MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 12:53 pm

Croc owners welcome government crackdown on Territorians' best friend

Posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries

Croc owners welcome government crackdown on Territorians' best friend. Crocodile owners whose pets escape and have to be recaptured by rangers could soon face penalties starting at $300, plus another $100 for each hour the reptiles are on the loose. Saltwater crocodiles can grow up to a weight of 1000–1500 kg (2200–3300 lb) and a length of 6 m (20 ft), rarely exceeding 6.3 m (21 ft) and can and do eat humans. (Northern Territory, Australia.)
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 11:05 am

This is Our BBC

Posted by rory

A foreign convicted felon is attempting to extract billions of dollars from the people of the United Kingdom by suing the BBC for "anywhere between $1bn and $5bn" for broadcasting an edited version of his words. A billion US dollars equates to £10.90 per head for every man, woman and child in the UK, and five billion to £54.50 per head.

(Almost everyone in Britain pays for the BBC through an annual TV licence fee of £174.50 per household, effectively a flat tax on all of us. A billion dollars would make a serious dent on the BBC's 2025-26 budget of £6.072bn.)
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 09:18 am

I am Carrie in a blood-soaked dress, but the gymnasium is empty

Posted by chavenet

CONTENT WARNING for anyone who struggles with sexual shame, sexual abuse.
I want Carrie to listen. I don't like looking at her, shoulders slumped in a plain dress, hiding behind her hair. Pretty means palatable, pleasing to others. Even as my mother forced me to dress modestly, she still wanted me to look pleasing. I wore a new skirt with dangling earrings. My hair was combed. To combat my friendlessness in high school, I roamed the mall and ransacked makeup counters, wanting to believe there was some combination of goops and powders that would make me deserving. Pretty is an illusion. It must be constantly maintained so no one questions what's underneath. from "Carrie" Helped Me Process the Sexual Shame of My Religious Upbringing [Electric Literature]
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 06:15 am

A message to future scientists

Posted by aubilenon

Apparently over the last twelve years, Japanese art collective EUPHRATES has been working with The Japanese National Institute for Material Sciences to produce a series of science education videos , with music by Masahiko Sato. They are simple and calming, but show off some surprising and nifty effects! I enjoyed them a lot!

Note that some of these videos have automatically generated English narration. I enjoyed those more when I set the audio track to the original Japanese and turned on English captions. (I do not speak a useful amount of Japanese)
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 04:17 am

A Day in the Life of Bakers in the Norwegian Mountains

Posted by SunSnork

If you enjoy watching professionals baking things without pretense or influencer personalities, you may enjoy A Day in the Life of Bakers in the Norwegian Mountains. And if you want more, there's a whole channel for your next coffee break, The Scandinavian Fika: (in Swedish custom) a break from activity during which people drink coffee, eat cakes or other light snacks, and relax with others..
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-15 12:25 am

Noisy little blue penguins nest under home

Posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries

Noisy little blue penguins nest under Coromandel home, leaving couple at wit's end. (Aotearoa/New Zealand)

Imagine sharing your home with noisy flatmates who party throughout the night and then move into your bedroom. That is what one Coromandel couple say it has been like living with little blue penguins who have taken to tunnelling under their home and nesting next to their bed under the floorboards. Tracy and Peter Kendall are at their wit's end about how to get a good night's sleep with these rowdy interlopers. The Kendalls have enjoyed sharing their home on the cliff above Waitete Bay with penguins for many years. The penguins would come and nest under their deck and it was a delight for them and their visitors. Bird and people alike shared their slice of paradise while giving each other space. "That's the relationship we really had, which was a very nice, friendly, warm relationship, right up until about two years ago," Peter Kendall said. That is when the penguins decided to make their move. "They've moved from the living area into our bedroom area, we're at the back of the house, and they have set up camp basically right outside where our bed is in our bedroom," Tracy Kendall said. The penguins are not quiet slumber party guests. "It's very, very noisy at night, their active period seems to be around six or seven pm, right through the night, until seven am or so in the morning."
Ask a Manager ([syndicated profile] askamanager_feed) wrote2025-11-15 12:07 am

weekend open thread – November 15-16, 2025

Posted by Ask a Manager

Sophie and Wallace

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand.

