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The best part of the de-blue-checkmark-ening has been (at least so far) a blissful realization that no one I follow has ponied up the $8, and that the blue tick has now become exactly what Musk and his sycophants* always said it was: a clear an undeniable sign that an account with it is full of shit, unable to be trusted, and oh, so desperate for some form of validation that they not only pay for it, they’re going to do everything they can to ignore the fact that they signed up for the cool kids… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:59 PM on April 21, 2023

A little bonus that I saw being floated: to advertise on Twitter, you need to subscribe to Twitter blue. Therefore, any checkmarks blocking app also functions as an ad-blocker, which means advertising on Twitter is even more useless than before, and he’s just gutted his revenue stream.

It’s fun watching him demand change after change where he’s clearly never given any thought past his immediate idea. He just thinks, eh, it’s hot outside, I don’t want to wear pants, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:15 PM on April 21, 2023

logicpunk's first comment reads like a journal you'd find late in the game in Disco Elysium, in which the hero records his first night in town, before... you know.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 9:09 PM on April 17, 2023

When I heard World War Z was getting made into a movie, I had visions of a Burns-style faux documentary, with interviews of survivors dissolving into scenes of the war, but not always. Some stories would just be the actor telling their story to the camera. The interviews would be, like the book, after the war, so that there was an overarching sense of hope, even as bleak as the story got.

So much for that.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:31 AM on April 16, 2023

Echoing what I said in the recent U2 post, I managed to be born in the mid seventies, spend my teen years listening to early nineties college radio, yet the only REM album I ever owned was a bootleg I bought in a random store in China (it was the one with Daysleeper). I didn’t (and don’t) dislike the band. There are a number of songs I deeply love, but they just never reached that “I would like to have that album” status for me.

Having just shown I have no leg to stand… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:34 AM on April 13, 2023

I started to read this last night, and I stopped. I don’t particularly want to know who dril is, and finding out he’s just some guy who grew up in something awful, I mean, great. Sure, whatever.

The great and powerful Oz was impressive and terrifying. The guy behind the curtain was, and always will be, a schmoe who can’t help but fail to live up to the image he created.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:42 PM on April 12, 2023

"You kidnapped me! You told me your finger was a gun!"

One of my favorite things about Field of Dreams is that we get to hear James Earl Jones' full range. It's not just the (obviously incredibly lucrative) "I am James Earl Jones, you will flock to the gravitas of my voice" baritone. Every once in a while, we get the sort of indignant squawk that pops up in that line. See also "Tahiti is not in Europe!… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 7:20 PM on April 3, 2023

I wonder what this does with the various “free agent” wrestlers currently bouncing around. FTR, Jay White, Mercedes Mone, Kota Ibushi, etc. If Endeavor/UFC are so well known for treating talent poorly/underpaying them, how does this affect WWE’s chances of signing/re-signing people when contracts are up? Obviously they have deep pockets, but from what I’ve read (I don’t follow it), UFC only pays significant money to people at the top of the card, and since the Endeavor takeover, has shown little… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:43 PM on April 3, 2023

Timely post. I came late to the PS4, and picked up 4 just a couple weeks ago. I'm trying to enjoy it, but some of the comments here fit with how I feel about the game: I have absolutely no interest in the main story. Wandering around and finding new stuff is fine, but every once in a while, it just stops being fun or compelling, and I put it down.

It's weird to me, though, that a game I don't think I'm actually enjoying all that much is so playable? I killed a couple… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 10:07 PM on March 28, 2023

I’ll admit to never having a U2 album (aside from the one Apple forced onto my phone), but if nothing else (and they *do* have some fantastic songs), seeing Until the End of the World here, and listening to the updated version reminds me that I still need to get the Criterion Blu-Ray of the movie, so I can enjoy it in all its fucked up desperate beauty.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:05 PM on March 22, 2023

One of my favorite dinosaurs, and I just want to imagine it’s got a low muttering voice muttering to itself as it knocks things around like a cat pushing things off the shelf: “fuck this thing, fuck that thing, hey buddy, less you wanna get hit, you best scoot” as it trundles through the prehistoric landscape.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 1:17 AM on March 22, 2023

Damn. I used that site to buy my first digital camera, which was a big leap of faith at the time, something like 2003. I agonized over what model to buy for weeks, going between an Olympus (I’d been using them for the simple film camera I’d had for years) and an Ixy. When I finally went to the store, the Olympus’ menu and user interface was unintelligible, even the staff in the camera section couldn’t figure it out. The Ixy was easily ¥10000 more than I wanted to spend, but it was so simple and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 11:56 PM on March 21, 2023

I loved the first game, then found my entire style of play had been nerfed by the changes in forbidden west. I mean, sure, I'd spend a couple minutes figuring out what bottleneck to lead the giant robot down, then spend longer plastering things with tripwires, find somewhere high up, and start pinging away with sniper arrows. In FW, they just said "eh, no more than three (or four) traps/tripwires at a time, and by the way, sniper arrows? We're going to make those incredibly rare, and make… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 10:34 PM on March 15, 2023

No one’s brought up the best line of the movie yet:

Gargles gravel, smokes 100 cigars, swallows fiberglass/

Quick impression for ya: KAW KAW! BANG, FUCK I’M DEAD!

