https://ask.metafilter.com/ The past 24 hours of questions at Ask MetaFilter Wed, 06 May 2026 13:47:47 GMT Wed, 06 May 2026 13:47:47 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60
The kids are 4, 8 and 10 years old. Open to anything: app suggestions for their iPad, interesting sheet music, finger strengthening gadgets, piano toys, musical reference posters, whatever a music loving kid would find cool.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389629/Piano-gifts tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389629 Wed, 06 May 2026 13:47:47 GMT vanilla.extract giftideas kids music piano https://ask.metafilter.com/389629/Piano-gifts/rss
I'd like to see examples of excellent speeches.
Even more than the topic or type of speech, what interests me is the skill of the speaker.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389628/Best-speeches tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389628 Wed, 06 May 2026 13:11:16 GMT vanilla.extract speaker speech https://ask.metafilter.com/389628/Best-speeches/rss https://ask.metafilter.com/389627/Who-is-most-consistently-appealing-in-music tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389627 Wed, 06 May 2026 04:12:34 GMT NotLost music MusicalArtists MusicPerformers https://ask.metafilter.com/389627/Who-is-most-consistently-appealing-in-music/rss
I know personality shifts are common with aging dogs, just checking to see if the hive mind has any ideas on anything I might have missed or has worked with similar issues with your dogs.

He had a rough start in life - his original owners for the first 3.5 years were somewhere between neglectful and abusive. He was ~15 lbs underweight and had heartworms when he was surrendered. He was pretty much untrained and out of control enough that he nearly got put down.

Since then, he's made a turnaround. He's helped socialize dozens of foster dogs and cats. He lost his interest in play around 5 years old but still loves going to the dog park and sniffing all the things.

In the past year or so, his personality has taken a pretty major shift with an increase in anxiety about 10% of the time. He's historically been pretty good about communicating what he wants. Now he'll sometimes come and stare like he needs something, even all of his needs are currently or recently met. He's more mopey and sighy than usual. He's going from loving car rides to making his unhappy pose or even outright shivering. The other 90% of the time he's his normal, chill but happy self.

He's in overall good shape for his age. He has a little cloudiness in his eyes and his night vision specifically has gone down a bit. He has mild if any arthritis. The vet screened him for CCD and doesn't think it's that. His blood work came back normal other than one liver enzyme being a little off. He's still capable of 3-4 hour long hikes on moderate slopes and goes on 3-4 walks a day (~2-3 miles total).

Anti-anxiety meds are out; the ones I tried while he was going through heartworm treatment seemed to make him more anxious. He was a voracious rope toy and ball play dog when he was young but it's been years since he's been interested in those. I got him some treat toys in case he's just bored, which he plays with a little but loses interest fairly quickly in.

The one major thing I suspect has played a part in this is I had long Covid last winter which greatly reduced the amount of attention he got from me. My housemate made sure he was walked/fed/etc. but it definitely was not the level of care he was used to getting.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389626/Senior-dog-with-major-personality-shift tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389626 Tue, 05 May 2026 23:44:13 GMT Candleman dog seniordog https://ask.metafilter.com/389626/Senior-dog-with-major-personality-shift/rss
I live in a 2BR on the first floor of an old house. The top floors have other tenants while the ground floor has some common space as well as a small in-law unit deemed unfit for occupation by the city government, nominally used for storage but otherwise locked and vacated. Our landlord and homeowner is, from what I've inferred, a gay widower in his seventies and we have an amicable relationship. (But I don't know him very well.) He lives in another neighborhood.

I went down to the ground floor yesterday around 11pm and was surprised to see a stranger with a large (but well-behaved) dog exiting the in-law unit. He seemed a bit dazed and took a swig from a flask. I asked him who he was, and then I heard someone whispering my landlord's name to him from the in-law unit. He repeated the name and didn't respond to anything else I asked. Kind of a deer-in-headlights situation. Thinking that maybe some unscrupulous people in our landlord's orbit had gained access to the building, I walked by the open in-law unit door to see what was going on -- only to find my actual landlord inside, looking and behaving just like he normally does. We exchanged quick pleasantries and I scurried off. The stranger asked my landlord where the exit was and then apparently left the building.

Over the course of the night, I heard the door to the in-law unit opening and closing maybe a few dozen times until around 4AM. Other than that and some footsteps, there was no noise, smell, or other disruption coming from the in-law unit.

This had happened once or twice a year ago, but when I alerted my landlord to the late-night visitors, he said something about some folks helping him with building supplies. I thought it was a bit strange at the time, but now I can assume that the same type of gathering was happening back then, too.

OK, so what the heck do I make of this situation?

* Clearly there's some sort of social event or gathering going on
* Other than the doors and footsteps, it's not noisy or disruptive
* Our landlord is seemingly there the entire time
* Our landlord is secretive about it
* I presume he feels embarrassed at being "caught" by his tenant
* He doesn't want to host whatever this is in his actual home
* I have no evidence that anything happening here is illegal

I don't really care what our landlord does in his spare time (though I'm confused by the parameters of this event) but I'm a bit concerned about building security. The fellow I met did not know our landlord by name, so I assume these visitors are strangers. From the common space, it's possible to go up the back building stairs to the rear entrance of our apartment, which is not well secured. I expect that our landlord would not allow that to happen, but it's unnerving to hear people walking around all night and not know what's going on. (And, I mean, he's in his seventies. A stranger could overpower him.)

