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Are there other science fiction awards or ways of sorting recent titles?

The Clarke Award is a juried award that picks some really interesting stuff, and if you don't mind a long list to sort through, the Locus Recommended Reading List is reliably very good. The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize is very new, and given to a work of "imaginative fiction" rather than science fiction per se, but I like their choices so far.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jeanne at 12:30 PM on February 15, 2024

Israel has been explicitly found to be taking actions that are potentially genocidal, by the international court that literally rules on genocides.

It's not anti-semitism to:


point that out
be horrified and disgusted by it
point out that Israel's government has been explicitly pursuing the annihilation of the Palestinian people for literal decades, a fact that has been so saliently obvious that people have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 4:56 PM on January 26, 2024

Female-coded tasks are primarily routine and indoor: laundry, cooking, cleaning, caregiving. There is always something to do, day in and day out. Routine tasks are relentless. You might be able to order pizza and let dishes pile up for one day. But much more than that, and there is going to be a mutiny in your home. Indoor tasks also require a high level of cognitive labor. While you’re folding laundry, you’re also thinking about your shopping list. While you’re bathing kids, you’re... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by atrazine at 6:36 AM on August 19, 2022

Nthing nouvelle-personne and yellow candy.

In an ideal world: Attach the brief to the invite, but assume no-one will read it. Re-structure meetings to begin with a quick review of priority requirements - you could list the 5 most important, you could give the room the first 5 min of the meeting to review the brief. Invite them to write (sticky notes?) any missing requirements they identify in this first pass and during your presentation. Let the team know that... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rrrrrrrrrt at 10:41 PM on June 16, 2022

Yeah, a 43-year old who does something like this is a dick, no matter what kind of sad story he's got going on. If he's going to work and otherwise keeping the basics of his life going, he can send you a text, even if he can't handle a conversation. Depression etc is serious, but it is not a license to treat other people like crap. You get to be angry and are under no obligation to wish somebody like that well, at least not for now. But think about the giant selfish-prick-sized bullet you've... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rpfields at 3:24 PM on May 2, 2022

There is a definite trans-Atlantic difference in "excuse me".
In the USA it is thrown out whenever you are about to impinge on someone's space. It's rude not to say it.

In the UK it is kind of "get out of my way" and it's rude to say it, so people avoid saying it wherever possible - they'd rather just give you a look or wait for you to realize you need to move.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by w0mbat at 3:56 PM on April 4, 2017

I think there's also a difference not noted here between a slow fade and like, the silent treatment. If someone doesn't really want to hang out with another person any more, they don't have to, and they can start refusing invitations or cancelling plans until they are happy with the current level or until their feelings change. Maybe now you only see each other in crowds. If the person on the receiving end of the slow fade feels similarly, if they aren't wanting to hang out... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Lady Li at 12:04 AM on April 18, 2021

"Favorite" button MASHED
posted to MetaFilter by Harvey Jerkwater at 10:53 AM on June 12, 2017

tl;dr: I don't know that this is uncommon. Marriage of an ex is one point where even whatever stubborn holdout hope for an against-the-odds reunion is hanging around in your heart somewhere has to give against reality. If your experience is like one of mine, that might be the point where really moving on starts.

A while back I found out that an ex got married... five *years* after we'd cut all contact. I was still messed up for at least a week,... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by weston at 12:06 PM on April 14, 2013

I hate the show a photo and tell me who you like study. Relies on the usually unstated assumption that what people say about these things translates into actual preference in the wild.

I understand this, but I think it's nice for somebody somewhere (a scientist, even) to straightforwardly say that women actual have physical, sexual preferences in general-- that it's not just men who look at hip-to-waist ratios and go !, but that women also appreciate.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by stoneandstar at 6:28 PM on April 8, 2013

Update: By far, the best solution he found was a monthly postpaid plan from Virgin (http://www.virginmobile.ca/vmc/en/plans/smartphone.html). For $50/month, no credit checks, no contract, and includes 500mb data per month. He just needed to bring ID and a credit card and he was set.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by exquisite_deluxe at 8:46 PM on July 3, 2010

Is it time for a recipe yet?

HOW ABOUT SOME SUPER QUICK AWESOME GARLIC SPINACH SOBA NOODLES

You will need to get yourself:

- some soba noodles
- some olive oil
- some garlic
- some baby spinach
- some salt
- some red pepper flakes
- a wedge or block of decent Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- an... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Nothing... and like it at 8:10 PM on May 13, 2010

I am both appalled and amused that MeFites even know what Twilight is.

Are you kidding? It's the perfect media storm of meta. You have entire websites devoted to Twilight hate and collecting mostly-fictional stories about provoking crazy interactions with Twilight fans. You have both the science fiction and comic book fanboy media bitching at every opportunity about yet another violation of the boyzone. And to cap it all off, you have the MSM punditry... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by KirkJobSluder at 10:19 AM on November 18, 2009

I use the Internet and bookshops, and have never heard of this "brand".

Reasonably well known in the UK - nnot everywhere is America.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 5:55 PM on November 14, 2009

I think my experiences have been too varied to say that I've just been lucky that I've never been assaulted. My attitude and the way I carry myself surely must also have something to do with it (many studies agree).

