MetaFilter

I just want to caution OP (and others) that I've looked extensively at this problem as somebody who wants to have a "cell phone" for work 2FA so crucial accounts aren't tied to my personal phone -- as a charity, I don't want to pay for a cell phone just for that, though.

The vast majority of cheap "fake phone" resources and apps will not work as 2FA for all things. I'm a voip.ms customer, for instance, but their "SMS" service is not… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:43 AM on June 2, 2024

I remember watching this -- because I was a fan of the Robert Howard character, and a comic (Marvel, IIRC?) that came out based on the books.

And then I re-watched it, within the last couple of years, because I thought it was such a good concept, maybe I was just in a bad mood, it couldn't be that bad.

And it's not that bad, just... inert? I have no memories of the movie… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2024

I'm riding along with Kitten and loving it. Ever since the reveal of Goat Psychologist this show has turned a wild corner and been an unmitigated delight. The first several words of the episode description are "Kristen learns the details of Leland's evil scheme involving her ovum (...)"

Kristen learns the details of Leland's evil scheme involving her ovum.

Kristen learns the details of Leland's evil scheme involving her ovum.… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 6:15 PM on May 24, 2024

I just listened to the Haus of Decline podcast -- I am not a regular listener, but remembered (a) the dominance of Sinfest back when I was trying (and failing) to make it in webcomics with a super-hero spoof called Man-Man; and (b) the 2022 breakdown by BitterKarella, which was equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

Tats isn't alone in the webcomic-to-crank pipeline; Scott Kurtz of PVP rather famously got big, then outed himself as a giant insane asshole; I'm sure… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:50 PM on May 23, 2024

I enjoyed the show on the whole, but kind of like the original Shaggy Dog story, my takeaway was "ehhh, he wasn't that talented."

Maybe I'm being too harsh on old Tom, but it seems to me that despite his disdain for the upper class, and his striving to climb into it however possible, once he attains it he's subject to all the traits he despises: he's arrogant, lazy, and frankly pretty damn stupid. Going to Rome at all, keeping the ring,… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:09 PM on May 12, 2024

Watched it in tandem with my wife while housesitting/dogsitting. It was kind of fun, but felt weirdly inert, like it was a well-filled-in paint-by-numbers picture... it checks the boxes but there isn't much there there. I mean, what I think is the actual plot starts at 1 hour 20 minutes in, which is like the length of an actual movie.
Random observations:


So the world just acknowledges that ghosts are real, and the only… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:01 PM on May 12, 2024

No Skinny Puppy, but NIN is a good proxy. And that lands.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:34 PM on May 11, 2024

Thank you for posting this. Until today I had -- no kidding -- a lurking dread that maybe there was some sort of above-my-head genius financial figuring going on. I'm not a math guy or a money guy so despite all the evidence, books, and journalism exposing this as the world's greatest Ponzi scheme I still thought maybe I'm missing something.

But I'd never really been directly exposed to crypto people other than seeing headlines, oblique shared posts… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 6:14 AM on May 11, 2024

I have taken to saying "Oh, Rip-lee" in the manner of Mr. Butlertron when our hero does something dastardly.

I say it a lot! It's fun!

One passing thought -- I'm not sure exactly when this is set, but I wonder if the "black and white means oldie-times" years are creeping up as we move forward into the future. Ripley is set in the 1960s, well after the advent of colour film. Has the '60s ever been… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 2:01 PM on May 8, 2024

I love that after Ripley murders Dickie, he is ostensibly on a path to a higher-class life, and from that point until the end of the episode anything that upsets him or interferes with his plan is invariably a working-class person doing their job; the mundanity of being one of the "little people" he so desperately wants to escape constantly knocking on his door, spooking him.
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:49 PM on May 7, 2024

I loved this! I thought it was incredibly well paced and with the benefit of hindsight fits perfectly into the Ti West commitment to venerating the slow-burn horrors of days gone by. I tend to judge horror movies by whether or not they hit a tight 90 minutes, and this just runs a smidge over -- and despite the fact that it takes 30+ minutes for "stuff to happen," I think the relationship- and world-building is impeccable and I wouldn't change a thing.

