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Dear LAPD Foundation:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,

etc., etc.
posted to MetaFilter by Ickster at 1:10 PM on April 19, 2024

(b) the kid's presentation is not bad enough to reflect poorly on the family in general

So many aspects of my childhood were controlled so that I didn't make my parents look bad (specific yet entirely arbitrary metrics that varied widely based on a number of things but mostly my mom's mood), it was absolutely miserable, and one of the prime contributors to why I don't have much of a relationship with my parents today.

Some... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by phunniemee at 12:04 PM on March 23, 2024

That's really awful news. He fostered so many meetups in so many places and made this place better and more of a community than it would be without him.
posted to MetaTalk by jacquilynne at 8:34 AM on March 20, 2024

On Twitter's destruction, it's also possible to mourn the good things there were about it. A flotilla of great bots. Black Twitter. A place where worthy causes could be promoted. A visible forum where corporations could be shamed for their actions, and once in a great while might actually do something to correct them.
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 10:44 PM on November 29, 2023

This post is what finally got me to pay my five dollars and join this site, after many years of intermittent lurking. I think about the same question often, and I don't have a simple answer, but I have found a lot of delight by following blogs I discovered through ooh.directory. That means using an RSS reader--I've been using The Old Reader now for longer than I ever used Google Reader--and subscribing to the feed of newly added blogs from the site. Anything that looks interesting is easy to... [more]
posted to Ask MetaFilter by brendn at 3:54 PM on November 27, 2023 marked best answer

I have a theory that Ono, as a conceptual artist, is quietly responsible for raising the Beatles to mythic stature in the band's afterlife. You don't just get that by being a great pop band. You get that by making specific choices about framing your legacy. And I would put money on her being very savvy about that.

Also, Dar Williams singing I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono.
posted to MetaFilter by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:42 AM on June 24, 2015

Have We Learned Nothing? (David Klion, n+1)

There’s a pervasive censoriousness right now—conservatives denouncing liberals, liberals denouncing leftists, leftists denouncing other leftists—that’s immediately familiar from the days and weeks after 9/11. Somehow, the upshot of all the denunciations and condemnations is the right’s unchallenged hold over the discourse, and, more importantly, the ultimate facts on the ground.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by non canadian guy at 12:24 PM on October 12, 2023

To me this thread and the Nazi thread have something in common which is a request for a quicker, stronger enforcement of site norms against hateful rhetoric. A lot of folks here are arguing that there is some value in keeping some misogyny around and arguing against it within the original thread for educational purposes, I guess, or because it’s not serious enough to merit deletion or, as one person put it, censorship.

And MiraK is arguing that there’s a lot more value... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by mai at 10:02 AM on October 9, 2023

This is excellent - I work in games and having the time and budget to add accessibility options is something I’d really like, so it’s great to see companies with the resources to do so putting some real effort into it. I believe accessibility can be done without too much extra cost, personally, but it takes a real commitment from the developer and publisher to keep focus on it and design it in from the beginning, rather than having it as a nice-to-have that gets dropped as soon as the project is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Jon Mitchell at 10:04 PM on October 4, 2023

It's wild that people think this is, like, a valid excuse that clears everything up or whatever.

Nobody thinks that up here, or at least very few people. In Canada, people are re-grappling with the Deschênes Commission, with calls to release the names in the second half of it, and an examination of how there is a real history in Canada that relates to this moment, as well as to the burial of historic atrocities, as well as the disturbing UN vote in... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by warriorqueen at 4:30 AM on October 3, 2023

The Nazi Bar metaphor is about shunning contemporary neo-Nazis even if they're being nominally "civil", not regular people going on an insensitive historical tangent about a particular SS unit. The existing deletion and warning feels appropriate (which IMHO should have been followed by a threadban+time-out for continuing to belabor the finer points of Hunka's historical context),

I could be misreading what Fizz wrote, but that follow-up you... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:42 AM on September 30, 2023

OK, look, this is getting pointlessly nasty with a lot of weird throw off attacks on people, because... why, exactly? I think we all (or almost all) agree that the Nazis were terrible. Even the comments in question were not arguing that Nazis or the SS weren't awful, although they were making apologies for the the specific guy by spinning a fantasy about his motivations. I am not excusing this; because, if you let this rhetoric slide, the move from bad actors is to push things a little further,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by GenjiandProust at 3:26 PM on September 29, 2023

