MetaFilter

"that Harvard President grouping isn't really that esteemed" - I would disagree with one example. Drew Faust is a fine scholar and did a solid job as (first woman) president.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:29 AM on January 4, 2024

Coming in late (sorry, a pile of very late and very good student work to grade) -

Two points.

1: the role of a university president is not to be an academic. (I'm saying this not only as an academic, not only based on talking with hundreds of presidents, but also from researching higher ed.) The primary role is to be a "living logo" of the institution, as one college president described it. This is massively different from being a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:39 AM on January 4, 2024

So you're saying there should have been only one?

Yeah, what was said at the time, with much anger and sadness.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:07 PM on January 3, 2024

Mmm, Highlander II. This is one I've always wanted to see.

(The "I" which loves psychotronic videos, who saw too many MST:3K movies before the bots did)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:57 PM on January 3, 2024

Another Kiernan fan here. Beautiful writing.

Really enjoyed talking with them at some Necronomicons.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:01 PM on January 3, 2024

PUT AN ALUMINUM FOIL WRAP UP HER RIGHT NOSTRIL AND IMMEDIATELY STARTED CRYING

That's reasonable.

PUT PIECES OF STYROFOAM CUP IN NOSTRIL. HE WAS SEEN YESTERDAY FOR SAME THING

...twice? There's a tale.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 3:16 PM on January 2, 2024

A very dear British friend introduced me to the Shipping Forecast while showing me his favorite London sites. He found it akin to space music and liked trancing out to it.

I miss him.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:55 AM on January 2, 2024

For the world, I'm hoping we collectively grasp the climate crisis and take serious action. That then leads us to rethink our political economy.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:57 AM on January 1, 2024

For myself... 2023 was a bad year. My father died. My wife suffered two heart attacks. To take care of medical bills (this is the US) I spent 6 months doing brutal overwork, 70+hour weeks.

So for 2024?
I want my wife to live and be healthy.

I want my work to be focused so that's it's excellent and doesn't kill me.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:59 AM on January 1, 2024

I appreciate Dash's optimism, based on his career.

I do wish he'd mentioned blogs. Much derided and now ignored, they continue.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:58 AM on December 31, 2023

the internet never stopped being wierd, all the wierdos just decamped to tumblr

Cute line, but weirdness is everywhere, once you look.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:59 AM on December 31, 2023

Bravo!
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on December 31, 2023

From one of the Twitter comments:

The Pop-Tart holding up a sign that says "Dreams really do come true" as it is lowered into a toaster to be cooked alive is the darkest thing I've ever seen
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:09 PM on December 29, 2023

After the battle, the losing clan's shaman falls into a dreamlike trance. He is possessed by the spirit of the Pastry God, and the victorious clan then consumes him in an ancient tradition that persists in some forms to this day.

posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 11:15 AM on December 30, 2023

Love this answer from StackExchange:

"The statement "A radio-controlled model of a Tiger tank was acquired and modified by adding a DeWalt battery-powered drill, some metal armor, and a video camera.", is very misleading and supported by the three comments about "un-NASA-like" and the idea of the NASA logo. To keep costs down, the tank started out as a Tayma German Tiger Tank, to provide the parts needed to drive it. Eventually, 90% of those… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:31 PM on December 27, 2023

One thing I remember my parents agreeing on when I was a kid was their admiration for the Smothers Brothers.

.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:25 PM on December 27, 2023

"Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers" is.... quite a mouthful.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:18 PM on December 26, 2023

Thank you, chavenet.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:11 AM on December 25, 2023

I'm fascinated by the tremendous interest in cults these days, an interest that seems curiously adjacent to the public's thirst for True Crime narratives.

I'd say rather it's a Venn diagram overlap.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:27 PM on December 24, 2023

please no
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:25 PM on December 24, 2023

"Not on Medium; on Substack" - my bad. Dear mods, can you correct, please?
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:05 PM on December 24, 2023

Same here, beagle.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:29 AM on December 23, 2023

I really, really like the phrase "Hallmark of the Beast."
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:29 AM on December 23, 2023

Don't touch formulaic films.

Have you met MetaFilter?
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:34 AM on December 24, 2023

Expect this element to turn up in an Alan Moore novel any day now.

