MetaFilter

I just had a Butterfinger bar and man they have gone to shit since the last time i had one maybe ten years ago. The spun sugar interior was hardly layered at all, there didn't seem to be hardly any peanut nougat layering either, and the enrobing "chocolate" had so little cocoa in it I'd call it more taupe than brown. Really disappointing.
posted to MetaFilter by seanmpuckett at 4:47 PM on May 12, 2024

I saw some of these and I was amused but I thought posting them to MetaFilter would lead to an argument.

Yep, you were right about there being an argument. I think it's an important argument though, and that fact doesn't reflect badly on the one who posts it. Some arguments are good to have.

I'm torn. I feel like these kinds of projects are made to serve as a trojan horse, to try to get the wider internet to accept all the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 7:45 AM on May 11, 2024

If people are depressed because the economy is predatory, or because they're being bullied, or they can't afford care for their illness

I don't think it's a sign of mental illness to be ground down by relentless discomfort (if you're indulging in the illusion that all medically-related suffering can be addressed by treatment, time to let that one go), a constant diminishment of one's capacity that robs one of the ability to do things one enjoys, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by praemunire at 5:24 PM on May 9, 2024

knock my sock and i'll clean your clock: sometimes people’s lives are destroyed by the suicide of loved ones, and sometimes it puts them at greater risk for suicide themselves.

This is true. The problem is there are so many different ways the conversation could go from here so it's difficult to have just one response (e.g. what if they're terminally ill/in constant, agonizing pain/living with treatment-resistant depression that torments them/trapped... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by tzikeh at 4:14 PM on May 9, 2024

We're going to be moving to Europe in about five to eight years. Romania first, then eventually southern Italy is the plan. We are not old, we are not rich, and and we do not have high demand jobs that can get us visas.

Our facilitating factors are that my wife is a dual citizen (Romania) and I can get a spouse passport, she owns a studio apartment in Cluj, and the modest savings we have are effectively multiplied by moving somewhere that €1000-1200 a month supports a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 6:13 AM on May 8, 2024

Recently, someone asked me what my "dream job" was and I was amazed by what a fucking american question that was.

Like, what's your dream colonoscopy?

I don't wanna fucking work. I wanna drink wine, read books, and sit around with my spouse and dog.
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 5:35 AM on May 8, 2024

Great theme for this week!
Question though: I don't get the pin anymore, except at huge distances. It's the same in Google and bing: I get outlines of the area, whether it is the municipality (big city) or the parish (small village).

As far as I can see, the pin that is there when I zoom far out is at our town hall square. Which makes sense, because that is what the municipality has been trying to tell us for 110 years and what tourists and people who have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mumimor at 3:11 AM on May 7, 2024

I think a lot of the disdain BASIC has gotten over time is undeserved, the result of a cadre of Respected Developers trying to maintain their profession as a kind of mysterious priesthood.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with BASIC. Sure, indiscriminate use of GOTO produces hard to read code, but that's a style problem. Sometimes you just have to code an indefinite loop, and there's no real difference between doing it with GOTO or while(true).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:31 PM on May 3, 2024

I taught the high school computer - it was, like, huge and in a windowed room and there were keyboards and sort of proto monitors on work stations around it, that is how old I am - how to write poetry in Basic when I was in 9th grade. I figured out the form of sonnets and I think haiku - I know I had two poem forms - and then I assigned a bunch of words to different numbers. Then I used the random number generator to spit out a lot of mostly terrible, occasionally randomly not terrible, not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mygothlaundry at 11:35 AM on May 3, 2024

If money wasn't communicated from you to your friend then I would consider this a case of lessons learned. It is highly unlikely FOF expected to pay since it probably sounded to that person that this was a use-it-or-lost it deal and you'd rather give it away then have it be wasted. The reality is that you couldn't make it anyhow so at least you got the "joy" of knowing that someone you know got some benefit from it.

Life happens, move on and you'll be happier.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by smilefreely at 8:32 AM on May 2, 2024

.

Paul Auster had a real profound effect on me. I knew of him early, because my dad really liked his works. Sometime in the early 90s, my dad interviewed him for Icelandic radio, and Auster said he should be in touch when he was in New York. My dad didn’t really think much of it, but once when he was headed to New York for a conference, he sent Auster a letter, and was promptly invited to brunch.

