MetaFilter

Dearly departed Bella (an Australian Terrier), first as a fuzzy sausage link in the mid-00s and then getting a sink bath at her mom's in the mid-10s

Mattcat, watching his stories

Bratcat, covering his shame
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:33 PM on May 18, 2024

Don't want to name names yet, but we've connected with a great MeFite lawyer who's well-versed with this process and was generous enough to meet with us gratis recently to answer all our questions and outline how everything works. Adam is collaborating with Jessamyn to make their representation official, and we spent some hours in a sidebar on the 20th workshopping the necessary bylaws for them to include in the application.

The board meeting schedule hasn't been a good… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:28 AM on May 1, 2024

Not only lovely posts, but one of the most charming usernames on the site. That mental image combo of stately elegance and exotic birdness never take to put a smile on my face (and another reason why it's nice to see it so often!)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:06 PM on April 7, 2024

As somebody who can't resist dressing even the simplest SLYT up with a few supplementary background links, I appreciate your regular long video posts, hippybear. They're easy to throw into a playlist to browse later while eating in front of the TV, or even to let play in the background or in another tab while doing other work (it's how I finished the last Folding Ideas essay). And ofc your personal spin on what's worth sharing is often more interesting than whatever the YouTube algorithm turns… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:45 AM on February 27, 2024

I just noticed that all my MetaFilter feeds recently stopped updating in Feedly (probably the most popular RSS reader around), which is weird because the ones I've subscribed to over the years are from a variety of feed URLs:

Ask: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AskMetafilter - 1,959 readers, last post 3 days ago
Best Of: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestOfMetafilter - 1,553 readers, last post 3 days ago
FanFare: http://feeds.feedburner.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:23 PM on February 3, 2024

No word yet from Feedly (probably not until Monday), but strangely MetaFilter and FanFare both updated ~16 hours ago, with a few more posts in the hours after that, but nothing in the last 11 hours. Bizarre.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:32 PM on February 4, 2024

"Sample meeting report paragraph hard to read outloud with straight face."

Not clear on what the criticism is. Is it ridiculous to have somebody taking notes during a meeting? Because trust me, reconciling half a dozen different ones or recapping from memory ain't great. Having somebody (GaP) with a background in governance helping determine a structure for a legal nonprofit is also a pretty sensible idea. And while we'll miss rebent, he did… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:11 PM on January 11, 2024

glonous keming: "i think the primary practical result of this proposed change will be a higher quantity of lower quality post: more clickbait ragefilter/newsfilter "high engagement" content on the front page with little noticeable increase in "cool stuff we found on the web". the cool stuff takes more time to find, curate, flesh out and present, so in a way it is sort of naturally limiting in the quantity of posts. the other stuff is infinite and ubiquitous.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:59 PM on October 11, 2023

Catching up:

hippybear: "[I will add, using the AskMe "New Question" form to compose a new post for the Blue is a great thing. It's the same editor, but as long as you never ever choose a question topic, you can never accidentally post the question. So you can compose and edit all you want and never get a Post button that you might hit by accident. Then it's just a cut-and-paste job to move it over to a new MeFi post form once your new window is… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:01 AM on October 12, 2023

Already chimed in on the update thread, but thanks again, loup. <3
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:21 PM on October 18, 2023

posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 1:33 PM on October 24, 2023

posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 10:00 AM on October 25, 2023

It works! And with the timer turned down to 11 hours, to boot. Thanks for making this happen so quickly, y'all. (Only nitpick: the new post and FAQ page still say "24 hours", which could be confusing if people don't pay attention to the countdown -- though in fairness this change hasn't even been officially rolled out yet!)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:11 AM on October 25, 2023

loup: "– We’ll reduce the waiting time for new posts on the blue from 1 day to 12 hours, based on the feedback we have received in the current Meta Thread, I’ll confirm once this change goes live."

Thank you! Hopefully it's easier to implement this time after past experience doing it for Ask.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:20 PM on October 18, 2023

Thanks for staying on this, Jessamyn -- the progress is so encouraging to see.

As I said over email, I'd be happy to participate in whatever way is helpful, from a volunteer role up to one of the required board spots if needed. I'm proud of everything the SC was able to do but there was the problem of scope mismatch/mission creep and the urgent fundraising/budgetary needs kind of taking over everything else; it would be nice to stay involved in a way that is a better fit… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:14 PM on October 18, 2023

Yeah, seems like a case of most people not wanting to spend 1-4 hours watching a video interview with Some Guy, Esq. on this particular topic. I saw the post a bit after it went up, skimmed the comments, figured by the unimpressed reaction it wasn't worth the time, and moved on. It took somebody posting an AI text summary later to really surface how questionable the content got (as opposed to the merely "off-putting" stuff noted early on).

