MetaFilter

The original terms of copyright in the United States, had they not been repeatedly extended for the sake of corporate interests, was 28 years at most. By that standard, here is the work written by Ms. Le Guin that would now be in the public domain:

- A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968
- The Tombs of Atuan, 1971
- The Farthest Shore, 1972
- Rocannon's World, 1966
- Planet of Exile, 1966
- City of Illusions,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 12:18 PM on December 24, 2009

He got re-elected, became chairman of the DCCC and was credited with some of the success of the Democrats taking the House in 2006, so I don't understand how he failed.

Like I said, failed. The real power in Chicago Politics is *in Chicago*. Ever wonder why the Daleys -- nor almost any mayor of Chicago, nor any of the mayors of cities with real power -- almost never go for "higher office."

Why? Because they're in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eriko at 7:28 AM on December 24, 2009

The guy's been chief of staff for almost a year, was a somewhat prominent congressman before that, and I still see people who should know better writing "Emmanuel" at least half the time. It baffles me.

This guy is a fuckhead -- a failed Chicago politician, who managed to find the right coattails to ride. The damage he's doing is incredible. When (not if) Obama loses the election in 2012, it will be Rahm Emanuel who will be the leading reason... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eriko at 10:08 PM on December 23, 2009

kigpig, my point was that in making the claim that "feminists should be against transgendered folk" the burden of proof is on you, to show that being against transgendered folk is a logical consequence of feminist thought, not on everyone else to find the logical inconsistency between feminism and a bigoted attitude to transgendered folk. You have so far failed to do that in a convincing manner.

I agree that the burden of proof is on the one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kigpig at 11:02 PM on December 22, 2009

I would just like to say that my job has mandated that I treat transpeople, which has turned into beings hundreds of trans patients, and the vast majority of them wouldn't recognize sexism if it bit them on the ass. Whenever one of them talks about how a client roughed them up during sex, they giggle like mad dogs because that's how they think women should be treated. Even as the nurse is trying to stop the bleeding caused by "rough sex".

They view that as... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bravelittletoaster at 4:01 PM on December 22, 2009

When I see a 50 year old man in an ultra-short miniskirt, 5" heels, double-D stuffing and made up like Lady Gaga's bad grannie, i treat him like the parody of a woman that he is making himself out to be. Not only do I not consider him to not to be a woman but I personally consider it offensive and demeaning to be displayed as a fetishistic parody of what I am as a woman.

You know, when I see Lady Gaga, I treat her as the parody of the woman she... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Sova at 1:30 PM on December 22, 2009

Then there should be no woman's space that is protected from any man who chooses to barge in whenever and however he wants?

You mean the way the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is "protected" from you, Poet_Lariat, because you had a male gender assigned to you at birth?
posted to MetaFilter by Sidhedevil at 1:12 PM on December 22, 2009

Is this the thread where I come out to MetaFilter as transgender? I think it is.

*takes a deep breath*

Forgive me, but I'm about to do a brave, terrible, painful thing. But I doubt it'll hurt me any more than I've hurt myself over the years and the truth can only set me free. I am very fortunate to have a lot of friends here that already know this about me, and who support me.

I'm not even sure where to begin, so I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 11:57 AM on December 22, 2009

Meh. I don't know how to do this shit anymore really. Dad, do you need some obscure XML-formatted data translated between two different, incompatible quasi-standards using Python and a bunch of proprietary internal libraries? I can do that. I have no goddamn clue about printer drivers.
posted to MetaFilter by GuyZero at 9:56 AM on December 23, 2009

Hokay. . . were is the wealth-creation available to the middle class going to come from?

Ah, the future of class in America. That's easy. The working classes will continue to scrounge the crumbs of American society, living off (dwindling) government handouts, selling drugs, filling up for-profit prisons and swelling the ranks of our Military to become cannon fodder on some distant battlefield.

The middle-class will subsist... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Avenger at 7:33 PM on December 21, 2009

The deeper issue behind delmoi's point is the near-universal fungibility of money. The same stuff can be acquired in a great variety of different ways, including earning it, stealing it, gambling for it, investing it, making stuff to sell for it, and so on. Having acquired money, it can be used for just about anything a person might want to have or do, and to some extent, to be.

Lacking any meaningful distinction in how money is acquired, it becomes optimal to acquire it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by aeschenkarnos at 7:05 PM on December 21, 2009

Shouldn't this be the same as a question such as "What kind of hammer do I use for opening my car's trunk, I lost the key?"