Some years later I read Auster’s novel Moon Palace... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kattullus at 2:15 PM on May 1, 2024

When I was living in san francisco in 1999, working for a dot-com 1.0 startup, we used to make fun of this same shit. And here we are, a quarter of a century later, and still these clowns are considered captains of industry etc. The more things change, the more they fail to change, I suppose.

Venture capital has always been the ultimate combination of people winning the lottery (metaphorically*) thinking they won a game of skill, and being born on third base and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jaymzjulian at 11:00 AM on April 28, 2024

"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by clavdivs at 5:13 PM on April 26, 2024

I had no first hand experience, but I know Helen Vendler's name and remember discussions about her classes and her formidable influence simply via sharing an apartment with a couple of Harvard grad students back in 90's. The reverence and love she inspired is still palpable.
posted to MetaFilter by amusebuche at 6:01 PM on April 26, 2024

the market cannot fund artistic production in any meaningful way — it is flatly terrible at it — and so the only option is to demarketize art.

> stop pirating

no. piracy, library systems and the public domain are the three-legged stool that makes mass access to knowledge possible. piracy is indispensable and facilitating piracy is an unalloyed moral good.

> But if piracy how... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:10 AM on April 23, 2024

I had about 1500 books in my house, mostly SF from ~1960-1985. Probably 90% of it was out of print. Then due to my landlord's criminal negligence, my house burned down and took all the books with it. I had taken photographs of the proof of negligence, so my wife and I ended up making a tremendous profit* on the whole thing.

We ended up moving into the high-rise part of town and live in a much smaller place, and I've not bought more than half a dozen books since. I just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by outgrown_hobnail at 5:42 AM on April 23, 2024

If someone gave you something explicitly and exclusively, it’s yours. That simple.

Besides you did say that it’ll mean remaining afloat for you. So please rather focus on properly investing and utilising this windfall so that it’ll serve the purpose it is supposed to.

Having said that — in situations like this, the airplane safety demo announcement makes sense to me: “Put your oxygen mask on first, before assisting others”.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by amar at 2:38 AM on April 9, 2024

Forgot one: Machi Koro is like building a city by playing poker machines, with lots of random positive reinforcement pushing serotonin through your brain. When your cards go off, it's a great feeling.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by some little punk in a rocket at 5:31 AM on April 6, 2024

I do find it disappointing that protest against Israel's inclusion (and boycotts) is only given a single line here, sandwiched among concerns such as "we're not getting new slogans." I think this is really emblematic of Europe's complicity in the crimes Israel is committing - and has committed - against Palestinians. It's simply not a big deal.

Let's be clear:

Israel is a racist apartheid state that is currently committing, if not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kutsuwamushi at 3:17 PM on April 3, 2024

I will, thank you praemunire. Also, my apologies for the 'tude. I am a little cranky about the car ( You would think I have more important things to be cranky about.) None of it should have been taken out on you, or here.
posted to MetaFilter by evilDoug at 9:04 AM on April 3, 2024

While I'm a socialist myself, it's arguable that with the right restraints, things can be livable under capitalism. Take the top tax rate up to 90% like under Eisenhower, bring the estate tax rate back to 77% as it was in the 40s-60s, fund universal health care like every other first world nation, and kick in Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax.

You'd probably also have to publically finance elections so the rich don't steal it all back again, but it would be a start.
posted to MetaFilter by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:06 PM on April 1, 2024

I'm 36. I won't inherit anything from my parents - money, home, or otherwise. If anything, I'll be paying towards my mom's housing and health care since she has no savings or retirement fund. I make what I used to think was 'good money' but now that reasonable housing (rent) costs over 45% of my take-home pay, it no longer feels comfortable. I don't see any way I can buy a house in the area I would like to live in. I luckily was able to prioritize paying off my student loans before housing and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rachaelfaith at 7:20 PM on April 2, 2024

CBT (therapy vs kink)

vs Computer Based Training - it may not be used anymore, but it's the first use of "CBT" I encountered by a long shot, and that's where my brain always goes first when I see the acronym used in other contexts.
posted to MetaTalk by Greg_Ace at 10:45 AM on March 30, 2024

Dear god, what is it about MetaFilter that causes people to do things like that?
posted to MetaTalk by hippybear at 7:45 PM on March 29, 2024

Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management:

There are a few examples of this trend towards denying reality. The starkest one being Elon Musk behaving as if European labour unions don’t exist and that labour is entirely powerless, leading his companies to lose money on strikes and other collective actions.

