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I hope those kids had permission to be up on that roof.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:59 PM on October 24, 2013

Also, thanks for getting off my lawn, kids.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:06 PM on October 24, 2013

Here's the AV Club review.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:57 PM on October 17, 2013

I do. And also Pelican. But not the Eagles.

I'm a huge fan of Swans and have seen them several times since Jira got the band back together, but while they're still pretty amazing live, I can't help but wish they would rope Jarboe back into the operation.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:30 AM on October 17, 2013

I know people in San Francisco who have been on the periphery of OneTaste in various ways, and I think I've actually been at a workshop with someone mentioned in this article. The thing is that it's best understood in the context of what insiders call "transformational work," which is pretty much the modern incarnation of the New Age movement from the 60s and 70s. It's never been my cup of tea, personally, but I've found most of the people involved to be pretty sincere at some… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:49 AM on October 17, 2013

This doesn't seem terribly realistic to me for its stated purpose of transporting goods in developing nations with poor road infrastructure.

1. The drones need to recharged regularly. They mention solar power, which seems like a great idea until you think back to the bad weather they describe in the first part of the video which necessitates the drones in the first place.
2. They need to be maintained.
3. If a drone goes down somewhere en route… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:15 AM on October 15, 2013

Ok, I have some suggestions for more obscure movies with low budgets. Note that these all have various flaws that will probably cause various viewers to hate them, and in particular it seems to be really hard for mid-range horror movies to pull off a decent ending, but I liked them all pretty well (each of these has one or more of good acting, production, or writing, but usually not all three).

First off is Absentia, which having zero budget still manages to produce a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 12:55 PM on October 14, 2013

I found The Descent to be terrifying just from the claustrophobia alone. The rest of the scary parts in that movie I didn't actually think were super good, but the notion of needing to crawl through a little tiny tunnel in the dark and almost getting stuck is enough to break me out in a cold sweat.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 12:59 PM on October 14, 2013

I also thought Lovely Molly was a good, if not mind-blowing, ghost story. And Behind the Mask is pure candy if you're a genre fan (although I wish it didn't have the ending it did).
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 1:16 PM on October 14, 2013

Oh man, Parents is so good! That was one of my all-time favorites. Probably one of Randy Quaid's greatest roles, and just bursting with 1950's cookbook-style closeups of meat.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 1:41 PM on October 14, 2013

gucci mane, it's honestly not a very good movie, but if you need that alien abduction fix, Dark Skies will deliver a tolerable dose of it.

I saw Spectre from that Films to Keep you awake series and liked it a lot too, definitely in the slow-burn arty subgenre of ghost stories (much like Ghost Story). I'll have to check out the others in the series.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 3:47 PM on October 14, 2013

Combat Shock was another Troma film that's actually good (it was released by Troma, but not actually produced by them IIRC). Probably one of the sleaziest-feeling and bleakest movies I've ever seen, and full of the horror of crushing mid-80s poverty.

Also those of you who liked the Kill List might enjoy the recent The Conspiracy, which has a similar feel to it.

A Serbian Film is actually a surprisingly well-made movie, in a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 4:32 PM on October 14, 2013

I actually seem to be the only genre fan that didn't like Pulse, but it just came across as kind of a half-baked rehash of The Ring to me. I do really like some of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's other horror-esque efforts, though: Cure and Charisma. (He also directed Retribution, which someone mentioned upthread; I haven't seen it myself.) Cure is a sort of a slow-paced mind-fuck about a detective investigating a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:44 PM on October 14, 2013

Oh man. Several years back I saw a Halloween double-feature of The Haunting and Night of the Demon at San Francisco's incomparable Castro Theater. Among the Castro's many charms is that it has a built-in pipe organ with a retractable keyboard which sort of rises out of the stage while an organist plays a little music before the film. On this night, the organist was dressed as Dracula, and the theme he played was, of course, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:58 AM on October 15, 2013

But "amplituhedron" ? that's gotta go.

Seriously. It's half Greek and half Latin!
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 2:47 PM on September 20, 2013

onlyconnect: it is news to her that jokes enforcing stereotypes of marginalized people hurts their feelings, because only now are the same kind of jokes hurting her feelings?

Thanks, this expresses what was bugging me while I watched this quite clearly. It seems like Silverman is trying to have her cake and eat it too.

lordaych: I think she's basically just saying "yes, I do this, and I know it hurts other… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:07 PM on September 15, 2013

I saw Kathy raising a stink about weev again on Twitter, because he won some sort of award at the last TechCrunch Disrupt conference. That seems kind of crazy, to give that guy an award.

