MetaFilter

On both sides.

I love that this comment suggests crocodiles are evolving to make even more painful bites.
posted to MetaFilter by mittens at 3:41 PM on November 24, 2023

My grandfather had the same haircut in the 80s that he had in the 60s and pretty much had until he died until 2007, just with a little less hair and a little more grey.

Now, Johnny Unitas — there’s a haircut you could set your watch to.
posted to MetaFilter by AndrewInDC at 9:30 AM on November 24, 2023

I mean, I'm still wearing some of the same clothes I had from 20 years ago, so

old man's wardrobe
posted to MetaFilter by phunniemee at 9:22 AM on November 24, 2023

The claim that older generations had trendy haircuts or makeup styles is laughably false. No open over 30 in the mi-80s went around looking like Adam Ant, Boy George or even Duran Duran (obvs there were some small exceptions, but these looks were not common in the more mature crowd).

This is the peril of writing about past fashions when you're 23 and - I bet - were not, eg, a historical fashion major. What this person means is that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Frowner at 8:04 AM on November 24, 2023

Two things that I think are key:

1. Selfies: The records we have of 80s fashion are largely of people dressed up to go out or celebrities or other wealthy people. The records we have today are for more likely to be, just, you know, folks doing stuff. If you go back and look through your own photo albums from the 80s if you have them, I guarantee you can find more than a few photos of people hanging out in jeans and sweatshirts that they could haul out and wear today and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jacquilynne at 7:06 AM on November 24, 2023

Governments not building, not maintaining, or selling off or demolishing affordable public housing for much of the past 40-50 years has been a major contributing factor as well. Like, why get bogged down in inefficient, roundabout, arcane tax or interest rate levers to try to cajole private capital into doing something that they fundamentally view as against their interests? Just build housing. It’s a human right.

A smaller side factor is the precipitous drop in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eviemath at 11:02 AM on November 23, 2023

“Defective Accelerationism,” Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, 22 November 2023
posted to MetaFilter by ob1quixote at 1:55 PM on November 22, 2023

They didn't just fire all the women from the board, they replaced them with Larry Summers. Jeffrey Epstein's buddy Larry Summers. Mr. Girls are Bad at Math.
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 8:16 AM on November 22, 2023

Start acting as if you have one minute max to communicate your point. Share only who, what, when, and how, as needed for the particular point you're making.

"We need to market the teapot more persuasively with soda drinkers. Billboards on beaches this summer is the current proposal."
"You're responsible for getting the teapot budget to the team by the 15th. Please distribute hard copies too."
"I will focus on... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by cocoagirl at 5:13 PM on November 21, 2023 marked best answer

sigh okay i'll stop commenting over and over again and get to work or some shit now, but:

> Without supplies of Egyptian papyrus, your scribes have to become picky about what they write on parchment,

and also for works from deeper antiquity the answer to the question of whether or not a work survived is often the same as the question of whether or not it ever made it to egypt, since the drier a place was the more texts... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:25 AM on November 20, 2023

The "people have to have more kids so they can pay into the pension/retirement system" argument really lays bare how much of a pyramid scheme capitalism is.

I hate capitalism as much as the next person but capitalism has nothing to do with this. It's inherent to being human that old people cannot survive through an extended old age if birth rates go down below a certain level. This is as true in your favorite socialist / communist /... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MiraK at 2:21 PM on November 20, 2023

I'm wondering if the socialized retirement plans created free loading behavior. One was financially better off retiring, having few kids, or zero kids, and hoping your investments grow because the population would grow and you can retire. But when everyone began to do that strategy, the economy struggles to grow because there isn't a growing population and so retirement funds can't find a place to invest to. So you have a bunch of childfree elderly people in the system, but who should... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by eekernohan at 1:22 PM on November 20, 2023

Migurski, is that a modern monetary theory idea?
posted to MetaFilter by Selena777 at 10:45 AM on November 20, 2023

We call this “Roko’s Bassoon.”
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 6:28 PM on November 19, 2023

How does Paul get away with being so rude about flavours he doesn't like? The point of the show is not to make Paul's favourite bakes, he sounds like a toddler, "ew that's weird." I also would have loved to have tried the dim sum sausage roll and the green curry inspired flan from last week. Dan is too polite (and too much of an adult) to sass back at Paul. I would kind of love to see him pull that with Tasha.
posted to FanFare by Rora at 6:35 PM on November 17, 2023

I’m shocked at how few people in here are fessing up to entering their organic produce as conventional at the self checkout.
posted to MetaFilter by BuddhaInABucket at 6:05 AM on November 19, 2023

Self checkout can be pretty good. It's the staffing cuts that make these places awful.

