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I think a fun experiment might be to do all of the rest of your life's dumplings in one day.
posted to MetaFilter by turbid dahlia at 6:20 PM on December 13, 2015

This is the Last Time I Will Ever See You--how weddings often mark the end of particular friendships. It's a similar thought on how life moves us away from one another.

My parents moved home to Chicago when I graduated from college, despite intentions not to, for various reasons. First my cousin's husband died. Then my father's mother (his father having died in the 50's) died; then his youngest sister. Then my parents' remaining uncles. Then my mother's mother (her... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by crush-onastick at 11:14 AM on December 13, 2015

And the winner for "Most 2015 Headline Ever" is...
posted to MetaFilter by TheWhiteSkull at 4:53 PM on December 11, 2015

This is great news for Weyland-Yutani.
posted to MetaFilter by markkraft at 8:42 AM on December 10, 2015

My former-neurophysiologist dad recently went in for a purely precautionary Alzheimer's screening. For one of the tests the doc gives him a piece of paper with a square printed on it and tells him, "Write any sentence in this box except, 'Dr. Williams is stupid.'" So my dad writes, "Dr. Williams is definitely not stupid." The doc laughs and tell him, rightly, "Humor! There's all the evidence we need that all of your higher functions are in perfect working order."
posted to MetaFilter by cmoj at 8:30 AM on December 9, 2015

" . . . expected to keep flying until at least 2040. By then, taking one into combat will be the equivalent of flying a World War I biplane during the invasion of Iraq in 2003."
That is a fascinating context-maker . . . nice article, thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by pt68 at 12:42 PM on December 9, 2015

My clock-radio alarm went off the next morning and WBCN was playing We Can Work It Out. I lay in bed for a couple minutes as the song finished, and then the DJ came on and gave the news about Lennon. I think I remember that he was crying. I think his co-host was crying. I woke up my mom and we turned on the radio and the TV. (When the attacks on September 11 happened, I had the radios and the TV on, and I thought about the morning I heard that John Lennon had been killed.)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rtha at 6:13 PM on December 8, 2015

Thankfully this sort of technical end-run around campaign laws is not the sort of thing the vigilant and forceful FEC will permit. Expect to see Ted Cruz facing severe civil and criminal penalties for this stunt.

Oh, no wait, that's only in my Imaginary World. Never mind.
posted to MetaFilter by srt19170 at 7:06 PM on December 5, 2015

Yeah, but wait 'til next year. Nobody's gonna show up to his real funeral.

I was thinking "I hope he doesn't choke or have an actual cardiac event during dinner or the last thing he's going to hear is his children and grandchildren laughing at their jokester Grandpa."
posted to MetaFilter by dances with hamsters at 5:47 AM on December 4, 2015

Put me in the "worst thing" camp. If the dude pulled this stunt there's probably a good reason his kids don't visit.
posted to MetaFilter by mightygodking at 5:05 AM on December 4, 2015

This is the song Lee Mendelson heard that made him get in touch with Vince Guaraldi about writing the music for the show.
posted to MetaFilter by lagomorphius at 4:58 PM on November 30, 2015

In a just world, every airing would be immediately preceded by this (it originally aired on CBS).
posted to MetaFilter by schoolgirl report at 2:28 PM on November 30, 2015

I call it crisis culture.

We can now do things amazingly fast and be more productive than ever... productive as in quantity. No waiting for the mailman, or sending out for printouts, or waiting for the delivery service, or getting the specced type back from the service bureau, etc., etc.

There's almost never a reason things CAN'T get done in the same day, or deadlines can't get cut, or budgets changed, or last minute changes. After consulting... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jeff-o-matic at 1:04 PM on November 30, 2015

The Beggar CEO and Sucker Culture castigates employers who think their employees should do extra work for free.

I'd bet cash money that many of those same employers regard taxation as theft.
posted to MetaFilter by Gelatin at 12:26 PM on November 30, 2015

Well that explains why Drake started tithing.
posted to MetaFilter by cmfletcher at 2:49 PM on November 30, 2015

We share the concerns of many Americans that extremists are creating a poisonous environment that feeds domestic terrorism in this country.

Yes. A thousand times yes.

I live just outside Paris. I go there at least twice a week, often more. I've only shared this with close friends until now, and feel so uncomfortable sharing it publicly (because I grew up in the States and know only all too well what it's met with), but will,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by fraula at 6:41 AM on November 28, 2015

I eagerly await calls for moderate Christians to denounce Christian extremist terrorism and come up with plans to counter the threat of radicalization that plagues their co-religionists.
posted to MetaFilter by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:20 AM on November 28, 2015

A man walking down the train tracks with a stuffed animal.

He says "why am I soft in the middle now?"
posted to MetaFilter by pulposus at 7:09 AM on November 28, 2015

Great article. One of the commenters makes the excellent point that it's perfectly possible that the human penis didn't directly evolve at all, not even in response to the growing vagina problem - the selection pressure on the vagina to be large enough to safely accommodate big smart baby heads may have affected developmental processes that also affect the size of the penis (since they are the same structures). So all the just-so stories about the benefits and utility of larger penises are quite... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by misfish at 2:02 PM on November 25, 2015

Oh wow. This so closely mirrors a situation my co-worker was in that I partook in, that I'd almost think she wrote it. I wrote all this before reading the article, but decided to check to see if I wasn't rehashing. I kind of am, so, fair warning.

