MetaFilter

Don't worry about it, they'll get it figured out. The last thing they want is to loose a customer.

I too have an REI credit card thru US Bank. A few months back, I tried to pay them more than I owed them (rounded up a $990 full payment to an even $1000), giving them a little extra interest free dough until my next bill. The website wouldn't let me. It wouldn't LET me give them money. If they have/had a check in place to keep me from giving them money I didn't yet... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by pwb503 at 11:01 AM on March 29, 2008

I think it would be a lot more useful if it was personalized:

Your parents last visited metafilter four days ago. They read and laughed out loud at a poor schmuck who was the subject of a series of anonymous questions. Your father even said "what a douchenozzle."

Your wife has left three anonymous questions on askmefi in the past three weeks.

Etc.
posted to MetaTalk by maxwelton at 3:23 AM on March 24, 2008

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* CONGRATULATIONS *
* YOU ARE THE ONE MILLIONTH VISITOR!*
* CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:57 PM on March 23, 2008

You know who else gets what they had coming? You know who else got exactly what they wanted, based on their behavior?

Everyone who has ever been bullied, if you ask the bullies.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 3:34 PM on March 24, 2008

23skidoo: Can you re-type that in rhyme?

Thank you.
posted to MetaFilter by Dr. Curare at 3:18 PM on March 24, 2008

When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order...

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have discovered prior art that invalidates Amazon's one-click buying patent.
posted to MetaFilter by zsazsa at 10:56 AM on March 24, 2008

I used to love to read these articles when I was a kid in the seventies and really expected most of them to happen. But, it seems like progress, in the sense that the writer of this article would use it, has slowed down instead of speeding up in the last forty years. Compare the differences between 1928 and 1968 to the differences between 1968 and now. From '28 to '68 we went from biplanes to 747s and from '68 to now we went from 747s to 747s. Similarly Radio -> Color TV -> somewhat... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by octothorpe at 10:24 AM on March 24, 2008

What could possibly go wrong?
posted to MetaFilter by Faint of Butt at 8:17 AM on March 24, 2008

Rafaelloello, I get 4.4e+22 miles, which is 44,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles, or 44 sextillion miles, or 70 sextillion kilometers.

That doesn't mean anything to me. Distance is something I think about traversing; when I think about 7.5 billion light years, I am never going to traverse that or any significant fraction thereof. But I know that when I look across that incomprehensible gulf, I am looking backwards in time. And that's kind of exciting.
posted to MetaFilter by ikkyu2 at 5:27 PM on March 23, 2008

7.5 billion years? At most it was 6012 years ago. Quit trying to ussher in some bullshit date.
posted to MetaFilter by maxwelton at 6:04 PM on March 23, 2008

It left an optical afterglow estimated at +5 apparent magnitude for 30 seconds, about that of an average star.

Thought:

If I had seen the optical afterglow, would I have been looking at photons emitted directly from the GRB, or would I be looking at matter between me and the GRB that had been excited or heated by the gamma rays?
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:18 PM on March 23, 2008

It is so you will listen to it as the artist expected you to. If a band wanted the guitars to be on the "left" of the "stage" there's probably a reason. If you swap sides you're not hearing the song in the way the artist intended. That's entirely up to you whether or not you want to respect that. Some will say "it does not matter" but most musicians and/or produceers make specific choices when it comes to decisions such as "how far to the right should I pan... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by afx114 at 1:38 PM on March 23, 2008

I blame Bush.
posted to MetaFilter by Balisong at 4:27 PM on March 23, 2008

I'll join everyone in saying, don't worry. But you know, if you're afraid of all this stuff, there's also not much downside if you move somewhere where you can walk to your job with good solar exposure and a secure water supply; put in extra insulation, a garden, and maybe some solar hot water panels; and diversify your savings beyond US markets. On the other hand, there's a lot of downside if you skip grad school in favor of waiting for the apocalypse, invest thousands of dollars in... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by salvia at 12:15 AM on March 23, 2008

*helps uncle Jack off a horse*
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 8:15 AM on March 22, 2008

You shouldn't worry too much.

