MetaFilter

Racoon playing with sprinkler

They added harp music because for some reason they didn't think playing with a sprinkler was cute enough on its own.
posted to MetaFilter by Joey Michaels at 12:21 PM on February 24, 2014

*waves to kovacs* Not often I cross fellow consultants who have worked on airline systems.

I worked for the IT department of an airline whose name is Air Country, where "country" is the one I live in currently, abbreviation AF. (I don't type it out because I know AskMe turns up in search results.) My job was to test their migration from their own internal system, to a very similar one managed by Amadeus. In matter of fact, AF's flight reservation system is the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fraula at 3:19 AM on February 20, 2014 marked best answer

I knew I was getting old when everybody online stopped obsessing about crappy shows of my youth like Knight Rider and Three's Company and a new crowd showed up and started obessing over crappy stuff I was just a bit too old for, when it was new. You pups just wait: any day now, you'll find yourself surrounded by adults who are obsessed with "classic" stuff like Space Chimps and Justin Beiber. (The Buzzfeed folks seem halfway there already.)
posted to MetaFilter by Ursula Hitler at 6:12 PM on February 18, 2014

I'd actually watch sitcoms with laugh-tracks if they all had imaginary, invisible, inaudible characters which the rest of the cast and the "audience" all respond to as if they were there, transforming the sitcom into its true self, a desperate scream of agony in a world of lies.
posted to MetaFilter by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:07 PM on February 18, 2014

Stephen Spender told our poetry class in college that getting old is like driving the same car for a very long time. You, the driver, seem to be the same, but the thing just starts falling apart around you.
posted to MetaFilter by thelonius at 11:18 AM on February 17, 2014

Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love.

This is worth remembering.
posted to MetaFilter by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:24 AM on February 17, 2014

I didn't read it, but the sooner you get over the silly-ass romanticizing of writing and all that horseshit about "muses" and "inspiration" and accept that it's work exactly like any other work, the sooner you'll be a real writer.
posted to MetaFilter by drjimmy11 at 3:28 PM on February 16, 2014

If you were a Republican political operative why on earth would you want to work for Chris Christie right now? He might get indicted. If you were a Republican political donor why would you want to give him money?

That's what's going to kill him. He needs to start running for President now and instead of looking like a golden boy with unlimited potential he looks like a crook who is being investigated.
posted to MetaFilter by leopard at 9:24 AM on February 13, 2014

Dude, you're making comments on a weblog on the internet. Maybe you can back the fuck off of the condescension about which nerd pursuits are unworthy of feminist critique?

I don't like that large parts of my generation have become consumed with infantalized, commercial bullshit and are proud of it.

Not sure how commenting on a website would be comparable to spending large sums of time and/or money dressing up like a media... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lattiboy at 6:25 PM on February 10, 2014

stenseng, this is a Fallon thread, which by definition is a celebration of milquetoast, inoffensive comedy preferred by a generation of children brought up on Facebook shaming so I'm not surprised that you'd find the mean-spirited pre-Stewart Daily Show boring. But you cannot deny the show its popularity.
posted to MetaFilter by any major dude at 12:01 PM on February 10, 2014

You can't spell A-hole without Aol.
posted to MetaFilter by Thorzdad at 10:20 AM on February 9, 2014

Sometime back in the 1980's, I was walking through ArborLand mall in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and come across a table set up, displaying books, with an older gentleman sitting behind the table. The books on display were copies of "Flight of the Enola Gay" by Paul Tibbets, the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. The gentleman sitting behind the table was Paul Tibbets.

It took me a few moments to put all the pieces together, here I was, over 40 years after... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by HuronBob at 10:18 PM on February 6, 2014

I worked for a time in Hemphill, Texas. The memories of the shuttle response are still quite raw - all of my coworkers worked on nothing BUT shuttle recovery for the first 3 months of the response, and many of my coworkers continued to work on the response for years later (I work for a federal response agency).

The response of the communities of deep east Texas, an area of the country with some very problematic and sad history is nothing short of phenomenal. Though the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by arnicae at 11:58 AM on February 1, 2014

George and I shared a birthday. I still give him a nod every year. And this also means that I grew up with radio stations everywhere playing "here Comes The Sun" on my birthday, and Beatles songs are a fine gift.
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 5:18 AM on February 1, 2014

I've got some Gmail invites I can send him, if that would help
posted to MetaFilter by thelonius at 12:16 PM on January 30, 2014

Why is this even news? All children are possessed by demons. That's the origin of the word children. CHILD = young. REN = demon.
posted to MetaFilter by perhapses at 1:42 PM on January 28, 2014

Hey, if you want real CGA/EGA quality graphics in your sci-fi movie, give Star Trek III a try.
posted to MetaFilter by zsazsa at 12:16 AM on January 26, 2014

YOU'LL PAY FOR THE WHOLE SEAT, BUT YOU'LL ONLY USE THE EDGE!!!!!!!!!!
posted to MetaFilter by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:24 PM on January 16, 2014

Adding hay to the haystack won't help you find the needle.
posted to MetaFilter by Kirth Gerson at 3:51 AM on January 13, 2014

Here's my color-geek take on this.

