MetaFilter

Ivy is very pretty, but it is very invasive in many places. I'm not sure about Atlanta. Where it is successful, it grows dense and excludes all other plants. It will choke out native wildflowers, and if it does get into trees, it can hide defects, add weight, eventually crowd out foliage, and sometimes it can graft enough to work like a strangler fig and choke out limbs. You will not damage trees by pulling ivy off! Trees have exfoliating bark, and if some flakes come off... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Red Loop at 5:14 PM on June 1, 2010

You puny Earth-first bigots conveniently ignore that here on Uranus, seasons last for 84 of your puny Earth years. MeFi members such as myself who are citizens of Uranus (aka "Uranals" or "Assholes") are sick of this kind of prejudice, and are constructing an interplanetary fart gun to spray alien flatus right up your puny air conditioning units, you bums.
posted to MetaTalk by the quidnunc kid at 8:23 PM on May 31, 2010

The use of the r-bomb was offensive, as was the intimation that people who practice meditation in a non-empirical context are 'stupid' and 'insane'.

Gross generalisations, ad hominem attacks and sneering cynicism don't sound like the actions of a good skeptic to me.
posted to MetaTalk by TheOtherGuy at 4:48 AM on May 31, 2010

i'm sure that a bunch of folks will share resources - but i just wanted to address what you said - that you had "failed" yoga and that you can't do "half of the things due to flexibility."

there is NO SUCH THING as failing yoga. if someone tells you that, or a teacher tells you that, they're not very yogic and not really practicing.

as cheesy as it may sound, yoga is about the process and the journey, not about your outcome.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by anya32 at 12:51 PM on May 26, 2010

Lousy beatniks.
posted to MetaFilter by kersplunk at 10:03 AM on May 26, 2010

Fine, fair enough. I understand the anxst. Where you see lesbians, I see a young person half my age from another country claiming to have popularised the one essential part of my uniform from my angst ridden teenage years.

Anyway, I promised not to piss on this thread anymore. If anyone wants to mark me down as a violent homophobe, go for it.
posted to MetaFilter by vbfg at 9:06 AM on May 26, 2010

Based upon the hysteria in this thread, I can say with absolute certainty that every single person I grew up with was "abused" based upon the definitions we're using here.

Does that make it OK? No. However, your husband is still human, and seems to want to improve himself, and based upon the way the rest of us turned out, your kid won't be shell shocked for the rest of his life.

Re: my earlier comment: The word... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by schmod at 7:10 PM on May 25, 2010

This is killing me, and it may be helping to turn our son into a yeller, whiner, poor sport and semi-jerk.

There was a discussion in which our son was being whiny and demanding and my husband was trying to lecture the kid, and insisting on eye contact. When the kid wouldn't look at him my husband grabbed his head and turned it, roughly, to look up, saying he needed to learn to look at people, at which point the kid burst into tears. All... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by anniecat at 6:22 PM on May 25, 2010

I feel I have to jump in and defend your husband a little.

Reading this thread, its a little disturbing how quickly it turns in to a catalogue of serious abuse.
I'm not condoning what he did, but it sounds to me that he is frustrated. He was totally wrong to do what he did, and if that becomes a pattern then you have to deal with that quickly.

He sounds as frustrated as you, and unable to communicate this. Men are crap like that... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by daveyt at 2:51 PM on May 25, 2010

My wife and I don't hit our children. However, we have a lot of differences in the ways we believe our children should be raised, and not all of them have been resolved. Yet, through couples' therapy, we've got it figured out, and it's been a fantastic year since we got into the groove of it.

So, you say: "If I don't intervene I am complicit, but if I do intervene then I'm "undermining.""

You can't... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by davejay at 2:36 PM on May 25, 2010

Was that DirtyCreature flameout the genesis of I was quoting SCIENCE

I'm pretty sure it was.
posted to MetaTalk by Nothing... and like it at 9:35 AM on May 24, 2010

I answered something about the scale of (generic search engines) here. That thread has some very interesting information in general, as well.

The short answer to give you an idea: Google is estimated to have hundreds of thousands of machines, in dozens of datacenters (all the major search engine players typically do).

