6309 MetaFilter comments by mathowie (displaying 51 through 100)

Sometimes a one-line text-only description of your git commits just isn't enough. For those types of scenarios there is software called "lolcommits" that is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux that, when enabled, takes a photo with your webcam every time you commit your code via git. Now you can really let your co-workers know how you feel about having to fix their whitespace issues all the time with just a simple facial expression. After the photo is taken, the git message is overlayed on top of the image is a style reminiscent of lolcats. The resulting image files are then stored locally in your home directory.
comment posted at 9:55 PM on Feb-16-15

The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, Fifty Shades of Grey is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read.
Anthony Lane reviews Fifty Shades of Grey.
comment posted at 6:00 PM on Feb-13-15

I started to wonder about the recipients of our shamings, the real humans who were the virtual targets of these campaigns. So for the past two years, I’ve been interviewing individuals like Justine Sacco: everyday people pilloried brutally, most often for posting some poorly considered joke on social media. Whenever possible, I have met them in person, to truly grasp the emotional toll at the other end of our screens. The people I met were mostly unemployed, fired for their transgressions, and they seemed broken somehow — deeply confused and traumatized.
comment posted at 11:29 AM on Feb-12-15

"In some zoos in Japan and China, staff members perform regular security drills to practice their response to a large animal escape by using costumed zookeepers as the fugitive animals. Individuals in furry costumes or pairs in full-size mockups of larger animals run through zoo property, sometimes inflicting mock injuries, as fellow zookeepers work to surround, subdue, and recapture them." A photo essay in The Atlantic.
comment posted at 8:05 AM on Feb-12-15

This Is What Happens When You Repost an Instagram Photo 90 Times is actually a lovely little demonstration of how JPEG artifacts, edge detection, automatic sharpening, and whatever else Instagram does by default to photos stacks up to quickly make an image decay and deteriorate via processing. The video demonstrates the effects in a nice quick time-lapse way as well.
comment posted at 7:10 AM on Feb-12-15
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Feb-12-15
comment posted at 8:25 AM on Feb-12-15

We as a society are expected to believe that live shows are fun, even though they’re basically loud, plotless museum exhibits with no chairs and no rules about whether people should yell a conversation at you. In your innermost self, you know this truth. But if you’d like ammunition to make the case to your friends and loved ones, or if you just need to read it on the internet, what follows is an airtight case as to why live music is the grownup birthday dinner of cultural events.
Live music sucks.
comment posted at 7:45 AM on Feb-12-15

A Jewish magazine is testing an unusual solution for toxic internet comments. I think we can all agree that this proposal is ridiculous. Please leave your toxicity in the comments.
comment posted at 1:27 PM on Feb-9-15

It got lost in the Kanye vs. Beck hoopla, but metal fans are fuming that "joke band" Tenacious D took home last night's "best metal performance" Grammy for their cover of Dio's "The Last in Line." The comedy duo beat out such metal mainstays as Anthrax, Mastodon, Motorhead and Slipknot.
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Feb-9-15

A 19-year-old Las Vegas teen is expected to appear in court Monday, days after being arrested in connection to a July swatting incident in suburban Illinois. Brandon Wilson, who goes by the online handle "Famed God," was arrested Thursday in Nevada and faces an extradition hearing to determine whether he should be sent to face hacking and other charges.
comment posted at 10:14 AM on Feb-8-15

OK, so what? What does it mean that “Jew-bwa-ha-ha.gif” likely isn’t the work of a raving Nazi or some corn-fed Aryan brother, but the doodling of a disaffected provocateur hopelessly misguided by a very specific cultural moment? On one hand, not much. Who cares where these images come from? They still do their damage. On the other hand, it’s worth wondering whether Bougas’ cultural moment is over at all. The idea that ironized racism and sexism and anti-Semitism are the bravest subversions of American culture still lives, not in zines or even Vice, anymore, but in subreddits, and chans, and red pill message boards. That’s why it is so fitting that Bougas’ work has found its best reception in these places. That’s why it is so fitting that these places so aggressively sont Charlie. (SLBF)
comment posted at 9:22 AM on Feb-8-15

Brian Williams, Under Scrutiny, Will Take Leave From ‘NBC Nightly News’ [New York Times]
Brian Williams, acknowledging that the scrutiny and criticism he was attracting was becoming a distraction for his network, said on Saturday that he was stepping aside as anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News” for the next several days.

