Best Of MetaFilter

Posts from September 2022

Nearly Right

Zürich, Braginsky Collection, B247, f. 03rZürich, Braginsky Collection, B247, f. 03r by Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland (cc by-nc)

... The length of the year may have been the first scientific measurement in human history to be accurate to seven significant figures. It took a thousand years of record-keeping to accomplish. Great comment from fantabulous timewaster on the "history that is embedded in the calendar."

09/28/22
by taz

Discussion of Hurricane Ian is here.

09/27/22
taz

"I must be avoiding work"

ConventionalConventional by Thomas Hawk (cc by-nc)

Grangousier in Fanfare with a grand deep dive comment on The Rocky Horror Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, their roots, the zeitgeist, and connections to the wider culture and adjacent subcultures.

09/27/22
by taz

Blame it on Babylon

photo of gold bracelet with seven round light colored soft stone raised relief cameos of the Olympic godsAn Italian cameo bracelet representing the days of the week by their eponymous deities via Wikipedia

The days of the week are associated with the seven 'luminaries' ... A fascinating explainer from heatherlogan about why the days of the week are named as they are.

09/26/22
by taz

Weaving Molecular Art Tapestries

DNA origami arrays imagesFractal assembly of micrometre-scale DNA origami arrays with arbitrary patterns (click for image info)

for us "tiny" doesn't mean 10 inches by 10 inches, but rather closer to 1 micron by 1 micron -- one hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair. To make tapestries that small, we don't weave with our hands, but rather we design molecules that weave themselves, using single strands of DNA as thread – brambleboy on creating "DNA origami" tapestries smaller than a photon in the Tiny Tapestries thread.

09/24/22
by taz

btw ... on the internet someone knows you're not a dog

09/22/22
taz

Recent Posts Flagged as Fantastic

Cake Week begins a new season of GBBO

The Great British Bake Off promo photo of a chocolate iced cake with strawberries on top overprinted with the logo for the show

For those licking their lips over a new season of The Great British Bake Off, episode one of season 13, "Cake Week," is being discussed in Fanfare.

09/20/22
by taz

My eyes are up here

photo of an ancient document including the multiocular O

This thread on the unicode "many-eyed seraphim" multiocular letter O (ꙮ) is heavenly. 👀

09/19/22
by taz

"They wanted to democratize television"

Current TV logo looking like a waving flag with large white capital letters spelling CURRENT on a black background

I was with Current TV from the launch in 2005 through 2008: Molasses808 remembers the early years of Current TV in poorchanticleer's thread asking about how to find user created shorts from the channel.

09/19/22
by taz

Snack Contraption

Merritt Square Mall, Merritt Island FLMerritt Square Mall, Merritt Island FL by Rusty Clark ~ 100K Photos (cc by)

Ask Metafilter reveals that there are more devices for Performative Snackery than one might imagine.

09/18/22
by taz

Last Person Standing

floppy disks for breakfastfloppy disks for breakfast by Blude (cc by)

Turns out the obsolete floppy is way more in demand than you’d think: great interview link from Etrigan.

09/14/22
by taz

Going for the gold
you can almost smell the excitement in the room ... the Mom Olympics Diaper-Changing event as visualized by Well I never.

09/12/22
by taz

There sure are a lot of crickets here.

photo of cricket ball and bat on green grassNot this kind

This being Ask Metafilter, surely one of you knows how many crickets per square foot there are in my part of the world. Please show your work.bondcliff

09/11/22
by taz

"one of the internet's coolest people"

black and white side view photo of Jessamyn smiling in white blouse seated in front of microphoneJessamyn, via jessamyn.info

i have no idea how these people got a librarian wedged into their social media site, or why. * publicinfrastructure.org podcast interview with Jessamyn! (Also discussing on Metatalk)

09/10/22
by taz

Highlighting the best bits from the MetaFilter universe

MetaFilter started as a community weblog in 1999, later added question and answers, then music by members, jobs, projects by members, a podcast, and finally an area dedicated to meetups.

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