The number of clusters is large- several clusters in each datacenter I'd presume, each cluster representing... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by hincandenza at 4:52 PM on June 20, 2007 marked best answer

I hear he's a smug, self-congratulatory ass IRL, too. Of course, I have no actual evidence of that.

If you disagree with his post, then feel free to say why, but to just lay out the insults like that is childish and I'd rather we not do that here. I, having met bingo "IRL", know that he's a brilliant individual AND(and I know he's going to hate my saying this and ruining his street cred), he is a nice guy under his prickly exterior.
posted to MetaTalk by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:43 PM on May 23, 2010

No shame, donnagirl. At least you're not bitmasking your ignorance.

okay i'll stop
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 4:28 PM on May 22, 2010

Metafilter, I like you guys. Even the new ones who got called aholes and then showed up here and were pretty funny.
posted to MetaTalk by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 4:41 PM on May 21, 2010

You were just secretly hoping to be the guy whose skepticism managed to uncover another Kaycee Nicole. And once it didn't, you have to save face somehow.

You want to disagree with bingo about the relevance of what kind of business Lux is, fine. But if we're all such wonderful people as we seem to like to think ourselves, could we please refrain from armchair-psychologizing the worst possible motivation for people we disagree with?
posted to MetaTalk by DevilsAdvocate at 12:14 PM on May 21, 2010

D, please, stop calling somebody, please, don't call to xxxx. All is ok.There is no problem!!!
11:25AM.

OK
11:26AM

D! Listen. I don't know how thanks you. Lux lounge is a strip bar, if we will go there, i don't know what would be... Thank you so much.! You saved our lifes.
3:33PM

No thanks necessary. It wasn't only me.... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by fake at 2:59 PM on May 20, 2010

people like nadawi

i certainly do!
posted to MetaTalk by gman at 8:15 PM on May 19, 2010

Yay! MetaTalk's back!!
posted to MetaTalk by gman at 5:25 PM on May 19, 2010

I mean, I honestly at one point a few years ago I said "God, I just really hate Armenians" just apropos of nothing and nobody cared.

Once. A few years ago. You don't engage in behavior or make statements that get flagged a lot, require mod intervention, etc. So yeah, nobody cared, or cares, because you don't seem to make a habit out of being disruptive.

And everyone's got a different tolerance for what's disruptive,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by rtha at 2:10 PM on May 10, 2010

My least-favorite thing about MeFi these days is that people who have demonstrated themselves to be hateful bigots are welcome here, but a guy who doesn't actually hate Arizona's citizens is up shit creek for yanking their chains when their government passes bigoted laws.

I also just don't generally agree with the idea that the best response to people being assholes is to be an asshole, and I dislike the idea that anyone's asshole behavior should be... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by shakespeherian at 1:30 PM on May 10, 2010

What I am trying to do is to say that I think maybe the problem with OC related stuff has more to do with the intricacies of your jobs as moderators, and less to do with nyc mefites stepping up to defend him.

Absolutely. I think the problems we dealt with with OC's interactions on the site and the meta-interactions stemming from those portions of our dealings with him that became public discussions are fundamentally about OC and mefi and not local... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by cortex at 11:29 AM on May 10, 2010

Wow. The dogs sure howl when the wolf's dead.

Bwahahahaha! Wolf? Please, don't flatter yourself. Er, your boyfriend's self. Whatever.
posted to MetaTalk by Nothing... and like it at 4:30 PM on May 9, 2010

the low-hanging clam ...

Yes, that is probably something you should see a gynecologist about.

sorry
posted to MetaTalk by Bookhouse at 2:48 PM on May 14, 2010

I had missed that earlier MeTa thread. Yeah, this is ridiculous. I'm pretty stinkin' tolerant, but assuming there's already been a Come to Jesus exchange with this poster, this seems to be up for bannination if there ever was one. Just because you're inexperienced doesn't give you the right to be repeatedly offensive.

And just because something offends you doesn't mean the poster should be banned from the site. The idea that you seem to feel it does... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by misha at 3:02 PM on May 13, 2010

sooo...

if this poster is, indeed trolling/engaging in performance art/gaming the system, then I wonder whether posting outragey GRAR-filled longthread-is-long argumentative callout threads isn't giving them EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT.

if, on the other hand, as jessamyn and cortex pointed out, this is just a clueless individual being supplied with some "teachable moments", then why can we not just trust the site admins to do their jobs and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by lonefrontranger at 1:45 PM on May 13, 2010

Dasein, I know women who won't even masturbate because they're icked out by their own parts. I knew one who would spell out the name of her gynecologist and curl her lip. Now, that's sad, but it points to something: people vary, widely.

