MetaFilter

How the hell do you train a dog to remind you to move? I am so so fascinated and interested please memail me your witchcraft Druid secrets!

Ah, to clarify, I'm using a "touch" behavior that I've back-chained to one of several cues:

-a verbal "touch!" command, useful if I'm in that "gotta get up. Okay, body, time to move... now. okay... now. come on—"... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sciatrix at 8:17 AM on January 11, 2024

I want more likes, filter!
posted to MetaFilter by mubba at 9:11 AM on August 24, 2024

Some wonderful obscurities now available online:

A FORTRAN Coloring Book by Dr Kaufman is the best computer language textbook I've ever found, better even than the Poignant Guide.

Science Made Stupid and its sequel Cvltvre Made Stvpid by Tom Weller hit all the right notes for those of us whose early education included those endless large-format Made Easy paperbacks.

What Is Science?

Put most... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by flabdablet at 11:42 PM on July 17, 2024

I don't seem to remember some of those people acting that way in the 2000s.

I was eight years old in 1970, and I can tell you for a fact that the late 60s and early 70s were worse on that front; the naked bigotry that you see proudly on display only amongst "anti-woke" fuckwits today was pretty much mainstream then and very rarely questioned.

But the 70s was also when the feminist movement whose seeds got planted in... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by flabdablet at 10:58 PM on July 16, 2024 marked best answer

(A long form article about digital twins, a digital model of an intended or actual real-world physical product, system, or process (a physical twin) that serves as the effectively indistinguishable digital counterpart of it for practical purposes, such as simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance.)
posted to MetaFilter by zamboni at 5:49 AM on March 25, 2024

I ran a small press from 2011 to 2019, Upper Rubber Boot Books. We still exist, technically, in that we still have a book in print (Sunvault), but we're on indefinite hiatus and unless I win the lottery we're not coming back. Our books were recommended by Barnes & Noble Sci-fi & Fantasy Blog, PBS Newshour, Publishers Weekly; we published people you've heard of (if you read SF/F anyway). Over the entire life of the press, I netted less than $1,000 in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by joannemerriam at 1:33 PM on January 26, 2024

Thanks for that addendum, Genji. I’ve had two massive ideological aboutfaces in my life - in both cases it started with other people either directly reaching out to build bridges / or writing things that challenged my worldview. This is what I think of as the “undermining the foundations” stage, where the usual backstops that keep you from entering a state of ideological freefall are pruned away. Eg, Bernie Sanders is a great touchstone for debunking erroneous views on what socialism is and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ryvar at 3:04 PM on January 25, 2024

Here's the ar5iv link which renders arxiv PDFs into HTML.
posted to MetaFilter by vacapinta at 9:38 AM on December 21, 2023

Buckle up. (Deep breath)

Stable Diffusion uses the 2.3 billion image-text pair English subset of the LAION-5B dataset (5.85 billion image-text pairs).

LAION-5B (arxiv PDF of paper) is the followup to LAION-400M (arxiv PDF of paper). The method for compiling both can be broadly summed up as: “filter CommonCrawl for images that are both >5KB in size and have >5 characters of alt-text in the <img> tag, then go throw them at OpenAI’s... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ryvar at 5:55 PM on June 15, 2023

I use https://allblackscreen.com to make my laptop screen black when I am cleaning it.

I use this https://barcode.tec-it.com/en/ISBN13 to generate barcodes for books because it will output vector if you want.

I use https://coolors.co for finding colors. You can can enter a specific color and lock it, then quickly flip through many other colors.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by snofoam at 1:30 PM on August 29, 2023

The husbands' names thing is completely hilarious.

Another commonality is that the Naomis Klein and Wolf both have hippie intellectual Dads, who were slightly older than the average hippie. Naomi Klein's Dad, Michael Klein, is an American red-diaper baby who started protesting the Vietnam War when he was in medical school. He became a member of the antiwar group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, but when he got drafted, the Army scheduled a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jonp72 at 2:55 PM on August 26, 2023

I think it's generally not understood that open source software is fundamentally a kind of labour that can be replicated an infinite number of times at close to zero cost. A developer's tools, in turn, are a kind of labour that both facilitates that creation and replication while in turn being trivially replicated itself.

