MetaFilter

I... HAVE... THE POWER 🎨🖌️

Thanks to travelingthyme for freeing this post from the queue after a few days of email tag. Idk how much demand there will be for this on a holiday weekend, but I wanted to do this ASAP while the beta is still available (no telling how limited/exclusive/expensive it will be if and when it's publicly released).

I'll upload generations to Imgur and post them with a 🎨 emoji for easier browsing!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 4:58 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 "Apocalyptic giant flying bioluminescent jellyfish destroying a city, digital art"

Lots of good ones, here's the full gallery!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:04 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Rudolf Nureyev dancing with Marilyn Monroe and Mary Pickford in a lovely garden shot, Ektachrome E100.

That's the closest one, the others have a similar vibe but tend to blur hair color and such, and the faces are uniformly blurry.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:09 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 A drawing of a stylized elongated cat gracefully leaping over a sandwich

Hmm, not sure what style you're going for but they all came out pretty cartoonish looking. If this thread peters out I might try again asking for tattoo art specifically (which it can do!)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:14 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 A pensive Roy Batty from Blade Runner (1982) eating a banana split, film noir style

Got two decent ones out of this, though it interpreted it as a banana rather than a banana split!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:20 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Lisa Frank style illustration of rainbow dragons eating cake

This is probably the cleanest-looking one, but they're all pretty nice!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:23 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Two shoebill storks in an umbrella shop in the style of Edward Gorey
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:26 PM on July 2, 2022

sardonyx: "The first Lisa Frank one gave me an "adult content warning, click if you're over 18 message" for no discernible reason."

Yeah, Imgur apparently errs very much on the side of caution with those warnings, it's about the most innocent thing you can imagine.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:28 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Photo of a snail and a beetle playing the board game Go, the board is full of black and white stones

Tried adding some extra keywords here as I reckoned it might have trouble picking up the word "Go" -- turns out the bigger problem was blending the snail with the beetle! Here are the other ones.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:36 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 A modernist illustration of the Loch Ness Monster by Charley Harper

They all tended towards minimalism; this was the one with the most Harper-esque vibe. I might have gotten better results with something like "ornamentation" or "lots of details".
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:42 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 a dramatic oil painting of a group of robed priests worshipping their leviathan lobster god
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:45 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Medieval tapestry of Homer Simpson kissing Count Dracula on the bridge of the starship Enterprise

Hmm, it normally does great with Homer Simpson, but looks like the medieval aesthetic won out, leaving them both looking like Some Dude (and mostly taking "bridge" literally!). But that seems to be the risk in trying to include a bunch of distinct, disparate things.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:52 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 Beijing CCTV surveillance headquarters, illustration by Hugh Ferriss

It definitely nailed his monolithic style, though most of them are a bit more colorful and modernist than his other works.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:57 PM on July 2, 2022

LionIndex: "Yeah, got the "imposing" part, but not so much the lighting and medium."

Yeah, it seems to have more success with artists whose styles are widely known and imitated, like Van Gogh or Magritte. For more niche stuff it can often get the gist, but it definitely helps to spell out the aesthetic you want in addition to namechecking the artist.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:03 PM on July 2, 2022

Still have 39 prompts left -- gonna take a second run at some of the weaker results in a bit if there aren't any new requests.

Greg_Ace, are there any examples you can find of the style you're looking for? I was thinking of asking for a photo of tattoo art, but that would tend to be more colorful and detailed than "stick figure drawing", which I expect would look pretty crude. Is that the aesthetic you're after, or more like something elegant/minimalist?
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:40 PM on July 2, 2022

Tried the snail/beetle Go game a couple more times -- as expected, "A snail and a beetle playing Go" missed the "Go" part entirely, and ended up looking like nature photography (though the snail and beetle were much clearer in that context). Trying something more verbose ("Chinese board game Go, black and white stones on a grid. A snail and a beetle are on the Go board.") got closer to the game's appearance (by no means accurate!) while the… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:55 PM on July 2, 2022

