MetaFilter

Grim news for likers of quality (and some not so quality) TV programming: Brooklyn 99, The Expanse and a bunch of other shows just got cancelled, with ABC killing 9 in an afternoon. Of course, for good or for bad, sometimes shows come back.
comment posted at 5:32 PM on May-11-18

Is it better to have one or two spaces after a period? The first study investigating this hotly contested issue is here, and it supposedly gives the win to the two-spacers. But a closer look at the research suggests that the only reasonable interpretation is that double spacing after a period remains bad. It’s ugly, it doesn’t help when it comes to what matters most (reading comprehension), and the experiment that supports its benefits uses an outdated font style.
comment posted at 10:22 AM on May-5-18

"Man with Swedish Academy ties accused of sexual assault." Jean-Claude Arnault, who has been accused of several cases of sexual assault, has now also leaked several Nobel Prize winners in literature.
The Nobel Prize scandal rocking Sweden had led to the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature being postponed until 2019.
comment posted at 10:13 AM on May-5-18

Does Socialism Have a Future in Texas?
comment posted at 4:59 PM on May-3-18

Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, ninth-generation American, was born on April 9th. This fact, by itself, is not noteworthy; a baby is born in the US every eight seconds. But baby Maile is different in one very interesting way: her mother, Tammy Duckworth, is a United States Senator, the first ever to give birth while in office.
comment posted at 5:16 PM on Apr-10-18

An oral history of the most excruciating episode of The Office (US): The Dinner Party.
comment posted at 2:42 PM on Apr-9-18

The sinking of the El Faro. In the darkness before dawn on Thursday, October 1, 2015, an American merchant captain named Michael Davidson sailed a 790-foot U.S.-flagged cargo ship, El Faro, into the eye wall of a Category 3 hurricane on the exposed windward side of the Bahama Islands. This is the story of the El Faro, recovered in part from three miles beneath the waves that took her. The worst American maritime disaster in decades.
comment posted at 12:24 AM on Apr-10-18

A Veteran Black Officer Teaches Police How Not To Kill People
comment posted at 11:10 PM on Apr-8-18

It seems very fitting that Merriam-Webster chose this week to add "dumpster fire" to the dictionary.
Some of the choice chunks of flaming refuse today:

Mother Jones releases its first excerpt of Michael Isikoff and David Corn's upcoming book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump .

The WaPo discovers that Erik Prince may have misspoken about the reasons for his January 2017 vacation in the Seychelles.

Hope Hicks has some email trouble.

As questions swirl around his NDA with adult film entrepreneur Stormy Daniels, the president is less than pleased with his press secretary's handling of the isssue.

The president has expressed mild interest in the discussions his staff have been having with the special counsel.

comment posted at 4:01 PM on Mar-11-18
comment posted at 5:32 PM on Mar-11-18
comment posted at 12:09 AM on Mar-12-18
comment posted at 12:24 AM on Mar-12-18

The Family Tree of the Noir Western
comment posted at 10:40 PM on Feb-18-18

ICE cracks down in LA, meanwhile immigration legislation progress isn't looking great.
comment posted at 7:53 PM on Feb-22-18
comment posted at 11:26 PM on Feb-23-18
comment posted at 12:56 PM on Feb-25-18

SpaceX will attempt to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time today. The launch window is from 1:30 to 4:00 PM Eastern. You can watch it live here. An animation on Youtube depicts how the launch will work if everything goes according to plan. The payload is Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster carrying a space suit-clad dummy. David Bowie's "Space Oddity" will play in the vehicle during the launch. The car is destined for an elliptical orbit around the Sun, taking it into the vicinity of Mars.
comment posted at 11:52 PM on Feb-13-18

In less than 90 days, Cape Town may become the world’s first major city to run out of water.
comment posted at 3:22 PM on Feb-4-18

Ice cross downhill is the "fastest sport on skates" and basically involves 4 skaters speed skating down a bobsled course, with jumps. (You will not be surprised to learn it's sponsored by Red Bull.) Videos incoming!
comment posted at 11:41 PM on Feb-3-18

'Fiction is outperforming reality': how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth An ex-YouTube insider reveals how its recommendation algorithm promotes divisive clips and conspiracy videos. Did they harm Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency?
comment posted at 12:05 AM on Feb-4-18

To celebrate Ellen Degeneres turning 60, Portia de Rossi surprised her with a gift.
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Feb-2-18

Inside Social Media's Black Market. "The price difference has allowed Mr. Calas to build a small fortune, according to company records. In just a few years, Devumi sold about 200 million Twitter followers to at least 39,000 customers, accounting for a third of more than $6 million in sales during that period."
comment posted at 12:26 AM on Jan-28-18

Flixable is a new, streamlined Netflix search site, built by redditor CrazedEll, which makes it easy to see what's new and what's leaving, separated by movies and TV, and is currently able to search titles available in Canada, Finland, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Alternative Netflix search sites: New On Netflix (for UK, USA, Canada, and NZ/AUS), Justwatch (also searches other services, but no country filters)
comment posted at 12:57 AM on Jan-28-18

Installment #*@&^% of the US political threads. This edition features fun at Davos, more Muellery, and DACA & CR continued.
comment posted at 1:10 AM on Jan-28-18
comment posted at 4:43 PM on Jan-28-18
comment posted at 5:54 PM on Feb-1-18
comment posted at 11:05 PM on Feb-3-18
comment posted at 3:43 AM on Feb-4-18
comment posted at 1:04 PM on Feb-4-18

