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And yet they programmed the robot to run away? It seems like the simpler solution is to build a robot that can call a child an idiot eight times in response.

Addendum: at no less than 100 dB.

Double addendum: it follows the kid it identifies as the ringleader around and keeps calling him/her an idiot. Forever. Decades later, the poor sap will be a prosperous sarariman with several underlings and, try as he might to avoid it,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:24 PM on August 29, 2015

Oh if life were made of moments / even now and then a bad one
But if life were only moments / then you'd never know you had one
posted to MetaFilter by deludingmyself at 8:03 PM on August 29, 2015

Which of Stephen King's works are taken as science fiction?

"The Jaunt" comes to mind.
posted to MetaFilter by Iridic at 6:21 PM on August 28, 2015

This article is so moving. I've always felt he was a cut above, was more tuned into the truth part of "truth in comedy"; this piece reinforced that, with an exclamation point:


I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by wemayfreeze at 4:02 PM on August 28, 2015

I curate artisinal memes.
posted to MetaFilter by meinvt at 7:54 AM on August 27, 2015

This seems like something they use to find people coming out of school. For mid/senior people, they send you a million message on LinkedIn about wanting to "sync up with you for a quick chat to hear about the projects you’ve been working on lately" blah blah blah.

I actually need the reverse of this where the recruiters can't contact me unless their job opportunities pass some of my own hidden test cases.
posted to MetaFilter by sideshow at 2:48 PM on August 26, 2015

Of course this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon nanofibers.

Space Elevator!

Win-win, baby. Then we start mining asteroids and building solar power satellites to beam down lots of energy to the Sahara to keep it going.
posted to MetaFilter by George_Spiggott at 5:28 PM on August 26, 2015

On the one hand, queer and trans kids should totally be able to access queer and trans resources online.

On the other hand, even the crunchiest of progressive granola parents would agree that they have some kind of right to monitor and control their kids internet access.

These two rights are fundamentally at odds, and there is no way of supporting one without impinging the other. As sympathetic as I am to the plight of these kids, we're a long... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Avenger at 6:45 AM on August 25, 2015

I'm not saying populism is bad. I think we don't make progress without it, but I definitely think there are dark sides to it that need to be watched and checked.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
--MiB, QFT.
posted to MetaFilter by The Bellman at 4:00 PM on August 24, 2015

y'all so fucked. i'll say it again: he's your next president.

And I will say it again as well, if you're willing to put your money where your mouth is. I'd bet you $500 USD Trump is not the next President.

And that, children, is how a little site called MeFi became the new InTrade way back in 2015.
posted to MetaFilter by Xavier Xavier at 2:35 PM on August 24, 2015

I recently got an unsolicited Facebook message from a long time acquaintance that has worked for the GOP for 5 or so years (college republican, now an East Coast GOP state operative). He's a really good guy. A nice young person who is kind to people, but also one of those guys who gets away with the bullshit "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" tag that is utterly meaningless. More or less, he's pro gay marriage and doesn't want to kill poor people for sport. So he's a moderate, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lattiboy at 1:42 PM on August 24, 2015

Further, Trump is upstaging all the white resentment, nativist, race baiting, dog whistle fear-mongering that has been the Republican playbook since Nixon. Previously those have been the tools of the party elite to whip the base into supporting Republican politicians, who go on to enact the policies of the 1% that their plutocratic overlords paid for. Trump is cutting out all the dog whistles and saying it right in the open, combined with some actual populist stances like *gasp* NOT slashing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by T.D. Strange at 1:40 PM on August 24, 2015

At this point I will be a little surprised if the next Republican candidate debate doesn't devolve into a running gunfight.
posted to MetaFilter by CynicalKnight at 1:25 PM on August 24, 2015

In all the writings about Star Trek and philosophy, I've gotten to the point where I'm never surprised that the writers neglect to consider the elephant in the room -- Gene Roddenberry's military service and the impact it likely had on his thinking about Star Trek's ethical ideals. Roddenberry was a philosophy major. He was a bomber pilot and a police officer.

Roddenberry flew B-17s in the Pacific, and while he wasn't the most distinguished aviator, he flew combat... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Cool Papa Bell at 3:38 PM on August 23, 2015

Ha. Thx. I laughed.

