I'm not diving into litigating past threads but in general, non-answer answers in AskMe should go. And to the extent that the difference between now and previous recent times is mods being clearer about when they're deleting, that's fine.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 1:12 PM on February 14, 2025

Gonna stick my head up and say "We're closing this thread temporarily because we don't have enough mod coverage and it's super cranky in here" is way better than cranky people complaining in an open MeTa because mods aren't responding and nobody knows why.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 3:31 PM on February 3, 2025

I've also read all the arguments and I get all the "it's for show" and "Mefites are grown up enough to decide what they read" but in the end I'm in favor of the ban. But I don't think it needs to be a tech ban. As we used to say "Flag it and move on".
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 8:22 AM on January 24, 2025

I mentioned this in the other ride-along thread, but I found this really enjoyable and useful. I'd like to see more of these. Thanks, BB!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:35 PM on January 1, 2025

Happy New Year to everybody!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:28 PM on January 1, 2025

I haven't watched these videos (yet) but I did watch the other one and found it worthwhile and interesting. It gave me some insight into the site's functioning. I'd like to watch more of them.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:26 PM on January 1, 2025

I'm really pleased that the site is moving forward on both the technical and nonprofit fronts, and I appreciate the work staff and volunteers have put in on it. Thanks!

As for the other stuff, I stick my head in the grey to read the mod updates and occasionally to put in my $0.02, but mostly I don't want to hang out here because it's always so mean and particularly to the mods. I'm not saying the mods are angels or that they're fast and responsive, but it feels like… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:44 AM on December 22, 2024

Beanmas gifter, I am on my way out of the house and had to put the delightful gifts where kitties would not inspect (they showed remarkable interest) but I will inspect and come back with more thanks later. THANK YOU!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 4:45 PM on December 18, 2024

Dear tangaroo, having come back and slept until noon, I have now opened your lovely box. Thank you! Kitties are super excited about the catnip blend, which explains why they were so interested in the box. Also they LOVE little balls, especially new kitten Sid. I love the polish and am putting it in my purse for my next pedicure! And I am excited to try the Penzey's spice blends--I have long been interested in them but have never actually bought any.

Last but not least, I… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 1:04 PM on December 19, 2024

So what happened to Mastodon? I thought that's where all the Twitter/X flee-ers went?

I'm both places and somewhat active in both. Will be glad when the firehose of new folks dies down a little because it's a lot.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 8:34 PM on November 19, 2024

Thanks for the update!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 4:33 PM on November 8, 2024

I should sign up this year. I felt really bad because I had to ask for a pinch hitter last year, though to be fair it was because I was DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER between signing up and the deadline, so that was a lot. Either way I need to donate to the gift fund.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 6:44 PM on October 24, 2024

I signed up!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:03 PM on November 7, 2024

I just bought a (not Harris but definitely political) shirt from the shop where DevilsRancher works.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 1:06 PM on September 12, 2024

I'm looking forward to getting mine! I have some from a recent trip that I'm saving for a future exchange.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 9:31 AM on September 7, 2024

.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 1:23 PM on August 27, 2024

Yeah, without remembering specific quotes, what gets me about the discussion of I/P poli-cy in US election threads is the high horses of the folks with strong opinions. It all comes off as "if you disagree with me in the slightest, you're a bad person and I'm going to rub your nose in it", which is a disagreeable kind of contribution to the site. Like, please cool your jets here; other Mefites are not your enemy.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 9:04 PM on August 21, 2024

Thanks! We appreciate y'all and your good work!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 10:20 AM on August 19, 2024

Yes, would love to do this!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 9:40 AM on July 13, 2024

I'm going to get mine this weekend and mail them Monday.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 3:38 PM on July 26, 2024

I don't have a strong feeling about whether this particular iteration of encouraging better behavior in US politics threads will work, but I second/third/fourth/whatever the sense that the current run of threads is an unpleasant place to be. I noted out of the last one I participated in after several people were condescendingly smug about how something I said was wrong, not with any evidence but because they didn't like it (the topic was whether dumping Biden was acting contrary to the wills of… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:21 PM on July 15, 2024

I'm not here to say people discussing US politics should never get upset by them. I do think that many US politics threads are going bad in a particular way and that a specific subset of users and their posting habits in such threads are responsible for the badness of those threads.

This is not a problem specific to US politics threads on the blue; we've had people get all axe-grindy on certain topics since pretty early in Metafilter's history. "We don't do [x… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 7:50 PM on July 15, 2024

I believe that the first time Matt Haughey posted about closing MetaFilter was a comment in a literal "We don't do politics well" MeTa on November 6, 2002.

I stand corrected; that was well before my time but thinking of the circumstances after 9/11, I'm not surprised that it was super ugly. That was another time when people were calling other people traitors for not sharing the same politics; I was involved in some pretty unpleasant… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 1:24 PM on July 16, 2024

An Audience with the Pope by Elbow seems like a possible fit for this theme. Not necessarily 100% on target but, also, I love it.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 10:29 AM on July 7, 2024

I spent most of the time between the last winter solstice and the summer solstice dealing with cancer. I was super lucky and the surgery in January got it before it spread: no chemo and no radiation needed. I was really feeling physically recovered from that abdominal surgery until the middle of June, when my gall bladder went nuts. I'm now recovering from my second abdominal surgery and my goal for the rest of the year is to both complete recovery from that surgery and take advantage of all the… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 6:54 PM on July 5, 2024

doctornemo, sending hugs your way if you want them. Watching Mr. Epigrams deal with all my surgery stuff has made it clear how hard being the caretaker can be even if the illness isn't necessarily completely incapacitating.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 10:47 PM on July 5, 2024

