7220 MetaFilter comments by mr_crash_davis (displaying 1 through 50)


"This is a game in which a sentient closet-based AI locks four girls in a room (with giant metal barriers) because one of them smudged her make-up, and forces them to repeatedly apply lipstick and eyeliner to freakishly giant doll heads until he is satisfied. That’s not my arch interpretation of events. That’s what actually happens."
comment posted at 8:54 AM on Nov-29-13

Boeing's largest, and ugliest, aircraft today is the 747 LCF, better known as the DreamLifter. The primary job of the DreamLifter is delivering entire 787 fuselages for final assembly. Yesterday evening, one DreamLifter was supposed to land at Wichita, Kansas...
comment posted at 11:01 AM on Nov-21-13


Before You Say You've Never Discriminated Against Someone, Listen To The Second Sentence From An Introverted Single Dad. You Will Punch Your Monitor When You See What A Homeless Upworthy Generator Delighted The Internet With. Starts around 1:54. Gets mindblowing around 2:15.
comment posted at 7:46 PM on Nov-19-13

How to draw GREAT BUTTS in five lines!
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Nov-17-13
comment posted at 5:17 PM on Nov-17-13

A Galveston medical student describes life and death in the so-called safety net. [via]
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Nov-16-13

About as many people say they’ve been abducted by space aliens as say they’ve committed voter fraud One of the findings of a new working paper by John Ahlquist, Kenneth R. Mayer and Simon Jackman is that “the lower bound on the population reporting voter impersonation is nearly identical with the proportion of the population reporting abduction by extraterrestrials.” Roughly 2.5 percent of the population effectively admit to one or the other.
comment posted at 2:18 PM on Nov-15-13

The News IQ Quiz by the Pew Research Center. Test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news by taking our short 13-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with 1,052 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey conducted online August 7-14 by the Pew Research Center.
comment posted at 6:32 PM on Nov-14-13


Tim Derbyshire, owner of London's On the Beat Records, has put his entire store up for bid on eBay. Says the NYT: "[Derbyshire] has decided to retire but would prefer not to just pack up and go. Nor is he keen on having an everything-must-go sale. His preference is to leave the shop as it is, with its stock of singles, albums, posters and 1960s through 1980s memorabilia intact, and turn over the keys to a record fanatic who will run it more or less as he has, since the late 1970s." The buy-it-now price is £300,000.
comment posted at 1:01 PM on Nov-14-13

Bob Dylan is a welder and he makes big iron gates out of scrap metal. You can see for yourself at Castle Gallery in London for the next couple of months. Says Bob: "Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference."
comment posted at 1:10 PM on Nov-14-13


The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ruled today that its Height Committee has determined that One World Trade Center’s height to its architectural top is 1,776 feet (541.3 meters), which will eclipse Chicago's Sears "Willis Tower" as the tallest building in the western hemisphere.
comment posted at 10:00 PM on Nov-12-13

Harold Percival will not be missed. This. This is the power of the printed word, and the internet. If you only read one thing today, please read this.
comment posted at 6:59 PM on Nov-11-13


"Let's say you have neighbors complaining about a drug house on the corner," he says. "They don't feel safe. It's a menace. Now, you could do a long investigation, culminating in a big raid. But in the meantime, the neighbors still have to live with the menace. Why not just send two uniformed cops to the house that same afternoon? They knock. They say, 'Hey. Knock it off.' The drug dealers pick up and leave. No guns drawn, no raid. Which approach will have a more immediate effect on the neighborhood?" - Salt Lake City police chief Chris Burbank's efforts to reform policing.
comment posted at 2:10 PM on Nov-9-13

Despite the cries of "Save the Mimolette!", the FDA has decided to ban the sale of the French cheese Mimolette over mites used in the rind.
comment posted at 8:24 PM on Nov-6-13

"[Walmart]'s policy of allowing overnight stays in their parking lots is intended to boost sales, but has the tangential effect of creating a subculture around its locations... The two separate Walmart parking lots in Flagstaff, Arizona are specifically known for their long-term residents, and this past summer photographer Nolan Conway spent several days making a series of portraits of both the overnighters and the people who call these asphalt grids a temporary home."