This wasn't just one comment and a bunch of people making a "snap judgement," this was a series of comments that received significant pushback over two days. There was a ton of back-and-forth in the first thread where he tried dropping knowledge bombs, that other users dissected in detail, including well-sourced citations. If that wasn't bad enough, it was followed by wandering into another thread about and dropping a random "well, actually" turd regarding Nazi military power,... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 4:54 AM on September 29, 2023

I agree with Rock 'em Sock 'em that the best thing the mods could have done here was to give the user a verbal warning that they need to take a break from the thread, as well as give them a time out. This should be the bare minimum, or starting point, for this type of commenter-related dumpster fire. I was disappointed by the moderator response.
posted to MetaTalk by nightrecordings at 4:01 PM on September 28, 2023

This reminds me of the true story of Grant Hadwin cutting down a tree in BC, Canada as an act of protest against the logging industry.

It's interesting how we decide which trees are worthy of grief.
posted to MetaFilter by honor the agreement at 7:34 PM on September 28, 2023

Someone destroyed something that other people enjoyed. Something that had stood for centuries. Something that was a symbol of the place. Something that was alive. Something that was beautiful. Worst of all, they did it intentionally and for no apparent reason.

If anyone is struggling to understand why that's making people upset, then I have no idea what to say.
posted to MetaFilter by nfalkner at 6:28 PM on September 28, 2023

Thanks, nfalkner, on preview you said what I was struggling to put into words.

A piece of culture that was important to a lot of folks was just destroyed. It doesn't really matter that it was a tree, or that there are n-billion other trees in the world, or that it was in a movie.

Is anything in your own world culturally important to you? Now imagine someone cutting it in half with a chainsaw for the hell of it.
posted to MetaFilter by swift at 6:36 PM on September 28, 2023

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America
by Matthew Olzmann

Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by bondcliff at 6:38 PM on September 28, 2023

The thesis is we will become a Nazi bar if we don't push back on these narratives. The offending poster kept making those sorts of comments even after the creator of the thread asked him not to. And no mod action was taken. I could take a guess that Fizz flagged the shit out of a lot of comments and nothing was done.
posted to MetaTalk by Kitteh at 4:36 PM on September 28, 2023

I would say that you don’t understand correctly, nor do you seem to be making a strenuous effort to do so.
posted to MetaFilter by Horace Rumpole at 4:44 PM on September 28, 2023

I kind of blame all the SF/F/comics/anime/video games that want to have a “rehabilitated villain” storyline. “Sure he participated in genocide, but he had a hard childhood/was misled/wanted to save an orphanage!” It trains us to want a dramatic antihero turn. In real life, it turns out that people who joined the SS were, at the end of the day, members of the SS no matter what their initial impetus, and the lack of solid documentation that any given guy did what the SS regularly did does not... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by GenjiandProust at 2:25 PM on September 28, 2023

mittens, the deleted comment was: "For me, "Waffen SS" doesn't immediately conjure up the SS-run concentration camps and Operation Reinhard(t) extermination camps. Like their uniforms there is a bit of gray here, IMO."

Honestly not as bad as the "Hitler and his form of national socialism was really delivering the goods, until it all started unraveling in late '41." on a different post by... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by qi at 2:52 PM on September 28, 2023

That thread didn't take long to descend into Middle Aged White Guys Explaining WWII to Everyone Else.

Here's the thing: tough applesauce that the Nazi who was praised in Parliament had no good choices in the war. That sucks, pardner, but at the end of the day, he's still a Nazi. And it turns here in Canada, we are really good at turning a blind eye to Nazis!

