MetaFilter

That's the most Barthelme-ish thing I've read in the New Yorker in a very very long time. In a good way.
posted to MetaFilter by jessamyn at 1:27 PM on February 11, 2015

This is what it sounds like when doves type.
posted to MetaFilter by xedrik at 8:04 AM on February 7, 2015

Not to get crazy here but it is possible that the cover is good in some ways but bad in others and that the article is the same way, right? Just kidding that is impossible. Back to the barricades!
posted to MetaFilter by Potomac Avenue at 3:18 AM on January 31, 2015

ALL THESE SPACES
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
CONFERENCE ROOM C
ATTEMPT NO
MEETINGS THERE
posted to MetaFilter by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:47 AM on January 14, 2015

So, uh, one of the authors, Mike Johanson, is MeFi's own.

Hi! Long time lurker (since 2000, I think?), infrequent poster, sometimes Edmonton MeFi meetup organizer.

I'm happy to answer questions, but will also be careful not to run the thread. A few quick comments -

nubs - the main importance here isn't so much that a poker game has been solved - it's that this is the first time any "real" (nontrivial, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fully Completely at 3:02 PM on January 10, 2015

As part of the process of making this episode, I wrote down everything that makes me feel anxious in the world, and wondered to myself if it would help me. It does not. It feels terrible. Things that work for Paul Ford do not work for me.
posted to FanFare by Alex Goldman at 9:14 AM on January 9, 2015

I only clicked because it was Ford.

Still pretty amazed that after three years of people raving about David Shaprio/PRR, no one ever mentions Gary Benchley.

He's a little wide on the impact of CAD, and materials sizing in detail, but his broad point about how much that drives design decisions (but fails to note the impact of FHA regs/appraisals/HOAs from the other side) is still valid.
posted to MetaFilter by 99_ at 7:44 PM on July 30, 2014

Whoa, I hit the blue. It's like 2004!
posted to MetaFilter by waxpancake at 3:26 PM on December 9, 2014

*as a veteran*

A veteran's status as it exists stems from his unique relationship within the state. The veteran, at some level, has served as one of the more direct tools of the state, and hopefully society. Because of this, the state takes not only an increased amount of responsibility when a service member separates or retires (with regards to healthcare, veteran's preference in federal jobs, education funds, etc.), but also honors them (Veterans Day). This is not to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Lord Chancellor at 5:43 AM on December 3, 2014

Great article. It has some choice lines and brings a topic many of us might know and care about to a mainstream publication. Nice work ftrain.
posted to MetaFilter by safetyfork at 12:31 PM on November 28, 2014

After my friend Paul killed himself, the only memorial I could make was on an emulated ZX Spectrum.
I couldn't travel through time and steal handfuls of biscuits from the church coffee time tray, as we did.
I couldn't travel through space and clamber about on the tame mossy cliff under Mearns Castle, as we did.
But I could make an ever-changing display of all of the colours by writing dreadful BASIC programs on his Sinclair, as we did.
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 7:38 PM on November 6, 2014

Oh, wow: reading this so close on the heels of bondcliff's story of building a train set with his son is setting my Dad Sense tingling.

I so want to make sure that my kids -- sons and daughters alike -- have someone important in their lives for the times when our communications break down, which I know they will someday. I am self-aware enough to know that I can't be the perfect person to all of them, and I just pray that when they need a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by wenestvedt at 10:41 AM on November 5, 2014

Wordshore: "Am being mildly chastised from one of the doners "

What has this world come to when a kebab can chastise a person?
posted to MetaFilter by Splunge at 10:52 AM on October 4, 2014

ftrain: "We might also set up a local usenet spool that is only inside the tiny network we are building"

BRB, installing nntpd, definitely want in on this even more than a login.
posted to MetaFilter by fireoyster at 7:59 AM on October 4, 2014

This will be fun, as despite being in nominal charge of all the computering at my job, I'm incapable of doing anything useful on our actual servers now. "Oh sorry, no those are all automated VMWare Dockered chef servers running Puppet 4.8 snapped from virtualized AWS Vagrants" and I'm like what I just wanted to cat a logfile.
posted to MetaFilter by nev at 8:04 AM on October 4, 2014

People got a kick out of logging into a Unix server and wanted their friends to log in too.

It's like witnessing the birth of Usenet in microcosm. Everything old is new again.

