MetaFilter

I harbor a love for Frasier partly because my high school chemistry teacher, whom I admired, thought it a cut above the rest of the sitcoms airing at the time. Still appreciating your wit and what you taught me, Mr. ---!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 12:58 AM on October 5, 2022

Carla Hayden previously on MeFi.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:44 AM on October 2, 2022

Appreciating the display options on the NOAA forecast map.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 11:49 AM on September 30, 2022

Some things I learned from this list: I hadn't known that The Underground Railroad is so visually spectacular, and I had never heard of Better Things.

Many years ago I read Steven Stark's book Glued to the Set: 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We are Today which included, for instance, the Watergate hearings and the Moon landing. This makes me realize that I think there are no reality shows on… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:39 AM on September 26, 2022

I haven't watched either, but groundbreaking reality shows like 1971's An American Family or its 1990s successor The Real World (especially the San Francisco season) would be worth considering.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:59 AM on September 26, 2022

Today I have learned the word "bole"!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 3:40 AM on September 15, 2022

For printed books/PDFs, I look to the Hesperian health guides such as "Where There Is No Doctor" which include several books on reproductive health and which are available in a ton of languages.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:26 AM on September 14, 2022

YESSSSSSSSSS
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 10:06 AM on September 8, 2022

If you want to just watch a few bits of the video, IMO it's particularly worth watching Neil Clarke's speech accepting for Best Editor Short Form, and the speech Seanan McGuire gave when accepting on Lee Moyer's behalf for Best Fan Artist, and Sarah Pinsker's speech accepting Best Short Story (which has a prop), and Becky Chambers's speech for Best Novella (read aloud by Annalee Newitz), and the cute presenter schtick Alec Nevala-Lee did when presenting the Best Related Work award.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 12:19 PM on September 5, 2022

j.r, please imagine me waving pompoms and cheering you on! Please check out the "not enough people know about these!" magazines in this list of short sf/f venues I posted on the blue last year.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 10:21 AM on September 6, 2022

.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 4:53 PM on September 3, 2022

As I mentioned in a comment in the linked thread:

I get the "this is a term of art" vibe when I read/hear a phrase and think, "Wait, isn't that, like, everything?" as in "functional programming" or "product management". In each of these examples we see an adjective that, literally, applies to the whole field. All programming has to do with functionality/making things work, and, in technology, all management of developers and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 4:43 AM on September 2, 2022

thivaia, MiraK, I picked up Alan Furst's Dark Star assuming that it would have some fantastical element, because of the title, and did eventually figure out it had none. (Idea for a future MetaTalk chat thread: what is the artwork that gave you the most dissonance between what you expected based on the title and what you actually got?)
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:06 AM on September 2, 2022

My idiosyncratic practice is setting it for about 90% of the recommended time - something I do for any cooking/baking process. I like that slack; it allows me to know time is about up, but I still have space to finish something, wash my hands, whatever.

Caxton1476, I love this! I sometimes do it for various timer things but hadn't concretized it into a practice.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:01 AM on September 2, 2022

I loved the NYT piece and I hope to visit City someday. It feels like something that Jon Bois would have imagined existing in the 17776 future.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:25 AM on August 25, 2022

What a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 3:53 PM on August 22, 2022

In the early 2000s I worked at Cody's Books in Berkeley, California, which had in 1989 sold The Satanic Verses when many other bookstores (especially the big chains) would not take the risk of doing so. Cody's got firebombed and pipebombed, yet kept selling the book. The owner of Cody's from that period, Andy Ross, wrote about the attack and its aftermath, including a short visit from Rushdie:

We also showed him the hole in the sheetrock above the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 1:23 PM on August 13, 2022

Several people died or suffered physical injury because of attacks on The Satanic Verses and on any person or institution who defended, translated, or promoted the book. Some of those people were Muslims.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 1:39 PM on August 13, 2022

The article links to https://www.disabilityathome.org/ which is a useful compendium of approaches and products - thanks for posting this!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:42 AM on August 10, 2022

Folks in Kansas: was the memory of George Tiller invoked in any of the "vote no" ads or discussion?
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 3:29 AM on August 3, 2022

Desai had been inviting Middlesex scouts to watch Crouch End in action for more than a year....

Rivals began rumours that its success was not legitimate, calling it a “brown envelope club” (one that pays its players – a practice strictly forbidden in the amateur leagues). “People say, ‘Yeah, I might leave my club and join yours, how much are you offering?’” said Desai. “We get it all the time.”


Racial discrimination in sports is… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:34 AM on August 1, 2022

Really looking forward to reading this -- I enjoy Emrys's short fiction and her nonfiction, and the premise sounds really neat. The page about the book at Macmillan has a chunk of the first chapter available to read for free ("Read Excerpt"). Emrys's guest post at Mary Robinette Kowal's blog discusses "what it takes to work at NASA in 2083, long after the U.S. government has waned in power. Ostensibly book promo, really a love letter to under-appreciated agency career folks"… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 12:29 PM on July 28, 2022

Appreciated this post, especially the Task & Purpose link!

