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On top of all the other Darnielle greatness, he's a huge Magic: the Gathering nerd! I sometimes wonder what his user name is on MTG:Arena and whether I've ever played him. He occasionally indulges in mill, I think, which is the only thing that has ever tarnished my opinion of him.

Also: Ska No Children
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:22 AM on April 29, 2022

So because I'm on vacation and that's my time to fill my head and body with garbage, and because it was free through my local library's video/music/audiobook app Hoopla, I half-watched American Siege, which was shot in 2020 and released at the beginning of 2022, this morning.

Hindsight is 20/20, but in the light of all this it's really really goddamn sad to watch. He's obviously (to somebody who knows about all this) confused and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:37 AM on April 24, 2022

I used to be friends with somebody who crewed on the Robocop TV show shot in Toronto and wound up with so much neat crap from that show; all sorts of goofy '90s "cyberpunk" stuff; leather jackets with chrome doodads sewed to them, various headpieces and prop guns, etc. Also: there was a Robocop TV show shot in Toronto in the '90s, which may come as a surprise to many.

Tons of cool stuff in here, my one prior experience with this kind of… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:39 AM on April 24, 2022

I was an Industrial / Extreme Music Dingus in high school / early university, a special breed of dork who listened to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry and Throbbing Gristle and thought that anything that sounded like music was, like, selling out, man. So loud stuff led to Painkiller, led to John Zorn's Naked City, and then a friend of a friend gave me a copy of Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus, a Hal Wilner compilation that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:47 AM on April 22, 2022

If I was hurting for cash I'd just rotate through the services.

I do this. There's no grandfathering loyalty pricing, so why not? I'm currently using Crave (a Canadian HBO / Hulu / other-service amalgamator) and a friend got me a Shudder subscription for the holidays, but once I've caught up on everything I want to see there, it's off to Netflix for a while, then I can see all the Mandalorian and Boba Fett stuff on Disney+ -- I figure I'm in for… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:06 PM on April 21, 2022

This is great -- thank you for sharing it.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:12 AM on April 11, 2022

I'm watching this with great interest; after a first failed attempt looking at puffery for my LLM, my second failure was attempting to build something around a growing number of legal cases (at the time) attempting to regulate loot boxes in video games, where most of the legal arguments were built around gambling and entirely predicated on the use of third-party services to translate digital game assets into real currency.

I eventually abandoned it, partly because it was… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:32 AM on April 8, 2022

My favourite song of the last two weeks has been Ibibio Sound Machine's "Protection from Evil," which may or may not be D&D related (I'm not being coy, I have no idea) but is just great as hell regardless.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:47 AM on April 5, 2022

Jorts the Cat has not endorsed the content per se, but the intent gets two thumb-paws up!
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:01 AM on April 5, 2022

Is this some sort of Pepsi Theme Month and I've missed the memo? We've had the Harrier case, the art deco building... and yes I am aware of the P. Blue scandal.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on April 4, 2022

Related, it seems that I'm the only nutjob out there who is particular about sort tags.

To your joy and my wife's eternal frustration I assure you that you are not. (although in my case I eventually defaulted back to firstname first, because so many bands are pseudonyms: Tull, Jethro feels wrong.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:37 PM on April 3, 2022

Hey, puffery!

I got into my LLM (Master's in Law) program wanting to use puffery as my general topic for exploration, but my thesis supervisor felt it was "settled" law in the sense that it just kind of... works, generally, and there isn't an urgent problem to be addressed.

As advil says above, it's not "advertisers get to lie because people know advertisers lie", the general principle is oriented more… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:22 AM on April 2, 2022

FARINE FIVE ROSES is as iconic as Montreal landmarks get.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:04 AM on April 1, 2022

The new Lisa Leblanc album, Chiac Disco, is an Acadian disco-funk-throwback franglais lump of pure joy and I can't stop listening to it. Everything LeBlanc does is great, this is just the latest great thing.

Drop everything and listen to Dans l'jus ("In the juice," roughly equates to "in the soup" / "in the weeds"). You don't need to know French to enjoy it, and the fluid French-English-French fusion is part of the fun.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:42 AM on March 24, 2022

Is this now the Acadian Bops thread? yes this is the thread for franglais bops

Radio Radio, Nine Piece Luggage Set (chuis jet set!)
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 9:56 AM on March 24, 2022

Serendipitously, majick, several people on the Lisa LeBlanc "Dans l'jus" video make reference to FIP as how they heard her for the first time! I've been meaning to check that out and you've just helped me considerably.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:13 PM on March 24, 2022

I am only a low-medium Trek guy but think Rainbow is a goddamn pop masterpiece, and am looking forward to these. Thank you!
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:46 AM on March 24, 2022

Also, was the Canadian one so bad it didn't make the list? I wonder.

Sexy Mountie. We all know it's Sexy Mountie, we don't necessarily need to see Sexy Mountie.

I think the vast majority of these would get me right back into the Street Fighter franchise.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:15 PM on March 15, 2022

I just came out of an hour of free webinar training on preventing street harassment recently; it was very illuminating and empowering. The next session is Mar 14, 2022 at 7:00 PM.

