It makes audiences (and, one might like to think, filmmakers) more aware of the role of women in film.

Or the lack of roles. The fact that the list of movies which pass this test - even when generously applied - is so short is disturbing.

From the link I provided above: You see, the reason the Bechdel criteria are spot-on is that having conversation between women about things other than their romantic relationships... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by three blind mice at 6:40 AM on September 3, 2008

TheStraightener Really? There was an entire row of exclusively fixed gear bikes outside this supposed party? There wasn't one bike that wasn't fixed gear?


It's artistic generalization. Come on. Pedantry is so not hip.


Anyway, this is a poorly-written article that touches on some important points. The first is that this "counterculture" movement isn't really counter... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jon_Evil at 8:21 AM on August 1, 2008

It isn't their fault for being ironic, Its the fault of the meta-industry that is gets its income from selling anything young and fresh.

Reacting to the meta-industry just encourages them. That's the problem with hipsters. Their reaction to the meta-industry culture perpetuates the myth that it is important. They are unoriginal because everything they do is a reaction to someone else's work. In that sense, it is the ad-soaked popular culture that is more authentic.
posted to MetaFilter by Ironmouth at 8:30 AM on August 1, 2008

Sam, Ironmouth's point was that it's arrogant and high-handed to assume that people aren't aware that they're living in a world that is saturated with advertising.

He's completely right; this is classic stoned-sophomore reasoning at work:

"I have just had a vision: there's advertising everywhere! No one but me and the chosen few who liked Modest Mouse until they got too big know about this! The poor down-trodden polyethnic hordes of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mister_A at 10:05 AM on August 1, 2008

He puts good premises into some of those books, and underneath all of his complicated internal meanderings, he's got a knack for dragging you into a scene and getting involved with it from time to time.

The way he embraces his fears and then lashes out at others for not being afraid of the same things has deeply disappointed me. Such a loss. If he had an emotional core as strong as his mind, I think he could have really done a lot of good with his gift of picking apart... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by batmonkey at 11:58 PM on July 29, 2008

As someone said, I think in some ways these closet cases are actually reasoning pretty rationally, they just start from false premises. The reasoning seems to go something like this: I am a normal heterosexual guy I constantly crave cock and only have sex with my wife due to social pressure Without that social pressure, all us normal heterosexual men would ditch our wives and head straight for the gay bathhouses Therefore, strong social (and legal) pressure is necessary for the human race to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by TheophileEscargot at 12:01 AM on July 30, 2008

Cagey people are toxic no matter the reason they're cagey and insecure. It just so happens that a lot of closeted people are cagey.

It's tempting to totally vilify, rather than support, closeted fuckers (I've personally been screwed over by the bitchery of closeted, confused, uptight assholes), but it's important not to totally conflate this kind of overcorrection with closetedness, because that's kissing kin to homophobia proper.
posted to MetaFilter by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:12 AM on July 30, 2008

Ugh, I feel dirty just for having read that.

Card's problem — at least as expressed in the essay, not generally — is that the courts have overturned the will of the majority. Basically, he's just wailing that this isn't faaaaair.

To which I'd say: that's the whole point. That's why we go to such great lengths to insulate the judiciary from the people; it's specifically so that they can ignore popular... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kadin2048 at 12:46 AM on July 30, 2008

The errors:

1. The courts are making law.
Not so. The court is recognizing that the State cannot limit the ability of citizens to enter into contracts based on gender.

2. Society gains no benefit.
Not so. Gay marriage creates the opportunity for contracts between gay couples. As we all know, contracts and property are the foundation of the economy.

3. It isn't good for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ewkpates at 4:07 AM on July 30, 2008

Kadin2048 writes "It frightens me to imagine what an America where the courts were overruled by popular vote would look like."

But... but that America would have a President Gore!
posted to MetaFilter by caution live frogs at 6:07 AM on July 30, 2008

Religions channel libido. They establish taboos and lay down laws that direct sexual energy away from its immediate expression. Secular judicial bodies do the same thing with aggression. Way back when, these sorts of redirections were crucial for the emergence of culture and fragile, complex forms of human interaction that would be catastrophically undone by rampant fucking or killing. Roman Catholicism, for example, opened up tremendous spaces for speculative thought by mandating a class of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by felix betachat at 6:54 AM on July 30, 2008

I got a hilarious email from an editor regarding a story I just filed about the kind of content street kids put up on their Myspace pages. One quote in the story is pulled from a comment box where this kid is basically bragging about intimidating a witness, which he was subsequently charged with and jailed for.

