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While Jennifer and Nelson Felix were cleaning out her late grandfather's basement, they found an unusual Chinese-character typewriter. Curious, Nelson posted pictures to the Facebook group What's My Typewriter Worth.
posted by tavella to MetaFilter on May 3 at 10:28 PM
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It's the semi-regular LGBTQIA+ News Post. I'm including news people added to my last post, and I will credit them with giving me that information. A little delay today because of some last-minute addition to the bad news.
posted by mephron to MetaFilter on May 1 at 8:38 AM
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The occasion for what turned out to be one of the most emotionally intense interviews I've ever done [ungated, yt] - "That story and your book connect to a larger question I have about the country: What do you understand about places like East Hartford that doesn't get communicated widely enough?"
posted by kliuless to MetaFilter on May 4 at 12:21 AM
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The star of the Red Sea Scrolls is undoubtedly a man called Merer, a mid-level official or inspector who oversaw a team of forty men transporting limestone for Giza on a ship named The Uraeus of Khufu Is Its Prow

—In Gold and Lapis Lazuli is an essay [archive] by archeologist Robert Cioffi about the Diary of Merer, the logbook of a crew working on the Great Pyramid of Giza. It was part of a cache of the oldest papyri yet discovered, uncovered by archeologist Pierre Tallet and his team at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor on the Red Sea coast.
posted by Kattullus to MetaFilter on May 5 at 4:09 AM
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Like a flatpack extendable Curta Roons is a fully mechanical portable computer (just don't lose your marbles!), and a very fun learning thing (too useful to call it a toy).
posted by unearthed to MetaFilter on May 2 at 12:55 AM
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Unlike patents, which are owned, licensed, bought, and sold, standards are developed collaboratively and published by SDOs on “reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms, ensuring that they are widely available. Even Friedrich Hayek, in “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” practically the ur-text of free market fundamentalism, notes that the free market needs a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. from The Anti-Capitalist Case for Standards [MIT Press Reader]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 1 at 12:03 PM
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A poetry competition using the words flagged by the Trump Administration. (Link goes to the Submittable portal which requires registration). Submit an original poem that makes creative use of the words that the Trump administration is flagging on government websites and research papers. See the list (PDF). There is no fee to enter. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. A free anthology will be published.
posted by Phanx to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 7:59 AM
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Kirkus Reviews’ list of the best books of the 21st Century (So Far).
posted by BuddhaInABucket to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 3:16 PM
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Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you meet. Henrik Karlsson reflects on discovering true friends.
posted by storybored to MetaFilter on May 5 at 5:33 PM
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The invention of album art can get lost in the story of technological mastery. But among all the factors that contributed to the rise of recorded music, it stands as one of the few that was wholly driven by creators themselves. Album art — first as marketing material, then as pure creative expression — turned an audio-only medium into a multi-sensory experience. This is the story of the people who made music visible.
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 3 at 12:33 PM
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28 slightly rude notes on writing "The more you think, the closer you get to the place where the most interesting writing happens: that tiny slip of land between “THINGS THAT ARE OBVIOUS” and “THINGS THAT ARE OBVIOUSLY WRONG”."
posted by dhruva to MetaFilter on Apr 29 at 11:46 AM
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"[But] if what they're proposing actually becomes law, it would be the single biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single bill in US history." Paul Krugman interviews Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress about Trump's "big, beautiful" budget.
posted by subdee to MetaFilter on May 3 at 12:42 PM
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DC band Sub-radio here to give you a catchy lil ditty about one of the worst people! And tbh, a pretty fun Cake cover.
posted by Kitteh to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 10:46 AM
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I Should Have Seen This Coming by David Brooks [The Atlantic; ungated]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 4 at 1:36 PM
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After a five week campaign, Australia goes to the polls tomorrow, Saturday 3 May.
posted by jjderooy to MetaFilter on May 1 at 5:41 PM
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For a group of not-terribly serious holiday romance movies, Netflix's Christmas Prince films actually demand a long and significant alternative history. The map shown in the third movie of the series, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby, show three kingdoms ruling over eastern Europe, two of which have royal families that speak RP English, and one of which is east Asian and uses Chinese characters for writing. How did this happen?
posted by Hactar to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 4:14 AM
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Self-styled prophets are claiming they have 'awakened' chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.
posted by clawsoon to MetaFilter on May 5 at 9:59 AM
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I spent 30 days in a dead game. [20m Youtube Video]
posted by Start with Dessert to MetaFilter on May 1 at 10:54 PM
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The mods of the academic subreddit r/askhistorians, with the support of about 30 other research & academic subs, ‪have posted a call in defense of the US research, which is under an unprecedented attack by the current administration. The text is signed by historian Dan Howlett with inputs by researcher and specialist of online communities Sarah Gilbert.
