Best Of MetaFilter

Sir crow's New Estate by SPDP (cc by)

Teaching capitalism to corvids with the open source Crowbox experimentation platform

“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.

Red Ant by Charlie Stinchcomb (cc by)

Ants, Ants, Ants, Bees, Bees, Bugs, Bugs, SPIDERS!

The Making of Harry Potter by Dave Catchpole (cc by)

In Ask MetaFilter: I would like to read some books that are set in magical (or possibly science fictional) universities and colleges, or about magical or science fictional students and professors.

riviere_tick_tack_1881 by Art Gallery ErgsArt

What are some songs that tell a story?

What's the oldest painted portrait of a dog?

What did a floral anchor symbolize, in a book by L.M.Montgomery?

What are scientific results or inventions that were famously demonstrated?

When is this wallpaper from?

How can I stop farting so much?

Frogs in the Pool...Again! by Gatorgoon (cc by-nd)

How do you drain a pool?

Science World by GoToVan (cc by)

Drunken mushrooms, remote control hand muscles, what an EKG really shows, the telescope that lets us see bees on the moon, and more! Come share your best science facts and stories in this week's Metatalktail Hour thread.

Bears and Codpieces by timkelley (cc by-nd)

Bits and bobs of recent-ish quirky questions on Ask MetaFilter:

What did historical laydeez think about those codpieces?

Films that occupy that "liminal space between being a bad movie and an art movie"?

Babushka lady behaviour? Examples, real or fictional, of people acting in noticeably strange or incongruous ways during important events or crowd scenes?

I vaaant to be alone! Temporarily deserted places that usually bustle during daylight hours?

No Chuck Tingle? What is the weirdest book in the history of English literature?

Not quite myself today. Is my body composed of a different set of atoms from when I was born?

Trophy by Matt Newfield (cc by-nd)

Doroteo Arango II, in the fun Menace 2 artificial intelligence thread, who lost the original school competition, but learned what every young science scholar needs to know: "Sex sells, bribery works, presentation trumps content, and everyone likes free stuff. If you want to sell science, make it shiny and sexy, and give free food."

Painting over a mural by WarmSleepy (cc by)

Some interesting ideas and answers in mermaidcafe's Ask Me post looking for examples of erasure in architecture, audio recordings, science, art, and other fields.

Homo naledi skeletal specimens from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa

One of my friends from my graduate program is a "tiny caver" on this project, so I can't make my own post ... but I can comment!

ChuraChura adds some great link love to ladybird's post about the discovery of new hominin species Homo naledi, and the skilled slender spelunkers recruited to excavate the nearly inaccessible find.

Helix desertorum. Forskal. From a living specimen in the British Museum, March, 1850.

In the mid-1800s, a snail spent years glued to a specimen card in the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum) before scientists realized it was still alive. What became of this snail? Ask Metafilter found out!

nicebookrack tracks down a gastropodean mystery and reports back on the amazing story of the snail that came back to life after years glued to a specimen card in the British Museum... and what happened next.

Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 by USFWS Pacific (cc by)

In the MH370 recovery thread, a comment from a member well-versed in deep sea dives via submarine and a comment from a member with knowledge of the ocean floor are both not to be missed.

a restoration of what a Kimberella might look like

[O]ur most recent common ancestor with octopus might have looked something like this... more like an octopus than a human. Our most recent common ancestor was some kind of soft-bodied blob that existed well over half a billion years ago and had no head, no eyes, and only a very basic, decentralized nervous system. In other words, our common ancestor had no brain.