The editor was like,

"How do we run this? Do we use all caps?

Did he actually write ‘NI99A’?"
posted to MetaFilter by The Straightener at 7:08 AM on July 22, 2008

My friend once wrote an article comparing penguins to koala bears after visiting Australia and New Zealand. The basic gist was, koala bears get stoned and sleep three quarters of their life away, while the poor penguin is faced with unbearable harshness in its life. For example, they have no knees. Which isn't a big problem when you're swimming, but makes walking on land very cumbersome. And you have to constantly worry about becoming some seal's snack. They build nests out of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:13 AM on July 17, 2008

The meetups I've been to, it's worked well to go around and ask people if they are there with Matt Haughey. None of the strangers seem to think it's very weird, I don't have to disclose that I'm there for an internet party of imaginary friends, and the people I'm looking for immediately know I've found them.
posted to MetaTalk by mosessis at 5:25 PM on June 23, 2008

When I lived near Chicago, I once went to the Billy Goat Tavern. As usual, they yelled "Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Double's the Best!", etc. But I said, I don't eat beef. And suddenly the place was absolutely silent (my friend I was with was quite a regular, and had never experienced such quiet). A minute passes, and then one guy in the back squeaked out, "Grilled Cheese?" So fun (and a pretty good grilled cheese)! I miss Chicago. I hope y'all had a good time.
posted to MetaTalk by bluefly at 5:01 AM on July 12, 2008

I guess they're free to spend their money however they want, but you would have been pretty hard pressed to convince me to spend $200 to paint a make-shift wall green.

Every penny I earned as a teen went to video arcades, marijuana, vodka, pornographic magazines, and cigarettes. These kids are doing it wrong.
posted to MetaFilter by Meatbomb at 8:17 AM on July 10, 2008

I really can't imagine having the sense of entitlement you'd need to commandeer public space the way these kids did.This has to be parody. Seriously--you really can't imagine? They're kids. Kids do stuff like this. Kids everywhere, rich kids, poor kids, in America, and elsewhere. Always have, always will. Anywhere there are kids, you'll see makeshift soccer fields, or bike paths, or basketball goals set up at the end of cul-de-sacs. We dammed streams, shot... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MrMoonPie at 9:12 AM on July 10, 2008

sorry, old joke is old
posted to MetaTalk by empath at 9:24 PM on June 27, 2008

Maybe you cant hack sex.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2008

I Can Hax Secks?
posted to MetaTalk by taz at 3:13 AM on June 28, 2008

My fingers flew in a flurry of furious activity. It'd taken all evening to find a box I thought was adequately vulnerable. A quick port scan showed some interesting possibilities; and not just the obvious ones. With deft keystrokes, I made some progress towards getting to root, but it was slow and frustrating. Since I wasn't having any luck, I decided to check some forums to see if I could find other's reports of exploits.

Following a few suggestions, first I tried... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Eideteker at 3:58 AM on June 28, 2008

I tried to hack sex. The result where initially vigorous and satisfying, but, right at the climactic moment, my partner kicked very hard, sending my testicles flying in the air. As an autonomic response, my own legs kicked forward, coincidentally catching my testes as they began their downward trajectory, and sending them flying again. Thinking this was part of the plan, my partner watched my bells descend again, and kicked them into the air as they neared the floor. This continued for several... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Astro Zombie at 9:58 AM on June 28, 2008

I woke up five minutes before the fact, without provocation from my alarm clock, and went back to sleep. Suddenly the vibration started. I thought it was the wind, since our house kinda hums and hooms in heavy wind, but there wasn't the usual sound of my screen door opening past the latch (as it does in gusts). My fiance, a geologist woke up from her deep sleep and said, dumbass, it's an earthquake, and got up to calmly move to a doorframe. After a few seconds, she yelled at me to do the same,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by notsnot at 7:19 AM on April 18, 2008

I think that my room's location on the top floor of a 160-year-old brick building amplified the effect.

Yeah, that'll do it.

The first Real Earthquake (i.e. above 4.something) I felt when I moved to SF came when we were at a movie. We were at the Castro theater, a beautiful old revival theater with a huge screen and a balcony, and we were watching All About Eve. The place was full of homos, all of us... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by rtha at 12:51 PM on April 18, 2008

On the worst days, I promise myself I will get one thing done and then I get the rest of the day off. On the better days, I put aside the thing on which I'm stuck and just do whatever else needs doing that I can bear to do--in my field that might mean spending the day weighing things rather than writing.

