MetaFilter

I cannot imagine spending that much time thinking about this.
posted to MetaFilter by George Lucas at 12:24 PM on February 5, 2024

Scott Meyer of Basic Instructions was on the list too, and just posted his own reaction comic.
posted to MetaFilter by mbrubeck at 10:34 AM on February 5, 2024

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, wait up. You... stole? A doo-wop tape? From Billy Joel?!?
posted to MetaFilter by Don Pepino at 4:48 PM on February 2, 2024

kozad, I genuinely can't tell if you're being ironic or not given the thread topic.
posted to MetaFilter by star gentle uterus at 6:29 PM on January 31, 2024

First!
posted to MetaFilter by madcaptenor at 5:26 PM on January 31, 2024

Poor Things’ intimacy coordinator on consent, orgies and Emma Stone.
posted to FanFare by TheophileEscargot at 7:53 AM on January 30, 2024

It's always interesting to me how slow the speed of sound is. My favorite visualization of it is the Queen at Live Aid performance (link goes to looping image) where the crowd motion actually visualizes the sound travelling from the stage.
posted to MetaFilter by true at 6:19 AM on January 30, 2024

the mazes are insane

They are absolutely amazing.

The post about leaving mastodon.art after being told he couldn't mention the graphics program GIMP, which reminded him of a homophobic incident in a seedy Montana bar decades ago, and after years of describing himself as a queer gimp due to a disabling illness, is also worth a read.

Thanks for this, mpark. What a fascinating little blog, and a neat,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mediareport at 4:15 AM on January 30, 2024

Two decades ago, and on a much much smaller scale, a car alarm used to go off on my street at half past midnight, every night, for about twenty seconds. For months. One night a friend was visiting and we decided that it was time to act. We chose two positions on the street, the thing went off, and it took us about fifteen seconds to work out which car was responsible. I tucked a note under its wiper ("Do you know your alarm goes off for twenty seconds at 12.30 every night?") and that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Hogshead at 2:32 AM on January 30, 2024

To save people a click and say what it was:

It was an air cannon used on a farm. Such air cannons are used to scare off wildlife, particularly Canadian geese in this case according to the author.

The air-cannon sleuth figured out where it was, called the owner of the property, and asked if the onsite staff ran the air cannon at night. They claimed not to, but conveniently after he contacted the owner of the property, the air cannon use at night... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cats are weird at 12:36 AM on January 30, 2024

I’ve become quite fond of sumo mandarins,

>sumo peel me a mandarin

SYNTAX ERROR
posted to MetaFilter by straight at 4:05 PM on January 28, 2024

that's a terrible pharmacy - you should get your silmaril from rite-aid or walgreens
posted to MetaFilter by pyramid termite at 1:49 PM on January 28, 2024

if you make your love jump through stupid hoops to prove their love, and they do it, then they pass the test, but YOU fail it.
Clowder of bats

Now I feel like an asshole for asking my partner to bring me a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth.
posted to MetaFilter by star gentle uterus at 1:38 PM on January 28, 2024

Id say Tenacious Orange is my band name but it rinds me of a political figure. I typo'd 'rinds' there and I'm gonna leave it because I find it appealing
posted to MetaFilter by The otter lady at 11:06 AM on January 28, 2024

I'm with Axle, in that the way this manifested on my feed has been women talking about it as a theory, not a test. No one I saw talking about it was saying or even implying they need to be waited on hand and foot, just that how your partner would react to something as simple as "hey, can you peel me an orange?" can be illustrative. I don't ask my partner to peel oranges but I do ask him to, say, bring my laundry basket upstairs for me and he does it happily. That means something to me.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by misskaz at 10:29 AM on January 28, 2024

Are they taking the pith?
posted to MetaFilter by zamboni at 9:41 AM on January 28, 2024

I liked the part where Mark Ruffalo's penis got so sad he had to be committed but I am simple woman
posted to FanFare by phunniemee at 1:07 PM on January 10, 2024

The comments make it sound like a chaotic system which will inevitably produce random failures, rather than the incident being a unique one-off failure.

From the industry I'm in, it reminds me a lot of the time pressures and mutual blame games that result in shitty outsourced animation mistakes making it into broadcast episodes.

...except that aircraft shouldn't be built the same way that kid's TV is built! They should have better processes!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by clawsoon at 8:46 PM on January 24, 2024

Why do I have the feeling that in the next 48 hours, Boeing security will spend 10x more effort/cost on trying to track down the whistleblower than anyone else at Boeing will spend on actions to address the systemic issues that led to this incident?

