MetaFilter

man what went wrong with the planning of the acquisition that they spun it off a year after buying it. after a year you’re still integrating the new company with your own. that’s an incredibly expensive mistake
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:08 AM on September 29, 2023

Highly recommend "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On", if you can find it anywhere!, an incredibly moving document of the effects of violence on the soul.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 2:01 PM on September 27, 2023

strikes work! unions give you power! also I'm glad the TV will start coming back :)
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:37 AM on September 27, 2023

Nationalize it? Ok, Nationalize AWS, which is basically public infrastructure now, and shut the rest of it down. Half the shit on there is counterfeit, and you can't even rely on it to buy books anymore, and you can't ever tell if the book is going to be one of those shitty print on demand copies (and what happened to "look inside", the thing I used to decide if I was going to buy the book from my local bookshop's website). Reputable brands have all gone direct to consumer with fast… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:20 PM on September 26, 2023

...obviously seizing and shutting down amazon is not actually a feasible solution. i'll be sure not to direct the ftc to pursue that course of action.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:57 PM on September 26, 2023

This is a fascinating story because it's a little microcosm of one piece of fallout from the Russian invasion, and it's alleged casus belli, "de-Nazyfing Ukraine", which has made it very hard to point out that, in fact, there are still a lot of Ukrainian fascists and that the fact that they've long been some of the best fighters in the war has meant politely ignoring that yes they are in fact far-right, genuine neo-Nazis, or getting shouted down and painted as pro-Russian for pointing… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on September 26, 2023

I didn't think about Ancient Rome very often until this story started going around last week and now I can't NOT think about Ancient Rome it shows up in my feeds so often
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:45 PM on September 23, 2023

Not that it's bad. I like to think about Ancient Rome I guess
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:49 PM on September 23, 2023

> I'm pleased to see animated people now include breathing. they still don't quite look right (maybe the breathing is exaggerated), but at least the artists/programmers are trying. I won't be surprised to find out that breathing for game characters has been around for five or ten years.

Nobody is doing this better than Naughty Dog in the Last of Us. They have the least-uncanny valley character animations in games today, with a ton of details like breathing (they even… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 2:06 PM on September 20, 2023

I love weird outlier language sounds, like "th" and "ng". Czech has one of my favorites, the ř, which is like a j and a trilled r together at the same time (or a "raised alveolar non-sonorant trill") and I believe this sound only occurs in that language.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:34 AM on September 19, 2023

What's the GDPR rule for "your data is in a semi truck on the interstate in northern california"
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:46 AM on September 11, 2023

> I guess Chaos Monkey needs to get a new feature

Adding "Musk mode" to chaos monkey where it fires engineers at random and hires a guy on fiver to hit your servers with a hammer
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:07 PM on September 11, 2023

he also doesn’t understand bots. bots are there to make money for people. the only spam that will kill is the spam that doesn’t earn enough money to cover the cost of posting. already you see tons of blue check 8$/mo bots posting crypto scam shit everywhere.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:34 AM on September 18, 2023

this guy always gave me the worst fucking vibes and i never understand how other people couldn't see the sickness at his core. i hope justice comes to him.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:23 PM on September 17, 2023

Unity offices close after death threat (non paywalled link).

Gamers responding extremely rationally to things they don't like, as usual. I swear if the left could harness just 1/10th of the gamer resistance to things they don't like we would have gay luxury space communism in 5 years.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:27 AM on September 14, 2023

We may have no idea what's happening in small market city and county governments anymore but at least we'll be up to date on every wardrobe change on the Eras Tour
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:07 AM on September 13, 2023

This is a lesson for all you future rebels. Never go halfway on a coup against an authoritarian leader. Gotta go all the way man.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:12 PM on August 23, 2023

it doesn’t matter where you get your info, it’s difficult to know what’s happening at the front even if you’re russian or ukrainian intelligence. and if you’re reading about it online it’s not really information as much as another front in the war…
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:29 AM on September 3, 2023

Incredible. Does he just get one set of indictments a week now? I can’t even imagine someone becoming more indicted.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:44 PM on August 14, 2023

The prosecutors are walking a line here. Just prosecuting him at all is political in a sense, but they still have to appear to be working in the interest of justice, and the judge above all has to appear to be impartial. I don't think a high bail would have served any function. As funny as it would have been to see him have to come up with a $1b bond, it would've seemed like impartiality. Trump is not going anywhere (despite people thinking he's going to flee to Russia or whatever, lol). The US… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:42 AM on August 22, 2023

> But what's the advantage for someone like Trump, assuming he actually did have $200,000 around to pay the bail with himself wouldn't that be a better economic decision than paying somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 to a parasite scumbag bondsman? Not that, in theory, for a guy like Trump $2,000 to $4,000 is really a big bite, but still.

