Re: Washington
Alice in Chains was a better BAND than Nirvana. Unfortunaly Curt is dead so Nirvana gets tha sympathy vote. Heart is the best Girl rock band EVER.
By mjlew12 on 07/03/2008 at 11:52:42

This guy is either a troll or he's listening to music through a cochlear implant, reveling in finally being able to halfway listen to the record collection he bought at a pot dealer's estate sale.
posted to MetaFilter by bunnytricks at 5:31 PM on July 5, 2008

All I could figure out from this is that I fucking hate all of these people.
posted to MetaFilter by jimmythefish at 2:11 PM on July 6, 2008

Keep doing it until one of them crushes you.

Why should I bother? Life has already crushed me.
posted to MetaFilter by flapjax at midnite at 7:42 AM on June 27, 2008

You learn "facts" in almanacs and in email forwards. University isn't about learning "facts" any more than it's about learning the alphabet.

Sociology, which I teach, is largely concerned with getting students to unlearn the "facts" they've imported into class with them. They all walk in as experts in, say, juvenile delinquency and they leave, if I've done my job, not "knowing" a fucking thing.
posted to MetaFilter by ethnomethodologist at 2:09 PM on June 19, 2008

Stop responding to konolia, you dorks. No one reads your special snowflake retort because everyone is too busy trying to come up with their own.
posted to MetaFilter by mullacc at 3:39 PM on June 17, 2008

Everyone who decided to post without listening to what Reagan said: you're a fucking idiot.

Everyone who decided to post that it is fine to ask your listeners to murder a specific person, including offering to pay for the method of execution: you're a fucking idiot.

I want you to shut the fuck up for a second and think about this. An influential broadcaster exhorted his listeners, many of whom may be psychotic or suggestible, to kill a real... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Optimus Chyme at 1:52 PM on June 14, 2008

I did something a bit like this for more than 100 days. I can recommend it: it really cemented my relationship with the Internet.
posted to MetaFilter by infobomb at 2:36 PM on June 8, 2008

This reminds me of a dream I had a couple of years ago. In the dream, a friend of mine (who happens to be deceased) was chatting with another friend of mine, then turns to say something to me, to which I then reply, "I'm sorry-it's not my practice to talk to dead people." Whereupon, he disappeared before my eyes.

I spent the rest of the dream worrying that I'd hurt his feelings.
posted to MetaFilter by konolia at 2:47 PM on May 11, 2008

.

Wow, ZachsMind, you sure are a righteous dude. But since you knew in advance pretty much everyone here agrees with you—war is bad, soldiers are dying pointlessly, etc. etc.—your "We can still tell ourselves we're winning. Insert celebratory hooting and hollering here" is pure posturing, and you are not doing anything but trolling for favorites. Enjoy them.
posted to MetaFilter by languagehat at 9:11 AM on May 10, 2008

I met Dave Sim's cousin, an Anglican minister, in a 1200-person Cree community in Northern Quebec while I was doing some radio instruction up there a few years back. He was more or less unaware that his cousin had met with any degree of fame (he recalled that his cousin "drew comic strips named after that dog in Hell"), much less completed a 300-issue saga about an aardvark with a sword.

Highlight of the exchange (paraphrasing due to crappy memory)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:23 PM on May 6, 2008

No - this one’s different, says The Times’s chief film critic James Christopher

I WISH TO SPEW MORE LIES, SAYS WALKING LIE-FOUNTAIN
posted to MetaFilter by Sticherbeast at 11:55 PM on May 2, 2008

I usually don't comment on threads, especially ones as desperately ugly as this one

Oh come on Neale, it's not so much ugly as just kinda dumb and redundant. WHERE CAN HAS PORBABILITIY?
posted to MetaFilter by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:27 PM on April 20, 2008

I'm ashamed to say this essay actually made me tear up. Because I was that student. Wow, memories.

When I was 10 we moved out of Queens to the hallowed educational nirvana known as a suburban NJ school district supported by upper-middle-class property taxes (seriously, the HS had won some kind of Blue Ribbon award the year before we moved. Never again, though). They tested me and put me in their Gifted & Talented math program. Why? I had no... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious at 12:31 PM on April 10, 2008

You know, it's very simple. Whenever we culture-dominant types give the other guys room to maneuver, it takes next to no time at all for some nature-type to say something remarkably shitty about black people. Let's not dance around it. Let's not abuse Godwin's Law to ignore it. Biopolitics have helped produce some of the planet's shittiest governments and historical events.

On one level, the truths of biology are so profound we can't ignore them. On another level,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mobunited at 11:45 AM on April 7, 2008

I think the article brings up important questions, but the conclusion and thesis is wrong from the get-go, so any value obtainable from the critique must be cherrypicked.


I was around Orange County, California when this stuff started. Shepard Fairey is just this guy who made some stickers.