Not that they'll ever be able to reconcile the reality that the pursuit of 'shareholder value' was likely the systemic issue.
posted to MetaFilter by jerome powell buys his sweatbands in bulk only at 8:46 PM on January 24, 2024

I love that Neagley calls Reacher a kaiju
posted to FanFare by mabelstreet at 3:08 PM on January 10, 2024

Hela is clearly having fun here. "What about those fire knives?"
posted to FanFare by jenfullmoon at 8:34 PM on December 29, 2023

Ten space dollars says that Ruby is her own mother. If not, then she's at least the mysterious woman who drops baby Ruby off at the church.
posted to FanFare by Mogur at 3:34 AM on December 26, 2023

I am disappointed that none of the obituaries I could find mention a time of death.

It’s complicated.
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 10:14 AM on January 20, 2024

I am disappointed that none of the obituaries I could find mention a time of death.
posted to MetaFilter by swift at 9:33 AM on January 20, 2024

The Correspondent on the Continent was my friend of 40 years. Words fail me on how devastating his sudden loss last summer has been.

Actually, thinking of it now, there's a secret I'm no longer obligated to keep: Almost a decade ago he maneuvered it so he was the sole moderator of several subreddits related to interest in fascism, made them private so the enemies of humanity could not use them to spread their filth, and defended them against all attempts to pry them... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by ob1quixote at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2024

I know, right? Like, "hey, do you happen to be shitty to trans women" is just not treated as the red flag it really is. It's on the "do you beat your spouse" level, except they are nice enough to just tell you about it. But no, we can totally do business with people like that. And then BAM! Surprise Nazis.
posted to MetaFilter by tigrrrlily at 12:17 PM on January 18, 2024

I love the 🍞 thing! I might have to start using it here!

Please don't! The ducks will start attacking
posted to MetaFilter by trig at 1:28 PM on January 18, 2024

That is both cute and maybe also a presager of impermanence 🍞
posted to MetaFilter by trig at 1:16 PM on January 18, 2024

@trig I was wondering when someone would ask! It's a little bit of an inside-baseball reference to old Ello members who read the post. It apparently originated with German users on Ello, who started using the bread emoji in lieu of a heart/star/like/+1 feature, which it didn't have. Ello eventually embraced it, put it on t-shirts, and you could type :bread: to get it to show up in posts and comments. 🍞
posted to MetaFilter by waxpancake at 12:53 PM on January 18, 2024

Jeez, practically anything can get you labeled a Nazi these days. I mean, does simply reiterating the ideas found in Goebbels' diary make you a Nnnn... yeah? Yeah? Oh. OK.
posted to MetaFilter by tigrrrlily at 8:38 AM on January 18, 2024

Hey, thanks for the link. I found a lot of lazy and snarky articles about Ello while researching this, treating it more like a punchline and a punching bag than something that real people spent years working on and a dedicated group of real people used and enjoyed. Ello's founders made a decision before launch that resulted in a predictable outcome, one that couldn't change no matter how many manifestos they published or corporate restrictions they put in place, and I thought that was worth... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by waxpancake at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2024

Unless Gambrell herself is extra anomalous, she herself has undoubtedly taken in and mysteriously assimilated the visual works of many thousands of living and dead artists without permission, and each of those artists have done the same

I don't want to downplay the importance that looking at art has when learning to make art, because it is important. But "taking in" art and "mysteriously assimilating" is not the main... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by surlyben at 11:59 AM on January 16, 2024

So in summary -
- she should be flattered that her work was ripped off
- you've never seen her work get ripped off
- she was ripping people off herself anyway
- AI is so clever is doesn't count as ripping people off, anyhow
- in the possible case of anyone getting directly ripped off, they deserve it because... they can only be ripped off... because they must be unoriginal?
posted to MetaFilter by ominous_paws at 11:07 AM on January 16, 2024

I liked it quite a bit. The respective second seasons of What If...? and Loki have been high points in a kind of bleak run for the MCU.

