MetaFilter

and then I realized that Metatalk is my local

Hugs, brother.
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 6:52 AM on February 20, 2012

Poop.
posted to MetaTalk by ColdChef at 8:54 PM on February 8, 2012

The Whelk: He better not ruin sweater vests for the rest of us, sometimes guys just want to look like Rupert Giles and not have people thinking he's a crypto fascist theocat werido. Some of us just like tweed and tartan.

Sorry, but I think you might be hosed. He's basically the bastard child of Mr. Rogers and the Taliban.
posted to MetaFilter by Mitrovarr at 10:22 PM on February 7, 2012

empath: "Are you offering to sell insurance on it?"

Absolutely not! That would require regulatory capital.

However, if you pay me $15 now, I will pay your friend $50 to settle your debt should you lose the bet. For a mere $15 more I will write a credit default swap so if your friend wins the bet and does not pay, I will pay you $50.

What could possibly go wrong if I hedge properly?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by wierdo at 10:00 PM on February 7, 2012

once he gave up the deliberate and tedious self-mythologizing

Which reminds of me of my favorite Henry Miller zing by Paul Theroux (who should know from self-mythologizing). Something like: "'You're so brilliant, Henry," 'You're so sexy, Henry,' 'You're so bad, Henry' everyone says in Miller's books, but no one ever says 'You're so full of shit, Henry.'"
posted to MetaFilter by octobersurprise at 10:28 AM on February 6, 2012

Good grief. If I wanted to read rRddit, or participate in their drama and discussions, I'd go there.
posted to MetaFilter by PareidoliaticBoy at 6:55 PM on February 3, 2012

First Gingrich, now Paul. Pretty soon we're going to have people posting on Metafilter about how David Duke isn't a racist, he's just a sociopath who panders to racists.

There is a difference, especially when you take into account that racism is a spectrum - every single white person who's ever used a racial slur isn't a card-carrying member of Stormfront. David Duke was an honest-to-goodness KKK Grand Whatever. Newt Gingrich has shown himself to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jhandey at 3:55 AM on February 2, 2012

My embarrassment comes not at all from the argument about the appropriation or misappropriation of Bradbury's title. I don't think I could really care less about that issue.

My embarrassment for us has to do with the unmoderated contempt for Doctorow for reasons I believe have more to do with pettiness on our part than for any misdeeds of his. We've teased and insulted him like school-children do, and we've done it for so long, far worse than any injury he ever dealt us.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by crunchland at 11:26 AM on February 2, 2012

That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Another might be to consider the amount of pixels we've devoted to hating this guy and the thing he's chosen to devoting his life to. But because he's sufficiently famous enough, we're all ok with it. I can only say that if I came across a page full of hundreds of comments telling me how much I suck, I don't know how I'd react. How would you?
posted to MetaTalk by crunchland at 3:19 AM on February 1, 2012

Malice, do a search on 김덕수 사물놀이 to find performance footage of one of the more notable Korean troupes for this type of traditional Korean folk music. Or just 사물놀이 for the genre of music.

Kim Duk Soo samulnori performance

The Kim Duk Soo troup also features in this performance by Korean modern rock band Jaurim
posted to MetaFilter by needled at 4:27 PM on January 28, 2012

Opening a bookstore is my retirement dream. I want to live above it and drink a lot. I think these things go with owning a bookstore.

Friends of mine keep encouraging me to do it now, but I think they are just spiteful and want to take away my retirement dream.
posted to MetaFilter by cjorgensen at 6:41 PM on January 28, 2012

It's pretty ugly, but from what I gather the appeal is all in the gameplay?

Once your mind adapts itself to the blocky visuals, it is a touchingly beautiful game. The first time you have time to watch sunrise from a safe place, or the first time you discover a torchlit underground waterfall, its pretty amazing. Minecraft has a specific visual language that you need to inhabit for a bit to understand.
posted to MetaFilter by memebake at 3:03 AM on January 27, 2012

From a QI episode, "Five percent of the world's population is American; twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners are American. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the history of the world. The rate is three time that of Iran, ssix times that of China. More than one in a hundred adults in the United States is in prison. One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is in prison."