Wow, TechCrunch Disrupt just keeps on giving. (I couldn't find any record of an award for him on there, but he seems to be a regular blogger on their web site, with a byline and everything.)
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:42 AM on September 12, 2013

I actually have dabbled in a lot of the more obscure languages on here and used to waste an inordinate amount of time on comp.lang.misc looking for new ones when that was a thing, but I did pretty poorly on this. It's largely because you can't really tell all that much from "hello world" programs.

I was able to distinguish all of the Lisp variants, though, which I'm pretty pleased about. You can tell it's befunge because it's two-dimensional and you can tell… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:16 PM on September 11, 2013

I recently read this profile of Brown in The Nation, which I thought was a good read.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 12:39 PM on September 10, 2013

Unfortunately I could not find any reviews for The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:41 AM on July 17, 2013

I saw Mudhoney live a year or two back and they were amazing, but I've been a lifelong fan since the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge days and my judgement is inevitably clouded. I haven't been totally crazy about their last few studio records but Mark Arm and co really know how to move a crowd, and you've gotta respect their work ethic.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:03 PM on July 11, 2013

Can someone explain this Franklin continuum stasis thing? I sort of started to ignore Marvel after the early 90's (and I mean, who wouldn't), and I've been trying to get back into it recently, but my God, those crossovers! Do they get any better? I actually thought Civil War had some good moments, but Secret Skrull Takeover Attack or whatever was just incomprehensible garbage, and I worry that I won't be able to understand the current books without knowing what happened during these big stupid… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:21 AM on July 5, 2013

Wow. So Franklin is essentially the kid from It's a Good Life. I do like how that explains the repetitive nature of comic book stories, plus the fact that nobody stays dead for long.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:58 AM on July 5, 2013

I'm going to stop now because I am three sentences away from talking shit about Park Slope.

Oh, but you should really check it out, Ad Hom, it isn't the ghetto anymore.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:31 AM on July 1, 2013

The thing that squicks me out the most about the tumblr is that unless OKCupid has changed radically since I used it several years back, no, these guys are not posting up public profiles of themselves. You have to have a profile on OKCupid to see anybody else's profile and their pictures and responses and whatnot. Publishing them on tumblr to everyone on the internet seems like a violation of these fellow's privacy, even if they do have shitty opinions.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:53 AM on June 28, 2013

The worst thing about being a BIV is that you would feel so alone. You know, without all your vatos around
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:55 AM on June 26, 2013

I agree with Tell Me No Lies. This just points out how ridiculous it is that the security of so many sites is predicated on using email addresses as the authentication mechanism of last resort, as though they are fixed entities that belong to the same person for life. It's not Yahoo that is having a spectacularly bad idea here, it's all the companies that rely on email addresses for authentication.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 9:12 AM on June 20, 2013

What I do get, though, is email intended for other people.

Oh, my god. I've gotten so much of this, since I've had my (apparently quite common) firstnamelastname@gmail.com account since beta. I get personal letters from doctors and lawyers, real estate agents, and all manner of friends and relatives. Just this week I got an email from a lawyer alarming reminding me that I was due in court on Wednesday and trying to make sure… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 3:05 PM on June 20, 2013

Goddamn it. Thompson certainly had a huge influence on my taste in comics, and my aesthetic preferences overall, though I didn't know who he was until years later.

.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 5:49 PM on June 19, 2013

Well, this seems to be well and truly hosed now. I'm surprised it lasted more than a few hours, really.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2013

Obligatory
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:56 AM on June 15, 2013

Reading Too Much Into ‘Mad Men’: Compelling Evidence That Megan Draper Is Already Dead
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:10 AM on June 6, 2013

The Cons of Being A Google Intern? There Are None

Shah was put up in Google-paid corporate housing, in San Jose's North Park

*ahem*
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 1:28 PM on June 3, 2013

In technical interviews I've been in I was encouraged to google the answer if I needed to. It's realistic, often during actual development the answer you can't quite remember off the top of your head is right there on Stack Overflow. (I did feel better if I could pass the test with no googling though.)
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 2:35 PM on June 3, 2013

Someone should open storefront bike garages

My local bike shop™ has a sign up in the window offering 3 months of winter storage for $50, which seems like a great deal (though it's in Brooklyn, where the cost of storage space is slightly less ludicrous than Manhattan).

