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How is "44. The United States pulled off an economic miracle" not being blasted at 100% volume into every media outlet by the Democratic party?
posted to MetaFilter by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:36 PM on December 20, 2023

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Hanlon's Razor is so often weaponized that I always reply to this by saying "Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained adequately by malice masquerading as stupidity."
posted to MetaFilter by hypnogogue at 12:42 PM on December 31, 2023

I always thought Green Day were posers trying to rip off the Clash, but now I understand we were all always just posers trying to rip off the Clash.
posted to MetaFilter by rikschell at 5:04 AM on January 3, 2024

I think conservatives are always predictably shocked at stuff like this because they get told so often, by politicians and preachers and conservative media, that their ideas are much more popular among the general public than they actually are.

Nixon had the Silent Majority, Pat Robertson had the Moral Majority, Sean Hannity has some catchphrase that escapes me at the moment...

Meanwhile, the majority in a very gerrymandered House is down to two... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by box at 6:58 AM on January 3, 2024

There is an important critique in this work, some of it is excellent but some of it is deeply methodolgically flawed.

From the last link on "colonial violence":

Unfortunately, more than half a century has passed since the inception of “Green Revolution” technologies and world hunger persists.1, 2, 3


The author cites the same 3 articles for the entire introduction to this... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by lalochezia at 6:55 AM on December 15, 2023

Bloomberg Law: "By a 7-0 vote Thursday [December 14, 2023], the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board approved the emergency temporary standard setting new requirements to prevent workers from inhaling toxic silica dust.

The temporary standard is expected to take effect Dec. 29 and stay in place for one year, when it would be replaced by a permanent rule.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jedicus at 7:37 AM on December 15, 2023

Matt Taibbi has always been a brodude provocateur who (even in my short engagement with his works) came across as entertaining but hella misogynistic.
Years back, a colleague who'd been at the center of some fairly shitty harassment campaigns told me that one of the most dangerous mistakes a vulnerable person can make is assuming that an individual is their ally simply because they hate the correct people. I read a couple of Taibbi's books years back, and thought they were bracing,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by verb at 7:50 AM on December 13, 2023

> It's what happens when the person who's an activist for Cause A gets "cancelled" because of a couple of 7-year-old tweets with an ignorant joke about Cause B, and people stop listening to them about Cause A altogether. It's what happens when someone has been fighting for a particular cause and has finally achieved a hard-fought and real victory against the GOP gets criticized for not having achieved even more, including some things that were never within their power to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MiraK at 6:47 AM on December 13, 2023

It's what happens when the person who's an activist for Cause A gets "cancelled" because of a couple of 7-year-old tweets with an ignorant joke about Cause B, and people stop listening to them about Cause A altogether.

But isn't it usually the selfish, non-apology for past transgressions/offenses that gets people to stop taking someone seriously? There's a lot of people cited in the article who were called out for something and instead of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RonButNotStupid at 6:32 AM on December 13, 2023

I really do not have any patience for the idea that pointing out people's racism and sexism forces them to become more racist and sexist. Serious people learn from their mistakes and rectify their areas of ignorance. Narcissists look for somewhere they can go unchallenged.
posted to MetaFilter by Horace Rumpole at 6:28 AM on December 13, 2023

> “Edgelords” who’d once used ​“strategic irony” to challenge the status quo ​“began to believe their own rhetoric.”

I had (past tense) two friends who fit this description, and even before the pandemic and everything that has followed in its wake they had already made it clear to me that their "ironic" stances on race relations and misogyny were never really ironic, they were masks of plausible deniability and (in hindsight) probably a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by The Card Cheat at 6:27 AM on December 13, 2023

Shit, I am guilty of confusing Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf and I should probably read Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
posted to MetaFilter by Molesome at 6:26 AM on December 13, 2023

Really enjoying the new one so far.

I read/watch/watch again the Scott Pilgrim chronicles through the lens that the real protagonist in this story is Kim Pine.
posted to MetaFilter by mcstayinskool at 6:55 AM on December 4, 2023

Every time with this guy, it's just the pettiest shit imaginable. Every single time.

