MetaFilter

There's a timeline where the people that invented this mechanism met the people who had primitive steam powered engines [also Greek I believe] and the folks in Iraq who had the clay pot batteries.

In that timeline, the internet age occured in the 1700s and we're currently all scattered across interplanetary colonies.
posted to MetaFilter by Renoroc at 6:48 AM on June 5, 2014

Is this somehow related to Steve Perry coming out of retirement to sing with the Eels?
posted to MetaFilter by lagomorphius at 2:52 PM on June 5, 2014

The article is sort of light on real data:

Neither labor professors, shadow economy experts, nor sociologists who specialize in Chinese Americans, have conducted studies on the phenomenon of canning.

According to employees at Sure We Can, a large number of canners are elderly Chinese immigrants. Half of the regular canners at Sure We Can are Chinese, the other half are mostly Hispanic. “Since more redemption centers have opened, the Chinese have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Michele in California at 4:10 PM on June 5, 2014

I just thought of something. A browser extension 1) that picks up when a clickbait article shows up in your browsing, 2) checks to see if SavedYouAClick has a spoiler for it, and 3) overlays that spoiler into your browsing experience right there. Whether it's Facebook, email, twitter or anywhere else.

Let's get this going. We could do some serious damage to the whole model. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.
posted to MetaFilter by naju at 4:50 PM on June 5, 2014

Interesting. That's the best explanation I've ever run across as to why gendered pronouns even exist: it makes pronouns more useful as a class, because you can use more of them in a sentence without confusion.

If we only had genderless pronouns, you'd be able to replace a noun with a pronoun much less often without introducing ambiguity into the sentence.

It seems as though English's use of gendered pronouns came out of a sort of 'balance of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kadin2048 at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2014

Advertising is a virus of the mind, to which we develop immunity via exposure.
posted to MetaFilter by kewb at 2:11 PM on June 3, 2014

I find it hard to believe PNAS would let through such a dumb statistical error, but maybe.

To encourage evacuation, we should give hurricanes really scary names like Murderdeath, Axkiller, Heartslicer, or Drownquick.
posted to MetaFilter by miyabo at 6:15 PM on June 2, 2014

It's a special kind of hug that grownups like to give each other in private. Sometimes you see animals doing it too. Sometimes it makes a baby happen.

My kids have known this since they were three.
posted to MetaFilter by jfwlucy at 3:48 PM on June 2, 2014

A few of the comments, from the vaccine defender guys, are very nice:

You’ll see on this thread that almost none of the people suggesting vaccines are unsafe will even answer what sort of evidence would be likely to convince them, and a few have openly declared they refuse to learn any more on the subject as a whole.

When that’s the case, there’s really no conversation or education to be had.

It’s very much like... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:08 PM on June 1, 2014

Wow, that's completely uncharacteristic of Steve Ballmer to grossly overpay for something that may prove to be monumentally unprofitable.
posted to MetaFilter by Bathtub Bobsled at 6:37 AM on May 30, 2014

#MissedChances: Shoulda had Clooney and Bullock inside making out when the door opened.
posted to MetaFilter by BeerFilter at 7:35 PM on May 29, 2014

The prevalence of frozen yogurt places is as baffling to me as the number of mattress stores. Neither of them seem like high-demand businesses and yet they sprout up everywhere like mushrooms.
posted to MetaFilter by winna at 1:51 PM on May 28, 2014

The most honest thing I can say about Evernote is that while I am a totally gung-ho pro user, it is a total shithole where anything I put into it just gets tagged and then never looked at. I don't know if it's the interface or what. Real fucking bummer. It's more of an information coffin than anything else. And yes I use the GTD system.
posted to MetaFilter by phaedon at 9:44 AM on May 29, 2014

I'm just indescribably delighted by her self-description "I was a hot teen Casaubon." Hooray.

Plus, this and this are pretty much my favorite thing ever to happen on or around Twitter.
posted to MetaFilter by torridly at 9:36 AM on May 28, 2014

Can I just say how awesome it is that Perry's return to the stage began with "It's a Motherfucker"?

No?

Dang.
posted to MetaFilter by gern at 8:16 AM on May 27, 2014

HIPPA says what?

HIPAA says we're going to complicate exchange of information and make research very difficult without improving your privacy one iota.
posted to MetaFilter by Mental Wimp at 10:02 AM on May 27, 2014

HIPPA says what?

HIPAA says it's completely legal. You are *offering* that information, and since they are paying for your health insurance, they have a financial tie to the information -- one of the way that you are allowed to have PHI. (You, those you designate, those you treat you, and those who pay is the short form of who can have access.)