There has been an explosion of the prison population... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Anitanola at 8:35 PM on January 24, 2012

I may be misinterpreting this, and if so, please enlighten me. But when G+ launched, there was a big hullabaloo about making people use their "real names". I don't. I mean, I use my first name, but not my last. Google has it, because I have an android, and because I have a analytics account and a checkout account, but I don't use it in my profile.

Google's policy on "real name" is problematic, in that I know I could lose my google+ if anyone... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dejah420 at 4:18 PM on January 24, 2012

For me, personally, it's "users can't opt out"--it's the same problem I had often with MS Office products. No, thank you, I don't want you to format my paragraphs for me; I want to make my own decisions. No, thank you, Google, I want "opt-in" not "opt-out". I don't want one log-in across all services. Fuck, I don't even want a log-in at all for most places I go on the internet. Take, for example. youtube. I don't post anything at youtube; I don't *save* anything... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by crush-onastick at 2:48 PM on January 24, 2012

charlie don't surf: but I didn't file a counter claim. I persued a retraction instead.

And in the case of people reproducing the site, I've used a cease and desist successfully before.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2012

Am I the only one who keeps hearing John Oliver from the Bugle/Daily Show saying "Oh PIPA!" in my head?
posted to MetaTalk by arcticseal at 12:12 AM on January 18, 2012

Fixed now, we had a cross-domain script problem for about ten minutes so it was a black box on everything but www.metafilter.com. Should be working now, and looks like this.
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 9:19 PM on January 17, 2012

stavrosthewonderchicken: "One thing I do wonder just out of curiosity -- which he may have talked about and I missed -- is why he decided to do it now."

He says that the rash of gay teenagers committing suicide recently - as well as being inspired by an It Gets Better video by a 13-year-old - were the reason he wanted to make a public statement.
posted to MetaFilter by Apropos of Something at 8:27 PM on January 17, 2012

Stavros (or anybody else that wants an intro to dubstep), listen to the following essential mixes:

Joker
Nero
Magnetic Man
Breakage
Skream
Kode9
Noisia
Dj Zinc
Caspa
Rusko

Just pick any of them at random. They're each two hours of mostly dubstep, though they tend to mix in a lot of music from other genres as well.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by empath at 6:26 PM on January 16, 2012

Stavros, the stuff I linked above are pretty good examples.

Clean production, original sounds, no overblown "drops".
posted to MetaFilter by erebora at 6:22 PM on January 16, 2012

All you need is lobe.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 3:49 PM on January 12, 2012

To say nothing of the actual wrongness and homophobia of this policy itself, which is uncanadian, it's the unfairness and meanness of this which is uncanadian. The abuse of good faith. 

And it's sickening how effective this kind of divisive politics is, riling up group against group, with no care to Canadian institutions or outcomes that most Canadians would find ethical, because -- at best these are externalities uncaptured by our political process, and at worst because... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ~ at 3:25 AM on January 12, 2012

Gamers like fours? This is a thing?
Naw, see, it was all like, cool n shit, people givin money to charity in nice whole chunks of dough. Ten here, a hundred there, people were just pop-pop-popping and donating. And then things slowed down, or something, and some dood was like, fuck this shit, imagonna donate a prime number or some shit like that. And then this other dood was like, whut the fuck, I gotta even this shit out. And then some other dood, or possibly the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by herrdoktor at 6:19 PM on January 11, 2012

Some of us are neither activists nor sheep. Some of us are moderately annoyed old goats. We take a stand by careful deployment of excess methane.
posted to MetaTalk by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:51 AM on January 11, 2012

Okay, so a few things to clarify here:

1. It seems clear from all accounts of this that he was workshopping his material. This means he wasn't getting paid for his performance, as has been implied above, and which he references in his response. He's dropping in, for free, and the people there get the treat of having a susprise performance from a comedian they probably wouldn't see otherwise. This is common to the point of standard for comedians, even the biggest ones.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Navelgazer at 1:08 PM on January 7, 2012

men are enormous segmented biomechanical things of unknown provenance, women are a rapidly changing set of geometric phosphors emanating from every surface
posted to MetaFilter by This, of course, alludes to you at 5:27 PM on January 5, 2012

