MetaFilter posts by univac.
Displaying 1 through 23. Subscribe: http://www.metafilter.com/user/45352/postsrss 
Today, Gawker editorial staff vote on whether to unionize with Writers Guild of America, East, saying that transparency in compensation and fair health benefits are among the issues that have led them to organize.
posted on Jun-3-15 at 9:29 AM
Game of Cards
posted on Mar-4-15 at 2:44 PM
Operation War Diary is the newest crowdsourced science effort from Zooniverse, cataloging WWI British soldiers' war diaries from the Western Front. Participants can help tag dates, locations, people, and events from 1.5 million pages of war diaries from the Western Front. Entries range from the uneventful (October 24 | PONT DU HEM | 5:30 am | Occupied same position. Did not fire all day) to the eventful (A & B cleared the village and the regiment eventually captured the convoy in the wood about a mile on after it had been headed back by a returning movement of 12th Lancers. In all 200 prisoners).
posted on Jan-14-14 at 11:05 AM
"But the technique that all of us in Aden listened to agape was a method that had been developed allegedly very recently, which was to suspend the prisoner in a tank of liquid gelatine which was at 94.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Naked. With your arms and legs tied and your head encased in a sort of diver’s helmet, through which you were breathing. You were hung into this tank, so all you could hear was the [breathing noise] of your own breath. And in theory you would go bonkers. Because you didn’t know which way was up, you had no sense." -Interview with British Interrogator #1
posted on Oct-21-12 at 10:05 PM
A society where the lucky few reap prodigious financial rewards is one where many will fall short of their dreams through no fault of their own. We must insure all people against disability, against sickness, against hunger, and against homelessness. I realize that these things cost money. I believe that the costs of building and maintaining a great country should be shared by all of us, beginning with the people who benefit the most from our society. I believe that people like me (and people who are far wealthier) should pay more in taxes.
So-called "job creator" acknowledges that he lives in a society and owes a debt to it, as a response to (seemingly in agreement with) a satirical Job Creator Manifesto published in the Washington Post.
posted on Oct-6-12 at 1:40 PM
MLK mural in reverse-solved Rubik's Cubes.
posted on Oct-3-12 at 10:18 AM
A comet has been discovered and we may get to see it. If it doesn't boil away first, we'll be able to see it November 29th, 2013, give or take a day. Lots of back-slapping on the comet email list. (Via.)
posted on Sep-25-12 at 3:20 PM
This NYT slideshow of Cuba photographs does an excellent job of portraying Cuba's mood: "like the most beautiful slum ever."
posted on Sep-20-12 at 10:19 AM
Lonesome George has died. George, the last specimen of the Pinta Island subspecies of the Galapagos Island Tortoise, was estimated to have been around 100 years old. Efforts to mate George with females of related subspecies had failed.
posted on Jun-24-12 at 4:24 PM
One Minnesota union's tongue-in-cheek response to a proposal to make Minnesota a so-called "Right to Work" State.
posted on Feb-16-12 at 4:59 PM
This week has seen a lot of discussion of the American criminal justice system and its failings, and a lot of concern about what can be done to fix it. In 1947, a working class black man looked like he was about to have the full weight of the system brought down on him for taking justice into his own hands. But after Chicago leftists - including labor unions, religious leaders, artists, civil rights activists & others - launched a movement, James Hickman was set free after an all-white jury, in a trial presided over by a white judge, failed to convict, and the DA chose not to re-try because of the magnitude of public support for Hickman. According to a review in The Nation, a new book tells the story in a way that turns the typical right-wing biases of the true crime genre on their head.
posted on Sep-22-11 at 2:44 PM
Hope withers on the vine. A look at daily life among the produce workers in Mecca, California.
posted on Jun-23-09 at 2:36 PM
Single-payer health care advocates arrested at Senate hearing. On May 5, 2009 advocates of a U.S. national health care program disrupted a Senate Finance Committee event to call for single-payer healthcare to be part of the discussion. The eight protesters were subsequently arrested. The protesters included representatives of Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors the The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676. Committee Chair Max Baucus (D - Montana), who has received more money in contributions from health insurance companies than any other member of Congress, favors requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance from those companies. Baucus, who has previously said that single-payer is "off the table," responded to the doctors and their fellow activists with, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views," and then, "we need more police [to eject protesters]."
posted on May-6-09 at 11:01 PM
Fake Rapture. You are now on the cutting edge.
