MetaFilter

It took us three transfers for it to take. (There were some complications with my initial egg-producing step, and the whole thing was painful and exasperating for me, but I'm now 33 weeks pregnant and feeling good. Everyone's different, but have hope.)
posted to MetaFilter by statolith at 9:46 AM on July 12, 2011

Thanks for the story.

Mrs Wombat and I have no kids but have been trying for a while, first a wasted year of IUI, and now we're doing IVF.
The odd thing about IVF (well OK it's all odd) is that they actually show you the embryos before they put them in. They proudly handed us a polaroid of 6 gray circles, neatly lined up, each looking like a blob of lumpy oatmeal. They complemented us on how good they looked. When the woman is in her mid forties they put... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by w0mbat at 8:10 AM on July 12, 2011

MetaFilter is amazing because people will share deeply personal stories about adoption, IVF, etc in the same thread as people who want to argue about infertility the same way they would about why Germany lost WWII. This thread is both lovely and infuriating.
posted to MetaFilter by chunking express at 8:49 PM on July 11, 2011

I had no idea that this group of processes for assisted reproduction was commonly referred to as ART. That makes his title INCREDIBLY clever -- maybe the cleverest title in history -- if nothing else.
posted to MetaFilter by The Bellman at 2:24 PM on July 11, 2011

I'm arguing that, from a practical standpoint, adoption is at least on par with IVF, and it puzzles me that the author dismisses it off-handedly in a single sentence.

Sometimes when I'm writing a piece, there's something that I could write a whole nother long essay on, but it's not the point of the story I'm telling, so I might just pass over it with a sentence or two in order not to have a digression that breaks the flow. It doesn't mean I haven't... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by not that girl at 1:47 PM on July 11, 2011

"and instead they spend three years and tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments. "

We adopted domestically, an African-American infant. We are white. Based on agency fees, some birthmother expenses, and our home study fee, we expected the whole thing to cost $14,000-17,000. Because our birthmother lied to us and to the birthfather, we ended up in a custody dispute with him that took two years to settle and cost us some $47,000... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by not that girl at 1:41 PM on July 11, 2011

Either way, I still find the way the article deals with/dismisses adoption to be troubling, to say the least.

The article quickly dismisses adoption because the article isn't about adoption. Should articles about adoption discuss all the reasons why the couple didn't choose fertility assistance?

I haven't had to deal with my own fertility yet, but I get the impression that for infertile people, the issue of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by muddgirl at 12:43 PM on July 11, 2011

Thanks for this, I think it's quite good. He gets the tone right: equal parts absurdity and despair.

My wife and I have been going through this for over a year. And it's one of the most difficult things I've ever been through. It's just really brutal: the hope and expectation, the repeated devastation, the odds (which are not good), the silent recriminations and arguments over whether this or that decision was the right one. When we started I had a sort of naive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by OmieWise at 10:41 AM on July 11, 2011

There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you. ~A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture

and, my favorite:

When science discovers the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it. ~Bernard Baily
posted to Ask MetaFilter by patheral at 5:33 PM on July 4, 2011

I would just stare back nervously and say, "I like turtles."
posted to MetaFilter by punkfloyd at 9:18 AM on June 30, 2011

thought it was cool to just slap some crappy Photoshop filter on the original cover and call it a day

It was a new derivative work, created by hand using the original as a reference. It was also a bit of a parody, though it wasn't at the Weird Al level of parody for a music album. I say it's fair use.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 10:17 AM on June 23, 2011

Pfft, the backspace key worked without an hour of tweaking. Lousy simulation.
posted to MetaFilter by jewzilla at 11:05 AM on June 4, 2011

I just want another rule, don't really care what it is.
posted to MetaTalk by carsonb at 11:43 AM on June 2, 2011

Is this something I would need to have a computer to understand?
posted to MetaFilter by thsmchnekllsfascists at 7:01 AM on June 3, 2011

Now that is a dystopia. Great story, though Iain M. Banks would have done it as a throw-away line.
posted to MetaFilter by wenestvedt at 8:05 AM on May 16, 2011

GRIFFINSUIT LAWFLOW v.5.8

User 0981273,

YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear at courthouse 2390483209 on 19th May, 2037.