The best days are the ones where I take five minutes to help out a fellow grad student with whatever I can. Sometimes, it's answering a question within our... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hydropsyche at 6:33 PM on January 31, 2008

Oh. My. God. The amount of uninformed, alarmist crap in the FPP article is astounding. Let me give one small example. I spent four years as an economist at the BLS, in the office responsible for researching methodologies for calculating the CPI. I worked on the article's principle target: hedonic adjustments to the CPI. The CPI uses code I wrote to make hedonic adjustments. So I feel somewhat qualified in saying that the article is just plain wrong in its criticism of hedonic adjustments -... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dilettanti at 9:45 PM on May 5, 2008

Wait, what am I talking about? The evil is why no one wanted to sign my yearbook, and I had to design that mind control ray to make them sign it. I like being evil. In fact, that was my yearbook quote: "I like being evil." Beneath a picture of me steepling my fingers. Oh, and look at the wildness in my eyes. How much it's faded, now that I'm living in an evil two bedroom house in the evil suburbs, with my wife and two evil kids, Hench and Henchier, and an evil... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Eideteker at 7:54 AM on April 26, 2008

Pretty much with ornate insect here. Even as a nihilistic teenager (i.e., a coward), myself and all my nihilistic teenager friends thought GG Allin was a tool.
posted to MetaFilter by kittens for breakfast at 9:38 PM on April 26, 2008

Baugh's ongoing study shows that over the phone many Americans are able to accurately guess the age, race, sex, ethnicity, region of heritage and other social demographics based on a few sentences, even just a hello.
[...]
Baugh has found racist responses in hundreds of calls. He tests ads with a series of three calls. First, someone speaking with an African-American dialect responds to an ad. Then, a researcher with a Mexican-style Spanish-English dialect... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kid ichorous at 1:04 PM on April 24, 2008

Wait until you see the results of the Open Source Cockpunching Project.
posted to MetaFilter by longbaugh at 5:56 AM on April 23, 2008

Ha, in my day a TRUE gaming geek would not be distracted by breasts. I went to a con once with a friend who in medieval garb who could shoot hard candies from her breast region. She would come up to fellow gamers and ask, "would you like a candy?" and if they said, "Yes" would shoot one right out from her bodice. It was a skill, almost a gift. Anyway, the true gamers would yell at her for distracting people from the Warhammer table and tell her to get the hell away... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jadepearl at 7:48 AM on April 23, 2008

The closer we get, the more it appears that this is the worst possible PR experience for China and the Chinese. Their responses to criticisms are not appropriate in western society to the point that one wonders why they want to join.
posted to MetaFilter by ewkpates at 7:17 AM on April 23, 2008

I've had a problem with this kind of "feminist" exclusion of people for a long time. I think things like the MichFest are representations of the idea that "separate can be equal -- or even better if we do it!" which never works and sets derisions like the one with Transwomen. I think it calls into question just what these women/womyn/wimin/etc consider a woman -- whether it's self-perception of woman hood or something biological.

If it's something... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Gular at 9:23 AM on March 30, 2008

While I don't have a strong opinion about excluding transwomen from the festival, I must say that I understand the argument. The festival is a reprieve for a very particular type of oppression, namely one that women experience in a patriarchal society. The oppression that transfolk experience is similar and related, but not exactly the same.

As a man-loving woman who has attended the festival twice, I must say the the experience of being in an all-woman space was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by crunchtopmuffin at 10:29 AM on March 30, 2008

crunchtopmuffin: " Being in this space which celebrates women and in which there is *no* chance of sexual assault by a man was liberating."

this seems like a somewhat specious argument, considering the fact that the festival organizers are allowing in ftm transmen. It seems to me that, from a biological/hormonal perspective, you should be more concerned about a T-taking transman engaging in the sort of stereotypical male aggressive/sexual... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grandsham at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2008

i went to this festival twice back in the day (about 12 years ago or so), and though i too was kind of squicked by the trans-controversy, it was a very inspiring place to be. the fact that the place is brought up from the ground entirely by women is a wonderful feeling to participate in.

i've since been done with the separatist mindset, but it has a place in helping women--especially women who've been severely damaged by their oppression--find their way to a stronger... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RedEmma at 11:14 AM on March 30, 2008

Did somebody say unicorn?
posted to MetaFilter by Unicorn on the cob at 8:19 PM on March 19, 2008

he wants to work on it so much that he would seem neglectful if we lived together.