Personally, I track all the information my company wants, and I won't give it to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eriko at 4:43 AM on May 27, 2014

"That Bantha poodoo you like is going to come back in style."
posted to MetaFilter by Atom Eyes at 2:08 PM on May 20, 2014

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced
posted to MetaFilter by Postroad at 6:51 PM on May 19, 2014

Speaking of the hardest drops ever, https://soundcloud.com/bestdropsever.
posted to MetaFilter by ben242 at 4:57 PM on May 18, 2014

The last paragraph says it all:

"“At the end of the day, it’s best understood as a function of health disparities writ large,” says Chris Beyrer, the director of the Johns Hopkins Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program. The core difference between the United States and Western Europe, he says, is that “we’re a much bigger, much more complex, and much more unjust country.”"
posted to MetaFilter by marienbad at 2:50 PM on May 18, 2014

Yes, the "peer evaluation" element is really rich. When they encounter a task that can't be effectively accomplished through AI, they make the work mandatory for students- many of whom are paying for the privilege in the form of "Signature Track" fees- rather than hiring qualified individuals who are actually trained in evaluating student work.

This was an excellent piece which articulated some very good reasons for maintaining my skepticism of Coursera.
posted to MetaFilter by foxy_hedgehog at 1:34 PM on May 16, 2014

PURE CHEWING SATISFACTION
posted to MetaFilter by RobotVoodooPower at 9:32 AM on May 13, 2014

One of the writers I follow on Twitter is watching his young daughter suffer from brain cancer, and the posts he writes are heart-wrenching. It's the small, quiet details that hit the hardest, like her wanting to play with a toy beyond her age group because she knows she won't live to see that age.

It can't be said more succinctly: Fuck cancer.
posted to MetaFilter by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:30 PM on May 6, 2014

Oh I got it: the 2nd Amendment protects every effort to sell or own any type of conceivable weaponry, except the Founding Fathers were really opposed to digital biometric verification systems.
posted to MetaFilter by Mid at 10:01 AM on May 6, 2014

I guess "we don't negotiate with terrorists" only applies when those terrorists have lobbyists.
posted to MetaFilter by munchingzombie at 9:44 AM on May 6, 2014

has joined other TV news media in dropping much of their pretense

It has occurred to me that US television, in general, has become an enormous troll whose sole raison d'être is to keep the population in a constant state of agitation, regardless of the content disseminated, whether that be sports, kitchenaria, reality/fantasy or the reporting of current events, among many others. It's a giant hate machine and whoa be the person or persons who find... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jsavimbi at 8:50 AM on May 5, 2014

Janewman, you're looking with too forgiving a lens. Given the cross-sectional area of the earth's orbit vs the orbit of everything else in the universe, suddenly the so-called bullet within 100 feet of you takes on new significance ie holy crap, bullets!

This asteroid is not the problem. It is asteroids, per se.

Think of it like being a serious criminal and chronically committing a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mike Mongo at 1:29 AM on May 4, 2014

Public schools: Government can't do anything right
Health insurance exchanges: Government can't do anything right
Drug safety regulation: Government can't do anything right
Welfare system: Government can't do anything right

Decide who we kill and how: Government will have a 0% error rate
posted to MetaFilter by 0xFCAF at 9:37 AM on May 1, 2014

And if the devil is iOS 6 THEN GOD IS IOS7 THEN GOD IS IOS7 THEN GOD IS IOS7
posted to MetaFilter by escabeche at 6:03 PM on April 26, 2014

I guess the logical extension of this is maybe the Dandy Warhols in the early 2000s, since a) every early-2000s Dandy Warhols song seemed to be soundtracking an advertisement and b) every Dandy early-2000s Warhols song seemed to be about taking a metric shit-ton of drugs and seeing what happens.
posted to MetaFilter by running order squabble fest at 5:41 PM on April 26, 2014

To clarify what I wrote above:

HLA-G (or actually soluble HLA-G: sHLA-G) is not only produced by sperm. It's secreted by embryos. And then once the embryo is implanted in the uterine wall, it's produced by the forming (and fully formed) placenta. The HLA (leukocyte antigen) helps prevent the maternal immune system from rejecting an embryo as a foreign body, causing a miscarriage. It actually plays a key role in preventing miscarriages. The embryo is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 7:58 AM on April 25, 2014

perversions have been observed in several physical systems

And the award for academic understatement of the year goes to Liu et al.
posted to MetaFilter by The Bellman at 12:18 PM on April 24, 2014

Maybe a physician owned that book.
posted to MetaFilter by Apocryphon at 1:03 PM on April 24, 2014

My intuition is that this will have no effect or possibly a positive effect on me. If the costs of bandwidth are borne equally now, pricing based on use should shift costs to people that do bandwidth intensive stuff like gaming, streaming movies & music, etc, and away from people like me that just read text-y stuff like blogs. Am I thinking about it right?

