MetaFilter

The Socratic dialogues are way more fun once you realize that, rather than engaging in some profound search for truth, Socrates really just enjoyed fucking with people.

SOCRATES: Tell me then, Plato, would you agree that a foolsayswhat?
PLATO: ಠ_ಠ
posted to MetaFilter by zippy at 2:06 PM on September 10, 2015

klangklangston!
posted to MetaTalk by MiguelCardoso at 2:16 PM on August 27, 2015

Honestly, the things you have to do to get on MeTa these days...
posted to MetaTalk by MiguelCardoso at 1:34 PM on August 27, 2015

I got drunk with JonMC once. He really cared. We were there for each other. Beam shots, beer backs, butt rock on the jukebox, awkward convo. If we weren't both spoken for, I'd swear we were this close to gettin it on.
posted to MetaTalk by Joseph Gurl at 11:13 PM on August 24, 2015

The people they lump into "anti-GamerGate" on the whole did not pick a side, they just reacted sensibly to a coordinated harassment campaign by trying to stop it and educate people who didn't know what was happening.

Yeah, I'm not really anti-GamerGate so much as anti-death and rape threats, anti-harassment and anti-internet mob.
posted to MetaFilter by Gygesringtone at 10:48 AM on August 19, 2015

I'm right at this moment in the early stages of building a Thing that is a response to the kind of issues people are talking about here...

Godspeed, stav. Let us know when you need beta testers.
posted to MetaFilter by harriet vane at 4:07 AM on July 31, 2015

Nevin, if you think Canada hasn't changed in the last 10 years, you're not paying attention. Most public institutions are being quietly gutted while everyone's distracted by new Economic Action Plan signs. There's a reason the Anyone But Conservative idea took hold out east.
posted to MetaFilter by peppermind at 11:00 AM on July 29, 2015

Chretien, just like Harper, was an autocrat.

I'd argue that he was not, in many important ways. He allowed his cabinet to be a cabinet, for ministers to make decisions that mattered, according to their specialty. Martin is the prime example of this, but Manley, Whelan and even Copps were allowed to make their own policies, speak to them and publically defend their own judgement in ways that the Harper government does not allow.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bonehead at 10:36 AM on July 29, 2015

I would say that the Conservatives are sort of an interesting mix of Liberal and NDP policies

you're going to have to show your work on this one
posted to MetaFilter by Hoopo at 10:38 AM on July 29, 2015

So, this is exciting: this is the debut episode of a new podcast we're going to be putting out in addition to (very much not in lieu of) the existing monthly "Best of the Web" MetaFilter podcast. Because of the nature of our podcasting workflow on the server side, and because this has all come together so quickly, the simplest thing to do is have the podcast episode post itself double as the introduction, so I'll talk about it right here.

I've put together this episode,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:53 AM on July 21, 2015

Propodeans!

Argh, that gives me claggy boak!
posted to MetaFilter by turbid dahlia at 8:00 PM on July 20, 2015

The only magazines we took in our home was (either Look or Life, not sure which one, and not sure it matters) and Ebony, after my father got all super into the civil rights thing in the 1960s. (I'd be willing to bet that our house was the only house in our zip code that got Ebony delivered to it.) Also no doubt some religious magazines came our way, because Jesus.

But no Esquire magazine, no Esquire bachelor life modeled for me.

In fact, no... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dancestoblue at 2:31 AM on July 17, 2015

I think they should just have gone with: we're banning the following subs and contributors because fuck em. Here's a used tissue from reddit employee toilets if you want to cry for Coontown.
posted to MetaFilter by humanfont at 4:58 PM on July 17, 2015

And it's very easy to wander into that territory if you're chanting "change or die" and have your eyes fixed on membership numbers and such.

