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There once was a young girl who saw
Half buried, half broken, a jaw.
‘It’s easy, now try,
‘To do science by eye,
‘Draw the rest of the ichthyosaur’
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 7:32 PM on June 6, 2024

This thread to me suggests one of the great limitations of the metaphor of privilege to describe structural arrangements benefiting men (and other groups). Privilege is an extraordinarily useful way, and a true way, to describe power in society, and is particularly good at pointing out invisibilities, but not many people when they're thinking about privileges remember that the reverse of privilege is obligation.

Higher statuses always come with… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 11:05 PM on June 5, 2024

The thing about metaphors is that they carry a freight; parsing men’s obligation to correctly express emotions, and to endure discomfort, as a progressive duty, will always wind up dutifully back at the masculine expectations of rugged silence patriarchy imposes, against intimacy and honesty. What’s a duty if not a role to be performed?
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:53 PM on June 6, 2024

You’re all younguns. I buy things using a phone to my broker, who places buy orders across a trading floor using complicated open-outcry hand signals, recording completed orders in crayon on paper slips, which he drops to the floor to be collected and compiled by sweepers at the end of the day.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 3:48 PM on June 5, 2024

the king of old-school partying and take-no-prisoners boasting

As I understand it Kid Rock has charted almost exactly the opposite rap-rock path that the Beastie Boys did.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:07 PM on May 27, 2024

Yeah I was coming in to say 'nudge' economics is a genuinely studied thing that had its unfortunate adoption into a political fad in the late 1990s, particularly under Blair in the UK. Nudging people not to smoke, nudging people to take more public transport, nudging people to eat more healthily, that kind of thing. The problem like interrogative mood says is that it's really hard to 'nudge' people into doing things they wouldn't, if there weren't consequences, like paying tax.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 1:23 AM on May 27, 2024

It’s because ‘maths’ is not the every day negotiating figures and numerical calculation that comes with context, to answer questions like how long will it take me to get to work if I miss the usual bus and have to wait for the next? Or, if my team goes up by another goal, what does that mean for goal difference and percentage on the ladder? Or, what does another interest rate rise mean for my repayments? ‘Maths’ is memorising the quadratic equation that everyone tries to do in year 8 and bounced… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:39 AM on May 23, 2024

INTERGALACTIC
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 5:09 PM on May 22, 2024

I parsed this as that every office environment in Japan has a group of ultra-synchronised uniformed girl dancers in it, which I’m not sure whether to believe, I’m fifty-fifty TBH
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:23 PM on May 22, 2024

If you're going to hire a celebrity to be the voice of a super-intelligent AI, with a variety of science-fiction alter egos and an ouvre that fundamentally gets at what it means to be a human, I mean, Kool Keith is right there.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:06 PM on May 21, 2024

Why would anyone keep the default Siri voice, when you could choose one of the “Australian - Male” options

Bluey is doing so much work to rehabilitate the Australian male accent, typecast for so long as ‘creepy action movie villain, gets shot in the last scene’. It’s been a closed shop of bad guys between us, RP English, and the South Africans, honestly
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:41 PM on May 22, 2024

one unit seems to have been expanded a bit further out than the rest of the building - do people do this already?

Simply to address it as a matter of practical possibility the answer has to be yes. Nineteenth century builders and owners constantly pushed the envelope of strutted extensions, mostly in timber. Vernacular and improvised extensions to tall buildings has been something that's been done in very many cities, from the earliest times, the… [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:55 PM on May 20, 2024

Further: jettying.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:01 PM on May 20, 2024

IDK, to me the novelty of GoT as a kind of radically new lengthy-run middlebrow costume drama is a bit overblown. It was perfectly fine high-budget potboiler with very very good costumes. But well before this series there have been many channels that specialised in this kind of thing (looking at you, BBC adaptations of Jane Austen and Tolstoy, in the USA Roots and, for the classic instance of a series that wormed its way into public consciousness, Dynasty, and Japanese TV doing one big-budget… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:15 PM on May 19, 2024

Hear me out on this one, for I will only tell you once: 'Allo 'Allo Cinematic Universe.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:19 PM on May 19, 2024

Or, for people of my generation, consider the greatest and most flawed example of a great High Concept episodic, long-story arc series that began strong, had some genuinely iconic moments that have entered popular culture, was at its peak a central part of everyday conversation and a frame to other television-watching, and ended up a flaming mess of narrative: The X Files.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:33 PM on May 19, 2024

The argument about demand and supply economics is totally convincing, the [implied] argument about the sinister influence of modernism is tedious. And echoes anti-modernist and illiberal arguments about ‘beauty’ you used to see by Twitter accounts with Greek statue heads.

