Best Of MetaFilter

IMG_1697 by FrancescaV.com (cc by)

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

40 years of Shenzhen, from market village to SEZ

Breaking the Ice, rare Icelandic funk- and soul-inspired music

Central Station, stories from cattle stations in the Australian outback

Georgia Has a Coast? Photos by drone of the Georgia coast that fills his soul

Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran: looking at the lives of women during the Qajar dynasty (1796-1925)

La Scarzuola: deep in Italy, one man’s surrealist mini-city sleeps

Arundhati Roy on the politics of language and translation in India

Beyond 'Florida Man': The problem with writing about Florida

Figures In The Stars: comparing 28 different sky cultures

Pont en Royans by FrenchHope (cc by)

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

Good luck finding parking: "The Precarious Architecture of 7 European Cliff Cities"

The REMAINS of Greenland project is attempting to locate and preserve archaeological sites in Greenland before they are lost to the destructive effects of climate change

Italians Compare the Arrival of Starbucks to the Apocalypse: pjsky's roundup of the unthinkable

Grace's Guide to British Industrial History is a project publishing the history of industry in the UK and elsewhere

"Being Iceland, it gets complicated": Saga Thing is a podcast about the Sagas of the Icelanders

Roadtrip like it's 1966: 1966 video photolog trips of selected highways via BC Ministry of Transportation

No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end: A short video from the British Geological Survey about Siccar Point

Laputa: Castle in the Sky / 天空の城ラピュタ（バルス後） by Tatsuya Tanaka

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

World Jollof Rice Day, you say? Jollof rice is a traditional West African dish, but not a humble one

From the Persian for "eyebrow," Ebru (paper marbling) has a long tradition in Turkey

The villagers of Kannauj have inherited a remarkable skill: They can capture the scent of rain

Au Revoir, Mogadishu Vol. 1 — Songs From Before The War: '70s and '80s Somali sound

Since April 20, 2011, Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka has created tiny dioramas with common household objects as landscape for tiny people, one every day

Chiara Vigo is the last master of weaving the sea-silk cloth bysso and showcases her art at Museo del Bisso in Sant'Antioco, Sardinia

Finnish Beer Float via kaljakellunta.org

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

"Who Killed Captain Alex: Uganda's First Action Movie" was produced, written, directed, shot, and edited by Nabwana IGG from his home in Wakaliga, Uganda for under $200, using real blood and a modified car jack for a tripod

In Cesena, Italy, a year long-project of getting one thousand musicians to play Foo Fighter's "Learn To Fly," in an effort to convince the band to do a show in their town

The annual beer float in Helsinki, Finland just kind of happens (note to self: poss Mefi competitive sport idea?)

Malaysian schoolkids perform choral speaking, a Greek-theatre-inspired cross between spoken word and choir

Kozyndan Nakano In Spring detail

Recently on Mefi, people and places around the world, enchanting, mysterious and magnetic:

The Banjo Bands of Malawi is a video clip featuring three different performances of a certain strain of folk music from the small African nation.
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From the 1920s to the 1960s, German people loved to pose with actors dressed as polar bears.
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LA-based art duo kozyndan posted an immersive "VR" experience of their 2009 Miyazaki-esque piece "Nakano In Spring".