There’s a lot about the movie I love, but hot damn Michael Wincott (and HIS VOICE) were just fantastic.

As far as the whole “only has power when seeking vengeance” thing, there was a whole… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 10:10 PM on March 14, 2023

The idea of not more or less, but better is kind of where I am with alcohol, as well as a lot less, to be honest. Beer in Japan is absurdly expensive compared to most countries where alcohol is regularly consumed. Imported beers, and any sort of craft beer start as twice as expensive as regular beers, and can often get much, much more expensive than that. While I’m not ready to throw down $12-15 for a can of beer, a lot of craft beer bars sell pints for as much, which means I need to be pretty… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 4:41 PM on March 6, 2023

These are more tools aimed squarely at cutting out the pesky part of paying creatives.

The way I see it is that the people so deeply annoyed at paying for creative don't see what the big deal is. They only asked for a quick five hundred words about a new product no one has even laid eyes on. They just want some art for the meeting tomorrow, and will ask it to be changed five different times between now and then.

They have no… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 12:09 AM on March 6, 2023

Do you think George Santos feels shame? He doesn't show it.

I don’t think a person capable of the level of bald faced lying and grift has the capacity for shame. If he did, he would have at some point caught his own reflection in the mirror and stopped to ask himself what he’d done, and it would be his undoing. He’s a total lack of shame personified: the ability to look other people in the eye and smile the smile of someone who knows themselves to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 1:38 PM on February 27, 2023

I read this a long time ago, and just recently came back to it, and did a full re-read. It's a stunning work, filled with details, many of which I missed on my first read. Past that, the care and level of work put into each issue, both words and art, are astounding.

Even more impressive? It's still going, and he is going to finish it. Thinking back to all the webcomics that came out around the same time that just... died, where the creator just never finished it, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 7:41 PM on February 26, 2023

This happens all the time.
It’s detachable.


Man, I might never have seen Live, but I sure as shit saw King Missile. Hot damn, that was a good show.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 2:35 AM on February 23, 2023

As a kid growing up in the Midwest, after school cartoons meant transformers, GI Joe, and maybe Mask if you were lucky. They were fine, but they were cartoons. The absurdity that no Joe ever actually hit anything they aimed at, that it was war, but they always showed parachutes from every downed plane wasn’t lost on me.

Then, one day, things changed. The local fox station, back when it was all just syndication, started showing Starblazers, the dubbed and vaguely messed… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 11:33 PM on February 20, 2023

I, too, am bummed there aren't as many fuckable spokescandies as there should be.

"What is it?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

"Is that supposed to be the point?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Was it supposed to be that sexy?"

"I really don't know. I don't know how I feel about it, other than unbearably turned on."

"Me too. That, and I really, really want a Whatchamacallit."

"Oh, yeah. That too."
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 2:19 AM on February 19, 2023

There are some books on that list that I've been meaning to check out, but the only one I have is This Is How You Lose The Time War, and I'll admit, the title is what caught my eye. There were definitely parts I liked, but I thought the gimmick kind of got in the way. For those who haven't read it, (and no, not a spoiler, it's front and center in the book) it was written by two different authors who took turns writing the book back and forth to each other.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:31 PM on February 16, 2023

picklenickle, if that's the response the AI gave you, I have to say I recognized it right away. It's the same wishywashy "Side A says this, while Side B says this, and in conclusion, it is all a land of contrasts" bunk that I'm trying to un-teach my junior high school students because it is largely terrible, devoid of anything that isn't already essentially common knowledge, and manages to take up space without really saying anything. From the structure to the amateurish transition… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 9:10 PM on February 15, 2023

If ChatGPT is a reflection of us, then we suck.

