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You could call them “sky flowers,” but that doesn’t really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don’t represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there’s a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob’s kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It’s a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?

Today marks 25 years since the original broadcast of "Help Wanted" -- the pilot episode of marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg's educational comic that became a delightful romp of "relentless optimism and fundamental sweetness", a hothouse flower of inventive and absurdist imagination, a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, and one of the most iconic and beloved animated franchises of the 21st century. Are you ready, kids?
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on May 1 at 3:55 PM
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People who care about internet monoculture and control are often told they’re nostalgists harkening back to a pioneer era. It’s fiendishly hard to regenerate an open and competitive infrastructure for younger generations who’ve been raised to assume that two or three platforms, two app stores, two operating systems, two browsers, one cloud/mega-store and a single search engine for the world comprise the internet. (Noema sl)
posted by Kitteh to MetaFilter on May 2 at 5:19 AM
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The Book of Miracles unfolds in chronological order divine wonders and horrors, from Noah’s Ark and the Flood at the beginning to the fall of Babylon the Great Harlot at the end; in between this grand narrative of providence lavish pages illustrate meteorological events of the sixteenth century. In 123 folios with 23 inserts, each page fully illuminated, one astonishing, delicious, supersaturated picture follows another. Vivid with cobalt, aquamarine, verdigris, orpiment, and scarlet pigment, they depict numerous phantasmagoria: clouds of warriors and angels, showers of giant locusts, cities toppling in earthquakes, thunder and lightning. Against dense, richly painted backgrounds, the artist or artists’ delicate brushwork touches in fleecy clouds and the fiery streaming tails of comets. There are monstrous births, plagues, fire and brimstone, stars falling from heaven, double suns, multiple rainbows, meteor showers, rains of blood, snow in summer. [...] Its existence was hitherto unknown, and silence wraps its discovery; apart from the attribution to Augsburg, little is certain about the possible workshop, or the patron for whom such a splendid sequence of pictures might have been created.

The Augsburg Book of Miracles: a uniquely entrancing and enigmatic work of Renaissance art, available as a 13-minute video essay, a bound art book with hundreds of pages of trilingual commentary, or a snazzy Wikimedia slideshow of high-resolution scans.
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on Apr 29 at 11:53 AM
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Kendrick Lamar and Drake (aka Aubrey Graham), two of the biggest active hip hop artists and former collaborators, are seriously beefing in a major way that hasn't been seen since Tupac vs Biggie. Last October, Drake dropped a track, First Person Shooter, where his collaborator J Cole named the two of them and Kendrick as "the big three". Kendrick, who has a competitive streak, took umbrage at being put on the same level as the other two and replied in Like That "it's just big me". What might've started as a somewhat professional competition has rapidly gone nuclear since Kendrick took shots at Drake's Blackness, fitness as a parent, and masculinity in his track titled "euphoria" and Drake responded with allegations of domestic abuse, infidelity, and cuckoldry in Family Matters. As of the latest, Kendrick has accused Drake of hiding a 2nd child and being a sexual predator of underaged girls.
posted by ndr to MetaFilter on May 5 at 7:07 AM
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The California man who hid for 6 months in a secret room inside Circuit City
posted by brundlefly to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 12:43 PM
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Sumatran orangutan becomes first wild animal seen using medicinal plant to treat wound.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries to MetaFilter on May 3 at 1:42 AM
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At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 1 at 1:20 AM
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For many people, the first time they tried to take control of a computer centered around learning to program in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simple, interpreted programming language designed around easily-understandable keywords and syntax. BASIC turned 60 a couple of days ago, so find one of the many online BASIC interpreters and write yourself a little bit of history.
posted by hanov3r to MetaFilter on May 3 at 9:25 AM
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Strippers' bill of rights bill signed into law in Washington state. The new law requires training for employees in establishments to prevent sexual harassment, identify and report human trafficking, de-escalate conflict and provide first aid. It also mandates security workers on site, keypad codes on dressing rooms and panic buttons in places where entertainers may be alone with customers.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 8:22 PM
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What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers? In Louisiana in 2000, 2-year-old James Leininger would wake screaming, repeating the same phrases to his baffled and disturbed parents: “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!” Over the following year, a story unspooled in memories and drawings: He was a World War II pilot whose plane took off from a boat, and he died when he was shot down by Japanese forces. James offered names of people and places, and his account would ultimately become one of the most prominent and thoroughly documented “cases of the reincarnation type,” or CORT, ever recorded.