But you know who has really nailed self checkout? Fucking Uniqlo. Everything in the store is labelled with an RFID. Next to each checkout is a nice bin. You just dump everything you want to buy in the bin all at once. Two seconds later you're presented with the list of items and the bill. You pay the bill and you're done. No scanning, no bagging, nothing.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by phooky at 4:49 AM on November 19, 2023

A lot of the external media chatter around "how could a weirdo board do this to such a vital company?!?!" is starting to rub me the wrong way (e.g., Kara Swisher's repeated digs at the board as 'underexperienced'). No one made tech titans plow billions of dollars into a subsidiary of a non-profit explicitly organized for the public benefit over private profit. The governance structure of OpenAI has been totally public for a long time now. It sounds like the board... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rishabguha at 7:50 PM on November 17, 2023

Any Americans that think they've seen some big flags should take a vacation down to Mexico. Then you can see what big flags look like.
posted to MetaFilter by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 7:18 PM on November 15, 2023

I mean, it makes sense that the Trump machine would start planning early re: staffing the gov't since last time it took them a ridiculously long time to do so. And it also follows that they would avoid the evil clown Giuliani types and go for people who were effective and persuasive and smart and free from moral restraint. So I don't find this shocking in the least. That's what a presidential campaign machine looks like.

We just need to, like, not vote him in.
posted to MetaFilter by grumpybear69 at 8:53 AM on November 15, 2023

I do understand being annoyed by the scolds tho - but they rarely talk in a way that represents the interests of those who are blind/low-vision

Yeah. I mean, I spent hours reading a number of resources about alt text to develop a sense of best practices, partially because I wanted to do it right, and partially because I sensed that the advice I was reading conflicted so much that I knew we were well into received wisdom territory, with a generous... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pudding Yeti at 7:38 PM on November 14, 2023

The $130 cable is Thunderbolt 4 which is different protocol that shares a connector with USB C but it does nothing for you if you're just connecting a USB device and does not transmit power any better. They're not substitute products.

The images are pretty but the explanations are cringeworthy speculation. The section about what the Thunderbolt chips are doing is so garbled it's barely worth picking apart.

IANAEE, but AIUI the chips are in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by grahamparks at 2:01 PM on November 14, 2023

Boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime.
That's why
I rightsize on company engagement and appropriately saturate my target
posted by Slackermagee at 10:18 PM on November 13
posted to MetaFilter by Harvey Kilobit at 9:29 PM on November 13, 2023

During the first few major Twitter exoduses there was a shit-ton of gatekeeping, a lot of it explicitly anti-black.

How so?

I'm not the person you asked, but I definitely remember a lot of black users being yelled at for not put content warnings on posts about their experiences as black people -- and particular black women -- because they were "too political" or because they generally made people uncomfortable... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by asnider at 2:11 PM on November 13, 2023

Everything said about the fediverse is true, yet I stay on my instance for two things: first, that it’s local to my country and society with all the good and bad that goes along with that.

Second, that the lack of discoverability effectively stops the habit, endemic on Twitter and becoming more common on Bluesky, of terrible people performing to be today’s main character, with crowds piling to say ‘get a load of this fucken guy’.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 1:19 PM on November 13, 2023

a hydraulic worldview

This is a beautiful phrase.
posted to MetaFilter by Dip Flash at 1:07 PM on November 12, 2023

There's no beating it.
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 1:10 PM on November 12, 2023

the "mathematical double-stroke" characters that resemble regular lowercase letters are, according to unicode, lowercase characters indeed.

𝕚 𝕒𝕞 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕨𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕘 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕨𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕘
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:30 AM on November 12, 2023

AKA The Greatest Shot in Television. No second takes allowed!
posted to MetaFilter by autopilot at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2023

8. Ow! My balls!
posted to MetaFilter by glonous keming at 6:50 AM on November 11, 2023

7. Man getting hit by football
posted to MetaFilter by Phanx at 5:57 AM on November 11, 2023

Speaking of a McSweeney's vibe...

Production Rider for Kate Kershner’s Holiday Visit Home Tour
posted to MetaFilter by charismatic megafauna at 2:31 PM on November 10, 2023

"this isn't your mother's mean girls" is an obscenely lazy tagline and yet it's also god-tier millennial social media bait, i hope some tiktok tweenfluencer got paid seven figures to come up with it without even looking up from her phone
posted to MetaFilter by Gerald Bostock at 5:20 PM on November 9, 2023

I think a post that talks about something as big, as varied, and as discussed across philosophy and science for centuries as the topic of panpsychism could probably use more than a list of articles and videos by and about the same one dude, at least for flavor or context.
posted to MetaFilter by tclark at 12:53 PM on November 9, 2023

"Having Rights Still Bewilderingly Popular" - Alexandra Petri, WaPo.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Navelgazer at 8:04 PM on November 8, 2023

Speaking of cron; I have a sky camera (current sky views! star trails! Time lapses!) which has a couple tasks that run in relation to sunrise, sunset, and solar noon. There's a utility `heliocron` that will take a command and wait until the astral event before firing.
posted to MetaFilter by caphector at 6:22 PM on November 7, 2023

→ CRON JOBS

I already do that: cron fires up sunwait, which waits until twilight, then triggers my custom IKEA control system. None of it talks to the internet.

