MetaFilter

A linkdump arranged very thoughtfully and with great contextual notes!

But it would be easier to handle as different posts, separated more granularly.
posted to MetaFilter by knotty knots at 9:41 AM on March 20, 2023

rikshell, I was running a Dungeon World game for a while with my monthly board game group and half the group was struggling with the more narrative and reacts-to-the-player style of the game. They are are old D&D players too. I recently started work on on an Index Card RPG super hero campaign for them and it seems to be a good pace for the frenetic action they seem to like.
posted to MetaFilter by grmpyprogrammer at 6:32 AM on March 20, 2023

grmpy, yeah, Hasbro/WotC are really on a tear, are they not? I (like so many others) find myself looking elsewhere as they transition from D&D5e to their next big cash grab. I've been playing weekly since fall of 2015 but while 5e seemed like a huge step up from the AD&D I grew up with, the systems I've discovered in the meantime make it feel clunky. Once I finish up the current game I'm running, I might not ever run a 5e game again.
posted to MetaFilter by rikschell at 6:04 AM on March 20, 2023

MetaFilter: just one overproduced bad idea after another
posted to MetaFilter by kirkaracha at 10:24 AM on March 19, 2023

ah The Monkees are brilliant artists now? ok...

Well, they performed some great music that other people wrote, then they performed some great music that they wrote, then they made a delightfully surreal movie with Jack Nicholson, and then they all did solo stuff. That's more than I ever did.
posted to MetaFilter by delfin at 3:38 PM on March 18, 2023

My second-best question was a lady who asked me if New Zealand was (physically) part of England. When I got an atlas and pointed out the locations of both countries she shook her head, said "I don't think that's right" and walked away.
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 11:32 AM on December 25, 2014

I put my kids in cloth nappies at a time I really struggled to buy food and other necessities. In order to afford the nappies I bought them one at a time from a factory that made them (they were seconds so they were cheaper). The factory was about a two hour car drive (one way) from my home, or about four or five hours one way via public transit (...with a newborn...fun) that cost about $40 for the trip. I had to buy three different sizes so I was hit with that upfront cost three times.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by saucysault at 6:31 AM on July 30, 2013

Easy way to find the card: light their card production factory on fire and pick it up un-damaged from the ashes.
posted to MetaFilter by miguelcervantes at 10:00 AM on March 17, 2023

If I stole the card from its owner and threw it into a volcano, no court would ever convict me.
posted to MetaFilter by allegedly at 9:56 AM on March 17, 2023

No, the old Expanded Universe was terrible. The problem is that you're comparing your reactions as an impressionable youth to your reactions as a jaded adult. Stop now or end up as Statler or Waldorf.
posted to FanFare by TheophileEscargot at 2:50 AM on March 17, 2023

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries

eponyvehicular
posted to MetaFilter by progosk at 4:49 AM on March 17, 2023

For what it's worth, in the subtitles the voice Jack keeps hearing is attributed to a particular individual at least twice in this episode
Beverley [echoing]:
Find me.

and

[Beverly's voice]
[echoing indistinctly]

Beverly:
Jack.

In the late 24th century, does a woman in her 50s really have an unintended pregnancy? What did... [more]
posted to FanFare by the antecedent of that pronoun at 12:00 PM on March 16, 2023

It's okay to opt out of engaging on a post if you don't like the subject.
posted to MetaFilter by seanmpuckett at 10:31 AM on March 16, 2023

The thing about the mountain peak that made me wonder is ... ok so like air pressure is a thing, right? Is it as bad as the difference between sea level and the top of Mount Everest here on earth, or is Coruscant basically flat and the highest peak is only a few thousand feet above MSL

If you've got the tech to build an ecumenopolis you've probably got the HVAC sorted.
posted to FanFare by nathan_teske at 7:38 AM on March 16, 2023

just grit determination and small loan from yrrr parents
posted to MetaFilter by philip-random at 11:38 AM on March 14, 2023

The holodeck is a cultural blindspot, like all those early European colonists starving to death next to bays full of lobsters. I'm waiting for the episode where some ship survives by rerouting holodeck power to life support, and then gets kicked out of starfleet and shunned for committing such an abominable transgression.
posted to FanFare by surlyben at 11:15 AM on March 13, 2023

Je suis québécoise any my heart breaks for Kiska one last time. She deserved better and we ought to have done better, but we were too busy shouting louder and louder what a great, admirable nation we were to have time to make it a reality. I won't go on a whole political rant but there are some parallels between the specific details of the resistance to and backlash against calls to release her and the arc of Canadian politics over the last 15 years, and they fill my heart with shame.
posted to MetaFilter by seraphine at 9:21 PM on March 12, 2023

