MetaFilter

Believe it or not, some people work for little pay and long hours because they believe in what they are doing, even at the expense of their own long-term income prospects.

Unless you would do your job for free, we have already established that your nonprofit employer is engaging in theft of labor, we are just determining the extent.
posted to MetaFilter by Rock Steady at 11:20 AM on May 18, 2016

Unpaid work is the theft of labor, full stop. If companies complain that they can't survive without stealing labor, then they're admitting they are unfit for survival in a capitalist economy, and no one should feel sorry for them.

Democratic politicians and pundits, feel free to steal that line. Often.
posted to MetaFilter by Gelatin at 10:09 AM on May 18, 2016

witchen: why are you so bad at business that you rely on almost-free labor?

There was something that I realized while reading a bunch of investment advice books by famous investors a couple of years ago: Some of the people who have gotten fabulously wealthy over the past 40 years by investing in the stock market have done it by identifying industries where a) workers were the main cost of business and b) workers were in a weak position, vulnerable to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by clawsoon at 9:12 AM on May 18, 2016

The other argument was that "There is no golden pot of money to pay these people from."

ORLY
posted to MetaFilter by Rock Steady at 8:36 AM on May 18, 2016

Kochs Pulling Out of Politics
posted to MetaFilter by indubitable at 12:23 PM on May 17, 2016

They're not pulling out of politics. They're redirecting their money to the state level, and into policy projects laying the ground work for future ratfucking to come, things like the Tax Foundation and Cato which formed the "intellectual" underpinnings for the Ryan budget, and the anti-Obamacare suits. Which they've been massively successful at outside of the presidency. This isn't a withdraw, it's a tactical admission that Trump is probably a lost cause. There's no good news here.
posted to MetaFilter by T.D. Strange at 12:20 PM on May 17, 2016

See now, when my SF class read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, everyone was all "ha ha NuSkins is a really dumb name for a corporation, so is RejoovenEsence, this is dumb" (my feeling was that it wasn't dumb, it was estrangement, a la the stupid names in Barthelme) but no, reality exceeds our ability to describe it. (Also a common theme in SF.)
posted to MetaFilter by Frowner at 11:04 AM on May 17, 2016

Like Napoleon Dynamite with "nunchucks".

It's why he didn't run for president. He didn't have bo staff skills.
posted to MetaFilter by maxsparber at 8:06 AM on May 17, 2016

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.
posted to MetaFilter by roomthreeseventeen at 2:31 PM on May 17, 2016

Not just miscarriage but implantation failure too. Ladies, your bodies can commit crimes of their own accord. In fact couples who are having trouble getting pregnant may actually be committing a crime in the course of failing to conceive.
posted to MetaFilter by XMLicious at 9:04 AM on May 16, 2016

This is so monstrous. I can't even wrap my head around it. So in Indiana, it's illegal to abort a fetus that has the gene for Tay-Sachs, because kids with Tay-Sachs typically don't die until they're two or three years old? On what planet is that humane or compassionate?

I'm also curious about whether they have any idea how common early-pregnancy miscarriage is. A lot of women miscarry before they even know they're pregnant. Basically, if your period is late and then... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:55 AM on May 16, 2016

A tough read, but a good one. In this country, the USA, where property is so much more valued than human life, it can be a strange experience. Wealthy, but full of harsh human degradation. The majority of citizens know very well how easy and short the fall can be into poverty. There are not many nets to break your fall. How many people read this piece and felt a small bolt of fear? Probably almost everyone.

Well over a decade ago I found out by chance that someone... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cwest at 12:47 PM on May 15, 2016

An absolutely heartbreaking long read. Thank you so much for sharing.

It just illuminates the sad fact that potter's graves are not just the tragic end-of-life scenario that happens to the unfortunately indigent and orphaned. They are what could happen to you, to me, to any of us given the perfect storm of missteps in a sea of bureaucratic apathy.

Reminded me of the similarly well-researched NYT investigative article The Lonely Death of George... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bologna on wry at 11:09 AM on May 15, 2016

This was my TLDR summary of Venezuela I posted to Facebook some weeks back --

Background:
Venezuela is a former Spanish colony, population of 30 million, GDP per capita of $15k PPP (comparison point, Malaysia is $10k PPP, Australia is $67k PPP). Primarily oil driven economy - they have the largest oil reserves on the planet and have pulled over a trillion dollars in oil profits in the past and they were the founders of OPEC. So far so good.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by xdvesper at 5:53 PM on May 14, 2016

Previously: Yet, it is the wealthy, not the poor, who are dependent on government subsidies. To transform dependency into self-determination is the work of poor people's movements.