Imagine sitting down at a smorgasboard with the full breath of the possible human experience laid out before you, and choosing ketamine and spite over and over again. Imagine being able to have anything, anything at all, and every time, picking "a tantrum".
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 12:57 PM on November 22, 2023

Of course, what will actually happen when they start summarily firing tens of thousands of federal workers is that many, many systems that Heritage Foundation / Federalist Society flaks aren't cognizant of and don't care about, but turn out to be essential to the functioning of various aspects of US life, will begin to fail.

The GOP can't govern, only loot, and we're headed for a United States of Mississippi if this idiocy comes to pass.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by ryanshepard at 4:56 PM on November 15, 2023

I don't understand how they don't automatically define an attempt to highlight female historical figures as inherently woke.

When you say "they", are you referring to the potential customers or the author?

If you mean the author, she probably doesn't want to cause a shit-show at a convention. She's already throwing up with anxiety before each of these sessions.

If you mean the potential... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by EmpressCallipygos at 5:10 PM on October 29, 2023

Karpf's reply is more thoughtful and insightful than pmarca's blog post deserved. Warmed over technoutopianism with fascist characteristics is really not interesting. I do appreciate how the essay landed like a damp fart though. Even the Hacker News crowd hated it.

Is there one good essay that points out how hollow Andreessen's career as a VC leader has been? I mean of course the man has had some significant investment successes and for better or worse is seen as a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 8:27 AM on October 18, 2023

I guess Chaos Monkey needs to get a new feature that makes random bad management decisions, to ensure that engineers implement their services to be resilient to senior executive failures.
posted to MetaFilter by FishBike at 12:30 PM on September 11, 2023

Also also: How many will be usable and operational in a year because the installation was sloppy and half assed.

And there-in lies the problem: the failures will be inconsistent and spread out enough, and far enough out, it can’t be obviously tracked back to this move. Hard drives fail? That’s what they do! Power supply died? Well, they are redundant. Blame won’t go to Musk. Either it will be regarded as typical failures, shoddy hardware, or blame... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MrGuilt at 12:05 PM on September 11, 2023

So, the reason that I posted this is because this is some of the most unhinged things I've read, with a bunch of executives who have no understanding of how to decommission and move servers that have sensitive personal info on them deciding that a "DIY" ethic is what was called for. This is the sort of story junior sysadmins are told in the wee hours of the night to terrify them.
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 11:38 AM on September 11, 2023

mike3k: "I strongly despise that kind of shallow mainstream pop music (also including Taylor Swift)."

Counterpoint: Spears is an amazingly talented musician who has been undervalued mostly because she's a woman, and Swift is a once-in-a-generation song-writing talent who has been undervalued mostly because she's a woman who is liked by other young women.
posted to MetaFilter by signal at 8:08 PM on August 1, 2023

Thinking of this as a matter of principle betrays a lot of privilege. Events need to move not in order to hurt Florida, but because some of us can't go there. Those events that it would take a lot of money to move? We can't attend them. Even the airport bathrooms are off-limits, never mind some kind of other law enforcement encounter.
posted to MetaFilter by tigrrrlily at 2:02 PM on July 10, 2023

I went and looked into it potrzebie, and it seems like Grace Hopper is aware of this issue and won't be doing it in Florida going forward:

For the past 26 years, AnitaB.org has worked to connect, inspire, and advance women and non-binary technologists to reach their highest potential. At the heart of our efforts is Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), a global gathering that brings together thousands of tech professionals to learn, network, celebrate their achievements, and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by foxfirefey at 9:32 AM on July 10, 2023

I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones.

The article addresses this, but there were literally newspapers everywhere throughout the 20th century. Even in the late 90s, there were boxes on the corner, or you could grab a paper at the bodega for a quarter. Free alt-weeklies were in the entrance of every casual restaurant or diner. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of content at your fingertips, almost everywhere in any urban environment.
posted to MetaFilter by eschatfische at 10:06 AM on July 8, 2023

Staring blankly out of the window of a bus while your mind roams is underrated, for starters.
posted to MetaFilter by penguin pie at 10:02 AM on July 8, 2023

> Isn't a leveraged buyout the PE equivalent of using a mortgage to buy a house?

