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A dying empire led by bad people.

Jesus.

No, it is not Putin and Tik-tok. Shit is really fucked right now, has been fucked for sometime, and no institutions have an interest in unfucking any of them. It’s pretty plain to see everywhere.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:45 AM on May 29, 2024

Yup.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:02 AM on May 29, 2024

Pretty much everyone is in fear of losing their jobs right now and even people with solid jobs are having trouble making ends meet. Housing is ruinously expensive and many are just getting straight up priced out of it. All the things that make the line go up make these things worse. It’s real bad.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:42 AM on May 29, 2024

The other democratic message is pretty much "vote affirmatively for us and our hellfire missiles because otherwise Trump will put you in a camp", and that frankly doesn't resonate with anyone I actually know, especially young people.

It’s basically voter suppression and gloating rather than an attempt at persuading people to vote at this point.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:50 AM on May 29, 2024

I’d say Putin, China, Saudi, etc. do enter into it,

I’d say that’s entering into wishful thinking.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:51 AM on May 29, 2024

All the “good” economic news is like “AI is going to revolutionize the economy and put you out of a job!”
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:59 AM on May 29, 2024

I am both dreading and expecting a full TERF pivot from them, to match other pseudo-liberal institutions.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:10 PM on May 29, 2024

Young people don't really vote in local elections either, correct?

Honestly if I was trying to persuade someone to vote that’s where I would encourage them to vote, presidential votes being terrifyingly irrelevant in pretty much everywhere that isn’t a swing state.

Also you get to vote for progressive people (probably democrats) and policies, even if they will almost always be crushed by better funded right wing opponents… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:02 PM on May 29, 2024

The thing about crime is it’s mostly a vibes thing. Any attempt to materially change things in the world rather than appeal to the vibes is a complete waste of time. And the vibes are mostly based on knee jerk lizard brain shit that republicans utterly control, so Dems campaigning against Repubs on crime toughness are just going to get crushed like the losers they are. Same with immigration, which is just racism.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:14 PM on May 29, 2024

The most bleak and defeatist view of all.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:02 PM on May 29, 2024

It will be once Trump II takes over, because we'll never have an actual election again.

Most of our votes won’t matter one tiny bit in deciding that.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:17 PM on May 29, 2024

Honestly I think if you want queer rights in every state the last thing you want is the Democratic Party thinking they can just ignore us without consequence, because they absolutely will.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:33 PM on May 29, 2024

Ain’t nobody here in charge of that.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:42 PM on May 29, 2024

the ultra rich have already decided they want fascism, they’re not going to be swayed further towards that.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:44 PM on May 29, 2024

Yeah I think you can assume we’ve heard about that.

So… You going to actually do anything or are zingers like that about it?
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 3:37 PM on May 29, 2024

"All of these things are happening now, and Biden isn't doing a goddamn thing about any of them, but at least under Trump maybe the goddamn liberals would care and be in the streets with us."

Everyone saw what happened with the border and Gaza is going to be exactly like that.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 3:41 PM on May 29, 2024

Did you just both-sides both-siding? Power move.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 3:48 PM on May 29, 2024

Microsoft WordPad: 1995-2024

Notepad now infected with AI garbage, because obviously that’s what you want from your basic level ascii text editing utility.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 7:18 AM on May 28, 2024

WordPad is pretty useful if you want to read/edit .rtf files, and .rtf was pretty useful if you wanted a lightweight document format with limited formatting that had a reader/editor available in every windows PC. Other document formats and other editors are available but it’s long been a useful go to, and I’m sure someone will miss it.

It’ll be interesting to see if it’s general use case gets replaced by something streamlined and slim or the most bloated shit… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 7:38 AM on May 28, 2024

Microsoft integrates Notepad with Copilot on Windows 11
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:19 AM on May 28, 2024

Theoretically you could have a markdown editor that never lets you see the code but given its most enthusiastic base of support is coders… yeah, that’s unlikely.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:24 AM on May 28, 2024

Labeler MAX.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 9:38 AM on May 28, 2024

Obviously it would be an electric typewriter, the comics sans would be rendered from individual normal sized characters, with each keypress activating a macro to type out the ASCII art.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:09 AM on May 28, 2024

this time Windows is finished

Kind of feels like Win7 was when it was feature complete and every step since has been a downgrade.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:37 AM on May 28, 2024

This feels like the sort of thing Microsoft (at least Microsoft of old, I have little experience with them now) would purposefully not add, because the lack of support made it look like those Other People on Other Systems were sending broken documents, and thus the user would not be tempted to think about those Other Systems, let alone try them.

