MetaFilter

My consumerist/lizard brain perks up for these sorts of articles because maybe I can replace whatever I’ve been making due with with something shiny and new. What a relief that this article is about the printer I already have!
posted to MetaFilter by rickw at 10:38 PM on March 15, 2023

I own a Brother HL-5280DW that I purchased approximately 15 years ago and it is a tank, it is my comfort and it is my rock, and I wish to be buried with it, for we are toner and to toner we shall return.
posted to MetaFilter by gwint at 9:00 PM on March 15, 2023

A fairly new acquaintance of mine gave me a copy of LLD, the signet paperback English translation by I don’t remember who, and I read a few of the letters at random and decided it would be hard for me to finish unless there were characters I liked a lot better than the ones whose letters I read.

About a week later he and I were sitting at a 4 person table in a coffee house right across the street from the campus of the university where he was a graduate student in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jamjam at 5:55 PM on February 11, 2023

Cis people get gender affirming surgery routinely, and this falls in that category. I support it because I support gender affirming surgery for normal people and cis people. People should get to be comfortable in their bodies.
posted to MetaFilter by Bottlecap at 5:04 PM on November 6, 2022

This is an awful, awful story; I can all too easily imagine myself in his role and as one of his audience.

He could easily have died or suffered a stroke, they could easily have witnessed a friend or acquaintance die a horrible death as they dithered and didn’t know what to do, and then been tormented with self-recriminations for the rest of their lives.

The detail about the stuff coming out 'including around my eyes' convinces me this is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jamjam at 1:18 AM on August 4, 2022

Metafilter has been lucky to have you.
posted by vacapinta at 9:08 AM on March 30

Delurking to second vacapinta and thank you for all the time, love, and effort you've put into keeping this site going for so many years. You're the best, and you deserve the break you're giving yourself. I hope you are happy and flourishing as you focus on your art and your actual life ...
posted by languagehat at 2:24 PM on March... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by the quidnunc kid at 8:45 AM on March 30, 2022

My current favorite jokes are Romanian Bulă jokes.

Here is an example:
Bulă is at school, the teacher enters the class and starts calling pupils to see who is missing:
"Andrei?"
"Here."
"Anda?"
"Here."
"Bulă?"
"Here."
Behind the class George starts laughing.
"What's so funny George?" the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on March 10, 2022

Cottage Life has some of the information, especially in there back issues. As will some local realtors in the area you target (they are trying to sell to you though so keep their bias in mind). I live in cottage country year round, but close enough that I can commute to my job in Toronto. I used to live in a very popular cottage place (non-stop parties and noise) and now live where there are no renters and it is heaven.

I have random thoughts... People renting do not... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by saucysault at 5:00 PM on February 25, 2022 marked best answer

Great movie - far more positive towards its characters than you might imagine - and inspiration for the Ramones' "Gabba Gabba Hey" onstage chant, of course.

There's a great story about Johnny Eck, the "half boy" who's one of Freaks' stars. It concerns a stage act Johnny used to do with his able-bodied brother Robert, and I'm quoting this account from The Apothetae website:

In 1937, Eck and Robert were recruited by... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Paul Slade at 12:00 AM on February 15, 2022

As to framing, I favor "unburden the police."

This suggests they are an entity who have actual responsibilities, that they actually fulfil, when all they really do is beat their wives and shoot black people and dogs.
posted to MetaFilter by turbid dahlia at 7:30 PM on January 20, 2022

The slow but obvious degradation of the core experiences of big tech juggernauts is a fascinating and awful thing.

Whatever bad stuff they might have been doing at the time, there WAS a time when Facebook's feed was enjoyable to read for many people, when Google search was consistently useful, when buying stuff on Amazon was reliable.

This is a little different than services that started failing as businesses and started flailing (Yahoo). Or hit... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by feckless at 11:50 AM on December 3, 2021

That every FPP be a short essay to justify itself submitted for for critique rather than, say, a link to an interesting thing on the internet to discuss is very much a later development . It’s fucking obnoxious and it’s why I’ve given up on doing FPPs.
posted to MetaTalk by Artw at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2019

I can’t think of an alternate name for it that would make the referent obvious to the reader unfortunately.