I don't… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 9:52 AM on May 5, 2024

Not to threadsit, but just one point of clarification: grants / donations are currently not a key concern, and the contract with the accounting firm does not include generating reports for external funders.

Concerns about grant tracking and reporting are a non-issue for us presently (not to say that'll be the case forever, but for right now, that's not something we need to factor in).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:34 PM on April 25, 2024

My read of You Can Call Me Al is three vignettes about three different men, but YMMV.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2024

Really enjoyed it, and appreciate your comment, DoT, because I didn't know it was the Ready or Not people. It makes a lot of sense in retrospect: functional, witty, gets you in and out without too much dithering, does what it says on the tin. Nobody's reinventing the genre, but just doing something competent, tightly written, well executed.
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 1:35 PM on April 21, 2024

Oh, and Dan Stevens' line delivery on "those are fucking onions" is a thing of beauty. A whole masterclass in how 99% of people would have loaded all the emphasis on onions and he made a meal of it by just shifting that around.

With Godzilla v Kong this seems to be part of a Dan Stevens sea change to "I play seedy guys and I might just be super high while playing them" that I am 100% here for.
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 1:39 PM on April 22, 2024

I wanted to like it, and liked it in fits and starts, but in the end I think I was a bit overhyped going in. I was saying to Kitteh that it reminds me a bit of nut crisps: I like them a lot, but if you tell me it's a whole new snack experience, I'm going to think the coating is great but then realize oh, hey, it's just a peanut.

I liked the coating a lot, but the actual story, the horror elements, whether or not it actually scared or unnerved me... it was just a peanut,… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 1:33 PM on April 21, 2024

Just watched this the other night with a friend and found the dialogue and acting choices so grippingly low-key weird that I just sought out and watched another Riley Stearns movie, Faults, to see if it had the same general vibe.

It didn't, which means this is something he did just for this film in the scripting, or his direction boxed in Gillen and Paul and... everyone else, really... into overly flat delivery of dialogue that always seems to overexplain the character's… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 6:03 PM on April 20, 2024

The Paul graphic novels are great. I like Ostie d'Chat even more (that's an archive, this is a collection), but I don't think they've ever been translated, and are very, uh, blue in their frank depiction of the sex lives of twenty-something Montrealers in the early 2000s. They're also written in joual/Quebec slang, which can be a hard slog for people who only really have read "France French".
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:05 PM on April 19, 2024

I've only played the iOS game Fallout Shelter (and see a bit of resonance... radroaches, stimpacks... but not nearly as much as players of the 'big' games are getting). I tried Fallout... 15 years ago?... and wound up playing Wasteland in an emulator instead. No memories that stuck. Downloading '76 now because a Steam sale makes it cheap to check out.

I'm enjoying the series okay, but have been confused from the get-go about proximity. I assume that Vaults 31-33 are… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 1:48 PM on April 13, 2024

I assume that the Shelter iOS game is less canon than the FPS games are canon, but those vaults start you randomized in a vault between 001 and 999 (it's a three-digit spinner). You can even set your vault starting number! So it definitely can't be canon, now that I think about it...
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 1:20 PM on April 14, 2024

I love this! Thanks for making it. I also looked for "cock" before opening this thread...
posted to MetaFilter Projects by Shepherd at 5:31 PM on April 13, 2024

I really liked this; it seems like the ideal intersection of Italian giallo and Carnival of Souls style flat surrealism. It's hard to parse what's dream logic and what's bad plotting, but the overall feel is haunting and overall I really liked it.

I loved, loved, loved the art in the house from the missing father, from the wall paintings of hardcore forced-perspective bridges to his own canvases with the amorphous faces. I'd love to get something in… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:07 PM on April 13, 2024

But the depth and intensity of Canadians’ frustration cannot be chalked up to misunderstanding the division of powers or to misdirected anger.

Uh... yes, it bloody well can? We have a full and well-funded right-wing media apparatus dedicated to doing exactly that, especially ginning up and turbocharging the "misdirected anger" part.

I'm more left than the Liberals and they do stuff I don't… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:36 AM on April 10, 2024

So, this person is the Canadian Ron Desantis?