Trumps relationship with money remains a complete mystery to me. Like obviously he's not poor, and he's also not a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:29 AM on August 26, 2023

> I’ll go out on the limb and say I bet he’s out of the race by early December at the latest.

I mean maybe that's a reasonable prediction for the future but my basic post-2016 assumption is that Trump will somehow emerge victorious. This is maybe a trauma-informed expectation, but it will ensure that the underwhelming case of a 2nd biden term will be greeted with joy.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:44 AM on August 29, 2023

WHY is ancient white Biden hiding Kamala under a basket?

i know she has a small but very dedicated fan base but harris is one of the least charismatic politicians i’ve seen on the national stage in a long time, except maybe buttigieg. i was surprised when biden chose her after she ran such a disastrous campaign, failing to even make it to new hampshire, but i’m not surprised that he’s been keeping her under wraps because every high profile… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:04 AM on September 1, 2023

I'm in favor of anything that holds a megacorp accountable. Yeah everybody knows that the food in the ad is nothing like what you get from the restaurant. But I don't really see why they should be allowed to make things look gourmet when they are not gourmet. Either up your quality so that a photo of your *actual* food is more appealing or show us what we're gonna get. Either way, to paraphrase one of the greatest posters of all time, I'll keep eating that garbage.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:43 AM on August 31, 2023

Living in apartment buildings a lot in the past I always figured single-stream recycling was just another way of things ending up in the landfill because whenever I would dump my carefully curated bin of actually recyclable things (basically just cardboard, the *right* kinds of plastic, aluminum cans) I would see the wildest shit in the recycling dumpsters: consumer electronics, rubber, tons of stretched plastic bags, and just plain trash. I dunno what happens to a dump of… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:57 AM on August 30, 2023

It is really fascinating that in the 70s they were really concerned to make smut that was also ART and now we just don't care about any of that for the most part. I do think a lot of it had to do with the question of obscenity and the pressing issue in the 60s and 70s of legality of pornography which seems more or less settled (for the time being, the current supreme court would probably happily make it illegal again) but it's also the case that once pornography had a secure legal framework it… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:02 PM on August 28, 2023

> It also became much cheaper to make and distribute porn in the era of home video, which led, I would assume, to the quantity-over-quality ethos.

This is what I might call the "Boogie Nights" argument but it doesn't pass muster with me. Prior to the 60s and 70s there was plenty of short, to the point, pornography, available as "loops" in seedy shops of the pre-disneyfied time square variety. Basically these short porn films had existed from the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:02 PM on August 28, 2023

I'm just an armchair whatever but why would Ukraine take out Prigozhin in a civilian jet 10 miles from Moscow?

I'd be curious about the rest of the passenger manifest. Maybe this was an easy way to eliminate everyone at the top of Wagner that they felt was responsible for the rebellion, in one go, and one that has that kind of ambiguity / deniability that you don't get if you just, y'know, shoot them. (oh, you said, *Ukraine*, well I dunno)
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:32 PM on August 23, 2023

the Chaos Congress where everyone is selected by lottery every 2 years would pretty fun. I do firmly believe it would lead to a more functional government.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:25 AM on August 21, 2023

I do think the Chaos President would immediately be swarmed with people trying to influence their decisions through money and other things. That's the case today, for sure, but the selection process for President generally sorts for people who will be in line with the Party and its goals (even Trump was a party man in the end). If I was Chaos President and Elon Musk offered me unlimited riches to do X? I'd like to think I'd tell him to get fucked, but then again, I am but a weak and fallen human.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:44 AM on August 21, 2023

.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:10 AM on August 21, 2023

I had *completely* given up on buying a house until I married up and my in-laws were like "here's a $60k gift for a down payment on a house". Like I seriously have no idea how the *majority* of millenials can afford a house without lucking into some kind of relationship with a boomer who will bestow some of their wealth upon you.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:45 AM on August 18, 2023

SNL has had its ups and downs but I think there's always been something consistently funny since the 90s. I thought I'd hate it after the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler era ended, and I do think that Weekend Update has been pretty weak (I cannot stand Colin Jost for some reason) but even when that's been no good we had Sasheer Zameta and then Ego Nwodim and Kate MacKinnon, and lately Sarah Sherman and James Austin Johnson are highlights. And Kenan Thompson has only become funnier as the years go by.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:10 AM on August 18, 2023

I forgot there even was a pre-turtleneck version of Jobs. I wanted an iMac so badly but couldn't afford one (though I eventually got an iBook G4 for college). I still kind of want one. I'm a "retvrn" guy but for candy colored computers, CRTs, and the internet before it was mostly used to turn employees into gig workers and information into training data for the AI that will replace us (poorly).
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:04 AM on August 17, 2023

