Best Of MetaFilter

Light At The Start Of The Tunnel by ARG_Flickr (cc by)

We're in the middle of September fundraising for Mefi, and cortex is still half-hippy, so vote with your $ because those scissors are not going to pay for themselves! Jessamyn is making sponsored posts every day this month (acquire your very own excellent certified Jess post right here), plus we're auctioning precious Mefi Blue chatfilter posts (#1, #2; see the current slate of chatfilter topics suggested, vote, and add your own topic ideas to the main thread), and we're still dreaming, so make any post on the blue about dreams or dreaming and tag it #dreamweek to add to the fun.

$20 by Sh4rp_i (cc by)

Jessamyn has been making sponsored posts for Mefi fundraising month, and so far we have great posts on accidental isolators, Black Monday and other days of the week, Nadia Comăneci, guitar effects pedals, the first Black woman to visit every country in the world, how maps in the media make us more negative about migrants, and Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street.

Love by kevin dooley (cc by)

Chatty Cashy, Dream Thyme, Hair No More, Super Librarian Lazy Web Posts ... Check it out! They're all part of Mefi's 2020 fundraising month.

Inaccessible Island Rail (Atlantisia rogersi) by brian.gratwicke (cc by)

There's a reason why chapters of the "Feminist Bird Club" are popping up all over the world and it's part of a larger issue with outdoor recreation, spaces, jobs, and natural/environmental sciences in general that has spawned groups like Latino Outdoors, Outdoor Afro, Unlikely Hikers, and many others: Primalux discusses birding while Latina, poor, queer, and a woman in the Chris Cooper video birdwatch post.

Text TK talks about "my father, Douglas S. Rogers, who lived on Ascension Island from 1966 to 1971, working for Pan-American Airways' Aerospace division ... In his spare time he co-founded the island's historical society, took a ton of amazing photographs with his Hasselblad 500C, and aided visiting scientists" in the How do you get to Inaccessible Island? thread about world’s smallest flightless bird.

My first season, my class had been taught to how handle bees without gloves or even necessarily bee suits, just smokers. Non-africanized bees are gentle enough that they will rarely sting you if you know what you're doing ... Until autumn. Then they switch from "gather the bounty" mode to "protect the spoils at all costs" mode. Which our teacher deliberately did not tell us, because he wanted us to observe it for ourselves. By getting stung: showbiz_liz talks about the "domesticity" of bees in the I Want To Beelieve heart honeycomb thread.

Also recently: birds taking public transit; The Secret Society of Self-Stingers; Why Birds Do What They Do; 'Murder hornets'; "a vicious resource war is being fought between the avians and the rodents"; "Ferris Jabr critiques bird nests and the personalities that build them"; GPS-tracking the movements of eagles; Bird Tableau.