Love it.
posted to MetaFilter by Itaxpica at 7:38 AM on October 4, 2014

Be polite.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by alms at 4:55 PM on September 26, 2014 marked best answer

Kudos to the entire team on a huge project that seems to have yielded amazing results. I may not have articulated it very well, but all I was ever trying to advocate for was a look that was approachable and familiar to people who had never been to the site before, but would surely have been delighted to discover what a special place this is, despite its intimidating first impression. (And some members' penchants for really never letting a tired old joke go.)

I hope all... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by anildash at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014

I've also been mulling this article over, and something I really like from it is the idea that avoiding judgment of others and allowing people space to have a bad day isn't about being a saint, it's a way to free yourself from the commitment that you make when you decide to judge someone.

A new acquaintance of mine was saying some obnoxious stuff and my instinct was to start forming negative judgments about him, but then I realized "you know, that's so tiring, maybe... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Solon and Thanks at 12:02 PM on August 15, 2014

Backwards ran revenue until reeled the magazine.
posted to MetaFilter by Spatch at 5:44 AM on September 5, 2014

For once, the comments didn't diminish my faith in humanity.
posted to MetaFilter by Harald74 at 11:12 PM on September 1, 2014

Not to be pedantic, but June 5, 1944 would have been the 70th anniversary of 'C-Day', not 'D-Day'.

D-Day means "the day this operation happens," not "the fourth day" or "the day after C-Day." It's unique to any particular operation, and tends to change based on how preparation for the operation forces changes to the actual date that the operation needs to kick off.

Days before and after a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 11:47 AM on June 5, 2014

Not to be pedantic, but June 5, 1944 would have been the 70th anniversary of 'C-Day', not 'D-Day'.
posted to MetaFilter by jimmythefish at 11:37 AM on June 5, 2014

This is it. This is the apex of my life in terms of schadenfreude. I do not know how I will ever get to feel such a perfect, Platonic ideal example of schadenfreude again. I don't know whether to feel happy or sad about this.
posted to MetaFilter by seyirci at 9:58 AM on August 27, 2014

This was one of the many albums I took and sold from my father's collection to finance my teenage drug habit. I gave him a copy years later for Father's Day and we sat down, two men with deep appreciations for the symbolic, and listened in the recommended single sitting. It opened the door for several subsequent sit-downs which became dear, dear memories when two months later he died suddenly of a heart attack. I may never overcome my bitterness about that, but I can't think of a more perfect... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Lorin at 4:30 PM on August 18, 2014

I liked this article, and the subsequent thread reminded me to be more sympathetic.

I'm fairly socially adept, but also have strong social anxiety. So to me, social situations aren't impenetrable soups of the social contract, but I very much feel how they can be, and especially just how bad it can feel to make a gaffe, no matter how unknowing. It also means I really get those guys who feel like they need more rules to follow, because if you can follow the right rules and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by gadge emeritus at 6:56 PM on August 15, 2014

I am not this person.
posted to MetaFilter by ZaneJ. at 4:02 AM on August 15, 2014

This thread is very weird to me and confirms my sense of how much MetaFilter has changed over the years. It would seem that nobody but jeremias (who's been here even longer than me) knows who Paul Ford is or remembers Ftrain (the subject of a very early MeFi post by mathowie himself). The author isn't named in the post or in the tags. It's as if it was some random blog post by some random blogger. I dunno. Sic transit, I guess. But he used to be well known around these parts. (Does... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by languagehat at 3:49 PM on July 30, 2014

It was a bit weird seeing Rodney's got into EBM and industrial since the old days

I guess some people will dance to anything.
posted to MetaFilter by hydrophonic at 9:20 PM on June 19, 2014

I feel sad for academics, either they are shat on by the public for toiling away on useless scholarship or they are shat on by their peers for pandering to the former and becoming pop-[insert field practitioner title]s.
posted to MetaFilter by anewnadir at 3:02 PM on June 11, 2014

Strip clubs, alcohol and estranged from his wife?

That doesn't deter an evangelical audience. That *is* an evangelical audience.
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 6:35 AM on June 9, 2014

The feminism one killed me. Laughing with bitter regret because it contained actual parts of the stories of Sassy, Jane, and Jezebel.
posted to MetaFilter by jocelmeow at 2:32 PM on May 29, 2014

I was asked yesterday to verticalize some content.

Bad, I understood what was meant.
Worse, I understood why.
Worst. Reader, I did it.
posted to MetaFilter by Devonian at 11:50 AM on May 29, 2014

This sad, anger-inducing event strongly resembles the shootings at the LA Fitness gym in Collier Township, PA back in 2009.

