Somewhat of a semantic and pop-culture derail, but I have long had a problem with the phrase "conspiracy theory" used simply as a catch-all pejorative. The negativity around the phrase often acts in discussion like a magic bullet, or like a red herring for those who would rather not sift through the sometimes detailed complexities and contradictions of specific evidence on a given topic.

The phrase is too often used as a simple way to attempt to dismiss... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ornate insect at 5:01 PM on October 5, 2008

I really don't understand how anyone could watch Palin's performance tonight and state, without laughing, that she is an authentic human being. She is a farce. She is a cartoon. I have a "diverse family" with a lot of "Joe Sixpack and Hockey Mom" relatives, too, and no one speaks in everyday speech the way she sounded tonight, and they certainly wouldn't speak that way in a serious debate; the fact that she did is not rustic, or folksy, but disingenuous and ultimately... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by gatorae at 9:18 PM on October 2, 2008

A real man can make a bong out of whatever random shit is in the house.
posted to MetaFilter by Meatbomb at 3:57 PM on October 2, 2008

Superdelete, superdelete. Tricker treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.

I will forgive Bush all his sins if he grants me unlimited one day immunity to take a vinegar soaked bullwhip to all the fucking greedhead cowardly solipsistic assholes who don't want to "pay for social programs", read a fucking history book zombie Ayn Rand and then get back to us. Jesus fuck. I need a double valium and stoli, stat!
posted to MetaTalk by Divine_Wino at 9:19 AM on September 30, 2008

Now if you would just apologize for calling it a crazy conspiracy video, we can probably close this out.

What would you prefer it be called? Astro-turfing bullshit that lays the blame for this massive economic fuck up right at the feet of the people who are going to be the most hurt by it, brought to you by a man who apparently can win unless he lies, lies, lies, and then tosses out casual racism and classism, all the while grinning and pretending he... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Astro Zombie at 9:21 AM on September 30, 2008

Out of odd curiosity I googled "September 11" and got nothing. I guess Google was living in a 9/10 world.

I have no idea what I'm saying.
posted to MetaFilter by Lacking Subtlety at 4:50 PM on September 30, 2008

caveat whatevor
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 1:05 PM on September 29, 2008

Yeah, let's get rid of earmarks entirely.

Here's a handy chart showing exactly what a huge impact that will have on the budget.
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 12:29 AM on September 29, 2008

SARAH PALIN GRADUATES! SARAH PALIN GRADUATES!
posted to MetaFilter by gman at 4:40 AM on September 26, 2008

In semi-related news, The National Enquirer's headline today: SARAH PALIN LOVER REVEALED

BTW -- "...the National Review and Jonah Goldberg believe that reports of [Sarah Palin's] infidelity in the National Enquirer are not just news, they're credible news. 'Whatever the merits of the whole Edwards love child story, are we really supposed to believe that one of America's most famous trial lawyers wouldn't sue a publication that printed... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ericb at 1:42 PM on September 24, 2008

Who curdles the milk? Who wipes down the badgers? Who drizzles cream on the berries? Who fellates the president? Who baits the hooks? Who chisels my likeness? Who sings redemption songs? Who farted?
posted to MetaFilter by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:41 PM on September 24, 2008

None of that stuff is going to stop the fire sales. I wake up every day for the past couple weeks now, walk to my computer, and flip to Google news to see which Wall Street firm sold yesterday for less than the price of the building their people used to work in. I do it while I'm still in the haze of sleep because I can kind of pretend that I'm just watching a very disturbing movie that's slowly unfolding before my eyes. Except its not a movie, its real, and I can't do a damned thing to stop it.
posted to MetaFilter by allkindsoftime at 1:12 PM on September 18, 2008

Oh, and McCain championed privatizing social security several times, imagine if that had succeed under Bush. (delmoi)

OK, let's try to imagine it, hmm?

