Best Of MetaFilter

What sort of noises do you make? It's your weekly Free Thread!

Anna's Hummingbird is one of the top species on BirdWeather

"BirdWeather is a visualization platform that... is continuously listening to over 200 active audio stations around the world and is actively plotting their results in a user-friendly map interface..." jessamyn posted about the birbs, and it is super cool.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Dialing in on the phone on Mefi: JanetLand posted WaPo's guide to modern phone etiquette, while in Ask Metafiler, Rash wants to know why you hold your phone like that, and niicholas is looking for songs with land-line telephone sounds ☎

Photo by Karolina Badzmierowska on Unsplash

Fantastic in-depth post by AgentRocket on Suzanne Vega and Tom's Diner 🍽, plus more assorted autumn audio on mefi:

Ad for Argo's Book of Dreams featuring Nandi Bushell 🥁; meet John Farnham, Australia's famed "Whispering Jack" 🇦🇺; the global, omnivorous sonic diet of SVBKVLT 🌎; U2 Joshua Tree tour fan edit video 📼; songwriter (and Oscar-winning actress) Mary Steenburgen 𝄢; poet, musician, activist, Moor Mother🎤; true stories from Martin Simpson in his "Rooted" album 📖; Great Chafing Moonboots, it's Friends Again!🍻; 1980 Concert by Young Marble Giants 🎵; Mercedes de Sosa and Gracias a la vida 🌞; Wendy Carlos' Switched-on Bach, 1968 🎹; Maestro: animated woodland creatures perform a gorgeous Bellini opera aria 🎼; The World According to Sound podcast 🎙; Dylan Tallchief made a drum machine in Excel 🥁; Sounding off, an appreciation of and guide to nautical noises ⚓️; Honeyland Happy Honeybee Harmonies (animation) 🐝; Sudan Archives, North African style violin + West Coast RnB, funk, soul 🎻; Indigo Girls' Swamp Ophelia 🥀; open-source Spleeter audio separation library 🎧; Lucy Dacus seasonal covers for Halloween and Christmas🎄; "Let It Go" in Klingon ❄️; recovering Native language for the indigenous community👂🏽; 1979-1983: A very abbreviated musical history ☮︎; Air Safety Video, K-pop style✈️; Kesha, Raising Hell with Big Freedia 🔥; Blade Runner Esper Edition soundtrack fan-made bootleg 👁; restored classic and lost punk films 📽; acoustic version of Ministry's "Everyday is Halloween" 🎃; and finally, an alter of sound for Day of the Dead 💀

WC [toilet facilities] by State Records NSW

History pals!

Enjoy some newly-animated historical city photos, plus barnacles on the history of Australian public bathrooms "in case you're the sort of person that wants to see 115-year old survey sketches of toilets and urinal blocks".

Or listen to the meticulously recreated ambient sounds of 1700s Paris.

How about Marie Duval, 19th century woman cartoonist called 'one of the forgotten wonders of nineteenth-century art .. the bizarre dreamlike distortions of her comic world look like some steampunk 21st-century version of Victorian London."

Or the re-discovered ancient Chinese texts that rewrite the early history of Taoism and Confucianism.

Speaking of, what are some examples of historical events that are commonly misunderstood?

Did you catch teponaztli transcribing some diary pages from 1799-1804 New York City? "The most I've seen her write about anything was how much she hates games, which I love for its being an angry rant from 200+ years ago."

Or enjoy the brief video on the baseball fan Wild Bill Hagy, which is a time capsule of 1979 Baltimore.

Harking back to 1979, share some sense-memories in what was it like when everybody smoked?

Or looking further back - what was sugar like in 1631?

Finally, what are the best history nerds on Youtube?

talking again by mediamolecule (cc by-nc-nd)

From The Vaults:

How do you fake American?, 2008

... what if you're not an English speaker, and you want to fake-speak English, or more precisely, American? How does it sound?

And more: Imitation English, 2003

What are the stereotypes of the native English speaker's accent as perceived by non-English-speakers?, 2004

How does one speak "pretend English"?, 2005

Linguaesthetics, 2006