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I’ve been meaning to watch this movie for years - this might prompt me to get around to it!

I ran across this fairly stunning fact about the conjoined twin actresses, Daisy and Violet Hilton, who struggled to make a living in showbusiness in the decades after this movie:

“The Hiltons' last public appearance was at a drive-in in 1961 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their tour manager abandoned them there and, with no means of transportation or… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:20 AM on February 15, 2022

I’ve gotten a lot of rhubarb for the price of celery over the years. But I never judge the cashier for not knowing what it is.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 3:53 PM on February 2, 2022

My dad used to say - think of a deer in the woods, who has evolved senses that allow it to perceive most dangers that it will directly face without overwhelming it. Now take that deer’s same senses, smell and hearing and sight and so forth, and expand them to a hundred-mile radius. It would be absolutely paralyzed. That level of input would both cripple it and prevent it from perceiving the most relevant and imminent threats. And that’s all of us all the time now.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:13 AM on January 25, 2022

Please be a trendsetter and not a unicorn!

This very much mirrors WNYC buying/saving Gothamist a couple of years ago and incorporating it as a nonprofit. But it’s not a print paper of course.

I am very hopeful about nonprofit news in general as a model.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 5:50 AM on January 19, 2022

At least one show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was rejected after it showed itself to be immune to the drug office's worldview. "Drugs were an issue, but it wasn't on-strategy. It was otherworldly nonsense, very abstract and not like real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to our message," says someone in the drug-policy office camp who read and helped reject it.

i wonder if they are talking about the entirety of season 6… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:28 PM on January 8, 2022

This particular provision seems surprising. No jail time for violent offenses which do not cause serious physical injury (e.g. armed robbery)?

It's not "no jail time," it's "you better make a good case that it merits jail time rather than some other penalty."
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 5:07 PM on January 4, 2022

And considering that just getting arrested in New York City was a death sentence for 15 men in 2021, I as a New Yorker support the fuck out of this. New York's criminal justice system is completely fucked up and overburdened and it's ruined countless lives for no legally justifiable reason.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 5:16 PM on January 4, 2022

Here is a really thorough rundown of Bragg’s planned approach. It’s a lot more nuanced and thoughtful than most news articles are presenting it as.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:03 AM on January 5, 2022

"Retribution," is that supposed to be the purpose of the criminal justice system? Why don't we just shoot every felon in the head and be done with it then?
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:16 PM on January 5, 2022

I get my local news from nonprofit newspapers. It's a model I really, really hope becomes more common.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:08 PM on December 16, 2021

I had never watched Formula 1 at all before like three months ago. Didn't even know what it was. But a friend recently got into it, and she invited me to watch a race with her, and it was an excuse to go hang out, and OOPS now I've seen four races and have somehow become a Formula 1 fan.

Anyways, in my extremely uninformed opinion the ending of that race was some hot steaming nonsense, regardless of who you support.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 5:06 PM on December 12, 2021

Oh I love this story. I ran across it in a “best of the year” anthology and it was maybe my favorite in the whole collection. IIRC the novel expansion does away with some of the ambiguity I loved in the story, which is a bit of a shame.

Other great Silverberg stories I’ve run across are Sailing to Byzantium, about a man who is resurrected in the distant future as the ward/lover of immortal Eloi-esque future humans, who travel endlessly around recreations of historical… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:54 AM on December 7, 2021

More the nature and ultimate goals of the aliens—I believe the story leaves that very much up to interpretation and the novel clarifies it.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:08 AM on December 7, 2021

Lol sure.

I saw it in the theater. If I say “Medieval minor nobles toxic masculinity rape Roshamon” then you’ve pretty much got the picture. It wasn’t a BAD movie, but I didn’t walk away thinking “wow that really made me think.” And I’d struggle to recommend a movie where you see the same graphic rape scene twice in its entirety, unless the movie around it was like, transcendent.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 5:11 AM on November 27, 2021

Ooh, or literal fiction.

Oh I really like this. That’s what litfic feels like to me, a hyper-focus on only portraying things that could very well be happening next door to you. Non-speculative fiction.

I am in a speculative fiction writing group which is currently going through a writing book called Story Genius, which is all about ensuring that your story is driven by who your characters are and not the other way around.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:19 AM on November 25, 2021

My radical proposal is permanent DST but twice as many time zones. They’re too goddamn wide!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:32 PM on November 9, 2021

I'm also a little confused by the article in general; I feel like I've been scolded, but I'm unclear what for.