comment posted at 8:23 AM on Feb-8-15

A look at Emma Sulkowicz's (The Columbia University student who carried a mattress around campus as a statement and art project) accused rapist, Jean-Paul Nungesser (who was found innocent by the university, but branded as guilty by the public) and the messy intersection of colleges handling assault cases themselves, instead of police dealing with the reported crimes. The Columbia University student newspaper weighs in.
comment posted at 12:20 PM on Feb-6-15
comment posted at 12:25 PM on Feb-6-15
comment posted at 3:52 PM on Feb-6-15

"Guitar Center, gutted and broken, meets its sad end. Guitar Center's financial condition (previously) - along with bad management and the hyper-financial dynamics of private equity - have finally taken this retail musical instrument powerhouse to the end of its long and winding road.
comment posted at 11:04 PM on Feb-5-15

Lost and Found and...Lost? "John Maloof and Jeffrey Goldstein turned their caches of negatives by the late street photographer and "North Shore nanny" into full-time jobs. Now the government wants in."
comment posted at 11:31 AM on Feb-5-15

The Fearless Comedy of The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore [The Atlantic]
"Wilmore's show seems to be in service of such conversations rather than easy, quick jokes. Not that it isn't consistently funny—but it's finding the humor in dark topics, and finding a way into talking about issues many Americans at home might not be able to broach."

comment posted at 9:53 AM on Feb-5-15

"We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing."
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo addresses the platform's persistent harassment issues in an internal memo.
comment posted at 7:32 AM on Feb-5-15
comment posted at 7:54 AM on Feb-5-15

Erowid Recruiter A Markov-powered mashup of Erowid trip reports and tech recruiter emails. "front end engineer would literally make or break the next hour, I walked through this area for a while and then my face ended, and the rats."
comment posted at 10:41 AM on Feb-3-15

Anna Merlan received both online and physical world trolling after writing a Jezebel article about 4chan manipulating a Time poll. She has described the experience, along with her attempt to work with the police: "The cops don't care about violent online threats. What now?" (The Guardian has some related musings: "Can emojis really be used to make terror threats?")
While not causally related, a few days after the article was published Brianna Wu received a death threat from a mentally-ill individual. She has contacted the police and has stated that several congresspeople have also been concerned.
comment posted at 5:35 PM on Feb-2-15

Last night's Simpsons intro in all its pixelated 8-bit chiptune glory was a sight to behold and not to be missed
comment posted at 4:54 PM on Feb-2-15

"To me this intersection [between food justice, fat-positive politics, and LGBTQ politics] seems clear as I live in a community where food is not easily accessible and I’m a fat dyke… We can simply look at the numbers and see that folks in poverty and are classified as food-insecure often have greater percentages of fat folks in their numbers. Often we get a lot of crossover between folks belonging to the LGBTQ communities and low-income folks. I’ve been doing food work with street-based queer youth for almost five years now. But beyond just the numbers we share this similar struggle, this fight for what’s just. We are all part of groups that are marginalized by society and many of us are doing work in many of these spaces."
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Feb-2-15

The 5000 word cover story on "What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women" in Newsweek is getting a lot of attention, but mostly for the illustration on the cover, which very simply (or simplistically) depicts high-tech sexism, and which writers like Rachel Sklar and Alexia Tsotsis consider to be sexist itself.
Responding to Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast**, article author Nina Burleigh says "It’s provocative because it quite powerfully and accurately depicts the disgusting behavior and attitudes toward women that dozens of women in tech described to me and that tens of thousands more must navigate on a daily basis, to the detriment of their professional advancement."
comment posted at 3:17 PM on Jan-30-15
comment posted at 4:02 PM on Jan-30-15

"It’s been a strange relationship, hasn’t it? Some of you – the original white-on-navy ones – went through the 2000 election and recount with me, when I had to explain the word “blog” to anyone I met; we experienced 9/11 together in real time – and all the fraught months and years after; and then the Iraq War; and the gay marriage struggles of the last fifteen historic years. We endured the Bush re-election together and then championed – before almost anyone else – the Obama candidacy together. Remember that first night of those Iowa caucuses? Remember the titanic fight with the Clintons? And then the entire arc of the Obama presidency. You were there when it was just me and a tip jar for six years, and at Time, and at The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, and then as an independent company. When we asked you two years ago to catch us as we jumped into independence, you came through and then some. In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it."
comment posted at 6:00 PM on Jan-29-15