It is kind of close if the model is buying the house with a loan, then - rather than just living in the house yourself - renting out the house to others in order to make the monthly payments on the loan.

It is closer yet if part of the plan is to gradually strip the house of its furnishings and anything saleable, and the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by flug at 1:20 AM on June 16, 2023

Prohibit leveraged buyouts.

How about we take it a step further? Prohibit buyouts. Corporations should not be allowed to own corporations. What if we lived in that world? How much mischief would that stop?

And a further step: people shouldn't be allowed to own corporations, either, if they're big enough. You start a successful company and it grows to 200 employees and you want to keep growing?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by biogeo at 12:19 AM on June 16, 2023

On a more serious note…

I took over my family’s small-ish wholesale distribution business about 12 years ago. When I first came back, the mindset was sales at all costs. Make line go up. The company barely turned a profit, but hey, line go up. It took me years to break this mindset. It was only through deliberative management, strong employee retention, strong customer and credit policy, and continual reinvestment that we’ve been able to make the company more profitable.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by slogger at 9:12 PM on June 15, 2023

No. A house is not a person, so it cannot be saddled with its owner's debt. A corporation is, and can.

And also, even if it was, a financial instrument that is beneficial when used by individuals does not mean a similar instrument is beneficial when used by corporations.

This is the same trap people fall into who think sovereign governments need to balance their books.
posted to MetaFilter by rhymedirective at 7:57 PM on June 15, 2023

Yes, but if you cook to relax you don't need a time/labor-saving device. You'd just... cook. You might still need a pressure cooker for some things, but you won't be the one targeted by the ads because you'd get one anyway for your purpose. The Instant Pot was sold as a gadget rather than a tool, if you follow.
posted to MetaFilter by Scattercat at 7:13 PM on June 15, 2023

What a relief!

Between this and the unexpected win against gerrymandering, which justice got visited by three ghosts this week?
posted to MetaFilter by The demon that lives in the air at 8:32 AM on June 15, 2023

One story:

I met Ted Kaczynski's brother and sister-in-law entirely by accident, around 2005. She, a fine professor at Union College, invited me to speak to her colleagues, which I did. After, she asked me if I minded going out to dinner with herself and her brother. Not at all, I said, and this is how I learned to Google everybody. The gentleman joined us and I, knowing nothing of this guy, and always being shameless, asked what he did with his time.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by doctornemo at 3:11 PM on June 10, 2023

Pretty clear to me that Werner Herzog is the perfect replacement.

you have elected to spin the wheel, a choice as pointless yet inevitable as life itself. having spun, you cry out for 'big money,' yet the money you seek is but a pittance compared to that controlled by forces which, unseen, shape your very existence. the wheel continues to spin, its outcome ambiguous for the moment. i invite you to remain in that moment, to allow the wheel to spin... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by logicpunk at 7:57 PM on June 12, 2023

“AI” feels like a deliberate play for clicks, given the current panic about LLMs et al. and their being used to make synthetic reproductions of singers parrot lyrics generated by random pattern matching.

“Machine Learning used to extract old vocals” has waaaay less ick but also less connection to the current bubble.
posted to MetaFilter by Going To Maine at 10:42 AM on June 13, 2023

There seems to be a lot of streaming content whose sound design is just bad.

I don't think it's my ears, even though I am officially an Old now. I have a media server with loads of TV on it from the 1960s all the way to current, and the dialogue in almost all the older shows is way easier to understand than many of the newer ones, which seem to have much more music and sound effects piled carelessly on top of it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by flabdablet at 11:51 PM on June 12, 2023

I had friends at this concert and to say I was a bit envious would be understatement; for me, just to stand and applaud Joni Michell in person on stage would almost be enough, even if she never sang a note. But to surround herself with singers like Annie Lennox-- older women with magnificent careers-- means something too. I love what the young are doing (Boygenius is my particular jam at the moment) but there's something resonant in the presence and voices of those closer to my age who are... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by jokeefe at 1:14 PM on June 12, 2023

This will help him the same way the impeachments did, and the same way the NY bullshit did. I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

And what's the alternative? To do nothing? Because doing nothing in 2016 didn't stop Trump from becoming president in the first place. Doing nothing over the past four decades didn't stop Republicans from becoming increasingly authoritarian.