I was back at my desk working through a company-wide meeting when one of the new employees came back up to the floor, on the phone, looking pretty shocked. While I was minding my own business, I could also tell she was very... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leviathant at 6:42 PM on November 25, 2015

I do taxes. What these things play on is how mind-bendingly scared people are of the IRS. We have to reassure them all the time that even when you owe back taxes and stuff, the IRS is one of the easiest creditors to deal with. The interest rates are not insane, and it's easy to get a reasonable payment plan, and even when you've done incredibly stupid stuff, they take forever and a half to get around to actually seizing anything. And we're talking there about things like failure to deposit... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Sequence at 6:08 PM on November 25, 2015

There is one big problem with the framing of this article. And it shows up right in the headline:

The CIA’s WWII Guide to Creating Organizational Dysfunction Perfectly Describes Your Toxic Workplace

Do you see the word that's wrong there? It's "your." "Your" workplace is not toxic, because (for most of you) you don't have a workplace. You may have a place where you work. That place may or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:18 PM on November 21, 2015

“I am sure that if they had lost an equivalent number of books from their library overnight (what 25,000-30,000 books) they would not be so nonchalant,”

Fortunately, it turned out that the files Swartz downloaded had not disappeared! They were still on Jstor's servers! So, miraculously, it turned out that Jstor's analogy was a tendentious bit of mendacity and not anything actually real.
posted to MetaFilter by Joe in Australia at 5:36 PM on November 21, 2015

The cabbie explained that the madallion system was to ensure that there was an artificially limited amount of drivers out there, otherwise it wouldn't be a viable business. I asked him why cities didn't have a similar scheme for restaurants (or any other given business model). He didn't have an answer for me.

So you take your advice on municipal licensing situations from a cabbie?

All municipalities restrict restaurants... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by srboisvert at 4:40 PM on November 20, 2015

Xiaomi, $46.0 billion to build Apple knock-offs for China. Good luck with that.

Xiaomi, and ugh I hate saying this, is kind of the chipotle of smartphone manufacturers.

They've figured out how to sell a comparable or higher quality product than their competitors midrange $250-400 phones(barring others in the cheap but good space like oneplus) for $100-200. Or even less, sometimes. And they utterly DESTROY the $20-150... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by emptythought at 3:33 PM on November 20, 2015

Looking at the referenced WSJ graphic:

Uber, worth $51.0 billion. "Disrupting" the taxi cab market by not having employees or carrying insurance - basically by free riding on externalities.

Xiaomi, $46.0 billion to build Apple knock-offs for China. Good luck with that.

AirBnB, $25.5 billion to "disrupt" the hotel industry by not having employees or carrying insurance - basically by free riding on... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RedOrGreen at 1:43 PM on November 20, 2015

Sometimes, I really do wonder how history will look back on shit like this. It's amazing and perplexing how much money is being tossed around, capital basically chasing mythical mega-super-awesome multiplied capital, in a way that future generations may well look back on as some sort of vague repeat of the tulip market boom and bust.
posted to MetaFilter by tocts at 1:26 PM on November 20, 2015

Dear Editor/Redittor

In order to address the points made by One_Giant_Nostril and AllNiteLoŋŋŋŋŋ we reanalyzed our data using different post-hoc comparions and found no difference in our tests. Further we included the covariates suggested by both walrus_waffle and EmancipatedEmpanada and likewise found no changes.

The suggestions of IWantToTouchYourBum were ignored as it was clear they hadn't even bothered to read the methods section where the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by srboisvert at 2:42 PM on November 16, 2015

And never forget you've gonna eat lightning, and you're gonna crap thunder!
posted to MetaFilter by fearfulsymmetry at 3:10 PM on November 16, 2015

Rocky (I) is in a class by itself. Let's face it, without Rocky, we would have had none of the other Rocky greatness.

So I am walking in Manhattan with my (at the time) wife when this short guy with two huge guys on either side of him walks toward and then past us. I casually say to my wife, that was Stallone. She says bullshit. Then, from about 10 yards away, Stallone turns and says, he's right then turns back around and keeps on walking. I wasn't sure if he had a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AugustWest at 11:46 AM on November 16, 2015

It was advertising a show featuring the Connells. Opening for a Dave Matthews cover band.

My fantasy is that, after the Connells played, the headliners realized they'd been wasting their lives and re-invented themselves as a Connells cover band on the spot.
posted to MetaFilter by escabeche at 9:11 PM on November 15, 2015

"Slackjawed" was a highly underrated song.
posted to MetaFilter by SisterHavana at 5:27 PM on November 15, 2015

Some personal highlights:


Currently topping the leaderboard for whitest rich dude statement: “My dogs get mani-pedis; I don’t”. But it’s a competitive field

From tennis lessons and stock reports to antiquing and booking a private jet, technology is transforming everything about the way we live

Next talk is a vision of connecting ubiquitous surveillance technologies to a form letter generator.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by tonycpsu at 9:58 PM on November 15, 2015

sio42's link, non-borked
posted to MetaFilter by Johnny Wallflower at 5:30 PM on November 13, 2015

Someone on my Facebook feed is already blaming multiculturalism. I don't know what to say, I just shouldn't have looked.

