arduinna

Posted by chavenet

https://www.metafilter.com/210630/The-relationship-between-Computing-and-its-history-is-that-of-an-amnesiac

Before Hackernews, before Twitter, before blogs, before the web had been spun, when the internet was just four universities in a trenchcoat, there was *BYTE*. A monthly mainline of the entire personal computing universe, delivered on dead trees for a generation of hackers. Running from September 1975 to July 1998, its 277 issues chronicled the Cambrian explosion of the microcomputer, from bare-metal kits to the dawn of the commercial internet. This zoomable map shows every page of every issue of BYTE starting from the front cover of the first issue (top left) to the last page of the final edition (bottom right). [via JoeZydeco's linkme]

BYTE previously

https://www.metafilter.com/210630/The-relationship-between-Computing-and-its-history-is-that-of-an-amnesiac

umadoshi

I'm not in deadline danger, but I'm also still not where I'd like to be with my current rewrite; I've also been sleeping badly and Dayjob has needed somewhat more brain energy than usual (for a non-crunch time) this week. So I'm taking tomorrow off to go with the Thanksgiving long weekend, and we'll see what can be done. Wish me luck!

Flu and covid vaccinations are rolling out provincially (just announced this morning), and hopefully we can get ours scheduled for fairly soon. (Which isn't actually urgent, given how little exposure risk we have, but I'd still like to get it done.)

Part of my brain seems to really think there can never be too many mugs or too many blankets. I'm not sure how it came to this conclusion, when storage space (perhaps especially kitchen cupboard space) is finite and while both mugs and blankets can be used in rotation, it can get excessive fast. I wonder if this is the same part of my mind that believes I can actually follow everyone who strikes me as interesting on any social media platform.

Last year during post-holiday sales I bought a Hallowe'en blanket that then spent nearly a year waiting for the season to come around again, and now I have it out as a lap blanket in my office. It is extremely warm and ridiculously soft and cozy on one side, which is great, except this week started out with, frex, a high of 29°C or so on Monday. At this point the temperature's much more reasonable for fall (high of 9°C today), even if it's warming right back up to highs of 16°-ish over the next few days. Not exactly classic October temps, but hopefully we'll be free of full-on summer heat after this.

Other parts of the province got some actual significant rain last night, which is a relief. Only 2mm or so in my area, but I'm glad a good amount wound up in the regions that desperately need it this time.

Tori has a new album coming out next year (with accompanying tour), with info on the front page of her site. (My feelings are the now-usual ones: I don't expect to fall in love with the new music, but I'll gladly buy it to support her and be ready to be wrong about the assumption; either way I'm so glad that she's still making music, even if it's been a long time since any of it punched me in the heart.)

Current Mood: drained

askamanager_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/is-it-tacky-to-bring-branded-items-from-your-old-job-to-your-new-job.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32339

A reader writes:

I have a pretty low-stakes question but it’s been on my mind a lot lately: is it tacky to bring branded items from your old job to your new job?

For context: I used to work for a big tech company, and I acquired a lot of swag over my tenure: jackets, mugs, travel cups, etc. At my old role, my colleagues and I would use branded items from competitors and no one batted an eye; lots of them would be free items from conferences and similar events, and hey, sometimes that branded travel mug from our competition is just REALLY nice.

But I’ve switched to a more conservative industry (law) and I’m wondering if it would be weird to bring branded stuff from my old job into the office. I’m not planning to like, plaster my laptop with stickers from my old company or anything; I’m thinking more along the lines of bringing in a branded mug (since my new office only supplies paper coffee cups). I wouldn’t think twice about bringing random branded stuff from other companies, but I wonder about the optics of bringing stuff from my old job specifically. Is it tacky? Does it make it look like I’m pining for the past?

Like I said, this is incredibly low-stakes, but I’d love your thoughts!

Nah, you’re almost certainly fine.

I mean, it would be weird if you were, like, fully decked out with branded items from your old job to the exclusion of having anything from your current one — like if people walked into your office and found you wearing your old company’s branded jacket, t-shirt, and hat and your mousepad and notebook had their logo — but that seems highly unlikely. A mug or a shirt? No big deal at all.

The exception to this would be if there’s bad blood between the two companies or, in some industries, if they’re a direct competitor (like wearing Pepsi swag when you work at Coca-Cola, and I’d suspect wearing Nike if you work for Adidas or similar).

