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Article:

We are the unlucky ones who are going to bear witness to the single most transformative episode in all of human history — the one that will never be forgotten. We are the witnesses to the death of a planet

Matthew 24:34-35, NRSV:

Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

posted to MetaFilter by howfar at 5:41 AM on May 15, 2022

Here's a tip for all the "we thought the 60s and 70s were going to be bad" folks; your casual dismissal of climate crisis, rising fascism, gig economy, education debt, medical bankruptcy, housing crisis, pandemic crisis, supply chain crisis, shooting wars involving a nuclear power, unprecedented surveillance by corporations and state, two wars that lasted two decades, militarized police who inherited the hardware from said wars and openly wear Punisher skulls, the start of a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AlSweigart at 11:58 PM on May 13, 2022

Even though you've bought your ticket and love the game, if you leave the stadium at the end of the eighth inning, you're going to beat the crowds and save so much time.
posted to MetaFilter by fairmettle at 10:33 PM on May 13, 2022

It’s also notable that about 2.2% of Tether tokens got unstaked yesterday, and another 2.8% today. That’s about 5% of the total tokens in circulation. If, as is commonly believed, Tether is vastly undercapitalized relative to its supposed promise of 1:1 capitalization, every at-par payout brings the currency closer to insolvency.

And it has to be “believed”, rather than “known”, because they have refused all requests (or even demands) to audit. If this was a responsibly... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by notoriety public at 11:31 AM on May 13, 2022

He’s a slasher and he must be stopped!

A slasher… of prices.
posted to MetaFilter by Slackermagee at 4:11 PM on May 8, 2022

Oh hey, I made this.
(If you're interested in why or how, you can read a little about that here.)

Are there similar lists for other gtlds? Can we see every .space or .computer?

I have actually generated a few others but not published them as sites - .africa, .nexus, and .boats for example. It would be somewhat trivial to set them up now but, well, why? This is about horses.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by secretdark at 1:59 AM on May 6, 2022

Bananas are fine, it's the brazil nuts you have to watch out for.

There's Brazillions of them. (mods, feel free to close my account now, I'm done)
posted to MetaFilter by Literaryhero at 10:45 PM on May 5, 2022

> and voters need to elect pro-choice officials

who will act on those beliefs and on the supermajority opinions of their constituents.

I've been on a bit of a self-imposed Twitter ban, but broke that last night to clap back at AOC - she tweeted that "People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these- to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, & have a President who uses his legal... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 8:27 AM on May 3, 2022

Get the Senate and Presidency firmly in Democratic hands, and the judiciary will eventually be dominated by their judges. Will it happen soon? No, of course not, but it's short-sighted to say "destroy the Judiciary" at this point.

I've lived, shit, I don't even know, but at least half of my life, I'm guessing (born in 76, if anyone wants to do the math) under democratic majorities of the house and/or senate, and presidency. I've also heard... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:26 AM on May 3, 2022

Reminder that, for now, Plan B is available over-the-counter in the US. It is very safe, but not always effective. It has an "official" shelf life of four years. However, if Plan B becomes unavailable and/or illegal in the near future, it is important to know that the manufacturer's expiration date is only a date before which they guarantee its potency. Potency declines smoothly throughout the lifetime of a drug, and physicians and researchers in developing nations, who often have to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biogeo at 8:17 AM on May 3, 2022

From historian Heather Cox Richardson:

And so here we are. A minority, placed in control of the U.S. Supreme Court by a president who received a minority of the popular vote and then, when he lost reelection, tried to overturn our democracy, is explicitly taking away a constitutional right that has been protected for fifty years. Its attack on federal protection of civil rights applies not just to abortion, but to all the protections put in place since World War II: the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by swift at 6:56 AM on May 3, 2022

Metafilter: We try to laugh it off, claiming that we knew it all along, but the reader can see at the end that we are quite embarrassed by the whole ordeal.
posted to MetaFilter by glonous keming at 10:19 AM on May 4, 2022

Wiki can have some really interesting and funny edits.