In the 20thC ornamentation shifted decisively away from buildings (and the article makes mention of filigree ironwork on Sydney and Melbourne houses, which have their own story). The article’s correct… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:47 PM on May 17, 2024

I own, because I am an idiot who likes old cars, a 1999 Land Rover Defender. It was then and remains a very large car; it’s designed for 4WD and we take it camping as often as we can. You could easily live out of it for weeks.

I had occasion to drive a ‘new’ four seater cross-over SUV and had a moment of shock when I realised that this new Ordinary Car was longer, wider, and nearly 2x as heavy in GVM as a truck from the 90s.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 3:47 PM on May 16, 2024

FWIW one of the most in-demand 4WDs in the Australian market? The Suzuki Jimny, the size of a generous fridge, manual transmission, with a pants-tearing 1.5L engine capacity. And a towball. When good cars are offered, people take the opportunity...
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:52 PM on May 16, 2024

Topological is one way to look at it but the functionality and cultural significance is another. The Earl Sandwich's premise was that he wanted a snack that he could eat while drinking and gambling that wouldn't require a sit-down service meal. It's continued in the UK/Australia in the grand tradition of the kebab (the between-beers meal or hangover cure of champions) and grilled meat or felafel in flatbread is, no question, a sandwich. Kebab shops are also almost always dry, based on… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:05 PM on May 14, 2024

fondue is a sandwich

You're still thinking topologically. Fondue in the form of meats or bread dipped in cheese is neither easily portable nor prepared quickly. Can't imagine popping down the street from the pub at kick out time for a quick fondue. It clearly belongs in a category of sit down shared meals, the functional opposite to sandwichhood.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:57 PM on May 14, 2024

I mean the thing about liberalism is that even when all of the criticisms of it are true---and all the criticisms come down to its failure to live up to its own promise---looking around at the other options, there are still very many things worse to be. If you dislike liberalism you're going to hate its only viable competitors.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:46 PM on May 9, 2024

The problem with the word "liberal" is that it means many different things

Yes but no, I think. There's a core of liberal thought that's common to all the political traditions you've described, and a few others too (including many strains of socialism, and especially 'democratic' socialism, though they deny their parentage in a 'you're not my real Dad' way). They're to do with an individual's relationship with the State and with who constitutes a society, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:21 AM on May 10, 2024

I bet if you're to do a screening of Office Space it'll go over like gang busters

I think that's absolutely right and revealing about what's going on in China. Office Space was a story about the pointlessness and arbitrary power of a corporation, and the absurdity of rules in a culture where nobody has access to power, and there's no point to any of it. I suspect a Chinese Office Space would go over so well it would be banned.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:24 AM on May 10, 2024

I am going to use the term "liberal" loosely in the classic sense, not American left-of-center. My hot take is "liberal" norms evolved in a very different milieu, namely between tightly networked landed nobles and other elites

Well taken historically, 'liberalism' was formed almost exactly in opposition to these people, and posited nations composed of peoples, with universal rights, and laws, and certain freedoms like speech and religious worship, so… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 1:19 AM on May 13, 2024

The most New Zealand Thing is that the approved kiwi-holding technique looks to be exactly the same technique as catching a football, preparatory to running through the defence and scoring a try
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:05 PM on May 12, 2024

Imagine being an American, in a country and society that was established as a revolution against monarchy, which created the notion of the people being sovereign, which derives its political identity literally in opposition to absolutist kingship, and being like this. Why? These people are—I don’t say this lightly—freaks.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 7:39 PM on May 10, 2024

They are certainly a particular type of Catholic

America, where even the Catholics are Evangelical
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:35 PM on May 10, 2024

Heritage professional here; installation of solar panels on roofs of culturally significant buildings is a very controversial subject and there isn’t an easy answer. There are as many ways to do it badly as to do it well. But it’s only ever a matter of degree, since, remember, the electric lights inside the building are also an intrusive accretion that affects the way the public experiences the traditional structure.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:51 AM on May 9, 2024

So it’s also the distinction between history and heritage; pure historians aren’t necessarily trained to appreciate that conservation efforts and the heritage movement (going back to the Athens Charter in 1931, or earlier) are almost exactly virtue signalling, an active effort by societies to preserve elements of their world which are significant to culture. Virtue signalling can be a good and admirable thing.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:00 AM on May 9, 2024