The post is it tacky to bring branded items from your old job to your new job? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/is-it-tacky-to-bring-branded-items-from-your-old-job-to-your-new-job.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32339

james

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

museaway posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

metafilter_feed

Posted by brainwane

https://www.metafilter.com/210629/begin-again

When making and maintaining a platform other people use, it's important to make the "set up a new account" process robust. That's hard for the maintainers to "dogfood" (to test on themselves to find bugs). One partial solution: "Onboarding roulette", "randomly deleting one of our engineers' Graphite accounts every day at 9 a.m. We don't just reset onboarding—we delete their account, tokens, configured filters, uploaded gifs, and more....this is only their Graphite product account - they still have access to GitHub and all other company accounts."

(While the company that published this blog post makes an AI tool, this post itself isn't about AI at all.)

https://www.metafilter.com/210629/begin-again

metafilter_feed

Posted by ichimunki

https://www.metafilter.com/210628/Latest-Update-of-Frontlines-Documentary-Born-Poor

Following the lives of three children (Kaylie, Johnny and Brittany) born into poverty, Frontline provides an update every five years or so. Via Youtube. This includes all the footage so far including the latest update with the children as young adults. Somewhat similar to UK's Seven Up series.

https://www.metafilter.com/210628/Latest-Update-of-Frontlines-Documentary-Born-Poor

askamanager_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/update-my-coworkers-are-joking-that-im-pregnant-when-im-not.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33879

Remember the letter-writer whose coworkers were joking that she was pregnant when she wasn’t — including having a local radio host congratulate her on her “pregnancy”? The first update was here, and here’s the final resolution.

I was reading AAM as I do every afternoon when one of the recommended posts catapulted me back into my past. I’m the reader who wrote to you about six years ago about my co-workers who wrote into a local radio station to pretending I was pregnant as a “prank.” I’ve been meaning to share an update for a while now, and this felt like a sign. In the years since, things got okay, worse and then much better.

After the first post, I spoke to my director to put a stop to the joking around. No one apologized, acknowledged that they’d crossed a line, or even made eye contact for a while, but I was just grateful that the jokes were over.

A few months later, my relationship unexpectedly fell apart, and a couple of weeks after that I found a channel on our internal messaging system that had been set up to talk about me behind my back. It had been running for months, predating the radio prank, and was absolutely a nail in the coffin. We also now had an external HR provision by this point, so I made a formal complaint against everyone involved. A coworker had been on the ropes for a while and they were let go not long after. I’m not sure how much the channel played a role in this, but it certainly didn’t help. The others apologized to my face, which I was grateful for at the time.

As some background, when I first started, the company was owned by two directors, a husband and wife. A couple of years into my tenure, one served the others with divorce papers and the business was squarely in the middle. But even before I started there were office norms that were only there to keep us in our lanes. We weren’t really allowed to talk to one another other than on IM, were made to take staggered lunches alone, had to sit with our screens facing outward so the boss could monitor what was on them, and so on. I found out later that my job only opened up because one director got drunk and threw a punch at a past employee on a work night out, prompting a few people to quit. When that director finally left, the other did try to open up communication but things just ran too deep. I’m sure I contributed to this environment too and I remember being deeply frustrated with nowhere for it all to go.

I also don’t remember exactly what the messages in the channel said but I was so angry that it snapped me out of my post-breakup funk and made me realise that my workplace was crap and was not going to change. I searched for all the jobs I could find with a short list of prerequisites — they must have an active HR department, visible salary scales, and be based in an interesting part of the country. I applied for the one that was closing first, which turned into one of the best things I ever did. I said yes to an interview because I’d never been to this city and at least if I didn’t get the job I could spend a couple of hours in a museum I always wanted to visit. I interviewed in February 2020, got the job, and started my new role that April, just after the first Covid-19 lockdown hit in the UK. I moved to my new city about five years ago as restrictions were starting to lift, so as people were getting used to socializing again there was me starting life again in my late 20s.

I’ve since changed roles a few times but have been in the same organization, and I can honestly say things are a million times better. My job is infinitely more fulfilling, has scope to grow, and I’m strengthening skills that are niche enough to be interesting and broad enough that I’m not stuck in a corner. I’m also actively involved in our workplace union so there’s a perfect outlet to channel any injustices in a positive way.

I’m not in touch with anyone in my old job. I wish them the best and hope everyone is successful and fulfilled in their own ways, but it took me far too long to realize it wasn’t the place for me. The fact I didn’t realize this after someone wrote to a radio station to pretend I was pregnant is beyond what I’d ever put up with now. I’m still embarrassed by the whole ordeal but grateful I can look back on it as a bizarre story rather than a situation I’m still stuck in.

