Displaying comments 1 to 50 of 86
MeFi post:
Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.
Despite all that, I love Kaufman's work and will make my way through the material.
The inside out, deconstructed, out of sequence, "dangling-the skeleton" method of posting this interview is a little pretentious and off-putting. Yes we know that's how Mr. Kaufman writes, but is it a little too cute to post the interview in the way?
OK, I have a few thoughts before I read and listen to everything in the link:
posted to MetaFilter by Fuzzy Skinner
at 10:13 AM on September 20, 2008
MeFi post:
Here's looking at you/me, kid
joaquim- I'm working in a perception lab that uses visual illusions, so I might be able to shed some light on this. The short answer is that the stimuli evolve; the selection pressure on that evolutionary process is these illusions must have (at one time) been able to answer theoretical questions about how brains process visual input (or just to blow people's friggin' minds- that works too).
We already know some things about how the brain processes visual stimuli.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jpfed
at 1:09 PM on August 30, 2008
MeFi post:
Sarah Palin as McCain's running-mate
Oh my god, really?
Really?
Look, to be fair, I was halfway through a post last night on my own site about how ridiculous I though all the hard-right Freepers/Cornerites/etc. were harping about Palin. She was basically their new Fred Thompson. But I am seriously dumbfounded that they would have been this stupid.
Don’t get me wrong, on a PR level this is masterful for McCain. He’s killed all the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by XQUZYPHYR
at 8:10 AM on August 29, 2008
She might be inexperienced in absolute terms, but look at the bigger picture, people. Obama is claiming 12 years of experience out of 4.5 billion years of Earth, but Palin's got two years out of a mere 6,000 — she totally wins on the percentages.
posted to MetaFilter by enn
at 10:20 AM on August 29, 2008
MeFi post:
Return of the Beat Generation
Man, I guess you never really think about how competitive the world of crazy-ass alarmist newsreporting is. You just figure that it's like, 5 guys knocking out stories about rap music and raves and how 5 year olds are smoking crack or whatever, and that's basically it. But then you stumble across this story by a hungry, young upstart named Kim Komando, armed with a vision and a dream that's going to blow the whole world of alarmist reporting apart and take it in strange new directions, and you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tiresias
at 11:13 AM on August 9, 2008
Seriously, does this stuff actually work?
I haven't looked into any of the commercial products we're talking about here. This thread brings back a bizarre memory, though. I was a teenager experimenting with audio, I accidentally made some audio that had distinct sustained effects on your perception of other sounds for a few minutes after you stopped listening to it.
After you listened to this (120-second) audio,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kalapierson
at 5:20 AM on August 10, 2008
MeFi post:
Hipster - The End of Wester Civilization
I think hipsterdom is particularly interesting because I agree with the author that it's the dead end of Western civ. But he doesn't say anything compelling about the phenomenon at all.
Here's my explanation for hipster self-hatred. All previous countercultures since you could really begin to speak of a counterculture--I would say, since the Romantics--have been fundamentally grounded in an appeal to authenticity. The Romantics prided themselves on their ability to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nasreddin
at 8:45 AM on August 1, 2008
MeFi post:
'Rejected' Dark Knight script
I'm always up for a little Michael Bay hate-on, so I'll repost this synopsis of an Esquire profile by Fametracker:
Here's what you need to know about Michael Bay: Well, since you've likely already given him three hours of your life, you won't want to give him forty minutes more by reading this piece. So we're going to condense the Inspiring Profile about the Extraordinary Life of Michael Bay down to its essential elements:
Whether Michael Bay... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat
at 2:30 PM on July 7, 2008
MeFi post:
Convert Your Car to Run On Water
Here's a partial list of other things you might want to make your car run on:
- champagne corks
- chanterelle mushrooms
- celebrity endorsements
- celibacy
- corporate dress codes
posted to MetaFilter by jepler
at 1:28 PM on May 13, 2008
MeFi post:
You are getting sleepy. . .
I make somewhere between a quarter to half my income as a stage "mentalist" whose act somewhat resembles Derren Brown's--though not to his "magic handshake" level--so let me post a clarification, a bunch of caveats, and as much information as I can without making my colleagues mad at me.
(Paging The Deej! Hope me fellow magician!)
First, there are three very different forms of hypnosis being talked about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ian A.T.
at 3:32 AM on May 12, 2008
MeFi post:
Single-Note Solos
I saw Graham Nash give a talk a few years back. He told a few stories, played a few songs, and told a few more stories. The best one by far was the time he went out to Neil Young's place to hear a cut of Young's new album (I don't recall which one). Young lived on a ranch with a big house, a barn, and a lake in between them. They went out on the middle of the lake in a little rowboat, at which point Nash was thinking why are we going to listen to this new record on a tape recorder... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zap rowsdower
at 11:53 AM on May 1, 2008
MeFi post:
Daydream Painting
If I had 5 mil I'd be more interested in collecting their stolen gear.
posted to MetaFilter by anazgnos
at 1:55 PM on February 25, 2008
MeFi post:
I'm f*****g Matt Damon
i didn't realize that people had such strong negative feelings about Sarah Silverman
posted by barrakuda
Forget it, Jake. It's MetaFilter.
posted to MetaFilter by The Deej
at 1:26 PM on February 6, 2008
Ask post:
How do they make them shows on the teevee?