We have no model for that in economics that does or even can make sense. It is not possible for us to recognize and reward people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 8:05 PM on August 5, 2023

I listened to part of the You're Wrong About podcast, and was struck by the story of her first-ever US prime-time TV appearance, at the 1989 Grammy awards. This was the first year that the Grammys gave an award for rap, which had become so popular that they couldn't ignore it. But they gave out the award before the telecast; most of the nominees (including the eventual winners) boycotted the awards as a protest, although Kool Moe Dee showed up.

Sinéad showed up and did... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Superilla at 9:49 PM on July 26, 2023

rtha and I famously had 4 weddings, two of which were in SF City Hall, one in a queer bookstore, and one in a park in the Berkeley hills. That was the only one that cost us more than the fees - there was a dress and a caterer and a DJ and a cake and so on - so our average wedding cost was pretty low. I planned most of it not via the Knot, but the alternative IndieBride (and I know some mefites from there, too) which was a much better website for us. The big friends and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by gingerbeer at 7:20 PM on July 11, 2023

computers do something absolutely different

Indeed, but they also do some things in ways that illuminate underlying issues to a useful extent.

I've long held the opinion that much of what my brain does is build a model of the world I occupy, the purpose of which is to help me anticipate and avoid things that will kill me.

The world is endlessly detailed, but my world model cannot... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 10:27 AM on May 14, 2023

Terrific post! William Blake is another poet whose work cannot be transcribed, as not only are the poems inextricable from the art, but also poems in the "same" book look radically different from copy to copy (e.g., "The Lamb"--click on the matrix view).
posted to MetaFilter by thomas j wise at 11:25 AM on May 10, 2023

"Heavily scripted" is said so often about reality shows, and that's not so much the case--they are often lightly scripted, ie production asks you to rehash a conversation in a certain setting (two cast members meeting up for lunch: "so what happened last weekend on that trip?").

But what is that like inside your head, knowing that you are living your "real" life with constant feedback from producers and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Frowner at 1:42 PM on March 7, 2023

Empress Callipygos that is pretty funny. I guess one of the plays that I worked on way back when had the holy trifecta - 911, Joyce Carol Oates played by a sock puppet, and an actress walking around in a t-shirt without underwear at one point for no discernible reason. Oh, yeah, and Heather Graham.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by stagewhisper at 6:18 PM on September 11, 2009

Greg_Ace, you've reminded me of an argument on Making Light 18 years ago. The person who said he didn't like rock music has since changed his mind but he noted how rock music jargon, to him, often included hostile words like "thrashing".
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 11:42 AM on February 22, 2023

The only thing I have experienced that comes even close to the freewheeling rush of feeling I get when reading through Webb's presentation was a series of documentary television programs called "Connections", hosted by James Burke.

Funny you should say that.
posted to MetaFilter by holgate at 10:14 PM on May 8, 2006

I wondered how long it would be before I can just tell my glow slab I want to see a movie about a plot with a ship, aliens, and redemption in late middle age written by screen writer X directed by director Y and with actors a,b,c,d+h etc. some living some dead and have the result in seconds or just rendered in real time.

In the Nineties they called this the Sloot Digital Coding System.
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 8:09 PM on February 20, 2023

the mathematics of taking abstraction to it's absolute limit?

fwiw...
What does it mean to understand a piece of mathematics? "I first really appreciated this after reading an essay by the mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov. You might suppose a great mathematician such as Kolmogorov would be writing about some very complicated piece of mathematics, but his subject was the humble equals sign: what made it a good piece of notation, and what... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kliuless at 3:22 PM on February 2, 2019

I recently watched the two-season fictional BBC show, The Capture, which is about surveillance technology and deep fakes. It was fascinating and frightening and probably how the future will go. It was like 24 crossed with Black Mirror and it creeped me out.
posted to MetaFilter by dobbs at 11:31 AM on February 13, 2023

Ted Chiang: ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web. An excellent overview of what deep learning systems are doing and some limitations implicit. It's quite a well written piece with some deep insights, I'm impressed at his knowledge.