Which is part of the problem here. Most of this thread is rolling on the assumption that people just ... don't ... can't think like the questioner does. Jesus said, "He who is not with me must be trollin'!... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by adipocere at 11:38 AM on May 13, 2010

there is a subsect of the community who value their time and the signal/noise ratio here enough to think the risk of banning the former is outweighed by the benefit of banning the latter.

We have a pretty codified set of procedures for when and if someone gets banned from the website and "asking clueless questions" is not one of the current reasons.

I don't mean to make light of this, but it's pretty important to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:32 AM on May 13, 2010

I think he clearly sounds like someone who -- for whatever reasons I'm not going to speculate about -- genuinely doesn't understand some fundamental things about other people, especially in the areas of sexuality and human relationships, and doesn't have anyone in his life he can talk to to help him understand.

His questions aren't unanswerable, and they aren't even that chatty. They're based on ill-informed premises. And they're often on touchy subjects, precisely... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by ook at 6:47 AM on May 13, 2010

I'm loathe to crack jokes about him 'cause it sounds like there are issues.
posted to MetaTalk by Brandon Blatcher at 5:45 PM on May 12, 2010

Wow. I really can't believe all the RUN CRAZY RUN in this thread. We have no idea what was said to him, why he reacted the way he did, or even if the way he reacted was coming from a crazy place. No offense to the OP here with that. But it *really easily* could be a simple miscommunication.

For example, if OP said: ""Anyhow, I was wondering if we were going to get together this weekend or if you were going to go on a date with someone else/visit your... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by iamkimiam at 5:08 PM on May 10, 2010

So, you don't have to agree with her, but try to have some empathy for where she's coming from.

Words to live by also when confronting racists, tea-baggers, and furries.
posted to MetaFilter by Joey Michaels at 6:31 PM on May 9, 2010

jonp72 thank you for bringing sanity and research to this thread. Let me recap what those expanded articles tell us:

These kids were in fact making a political point. Whether or not it was 'assholish' depends on whether you agree with them.

The school administrators freaked out, possibly because of past incidents, or possibly because of a fear of violent mexicans, but they freaked out on a small group of kids out of many wearing the shirts (and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Potomac Avenue at 5:05 AM on May 7, 2010

From an outsider's perspective, all that this story says to me is that racial relations in the US remain almost incomprehensible to me -- whether or not the kids were legitimately sent home, the fact is that the wearing of the flag of a country largely composed of immigrants is interpreted by a not insignificant number of those immigrants as a symbol of something 'bad', at least in certain contexts. It is also interpreted by others as a symbol of anti-Other. There's something very broken there,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by modernnomad at 1:41 PM on May 6, 2010

What's your non-racist explanation for five white friends coordinating matching outfits with flag-patterned shirts and flag bandannas, specifically on Cinco de Mayo, and walking out rather than changing or even taking off a bandanna?

I think we should start by asking the kids and people (sympathetic to this dress plan or not) they might have spoken to in advance, rather than jumping to the most damning scenario possible. I haven't read enough about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Inspector.Gadget at 11:56 AM on May 6, 2010

This amazes me - both the incident itself, and some of the reactions here.

Five kids wearing American-themed apparel to school on ANY day shouldn't be considered inappropriate or warrant discipline.

Five kids wearing American-themed apparel to school on a semi-recognized day of ethnic and/or religious and/or cultural importance to a minority of fellow students and/or citizens shouldn't be considered inappropriate or warrant discipline.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by davidmsc at 11:36 AM on May 6, 2010

I don't think any of us is honestly in a position to make any final pronouncements on this story, because there's far too much we don't know about what actually happened.