I... don't think this is about you? I'm in a bunch of Faceboook plant groups and I 100% know what this author is talking about - constant posts from people saying "I need a PPP cutting DESPERATELY where can I get one??" and other people selling them for $50 a pop.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:09 PM on November 6, 2021

When Bryan Fuller was working on the new Star Trek I started thinking about how replicators would enable completely victimless cannibalism. Scan someone’s leg in, replicate a copy of just the leg, butcher it, cook with it, program the resulting dish in - now you can have it whenever you want, no trouble at all! You can’t tell me NOBODY has EVER tried this in the Trek universe…
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:56 AM on November 4, 2021

I bet there’s more than one version of at least the most popular foods, and you get a random one of those… but not THAT many versions. Like how McDonalds only has four chicken nugget shapes.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 11:02 AM on November 4, 2021

And if the fan theories here about replicators knowing your most intimate food preferences are true, then that makes the Federation (or at least Star Fleet) one of the more comical surveillance dystopias. They watch everything you do. They even somehow determine your thoughts. Either directly or from close AI-enhanced observation. And then they use this massive body of information to determine your favorite version of chicken marsala.

In the process… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:40 PM on November 4, 2021

Tangent here, but I'd love to see a sci-fi would with perfect surveillance and accountability.

The short story I See You by Damon Knight is this! Someone invents a technology that allows people to see everything that has ever happened, past and present, anywhere in the world - and because they realize how disastrous this technology would be if it were kept in the hands of the powerful few, they distribute copies of the device throughout the world before they announce what it does.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 12:53 PM on November 4, 2021

This is my favorite thing in the Met. I saw it displayed in a big case of other ostraca, and it stood out for having absolutely terrible handwriting. Turns out it was some kid’s homework from 1,400 years ago - specifically their homework on the Illiad, which I also studied in school. I think I just stood there staring at the thing in a weird kind of awe for five or ten minutes.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:36 PM on November 1, 2021

That story may be apocryphal, but when I did anthropology we definitely learned as fact that prehistoric humans and proto-humans had been found with healed wounds like that, as well as some individuals with conditions that would have severely limited their mobility prior to death (like advanced bone cancer).
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:38 PM on November 3, 2021

Oh man now I'm clicking around the Met's collection of ostraca and there's some good stuff in there, such as this extremely per-my-last-chunk-of-broken-pottery one.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:58 PM on November 3, 2021

After this happened I started working the phones at a big park that a lot of businesses tack onto their names (think Pancake Park Hotel and Dunkin’ Donuts - Pancake Park, etc.) And I could not believe how many times PER DAY someone googled wrong, dialed our number, listed to me say “Pancake Park Corporation,” and then immediately launched into a story about how they need to book a table for two or change their room reservation or, for one memorable week when google was REALLY screwing up, when… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:52 AM on October 26, 2021

As a person who very often has to copy and paste things like headlines for work, I am obsessed with convertcase. Turns all caps or sentence case into title case with the click of a button.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 3:32 PM on October 12, 2021

Is it worse to be annoying and oblivious, or cruel and manipulative? I feel very strongly that it’s the latter. Larsen didn’t just write a story about how awful and annoying Dorland is, she repeatedly lied to her about it. I have no idea how people are landing on her side of this.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 2:56 PM on October 5, 2021

Lol:

@AITA_online

AITA for refusing to engage in the kidney discourse?

(Please, I want no part of it.)
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:11 AM on October 6, 2021

I am a published writer, and I once had an amazing, fascinating, deeply cringy interaction with someone in my social circle that would make a fantastic story. I even wrote it up and sent it to my writer dad who loved it, I’ve told it as a funny anecdote on several occasions, etc.

I would never publish it or anything derived from it. Because it would be cruel, and because I can come up with my own ideas.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:14 AM on October 6, 2021

If Larson “obviously” didn’t think of Dorland as a friend, it’s pretty fucked up that she explicitly raised her supposed friendship with Dorland as a cudgel when Dorland expressed her discomfort with the parallels between her experience and the story!
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:35 PM on October 9, 2021

Specifically:

Larson answered this time. “I see that you’re merely expressing real hurt, and for that I am truly sorry,” she wrote on July 21. But she also changed gears a little. “I myself have seen references to my own life in others’ fiction, and it certainly felt weird at first. But I maintain that they have a right to write about what they want — as do I, and as do you.”

Hurt feelings or not, Larson was articulating an ideal — a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:38 PM on October 9, 2021

FencingGal - I sort of agree with you but also, when I initially read this piece before I saw all the Takes, I just assumed the reader was supposed to come around to Dorland’s side by the end. It surprised me to see that it WASN’T being read that was by most people. And I’m not totally sure if the article author intended it as a squirrelly both-sides-y thing, or a late-article reveal of the answer to the question in the title.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:49 AM on October 10, 2021

As somebody who read Dan Savage as a teen and was later turned off of him for some of the reasons mentioned in this article - this was a fascinating read and I'm glad you posted it. It seems clear that there's some stuff that he still doesn't get, but wouldn't the world be better if everyone with shitty opinions at least made an attempt at correcting them?

Don’t people have an obligation to try to be less oblivious, I replied?