Bandwidth is exceptionally cheap. That you use very little of it due to your choice of data should have you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by flippant at 4:35 AM on April 24, 2014

I suspect that a careful viewing might have revealed some of the money angle but sex trumps just about everything else and so that is where the eye if not the mind is.

Might you say that most people would watch the film with their eyes wide shut?

I'll show myself to the door...
posted to MetaFilter by Llama-Lime at 4:28 PM on April 23, 2014

Asked about Alex’s fondness for Ludwig Van in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick answered, “I think this suggests the failure of culture to have any morally refining effect on society. Many top Nazis were cultured and sophisticated men, but it didn’t do them, or anyone else, much good.”

Wow. Succinct and perfectly appropriate for the era of art-loving hedge fund managers.
posted to MetaFilter by RedOrGreen at 2:08 PM on April 23, 2014

I have been waiting for a general critical re-visitation of Eyes Wide Shut. It didn't surprise me that the film was pilloried when it came out, because that's pretty much par for the course for Kubrick, but most of his films have had champions nonetheless, and this has had few.

I love it. It's a tough movie, sure, but, then, so are they all. I suppose there was nothing in it like the light show at the end of 2001, to draw in stoned young people who wound up seeing the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Bunny Ultramod at 11:10 AM on April 23, 2014

If you want to use TapForms, this is the solution I would recommend.

1. Have each user set an password for the database on the device.
2. At the end of the day, create a backup file.
3. Upload the file to a dropbox account. (Configure in settings).

- At this point the submitter is done.

4. Admin loads that database into a new database on the desktop version of tapforms.
5. Exports... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Brent Parker at 10:38 PM on April 21, 2014 marked best answer

Handbase is another good database program, with versions for every platform. The desktop version allows multi-user sync, and the developer is working on a automatic cloud sync. There was a recent question on their forum which was similar to yours, the support tech offered to directly work with the potential user.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Sophont at 11:57 PM on April 21, 2014

How about wufoo?

Here's the iPad app.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by LuckySeven~ at 12:00 AM on April 22, 2014

What's going on with the Midwest?!

People finding ways to lower taxes and cut government spending by abandoning the whole notion of socialized care for the mentally ill, then spend a few years thinking the neighborhood sure seems to be going downhill what with all these homeless people in it, and then eventually asking themeselves How Something Like This Could Happen Here.

So, America. America is what's going on with the Midwest.
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 2:03 PM on April 19, 2014

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
posted to MetaFilter by Debaser626 at 6:22 AM on April 18, 2014

I'm not a supporter of Mr. Obama, but it should be obvious even to the dimmest of the dim that racism is a big if not the biggest driving force behind the right's hatred of him.

It's a factor, sure, but I'm old enough to remember the Clinton Years well, when Rush Limbaugh opened every show with counting the number of days that America had been "held hostage" (the number of days Clinton had been president). I remember the lists of murders... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pater Aletheias at 11:04 AM on April 15, 2014

how about praising successive approximations, while keeping the starting bar low enough that anyone can feel capable, and managing the process at the level of the individual to ensure no one gets left behind?
posted to MetaFilter by rebent at 1:59 PM on April 15, 2014

I've often thought that video game consoles make for nicely granular generational divisions, for those of us born in the '70s or later. What console was most prominent in your childhood? I was born in 1980 and confidently identify as Generation NES, even though I never actually owned one. Perhaps you are slightly older, and grew up more familiar with the Intellivision or Atari 2600. Amazingly, there are now eligible voters who have never known anything more primitive than a PlayStation.
posted to MetaFilter by Faint of Butt at 5:14 PM on April 13, 2014

t gottabefunky: I dunno, it seems like despite being a rapidly shrinking group being old, conservative and white is pretty much the plum gig of being an american citizen. You're catered to on every level politically, you have wealth from a lifetime of opportunities that young adults never had, and you are super over-represented in media.

If the trade off for that is you have to deal with social policies you disagree with but don't really affect you on any personal... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ferreous at 1:19 PM on April 13, 2014

Paul Krugman: Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
posted to MetaFilter by homunculus at 11:23 PM on April 12, 2014

He left out a key point though, that I think should be shared with all high school students:

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

Kurt Vonnegut
posted to MetaFilter by nubs at 9:10 AM on April 11, 2014

I hope he pronounces it "Lay Show".
posted to MetaFilter by Flunkie at 10:47 AM on April 10, 2014