But Elon Musk isn’t alone. It’s very common for US punditry to completely misunderstand the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kmt at 9:29 AM on March 26, 2024

> At some point it'd be less hassle to just abandon the EU market. If they want to be so protectionist for EU based companies

see this article, linked above by kmt.

i'm super amused by the, i dunno, weird perspective displayed in the quote i quoted, largely because despite its weirdness it is absolutely pervasive. like, okay, here are some measures enacted by a nominally democratic organization — at least, much more... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:08 PM on March 26, 2024

I don't know what kind of children's book that criticism envisions

I tend to agree--agree hard, in fact--but I will say that yankeefog's picture book published last year, which I read this weekend, handles war, migration, Nazis, and ghettos... and it's sweet and moving. I'm not sure how ready the world was for critical children's books in the days of Babar, but there seems to be more room these days.

Wow-- thank... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by yankeefog at 10:27 AM on March 26, 2024

I find Adam Gopnik's defence of the Babar books (in Freeing the Elephants, linked above) quite persuasive: that the books should be read not as a celebration of the mission civilisatrice but as an ironic comedy of bourgeois life.
posted to MetaFilter by verstegan at 4:55 AM on March 26, 2024

Shakespeare shelf:

All’s Well That Ends Well-Done
Chicken Caesar
The Comedy of Eclairs
Ham Omelet
The Merry Wines of Windsor
A Midsummer’s Ice Cream
Much Ado About Stuffing
The Two Noble Kimchis
The Tempeh
posted to Ask MetaFilter by box at 6:19 PM on March 20, 2024

"Un jour, ma mère a mis ma Nintendo 64 en gage pour acheter plus d'alcool." Putain.

-Marquis de Sade.

vous ne vous rendez pas compte monsieur Zola, pour le cheval, c'est un aller simple.
posted to MetaFilter by clavdivs at 8:36 PM on March 25, 2024

Great article! I can see why he got hung up on The Dream (which is uncharacteristically short for the cycle), because it's actually satire--Zola is ribbing the medievalist tendencies of the French Catholic Revival. L'Assommoir is indeed terrific.
posted to MetaFilter by thomas j wise at 2:38 PM on March 25, 2024

It boggles my mind that "texting several times a week and offering advice and financial support" is considered highly involved amongst anglo-americans. In latine families if all you do is offer advice once in a while and help with some bills now and then, that's dangerously close to outright neglect.
posted to MetaFilter by oddman at 8:25 PM on March 23, 2024

As someone currently negotiating an older parent through a cancer diagnosis/treatment in the UK, facing a grossly underfunded and under resourced NHS; where we've waited months and months for "urgent" appointments and diagnostic tests, can't get answers, can't get treatment in the local area they're comfortable with but have to travel with them on very difficult public transport routes to big cities that scare and intimidate them, and deal with tired, fractious consultants who offer... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AFII at 1:18 PM on March 22, 2024

Excel 365 has easy-to-use stock market data functions built in. This is what I use to keep track of my portfolio in combination with manually entered info along the lines of what you describe.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by mullacc at 11:18 AM on March 21, 2024

vacapinta, have you ever read When Prophecy Fails? It’s a fast and fun read — a group of social scientists infiltrate some manner of doomsday cult and write about it. Like the most fun social science, the arguments weren’t watertight, but the images stayed with me.
posted to MetaFilter by eirias at 4:41 AM on March 19, 2024

I want more sex scenes in media. I want happy, loving people of all races and genders expressing their love and lust for each other in creative and exciting ways. I want media to reflect reality: sex is normal, it's awesome if done responsibly, and there is no 'normal' way to do it.

I want violence in media to be portrayed to the same realistic standards; it's rare, it rarely ever solves anything, usually fucks up the lives of anybody participating, and should be avoided... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MrVisible at 11:31 AM on March 17, 2024

Porn and sex work, both regularly used by lots of people, are never given any respect, so are vulnerable to having tons of hoops to jump through, making it a difficult industry to work in. This also goes hand in hand with the FOSTA/SESTA and KOSA acts that are basically censorship laws wrapped in "protect the kids" dressing, which resulted in an increase of sex trafficking--something sex workers warned about but nobody listened. Right now gumroad and patreon are also trying to ban... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by picklenickle at 5:51 AM on March 17, 2024

Also: holy shit everyone should see Lola (2023). Set in 1941, it's a bout a pair of sisters who invent a device they call the chronovisor that lets them pick up radio and TV broadcasts from the future. Initially, they use it to rock out to David Bowie and win at bets, but then they decide it will best be used to help fight the Nazis. Butterfly effects abound. Extra bonus fun: this is a found footage style film shot on vintage Bolex cameras.