Given that this seems to happen relatively infrequently... should I just ignore it and see if it recurs? Should I broach the subject somehow? I feel like I've been roped into a conspiracy that I want no part of. The whole situation makes me very uncomfortable.

Also, any thoughts on what this event could actually be? My best guess is some sort of hookup thing, but I assume that would produce some actual noise, and the walls in this house are paper-thin. It also doesn't seem to track with a stream of relatively silent people coming and going in the middle of the night. Is there something in the gay community that maps to this sort of thing?]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389625/Secret-silent-social-gathering-in-unoccupied-flat tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389625 Tue, 05 May 2026 23:08:36 GMT Anonymous flat gay housing landlord https://ask.metafilter.com/389625/Secret-silent-social-gathering-in-unoccupied-flat/rss
My mom can't be counted on to have her iPhone on her at all times, and trying an Apple Watch was useless because it needs charging too frequently and is overall too complicated for her.

Please suggest an alternative for us.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389624/Ive-fallen-and-I-cant-get-up-2026-edition tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389624 Tue, 05 May 2026 22:21:46 GMT BlahLaLa elderly FallMonitoring seniors https://ask.metafilter.com/389624/Ive-fallen-and-I-cant-get-up-2026-edition/rss
What is the best type of bed to get? Frame, box spring? Ideally one with good storage under would be great, but most important is he doesn't break it, and that it can give him good and restful sleep and support his body of course. We have access to IKEA if anyone has experience of that, but otherwise broad advice is what I'm looking for.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389623/Big-boy-bed-real-big-boy tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389623 Tue, 05 May 2026 21:58:43 GMT Iteki bed heavyDuty shoppingAdvice https://ask.metafilter.com/389623/Big-boy-bed-real-big-boy/rss https://ask.metafilter.com/389622/How-Much-Life-Should-be-Left-On-a-CO2-Tank-Ive-Just-Bought tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389622 Tue, 05 May 2026 19:51:02 GMT stevenpl aquascape https://ask.metafilter.com/389622/How-Much-Life-Should-be-Left-On-a-CO2-Tank-Ive-Just-Bought/rss like so. Do you have any experience with these?

I think I would get the stamp and a straight handle. I would heat it with an oxy-acetylene torch.
I have no experience with these. What can you tell me? Also I prefer to make things myself, but I don't see how I could do this.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389621/Branding-Iron tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389621 Tue, 05 May 2026 17:29:09 GMT falsedmitri brandingIron stamp torch https://ask.metafilter.com/389621/Branding-Iron/rss
For my part I've always just built project-specific databases in Excel using VLOOKUP and nested formulas to generate whatever reporting I've needed--self-taught cludge after self-taught cludge that could better be done by another program. I know a lot of people would not even consider this a "database."

The Data
Right now our data just exist in an Excel workbook with several worksheets. For the sake of simplification, the sheets are basically like this:

1. Master Company List, one record per company: Company ID, Company Name, Company Contact details, Service provided
2. Vendor List, multiple records per company: Company ID, Company Name, Vendors, Vendor Contract Year, Vendor Contract Amount
3. Funding List, multiple records per company: Company ID, Company Name, U.S state where it operates, Revenue in that state
4. Regulatory List, multiple records per company: Company ID, Company Name, Regulatory Agency, Regulatory Action, Regulatory Fine

So basically we might want to say, "Let's look at a report for every company operating in Tennessee, including the number of regulatory actions in the last ten years, the sum total of fines, and their vendors during those ten years."

This is a database that would never exceed 1,000 records, and where individual data tables are unlikely to ever have more than, say, 50 fields.

Other Considerations
The other considerations I would think of are:

1. Ease of use -- we don't have a ton of time to learn or train on this, and our computer software skillset could be described as "familiar with all of MS Office Suite except Access, and that's about it."
2. Ease of training -- but we do have some tiime to spend learning it.
3. Accessibility -- are there considerations related to software going out of date, out of style, out of business, out of security updates, etc?
4. Other applications -- we may want to do data visualizations like charts and the rest. I would imagine most reports can be just ported into other programs for that, but if there are easy plug and play considerations, that would be great to know.
5. Enshittification and AI -- are there things we should be thinking about in terms of like, overautomation and AI gold rush things that might actually hinder our work, go out of use in the future, etc. (I barely can summon the words to say what I mean here but I hope it's clear.)


So far my ideas are Airtable and MS Access, but I know other database management systems are out there as well.]]> https://ask.metafilter.com/389620/What-software-should-I-use-for-this-database-project tag:ask.metafilter.com,2026:site.389620 Tue, 05 May 2026 16:55:25 GMT kensington314 Cludges Database Non-Profit Software SoftwareApplications Workplace https://ask.metafilter.com/389620/What-software-should-I-use-for-this-database-project/rss