That makes no sense. By not living together and spending all his time on music he would be neglectful. At least by living with you, you'd see a little of each other every day: at meals, brushing teeth, reading comics. If I was in love with someone and had a choice to spend daily inconsequential moments or rarer weekly visits, I'd take the first choice always.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by yeti at 3:04 PM on March 17, 2008

Dear Exasperated Philosopher:

Mr. Pseudo Profundity is, fortunately, in a transitional state, much like the pupa that one day reveals itself to be a beautiful butterfly. Eventually he will smoke enough pot and sleep with enough impressionable girls after coasting on his Profundity that he will collapse like a souffle in a sonic boom under the weight of his own cynicism and boredom and fluffy, nutty bullshit. Heavy drinking will ensue, then depression, then he will... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by middleclasstool at 11:11 AM on March 13, 2008

Have you noticed that the link from his site labeled "popular posts" is actually a link to his own del.icio.us page where he has linked practically every post on his own site? Why would one need to delicious everything? Is the idea just to keep it all in one place, or is it to try to get some market/mind share? Some of both?

I took an honest stab at answering what I took to be his question, mostly be throwing resources at it and saying "go read stuff.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by wheat at 1:18 PM on March 13, 2008

I work for a publisher that publishes a bit of philosophy and in a discussion of what sort of Web services that scholarly community might need in the future, the only thing we could come up with was a spell-checker/referee plug-in for neologisms. "It looks like you're making up words, need some help?"

One of our editors swore never to work on a philosophical monograph again after working with an author who insisted on muddling his manuscript with the incessant... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Toekneesan at 2:37 PM on March 13, 2008

spoErdt (some people of EVERY race do that)
posted to MetaTalk by 23skidoo at 9:40 AM on March 13, 2008

.

By strange laundry coincidence, I dressed in all black today. The last time I did that was when I played DnD and other RPGs pretty religiously. So when I looked in the mirror on the way out the door this morning, I thought to myself, "Man, I look like a DnD Nerd today."

So I am surprised and saddened to learn that it was entirely appropriate for me to dress all in black today.

Say what you will about RPGs, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by robocop is bleeding at 10:27 AM on March 4, 2008

On a sort of tangent, this rules min/max'ing makes me realize what I grow bored with so easily in Warcraft -- the constant push for more loot, more treasure, etc.

I guess why I'm one of those types who keeps trying to make the game more special by, you know, kiting bosses to cities.
posted to MetaFilter by cavalier at 2:07 PM on March 4, 2008

mathowie: You enter a large, blue room. There is a door to the left leading to a green room and a door to the right leading to a gray room. The room is full of trolls.

jessmyn: Again with the fucking trolls! I whip out my +1 Banhammer.

cortex: Good thinking. Trolls take double damage from banhammers.

mathowie: The trolls flee into the gray room, as is their trollish custom.

cortex: I search for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Parasite Unseen at 1:43 PM on March 4, 2008

Doubting the technical accuracy of this diagram
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:44 PM on March 9, 2008

I thought I'd sneak in here, now that most of the traffic's gone and only the Google spiders are watching, to mention that a friend who's senior at Microsoft once reported seeing, among the books on a shelf behind Bill's desk, what was clearly the spine of the 1st-ed AD&D Monster Manual.

You can keep your black polonecks and your what-do-we-do-when-we-run-out-of-cats OSes, I'm sticking with Windows.
posted to MetaFilter by Hogshead at 6:46 AM on March 12, 2008

OK. I was That Girl who waited till marriage for sex. My now-husband (who I am still convinced is a saint) waited 4 years. And even we had at least started making out after the first month.

I was also That Girl who let relationships drag on and on with no physical intimacy because I couldn't get up the nerve to tell the guy I just wasn't into him. Half the time I didn't know it myself. I honestly didn't know how I was... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by CrazyGabby at 8:56 PM on March 2, 2008

Oh boy.

Your girlfriend reminds me a bit of myself with my first boyfriend-kinda-sorta. We were head over heels for each other but never did more than cuddle/hold hands/kiss on the cheek. I cared about him very much and was attracted to him, but was so completely intimidated by sexuality and hung up on the idea of some kind of romantic purity that I just couldn't handle anything more. No abuse or eating disorders or anything on my part, just divorced parents and a lot... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by hippugeek at 12:10 PM on March 3, 2008

When you work in office environments you are bound to meet strange, abrasive, annoying, etc. people. If, as in this case, they have no real power over you or your job, your best bet is to be unfailingly cordial to her when you see her and as soon as she is out of your sight, let her slip out of your mind. Seriously, do not waste time and energy thinking (and overthinking) about people who have no real impact on your life. You are the one making this an issue. Just be polite and forget about her.
posted to Ask Metafilter by sic at 12:20 PM on March 4, 2008