As far as I recall, the "OBEY" sticker project started when he was an art student - at Orange Coast College, I think?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 5:13 PM on March 18, 2008

This is the real world. There is no god or afterlife or just reward. This is life fighting life and it's survival of the fittest. These hateful people would love to roll over you and control your life, the way you raise your children, the things you watch, the books you read, the ideas you have. If we just sit back and throw up our hands and say "hate is bad" then we lose. It's okay to hate them back. Their ideas HURT people. In fact, that's pretty much the only reason to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by shakespeherian at 6:16 AM on March 13, 2008

I'm going to start hanging GOOGLE ADAM WEISHAUPT banners off of overpasses.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 9:25 AM on February 28, 2008

He helped me in my early intellectual development because he was so obviously intelligent and articulate yet his ideas were so wrong-headed.

It served as a warning, in the area of discourse at least, to take greater care in distinguishing content from form.
posted to MetaFilter by vacapinta at 9:49 AM on February 27, 2008

I think maybe the hugs aren't working.

New note: Everyone needs some drugs.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:15 PM on February 25, 2008

So, surround yourself as a teenager with people telling you that you are great that you are beautiful, give yourself millions of fans and people who buy anything that has your name on it. Combine this with enough lack of control through career management, told how to look and what to do. Combine all of this with (I am guessing here) a lack of critical thinking skills that someone with a better education might have had. Combine it with the fucking Horatio Alger mindset that seems so prevalent,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by edgeways at 7:21 AM on February 26, 2008

Hopefully people won't be completely stupid this time around, right?

Yes, hopefully the Democrats and the rest of the political establishment will stand up and do what is right, rather than trying to blame everything on Nader. It seems unlikely but it would be awesome if they all developed real backbones that don't depend on them having political power at the moment.
posted to MetaFilter by XMLicious at 8:14 AM on February 24, 2008

Which I suppose is what makes him Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale and you..um...not, Snyder.

You do realize that this is a seriously lame argument to make, right? They call it "argumentum ad verecundiam" where I come from.


...and Bloom's point was more that adults who weren't even passingly familiar with the great canon of western literature were extolling the virtues of a series... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nasreddin at 12:01 AM on February 22, 2008

El Clavo Y La Cruz
posted to MetaFilter by Elmore at 3:43 PM on February 21, 2008

You know, I did exactly this experiment when I was 22, but by accident. I moved out to Los Angeles with not enough money to get by, crashed and burned in a few weeks, ran out of money almost instantly thanks to the high cost of living out there, and moved into a shelter. I was college educated from the University of Minnesota, straight, white, good looking, healthy, and willing to work. I mention being straight, because the shelter I ran into was run by the gay/lesbian community services center... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 5:50 PM on February 15, 2008

then why should they be allowed to make choices for themselves that are so ineffective?

Um, because they're human beings, with free will, and if they don't choose to live their lives according to your standards of what a "halfway decent life" is, that's their prerogative.

why should they be free when they aren't capable of building themselves a worthy life with that freedom?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rtha at 9:07 PM on February 15, 2008

If 500 people favorite this comment, I'll disable my account.
posted to MetaFilter by hermitosis at 3:54 PM on February 10, 2008

It's times like this I truly cherish life in the American capitalist-entertainment multiplex. It's so much easier to fall in love with a business plan than a person, and to justify doing so using hazy statistics, personal anecdotes, and the plot points of long-demised sitcoms.

It's also times like this I wonder why good women writers, ones with an actual grasp of how to interpret demographic and cultural trends, bother writing the same goddamn book... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by melissa may at 11:12 AM on February 10, 2008

Great - at least Elvis didn't think he was Rambo when he got his honorary badge.

“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI”

I'd like to know which corporations are participating in this particular brownshirt program, so... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by FormlessOne at 2:45 PM on February 9, 2008

This reminds me of that one time someone said they really liked a comedy (I can't remember if it was a movie or a tv show or someone's standup or what) and as they were talking I realized that the single most important thing I could say at that moment, possibly the most important thing I could say in my entire life, was that what they thought was funny actually sucked.
posted to MetaFilter by shmegegge at 2:07 PM on February 6, 2008

I think it means you've got Stockholm syndrome.
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 12:51 PM on February 4, 2008

I would talk to a therapist or psychiatrist and see what their prognosis is and see what suggestions they make. There's no need to be setting off alarms at HR until you know what, exactly, you will need to get better. I think that a professional can help you come up with a good plan for treating your depression AND dealing with your work situation.

My personal opinion (and I am not a therapist but I have been severely depressed) is that if you take 3 months off of work... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by sondrialiac at 2:26 PM on February 2, 2008

I think the official word for "having breasts in spite of otherwise being reptilian in appearance" should be "sleestacked."
posted to MetaFilter by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 10:18 PM on February 3, 2008

I was friends with Carter Albrecht and spent a good 8 hours online posting in various forums where people were bashing him and posting lies about his death before the facts came out. He was a genuinely nice guy and I miss seeing him around town (after seeing him almost every day for two years in my apartment in college, he felt like a brother when I was about 19).

I also posted in one of the AskMes about Chantix causing psychotic blackouts, hallucinations, vivid... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Unicorn on the cob at 6:25 PM on February 3, 2008

If we had a few more cynics in this country there would have been a few less people thinking Bush was anything but a worse scumbag than most and a huge fuckup to boot in 2004 when he'd had several years to show that.