Shout out to all my Canadians who pointed out the very very troublesome occurrence of... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Kitteh at 1:34 PM on September 28, 2023

Fizz, I can hear that comment.
posted to MetaFilter by gc at 10:19 AM on September 28, 2023

Chris, is that a weed? I'm calling the police!
posted to MetaFilter by neuron at 9:18 AM on September 28, 2023

This looks like it's at the intersection of Sable and Heaven's Vault - both of which you should play - and I am fully invested.
posted to MetaFilter by mhoye at 12:00 PM on September 27, 2023

I posted an blog piece yesterday with little framing, so I want to apologize for that. This was in the lead to piece but I should have made more clear in the post:
"With that background, let’s get a few things out of the way, before we embark any further. I’m putting them in bullet points so they’re abundantly clear:
While you can play with words — does one need to be a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party to be a Nazi? Is fighting with the Nazis... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mazola at 8:51 AM on September 27, 2023

I just got started with Pocket Casts, after Stitcher recently shut down. It's fine! Better than Stitcher, actually. And I'll note that I haven't had the skipping audio problems that people are reporting, and I have NOT done their unlimited-battery workaround. It's been fine as is.
posted to MetaFilter by intermod at 10:00 PM on September 26, 2023

Look - something 7 million Ukrainians made the correct decision and fought for the Allies under the Soviets. Around ~200,000 fucking freaks made the unambiguously wrong decision to fight for the evil side (that's the Nazis. They're evil. Just a reminder since a disturbingly high amount of people on this thread and in Canada's parliament seem to be unclear about that.)
Many Ukrainian Nazis ended up in Canada, and some of them were so fucking evil and stupid that they didn't just put... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by youthenrage at 5:52 PM on September 26, 2023

I have to say, I was reading this thread on the bus on my way to work. The story (and thread) seemed incredible -- how did a major Canadian political figure end up honoring an SS soldier in front of the whole nation. When I finished work, I caught up on the thread, and I find myself with much the same question but also the weird experience of reading MeFites defend the idea of joining the SS. I'm utterly bewildered.
posted to MetaFilter by GenjiandProust at 1:43 PM on September 26, 2023

Unless I'm missing something, the only use of "grotesque" in that thread was describing a poster's own parent, not a member of the community. I do have Feelings about this but I also believe people directly involved in end-of-life care are entitled to be free from my judgement when describing their experience. mubba's comment closely parallels my take on this: it is not the same as deploying a thoughtlessly ableist slur in a different context.

Also, I'm far... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by pullayup at 12:02 PM on September 26, 2023

googling "nazi but very good reasons"
posted to MetaFilter by Operation Papercut at 10:47 AM on September 26, 2023

Also the CPC can shut the fuck up because in 2019 they were the ones bragging they got him elected as speaker of the house to replace Geoff Regan...

Would have linked it sooner but it took me a while to find an article with the info.
posted to MetaFilter by WaterAndPixels at 10:20 AM on September 26, 2023

every Ukrainian had to pick their poison

What a lovely, sanitized way of saying that many of them, "supported and in some cases actively enabled the systemic massacre of nearly 1.5 million Jews."
posted to MetaFilter by qi at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2023

We're not talking about Oskar Schindler or a press-ganged peasant haunted by the atrocities he was forced to commit at gunpoint. Yes he joined when he was 16, but he also described his time in the SS as the best of his life in this century.

You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to him.
posted to MetaFilter by Reyturner at 9:51 AM on September 26, 2023

that's just it tho. Ukrainians in 1941-44 could throw in with either Hitler or Stalin. There was no third option except trying to sail to Turkey or something.

if i'd had a comment deleted with a mod note for defending nazis i would simply not continue my line of argumentation in the thread
posted to MetaFilter by Operation Papercut at 9:18 AM on September 26, 2023

[The comment and link about the Waffen SS has been removed.

A few responses have been left up to point out the problematic elements of defending the Nazis.
]
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 7:46 AM on September 26, 2023

Like I'm shaking, there is absolutely no grey on this and I think there has been some uncomfortable apologia (not just on Metafilter) on behalf of far-right elements in Ukraine and I know Russia is terrible and the aggressor but it has been terrifying to me to see people who I have generally believed to be liberal and supportive allies elide some really bad stuff. I don't want to get in a fight about this so I will probably not post further in this thread but framing support for a literal Nazi... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by an octopus IRL at 7:27 AM on September 26, 2023

Part of the reason why hard right ultra-nationalism (and all the nastiness that comes with it) can be tolerated and metabolized, systemically speaking if not aesthetically, is that people with a lot of power and a lot of influence consider it a preferable expression of popular discontent to the poors having class consciousness.