Also, it really doesn't amount to anything more than a trifling personal dispute that should remain between the parents of the kids in question and the school administrators. Sober adults should be above getting riled up over stuff like this, because it's such an isolated and inconsequential incident... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by saulgoodman at 11:23 AM on May 6, 2010

kafziel, I hope you're kidding. Because you seem to be jumping to an unwarranted conclusion and then basing further unwarranted conclusions on that.
posted to MetaFilter by Inspector.Gadget at 10:58 AM on May 6, 2010

I'm not totally convinced these kids were assholes; given the circumstances, it seems likely that they were exhibiting other asshole behaviors, but we have nothing more than circumstantial evidence for that. I cannot see that wearing an American flag t-shirt is, in itself, a dick move, no matter what day of the year. Then again, I also wouldn't give a flying fuck if a person of Mexican heritage wore a shirt with a Mexican flag on the 4th of July. I probably wouldn't even... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Commander Rachek at 9:27 AM on May 6, 2010

I'm glad to know that support of free speech and expression extends to just "your side," for whatever given side you're on. These kids knew they were going to provoke a reaction, so they should not have done it — like a young woman wearing a tux to Prom down south, they just ought to know better. Oh, wait.

Can we collectively strike the "it might provoke a reaction" condemnation, since it seems to be so inconsistently applied ?
posted to MetaFilter by adipocere at 9:23 AM on May 6, 2010

Wow. I grew up in a family of three boys. I like to think my brothers and I are reasonably well-adjusted "non-thugs". I'm a lot more worried for your boys that they're growing up in a house with such bad attitudes towards maleness than that they only have brothers. For the sake of your kids, please go to therapy or something before #2 is born. Also, for the record, my mother used to get that "Oh my god! Three boys! How do you deal?" all the time, and she maintains to... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by jeb at 2:33 PM on August 23, 2009

I thought the phrasing was naive and irritating, but the reaction here, with the jeering and the liberal discussion of his mental faculties and, Jesus, the obsessive parsing of his posting times - well that seems uglier to me.
posted to MetaTalk by CunningLinguist at 6:15 AM on May 6, 2010

Really?

Yes. You pointed out another shitty post, which was flagged much less but was actually pretty lousy and maybe should have been deleted. After you said you were going to step away from this thread because you were worried you were going to go into "battle mode."

It's up to you how you want to play this, but if you want to have a discussion, use some words. If you're just angry and upset I'd really like to... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by jessamyn at 6:40 PM on May 5, 2010

Also: "Aspbergers'? Autism?" Is two words, not ten.

definitely two words. not ten. definitely two.
posted to MetaTalk by gman at 4:10 AM on May 4, 2010

Male Answer Syndrome

This term really bugs the fuck out of me. I'm not sure why it's OK to use gendered pejorative terms in this case, but not in others.
posted to MetaTalk by rodgerd at 2:22 AM on May 4, 2010

Possible solution: a little text at the bottom of the page that says "# comments have been deleted in this thread. For more information contact a moderator." Possibly with a link to some information about deletion policy. I think it will add a little bit more transparency to the proceedings, more than there is already.

I can see the problems, of course. The mods probably don't want people asking them about every deletion, and it'll make more work for pb, but I... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by The Devil Tesla at 8:50 AM on May 3, 2010

1. Dump impossible guy (have already, quite recently, told you this.)
2. Have dignified period of mourning, marked by drinking too much with girlfriends, emoting on blog, bad poetry, listening over and over to breakup music of your choice. Can last anywhere from one day to about a year or so - after that friends become restive.
3. Go back to class. When walking out, if attractive boy says, hey, say hey back. Smile. Make eye contact. Suggest coffee to go over notes, or,... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by mygothlaundry at 10:52 PM on April 29, 2010

GO CAPS

(or veneers)
posted to MetaFilter by Potomac Avenue at 4:55 AM on April 27, 2010

(Also I don't know if it was DTT or someone else but seriously let's try to get some perspective here).

Does this mean you'll stop getting pissy about dumb ass comments on the site 'cause they're not as bad the Rwandan Genocide?
posted to MetaTalk by Brandon Blatcher at 11:27 AM on April 24, 2010

I guess my problem boils down to - plausibility aside - we have a basic assumption that gaining 55lbs in around three months is a good thing, if not the best thing. The best for exercise, the best for health, the best for fitness, etc.

But I actually think this is very contentious. Really, it's only best for strength. Arguably, only squat strength.

Why not do that over a year - even two years - and avoid all the extra fat?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by smoke at 12:12 AM on March 12, 2010