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The short science fiction story "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones (published March 2024 in Clarkesworld) begins:

I express greetings and most joyful salutations!

I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your movement has been aimless, and I express concern!

posted by brainwane to MetaFilter on Apr 26 at 9:21 AM
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Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.” [...] “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said [last October], after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts.

TNR: The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco: "If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay."
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 12:12 PM
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G/O Media, the much-reviled owner of such internet landmarks as Kotaku, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and The Root, has been selling off their assets recently, including ClickHole (sold to Cards Against Humanity), Lifehacker (Ziff Davis), Deadspin (gutted), Jezebel and the AV Club (Paste). Latest on the auction block is The Onion... who ended up with a surprising buyer: Global Tetrahedron, a name that might ring a few bells for longtime readers. But what does the advent of this ominous conglomerate mean for America's Finest News Source?™
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 6:59 PM
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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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“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.” "It was 2017, and a YIMBY activist invited me to talk about my book Nixonland with his book club, which also happened to be Marc Andreessen’s book club."
posted by mecran01 to MetaFilter on Apr 26 at 3:06 PM
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Brutalist Churches.
posted by kaibutsu to MetaFilter on Apr 26 at 7:52 PM
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When you often notice people "why-don't-they-just"-ing their way into a proposed solution to a gnarly problem, you might turn your criticisms into a checklist. "Your post advocates a [( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante] approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work." These templates often offer a summary of the problem space and a glimpse of experts' frustrations. Solution rejection checklists exist for fixing the housing crisis, beating the CAP Theorem, protecting against DDOS attacks, improving pharmaceutical drug discovery success rates, creating new programming languages and distributed social networks, and (MeFi comment!) saving journalism.
posted by brainwane to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 7:30 AM
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“ So my editor, and I, would like me to bring Garak into this.” - “ That’s interesting. There is an interesting angle for that.” - Star Trek’s Alexander Siddig interviewed for Arab-American Heritage Month
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 1:34 PM
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Ultimately, cultural preferences are subject to generational relativism, heavily rooted in the media of our adolescence. It's strange how much your 13-year-old self defines your lifelong artistic tastes. At this age, we're unable to drive, vote, drink alcohol, or pay taxes, yet we're old enough to cultivate enduring musical preferences. The pervasive nature of music paralysis across generations suggests that the phenomenon's roots go beyond technology, likely stemming from developmental factors. So what changes as we age, and when does open-eardness decline? from When Do We Stop Finding New Music? A Statistical Analysis
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on Apr 26 at 2:05 AM
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Writing for Defector, Asher Elbein talks about the evolution of the character of Magneto, who is (yet again) back from the dead and the shift of meaning in "Never Again," from inclusive aspiration to its violent modern application.
posted by Ghidorah to MetaFilter on Apr 24 at 4:13 PM
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The backside of the moon as it transits across Earth. That is all.
posted by Tell Me No Lies to MetaFilter on Apr 24 at 1:32 PM
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The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness , signed by 88 researchers, asks us to consider more non-human creatures as capable of subjective experiences.
posted by doctornemo to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 4:42 PM
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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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The Coddling of the American Parent by Mike Masnick (TechDirt) debunks Jonathan Haidt's panicky new book on teens & the internet. Developmental psychologist & scholar Candice Odgers' article for Nature: The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.
posted by spamandkimchi to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 12:58 PM
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For more than two years, the world of lost media has been flummoxed by 17 seconds of grainy audio uploaded to a small name-that-song site. Tentatively titled "Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)" based on the apparent lyrics, the clip's energetic retro 80s vibes defied all attempts by music ID apps and various hive-minds to track it down, soon becoming the holy grail of the "lostwave" community of enthusiasts for obscure unidentified "rare grooves." The search inspired articles, video essays, Youtube and TikTok memes, ambitious reconstructions (including multiple music videos), and whole wikis, but the song itself remained unsolved... until now.
posted by Rhaomi to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 12:52 PM
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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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Synthony is apparently an EDM orchestra. I mean, like, that's what it is. It's a DJ mix being played live by an orchestra. With singers and other things. Like, I can't describe this adequately, here: SYNTHONY - World Premiere - Full Length Show [1h55m] Performed by Auckland Philharmonia.