Well, first, all 3 of the plans that Bush has proposed for partial privatization were optional, not mandatory, for those paying into Social Security. So I suppose if they'd succeeded, people who had chosen, of their own free will, to take money they had earned and put it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by tocts at 2:15 PM on September 18, 2008

For the "shoe on other foot-ers":

If this were about a Democratic governor/VP candidate using a Yahoo account to conduct subpoena-proof state business, one of those email screenshots would be declared a "smoking gun," and would be featured above the fold on the front page of the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, HuffPo, et al. The right-wing media would be screaming about it, and the mainstream media would follow suit, terrified of being called "liberal."... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by turducken at 5:42 PM on September 17, 2008

jonmc: When he saw it, he chuckled, looked vaguely perturbed and said "I wish I liked Metallica," and wrote 'David Foster Wallace..on zither'.

The other day I was passing through a bookstore and saw the bright orange spine of Infinite Jest. I read two-thirds of that book and hated it and quit. But looking at it I thought: "Well, so many people I know and respect love this book, one day I'll have to give it a second chance." I wish I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 8:07 PM on September 13, 2008

I read Infinite Jest the summer I was 23. It was 1997, I was living at my parents' house while doing a summer internship, and I had no friends in the area. Instead of a social life I had that book.

I would tote two things together around the house: my paperback copy of Infinite Jest and my hardcover, jacketless copy of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. I wasn't reading a novel; I was tackling a summer... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tin Man at 10:52 AM on September 14, 2008

Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace, Gourmet Magazine, August, 2004 (pdf)

Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

NYT : Review on the publication of Infinite Jest - March 3, 1996

Interview with David Foster Wallace, April 11, 1996

NPR : David Foster Wallace talks about tennis player Roger Federer - August 19, 2006

NYT : Roger Federer... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dave Faris at 1:30 PM on September 14, 2008

ONE ECONOMY ENTER
NO ECONOMY LEAVES
posted to MetaFilter by mrnutty at 8:45 PM on September 14, 2008

koeselitz: nobody made money off of this - everybody lost.

Really? You mean those bankers bought multimillion dollar houses in the hamptons with monopoly money? Bullshit. People got rich as hell off of this madness.
posted to MetaFilter by Freen at 9:28 PM on September 14, 2008

For my fellow English majors and other artsy types who might want to do some reading on how this whole mess came about, let me recommend THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN, AS SEEN IN REAL-TIME THROUGH METAFILTER POSTS:

(The following list is woefully incomplete; please feel free to add your faves from the past year or so.)

July, 2007:
"A world of Casey Serins" - MeFi takes a look at the world of sub-prime mortgages and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Asparagirl at 11:03 PM on September 14, 2008

I don't see anything else lurking on the horizon right now.

You mean besides the other financial institutions on the brink of collapse (WaMu, just to name one), the weak dollar, millions of homeowners underwater on their mortgages, rising food, gasoline and heating oil prices, trade deficit, and record levels of personal debt? No, other than that, it's all good.
posted to MetaFilter by scody at 12:05 AM on September 15, 2008

kolonia

I spell it konolia.

And fwiw I guess I am a bit more travelled than Palin; I spent a couple of weeks in Thailand a decade ago. Not that it would make me more or less qualified for public office.

But I digress....this afternoon I had to go to a fish fry for a local Republican running for reelection as a county commissioner. While there much of the talk turned to Palin.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by konolia at 6:11 PM on September 14, 2008

Charlie Gibson was mean to Hillary Clinton.
posted to MetaFilter by Zambrano at 8:07 PM on September 14, 2008

Yeah. Sacred plant? Like, what, holy beets? Spiritual salad?

It's a plant. Just like the coca plant, from which cocaine is made. Poppies, from which heroin is made. The, uh, methamphetamine tree from which crank is made. Well, okay, I made that last one up.