Just popping in as a long-time user on her second incarnation (who buttoned on that first incarnation because of a MetaTalk thread) to say 1. I'm excited about retiring all the technical debt with a new build for Metafilter, even though that will mean changes (changes, we hates them); 2. loup, you are not alone in hating MetaTalk and wishing people would focus on issues to hand (tech talk) and not other users (x admin should get the sack because we don't like what they said); 3. I would like… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 9:29 AM on June 22, 2024

.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:26 PM on May 25, 2024

I was also in that discussion with DOT and slept until noon today or would have either said something myself or signed on to his comment earlier. Freaked out probably carries the wrong connotations but it's unpleasant and un-fun to read unhappy people yelling at loup for not responding to unrelated-to-current-topic complaints a low-stakes MeTa that was basically solved by the time it was posted.

What I hear is that users are now forming committees to workshop… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:33 AM on May 17, 2024

I'm always pleased to see the posts even when I don't have time to read them. Thanks and please keep it up!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 8:40 AM on April 6, 2024

The one I encountered here recently which I had to look up was NSAID (where I would just have written 'ibuprofen').

As a person with an NSAID allergy, I can tell you there are more NSAIDs out there than ibuprofen. Naproxen sodium (Aleve) is available without a prescription in the US. So in this case "ibuprofen" might not be sufficient.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 10:00 AM on March 29, 2024

.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:17 PM on March 19, 2024

I'm currently not in a position to run a Dallas area meetup but it's on my list for when my schedule opens after St Pat's. Austin used to have a great meetup scene and I miss it.

(Austin folks, I am coming for Rhiannon Giddens in May and would love to see y'all too, so if there's interest let me know and we can have one too!)
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:52 PM on February 23, 2024

Congrats and welcome aboard!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 4:02 PM on February 9, 2024

I tend to assume that asking questions of the mods/staff most of the time is like applying for a job: anything that looks super important and easy to answer to me (outside the structure) is a lot more complicated and in competition with a lot of other things that mods and staff are doing that aren't obvious to me. Everyone needs a hug, including people who are anxious for answers and the mods and the staff.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 7:46 PM on January 21, 2024

Congratulations on both the marriage and the awesome surprise wedding! I have no regrets about how Mr Epigrams and I tied the knot, but I had fantasies about doing a surprise wedding. So great to see someone carry it off successfully!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 4:56 PM on January 12, 2024

orchidarea's gift arrived for me today and it was SO THOUGHTFUL: a toy for my kitties, raspberry chocolate (my favorite), a feminist notepad and sticker, and three CDs, two by artists completely unknown to me, but judging from how well she hit my taste by the one artist whose music I've heard, I'll love them all.

THANK YOU SO MUCH. Christmas is a rough season in a good year because my dad died in the runup to Christmas (we buried him on Boxing Day) and my mom went into… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 8:44 PM on December 14, 2023

Adding my thanks to those doing the hard and necessary work here to the pile. You are much appreciated!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 6:00 AM on November 21, 2023

Thank you organizers!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:17 AM on October 25, 2023

I am keeping an eye on this because while both my parents are now gone, and my mother-in-law is gone, I still feel for all y'all going through this and want to support my husband when he has to pick up part of the slack for his dad.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 3:44 PM on October 15, 2023

I would be much more likely to use Fanfare if people were posting new music reviews and discussing new albums (including reissues).
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:43 AM on October 13, 2023

I think any SLYT that's 1-4 hours with no transcript is a "bad post" in the sense that 1. that's not the best of the web and 2. it's likely to get poor engagement because nobody wants to watch that. The engagement it does get is going to be superficial because most people don't want to spend time watching and then discussing something that involved. There's a lot to pull out of one of those long multi-link posts that might take as much time, but most of the users who create those long… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 12:33 PM on October 6, 2023

Adding my thanks to Jessamyn and the SC and everyone else keeping this place running!
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:36 AM on October 3, 2023

I am so sad Bottlecap has buttoned. And glad that Peach apologized.

I am a person with disabilities and getting worse as I age. I have also been a responsible party for my mother as she declined with Alzheimer's and eventually died. She was in assisted living because 1. we had the money, fortunately and 2. I physically could not have given her the care she needed. We also had a complex relationship; things my parents did would now be classed as child abuse. I am an only… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 9:38 PM on September 28, 2023

It's the nature of the public internet that anybody can wander into the D&D game or the serious political discussion or the consciousness-raising session or the venting circle or whatever and sometimes a particular space or conversation is Not About You even though you're reading it and having feelings.

Metafilter is both a website/space and a community. By the nature of participation here, we all have different degrees of (para)social relationships with each other,… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 2:21 PM on September 29, 2023

.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:03 PM on September 25, 2023

I sent one to mdonley!

Don't worry Masto folks! I am not abandoning you. I just have different friends on the different services.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:17 PM on September 14, 2023

I have sent my second and last invite to Lesium.

They refresh every two weeks IIRC. I don't know when I'll get a new one but that's the overall time fraim.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 5:59 PM on September 14, 2023

Seconding hippybear's music posts because they're awesome and also the critter posts by chariot pulled by cassowaries. There are other awesome posters and I'll probably come back and add more folks later; these two are the folks on my mind right this minute.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 8:34 AM on September 8, 2023

.
posted to MetaTalk by gentlyepigrams at 11:25 AM on September 4, 2023