Yes, but also a coward. Ron Desantis will at least flat out say what he thinks. PP scurries around telling his supporters one thing and publicly saying other things.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:38 AM on April 10, 2024

Civil...

(shades on)

...disobeedience.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:19 AM on April 5, 2024

I have come here among you to praise the beard of Balisarius, King of the Universe, which appears mainly in the last few minutes of the movie.

The beard of Balisarius, King of the Universe, which has chosen to be borne by That Guy from Hawkeye, a thousand blessings on his name.

The beard of Balisarius, King of the Universe, clearly plucked in a last-minute frenzy from the face of a child playing a Wise Man in a third-grade… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 4:58 PM on April 4, 2024

I've recently become the ED of the Chess Institute of Canada, and it's been tremendously exciting to see this shaping up (although it's only been a few weeks for me, so effectively too late to get meaningfully involved).

Lots of our instructors are volunteers for the event, and it's amazing for them to see this level of play coming to Toronto. I've joined the organization based more on my strengths with community organizations and management -- I'm not a chess whiz… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:57 PM on April 3, 2024

There have been two times in my life when I have read somebody's writing and it's converted me from being "on their side" in terms of thinking they were beleaguered or facing outsized criticism for their actions, to thinking they were entirely in the wrong and thinking far less of them than if they'd never written anything at all: M Doughty's Book of Drugs and Ed Piskor's suicide note.

Don't read it, folks. I regret doing it. It did not… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:40 AM on April 2, 2024

Hat tip to the podcast Free With Ads for pointing this out to me! It's also a great podcast.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:15 AM on March 27, 2024

So I've been leaning into this since I posted it, joining Lil Jon every morning for 10 minutes. Not all topics relate to me, but I'm working through them regardless as I think there's some value even in the ones that don't resonate absolutely.

I've bounced off mediation at least a dozen times in my life, including self-directed attempts, silent, guided, music mediation, etc. So far this is sticking!

My hope is the novelty of it will keep me… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:21 AM on April 2, 2024

I’m fascinated that Michael Madsen is not credited on IMDB for this.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:28 PM on March 29, 2024

.
posted to MetaTalk by Shepherd at 8:55 AM on March 23, 2024

Yeah, a huge part of the charm for me with OG Roadhouse was that it's clearly set in an alternate reality where bouncers are celebrities; I feel like we're always one zoom-out away from seeing that elections are decided with moped races, distance spitting is an Olympic sport, and diplomacy takes place through complex arrays of high-fives and fist-bumps. The goony surreal world of it is a huge part of the fun for me. Making Dalton 'plausible' by having him be an MMA fighter kind of takes me out… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 3:13 AM on March 22, 2024

Kitteh and I were kind of meh-watching the first season until Goat Therapist near the end, at which point we perked up, and boy, the second season really delivers on what Goat Therapist promised in the first! We're now catching up with alacrity and really enjoying it.

The Auditor Gang is second only to Torchwood in their propensity to blunder into situations beyond their ken, flail around for a while, then kind of shrug and walk away from complete… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:06 PM on March 20, 2024

I bought on sale and really enjoy The Conquest of Go, which doesn't mess with the game itself but nests boards of increasing size and opponents of increasing difficulty in an overall "conquer the land" meta-game.

I don't get better at Go; I'm a perennial striver. So I've never gotten that far in the game. But I find it a bit more gratifying than getting pummeled by an AI or opponent over and over.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:52 PM on March 14, 2024

I am not a lawyer, not your lawyer, and not based in the U.S. but my first instinct would be to start with a realtor you know and trust in your area and ask them that question. Failing that, I'd guess you'd want to ask a real estate lawyer, who might direct you to contract law.

As somebody who has hired lawyers for various reasons in the past, my personal experience has been that "stop thinking about it" is absolutely the last thing that will happen, and if… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:49 PM on March 14, 2024

This is amazing!