Just look... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 12:01 PM on March 15, 2024

Animal Farm To Table

One Hundred Beers of Solitude

East of Edam
posted to Ask MetaFilter by It's Never Lurgi at 10:06 AM on March 15, 2024

A check and an appointment with a fee based financial planner.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Geckwoistmeinauto at 10:58 AM on March 14, 2024

This is why we need a US equivalent of the EU GDPR and privacy by design; with affirmative consent before collection and sharing and opt out as the default written in the law.
I do wonder if state laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act are being violated here.
posted to MetaFilter by interogative mood at 10:46 AM on March 12, 2024

To answer some of the "why" questions about some photo editing weirdness, there are different ways to edit an image, and one is by cutting, pasting, and blending things, or selecting and changing color, overlaying your own pattern, etc., and these are human interventions, but you can also select an area, and give the AI editing program some guidance for "generative fill," and in this situation it's the AI that tries to fill in what it thinks you want, based on its understanding of what things of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by taz at 6:48 AM on March 13, 2024

Am I the only one who thinks constant surveillance is horrifying?
posted to MetaFilter by joannemerriam at 6:43 AM on March 12, 2024

I do couldn’t have cared less about Kate’s health until this dust up. I do wish her a full recovery- it must be bad if they can’t get a decent real photo.

That being said I want to raise the glorious revolution talk and say that the House of Orange should just go ahead and take the whole UK. I love the image of King Willem-Alexander flying in a KLM plane full of militia members in Dutch golden aged dress. While Queen Maxima (Argentine by birth) screams “Malvinas... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by CostcoCultist at 12:33 AM on March 12, 2024

I loved seeing the Nike (Winged Victory) of Samothrace. I was with non-Classicist colleagues on my one and only visit to the Louvre, one of whom desperately wanted to see the Mona Lisa, so we ran (almost literally) through the Ancient Greek and Roman art on the way - the only things I specifically remember are the Nike, which I was expecting, and the Hermaphroditus (mentioned above), which I was not. Everything else was a blur. (The Mona Lisa was 100% not worth it, but my colleague was happy.)... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by lysimache at 3:39 PM on March 8, 2024 marked best answer

For the Louvre, for me the must-see is the Assyrian Museum and The Palace of Sargon II, which is absolutely crazy. My parents and I wandered around and stumbled into it and were completely astounded. It is at first incredibly beautiful to wander around it, and then second it's absolutely sobering to consider how French colonialism could literally excavate an entire fucking palace and house it in a basement? The Medieval Louvre is also super cool. I also recommend any of the Chinese art, because... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by yueliang at 10:20 AM on March 8, 2024

Coincidentally (I haven't watched Molly's video yet) I created my first Wikipedia page just the other day - after decades of just making minor edits.

I tried to follow the various onboarding guides on Wikipedia itself, and the experience was genuinely enlightening - a lot of people have clearly invested a huge amount of work and making that flow clear, while also strongly supporting Wikipedia's editorial values.

Finding citations to support... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by simonw at 1:24 AM on March 8, 2024

Check to see if you are eligible to belong to more than one library! Even if you're not close to it, their ebooks and audiobooks on Libby might be better or a good supplement to your local library's selections, and if nothing else will increase your chances for getting through holds lists faster. Here in Pennsylvania, for instance, most public libraries have reciprocal agreements, so in addition to my local library system, I also belong to Pittsburgh's. In New York State, the NYPL allows... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biblioPHL at 6:17 AM on March 7, 2024

One of the most important words to understand this piece of rulemaking is “regulatory capture”, where rulemaking bodies such as governments become controlled by whoever is making honkingly large piles of money at the time.

Basically, for the past 25 years American corporate interests and the interests of the American state have combined to form a fantastically soft environment for ‘doing shit with computers’. At first the American state didn’t... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The River Ivel at 10:22 PM on March 6, 2024

It's such a good movie and so full of Hitchcockian tropes - the ordinary person swept up in extraordinary events"is everybody but me crazy or lying or what?"initially hostile young people thrust together by fate who find themselves falling for each otherand many others.. It's not in any way technically his best film (you can plainly see the budget constraints in many places, especially the train and village shots at the beginning of the film) but it uses what resources it has where... [more]
posted to FanFare by Nerd of the North at 2:11 PM on March 3, 2024