Description from their website:
Like much of the world, we are all still figuring out how COVID19 will change us. We’ve seen what happens when millions of people ban together to take care of one another against the odds. How can we bring that forward into our lives after… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:04 AM on March 8, 2022

after work I became the eager owner of a tenor ukulele

I had more success with the free parts of the app Yousician than anything else I have ever tried to learn the uke. Hopping on their site right now it looks like they're a lot less generous with free content than when I tried it, but might be worth looking at.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:20 PM on March 11, 2022

I actually have a little prayer that as a non-religious person I don't really do regularly but I legit sometimes direct intention at the Powers That Be that a small set of men, mostly b-ish tier in entertainment and mostly in comedy, turn out not to be monsters:

Paul F Tompkins
Ben Schwartz
Craig Ferguson
Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris
Adam Scott
Michael Ian… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:16 PM on March 11, 2022

I watched Good Timing with Jo Firestone about two months ago with my wife. I have been meaning to start a Fanfare about it. It is wonderful. A short documentary about a comedy class for seniors culminating in a night of stand-up sets by people aged from their late 60s to into their 80s.

It was one of the most life-affirming and joyous things I've seen in quite some time. And pertinent to this thread chockablock with jokes, including this gem (I'm… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:37 PM on March 10, 2022

Yay!

I've been hoping to do some short-session rules-lite RPGing with local friends, so if anyone has recommendations in that space they're very welcome. I already see some options, but would love some takes from people who have actually tried some of these, if there's anyone in the room.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:15 AM on March 8, 2022

Oh! And I bought TAPE a few charity bundles ago, and it's been a MONUMENTALLY helpful local to-do list on my home PC. It has a learning curve but it's right in the sweet "simple but powerful" spot for me.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:50 AM on March 8, 2022

Oh, wow! I've been chipping away at the edges of African music for a while now -- my last foray was into the One Night in Pelican compilation.

I think I've been so discouraged by copyright limits on North-Amerian-centric music podcasts before and the frustration of only ever hearing music in 15-second chunks that it kind of turned me off in general. Listening to TRAM 83 and this sounds much more generous in its music presentation. Thanks for sharing.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 12:59 PM on March 4, 2022

Looking forward to settling in for an evening with New Lights -- this is great! Thanks for sharing it.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:35 AM on February 28, 2022

I'm proud to say I know Roger! Not super well, but as a webcomics veteran, we crossed paths a fair bit back in the late '90s and early '00s, and at one point I made the trek out to visit him in the UK when I was over there visiting my sister.

He is a mensch. Just a gold-plated great guy. His love of art (and comics) radiates through everything he does. A++ would Hotel Fred again.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:36 AM on February 26, 2022

My wife, who is both a vegan and a cannabis coach, has been distraught to see how many people she follows and admires for various things go down the anti-vax rabbit hole in the last few weeks; Liddon is just the latest.

My take largely mirrors rorgy's, but -- especially when you cross over into the wellness community that embraces cannabis -- there's an arguably justifiable inherent worldview that big business and the government are liars who don't know what's best for… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:28 PM on February 7, 2022

Erin O'Toole is the MP of my parents' riding, and my dad -- a lifelong lefty, but in a "big tent we're all trying our best" kind of way -- seems to kind of be in the H.I. McDunnough "he seems to be a decent man, maybe his advisors are confused" camp when it comes to O'Toole.

My wife and I are definitely in the "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas" camp, and feel that anyone who happily breaks bread with Nazis isn't much better than one,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:33 PM on February 2, 2022

I am watching this now and I love it but oh my god the guy's "David Lynch Voice" is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I get it! Lynch has a speech affectation! You can just read his stuff normal anyway!
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 8:53 AM on February 2, 2022

Hm. I have to confess I never really thought much about it, and broadly put Jon Stewart in the mental "unalloyed good" category, especially after that very public call-out of Tucker Carlson. But this makes a compelling case that he was closer than I'd like to the odious South Park-style all sides are bad so why bother? calculus.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:51 AM on February 1, 2022

I acknowledge that this is something that takes a fair bit of privilege to do, but I've been using Plex (with the Plex Pass) for... five years, now?... and have a lot of my own MP3s from digitizing thousands of CDs I bought over the years and picking up an album a week or so on Bandcamp (or iTunes, when the album on Bandcamp isn't is prohibitively expensive after currency conversion), as well as on occasion being gifted music by friends. It's not the vast universe that the megaliths can offer,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 10:03 AM on January 29, 2022

Ah boo. I really enjoyed Baskets, and was really happy to see Anderson have a bit of a second career there. 35-ish years ago I was a kid wearing out VHS cassettes of taped Just for Laughs festival highlight shows on the CBC up here in Canada, and Louie was right there. For some reason I've really internalized one of his Juste Pour Rire bits, and every time I see a toaster at a yard sale I mutter to myself "the cord's worth a quarter."
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:11 AM on January 22, 2022

I am gratified to learn that although they were apparently short-lived and are now defunct (hello MySpace!), "The Deep Sound of Bobby Peru" was a band name.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:20 PM on January 19, 2022

Is it possible that this is largely because the evolution of music has slowed considerably since around 2000?