posted by Toddles to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:05 PM
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Jerry Seinfeld is a Lazy Hack Out of Touch with the Real World - and Who Can Blame Him? Paste Magazine's brief riposte to the New Yorker's Jerry Seinfeld interview in which Mr. It's About Nothing feels that comedy has been killed by "the extreme left" and "P.C. crap."
posted by Kitteh to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 8:19 AM
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A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Nurses in the Phillipines are doing the initial reviews, and making major mistakes. Cigna wants their reviewing doctors to take about four minutes to check the reviews and decide if warranted, or if it should be approved, and penalizing doctors who do the work to know what's really going on.
posted by mephron to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 6:41 AM
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Shakespeare toys with numerous European languages throughout his work, including Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch. Often, these are spoken in thick accents, with comedic pronunciation. The same holds true for his use of the various British dialects—Scots, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish—heard in scruffy taverns or high courts. In Henry V, soldiers fracture the King’s English while the king himself and a French princess descend into a comical Franglais courtship. Yet, no matter how garbled the speech, playgoers can usually identify distinct languages and dialects—that is, until they bump up against what scholars have called the “invented language,” “unintelligible gabble,” and “‘Boskos thromuldo boskos’ mumbo-jumbo” in his comedy "All’s Well That Ends Well." from I Understand Thee, and Can Speak Thy Tongue: California Unlocks Shakespeare’s Gibberish [LARB]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 4 at 1:08 AM
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Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost....
posted by drewbage1847 to MetaFilter on May 1 at 1:06 PM
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How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fab . By Brian Potter of Construction Physics.
posted by russilwvong to MetaFilter on May 4 at 8:57 AM
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Ken Klippenstein resigns from The Intercept. In his announcement released through his newsletter, Ken details some of the machinations between the management class controlling journalism, and the journalists out there trying to do the work. Klippenstein will continue publishing his work independently along with legendary editor and national security researcher William Arkin, as well as FOIA specialist Beth Bourdon.
posted by slogger to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 11:04 AM
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The Media Matters study of tradwife influencers and the rabbit hole to far right conspiracies.
posted by Kitteh to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:24 AM
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By leveraging a unique large dataset and new techniques for exploring this dataset, our paper highlights the diversity of moral dilemmas experienced in daily life, and helps to build a moral psychology grounded in the vagaries of everyday experience. from A Large-Scale Investigation of Everyday Moral Dilemmas, in which Philosophers are studying Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” [Vox]
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 3 at 1:41 PM
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Why have philosophers had so little to say about Descartes’s stove, and so much to say about his dreams, his resolve, and his conception of analytic geography on that winter’s night? Suppressing the agency of the stove makes it easier to tell a simple story about the agency of the individual thinker. But it has made it that much harder to discern the subtle yet powerful ways in which modern air conditioning technologies condition thought, culture, and social experience. from Descartes’s Stove by the author of Air Conditioning, Hsuan L. Hsu
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on May 3 at 2:09 AM
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A discovery about how a circular trough filled with lighter fluid can create looping mini-flames leads to a fascinating set of experiments and an explanation of excitable media.