I appreciate the deliberation and thought here, and the spirited defenses, so perhaps I should offer something more than my glib comments above. Yes, I do believe a white background would help the site -- appealing to new users in a way that might encourage them to stay and participate is a valuable goal that I think the site should aspire to more than it does. (MeFi is fairly extreme in its deliberate hostility to new users) Obviously, articulating that as "professional" is a weak way... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by anildash at 9:05 AM on January 3, 2012

Yeah, I'm put off by the mocking of his name. To my knowledge he has always been an helpful, good faith contributor here. Why are you all laughing at his name?
posted to MetaTalk by jayder at 6:06 PM on December 31, 2011

"That was an absurd amount of pushback to a relatively anodyne and reasonable suggestion. Metatalk's antipathy to any suggested changes is kind of ridiculous."

It wasn't the suggestion that was the problem, it was how the suggestion was made. And then he doubled down on the attitude, saying things like "And to think I wasted all that time studying propositional calculus" and " I'd submit that some of the people who are taking... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:26 PM on December 29, 2011

I guess I'll be the one to suggest that Louis CK isn't funny. He's a mechanism for an increasingly anxious and paranoid bourgeois consciousness to subtly explore its darker side.

I guess I'll be the one to suggest that even though you're trolling, your final clause here is such a stunning little black hole of anti-funny, such a Jim Belushi of pop commentary, that I may use it ad antidote the next time Louis CK gets me laughing so hard I nearly wet myself.
posted to MetaFilter by gompa at 11:42 AM on December 26, 2011

Don't know the airline, maybe Uzbek Air? Late 90s, Bishkek - Tashkent.

Yak-42, load through the tail. No reservations it is "festival seating" style. So everyone crowds and elbows to get the "good seats" (spoiler: there are no good seats).

There is no checked luggage. Well, there is, but the luggage you checked was just pawed and rooted through by the baggage handlers and then dumped on the tarmac beside the plane. You have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Meatbomb at 12:12 PM on December 20, 2011

Here's the one thing that I think is kinda sorta capital-w wrong about what you're doing, Matt: Stop inserting ads into the middle of members' questions.

Yep, you're right, and that's the big thing that I'm not entirely comfortable with, since I think it does make the site look pretty ugly, does look kind of tricky, and would be best undone. We'll start changing it back soon (we have to regenerate nearly 200,000 static files so it actually takes a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mathowie at 4:58 PM on December 20, 2011

Obit threads on metafilter are the worst kind of echo chambers. If they went away, I wouldn't even shed a dot.
posted to MetaTalk by found missing at 11:27 AM on December 19, 2011

Aw. Old enough to remember 9622.net. Those were the days. *sigh*
posted to MetaTalk by ColdChef at 7:43 AM on December 16, 2011

who the hell are you again?
posted to MetaTalk by jonmc at 5:03 PM on December 14, 2011

> Beer anytime is still ok, right? [confirmations only accepted, thank you]. Wine after 4 is harmless?

According to Berkhan, basically yes.
posted to MetaFilter by Listener at 8:06 PM on December 9, 2011

The worst part is that all this had made it impossible for me to enjoy Penn and Teller as stage performers, which they were great at.

Yes, Houdini debunked spiritual mediums. Yes, James Randi debunks spirit healers. That doesn't mean Penn and Teller have to debunk recycling, especially as they have repeatedly shown themselves to be lazy thinkers whose debunking technique seems to convince almost entirely of assembling cherry picked talking heads of the opposition who... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Bunny Ultramod at 7:33 AM on December 5, 2011

I'm sure the license on the test absolutely forbids any sort of republication of the questions

Yep. ETS (the Educational Testing Service) and the other people who provide standardized test that are part of No Child Left Behind [which they call Nickelby and I hate them for it] are fiercely protective of their proprietary stuff. I've been in a situation where I both taught test prep and worked as a test scorer for ETS.The very weird thing about the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 10:22 AM on December 5, 2011

Greetings from a long time reader, first time commenter. I became a registered user earlier today, and did a double take to see my own essay as a(n) FPP.