The post update: my coworkers are joking that I’m pregnant when I’m not appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/update-my-coworkers-are-joking-that-im-pregnant-when-im-not.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33879

metafilter_feed

Posted by Kitteh

https://www.metafilter.com/210627/Mark-Carney-Is-a-Very-Demanding-Boss

His elbows-up enthusiasm won him the election. Now he's governing like a Bay Street exec. (slMacLeans)

Sigh, I mean it was him or PP, and well, here we are.

https://www.metafilter.com/210627/Mark-Carney-Is-a-Very-Demanding-Boss

metafilter_feed

Posted by deeker

https://www.metafilter.com/210626/Did-a-Single-Generation-Ruin-Modern-Music-for-Everyone-Else

In Pierre Boulez' centenary year - for which Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Boulez's Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for the NY Philharmonic - the NYT asks, "Did a Single Generation Ruin Modern Music for Everyone Else?" (archived)

As David Stubbs in his book Fear of Music (discussed here in a previously that... does not necessarily bode well for this post) notes, "while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a "synaesthesia" between their two media." As TFA notes, "Each major artist from that generation had a personal style, but there were common traits: serialism, a focus on structure over emotional appeal, an electronic incursion. New extended techniques were introduced. Composition began to thrive in academic spaces. Boulez was perhaps the most prominent avant-gardist during those years." For Boulez's centennial year, Deutsche Grammophon has released two boxed sets: a reissue of his complete works, and a nearly 90-disc collection of his albums for the label and Decca. A more Boulez-focused piece, also from the NYT, provides much more detail on Boulez, his reception and his legacy: "A hundred years after his birth, and nearly a decade since his death, his legacy isn't necessarily as a composer. Celebrating his centennial at the Philharmonie in March, two performances of his "Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna" were notable mostly for their rarity. His music, like that of his peers from the post-World War II generation of high modernists, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono, is brilliant but out of fashion, and difficult to program."

https://www.metafilter.com/210626/Did-a-Single-Generation-Ruin-Modern-Music-for-Everyone-Else

brightknightie

Thundarr the Barbarian (cartoon, 1980-81) will get a comic run, for the first time ever, starting in January 2026. This news broke at least as far back as June, but I saw it only yesterday. Here's the CBR article. The publisher is Dynamite Entertainment, with writer Jason Aaron and artist Kewber Baal.

promo image

This cartoon re-ran for many, many years on Saturday mornings; I met it around '84, probably, and I loved it. I own a print-on-demand copy of the DVDs (its only kind of DVDs). I hope that this comic run will be all it should be; I'll probably dip my toe in with high hopes.

Yet I also feel caution. Two years or so ago when my beloved Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon, 1983-85) got its first comic run (from IDW, not Dynamite), the initial arc of stories was fun, though I had quibbles, especially with the too-obviously copy/paste-panels art, but the second arc made the sad mistake of trying to move on from what made the original series great. It casually, off-screen, gave the kids swords, breaking the prime no-offensive-weapons directive of the network censors that had forced the original series to tell stories in other ways and had shaped the characters and the audience. It also brought in a parade of name-brand guest stars from modern Forgotten Realms properties without making them really serve the D&DC story, the way the original series did with its much more occasional red-book NPCs.

askamanager_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/lets-discuss-chaos-at-work-restaurant-meals.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33886

Let’s discuss chaos — or just mildly embarrassing / funny / off-key things — that happened when you were eating in a restaurant for work.

Some stories that have been shared here in the past:

I was in my mid-twenties traveling to a conference with my fifty-something boss. He could be odd and a bit awkward but never creepy or inappropriate. We were having dinner at the hotel restaurant when approached by a violin player obviously offering romantic musical accompaniment. I politely declined but my boss excitedly requested a specific piece. I then had to sit there awkwardly for several minutes while the violin player played his piece circling around us as if he was enhancing our romantic dinner. My boss smiled the whole time and afterward spoke about how lovely the music was as if he had no clue everyone was thinking I was his much younger mistress meeting up at with him at a hotel. We were both married to other people and after this we went back to discussing business.

• • • • •

I had just been promoted and my new boss invited me to lunch to discuss the job and any suggestions I might have. Having been a faceless drone for most of my short career, I was beyond excited and desperate to make a good impression. Above all, I wanted to order something tidy and easy to eat so that I could spend the lunch hour being insightful, witty, and bristling with helpful contributions. I ordered French onion soup. While channeling the business version of Dorothy Parker/Oscar Wilde, I quickly swallowed a spoonful of soup and discovered to my horror that the glob of rubbery cheese now nestled in my stomach, was attached via a rope of the stuff to the glob still in the soup bowl. While gagging and choking, I bit and gnashed at the rope like a demented shark, hoping I could finally swallow it and be free. A memorable first impression.