Taking salvia is not some metaphysical right of passage. It's not a message from God. It's people getting fucked up in a way that they like to get fucked up. That doesn't make it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Justinian at 3:18 PM on September 14, 2008

Also, I agree that the "root for the home team or get out of the stadium" shit is pretty offensive. I those southpark guys are idiots. They did a whole show making fun of Al Gore for making an Inconvenient truth (remember "manbearpig")? When they were doing interviews for "team America, world police" they were saying things were fine for them and everyone they knew, so what was the problem?

And look, it's not a stadium, it's a country.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by delmoi at 11:19 AM on September 8, 2008

The weird green lawn is still better than the close up shots of Rudy 9/11 in front of the weird brown/red rippling water of New York Harbor, which made it look like he was delivering his speech from a terrible winamp visualization/shitty acid trip or the "blood red haze of hell" that Romney and others spoke in front of. I'm working on a complicated theory that will attempt to decipher the meta-language of Republican iconology, right now I get the feeling they want us to think they're... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Divine_Wino at 10:37 AM on September 5, 2008

This is a pretty good livebloggy snark time, if you want an alternative.

well, the alternative -- since, you know, the users of the website you work for seem to be really, really interested in that topic -- would be to allow another thread to be opened so that it is more usable, instead of attempting -- clumsily -- againg and again to drive them over to another website.

those users are being punished for their interest by... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by matteo at 6:26 AM on September 4, 2008

Dave Faris:

If this were truly the totalitarian police-state that people are decrying it to be

...then it would be far, far too late to complain.

Truly totalitarian police states aren't dropped from orbit. They're built, piece by piece, on good, normal people saying things like "This isn't anything new, and these guys shouldn't be surprised that they got busted".... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by regicide is good for you at 8:22 PM on September 1, 2008

My point is that it is unproven that liberal democracies can transform into totalitarian societies by a gradual loss of freedoms

Early Showa Japan might be an example of the sort of crises required to turn a parliamentary democracy into a military dictatorship over ~10 years.

Us getting into a shooting war in China like the Japanese Army did 1931-1938 would probably send us down a similar road.

Draft... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by troy at 2:44 AM on September 2, 2008

The discussion about the USA becoming a totalitarian state or not always looks a little funny to my European eyes. A bit like two people inside a house that's on fire arguing about how high to set the thermostat on the heater.

The USA has a long history of civil liberties violations and totalitarianism, starting with slavery (it was already supposed to be the land of the free then!), apartheit after slavery was abolished, concentration camps for citizens of Japanese... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Djinh at 5:15 AM on September 2, 2008

I'm beginning to suspect a lot of you are inhuman.

A lot of you really believe that police officers have the right to arrest people who disagree with them. Exactly what is Amy Goodman doing that is a "crime"? Can you see that video with her getting arrested for simply talking politely to a police officer and say, "Yes, that's justice in action?" Do you really not see how much the officer is enjoying what he's doing?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lupus_yonderboy at 8:51 AM on September 2, 2008

“I live comfortably, work in my chosen profession, come and go as I please, buy what I want, associate with who I like, and so on.”

Me too.
It’s not enough.

I demand the right to disagree with and petition my government for redress without fear of retaliation by other means. If I have no disagreement or need to petition my government, I demand the right be open to others. Even those, perhaps especially those, who may disagree with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Smedleyman at 10:40 AM on September 2, 2008

Dave Faris writes "While it's clear that the police over-reacted yesterday -- and the raids, which included 5 different houses -- are pretty much all unacceptable, how would you propose a modern police force, faced with a potential riot, with threats of destruction, react?"

The difference, Dave, is that the police are supposed to be accountable to us. We can admonish the protesters, but they don't act as agents of the government. It's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by krinklyfig at 11:49 AM on September 2, 2008

Actually, those that just accept the official version of these things are a huge part of the problem. These police (they, by and large, were not St. Paul police officers, many of whom I know and talked to during the march) decked out in riot gear, some with sleeves rolled up to show their ripped arm muscles, were brought in from all over, some as far away as Philadelphia. Their presence was meant to intimidate people and it really did, but the few among us who are not intimidated by such... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mental Wimp at 4:59 PM on September 2, 2008

“the group whose headquarters was raided was a coordinating group for those planning illegal activity.”

