MetaFilter

I recently went down the rabbit hole on couches. Yes, there is a lot of shit out there, especially in the DTC sector, but if you learn the terminology for the various options, you can know what to look for.

frame materials:
- Kiln-dried hardwood
- Laminated wood (5-ply, 7-ply, etc)
- MDF and other terrible conglomerates
- flexsteel and other unique setups

frame construction:
- corner... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grimp0teuthis at 7:59 PM on March 15, 2024

During winter when waiting at the bus stop I use my own feet to dig/stomp paths in the snow to the bus shelter and to the curb and to create an area for people to line up outside that is snow free enough that they can stand or walk there even if they have insufficient shoes and no boots. It's satisfying how big a space I can clear if I have to wait for ten minutes.

During slush and winter rain season I clear the snow so that the storm drains are not blocked, and in the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Jane the Brown at 12:10 PM on February 17, 2024

I have a short leaf rake and when it's been raining hard I'll take it on my daily walk and clear all the drains on my route.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fiercekitten at 8:01 AM on February 17, 2024

Now do calendars

Falsehoods programmers believe about time

(as some may know, "falsehoods programmers believe about X" is kind of a memetic blog post title for comments on the difficulties of interfacing with that pesky and messy Real World; I thiiiiink but am not sure the first was names, there are quite a few snowclones out there about networks, math, ... )... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by look upon my works progress administration at 6:44 AM on January 8, 2024

What turned the key for me on this was recognizing that the objectively right course of action is always (for me) to respect other people as full human beings who can, and are due the right to, take care of themselves.

Trying to spare everyone else harm is what I do with children. I find doing it with adults to be disrespectful.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 12:18 PM on December 16, 2023 marked best answer

He was an actual victim of cancel culture.
No he wasn't. "Cancel culture" is a new thing. That phrase was recently coined by some reactionary MAGA dickheads. "Cancel culture" did not exist at the time CBS (not known as a standard bearer for cancel culture) cancelled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. That show was actually cancelled in the original sense of the word that the new... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Don Pepino at 5:08 PM on December 27, 2023

Every year The Quietus list points me to more interesting new music than any other list.
posted to MetaFilter by HumanComplex at 1:00 PM on December 6, 2023

could you list them from best to worst pls
posted to MetaFilter by Klipspringer at 11:06 AM on December 6, 2023

I have a Google sheet of my relationships. I list each person's name, and then I have a column for the most recent time I interacted with them, and then columns for what that channel was (in person, text, phone call, email, etc.). I don't plan or schedule things using the list, but I'll look at it and notice who I haven't been in touch with for a while, and I'll ping them and update the spreadsheet when/if/how they reply.

Over time, I notice who "floats the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by OrangeDisk at 5:37 PM on November 9, 2023

Terry Pratchett + Neil Gaiman = Good Omens (fantasy comedy, with splashes of horror)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Iris Gambol at 10:41 AM on November 9, 2023

The Hitchhiker's Guide the Galexy series - weird sci fi
posted to Ask MetaFilter by gingerjules at 6:27 PM on November 8, 2023

0. Don't assume it's a cold. Test for covid. More then once.
posted to MetaFilter by Dashy at 4:16 AM on October 24, 2023

Looks like those goons from the Egg Council have infiltrated the Blue!
posted to MetaFilter by 2N2222 at 9:54 PM on August 28, 2023

I know we're always lamenting the loss of RSS and webrings, but what I don't quite understand is why we don't go back to it. The tools are still there.

With RSS, the secret is, it never left. Google Reader was killed (KILLED!!) a decade ago, and that created a media narrative that RSS was dead. But lots of sites still secretly support RSS! It's a default part of Wordpress. Even now, get yourself a good feed reader (I use Newsblur, thanks to Chrysostom... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 7:07 AM on October 19, 2023

This will be a very useful article to send to people. The number of times I've run into people twitter users who insist that being on twitter is essential and doing anything else is social and commercial suicide. It's just not true, at least for the vast majority of people. It's certainly not true for people in the sorts of academia or jobs I'm talking to - a minor sociology journal isn't getting anything meaningful out of being on twitter. But ask the people whose job it is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dysk at 10:45 PM on October 12, 2023

Routeshuffle (previously on Metafilter)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Syllepsis at 11:19 PM on September 23, 2023

Wouldn't it make more sense just to say, "We're a very small restaurant so we reserve seats, not tables, and if you come solo there's a chance a stranger will be seated at the table with you. Is that all right?" If it's such a super-fancy expensive gourmet experience place I doubt the people who want to go would be turned away by that. Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see why that isn't the immediate solution here.
posted to MetaFilter by kyrademon at 5:59 AM on August 14, 2023

I know it's pretty cliche at this point, but daily sunset walks have really made a difference for me. There's something about keeping a commitment to myself, and getting better acquainted with my neighborhood that helps fight the evening blues.

I try to take a picture of at least one thing along the way that makes me smile. I hope this helps!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Space Kitty at 6:13 PM on August 28, 2023 marked best answer

Also - often, when I am going out to a restaurant, I am usually doing so alone. And it is neither because I am a "sad lonely loser" nor is it because I am a pampered gourmand. It is because I am a person who is hungry and just wanted to fucking eat out, just like any one of the other people in the damn restaurant.