There's a color notation system called the Munsell scale. In this notation, all colors are described according to three characteristics: Hue, Value, and Chroma. Hue could be understood as the "identity" of the color: red, yellow, blue, green, orange, etc. It's the closest thing to what we think of as the name of the color. Value is the lightness or darkness of the color to the human eye.

Chroma is the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by overeducated_alligator at 9:28 AM on January 7, 2014 marked best answer

I don't think it's trolling, I think it's a nice demonstration that economics has identified some points of public policy that are so inefficient that they can be solved in ways that have (to some degree) ideological appeal to the left and the right.

They are quite obviously not the same ideologically though, most importantly in points III and IV, which take the same two insights in 180 degree different directions.

I -- excess... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 12:06 PM on January 11, 2014

I could never really understand how Churchill was able to rehabilitate his reputation after [Gallipoli]

It's a matter of timing. The Gallipoli campaign came relatively early in the war. At the time, British people were still able to kid themselves that, in spite of the difficulties of their continental neighbours, British pluck and practical skill would still win the day. So when the Gallipoli invasion turned out to be an incompetent mess, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dreadnought at 6:06 AM on January 11, 2014

But Churchill had it easy! He only had to deal with the Nazis, the most powerful military force up until that point in history, a county with more than half the Nobel Prize winners ever given - whereas we had to deal with almost twenty people with box cutters.
posted to MetaFilter by lupus_yonderboy at 10:25 PM on January 10, 2014

It is failure if you give up; otherwise it is feedback...
posted to MetaFilter by Alexandra Kitty at 2:22 PM on January 9, 2014

My favorite: Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Obscure Reference at 4:55 AM on January 9, 2014

Also, since the images are stored on the Google App Engine, they of course never disappear for good.

This is why I post my Facebook updates in a brown envelope taped under a park bench at a prearranged time every week.
posted to MetaFilter by three blind mice at 1:14 AM on January 8, 2014

I found a camera in the woods... (There's a 2004 MeFi thread about this, but it looks like all the links are now dead.)
posted to MetaFilter by Guy Smiley at 9:33 PM on January 6, 2014

Things I like about the Reeve movies: Christopher Reeve. John Williams's Superman theme. The sense of wonder. Zod. Some of the dialogue:

Clark Kent: Excuse me, Mr. White. I was wondering if, if, uh, perhaps you could arrange for half my salary to be sent to this address on a weekly basis.
Lois Lane: Your bookie, right?
Clark Kent: My what?
Lois Lane: Don't tell me: he sends a check every week to his sweet, grey-haired old mother.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by martinrebas at 4:33 PM on January 3, 2014

hattifattener: "One of those phrases that makes me happy to have a desk job."

When my uncle did his PhD, back in the dark ages, his adviser was a mosquito researcher who has long since stopped having the allergic reaction to mosquito bites that makes them itchy. He kept a sort of plexiglass cage of just regular (non-research) mosquitos on his desk in his office with an openable portal. Whenever undergrads came in to complain about their... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Eyebrows McGee at 6:15 PM on January 4, 2014

Uncrop.
posted to MetaFilter by dmd at 8:13 AM on December 28, 2013

Hopefully listicles are something we leave behind in 2013 like infographics in 2012.
posted to MetaFilter by Joe Chip at 11:31 PM on December 27, 2013

Don't get me wrong, the NSA has gone way too far in online surveillance and Snowden is a national hero for revealing it. This particular message just would have been better without that straw man.

Simply calling an argument a straw man doesn't make it so. You may simply disagree with Snowden's hypothesis on what the future looks like, and then support that disagreement with some kind of counterargument.

I'm watching War of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by phaedon at 12:22 AM on December 25, 2013

Reza Aslan has some nice succinct comments on this topic as well.
posted to MetaFilter by George_Spiggott at 8:33 PM on December 25, 2013

the man still rates at pretty much the top of my list for favorite quotes:

"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

If I ever get around to it, my autobiography will be called Basic Research.
posted to MetaFilter by philip-random at 3:58 PM on December 24, 2013

Interesting point for comparison: The US and the UK have about the same suicide rate, despite the dramatic difference in the number of guns in each country.

Is the suicide rate in the US due to our gun ownership, and are our British friends substantially less mentally healthy? Or are our cultures and mental health similar, and are suicides going to happen regardless of what tools are available?
posted to MetaFilter by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 5:15 AM on December 23, 2013

THE ANGRIEST TRANSPORTER CHIEF IN THE WORLD

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
posted to MetaFilter by Strange Interlude at 4:10 PM on December 23, 2013

While this article isn't entirely wrong, it's contextualizing all this pretty incorrectly, to the point that I think its ultimate conclusion is pretty misguided.

