensalist Lorax; HAMMACHER SCHLEMMER!; Beano of Dundee; Painswick nibbles, pub butty & more; Fox Amoore Stitches; Feierabend, et al; Chicken Diapers; Dada à la Dupré; Epithelial Scutoids; Imperiled Achoques.