The fact that I am single does not negate my BASIC FUCKING HUMANITY.
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 3:40 AM on August 14, 2023

In my experience, local independent bookstores are generally happy to special order whatever you want
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Jacqueline at 4:24 PM on August 2, 2023

I defer to the others on recommendations, but I would actually suggest simply reading through allowing that feeling to be present. There are other layers but it can be distracting to think of Moby Dick as being a book that "needs to be studied and understood" rather than experiencing it naturally. Contemporary readers would likely have gotten the same sense of "wait, is this..?" and prompt further wondering.

I read it once and thought it was funny and... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by BlackLeotardFront at 10:39 AM on July 24, 2023

Moby Dick is a great and fascinating book. The language of the book, as I'm sure you've noticed, is almost Biblical in its force and grandeur. This isn't really just about whales, or is it?

Ahab's Rolling Sea
is an interesting non-fiction book on its own. The author travels around, talking to oceanographers, biologists, museum curators, etc to try and set the Natural context for much of Moby Dick. I recommend this highly as it fills in a lot about what was... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by vacapinta at 12:19 AM on July 24, 2023

It's a bit old-school in this day and age, but the Norton Critical Edition is pretty good.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by box at 6:49 AM on July 24, 2023

I love this question! There are some things my parents and grandparents did for me growing up that I do for my son, and will continue to do throughout his childhood:

1. Always pick him up from school/ activities on time - I'll be waiting for him when he gets out
2. Celebrate end-of-school-term, academic milestones, achievements that he's really proud of himself for, i.e., milestones other than birthdays, by going out to dinner
3. Apologize if I've... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Everydayville at 3:33 PM on April 3, 2019 marked best answer

This was the first film score I ever purchased, from the ludicrously overpriced 'import' section of Tower Records. Still absolutely phenomenal, and it was a wild moment when I instantly recognized a snip of the Doll's Polyphony being used in Boots Riley's "I'm a Virgo".

Seems like a lot of musicians I love have been building off of this score recently as well - BLVCK CEILING's 'kaneda' starts with a classic loop of the original character track and then mixes it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by FatherDagon at 12:05 PM on July 18, 2023

Toronto does deserve a professional ice hockey team.
posted to MetaFilter by saturday_morning at 1:03 PM on July 7, 2023

Many of the feeds I read would only display a short opening in the feed and to actually read the full article still required to you to click on a link to go to their website where they would show you all the ads anyway.

RSS is just a protocol. It's not guaranteed to allow you to skip over ads and bypass paywalls. It serves up whatever the feed author wants to serve you. You can make the same complaint about email and browsers.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by meowzilla at 2:01 PM on June 30, 2023

I think the key insight in this article which is never really articulated but which shines through very clearly to me, is that at the time Google believed it was a company that only made rational decisions based on data, when it was in fact a cult of personality where the only products that were allowed to thrive were products that could claim to be the brainchild of a top exec or one of their favorites. What Reader needed wasn't numbers or features. Reader needed a patron.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by potrzebie at 8:00 AM on June 30, 2023

I asked a very similar question a couple years ago and got some great suggestions.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Automocar at 4:53 PM on April 12, 2019

I am pretty deep into this world (I do the Advisory Circular/sky circles bots, and GPSJam, and that's my discovering-secret-FBI-aerial-surveillance presentation linked), and my take is a bit different. I'm certainly worried about the future of ADS-B Exchange, but I was also worried about its future before this. I think disconnecting your data feed might be a bit rash, and actually hurt the journalists and researchers like Dictator Alert and others.

The current situation... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jjwiseman at 9:49 AM on February 1, 2023

I would subscribe to this mastodon bot.

...

I might make this Mastodon bot.
posted to MetaFilter by Pronoiac at 9:56 PM on February 3, 2023

As far as good resources I really like the mission and some of what the Good Men Project has done but they seem to think they need to be a content farm and have gotten very diluted as a result. I think there's a space for a more longreads- or nautilus-style contemplative project that focuses on quality over quantity.
posted to MetaFilter by pahalial at 9:56 PM on December 9, 2015

But here's something MLB really needs to fix: if you're a Canadian baseball fan in Vancouver, you can't watch the Blue Jays on MLB.TV because it's blacked out.

As a fellow Canadian baseball fan, we've been forced into a choice where we can spend $120 a year to watch just the Blue Jays or spend $150 a year to watch everyone BUT the Blue Jays. I suppose they thought people would spend $270 to watch both the Blue Jays and everyone else but now I just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Notorious SRD at 8:51 AM on April 6, 2022

Meanwhile, baseball is the only sport I can think of where the arena, i.e. the baseball field, does not have a standardized size. Do any two outfields match in MLB?

No, and it's a wonderful thing. Teams are built around their parks and it means that you can have two very successful teams that are structured to execute completely different strategies on the field.

I'm a big baseball fan. I'm a fan of the pitch clock. I think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by synecdoche at 8:36 AM on April 6, 2022

The reality is that the rules are going to have to change to create a more watchable product because the players have changed physically, strategies have changed to exploit that, and the result is a game that takes longer, has fewer balls in play, and is generally less interesting.

