MetaFilter

There should be a new FPP about how Disney just screwed over DeSantis, but I'm at work now.
posted to MetaFilter by Melismata at 9:08 AM on March 30, 2023

I'd like to nominate Billy Joel's "Storm Front" (1989) as an honorary inclusion since it was based on "Sledgehammer" with the same slow walk base line that plods along just enough not to fall apart (by Joel's own admission).
posted to MetaFilter by Servo5678 at 8:58 PM on March 28, 2023

Why are all men in BBC radio dramas and sitcoms called Tom, for that matter?

Interestingly, both Tom and Jack are used to refer to the males of some animal species, as in tomcat, jackass, etc. (Apparently in the case of toms this might have been inspired by a 1760 children's book.) The female counterpart of a jackass is a jenny -- where Jenny is a diminutive feminine form of John, of which Jack is supposed to be the male diminutive for whatever... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by trig at 1:44 PM on March 27, 2023

Meanwhile, on a server at Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems:
"All these people applied for Social Security cards in the same town in New Jersey, on the same date":


John Barnett
John Bigboote
John Camp
John Careful Walker
John Chief Crier
John Cooper
John Coyote
John Edwards
John Fat Eating
John Fish
John... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by sebastienbailard at 9:08 PM on March 26, 2023

“John Matrix” (Commando, 1985 with Arnold Schwarzenegger) is the greatest action hero name.
posted to MetaFilter by migurski at 5:38 PM on March 26, 2023

billg: "PC ➝ Internet ➝ Mobile Phone ➝ LLM"

"natural language is as profound as any of these previous milestones"
"every advance lowers the bar as to who can take advantage"
"this LLM demo is same scale as the demo I got from Simonyi in 1979 at PARC"
"this will move faster than the previous breakthroughs since there are more people working on it now"

My list of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:29 AM on March 25, 2023

More of this please. PLEASE! More arguments, more research, more policy papers documenting the whole human effect of forced moves

The market-based arguments against rent control are well known and compelling, but nobody factors in the holistic effects on people's lives due to rental churn and the costs due to lost productivity, lost health and lost connections

A couple careers ago, I had a job where I was researching the pros and cons of HUD... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Skwirl at 9:06 PM on March 19, 2023

JFC can we not

After tweeting these things, Trump was troubled in his spirit, and testified, "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Trump loved, was reclining at table at Trump's side, so Rudy Giuliani motioned to him to ask Trump of whom he was speaking.
posted to MetaFilter by pwnguin at 4:37 PM on March 19, 2023

Similarly, right-wing pundit Jesse Kelly wrote on Twitter: “The last time Trump’s biggest fans protested on his behalf, he left them all to rot in jail without so much as a penny from him in legal fees.”

Hey, you’re getting there, buddy!
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 4:30 PM on March 19, 2023

Surely, this...
posted to MetaFilter by Metro Gnome at 3:34 PM on March 19, 2023

Metafilter: It's like asking a parrot who has hung around doctor's offices for medical advice.
posted to MetaFilter by wats at 10:15 PM on March 6, 2023

I'd kind of argue that anything that can be written by AI doesn't need to be written in the first place. A friend is starting to use them for performance reviews where he works. He feeds it bullet points and it spits out a few paragraphs of editable prose about the person.

But why can't we just let the bullet points be the review in the first place? Why wrap it in meaningless fluff just to make it look like we put more effort into it than we actually did.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mikesch at 9:10 AM on March 6, 2023

Apparently there's a ChatGPT extension for Google sheets and someone used it to automate messaging potential employers on LinkedIn (Twitter link).
Easy to see this being used for things more nefarious then annoying CEOs.
posted to MetaFilter by thatwhichfalls at 6:33 PM on March 5, 2023

I started using ChatGPT for work-related tasks a couple of weeks ago (I work for a non-US government), and now it's become impossible for me to imagine a world where I don't use it daily. While it does generate a lot of poorly written output (which requires a lot of editing), in the end, it gets the job done. Nobody has noticed any significant difference in the quality of my work, and I've actually gotten compliments about a couple of speeches I've written with it in about 20 minutes.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Omon Ra at 6:27 PM on March 5, 2023