It should be clear that I am not coming from such a shallow place. I've tried to be very clear that I want MetaFilter to continue to offer its central value and stay true to its central character. If we have "begun our decline," what is your counterproposal? That we be content to watch... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Miko at 6:26 AM on July 16, 2015

Stars glow like bright wounds on indeterminate forms, nested in the essence of space.
posted to MetaFilter by Oyéah at 8:11 PM on July 9, 2015

RUSH getting drunk on wine at a hunting lodge
posted to MetaFilter by philip-random at 9:47 AM on July 9, 2015

I can see the awesomeness, but I also see a perfect example of Hunter S. Thompson's observation: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
posted to MetaFilter by Cool Papa Bell at 7:31 PM on July 8, 2015

I'm 48 and I think everyone my age was exposed to Rush via older brothers, their own or somebody else's, who had their rooms in wood paneled basements with loose stacks of LPs on the wall-to-wall carpeted floor. There was also usually a giant wine carafe filled with spare change and smaller wine bottles with wicker bases that had candles in them that were lit to try and cover up pot smells. Oh and black light posters. They might have been good times. I am not sure. It was so long ago I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by srboisvert at 11:38 AM on June 17, 2015

dirigibleman, chainlinkspiral, are you two on MeFightClub?

also, share some vids, chainlinkspiral, I've basically exhausted Manley's stuff and I'm looking for some more good ones!
posted to MetaFilter by barnacles at 11:00 PM on July 2, 2015

I read the two deleted threads (well, third too, but I didn't see that until much later and it didn't have any comments), and am kind of disappointed in how both those discussions and this one have gone. It's a shame to lose a decent FPP after 100 comments, but I understand why it got axed after we couldn't right the skid into the shit.

This has also been a pretty disappointing MeTa, where the two putative sides seem to routinely burlesque the others' position into... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by klangklangston at 4:44 PM on June 16, 2015

Nora, I appreciate your clarifying comment. My own reading of digitalprimate's comment wasn't that he was determined to stay ignorant, but that he was acknowledging that the complexity of the dialog was beyond his ability to keep up. Maybe it's reassuring to say "well it only took me five seconds to google a term, why is that so hard?", but I'd like to think -- being familiar somewhat with digitalprimate as a human being -- that it's more than just being able to decode terms. If a... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by boo_radley at 2:35 PM on June 16, 2015

I believe in the New York Times having some really stupid op-ed columns. I also believe that religionists' continued insistence that atheists MUST have some religion-surrogate is a clear indication that they don't understand the basis of their own beliefs.
posted to MetaFilter by Kirth Gerson at 12:28 PM on May 31, 2015

As there are multiple causes, I don't think there's one simple solution.

There are, and the problematic behaviour seems to be self-reinforcing as well. Stavros has mentioned MeFightClub a couple of times in this thread, which I find to be a wonderful haven from everything that's bad about online gaming culture.

I inhabit a couple of the more obscure corners there, and here's what my experience has... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by FishBike at 8:30 AM on May 25, 2015

I will talk IMMENSE trash while gaming,

This may be deleted as a derail - obvs, this is in a different league to what's happened in the OP - but seriously dude, why do you do this????

It is so unpleasant. So unpleasant and horrible. I'm sure you wouldn't talk that way to someone you didn't know if you were in a room or sharing public transport with them? If you spoke that way in any refereed sports match... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by smoke at 9:49 PM on May 24, 2015

All true. I should have said that the reason non-human actors like corporations and states have amoral/immoral goals is not because they're instrumentally rational, and that a moral human would also need instrumental rationality to be effective—but it sounds like you agree with me there.
posted to MetaFilter by Rangi at 9:38 PM on May 19, 2015

Tender sensibilities? Onlyconnect has been advocating for pro-feminist, anti-boyzone changes since days when "boyzone" and "I'd hit it" were actual things, not just metaphors.