You actually can open a car trunk with a hammer, though, and the kind of hammer you use will make a difference. This is different from astrological signs, which make no difference whatsoever.
posted to MetaTalk by Pope Guilty at 2:25 AM on December 22, 2009

Let's also be quite clear: No coupon (or any other financial procedure) has ever saved a single cent.

Coupon usage prolongs cents, it never saves them.

A penny saved is a penny spent later. - Benjamin Franklin Ironmouth
posted to MetaFilter by explosion at 11:29 AM on December 21, 2009

Let's also be quite clear: No organ donation (or any other medical procedure) has ever saved a single life.

Organ donation prolongs lives, it never saves them.

I will not be donating my organs for religious reasons.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:14 AM on December 21

This is a pretty good troll. A "classic" troll, if you will. Ironmouth knows full well that no medical procedure... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Optimus Chyme at 11:17 AM on December 21, 2009

It's always funny until somebody gets killed in a steel mill explosion or gets one thousand times too much therapeutic radiation or the phone system aoto-dials an old lady in Dubuque fifty times a week. Then real people have to live with the consequences while the software engineers make that snorting, gasping sound they use for laughter.
posted to MetaFilter by longsleeves at 12:06 PM on December 20, 2009

Jeez, I go to sleep for a few hours, and this is what happens? (Yer welcome, n_o_d)

I think one of the more remarkable documents from Laurie in the last decade is her "Live In New York, September 19-20, 2001" album. She'd had the shows scheduled, and she was out of the city eight days earlier, when there was that mishap with those buildings and those planes. She genuinely was not sure whether she should even proceed with the concerts, but she certainly... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 9:20 AM on December 16, 2009

What everybody complaining about the whole "serial killer" background of that review doesn't seem to grasp is that he postulates no good movie can be told without emotional involvement, interesting characters and a story arc. He then provides all three in the review itself, ending with the narrator's dramatic death. It's a both a review and a demonstration ;)
posted to MetaFilter by Nightwind at 7:25 AM on December 17, 2009

The reason the Democrats have not used reconciliation is because the procedure restricts...

No, the reason the Democrats have not used reconciliation is that they don't want make the insurance companies mad. If they really, really wanted to pass this bill, it would be called "The Medicare For All Bill" and it would consist of a single provision: "Everyone is covered by Medicare". It would get like 70 votes in the Senate, we'd all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2009

I think his discussion of technology confuses an effect for a cause - the only reason Facebook can dominate our social lives is because it takes the form that people want it to. The interesting question is, why do we want it that way?

The notion of "therapeutic friendship" is a great description of today's ideal form of friendship, but isn't it also true that the network of friends is the perfect form for it to take? We're no longer connected to individual... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AlsoMike at 12:30 PM on December 14, 2009

I am simultaneously heartened and disturbed to see an internet meme become so widespread

This is actually HOW they become widespread. Nerds get writing jobs, make sekrit-handshake references which can then be quoted in Wikipedia, completing the circuit. Win!
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:49 PM on December 13, 2009

From one of the links: "I don't want to buy new stuff all the time. I want to hack the stuff I already have so it works better for me."

Every time some hipster asshole uses "hack" like this God kills a kitten. What is gained by not using the words "repair" or "fix" or even "improve" in this context? Apart from not signifying oneself as a hipster asshole, I mean.
posted to MetaFilter by Justinian at 4:26 PM on December 13, 2009

I feel somewhat responsible since I was the first to mention acquiring Demonoid invitations as a joke. I saw the front page of Demonoid.com, saw that it was 'invitation only' and thought "How many Google Wave invites (which have become the new century's equivalent of AOL disks) equal one Demonoid invite? 10? 100? Or that number I put in there with a hundred zeroes... a googol..." GET THE JOKE?

That joke netted me a Demonoid invitation via MeFiMail and a couple... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by oneswellfoop at 5:02 AM on December 13, 2009

I understand that we're all going to get our best "lolsteampunk" wisecracks ready, and that's fine, I guess.

But you know what? All that aside, this is great.

Yeah, it's great.

And as an actual real thing that isn't powered by dragons inside or some bullshit the top-hats and goggles crowd really shouldn't be laying claim to it. It's too much for them. They might learn an engineering... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:28 PM on December 8, 2009

I love the Transmit fake box artwork so much I wish I could buy just that one poster.

When I was a kid, my dad ran a taco truck between businesses, and one of the businesses was a toy warehouse/importer. My dad made friends and connections with employees and trades were made of free food for toys, and I happened to be lucky enough to have just about every early 80s console and game produced (I probably played 2600 the most, intellivision second, but I actually loved a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 8:14 AM on December 9, 2009

If you're confused, this will clear things up.
posted by billysumday at 11:46 AM on December 7 [+] [!]

