MetaFilter

I dm on roll20. i keep a bag of dice at my side for decisions and my PCs find it much scarier hearing them roll.

Big ups if you put in a pause after the roll, then a slightly breathless "...huh."
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:47 PM on December 10, 2022

My dream the night before last was a sci-fi Terminator thing, but the friendly "fleshy Terminator" was played by Sam Elliott, and at one point he got all his flesh blown off by an evil Terminator, but survived, and for the rest of the dream my friendly Terminator companion was a full-on metal Terminator that talked like Sam Elliott, and that was probably the best dream I've ever had and will have.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:19 AM on January 29, 2024

I've been talking about my cancer diagnosis in these threads so I wanted to tell everybody that I got my pathology report yesterday: looks like they got everything with the hysterectomy. No chemo or radiation in my future. I just have to heal up from having my reproductive innards removed!
posted to MetaFilter by gentlyepigrams at 4:22 PM on January 26, 2024

When I was a kid, my grandmother was big on manners, in a very mid-century kind of way. Not stuffy white-gloves manners, they were way too hippyish for that, but very much being polite and and indirect as a way of avoiding offense. So if someone served you something gross or showed you their favorite artwork, no matter how disgusting or in poor taste it was, you weren't supposed to say "Ew, yuck!", you were supposed to say something like "Thank you, but that doesn't quite speak... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Dip Flash at 11:59 AM on January 27, 2024

I'm having one of those weeks where every conversation makes me feel like maybe I'm actually a ghost who cannot be seen or heard by the living?

Me: So the problem with this project is that phases 1 and 2 were done without oversight, by an outside party who didn't really follow our best practices. Phase 3 was under our supervision and will be more like what you're used to seeing. Just bear that in mind as you dig in!

Coworker, 3 hours later:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:58 PM on January 25, 2024

"Listen, Mr. Wright, I admit you and your brother have made some progress - up from that first 12 second flight a year ago to a minute and a half this year - but to be blunt, that pretty much sucks, and we don't see this airplane thing going anywhere."

Alternately, you know how people often speculate about traveling back in time to destroy some unspeakable evil in its infancy before it could wreak untold harms upon the Earth? The cradle is right fuckin' there.
posted to MetaFilter by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:18 PM on January 25, 2024

I've actually been thinking a lot about the ongoing problem with hourly wage jobs of people being forced to work when they're sick. Is this anywhere as bad in countries other than the US?

Speaking for my part of Ontario, yes it is, even with universal healthcare. The COL is high that so many people go into work sick because they can't afford not to. If you're lucky, you find the kind of job that gives you vacation or sick days, but other than that?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 3:50 PM on January 24, 2024

Don't forget Look What They Done To My Song, Ma
Ils ont changé ma chanson
.
posted to MetaFilter by MtDewd at 5:52 PM on January 24, 2024

Will listen to Candles in the Rain and see if that strikes any memories.

With a name like Windopaene it should😁
posted to MetaFilter by TedW at 3:09 PM on January 24, 2024

"And he could abs use his time at the mic to say A Few Words."

It doesn't matter to me one iota if this was unintended. STANDING OVATION.
posted to MetaFilter by joelhunt at 6:27 AM on January 24, 2024

> Ghandi

Obligatory reminder that "ghand" literally means ASS in Gandhi's native language, except more crude than ass sounds to us.

That h is properly placed elsewhere in the man's name. Come on. If you can learn to spell Schindler and Oppenheimer, you can learn to spell Gandhi.
posted to MetaFilter by MiraK at 11:58 AM on January 23, 2024

There are many, many films through the history of the medium that are 3.5 hours long (and longer!) A shorter length may be normative, but it’s also not definitional.

Ok? I am comfortable with my statement being correct. MOST are not 3.5 hours long. I didn't say it was hyper unusual. The length is being pushed more commonly though. It's a change to me.
posted to MetaFilter by tiny frying pan at 11:37 AM on January 23, 2024

Sorry to flabbergast you. The expected norms of a film. Most films throughout history aren't 3.5 hours long. It starts to subvert the art form, imo.
posted to MetaFilter by tiny frying pan at 11:21 AM on January 23, 2024

I don't know how it never occurred to me that people who have been stuck in prison for most of their lives get fucked again since they can't get Social Security. Seemingly little details that don't just add insult to injury, but are another injury all their own.
posted to MetaFilter by wierdo at 1:44 PM on January 23, 2024

Yet sand mining is the world's largest extraction industry because sand is a main ingredient in concrete, and the global construction industry has been soaring for decades. Every year the world uses up to 50 billion metric tons of sand, according to a United Nations Environment Program report. The only natural resource more widely consumed is water. A 2022 study by researchers at the University of Amsterdam concluded that we are dredging river sand at rates that far outstrip nature's ability to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MrVisible at 5:18 AM on January 23, 2024

Also Bananagrams. It's Scrabble for introverts, and thus we love it. With two players, both with absurd vocabularies and mixed UK/US/CA spelling, we aim to draw every time. And we almost always draw.

