(Via Metafilter.)
Showing posts with label Metafilter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metafilter. Show all posts
"Once purified, the water is then frozen, where it is aged for at least 48 hours, increasing its density and making it colder and stronger."
Gourmet ice.
Discussion at Metafilter . Example:
Discussion at Metafilter . Example:
These are the sorts of people our society rewards. I thought about that and I shivered a bit.
ARTISAN. FUCKING. ICE.
I'm quitting America guys.
"O Holy Night"... over and over.
What's your favorite version? When have you had enough?
I was going to pretty much do exactly that post a couple days ago! But I never completely got my act together and now I've been scooped.
Ah, well... I did it with "Blue Christmas" in 2004, in the first Christmas on this blog, and things were much harder then... because we didn't have YouTube.
I was going to pretty much do exactly that post a couple days ago! But I never completely got my act together and now I've been scooped.
Ah, well... I did it with "Blue Christmas" in 2004, in the first Christmas on this blog, and things were much harder then... because we didn't have YouTube.
Go ahead!
Jump!
Via Metafilter, where I also found out (via email from Jaltcoh) about this amazing website where you can search for phrases in movie and TV scripts. So, for example, it found "Go ahead! Jump!" — or things quite close to that — in 27 phrases from 25 movies, including "Diva" ("Go ahead, jump."), "Back to the Future Part II" ("Go ahead, kid. Jump."), and "Mean Streets" ("Go ahead. Jump out the fuckin' window.")
Oh, I know what I'm going to search for. That line I've heard is in every movie. "2987 phrases from 2252 movies and series..." LOL. Hundreds of movies have it more than once.
Via Metafilter, where I also found out (via email from Jaltcoh) about this amazing website where you can search for phrases in movie and TV scripts. So, for example, it found "Go ahead! Jump!" — or things quite close to that — in 27 phrases from 25 movies, including "Diva" ("Go ahead, jump."), "Back to the Future Part II" ("Go ahead, kid. Jump."), and "Mean Streets" ("Go ahead. Jump out the fuckin' window.")
Oh, I know what I'm going to search for. That line I've heard is in every movie. "2987 phrases from 2252 movies and series..." LOL. Hundreds of movies have it more than once.
"Man, those sleeping-inside-a-giant-yam years are the worst."
"But it's all worth it when you can finally relax and listen to your huge infant-headed son's butt through a tin can on a string."
A Metafilter comment on a series of drawings by Ruth Gwily.
I'm not thrilled with the drawing itself, but the images give you something to talk about — is this The Life of a Woman? — and I love the simple website design that lets you scroll across a long series of drawings. That's so much better than a lot of thumbnails that you have to click to enlarge or do as a "slideshow."
A Metafilter comment on a series of drawings by Ruth Gwily.
I'm not thrilled with the drawing itself, but the images give you something to talk about — is this The Life of a Woman? — and I love the simple website design that lets you scroll across a long series of drawings. That's so much better than a lot of thumbnails that you have to click to enlarge or do as a "slideshow."
"He stands swaying, his actions only slightly interrupted by the amputation of half his head."
Writes Gordon Grice in "The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators."
I have exclamation points in the margin in this passage of the book, which I read a dozen years ago (when I went through a period of intense fascination with the essay form). I just got the book down from the shelf to answer a question over on Ask MetaFilter: "Can you please recommend good books (fiction or nonfiction) or websites about insects and/or spiders..? Not so much identification books, but ones about how they live, interact, etc." It was fun reading that again. I should leaf through other old books of mine and pluck out passages with exclamatory marginalia.
Then, while she is still eating, he crawls onto her back. He seems in this semiheadless state to have found a renewed vigor and sense of purpose. There will be no more showy stunts. His pale penis emerges from the rear of his body, extruded between the plates of his exoskeleton. His abdomen snakes around beside hers and forms a painful-looking curve. They begin to copulate.Mantis sex. That description! Whew! It goes on...
Turning her face almost 180 degrees, she regards him for a moment, as if his attentions were a distasteful surprise. Then, twisting with some difficulty, she brings her raptorial forelimbs into position and strikes again. This time she retrieves the remainder of his head and a scrap of his thorax, from which one foreleg dangles.He doesn't seem to mind! Ha. Well, try minding something when you have no mind. Anyway, there's quite a bit more, and the main idea is that the male insect's sexual performance is improved by the absence of a head: "He performs with more gusto once he's decapitated." Apparently, the brain is a source of inhibition.
He doesn't seem to mind.
I have exclamation points in the margin in this passage of the book, which I read a dozen years ago (when I went through a period of intense fascination with the essay form). I just got the book down from the shelf to answer a question over on Ask MetaFilter: "Can you please recommend good books (fiction or nonfiction) or websites about insects and/or spiders..? Not so much identification books, but ones about how they live, interact, etc." It was fun reading that again. I should leaf through other old books of mine and pluck out passages with exclamatory marginalia.