posted on May-5-09 at 11:26 AM
We've gotten all stupid over the Kogi taco truck.
posted on Apr-10-09 at 7:02 AM
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968, he was helping sanitation workers in Memphis form a union. In 1967, SCLC initiated the Poor People's Campaign to unify the African-American civil rights movement with working people's movements more generally. In MLK's words, "It must not be just black people, it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites."
posted on Apr-4-09 at 12:00 AM
Archaeologists and Native Americans race against the border fence. The REAL ID act authorized government agencies to bulldoze long-standing environmental, cultural and anthropological standards. But a team of activists worked delicately behind the scenes to win millions of dollars in federal funding and the go-ahead for a last-ditch effort to study ancient artifacts. Archaeologists have faced similarly rushed projects elsewhere along the fence route.
posted on Mar-31-09 at 1:32 AM
Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here.
posted on Mar-15-09 at 6:52 PM
Bob Boorstin, Google's Director of Policy Communications, wrote a letter to the Rose Foundation, suggesting that the foundation stop funding Consumer Watchdog, an outspoken Google critic.
posted on Feb-26-09 at 10:57 AM
Matmos provides a song-by-song exposition of their synth-only* album Supreme Balloon, including explicit pics of the gear they used. Highlights include the Electronic Valve Instrument, the Coupigny, & everything else.
*Mostly - all sound sources were synths, some software controllers were used.
posted on Jul-6-08 at 10:53 AM
How depressing is your job? The Office of Applied Studies, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, released a report ranking various occupations in order of the number of depressive episodes experienced by workers. "Personal Care & Service" occupations (defined by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics here) top the list. One wonders if these are the occupations contributing to the growth of the so-called "service economy," and if so, are we heading for a deepening national malaise?
posted on Oct-13-07 at 5:30 PM
Ambushing yer bits on teh Interpipes (maybe) Accusation against Comcast shows need for net neutrality laws.
posted on Aug-22-07 at 6:23 PM
SEIU President Andy Stern says unions should be less like unions. He recently teamed up with Wal-Mart to call for incremental healthcare reform, and has said that unions should assist employers in outsourcing their employees. His union once teamed up with CA nursing home operators to limit the rights of abused patients. This is the same union that promoted this insipid PR campaign.
posted on Feb-14-07 at 2:46 AM
posted on Jun-3-15 at 9:29 AM
Game of Cards
posted on Mar-4-15 at 2:44 PM
Operation War Diary is the newest crowdsourced science effort from Zooniverse, cataloging WWI British soldiers' war diaries from the Western Front. Participants can help tag dates, locations, people, and events from 1.5 million pages of war diaries from the Western Front. Entries range from the uneventful (October 24 | PONT DU HEM | 5:30 am | Occupied same position. Did not fire all day) to the eventful (A & B cleared the village and the regiment eventually captured the convoy in the wood about a mile on after it had been headed back by a returning movement of 12th Lancers. In all 200 prisoners).
posted on Jan-14-14 at 11:05 AM
"But the technique that all of us in Aden listened to agape was a method that had been developed allegedly very recently, which was to suspend the prisoner in a tank of liquid gelatine which was at 94.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Naked. With your arms and legs tied and your head encased in a sort of diver’s helmet, through which you were breathing. You were hung into this tank, so all you could hear was the [breathing noise] of your own breath. And in theory you would go bonkers. Because you didn’t know which way was up, you had no sense." -Interview with British Interrogator #1
posted on Oct-21-12 at 10:05 PM
A society where the lucky few reap prodigious financial rewards is one where many will fall short of their dreams through no fault of their own. We must insure all people against disability, against sickness, against hunger, and against homelessness. I realize that these things cost money. I believe that the costs of building and maintaining a great country should be shared by all of us, beginning with the people who benefit the most from our society. I believe that people like me (and people who are far wealthier) should pay more in taxes.