I do use my phone to turn on my office light, though. Not through an app. The switch is partially blocked by a bookcase and the phone is a handy way to reach the switch
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 5:30 PM on November 7, 2023

I WANT TO DO THIS THROUGH CRON JOBS AND NOBODY CAN STOP ME
posted to MetaFilter by grumpybear69 at 1:39 PM on November 7, 2023

> Looking into it more, it seems like the zwave-ui-js integration that HA uses is actually just a standalone application for managing ZWave devices, which is, like what I need. So I may do away with HA altogether and just run that application and maybe a few cron jobs to send commands over to it.

This is not a dig at you, but as a certified Clueless Old Person I cannot believe this is a paragraph about technology used to turn porch lights on and off.
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 1:14 PM on November 7, 2023

The Jet Song scene from West Side Story
FADE IN:

EXT. BACK ALLEY - NIGHT

Underneath the glaring neon lights, the JETS, led by RIFF (17, the cool leader), have gathered around a trash bin fire, flickering shadows dancing on their faces. The backdrop, a towering, half-constructed SKYSCRAPER.

RIFF
When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way!

Suddenly, a massive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by freelanceastro at 11:35 PM on November 6, 2023

The scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the apes learn to use bones as weapons
INT. AFRICAN SAVANNA - DAY

A group of APES huddle together, their primal eyes fixated on something off-screen. A WHIP PAN reveals a BONE, half-buried in the dust.

QUICK CUT TO:

An APE, the biggest among them, stares at the bone. It's a CLOSE UP, his eyes reflect the bone and a spark of curiosity... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by straight at 11:03 PM on November 6, 2023

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

Gods yeah. It was way harsher to be a marginalised person online in many ways. Especially when there was so much victim-blaming of the "well you shouldn't have reacted to the trolls" variety.

See also: the Boyzone years of this website.
posted to MetaFilter by creatrixtiara at 7:28 PM on November 6, 2023

I been blinded. all my sight gone.
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 3:37 PM on November 6, 2023

Public defender here. Gun laws put us (as in, PDs) in such a strange position, because while we are, at least in my office, left-of-left, we are also in general trying to put ourselves at the forefront of pushing gun cases to SCOTUS to get the laws struck down.

I'm not going to say I've never seen a white defendant looking at a gun charge, but I can definitely say that out of my usual load of 70-80 cases, a third of them at any one time are Black kids charged with gun... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by TheProfessor at 11:33 AM on November 3, 2023

> Hanlon's Razor applies?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

1. It can be both.

2. Sounds like something a malicious person would come up with when stupidity can get you fired but premeditation can get you jailed.
posted to MetaFilter by AlSweigart at 10:27 AM on November 6, 2023

See also: literally every deal like this that governments make. In the case of this highway voters "saved" a few bucks in the short run, which helped the then-current provincial government win another term (because at heart we're a populace of hayseed rubes who love nothing more than to be fleeced by conservative governments), but of course in the long term it wound up being a massive loss of revenue for the citizens of this province and a "value generating monster" for the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 8:54 AM on November 6, 2023

My son read TKAM during his freshman year (he is now a junior). This year, he is taking AP Literature. Instead of reading Their Eyes Were Watching God (which the teacher had used for years) they read Frankenstein because his teacher was afraid of crossing SF 496.

Honestly, this discussion is classic Metafilter: a competition to point out all the ways that something good isn’t, actually, perfect.

Meanwhile, the fascists are burning it all down.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Big Al 8000 at 5:21 PM on November 4, 2023

The episode and show have been fine. Not great, but fine.

What's preventing greatness, IMO, is that I'm living in a post Spider-man:Across the Spiderverse and Everything Everywhere All At Once world. Those two movies absolutely nailed how to tell a multiverse story and they did it in different ways. But one thing they both absolutely excelled at was making the main characters come alive in ways that Loki is... [more]
posted to FanFare by Brandon Blatcher at 10:15 AM on November 3, 2023

I'm glad the article talked about the chaotic rollout. In the US, the first two years of vaccination were all single payer public health. You went and got a shot and it was effectively free and bureaucracy-free. The federal government covered the cost. Now we're back to the terrible private healthcare system where you personally, the pharmacy or clinic, your insurance, and the state and federal governments are all involved in arguing about who pays and how much. It's made getting a shot way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 12:06 PM on November 4, 2023

It's weird - In October I saw multiple articles about how the latest vaccine rollout had a lot of hiccups and many people found it hard to get. Now we're barely into November and suddenly it's the public's fault that so few people have gotten it??
posted to MetaFilter by Greg_Ace at 11:48 AM on November 4, 2023