I live about a 10-minute drive from Marineland and I cannot wait for the day for when this garbage park officially closes their doors for the final time. It's long been an eyesore in this community. I'm gutted to hear of the long-suffering of these beautiful animals but I'm glad that Kiska is at peace. Thanks for putting this post/media/links/resources together fortitude25.
posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 11:20 AM on March 11, 2023

My Facebook comment just a while ago after the show:

Ok... Dear Hollywood: Please take in this moment tonight, post-Oscars. Please look at these wins for "Everything Everywhere All At Once" and learn that there is a future for movies that is NOT the formulaic, over-polished odes to egotistic actors like "Top Gun," or the ponderous muck and gore of yet another war movie that gets its prestige more for the historic book it's based on than what it... [more]
posted to FanFare by dnash at 9:36 PM on March 12, 2023

Changing a book just because the audience is substantially different from the original one is some totalitarian BS.

And don't get me started on all those so-called "translations" into foreign languages.
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 9:52 AM on March 12, 2023

How will we find out whether the reply is satirical?
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 12:11 PM on March 12, 2023

There are plenty of books that I don't have in my personal library, books that I don't even like, that I think it would be wrong to let go out of print.

But, like, almost all books ever published are already out of print.
posted to MetaFilter by snofoam at 7:11 AM on March 12, 2023

Currently reading Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass. Very good, but Douglass' life is (for all his flaws) the heroic arc of an exceptional individual, and Douglass himself refined his own narrative to make it compelling, so I kind of think it's an easy one to make an exciting bio out of.

Last read what I think was my first Jack Vance novel, The Star King, which is a revenge space opera. It's very 1960s. There's a fairly... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mark k at 8:03 AM on March 11, 2023

I just started reading The Stick Chair Book by Christopher Schwarz. I do not need a chair, I do not really care about chairs, but the process by which one builds a chair seems really interesting so I think I'm gonna have to build a chair.
posted to MetaTalk by bondcliff at 7:44 AM on March 11, 2023

Voyager was supposedly rationing energy and replicator rations during the trip home as well, but the holodeck was similarly used for recreational purposes constantly, running hangout spaces like Chez Sandrine from the beginning. So while it's illogical here too, it's not without precedent.

The counter-example is from TNG when Geordi was running that Leah Brahms program to figure out how to escape the booby trap and had to get authorization to keep it going when the power... [more]
posted to FanFare by Pryde at 6:44 PM on March 11, 2023

.

That Austrian spa should set up shop on the former marineland site, not on Ontario Place
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 7:01 PM on March 11, 2023

What does this have to do with metafilter? Why was this approved by the mods?
posted to MetaTalk by bondcliff at 10:52 AM on March 6, 2023

His refusal to use the name Seven, was, in his way, a way to humanize Annekin Hansen, or make himself more comfortable.

Yes, I really liked the way that was contextualized by his Wolf 359 experience. Hard enough to serve with an ex-Borg after that, harder still to call her by a Borg designation. He's still an ass, but maybe his assishness is trauma-induced.

Overall, I thought this episode was a huge improvement over the... [more]
posted to FanFare by Pater Aletheias at 6:51 AM on March 10, 2023

I enjoyed this episode! Nice to see it getting somewhere. The structure and pacing felt very odd to me, not at all like a Star Trek episode. But in a good way. Also sort of par for the course for Picard, it's had a different way of being a show than others.

Glad Jean-Luc got some time for character development. This is his show, afterall. The parallels between the flashback and the current scene were remarkably effective.

I guess that awfully... [more]
posted to FanFare by Nelson at 7:07 AM on March 10, 2023

Lack of Groppler Zorn notwithstanding, I'd take "Tin Man" over "Encounter at Farpoint" for spaceborne life references any day.
posted to FanFare by lumensimus at 7:10 AM on March 10, 2023

yeah I too am extremely intrigued by Vadic's hand situation and the mysterious face

like she seems to be a changeling based on that, but also, what the heck is going on though
posted to FanFare by DoctorFedora at 11:19 PM on March 9, 2023

Vadic spins around in her chair just like her father!

I knew Shaw had some unprocessed trauma somewhere in his background, but when he said to Picard in dark tones that they'd met before, I said "Oh no."

My wife: "What?"

Shaw: "USS Constance. Stardate 44002.3."

Me: "Oh no!"

My wife: "What??... [more]
posted to FanFare by Servo5678 at 8:43 PM on March 9, 2023

Nothing that happens is actually bad, but it just seems to be missing tension. There's no big baddie, no moral dilemma like whether Din Djarin needs to surrender Grogu.