"Searle's Room"
posted to MetaTalk by Etrigan at 10:12 AM on February 15, 2019

Meanwhile, Mariners and Nationals fans just want their teams to stop sucking in the postseason.

hi i'm an orioles fan and what is a "postseason" ???
posted to MetaFilter by halation at 8:08 PM on June 8, 2019

I confess, I am a Surplus Auction Junkie. Have been for near 40 years now. I've bought just about everything you can imagine except maybe live animals. I used to specialize in IBM Selectric typewriters back in the day, the ones with the ball. I could pick them up usually for about $30-$45 for a pallet of fifteen or twenty. Usually make ten of them work and sell them to lawyers and title companies that had to make multiple copies using carbon paper. I was minting money until the Government got... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by HappyHippo at 12:57 PM on January 26, 2019

Sure, humboldt32, but lot's of people are upset by the cold -- entire categories of apparel, huge industries, even otherwise onerous regulations on new construction are predicated around the coming of cold, its negative effects, and predicting when it might arrive and how to mitigate it based on prior experiences with the cold. If you're cold, want to be warm, and can't afford it, many states and non-profits have direct infusion aid and broader subsidies for cold-solutions,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Chipmazing at 10:11 AM on August 24, 2018

Thank you for this post. I am intimately involved with the Seattle homeless population professionally, and am affected by the issue because, like many residents near the city center, I am surrounded by homeless encampments. I had read the Atlantic article previously and our neighborhood listservs are basically “grar! More tent cities discovered! I called the police and nothing happened!” Importantly, the people complaining the loudest about homelessness are not the new money immigrants, but the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Slarty Bartfast at 10:59 PM on July 5, 2018

Oh yeah, I was also going to recommend The Dental Shoppe! Everyone there has been both nice and understanding (that we are human beings, that we don't have infinite wallets, etc).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by batter_my_heart at 11:13 PM on March 11, 2018

I have seen hagelslag at Big John's PFI each time I've been there.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by saeculorum at 11:25 AM on February 20, 2018 marked best answer

Look, if some of you want to be untrained, unprofessional, volunteer social workers for white supremacist terrorists, god bless you.

Don't ask me to do that work. Don't imply it is a superior decision. Don't boast about your relationship online. And if I get even a whiff that you are failing, that what you are, in fact, doing, is acting as an accidental support network, tacitly normalizing white supremacy by maintaining a friendly relationship with a white supremacist,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by maxsparber at 10:56 AM on February 14, 2018

All beings that feel pain deserve human rights

Human rights are about so much more than feeling pain.

Rights are a social construction, something we create as humans, and built on the basis of the needs and responsibilities we all have as humans, and on the basis of the relationships we share with one another. Tying human rights to the concept of "capacity for pain" diminishes their scope and weakens their efficacy.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biogeo at 9:58 PM on January 27, 2018

A reference to this on twitter was among the very first things I saw when I woke up this morning and I am not regretting it a bit.

And this is a really good choice for this sort of nonsense! The drum fill sample has some great features for something you're going to grind itself at length:

1. Lots of empty space. Each drum hit has a big transient spike and then some decay so there's a sense of space between sounds that the off-sync versions can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cortex at 7:35 AM on March 1, 2017

Okay.

Going back to before the AskMeFi question: the dialog between myself (Me) and my friend (Fred - not his real name) when I visited, pretty much word for word as I can remember it. I wrote this down soon afterwards to cover myself if things went badly wrong and I had to speak to the police, and also to send to the other police (the MetaFilter mods) as an explanation.

So, if you want movie dialog, but actual dialog (as in a documentary or... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Wordshore at 8:35 AM on August 13, 2016

One thing re not-liking-being-a-man:

While it is very, very true that not being masculine doesn't make you a woman and not being feminine doesn't make you a man, because of the way our culture works, discomfort with stereotypically-[GENDER] things is one way that some trans people experience and articulate transness.