The Internet being the Internet, has anyone built a reliable index for all similar museum-makes-things-public-domain initiatives? I know I've seen several (I've posted one or two!) and it'd be great to have a place to hop around all of them.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:01 AM on March 10, 2024

Years ago I picked up a copy of Mr. B Gone in a little free library. The book starts with the narrator running through a litany of "if you X, don't read this book!" that was so try-hard and Hot Topic in its 'edginess' that after three or four of them I said "okay, I'm not reading this book, then" and tossed it back in the next little library I found.

The Scarlet Gospels is bottom-five… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:19 AM on March 9, 2024

I've been curious about this since I opened it on Shudder and saw a long run of one-star reviews by people that come across as MAGA goofballs calling it "woke" and "communist". Since everything they hate is good, I'm assuming this must be great.
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 3:05 AM on February 25, 2024

Well, maybe I'm a big ol' dummy but I really liked the entire season; second favourite of the series after 1. Maybe a bit more than 1? I found it had more interesting characters and character development at the centre than 1, which did feature a lot of Rust and Cole barking at each other and wandering around for ultimately no great reason.

Things like "we don't know each individual scientist as a person" didn't and don't really bother me. I think the show… [more]
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 2:48 AM on February 20, 2024

I saw it original run in Toronto and would not shut up about it, to the point that my friends were getting kind of annoyed. I haven't watched since because I'm afraid it won't hold up. Based on the above, I might give it another whirl!
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:20 PM on February 18, 2024

Not to abuse the edit window, also spent some time afterwards trying to track down Dylan Dog comics -- not easy in the very early Internet days -- and ultimately either failed, or have completely forgotten reading them. I bet it's a lot easier now...
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:23 PM on February 18, 2024

There is such a specific and obvious digression early in the movie into Nic Cage talking at length about the Beatles, or a Beatles album, my memory isn't super great. But I was and am still convinced that there's an early draft of the script that has Connery having some sort of Beatles connection from his early days as something they bond over at a critical moment.
posted to FanFare by Shepherd at 5:17 PM on February 18, 2024

After several modest attempts to figure out how to make this work without a subscription model, I've resigned myself to vanilla Keypassium and a calendared reminder to push my database to my devices monthly to ensure the passwords are more or less up to date. No magic bullet for my scenario of sharing the database via Synology Drive and having the app pull a keyfile from Files. But I appreciate all the attempts to help! Best answers were I felt like there were good solutions for not-me people… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:58 PM on February 18, 2024

Long Dark and Frostpunk, both mentioned above, are the only games that have ever made me feel cold while playing them, regardless of the heat and time of year.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:50 PM on February 10, 2024

Cool! Congratulations and have a blast!
posted to MetaTalk by Shepherd at 4:55 PM on February 9, 2024

Dawncaster is my jam. I love a solid deckbuilder. One price up front, 100% playable (it gets more fun after you get a run or two under your belt and start unlocking stuff). No ads.

Every expansion is its own up-front cost, not necessary to play the game, but adds a lot of lore, cards and (IMO) value. The devs roll out new expansions on the reg, the Discord and Reddit communities are generally friendly and helpful. Easily the iOS game I play the most, and I'm still… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:17 PM on February 5, 2024

I'm about to career pivot from a decade in higher ed marketing and communications into being the ED of a small non-profit, but I'm hoping to carve out enough time/energy to actually write a comprehensive "how-to" manual on higher ed marcomms, which doesn't seem to ever have been done -- there are a few books out there, but they seem to be more esoteric "hey higher ed executives, this is what 'branding' means" kinds of books.

I've written about it in… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:28 AM on February 5, 2024

I think I do, but I also find spending 18 minutes watching something that probably boils down to 3-4 key points isn't something I enjoy. Could somebody who enjoys watching videos TLDR the criticism? Is is just "BetterHelp connects people who need qualified help to underqualified low-rent therapists, takes a huge cut, and everybody loses"?
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:25 AM on February 5, 2024

It's probably not this, but back before comics broke my fingers and crushed my spirit under its relentless grinding millstone, I was working on a project for Ape Entertainment (RIP) with the premise that it was based on an obscure comic from post-WWII, and was starting to get into light skullduggery to see if I could create a "real" history about it by generating Wikipedia articles, and such.

Failed/aspiring novelist, looking to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on January 31, 2024