MetaFilter

So in summary -
- she should be flattered that her work was ripped off
- you've never seen her work get ripped off
- she was ripping people off herself anyway
- AI is so clever is doesn't count as ripping people off, anyhow
- in the possible case of anyone getting directly ripped off, they deserve it because... they can only be ripped off... because they must be unoriginal?
posted to MetaFilter by ominous_paws at 11:07 AM on January 16, 2024

My wife has been calling me a "rave dad" (despite my not having any children and having not attended a proper rave in at least a decade) since forever so I guess I need to have an opinion on this.

I... don't know. Philosophically I think my ideal of a rave is something that isn't about the drugs or the music but about a community that by design lacks formal hierarchies, and that's not really something you can have when you have parents and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Parasite Unseen at 1:51 PM on January 16, 2024

Just walk out - you can leave!!!
posted to MetaFilter by scolbath at 6:08 AM on January 15, 2024

It's a million times easier, cheaper and more convenient now

I mean, yes, but also no? I could navigate 182837 different services, trying to find out who purveys what, when, and for how much, if it's even on offer any more, and then just fork over monthly to some cross-section of those services. Or I could hop around on them, trying to game the system in a futile hope of min-maxing my expenditure on the massively fragmented system.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by majick at 11:18 AM on January 15, 2024

I hold a belief that if no one pays, eventually there is a tier of things that just won’t get made.

That is true, but if people do keep paying, the current streaming economy is likely to continue, which doesn't seem like a good thing either.
posted to MetaFilter by The Manwich Horror at 9:41 AM on January 15, 2024

As one of Plex's co-founders, I have to agree with Gabe here. We created the platform in 2008 to solve the usability and distribution issues with video content. It was always our point of view and experience that people who loved media so much to go to the trouble to torrent and run a media server also are willing to spend money to get content legally if the experience was reasonable. In the early days, you couldn't even get most of the content streamed to your house at any price.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ill3 at 8:55 AM on January 15, 2024

This is fascinatingly English in a way I think only non-English people will see; the author jumps straight to gender and some kind of elaborate Darwinian metaphor when what is obvious, so so obvious, is that all these jokes are ways of performing class. He even notes that 'middle class men' are the most positive (though the jokes are fascinatingly double-edged and ambiguous as only the English middle class can be).

The findings may also be relevant to the great... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:10 PM on January 14, 2024

Tell Me No Lies, your American myopia is showing.
posted to MetaFilter by sagc at 9:21 AM on January 14, 2024

I think that’s the world for people who actually don’t belong to any country, which countries make an incredibly painful situation. You have to be someone’s property to live in this world.

it’s amazing what the internet has to offer. For instance, today I learned that enjoying all the benefits of citizenship means that I am owned by something? The US federal government I guess? Maybe the state department? Maybe my state since they issue the birth certificate? Who knows.
posted to MetaFilter by MisantropicPainforest at 6:46 AM on January 14, 2024

What is the word for people who don’t want to belong to any country?

One version is "stateless"

...it's something you definitely don't want applied to you, if you can avoid it. Ask the Rohingya. Or the Palestinians.
posted to MetaFilter by aramaic at 9:22 PM on January 13, 2024

This discovery was anticipated in Charles C. Mann's excellent book 1491. He describes a debate amongst scholars about the human population in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and their diseases. The big population school argues that indigenous populations had transformed much of the American landscape to suit human needs. Then diseases collapsed those societies. European colonists arrived just as nature itself started colonizing abandoned fields. Some of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by SnowRottie at 1:28 PM on January 14, 2024

These are the days of miracle and wonder
posted to MetaFilter by 4th number at 1:06 PM on January 14, 2024

It's hard to pin down the particular kind of sadness these stories give me. Maybe they illustrate the sadness of believing that you can create unchanging perfection? Perfect doesn't really exist. And if you do create it, it will not last after you're gone.

In my personal experience, audiophiles are some of the worst because they never stop fiddling with their goddamn knobs long enough to just let me listen to great music. The best system in the world will never give me... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by emjaybee at 1:31 PM on January 13, 2024

a certain subset of stylish guys—Andy Warhol notably among them—haven’t concerned themselves with correct timekeeping for decades.