On Trial for Rape by Ann Brocklehurst [The Walrus Magazine]
"Late last year, in a Toronto courtroom, a young woman faced off against the university student whom she accused of raping her in a school parking lot. The media ignored the story. This is a series about a criminal rape trial that took place in Toronto late last year. The trial lasted eight days; the judge announced his verdict earlier this month." —Ann Brocklehurst

comment posted at 4:13 PM on Jan-30-15

Using publicly available data and open source tools to find answers to questions about Los Angeles. What are the most expensive pieces of land in LA County? Which of these has the most expensive “improvement”, or building? What is the assessed value of Dodger Stadium? What are the most expensive cities by area in LA County? Who owns the most land? What percentage of the land in the city of LA is devoted to public space? where is the geographic center of LA County?
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Jan-29-15


Last October, director Paul Feig announced he was working on Ghostbusters 3 along with the writer of The Heat, Katie Dippold, and said it "will star hilarious women". Today, the all-female cast of the Ghostbusters reboot was announced: SNL alum (and star of Bridesmaids) Kristen Wiig, two current SNL performers Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, and star of The Heat & Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy. The movie starts shooting this Summer.
comment posted at 4:03 PM on Jan-27-15
comment posted at 4:19 PM on Jan-27-15
comment posted at 4:56 PM on Jan-27-15

Deathhacks: Tech tips for people who are going to die (someday) Jessamyn West (Mefi's own) describes the challenges that came with being executrix of her father's estate, and his house.
comment posted at 10:01 AM on Jan-27-15

The Smithsonian Magazine reminds us that "Barns are painted red because of the physics of dying stars", summing up a more detailed post by Google employee Yonatan Zunger on the nature of stars, the atmosphere, and cheap paint found on barns.
comment posted at 7:31 PM on Jan-26-15
comment posted at 7:47 PM on Jan-26-15
comment posted at 10:45 PM on Jan-26-15

On Running and Street Harassment
This past Saturday, eight different men verbally harassed me. Two stepped into my path and said they wouldn’t move unless I gave them a high five. The murmurs, the coos and looks, all serve as reminders that I am not a person to them.

By the seventh man, I was tired. He told me he could look at that ass all day. I told him to shut up. He said to me, “Don’t worry, baby, I still love you,” and my skin went clammy with defeat. And there was something about hearing the word “love” come out of his mouth that made me want to push him into traffic.

comment posted at 1:14 PM on Jan-26-15


MeFi's own jscalzi suffers the loss of his beloved pet. Ghlaghghee (pron. "Fluffy"), a.k.a. the world-famous BaconCat, has passed away after a brief illness. John writes a quiet, typically wry eulogy and appreciation.
comment posted at 8:05 AM on Jan-26-15

The "world's largest ship" is named after a Nazi war criminal. Unsurprisingly a few people have a problem with that.
comment posted at 7:13 AM on Jan-26-15
comment posted at 8:08 AM on Jan-26-15

You may have assumed that some products were immune from blatantly gendered advertising. Bread, say. But you'd be wrong. Stonemill Bakehouse has introduced Men's Wellbeing Barley & Rye Bread and Women's Wellbeing Hemp & Quinoa Bread. The label for the women's bread is, helpfully, pink.
comment posted at 5:17 PM on Jan-23-15


As Neda Maghbouleh pointed out for an article in the January 2009 issue of Center for New Racial Studies, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama gave Portland newspapers a striking image of its racial makeup. Just look at the photo above from Portland during Senator Obama's presidential campaign. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe Dave Matthews Band was about to go on stage.
There's a reason why Portland, and Oregon in general, are so whitebread: it was founded as a whites-only, racist utopia with no room for black or Asian people.
comment posted at 11:08 AM on Jan-22-15

The NYT Social Media team pulls the curtain back on how Twitter works for them with detailed examples of how changing text and descriptions and focus in their short messages resonated with readers, and which fell flat. Really interesting bit of transparency on their process, and results.
comment posted at 9:30 AM on Jan-22-15

And It Is Not What You Think. "The rats with good lives didn't like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did."
comment posted at 9:03 AM on Jan-22-15

VROOM! The “aural experience” of a car, they argue, is an intangible that’s just as priceless as what’s revving under the hood.
comment posted at 7:45 AM on Jan-22-15

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