This upsets me. mdn was wise and one of the best posters here.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 11:49 AM on July 8, 2008

proof positive that filtering the content according to favorites (read 'validations') was a poor idea.

I've wondered about mdn's low favorite:comment ratio before. I think a large part of the reason for it is that she was most active before favorites existed.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 11:55 AM on July 8, 2008

Yay, it's time to grill various meats, drink Negro Modelo in the pool, and blast David Byrne's Miss America on loop for 10 hours. Happy 4th, Metafilter! I'll be your teenage fanclub, although at times it might seem awkward.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 10:53 AM on July 4, 2008

[...] a creative and original FPP in the way this was a creative and original FPP (with totally un-original content.)

Aw, the tag box on the side totally ruins the inventive formatting. I think it would be evened out if a few more tags were added, extending the box down the length of the post. Can we get a couple of new tags tossed in there?
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 10:10 AM on July 3, 2008

A great choice!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 10:07 AM on May 18, 2008

Aw, no way, a MeFite wrote that banana book? That's great! When that NPR interview came on a few weeks back, as soon as I heard the phrase "banana scientist" I was instantly engaged, and on arriving home I hung out in my parked car in my driveway so that I could listen to the whole thing. Great job, soulbarn! Since then I've told many a person about how the Cavendish has usurped the Gros Michel, and I am dying, dying, to try a Lakatan at some point.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:21 PM on April 21, 2008

I know that the point of this post isn't to have people look at your project and tell you whether they like it. But I still want to tell you that I like your project and I like your site.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:01 PM on April 7, 2008

qnk is awesome.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 4:54 PM on March 28, 2008

I've always thought that OmieWise has a history of excellent comments related to antidepressants and depression. This post in particular springs to mind.

mdn also has some wise things to say. This comment has stuck with me, though perhaps it's not entirely appropriate, as it's a rebuke to others who charge the OP with being depressed.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 6:18 PM on March 24, 2008

I second flabdablet's call!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:59 PM on March 24, 2008

Holy Christ, that speech was incredible.

I support the total excision of politics from Metafilter. IMO, this speech would be objectively FPP-worthy for reasons purely having to do with its form, were it not an unfortunate casualty of a sound policy decision to depoliticize this place. If we could do things over and allow exactly one FPP up to this point to mention the word 'Obama', it should be this one. Still: no exceptions. It's a presidential campaign speech, so... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 3:29 PM on March 18, 2008

these individuals sip their coffees, buy their carbon footprints, shop at Trader Joes and donate money to Obama's campaign feeling they are part of something - that they are actively making the world a better place.

Stynxno, if you don't like the insulting backlash you receive from Obama supporters, then maybe you shouldn't use implicature to caricature and insult the people who liked his speech.

Plenty of people who find Obama... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 8:52 PM on March 18, 2008

Also: "the amazing phenomena which is Obama" makes no sense. It should be "phenomenon".
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 1:15 AM on March 19, 2008

Well, this thread inspired me to pour myself a glass of Macallan 12. It's not 25, but whacha gonna do? Cheers, MetaTalk!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 2:59 PM on March 15, 2008

We've had debates before about whether there's an anti-philosophy bent on Metafilter. Remember this thread? Ontic was worried that the mods were a little too trigger-happy in deleting philosophically-oriented questions, and it degraded pretty quickly into davy taking on the whole discipline. Good times. LobsterMitten's position hasn't changed much.

Haven't seen ontic in a while. Hope he'll be back. Kwine's pretty much incommunicado as well.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 1:01 AM on March 14, 2008

"Perfunctory" is such a sesquipedalian-ass word to append "-ass" to.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:00 PM on March 9, 2008

I'm not a fan of the forking solution. Just rename Favorites. You'll be able to do the exact same things with them, but it'll be more obvious that they're not meant to be used solely as marks of applause. You won't get comments like "What's more upsetting is that Derek marked that as a favorite comment."

A whole bunch of sites (like YouTube) have comment-rating features that are entirely divorced from bookmarking. Conflating them is hugely confusing from a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:52 AM on February 15, 2008

"Favorites" should be renamed to be "Bookmarks".
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:56 PM on February 12, 2008

Ahh! An admin onslaught!

Thanks, guys.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 3:57 PM on January 21, 2008

Sorry I ruined the admin rush, Jessamyn. I would have been totally overwhelmed otherwise.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 4:01 PM on January 21, 2008

I asked this question in a MeTa thread a little while ago and didn't get a response. 'Nth' is one of those words that comes up all the time in crosswords, Scrabble, etc., and when I was playing around with the wordlist I use to make puzzles, I noticed 'nthing' wasn't in there. I was about to put it in, but then thought I'd better google it to see how common it is.

Ever seen that sign, "Good is nothing without God"? Nothing is nothing without nthing.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 8:54 AM on January 14, 2008

There should be a required course in every computer science program that tries to teach budding geeks that people are not computers and that language is not code.

The author has a PhD in linguistics.

Linguistics pretty much is the study of language as computer code.

