18th Century portrait of Francis Williams in his study
like a real life version of a spy thriller (art & science history edition) — comment by Ausamor
Kattullus has posted about the mysteries of the portrait of Francis Williams, brilliant Black Jamaican polymath and member of the Newtonian inner circle ... and the painted clues that untangled his life story. Great art sleuthing, and a fascinating tale, then and now.
For getting ideas, or sharing answers, some #GiftFilter posts currently in AskMe: Gift for the guy who has everything? ❖ Fantastic gift (basket)? ❖ Rubik's Cube and Rubik's Cube Adjacent Gift ideas? ❖ Sewing/fashion gift to inspire a creative, crafty tween? ❖ High Quality, Interesting Advent Calendars? ❖ Gift ideas for geography + history + gadget lover? ❖ The Best X You Can Buy for under $50? ❖ a cute, modern craft kit, please? ❖ What gift for a someone who cleared my driveway of a fallen tree? ❖ Interesting international snacks for Christmas gifts?
Image by Scott Curran, via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tog_go_bog_e/)
I've always enjoyed traditional Irish music, so these recent uploads to the Music section by wurl1tzer_c0 have brought a smile to my face and a bit of head bobbing. Here's 30 seconds of a traditional tune and later post of another traditional tune, "Maid behind the bar" !
Ferry to Bremerton, Washington by Barret Anspach via Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/anspach/
The world needs your poems! Or at least the town of Bremerton, Washington does, according to this post from JHarris. Click the link to learn where to send yours!
Condour75 has made a neat little app called Memento Movi! Here’s how they describe it: “The user enters date of birth and life expectancy, and chooses from a list of movies. The site then shows a frame from that movie that represents your place in your lifespan. So, for instance, a twenty-year-old who selects Star Wars will likely get a frame from Tattooine, but a sixty-year-old who selects Jaws will be on the boat.”
I’m 71.02% of the way through Howl's Moving Castle, how about you?
image from Muséum de Toulouse, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
image via pixabay.com (not the book cover art!)
I remember this old paperback in my old used bookstore where Greek or Roman voyagers end up in America and meet the Mayans ... suburbanbeatnik is looking for a particular hard-to-find DAW paperback from the 1970s
"With a decent local GPU and some free open source software like ollama and open-webui you can try 'open source' LLM models like Meta's llama, Mistral AI's mistral, or Alibaba's qwen entirely offline." Lenie Clarke has a big ol' post on Homebrew LLMs and Open Source Models
A couple of holiday notes in Metatalk: 2024 MetaFilter Gift Swap - Arrival - thank you and MeFites for the Holidays!
via theparisreview.org, Wacław Szpakowski, A1, 1930, ink on tracing paper, 9 5/8″ x 14 3/4″
These works did not reach an audience until 1978, five years after Szpakowki’s death; today they’re still obscure and easily misunderstood ... dhruva posted the Paris Review's Rhythmical Lines about Polish artist Wacław Szpakowski's "series of labyrinthine geometrical abstractions, each one produced from a single continuous line." Such interesting work and life!
photo by Smart Destinations - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gocardusa/3856316180/, CC BY-SA 2.0
jontyjago has a great comment about how finding a chance article by late member pjern on Metafilter eventually led to a career change as a UK railway signaller. Very interesting!! 🚂
The newest edition of “Why did you think that was a good idea” is live in ShooBoo’s post about a bear attack that actually wasn’t. Folks, this is not what you should use a bear costume for!
Photo by William Yeung, courtesy of Flickr
You want scenes of cats? ‘Cause this is how you get scenes of cats, courtesy of Pink Fuzzy Bunny’s Ask MetaFilter question!
Here is dng's explanation of their quirky project: Quest Heroes is a sort of cute and cuddly (and hand drawn and fairly rough) card game version of 80s role playing board game classic Hero Quest which I made for my niece and nephew the other week (who both love Hero Quest a lot for some reason).
What's inside the box? Pain. What's inside this week's Free Thread? Your happy place. Come tell us about it, if you feel so inclined.
MetaFilter started as a community weblog in 1999, later added question and answers, then music by members, jobs, projects by members, a podcast, and finally an area dedicated to meetups.