I know you have only good intentions, but that, right there, seems to say that when I was eight and got my ass grabbed in a gift shop it was because I was carrying myself wrong. Or that now, when I walk down the street, guys are yelling at... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by hydropsyche at 8:39 AM on November 9, 2009

Plus, the Law Lords sound like evil Dr. Who villains.
posted to MetaFilter by ooga_booga at 12:04 PM on August 3, 2009

For those of you that liked this, check out the researchers who took over the Torpig botnet for a while. Their paper is a fascinating read even for non-techies. (Torpig has been around since 2006 and their 10-day hijack found 70gb of data and 10k credit cards numbers.)
posted to MetaFilter by bhance at 4:02 PM on June 15, 2009

I wonder if this is a signpost on the road to purely-digital media? I wonder what it says about the relationship between an author and his audience, which has typically been tied to a physical delivery medium, albeit one toward which many readers have grown extremely affectionate?

Maybe there's a debate about proscriptive grammar or a Simpsons quote or a story about Neil Gaiman that will shed light.
posted to MetaFilter by donblood at 5:00 PM on June 16, 2009

What's with the headings on every paragraph?

A peculiar British thing, if I may be so bold to speak as an Australian. Viz magazine takes the piss out of this perfectly, if you ever happen across a copy. As the [satirical] article progresses the headings get more and more obscure and tangential.
posted to MetaFilter by uncanny hengeman at 7:38 PM on June 16, 2009

Dude, she invited you to spend the weekend alone in a cabin in the woods. Of course she's interested in you. What you do you think is going to happen up there? Scrabble?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by ga$money at 9:02 AM on June 8, 2009

It is awesomely bizarre in a James Bond kind of way that the restaurateur who goes only by "Mr. Chow" has not only armed gaurds in his mansion but a holding cell to put people in.
posted to MetaFilter by The Straightener at 11:51 AM on June 8, 2009

Everybody kills Hitler their first trip.

Really? I'd kill Paul and leave Christianity as an obscure Jewish sect that never evangelised to Gentiles effectively.
posted to MetaFilter by rodgerd at 12:32 AM on May 11, 2009

But if you kill Paul, who will bring balance to the Force Beatles?
posted to MetaFilter by ooga_booga at 12:44 AM on May 11, 2009

We've spent so long drilling into dude's heads LISTEN, IT CAN BE DIFFICULT FOR GIRLS TO COME, THEY MAY NOT COME FROM INTERCOURSE ALONE, MANY NEED A SPECIFIC TYPE OF STIMULATION THEY'RE USED TO SUCH AS RUBBING THE CLIT OR USING A VIBRATOR, SOME HAVE A REALLY HARD TIME COMING, etc, but of course dudes are supposed to come at a drop of a hat if someone casts a sidelong glance at their dongle. Pfft. Don't worry about it, homeboy, you're totally normal.

If you want to come... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Juliet Banana at 6:00 AM on May 9, 2009

You know you're a mefite if...you notice that in tiny little ways, you've changed in the past few years. Your world has changed. You're listening to music that is made by people you know, and these people you know, you've never really met, but you know them. You know? And you count them as friends. You refer to them by username or real name or you just say, "This girl I know..." without saying how exactly it is that you know her. And you know about places you've never been--never... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by ColdChef at 7:01 PM on May 4, 2009

Pony request: Spider FPPs should only be allowed prior to 4 pm.
posted to MetaFilter by The Deej at 10:34 PM on May 6, 2009

It's really a shame. I got to play the game and it was awesome. You can see ever coarse stiff little hair on the pig men and they don't sweat because pigs don't sweat but if they did they would glisten and when you fired a rocket at them the sweat would blow off them and in that little droplet you could behold the who environment hanging there upside down in the smoke. There was this alien. Man you got to see it. It was like a crude dude and really macho and it was probably like 4 stories tall... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by I Foody at 5:04 AM on May 7, 2009

I limited myself to only 140 characters here. Nobody seems to have noticed. #fml
posted to MetaTalk by allen.spaulding at 9:46 PM on May 6, 2009

I think we're thinking that if your meetup had <5 we'll reimburse up to $50, >10 then you get $100...

Um, uh, why, no--this isn't a meetup of twenty! It's ten meetups of two...
posted to MetaTalk by Sys Rq at 3:41 PM on May 5, 2009

We could do it arms-race style. We'll pay for the largest tab. And only the largest tab.

Ignore my well-meaning associate.
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:52 PM on May 5, 2009

I'd prefer a 'which city has the highest tab' challenge.

We could do it arms-race style. We'll pay for the largest tab. And only the largest tab.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 2:51 PM on May 5, 2009

Reminder: It is considered the height of etiquette to establish that doing that is ok before actually attempting it.

Yes, obviously I was not advocating an ambush.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rokusan at 10:40 AM on May 6, 2009

When masturbating, upon what do you ejaculate?

A girl.