It’s illegal to fart in a church in some places in the country. See any doors being kicked in over that?
But this “free speech zone” B.S. isn’t just bad or stupid law, it’s contrary to the spirit of the constitution. It’s against the foundational principles the country rests on. Democracy is supposed to be uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be a hassle. It’s... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Smedleyman at 3:50 PM on September 3, 2008

17th time's a charm.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, drjimmy11. If we have to hounddog these war-loving bastards every day until January 9, well, that's what we'll have to do.
posted to MetaFilter by John of Michigan at 4:46 PM on September 1, 2008

Oh my god, really?

Really?

Look, to be fair, I was halfway through a post last night on my own site about how ridiculous I though all the hard-right Freepers/Cornerites/etc. were harping about Palin. She was basically their new Fred Thompson. But I am seriously dumbfounded that they would have been this stupid.

Don’t get me wrong, on a PR level this is masterful for McCain. He’s killed all the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by XQUZYPHYR at 8:10 AM on August 29, 2008

Oh, and she's an attractive woman. OMG METAFILTER RAAAAAAAAAGE!!!

I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the male chauvinists.

You know, I'm really naive in thinking that at some point in my life people will actually get it through their heads that feminism is as much about equally judging women's faults as it is about judging their attributes.

Whining that everyone here is ragging on Palin for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by XQUZYPHYR at 10:25 AM on August 29, 2008

Can we please retire "[keep it | stay] classy"?
posted to MetaFilter by everichon at 11:58 AM on August 29, 2008

Here's the thing: it's not the inexperience--experience as such is not necessarily dispositive--she's not accomplished. She's not a policy wonk; she does not have academic credentials; she has virtually no legislative experience of any kind; nothing in her resume even remotely suggests that she has a clue about matters of national security or foreign policy. I am not impressed. I want to be impressed. I want somebody smart and accomplished in the White House.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kosem at 12:05 PM on August 29, 2008

That's funny because a friend of mine just told me that the reason he's never sick is because of all the pot he smokes. I suggested it's because he doesn't leave the house that much. He said: exactly, man.
posted to MetaFilter by cell divide at 2:18 PM on August 27, 2008

It's a bunch of bullshit, frankly and It's annoying to see people so eager to debase themselves.

Yeah, I feel so dirty and degraded when I touch my iPhone right there.

Hearing you bitch about iPhones every time they come up on Metafilter, it's like listening to Larry Craig denounce the gays. Just get one, already. Jesus.
posted to MetaFilter by Blazecock Pileon at 5:38 PM on August 26, 2008

That's the stupidest thing I have ever said.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 12:30 PM on August 26, 2008

I would cross out this whole fucking thread if I could. All of you assholes. You're all wrong. About whatever you're talking about.

Everyone needs a hug.
posted to MetaTalk by Mikey-San at 5:04 PM on August 24, 2008

i applaud Glenn Greenwald. always. that guy just gets it.
posted to MetaFilter by punkbitch at 1:52 AM on August 23, 2008

Oh yeah, seconding unknown command. My apartment is about 9" x 40", which gives them a good length to run (on the occasions that they do).
posted to Ask Metafilter by kimdog at 6:32 PM on August 22, 2008

MY FRIENDS, THAT'S NOT REAL ESTATE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
posted to MetaTalk by trondant at 2:42 AM on August 22, 2008

And btw unless y'all plan on kicking people of faith out of this country

You are 80% of the country and you do not get to play aggrieved party here.
posted to MetaFilter by Pope Guilty at 7:31 PM on August 20, 2008

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen," - John Edwards, on Bill Clinton, 1999.
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 2:48 PM on August 8, 2008

You lost me at "David Brooks says".
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 6:52 AM on August 8, 2008