In the future, everyone will be famous for an indeterminate period.
posted to MetaFilter by box at 7:32 AM on January 13, 2024

Dude doesn't need autotune

The quote I've heard is "T-Pain didn't need Autotune, Autotune needed T-Pain."
posted to MetaFilter by Navelgazer at 5:40 PM on January 11, 2024

I mean, you CAN. It just makes you a bad person when you do.
posted to MetaFilter by rikschell at 5:30 AM on January 11, 2024

Like the author, I don't have a lot of patience for anyone justifying Clarence Thomas' corruption. But I also don't have a lot of patience for people who are attacking the notion of paying the people in the highest court in the land enough salary that they can pay for their own vacations with their peers

Come at it from the other side, tax Clarence's friends so hard there's barely a difference anymore.
posted to MetaFilter by Dysk at 11:19 PM on January 10, 2024

How is this a cautionary tale, in ANY way?

You ever been a worm dude
posted to MetaFilter by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:27 PM on January 10, 2024

So it's sort of a gigantic hard-on for a genetic ruler who can dominate everything and steer humanity for untold generations.

Authoritarianism taken to the Nth degree.

Herbert was very clear in numerous interviews that it was meant to be the opposite of this: a cautionary tale against charismatic leaders.

As for the "white savior" trope, I'm not sure that contemporary racial categories like... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artifice_Eternity at 6:08 PM on January 10, 2024

I think he tired of it and wrote it off as a bad experience very soon after finishing it if not before finishing it, which is a shame to me because I am very solidly in the “this is an awesome movie” camp, even if the very end is dumb.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 3:17 PM on January 10, 2024

I think I'm weird in that I actually liked David Lynch's Dune.
posted to MetaFilter by jmauro at 1:24 PM on January 10, 2024

...characters that aspire to one day become cardboard...

After reading the third book, this comment is funny
posted to MetaFilter by NoMich at 4:35 PM on January 9, 2024

Unfortunately, the astrophysical system referred to in by title is an example of the four-body problem. So that title is invalid.

Revise and resubmit.
posted to MetaFilter by The Tensor at 4:28 PM on January 9, 2024

I liked the beginning of TBT but it's an intensely silly and tendentious series with characters that aspire to one day become cardboard in some kind of happy, better-written future
posted to MetaFilter by Sebmojo at 4:14 PM on January 9, 2024

This database approach seems like it will focus attention on the Justices who actually disclosed their financial interactions, unlike Thomas who just didn't. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and all that.
posted to MetaFilter by anthill at 11:52 AM on January 7, 2024

They should add pseudo-filings for all of the gifts that Thomas should have disclosed, with big asterisks.
posted to MetaFilter by jedicus at 12:09 PM on January 7, 2024

I am a Swiftie, and moreso, I am a Gaylor. I think Ms Swift unambiguously packs her songs and especially music videos with queer coded messaging. Frequently, for a long time, and constantly. It's not just a random rainbow in the background, it's pretty much everywhere. And she self admittedly likes hiding messages in everything from liner notes to covers to outfits. Taylor Swift herself encourages digging and finding meaning. She's a self proclaimed mastermind. It's not a simple argument that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jacen at 9:30 AM on January 7, 2024

All right, NYT; let’s see you publish a similar editorial about someone who actually wields real power in this country. Perhaps a senator from the south.
posted to MetaFilter by TedW at 6:13 AM on January 7, 2024

The best thing you can say about these predictions is that they stopped including Amy Webb. Every year they're the most embarrassing part of being an American journalist.
posted to MetaFilter by Four String Riot at 9:02 AM on January 4, 2024

Why does this article begin with laying the fault of this at Biden's feet, and then repeating that charge repeatedly, when the real culprit was bad messaging early and repeatedly in the Trump administration about the pandemic for nearly a year before Biden even came into power?

That early messaging caused all the true damage. If Trump had stood up as a bastion of Best Practices And Good Empathy Toward Others for the 11 months he was in charge of this, the outcomes of not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 4:57 PM on January 4, 2024

shut up spending an evening refining a prompt is exactly the same as toiling for years to master the techniques and materials that allows one to execute a competent oil painting
posted to MetaFilter by logicpunk at 6:42 AM on January 3, 2024

The pop-punk accent comes from SoCal punks trying to sound like Berkeley punks trying to sound like London punks trying to sound like New York punks.

Metafilter: we were all always just posers
posted to MetaFilter by team lowkey at 3:57 PM on January 3, 2024

No true science fiction is not capitalist and exploitative
Hell of a Scotsman you've beamed up here!
posted to MetaFilter by SaltySalticid at 8:07 PM on January 2, 2024

Way back in 2012 Morello had to write an essay explaining to apparent fan Paul Ryan that he was "the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades."
posted to MetaFilter by usr2047 at 8:41 PM on January 2, 2024

So it sounds like a big part of the reason this is so stressful for you is you feel like you haven't had to deal with it before. It's like the only downside of extraordinary good employment luck -- when that luck does finally run out, you have no coping mechanisms in place. I would argue that if you can't sleep, are having eczema flare-ups, and think you will no longer be able to work well...that's not "low-level" stress. That's pretty high-level stress. Glad to hear you will be... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:29 PM on January 2, 2024 marked best answer

a paintbrush isn't a person, and nor is a camera. obviously they're different, but is the difference as material as it feels?

