Favorites from Rhaomi

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MeFi post: I swim the seas between paranoia and disbelief - your weekly free thread
Oh hey, in the previous freethread, I mentioned that our kid was making an absurd, 4 foot birthday hat. He finished it. It's three levels tall and telescoping and ends with a concial birthday hat and a loofah as a giant pom. It features a bunch of weird in-jokes in text beads, three hands (a left, a right, and in between, a five fingered, no thumbs third hand) labeled "I am this many" and the words "BRITHDAY BOY" (sic).

Here is the promised photo. It... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on February 20, 2024
I'm in a room with a very large spider in the corner. I don't know if the spider is dangerous or not but it looks like H. R. Giger, by which I mean the actual guy. it's making that face.
the room is otherwise empty, including furniture. I passed out last night keeping an eye on the spider, when I woke up it was in the same spot, but there's a spent cigarette butt near my foot. I don't smoke.

I am typing very carefully. the neighbors have been arguing for 45... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dong_resin at 1:51 PM on February 19, 2024
MeFi post: "Marry, here's grace and a cod-piece; that's a wise man and a fool."
sometimes stashing useful items away inside such as handkerchiefs and money

Thus leading to hand-written signs on store entryways every summer: "Thine crotch-coin be not accepted by ye keeper of this shoppe"
posted to MetaFilter by Greg_Ace at 8:55 AM on February 14, 2024
MeFi post: How Vince McMahon Explains the 21st Century
So back in my Limo days, I was working at the planning desk and received this call from Vince McMahon's personal assistant, who wanted to schedule a limo to pick him up at International Arrivals to transfer him to the rental car lot to pick up his car.

I explained that this was a waste of time, money, and resources, as the car rental lots at the YVR at the time were directly across the roadway from the International Arrivals concourse. We're talking a zebra-striped,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by PareidoliaticBoy at 12:54 AM on February 13, 2024
MeFi post: JS+TDS=?
if you don't won't "low information voters" thinking "both sides are the same" then maybe give people a fucking pube's worth of effort differentiating yourself and enact policies that make material changes in peoples lives.

Like expanding overtime guarantees to boost the wages of millions of workers, or delivering hundreds of millions of dollars to schools to address mental health and gun violence, or taking unprecedented action... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Method Man at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2024
MeFi post: The MeFite as reader ... it's your weekly free thread
Our kid celebrated his 14th birthday last year by making himself a two foot tall (64 cm) conical blue hat that said "BRITHDAY BOY" and had an illustration of two seven fingered hands below which was written "I AM THIS MANY." He wore it to school and his party. Because why not.

For his 15th this year, he decided he needed to outdo last year. So he made himself a four foot tall (1.22m) telescoping hat with tiers like a wedding cake. The highest level is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 8:24 AM on February 12, 2024
I'm partway through a wilderness medicine textbook from NOLS (formerly National Outdoor Leadership School).

Something from the section on burns keeps ringing in my head because it's interesting in its literal truth but also figuratively resonant.

Burns that injure only the epidermis, or that go deeper into the dermis, are generally painful. But deeper ("full-thickness") burns penetrate deeper, injuring the subcutaneous tissue as well.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 4:40 AM on February 12, 2024
MeFi post: Recreating a game using a VHS recording of it
Thanks for posting this, JHarris! I've run Press The Buttons for almost 20 years now, and I've been coordinating with the lead on this project for a long time, so he lets me know when he has something new in the works. In the past he's hacked the 64DD-exclusive tracks into plain F-Zero X and hacked the lost e-Reader cards into F-Zero GP Legend. I can't wait to see what's next.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Servo5678 at 5:15 AM on February 12, 2024
MeFi post: Revel in your friends and hobbies, let your heart speak
Hi, I'm the person behind the website and I randomly stumbled on this thread.