Web developers shifting en masse to Macs because of that kind of fuckery may have shifted an attitude or two.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:51 PM on May 28, 2024

DOC and especially DOCX has a bunch of binary blobs to persist various state.

A Docx should just be a zip file with a bunch of xml files in it. Probably not the most easily parsed xml, but it should all just be xml.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:06 PM on May 28, 2024

Almost too much markup.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:18 PM on May 28, 2024

Yeah, the no x is for “no xml”.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 8:38 PM on May 28, 2024

Fun fact: first thing to export it was Word on Mac.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:24 PM on May 29, 2024

The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel

Oh, you haven’t even seen the Church Play Cinematic Universe.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 5:36 PM on May 25, 2024

Hopefully this works... Unlocked due to all the interest:
A More Civilized September Bonusode: Galactic Starcruiser Audio Diaries
As promised, here are our night 1 and night 2, recorded-on-a-phone Starcruiser diaries! As you'll hear, some of this is material we talked through on the main feed episode, but some of it is really grounded in the then-and-thereness of it all.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 2:07 PM on May 26, 2024

the title does sound a little definitive

Ehh… Star Wars hotel failed, spectacularly. Not sure there’s anything to be gained from pretending otherwise.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:46 PM on May 27, 2024

Disney’s Star Wars hotel Galactic Starcruiser was torpedoed by bad app design
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 9:06 AM on May 29, 2024

Rich dude spends money building mini-sub to visit Titanic: 2024 edition

God luck to him getting as many extremely rich takers as possible.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:09 PM on May 28, 2024

I’m gonna want James Cameron to weigh in, but it does sound absent weird engineering hubris, for better or worse.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:31 PM on May 28, 2024

A sandwich of compressed wealth would be a flatbread, obviously.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 6:29 PM on May 28, 2024

With Cameron it’s kind of the other way around.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 6:46 AM on May 29, 2024

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC

Looking forward to the tortured logic from the usual suspects how this is fine actually.

Brett Stephens: war crimes are good actually.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 6:42 AM on May 29, 2024

“the disappointing love child of Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin”

It seemed like something people here would want to hear about. :-)
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 5:13 PM on May 28, 2024

“Will you tell everyone that I was halfway cool?”

Although Ritchie often describes his upbringing as “middle class,” it was beyond what most people would ascribe to the term. His father, Bill, who died in February, owned a large, successful Lincoln-Mercury dealership in the northern suburb of Sterling Heights, and for a time was president of the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association, an influential trade group. The family lived in an expansive 5,628-square-foot estate, built on more than five acres that included apple orchards, an… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 9:22 AM on May 27, 2024

Honestly I sort of thought they were the same person and conflate the two constantly, probably unfairly to one or both, though I got a certain air “of trying too hard” when the both of them first popped up for their respective early hype cycles and nothing has really swayed me from that.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:48 AM on May 27, 2024

"[Pamela Anderson] also couldn't help but throw a little shade about [Kid Rock's] supposed country lifestyle. "When he was with me, he didn't hunt," said Anderson. "I don't think he was very Republican, but now he is. Oh well."

A Republicans aspirational rural signaling actually being bullshit, what a shocker.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 4:53 PM on May 27, 2024

“The Mist” is a novella

I think a lot of these choices are spot on, but the two that I would have added were "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" and "Everything's Eventual."

Both fall down the “actually a novella” hole that most of the omissions seem to be in.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:39 PM on May 25, 2024

He really wasn't fooling anyone saying he wasn't going to finish it.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 1:13 PM on May 27, 2024

"It is a recognition that neoliberalism failed to deliver."

Remember the PUMAs? There’s some fucking weird notionally feminist stuff that goes on in the reactionary wing of the Democratic Party.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 4:24 PM on May 26, 2024

They are not maternal. They are PUNK AS F*CK.

Saw them at the Crocodile here in Seattle, with two awesome support bands ( Drinking Boys and Girls Choir , Lemon Boy). They were incredible and had all the amazing energy you see in the video and more.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 10:10 AM on May 25, 2024

Niiiiice. Thank you for that info.

I find them a bit ungooglable because of the Cave Town song.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 4:43 PM on May 25, 2024

They have an amazing sense of showmanship.
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 12:20 PM on May 26, 2024

AI-detic Memory

Windows Recall sounds like a privacy nightmare – here's why I'm worried
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 6:02 PM on May 25, 2024

Ten Blue Links

Google Search Says You Should Eat Glue, Use Gasoline in Spaghetti
posted to MetaFilter by Artw at 11:19 AM on May 25, 2024