You can't look at any decade from 1900 to 1990 without immediate, massive, super obvious shifts in the sound of popular music. If you hop two decades, it's even more staggering. 1930 vs. 1950? 1950 vs. 1970? 1970 vs. 1990?

But after grunge, hip-hop and to an extent turntablism became more normalized... I'd be hard-pressed to think of a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:13 PM on January 19, 2022

As somebody who tried (and failed) at webcomics in the Keenspot / Sluggy / Dumbrella / Goats era, it's great to see some of the original greats still thriving in an increasingly corporatized Internet.

I vividly remember the Great Wigu Brown Recluse Scare, which I carried with me for an amazingly long time, and had a profound impact on my visits to my then-fiancee now-wife in Georgia.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:06 PM on January 11, 2022

We have always pronounced it Ch-vrr-ches in our house, just like that contemporary horror movie The Vuhvitch.

In other news, last year I bought poha on a whim from the only Indian specialty grocer in Kingston, thinking that "flattened rice" might be just a kind of fluffier delicious rice. After I read up on it we tried using it when we ran short of oats for granola, and now we've pretty much forsworn oats and just make poha granola. Try it!
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:07 PM on January 10, 2022

They are completely different in every way but after they released the album Destroyer, my brain cross-wired Black Mountain as Destroyer, so now two Canadian musical outfits are permanently fused in my head. I'm always delightfully muddled when somebody mentions Destroyer and I start mentally rocking out to Future Shade, and then I switch gears and mentally bliss out to Kaputt.

Of the many things I'm confused about this is one of the sweetest.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:54 PM on January 10, 2022

Being somebody who does not work in media but has worked in advertising and often under the stultifying grip of MBAs, I feel like the Angry Birds 2 phenomenon happens sometimes with properties where genuinely talented writers realize that nobody is paying attention any more and they can do better work. I vaguely feel like the Universal Soldier movies kind of did this; there was this pivot point after it was all straight to DVD where somebody just said… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:07 PM on January 11, 2022

Thanks for posting this! I love Off Book, and find I kind of jump in once a year and catch up; a weekly listen starts to feel a bit samey after a few weeks, but periodically jumping into the archives and cherry-picking ones that sound good is always super rewarding. My last listen was when it was just Scott accompanying, so it's great to get nudged to dive back in.

One of the things that podcasting in general amazes me with is how quick these people… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 11:13 AM on January 8, 2022

How is qwerty -- which seems to be the same characters, based on my cutting and pasting into a text editor -- at both #4 and #94?
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:29 PM on January 7, 2022

Belated thank you for sharing this! Mornings are WORDLE TIME for me and Kitteh and it's been very enjoyable.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:25 AM on January 4, 2022

Wordle 200 5/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I tried "SNORE" as my opening word today for funsies, but I'm leaning more and more into ADIEU, because (unproven and possibly wrong) that second-last-letter-E seems to be super common, and important to lock in if I can. Lots of ___ED, ET, ER, ES, EN words out there.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:37 AM on January 5, 2022

Now I want to up my pen game -- any Canadian pen sources that are good? The abovelinked look excellent and right in line pricewise but shipping is more than the pens in most cases.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:24 AM on January 4, 2022

Somebody in the Twitter replies says that the article that Alexa scraped from is actually about how these dangerous "challenges" are circulating thanks to TikTok, etc., and parents should be on their guard. Alexa, I guess, scraped the "challenge" portion, stripped all the context, and served it up as a fun activity.

This is obviously bad, but I'm not smart enough to know how it could be prevented, given my… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 5:23 PM on December 28, 2021

While North America may be a homogenous mass when it comes to what we call 'tag', ask people what they call sugary carbonated drinks and you are in for a brouhaha.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 1:45 PM on December 23, 2021

If Black women playing Americana is your jam, I can't recommend Canada's Kaia Kater enough -- her more recent sound has broadened out a bit, but Nine Pin is just amazing.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 7:22 AM on December 17, 2021

Always good to see Eban Schletter's name pop up anywhere -- I discovered him through Paul F Tompkin's "Spontaneanation" podcast as the accompanist, and he just seems like a super hoopy frood.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 4:52 AM on December 3, 2021

John Darnielle tweeted about this yesterday; I can only imagine for some people a Mountain Goats / Heidecker collision is absolutely peak everything.

I never had much time for anti-comedy in the Tim & Eric vein; I always found it kind of easy and lazy. But the "crab salts" clip that John Darnielle shared hit 10/10 for me, and I'm looking forward to listening to this, and I've really been enjoying I Think You Should Leave, so maybe I was totally wrong about that whole thing.
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 2:52 PM on November 29, 2021

I'd kind of like to see the questions, I guess? Prior to this post I could say with certainty that millions died in the Holocaust, and that it was an attempt to perpetrate genocide against Jewish people, but also the Roma and what we'd now refer to as LGBTQ+ people. But if I were asked "how many million Jewish people exactly," I don't know if I could get that question right.

I don't think that means I'm not serious… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Shepherd at 3:48 AM on November 10, 2021