Holy shit, everyone was all "Heath Ledger is a genius, his performance in Batman was so brave." This video clearly illustrates that the makeup makes The Joker fascinating, not the man behind it. The guy in this video is the most watchable crazy person I've seen in years. The world would be far more interesting if all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Keith Talent at 2:04 PM on December 7, 2009

If you're confused, this will clear things up.
posted to MetaFilter by billysumday at 11:46 AM on December 7, 2009

Does the Tea Party actually have a platform, or are policy positions more a chaotic whipped froth of incoherent rage, ignorance and jingoism?

it's a more consistent platform than either of the current parties.
posted to MetaFilter by GuyZero at 11:30 AM on December 7, 2009

I could see how Democrats might get jealous of Republican inroads into their traditional strong area of self-defeating behavior.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:24 AM on December 7, 2009

men typically have more estrogen in their bloodstream than women do - we pretty much have more of all the hormones we have, but their cycles are slower in the male body, over many months, rather than monthly

Or as a former co-worker (a woman) used to say, women only get PMS once a month; men have it all the fucking time.
posted to MetaTalk by philip-random at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2009

What's with his syntax here? It sounds like a parody of an eastern European accent, with the weird sentence order ("dyed many times hair") and non-idiomatic conjugation of verbs ("they are all having smooth skin").

Oh my god....Lie Bot wrote this, trying to frame Vlad!

"Do ... do not DO this! You are havink such DICKNESS, Lie Bot!"
posted to MetaFilter by Inspector.Gadget at 12:31 PM on December 6, 2009

I studied engineering at a Canadian university. There is a bit of a common 'engineering culture' that is shared among most of the bigger schools; similar rituals, like the Iron Ring, and painting yourself purple, and boat races (drinking contests), etc. One of the more puzzling traditions was a fixation with Lady Godiva. The engineer's drinking song that everyone learns in first year is called 'Lady Godiva's hymn'.

I found myself taking an anthropology course and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PercussivePaul at 10:32 AM on December 6, 2009

"I mean, why in the world is a guy like Paul Graham using a MacBook Air for a terminal window and Firefox?"

Because right now, Apple is the only serious UNIX workstation vendor in the market and some people -- I number myself among them -- strongly prefer UNIX workstations. You buy an Apple machine, you get a box that has a lovingly hand-crafted UNIX that Just Fucking Works. The however many hours of assing around trying to get xorg to work... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by majick at 7:42 AM on December 5, 2009

I use an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7. When I'm sitting in a dark corner of a coffee shop "hacking" away at my visionary cyberpunk thriller in my mirrorshades, sometimes people will ask what the fuck an Ono-Sendai is. I don't hear them at first 'cause of the loud industrial-techno pumping into my aural canals. But it's real easy to get one. First you take your shitbox dell or whatever, right, then you spray paint it matte black and make up some logo that looks cool or whatever and call... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by logicpunk at 3:23 PM on December 4, 2009

You start out in 1994 by saying, “Hipster, hipster, hipster.” By 2008 you can't say “hipster”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like irony, fixie and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about flannel, and all these things you're talking about are totally style things and a byproduct of them is [that] emos get hurt worse than mods.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ifandonlyif at 7:56 PM on December 4, 2009

Men want NP.

Dear AkMeFi: How can I get my wife to be more interested/accepting of nondeterminism?
posted to MetaFilter by hattifattener at 1:44 PM on December 4, 2009

It's a shame Independence Day didn't make that list. You know, where Jeff Goldblum can cobble together a virus on his laptop and infect a huge alien spaceship and make it explode.

The real shame is that they didn't have a conversation between The Fly and LonghairData where The Fly laments that he can't upload a virus to an alien machine and LonghairData points out that the whole 680x0 line is, technically, also alien hardware since it was copied... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:49 AM on December 3, 2009

Wow, I'm fairly certain it took more time for people to come post "idunngettit this game sucks!" than to figure out the game mechanics, which with regards to lining up the tiles was pretty obvious since the game is called "Continuity." This thread makes me fear ever releasing a game to the public, since I usually regard people on the Blue as having a high mental caliber. Perhaps that actually leads to leads the to finicky, anxious outbursts of frustration - "If... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PostOfficeBuddy at 11:12 AM on December 2, 2009

I was so disappointed when I realized that I had to make the tiles fit together like a jigsaw puzzle rather than being able to make each tile fit with every other one in any arrangement.