“Agreed.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:28 PM on September 24, 2021

I feel like at some point, the (very correct) notion that you don’t have to spend time trying to convince people of your perspective because that can be damaging and exhausting, became twisted into “it is ideologically wrong and utterly pointless to even attempt to open a dialogue with Those People in any circumstances, fuck them, I’ll see them in hell.” But if some people hadn’t done the frustrating work of convincing some other people to be frustratingly halfway to getting… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:43 AM on September 26, 2021

A friend is trying to get me into this, and I'm intrigued, but I must admit I find the rules pretty incomprehensible. Nominations and requests and offers and tag sets, etc, you have to pick x fandoms and x characters and write y fandoms and y characters... I read the whole rules page on AO3 but there's something that's not clicking.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 6:32 PM on September 21, 2021

The fact that a city is doing a poor job of adequately replacing cars does not mean cars are good. Aside from the whole global warming thing, aside from the rampant cancer and asthma which disproportionately affect minority communities, just car crashes alone are the leading cause of death for American children. But a city did a shit job of implementing rapid bus service so instead of making the buses actually functional, we ought to keep giving every teenager a planet… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:22 AM on September 19, 2021

and they're going to be handed out to everyone (this isn't a thing by the way, that's not happening anywhere),

Clearly I didn’t mean they’d be handed out for free by the government. I meant they would continue to be seen as a necessity for life that everyone must have or else they will suffer, which is more or less exactly what you said in the comment I responded to?
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:55 AM on September 19, 2021

It wasn't "all they guys wore tuxes," it was "all of the guys who wore tuxes to this are lame, because look at Lil Nas X for fuck's sake"
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:20 PM on September 15, 2021

JoeZydeco, you got me curious, so I looked around and found the term “white glove logistics.” No need for a brand to book a whole jet just for themselves, when there’s probably a jet already going to the same place with other couture and maybe some priceless art or cases of delicate wine.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:21 AM on September 16, 2021

I have never seen an interview with Lil Nas X before, just read the Tweets and seen his videos. Holy cow, that man has that intense charisma that just reaches through the screen and grabs you.

He's like, Gen X Beyonce. Or Elvis.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 6:56 PM on September 16, 2021

Typo! Bah. That's what I meant.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 9:37 PM on September 16, 2021

Ha! Yesterday I told some friends “I wonder how I can explain this phenomenon to my mom… oh, wait, I won’t have it, it’ll definitely be on NPR this weekend”
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:31 AM on September 18, 2021

I don’t understand like 95% of this but it’s very exciting, as a former pedantic child who had a real issue with the concept of infinity.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 7:47 AM on September 12, 2021

There is no 'direct' experience of reality; 'reality' is an invention of our brains.

That sounds criminally anthropocentric to me. Did reality not exist until human brains did? Or even the first brains? I feel like rocks might have something to say about that.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 8:51 AM on September 12, 2021

Whatever existed before consciousness isn’t the same as the reality that is the phenomenal experiences had by consciousness. In other words, the reality that we perceive is not identical to the causes of those perceptions. You see or feel a rock. That perception is entirely in your consciousness. The thing (or things or events) that prompted your brain to have a rock-experience may be very different from the rock-experience.

Totally with you on this,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 10:35 AM on September 12, 2021

So eviemath, “I didn’t read this and don’t understand what it’s saying but I’m certain I disagree”?

My take on it is, loathe this group of people all you want, but if you ignore the absolutely fundamental role that elite propaganda and manipulation has played in the development of their beliefs, you are just as much a tool of those elites as they are.
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:52 AM on September 7, 2021

Setting aside the fact that my experience of fanfic has been radically different than yours, it is absolutely poisonous to say that a person’s genuine, non-commercial expression of creativity is “sad purile drivel.” That attitude kept me from writing fiction for decades because “I’ll just be terrible and being a terrible writer is worthy of vicious mockery so why bother.” Now I’ve written original fiction that has been published in a semi-pro market and guess what, I only got committed to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:14 PM on September 1, 2021

Most sexual fantasy is puerile in the cold light of day, an unfortunate truth.

Time once again to quote the amazing Joanna Russ:

"Only those for whom a sexual fantasy ‘works,’ that is, those who are aroused by it, have a chance of telling us to what particular set of conditions that fantasy speaks, and can analyze how and why it works and for whom. Sexual fantasy materials are like icebergs; the one-tenth that shows… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:47 PM on September 1, 2021

You can think things are bad all you want. But you're essentially saying that things you think are bad should not be allowed to exist in public. Like, how dare people be amateurs, they should be ashamed of themselves for trying and burn everything they've ever made. How on earth could anyone find that condescending?

Being 'good' at something, taking pride in what you do, and ensuring that what you do is something you are capable of is important in a competitive… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 6:50 PM on September 1, 2021

I make an excellent living from my writing - writing proposals for corporations. It baffles me how I spent years and years simply not noticing that I had literally achieved my childhood dream of becoming a writer.

Ha, I had almost the reverse experience - I got into a career in grant writing because omg I get to write for a living! And then for many years of terrible stressful jobs I kept going “but I get to WRITE tho” and then burned out super hard,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by showbiz_liz at 4:25 PM on September 2, 2021