MetaTalk

Quiz Me

theichibun — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:21:30 GMT

Remember when someone made that quiz about MetaFilter members on that website where you can make quizes? Can I get that link again? Just the main site works too since that's what I really want.

No More Mr Frothy

SPrintF — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:38:37 GMT

OK. Tired of "santorum" now.

I don't want to be That Guy. But the current Santorum Surges From Behind thread bothers me, simply because the discussion about "santorum" is blotting out useful discussion of important issues.

So, thanks, we've all "GOOGLE'D SANTORUM." Yeah, I think Santorum is sketchy as a candidate. But, for a month or so, at least, he'll be in the news. Can we drop the "frothy" discussion for awhile and focus on real issues?

DoppelMetaGangers

unSane — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:30:12 GMT

jason. jason. John. John.

I was looking for a particular Jason, and found TWO 'jason's. Then I found TWO 'John's. I noticed all of them had three digit user numbers. Is this a thing?

Comment fiction

curious nu — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:34:46 GMT

Is there much in the way of comment fiction? Has anyone collected it? Thinking about things like this.

YouTube stutter/frame-drop on MeFi

Thorzdad — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:03:28 GMT

Anyone else suddenly getting stuttering/frame-drop in the MeFi YouTube overlay?

Within the past week, I've started getting stuttering a huge frame-drops in the MeFi YouTube popup/overlay. Nothing's changed on my end. I'm not getting it in any Vimeo overlays that I can recall. The YouTube videos all play perfectly if I view them at YouTube.

Anyone else?

DTDTMFA

ricochet biscuit — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:44:09 GMT

Dear Metafilter, No, the answer to every relationship question is not DTMFA.

Why is it that seemingly every single AskMe in which there is any difficulty with a partner -- be it a spouse who has been secretly banging transgender hookers for a decade or a FWB who occasionally snores -- is met with a volley of answers advising the asker to get out of this poisonous/doomed relationship? It is of course merited sometimes, but it astonished me with the question in the FPP wherein two seemingly happy people are about to be separated by circumstance for a few months and are looking for guidance. (I picked this one as a recent example, but it is an ongoing phenomenon.)

One of the least appealing things about this site is that it seems that when one of our own (especially one of our own who asks anonymously) is suffering heartache, a chorus rings out urging our troubled friends to treat people as disposable.

I am currently in what is surely the happiest, most comfortable, most stable romantic relationship of my life. But if it were heading for the shoals, I would be loath to write an AskMe about it because I am certain that most of the answers would be predictable, no matter what the nuances or extenuating circumstances of the situation were or how carefully I explained them. Years ago I did write an anonymous relationship question and was appalled at the vast trains of baggage that people brought to their answers. As I said once before on the site, it was the equivalent of me saying I had come into some money through inheritance and was asking for investment advice and having an early reply mysteriously deduce that I was lying and I must have come into this money by armed robbery, so every response after that was people urging me to turn myself in and expressing their wishes that I suffer years of prison rape.

I am continually amazed and disappointed that so many bright people who have such incisive thoughts about politics, culture and art seem to see every knotty relationship as being of the Gordian variety.

Look, nothing ends until it ends badly. This does not mean we have to tell people to end everything, end it badly and do so as quickly as they can.

Painting with slices of video

kilo hertz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:30:07 GMT

Does anyone remember a post (from the past year or so, I think) about some digital art that was made by taking (pixel-wide?) slices of video and sort of "painting" with it?

To clarify, these were still presented in the form of video (except all abstractified and texturey), and weren't static paintings in the traditional sense, and may've included (equally abstract) audio. Thinking about it a bit more, I think there was some sort of programming aspect to it, rather than this being a thing that was done manually (I looked through posts tagged with max/msp/jitter as well, but couldn't seem to find it there either). I'm pretty sure the art itself was hosted on vimeo, although I could be mistaken. I have searched and looked through various combinations of tags and the like, but it seems my google-fu is not up to the task.

So, does this ring any bells or sound familiar to anyone?

Good days in school

rebent — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:01:44 GMT

I'm pretty sure I Saw this on MeFi. Help me out! It was a story about the number of "good" days in public school. First you take off the first three weeks, then every holiday and every day before the holiday, then 15 "special" days, then most fridays, then the two months you need to cram for the standardized tests, and you end up with about two months of actual useful teaching time - the two months after halloween

Metafilter on WFMU

Joey Bagels — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:43:38 GMT

Matt Haughey on WFMU right now, talking Metafilter legend and lore. Benjamin Walker, Too Much Information. Listen.

The archive will be available for later listening, I'm sure.

Metafilter Music torrent updates!

Pronoiac — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:51:07 GMT

In October 2010, we posted a torrent of all of Metafilter Music. Here's an update, a torrent of Mefi Music songs from 2011 - 648 songs, 3.5 gigabytes. Share & enjoy, everybody!

Thank you very much to all of the musicians who shared their music, and thanks to not_on_display and the other seeders!

Meta love is the best love of all

showbiz_liz — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:29:38 GMT

I think it's high time for some meta-love. Post your online dating profiles!

There's been chatter in the past about a MeFi dating site, but let's be honest- with the demographic that posts here, there already IS a MeFi dating site and it's called OKCupid. So what are we waiting for? Let's share our profiles!