LURK MOAR
posted to MetaTalk by klangklangston at 7:01 PM on May 19, 2015

I do not like this new knives-out version of MetaTalk, where nobody seems to remember anyone else from threads five years ago and we jump down one another's necks for making a mistake or, in many cases, our own misreading of a thread. I was against this version of MetaTalk a dozen years ago when it was called "self-policing" and we joked that only the strong survived and made it out of the MetaTalk thunderdome.

I know that many people here feel that people... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by onlyconnect at 5:40 PM on May 19, 2015

I think your concern is genuine based on your participation in the thread

Wait is this what we are now? Show your feminist cred badge before you speak or you may be a troll?

My concern is genuine. I've been a member since 2002, and a lurker before that. I've been fighting the good fight against boyzones in MetaTalk for over a decade, and have linked to a seminal boyzone thread in my profile for nearly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by onlyconnect at 12:13 AM on May 19, 2015

Had to wait a whole day to watch the finale but it was beautiful.

One of the last things Don says in his call to Peggy is something like "I stole a man's name and didn't do anything with it". He's wondering if his life as Don Draper was a mistake, if he would have been better off if he had just lived it as Dick Whitman. This has been his central turmoil for the entire series and it comes to a climax in this scene and his resulting panic attack.... [more]
posted to FanFare by rocket88 at 10:27 PM on May 18, 2015

I don't like how you look in your comedy videos, either.
posted to MetaFilter by YoungAmerican at 5:39 PM on May 17, 2015

For me, I always thought there was a story behind criminal behavior. In general though not always, it seems there's some kind of story to most of the people I know who have been most abusive. I think,if anything I had a harder time understanding those who do feel a powerful sense of rage at criminals and a desire to harm or execute them. I did see such people as "deliberately" cruel in a way that I gave more of a pass to criminals for. With criminals, "there must be a reason"... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by xarnop at 3:13 PM on May 16, 2015

My Gen-X brain still thinks that it must actually be En fliq

Your grey, wrinkled Gen-X brain may well be correct to think that. There's the French slang flic or flique (cop, pig, fuzz), whence is derived the transitive verb fliquer (to be under police surveillance, or to have someone under police surveillance, or something like that), whence fliqueur, etc., etc. For... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Sys Rq at 6:46 PM on May 14, 2015

So we gotta let shitheads be shitheads, and the rest of us have to continue to undertake the ongoing work of pushing back against shitheadery?

Topics that are lightning rods for the weird underbelly of contemporary cultural and social shit are going to bring out obnoxious or objection comments from a mixed crowd sometimes. We live in a world that's deeply imperfect and in which people have a wide variety of opinions about stuff even if a lot of folks... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:55 AM on May 14, 2015

So we gotta let shitheads be shitheads, and the rest of us have to continue to undertake the ongoing work of pushing back against shitheadery?

Yes. Forever. That is the social contract. It's exhausting, and it's unfair, and it is the human condition. There will always be assholes. Always. There will never be a time when all the assholes have been reeducated, or removed, or silenced all their lives while there are still enough people around to hold... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:48 AM on May 14, 2015

otzi the fucking iceman had tattoos

OTZI: It means "strength" in Kurgan
FRIEND: Dude I can read Kurgan. It means "dumbshit who will get shot by an arrow and die of exposure"
OTZI: God dammit
posted to MetaFilter by prize bull octorok at 11:51 AM on May 13, 2015

The patriarchy did not ruin your tattoo. The world does not have to praise and applaud your thoughts or actions. People do not have to indulge your personal narrative.

If they think it is a tramp stamp, they have the right. If you don't think it is a tramp stamp, you have the same right, just as I have the right to think nothing proves the phrase about a fool and her money more than getting one anywhere on your person. People flip when there is a tiny dent on their car,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Alexandra Kitty at 8:13 AM on May 13, 2015

Now that's some good advertising, stavrosthewonderchicken. I just joined Mefightclub because I'm an avid Elite:Dangerous player (when family obligations allow) and playing with a bunch of Mefites sounds great.