posted by elgilito to MetaFilter on Apr 29 at 1:11 PM
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The series is considered to be among the most influential comedy programs in history. In 1998, Entertainment Weekly praised the series as one of the "100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time". In 2007, Time magazine selected it for its "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". Jerry Seinfeld has declared that The Abbott and Costello Show, with its overriding emphasis upon funny situations rather than life lessons, was the inspiration for his own long-running sitcom, Seinfeld.*
posted by Lemkin to MetaFilter on Apr 29 at 6:10 PM
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[more posts]

For Centuries, People Thought Birds Flew to the Moon During Winter No they didn't. That was just one weird guy's theory. I'll repost below what I wrote on another website. Here's a rundown of bird migration as understood in Europe throughout the centuries. In a nutshell, it is true that there were doubts until the 19th century... [more]
posted by elgilito to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 12:16 PM
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. And now, a decidedly uncharacteristic rant: From day 1 of her career I absolutely hated Katy Perry for taking the title / theme of Sobule’s breakout hit and giving it a buttrock-level pop treatment. Perry literally shot herself into space, came back to grace us with whatever-the-Raygun this is, and Sobule dies in a house fire the... [more]
posted by Ryvar to MetaFilter on May 1 at 7:23 PM
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Language Log: My recommendation: Never use the phrase yourself — use "assume the conclusion" or "raise the question", depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others. [view]
posted by zamboni to MetaFilter on May 4 at 3:49 PM
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Oh, and if you worry that you might be corrupted, using ChatGPT to troubleshoot non-working cars, or to help you figure out a programming task that you know is possible but are unclear about the details, you could try System Instruction: Absolute Mode. Eliminate emojis, filler, hype, soft asks, conversational transitions, and all call-to-action... [more]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog to MetaFilter on May 5 at 10:40 AM
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My question is, how in the world does this thing work? The answer is even more surprising & amazing than I thought it might be: The machine worked as follows. Seated before the device, an operator would see 72 keys divided into three banks: upper keys, lower keys, and eight number keys. First, the depression of one of the 36 upper keys... [more]
posted by flug to MetaFilter on May 3 at 11:42 PM
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If only there was a genre of literature which featured lots of stories about the bad consequences of asking computers to perform complicated human tasks, then perhaps a mistake like this wouldn’t have happened. [view]
posted by Kattullus to MetaFilter on May 5 at 9:30 PM
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I'm terrified of LLMs as someone who works in regulated safety testing. Something that isn't just making up a possibly wrong answer, but doing so convincingly based on the success and failure of millions of prior interactions? The output of ego stroking smoke-up-your-ass phrasing because that drives engagement and utilization? There's going to... [more]
posted by Slackermagee to MetaFilter on May 5 at 10:24 AM
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Well, for all intensive purposes I literally find this phrase to be misinterpretated alot by people who are just chomping at the bit to prove you wrong. [view]
posted by supermedusa to MetaFilter on May 4 at 2:36 PM
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IIRC the zookeeper cliche about apes is that if you leave a screwdriver in a gorilla enclosure he'll pick it up, put it in his mouth and then drop it soon after. If you leave a screwdriver in a chimpanzee enclosure, the first chimp to pick it up will immediately use it to stab their closest rival. And if you leave a screwdriver in an orangutan... [more]
posted by Space Coyote to MetaFilter on May 1 at 8:02 AM
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About 25 years ago, I met a small group of people at a cafe, who I had seen there for a few weeks before. I saw a couple of them at a mushroom fair and I went up to them and told them that I saw them at the mushroom fair. They said that they saw me too and I was to sit down with them. They had been meeting every Saturday for around twenty years. I... [more]
posted by njohnson23 to MetaFilter on May 5 at 6:27 PM
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Apart from the Sartrean Hell is Other People part where road rage is replaced by sardines packed in a tin rage. In my experience, most people are way calmer in fast, efficient, and well-resourced public transit options than they are in their little living-rooms on wheels when they are inconvenienced by the possibility of the presence... [more]
posted by TheWhiteSkull to MetaFilter on May 4 at 8:56 PM
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He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty bot. [view]
posted by Phanx to MetaFilter on May 5 at 10:38 AM
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a cautionary tale usually works for everyone In 2016, I was sure the Brexit referendum would be the USA’s cautionary tale, but apparently learning from others is woke. [view]
posted by gauche to MetaFilter on May 6 at 5:42 AM
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MetaFilter: This is probably directly affecting like, what, 25 people? [view]
posted by Lemkin to MetaFilter on May 5 at 10:59 AM
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*waves in metafliter* Hey all. This is me, one of the authors of this piece. There's a fair amount of conflation going on in the comments, but very quickly: A lot of these issues are covered in the book, unsurprisingly....regulatory mechanisms of political bodies that force issues (Brussels effect internationally, California effect here in... [more]
posted by griffey to MetaFilter on May 1 at 4:38 PM
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Having been peripherally involved in some standards processes (ISO, ETSI, and others), and knowing some people in the 3GPP circus, this reads a lot like someone who hasn't been on the sausage factory tour. The standardisation processes I've seen are intensely political processes, where companies manoeuvre for competitive advantage,... [more]
posted by Luddite to MetaFilter on May 1 at 1:02 PM
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If we assume that the gorilla is hurling barrels from the top of a hi-rise construction site, I feel like he could be defeated by a single Italian plumber with superior leaping ability and access to simple tools. [view]
posted by Strange Interlude to MetaFilter on May 1 at 8:56 AM
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We need to be asking what we could all win, if 100 men cooperated with 1 gorilla. [view]
posted by mittens to MetaFilter on May 1 at 7:26 AM
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What a time to be alive. We train LLM's to mimic obsequious savants, because that's what kings and rich people have, and we recognize consultancy-speak as knowledge, because that's what power sounds like. Then people go nuts, because that's what happens to kings and rich people. We desperately need AI jesters to mock and insult the court. [view]
posted by dmh to MetaFilter on May 5 at 3:35 PM
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I know the kid. The only sense in which you could measure their intellect in Newtons is if you pushed them off a roof. This ridiculously savage one liner deserves a standing ovation, wow. [view]
posted by Rinku to MetaFilter on May 5 at 2:49 PM
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[more comments]