At least this is something. I much prefer a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RonButNotStupid at 5:47 AM on June 9, 2023

Pfft. Amateurs. The cool kids will be wearing a Dyson Zone and Apple Vision Pro goggles.
posted to MetaFilter by zardoz at 4:25 PM on June 8, 2023

Naomi Wu has previously tweeted about how bad and even dangerous the Dyson Zone is for COVID mitigation.
posted to MetaFilter by Joakim Ziegler at 3:51 PM on June 8, 2023

I thought the writer was going to get hunted by feral gangs to sell for parts to the organleggers and backstreet doctors…. But, no, just pollution and a kind of crap device.
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 3:40 PM on June 8, 2023

Highly recommend checking out The Donut King, a documentary about Ted Ngoy, the Cambodian refugee mentioned in the article who started a donut empire in southern California. Streaming on Hulu in the US.
posted to MetaFilter by General Malaise at 1:45 PM on June 2, 2023

Central and Southern California are the regions of the Southeast Asian immigrant mom and pop donut shop. Small Brand Fiefdom forever: corporate donuts still suck.

The Cambodian American Reign of Doughnut Shops Began in This La Habra Shop
posted to MetaFilter by kensington314 at 11:39 AM on June 2, 2023

What a fascinating article. I was a Snopes DORK back in the 90s - I'd read basically every article on the site many times same checked multiple times a week for new stuff. I knew they were locals (the site claimed to be owned by "the San Fernando Valley Urban Folklore Society" or something of that nature), and I was a valley kid myself and took a certain amount of hometown pride in the site. I think I emailed them questions and tips a few times, even. Here's hoping the new team gets... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by potrzebie at 9:16 AM on June 2, 2023

"IRC is Discord for old people."

Real quote from real teenager on Reddit.

So it goes.
posted to MetaFilter by ocschwar at 8:46 AM on June 2, 2023

Everyone who complains about wokeness ignores the fact that people who honestly and publicly denounce bullshit they used to espouse get welcomed with open arms.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 9:17 AM on May 28, 2023

The crossover between Supergirl and the Flash is one of my favorite episodes of TV ever. Kara's reaction to how Barry demonstrates his speed for the first time (by fetching ice cream) is great.

I fell off watching after a while just because I got distracted by other things, but I always appreciated what they were trying to do.
posted to MetaFilter by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:19 AM on May 24, 2023

kingdead, I would counter that your elected officials may share your interests in lots of areas, but they only have so much time and energy they can put into things, and they have to choose whether they're going to spend most of their energy this week championing better Medicare coverage or water rights or voting rights or support for Ukraine. Lots of legislators aren't siding with the billionaire in this particular case, and I think it's worth it to let them know when I appreciate (or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kristi at 11:07 AM on May 24, 2023

Honestly I don't really feel like there's a need for political journalism at this point, I feel like it's just there to extract money by getting me mad about things I can't change within the current system.In order to make sense of this sentence I have to assume you're talking about some very specific subset of political journalism.

Do I need to know about the latest inflammatory tweet from Marjorie Taylor Green? Probably not. But do I want to know about the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nerd of the North at 9:37 AM on May 24, 2023

Not to mention journalism's cowardly abandonment of objective journalism for the flawed and lazy balanced model, in which, say, Republican and Democratic claims about the effect of a policy are presented equally, no matter how much data one side has to back up their claim or how much incentive the other side has to lie.

My high school journalism teacher told his students that when a source lies to you, that's your story. But the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Gelatin at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2023

why have we all been pulled into the audience for their performance?

The same reason none of those conservative, right-wing alternatives to Twitter have ever taken off: these people are nothing without the privilege of having a captive audience. It isn't enough that this little group of people get together and have a sulk--they need everyone to know that they're getting together and sulking, hence the profile in the New Yorker about their little sulk... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by RonButNotStupid at 2:11 PM on May 23, 2023