🎨 electromagnetic radiation

Heavy on the stock photo vibe, though it also gives us our first delightful example of DALL-E attempting to do text: RADDIAD INDIAL INVIATOI!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:00 PM on July 2, 2022

Tried the Loch Ness one again with the added tag "lots of ornamentation and detail" and got better results; my favorite.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:06 PM on July 2, 2022

Metatalktail Hour: Everybody needs a Pug

Probably my favorite picture of my old childhood dog is this adorably whale-eyed photo of her getting a bath in the sink. Recently, I got access to an AI generation system that, among other things, can take any uploaded picture and create endless variations on it. So now I've got infinite parallel universe versions of this poor pitiful pooch. It's a little eerie, but it also made me laugh more than just about anything else this year.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:03 PM on June 25, 2022

Metatalktail Hour: Dreaming, perchance?

I have terrible sleep hygiene -- night owl with inconsistent sleep times and lengths and a very irregular schedule. Perversely, when I try to go to sleep at a decent-ish hour, I often get these weird... night terrors? Hynagogia? Basically I'll sleep really lightly for 15-20 minutes -- often with a dream, which is unusual -- then wake up with the strong impression that there's something in the room -- a floating object, a big spider on the wall, a tower of boxes falling over.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:04 AM on June 12, 2022

183: Severance, not Succession

Hey thanks for the Projects mention! I've actually got one more quiz in progress I've been procrastinating on but this is a fine reminder to finally get it done. <3
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:39 PM on April 11, 2022

As promised: AI Jukebox music quiz #2! Or you can just watch the YouTube video if you don't want to bother with the Sporcle part (AI image clues start at 10:00, answers at 20:00).

Also -- having listened to the podcast now! -- I should clarify that while Jukebox *can* be used to continue an existing song, what was really interesting to me about the particular "No Lyrics Conditioning" clips used in the quiz was that they intentionally aren't continuing real… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:31 PM on April 11, 2022

First steps in some MetaFilter changes

One of the worst things about mathowie's departure was his after-the-fact disclosure of how stressful and difficult running the site was and the emotional and even physical toll it took, and it was painful seeing the same thing seemingly happening again. Having known you as a user since your pre-mod days, corresponded about tough issues, listened to you enthuse on the podcast, and shook your hand at a meetup, I know how much you love this community, how much you tried to shoulder these burdens,… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:30 PM on March 29, 2022

Archive.org, Linkrot, and You

PS: My attempt to do a post-per-day in February for #DoublesJubilee stalled out at the tail end due to surprise jury duty (and accidentally becoming a PR liaison for the Ukrainian government), but I did still have some old-n-busted posts I wanted to update and save -- hopefully it's not uncouth to do some more outside of February proper!
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:19 PM on March 7, 2022

[MeFi Site Update] February 9th

- Removing the limit of questions you can post in ASK

Trying to keep up a daily post tempo for the theme month reminds me of something I'd love to see along these lines: either reducing the FPP limit to once every 12 hours, or allowing work on a draft before the 24 hours are up instead of showing an error page. It's annoying having to wait for a specific time of day to even start putting a post together, and even short delays ratchet the time you can… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:57 PM on February 9, 2022

At risk of dragging in baggage, I think what cortex is prickly about here isn't the offers of help generally because there's something wrong with Miko as a member or a person, but rather the specific goal of converting the site into a nonprofit. It's something Miko has professional experience with and feels very strongly about but after some investigation cortex has firmly shut the door on that idea for a variety of reasons I won't rehash here.

