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I've been eased out of any catharsis or shock by the knowledge that his work had ended and that he would not be directing or acting anymore.

There are three of his movies that I've never seen.

No hay banda, and yet, we hear a band.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:15 PM on January 16, 2025

I got a Toto Washlet with a remote control for my mom last year, as she is elderly and disabled, and now additional Washlets are being installed, one by one, in the homes of the people that take turns taking care of her.
The remote control makes a bathroom visit an entirely hands-free operation, but I am still unable to break the habit of washing my hands afterwards.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:13 AM on January 12, 2025

Requires a permit to own one in Tx, illegal most states as pets.
Seeing the problems with pythons in Florida,
I'd be a little worried about a breeding pair of kangaroos loose in Tx.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 1:02 PM on December 25, 2024

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Just one avenue over and two streets up, it's strange that this anonymous guy might somehow be in the same position.

You know who really does have to worry about being murdered because of their jobs?
Convenience store clerks and gas station attendants.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:00 AM on December 4, 2024

arxiv link:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03719
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 2:19 PM on October 26, 2024

Again, but harder:

“John,” he said, and Huston glanced over at him. “Fuck you.”
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:31 PM on September 13, 2024

Digital trunked radio system?
Failure of radios, plural?

Was it a failure of a system, rather than a failure of a radio?
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:24 AM on August 19, 2024

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:29 AM on January 25, 2024

For a long time, I often typed "begin" when I had intended to type "being".
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 1:45 AM on January 5, 2024

Adding extra carbon to the concrete mix might be increasing the rate of curing, like adding carbon dioxide to fresh concrete in the CarbonCure™ process, or the natural curing and hardening of set concrete over time by the carbon dioxide in the air.
I don't know if you can pyrolyze coffee grounds greenly (that is, fixing more carbon than is used to create it), but it seems possible as long as you don't use any fossil fuel to do it.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 7:48 AM on October 3, 2023

I'll remember her for the Mojave Preserve, and the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, two important and durable conservation achievements.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:06 AM on September 29, 2023

surlyben, here's a link to an EIS that I believe is for the current permit period:

https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/nepa/93518/175007/212561/Burning_Man_Event_SRP-Final_EIS_Vol1.pdf
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 7:28 PM on September 4, 2023

As an adult I used to get up early to watch Pee Wee's Playhouse.
I'm not sorry.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:02 PM on July 31, 2023

I drove from San Jose to El Segundo on August 6, 2015, and had only the radio. FM stations would come and go as I drove through the ranges of their transmitters and their repeaters.

The GOP Primary debate was broadcast live and complete and was easily found on AM radio stations, and when the station I was listening to faded out, I could punch seek and I could hear the debate with scarcely a dropped word on the next AM station down the dial, along with what seemed like… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 6:33 PM on May 15, 2023

I'm so glad to have heard his work.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 2:01 AM on December 13, 2022

That music: I wonder about its generation.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:20 AM on December 2, 2022

Sounds like chunks of Jesus Christ Super Star!
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 6:02 PM on October 21, 2022

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 2:28 PM on July 31, 2022

I found what appears so far to be an excellent and pertinent biography of Tina Modotti. Like almost everyone else, I only knew her as a model in a photograph by Edward Weston, and I wonder if she as been as completely elided from his Daybooks as Steinbeck's wife was from The Log from the Sea of Cortez.
I can't immediately lay hands on my copies of the Daybooks to find out.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:18 AM on July 25, 2022

It bears repeating: don't talk to the Police:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:55 PM on June 28, 2022

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 2:59 PM on June 12, 2022

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 4:32 PM on June 7, 2022

Sound Chaser, from Relayer
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 6:15 PM on May 26, 2022

I'm not too surprised to see only sparse discussion of unit testing as a means to improve reproducibility: tests are boring but a mainstay for sanity.

testthat seems popular (https://cloud.r-project.org/web/packages/testthat/index.html), but I wonder what percentage of popular R packages have tests of their own.

The testing chapter looks pretty good: https://r-pkgs.org/tests.html
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:42 AM on May 1, 2022

That Labov paper is distilled and potent:

"I want to give you some indication of how serious these reactions to Headstart's problems are, because you don't have to have a great many psychologists going around saying that it is time for the gas ovens or mass sterilization. All you need is a few, because those who want to apply eugenic foresight only need one or two experts to tell them that what they are doing is scientifically correct and morally justified."
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 1:10 PM on April 22, 2022

Borrowed a car from my brother when we were in town. He's was a late century car and boat mechanic before he started working for Microsoft, and had made a hobby of raising older abandoned-at-home Mercedes diesel sedans from the dead, so we got one of those.

There's a standard procedure for starting diesels that we had to be taught, but the shutdown procedure seemed weird. You stopped the car, got out and opened the hood, found the open end of a particular white nylon… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:16 AM on April 2, 2022

For a while I worked in a building that was owned by a big real estate company in Palo Alto. They officed in the front and our technology company parked in the back, also where we entered and exited our rental via the backstairs to the second floor. Nice persimmon tree. Good view of the dumpster.