ALTERNATELY, you may pay the listed damages, below.

CLAIM SUMMARY: copyright infringement; while reading "Nanolaw with Daughter", user made a copy of the story in his brain without authorization

DAMAGES: USD 0.10 [Pay now with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Grimp0teuthis at 6:34 AM on May 16, 2011

I don't care how much it costs me, I'm not giving up my Belgian beers.
posted to MetaFilter by Terminal Verbosity at 3:56 AM on May 16, 2011

Holy shit. That's the best (terrifying) fiction I've read on a blog ever.
posted to MetaFilter by mathowie at 9:58 PM on May 15, 2011

I really, really don't get Google's strategy sometimes.

Throw birds at pigs and see if they explode.
posted to MetaFilter by Faint of Butt at 11:54 AM on May 11, 2011

I'm in the minority of people who, when faced with a botfly video, can only think of how satisfying it must be to pull one of them things out of yourself, then follow those thoughts down the rabbit hole to that inevitable point when I say to myself, "I wish I had a botfly."
posted to MetaFilter by infinitywaltz at 3:28 PM on May 9, 2011

Hello to my fellow protein crystallographers who did a double take when they saw this post..
posted to MetaFilter by TheOtherGuy at 2:41 AM on May 6, 2011

it's not at all clear where to draw the line between restless_nomad's personal opinions and his official pronouncements as moderator.

First of all restless_nomad is female which is clear from her profile page. Secondly we'll often drop someone a note on the back end to let people know "Hey this thread seems to be becoming all about you, maybe you could ease back some for a while?" which is, I assume, what was happening. We don't have much... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 10:45 AM on April 30, 2011

During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
posted to MetaFilter by charlie don't surf at 3:35 AM on April 30, 2011

Why the hell do people make huge gifts to the 10 universities that don't need any more money and ignore the thousands that do?
posted to MetaFilter by LarryC at 9:30 PM on April 29, 2011

A lot of home entertainment systems are one degree closer to Noam Chomsky today.
posted to MetaFilter by Beardman at 9:21 PM on April 29, 2011

When I was in high school I thought London Fields went perfectly with U2's Achtung Baby, kind of in the way people say the Wall goes with the Wizard of Oz. This has less to do with drugs and more to do with me being a GIANT nerd and also quite bored. OMG the dystopian parallels...squee Bono's glasses...
posted to MetaFilter by sweetkid at 2:43 PM on April 28, 2011

Venture capital doesn't mean not having to fish around in the back of the sofa for change.
posted to MetaFilter by ryanrs at 7:03 PM on April 25, 2011

So far, the forum has produced a “field guide” to the various types of Martin defenders and how they may be refuted; a pseudo-legal brief titled “The People Against George R. R. Martin”; detailed charts attempting to expose how few hours Martin has devoted to writing “A Dance with Dragons” per year, based on his blog postings; and a three-hundred-page “Encyclopedia GRRuMbliana,” which includes a spirited history of the forum.

That is.... literally worse than anything I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by running order squabble fest at 11:58 AM on April 14, 2011

Did the New Yorker editor really accept a sentence like "his readership will likely multiply exponentially after the launch"?
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 10:07 AM on April 14, 2011

Happy anniversary to Linux then. I remember the first time I installed slackware in 2001. It wasn't easy and a lot of stuff didn't work. But it felt like home to me in a way that nothing had since AmigaDOS. And then I started using Debian and wow! Package management is such a killer feature even for a desktop. Now I use it every day on my servers, my desk top, my phone.

Cheers OS community.
posted to MetaFilter by aychedee at 7:57 AM on April 11, 2011

I'd just like to apologize to approximately everyone I spoke to in the couple of years that I though that Gentoo was a good idea.
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 7:57 AM on April 11, 2011

In defense of gnome 3, I've been using gnome-shell for quite some time now, and it gets in my way slightly less than compiz or metacity did before it. But then, I'm mostly running an email client, an irc client, a web browser, and 200 gnome-terminal windows with vim (or other tools) in them.