This is your latest installment in the Trump / U.S. Politics Megathread. Trump golfs on MLK day after urging Americans to celebrate it with volunteering; popularity among African Americans continues to plummet. Bannon subpoenaed to grand jury. Blowback continues on “Sh—holeGate”; CNN reporter expelled from press conference for asking about it. There are four years in a Presidential term of office (not many people know that).
comment posted at 3:50 PM on Jan-20-18
comment posted at 2:45 PM on Jan-21-18

There's a lot going on, but most people are talking about the Wolff book.
comment posted at 10:55 PM on Jan-5-18
comment posted at 11:35 PM on Jan-6-18
comment posted at 11:12 PM on Jan-8-18
comment posted at 3:18 PM on Jan-15-18

Meagan Day writes about five experimental Utopias in US history for Timeline - Bible Communists embrace free love in Oneida, NY - Kansas’ octagon obsessed vegetarians - Socialist loggers in the Sierra Nevadas railroaded by capitalism - Home, Washington was red, nude and without rules - All One Farm grows apples, drops acid, and eventually poisons millions.
comment posted at 11:41 PM on Jan-4-18

NYT Opinion: Confessions of Digital Nazi Hunter. In which the creator of a bot that succeeded at taking down Impersonation Accounts gets shut down by Twitter itself.
comment posted at 12:09 AM on Dec-29-17

But the more of SNL I watched this year, the more I felt like I was watching a different show than everybody else was. I was tempted to call it the worst show of 2017, but I’m not sure that’s what I mean. It’s certainly made with a certain degree of love and affection that marks it as the work of talented people.

No, what SNL was was the emptiest show of 2017, and the fact that it was so over-praised makes me worry we’ll learn nothing at all from this particular moment in pop cultural history. And there’s no better way to talk about that emptiness than to consider just how poorly SNL handles the current occupant of the White House, even as it clearly wants to say something daring.

Saturday Night Live’s current cultural cachet is built on a mirage [Todd VanDerWerff, Vox]
comment posted at 11:03 PM on Dec-28-17
comment posted at 11:52 PM on Dec-28-17

Merry Christmas, it's a new politics thread. In the week that was:
comment posted at 11:28 PM on Dec-28-17
comment posted at 1:54 PM on Jan-1-18

The Sandbergs were talking about expanding their family. They hired a lawyer who found a newborn and when she arrived, what they saw surprised them. She was black. Immediately, Mr. Sandberg said, he thought of the burning crosses and racist taunts, the upheaval in their community over the prospect of black people moving in. Interracial adoptions were far less common then. “I said at that point that I wasn’t going to go forward with it,” Mr. Sandberg, now 89, recalled. “I thought, ‘My God, how are you going to raise a child in this neighborhood with the way people are feeling about this thing?’” said Mr. Sandberg, the owner of a prosperous manufacturing company. “It just wouldn’t have been great for her.” The Sandbergs returned the child. A few months later, they adopted a newborn white girl and named her Amy.
comment posted at 3:19 PM on Dec-25-17

Ave Maria Bamford! Maria Bamford (previously, more previously) stars in this 12-part holiday special about the silver linings within everything from substance abuse to bankruptcy and existential despair.
comment posted at 3:30 PM on Dec-25-17

So, what to do with this once-beloved book? I’ve read it once since Greyland spoke out, and I don’t know if I will read it again. Probably not, I’m guessing. Discovering that powerful men are predators is disturbing, but not surprising. Learning that the author who introduced me to feminine spirituality and the hidden side of history abused children — girls and boys, her own daughter — was horrifying in an existential kind of way. I’m a writer and an editor and I know that characters can exceed their creators. I would go so far as to say that that’s the goal.

So I can keep Morgaine — what she has meant to me, what she has become in my personal mythology — while I reject Bradley.
comment posted at 3:59 PM on Dec-15-17

People in high profile government jobs share commonly held view of multiply bankrupt toupee model
comment posted at 12:48 AM on Dec-22-17
comment posted at 4:52 PM on Dec-24-17

The new movie I, Tonya offers the complete story of Tonya Harding, a woman who was "a punchline, her name alone providing a bitter shorthand for scandal." According to Vogue: "The result is a dark (more like pitch-black) comedy that makes you feel uneasy about laughing, a mockumentary that casts doubt on the mechanisms by which documentaries—or journalism more generally—purport to enshrine the truth, a demented, doomed love story that’s mostly about abuse." The Roger Ebert web site: 3-1/2 stars.
comment posted at 1:24 PM on Dec-8-17

Can you hear this silent gif bouncing? Try some of the others at /r/noisygifs.
comment posted at 12:56 AM on Dec-8-17

The more the rural U.S. struggles, company officials said, the more places Dollar General has found to prosper. “The economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” Chief Executive Todd Vasos said in an interview. [Alternate link]
comment posted at 6:28 PM on Dec-4-17

Day 316: former National Security Advisor to Trump, Michael Flynn, has pled guilty to lying to the FBI, widely believed to be a sign that Flynn has rolled on either senior administration officials or Trump family members. In particular, CNN is reporting that Flynn's plea bargain implicates Jared Kushner, and Buzzfeed suggests that he was working for both Russia and Turkey. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are coming to the end of their shambolic process to put together a tax bill, and are preparing to vote. [This is a US politics catch-all thread: please read these important rules about how they work. Also, enjoy refreshing MetaFilter chat for your hot takes and instant reactions.]
comment posted at 12:15 AM on Dec-3-17