Respond to them and blame the presence of the Mets in the World Series.

"Aren't you playing Fucking Idiot Poker? Call and raise."
posted to MetaFilter by delfin at 5:17 PM on November 13, 2015

It'll never work. You can't just write a Die Hard script, you have to write a script for some other franchise and then edit it into a Die Hard movie when that falls through.
posted to MetaFilter by ckape at 5:32 PM on November 12, 2015

Vonnegut had an uncanny ability to turn some of the simplest phrasings into powerful statements. Consider, toward the end of Slaughterhouse Five, after relating the deaths of RFK and MLK:

He left me his guns. They rust.
posted to MetaFilter by borborygmi at 2:46 AM on March 12, 2012

The modern Republican platform of the last 20 years would be, elsewhere, the crazy nutter party that should it ever break into two digits and get 11% support would causes a national freakout about whether the country is becoming hateful. Yet here, it is considered a respectable party allegiance that people are not ashamed to admit they support.

To be fair, it's not as though we're playing with a fair deck here. In addition to a Senate that strongly... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by leotrotsky at 10:54 AM on November 11, 2015

Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a cash register rings an angel gets PTSD.
posted to MetaFilter by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:13 PM on November 10, 2015

Whatever color it is, their logo features A TWIN-TAILED MERMAID. The only way it could be more pagan is if it showed Pan throwing a nun's skirts over her head. There IS NO MODIFICATION which can make a twin-tailed mermaid into a Christmas image, and anybody who is actually bothered by this kind of silly shit should have started camping out outside their local Starbucks in a hair shirt and handing out leaflets, years and years ago.
posted to MetaFilter by Sing Or Swim at 5:03 PM on November 10, 2015

"We don't need to say that a banana “looks like lemon;” we can just say that it's yellow."

Banana you glad he didn't say orange?
posted to MetaFilter by Earthtopus at 10:51 AM on November 11, 2015

I have a sudden urge to... publish zines? Rage against machines?
posted to MetaFilter by gwint at 9:55 AM on November 11, 2015

I saw Harvey Danger open for Semisonic at the Bowery Ballroom in the summer of 1998....

That is one of the most 90s things I have ever read.

I love Flagpole Sitta, and I listen to the entire Little By Little album several times a month. Almost all of those songs have a regular place in my internal jukebox.
posted to MetaFilter by hopeless romantique at 9:50 AM on November 11, 2015

wait, you guys aren't get paid to post here?
posted to MetaFilter by roger ackroyd at 2:08 PM on November 9, 2015

I've been a BoJack evangelist since not long after the release of the first season. I watched it so many times that I started getting "BoJack Horseman's favorite shows" as a category on Netflix, and kept trying to convince pretty much everyone I knew that they needed to give it a chance.

Most of those folks would look at me like I was crazy or stoned (or both) when I told them that this cartoon about a talking horse was among the most legitimately heartbreaking... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dersins at 2:49 PM on November 9, 2015

I wouldn't describe the show as being especially funny (though it does have its moments). It is however a far more subtle and humanistic character study than one would expect, given the concept. It's hard to depict depression and self-loathing in a character without making them seem pathetic and unlikable, but in the case of Bojack, his flaws make him more relatable. The writers give the character room to be depressed and unfulfilled without rushing to explain or resolve it, and that in itself... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dephlogisticated at 2:33 PM on November 9, 2015

'Having friends' and enough leisure time to nurture them, is quite a new invention beyond childhood. My working class grandparents appeared to have no such concept, although they did chat to their neighbours relentlessly. (Or a shopkeeper. You could chat for half an hour to a shopkeeper in those days).
posted to MetaFilter by colie at 10:46 AM on November 9, 2015

The only problem with rent control is that it is not transferable between tenants; if it were transferrable, it would represent, more or less, a gradual ownership stake in the unit acquired by the people living in it — people who, all told, are much more likely to meaningfully contribute to the neighborhood around the unit than any landlord is, and therefore should rightfully receive the benefit from gentrification of that neighborhood. This would also solve the problem of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:20 PM on November 7, 2015

You want to fix this, end racist voter disenfranchisement in the South, overturn Citizens United, protect women's right to choose, and more?

Vote Hillary Vote Hillary Vote Hillary

...and then re-elect her in 2020. 16 straight years of Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court will solve a tremendous amount of the current bullshit going on right now.
posted to MetaFilter by leotrotsky at 12:34 PM on October 31, 2015

Also, how the hell did this experiment get past an ethics board. This is some bullshit research design. That much we can all agree on.
posted to MetaFilter by If only I had a penguin... at 8:07 AM on November 1, 2015