posted by hippybear to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 1:49 PM
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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 generations of science fiction and fantasy aficionados, saying the name Harlan Ellison is like uttering a dark spell. Ellison’s writing — primarily in short story format — is fantastic and provocative, but his reputation for contentiousness was equally potent, often overshadowing the art itself. And for younger genre fans, the name Harlan Ellison might not mean anything at all. If you’re into science fiction and fantasy and came of age in the new millennium (and his 2014 Simpsons cameo went over your head), there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Ellison. from The Unexpected Resurrection of Harlan Ellison
posted by chavenet to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 1:50 AM
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Jerry Seinield 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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(Apologies, this got long) Oh this hits so close to home. Not for me, but for my wife. We both came to running later in life (I was 35, she was ten years older than me and started a few years later when she was almost 50). When we were first married, running meant running to the store to buy a pack of cinnamon rolls to split. But after we... [more]
posted by gmatom to MetaFilter on Apr 24 at 6:22 AM
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i await the cleansing fire i'd be happy just making these fuckers pay their taxes [view]
posted by They sucked his brains out! to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 12:44 PM
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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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"Man of Indian descent, man of Chinese descent and unwillingly-outed gay man allying themselves with the extreme right in well-thought-out scheme" reads like a modern version of an old Onion headline. [view]
posted by mhoye to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 12:48 PM
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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
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Christ, what assholes. [view]
posted by Wild_Eep to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 12:15 PM
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My spouse grew up loving Ellison and introduced me to him. I loved his writing, too. The City of the Edge of Forever saga is fascinating and ridiculous and changed Star Trek forever. But the FPP article quickly glances over the time he grabbed the breast of (one of my favorite authors and one of the most Hugo Award winning authors of all time)... [more]
posted by hydropsyche to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 4:07 AM
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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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These people don't really have utopia in mind, and they don't have any particular morality or politics or ethics that are consistent or even thought-out. They just don't want to pay taxes. That's all that underlies the fascist posturing. It's so fucking pathetic. [view]
posted by They sucked his brains out! to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 1:10 PM
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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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“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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Maybe they need more humanities classes at Stanford. [view]
posted by chasing to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 12:57 PM
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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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He was definitely a writer of contradictions - famously, he mentored Octavia Butler, and his sixties/seventies/eighties essays about feminism, racism and policing are worth looking at if you're trying to get a sense of his concerns. And if you read sixties science fiction, there's a whole trend of "we are tough and real and deep,... [more]
posted by Frowner to MetaFilter on Apr 28 at 5:33 AM
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and also WHY IS THERE NOT MORE GOTH FOR AND BY OLD PEOPLE. WHY DO ONLY YOUNG PEOPLE MOAN ABOUT DEATH. GOTH SHOULD BECOME MORE INTENSE AS YOU APPROACH THE GRAVE, NOT LESS. WHAT THE FUCK [view]
posted by phooky to MetaFilter on Apr 26 at 5:31 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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Here are pictures of our last 5k costumes, and our 5k in Juneau. [view]
posted by gmatom to MetaFilter on Apr 24 at 8:20 AM
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During the encounter, which was captured by security cameras, she offered a very different spin on why she had hired so many employees with criminal records. "I can use the legal system to my advantage," Widell crowed. "Do you know how many people work here that don't want to go back to prison or jail? Fuck all of them.... [more]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane to MetaFilter on Apr 29 at 5:02 AM
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They just don't want to pay taxes Oh I don’t know. I expect they want to not pay for ANYTHING on top of not paying taxes, have the state back that desire with force and to be congratulated as the cleverest and most beneficial figures in world history. Also it should be illegal to make fun of them. [view]
posted by Artw to MetaFilter on Apr 27 at 1:40 PM
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I heard a long interview with Haidt and got pretty suspicious, sure enough he thinks transgender kids are infected by social media/peers and is supportive of his colleagues who refuse to use a student's correct pronouns, under the guise that "truth" is more important than "social justice." [view]
posted by muddgirl to MetaFilter on Apr 25 at 1:17 PM
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[more comments]