Here are the rules for the weekend posts.

Book recommendation of the week: Grace & Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, by Matthew Norman. After being recently widowed, a mom raising two young kids meets a man who recently lost his wife, and they slowly start to rebuild their lives. It is charming and legitimately funny and there’s a lot of Baltimore in it, and I loved it. (Amazon, Bookshop)

* I earn a commission if you use those links.

The post weekend open thread – November 15-16, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager.

MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 10:04 pm

"Shane, Come Back."

Posted by clavdivs

'Shane, the ending' (slyt. 2:12)
"I've come across another Mandela effect online, this one involving the classic Western, Shane. Some people - and I'm one of them - are convinced that after calling out "Come back, Shane!" several times, little Joey Starrett's final words in the film are "Bye, Shane."(yt..36)

"Within the confines of Shane, a classic, mythical Western, he (Ladd) seems uncannily at home. Chosen from two recurring elements of the Western genre, the gun fight and the bar fight, I decided to analyze the spectacular barroom brawl that takes place at Grafton's supply store. True, the film has an explosive gunfight near the end of the film that pits Alan Ladd's Shane with one of cinema's all-time greats, Jack Palance..." 'Shane and modern masculinity in Western genre'
"On the surface the plot of Shane pits the 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys' and conflict is resolved by intimidation, fists, and then guns, in conventional Western fashion. But rather than glorifying the use of weapons or violence, the film surprises in that it is arguably an elegy for the inability of humans to find other solutions." 'The Unexpected Beauty in 'Shane' (1953)
McMansion Hell ([syndicated profile] mcmansion_hell_feed) wrote2025-11-14 02:02 pm

chud atlantis

Hello everyone, sorry to go so long without posting something. I caught covid in August and it’s taken me months to start feeling relatively back to normal. I am still struggling with fatigue and some neurological problems, so thank you for your patience!

It is rare that the McMansion ever approaches the mythical, though it is, of coursed, steeped in its own mythology – of bootstrapism, castle doctrine and, importantly, a total commitment to individualism. No one bereft of a sense of personal mythos would build some of the houses I’ve posted about on this site throughout the years.

However, rarely do those houses sincerely believe their own myths, express them so utterly. Often, there’s a bit of cheek involved in all those Corinthian columns, even among the knockoff Rolex set. Whenever one does swallow the (blue) kool aid, well, it’s very important to me. And so, from the forgotten underwater past of the greater Houston suburbs, I bring you: Chud Atlantis

(it is always more fun to quote the front bit of that Shelley poem, because the second bit has been misappropriated by Reddit.)

Atlantic in size (8 bedrooms, 9 baths, 10,000+ square feet), and in price ($2.8 million), Chud Atlantis is proof that, for better or for worse, we used to build things in this country. (Just kidding, this house was built, astonishingly enough, in 2023.) Its existence is baffling to me not only because it is anachronistic (it belongs in the Bad 70s) but because it is Texan. This house is, in the fullest sense of the word, a transplant. Orlando is that way.

(Shall we enter, then, the eye-watery depths?)

It’s important that you understand that the most significant thing about this house is that it is blue. In an age of gray supremacy, it is nice to know that tacky can still come in more unconventional shades. No one prior to this has ever looked at a piece of dyed marble and thought: I need to make this my entire personality. Not even in the 80s!

Like many McMansion owners, these do not know how to decorate. One can only presume that the furniture involved is so heavy that staging also wasn’t an option. This makes the house a historical document because from this point onward such rooms will henceforth be yassified with AI.

this kitchen begs for a concept food. it begs for ‘gold leaf hamburger.’

