Posts and comments from across all sites, marked as a favorite most often in the past seven days.
I really like looking at pictures of beautiful/clever/interesting products. What are some frequently updated blogs that feature good pictures of really cool stuff? I'm talking about pictures of clothing, gadgets, prints, handmade goods, kitchen implements...pictures of almost anything tangible, and the featured items don't have to be for sale.
posted by Alison to Ask MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 10:25 AM
56 users marked this as a favorite
Contrary to what you probably think you know about hypnosis, it can be done very quickly and can be used to convince someone to do something they normally wouldn't--like, say,
giving away their wallet, phone, and keys to a stranger (English mentalist
Derren Brown). What's happening here is known as a
handshake induction, a technique pioneered by American psychiatrist
Milton Erickson. There are
other methods of rapid induction hypnosis. These methods, along with techniques of verbal suggestion, are used by practitioners of
Neuro-linguistic programming, a field which some have associated with Mr. Brown's performances, though
he denies it. I wonder, though, how he manages to get a cashier at a dog track
to pay out on a losing ticket?
posted by flotson to MetaFilter at May-11-08 at 8:31 PM
49 users marked this as a favorite
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 magic...
posted by Ian A.T. to MetaFilter at May-12-08 at 3:32 AM
123 users marked this as a favorite
I met Dave Sim's cousin, an Anglican minister, in a 1200-person Cree community in Northern Quebec while I was doing some radio instruction up there a few years back. He was more or less unaware that his cousin had met with any degree of fame (he recalled that his cousin "drew comic strips named after that dog in Hell"), much less complete...
posted by Shepherd to MetaFilter at May-6-08 at 12:23 PM
64 users marked this as a favorite
Disclaimers:
Although I am a former manager at one of the nation's formerly largest toxicology (specifically drug-testing) laboratories, I am not your former manager of a toxicology laboratory, and this is not drug-testing advice. Heh.
First, ignore anything a headshop tells you. They are like astrologers, gleaning information from barely perce...
posted by nedpwolf to Ask MetaFilter at May-5-08 at 3:39 PM
64 users marked this as a favorite
I went in for the voiceover on those Activia spots.
It's funny - the specs on the ad copy for products targeting women are always, "young, hip, with a natural, easy-going personality", or something similar, and the engineer always gives direction like, "Just real natural, like you're sitting around talking with, say, your mom.&qu...
posted by TryTheTilapia to MetaFilter at May-10-08 at 7:01 AM
60 users marked this as a favorite
Oh. My. God. The amount of uninformed, alarmist crap in the FPP article is astounding. Let me give one small example. I spent four years as an economist at the BLS, in the office responsible for researching methodologies for calculating the CPI. I worked on the article's principle target: hedonic adjustments to the CPI. The CPI uses code I wro...
posted by dilettanti to MetaFilter at May-5-08 at 9:45 PM
58 users marked this as a favorite
The feeling steam punk arises in me is not one of revulsion or annoyance. It's a very distinct feeling that the English language does not have a good expression for. In Dutch it's called plaatsvervangende schaamte which literally means "place exchanging shame". Shame felt on behalf of someone else, shame you feel someone else should feel....
posted by phrontist to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 8:00 AM
57 users marked this as a favorite
This is an excellent piece. Much of it was quite emotional for me; two parts brought me to tears. The first was her son's response to her disclosure. The second was the part that mer2113 quotes.
To me, the single most heartbreaking aspect of sexual assault is that the survivors (much more often and more intensely than other crimes) carry with...
posted by Dances with Werewolves to MetaFilter at May-6-08 at 5:17 PM
45 users marked this as a favorite
"It's a very distinct feeling that the English language does not have a good expression for. In Dutch it's called plaatsvervangende schaamte which literally means 'place exchanging shame'. Shame felt on behalf of someone else, shame you feel someone else should feel. I'm embarrassed for them."
I endeavor to engender this feeling in peo...
posted by Eideteker to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 9:27 AM
44 users marked this as a favorite
Like Hip-Hop, it won't die off at all. Just become mainsteam, i.e. irrelevant :)
Nothing to see here, move on.
...to...steamcrunk! The new, hybrid aesthetic that has all the internet hipsters imbibing potent brews of laudanum and grape soda from elaborate blown-glass contraptions while listening to music on victrolas run at half-speed.
Yo...
posted by felix betachat to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 8:28 AM
42 users marked this as a favorite
delmoi: If she had been running the campaign she's been running lately after super Tuesday, she'd probably be the winner now
No. The math: Super Tuesday decided the race. The video fails to give the proper context that the race has been over for just over three months now, and everything since then (i.e. the last 2:30 of the video) has been noth...
posted by DaShiv to MetaFilter at May-7-08 at 7:20 AM
42 users marked this as a favorite
Do these people just sit there, scouring the web for "evolution" keywords to put their propaganda into?
Apparently.
The forums to which anti-evolutionists post can be seen as a sort of ecosystem, in which the spurious arguments they post live. In some forums, arguments find more receptive readers, or are couched in a way that makes ...
posted by aeschenkarnos to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 11:26 PM
39 users marked this as a favorite
Is there a snappy Dutch phrase for "initial impulses of mockery and pity for another person's exorbitantly artificial fashion choices giving way to reflection that one's own conventional fashion choices are simply normalized artificialities, just as arbitrary and exhibitionist, resulting in acceptance of and even conflicted admiration for grow...
posted by dyoneo to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 8:45 AM
39 users marked this as a favorite
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost...
posted by sicem07 to MetaFilter at May-10-08 at 3:31 PM
38 users marked this as a favorite
Doing your best is taking an action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward. Most people do exactly the opposite. They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don't enjoy the action. That's the reason they don't do their best.
For example, most people go to work each day just thinking of payday and the money they ...
posted by netbros to Ask MetaFilter at May-11-08 at 9:19 PM
37 users marked this as a favorite
I love drug laws.
No, really. They're so brilliantly designed. Given the enormous percentage of the populace who either uses or has used The Illegals, they leave a large segment of the population feeling guilty, another chunk feeling guilty for not turning them in, and then a bunch of people suspicious of the rest.
Because these are laws re...
posted by adipocere to MetaFilter at May-11-08 at 11:37 AM
34 users marked this as a favorite
and there is no liberal equivalent to Fox News. Although there probably should be.
There can't be. Being a conservative is about put to rest any lingering doubts you might have about your impulses, and being okay with, essentially, not giving a shit and "looking out for number one". This means that you can find comfort in a news medi...
posted by psmealey to MetaFilter at May-8-08 at 10:10 AM
32 users marked this as a favorite
Tom Waits is a living national treasure, and a glorious ramshackle mess of infinite dimensions. We should all be blessed to have him throw some confetti in our hair, fry us up a piece of oily fish, and roll us down the hill in an old oil barrel. Committing all manner of magnificent misdemeanor, impeccably stumbling from one door to another, his voi...
posted by flapjax at midnite to MetaFilter at May-7-08 at 8:39 PM
32 users marked this as a favorite