Basically, you could have two people, and one of them is a woman who loves fixing... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Frowner at 9:21 AM on September 26, 2016 marked best answer

Damn, so sad!

It was going to be part of my 'lets see how things have changed in 15 years' stop-over in London. I have a sweet story from Fabric, and I am waiting for some automated tests to finish, so story time it is.

In 2002 I made a literal last minute decision, standing at the check-in line at the airport after a visit to my sister, to stay in London and see how long and how far I could make it with 100 pounds and basic English.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Doroteo Arango II at 1:30 PM on September 19, 2016

So, I work at the Levi's HQ in a non-product capacity. (This is all gleaned from plenty of corporate communication that I'm hopefully not butchering, so please don't fire me HR person who found this through google)

This is not a cotton vs cotton blend quality issue, which most people try to boil it down to. And when people talk about this, they usually are conflating 100% cotton with very dense/rigid fabric. But cotton blends can just as dense and rigid. Especially when... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by politikitty at 5:13 PM on August 8, 2016 marked best answer

When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and
the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in
the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who
comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says
he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked
questions like a senator. (1967, as quoted by H S Thompson)
posted to MetaFilter by hawthorne at 10:48 PM on June 3, 2016

No, because cereal isn't soup, and only a few intentionally eccentrics disagreed.

But cereal is, technically, a burrito.
posted to MetaTalk by beerperson at 10:53 AM on April 5, 2016

I'm actually on my way out the door to do an interview on the Disability Community's opposition to assisted suicide, so I don't have the time it might take to respond to this article, but here is some perspective that I think people should consider, and that often gets left out of this discussion.

Council of Canadians with Disabilities: "SCC Decision Disappoints"

Not Dead Yet: "Why Do Disability Rights Organizations Oppose Assisted... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by gauche at 9:47 AM on March 3, 2016

Is there any indication that a UBI is a viable political options in the US within the next decade?

Well, the $15 minimum wage is certainly getting traction on the coasts. Politically, there's a lot of tie-ins between the Fight for 15 and calls for a minimum income. I think it's one of those things, like same-sex marriage, that will seem infeasible until it suddenly isn't.
posted to MetaFilter by eviemath at 10:50 AM on January 25, 2016

pg;dr.
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 8:13 PM on January 3, 2016

I'd love to see stats on how freelancers compare, in general. On one hand, like breadbane says, we can take any days off we want, right - a big part of the freelance fantasy that is true.

On the other hand, every day off is unpaid, ever. It can really be the best or the worst of both worlds, depending.
posted to MetaFilter by gottabefunky at 6:36 PM on September 7, 2015

That we always feel we must justify our ownership of books, that we must place ourselves on one side or the other of the library question, the ebook question, the read/unread question, as though there is a morality of books, a proper biblioethics that we're all aware of, and all aware we've sinned against, seems to flatten the entire experience of the book, mashing your relationship of this thing across time, into some bland matrix of pragmatism: Is this book useful? Will I read it again?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mittens at 5:52 PM on July 11, 2015

"Inflammable" means "flammable."
posted to MetaTalk by griphus at 8:45 AM on June 4, 2015

To expand, the city charter was amended in 1920 to declare an inalienable right to unmetered water. The state's opinion differs on that matter.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Blue Jello Elf at 6:51 AM on May 22, 2015

The Super Rally is Europe's annual gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts; it's in a different city every year, and I was at the Paris Rally in 1992 when the Harley Owners Group of Poland made their first foray into the West after the fall of the Iron Curtain. You couldn't buy a Harley in Communist Poland, of course... but what you could do is find wrecked bikes left behind after WWII, and then hand-machine all the parts you needed to make them run again. They were barely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mary Ellen Carter at 8:43 PM on February 11, 2015

We're fucked. Can someone find me a time portal so I can hop back a few decades?