Just wanted to quickly respond to the comment about Firefox – I do personally think that Firefox is an awesome browser and that websites should aim to provide as great of an experience on it as other browsers. I hate hate hate notices along the lines of "please use Chrome for best experience", but this project here is a bit of a special case. Firefox does many... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by rebane2001 at 5:21 PM on February 5, 2024
MeFi post: Taking the Prize
If anything I feel like the announcement underplays just how exciting this is for the study of ancient Greek and Roman literature. For centuries, Greek and Roman literature has been a "closed corpus" meaning scholars had found and catalogued basically everything that still existed in readable form. The last really significant discovery was of the full text of Aristotle's Athenian Constitution in 1890. So with these 2,000 characters or so we're already talking about one of the largest... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by firechicago at 1:54 PM on February 5, 2024
MeFi post: A directory of healthy mobile games
I can't escape the feeling that this is what the formerly well-paying industry of Flash animators has been forced to resort to.

Former Flash animator here. There was a time when I could've applied for a job at Zynga during their peak, after ten-odd years of working in TV and commercials and being burnt out. Ultimately, I'm glad I didn't do it.

Even now, their ads make it seem like it's more puzzles than tactics.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by May Kasahara at 6:01 PM on February 5, 2024
MeFi post: "The people of South Carolina have spoken again."
NPR, January 2023, Despite infighting, it's been a surprisingly productive 2 years for Democrats Looking back at the last two years, there was plenty of infighting among Democrats, even as they held control of both chambers of Congress. Biden was not able to pass the full scope of his social spending plan, for example; the expanded child tax credit did not get extended, and the president's student loan relief program is tied up in courts with an uncertain future.

And yet,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 4:48 PM on February 4, 2024
30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed

Posted it in the other thread but it's more germane here. Truly hadn't heard about a couple.
posted to MetaFilter by tiny frying pan at 4:41 PM on February 4, 2024
MeFi post: 30 of the best fantasy novels of all time
I would need to read, lessee, in alphabetical order by last name....

Piers Anthony (Incarnations of Immortality and Xanth)


Absolutely do not reread Anthony. I had a similar arc as a kid, read a heap of Xanth and then checked out his other stuff. Xanth starts off lighthearted but with a heap of creep/regressive stuff baked in that one doesn't realize until they're older.. and then you check out his other books and find that he... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by FatherDagon at 7:43 AM on February 1, 2024
MeFi post: To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him
If there's one thing I'm tired of, 8 years past 2016, it's people still acting like it's some deep ineffable mystery why perfectly nice moral people vote for Trump.

It's not complicated, it's just a coalition. Yes, it's partly fascists. Yes, it's partly racists. There's some "conventional" Republicans (and yes many of these categories overlap). There's some bizarre flavors of Christianity that I won't pretend to understand. But there's one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mstokes650 at 2:58 PM on January 29, 2024
Last week, I got a question at work from a Japanese colleague that I’ve been sort of dreading, the “(Ghidorah), why is Trump back? Why is he so popular?” The explanation I gave is pretty much what I’m writing here:

There are people, a lot of people, a lot more than we're comfortable admitting are out there that are just inwardly seething that they have been told they have to be nice, that they can’t tell blatantly racist/bigoted jokes without getting in trouble. There’s... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 2:07 PM on January 29, 2024
Seth Meyer looked at the choice between Clinton and Trump in 2016:They just don’t love the two choices. Do you pick someone who’s under federal investigation for using a private email server?

Or do you pick someone who called Mexicans rapists, claimed the president was born in Kenya, proposed banning an entire religion from entering the US, mocked a disabled reporter, said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured, attacked the parents of a fallen soldier,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 12:48 PM on January 29, 2024
MeFi post: Gen Z is two generations, not one
some very loose thoughts on the huge gap in south korea, from the point of view of a member of the diaspora:

korea has been, at core, a phenomenally patriarchial, neo-confucian society for as long as anyone can recall; it's so entrenched that one folk etymology for the common korean word for "wife" (아내) is from the word "inside", as in "inside the house". as one can imagine, the introduction of christianity during late joseon dynasty and it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by i used to be someone else at 9:57 PM on January 28, 2024
Or, to rephrase, men aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more conservative than their female contemporaries. I feel like that's maybe a better statement of the problem.

Worth looking at the graphs in the article if you didn't. There's no one pattern.

In the US, men have become more conservative over the past decade or so, but only back to the aggregate level they were around 1990, while women moved sharply to the left.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:28 AM on January 28, 2024
MeFi post: Not the Quiet One
It makes little sense to deploy the circular firing squad against a person who can catch a bullet in his teeth.
posted to MetaFilter by credulous at 8:40 AM on January 25, 2024
MeFi post: A slow civil war
So, I found the interview illuminating enough that I picked up Jeff Sharlet's book The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. I stayed up way too late last night reading straight through it, and I had bad, bad dreams. I recommend it strongly (bad dreams notwithstanding). It's very beautiful writing, and not without hope -- but it clearly shows some disturbing things that the mainstream discourse about Trump is getting badly wrong.