I ate many of these when I was a child. And then I got one as an adult and I had trouble finishing it -- my tastes had changed a bit, or my appetite/capacity for giant sweets had. I just reviewed the modern nutritional info and am surprised, because the current wrapper says that one taco is 45% of your Recommended Daily Value of saturated fat, and I recall it being more like 60% or more. But maybe the recipe… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 10:36 AM on July 27, 2022

I like how "The Legend of the Choco Taco" in Eater discusses what's special about the eating experience of the Choco Taco, quoting inventor Alan Drazen:

That shape made for a whole different ice cream-eating experience. “When you eat a sugar cone, you generally eat the nuts, chocolate, and ice cream on the top, and then when you get to the cone, you’re [only] eating ice cream and cone,” Drazen says. “With the Choco Taco you’re getting the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 10:47 AM on July 27, 2022

uncleozzy, I disagree with you but you put a huge smile on my face with your first paragraph. Thank you.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 11:55 AM on July 27, 2022

Like, what is The Good, Socrates?

I just realized that this should have been "Chocrates"
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 11:56 AM on July 27, 2022

Relatedly: as I mentioned in a previous thread, COVID notification/tracking/contract tracing info in Australia was misused by law enforcement in ways they'd promised Australians they wouldn't, risking the public's trust and willingness to provide accurate data when visiting public places. "‘Breach of trust’: Police using QR check-in data to solve crimes", Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2021:
The nation’s privacy watchdog has called for police forces to be banned from… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:10 AM on July 26, 2022

This was fascinating and inspiring - thank you for sharing it!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 3:35 AM on July 19, 2022

storybored, thank you for sharing that. My sympathies shifted a few times as the story went on and I'm grateful for this perspective which helps me reflect on my own family gatherings.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 1:42 PM on July 17, 2022

Thanks - what a sweet video.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 1:18 PM on July 11, 2022

Most of the things about the effective altruism approach that I hear about are kind of ugly and inhumane, or are connected to proposals to take extreme steps regarding stuff like artificial general intelligence (AGI). That's why I thought it was interesting, and worth sharing, when I read these two pieces, which are enjoyable to read and which engage with effective altruism ideas in ways I found more sympathetic to my values.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:35 AM on July 8, 2022

BrotherCaine: I got it on the first guess today too! I felt like such a champion.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:35 AM on June 24, 2022

I realized the other day that -- as the chronological history game Wikitrivia does -- a lot of puzzle/trivia games could reuse Wikidata structured data. Like:

Guess this person who has, at some point, been in line for the throne for a particular monarchy. If you guess wrong, you get a hint about how far you are from them in the genealogical tree, and in what direction.

Guess the extraterrestrial object. As with Globle, wrong guesses get you a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 10:21 AM on June 24, 2022

I sometimes need hundreds of guesses for Redactle!

Globle and Tradle are my preferred geography games. Globle shows me where the countries I've already guessed sit on the globe and this makes it easier for me to guess the target country. But there's no limit on the number of guesses which can definitely lead to the game taking longer than the six-guess-limit games do!

Every day when my household finishes Tradle and Globle, we usually look up the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:02 AM on July 7, 2022

The_Vegetables: the roommate, in the author's recollection, did not say a single word of complaint about the author's approach; she made a face (possibly without meaning to) and stepped away, and the author read criticism in that and took it to heart -- compounded by the jar-bashing prevalent online.

“You use the pre-minced stuff?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose and receded.

I was, at… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:09 AM on July 1, 2022

BTW people who have used dried pre-minced garlic from Penzeys, they offer both "Garlic minced" and "Penzeys Minced Garlic" and I welcome your recommendations on when to use one versus the other.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:13 AM on July 1, 2022

As a Twitter reply mentions, note:

how they used their fourth dancer, the camera 🎥.
Watch it one more time, noticing when the camera moves, how it moves, and when it stops. Then imagine what this video would look like from a stationary tripod. These pros know the diff.

posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:14 AM on June 29, 2022

This was excellent and I loved the jokes and the delighted laughter and smiles.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:56 AM on June 28, 2022

I welcome recommendations for the next Hovland video to watch if I enjoyed this one!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 9:57 AM on June 28, 2022

"Harmonica Exhaust Mod for a Sports Car" is 7 minutes long and delightful. And includes a bit of interactivity in the comments.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 4:36 PM on June 28, 2022

That was gorgeous, especially the last one!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:00 AM on June 28, 2022

tiny frying pan, I think this particular theme just emerged ad hoc as people built on each other's whimsy. I know that I personally didn't hear of any plan for a potato theme!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 7:30 AM on June 23, 2022

clawsoon can rejoice!
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 5:08 PM on June 21, 2022

signal: answered, a bit.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 5:49 PM on June 21, 2022

Maybe there is a translation issue from Slovenian to English?
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 3:47 PM on June 21, 2022

BTW signal asked why all the potato posts today. At least in my case: the other day Slovenia was the mystery country in Globle or Tradle, so my spouse and I looked at info about it including the Cuisine section of the Slovenia page on English Wikipedia, and that's how I found out about the roasted potato festival, and I meant to make a MetaFilter post about it at some point soon, and then today I saw there was a front page post about a potato thing and decided to make this post!… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 5:48 PM on June 21, 2022

I appreciated getting to read this; thanks.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 5:50 PM on June 19, 2022

A wonderful piece of news.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 1:09 PM on June 14, 2022

I love it. Yup.
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 8:19 AM on June 9, 2022

In the comic "Range Life" that spare illustration of the light from the window painted on the wall... it's evocative. How? Why? People who know about visual art - what is it doing and why is it evocative?
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 2:26 AM on June 7, 2022