I really do think this whole thing is overblown. I may be biased though; I have lunch with the guys doing this work pretty often, and work with them to some degree.
posted to MetaFilter by atbash at 6:39 AM on April 11, 2011

Neuromancer.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by pompomtom at 4:16 AM on April 11, 2011

CiviCRM aims to do this, though I find that it's kind of polarizing as far as people's opinions of it. You could also hack something together on top of Drupal or similar if you really wanted to. Either of those could at least theoretically be tackled without having to write any code.

Being a coder, though, and not really liking either, I'd probably opt to roll my own, likely on top of the Django admin and possibly on top of Pinax, which is a Django-based... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by andrewpendleton at 8:11 PM on April 4, 2011

"He just sat in his camper and wrote all that [expletive]."

But if that isn't how to 'search for America,' I don't know what is.
posted to MetaFilter by grounded at 12:02 PM on April 4, 2011

It's a neat idea and the execution is just fine. Fuck the haters. Fuck 'em.
posted to MetaFilter by jjray at 8:18 PM on March 31, 2011

I first saw this on mlkshk.com (via Paul Ford) under the heading, "I HATE EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT THIS". Pretty much sums it up.
posted to MetaFilter by yerfatma at 3:37 PM on March 31, 2011

IAMA workplace toucher. I do it inadvertently, unconsciously, naturally during the course of my interaction with others. (I have NEVER touched anyone's hair, that's over the line.) I am usually smart enough to pick up on any vibe that tells me you are uncomfortable with touching. I think you just need to tell her in a very nice way, "Sorry, I just can't stand being surprise touched!" Smile when you say it, laugh it off, this is not an unreasonable request. If that doesn't stop it,... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by raisingsand at 6:54 PM on March 29, 2011

I can't get past the first link because my ovaries just exploded.
posted to MetaFilter by Dr. Zira at 12:52 AM on March 29, 2011

I just made the mistake of showing this post to my wife.

Thanks a lot, MetaFilter.
posted to MetaFilter by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 7:54 PM on March 24, 2011

This will not Rendell.
posted to MetaFilter by zippy at 8:36 PM on March 23, 2011

Chris Lehmann and Clay Shirky are wrong to approximately equal degrees, but out at the opposite ends of the analytic teeter totter.

As a consequence, I choose to award my cookie to whoever entertains me the most.
posted to MetaFilter by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:42 PM on March 13, 2011

Yeah, the tone here is a bit disturbing. The tone of the news story was fine; it would become too aggravating to watch if the talking heads were constantly getting hysterical. One Fox News is enough.

This slavery problem isn't going away. I first came across a mention of it doing research on Louis Farrakhan in the early 90s when he was going to the UN to drum up some kind of awareness and action. I mean, I first realized that slavery as we always understood it and not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by artof.mulata at 2:32 AM on March 11, 2011

...particularly in the developing world.

Well, no shit. If this ass had done any research instead of parroting wire reports, he'd know that first-world slaves are WAY out of reach to the average person. My dream of owning a Canadian has been effectively over for several years now. Maybe if I'd asked my parents for a loan in fucking 1997 I might have one, but my economic realities and those of the western slave market have diverged... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mayor Curley at 9:31 PM on March 10, 2011

Will future generations actually give a damn about a show that is (20, 50, whatever) years old? Or will they be creating their own media that is important and relevant to them? Personally, I'd be kind of bummed if the following generations place a huge amount of importance on understanding essentially ephemeral items from our time. As a former history grad student, I get that being able to put cultural items into context is important, but every single joke and reference? Leave that to the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bitter-girl.com at 6:12 AM on March 9, 2011

The Simpsons is probably a bad example. Future generations will still be watching first run episodes.
posted to MetaFilter by Silentgoldfish at 6:10 AM on March 9, 2011

Look what Anonymous did to Plastic.com. Fear them.
posted to MetaFilter by Ardiril at 9:27 PM on March 8, 2011

Twins are nature's sockpuppets.
posted to MetaTalk by qvantamon at 4:49 PM on April 15, 2010

I must be the last user of Joe
posted to MetaFilter by wcfields at 11:17 AM on March 1, 2011

Apologists? Was it ever under attack?

Don't feel bad -- it's perfectly normal for victims to feel some sympathy toward their abuser.

I think it's called EscapeMetaAltControlShiftholm Syndrome.
posted to MetaFilter by Celsius1414 at 8:28 AM on March 1, 2011