MetaTalk

And I was just about to download SOS

jaduncan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:13:12 -0800

Maybe there's a memo I missed, but what happened to the mefi music download links? I just get the flash player now.

Could we post weak links to the "back" page?

jefficator — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:48:52 -0800

Could there be something like a Back Page Post? So I just read this on Gizmodo. Its quirky and interesting, but not at all sufficient for a FPP. I got to wondering. What if there was a back page? No comments to moderate. Users can just post weak-but-somewhat interesting links. People who dare can filter through the less-awesome-ness. Then if it gets enough favorites, maybe that link gets highlighted somewhere? It seems like some interesting links are just inherently too weak. Also it seems like sometimes something interesting happens after the start of a relevant existing thread--but the new bit will never be seen because the thread is off the front page. Please forgive me if there's already a mechanism for dealing with this situation. (Or if this isn't a "situation" to anyone but me!)

ocherdraco

piratebowling — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:40:58 -0800

The awesome ocherdraco will be in Philly December 10-12. And it's been entirely too long and I mill all y'all's shayna punim. Let's get come drinks and food and show her a good time, shall we? That's a Thursday through a Saturday. Do people have preference for day of the week? In the past the Belgium Cafe was accommodating with our large group and offers both food and drink. However, willing to take other suggestions for meeting places as well. I'd suggest the yummy dim sum place, but it's gone.

Anyone interested in a MeFi Film Club?

Taft — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:49:04 -0800

Anyone interested in a MeFi Film Club? I thought of the idea after hearing about the MeFi bookclub and reading this post on Reddit. The club would work the same way a book club does; we all watch the same agreed-upon film, then discuss it. Whether this should be a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly thing is up to everyone who's interested. If you are, let me know through MeFi mail and in this thread, and say what a good schedule would be.

Organising a meetup beats donning a hairshirt every time (late November London meetup?)

Mutant — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:13:36 -0800

Fancy a late November London Meetup? Since Mrs Mutant & I couldn't make it to the last London Meetup and the holidays are rapidly approaching, we thought as penance we'd try to organise an end of November London meetup. Would anyone would like to get together in roughly a fortnight, say the weekend of the 28th? We'd tentatively suggest either Friday or Saturday. Friday would be a later start, say 7PM or so, while for Saturday we'd like to suggest maybe a 4PM start. We're good either way. As we'll have kin visiting from Amsterdam (Marielle's vader, Roel, who attended a meetup with us in Amsterdam) we'd have to bugger off after roughly three hours but that way, in the manner of all enzymes, we'd emerge unscathed from the conflagration and not only able but willing to organise a December meetup.

How Not to Deal With Stress

meerkatty — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:59:33 -0800

The lying about having cancer thread. I'm responding here. My comment in this thread lasted about 12 hours and had 40+ favorites before it was removed. And I'd like to add one more thing, but am doing it over here to as not to make noise in that thread, since my comment was apparently noisy. That's totally fine, I'll admit that even though I was answering the question, the tone could have been better. But... . . .as this is the most appalling thing I have ever read on AskMe. What a hideous thing to say. Anonymous says in number 3 I have seen several doctors for various other problems in the past few months so the benefit of the doubt would have been nice, i.e., this is a person who has various medical issues, is under a tremendous amount of stress and is not coping the best way that he/she could. Read for context, people. Sheesh. I absolutely read for context. This person is a TEACHER. I know this is an unbelievably stressful, low paying job and I have an education background and many friends in the profession. But trying to deal with it by lying about having cancer? I'm sorry, it's appalling and this poster needs psychological help. Which is what my comment stated, along with the advice of telling the principal that there was a medical error and a misdiagnosis. And I did read that the poster had gone to several doctors over the past few months. This is an excuse for his or her behavior? Because when I go into the hospital next week for surgery and chemotherapy (not for cancer, but to treat another scary and stressful issue) - which is where I've spent way too much time over my own past few months - I won't be, in these apt words in the thread from Gainesvillain, using "stress [as] an acceptable excuse to lie, cheat, and steal. You are lying to your supervisors, cheating your students out of a role model, and potentially stealing from a system set-up to ensure your health in order to cover up your lie." I love Metafilter and have been overwhelmed by the good wishes sent to me from various members I have never met as my treatment has been going on. I was overwhelmed by the good wishes for cjorgensen yesterday. But this question makes me sick.

Guinness record for the Blue?

reenum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:27:06 -0800

Is there a record for most consecutive days making a meaningful FPP post? Just wondering. I've been making FPP posts of interesting articles and topics I've read over the last week, and they seem to be well received. I have a ton more stuff and will make posts until I run out of cool stuff or the mods tell me to cut it out.

Further China-like Censorship

peter_meta_kbd — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:27:36 -0800

Don't Believe In Sex Before Marriage? Don't Bother Saying it in a Comment, It'll Be Deleted The admins (and possibly the comment-flagging readers?) here apparently continue their insistence on censoring viewpoints based on content. About a week ago, there was one not-so-young lady who was asking for tips on how to have her first kiss etc. In my answer, I encouraged her to remember that anything she gives away to a passing stranger is a gift she can never give to a life partner, although I don't remember the exact wording. The admins deleted it (or maybe it was lost in the database?). So I sent a question about this to the admins through the contact form. It was not answered after 2 days. So I sent a personal email to the owner. He asked what was the problem and said that contact form entries are usually answered within a few minutes. I explained to him, and there was no further response from him in 2 days. I'm not saying that this website "should" respect freedom of speech in a different way, of course it's the owner's site and he can do whatever he wants as long as its legal, and I'm not saying his way of running the ship is illegal. I'm just pointing out what goes on here. Typical of the illiberal state of affairs in reactionary left wing contemporary circles. (closed)

MetaFilter Book Club this weekend

russilwvong — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:52:26 -0800

Just a reminder that the MetaFilter Book Club (previously) is discussing Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake starting Friday November 13, on this LibraryThing thread (possible spoilers). If you're interested in joining future discussions, check out the LibraryThing MetaFilter group. Nominations for our next discussion can be added to this thread.