It's floating around in my head along... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ourobouros at 10:01 AM on January 23, 2024
If you'd like to talk to talk more about The Undertow, please stop by this post on FanFare.

Supplemental reading from Rick Perlstein and Jeff Sharlet: Metaphors Journalists Live By (Part 1) (Part 2):

“Fascism is a dream politics. It’s a mythology. You can’t fact-check myth. You can’t arch an eyebrow and make it go away.”--Jeff... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 1:24 PM on January 22, 2024
MeFi post: MagazineFilter
thivaia, what was it like writing for Pitchfork in the pre-Nast era?

I was there early, early, like 2000-2002 era. We mostly did not get paid then. We giant envelopes of promos. Then we started getting paid, like, $10 a review for what was commonly a 750 word review. We each wrote 2-3 reviews per week. I was one of the only women on staff at the time and briefly the only woman writing reviews (there were other women under the "news" heading)... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by thivaia at 9:09 AM on January 20, 2024
It seems that magazines (like newspapers) are over, for the most part.

I'm a magazine and newspaper photographer (in addition to other types of photography) and the past couple of years have been tough. There are still outlets that publish, but there've been a few wake-up calls. One of the first I remember was being unable to find a copy of Bloomberg Businessweek anywhere in Boston to see how my work looked in print. That was probably 2017 and I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by msbrauer at 1:33 PM on January 19, 2024
MeFi post: i've heard of chiptunes but
MetaFilter: I have written in the past about the joy of dumping.
posted to MetaFilter by potent_cyprus at 4:34 PM on January 17, 2024
MeFi post: Sex, aggression, and humour: responses to unicycling
We have a new puppy, and (like a unicycle) it's something that really gets you attention at the park park. It's like walking round with a celebrity. Every kid wants to pet him, every dog owner wants to know all about him. Reactions from younger men are uniformly about how he's a handsome dog and looks like he'll be big. A lot of kids are surprisingly polite about asking if they can pet him. You get the odd dog-walker who just jerks their little beast away and avoids your gaze, which is an odd... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by pipeski at 3:31 PM on January 14, 2024
MeFi post: In other news, water is wet
"Aaugh!" shouts Charlie Brown as Lucy pulls the football away.

My own posting to this site in the early 2000s easily qualifies as misogynistic hate (which you can go read if you really want or you can enjoy the rest of your day but not both). The first group I fell in with fresh out of fundie evangelism was, if not quite 4chan bad, definitely not far off.

Despite those posts, jessamyn took the time to befriend me and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ryvar at 1:00 PM on January 12, 2024
MeFi post: How Not to Speak to Someone With ADHD
> In my family of 3 ADHD and 1 normie I think we need a guide for now to converse with the normie. My partner goes a bit nuts when we are talking over each other, interrupting, and seeming to jump all over the place.

so one thing that’s interesting for me is that although i love and cherish the ping-pongy conversations featuring three or four interleaved parts all of which themselves contain six or seven levels of nested tangents that over the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:23 PM on January 10, 2024
MeFi post: With an uneasy mixture of consternation and lust
Loooool "it's actually bad to discuss the sexual feelings you got from the underwear ad which was designed to give you sexual feelings" is peak Metafilter.

i just consider everyone a perfectively reflective sphere on an infinite checkerboard plane like a 90s Amiga graphics demo and invite other posters to do likewise.

what beautiful hamronious bonging noises we shall make, when we touch
posted to MetaFilter by Sebmojo at 1:45 PM on January 9, 2024
MeFi post: "They do cushion our lives. But I cushion their lives."
I keep having Thoughts about living with my mother. I lived with my parents until I graduated university, then moved an ocean and continent away and happily lived alone for a dozen years until my father suddenly passed away in 2019. They were still living an ocean away but had been thinking about moving "back" to my hometown once my dad retired.