Deadwood is slightly unusual: after the writing staff breaks the stories (puts together overall arcs, episode structures, etc.), showrunner David Milch rewrites every scene from scratch, essentially improvising the episodes without any written plan. He can get away with this because he's the greatest writer in the history of television. (No really.) Season Three of that show (don't worry, no spoilers) is a complicated example of what happens when that mode of storytelling... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by waxbanks
at 7:53 PM on January 31, 2008 
marked best answer
MeTa post:
Why is work blocking me from viewing MeFi tag pages?
Recipe for corporate filter circumvention, on Windows, using portable apps on a USB stick, and an openssh box you control elsewhere:
1. Put PortaPuTTY and Portable Firefox on the stick.
2. At work, use the Tunnels feature of PortaPuTTY to forward localhost port XXXX (1080 is conventional) to a Dynamic port, and bring up a ssh session on your home openssh box.
3. In Portable Firefox's preferences, under... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by flabdablet
at 3:04 AM on December 14, 2007
MeFi post:
Eight Bars of Soul
I first heard my favorite story about Sam on an hour-long biography that used to be on YouTube. He was sittin' in his brother's car, waiting for him to return, when two cops pulled up behind him. They came up and told him he had to move the car off the street. Sam told them it wasn't his car, and that his brother would be back in just a moment. One of them said "Boy, you're gonna move this car." Sam looked up and coolly replied "My name is Sam Cooke. You may not know me,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Roman Graves
at 3:33 PM on December 11, 2007
MeFi post:
The New Games Journalism
I only play games that have been around for at least 2 or 3 years, based on their long-tail reputations. I only see the cream of the crop and the hardware's cheaper, too.
I'd argue that that's not a universal principle. You just happened to pick the right cutoff date. I really believe the industry is on the verge of disappearing into its own navel, and the latest generation of consoles was the beginning of the end.
Games... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Naberius
at 7:48 PM on December 2, 2007
Ask post:
Sleep with the devil cat
I think it will be hard for you to win a direct contest of wills with the cat, though you may if (a) it is a newcomer and/or is rarely let out, so that it doesn't have too much ground for hope, and (b) it doesn't just want to mess with you. I have never had success with water because it is too easily evaded and becomes a game. You might have somewhat better luck confusing/reprogramming it. For example, if every time it meowed you got up and placed it on the bed, or clipped its claws, it might... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by Clyde Mnestra
at 11:25 AM on September 6, 2006
MeFi post:
David does Berlin
That's too bad. Lynch only means well, and I have nothing but respect and gratitude for the man, his art, and his efforts to popularize TM, but evidently, he needs to be more careful whou he associates with. I can't quite make out if this Raja is a fascist or just a fool, but this is not pretty. FWIW, I wrote a little bit about my experience with Lynch and Transcendental Meditation.
posted to MetaFilter by muckster
at 9:12 PM on November 21, 2007
MeFi post:
Hollywood Kabuki
As a working screenwriter, we need the strike, and aspiring scabs might want to really look at why this strike is getting ready to happen before they offer their services.
If you write an episode of Metafilter Towers, you get paid according to scale for the script; you get paid according to scale for residuals when the show goes into reruns. You always wrote the script, the show is still making money, consequently, you're entitled to some of that. That's the current... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by headspace
at 7:25 AM on November 2, 2007
MeFi post:
That was a dumb move, wasn't it?
I very much like hot food and grow hot peppers, but very hot peppers like the scotch bonnet don't have to be used to make extremely hot food.
Instead, try taking half of a scotch bonnet (dried or fresh) and adding it to a tomato or squash soup - the quantity of soup being in the gallon range. Leave the half pepper in only for a minute or so, then remove it.
You'll find that the pepper leaves a nice, slight amount of heat suitable for anyone... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Muddler
at 1:43 PM on November 11, 2007
MeFi post:
This was a triumph.
Okay, for the 3rd time in 24 hours, I'm going to say that Portal is the Citizen Kane of the art form.
It's also a good test-case for the process by which human beings learn new concepts. No one, after all, has ever seen or used a portal before.
The game teaches you how to 'think with portals' by a slow process of introducing new metaphors by which you can understand it.
The first introduction to the device is when they... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by empath
at 12:56 PM on November 6, 2007
GLaDOS is offering us cake because she is our metaphorical mother, a role that is reinforced by her dated name--GLaDOS/Gladys, hearkening back to sitcom matriarchs we have known in countless television reruns (a datedness further evoked by the technological datedness of the "DOS" in her name)
HI I'M ON METAFILTER AND I COULD OVER-THINK A PLATE OF CAKE.
posted to MetaFilter by GLaDOS
at 12:01 PM on November 9, 2007
MeFi post:
The History of the Super Mario Franchise.
Talk of Super Mario Bros. always brings a smile to my face. If it weren’t for those games, my childhood would have been a lot less exciting. I grew up as a carney. My parents were carneys and my grandparents and great-grandparents were carneys. My father was a concessionaire who sold food at fairs all over the U.S. and Canada. He sold popcorn, cotton candy, snow cones, candied apples, funnel cakes, and fiddlesticks to name a few. We lived a very nomadic sort of life, traveling around the country... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by inconsequentialist
at 7:54 AM on November 9, 2007