In the aftermath of that 'I Knew It Was Over When' thread, I think we could all use a chance at a fresh start. Let's make some terrible, regrettable memories of our own!

Reddit trivia rematch

PercussivePaul — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:59:03 GMT

Good morning westerners! In just over four hours, our Trivial Special Forces will reassemble in central London to do battle with our arch-nemeses, Reddit, in a re-match after we mopped the floor with them last time. Current IRL thread here. Any MeFites in London are encouraged to come along and participate and/or cheer us on. Live updates in this thread will follow I'm sure, though we will go dark during the quiz. Tally-ho!

Did I sound British enough with the Tally Ho? I'm new over here.

Teach odinsdream how to braid!

hermitosis — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:13:08 GMT

Would've flagged as "Fantastic" but I figured it would just baffle the mods: This thread asking for hair-braiding instructions is the most confounding, unintentionally hilarious AskMe exchange I've read in a long time.

non-rainbow-bridge-dead-pet solace?

headnsouth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:07:28 GMT

Please help me find the alternative to the Rainbow Bridge poem!

I swear I favorited it. I've favorited other posts and comments about pets and death and can't find it. The comment that it was in (or that linked to it) specifically mentioned it as an alternative to the Rainbow Bridge poem. Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

War, what is is good for?

ennui.bz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:58:46 GMT

Can we have a moratorium on context free posts on how weird and crazy one of the "axis-of-evil" members is while there's a significant probability that US arms will be used against them?

Aside from it being a shitty post, (I mean, ninjas in 2012?) this sort of thing is PR or propaganda for war, in the current context. Evaluating context is difficult, but without context metafilter becomes just another wall in the echo-chamber reverberating this stuff. And, war is pretty serious, yes? And once you start adding context it just becomes a shitty post.

You could take the position that it's not the job of metafilter to filter out war propaganda... but I don't think you should take that position. (closed)

a human being and a public servant

gerryblog — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:39:03 GMT

I haven't seen this happen on the site before. Is it something we should talk about?

As a prosecutor in another jurisdiction who has seen the effects of child sexual abuse, I implore you to report your friend, both for his own sake and for the sake of the (quite possibly real) child. If he's never been in trouble with the law before, he can be helped and may never have to spend a day in jail.

Otherwise, I don't see how I---as a human being and a public servant--cannot forward this posting to the Georgia Department of Public Safety.
posted by saslett at 12:06 AM on February 5 [28 favorites +] [!]

Animal totem as ethnic slur?

Renoroc — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:10:12 GMT

Isn't referring to French people as "frogs" offensive? (closed)

Dodgy link needs to go.

MaryDellamorte — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:41:42 GMT

Why is the second link to this post still up? Several people have mentioned problems with it, including myself, yet the link still remains. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think that the link should be axed since its absence won't really affect the rest of the post. Or is this just something that is allowed?

The problem website is also linked to in a comment.

Why the snark, MetaFilter?

marcusesses — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:29:49 GMT

What's the philosophy on flagging or deleting comments that derail a discussion on Metafilter?

So I'm reading this post, and there's some good discussion happening regarding the actual post , but there are also comments like this, this, this, or this, which are nothing more than snarky complaints about reddit which have nothing to do with the actual submission. I'm wondering why these types of comments aren't actively discouraged or deleted.

Now, I've been a reddit user much longer than I've been a MeFi user, so maybe I'm just sensitive, but I find this happens with submissions to other topics that I enjoy (I mean, the comment "Is this something I would have to _______ to understand?" has become a joke response on MeFi), or other topics that certain users find to be below their tastes. These types of comments make for a really crappy experience, and are the reason it took me so long to finally make a MetaFilter account; anytime I saw something like that, I would just roll my eyes and move on to a different site. I'm sure I could flag these types of comments, but when they have 26 favorites, it makes it look like it adds something positive to the discussion, when it does nothing of the sort. I mean, if that's not your thing, why are you commenting just to derail the discussion for everyone else?

If not mod action, then maybe (and pretty unfortunately), user shaming (like this) will convince people to add something valuable to the discussion.

I'm sure this is well-trodden territory on MetaTalk, so maybe someone can guide me to a discussion where this type of thing is discussed.

Please be aware of the implications of the language you're using.

Drexen — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:07:08 GMT

Let's please not call people c**ksuckers.

This post about a litigious darts player quotes an affected board-member as calling the subject a "cocksucker".

This comment and then this comment repeated and endorsed the insult, and when people pointed out that this isn't really okay, Hoopo dismissed the concern with this comment.

Cocksucker is a pretty hateful word to use; it hurts people other than the intended recipient. Like faggot, bitch and slut it implies that the subject is bad, despicable, disgusting, and contemptible by comparing them women and gay people, even if the subject isn't one of those. This is a technique that, in history and the present day, is used to marginalise and degrade these groups. It is different from a more generic but still forceful insult like asshole, dick, motherfucker etc., because those aren't terms that were, and are still used as hatespeech. I don't care about Zaffina's feelings, but I do care about those of people who want to participate in the discussion without being inherently put down by the language being used.

I have no problem with the article reflecting the language that the interviewees actually used. The article doesn't endorse the use of "cocksucker," it merely reports it. But on Metafilter, which is supposed to be a respectful, mature and accomodating space for discussion, I don't think it's appropriate to deliberately use it against other people, even if they're not in the thread.

Thanks. (closed)