Waking Up At Walmart (via)
comment posted at 2:10 PM on Nov-6-13
comment posted at 6:28 PM on Nov-6-13


This 419-Million-Year-Old Fish Has the World’s Oldest Known Face What makes it remarkable is everything that’s come after it: It’s the oldest known creature with a face, and may have given rise to virtually all the faces that have followed in the hundreds of millions of years since, including our own.
comment posted at 8:31 PM on Oct-24-13

Why People Mistake Good Deals for Rip-Offs. In another experiment, the ventral putamen, a region of the brain that processes reward, was more active when people drank Pepsi than when they drank Coke—except when they were told that they were drinking Pepsi. Coke’s brand appeal is so powerful, and our ability to determine the value of cola so fickle, that our brains respond differently as soon as we learn that what we’re drinking isn’t Coke. The physical experience doesn’t change at all, but we’re unable to peg the value of a brown, caffeinated soda until we know where its life began.
comment posted at 9:15 PM on Oct-22-13
comment posted at 9:33 PM on Oct-22-13
comment posted at 9:34 PM on Oct-22-13

As the 2013-14 NBA season approaches, the last year of the reign of Commissioner David Stern, Sports Business Journal takes an in-depth look at his successor, New Media enthusiast, marathon runner, and fan of competitive balance, Adam Silver.
comment posted at 2:32 PM on Oct-22-13

Flying Square of Cardboard. [SLYT] It's a square of cardboard. That flies.
comment posted at 7:47 PM on Oct-20-13

Bloke rents out a small, neat, English apartment. Finds a hatch with some tools in it. And...
comment posted at 11:34 AM on Oct-19-13

This August, Washington state's Fish and Wildlife Commission banned giant Pacific octopus hunting (recreational harvesting) across seven popular scuba sites in the Puget Sound -- not because the species is endangered, but simply because the sea creature is revered by the Seattle community. The law went into effect on October 6. What triggered the ban? Therein lies a story.
comment posted at 6:49 PM on Oct-17-13


Journalist Natasha Tiku (you may remember her from her piece on Business Insider's Pax Dickinson) takes on the cult (?) of Orgasmic Meditation.
comment posted at 1:25 PM on Oct-16-13


John Munch, formerly a detective with the Baltimore PD’s homicide squad and currently a sergeant with the NYPD's Special Victims Unit, has put in his papers. He'll be bidding farewell to his fictional coworkers and real-life fans as he heads off to retirement on tonight's episode of Law & Order: SVU.
comment posted at 1:30 PM on Oct-16-13

Historically, the state of Utah has had little relation to jazz music, giving the Utah Jazz the title (the team's only title) of the most incongruously named franchise in the world of sports. Would the Utah Hip Hop be more fitting?
comment posted at 12:55 PM on Oct-16-13



"In New York City, if you yell “where do I get the F train?” at someone they will tell you, they might even STOP to tell you. If you ask them “Excuse me, I was wondering if you have a moment, I’m from out of town and my trying to find the F train, so if you could possibly…” If you set up your question with all that, they will have walked away from you after the fifth word.
In Seattle, if you are pushing your car for some reason, men will appear without a word and help you push. You’ll be pushing, and the next thing you know, there are men on either side of you." -- Cultural Secrets that I Know
comment posted at 1:18 PM on Oct-6-13

This fall, why not kayak down a drainage ditch at speeds of 35 mph?
comment posted at 2:55 PM on Oct-4-13

Jason Kottke turned 40 today. Some of his friends threw a party on his blog.
comment posted at 6:59 PM on Sep-27-13

September 7th marked the beginning of the battle for the 2013 America's Cup between defending Oracle Team USA and challenging Emirates Team New Zealand. As the winners of the last cup, the Golden Gate Yacht Club decided that this year's Cup match would take place in a new class of boat, the AC72 wing sail catamaran. Almost as much airplane as sailboat, these extraordinary craft are designed to lift out of the water, allowing them to sail faster than the wind and reach astonishing speeds of up to 50 knots. It was hailed as the pinnacle of the sport until a May 2013 capsize and death of Swedish crew member Andrew Simpson had some calling it the world's most dangerous sailboat.
comment posted at 11:25 AM on Sep-22-13
comment posted at 11:26 AM on Sep-22-13

Louis C.K. explains to Conan O'Brien why he hates smartphones. "You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person." (via)
comment posted at 7:48 PM on Sep-20-13


Linda Ronstadt was diagnosed 9 months ago with Parkinson's and, according to Linda, she "can't sing a note". Linda sang her last concert in 2009, her voice reflecting the impact of the disease. It's hard to pick out a favorite, there are just so many fantastic hits, especially considering that Linda suffered from stage fright, but...I'll leave you with this simple tune, Someone to Watch Over Me. Previously on Metafilter.
comment posted at 9:34 PM on Sep-16-13

Where in the world are you most likely to be hit by lightening? Where's the best place to go to totally escape from the Internet? Which countries has Britain *not* invaded?
comment posted at 8:32 PM on Sep-14-13

Politico: "The U.S. government on Friday approved Shuanghui International Holding’s bid to buy iconic U.S. pork producer Smithfield Foods in what would be the biggest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company to date."
comment posted at 8:41 PM on Sep-10-13


How the Wild West really looked: Gorgeous pictures show the landscape as it was charted for the very first time 150 years ago. Previously.
comment posted at 10:52 AM on Sep-2-13

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