And how!

I'm an acquaintance of the MAD magazine writer Des Devlin. When he first discovered that he actually had a Wikipedia article about him, he was surprised - and a bit baffled, as he was pretty sure vanishingly few people would be looking him up. When he then learned that anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, he would periodically add his own edits, in a way befitting... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 9:13 AM on May 4, 2022

"When someone tells you about the peak year of human history, the period of time when things were good before things went downhill, it will always be the years of when they were 10 years old — which is the peak of any human’s existence."

There's an old saw that the real Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve; that after that life and relationships and expectations and all sorts of things get difficult, and there's this brief window when you're old enough to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 2:54 PM on May 3, 2022

• To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave

Littering aside, this is amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by hwyengr at 2:44 PM on May 3, 2022

I may have laughed as hard at another meme, but never harder than the this girl is killing it with her CVS receipt meme.
posted to MetaFilter by BrotherCaine at 12:41 PM on May 2, 2022

I agree with everything he said about MJ. It sucks how much Peter ignores her assertion that she wants and chooses crazy life with him instead of a quiet, safe life without him. And it really sucks that he lets that cut on her forehead trump the promise he made to get back in touch with her.

(Also it ought to be fairly easy for Peter to go to Strange and tell him the whole story—Peter knows enough details about Strange's life, home, and magic, and Strange knows memory... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by straight at 12:29 AM on April 29, 2022

Best takedown since the classic 1974 response from the Cleveland Browns' legal team:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP.

posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 9:39 AM on April 27, 2022

She frames it as "the one thing" she's asked him not to do, but I get the feeling that there's not just this one thing she's tried to control in her (adult) son's life.
posted to MetaFilter by Harald74 at 10:44 PM on April 19, 2022

The best response regarding the Giants/Padres flap is that a team who’s way ahead should only agree to stop trying to score runs if the underdog agrees to stop trying to come back.

No amount of a lead is safe in a game without a clock.
posted to MetaFilter by hwyengr at 7:17 AM on April 15, 2022

I am confused as to why censorship or as the progressives put it, "Content moderation" is the way to go. I have never seen where censorship or content moderation is good for democracy. Let it play out.

Your argument is 100% goalpost moving.

Let it play out to when? It's already played out to an armed insurrection against the Capitol. It's already played out to electing a President who displayed an unprecedented... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RonButNotStupid at 9:56 AM on April 14, 2022

Sunshine brings to light (pun intended) bad ideas. They will be refuted.

... Citation needed? If anything has taught us about the last 2 years, just because the bad ideas are refuted, didn't mean they will be believed. It's all about who presents the ideas, and how well they present them. Just because it's true doesn't make it easy. Your eyes tell you the earth is flat.

Free speech absolutism can come from a good place, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jonnay at 9:51 AM on April 14, 2022

It seems to me that the stepped up basis is the real "problem", because it enables the very rich to avoid all these nice increases in taxes, so that should really be the first target and perhaps after you take care of that you don't need another target.

I think that Americans tend to believe that inherited wealth doesn't stick around that long (one generation to build it, one to manage it, and one to spend it), which might be true for the merely wealthy. But... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by It's Never Lurgi at 4:29 PM on April 13, 2022

Meanwhile, last week I stumbled onto a discussion thread about a guy who had defaulted on his student loans, had his wages garnished and his life destroyed, and finally talked the collections agency into settling his $120K in debt for something like $3K... and the thread was full of people reminding him that he had to declare the written-off debt as income and pay taxes on it, or else the IRS would ruin his life some more.

Morning in America.
posted to MetaFilter by Mayor West at 1:30 PM on April 13, 2022

A spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg said, “Mark has always paid the taxes he is required to pay.”

Therein lies the problem.

That, and that not a single one of them approach this amount of value to society. In most cases, *cough* DeVos *cough*, QUITE THE OPPOSITE.
posted to MetaFilter by mcstayinskool at 12:53 PM on April 13, 2022

It's always forgotten that Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Animated Series had some of the most high caliber, philosophical, and contemplative Star Trek episodes ever produced.