posted by Stark to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 8:20 AM
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You couldn’t do that joke today because it’s a business model for at least five start ups. [view]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:19 AM
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Maybe I have a different perspective because I used to go to live theatre a lot, but colour blind casting has long been a thing there. So I tend to interpret it the same way in TV and movies. In Renegade Nell I just kind of assumed the Earl of Poynton is a white character who happens to be played by a black man. Just suspend your disbelief.... [more]
posted by TheophileEscargot to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 12:39 PM
94 users marked this as a favorite

Seen on Blue Sky: "Interesting how Julia Louis-Dreyfus is way too busy having an actual post-Seinfeld career to complain about woke." [view]
posted by Kitteh to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:30 AM
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. Paul Auster had a real profound effect on me. I knew of him early, because my dad really liked his works. Sometime in the early 90s, my dad interviewed him for Icelandic radio, and Auster said he should be in touch when he was in New York. My dad didn’t really think much of it, but once when he was headed to New York for a conference, he sent... [more]
posted by Kattullus to MetaFilter on May 1 at 2:15 PM
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The 'trad wives' I knew growing up in the 60s/70s wore polyester elastic-waisted pants around the house and only put on lipstick for (maybe) church. They did not coo about how they loved serving their husbands; their expressed emotions about their spouses ranged from mild annoyance to contempt to fear. Kids were just tossed outside and ignored as... [more]
posted by LindsayIrene to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:34 AM
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This was such a hard read. There is just so much about this that absolutely horrifies me and makes me want to scream. I think the most immediate thing is that I am really alarmed that Balaji feels okay saying this out loud and on record. It’s not just that he’s moving the Overton window, it’s that him feeling insulated from any consequences... [more]
posted by 1024 to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 9:07 PM
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It's pure bullshit. [view]
posted by ovvl to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:27 PM
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yes it is and it's binding both ways if you stop eating the shrimp you have breached the contract. [view]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:30 AM
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“If you draw a doughnut around that Circuit City,” a Charlotte police captain later said, “I bet he talked to everyone within a mile.” I'm sorry, what? A doughnut? That's what we're drawing? [view]
posted by charismatic megafauna to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 3:20 PM
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A more skeptical look at the Leininger case. [view]
posted by interogative mood to MetaFilter on May 2 at 8:13 PM
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Ctrl-F p-r-i-v-a-t-e e-q-u-i-t-y Found the problem. Put the corpse over there next to Toys 'Я' Us, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sears, RadioShack, etc. [view]
posted by JoeZydeco to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:50 AM
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While I think Seinfeld is very very wrong, and super super myopic, that doesn't make him a "horrible horrible person." No, what makes him a horrible, horrible person was dating a high school student when he was 38. [view]
posted by rikschell to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:13 AM
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It's got to be hard to feel like you're the king of comedy and then one day and wake up and realize that you're not as funny as dril. [view]
posted by phooky to MetaFilter on Apr 30 at 9:08 AM
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Ten months ago when the Supreme Court rejected a loan forgiveness plan for technicalities, Biden quickly revised it and announced $39 billion in student debt relief. But you didn't hear too many people credit him for it, because it's difficult for them to admit how successful Biden is as a leftist president. [view]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta to MetaFilter on May 1 at 6:08 PM
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To raise enough cash to make the deal happen, Golden Gate sold off Red Lobster's real estate to another entity — in this case, a company called American Realty Capital Properties — and then immediately leased the restaurants back. Yep, that’ll do it every time. We’re only hearing about all you can eat because shoplifting doesn’t... [more]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:06 AM
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Endless shrimp didn't sink the seafood chain. Wall Street did. (Business Insider) [view]
posted by box to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:49 AM
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Red Lobster misjudged just how many seafood lovers would pour into restaurants around the United States and fill up their stomachs with pounds of sweet, juicy crab legs drenched in lemon and dipped in melted butter. Did a Red Lobster marketing team write this article? [view]
posted by moonmilk to MetaFilter on May 3 at 7:45 AM
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This whole thing is just so weird to me. Especially when they cosplay in 1950s housewife clothes. This is what happens when you remove all traces of rocking from rockabilly. [view]
posted by FatherDagon to MetaFilter on May 3 at 9:33 AM
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Wow, the all-you-can-eat stuff was just a small part of the problem, which even went beyond the usual private equity vultures cashing out while making the restaurants start paying rent: Thai Union was a top supplier of shrimp to Red Lobster for more than 20 years. In 2016, Thai Union took a $575 million minority stake in the brand. In 2020,... [more]
posted by mediareport to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:52 AM
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but without the chain smoking and benzos and amphetamine diet pills you really can't trad-wife can you? [view]
posted by djseafood to MetaFilter on May 3 at 8:48 AM
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[more comments]