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Amansara Fruit bowl by boydiz (cc by)

I sold a kind of lame coffee table (that I bought at a thrift store for 50 cents) for $50 using the fruit trick. I sold a cheap, scraped and scuffed Ikea pressboard endtable that I got for free for $10 using the fruit trick. I even made five whole bucks selling a fucking used tire that I pulled out of the lake using the fruit trick. (Yes, I put a goddamned bowl of fruit on top of the tire. Yes, I made sure to state that the bowl of fruit was not for sale. Yes, I clearly stated the provenance of the tire.)

phunniemee discusses the best way to sell things more effectively on Craigslist.

Pharmacy by Army Medicine (cc by)

There are many reasons, but the primary one is that the massive series of mergers and buyouts in the pharmaceutical industry over the past ten years has meant that companies have consolidated their manufacturing facilities. Where in the past you might have had six or seven companies manufacturing a certain drug in eight or ten factories around the country, you now have one or two companies making it at two or three sites. If one of those sites goes down do to equipment problems or regulatory shutdown for improper safety standards (that's what happened to Novartis -- they got hydrocodone in their Excedrin bottles, allegedly), that means the other sites (if any) can't keep up with the increased demand.

RockSteady explains why we're seeing more and more prescription drug shortages lately, and why it's a big problem.

Haunted House by Sean MacEntee (cc by)

In short, it describes the interwar period as formative for creating the idea of the Gilded Age mansion as a place of mongrel (sic) agglutination in architecture and interior design, thus impure, and a sign of the excesses of the time, anti-industrial and anti-progress. In addition, there remains the idea of the grand old family and the secrets, hidden unhappiness, and isolation which may have remained in the childhood memories of artists creating in a post-WWI era - which has its own Zeitgeist, a combination of glitter and ennui/angst, both meanings of decadence. So by the 1930s the decrepit mansion 1. was actually decrepit when seen and 2. was not appropriate in several ways by economic/socio/cultural standards.

Citations and conjecture about why the Victorian house is always where the monsters live.

Page 66 - Orchid specimen, article on Dr. Chapin's mission by Smithsonian Institution

Fame is not that important to historians. Famous people's lives are generally well documented in sources other than a journal - newspapers, proceedings, parodies, letters, legislative records, etc. PRivate people's lives are, in fact, a lot harder to find out about and lot more interesting to people practicing history today. What we know about events like the Civil War or even World War II, life aboard an American whaleship or on the frontier, we mostly know by the writings of non-famous people who simply observed and recorded the detail of daily life.

At some level it's impossible to say what historians of the future will find important and interesting about our time, and it will change, anyway. Diaries of non-famous people were scoffed at for a long time before they began to be taken seriously as sources of historical evidence. But I think there are some general principles.

Miko gives an in-depth answer from a historians perspective.

soldiergrafitti3 by dkmonkey

My ancestral home was requisitioned by the US army to house many soldiers. My great-grandmother cooked for them and became fond of many of them. Enclosed is a sample, I know it is difficult to read but it says: "Edw Clark 9cd Co. 114th US INf, Camp McClellan, Anniston Ala. In nov, in Berlin."

I wanted to send these inscriptions left by their ancestors while serving in that horrible war, but have not been able to trace anyone, unless I am willing to pay for a research service. I do not know the hometown of these soldiers in the US. Camp McClellan, in Ala, was formed in 1917, so I should be able to obtain enrollees names and details, but no success.

A mystery AskMe with a very happy ending.

Playing with cameras by magicmonkey (cc by)

MeFite yeolcoatl offers a suggestion about how to politely and respectfully tell people to put away their cameras during a wedding ceremony.

Since I study tea ceremony, I talked about the idea of ichi-go ichi-e (one time one meeting): the idea that this moment with these people will never happen again, and that that the moment should be experienced, because the feeling of looking at pictures you can have over and over again, but the feeling of being in this moment cannot ever be recaptured. I mentioned the professional photographers and that we could trust these experts to do their job, and then I asked them to put away their cameras and turn off their cellphones and invited them to share the experience of the moment with the bride and groom.

Dancers on The Judy Garland Show (1964) A few illuminating answers to a question about why some old Twilight Zone episodes can look especially creepy. Meet the term, and the MeFite, orthicon halo.

The cat is off the ledge!

I grew up without cable, and am pretty much ignorant of everything but the "classic" music videos from the 80's; please let me know what I'm missing.

An awesomely generated list of 80s videos from Ask MetaFilter. Now with playlists!

Part 1 | Part 2

Maria Callas (La Traviata)

Madamina and others outline bel canto singing to help us understand a scene in The Fifth Element.

Punchlines without jokes (cc by)

My father passed away this morning. I'm going through his file, and I came across JOKES.TXT ... which contains only the punchlines. Can the Mind please tell me the jokes?

Turns out, it could.

Rice Pudding by bgreenlee (cc by)

I ate a lot of rice pudding in WW2. Where did the rice come from?

Vintage Lion Coffee Ad by thegraphicaddict (cc by-sa)

In an AskMe trying to track down a coffee press from a screen shot MsMolly one of our local librarians, tracks down an amusing letter to the editor from an 1814 coffee nerd.

Little People 1 by bdebaca (cc by)

"I am really good at sexing small mammals." and many other job-related superpowers that MeFites have obtained.

Mutter Museum by John H. Kim (cc by)

"What other unconventional places in the world feature an equivalent mix of amazement, craziness and depth?"