• • • • •

My third interview for my very first managerial job involved me flying into Chicago where I would be meeting with “the Big Boss” right at the airport.

Finding each other, he suggested we get a table at one of the restaurants, where we both ordered sodas. As he was speaking, keeping my eyes focused on his face, I bent down to take a sip of my soda. My straw went way up one of my nostrils! Neither of us said anything and I prayed he somehow had not noticed.

I got the job! Years later, it was time for me to move on. On my last day, that same boss called me in to say good bye. Grinning ear to ear, he asked me if I remembered what he called “the Straw Incident” when he had first interviewed me. (As if that were something I could forget!)

• • • • •

At a business meeting at a private club, I ordered a glass of lemonade and received a glass of lemon juice. Nothing like a cool refreshing mouthful of acid!

• • • • •

My brother’s mother-in-law was a vegetarian in a rural community who once accompanied her husband to his company’s annual dinner. The dinner organizers were very proud of themselves for coming up with something they assured her was much better than the plates of plain vegetables she’d been served in the past. Her husband got steak. She got a slice of watermelon cut into the shape of a steak.

• • • • •

Please share your own stories of work restaurant meals gone wrong in the comment section.

The post let’s discuss chaos at work restaurant meals appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/10/lets-discuss-chaos-at-work-restaurant-meals.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33886

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/fancrafts/fanart/fics/podfics/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here

metafilter_feed

Posted by HearHere

https://www.metafilter.com/210625/planes

patterns that arise in origami can be translated into a set of points that together form the amplituhedron [en.wiki]. Somehow, the way paper folds and the way particles collide [quanta] produce the same geometric shape (previously)²

https://www.metafilter.com/210625/planes

full_metal_ox posting in

fancake

Fandom: Jungfraukallen | The Virgin Spring (1960 film)
Pairings/Characters: F/M, Gen; Karin | The Maiden, Per Tore | The Father, Mareta | The Mother, Oldest Herdsman | Bearded Brother, Middle Herdsman | Beardless Brother, Young Boy | Narrator
Rating: Mature
Length: 2,029
Content Notes: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Author Showed Her Work, First Person POV, Somebody Lives/Not Everybody Dies
Creator Tags: Minoan, Retelling, Remix
Creator Links: (AO3)

Rubynye; (Dreamwidth)

minoanmiss; (Tumblr)

rubynye

Theme: Uncommon Settings, Fix-it, Found Family, Folklore & Fairytales, Food & Cooking, Historical AUs, No Canon Required, Old Fandoms, Small Fandoms, Research

Summary: Before you wed me you must know.

Author’s Notes: _The Virgin Spring_ is a haunting tale. One night I dreamt this version, and was able to write it down.

Reccer's Notes: Rubynye transposes Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of a medieval Swedish murder ballad into her beloved Bronze Age Crete; she gives this account of its creation in the comments:

I almost feel like I, my waking self, can't take credit -- I literally dreamt this, fortunately on a weekend so I could write it down, complete with the note about the refrain of "this they should not have done". I have loved the Minoans for a long time so it makes sense that my subconscious decided to retell the story there, as much sense as subconsciousnesses make anyway. The Minoans, with a different sense of morality and the universe, wouldn't ask "why did God let this happen" but would note how people in a society should and shouldn't behave (I think at least).

Dreamland delivered its gift to a formidably disciplined, well-read, and eloquent mind: the story begins with a classic fairytale riddle (whose answer will hinge upon a fluid definition of family) and is knit together by an insistent and anguished refrain; the author carefully avoids the film’s conflict of Christianity versus Norse religion in a setting where it would make no sense, furnishes researched hit-and-run cultural color (a traveler gifts her benefactors with the exotic delicacy of…stone-baked wheat flatbread!), and spares an innocent whose fate in movie canon was undeserved—allowing a family to be (though not restored) renewed.