Yeah, I found a phrase from an earlier fanfare ("And now it's just Jon Favreau playing with his action figures again") camped out in my head for a lot of this episode.

Even at this level there are worse way to spend a short hour, but it's way below it's potential right now.
posted to FanFare by mark k at 4:02 PM on March 9, 2023

someday when there’s less stuff on my floor

I have never in my life lived a life where a roomba would be able to deal with how I use my floor. It's another surface. Things stack on it, pile on it. I would need a better robot vacuum friend than a roomba.
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 5:25 PM on March 8, 2023

And, yes, the sheer level of personalized hatred of The Justin is nuts. It's so fucking high school, like he kicked them out of his house party when they were 16 and they'll never Ever FORGET!!!!
posted to MetaFilter by house-goblin at 10:04 AM on March 9, 2023

"I must respectfully disagree."

She’s so much more restrained than I could ever be.
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 1:55 PM on March 8, 2023

BK seems to think Din is a bit of a dimwit who has to be supervised to keep from hurting himself. Based on his performance this episode I can’t disagree. How did he end up at the bottom of that pool? He should have just lost his footing and got a bunch of water up his nose. The mythosaur looks like it’s already sick of everyone’s nonsense and it is now my favorite character.
posted to FanFare by orrnyereg at 4:26 PM on March 8, 2023

Re: darksaber: in a way Mando had already lost it to the tiny guy in the multiple robot bodies, and she beat that guy in combat. But then Mando took it back.
posted to FanFare by snofoam at 4:16 PM on March 8, 2023

Having watched every episode of HIGNFY I could find online, in order (it was a journey, let me tell you), I can say that Johnson was made to look as bad as possible by the cast of the show as often as possible. If it did anything, it simply put Johnson in front of cameras, but he was a career politician working his way up the party before he was ever on the show, and the show did its best to belittle him every chance it got. Maybe this is a case of all publicity is good publicity, but they were... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 12:28 PM on March 8, 2023

Sounds like people have never worked in an industrial/commercial setting and used a 3' wide swivel head dust mop.

...Hang on a second, you're expecting someone who lives in an apartment to clean their apartment with something more commonly used in an "industrial/commercial setting"?
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 11:11 AM on March 7, 2023

Just found out a close old friend died suddenly Sunday morning at 42...I'm 5 days older than her. We were never lovers but we slept in the same bed for months when we were illegally living in an art studio in a warehouse before that area became gentrified. It's like a physical connection to my past is now an ethereal connection and I feel unmoored.

Just trying to navigate a workday without (too many) tears right now.
posted to MetaFilter by schyler523 at 6:31 AM on March 7, 2023

Instead of me moving out, my parents have moved out and gone to live by the sea. Good for them.
I am having a strange version of empty nest syndrome
posted to MetaFilter by thegirlwiththehat at 12:33 PM on March 6, 2023

Friends, I'm starting to think laying off 70% of your engineers might not be a smart way to run a complex tech platform.
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:21 AM on March 6, 2023

I was thinking more the style of the in-your-face personal injury attorney commercials, ricochet biscuit

Scene: EXT - city street with a pink sports car, hazard lights blinking, Nice Guy looks on in apoplectic frustration

Big Brash Loud Attorney: HEY!!

pulls up in reverse at high speed in a tow truck, hooking up to the car with a loud clank

BBLA: NO PARKING IN THE FRIENDZONE!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dr_dank at 6:11 AM on March 6, 2023

Hibernate for half the year and trap-happy for chocolate and peanut butter? I have finally found my daemon.
posted to MetaFilter by EvaDestruction at 9:33 AM on March 4, 2023

What are eyeballs but sensors? I'm a little surprised that/ if Starships don't have wraparound external visible light sensors/ "sensors" aren't able to sense in the visible light spectrum.

The nebula thingy is interfering with the ship’s electronics. This is a Trek Trope since Star Trek II.
posted to FanFare by Fleebnork at 5:45 AM on March 4, 2023

I see *zero* upside to these test kits, and the potential downside is deep.

I mean I’m just gonna wait til a cousin gets convicted of a felony and get it done for free.
posted to MetaFilter by Hypatia at 9:06 AM on March 4, 2023

"On the Dark Side" is a legit banger. That whole movie is due for rediscovering.
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 2:24 PM on March 3, 2023

They missed "I am a man of constant sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys.
posted to MetaFilter by mach at 1:08 PM on March 3, 2023

Ctrl+F "lost boys" – 0 matches

I cannot take this list seriously.
posted to MetaFilter by escape from the potato planet at 12:57 PM on March 3, 2023