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I put these functional, foldable structures together in a collection so that our class might develop new ideas from the same starting point of "classical" paper-engineering knowledge. These fundamental structures are scattered between the non-overlapping disciplines of origami, compliant mechanisms, pop-up books and the study of Victorian papercraft.
posted by Wolfdog to MetaFilter on May 19 at 6:33 AM
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Iceland approved the 4-day workweek in 2019: nearly 6 years later, all the predictions made have come true. - "In 2019, Iceland made headlines by becoming one of the first countries in the world to adopt the four-day working week, not through a general law, but through agreements allowing workers to negotiate shorter weeks or reduced hours. Five years on, the results are indisputable."[1,2,3]
posted by kliuless to MetaFilter on May 16 at 12:12 AM
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The popular narrative that the English colonists were victims of native aggression has been proven wrong. Scott Dawson, author of “The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island,” together with British archeologist Dr. Mark Horton, has unearthed abundant evidence that the colonists were in fact assimilated.
posted by kinnakeet to MetaFilter on May 17 at 6:25 PM
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I wanted to make a programming language that resembled magical circles.
posted by Wolfdog to MetaFilter on May 18 at 5:58 AM
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Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic (ungated) Thomas Keller is fidgeting on the bench next to mine in the empty courtyard of the French Laundry. There’s a slight quaver in the chef’s voice, and he tells me he is nervous. This is not something he is accustomed to doing, he says — asking a critic to leave. He’s sure I’m a nice person, he tells me, but he doesn’t know my intentions, and he doesn’t want me in his restaurant.
posted by rhiannonstone to MetaFilter on May 19 at 10:36 PM
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Mark Zuckerberg is giving public interviews on Meta’s AI strategy, often dropping that chatbots could address the epidemic of loneliness by serving as friends or, more surprisingly, as therapists.... Yesterday, as if on cue, the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the U.S. House of Representatives passed this proposal to prohibit state regulation of AI and “automated decision systems” for TEN YEARS, which is defined as systems that "materially influence or replace human decision making."
posted by subdee to MetaFilter on May 14 at 7:02 PM
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"[T]his terrifying global network can have its intellectual core traced back to one single book: James Mason’s Siege. And it, in turn, only exists because of the efforts of a handful of people in a corner of the 1980s counterculture who worked together to make its publication a reality."

Spencer Sunshine in The Quietus: The Countercultural Figures who helped give birth to the Neo-Nazi Terrorist Networks of Today
posted by Pope Guilty to MetaFilter on May 15 at 6:28 AM
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I had high hopes for Mark Carney, but then he created a Ministry of AI and appointed Evan Solomon to the position. On Carney's new, gender-balanced cabinet.
posted by joannemerriam to MetaFilter on May 15 at 6:13 AM
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The Chicago Sun-Times, a large Chicago newspaper, publishes a several page section that appears to be made largely if not entirely from AI. Featuring a farmer's market filled with eldritch blending crates of food and a giant tree growing through the middle of a mushroom box, A summer reading list largely filled with fake book titles, and much much more, the newspaper is scrambling as readers ask how this possibly got into print.
posted by wafehling to MetaFilter on May 20 at 8:26 AM
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Neglected Books has been doing deep dives on… (checks notes)… neglected books for 19 years. It’s like talking with the owner in the world’s greatest used bookstore except you’re not able to buy anything.
posted by Lemkin to MetaFilter on May 20 at 6:07 AM
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David and Goliath each have a six-sided die. David’s die has the numbers {1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6}, and Goliath’s die has the numbers {0, 1, 2, 6, 6, 6}. If each of them throws his die n times and announces the total, then Goliath is more likely than David to have the higher total, except when...
posted by Wolfdog to MetaFilter on May 17 at 5:17 AM
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I’ve worked on web archives in a professional setting, but this one is strictly personal. This gives me more freedom to make different decisions and trade-offs. I can focus on the pages I care about, spend more time on quality control, and delete parts of a page I don’t need – without worrying about institutional standards or long-term public access. In this post, I’ll show you how I built this personal archive of the web: how I save pages, why I chose to do it by hand, and what I do to make sure every page is properly preserved.