As in that crime, the motive seems to have been "sexual frustration," a euphemism for narcissistic rage borne of socially-sanctioned male entitlement to the bodies of women.
posted to MetaFilter by kewb at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2014

This will drive me insane even though it is an incredibly minor point: On the fictional map with states named Sharkia and Junubia and Shimal- Junub and Shomal are the Farsi words for the cardinal directions South and North... and of course on the map the state called North is in the South and vice versa.

When it comes to Iran, the military literally doesn't even know which way is up.
posted to MetaFilter by BuddhaInABucket at 7:19 AM on May 15, 2014

As of (checks watch) 18 days ago, I'm no longer a defense contractor. So it's a bit surreal to me to see things I'm more-or-less familiar with, like DoDAF, showing up in a "whoa look at this crazy stuff" context - when you swim in those waters, where everything is very, very complex and systems are layered upon systems nested inside acronyms - it's easy to forget you're in water at all.

Offhand, one thing I think we might identify here as a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tomorrowful at 6:38 AM on May 15, 2014

White Flint opened when I was 6. The Eatery -- which was what this food court was called, though the linked post doesn't say so -- was the first food court most of us had ever seen. It looks terrible to you now because we have different ideas about how a commerical environment ought to look. But it wasn't terrible. It was great -- all those different kinds of food, and you could get food one place and your parents another, or you could mix and match from different places, and enjoy it all in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by escabeche at 8:57 AM on February 16, 2014

These anti-Internet pieces are the middlebrow equivalent of an alt-weekly Juggalo Gathering feature. They are typically lazy, self-satisfied, and unencumbered by any actual research or knowledge (at least the alt-weekly writer makes an effort to find out something, before filing the story).

I lived a lot of my adult life before social media, which I do actually kind of hate. The world was well-stocked with self-centered, ignorant bastards then, too;... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by thelonius at 6:17 PM on September 13, 2013

At 250k a year how will they ever afford to buy Google Glass for their Labradoodles?!
posted to MetaFilter by cloeburner at 11:43 AM on May 27, 2013

Damn. I live right by the cemeter
posted to MetaFilter by RedEmma at 5:46 AM on February 12, 2013

Yeah, the world does not need another Loveless. It was over-rated and over-hyped the FIRST time around.
posted by Skygazer at 10:04 PM on February 2 [+] [!]

hahaha is it physically possible to utter a statement more incorrect than this
posted to MetaFilter by p3on at 11:38 PM on February 2, 2013

I must say, I'm loving the tag list on this post.
posted to MetaFilter by radwolf76 at 1:05 PM on November 20, 2012

this is so fucking dumb it makes me scream. This isn't a demand shock, its a supply shock. This is like Micro 101. That's why its gouging. Higher prices won't cause participants to offer gas to the market.
posted to MetaFilter by JPD at 3:16 PM on November 4, 2012

How could NYC possibly hold a marathon when people in the city are without power, without running water, lost their homes and are unsure when life will return to normal.

Well, they hold the marathon amid those conditions every year.
posted to MetaFilter by griphus at 6:06 PM on November 2, 2012

Begun this rebranding has.
posted to MetaFilter by TheWhiteSkull at 2:15 PM on October 30, 2012

Pixar presents: Grim Fandango.
posted to MetaFilter by hellojed at 1:08 PM on October 30, 2012

A lot of 24-year-olds were conceived to that album.
posted to MetaFilter by Blue Meanie at 10:26 PM on October 27, 2012

It was nauseating when Nixon won.

I so remember that feeling. It has been a sad refrain in my life. McGovern was my first vote, too. George McGovern is such a fundamentally good human being - the type of man we should lionize, we should aspire to have our leaders be. His loss was our loss.

I discovered a particular Yeats poem around that time that I found a bit of a soothing balm for my sadness. Leave it to Yeats to find... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by madamjujujive at 2:29 PM on October 19, 2012

but it does strike me as a bit strange that you apparently would not trouble to check the weather forecast the night before your $15,000 one-hour window procedure.

The timing of the trigger shot is dependent on the maturity of the eggs already in the ovaries, and isn't really something you can adjust all that much.
posted to MetaFilter by OmieWise at 10:43 AM on July 11, 2011

Time... to die...

(releases a dove into the rain)
posted to MetaFilter by boo_radley at 2:20 PM on September 14, 2012