I come to cancel Caesar, not to stan him

Get thee to a nunnery.
posted to MetaFilter by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:56 AM on March 6, 2023

It was 2009. I was sitting around a fire pit (not one of the bad ones; I was lucky that way), smoking cigars and swapping war stories and other lies. One of my buddies' buddies had done a stint at Guantanamo. He told a story about an interrogation he'd been part of, and the story was... I won't say troubling, but he definitely didn't want to tell the entire story either. Then it occurred to me that I didn't know he'd ever been an MP, or MI, or anything... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 12:04 PM on February 28, 2023

What's the impetus behind the defenses? "Sure, the Internet is now a worse place to be, but money is being generated - money that I could have?"

From where I'm sitting, there are two. One, which Doctrow points out, is based on them trying to "prove" they wouldn't be taken in out of fear that they would. The other, which I feel Doctrow himself winds up in here, is summed up as "I don't like where this logical train of thought... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 12:41 PM on February 24, 2023

Look, this stuff is hard.

But what stands out to me in your post is that you seem really focused on your kid not being smart enough (particularly not smart enough not to get caught). And you seem to be focused on social media rewiring his brain.

If this were my kid, I’d be worried about what he’s feeling, where he’s getting (or learning to develop) his self-worth, how he experiences his friendships, what’s going on with him.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by warriorqueen at 3:58 AM on February 21, 2023

I saw Live once at the Hartford Whalers Arena back in (I want to say) 1998. I wasn't a huge fan, but they were pretty damned amazing, and their performance of "White, Discussion" made me a low-key fan. Ed always struck me as being way too invested in his "big rock and roll frontman ego" thing, and it's not a huge surprise that he's declared that Live is really just him, and the rest of the band are replaceable widgets. Seems in-character.

How does a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by 1adam12 at 8:37 AM on February 22, 2023

For anyone who missed it at the time, the key change article from Chris Dalla Riva that he mentions in the intro was fascinating and had a post here.

Since 1991 you say? I guess it's been a long road getting from there to here.

KIRK: [shaking fists, apoplectic] WARRENNNNNNN!
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 10:34 AM on February 21, 2023

Every day, people sit in front of TVs, allow the artistry, the hucksterism, the deception to flow into their consciousness as if it were real, and allow this to manipulate their endocrine system, and emotions as if it were real. Every day we type words to the internet, wait for a ripple, a response, which manipulates in the same way, regardless of what we seek, or what we are doing when we hit enter. People go for their regular doses, in fact, seek the same pleasures over and over again, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Oyéah at 8:44 PM on February 20, 2023

There's a Sci-Fi short story out there somewhere about the Fermi Paradox (if the universe is so big, and the conditions of life are nothing special, then where is everybody?) where someone is being led on a Virgil-like tour of the planetary civilizations that didn't make it through the process of The Great Sorting:
"These are the planets that overused their resources and Easter Islanded themselves; these are the ones that blew themselves up with atomic weapons.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bartleby at 3:46 PM on February 15, 2023

If you are a person who does not identify as transgender, non-binary, and/or gender nonconforming, or if you don't have those people in your life as friends, or if you are considering in any way, shape, or form of posting a hot take that might be read as "NYT is good, actually!" -- please take a step back from the comment box and think really hard about what message you'll be sending to MetaFilter readers who have been the targets of the attacks from the NYT.
posted to MetaFilter by curious nu at 8:20 AM on February 15, 2023

Tired: shooting down weather balloons and believing they're aliens
Wired: shooting down aliens and believing they're weather balloons
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 2:42 AM on February 13, 2023

Trying to reduce chatgpt to "it's just like compression" or "it's just a very fancy markov chain" misses the point. It has the abilities it has because it's a load of simple components scaled massively. The scaling give it it's emergent behaviour. It's something we haven't seen before, or at least not more than a few years ago. That's why we're struggling to categorise it.