ARE WE NOT MEN? / WE ARE PRINTERS
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:58 AM on May 6, 2024

This has a way to go before it reaches the levels of the most grotesque and cruel diss track of them all; Jarvis Cocker absolutely annihilating a Greek girl he went to art school with
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 8:51 PM on May 5, 2024

Also Jarvis Cocker, in calling out nonces: mooning Michael Jackson on stage and getting arrested for it.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 8:56 PM on May 5, 2024

There’s no way for laypeople to tell, but I don’t think it’s out of the bounds of possibility for these algorithm relationships (gender roles —> political conspiracism) on an opaque platform to have a State intelligence operation basis. If you wanted to run an op destabilising the US, that funded itself, this would be something it’d look like.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:25 PM on May 3, 2024

For worldwide recognition, the Shahada in Islam ('there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet') would have to be up there, in variants (some 'I bear witness that', and so on).
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:21 PM on May 1, 2024 marked best answer

I get knocked down / but I get up again
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:55 PM on May 2, 2024

‘Oh Australia is so dangerous you have spiders’! You know what you can probably just brush off your clothes? A spider.

But in Soviet Canada, mountain brushes you off
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:20 AM on May 2, 2024

It's an extraordinarily eerie museum, by the way. I'm a huge fan of nautical and maritime museums wherever I go---my partner despairs at my keenness to go and look at lobster pots and lamps and ship models and paintings of wrecks---but this one is honestly like nothing else I've seen anywhere.

It bills itself as a killer whale museum, and the Old Tom skeleton (with the story of the combined human-orca hunting) is the outstanding highlight of the collection, but overall… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 9:50 PM on May 1, 2024

If we take the area of Port Jackson as 55km^2 and the size of a rugby league field as 7,480m^2 then the size of the reclamation, 187,000m^2 or 0.187km^2, is approximately 0.3% of a Sydney Harbour, the correct Australian Standard Unit.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 7:08 PM on April 30, 2024

In modern terms Blazing Saddles has an extraordinarily white-dominated cast, probably intolerably so. The only reason it’s still watchable in the contemporary era is that the viewpoint about the West is shifted drastically, right into the fourth wall, into a sound stage fistfight, and beyond.

One of its underappreciated small jokes, that I think goes over the heads of people who aren’t aware of the context, is Mel Brooks casting… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 2:53 PM on April 30, 2024

Related: I found, and find, The Death Of Stalin entirely unwatchable. The period details and costumes are right, the casting nails the characters, it’s historically erudite, it has a deep sense of self-parody, and there’s Iannucci and the cast defiantly having fun being English-accented Soviet monsters. The problem is that it’s in such poor taste: it gestures at, but barely scratches the level of monstrosities those men actually were. If it were full pantomime (in the tone… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 3:11 PM on April 30, 2024

It's not necessarily about education so much as realism; one of the better though not perfect educational shows I mentioned before (Horrible Histories) is written by people with a very careful sense of history and research, silliness turned up to 11, and absolutely no sense of realism in casting at all.

You can put a sideways hat on any actor you please, whatever their skin colour or gender or age, tell them to stick their chin… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:46 PM on April 30, 2024

Also sometimes contemporaneity catches up with fiction. When it was first in theatres Gone With The Wind was praised both as realistic historical fiction, and a compelling historical romance. Nowadays we recognise it properly as a very well-produced set of grotesque lies about American history. Most of all, it comes across to a modern viewer as being in bad taste.
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 5:42 PM on April 30, 2024

I feel like the news outlet missed a trick by failing STRIPPERS COVERED as the headline though
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:48 PM on April 28, 2024

I submit Theodore Roosevelt may or may not have been stronger, but absolutely had personal beliefs more centred on fighting and personal physical strength.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 5:01 PM on April 27, 2024

[Strine intensifies] would you just get a fucken load of this arsehole
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 4:55 PM on April 27, 2024

For a director he compiles a powerful soundtrack album, that’s what I’ll say for Tarantino
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 7:29 PM on April 26, 2024

The notorious Australian cheese brand, changed in 2020(!)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 10:50 PM on April 24, 2024 marked best answer

I’m pretty confident the device on the bonnet is LED driving lights.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 6:44 PM on April 23, 2024

Kiwis! Whimsical champions of deadpan humour! What could be more irony-laden than building tunnels as transport nodes in one of the most geologically active places on the planet? Now that’s John Clarke level humour IMO
posted to MetaFilter by Fiasco da Gama at 8:33 PM on April 22, 2024