I can understand not being… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 3:36 PM on February 21, 2022

Archive link request

Just use Archive.org, people! It's a known quantity, far less likely to go down than some of these dodgier sites, and preserves the web address in the URL. You can also archive a live site on demand.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 4:34 AM on February 16, 2022

Introduce yourself!

cathodeheart: "OK, sure, hi. I've been mostly lurking since April 2001 (!). I didn't really mean to sign up for Metafilter itself, but https://the5k.org had a membership tie-in that led me here, and I guess I stuck around. 👋

I still read this site (and skim Ask) as part of my daily web routine. I made one or two half-hearted moves towards participating back in the day, but that never really stuck. I'm not a prolific poster anywhere, so that makes sense.… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:12 PM on January 26, 2022

Our favorite under-loved comments of 2021

mhoye on the eerie quietude of breaking outside a game's boundaries

flabdablet on the workmanlike charm of his favorite chess set (and later, a more unorthodox one)

Superilla on the unexpected origin of the names from that funny Japanese baseball game roster

humuhumu links an ultra-high-resolution scan of Rembrandt's The Night Watch

mcstayinskool on the bravery of Hank… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:56 PM on January 12, 2022

Mchelly: "Where is this comment from? What is this trick? Why am I not seeing it or the link? Is that the trick?"

At risk of angering the Magician's Guild, I think the bulk of that comment was quoting the original, and italicizing the first-line intro was just an awkward way of separating the two.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:13 PM on January 14, 2022

Roll, Truck, Roll

.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:42 AM on October 29, 2021

[MeFi Site Update] October 20th

Plans for growth
- This is still an open discussion and includes making it easier for members to send out invites to their friends as well as promoting MetaFilter and the subsites externally.

One simple idea that could help a lot: put the the above-the-fold text for posts or an equivalent excerpt for comments in prominent text at the top of every "favorited by" page, along with a link back to the original. This gives people a… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 10:55 AM on October 20, 2021

- We’re working on an “other media” category for FanFare. We are currently testing it and will share more details soon.

I'm so glad to hear this, because it leads me to my other big idea for revamping the site.

The fundamental issue facing MetaFilter is a decline in both ad revenue and inbound traffic from Google. That's what kicked off the original crisis under mathowie, and the state of the site updates show it gets worse… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:41 PM on October 20, 2021

Reddit is another website that uses that model to great success, yes. Their main problem is that they have very lax global standards that allow extremely awful groups to fester until media attention forces them to quash. But with the right guidelines and enforcement, there's nothing wrong with the sub-group model. (And even on Reddit, subreddits with strong moderation and culture form diamonds in the rough, like with /r/AskHistorians.)

edit: to clarify, I don't think… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:22 PM on October 20, 2021

That's an impressive number, when we hear so much about how ads have cratered in value.

Can MetaFilter do what they're doing, or is the scale too radically different? Or are we talking about something like paid posts that would be incompatible with MeFi?

Their traffic is ~10x bigger for starters, plus their userbase is younger and built around the very lucrative gaming market. They also only pay their their tech team (and… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 7:30 PM on October 20, 2021

FWIW, FanFare posts stay open indefinitely, and later comments there will be seen in Recent Activity for everyone who commented previously (or added it to RA manually). Slower than an active post, but not shouting into the void either. I've seen plenty of asynchronous discussion play out months after a post originally went up.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 4:32 PM on October 22, 2021

Do we really need to use the m word?

lemur: "Folks were responding and using the m word too though, and no one really made note of its use, which surprised me, as I personally find it shocking at this point and the mainstream MeFi sensibility is usually line with mine when it comes to this type of thing."

Speaking as somebody who doesn't really use these words but isn't offended by them, either:

The thing about them is, whatever clinical significance… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:12 PM on June 28, 2021

Hence my point about distinguishing the trait from the cause. Weakness is bad, but calling someone a weak leader or a weak writer does not inherently demean people who are weak due to a physical disability. Using a term like "palsied" or "spastic" would, but that's a rare insult to hear because the association with the actual disability remains strong and it would be offensive to invoke it like that. Words like "idiot" and "cretin" used to get their punch… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:15 AM on June 29, 2021

lemur: "To those saying that no one is affected by these antiquated terms anymore, I would suggest considering the feedback of those with lived experience. I can assure you that the word still hurts, even if one is ignorant of its origins."