I think you mean skepticism. Cynicism is the poison the led people to conclude that there was no difference between Gore and Bush in 2000, and that John Kerry was not a patriot who bled for his country as a young man and wanted badly to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 1:01 PM on February 2, 2008

From an economic standpoint, if we were to consume every resource on the planet at once... chop down every tree, mine every hill, catch every fish, and consume all the oil.... it would be the best year ever.

Next, year, well, that's for tomorrow's stockholders to worry about.
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 1:11 PM on February 2, 2008

"Hey, you have that Nader guy."

You mean that crowd was only burning an effigy?!
posted to MetaFilter by mullingitover at 7:41 PM on January 28, 2008

> The end of the world has always been coming next week.

PAST RETURNS DO NOT GUARANTEE FUTURE RESULTS: A One-Act Play

ACT ONE

SCENE: It is 11:45 AM on August 24th, 79 A.D. AMANTIUS and DECIMUS are citizens of Pompeii. The two sit in an antechamber at DECIMUS' house, which has a good view of the volcano Vesuvius.

AMANTIUS: Vesuvius has been smoking and rumbling for weeks now!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 11:53 AM on January 28, 2008

"I don’t know how it started, but there’s a rumor going around Hollywood that Courtney Cox bleaches her asshole."
posted to MetaFilter by kittens for breakfast at 3:06 PM on January 24, 2008

Afroblanco: I'm working under the impression that since feces stains, the place it inevitably passes and decorates as it goes would retain said stain. Given, say, a once-a-day lifetime average I'd guess that's pretty staining.

And by that logic, the younger you are, the fewer stools have passed your anus, the less stained it is.

So, when you meet someone on the street and, as is di rigeur nowadays, immediately display your asshole to them, they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by abulafa at 4:11 PM on January 24, 2008

Correlation equals causation!

Wait, no it doesn't.
posted to MetaFilter by infinitywaltz at 12:57 PM on January 25, 2008

Wow. That guy whined so much you'd think they castrated him with a pencil eraser.

Getting shaved? That's terrifying? Buddy, just wait until you finally make it to the outside world. Subways. Honking cars. Escalators. Fuck, man, germaniums! Look the fuck out!
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 9:46 PM on January 22, 2008

One of Ledger's close friends tells US magazine

"Close friend" !=! "tells US magazine". I hope when I die, you will all take my vices to your graves.
posted to MetaFilter by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:06 PM on January 22, 2008

posted by SassHat Can I get a witness

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fandango_matt at 5:41 PM on January 22, 2008

The six hour workweek sounds good, until you remember it's six hours in the freezing noontime dark filleting herring so Danes can feast on roll mops while they drink cheaper beer and tut-tut about Norwegian suicide rates.
posted to MetaFilter by Rumple at 7:26 AM on January 21, 2008

Nevercalm: when do we accept that market forces don't seem to be the best invisible hand to guide the healthcare industry?

Pracowity: In the US? Never. It's the biggest industry in the country. You'll never get that pig back in the sty.

Nonsense. You think universal health care just happened to be growing on the trees in Canada and the colonists found it there when they got off the boat? The Canadian... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Naberius at 5:29 PM on January 18, 2008

So, in the first three responses, we had two references to Tila Tequila, one assertion that bisexuals are "for the most past ... promiscuous attention whores", a link to a site about a guy into wife sharing, and a belief that bisexuality is a way to stay "halfway in the closet".

I have just mentally reassessed how very very needed the study in the post really is.
posted to MetaFilter by kyrademon at 3:19 PM on January 17, 2008

If anyone wants to discuss the, you know, study, it's actually kind of interesting.

Although there was a fair amount of shifting in how the study participants labeled themselves, it almost always was a back-and-forth between "bisexual" and "unlabeled", and actual sexual attraction and activity w/r/t both sexes seemed to stay relatively constant at all phases of the study; while it doesn't disprove that for some bisexuality may be a transitional label... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kyrademon at 4:42 PM on January 17, 2008

The only conclusion I've got about sexual orientation is that nearly everyone seems to overgeneralize from their own experience.

The bisexuals think everyone is basically bisexual. The devoutly straight or gay folks think everyone has a fixed orientation. The ones who try too hard to be straight think that homosexuality is a temptation that anyone could succumb to. The polyamorists think everyone's poly at heart; the monogamists think nobody is. The flexible think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nebulawindphone at 8:06 PM on January 17, 2008

Oh, blah blah. I'm so tired of people romanticizing misery, and tired of this cult of emotional authenticity in art. For every depressed person making fantastic things, there's a dozen people who are so down they can't get out of bed to bathe and feed themselves.
posted to MetaFilter by lunalaguna at 1:12 AM on January 17, 2008

Are you willing to accept the possibility that maybe they suffered, and then learned from their experiences, and then moved on?

Of course that was true in some cases, but I have some doubts that the majority of people were able to simply suck it up and move on. The expression "leading lives of quiet desperation" comes to mind. What I do not have is a device that tells me that society, as a whole, is overprescribed, and if it is, what the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by psmealey at 9:08 AM on January 17, 2008