I think it absolutely is, and we absolutely do. Long term, my deepest hope about all of these programs trained upon the mass of content humanity has produced is that they hold up the most unwanted mirror ever created. The mass of content, the lion's share of the things we put forth is mediocre. We produce crap. We write it, we design it, we create it. It's everywhere. It's why… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:11 PM on February 14, 2023

The thing that's affected me the most, I think, of the last three years of Covid, has been the sudden and stunning degree to which lives seemed to stop mattering. People I work with, people I know in daily life, let alone government officials, talking about how it's okay that people were dying, since (according to news at the time) they were already old or sick. It became totally acceptable to say that it was okay for someone to die because they were old. People felt comfortable saying it was… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 6:22 PM on February 14, 2023

Do people on Truth Social not know about adblockers?

I would bet a really interesting study could be put together (if it hasn't been already) on lack of internet literacy (ad blockers, not clicking pop-ups, stuff that most people on this site would think of as basic internet skills, and how it intersects with voting, worldviews, and all around susceptibility to demagoguery, fascism, and, well, wearing MAGA hats and sleeping on MyPillows.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:50 PM on February 12, 2023

For people wondering when it became a superhero franchise, I’d say the vault heist end of 5, and then 6 is just straight up comic books. I mean, you’ve got Diesel and Statham fighting with giant wrenches and hunks of metal (respectively) with neither dying from repeated blows to the head and body, and the bridge leap/catch/utterly reversal of momentum, being caught by a car (!) going in the opposite direction sequence is on par with anything in the history of the MCU. After 6, it just went full… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:29 PM on February 10, 2023

My intro to all of this was the original AD&D Monster Manual. The one with the red dragon just sort of hovering in the sky above a centaur and a unicorn that I found for 25 cents at our synagogue's rummage sale.* That was the beginning of the end of my brain's ability to store useful knowledge. Sure, maybe I'd be able to remember the Japanese kanji that might make my daily life useful, but why do that when I could, today, probably twenty-five years removed from my last actual role-playing… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 6:44 PM on February 8, 2023

I say to myself "Shambling Mound"

Better seeing someone like that than something that makes you say "Gelatinous Cube"...
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 10:20 PM on February 8, 2023

As a Bulls/Pistons fan when James came into the league, I wasn't a fan. I didn't like (still don't) the calls and preferential treatment he got, and when he went to Miami and settled into the villain role against the plucky understart/star-crossed Bulls, he was great as the big bad. I still want to believe that, had Rose's knee never turned into used off-brand tissue, and had Noah and Deng not been ground to absolute dust, the Heat/Bulls conference finals could have been a regular thing in the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 6:37 PM on February 7, 2023

I'd just like to register the pleasant wistfulness I felt at seeing "The climax of the classic Dune trilogy" above the title for Children of Dune.

I mean, God Emperor does some interesting stuff, but if the whole thing had just ended at Children... it wouldn't be so bad, right?
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 1:08 AM on February 1, 2023

I haven't seen the episode in decades, but I would probably remember every line of dialogue if I were to watch it again. Of course, something that keeps it ever-present in my mind is that I live within spitting distance of the longest suspended monorail in the world, the Chiba Urban Monorail (and no, Japan doesn't do a good job of naming things, and there is a good reason to just call it the Chiba Monorail, but anyway). It, too, is a suspended monorail, and now that I know it's also called a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 4:09 PM on January 19, 2023

I just kind of kept going, having lost track of what page I was on, and when I got to the next page I felt a little tricked, then I went back and read the last page a little more carefully, and noticed I'd missed the date on the Roombas.

This was nice. There's not enough nice/quaint in the world. Not everything needs to be deep or weighted down with terrible import.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 6:15 PM on January 18, 2023

I never really followed ROH that much, so never really knew the Briscoes other than as a name until their matches this past year on AEW. Death in wrestling is such a common thing, and you see wrestlers putting out statements or tweets about respected elders a lot, enough that it’s almost normal to see. This is different, and you can see from different wrestlers reactions how painful this is. It’s a sudden and agonizing hike ripped open in the lives of everyone who knew and worked with him.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 12:50 PM on January 18, 2023

I believe the lunchmeat slicer they originally paid $7,000 for is on there.

I love that the first bid on that beast was $25.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 10:57 PM on January 17, 2023

Ah, well, the next bid was like $50. If I managed to snag that, I'd come home saying "Honey, I'm sorry, but we have to start a deli business, it was decided by the fates."
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 12:38 AM on January 18, 2023

trig, it is broken, and it was pretty much broken as written. It's how we lost Toys R Us, the Tribune company, Gizmodo/Gawker/Deadspin and a bunch of other pretty great stuff. Somehow, a person who doesn't actually have enough money to buy something (or, like Musk, actually does, but just doesn't want to use their own money) can get banks to give them a loan using the thing they don't actually own yet as collateral, which means the company that just got… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 12:53 AM on January 18, 2023

I noticed the ability to see tweets by latest has disappeared from the menu, too. Like Facebook and Instagram, it's a shit idea. I don't use twitter to see what happened 15 hours ago.