I'm sure there are people with the lived experience of being called "asshole" or "fucker" that dislike those ugly words and would love if we all stop using them, but that doesn't mean… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:42 PM on June 29, 2021

epj: "Why is strength better than weakness? Why is health better than sickness?"

I mean, sickness in general is bad; it causes pain, suffering, shortens lifespans, reduces quality of life. None of that means that sick people are bad, or worth any less for being sick. Insisting on interpreting the former to always mean the latter seems like a recipe for needless hurt.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:43 PM on June 29, 2021

Spend 2 hrs watching the Matrix? I could read the script in 15 minutes!

If only there were a way for people who did have time to watch the video to discuss or perhaps just summarize the thrust of its argument for the benefit of other readers, "filtering" it down to key points in a "meta" sort of way.

Sadly, time constraints mean no one reads the posts down here.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:51 PM on June 8, 2021

It's not easy being short

Thanks! Fun fact: when the in-line player is up, you can drag it around by the border so you can read 'n' scroll while it plays.

(Also, on the off chance frimble implements a fix that recognizes all YouTube links regardless of format, I hope they keep the "youtube.com/embed/" style out of it, because it's nice for formatting purposes to have a YT link that I know *won't* trigger the player button.)
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 6:13 PM on May 13, 2021

Huh... I just came across another instance of the play button not working on a shortlink (after frimble's fix, too), but it's just a basic youtu.be link without any cruft at the end. There must be some more unresolved regex weirdness going on.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:07 PM on May 31, 2021

Adding archive.org links to old posts

While I do hate link rot (and thanks for the shout-out!), redirecting countless outbound links to Archive.org would likely further reduce the site's Google juice.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 12:56 PM on May 16, 2021

Updating the graphical style of mod notes

Maybe add "mod note" in-line with the text box, legend-style? Like the "Employee basic information" part in this image.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 11:10 AM on April 15, 2021

MetaChat: Personal quarantime playlists

I just don't wanna be back in this place again
I mean I done cried a little, tried a little, failed a little
I don't wanna do it again

Do you feel me? (yes, ma'am)
Do you feel me? (yes, ma'am)
Do you feel me? (yes, ma'am)
Do you feel me? (yes, ma'am)
Do you?
Do you?… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 5:53 PM on March 2, 2021

MetaTalktail Hour: What is on your walls?

Got a vintage 2008 CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN placard in a nice white frame above the teevee.

My fave is probably this very large print of the Map of Humanity (background). You could pore over it for hours, and it's equal parts amusing, disturbing, and curiosity-piquing.

One of these days I'd like to get a print of this incredible Andromeda photo at a high enough resolution that you can make out the individual stars (without taking up a whole wall), but easier said than done.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 1:27 PM on February 28, 2021

Difficulty searching AskMeFi on Google

Google's index of MeFi is okay, but a lot of stuff slips through the cracks. Try searching the thread title in quotes and you'll see it in their crawl of the Computers & Internet category page, as well as the questions before and after it, but not the thread itself.
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 9:31 AM on February 26, 2021

State of the Site, Feb 2021

15L06: "I was resolved not to comment, but this If you're budgeting for frimble, and frimble ain't working, pay someone else to start learning the codebase so you have a damn contingency plan in the future. this comment just is way off the scale of awfulness present in this thread. It is not right to write this way about frimble (or any other staff)."

fwiw, I read "if frimble ain't working..." literally, as in… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:30 PM on February 16, 2021

Vaccination Success Stories

As a relatively young person living in literally the worst vaccine-distribution state in the country, I wasn't too optimistic. Even being in the coveted phase 1b (public-facing essential workers) didn't seem to help, since for the longest time they only opened it to the politically influential police-and-retirees portion over the other job classes in the group. But as soon as eligibility was expanded, I went straight for my local hospital site, and after resubmitting a lengthy application 10+… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Rhaomi at 2:32 AM on February 13, 2021