One day I saw an IBM 5150, a monochrome monitor and a keyboard in that dumpster Someone must have just upgraded to an AT! The ST-251 survived the toss and the PC booted right… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 5:53 PM on March 23, 2022

Connolly explains the head to toe tights (with a hood) seen on the diver in the first video.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:58 AM on January 1, 2022

cribbed from a Scientific American review of his collection, The Insect Societies:

"It is written with clarity and verve, but what distinguishes it particularly is its catholic mastery of all of biology, from paleontology to formal genetics, from ethology to biochemistry."

He spoke of conservation with authority and conviction. Here he is with Bill Moyers:

https://vimeo.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:40 AM on December 28, 2021

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:10 PM on November 25, 2021

Pretty funny to have sport of PASCAL and COBOL in the same comment section. I once worked on an OS/VS COBOL interactive software engineering workstation. With the compiler written in PASCAL. COBOL programs were run on a virtual machine with an IDE front end on a bitmapped display. It was a year without a summer.

You can get something like that today, from Microfocus. It's based on Visual Studio 2019 (or Eclipse: shudder): https://www.microfocus.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:20 PM on November 4, 2021

At least the children will learn how it works...
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:20 AM on October 19, 2021

I wonder if there's a Life game for it yet...
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 11:56 AM on October 12, 2021

"The Aristocrats!"

A lot of people were choosing sides after 9/11, and it was only a few years before the rosy glow of shared national calamity had faded enough to use the towers as part of GWB's re-election campaign, to divide and conquer.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:14 PM on September 11, 2021

I didn't think much of it the first time I saw it, but it was coherent and it was unique: the abuse delivered to current, recognizable brands (Starbucks, Fuddruckers, Carl's Junior, Costco), the lampooning of entertainment's reliance on violence ("Rehabilitation", "Oh My Balls"), and the unseen AI-operated economy and social order made me watch it again.

Also, Fox hated it very much, and tried to kill it: that means something.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:55 AM on September 6, 2021

Sure got cold after the rain fell.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 1:18 PM on July 30, 2021

Poplars and cottonwoods make a smell when leafing out in the spring described as propolis. It comes from a golden, sticky substances on the newest leaves. You've smelled it, but likely you don't know what dealt it.

The Jeffrey Pine in the Sierra Nevada make a distinctly vanilla scent. You shove your nose into the bark at eye level and inhale very slowly through your nose. You can hug if you want people in the rest stops on I-80 to stare at you.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 6:14 PM on May 3, 2021

RoF, I came to the same conclusion. I started driving quite late for an American, and I always wore a helmet when bicycling. At first, I felt naked without my helmet in the car (later I felt naked without seatbelts on the bike).

As a pedestrian and bicyclist in an urban area, I had spent a lot of time being "talked to" by cops when they didn't have anything better to do, at night or in non-residential areas, and I imagined that wearing my white Tourlite Bell… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 1:33 PM on March 1, 2021

I was perusing books at the Santa Trinita Fry's and my vision grayed out slowly enough that I just had time to reach out to a bookshelf to steady myself against the natural loss of proprioception that seemed certain to follow. Good thing I did, too: I went entirely blind.

Got better in a minute. Couldn't figure it out: not a TIA, not in both eyes, or my scintillating scotoma. Never had seizures or migraines before or since.

Over a decade later,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:26 PM on February 24, 2021

"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:59 AM on February 17, 2021

No one really wants the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1965...

That's probably true. The 1975 edition is better for a lot of reasons.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:46 PM on January 12, 2021

Colin Powell, whitewasher of My Lai, yellowcake crisis actor for Bush at the UN, has come out to count coup on Trump by calling for him to be as honorable as Nixon was in his time of crisis.
If only Trump were as honorable as Nixon...
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:30 AM on January 8, 2021

No senator.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 12:38 AM on January 7, 2021

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 3:24 PM on December 30, 2020

Like TedW said:

http://www.nyheritage.org/collections/bentley-snow-crystal-collection

There are a ridiculous number of megapixels in a glass plate negative, if the focus is good.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 8:08 AM on December 21, 2020

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posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 10:06 AM on November 8, 2020

I'm putting up my winter solstice lights early, and they're going to burn every night until January 20, 2021.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:30 AM on November 7, 2020

Miss Atomic Bomb is memorialized in the Atomic Testing Museum, off of the Strip in Las Vegas.

It would be wonderful if people walked the Strip in that costume, handing out discounts to the Museum.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 9:10 AM on October 19, 2020

This might be the "warmest" medium that I can use to apprehend the debate. I feel ill.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 5:48 PM on September 29, 2020

Cereal first, then freshly-shaken whole milk poured slowly, sufficient to just to wet all cereal.

Favorites were Vitacrunch Almond, no sugar; Sugar Pops, no sugar, no milk.

Raisin Bran, paved with sugar until capillary action could no longer wet it, then excavated a spoon at a time from sugar to the bottom of the bowl.

Bowl emptied of milk by drinking from the rim, swished to entrain sugar sludge.
posted to MetaFilter by the Real Dan at 4:48 PM on September 7, 2020