Yes.

you're still manipulating a tool, to produce a result.

You're moving the goalposts. Your first question was how is the system different than a human artist. Now it's "well, they're just tools manipulated by humans". Which is it? Paintbrushes... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by star gentle uterus at 5:40 PM on January 2, 2024

Jack Kirby, Jim Lee, and John Byrne are there, but no Greg Land, so whoever is choosing who to steal from at least has a modicum of taste.

Also no Rob Liefeld, which is somewhat confusing, because that would at least partly explain any difficulties with generating images of feet.
posted to MetaFilter by notoriety public at 5:39 PM on January 2, 2024

chavenet posted this to the other AI thread: Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI.

It's not artists who are going to cause trouble for the AI bros; it's megacorps invoking trademark law.

I mean, hoovering up art in order to regurgitate it for profit is immoral, but pissing off Disney is unwise.
posted to MetaFilter by zompist at 4:36 PM on January 2, 2024

In the end it comes down to being a “boy’s club” which I mean in a way that says there’s a clique that keeps you in or out.

There must be in-groups whom HR protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom HR binds but does not protect.
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 11:35 PM on January 1, 2024

Different industry, different time, different legal context, but: just-sold U.S. Steel is a long-term view of what it looks like when companies like today’s tech giants operate as monopolies.

Interesting article, particularly since it seems to tell the story of a company that operates as if it's a monopoly, but is in fact, not a monopoly: competitors chip away at its dominance for decades with innovations. 35% market share by 1941 is respectable, but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by 2N2222 at 2:06 PM on January 1, 2024

Migurski this article is magnificent. Thought exercise: FAANG becomes US Interwebs. 🤔
posted to MetaFilter by apathy at 12:20 PM on January 1, 2024

The ruins of G.T. are the final stage of its existence. Clearly this was a site of complex activity for hundreds of years before it reached that stage.

Because these people are described as pre-agricultuural hunter-gatherers, it is my opinion that it started as a place to process the proceeds of hunting the massive herds migrating past. If a single seasonal event can feed a community for the upcoming year, there is plenty of time and resources available to improve the place.
posted to MetaFilter by Repack Rider at 10:03 AM on January 1, 2024

I’ve read about Gobekli Tempe before, but not about these enclosures. They’re fascinating.This article has photographs of the T-shaped pillars and their carvings.
posted to MetaFilter by bq at 6:31 AM on January 1, 2024

It just kills me that Rolling Stone gave Anil Dash the epitaph of "won a Webby". That's the award program where you pay to be considered for recognition. It's the fucking Whos Who of the Internet.

I suspect Anil's Lifetime Achievement Webby is actually not quite so awful, possibly a sincere award. OTOH it was given to him in recognition of his early work in what became NFTs. Anil and Kevin McCoy's early work on this crypto stuff was... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 2:38 PM on December 31, 2023

stuff on the Internet should be hard to find and really should require navigating from stuff you already know via webrings, hand-maintained 1993-yahoo style directories, blogrolls and the like.

If you're wondering why the corporate Internet was able to take over so quickly, this sort of arrogant gatekeeping bullshit is Exhibit A. This idea that it is somehow "better" for people to have to put in unneeded labor in order to engage with and in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 10:11 AM on December 31, 2023

It's possible to answer "What was the Civil War about?" with other than "slavery."

That is absolutely incorrect, unless you want to say that the Civil War wasn't about states seceding.

Most states wrote and published a declaration of causes for seceding.

State and number of words before slavery is directly referenced in their declaration of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:29 AM on December 28, 2023

mostly hoping the overreach fucks him over in Florida somehow.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:48 AM on December 25, 2023

This is not the upscale I wanted.

Pray they do not upscale it further.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:10 AM on December 24, 2023

Two other games in this vein are

Cross Bronx Expressway, with perhaps the most surprising "advertisement" for a board game you'll ever see here.

Votes for Women, with a review here that mentions Holland's The Vote.


(Disclaimer: I haven't played these)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Slothrup at 6:41 PM on December 23, 2023

Jesus man, they're moving the descheduling through the system and now Biden has taken unilateral action to help people convicted of nonviolent offences. Take the win when you get it. Sometimes good things can happen.
posted to MetaFilter by Justinian at 4:00 PM on December 22, 2023