I SAW WHAT YOU DID THERE
posted to MetaFilter by Smart Dalek at 7:26 AM on August 22, 2015

Bradbury's The Pedestrian, my favorite of his stories, addresses this directly, and presciently.
posted to MetaFilter by Pater Aletheias at 7:54 PM on August 21, 2015

This is an advertising campaign that seems to say, "we already own all the people who would play an American football game, but EA keeps giving us truckloads of cash, so let's do Fast and Furious meets This Is the End meets Zoolander?" Like, it doesn't matter what they do, even if they make a five-minute spot that has nothing to do with the game and also looks a hundred times more exciting than the actual game, because the people who already play Madden will never stop buying... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by elwoodwiles at 10:50 AM on August 22, 2015

Good timing, we're just a few short months away from the 10th anniversary of the greatest NYT headline ever: Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers.
posted to MetaFilter by griphus at 9:22 AM on August 20, 2015

By the way, Star Trek fans may remember her as the green Orion slave girl.
posted to MetaFilter by vacapinta at 2:38 AM on August 20, 2015

X-Men in X-Wings.

Coming this X-Mas!
posted to MetaFilter by Jeanne at 2:09 PM on August 17, 2015

I swear, whenever mefite regulars convince me they are a terminally dismal group of people, something always arises to demonstrate that their usual pit of despair has no bottom.
posted to MetaFilter by 2N2222 at 2:10 PM on August 14, 2015

The study describes the effect of a German baby on new parents. Other studies, such as that by Fälschung (2012), suggest that German babies are among the most difficult to raise in the world. Falsch (2013) suggests that this is due to their unquenchable desire for order that new parents have difficulty dealing with.
posted to MetaFilter by vorpal bunny at 1:47 PM on August 14, 2015

Holy shit is this even real

Is the republican party just 4chan and stormfront

Has it always been this way
posted to MetaFilter by Avenger at 3:05 PM on August 13, 2015

Best of the web.

Best of multi-cellular life.
posted to MetaFilter by carsonb at 10:27 AM on August 12, 2015

i'm just going to leave this short story here kthx.
posted to MetaFilter by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:48 PM on August 11, 2015

I'm going to be really disappointed if the floors in the Pentagon are not, in fact, tiled with pentagons.
posted to MetaFilter by xedrik at 12:19 PM on August 11, 2015

COMEXONXFHQWHGADS
posted to MetaFilter by escape from the potato planet at 1:16 PM on August 10, 2015

Alphabet Inc., a division of the RAMJAC corporation
posted to MetaFilter by thelonius at 3:57 PM on August 10, 2015

The 1970s have a bad reputation amongst pundits and policy makers, but for most working people they were pretty good.

Let's all let that simmer for a minute. Like a nice stew. It takes a while for the meat to get tender and the flavors to mingle. Mmm.
posted to MetaFilter by 3urypteris at 10:51 PM on August 6, 2015

Thank you for this. The Daily Show was such a formative part of my interest in politics that I felt obligated to put together an appropriate send-off à la the Colbert finale, but never got any further with it by last night than an incomplete selection of my personal favorite clips. So seeing this nice round-up really took a load off.

It shouldn't go to waste, though, so here in no particular order are some of my top TDS... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 5:50 PM on August 6, 2015

President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, "Dozens of times each day." Mrs. Coolidge said, "Tell that to the President when he comes by." Upon being told, the President asked, "Same hen every time?" The reply was, "Oh, no, Mr. President, a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 3:35 PM on August 5, 2015

Strange Interlude: "I just Googled "warren g harding scandals" and one of the suggested searches was "warren g harding scandals beastialitality" [sic] which just sounds like a Mortal Kombat finishing move. So to speak"

Look, just because his partner's called "Nate Dogg" doesn't make it beastialitality.
posted to MetaFilter by Joakim Ziegler at 2:21 PM on August 5, 2015

"There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark."
posted to MetaFilter by SansPoint at 11:06 AM on August 5, 2015

You guys do get that the Kermit/Miss Piggy characters are already a subversion of traditional roles, right?

Kermit is a frog. What other myths do we have where a frog is the leading man in the story? The one about the Handsome Prince. But Kermit has no backbone; he's constantly a victim of his environment. He's a lovable loser. He's not a prince, and certainly won't be a king.

Miss... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Cool Papa Bell at 7:37 PM on August 4, 2015

Problem: People think I look angry
Cause: Social anxiety
Solution: Look angrier
posted to MetaFilter by timdiggerm at 5:09 AM on August 5, 2015

I am officially shipping Kermit and Janice, the guitarist from The Electric Mayhem.