I saw Mike Schmidt (who yes, was a great player) complaining that "in his day" they knew how to hit against the shift. Mike, in your day the shift meant the shortstop sliding... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 7:03 AM on April 6, 2022

Feed an AI the career of Vin Scully and you could have an infinite supply of these.
posted to MetaFilter by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:37 AM on January 21, 2022

Kind of wish they'd gone for the 'Cleveland Rocks' instead.
posted to MetaFilter by Kikujiro's Summer at 8:32 AM on July 23, 2021

YYYY YY
HHHHH HHHHH YYY YYYY
HHHHH HHHHH PP PPPPPP YYY YYY
HHH HHH PPP PP YYY YYY
HHH HHH AAAAA PP PPPPPP PP PP YYY YYY
HHH HHH AAAAAAA PPP PP PP PP YYY YYY
HHH HHH AA AA PP PP PP... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mazola at 2:36 PM on July 14, 2021

"What do you do?"
"I work for the state and county governments, and I spend a ton of time fishing/quilting/trying to teach my dog sign language! What do you YOU like to do?"

IE redirect to something you actually want to talk about. You are shutting down the conversation by saying your job is boring. Say something positive, ask about them: conversation executed.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by chaiminda at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2015

I stopped regularly watching baseball a while ago for two primary reasons:

One is that MLB's ridiculous blackout rules make it almost impossible to watch the team closest to me (if you consider 300 miles "close" but the major reason is that the game became static.

Specialization is rampant, three true outcomes has become the order of the day, LOOGY makes the innings drag as pitchers swap in and out.

One of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by madajb at 11:39 AM on November 13, 2020

Wake me up when they introduce promotion and relegation.
posted to MetaFilter by Cardinal Fang at 4:19 AM on February 13, 2020

"Having a safety meeting" was a euphanism with my wife's coworkers to go smoke pot...
posted to MetaFilter by Windopaene at 3:44 PM on February 1, 2020

Things that have worked for me:
- Early morning workouts. I HATE getting up early, but it was much too easy to not do it in the evening. Way more Good excuses.
- Got my workout outfit ready the night before and placed in the bathroom. Changed right into it after waking up and peeing.
- the hardest part: just getting up when the alarm went off. No lying in the dark thinking and hesitating. No snoozing. Just off and up. What helped was sleeping with a partner.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by like_neon at 9:43 AM on January 12, 2020 marked best answer

Who buys two baseball caps every time they go to the ballpark?...There's 81 home games

Wear 81 hats at once. Rotate each hat 4.5 degrees from the one before, glue them together, then you have a spiral staircase miter.
posted to MetaFilter by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:25 PM on December 27, 2019

It's really, really painful to let go of the good things about a relationship, even when you know that the bad things are deal-breakers and ending is for the best. You know that this is universally true, that's why you asked us, right? So I'd say, first step is, accept that it's painful and probably will be for a while.

I think one of the things that is most searing about breakups is that they can press all our buttons--they can activate all our deepest fears, and the... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Sublimity at 3:48 AM on October 14, 2016 marked best answer

It is pretty grating when people avoid answering the question in the way that some have described above, and instead answer a different question I did not ask. It's just rude, and always appears to comes with a judgment that I am some kind of limited, stifled person who needs enlightening.

Just answer the question and if your answer is not that interesting to you, that's okay. Segue into a more interesting thing, as suggested above (e.g. "I do government filings for... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by girlpublisher at 10:50 AM on September 4, 2015

The actual work is boring and its impact vague, sure. The trick to this is to connect it to something more accessible or universal, perhaps with an example.

"I draft and file corporate filings with state and county governments. For example, whenever a company does BLAH, they need to file that with BLAHBLAH for BLAHBLAHBLAH reasons. All of that comes across my desk. I'd like to say it's action-packed but I'd be lying to you. Of course, if you need help parsing fine... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by milqman at 8:29 AM on September 4, 2015

Neil Young fans in the '90s weren't real into Social Distortion, either.

In 1997, Wu-Tang Clan dropped out of their slot between Atari Teenage Riot and Rage Against the Machine partway through the tour.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by box at 1:39 PM on August 26, 2019

> with the largest drops in Toronto

I usually go to a couple of Jays games a year, and while I generally enjoy them I wouldn't want to be in charge of trying to entice casual fans to attend games featuring a lousy team in a cavernous, personality-free stadium* where even crappy beer costs over ten bucks and everything else is similarly overpriced.

* which, to be fair, is extremely easy to get to and does have nice views of the CN Tower if the dome is open
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 10:45 AM on July 29, 2019

No mention of Tal's Hill, an actual hill in the outfield of the Houston Astro's Minute Maid Park? It made for some great plays and embarrassing bloopers. They flattened out Tal's Hill in 2015 but the memories live on: mostly of annoyed outfielders that not only had to sprint across the outfield to catch a fly ball, but then they had to climb a damned hill.

I'm all for having variety in ballparks - it's one of the things that makes the game fun -... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Gray Duck at 2:00 PM on May 9, 2019