If you reduce it down again to simple concepts, of course it's going to look... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by memebake at 6:19 AM on February 11, 2023

You know, there's no law against rudeness. There's really not much legality regarding racism and bigotry, either, and what laws there are that might be enforced usually don't end up being prosecuted. All that really happens is that the people who are being rude , racist and bigoted end up feeling validated and vindicated. Really, what can the law do about this?

People need to start calling out other people who aren't being civil instead of letting it go by. "Excuse... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ashbury at 6:16 PM on February 10, 2023

Could the rise in the charts be related to the fact we were 98 short of Armageddon last week?
posted to MetaFilter by MrGuilt at 12:55 PM on February 8, 2023

My mom stopped eating and drinking on purpose (Parkinson’s and didn’t want to end up on a tube), and we think my mother in law took an overdose of blood thinner. Both had DNRs but the nursing home called us anyway for my mom (luckily my sister had the Health Care Power of Attorney) and the EMTs insisted on transporting the MIL to a hospital where they put her on a respirator until the family got the lawyers on it next day. Meanwhile my lifelong moocher/squatter of a 93-year-old father has been... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Peach at 11:58 AM on February 9, 2023

My mother died five years ago after a five-plus year struggle with Alzheimer's and what was probably a stroke that preceded a three-month rapid decline and death. I'm still so angry about the financial side of it (separately from the "shake fist at the universe because my mama is dead" part) that I can't talk about it in terms suitable for public consumption.

Two years before she went into hospice, she moaned to me "why can't I just die?", lamenting... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by gentlyepigrams at 11:14 AM on February 9, 2023

I always thought he and Dionne Warwick were a match made in heaven. But my favorite is still probably “One Less Bell to Answer” and Marilyn McCoo’s almost wail on the chord changes. Thank you for all the wonderful music, Burt.
posted to MetaFilter by kitten kaboodle at 4:03 PM on February 9, 2023

I'll never fall in love again.
posted to MetaFilter by box at 2:36 PM on February 9, 2023

Here's a timely Letterman link with Elvis Costello. ed: posted above by Joey Michaels.

Mr. Bacharach was a Top-3 Burt.
posted to MetaFilter by Jansku at 1:17 PM on February 9, 2023

SCENE: RANDOM DAY IN 1984.

Me, in passenger seat, singing along with Naked Eyes.

Mom, driving: I know that song. Check the records when we get home.

Me, later, finding some random gas station compilation: oh.
posted to MetaFilter by fedward at 1:13 PM on February 9, 2023

One less bell to answer…

.
posted to MetaFilter by jabo at 12:19 PM on February 9, 2023

Teachers in the middle of the salary scale, for instance, have seen their wages drop by 9 to 10 percent in real terms between 2010 and 2022, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The government says it cannot pay teachers what they are requesting because it would fuel inflation, which is more than 10 percent.

Gotta love the logic. You've lost purchasing power for a decade, but we can't give you more money, because that would erode purchasing... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ickster at 9:35 PM on February 2, 2023

If you're a fan of time loops, give Replay by Ken Grimwood a shot. I read it shortly after it was released, and was initially disappointed in Groundhog Day because I thought Replay's story was more interesting. Groundhog Day grew on me, over time, and while there are other loop movies I like more, my favorite story overall is still Replay.
posted to MetaFilter by Gorgik at 11:42 AM on February 3, 2023

*falls out of tree again*

The kid who fell out of the tree is now a news reporter at the ABC TV station here in Boston: Sean Chaiyabhat
posted to MetaFilter by briank at 10:10 AM on February 3, 2023

A year or so ago there was a story about a ship's engineer that came across a serial data line from an undocumented box in his ship's bridge into the engine, carrying Modbus data. Nothing in the ship's documentation said a thing about the box, the cable, or what it was doing in the engine, but some reverse engineering showed it was regulating the diesel throttling and injection.