The whole story feels one feckless don away from tipping over into an M.R. James story.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:15 PM on December 22, 2023

"Fast forward almost sixty years" - this took me back to "making" models when I was a kid (my father helping), then making them for real. Fine GenX memory.

My brother went further, getting into model ships and raising their sails inside bottles, or crafting them from wood.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:10 PM on December 22, 2023

Sauce Trough, I'm sorry - looks like copy and paste error.
Can mods help, please?
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:27 PM on December 21, 2023

Thank you!
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:11 AM on December 22, 2023

“One does what one can.”
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:59 AM on December 20, 2023

Thank you for sharing all of that, dancestoblue. Please take care.

(I'm not too far behind you, hitting 57 soon)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:25 PM on December 20, 2023

"14. The greatest year ever for clean energy" - this is something Bill McKibben's been telling the world about. So important.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 5:16 PM on December 20, 2023

‘aubergine deformity’.

That's an emoji no one needs.

It would be, of course, a fine name for a band.

Or for a colorful assassin.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:55 AM on December 20, 2023

Great photo from a friend about 10 km away.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on December 20, 2023

People of Earth: 2023 is nearly done. There are holidays. Maybe the year can just relax and leave us alone for a blessed minute -

Iceland: Watch this.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:52 AM on December 20, 2023

I wonder why Unsolved Mysteries turned them down. Did they conclude it was just too likely Alan had died?
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:05 PM on December 17, 2023

For about a decade in the 1970s, the old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired and the boomers moved in with their new ideals. Mainstream movies would regularly buck the status quo.

posted by zardoz

Fairly eponhysterical!
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:46 PM on December 16, 2023

Such a great scene from a great film.
So many fine details, like Beale nervously making prophet noises at passers-by on the way up, or Jensen's sudden tonal shifts.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:53 PM on December 16, 2023

I love this line from the Wikipedia article:
"McCurdy decided to incorporate his training with nitroglycerin into his robberies. This often caused problems as he was overzealous..."
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:52 PM on December 16, 2023

Agreed on The Sheep Look Up, ob1quixote. I just reread it and the despairing ending hit me as hard as it did the first time.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:42 PM on December 9, 2023

Re: that Gramsci quote, it's been in my mind for some time now.

It led me to a couple of similar ones.

It is a time of confrontation, this transition, the time of transition of the old society to a new one that does not exist yet, but it’s being created with the confrontation of the ghosts.
-Paulo Freire in the 1960s

Something… was growing old and weak, dying out; and something… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:45 PM on December 9, 2023

Futurama's "the Stupid Ages".

That's also a movie from 2009.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 2:16 PM on December 10, 2023

I'd really like to turn my CPAP into a Giger Alien setup, like this.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 1:28 PM on December 9, 2023

Ah, that one's out of stock. I'll keep looking.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 9:00 PM on December 9, 2023

A very good reading. Thank you for this one, clavdivs.
And thanks for that one, too, Dobbs: faster, more aggressive.

(looks fondly at his Black Sparrow stack)
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 12:03 PM on December 8, 2023

Good luck, workers.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 8:38 PM on December 5, 2023

I'm an academic. I'm very familiar with plagiarism, having been a classroom professor for years. And my field of study is academia (specifically, academic's future). So I am already primed for this.

But I don't know hbomberguy. I don't know James Somerton. And like many academics I am *enormously* beyond busy right now, in December, when a semester is careening to an end and the new semester is coming up fast.

Thanks to some comments, I'll give… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 4:26 PM on December 3, 2023

Running notes:

It starts with sf writers Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison (previously) and the Brillo story. Good example.

Ah, so this is about YouTube plagiarism, not the academic kind. So if it's all about video, it makes sense to make a video about it.

...at this rate it'll take me a week or two.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 3:37 PM on December 4, 2023

toward the end of the video

OK. I'll keep plugging along.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 10:23 AM on December 5, 2023

This looks excellent and inspiring, jasper411. Thank you for the post.
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 6:22 PM on December 3, 2023

Bill McKibben:

the UAE’s close ally, Saudi Arabia, hard at work on an Oil Development Sustainability Programme which involved hooking African and Asian nations on fossil fuels. It is almost cartoonishly villainous...
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 7:02 PM on December 1, 2023