So my recently-widowed mother and I bought a house together and moved her back across the ocean to Hometown. We... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by paisley sheep at 4:13 PM on January 8, 2024
MeFi post: That's WHY He's Superman
There's a sort of argument by induction here. If you believe that Superman should be spending 100% of his time rushing from one maximally-efficient good deed to another -- well, doesn't that apply to everybody else too?

I mean, superpowers don't fundamentally change the moral calculus; everybody has some degree of power. Your power is x, and Superman's is Y, where Y > x, but so what?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by automatronic at 11:07 AM on January 8, 2024
MeFi post: 100 Years of "Rhapsody in Blue"
This piece, one of the great concertos of any kind ever. The linked article leaves out great details from this story, like Gershwin sitting in the hall during rehearsals, frantically writing to stay ahead of the ensemble's rehearsal pace and handing single pages to Ferde Grofé to orchestrate, literally as he finished each one; and Grofé orchestrating directly to parts a lot of the time, just to get the next page to players as quickly as possible. And then Gershwin winging the whole... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by LooseFilter at 8:22 AM on January 8, 2024
MeFi post: The biggest COVID wave since Omicron
Less importantly, the surgical masks that are still widespread even though I'm always told how useless they are, they made me look cute and I kinda liked wearing them. The N95s mean going out looking ugly, something I try and avoid for my own safety.

Honestly, I'd say in that case to just wear a surgical mask. Get the best one you can tolerate. A surgical mask will make you a lot less infectious, may protect you somewhat and will at least reduce the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Frowner at 6:58 AM on January 6, 2024
MeFi post: You're the star of the story! Choose from 40 possible endings
Oh! I got weirdly into this topic a few months ago and made a TWINE version of the first gamebook, Consider the Consequences (playable in your browser)
posted to MetaFilter by bookwo3107 at 8:03 AM on January 5, 2024
MeFi post: Therapists: We've heard everything
Previously, Maria Bamford gives the 28th Annual OCD Conference Keynote:

> Again and again and again she asked me more specifically whether I'd done these horrible things I was afraid of doing: was I planning to seduce Chihuahuas or genocide loved ones. I'm not sure why - maybe it was my million miles an hour backpedaling - but she did not believe me. We reached an impasse. She explained, "Hey, I'm a mandated reporter and I need to let the police know... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by AlSweigart at 10:01 AM on January 5, 2024
MeFi post: Medical Mystery
The one time I was in the ER, still conscious, I had a moment of zen. A nurse putting an IV in my right arm and another nurse putting a credit card receipt in my left hand. At the same time.

The symmetry of that has stuck with me for years.
posted to MetaFilter by howbigisthistextfield at 3:38 PM on January 3, 2024
MeFi post: When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears...
While I do not play darts or understand its jargon, I do enjoy this writing:
Afterwards, he was just a 16-year-old kid again. He gave light, diffident answers to the same light, diffident questions he has been facing all tournament. And frankly, why not? Perhaps the last person capable of putting this achievement into any kind of perspective is Littler himself, for whom 105-plus averages and otherworldly excellence are simply the norm. If you want to measure the strength of a storm,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Songdog at 6:47 AM on January 3, 2024
MeFi post: Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)
Here's a question I feel it's worth asking: why did the internet stop being weird in the first place?

There are two answers I come up with. (Do you care what I, a nobody in semi-rural Georgia who has never had a real job and doesn't have the ear of any venture capitalists, thinks? Well I paid my five bucks like everyone else here....)

First, the internet never stopped being weird, but it became a lot harder to find the fun and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 5:09 AM on December 31, 2023
MeFi post: "The Times hereby demands a jury trial for all claims so triable"
love mike masnick's take in techdirt.
posted to MetaFilter by brewsterkahle at 3:09 PM on December 28, 2023
I hope (not sarcastic!) that this is a more helpful response!

It really isn't. Because it hinges (ironically) on not understanding what the word "understanding" actually means. LLMs like ChatGPT store statistical relationships between tokens: small words (4~5 letters) or partial words, or individual symbols. The way that they store this is a complex web of billions of weighted connections between layers of nodes, which are intended to mimic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ryvar at 2:48 PM on December 28, 2023
MeFi post: “Well, don’t come with an easy question.”
>It's possible to answer "What was the Civil War about?" with other than "slavery."