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 19 at 11:58 AM
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The Trump administration used U.S. diplomats to pressure African governments into fast-tracking approvals for Elon Musk’s satellite company while Musk was working in the White House. The effort involved close coordination between the State Department and Starlink, who described their goal as to “ram this through.” Kristofer Harrison, who served as a State Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said: “If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption. Because it is corruption.”
posted by subdee to MetaFilter on May 15 at 6:37 PM
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What the hell are people doing?
posted by slater to MetaFilter on May 19 at 9:35 PM
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"The Blasters emerged in 1979, put out four albums in six years, and then promptly fell apart. A great band that barely was, but in that time they put out some truly incredible music."
posted by Lemkin to MetaFilter on May 17 at 7:55 AM
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This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. On Martin's account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be "no limit to the targets."
posted by subdee to MetaFilter on May 20 at 8:05 PM
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Addicted to ICE: Trump's Deportation Plans Hinge on Small Towns Hooked on Private Prisons [ungated] - "Like a growing number of US communities, Torrance County, New Mexico, is convinced its financial survival depends on locking up immigrants."
posted by kliuless to MetaFilter on May 15 at 1:01 AM
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We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard, part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future.”.
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 21 at 12:01 AM
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And it is so great. And I have watched it/listened to it at least 20 times. It's not just that his version is better (fight me.), it's the audience reaction also. Vampire - Paul F Tompkins [SLYT*]
posted by Glinn to MetaFilter on May 20 at 4:47 PM
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Pro-EU centrists posted critical election wins in Romania, Poland, and Portugal this weekend against far-right extremists.
posted by DirtyOldTown to MetaFilter on May 19 at 10:22 AM
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God, what a disgrace. What a disgraceful culture we live in. It's certainly one of the least serious of the recent disgraces, but it reflects the whole - someone who doesn't care doing something scammy and useless for a paycheck, carefully shielded from accountability because he has no official status. Something that no one wants but everyone will... [more]
posted by Frowner to MetaFilter on May 20 at 8:46 AM
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for everyone worried about "efficiency" and "productivity" these metrics are almost always from the point of view of the capital owner, not the worker. A worker has only their labor to sell, so if you are paid the same for less hours you are getting a better deal. If productivity goes up, but wages stay the same (as they... [more]
posted by stilgar to MetaFilter on May 16 at 3:53 AM
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For all of the people reading this and being confused - most of the comments are from americans. They can't imagine freedom so they have to insist on having bad work/life balance. And this is one more thing that will be cosmically impossible and insane and not workable at all at any time, just like gun control, maternity, vacations, all of the... [more]
posted by mayoarchitect to MetaFilter on May 16 at 5:07 AM
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What I find interesting is how this all ties into a complex with Ignatius Donnelly and all the other Southern pseudohistory... the preferred the narrative of 'they vanished into history' to 'they intermarried with the local races that we worked strongly to exterminate, and we don't want to recognize Gullah or Creole." It makes me think of... [more]
posted by LeRoienJaune to MetaFilter on May 17 at 11:02 PM
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I was surprised to see this line: "Young boys grow up with little to no role models for household management." Surprised, because of course they do grow up with those role models. It takes a lot of effort to not learn from someone you watch every day. [view]
posted by mittens to MetaFilter on May 21 at 9:52 AM
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Seconding that. Has Google tried not sucking? They did pretty well when they didn’t suck. [view]
posted by leotrotsky to MetaFilter on May 21 at 5:37 AM
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Speaking from within Gen X, I will just say I was shocked we were mentioned at all. [view]