Fanwork Links: How To Raise a Spring, by

rubynye.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: ”Where the Wild Roses Grow.”

metafilter_feed

Posted by Kattullus

https://www.metafilter.com/210624/The-2025-Nobel-Prize-in-Literature-Goes-to-Lszl-Krasznahorkai

László Krasznahorkai is the 2025 Nobel laureate in literature. He is a 71-year-old Hungarian novelist, perhaps best known for his novel Satantango, which was made into a film by the same name. If you want to get a feel for his writing, you can find stories on Words Without Borders, London Review of Books and the New Yorker [archive]. Hari Kunzru interviewed him for the Yale Review this year, and one of his translators, Georges Szirtes, interviewed him for the White Review in 2012. Colm Toíbin interviewed him for the LRB Podcast in 2012 as well. There are many essays about his work, so here are ones by Taylor Eggan, James Wood [archive] and finally one by Ange Mlinko from earlier this year [archive].

https://www.metafilter.com/210624/The-2025-Nobel-Prize-in-Literature-Goes-to-Lszl-Krasznahorkai

metafilter_feed

Posted by Wordshore

https://www.metafilter.com/210623/The-2025-Nobel-Peace-Prize

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced at a press conference at the Norwegian Nobel Institute on 10th October at 11:00 CEST. Who can nominate, and the process for this year. Who, selected by the Stortling, decides the winner. United Nations Nobel Laureates. This year, 244 individuals and 94 organisations have been nominated; current bookmaker favourites include the Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan (wikipedia), the UNRWA, and Yulia Navalnaya.

https://www.metafilter.com/210623/The-2025-Nobel-Peace-Prize

flaskbringer posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

metafilter_feed

Posted by chavenet

https://www.metafilter.com/210622/Not-metaphorically-but-literally-worthless

To describe the commitment to the future as those of us in the present "sacrificing" ourselves is to fundamentally misrepresent what is at stake. Doganova quotes a report by the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that blandly claims it is "impossible not to discount," but Discounting the Future shows that this kind of thinking totally misses the point. By reducing everything we value to the present, we have, as she puts it, decided that our "sacrifices" must be rewarded "regardless of what that future might actually hold." from The Price of Tomorrow [NYRB; ungated]

https://www.metafilter.com/210622/Not-metaphorically-but-literally-worthless

m_findlow posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Somewhere that’s green
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,097 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 493 - Garden
Summary: Jack has a proposition for Ianto that includes something he’s never had before.

( Read more... )

highlander_ii posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: gardens
Fandom: none
Rating: G
Content notes: None apply
Summary: icons of pretty gardens

( gardens )

metafilter_feed

Posted by emelenjr

https://www.metafilter.com/210621/A-good-news-story-right-when-everyone-needed-it

Francine, the feline-in-residence at the downtown branch of the Lowe's hardware store in Richmond, VA, is currently all over the place, after having gone missing for a while. Lowe's | NPR | Associated Press | Washington Post | Wikipedia

https://www.metafilter.com/210621/A-good-news-story-right-when-everyone-needed-it

metafilter_feed

Posted by toastyk

https://www.metafilter.com/210620/Hudna

Hudna is Arabic for ceasefire. Hamas and Trump announce an agreement to the first phase of a ceasefire deal. Meanwhile Israel continues to bomb Gaza. The US has provided $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel over the past two years. Israel has a history of violating ceasefire agreements.

Spain's parliament formally approves Israeli arms embargo. Montreal students went on strike in support of Palestinians. The majority of the Gaza flotilla participants have been deported back to their home countries; the Israelis have captured the second flotilla. US: Federal court rules speech-based deportations of non-citizen students and academics violate the First Amendment. There are currently 54 cosponsors of the HR 3565 Block the Bombs Act. Bari Weiss to head CBS News as pro-Trump, pro-Israel Ellison family expands media empire. Legacy journalists from NYT, CNN, are mentors in a fellowship founded for pro-Israel "Information War". Previously. Previously. Previously.

https://www.metafilter.com/210620/Hudna

Profile

Arduinna

My Website

February 2023

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Oct. 9th, 2025 08:05 pm

Reading

The relationship between Computing & its history is that of an amnesiac

Mishmash. It's just a mishmash post.

is it tacky to bring branded items from your old job to your new job?

Stargate Atlantis Secret Santa Exchange - sign up now open

Writing

Multifandom: All Ships Week

begin again

Latest Update of Frontline's Documentary "Born Poor"

update: my coworkers are joking that I’m pregnant when I’m not

Mark Carney Is a Very Demanding Boss

Did a Single Generation Ruin Modern Music for Everyone Else?

Thundarr the Barbarian is finally getting a comic book

The Old Guard: You're Gonna Feel It: An Old Guard Horor Event

let’s discuss chaos at work restaurant meals

Community Recs Post!

planes

Jungfraukallen | The Virgin Spring (1960): How To Raise a Spring, by Rubynye.

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to László Krasznahorkai

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

Secret Sanguinala 2025 Warhammer 40k Gift Exchange - Nominations Open

Not metaphorically but literally worthless

Torchwood: Fanfic: Somewhere that's green

no fandom : icons : gardens

A good news story right when everyone needed it

Hudna

Profile

February 2023

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags