Gnashing my teeth because over on Metafilter there is a thread about the efficacy and need for Trigger and Content warnings and more than one ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE is (in effect) maintaining the line that if you cannot handle exposure to anything that might be upsetting you should choose to just not interact with anything and ..
:: SEEEETH :: 😬 Actually wanna bite someone.
Sometimes, people try really hard to just SUPER SUCK.
A financial planner I haven’t talked to in 20 years emailed to thank me for something I’d written on my blog which was super nice but they opened their email with “I just read your substack and it was wonderful” and now I’m a little mad to hear the nazi-loving email service is a generic phrase synonymous with “personal essays” in business people’s minds already.
I hate to be the guy who judges things before they exist, but ... I just don't see how the movie adaptation of #EarthAbides is going to do the book any justice. I sincerely hope it will ... but, as someone on #Metafilter said, "get prepared for Earth Abides: Kickpuncher Requiem"
some of Daniel Davies's commentary on travel, Ezra Pound, coffee, and the culture of the Internet and how to manage one's equanimity while writing for strangers
Some of Daniel Davies's commentary focusing on academia & on the cultures/norms of research in general. A fave: "LIBOR for the universities?" (2015) asks: in academia, what scandals are waiting for public scrutiny of the type LIBOR got?
"The governance committee of the MetaFilter Interim Board is collecting some sample bylaws. I'm looking for bylaws from groups that are roughly similar..."
Please do not answer here; I am not the one posing this question. The appropriate place to put suggestions is in the Ask MetaFilter thread. If you don't have a [#MetaFilter account, and the USD$5 fee to make one would make this harder for you, tell me and I'll make you a gift account; MeFi users can do so for free.]
Usually, when I post to the front page of #MetaFilter, my posts get significantly more favorites than they do comments. In the past ~14 months, my posts that have gotten more comments than faves have been about:
Looking for stuff to read, especially to nominate for awards this year? Consider these books, short stories, & other works published in 2023 by creators whose works have previously won the Otherwise Award, & past Fellows.
The Otherwise (formerly the Tiptree) Award celebrates science fiction, fantasy, & other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender.
#MetaFilter#MeFites#MeFite -- I co-wrote this blog post so I can't post it to the front page of MetaFilter, but if you like it, please go ahead. 9 of the short stories mentioned are available to read for free on the web
TIL: the Gulf Stream is /not/ a major factor in Europe’s mild-for-its-latitude climate; “UK will freeze if the Stream fades” is false. Europe is warmed mostly by a combo of generic maritime air moderation & (wat) the Rocky Mountains!
If anything, the stream/conveyor shutting down sometime this century from #ClimateChange factors would merely offset global warming in the region a bit.
Any #metafilter people out there? This online community was often spoke of as one of the best on the Internet, and it was believed part of that may be due to the $5 sign up fee. I’m curious: how has your experience progressed there as the rest of the Internet has lost the plot? Is it still an exceptional place?
I low-key love the existence of mefi.social because most of the time folks reuse their #MetaFilter usernames and I get a small burst of joyful recognition anytime I see 'em.
This concept — “Executive Function Theft” — is such a lucid description of a constant source of frustration that, like the author, I can’t believe it hasn’t been named before and dug into.
It's the thing “where one entity offloads things they consider unimportant onto some other entity they consider unimportant”. Once you see it you can't unsee it.
This #MetaFilter Q&A on what a person means when they say "be careful!" reminds me to share a bit of personal discipline I'm working on:
Instead of or in addition to literally saying the vague advice-phrase "be careful" to someone who's about to do something, I must SPECIFY a particular kind of caution or behavior change. Examples: "it's slippery," "cars often break the speed limit here," "that's more fragile than it looks so notice if the tension starts changing."
Fred Clark of Slacktivist quotes Biblical scriptures on honest weights and measures while critiquing corporate survey metrics and their dishonest usage by bosses to punish individual workers. "Your job is simply to give all 5s. To everyone, everywhere, every time. This is your task because it is the only honest answer available to an honest person.....
... Because 4≠0. Because differing weights are an abomination and false scales are not good. Because your wealthy are full of violence with tongues of deceit in their mouths and bags full of dishonest weights."
In the past, I've posted scores of short story recommendations to #MetaFilter. As part of the current fundraiser, I'm interested in making further front page posts recommending short #scifi and #fantasy stories you can read for free online!
For the rest of August: MeMail me to tell me you've contributed USD $150 to #MeFi, and I'll make a post. $225 if you want to specify some kind of theme.
A few times in the past few years I've gone to see a film in a cinema on a weekday morning, showtime starting before 11am or so. Grateful that my schedule is flexible enough to permit this. Since, usually, the air in the theater has had 10 hours of filtration/ventilation/precipitation since the last moviegoers exhaled there, and I'm one of 5-10 viewers at the show, #COVID risk is lower.
I very much enjoyed #Barbie. What a spectacle! That was a MOVIE, something that USED the medium! I laughed out loud many times, teared up several times, and particularly delighted in the many moments when I genuinely did not predict what was coming next. I'm considering nominating it for a Hugo Award.
I'm part of the group blog #MetaFilter, where one researcher assessed this particular scent and cognition study and pointed out that the actual effect may well be attributable to random chance:
"What would the positive and negative impact be of going back to horses as our primary mode of transport instead of fossil fuel powered cars? I've been rolling this around in my head recently..."
(Can't find the #MetaFilter thread right now, but years ago someone was just bewildered and boggled at the US system of schoolbuses, suggested abolishing it in favor of "everyone takes public transit", and would not listen to the interlocutors trying to explain the relevant transit rhythms, population densities, and liability and safety concerns. I doubt "what if horses?" will go that entertainingly but it might.)
Summary: we'd need to massively reconfigure the fundamentals of human civilization to switch to using draft animals for transport. But, it MIGHT be more resistant to the collapse of the post-Industrial-Revolution supply chain that assumes factories assemble interchangeable components bought from specialized vendors far away, with rare interruptions from skilled labor shortages/natural disasters.