Note: This whole topic may indeed give me tingles in the downbelows.
posted to MetaFilter by Ridge at 7:02 PM on May 11, 2015

I didn't get any sense of inappropriate editorializing in the FPP

Making an FPP on Mother's Day with the line "It's a taboo in our society, but some mothers are just completely toxic." is tone deaf in addition to the rest of it. Definitely GYOB territory.

There's a sense that some people seem to have that MeFi is where you respond to the internet, speak truth to the oppressive "This is how to be a person"... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 2:43 PM on May 10, 2015

Brown People Don't Need You Defending Them Like That

My Lords, I would take you back to the three comments quoted in my learned friend Etrigan's skeleton argument:

1.  [Accusing anyone in the U.S. military of doing] "horrible things to foreign brown people";
2.  [An academic] "getting a disproportionate amount of crap because he's siding with brown people over white people";... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by the quidnunc kid at 6:07 PM on May 9, 2015

Ooooh, a powerful male berates an old woman for her lapse in judgment; take that, military industrial media complex!

Great, my eyes rolled so hard that they're stuck in the up position and I look like a jackass trying to type this. I hope you're happy.
posted to MetaFilter by indubitable at 5:36 PM on May 2, 2015

SPrintF: I have no way of knowing Sanders's mind. Is he sincere? Um, no. No sane person thinks he's really running for president. Does he have a book deal in the works, or is he an honest kook like Paul Rand? Don't know, don't care.

Then you really don't know Bernie Sanders at all. But if you think a book deal is the measure of insincerity, then fine: Hillary has a book deal, Sanders does not.*

* unless you count the publication of Sanders' epic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Davenhill at 2:15 AM on April 29, 2015

There was only one use of the word "fuck" in the approximately 50 paragraphs in this piece. Does "f-bomb" mean something different now?

The destruction wrought by an f-bomb doesn't end with the explosion itself; certainly, there is great and obvious rhetorical devastation at the site of the actual ignition (known as "f-zero", from which Nintendo famously—and controversially—took the name for their post-war... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2015

Great infographic: Snake Oil Supplements?
posted to MetaFilter by Jubal Kessler at 12:42 PM on April 6, 2015

It's pronouced the opposite of however cortex says it is
posted to MetaTalk by The Whelk at 11:20 AM on April 3, 2015

(I've been asked to bow out of this thread; thanks for the discussion)
posted to MetaFilter by ShutterBun at 9:25 AM on April 1, 2015

There might be a canonical list on the wiki

2000 - "It's your web, log it"
2000 - "weblog as conversation"
2000 - "as meta as we wanna be"
2000 - "meta-meta-meta-madness"
2001 - "More addictive than crack"
2001 - "self-policing since 1999"
2001 - "we're all in this together"
2002 - "All your... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by zamboni at 5:58 AM on March 26, 2015

Man, that original list is like a dictionary of cool users that I miss :-(
posted to MetaTalk by dg at 4:05 AM on March 26, 2015

How shit happens.

In the Beginning was the plan.

And then came the assumptions.
And the assumptions were without form.
And the plan was completely without substance.

And the darkness was upon the face of the workers. And they spoke  
among themselves saying: "It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."

And the workers went unto their supervisors, and sayeth: "It... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lalochezia at 6:04 PM on March 19, 2015

The articles are all wrong.

The main reason the ROK leads the world is that I have at least six procedures a day and have done so since July of 2002 when I first arrived on these glorious shores.
posted to MetaFilter by Joseph Gurl at 9:36 PM on March 18, 2015

"But kibbitz not so much; maybe it's of hebrew or ukrainian origin."

No, looking it up, it's definitely Yiddish and probably from German kiebitz.

"Honestly I think the 'Important' posts are some of the worst ones for Metafilter. They're usually political, usually controversial, and usually cause a fighty shitshow or bad feelings on a lot of community residents.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:28 PM on March 14, 2015