Yet another thing (admittedly, I'm not calling Twitter a "nice thing") that we can't have because some failson fuckwit cashed out of the right company at the right time, and ended up with more money that anyone should have, and without the understanding that they could simply fuck… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:28 AM on January 18, 2023

The Monster at the End of this Thread, I think there's a fundamental difference, even if only in scale, of getting a mortgage or securing a loan to start a new business and the concept of leveraged buyouts, especially as they've come to be used. To get a loan to buy a house, you have to be able to show that you can, realistically, handle the monthly payment (subprime mortgages and scams excepted). To get even the tiniest business loan, you need a business plan that details how, exactly, you will… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:32 AM on January 18, 2023

Growing up in full late Gen-X 80s, I slept over at friend's houses a good deal. They weren't sleepovers in the idea of a bunch of kids going to one kid's house, and looking back, it was pretty obvious that a good number of those sleepovers were so my (single with two kids) mom could just have a break, and many of the times a friend stayed with me, it was pretty much reciprocation.

The thing is, the people I stayed over with were members of a community (most sleepovers I… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 6:07 PM on January 17, 2023

sometimes other parents have bizarre rules

Weirdly, I see that as a kind of benefit of sleepovers, a form of socialization and learning to read the room/adapt to different situations. There've been way, way too many comments and articles (not here, per se, but around, on the net) about "kids these days" and younger workers in general not understanding boundaries in the workplace or how to carry oneself in a professional setting, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:21 PM on January 17, 2023

I am genuinely saying that we are not prepared to handle the increasing sophistication of these systems

This is a strong part of my gut reaction against these programs. After the fact, the information that has come out on what Facebook, Twitter, etc pushed because it increased "engagement" has shown how unprepared we were (and continue to be) for social media. AI bots will be an order of magnitude worse, and will be used to sow… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 8:06 PM on January 16, 2023

the lowest-level zero-effort corporate drivel

Dysk, it’s not necessarily that all us philistines don’t “get” art, it’s that we “get”, through years and decades of experience that modern capitalism equals the absolute race to the bottom and the cutting of all possible costs. Tell me what corporation is going to go with “perfect, but costly” over some form of business speak for “good enough” and free?

The race to the bottom doesn’t stop until you actually hit it.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 12:41 AM on January 17, 2023

On the flipside, Detective Mole by the (sadly, late) Robert Quackenbush, ended with a recipe for Detective Mole's favorite snack, which was absolutely delicious: cream cheese on graham crackers with sliced bananas on top. Not only was Detective Mole an excellent sleuth, he had impeccable snacking taste.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 7:39 PM on January 13, 2023

I love movies that take the time to craft a world in which all of the characters have fully realized lives and it’s clear that the exist both before and after they intersect with the protagonist’s story.

As silly as it might sound in comparison, Grosse Point Blank does a phenomenal job in creating minor characters that are living fully realized story arcs in the background of John Cusack’s mid life crisis. It’s worth watching the reunion scene just… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 5:43 AM on January 10, 2023

I got kind of hyped for it after seeing Omega's promo delivered in honestly not terrible, at least in comparison to hearing random stars, wrestling/movies/whatever, stumble through written statements they don't even know how to pronounce. Obviously, the guy lived here a while, and yeah, it's stilted in parts, but I gotta respect the guy for playing the "you only think you know Japan" angle. Solid stuff.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:05 AM on January 6, 2023

In response to “where are all the small cars?”, I mean, Japan, and it’s pretty awesome. I’m hopeful our current car is the last ICE we’ll ever own, though I’ve dialed back my irrational exuberance over the idea of automated cars on hire that would obviate the need for private vehicle ownership (goddamn, can you imagine how liberating it would be to no longer need parking? How much more space the average home would recover, let alone city would be if… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 3:08 AM on January 5, 2023

A tremendous savings over the Will in town.
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 2:31 AM on December 19, 2022

(Also, title chance: Spinoza?! I hardly knows her!)
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 2:32 AM on December 19, 2022

I loved the game for the beauty of it. The design, the time taken to make it so visually appealing, yet clearly unified. That, when I opened the box for the PS4 disc, it came with an art book of the characters instead of an instruction booklet. Hades took time to build in my low key favorite part of games: the moment of quiet beauty that has almost nothing to do with gameplay, but serves the story, like, say, the song that comes out of nowhere in Red Dead as Marston heads across the border, or… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ghidorah at 4:15 PM on December 10, 2022