Relatedly, I have to… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:57 AM on October 6, 2023

I agree there's cause for action here, but not in quite the same way the post framed it.

When seeing the phrase "users who support or defend Nazi/fascist ideology" I take that to mean Holocaust denial, Holocaust advocacy, or otherwise supporting their anti-semitism, racial purity rhetoric, brutal totalitarian rule, etc. That's an extremely charged accusation to make, and without the source comment handy I can see why people would be… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 9:49 PM on September 29, 2023

I read an eye-opening post recently about how even small-time web extension developers are often solicited by predatory spammers looking to "monetize" their tools in invasive and harmful ways. It would be*so easy* for the folks in charge here to say "fuck it" and sell out to somebody like that, turning AskMe into a referral farm and opening up MeFi to paid blogspam and selling off user info to the highest bidder. As Xitter goes full fash and Reddit contemptuously screws over… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 4:26 PM on September 7, 2023

It's possible to critique fundraising without accusing the people involved of being incompetent, lazy, embarrassing, saying they should all be fired, etc. -- see openhearted's reasonable comments above, for ex. Casually talking about eliminating people's jobs (especially for those in places without a good safety net) is quite insensitive.

I would 100% be in favor of hiring somebody from the SC for fundraising/business purposes, even if that requires shifting hours around… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:54 AM on August 23, 2023

warriorqueen: "Also for the love of God, while I'm posting, get GA4 installed if you haven't already. Without data there just can't be good decisions."

IIRC loup and frimble are against using Google Analytics because of risks to user privacy; they use the open-source Matomo instead.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:42 PM on August 24, 2023

Are your Android OS and Chrome browser up to date? Chrome should be pretty consistent across devices as long as it's current.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 9:04 PM on August 10, 2023

jessamyn: "This is now deployed sitewide. If people see a New Post box that does not have CamelCase as part of the suggestion please let us know."

Just noticed that while the updated guidance is initially showing on new post pages, it still shows the original text when the post is previewed. First noticed on Ask and tested on MeFi and MeTa, so probably happening on the other subsites as well.

Given most posts likely… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:11 PM on July 10, 2023

Could it have been related to either the Bojack on his boat meme or SNL's "Guy Who Just Bought a Boat" character?
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 4:22 PM on March 30, 2023

And one bona fide scoop!

This was really cool. I'm a fan of Ryan anyway but he's a great storyteller and the Q+A was well-paced, getting thoughtful, thorough answers to every question just within the time limit without rushing things. Definitely check it out once it's published if you couldn't see it live.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:18 PM on March 29, 2023

Thanks, travelingthyme. It's partially my fault as well -- I'd been keeping an eye on the thread as the OP but had to step away for a bit shortly before schmod's comment without saying so. It apparently caught some flags in the interim which bumped it up the flag queue (which is a separate view from the thread). Having a designated person to respond to SC threads is one of the things we're doing to improve communications, but gaps like that are gonna happen when we're doing this on a more… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:22 PM on March 22, 2023

Posting on the go, apologies if this comes off a little scattered!

We've talked about this previously, but the biggest curveball we ran into starting out was the cash crunch. The site normally does a summer fundraiser to shore things up, but last year's was delayed by the process of setting up the SC itself and left things in a much more precarious state than they usually are. Loup and Jessamyn let us know about the situation, but they didn't require, ask, or even… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:00 PM on March 22, 2023

Thanks aielen, I definitely agree that there was a time sensitivity to the budget situation, specifically that we'd planned to do a fundraising push later until we found that the situation was more urgent than expected. I guess my point was more that loup et al didn't ask us to do anything concrete wrt fundraising beyond the sort of general sitewide fundraising appeal cortex and mathowie had done in years past, and that the various fundraising avenues (auction, events, etc) were… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:31 PM on March 22, 2023

[Note that this was a collaborative post by the Steering Committee, written first by myself with extensive notes and additions by the rest of the team. So much of the last six months has been an exercise in collaboration, and I deeply appreciate the opportunity to work alongside such thoughtful, diligent folks who care so much about this place. Thanks, everybody.]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:24 PM on March 1, 2023