From this Tampa Bay article:

Stores are like neighborhoods, he said. If they look tidy, research shows, they signal that the residents are paying attention. Walmarts can feel messy and disheveled. The “chaos,” Jennings said, allows troublemakers to rationalize that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 7:46 AM on May 12, 2016

Also, judging by what we've seen from private store security forces, I'd really rather have them use the actual police.

Except that the police are not only acting as a de facto private private store security force for Wal-Mart at taxpayer expense, but also those disproportionate number of runs consume time and resources that the police might be using to respond to other calls.

No matter which way you slice it, Wal-Mart is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Gelatin at 7:38 AM on May 12, 2016

The heart doesn’t break just once. It breaks a thousand times.

True, dammit.
posted to MetaFilter by wildblueyonder at 9:22 AM on May 12, 2016

... and Olivia Tremor Control is all but forgotten. It is kind of mysterious.
posted to MetaFilter by ryanshepard at 7:45 AM on May 11, 2016

I am a professional organizer, but IANYPO.

Starting at NAPO, as you've been advised, makes the most sense. NAPO is the main industry association, and you can get referrals based on your geographic location and specific needs. NAPO does not allow provisional members (those who have only been professional organizers for less than a year) to show up in the directory, so you know you won't get an absolute newbie, and you'll be able to click through to each organizer's own... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 9:28 AM on May 2, 2016 marked best answer

My sixth grade crush sang "Memory" as a solo at our elementary school concert. For me, there is no more to be said.
posted to MetaFilter by meinvt at 2:42 PM on May 6, 2016

Metafilter: Assume that anyone you see ... has been drinking all day and given very little food.
posted to MetaFilter by nfalkner at 5:46 PM on May 4, 2016

For centuries, Peruvian locals have talked about a river in the Amazon that burns so hot it can kill.... [Peruvian geoscientist Andrés Ruzo] began to question whether the river could actually be real.

According to the experts he spoke to, the answer was a unanimous "no".... But when Ruzo went home over the holidays and asked his family where the myth had come from, his mother told him that the river didn't just exist, she and his aunt had actually swum... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Tensor at 10:03 AM on May 4, 2016

THIS IS WHY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS MATTER
posted to MetaFilter by batbat at 2:15 PM on May 4, 2016

The sooner you can get these kinds to move from coding games to actual programming, the better.

A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Committing. Always be committing. ALWAYS BE COMMITTING.

Put. That toy. Down. Toys are for toddlers only. You think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you.
posted to MetaFilter by a lungful of dragon at 12:03 PM on May 2, 2016

Here's a poet's version
posted to MetaFilter by Aubergine at 8:10 AM on April 29, 2016

I loved this so much after I heard it this morning I sat right down with my healthy breakfast breakfast pie and started putting mine together. Only I was ambitious about my failure- I was also going to put down my science investigations that have failed, because I think that's also important.

Annnnnnnd after about half an hour I realized my failures so outnumbered my successes that I was getting depressed. So I wrapped it up with my own... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by barchan at 7:50 AM on April 29, 2016

Aborta - worst baby name ever.
posted to MetaFilter by Nanukthedog at 9:20 AM on April 29, 2016

I guess they weren't content with letting Watson go on Jeopardy and give medical advice, they also want it to start writing prescriptions.
posted to MetaFilter by radwolf76 at 3:40 PM on April 28, 2016

Now we know why that monkey gone to heaven.
posted to MetaFilter by jonp72 at 6:19 PM on April 27, 2016

The question is will the nation take steps to change things?

No. Because "the nation" is run by the people that have benefited from the last 35 years. The 90% at the bottom have no voice, and when they do try to speak, they're co-opted by professional agents or corporate plant candidates steering the conversation back to the same "solutions" that caused the problems in the first place.
posted to MetaFilter by T.D. Strange at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2016

"In the 1950s, the average New York City apartment rented for $60 a month — around $530 in today’s money. With the US median wage at $5,000 a year, New Yorkers spent 1/10 of their salaries on rent. After World War II, apartments were so cheap and available that Manhattanites would regularly move every September just to get the landlord to repaint their new home."
posted to MetaFilter by Atrahasis at 11:43 AM on April 22, 2016

Perhaps no other factor is more fundamental to the city’s growing rent burden than lagging income growth.