Free economies have amazingly strong self-correction mechanisms. As nature abhors a vacuum, economies abhor idle capital and labor, and will quickly put it back to work because it will always be worth more than zero. And of course recessions are great opportunities for those who enter them with excess cash, because you get to buy that capital (example: a house) and lock in those labor costs at cheaper-than-usual rates.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by MattD at 3:08 PM on March 22, 2008

Normy--

I think you're right about Huret > Sachs > SRAM. I had an old-when-I-bought-it Raleigh Competition with Huret Jubilee derailleurs. Beautiful little jewels.

And this post reminded me of Drillum (examples 1, 2)
posted to MetaFilter by adamrice at 7:06 AM on March 22, 2008

Sure, as a bike shop mechanic in the 80s I remember these. The Jubilee was particularly notable for its light weight and how it would explode into a pile of springs and assorted mysterious parts if one should so much as look at it the wrong way. Their Duopar Eco was a much more interesting (and robust) design, with an articulated parallelogram mechanism to accommodate the big sprockets that were becoming popular around then. By far the best performing of the time was the Suntour Superbe, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by normy at 4:49 AM on March 22, 2008

I don't care how future newspaper articles describe me, as long a my name appears nowhere near the phrase "covered in his own filth".

In other news, most of the body of mefite blue_beetle was found today covered in filth in a 1972 AMC Pacer behind a Taco Bell in Corpus Christi, Texas, along with some legal paperwork. The documents found with his body, and the filth, transferred ownership of the filth to mathowie, so blue_beetle was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:50 AM on March 21, 2008

“Smed, I’m at the gas station, where’s your house, man?”
“Look, just imagine you’re in a state represented by vertices on a graph...”
“Ok, so, left at the light or what?”
“No, no, each input is represented by the edges, so - are you in state ‘S’?”
“Uh, what?”
“You’ve got to go blue-red-red, man.”
“So...right at the light then?”
posted to MetaFilter by Smedleyman at 1:11 PM on March 21, 2008

I built many of the buildings of this town. Eight of these homes were built by my hands, but do they call me Allen the constructor? No.

And I farmed five thousand acres of land with no aid from anybody, with cattle, sheep, and a great deal of produce, but do they call me Allen the farmer? No.

But you fuck one lousy sheep.... guard one lousy building...
posted to MetaFilter by allen.spaulding at 7:07 AM on March 21, 2008

"Millionaire playboy wannabe Pollomacho was found dead in his skidrow cardboard box today. He had a plastic bag over his head and his pants down."
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 7:07 AM on March 21, 2008

I gave up on love years ago.

That's not true; I gave up on dating and relationships years ago. A catastrophe destroyed the love I thought would last the rest of my life, and when I stopped being helplessly broken I found that I just couldn't love the same way. I'm not talking about a breakup, but death. I guess the decision was thus forced on me. But the way I've felt about love over the intervening decade, and the way those feelings evolved, may help answer your... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by breezeway at 11:55 AM on March 20, 2008 marked best answer

What happened to the Blue? Is it metafuckingsnopesfilter.com now? Jesus on an Allah-fucking pogostick already.
posted to MetaFilter by joe lisboa at 11:31 PM on March 19, 2008

Mr. Prez Steve guy:

I'm not sure why you don't get it, because it's just so crystal clear to me. And I don't think anyone else here can be any clearer than they have in explaining it to you.

Maybe you don't understand that circumstance and context are both continuums, and that also applies to prison convicts. Maybe you just see it as black and white. I think that's wrong, and I hope you're not involved in the justice system, such as it is.
posted to MetaFilter by illiad at 9:40 PM on March 19, 2008

I'm gonna reiterate what a few people have said about messing up your metabolism. This will probably set you up for weight gain at the very least, as your body will store a lot of the breakfast and then go into a sort of "starvation mode" when you're not eating, causing your metabolism to slow and not burn off all the stored bacon.