Personally, I already own a bike and there isn't a station near my house, so I can't quite justify the $100 annual cost for membership. There is a station… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 12:29 PM on June 3, 2013

As a long-time Pythonista, I was a little baffled and offended to be called a Rubyist by this thing, but then I remembered that I have sent a bunch of patches to homebrew, so I guess I sort of qualify if you squint a little bit.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 2:16 PM on May 29, 2013

No doubt he was using twitter's Futures library.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 2:09 PM on May 29, 2013

I saw some work a few years years back that was similar to this at the SF MOMA - it was installed on the top floor, not part of the permanent collection, and consisted partly of a room whose walls slowly changed color. Do any Bay Area mefites remember this, and can you confirm it was Turrell if so? I'm terrible at remembering the names of artists.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:36 AM on May 28, 2013

People who don't understand why anyone would ever want to write something in perl are most likely people who have never written a shell script with awk in it. It's still hard to surpass at its original killer application, writing scripts and acting as cross-process glue code on unix-based systems. And it's actually not as hard as people say it is to write good, maintainable perl, you just have to be a little less lazy about it. (On the other hand, it is just as easy as… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 6:13 PM on May 26, 2013

Well, that explains why everyone uses APL derivatives these days.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:38 PM on May 26, 2013

I'm not really sure why you keep harping on how difficult it is to saw wood with a hammer, but anyways, the question of Turing-completeness just refers to whether a Turing machine can be simulated in a given system, right? The idea being that any system in that category can emulate any other one?

I think you've seized on an argument that nobody is making, that all computation can be modeled with a Turing machine, which ok, I believe you, but it doesn't really seem… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 11:38 PM on May 26, 2013

I listened to this album one night while driving up the extremely dark and windy roads of Big Sur at 3 AM, and it was a pretty mystical experience.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 7:26 AM on May 14, 2013

This is kind of a lazy little essay, and it's quite obvious that rock and roll is not going anywhere nor being supplanted by foodie-ism, but I do think he makes an interesting observation about the current state of foodie culture. The sort of curatorial expertise that music snobs of the pre-internet era had, and its corresponding social cachet to people who cared about music, has been, to an extent, replicated in current foodie culture.

Nowadays if someone tells you… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 3:57 PM on May 11, 2013

There was a fighting game in the mid to late 90's featuring mostly pirates and other nautical-themed characters, but its name is eluding me. Possibly a Neo-Geo game?
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 2:56 PM on May 11, 2013

I've often wondered about the difference in perceived cell-phone etiquette between going to see a movie and going to see a rock show. I'm sure most people taking pictures at shows wouldn't check their email while a movie was playing, or would at least recognize that doing so is considered rude (especially once I start loudly swearing at them). The principle should be sort of the same at a rock show, right? Is the difference that the show experience is supposed to be primarily auditory rather… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 4:39 PM on May 8, 2013

It's this point again: it's not about 'the moment'. There is no 'moment'. Bands that over-romanticise 'the moment' are chasing a mirage and would be better off acknowledging the dispersed moments that will build their success and fan love.

Uh, maybe for you. I'm there to experience the moment. That's why I'm at a concert instead of watching a shitty cell-phone video of a concert at home. To me the issue is not about whether… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2013

Well, I mean, they are able to do whatever they please, basically. I don't think anyone is saying they should be immune from criticism.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:10 AM on May 4, 2013

They wouldn't be able to if there were meaningful regulatory oversight.

I'm curious about what sort of regulations you think should be placed on Google that would have prevented them from shutting down Reader. I mean, I miss it too, but it's not like Con Edison suddenly stopped delivering gas to my house or something.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:25 AM on May 4, 2013

A fair-warning law and something allowing for data export (30 days warning, and a guarantee of data portability perhaps?)

Ok, well I don't want to derail the thread too badly, nor set myself up as Google's white knight since I'm quite skeptical about a lot of things they do. But I mean, have you had fair warning yet? Google removed the link from their main nav on the home page, but Reader is still there, functioning the same way it always did, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2013

It's been a rough week for pop-cultural criticism, with a bunch of talented folks leaving the AV Club as well.

I'm in for a comics book club. I've recently been catching up with my 2000's era superhero books to leaven my usual digest of twee arty nonsense.
posted to MetaFilter by whir at 8:16 PM on April 30, 2013