Hi creatrixtiara, we've experimented with several different schedules using tools to identify times that work best for the most people, including rotating to later US/EU hours to better accommodate Asia/Pacific time zones. This will vary depending on what the geographic composition of the new SC ends up being but we're always willing to be flexible.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:42 PM on March 1, 2023

Jessamyn and loup will screen applicants as before but the SC will now be involved (the applications go to our inbox) and will provide some oversight on the process.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:22 PM on March 1, 2023

We went back and forth on the target time commitment. To clarify, I understand the 10 hours/week to be a rough estimate that includes time keeping abreast of the site, participating in discussion on SC/admin platforms and being around to vote, answer questions, and pitch in on various tasks when needed, not ten regularly scheduled hours of nose-to-the-grindstone Work. It's more a question of availability -- with four hours a month, and 90 minutes of that going to the monthly meeting, that's only… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:34 PM on March 1, 2023

Hi all, just had our monthly SC meeting the other day. I can report that we have four candidates at the moment, while the staff and BIPOC board is in contact with a couple dozen potential applicants. I blame myself for not being clearer about the nature of the time commitment, which may have put a damper on enthusiasm. There was no consensus against people talking about their applications here; I'll reiterate that the SC is first contact on all applications so there is additional oversight on… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:52 AM on March 12, 2023

Posting on my lunch break woooo

So after checking in with the others, we're pretty happy with the submissions we have so far and have no issues with anybody. That said, we're going to extend a week and change for the scheduled March 25th BIPOC board meeting so they can meet and finalize their picks (and give loup time to catch up with the rest of the staff on theirs). And tbh I feel bad for doing a poor job communicating the nature of the time commitment in the original… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:02 PM on March 16, 2023

Personally, I love ChatGPT as an infinitely pliable magic language toy that you can bounce absurd ideas off of and ask to do linguistic party tricks on a whim (and decidedly not a fan of the push to paint interest in a whole field of tech as repugnant) but I agree that it is not appropriate for Ask. It's free to query for those that want to, not nearly reliable enough, and the "surprise, this was actually written by an AI!" game has been done to death at this point. As for folks… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 9:08 PM on March 2, 2023

Just wanted to note that this was a collaborative post by the Steering Committee, written first by tavegyl with an addendum from aielen, additional notes from the rest of the team, crouton graphic by JHarris, and an editing and formatting pass from me. I also want to add a personal thanks to both the rest of the SC generally and tavegyl and aielen in particular for the incredibly diligent and focused job they've done to make this fundraiser a success -- this task was much more difficult than it… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:29 PM on January 23, 2023

I cannot believe that the site owner has sold out the front page to Big MeFite so quickly. Really questioning my participation in this charade rn. /s

(Also note that my fine print is for a recurring contribution -- trying to encourage more sustainable funding!)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:11 PM on October 28, 2022

NotLost: "By "recurring donation" -- does that mean to recur every month or every year?"

Whoops, probably should have been more specific! You can set up a recurring contribution using the main Fund MetaFilter link at the bottom of every page. For these purposes I'm thinking a monthly recurrence, but there are also options for quarterly and yearly if that works better.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:36 PM on October 28, 2022

roolya_boolya: "I've increased my monthly subscription by 15 dollars. I would like a Rhaomi post on nacreous clouds, ideally with some links to pretty pictures.

Thanks for the initiative!"

Nacreous clouds post is a go! Had some fun with this one. Thank you, roolya_boolya. 🌠

Lawn Beaver and martin q blank, I've memailed you for more details!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:13 PM on November 3, 2022

Lawn Beaver: "I just raised my recurring donation (almost doubled it) and would be grateful for a Rhaomi post on an aspect of natural history or weird plant or animal biology."

Please enjoy this post on the Okavango Delta! One of the coolest phenomena in nature. Thanks, Lawn Beaver. 🌠
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:43 PM on November 11, 2022

Thanks for the bug reports, everyone. Staff is aware and looking into the Cloudfront issue -- we've got a *possible* lead on the problem, should have a better idea what exactly is going wrong in a few hours. Thanks for your patience.

