Very rarely can we see an entire system reflected in one person. The creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” is such a person. (Seth Simons, Longreads; content warning for sexual assault)
posted to MetaFilter by dismas at 4:38 PM on August 17, 2023 (154 comments)

What are some unusual non-sweet ways to flavor fizzy water?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by vunder at 1:30 PM on August 10, 2023 (24 comments)

I'm reading Moby Dick. It's fun! But I'm sure I'm missing a lot. This is where you come in!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wooh at 10:03 PM on July 23, 2023 (18 comments)

Is there a straightforward resource with step-by-step instruction for a range of basic care tasks (e.g., maintaining personal hygiene, laundry, household chores) that is written for a general adult audience, not specifically for kids, developmentally disabled people, or other specialized populations? Basically, I'm looking for a book, website, Youtube channel, or other resource that could function as a practical companion to KC Davis's How to Keep House While Drowning.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by theotherdurassister at 7:13 PM on July 24, 2023 (9 comments)

FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY: With the Kansas City Royals trailing 4–3 in the top half of the ninth inning and two out, future Hall-Of-Famer third baseman George Brett hit a two-run home run off of "Goose" Gossage (also a future Hall of Famer) to give his team the lead. Yankees manager Billy Martin, who had noticed a large amount of pine tar on Brett's bat, requested that the umpires inspect his bat. Home plate umpire Tim McClelland ruled that the amount on the bat exceeded what was allowed, nullified Brett's home run, and called him out. Brett, having already rounded the bases and returned to the dugout, launched himself towards home plate in a rage, requiring his manager and teammates to drag him screaming and cursing away from McClelland... but the story doesn't end there.
posted to MetaFilter by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:09 PM on July 24, 2023 (60 comments)

I recently bought a couple of really nice enamel pins and want more. What do you recommend?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Frowner at 8:41 AM on July 19, 2023 (18 comments)

I need book recommendations! One of my favorite genres is science fiction, but only hard sci-fi and speculative fiction, NO FANTASY. Trying to find a regular source of book recs is tricky because they all seem to include fantasy. Any recommendations?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Threeve at 10:19 PM on June 17, 2023 (37 comments)

I recently discovered that I love rice, as long as it’s salted or has other spices/flavors in it. What else should I add to rice, that goes in the pot directly when I’m making it, that will taste delicious?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by danceswithlight at 10:11 AM on March 12, 2019 (69 comments)

The Unexpected Genius Behind Akira's Legendary Score [SlashFilm] There's never been anything quite like the soundtrack to the anime classic "Akira." To this day, the pulsating rhythms and otherworldly chants still sound unlike any other music put to film. That uniqueness is due to the unorthodox approach of composer Shoji Yamashiro, whose background in amateur musicianship allowed him to create a score completely outside the realm of professional tradition. "Akira" utilizes a host of sounds that may seem unfamiliar to Western ears. The soundtrack is an eclectic mixture of traditional folk music and digital synthesizer programming, eliciting a raw and primal feeling amidst the futuristic cyberpunk skyline of Neo-Tokyo. Yamashiro incorporated a form of Indonesian music called gamelan jegog, which stems from Bali and is made up of fast, intense rhythms played on bamboo instruments. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of "Akira." [YouTube][Geinoh-Yamashirogumi "Kaneda" from AKIRA]
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 11:24 AM on July 18, 2023 (42 comments)

"We are told that the problems in our lives are solvable mostly by individual action. This lie has been repeated so often that it has soaked down into the cultural bedrock of much of the western world and so is almost an inescapable starting proposition." You are not the answer.
posted to MetaFilter by simmering octagon at 11:30 AM on July 13, 2023 (69 comments)

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted to MetaFilter by Melismata at 6:44 AM on July 14, 2023 (76 comments)

Recently I have noticed several different commenters on MetaFilter using the phrase "wheelchair bound." This is a phrase that a lot of wheelchair users (including myself) find deeply objectionable, as wheelchairs actually give us freedom of movement compared to not having a wheelchair. (Also, a lot of wheelchair users are ambulatory wheelchair users, e.g. they can sometimes walk a very short distance.) The preferred term is "wheelchair user". If using it as an adjective, you can say "wheelchair using", e.g. "My wheelchair-using girlfriend."
posted to MetaTalk by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:27 AM on July 13, 2023 (43 comments)