The shitstorm that will happen in 2038 will involve embedded processors whose existence... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ocschwar at 4:37 PM on February 1, 2023

This is also a good summary of some of the political design "compromises" behind the physical designs.
posted to MetaFilter by ensign_ricky at 12:36 PM on February 1, 2023

I've told it before and I'll tell it again. Back in 1983 I went to the first or maybe second ever Space Camp. I was thirteen. Our shuttle mission that I was the commander of, burned up on re-entry because of a damaged tile. Evidently I was supposed to send some other kid out on the 'space walk' to fix the damage, but I knew damn well that there was no way to fix a damaged tile, it wasn't something that was actually possible. They let us burn up. I killed my crew. I can't even describe... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zengargoyle at 4:12 PM on February 1, 2023

Over in the discussion at LGM about this, one of the commenters made an excellent point:

The key detail is omitted: Javice herself is the product of an elite education (well, Penn) and a wealthy background (father is a hedge fund manager). This is what let her mingle (or claim to mingle) with movers and shakers when she was in college. This is what let her even have a meeting with JP Morgan Chase. Lest there be any doubt, if there were a real Frank with 4+ million... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 2:08 PM on January 25, 2023

His doctors say he has the gum inflammation of a 17-year-old.
He blasts his pelvic floor with electromagnetic pulses
[He] has a device that counts the number of his nighttime erections
He could have been mistaken for a big, swollen porcelain doll.

I feel like these should be Talking Heads lyrics maybe.
posted to MetaFilter by uncleozzy at 12:59 PM on January 25, 2023

Nobody would know what they mean if they wrote hectomillionaire. It's also possible the writer didn't know or even think of the hecto-prefix.

Maybe they should use decibillionaire.

Me, I'm a nanobillionaire, so I guess I got that going for me.
posted to MetaFilter by tclark at 12:26 PM on January 25, 2023

This team of doctors are masters in wealth extraction.
posted to MetaFilter by Roentgen at 12:13 PM on January 25, 2023

I was very confused at first about the premise until I figured out that it's "move the knight to each square we prompt you to move it to, in the order that we prompt you to do so". So get it to f8, and then it'll update to a new target square that you need to get to, and so on.
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 10:46 AM on January 25, 2023

I was such an optimist when the World Wide Web was new in the early 1990s. That neoliberal boom time of the Clinton age when crypto was about trust, data privacy and security; not some buzzword for a ponzi scheme. That small things loosely joined would topple the old monopolies of technology, that it really could be the year of Linux on the desktop. That we could build a marketplace of ideas and the best ideas would rise to the top and we’d see the world moving towards knowledge and progress.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by interogative mood at 8:59 AM on January 22, 2023

This kind of business now goes well beyond the Internet. Everything quickly turns to shit because that's the current dominant business model. Find a semi-consumable product that has quality construction and design? If you don't buy a lifetime supply of it the moment you discover it you'll likely not get the same quality and design ever again because competitors will knock it off cheaper and crappier and the execs at the original company will see that they can get away with it and do the same.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on January 22, 2023

"[...] making you pay $2.99 extra to see the "From:" line on email before you opened the message – charging you to know who was speaking before you started listening – but they didn't."

Dear sweetness that is nightmare fuel. Why did he post that out loud ?
posted to MetaFilter by NoThisIsPatrick at 11:25 PM on January 21, 2023

I think a better real world example of this effect is illustrated with bicycles.

Drivers HATE cyclists. Infrastructure for bicycling is always a waste and worse. Cyclists are always at fault. Cyclist are the worst scofflaws, etc.

But what is the real impact of bicyclists on drivers? It's almost never danger. It's mild inconvenience at worst for the vast vast vast majority of interactions.

What's the reality? I can't drive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jclarkin at 10:28 AM on January 17, 2023

One of Dicken's scariest characters for me was Miss Havisham. She was jilted at her wedding, the groom never came. This was so devastating, she entered a kind of psychotic denial. She continued to wear her wedding dress for decades, until it was rags and dust. Growing more bitter and spiteful over the years, she schemed and plotted but would never leave the decaying mansion, until the whole place went up in flames with her inside.

Miss Havisham, in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by adept256 at 8:22 PM on January 9, 2023