That is absolutely incorrect, unless you want to say that the Civil War wasn't about states seceding.


Just to drive this home, the very first points mentioned in the Declaration of Causes for Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

GEORGIA

The people of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Tell Me No Lies at 8:51 AM on December 28, 2023
MeFi post: "The upshot is that nowhere in Gaza is safe."
. (b) much of the civilian violence was perpetrated by unaffiliated militants who came across the border in the chaos left by the main Al-Qassam force......Like it or not, the actual goals of Hamas on 10/7 were to attack legitimate military targets at and near the border.

what the actual fuck is this apolgism? where is your evidence for such a breathtaking assertion?

I've been relentless in criticizing apologists for Israeli... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lalochezia at 2:07 PM on December 28, 2023
This ugly, criminal response by Netanyahu was so easy to see coming.

Yes. In fact it's pretty clear that Hamas perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks specifically to provoke this response. It's much like what Al Qaeda did on 9/11: Commit an outrageous, shocking terror attack on a powerful state in order to trigger a blind, rageful, oversized reaction. It worked that time too.

That's not to say Bibi or the IDF... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artifice_Eternity at 7:37 PM on December 27, 2023
I am very disappointed to see people here defending the genocide and colonization of Palestine by zionists. This struggle has been going on for 75 years and the clear aggressors are zionists.

The struggle has been going on for far longer than that, and the "Zionists" are the "clear aggressors" if you choose to ignore a substantial portion of what happened before 1947/1948, and also ignore a significant portion of what came after.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by 1adam12 at 4:14 PM on December 27, 2023
MeFi post: You’re Supposed To Be Glad Your Tesla Is A Brittle Heap Of Junk
I didn't write this meme, but since it is on-topic, I will share for the LOLs:
Something I learned from trail hiking is if you're ever lost in the woods, do not panic, do not go off trail, just say loudly and clearly, "Elon Musk is not a genius," and several of the most unfuckable men alive will appear out of nowhere to call you poor, then you can follow them to the parking lot where their Tesla exploded.
posted to MetaFilter by birdsongster at 9:35 AM on December 27, 2023
MeFi post: “I love you, but you are not serious people.”
2024: Lizzo razzes Baby Groot
2025: Grass Muttons/Big Buttons
2026: "She was teak, stone slab, mall product"
2027: rapazoid phase
2028: trogging smig on the toecutter
2029: "Only Flesh for Giant Cobb"
2030: biphalbetic
2031: SNARLIN AND CHARLIN
2032-2036: interregnum
2037: "shammin with hoog, in nozzle drone"
2038: the low god desecrates the last... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by phooky at 4:57 PM on December 26, 2023
MeFi post: Can you copyright Sun Powers?
Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to copyright the sun.
posted to MetaFilter by kyrademon at 5:36 AM on December 24, 2023
Ask MeFi post: How to deal with differing feelings about marriage?
When it seemed like it was less *actually* possible/realistic, he initiated and talked about it more: now it *is* possible/realistic, and he is avoiding the idea like the plague.

This is a common psychological phenomena where the further someone is from the object of their fear, the more comfortable they are talking/referring/conceptualising it. Conversely, the closer they get, the less comfortable they are.

He is clearly not... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by underclocked at 9:39 AM on February 22, 2024
Ask MeFi post: Seeking fiction books with labyrinths and other interminable buildings
A Short Stay in Hell is a novella about Borges' (previously mentioned) Library of Babel as an afterlife. You could argue it's horror. But I'm also someone who doesn't enjoy horror and I was fine with it.

Report on an unidentified space station by J. G. Ballard is a short story available for free online. It's about a spaceship crew that lands on a space station that turns out to be much larger than they expected.

Blame! is manga rather than a... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Lorc at 4:49 AM on February 4, 2024 marked best answer
MeFi post: Netanyahu has 'lost his way'
If the aim is to see Netanyahu gone then now the iron is hottest and it's time to strike. His war cabinet and unity government is hanging on by a thread and is about to be squeezed hard by the deadline on the conscription of Haredi Jews, March 31st 2024. There's no way the ultra-orthodox are going to support passing the laws necessary to conscript Haredi Jews (not like it matters since the courts have ordered the military to do it) and the far-right will sink the government if there's any laws... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:28 PM on March 14, 2024
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