(Also, I'm not in webdev myself but I'd guess the variance in working vs. not working is probably a cache issue; if one of your devices is loading the stylesheet okay it should continue to work as long as you don't force-refresh or clear your browser cache.)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:34 PM on October 26, 2022

Special thanks to frimble for fixing an RSS issue that was delaying this post! For reference, here's the posts that were missed during the downtime for anybody (like me) who reads the site through a feed reader:

MeFi
"Don't camp outdoors, or the cows will trample you." by rory [Scottish island travelogue]
The Mothership Landed in Houston, October 31st, 1976 by wellifyouinsist [Parliament Funkadelic concert]
Our Cancers are… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:03 PM on October 3, 2022

Hi! I already put something up on my profile, but I'll copy-paste here for convenience (plus idk if I'll keep it up there after):

I've been on MeFi since 2007 -- my entire adult life! -- and it's still my favorite place on the web. You might know me from my occasional megaposts (though I do more reading and commenting these days). I also spend time on Reddit (where I co-mod the nearly 2 million Q&A subreddit /r/TipOfMyTongue, helped salvage /r/PresidentialRaceMemes… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:10 AM on August 15, 2022

re:threading, I think a full-on Reddit-style nested hierarchy would be far too disruptive and tough to implement, and most threads aren't sprawling enough to benefit. But I think it would be useful to explore incorporating something like GraphFi as an optional feature. I have it installed as a local userscript that runs automatically on every page load; it's only 21 kilobytes in size but it's capable of parsing quoted text to make following chains of replies a breeze, and it makes digesting… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:00 PM on August 24, 2022

Brandon Blatcher: "As the person who’s made the various updates on the sub-sites, I think developing some other way for the SC to inform the community is going to be crucial. MeTa posts and the site banner isn’t going to cut it. Probably need the ability to do global pinned posts on each sub-site or something similar."

It's never too late to implement a tiny little video Mathowie.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:34 PM on August 26, 2022

I don't think it's linked on the homepage anywhere, but if you enjoy closure check out the Final Answers feed of old questions that recently had a final update from the OP added by a mod.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:04 AM on August 12, 2022

Maybe keep the small green checkmark for posts with best answers and highlight resolved questions with a dark background or a [resolved] tag before/after the title?
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:52 AM on August 12, 2022

oomny:
🎨 Colored pencil drawing of a horse with hoof-hands riding a bicycle (tried this one a few times and that was the closest I could get!)

some_kind_of_toaster:
🎨 A domesticated miniature pet bear sitting on its owner’s lap

CheeseDigestsAll:
🎨 A Cat Eating a Rhinoceros Beetle, oil on canvas, by Hieronymus Bosch

If only I had a penguin...:
🎨 A moose and a beaver… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:19 PM on July 6, 2022

daisyace: "Rhaomi, if you get through everyone’s first requests and still have the energy for more, would you be up for giving mine another try? Maybe: Brown-haired man stooping in a dreary apartment hallway to guide a little bird on the floor towards a bright window at the end of the hallway; style of Edward Hopper?"

I actually tried this one a number of times with several different phrasings -- the issue seems to be that giving the AI too… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 8:52 AM on July 7, 2022

daisyace: Tried yours one more time, first by generating the whole scene with the man, then inpainting the sparrow; hope it's closer to what you were looking for!
🎨 Perspective painting of a brown-haired man kneeling next to a sparrow sitting near a single bright window at the end of a dreary green apartment hallway, by Edward Hopper

Going To Maine:
🎨 Webcomic panel of a happy dog sitting in a burning kitchen saying "This is fine", by… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:06 PM on July 8, 2022

A few more tonight:

Bloxworth Snout:
🎨 A single blue and white Delftware tile depicting a kraken attacking a ship
🎨 18th century depiction of a tall, carnivorous Triffid alien plant, ukiyo-e
🎨 18th century depiction of a pitcher plant, ukiyo-e
🎨 A cave painting of a swan

rebent: You might be interested in this "prompt engineering" spreadsheet, along with this article and this Reddit… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:51 PM on July 12, 2022

Bad news -- the number of images generated is being reduced from six to just four. So I'm going to try closing out this thread while I can still maximize odds of a good result!

GCU Sweet and Full of Grace:
🎨 Photorealistic painting of a very sad-looking spaceship with googly eyes, science fiction art by Chris Foss (assuming this is the artist you meant)
🎨 Vintage photograph of Abraham Lincoln tapdancing in the back of a 1972 Chevrolet El… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:41 PM on July 18, 2022

Update: The party is sadly over -- OpenAI recently moved to a commercial closed beta, with a new paid credits system and sharply curtailed access to free generations. But this is enabling them to ramp up the number of invites up to one million in the coming weeks, so definitely sign up for the waitlist if you haven't already! And thanks for all the suggestions -- it was really fun and challenging to make people's visions a reality, and it helped me learn a lot about how best to compose… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:56 PM on July 26, 2022