(The Chomskyan program, anyway. And that's nearly universal.)
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:16 PM on January 13, 2008

Asked a bunch of linguists the other day if any natural languages had the same syntax as Yoda's speech, I did. Their conclusion: no.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:11 PM on January 13, 2008

Did "nthing" originate with Metafilter? This is hard to Google for -- you get pages and pages of misspellings of "nothing". But some searches indicate that it's a very Metafilter-centric saying. What was the first MeFi use of it? Is there any easy way to search for that?
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:47 AM on December 21, 2007

People are seeing change in the site that I don't think it exists. I'm guessing that the thread would have been deleted as chatfilter back then, too, if the mods had caught it early enough (was jessamyn on board at that point?). Even before 10 AM, some powerful, powerful comments had been made, and it was clearly something that could not and should not be deleted. It slipped through the cracks for a few hours and had a chance to fight for its life. We now have more mods, so chatfilter is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:33 AM on December 10, 2007

Being able to tag favorites is a great idea. Once you get enough, they become almost useless as bookmarking features because you can never find anything that you favorite. Then they become useful only as public shows of applause or votes in arguments. I'd like to see their cataloging capabilities be heightened to prevent them from naturally turning into a tool for popularity contests.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 11:44 AM on December 9, 2007

This is terrific!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:29 AM on December 9, 2007

Wow, layer tennis is great! I'll definitely watch out for this.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 4:31 PM on December 5, 2007

I used to think that The Beatles were so-called in order to be self-deprecating in a punny way. The Beatless.

Also, I assumed for a long time that 'Sol LeWitt' was a pseudonym because it was so fitting for a minimalist artist. Brevity is the Sol LeWitt. I still can't believe that there are hardly any Google hits for that pun.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 6:06 PM on November 25, 2007

Here's a thread about grilled cheese sandwiches.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 1:23 AM on October 31, 2007

Excellent! Congratulations!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 4:02 PM on October 29, 2007

the concept is no different to what the french art chick in the fpp did: "hey! here's a breakup email! now go off and produce analysis / art from it!" [...]

c'mon, despite the fact that almost everybody has resisted the idea, don't you think we can do better than that?

I think we have very different interpretations about why the "french art chick's" work is cool.

Sophie Calle is... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 10:04 AM on September 28, 2007

BeerFilter, that is awesome.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 2:43 PM on September 28, 2007

Metafilter: Just like people to fuck up posts. Make time to think things out, then comment. Don't say or link to shit that you know sucks.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 2:24 PM on September 28, 2007

"It showed clips of orangutan females acting submissive in front of the dormitory poet-troubadour."
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:19 PM on September 11, 2007

I'm happy that this thread introduced me to Brad Sucks. Great stuff, frenetic!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:47 PM on September 7, 2007

Oh man, I can't believe I missed that Ron Paul thread. It's a trainwreck classic.

Gnostic Novelist in that thread kind of reminds me of Ignatius Reilly. "My father is a brilliant man, we were lower middle class, but he was a member of Mensa, and of course this means I am endowed with certain genetic gifts."
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 7:26 PM on August 26, 2007

The Allman Brothers? Banned.
K. C. and the Sunshine? Banned.
Henry Rollins? Banned.
Steve Miller? Banned.
Dave Matthews? Banned.

These guys can still post.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:23 PM on July 20, 2007

What do you call a mix of water and fruit drink powder that can't post any more?

A banned ade solution.

What did Matt do to the posting bot that chopped off Matt's left arm?... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 5:12 PM on July 20, 2007

Lentrohamsanin got me. That was a funny surprise.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:55 PM on June 23, 2007

I think that's a common reading of Romeo and Juliet, Firas. I've heard it a few times before in any case. R&J are just two dumb star-crossed kids who got swept up in angsty youthful melodrama -- their love is not to be admired. I've no idea how much textual support there is for this reading, how popular it is in critical circles, or if it's at all feasible to think that Shakespeare himself was slyly critical of R&J's romance. But it's certainly the interpretation I prefer.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 9:20 AM on May 15, 2007

Thanks for the follow-up. The quonsar connection and the subsequent burst of internet sleuthery made the duclod post really exciting.

I still can't stand the author's writing.

"This is Rick": this is annoying.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 3:30 PM on May 8, 2007

Self-poster self-posts self's poster.

Diesel van diagram.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 2:51 AM on April 20, 2007

There are so many good things about this story.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 5:40 PM on April 2, 2007

That was a great surprise. Thanks.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 12:32 AM on April 1, 2007

People act more morally when they think they're being watched. It's hard to believe, but this effect manifests itself even when people are being "watched" by an image of eyes (cite).

Of course, sticking a picture of some watchful eyes by the Post button would look a wee bit intrusive and contrived. Unless the eyes could be somehow naturally integrated into the site design. Say, on the Preview button. And put a pencil image or something... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 6:56 PM on March 28, 2007

Thanks! *slow breathing, withdrawl fading*

I have a friend originally from Virginia who also slips into a southern drawl when she gets excited, Salmonberry.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 1:06 AM on March 26, 2007

I wish Favorites were called Bookmarks or something like that. As it is, people use them to vote for arguments that they agree with, endorse attacks on other users they dislike, rank standing in the community, etc. That's not what they're there for.

Vote for this comment if you agree!
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 11:00 PM on March 20, 2007

The race is on! Go team painquale!

I'm gonna lose so bad
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 11:33 PM on March 20, 2007

I don't think Shigella bacteria work like Iocaine powder, o King Mithridates.

In middle school I read that apple seeds contained cyanide, so I decided to start eating the cores of my apples in order to build up a resistance. My science teacher then told me that cyanide is one of those substances that stays pooled in your system. I am one apple seed away from a grisly death.
posted to MetaTalk by painquale at 4:05 PM on March 18, 2007