No direct SFI connection, except that SFI has played host to some of the leading neural networks and AI researchers going back to the 1990s. I imagine Chiang wrote this well before the SFI position was even announced.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 11:28 AM on February 10, 2023

When we heard two women chatting on a bus use "pixel", we knew the fun part of computer graphics was ending (late 1980s, I think).

But I don't remember ever hearing a civilian use "blit" -- even the spell checker red-lines it. Rob Pike something something...
posted to MetaFilter by hexatron at 12:09 PM on December 30, 2011

i think i'd normally have a squick reaction to this, but i absolutely thing mcqueen would LOVE it - conceptual or not.
posted to MetaFilter by nadawi at 6:50 PM on July 16, 2016

Has anyone ever suggested that by implementing quality management and continuous improvement directly into processes Metafilter could streamline

(12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways.

posted to MetaTalk by zamboni at 4:33 PM on January 30, 2023

In 2010 NIST scientists were able to measure this effect with very accurate atomic clocks arranged so that one was 33 centimeters higher than the other. And then in a study published in 2022, more scientists measured it at millimeter scale.

I can't think about this too much or my brain will hurt.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fedward at 6:14 PM on January 26, 2023

Just happy for an excuse to link to Chris Pine in a caftan.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rdnnyc at 10:09 AM on August 2, 2022 marked best answer

Can someone tell me what the snazzy grey car is in the Ossington Ave / Toronto picture? It looks modern and expensive, but with a vibe that reminds me of Detective Columbo's famous beater.

Thanks to CarNet, it's a Nissan Figaro. They were only made in 1991 and were described as "the height of postmodernism" and "unabashedly retro." Sarah Jane Smith drove one in The Sarah Jane Adventures.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 9:54 AM on August 27, 2022

Ooo, that’s a good video (edit for specificity: second comment above this one)! It’s what many of us non-male feminists have been saying forever, but I’m sure the relevant audience will have an easier time connecting and listening to the idea coming from a guy.
posted to MetaFilter by eviemath at 8:55 AM on December 31, 2022

This was linked in phunnimee's reddit link: The Misandry of the Manosphere, and I thought it was a good point.
posted to MetaFilter by mumimor at 8:32 AM on December 31, 2022

A gal I went to high school has a Twitch channel where she watches found VHS tapes.
posted to MetaFilter by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:13 PM on December 30, 2022

TIL Ben McKenzie, an actor best known for his role in The OC, wrote a book about crypto and fraud. That is actually cool as hell.
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2022

I wish something had come out of The Remnants... that seemed like another and an interesting side of Ze Frank. But this is nice, too.
posted to MetaFilter by running order squabble fest at 5:44 PM on April 9, 2012

I get bothered by the seemingly evergreen tradition of describing contemporary fairy tales as bastardised versions, watered down by the prurient tastes of our modern age, and somehow inferior to the grimdark, grittier versions that preceded them. I feel like it almost completely misses the point of fairy tales and is the fairy tale equivalent of Their First Album Was Better.

Firstly, this idea that there's an "original" - or even a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by smoke at 1:21 PM on November 23, 2014

Photopea is a pretty darn amazing stand-in for Photoshop that runs in a browser. I am a looong time daily user of Photoshop and I am blown away by how good Photopea is compared to Photoshop.
posted to MetaFilter by bz at 11:33 PM on October 30, 2022

> Shhhh...It really annoys the geeks when you ask what their awesome creations can actually do, or why you'd ever want to use it.

Frequently, the important work does not come with anything outwardly impressive -- think for a moment about how visually impressive the original public version of Linux was.