For over a year, players in the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association have been in negotiations with investment firms Billie Jean King Enterprises and the Mark Walter Group to launch a new women's hockey league. Thus, the part of their Thursday night announcement laying out plans for the new league to start play in January of 2024 wasn't a huge surprise. But the other part of the announcement was: The investment groups have also bought out the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly the National Women's Hockey League), consolidating the sport's player pool and essentially disbanding what had been the only pro women's hockey league in North America for the last four years. (archive.today link)
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 9:57 AM on July 7, 2023 (13 comments)

Over the years that followed, I kept clicking on my keyboard phones until eventually the iPhone replaced them. I have memories of using a Palm Treo on the train and my BlackBerry at lunch through most of the 2000s. But I can’t remember how I’d spent my idle time in the years before, on the train or at lunch or at any other time of day when we found ourselves between things. Literally, what did we do? I cannot recall. (SLAtlantic, ungated)
posted to MetaFilter by ShooBoo at 9:46 AM on July 8, 2023 (154 comments)

So apparently Evernote was acquired and fired all its workers and is announcing price hikes. I have a decade or so of notes. Whither to move my stuff to?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by signal at 5:43 PM on July 6, 2023 (16 comments)

[MLYT] During his run on Late Night, David Letterman would do intros before reruns - but occasionally, he'd go a little further. Speeding up the episode to cram extra footage in, watching the episode alongside the viewer and offering commentary... but these pale in comparison to the time he had a rerun redubbed by different people - including voice actors from the 60's Speed Racer dub.
posted to MetaFilter by BiggerJ at 7:09 PM on July 5, 2023 (16 comments)

An often overlooked insight on this "holiday."
posted to MetaFilter by Scout405 at 8:34 AM on July 4, 2023 (11 comments)

Hello Toronto! It's been so very long & I miss y'all! Let's meet at our usual (pre-pandemic) spot for a pleasant afternoon on the patio =)
posted to MeFi IRL by rat 'n loveseat at 10:02 AM on July 4, 2023

Die Hard has hit one of our streaming services this month, which makes me think about Christmas in July. What are some of your favorite Christmas movies? And would you watch them in July?
posted to MetaTalk by a non mouse, a cow herd at 10:39 PM on July 1, 2023 (44 comments)

…by modeling a film camera in Blender to capture images in Blender. In excruciating detail. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by adamrice at 3:23 PM on July 1, 2023 (12 comments)

Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been.
posted to MetaFilter by 1970s Antihero at 5:43 AM on June 30, 2023 (51 comments)

Have there been any innovations or improvements to pandemic face masks in the last year or so—especially as relates to comfort, fit, seal, durability?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rollcredits at 4:38 PM on June 29, 2023 (15 comments)

The first price is the cost of acquisition and then "in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits."
posted to MetaFilter by blue shadows at 9:20 PM on June 28, 2023 (41 comments)

To those who know what Oakland A’s baseball used to be, what Fisher had turned the team into was nothing short of tragic. A’s teams in the past had brought to Oakland pride and repute, as they had seemed to represent, in their character and color, their misfit swagger and underdog grit, something both essential and specific about the East Bay’s sense of self. In this way, certain of those teams had evinced something distinct about the constructive potential of pro sports writ large: how beloved local teams can bring a people together and lift a city up. Fisher’s A’s evince something very different: pro sports’ concurrent capacity for diminishment and plunder, disillusionment and grift. from The Long, Sad Story of the Stealing of the Oakland A’s [The Ringer; ungated]
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 12:19 PM on June 29, 2023 (39 comments)

White people food is the latest social media trend in China, with posters presenting minimalist lunches of raw veggies, crackers, slices to cheese, cold cuts and other staples, as Chinese young people discover the "lunch of suffering."
posted to MetaFilter by chrchr at 10:18 AM on June 28, 2023 (94 comments)

Looking for clothing that passes the Stupid Sexy Flanders test. Any type of clothing, as long as it can barely be felt on your body. What are your favourite articles of clothing that feel as little like wearing clothing as possible?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by wheatlets at 2:17 PM on June 26, 2023 (23 comments)

After two (and a fraction) terms of the inane, waffling, conservative bootlicking John Tory (who resigned after it was discovered he was schtupping a staffer), preceeded by a term of the odious and idiotic Rob Ford resulting in over 13 years of ponderously ineffective governance, Toronto has finally elected a progressive, visionary mayor: Olivia Chow -- immigrant, Chinese, a master of grass-roots organizing, and the widow of much lamented Jack Layton. I'mma editorialize further: we're giddy up here.
posted to MetaFilter by seanmpuckett at 7:00 AM on June 27, 2023 (57 comments)