Or Sweetums.
posted to MetaFilter by mrjohnmuller at 5:08 PM on August 4, 2015

I'll take the con-side of the argument. There are flashes of brilliance, and I was impressed with her technical understanding(1). But overall-- nah. She's too tightly wrapped up in what I call Internet Tough Guy, which I think most people will recoginize as SA and Cracked's house style.

It's an easily learned and easily aped style, and it's a huge crutch to writers learning their craft.

This is a freshman/sophomore level piece(2).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mrdaneri at 7:00 AM on August 4, 2015

Astonishingly, Arkhipov played a major role in saving the world twice. He was also the first officer aboard K-19 when the heroic effort of the crew (at the cost of seven lives) prevented a catastrophic reactor meltdown which had a reasonable chance of being misinterpreted, by the Americans, as an attack. Indeed, Arkhipov's experience aboard that ship might well have steeled him for the crisis aboard B-59.

Heh... I just read the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dreadnought at 4:43 PM on July 30, 2015

Last month wrestling lost one of the best babyfaces in the history of the business, today it lost one of the best heels.

Jimmy Snuka was my favorite wrestler as a kid. Not understanding at the time the predetermined nature of the business, the Piper's Pit linked above where Roddy Piper attacked Snuka with a coconut and mushed a banana in his face was seriously traumatic for me.

"Just when they think they got the answers, I change the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Gooch at 4:28 PM on July 31, 2015

simra:
Solitaire is still exactly the same as it was in Windows 8, except they added an ad-supported Challenge feature that no one is forcing you to play. You get a 30-second spot between challenges that you can pay to turn off. [My daughter loves it, in spite of the insipid and tasteless ads they're showing her.] Someone put it well on reddit: This is like a shop that gives away free stuff suddenly start selling other stuffs while still giving away old free stuffs and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 3:08 PM on July 31, 2015

I, oddly, have always had a soft spot for 'Down By The Seaside.'
posted to MetaFilter by jonmc at 6:19 PM on July 31, 2015

So what happened with Windows 9?

Skipped because there's too much software still out there in which lazy programmers version check what Windows it runs under by looking for "Windows 9" rather than e.g. "Windows 95".
posted to MetaFilter by MartinWisse at 10:17 AM on July 31, 2015

Windows 7 ate 9.
posted to MetaFilter by a lungful of dragon at 10:12 AM on July 31, 2015

In the history of humans? Obviously, the most important person who ever lived was Mitochondrial Eve.
posted to MetaFilter by maxsparber at 12:21 PM on July 30, 2015

There are major websites that I just can't read on my iPhone, like the Jerusalem Post. It takes forever to load and then there's this weird draggy effect as you scroll. The Guardian is about half as bad: I don't get the dragginess, but I often get page crashes and half the time the front page won't load at all. The Toast has these horrible little adds that slide in from the side and obstruct your view. They've fixed them a bit so you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Joe in Australia at 10:20 PM on July 29, 2015

This is a real and pressing problem; over the past couple of years I've worked on redesign projects for large and mid-sized ad funded sites, and it is rough fighting for lighter-weight pages. One of the problems is concentration risk: if you put all of your eggs in one basket with a single ad network and/or metrics system, you run the risk of falling behind in a sort of arms race that pushes shockingly thin margins around like water seeking the lowest point. In businesses... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by verb at 8:27 PM on July 29, 2015

The thing you carry with you will report on your progress, and then the next thing is...why not tell work what you're doing for a lowering of your life insurance premium? Hey, why don't we start just making our work badges into little FitBit-like devices, just to make things easier?

Giving out pedometers is already a thing, voluntary I believe, in some workplaces to lower premiums. I would do it if offered. I let Progressive monitor my driving too to get rates lower.
posted to MetaFilter by Drinky Die at 6:48 AM on July 29, 2015

What will you do with all this possibility?

You'll climb the same route everyone else is climbing of course and shuffle slowly in a queue.

But if you're queueing, you are participating in a national pastime!
posted to MetaFilter by ocherdraco at 8:24 AM on July 28, 2015

Every single one of the Google Car's accidents have been caused by other drivers.

How did you find that link?

I rest my case.
posted to MetaFilter by gauche at 11:52 AM on July 27, 2015

I am sure this letter will make a tremendous difference and cause the human race to reconsider its choices.
posted to MetaFilter by entropicamericana at 11:47 AM on July 27, 2015