To start, the feed didn't start in 2009. Blogs have been around since before the 21st century — hell, if you look at MetaFilter's front page, it's a reverse-chronology feed. Some forums bump newly-commented threads to the top; MetaFilter doesn't. RSS and new content pushes have been around for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rory Marinich at 10:15 AM on December 19, 2013

Blind Melon's 'Hello, Goodbye'

FWIW, that ain't the pre-gap song. That's just a prologue to the album that wasn't designated a track for whatever reason, and instead plunked in at 0:00 of "Galaxie." To get the actual pre-gap song, you have to pause track 1 on the CD, and 'rewind' back beyond zero. (But not too far, or it goes back to zero...) This is what you'll find.
posted to MetaFilter by Sys Rq at 2:17 PM on December 16, 2013

Whenever I would teach intro to microbiology classes one of the things that would surprise my students the most (aside from the concentrations of fecal bacteria on their belt buckles) would be the results they got back the next day on Petri dishes they made thumb prints on before and after washing their hands. They would almost always see much more bacteria after hand washing than before. This is because the primary way in which hand washing affects our skin is by physically removing the oils... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Blasdelb at 2:25 PM on December 16, 2013

Whitey's economy is a total fail
and China's on the Moon.
He's got no place left to dwell
And China's on the moon
He can't pay no student loan bill
And China's on the Moon.
Ten years from now he'll be paying still
And China's on the moon
posted to MetaFilter by humanfont at 10:48 AM on December 15, 2013

The sort of person that those stupid "LOL WHERE'S GLOBAL WARMIN' WHEN YA NEED IT?!?" cartoons are aimed at does not realize that they're laughing at a misrepresentation of the facts. It's the equivalent of saying "What recession? I'm holding a $20 bill right now! HAW!" but more tragic. This is part of how the propaganda works: the public isn't properly informed about how global warming causes climatic change because they've been... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by clockzero at 11:45 AM on December 14, 2013

Truman/Hoover is another great President/Ex-President BFF pair.

There's an interesting story about Truman, Hoover, and the presidential pension:

Harry Truman was so poor upon his return to Missouri that he had to move into his mother-in-law's house. He hoped for some relief through the passage of a pension bill, but, for inexplicable reasons, Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House, sat on the proposal year after... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rangeboy at 7:36 AM on December 12, 2013

Truman/Hoover is another great President/Ex-President BFF pair.

Hoover was the only living ex-president for twenty years. Talk about a lonely clubhouse.
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 7:10 AM on December 12, 2013

Yeah, I imagine having been among the select few with access to nuclear launch codes, proof aliens are real, and actual real hoverboards tends to create bonds that transcend all other differences.
posted to MetaFilter by Panjandrum at 6:51 AM on December 12, 2013

My paternal grandfather was similarly stubborn when it came to wanting to stay home and not get hospitalized. There wasn't any urgent need to get him to a hospital, no sudden downturn - the only time hospitalizing him ever came up was when he was in his mid-80's, and he experienced sudden blackouts. My father and the doctors discussed putting him in a home and made those arrangements. But on the day the doctors were going to move him to the new home, Grandpa apparently locked his arms around... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 1:43 PM on December 12, 2013

I love that Sid is the garbage man in Toy Story 3. While Andy heads off to college to be saddled with crushing debt and questionable job prospects, Sid gets great benefits, a secure job, and a pension that he can retire on at 50. Who's the dummy now?
posted to MetaFilter by dr_dank at 10:40 AM on December 11, 2013

“This is the game. This is the game we were dreaming about.”

My top four "OMG - I can't believe a computer game is doing this!" moments:

1. Watching a guy play an early Scott Adams (?) text adventure on a TRS-80 at a grocery store. He typed "LOOK" and got a description of a room, which had a mirror. He typed "LOOK MIRROR" and got a description of...himself?! Mind blown.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by straight at 2:46 PM on December 9, 2013

Who typed in IDKFA ?
posted to MetaFilter by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:44 AM on December 9, 2013

I found these tongue twisters online:

I'm not the fig plucker,
Nor the fig pluckers' son,
But I'll pluck figs
Till the fig plucker comes.

Mrs Puggy Wuggy has a square cut punt.
Not a punt cut square,
Just a square cut punt.
It's round in the stern and blunt in the front.
Mrs Puggy Wuggy has a square cut punt.

I am not the pheasant plucker,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Daddy-O at 9:25 AM on December 8, 2013

He developed the “digging bug,” as he told the New York Times in 1937, at the age of 6, when he stumbled across evidence of a prehistoric village on the grounds of his father’s castle

I want this sentence to be about me so much.
posted to MetaFilter by vorpal bunny at 9:13 AM on December 8, 2013