I hate this guy, he sucks. Not that the people he encounters don't also suck. But I also think the shopping cart thing as an example of your level of basic human decency or adherence to the "social contract" (lol, we don't have one, never did, silly early modern political fantasies) is stupid. Shopping cart return is a parking lot design problem. It's a problem created by cars. Cars are the problem. Destroy the cars, cart narc. Car Narc.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:33 AM on August 15, 2023

The performance of the étude sounds in parts like me tuning my guitar. I wonder if there's a way to build a keyboard instrument where you have to also 'find' the pitch the way you do on an fretless stringed instrument like a violin. That would enable playing in just intonation. I have nothing resembling perfect pitch, but hearing pieces played in the actual key (where the flats and sharps are in fact separate tones) sounds surprisingly more harmonious (although I don't notice it when playing on… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:12 AM on August 14, 2023

zenos octave
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:53 AM on August 14, 2023

Wow the Mk 8 is $10k. That’s wild. You can get an extremely nice (used) upright piano for that much. Guess i’ll stick to the patch on my roland
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:10 AM on August 14, 2023

yes but you have to admit he’s one of the funniest guys to be mayor of anywhere in a while
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:28 PM on August 11, 2023

give adams some credit, he’s bizarre, he’s a cop, his politics suck and he has the most interesting relationship with the truth of any living politician but compared to herschel walker he’s a two time nobel laureate in physics
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 10:56 AM on August 12, 2023

Listen, the borg cube visited Bakersfield and only two guys saw it what can you do
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:00 PM on July 31, 2023

> I do not want to believe. I want to understand. I wish more people felt the same way.

All empirical understanding is probabilistic. If the best explanation from the evidence is that what's going on is a mixture of mistaken perceptions, tricks of the light, misperceptions of weather balloons, drones, etc., with a large helping of grift or credulity on the part of those reporting the events, then coming to that conclusion just is understanding. Refusing to accept this… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:18 AM on August 11, 2023

I feel like the person who designed this has never actually seen what a the action mechanism on a real piano looks like or given any thought to how the action will curve around while still being reliably connected to a flat keyboard. Also the strings are too short, and there appears to be no soundboard to resonate? it will be a very quiet piano.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:58 AM on August 6, 2023

> I don't really see why the MCU is vastly worse than the "Fast and Furious" or "Mission Impossible" or "John Wick" movies.

i mean the difference is that the john wick and mission impossible movies are movies made for adults and are actually pretty good instead of bad. being good instead of bad is an important quality when it comes to movies.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:23 AM on August 3, 2023

> I don't eat at CF often, but when I was at one with people who had some issues with various ingredients, someone from the staff sat down with us to discuss what would be safe for each person.

Apar from the decadent embrace of postmodern interior decoration, the one good thing about cheesecake factory is if you have to get dinner with a large family where there are various dietary restrictions, everyone can find something on the menu that they at least can't object… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:28 AM on July 28, 2023

> From the links it seems to be basically rum that isn’t aged.

rum is made from molasses or sugar cane juice, this sounds like it’s more like a sugarcane mash that’s fermented instead of a water/molasses mixture
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:09 AM on July 28, 2023

> this film had and has tons to say about and for capitalism

I guess what I meant was: this film was not critical of capitalism in a meaningful way, and was, if anything, pro-capitalism. "Feminist" barbie will earn a profit for Mattel. All is consumed by the limitless appetite of the market. And the production of Barbie, as a commodity, just doesn't exist. Cube dwelling knowledge workers exist but are not explored. Executive Assistants exist but capitalism… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:57 AM on July 25, 2023

> the way Barbie straightforwardly says that she does not have a vagina but is still indisputably a woman

The movie is definitely full of contradictions! I thought that moment of Gender Discourse was really interesting, and from the way the right was losing their minds about the movie I expected more than the kind of patriarchy 101 we got that doesn't really go beyond, say, Mike Nichol's 1988 Working Girl. But then in the final scene, Barbie shows… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:46 PM on July 25, 2023

to be clear i thought the ending showing up at the obgyn was funny but what i mean is what does it mean for a barbie’s gender. are barbies biological females in doll form or are they genital free plastic expressions of gender norms, something not biological but socially constructed. i just mean that giving her genitalia undermines an earlier possible narrative about separation of gender and biology. i was not confused by the scene in general
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:42 AM on July 27, 2023

i recently got a cpap machine and it's the most insane thing. subscriptions for everything, notifications pushed to me telling me to buy a replacement mask 4 months in, which, at $250 a pop (absurd!), would mean $750 a year in masks (I refuse to believe it needs to be replaced already, it works just fine). They want me to pay a yearly subscription to talk to someone who will adjust your air flow levels but the conversation is mostly: do you think it's enough air? ok, I'll increase it. They do… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:48 PM on July 25, 2023