Wouldn't that be awesome? I thought that's exactly how the game works in the very beginning, especially since it made so much sense - being able to match any two tiles together would have made this a much more creative and fun experience, but alas...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MetaMonkey at 8:48 AM on December 2, 2009

I'm just gonna throw this out there, but why bother with physical delivery of CDs? Anybody can make a mix and post it online (see my profile for example).

Done the traditional way, only 5 people are going to listen to your mix cd. If everyone just uploaded their mix to soundcloud (we can even make a mix swap group), everyone can listen to all of them.
posted to MetaTalk by empath at 9:20 PM on December 3, 2009

floam writes "What's worse, is I know somebody is going to inevitably rip a CD they received back down to MP3. And there's nothing I can do about it, it's just going to happen. And nobody else will even care."

A multi session cd of uncompressed CD audio and MP3s will still play in standard CD players if the MP3s are in the second session. We could give up one song to remove the horror of CD to MP3 to CD to MP3.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Mitheral at 6:35 AM on December 3, 2009

Just to repeat myself again. These are not HDR images. These are tonemapped images.

I work every day with HDR images and one of the only HDR displays in the world, the Brightside DR-37p. And even that insanely expensive bastard contraption does some tonemapping to display the things.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fake at 8:06 AM on December 3, 2009

This is such a brutalization of terminology, though it's a battle that can never be won, now that it's gone so far. HDR images cannot be viewed on an ordinary display, because ordinary displays can not produce enough luminance or contrast to display them. These images are "tonemapped" images, made from HDR images, and the awful visual effects that everyone loves or objects to are artifacts of the tonemapping algorithm used to bring the High... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fake at 8:03 AM on December 3, 2009

Least irritating font-geek post in a long time.
posted to MetaFilter by boo_radley at 8:42 PM on December 1, 2009

Because my father proudly refused bankruptcy when his business tanked -- probably the last American to do so -- there was no money in our household as I was growing up; it all went to paying off every last dime he owed. That was laudable, and grand, and great, and good, get out the American flag and some apple pie and lets all celebrate, right, hip hip hooray! and all that shit. Gosh, I'm still warmed, just thinking about it!

Meanwhile, in his home, he, his wife, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dancestoblue at 7:56 PM on November 30, 2009

Yes, the methodology is sometimes flawed. But I love this blog.

What it has is an INCREDIBLE pile of data, and this data blows any flavor-of-the week evolutionary pop psych, trend-of-the decade crap psychology, sociological hooha, occasionally excessive feminist jackbootery right out the window. They collect data on what people actually DO online, not what is appropriate, what is popular, or what is safe to say on Ask Mefi.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fake at 3:28 PM on November 24, 2009

Did you know that for a disturbingly large amount of maladies, knowing EXACTLY what is the cause for your cough, your UTI, or your whatever is not necessary to provide accurate or effective treatment? A lot of American medicine, it is my experience, is spent in finding out definitively what is wrong, when symptomatic or empiric (ie "best guess") treatment is often all that is necessary. Doctors are trained in a culture of scientific inquiry - always curious for that final... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grapefruitmoon at 5:30 AM on November 22, 2009

A MetaFilter link that goes back to itself is small potatoes. There are many more pressing things in life to worry about. For example, at 2:35 in this Slap Chop video, Vince is about to put the cover on the Graty and there's a piece of yellow cheese hanging out that gets caught in the cover. Doesn't that DRIVE YOU NUTS? And it HAPPENS EVERY TIME he does this.
posted to MetaTalk by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:44 AM on November 24, 2009

languagehat: You have just been enrolled in the exclusive "MeFites languagehat approves of" list.

Clearly the only proper construction of this sentiment is 'MeFites of which langaugehat approves' because you cannot ever end a sentence with a preposition it is irrefutable and carved in granite.
posted to MetaTalk by shakespeherian at 10:46 AM on November 24, 2009

I am not an idiot.

FPPNoob: Hi, I'm having a problem with my FPP.

MeFi Support: Are you an idiot?

FPPNoob: No, I'm not.

MeFiSupport: Most of the people who have problems with their FPPs are idiots, so it's important to know if you are one. Can you describe your problem in more detail?

FPPNoob: Sure. I posted a link, and instead of linking to the page I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by burnmp3s at 9:34 AM on November 24, 2009

Jonah Disend, chief executive at Redscout, a brand strategy agency in New York owned by MDC Partners, disagreed.

“I would get rid of the parent brand and dissolve AOL,” Mr. Disend said. “The assets are stronger on their own.”

This is the only sane person in the article, by the way. AOL is dead. There is literally nothing profitable they can do with that brand except sell it to someone ironically.
posted to MetaFilter by Optimus Chyme at 7:48 PM on November 23, 2009