I'm now on my third decade of playing Dope Wars on mobile. It's on Android, but every few years I drag out my PalmPilot and play it the way it was meant to be played.
posted to MetaFilter by scruss at 8:28 AM on January 22, 2024

Over the summer, a friend reached out and asked if I’d be interested in joining a weekly online DnD meetup. One guy had to leave, and they needed a fourth player.

It’s been years since I played, and I gave it some thought. I wanted to do some full on character role play instead of the dumb min/max half elf ranger I always played as a kid. We’re playing 2E (uh, not my choice, but also, it’s the last edition I actually know), but the dm doesn’t have unearthed arcana, so... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:22 AM on January 22, 2024

My wife and I started a game of rummy about 5 years ago and are aiming to take it to 1,000,000. We are about 25,000 into it. The winner gets planet Earth.
posted to MetaFilter by kabong the wiser at 5:20 AM on January 22, 2024

Brainwane: Thank you for shouting out Once Upon a Time. I co-designed it, and the fact it's been in print for more than thirty years and people are still discovering it and designing their own card-sets for it is a constant source of amazement, pleasure and pride.
posted to MetaFilter by Hogshead at 4:59 AM on January 22, 2024

I’m quite local to this and while it is interesting to see the history unfold like this the best bit remains that if you visit the town of Cern Abbas you can buy clocks where his willy is the second hand and no amount of historical detective work will ever stop those being funny.
posted to MetaFilter by dowcrag at 10:23 AM on January 21, 2024

I cast Vicious Mockery nat 20 let's go
My favorite LARP character is a Bard who has the ability to maintain an impenetrable shell while playing an instrument. It is a great deal of fun to stroll along behind the enemy lines, mocking to distract them while playing my dulcimer. I've always loved Bards - even (perhaps especially) those wonky triple-class 1st edition ones.
posted to MetaFilter by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 4:51 PM on January 15, 2024

Wormy was sometimes kinda inscrutable to me, but sometimes it was the best fantasy art that ever appeared on the inside or outside of Dragon magazine.
posted to MetaFilter by fleacircus at 10:50 AM on January 14, 2024

skewedoracle was not the most prolific poster here but a few people might remember him from the occasional IRL appearance. He joined MetaFilter five years before I did and he's the one who introduced me to the site.

We met when I was sixteen and he was in his early twenties and we bonded over our shared love of roleplaying games. We were roommates for a couple years and then separated and then became roommates again and then separated and then became roommates again and... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Parasite Unseen at 12:12 PM on January 18, 2024

5. Really, really ethical leadership with the foresight to recognize that if you make something people care about, people will care enough to donate money and time to keep it alive

Yeah but also 6. being put into continual damned-if-you-do-or-don't situations over the years that result in the site periodically bleeding members. Watching people hate on Metafilter time after time when, despite mistakes once in a while, its management has always tried to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 1:22 PM on January 18, 2024

I think I speak for many people when I say, Oh shit! I remember Ello. That was still a thing?
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 9:26 AM on January 18, 2024

I miss gman. I think of him whenever I pass the bar where he organized the Mefi X meetup.
posted to MetaTalk by If only I had a penguin... at 7:45 AM on January 17, 2024

.

I can't say that I truly listened, but I always enjoyed having his show on.

Also, the idea that a guy could make a career out of parodying musicology lectures seems to me like something from a world infinitely more sophisticated and yet even more infinitely innocent than our own, and I am sad about the loss of that world.
posted to MetaFilter by gauche at 6:05 PM on January 17, 2024

I am so sorry that you lost your beloved kitty. Would it help to post a picture of Mirana in this thread? I for one would like to hold memory for her, if that would help you in any small way.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by mydonkeybenjamin at 8:08 AM on January 16, 2024

Racists are fearful because they know they are evil, and they expect to be punished.

Content warning for description of racism in the abstract.

Possibly this is different in the US, but if I could weigh in as a white South African who grew up in the last years of apartheid: I don't think this statement is accurate.

Racists (like people who are sexist, transphobic, abelist, ect) don't think there's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Zumbador at 10:33 PM on January 16, 2024

The invasion of Canada would be first pitched as a "tighter union" to share resources, remove trade and migration barriers, and later "entering into a protective arrangement" with the US military supplanting oops I mean supplementing Canada's forces. Add money, political influencers, and stir. If you look at how Canada's right wing has already started embracing US right-wing tactics and hiring US political consultants, the process has already started.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artful Codger at 9:03 AM on January 16, 2024

I never, at any time, got the impression that the Republican party or electorate viewed Trump as a "disgraced inssurectionist"

"January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. ... Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the center floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chatted about murdering the vice president. They did this because... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:45 AM on January 16, 2024

Because we'd be a sparsely-populated, resource-rich, relatively progressive non-fascist democracy affronting MAGA by virtue of existing.
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 8:23 AM on January 16, 2024

I swore off traveling to the United States after Trump won the first time, and the way things are going I very much doubt I'll ever step foot there again. Of course, if he wins or otherwise takes power in November the U.S. could very well invade Canada at some point, and as others in this thread have pointed out there are millions of Canadians who would vote for Trump if they could, so it's not like I can assume I'm safe even if he doesn't win.
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 8:07 AM on January 16, 2024