"I like to ask my kids interesting, but age appropriate, ethical and epistemological questions while we sit around the dinner table. Help me think of some more."
A great Ask Metafilter question.
(I give an answer, using my Metafilter screen name, Alizaria.)
Do you/did you do things like this with your children?
(I give an answer, using my Metafilter screen name, Alizaria.)
Do you/did you do things like this with your children?
The Artichoke MRI....
... insight into fruits and vegetables here. (Via Metafilter.)
ADDED: I took the artichoke GIF off the page. It seemed to be causing trouble. I'm not going to let a vegetable screw things up around here.
ADDED: I took the artichoke GIF off the page. It seemed to be causing trouble. I'm not going to let a vegetable screw things up around here.
"It's been an unforgiving couple of decades for 21-year-old meth addict Jayden, but he's still got that smile."
Fun with that website that purports to show you what you'll look like in 20 years.
Feel free to "toggle whether you're a drug addict or not."
And here's some clever sleuthing:
Feel free to "toggle whether you're a drug addict or not."
And here's some clever sleuthing:
And then I tried throwing a cartoon face at it, and got a glimpse of what’s actually going on: it looks like in20years is just blending one of a handful of pre-rendered facial templates onto the submitted face. I got curious about what all those templates look like, and so I found a very simple line-drawing face via google image search...Ha.
Photographs by/of Dennis Hopper.
Hopper took some cool photographs in the 1960s — cool not just because he had access to some of the celebrities of that era (Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Bill Cosby, Brian Jones, Tuesday Weld, Andy Warhol, etc.).
And Terry Richardson did a nice cigar-smoking sequence of Hopper.
Via Metafilter, which highlights the great photoblog Chasing Light.
And Terry Richardson did a nice cigar-smoking sequence of Hopper.
Via Metafilter, which highlights the great photoblog Chasing Light.
Dangerously contagious writing.
What writers should a good writer avoid getting tainted by?
The list discussed at the link is all about protecting the delicate sensibilities of novelists. To write, you need a good "ear." (Sorry, that's a metaphor. And a penchant for metaphors is something you might pick up from reading "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy.) The problem with reading is that it puts some author's way of saying things in the place in your mind that would otherwise be occupied by the way real human beings speak.
I think you can immunize yourself from the disease of overly influential writers by getting out there in the world listening to people and doing some talking yourself. Have conversations. Listen to other people and watch how they interact with you when you speak. Develop your voice in real life. Even if you don't end up with a good ear and an original writing style, you will have lived and you'll have your friends. Maybe even some stories to tell.
So put down that book...
... and go parading before it's too late.
And stop looking so scornful, it's twisting your face.
The list discussed at the link is all about protecting the delicate sensibilities of novelists. To write, you need a good "ear." (Sorry, that's a metaphor. And a penchant for metaphors is something you might pick up from reading "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy.) The problem with reading is that it puts some author's way of saying things in the place in your mind that would otherwise be occupied by the way real human beings speak.
I think you can immunize yourself from the disease of overly influential writers by getting out there in the world listening to people and doing some talking yourself. Have conversations. Listen to other people and watch how they interact with you when you speak. Develop your voice in real life. Even if you don't end up with a good ear and an original writing style, you will have lived and you'll have your friends. Maybe even some stories to tell.
So put down that book...
... and go parading before it's too late.
And stop looking so scornful, it's twisting your face.
"'Halogen, your explanation makes perfect sense.'/'The 'Arabic is the default language when Google gets confused' thing rings true for me.'"
"The title of this post rags on Tea Partiers, but commenters here are displaying a free-wheeling intuitive style of thinking that is actually the mode used in coming up with conspiracy theories. Where are you getting this feeling of "perfect sense" and what kind of truth bell have you got in your head and when does it ring? When you hear what you want to hear?"
I comment — as Alizaria — on that AskMetafiter post I blogged about yesterday.
ADDED: Speaking of creepy things in Arabic-looking writing, look at this Google search that brought someone to my blog today.
I comment — as Alizaria — on that AskMetafiter post I blogged about yesterday.
ADDED: Speaking of creepy things in Arabic-looking writing, look at this Google search that brought someone to my blog today.
"It may seem to a non-parent that this is mean-spirited and bitter."
"And perhaps some of the entries are. But a lot of them are just honest and good-natured venting, and also pretty hilarious shots of what massive damage kids can cause."
Remember that behind ever "hilarious shot" is a parent who decided that the first thing to do is — not to comfort, not to discipline, not to flush the Desitin out of their eyes — but to reach for a camera and take some pictures.
Remember that behind ever "hilarious shot" is a parent who decided that the first thing to do is — not to comfort, not to discipline, not to flush the Desitin out of their eyes — but to reach for a camera and take some pictures.
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