So-called "job creator" acknowledges that he lives in a society and owes a debt to it, as a response to (seemingly in agreement with) a satirical Job Creator Manifesto published in the Washington Post.
posted on Oct-6-12 at 1:40 PM
MLK mural in reverse-solved Rubik's Cubes.
posted on Oct-3-12 at 10:18 AM
A comet has been discovered and we may get to see it. If it doesn't boil away first, we'll be able to see it November 29th, 2013, give or take a day. Lots of back-slapping on the comet email list. (Via.)
posted on Sep-25-12 at 3:20 PM
This NYT slideshow of Cuba photographs does an excellent job of portraying Cuba's mood: "like the most beautiful slum ever."
posted on Sep-20-12 at 10:19 AM
Lonesome George has died. George, the last specimen of the Pinta Island subspecies of the Galapagos Island Tortoise, was estimated to have been around 100 years old. Efforts to mate George with females of related subspecies had failed.
posted on Jun-24-12 at 4:24 PM
One Minnesota union's tongue-in-cheek response to a proposal to make Minnesota a so-called "Right to Work" State.
posted on Feb-16-12 at 4:59 PM
This week has seen a lot of discussion of the American criminal justice system and its failings, and a lot of concern about what can be done to fix it. In 1947, a working class black man looked like he was about to have the full weight of the system brought down on him for taking justice into his own hands. But after Chicago leftists - including labor unions, religious leaders, artists, civil rights activists & others - launched a movement, James Hickman was set free after an all-white jury, in a trial presided over by a white judge, failed to convict, and the DA chose not to re-try because of the magnitude of public support for Hickman. According to a review in The Nation, a new book tells the story in a way that turns the typical right-wing biases of the true crime genre on their head.
posted on Sep-22-11 at 2:44 PM
Hope withers on the vine. A look at daily life among the produce workers in Mecca, California.
posted on Jun-23-09 at 2:36 PM
Single-payer health care advocates arrested at Senate hearing. On May 5, 2009 advocates of a U.S. national health care program disrupted a Senate Finance Committee event to call for single-payer healthcare to be part of the discussion. The eight protesters were subsequently arrested. The protesters included representatives of Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors the The United States National Health Care Act, H.R. 676. Committee Chair Max Baucus (D - Montana), who has received more money in contributions from health insurance companies than any other member of Congress, favors requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance from those companies. Baucus, who has previously said that single-payer is "off the table," responded to the doctors and their fellow activists with, “I want you to know I care deeply about your views," and then, "we need more police [to eject protesters]."
posted on May-6-09 at 11:01 PM
Fake Rapture. You are now on the cutting edge.
posted on May-5-09 at 11:26 AM
We've gotten all stupid over the Kogi taco truck.
posted on Apr-10-09 at 7:02 AM
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated April 4, 1968, he was helping sanitation workers in Memphis form a union. In 1967, SCLC initiated the Poor People's Campaign to unify the African-American civil rights movement with working people's movements more generally. In MLK's words, "It must not be just black people, it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites."
posted on Apr-4-09 at 12:00 AM
Archaeologists and Native Americans race against the border fence. The REAL ID act authorized government agencies to bulldoze long-standing environmental, cultural and anthropological standards. But a team of activists worked delicately behind the scenes to win millions of dollars in federal funding and the go-ahead for a last-ditch effort to study ancient artifacts. Archaeologists have faced similarly rushed projects elsewhere along the fence route.
posted on Mar-31-09 at 1:32 AM
Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here.
posted on Mar-15-09 at 6:52 PM
Bob Boorstin, Google's Director of Policy Communications, wrote a letter to the Rose Foundation, suggesting that the foundation stop funding Consumer Watchdog, an outspoken Google critic.
posted on Feb-26-09 at 10:57 AM
Matmos provides a song-by-song exposition of their synth-only* album Supreme Balloon, including explicit pics of the gear they used. Highlights include the Electronic Valve Instrument, the Coupigny, & everything else.
*Mostly - all sound sources were synths, some software controllers were used.
posted on Jul-6-08 at 10:53 AM
How depressing is your job? The Office of Applied Studies, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, released a report ranking various occupations in order of the number of depressive episodes experienced by workers. "Personal Care & Service" occupations (defined by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics here) top the list. One wonders if these are the occupations contributing to the growth of the so-called "service economy," and if so, are we heading for a deepening national malaise?
posted on Oct-13-07 at 5:30 PM
Ambushing yer bits on teh Interpipes (maybe) Accusation against Comcast shows need for net neutrality laws.
posted on Aug-22-07 at 6:23 PM
SEIU President Andy Stern says unions should be less like unions. He recently teamed up with Wal-Mart to call for incremental healthcare reform, and has said that unions should assist employers in outsourcing their employees. His union once teamed up with CA nursing home operators to limit the rights of abused patients. This is the same union that promoted this insipid PR campaign.
posted on Feb-14-07 at 2:46 AM