I’m not entirely convinced that the Rococo period was ugly, but its imitators commit crimes unerringly and without fail. Furniture like this sits in a room like a big glob of meat. Instead of saying 'i’m rich’ what it actually communicates is: 'i’m heavy.’

I don’t know how you can make so much money and yet have everything you do look like the bootleg Chanel rugs they sell outside of the subway. Like, can’t you buy the real thing, dawg?

This may also be the first house whose broad aesthetic is executed by way of direct to consumer printing. The FedExification of art. Or something like that. After all, the internet loves a neologism more than it loves its elaboration.

“What should we put here to fill out this room” all-time bad answer.

Anyway, without further ado, the back:

The suburban mind yearns for the miniature golf course. The suburban mind yearns for water while it all dries up.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams. (Don’t worry! This doesn’t adjust for inflation! Now’s the perfect time to join!) By the way: new subscribers can buy a year of McMansion Hell for just $12!

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! McMansion Hell stocks, much like mortgage-backed securities only ever go up! For non-architecture stuff I also have a substack where I write about things like the ring cycle and going to the eye doctor.

MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 07:45 pm

I just kept looking for Steve Carlson

Posted by chavenet

I turned my attention to TIFF, built initially as an image standard for desktop publishing. TIFF was able to store monochrome, grayscale, and color images, alongside metadata such as size, compression algorithms, and color space information. In many ways, it was a lot like AIFF so I was keen to know more. But I couldn't find a TIFF creator. No matter how I enquired, Aldus created TIFF. from Mr TIFF [Inventing the Future]
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 03:57 pm

Muh-muh-muh-MONSTER KILL kill kill

Posted by Diskeater

Unreal Tournament 99 multiplayer is now playable in your browser.

Not a fan of UT99 multi? How about Quake 3 Arena instead? Or Half-Life DM? You can also check out the main site for all your old-games-in-a-browser needs.
Ask a Manager ([syndicated profile] askamanager_feed) wrote2025-11-14 04:00 pm

open thread – November 14, 2025

Posted by Ask a Manager

It’s the Friday open thread!

The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.

The post open thread – November 14, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager.

MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 03:43 pm

no mercy

Posted by kmt

Milan prosecutors investigate alleged 'sniper tourism' during Bosnian war - "Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italians who allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for trips to Sarajevo so that they could kill citizens during the four-year siege of the city in the 1990s." (The Guardian)
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 02:26 pm

We Choose To Play With The Moon

Posted by Brandon Blatcher

BIG STRETCH! Kitten Space Agency, the spiritual successor to the beloved and sadly fumbled Kerbal Space Program, has launched a publically available, donate what you want, pre-Alpha build (Windows only). Matt Lowne has a quick look at this early version (gameplay of a simple mission starts about 10 minutes in). Previously.
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 12:52 pm

When Sociology Fails

Posted by rednikki

The social psychology book "When Prophecy Fails" was a nonfiction account of a cult built around a prophecy. When the prophecy failed to come true, the cultists doubled down on their beliefs. For decades, the learnings have been used to support theories about cognitive dissonance and cult behaviors, even as other studies of cults did not get the same results. The replication studies failed because the things they tried to replicate didn't actually happen. Come for the lies, stay for the research ethics violations and interference in child welfare investigations.
MetaFilter ([syndicated profile] metafilter_feed) wrote2025-11-14 08:02 am

Undone by the laws of physics and finance

Posted by chavenet

While Neom employees say that much of The Line might still be technically buildable, they are not convinced anyone is ready to pay for it. Construction work across Neom has slowed, with the desert ski resort Trojena, the intended venue for the 2029 Asian Winter Games, one of the few sites still moving ahead at pace. Neom says that the attention has now moved to "the complex engineering and detailed design work associated with the first phase" of The Line. But one former employee has said that everyone knows the project won't work; it is now just a matter of letting MBS down gently. from End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia's Neom dream unravelled [FT]

NEOM previously