The Black Triangle is a good anecdote about retaining a sense of wonder when introduced to things that don't look how... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ardgedee at 9:32 AM on May 17, 2011

Ha, I was going to suggest a double feature with Mayhem. Movies like this are catnip to me—I also loved Battle Royale, Circle, and Cube. I agree that the conclusion was a bit soggy, but I guess they didn’t want to go as nihilistic as the examples I mentioned.
posted to FanFare by ejs at 4:05 PM on September 21, 2022

For someone who claims to not know the history of American humor, you got Carlin pegged pretty well there, Dee. Another comedian you might wanna look into if you're interested in American humor is Lenny Bruce.

I've seen a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry falls for a Romanian gymnast, with all the sort of quasi-sexual implication that (seemingly) is wrapped up in the idea of Romanian gymnasts, at least for American men. And I can't recall precisely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dee Xtrovert at 12:09 AM on June 23, 2008

Another humanist who does not recognize that librarians and archivists, y'know, exist

Noga Arikha studied at the Warburg Institute in London, which, famously, is organised around the library and archive of Aby Warburg. Samuel Beckett's letters to her parents, Avigdor Arikha and Anne Atik, are archived at the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana. So I think we can safely assume that she is well aware of librarians and archivists and the valuable work... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by verstegan at 8:49 AM on September 14, 2022

It’s out of print now, but John Preston’s Hustling: A Gentleman's Guide to the Fine Art of Homosexual Prostitution spent a great many of its pages talking about how to manage money.
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 12:59 PM on August 25, 2022

It's also thrilling to think about the fact that of all the cuneiform tablets like the one the Hurrian Hymn was discovered on, which have been unearthed and collected in museums around the world, only a small fraction have actually been translated. Not because scholars don't know how to translate them, but because there's just not enough people working on the problem to have made a big dent yet. Who knows how many more treasures like this might be sitting in a vault in the British Museum... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biogeo at 11:44 AM on August 19, 2022

Practically everyone has a 7 digit prime number memorized.

.

.

.

8675309 is a prime number. One half of a twin prime with 8675311.
posted to MetaTalk by Mitheral at 10:58 AM on August 6, 2022

When I watch biopics or other historical films, I go through two stages: 1) rage (WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE FACTS OMG) and, having got that out of my system, 2) analysis (granted that they've screwed up the facts, what are they trying to argue?). Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single biopic that qualifies as "accurate," even when, like The Madness of King George, they're scripted by a trained historian. Biopics are usually more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by thomas j wise at 7:08 PM on January 11, 2015

This reviewer walked in with no background to this episode.
In just the first two minutes of this episode, there’s a lot to report. For starters, I have no idea what’s going on. But what is clear is JESUS:

posted to FanFare by the man of twists and turns at 6:04 PM on January 13, 2018

I don't even go here but I will say: Classic theme 4eva, mustard + Verdana all day
posted to MetaTalk by LobsterMitten at 3:31 PM on July 8, 2022

condiment-themed themes.

I look forward with anticipation to our glorious Hot Dog Stand future.
posted to MetaTalk by zamboni at 8:57 AM on July 8, 2022

To me, this is the best of the web ever. I thought I was the only person in the universe who loves this film. I love this movie. Everything is right about it. I am only half through the article, so can't comment on that yet, but it is a film on the level with Tarkovsky films and Last Year In Marienbad and The Leopard. And Heat, which is also underrated. And obviously La Jetée, which I feel it probably owes a lot.
posted to MetaFilter by mumimor at 1:11 PM on July 6, 2022

As noted in the article, I also want to tell you a thing: editors work and live in New York. Many have grown up in New York. For them to survive being a junior editor and working their way up, they too, have probably come from money or have some measure of privilege that allows them to work in the notoriously poorly paid but prestigious field of book editing.

And that means a large proportion of editors don't get it in the same way that their cohort... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by headspace at 4:59 PM on June 25, 2022