Not a Trudeau fan, but almost anything is better than the CPC.

This is, and had always been, the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Reyturner at 7:02 AM on September 26, 2023

My Canadian husband has often said that Canadian governments tend to run roughly a few years behind the US in terms of who's in power. (I mean, it's not a hard and fast rule.) The US recently did four years of Trump; by that metric, we would be in our last second term phase with Trudeau (parallel to the eight years of Obama), and primed for PP to get his own kick at the can.

I know CPC underestimates Trudeau constantly, but this doesn't look good for our next election.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 6:35 AM on September 26, 2023

Like, how do you not do your due diligence for this sort of event? I am curious about the potential blowback for Trudeau, especially since PP is bringing the worst of the US to Canadian politics (added and abetted by other Con politicians).

I tried explaining this to my mom back home in the US and just sort of got tripped up on, "Yeah, I don't know how this passed officials."

Edited to add: the speaker needs to step down full stop.
posted to MetaFilter by Kitteh at 5:19 AM on September 26, 2023

You would think endorsing an actual member of the SS would be a career-ending sort of thing, yes.

You'd be surprised. Here's for example Peter Savaryn, who "served as Chancellor of the University of Alberta from 1982 to 1986 and was involved with the university Board of Governors and Senate. Savaryn was awarded an honorary degree in 1987 from the University of Alberta, and was also named to the Order of Canada that year." And also:... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kmt at 5:56 AM on September 26, 2023

Missing Wings of Desire
posted to MetaFilter by TwoToneRow at 11:35 AM on September 24, 2023

The beauty of art is that its power is capable of achieving one than more goal. I don't think you need to be black to enjoy Poetic Justice. Yes, the movie is centered on experiences that are going to be more particular and familiar to many people who are black, but how is that different from any other movie with broad appeal that happens to be centered on white experiences? The human experience is a spectrum, but there are central themes that pervade nearly all walks of life.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by nightrecordings at 10:28 AM on September 23, 2023

It's also currently free on Tubi.

Love a romantic lead who's also a USPS employee.

Also, Maya Angelou wrote those poems (on preview, yes!)
posted to MetaFilter by the primroses were over at 10:00 AM on September 23, 2023

Zendesk doesn't do that automatically - it's up to the publisher to have put in workflows to prioritise messages. I'm involved in zendesk stuff at work and our protocol which is pretty standard for helpdesks is to merge the two tickets if somehow they get split up with separate request numbers. If you have the same request number on both, you're fine. Otherwise, reply to one, list the two request numbers and ask the agent to merge the two tickets for you - it's super easy.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by dorothyisunderwood at 11:17 AM on September 22, 2023 marked best answer

Seems like kind of a great time to be into opulent single-player RPGs, dang. When it rains it pours.
posted to MetaFilter by Phobos the Space Potato at 10:12 AM on September 22, 2023

I played the main game last year after the major bug fix releases. It was quite good! The visual design in particular was fantastic, remarkably good textures for clothes etc. I also liked the writing quite a bit, lots of memorable characters and quests. Game balance was a bit off (the magic spells quickhacks got super powerful very early) but it was fun.

I can't wait to play the new Phantom Liberty DLC. The reviews are very strong. I gather the 2.0 changes to the base... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Nelson at 8:41 AM on September 22, 2023

re: I'm not willing to cede the meaning of words to fascists.

I know you don’t mean it in a bad way, but I think it’s worth discussing anyway.

The problem with descriptors like fascist immigrants is that there’s an implication of "fascist because immigrant" or "all those damned fascist immigrants" which are perfectly valid readings of the phrase. Immigrants are one... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by UN at 1:57 AM on September 22, 2023

Transported to the UK for analysis and preservation, the wooden artefacts are being stored in tanks that mimic the waterlogging that preserved them so beautifully for the last half-million years. But they will soon return to Zambia to be displayed.

DON'T DO IT!!! IT'S A TRAP!!! DON'T LET ANYONE BRITISH NEAR YOUR CULTURAL ARTIFACTS!!!
posted to MetaFilter by slogger at 1:07 PM on September 21, 2023