Or, in the absence of that, the shower floor.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by rokusan at 9:00 AM on May 6, 2009

Excellent! Thanks for the statute cites, everybody!
I'm actually planning an attorney training event about how to handle juvenile criminal record expungement cases, so I need some adorable and sympathetic examples of teenage crime. After all, if Ferris (and his friends) had been successfully prosecuted for all the things they did it would have been such a tragedy.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by steinwald at 1:47 PM on April 25, 2009

what i like about silly threads like this one is you think oh, but the mods will show up and ruin everything! and then cortex stumble in and everyone goes silent and then cortex goes heyyyy i brought some tequila!!!! and yay the party explodes like boom and then when everyone's passed out on the lawn jessamyn pulls up lowers her window and lifts her sunglasses and says, we have some rules here you know. and we stammer sooorrry muuumm we'll clean it up we swear and she goes good, well carry on... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:29 AM on March 25, 2009

I think shmegegge and others began touching on this point earlier, but I think that one thing that is absolutely critical to viewing games as art is to consider the medium they are played on. Games are rarely timeless, very few people come back to titles from years ago, just to run through them again, because there are usually new titles in the franchise capable of being played on the newest and slickest hardware.

There have been some amazing games over the years, but if... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by quin at 1:02 PM on April 8, 2009

jessamyn: "Did anyone think it was a little weird that just because Obama doesn't like beets, they won't plant any in the garden."

I don't have many good things to say about Bush the First, as you might imagine.

But I'll be at least a tiny bit sorry when he passes because he once said...

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Joe Beese at 7:22 PM on March 19, 2009

god, my mom called my brother and I by our wrong names so often it's a miracle we weren't accidentally left in the car at some point (maybe we were and she never 'fessed up).

I don't have kids, but for all of you drawing cellphone/wallet=baby analogies, think of this- imagine if you were diligent and always carried your cellphone on you, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when your spouse has it. and you drop it off every weekday for a few hours for daycare, but this all... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Challahtronix at 8:07 PM on March 7, 2009

Good heavens, Potomac, it's never too late for kissing!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Casuistry at 3:55 PM on February 13, 2009

I think it happens to some extent, obviously differing a lot from male to male. Most of the time I see a woman eating a banana or whatever, I don't think OMG BLOWJOBS!!! But occasionally I do.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by number9dream at 6:40 PM on February 21, 2009

A friend of mine, in drunken rage and despair, once punched through a double-paned window, and used one of the larger shards to carve patterns in his upper arms that required a night's stay in the ER and intervention counseling.

This is a worse idea than that.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Mayor West at 5:27 AM on March 3, 2009

Classic miscommunication. He wanted to be involved in taking the pics, but oh, you already have some pics, taken by some other guy. Oh. Yeah, they're nice, sure.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 6:19 PM on March 2, 2009

...and I'll be sad if it folds.

It always has. It always has.
posted to MetaFilter by gman at 6:30 PM on February 24, 2009

The video at the website has some great, awkward moments. At the 8 minute mark there is the face-palm realization that kids are probably going to look up 'masturbation' on the Internet after seeing the shirts. At the 10 minute mark they hilariously interrogate some proper white grandma about her masturbation history.

But seriously man, if that video is supposed to discourage masturbation it is doing a piss poor job. It's full of hot young black girls... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dgaicun at 9:08 AM on February 25, 2009

Pam brought a giant crab one time for dinner, not thinking they would need a crab cracker, and Robert spent that evening making a mess of it on the floor with a can opener. It would be one of her favorite memories.

Whereas for me, it just reminds me of the time he made a mess of his best friend on his cell floor with a speaker wire for a garrot and pencil that he plunged all the way into his eyball. But then Robert has never written me sensitive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:30 AM on December 4, 2008

Also, I'd like to thank baby Jesus for this thread. I am stuck in the house today with a bad cold and really thought I'd have to do something terrifying to occupy myself like watch The Young and the Restless or some shit like that. Now I can just obsessively refresh this thread and wallow in my own irrelevant outrage instead. Yay!
posted to MetaTalk by lysistrata at 9:08 AM on February 23, 2009

This reminds me of the time that Garfield totally ripped off my comment about loving lasagna and hating that stupid fucking dog.
posted to MetaTalk by quin at 8:23 AM on February 23, 2009

Two elderly Jewish men are sitting on a park bench, chatting of this and that. One says to the other, "Hymie, you know, ever since I retired I've found the days seem longer and longer. I don't seem to be able to find a way to fill the day."
Hymie pats his friend on the knee and nods sagely, "What you need, my friend, is a hobby."
"A hobby?"
"A hobby. I've got a hobby."
"What's your hobby?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jofus at 2:02 AM on December 9, 2008

If you want epic hallucinations, get up out of an armchair really quickly.
posted to MetaFilter by turgid dahlia at 5:13 PM on February 5, 2009

My heart goes out to you and I am sorry for your loss. The following is what I plan to read (or have read) when my mostly atheistic mother passes. It is perfect for her and you may find it comforting considering your own beliefs. I have no idea who wrote it so I can't credit anyone:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, I do not sleep,

I am a thousand winds that blow

I am the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by forensicphd at 2:54 PM on January 1, 2007