The piece is an update to my 2008 book on the Future of the Internet, available as a free read here and download here. There I used the brand-new iPhone as an example of a "tethered" technology, compared to its Apple bookend of the Apple II from 1977, the first PC available to a mass audience that didn't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by zittrain at 5:21 PM on December 4, 2011

Hey guys, several comments batched b/c i'm late to the party.

1. Matt runs a nice simple interview. Give me some rope and let me strangle myself. A podcast would be fun. We could do that sometime. Maybe in NZ?

2. Jessamyn was nice when we met in A2. She took my $5 in cash and then told me I must have actually snagged my nickname like 8 years ago. I hope she gave it to MF and didn't just use it to buy booze and silly hats. You guys are... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by CmdrTaco at 7:23 PM on December 1, 2011

Dear Americans:

You don't have to like the person you vote for. Really, you don't. Voting is not liking. You don't have to agree with everything they do. It's unlikely you'll agree with everything they do. Voting is not liking. Voting is saying which out of a set of choices you prefer. That's all it is. It doesn't mean you like, love, enjoy, wish good on, admire, or lust for someone. It's nice when you also feel that way, but it's not a requirement for voting for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by benito.strauss at 1:43 PM on November 23, 2011

I have my qualms with Obama, certainly. His let's-start-by-meeting-in-the-middle negotiating tactics have been supremely frustrating (though he seems to be getting past this). He could have done a better job selling health care reform. He has not gone far enough in dismantling Bush's post-9/11 security state. He hasn't done enough on global warming. There are, surely, things to criticize.

But when I hear anyone - liberals, or centrists, for that matter - going on about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by breakin' the law at 11:13 AM on November 23, 2011

And mildly related, your Korean language/culture note of the day: If you are in a disagreement with someone and you simply will not budge on an issue, and this is the hill you plan to die on and there's no way you're doing anything about it, the Korean equivalent of "Come at me, bro"+"I have no fucks to give" is "bae jjae," meaning "Cut my stomach open." It is a statement that depending on method of delivery or situation can convey hopelessness and despair... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kkokkodalk at 5:38 PM on November 23, 2011

This is what we can do, folks. Keep at it.
posted to MetaFilter by brundlefly at 1:32 AM on November 22, 2011

Leading social ethicist Gary Dorrien has written an article about OWS for The Christian Century, which is firewalled, but has a free Q&A accompanying it. Takeaways:

My chief impression is the one that I highlight in the article: I'm struck by the ideological, economic, racial and ethnic diversity of the protesters.... a great many people from nearly all walks of life are fed up with the system and with typical liberal attempts to reform it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dhartung at 1:10 AM on November 17, 2011

I was sort of expecting to hear chants along the lines of "YOU! ARE! THE 99!" when it came time to square off against beat cops. I sort of still am. Give it a try, OWS?

I've seen and heard it personally. I like it but it doesn't seem to be very effective.

I witnessed one Seattle PD officer respond to a direct, personal appeal with (and I quote) "No, I'm not like you. I'm proud to be a house... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by loquacious at 12:29 PM on November 15, 2011

Do you mean mewling or meowing, or is this one basass motherfuckin' cat?

One day in El Paso
The cops go into the crowd
Under a glaring bladder of light
And the music is so loud
And the tourists take their T-Shirts off
A busload of kids gives you the finger
Afternoon when the sidewalk's hot
And the shadow's too chilly to linger
Walk past damaged goods and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Durn Bronzefist at 9:53 PM on November 14, 2011

I'm starting to feel like there's something deeply wrong with our community. It may be an expression of how fucked up the world is in general these days, but there seems to be little but ill-feeling lately, punctuated by emotional outpourings which, while positive occurences, seem to me a sign of the out-of-kilter emotional rhythm of this place. I have now started avoiding many, many types of threads on the Blue because I know that they will inevitably devolve into vituperative arguments.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Kattullus at 7:05 AM on November 14, 2011

You godless heathens. Flash rocked. I WILL NOT hear a word said against it. You soulless apple acolytes. Newgrounds in its prime and YTMND and a gajillion stick fighter animations and lolz would not have come to be had we not had flash. So take your hatin ass off somewhere and play with your html5 applications somewhere else cause we be rollin here and its all about the SWFS.
posted to MetaFilter by vicx at 5:51 AM on November 9, 2011