Also, the larger the meal, the larger the glucose spike, and the larger the insulin response needed to handle that spike. I think... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jjbb at 9:41 AM on March 19, 2008

I've never looked for anything with dynamite, never mind a missing kid. Were they punishing the lake for eating the kid, trying to throw a corpse into the air or what?
posted to MetaFilter by vbfg at 8:03 AM on March 19, 2008

The truth in text form.
posted to MetaFilter by Astro Zombie at 7:26 AM on March 19, 2008

So I just broke my smartphone (it fell under the seat of my car, and I power seated the wrong way and it smushed the LCD). This thread just gave me a brilliant idea. My idea is this. I will go buy myself an iPhone right now. Then when the new one comes out, I will give my wife my current iPhone and go buy myself the new hottness.

Brilliant!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jeffamaphone at 5:30 PM on March 18, 2008

You will buy the EDGE version, and then shortly afterward they will release the 3G. That's how it works. If you buy the EDGE version now, they will release the 3G in two months. If you torture yourself and wait a year, you will finally cave in and buy the EDGE version because it looks like they will never release the 3G. Then two months later they will release it.

Worse: your cousin, who knows nothing about technology or computers, will have finally just gotten... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by The Loch Ness Monster at 3:42 PM on March 18, 2008

McCain is really A Harrison Whig.

Get it???? Because he's old. Very very old.
posted to MetaFilter by drjimmy11 at 7:04 PM on March 15, 2008

Oh wow, that CBS thing was awesome. They must have used that for quite a while, since there's no way I remember it from 1973.

Also, remember when every NOVA was as awesome as the intro music?
posted to MetaFilter by DU at 2:13 PM on March 15, 2008

Oh, and as far as commodity money goes... you just have to back off a bit further to understand how it originally worked.

Way back when, before money, we had barter. You made shoes, and I raised chickens, so you'd trade me a pair of shoes for a chicken. But if you didn't need a chicken, or if I didn't need shoes, one of us had a problem. Maybe you would accept a chicken for shoes if you knew that delmoi needed chickens and offered silverware, but you had to know... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Malor at 11:38 PM on March 13, 2008

Man, I'd never seen Holy Taco before. Outstandinger than hell.
posted to MetaFilter by jbickers at 3:40 PM on March 12, 2008

According to Gawker, that's " anchor, venerable old Jim Ryan, forced into retirement from WNYW in 2005. The reporter, former New York Daily News assistant managing editor Dick Oliver.
posted to MetaFilter by msalt at 2:37 PM on March 12, 2008

Man there's some real satisfaction involved in that "how'd that happen?" He was so glad to be able to ask that.

This is one of two videos I've cracking up over today. The other one is the kids smoking pot under a parachute vs. a cop.
posted to MetaFilter by Bookhouse at 2:18 PM on March 12, 2008

San Diego? Looks like New York to me.
posted to MetaFilter by mrnutty at 2:03 PM on March 12, 2008

San Diego? Looks like New York to me.

Oh, a Ron Burgundy reference...
posted to MetaFilter by mrnutty at 2:06 PM on March 12, 2008

It's discouraging to think that I have to give up the fruits of my labor to feed and clothe worthless layabouts. I really feel no differently toward them than I do a cancerous tumor.

I know how you feel. After all, I think pretty much the same about CEOs and shareholders.
posted to MetaFilter by UbuRoivas at 9:18 PM on March 11, 2008

This guy sucks the paint off an 8-ball. It's exactly the kind of writing I'd have loved and aspired to when I was writing for independent weeklies myself, though.

I'm fairly certain that he also did another piece about a year ago for the City Paper about how easy it was for him to have mindless, soulless sex in DC. The tone rings a bell -- it was a thin veneer of self-deprecation over a great big sack of "aren't-I-cool," self-conscious affectation at its... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chinese_fashion at 2:03 PM on March 11, 2008

Yet another article proving that the vast majority of writing in free city weeklies is uninformed, rote shit.

I fix things for you as if it were my job, but its not.
posted to MetaFilter by ND¢ at 12:40 PM on March 11, 2008

Having been unemployed on multiple occasions (more than half the time by choice) for varying periods of time of at least 6 months, I can say that the first month is easy, the second is harder and the third is hardest and then it gets easier again (it's very cyclic). There's a bit of a hump you have to get over before it gets good. The thing for me is that while my quality of life improves the longer I am unemployed, my productivity and creativity tends to decrease over time until it spikes... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by shoepal at 12:27 PM on March 11, 2008