My job has increased in complexity, with a lot of goals, priorities, moving parts, key stakeholders and in particular lots of ways that information and requests come in. I am far from unique in this, but I am increasingly feeling overwhelmed. How are great middle managers, product managers, project managers, and other professionals managing this? What tools or techniques are you using?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jeoc at 5:55 PM on June 15, 2023 (14 comments)

The Slow Birding project, on the pleasures of and lessons learned from carefully observing common birds, was launched 13 years ago by animal behavior biologist Joan E. Strassmann. Now it's a book. An author interview: "the reason I wrote a whole book is that I wanted to tell the stories of the commonest birds, because the commonest birds are also the most-studied, and ornithologists have figured out some pretty amazing stories about them. So I also wanted to tell the stories of both the scientists and the common birds." On blue jays: "It may well be that these brilliant colored birds are the only ones I recognize in my early morning daze."
posted to MetaFilter by spamandkimchi at 2:40 PM on June 15, 2023 (10 comments)

Why Is Everyone Watching TV With the Subtitles On? (SLAtlantic - archive)
posted to MetaFilter by ShooBoo at 10:57 PM on June 12, 2023 (155 comments)

Anger over an astronomical increase in Reddit's API prices [prev.] boiled over this week as multiple third-party app developers were forced to close down, with one -- Apollo dev Christian Selig -- posting a scathing exposé detailing the company's shady dealings... including a recorded phone call disproving CEO Steve "spez" Huffman's claim that Selig blackmailed them. Huffman took to the site's vaunted AMA format to do damage control, only to double down, ignore tough questions, and reap thousands of downvotes. In response, the community has organized a massive subreddit "blackout" to protest the rate hike that will bankrupt popular apps, hamper critical moderation tools, and exclude blind users. While such protests are not new, this one is unprecedented in scope: 20,000+ mods from over 7,000 subreddits with more than 2 billion collective readers, from familiar mainstays like /r/aww, /r/videos, and /r/todayilearned to niche subs like /r/Eragon and /r/Panda. Facing layoffs, a major pre-IPO valuation cut, and a runaway user revolt reminiscent of Digg [prev.], could this be the end of the "front page of the internet"? Watch the site wink out in real time [livestream], join the fight on /r/Save3rdPartyApps and /r/ModCoord, backup your data, or check out some up-and-coming /r/RedditAlternatives.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 8:36 AM on June 12, 2023 (704 comments)

Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri shares a hidden, almost subliminal aspect of Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining: quick, unsettling glances that break the fourth wall. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by swift at 10:07 AM on June 6, 2023 (66 comments)

I’m on record as opposing the pitch timer, and I opposed it on aesthetic, even theological, grounds... I’ll just have to come right out with it. I was wrong.

posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:38 PM on May 17, 2023 (41 comments)

How to Make Friends Making friends easily is less about accomplishing certain actions than inhabiting a kind of persona.
posted to MetaFilter by misskaz at 5:03 AM on April 24, 2023 (50 comments)

According to her Instagram. Heather Brooke Hamilton aka Heather B. Armstrong aka dooce aka love of my life. July 19, 1975 - May 9, 2023. "It takes an ocean not to break." Hold your loved ones close and love everyone else.
posted to MetaFilter by Bluecoat93 at 9:51 AM on May 10, 2023 (156 comments)

Small Wonders Magazine [via mefi projects] is a new online speculative fiction and poetry magazine. Their inaugural issue contains fiction by Saswati Chatterjee, Premee Mohamed, Wendy Nikel, Charles Payseur, Moses Ose Utomi, and John Wiswell, and poetry by Beth Cato, Mary Soon Lee, and Ali Trotta.
posted to MetaFilter by joannemerriam at 3:45 PM on May 4, 2023 (3 comments)

During a pretty unhappy breakup, staring at screens went from "thing I do too much" to "self-soothing strategy that is taking over my waking hours." Have you had any luck loosening the internet's grip on your brain?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by less-of-course at 7:05 PM on May 6, 2023 (17 comments)

Probably not... but still looking for helpful tips on how to deal with very persistent avoidant behaviors.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Desertshore at 3:53 PM on April 12, 2023 (26 comments)

