Best Of MetaFilter

My toddler has a set of animal magnets that include a snail, a cow, a beaver/woodchuck thing, a sheep, another sheep, a goat, and... a purple blobby thing. What the hell kind of animal is this?

Dragon Scream by Brandon James Scott (cc by-nc-nd)

Want to hear Mefites hiss and spit over sins of omission (and inclusion!) in another "best books" thread, and pick up some great member reading recommendations along the way? Check out the thread on The 51 Best Fantasy Series Ever Written. (tip of the wizard hat to y2karl for the title)

In other news, Space Journey Walrus makes an entrance in a thread about some Very Serious Developments Indeed in the aftermath of "this year's kerpupple surrounding the Hugo awards," soon acquiring form (and fashion) and narrative arc. What strange new realms await our hero?

Ramses condom package design

Ramses condoms are named after Ramses II, who had almost 160 children. Condoms are kind of all about preventing lots of kids ... And the Trojans famously let a large object inside their city which discharged a swarm of invaders that destroyed it. Again, isn't this exactly the opposite of what a condom should do? – Sangermaine

Arousing, spacey, spicy and dashing design recently on Mefi: Vintage condom package designs; An extravagant symbol of a man who can’t hide his true nature – A brief history on Spats; Taxi Fabric connects young Indian designers with taxi drivers; When Airlines Looked Cool and Showed It, posters from flying's golden age; In the '70s, NASA commissioned a redesign of their "meatball" logo... unfortunately a lot of NASA engineers hated it. And of course, Mefites weigh in on the Google logo redesign.

and in the Green: Who originated the ubiquitous laser/neon grid design of the '80s?; Cool examples of generative art?; How can I make beautiful Powerpoint Slides?; "The best way I can describe it is 'whimsical'" – Where can I get more plates like this?

Delia Derbyshire

A polyphony of music past recently in the blue:

11+ documentaries on the history of electronic music; Larry Chung talks about and plays a 1934 Gibson L-5; A three-hour mixtape of Goth history, nearly 50 tracks of early-to-mid eighties Goth classics; Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1980s; Anton Karas plays the Theme from the Third Man, on zither; Using Spotify plays to quantify how old music has stood the test-of-time; "massive chords of intemperate savagery" – the strange story of Jón Leifs' Organ Concerto; great highlights from This is Tom Jones, a variety show that ran from 1969-1971; "Old Weird America", you say? I got some right here for ya

flying high by Kalexanderson (cc by-nc-nd)

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