As someone who moved to Canada from the UK some time ago, I would caution those who think that Canada is going to be some kind of 'woke Shangri-La'. We have our own problems with (admittedly, so far, largely inept) 'swivel-eyed loons' and fascist-adjacent politicians. Here in my own province, we have christo-fascists coming out of the woodwork at an alarming rate. Our next national election is likely to precipitate a political sea-change towards populism which could align with the trajectory of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by aeshnid at 7:43 AM on January 16, 2024

I left for Canada in 2008, and for the most part it's been fantastic, aside from the cost of living/housing and how tech jobs pay like 50% less factoring in exchange rates. I have not for one day regretted my decision to move here though, and can't tell you how much better my mental health has been since I stopped being "governed" by DC's dumpster fire. Took me two years to get PR, and then three? more years to get full citizenship.

If you're thinking about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by neon909 at 7:27 AM on January 16, 2024

You can't be disgraced if you never had any grace to begin with.

Disgrace under pressure
posted to MetaFilter by chavenet at 6:53 AM on January 16, 2024

This is terrible. This is the tip of the iceberg. I would tell you that the worst of it happened during childhood, but it persists. A dude at an event recently told me that “the reason why you’re able to have so many friends who are men is because you don’t have to worry about them hitting on you.” Or the concerned looking woman, mid-Covid who approached my car, as I loaded groceries (masked) into the trunk and told me I should really be more responsible and stay home and out of the public... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by thivaia at 6:12 AM on January 13, 2024

I wondered about the Warhol reference too. Maybe if you don’t care about your watch working, you don’t care if your favorite artist is working either.
posted to MetaFilter by heyitsgogi at 8:11 AM on January 13, 2024

a certain subset of stylish guys—Andy Warhol notably among them—haven’t concerned themselves with correct timekeeping for decades.

In the future, everyone will be famous for an indeterminate period.
posted to MetaFilter by box at 7:32 AM on January 13, 2024

a balky AI servant can probably just be wiped and restored from a checkpoint as often as necessary, or duplicated a billion times and randomly modified until it doesn't feel like striking anymore. or in a darker timeline someone just invents a way to torture them.

q.v. Lena, an unsettling short SF story about mind emulation.
posted to MetaFilter by zamboni at 11:36 AM on January 12, 2024

Hippybear has learnt the attitude of the knife
posted to MetaFilter by Sebmojo at 8:27 PM on January 10, 2024

Not clear on what the criticism is.

Personally I find it very amusing (in a non-critical way) to read professional-sounding minutes where the names are all MeFi usernames like mrmcsurly or apartment dweller. Not at all a comment on the work being done here or the quality of the minutes, just two different cultures (professional writing vs absurdist naming style) happening to meet in a way that results in delight.
posted to MetaTalk by terretu at 2:43 AM on January 12, 2024

so it was all around a bad year to be dating me.

My partner and I long ago came to terms with are disparate tastes. I think that is a key to a long term relationship. They can watch the Crown and I will watch Help Me I'm Possessed!
posted to FanFare by Ashwagandha at 8:51 AM on January 12, 2024

I wrote a dungeon adventure for Dragon Magazine, oh so many years ago, in response to a dungeon design contest. I won! The prize was an autographed copy of the Player's Handbook, which I still have. (Wow! The Internet never forgets. There's even a Reddit entry about my dungeon!)
posted to MetaFilter by SPrintF at 10:26 AM on January 12, 2024

I played D&D and then AD&D pretty much constantly from early 1977 through late 1983 (when scattering to universities in different cities broke up my group—( never resumed).

Every so often somebody rediscovers me because my first professional publications were some of the monsters in White Dwarf's "Fiend Factory" column that got incorporated into The Fiend Folio, and they want to know if I have anything new to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by cstross at 4:41 AM on January 12, 2024

... regarding that weird Boebert story this week.

Immediately Googles "weird Boebert story."
posted to MetaFilter by heyitsgogi at 9:19 AM on January 12, 2024

This is never as good as I want it to be

But somehow also better than it should be? Having genuinely creepy vampires really elevates what is otherwise a pretty standard plot.
posted to FanFare by schoolgirl report at 1:06 PM on January 11, 2024

This is never as good as I want it to be, as I loved the cominc and I think the premise is brilliant. But my kid asked to see this and on rewatch, I liked it well enough.

Danny Huston is the best part of this movie. His vampire is ancient, simultanteously feral and regal.
posted to FanFare by DirtyOldTown at 12:14 PM on January 11, 2024

Again, I love that Sanaa Lathan starts out as a bad-ass and remains a bad-ass. It's not often you get a Black Final Girl!

You have to admit, it was really handy to have the kind of archaeologists who could craft a narrative from the hieroglyphics of three cultures into a coherent story!
posted to FanFare by Kitteh at 4:31 PM on January 11, 2024

Kramer vs. Kramer?
posted to MetaFilter by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:44 PM on January 11, 2024