This was due in part because of the incredibly talented writers working on the series but mostly because Filmation just didn't have the budget to do any action scenes at all.

Such overlooked episodes included "The Innermost Light", "More Measure; More... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RonButNotStupid at 9:31 AM on April 13, 2022

I have a fantasy that there is a big secret where most of our nuclear arsenals are non-working. I mean think about it. As long as your enemy thinks you have them; why bother. You can’t actually use them as that would end the world. An accident, theft, or if they fell into the wrong hands it would be a huge catastrophe. If your some scientist working on the project why not just make a couple for testing purposes and then make some convincing looking props for the missile silos and the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by interogative mood at 8:51 PM on March 28, 2022

GENESIS?!? Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden!
posted to MetaFilter by blakewest at 4:59 AM on March 27, 2022

Make sure you stay for the "fin".
posted to MetaFilter by credulous at 3:45 PM on March 26, 2022

It seems insanely short sighted how thoroughly the US has failed to follow through on its purported principles internationally.

How much long term damage resulted from the so-called “economic liberalization” of the former USSR, which turned out to be just another round of financial rapacity?

Or, 20 years ago it was clear that China would grow to be demographically unstoppable except by a truly multilateral world order, which was absolutely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bjrubble at 4:37 PM on March 26, 2022

Putin's plan, as a plan, wasn't terrible strategy. (The ethics, morality and legality are all atrocious, being both unprovoked and utterly unjustified mass murder and war crimes.)

Two main goals that I think he was going for, with the super fast strikes. A, he successfully takes Kyiv, and installed a group of politicians loyal to him, perhaps with a 'peacekeeping force' in place to ensure they stay in power and continue to do what he wants. This basically gets him the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jacen at 10:28 AM on March 6, 2022

I've always wondered what that button does! I doubt many people see it now as they have been trained to use the address bar to search.

Nowadays you can think of Google Assistant/Siri/Alexa searches as the equivalent of "I'm feeling lucky".
posted to MetaFilter by meowzilla at 1:38 PM on February 24, 2022

Hey, take it up with she of her own room:

Virginia Woolf famously observed that “on or about December 1910, human character changed”—by which she meant to locate the shift to modernism at the end of the reign of King Edward VII and the beginning of the reign of King George V.

The project, in reflection of this quote, maintains a specific collection of journals from the year 1910.
posted to MetaFilter by youarenothere at 5:18 PM on February 22, 2022

Did human character change then?

There was no broadcast media to passively consume. Network radio didn't start until after 1920. So, if you were literate, you had ample time to become well read without distraction.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 3:16 PM on February 22, 2022

I once came in second to Ted for an award.

My reaction: "Cool! I won!"
posted to MetaFilter by jscalzi at 4:43 PM on February 21, 2022

I actually remember the A Very Young Model book -- and picking it up when I was older gave me an eerie shock as the child model they focus on mentions her friend Brooke who's also a model. The book's subject also mentions that she's just been contacted to be in a movie -- actually, she and her friend Brooke are both up for the part -- her mother's checking the script out, but she knows it's about a girl who gets shipwrecked at a lagoon and they fall in love and...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 1:47 PM on November 17, 2011

God, how awesome is Jill Krementz.
posted to MetaFilter by penduluum at 2:10 PM on November 17, 2011

When my BFF was pregnant I had to miss her surprise baby shower because I was stage managing a play at the exact moment it was happening. (I called during intermission to say hi, talked briefly and then had to go; it killed me I couldn't be there. Turns out that my friend really hated that they were throwing her the party and she was much more grateful I wasn't there, so she could vent about it when I called later that night.)

But after the show,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 1:17 PM on February 9, 2022

After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein.