W/r/t to this episode, the comments on social media have shifted gears from, "The MCU is just churning out recycled, unoriginal product," to, "The MCU is now just dropping in new characters we have never even seen before and expecting us to be interested."... [more]
posted to FanFare by ricochet biscuit at 2:08 PM on January 1, 2024

If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy the best film in the Predator franchise, Prey. They both feature badass indigenous women leads who show extreme competence in their defense of their homes and people from outsiders, and both films are subtitled since the characters speak their native languages (including the invading colonialists). And the Predator, too, although they aren't subtitled.
posted to FanFare by autopilot at 10:49 AM on January 2, 2024

For the proper What If effect I really want to see how What If The European Colonization of (North) America Never Was Allowed A Foothold plays out to the 21st century. Imagine an alliance between Wakanda and the Iroqois Confederacy fighting off Thanos or a Kree/Scrull invasion. You would not even need to change too many place names. Manhattan would still be Manhattan, for example.
posted to FanFare by Karmakaze at 11:48 AM on December 28, 2023

The original comics series had the wackiest divergence.
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 11:06 AM on December 28, 2023

However, it would seriously undermine that foundation. Pretty irresponsible, Reacher!


Look, he's an expert in pretty much everything else but structural engineering is just a bridge too far.
posted to FanFare by coriolisdave at 8:23 PM on December 20, 2023

Saropian: "And who's Sarah Conor?"
T-1000: "I don't give a shit."
That alone deserves an award or two.
posted to FanFare by dogstoevski at 3:06 PM on December 18, 2023

The novelization of this episode offers some extra details including that 14 bought a house.

The garden party at the end of the episode takes place outside of Fourteen’s house!! Idiot saw an ad for it, thought it “looked happy”, then — after checking with the real estate agent that it had a nice corridor, an essential need— tried to buy it, sight unseen, with 60 pounds cash. Eventually, he calls up Kate and collects the salary UNIT has owed him for 50-plus years... [more]
posted to FanFare by Servo5678 at 5:59 AM on December 15, 2023

Surely there’s some sort of joke to be made about this regeneration being some kind of binary paradox (“pair o’ docs”)?
posted to FanFare by transient at 4:01 PM on December 12, 2023

While the wheelchair ramp was a thoughtful touch, old school Daleks are going to have a field day in the TARDIS.
posted to FanFare by dr_dank at 10:23 AM on December 12, 2023

The whole puppet show with Amy, Clara, Bill, and the Flux really hits over the head with RTD’s thoughts on how his predecessors handled the final fate of companions. “Well, that’s alright then!”
posted to FanFare by Servo5678 at 11:46 AM on December 10, 2023

Since the Toymaker has/had turned the Doctor's life "into a jigsaw" does that mean another rewrite of the Doctor's past?

I dunno - I think it's more like The Doctor making peace with his past. RTD was the one who introduced the whole notion of The Doctor Tortured By His Past Misdeeds right from the first - when he brought back the show in the 2000s, the whole Time War thing was right there in the first season. He was playing with the... [more]
posted to FanFare by EmpressCallipygos at 7:56 AM on December 10, 2023

But, of course, the biggest twist is the bi-generation of Fourteen and Fifteen and Ncuti Gatwa in his underpants!!!!

If you look closely at both their clothes - they sort of SPLIT Fourteen's Clothes. Fifteen got the Oxford Shirt and the Tie, and Fourteen kept the pants, the vest, and an undershirt.

....And that means...if Fifteen has the underpants, Fourteen is going commando.
posted to FanFare by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 PM on December 9, 2023

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH.

I thought the Toymaker stuff was great - both commenting on the character's racist/Orientalist origins in the Classic series, while also making fun of stereotypes in a bufoonish way. The idea of the Giggle and dialing up of everyone's doom scrolling/online outrage was great - without really saying the problem is with the technology. The problem, as always, is how humans use it.

But, of course, the biggest twist is the... [more]
posted to FanFare by crossoverman at 7:25 PM on December 9, 2023

Oh, okay, one tiny spoiler -

Thank you, RTD, for treating us all to the sight of Neil Patrick Harris cavorting through UNIT headquarters singing "Spice Up Your Life." I did not know how badly I needed to see that.

...There's also an anecdote from when RTD reached out to Neil to invite him onto the show. He'd worked with Neil on his earlier show It's A Sin and thought that with Neil's magic background he'd be perfect for The Toymaker.... [more]
posted to FanFare by EmpressCallipygos at 5:25 PM on December 9, 2023

WHAT
JUST
HAPPENED ?!
posted to FanFare by Faintdreams at 11:54 AM on December 9, 2023

Alternate summary: after 37 years, someone on the Doctor Who production staff finally remembers that Mel is a computer programmer and Bonnie Langford can sing!
posted to FanFare by Blue Jello Elf at 11:45 AM on December 9, 2023

And as always, Sam Rockwell gets to dance
posted to FanFare by DowBits at 9:55 PM on January 2, 2024