We have adjectives to describe the insistence on a superior past, and they tend toward the pejorative: vestigial, atavistic, reactionary. Exaltation of lost glory necessarily discounts the present; reimposing the ancien régime requires tossing aside today's players, often with casual recklessness. Audiences embraced "Field of Dreams" because it's a sumptuously shot, well-crafted movie with compelling actors and an Oscar-nominated score, yes, but also because they worried then—and continue to worry now—that something valuable is vanishing, that the best of baseball and the country of its birth is in the rearview mirror. That the only path to redemption is believing, twice as hard this time, in a fairy tale. One that narcissistically absolves our own active role in the decline. from The Expensive, Seductive Nostalgia of Field of Dreams
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 8:06 AM on April 3, 2023 (27 comments)

It's Day 2 of spring training games and the pitch clock is already wreaking havoc. It's the bottom of the ninth in yesterday's Spring Training game between the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves. The bases are loaded, two men are out, and the Braves' Cal Conley has a full count. What happens next? Conley is given a strike by the umpire for taking too long to get ready and the game is over. Welcome to the new MLB season and the new rules.
posted to MetaFilter by JoeZydeco at 3:23 PM on February 26, 2023 (69 comments)

I love love love post-apocalyptic fiction and found the suggestions in this previous Ask very wonderful, but I'm wondering about suggestions for post-apocalyptic fiction set decades or centuries later that focuses on the rebuilding of governments, societies, civilization.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Automocar at 12:28 PM on November 19, 2015 (38 comments)

I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year. Here’s what I learned
posted to MetaFilter by logicpunk at 6:13 AM on February 3, 2023 (46 comments)

Hi y’all, we have the final results for the inaugural Metafilter Steering Committee, so without further ado, here they are, in alphabetical order:
posted to MetaTalk by Brandon Blatcher at 9:09 AM on August 29, 2022 (196 comments)

I've come to the conclusion that I need to step away from running MetaFilter. I'm still figuring what the totality of that will look like, but the initial steps include handing over day to day business administration processes to loup, mod duties to the existing mod staff, and working to set up a steering structure that incorporates community members. My goal is this transition shouldn’t disrupt day-to-day member experiences on the site. Come on in and I'll go into some preliminary detail.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 12:00 PM on March 29, 2022 (194 comments)

"Those who think “15-minute cities” are for wealthy urbanites should consider this graph from a recent nationwide study. It shows a powerful reverse correlation between household income and use of services and amenities within a 15-minute walk of home. In other words, the wealthier you are, the less you rely on goods and services within your immediate neighborhood or adjacent neighborhoods. (You can easily afford to drive, or take a cab or Uber/Lyft to more distant locations)."
posted to MetaFilter by aniola at 9:28 PM on January 28, 2023 (81 comments)

... the Kondo boom feels like the last hurrah of a particular type of the prescriptive, white-knuckled minimalism that felt inescapable for much of the past decade. Enter "knolling," a totally different organizational method born from the studio practices of artists, designers, and DIYers that involves laying out related objects—paint pens and ink markers, wrenches and chisels, metal chains of all sizes—in a precise but simultaneously stylish way, intended to streamline workflow. The organizing practice feels uniquely suited to meet this aesthetic moment and rife with potential as an interior design philosophy, focusing on highlighting your belongings instead of discarding them. Tyler Watamanuk writes in Dwell on the Life-Changing Magic of “Knolling.”
posted to MetaFilter by Bella Donna at 3:57 AM on January 11, 2023 (68 comments)

Mortals should think mortal and not immortal thoughts.

Epicharmus of Syracuse

I feel I must point out a serious discrepancy among the membership demographics

Simply put, we are overloaded with divinities and royals and have too many cooks to spoil the less than enough porridge with a severe deficiency of the salt of the earth.
posted to MetaTalk by y2karl at 1:13 AM on January 2, 2023 (143 comments)

I’m trying to understand and address a very long-standing situation in my life, which is that I do not have a single friend. Help me figure out what concrete steps to take.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by averageamateur at 5:46 AM on January 3, 2023 (30 comments)

I've read plenty of speculative fiction taking place in the years/decades following the collapse of society (for various definitions of "the collapse of society"). I'm looking for recommendations for post-post-collapse fiction, taking place after society has begun to rebuild itself.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 1:28 PM on April 12, 2019 (58 comments)

Musicards is a collection of music theory flash cards for the beginner and intermediate music student. Learn note names, chords, key signatures at your own pace.
posted to MetaFilter by storybored at 10:12 AM on March 18, 2019 (4 comments)