Music happens to be the food of love
Sounds to really make you rub and scrub
I say...
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
Pass the bitcoin back from Lichtenstein
posted to MetaFilter by mandolin conspiracy at 5:23 PM on February 8, 2022

I think we will get more and more moody pieces about the '90s, which I have already begun seeing, now that the people who were young and hopeful then are middle-aged and miserable. When I began to see '90s pop culture nostalgia, driven by the people who were children then, I was bewildered: it was boring, I said. Sure, there was some good TV and the flannels were warm, but --

Well, that wasn't the point. It was boring because it was safe. I was a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Countess Elena at 3:27 PM on February 7, 2022

When I was 16, I invited several of my friends to a party at my house to celebrate the 8th of the 8th month, 1988.
It was my mother's idea
We toasted marshmallows in the fireplace.
I miss my mother.
posted to MetaFilter by Zumbador at 9:09 PM on February 2, 2022

Go Commies!
posted to MetaFilter by Mister Fabulous at 11:00 AM on February 2, 2022

The fact that the post about a solo developer selling a daily word game for Xmillion dollars to a newspaper has nearly twice the comments of a post about a multinational electronixs corporation buying a legendary FPS game development studio for Xbillion dollars speaks to why Metafilter is my kind of place.
posted to MetaFilter by subocoyne at 4:00 PM on January 31, 2022

> Dordle is better anyway

I know! And it should be a bargain in the low 14 figures.

For real though, he held out for a while with the no ads thing, and I salute him for that. But once people start backing up the trucks full of cash? I mean you can't let it go to waste, can you.
posted to MetaFilter by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 2:59 PM on January 31, 2022

(there were so few women on TV then who were allowed to be pretty and smart - to have someone who was glamorous and smart AND funny - and especially at the expense of people who continually underestimated her - adolescent me was taking notes)

And that the two female characters, while being different "types," were positioned from the very beginning to be mutually supportive friends instead of rivals!
posted to MetaFilter by The Underpants Monster at 8:53 AM on January 31, 2022

In 1982 I was at loose ends after a divorce. One night after watching WKRP with my parents (and laughing an awful lot), my Dad turned to me and said, "You have a deep voice. You know a lot about music. You could be a radio DJ." The next day I got a job doing that and stayed with it 24 years. I left radio a long time ago, but now my inspiration is gone, and it seems like the end of an era personally.

.
posted to MetaFilter by Miss Cellania at 7:21 AM on January 31, 2022

My favorite Johnny Fever line is when they're on the elevator, and he pops the control panel box open.

"Yeah, we had 'em like this in 'Nam."

I'm old enough now, that when I use that line when doing anything mechanical, the kids I work with look at me with a new kind of appreciation, regardless of the fact that I was like 2 years old when 'Nam was a thing.
posted to MetaFilter by valkane at 7:08 AM on January 31, 2022

I'm late to this thread because I had professional obligations (although I managed to sneak in a tiny mention of his passing while covering Cincinnati's improbable AFC Championship Game win for The Guardian, which felt like kismet). First of all, Howard Hesseman was way more than Dr. Johnny Fever. He was one of those actors that every single time you saw him, you knew he was going to be great. I think my favorite non-"WKRP" role was probably on "Soap" but there are so many... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by HunterFelt at 11:45 PM on January 30, 2022

The fact that the US has lasted this long has been a minor miracle.

In my more cheerful, hopeful moods—"hope amidst perdition" rather than blithe optimism—I remember that our country started, not as the egalitarian utopia our high school history books pretend it was, but as something a couple of degrees less horseshit than the thing that, in retrospect, was so horseshit that we can't believe people ever lived like that before.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rorgy at 8:31 AM on January 31, 2022

WKRP was hugely formative for me as a kid. I desperately wanted to grow up to be Dr. Johnny Fever when I was in single digits. Never quite grew out of that, got a chance to work as a DJ while in college. Yes, I did say "booger" at the first opportunity.

Turns out I missed the detail about Johnny always being broke. I worked in a tiny market and moved on to other things, but if I'm being honest I loved that job more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jzb at 6:42 PM on January 30, 2022