You're white, aren't you?
posted to MetaFilter by el io at 8:52 PM on January 2, 2015

They are commemorating the Gravensteenfeesten. Described as the biggest student prank in Gent, it dates back to November 1949 when students protested a price increase from 2 to 3 old belgian franken for a beer ("pintje"). Armed with beer and fruit they entered the Gravensteen and managed to withstand the police for quite some time. Eventually the police was able to reenter the castle and some students were arrested. None were prosecuted because the inhabitants of Gent found it all... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by schamper at 9:43 AM on November 12, 2014 marked best answer

I read the site "Not Always Right," about looniness in the service industry. And there was a similar story recently:

A woman was the clerk at an electronics store, and two guys in her line were obviously a couple, the two of them holding hands and occasionally smooching. Behind them was a sour-faced woman, and behind them, another woman with a little girl. When the two guys got up to the clerk, they asked if the store had a wedding registry. "Oh,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 4:34 PM on November 4, 2014

I looked at the linked survey and, well, just UGH. I couldn't even imagine answering a question like "what kind of women do you notice and admire?"

I dunno, that seems like a completely legit question to me. Every once in a while, like about every other month or so, I get on a train with this woman. I love her so much. She is so fucking cool. I see her and I think damn, I want to be that lady. I want to be as cool as that lady when I'm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by phunniemee at 1:03 PM on October 16, 2014

But how can I, as a teen, interact with my favorite brands?
posted to MetaFilter by The Whelk at 9:04 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm not sure 'Westeros' is much more creative than 'Map' to be honest.
posted to MetaFilter by Tevin at 8:19 AM on August 28, 2014

I kicked a dude in the groin once.

I mean, I have been to classes where we talked about groin kicks - their relative utility in self defense situations, etcetera. We sort of acted it out.

But in real life, just one time.

A coworker of mine at the time was the sort that tried really hard to be friends with everyone, to the point that it was kind of awkward but you still had to appreciate the effort.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by louche mustachio at 8:38 PM on August 8, 2014

The first part of this video and then this follow up are relevant to our interests.

I really don't know what would happen if you put your head (or hand) into the LHC beam, and contra the article, the Anatoli Bugorski incident only gives us a vague sense of what would happen in the much more powerful LHC. So let's do a Fermi-style thought experiment. Also known as writing down a bunch of numbers and then guessing from that.

Let's ignore the fact... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by physicsmatt at 6:43 AM on July 30, 2014

4E was basically Diablo the Tabletop RPG.

If I never again hear somebody conflate characters who aren't mages having something interesting to do every turn with video games, it'll be too soon.

The real problem is that 4E had a ton of combat rules and not a lot of rules for everything else, and gamers are not as creative as we'd like to pretend we are, and a lot of (groggy) types decided that having no rules for, say, how good a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Pope Guilty at 5:27 PM on July 3, 2014

As a woman with a 20-year career in technology, the one thing I would not do is development or engineering at a technology startup or game company. There is a culture there that is toxic and still pretty proud of it.

But there's another 98 percent of the working world that is not that. They are hospitals and trucking companies and pool tile manufacturers and widget makers who have sales systems and accounting systems and workstations and servers and in-house software... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Lyn Never at 10:09 AM on May 13, 2014 marked best answer

Oh, oh, oh! Avatar: The Last Airbender. Seriously!
posted to Ask MetaFilter by PercussivePaul at 12:50 PM on April 27, 2014

(By the way, I happen to know the guy behind Utilikilts. He's an incredible douchebag. Please don't give him money.)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Skot at 2:32 PM on April 14, 2014

Amazon search results often include a wide range of items that are only incidentally related to each other. For example, searching for "clay" returns results that include modeling clay, air-drying clay, cosmetic cleanser, sculpting tools, and something for cleaning cars. What would it mean to sort these items by their star rating? Amazon is first and foremost trying to guess what you're searching for.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by alms at 7:29 PM on April 13, 2014

The worst etiquette breach I (clueless Frenchman) have been guilty of happened during my last visit to the States, at a tourist information office.

My (US-born) fiancee and I were exploring Amish country, and had plans to get a marriage license in the fair city of Lancaster, PA (the self-unifying kind, pretty baffling too, but an altogether different story). The countryside was gorgeous, rolling hills, barnstars and the like, and Lancaster itself proved nice. We had... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by susuman at 9:36 AM on March 6, 2014