posted by DirtyOldTown to MetaFilter on May 14 at 1:55 PM
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Okay, just asked my kid what the version of "OK, Boomer" was for Gen Xers. He said "It's still 'OK, Boomer,' because pretending your generation doesn't really exist is what drives them crazy." [view]
posted by DirtyOldTown to MetaFilter on May 14 at 2:08 PM
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Newspapers firing real writers so that they can use a chatbot to hallucinate fake summer reading lists is such a perfect symbol of the modern dystopia. Truly a society circling the drain. [view]
posted by mrjohnmuller to MetaFilter on May 20 at 8:59 AM
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This is such a weird thread. ICELAND: We reduced the standard work week by four hours and literally everyone is happier! AMERICANS: But what about the profits of our corporate overlords?!!! [view]
posted by kyrademon to MetaFilter on May 16 at 6:37 AM
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carnage raccoon Well that's way more metal than the OP's actual handle. [view]
posted by axiom to MetaFilter on May 16 at 12:42 PM
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if after many decades of success you’re getting reviews along the lines of “fine, if an uninspired and complacent version of its former self”, then replacing a dying, iconic tree intertwined with the heart of the place with a simulacra of it is perhaps a wee bit on the nose [view]
posted by Jon Mitchell to MetaFilter on May 20 at 12:48 AM
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It would be one thing if the league was doing this as a way of separating the celebration of a player's achievements from celebrating him as a person. I wouldn't approve of that personally, but it would be an argument I could understand to some degree. But what is actually happening here is that Rob Manfred and the rest of MLB's executives have... [more]
posted by DirtyOldTown to MetaFilter on May 16 at 4:14 PM
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What does that even mean, he asks, saying that culinary cultural appropriation doesn’t exist in America, a nation of immigrants. In a melting pot, cultural appropriation isn’t a thing. When a middle-aged white dude says this, you know he's a raging asshole. [view]
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts to MetaFilter on May 19 at 11:50 PM
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"how this made it into print" oh fuck off you monsters. money was paid. presses rolled. that's how it got into print. and you got caught. what you are saying is "we need a minute to find someone to throw under the bus" [view]
posted by seanmpuckett to MetaFilter on May 20 at 8:57 AM
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I had a dog who was food motivated like this and took great pleasure in stealing food. In her experience, once a dog had touched human food, the human no longer wanted it, so all she had to do was kind of get in there and get her mouth on it and she could have any snack she wanted. Once she grabbed a rib from our friend who was over for a barbecue... [more]
posted by potrzebie to MetaFilter on May 16 at 8:43 AM
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I think the Subgenius comment was riffing on satirizing mild centrists, which, fair, since mild centrists are usually weirder than they (or you) are comfortable with if you dig deep enough. I ran a bookstore in the 90s that specialized in "edge literature." We carried a lot of SFF, queer lit, Beats, Absurdists and Surrealists,... [more]
posted by GenjiandProust to MetaFilter on May 15 at 11:49 AM
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A lot of you are saying that AI slop is the cause of this problem. I'm here to tell you that AI slop is the solution: Just use ChatGPT to generate these books. Then they won't be fake anymore. Venture capitalists, I've got a ton more ideas like this but I'm in between banks right now so just make those checks out to... [more]
posted by AlSweigart to MetaFilter on May 20 at 9:17 AM
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I told my late husband at his gravesite that I would divorce him if he kept on appearing in my dreams, and the threat apparently worked. Having gotten him though his fatal illness to the end, I can only wonder why more women don’t walk out. As I said when being local caregiver to my mother until her death before that, “This is not playing to my... [more]
posted by Peach to MetaFilter on May 21 at 9:48 AM
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optimal productivity for 40 hours My understanding has always been that human beings simply aren't able to be optimally productive for the expected periods of time that full-time 40hrs per week employment requires. That's why there's less/no drop in productivity when the hours are reduced; quality takes over for quantity. I don't... [more]
posted by slimepuppy to MetaFilter on May 16 at 3:40 AM
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