Best Of MetaFilter

They are called P A Y P H O N E S

Are you ... how shall we say? Of a certain age? For the over 50s, what used to be but is no more? People are sharing all the things in Ask Metafilter!

dancestoblue posts about a surprisingly potent technique to boost your short and long-term recall. Just lie back and think of ... nothing.

Ari Braginsky photo on Flickr: Alternative Tentacles 33 1/3rd Birthday Show

I did do a purple hooter shooter last night in his honor when I heard the news ... teleri025 shares a reminiscence in the Mojo Nixon obit thread.

brain mechanics by lady-traveler (cc by-nc)

"If someone tells me something or asks me to do something while I’m already doing a task, I will say “sure” and immediately forget the thing they told me, forever. Since most of my time is spent in tasks, that means I forget almost everything. Please help."

romeo and juliet by sammydavisdog (cc by)

Nice discussion in eotvos's post on the (un?)balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, with an especially interesting comment from ricochet biscuit on one Thomas Coryate, "probably the most influential person on your daily life that you have never heard of but who is still known by name" — and a man who would almost certainly understand the dread perils of modern day Twitter (et al).

Memory by kevin dooley (cc by)

Remembering, Forgetting, Remembering, Forgetting, Remembering, Forgetting, Remembering

ποντίκι / μυς, mouse (Mus musculus) by George Shuklin by dullhunk (cc by)

... this is cool, important, and well done research. But as in most cases, we should be cautious in making assumptions about how broadly it applies

biogeo offers an outstanding, detailed backgrounder in the Turning off intergenerational trauma in mice thread.

Cooking & Eating by ☼☼Jo Zimny Photos☼☼ (cc by-nc-nd)

A digest of recent food culture posts on Mefi:

The Food Timeline, evolution of foods dating back to before 17,000BC ⏳; Maria Orosa, Filipina food technologist, chemist, humanitarian, war hero 👩🏽‍🔬; The D.C. Region Doesn’t Have Full-Time Food Critics of Color. Why That Matters 📰; Archeology of Taste is a project about childhood memories 🍭; Consider the potato: How do you prefer yours? 🥔; The Food Flow Model, a web of connections across the continental U.S. 🚚; What Makes Good Comfort Food? A LitHub conversation 🍝; The most taxing work in the kitchen is brain work 🧠Iceland’s last McDonald’s burger simply won’t rot, even after 10 years 🍔.

If You Have A Bee In Your Hand by thedailyenglishshow (cc by)

Mefite colossal tells a touching tale of bees, and a boy, and a bedroom, and a plan gone very, very wrong in Johnny Wallflower's post The charming habits of bees. (Fair warning: Sometimes our Johnny shares such sweet stories of apian inclinations. This is not one of those times.)

“Eddie Kang: In the middle of, 2013 (mixed media on canvas)” / Gallery Ihn / Art Basel Hong Kong 2013 / SML.20130523.6D.13996.SQ by See-ming Lee (SML) (cc by-nc)

Don't forget to remember to check out Wolfdog's fascinating post on augmenting long-term memory, featuring an essay on personal memory systems by Michael Nielsen.

Butterfly Gold Corelle Vintage by Vintage19Something (cc by)

Did your family have Corelle dishes? "All those memories in the little things like cups and place mats and jelly jars."

NYC Subway 80s by Olivier Nade (cc by-nc)

What was it like to be alive on September 15, 1985? "from the mundane to the profound, what do you remember about that time?"

GRCA 20819 Powell Expedition Journal by Grand Canyon NPS (cc by)

I am no longer simply the kid who wrote those things, did those things. I am that person with years, layers of experience and judgement added to the mix. Something like looking into the mirror, but your image doesn't behave the way you'd like it to behave. Anyhow, my memory needed to be tweaked, and I'm glad I did it.

Several things stand out. I was shocked to see things (written there) that I thought I'd never forget, but had. Also, some of the memories I carried never happened to me--they were things someone else told me, and I had internalized them. More subtle slippage, in that sometimes I wrote several page of bullshit--not lies, just circumscriptions, soldierly evasions, using standard war-story phrases--while trying to say something, and that something never quite made the trip from my mind to the paper. Yet thirty years later I could see between the lines. I know what I couldn't say then. It it truly wierd how we are able to store little packets of reality without knowing it, and when the right stimulus comes along, all the little itches and aromas, textures and sensations waft up to command the senses, like a fugue, if you please.

Mostly, though, when I read that journal I was surprised, as if I were seeing the kid who wrote it in person for the first time. All these years I'd thought him to be an asshole, but looking back at him now, he wasn't all that bad, just young, and without much of a perspective with which to deal with the impossible things he was witnessing. Doing. He was better at his job than I remember.