Best Flame Out Ever! (Or maybe not).

cjorgensen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:29:14 -0800

I go in for surgery in a couple of hours to have a tumor removed from my neck. I'm getting a parotidectomy (link not safe for breakfast). I was going to spend some time thanking some people for pretty much being the people they are, for amusing me, or challenging me, pointing out interesting stuff, or giving me the information I needed, but honestly I don't have that kind of time and I don't want to leave someone out. So to the community as a whole I'll say thanks. I fully expect to make it, but in the event I don't it's been worth the $5. I feel much better about the surgery after reading this askme answer. This place has been great for me the last couple of weeks especially. Thanks.

Why doesnt Deleted Posts show up?

wheelieman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:53:16 -0800

No Deleted Posts Script? It doesnt seem to be working for me (Firefox 3.5, Windows Vista)

Robot goes adventuring.

iamabot — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:34:39 -0800

Sydney Meetup ?! Your friendly robot (that's me) will be in Sydney for work for the next 2 weeks, I'd like to meet some of the local folks if anyone will be in the general area.. Schedule is likely to be a bit wonky but I'm hoping I'll have a couple of evenings free.

DC Mefites play mini golf!

youcancallmeal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:38:46 -0800

After the EPIC MEETUP FAIL that was this weekend's DC meetup, there seems to be interest in trying again next month. Saturday December 5, 6pm at H Street Country Club. Can I get a hell yeah? (Baltimore mefites: I have a Jeep and can fit 4 people other than myself if anyone needs to carpool. Just shoot me a MeMail.)

100k auction?

mathowie — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:52:45 -0800

Behind the scenes, we've been thinking about what the 100,000th user on MeFi would mean, and how we could commemorate it, so I'm floating our idea here... When we hit 99,999, user signups will freeze for one week, and we'll launch a 7-day eBay auction for the 100,000th user account. All proceeds will be donated to Kiva.org at the end and we'll resume user signups. We've been talking about this privately for the past few weeks and given this morning's post on the issue I figure I'd make a new post instead of bury it in a comment. So, does this sound good to everyone? Is Kiva a good choice? For what it's worth, DonorsChoose.org (fund mostly US school kid projects) and Creative Commons were also front-runners but Kiva is still pretty cool and I could transfer the money to my team-linked account and disburse it to current listed projects, and recycle the money back into it as it gets repaid.

Another day, another digit.

mkultra — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:36:45 -0800

User registrations are quickly coming up on 100k (Highest user number is around 99300 as of this posting). Are there any plans to either commemorate the occasion, or reserve the number? I know that in the realm of Metafilter Lore, user numbers aren't supposed to mean anything, but this does seem like a milestone the site isn't likely to match anytime soon. Considering how lackluster the lucky users who got the other "10k multiples" are (either non-existent or non-contributing), how about an auction or some such thing?

AskMe to Recent Ac

Netzapper — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:44 -0800

Could one's AskMe questions perhaps show up in Recent Activity? As it stands, to keep track of your own AskMe thread, you have to manually check it through your general activity. Since questions seem to remain open for a very long time, it's possible that people can provide an answer long after the question has faded into the vaulted halls of memory. Would it not be better if asking an AskMe question acted as if you'd posted in your own thread, thereby adding it to your recent activity and bumping it to the top whenever somebody replies? Yea, would this not be a very shiny and well-behaved pony?

The GifWell Thread

taz — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:20:57 -0800

Can we have have the ability to upload gifs as our profile pix? I wanted to use this, but it was converted to a jpg. I can understand that file size could be a potential problem, and that you don't want outside-hosted images, but perhaps a size cap? Like no larger than 40KB? Obviously, not the most important beast in the pony stable, but I just thought I'd ask.

RSS feed or reader broken by long thread?

FishBike — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:58:22 -0800

The November Experiment thread has broken something RSS-related. I'm trying to follow that monster thread via RSS and I can't get the feed to load in my reader (RSSOwl 2.0.0 build 2009-10-24). Checking the log file, I'm seeing this:

MESSAGE Error loading 'Comments on: November is National Let's Try Obscuring Favorite Counts Month' Problem: Error on line 26308: The character reference must end with the ';' delimiter. Link: feed://metatalk.metafilter.com/18396/November-is-National-Lets-Try-Obscuring-Favorite-Counts-Month/rss

Is it the RSS feed that's broken, or can my reader just not handle it? Is it working for anyone else?

Watcha reading? Well, this thread for one thing

jokeefe — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:46:00 -0800

This recent thread, from October 8, is just about to close. It's been an extraordinary one, and is still active as of this afternoon. If you haven't read it, or if you stopped reading after the first few posts, you might want to visit or revisit the thread; you will find one of the finest and most thoughtful Metafilter discussions touching on sexism, sexual assault, and gender relations to have taken place here. Threads like this make Metafilter itself the best of the web. A special thank you to all who posted, especially to the women who told their personal stories.

iPhone posting

pwally — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:04:00 -0800

New iPhone interface! High fives! Although I had to switch back to the regular site to post this. But don't get me wrong.. looking good San Diego. Also, how do I switch back? (closed)