It takes years of education and the hope of a career in places like the "Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy a joint research center between the NYU School of Law and the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service" to be able to write a sentence like that and not shoot someone. As if, somehow, the growth of rent in NYC is a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ennui.bz at 8:49 AM on April 22, 2016

Nobody who refers to a blog post as a blog has anything meaningful to say about the web, no matter how beloved they might be in other fields.
posted to MetaFilter by maxsparber at 9:31 AM on April 22, 2016

The future of the internet is plain to see. The social media sites will fill with bots, endlessly yammering semi-coherent nonsense back and forth. Then there will be the content farms, created by slightly more sophisticated bots that scrape each other's content back and forth, recombining and regurgitating endlessly, with occassional injections of new buzzwords and ideas from some poor "creative" types, in the hopes of producing something new and relevant. The overlord bots will... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nubs at 8:50 AM on April 19, 2016

The internet makes a lot more sense if you assume this has already happened.
posted to MetaFilter by ryanrs at 5:03 AM on April 19, 2016

Constitutional amendment: Any debt is repaid as soon as the borrower has paid double the amount borrowed. Fees and charges count towards this amount.
posted to MetaFilter by Talez at 4:23 PM on April 9, 2016

the best thing about BB8 is that he is shaped like all the characters in his name
posted to MetaFilter by beerperson at 8:14 AM on April 7, 2016

New York is at least 8 states in one:

1. Maritime Long Island: Suffolk County, historically New England
2. New York City: ethnic, diverse New York
3. Hudson Valley: east bank, historically New England
4. Adirondack, New York and Tug Hill Plain: forest dweller individualists
5. Western New York: Midwest Western New York
6. Ontario Plain: similar to southern Canada
7. Mohawk... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Melismata at 12:29 PM on April 7, 2016

i mean, it takes a lot to make a stew
posted to MetaFilter by beerperson at 6:07 AM on April 7, 2016

passes the bechdel test in the teaser trailer
posted to MetaFilter by incomple at 5:03 AM on April 7, 2016

This is just like the other day when I realized thirty-goddamned-seven years after the fact that the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America was a reference to the Statue of Liberty.

Oh, but it goes much, much deeper than that.
posted to MetaFilter by bondcliff at 7:43 AM on April 7, 2016

Do Al Jaffee and Roger Angell know each other, or would they care to? They are almost exact contemporaries - Jaffee was born in March 1921 and Angell was born in September 1920. They live in the same city, even!

And then add in Betty White (January 1922), and Doris Day (April 1922) if she wanted to be less reclusive.

Good to hear that Mort Drucker is still around too. When I subscribed to MAD magazine in the 1970s, I used to especially enjoy... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by tallmiddleagedgeek at 6:59 AM on April 7, 2016

I haven't bought a mad magazine for about 30 years, to discover Al Jafee still working is surprisingly heart warming.
posted to MetaFilter by deadwax at 5:18 AM on April 7, 2016

Indeed, the moral of the story was more about hubris than anything else. Industry is featured very little; this is a reminder that while science may not have an agenda, people do. I'm curious to read more about the findings in the article: that research tends to move more quickly as renowned figureheads leave their fields — taking their obstructionism with them.
posted to MetaFilter by Dark Messiah at 4:03 PM on April 7, 2016

Can you explain what red looks like, using only blue and green?

it is feistier
posted to MetaFilter by threeants at 8:36 PM on April 5, 2016

So what wavelength is squant?

I'm checking the readouts and it says.... negativ?
posted to MetaFilter by carsonb at 7:27 PM on April 5, 2016

mochapickle: Last summer, I was stuck on a business trip with a power-obsessed colleague who had apparently been reading up on power poses to prepare for our meetings. She spent the whole 20 minutes of her presentation to our internal team cycling through pose after pose: Hands on hips, the forward lean, then back to hands on hips, then back to the forward lean. Seated, she'd make her body as large as possible.

You know who else practised his power... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by clawsoon at 10:51 AM on April 5, 2016

The way to make gold is to practice on the credulity of mankind <---- 19th century Alchemist
posted to MetaFilter by bukvich at 7:24 AM on April 5, 2016

For everyone who is thinking "Surely this...", please keep in mind that there are people walking around with medical devices implanted in them who have lost support, but are still breaking the law if they try to access them.

There's a recent Cory Doctorow talk where he points out that there are already car loan companies that disable your car if you don't make payments. Imagine that it's not your car, but your legs. Or your kidneys. That's not a distant future.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lumpenprole at 12:09 PM on April 4, 2016

"Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?"
The house was silent.
The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random."
Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite..."
"ERROR: No connection available.
Please alert a Homeware customer support representative.
We apologize for the inconvenience."
posted to MetaFilter by theodolite at 11:38 AM on April 4, 2016