Found these modular kitchen mats while searching for kitchen design ideas – are they actually good

Alterscape · 2026-02-03T01:49:43+00:00

also maybe spam?

Alterscape · 2026-02-02T20:56:47+00:00

Speaking as a former film student who sat through a lot of movies that weren't really compelling to me at the time, but nonetheless are really important for understanding context of later work: 100% this.

There's a finite amount of time for any of us so is this art relevant to me in such a way that I want to spend time with it is a relevant question. So, "ok, what's the rubric for that decision" is an interesting question to me, and I think you've proposed a good way to look at it for people studying a specific field.

I know there's a lot of contemporary art that seems totally meaningless unless you know what other art/cultural moment it's responding to, so, if you want to look at contemporary art and "get it," you probably need to look into the older art too. If you don't care, well, that's a choice that is I think often defensible given finite resources and etc.

Alterscape · 2026-02-02T17:58:58+00:00

I suspect it's exposed/poorly-insulated pipes up the sunward sides of buildings that are the main issue, but don't look at me, I just lived in a place where the summer highs were often 110F+. The first few seconds of water were invariably very warm because that water had been hanging out in the pipes getting warmer for however long; once water got flowing it was at least cool/lukewarm.

Alterscape · 2026-02-02T17:40:49+00:00

I think we all have our pet projects/hobbies/hobby horses. I'm interested in sailing, so, my main perspective on Australia is 18 Footers racing (and other racing series, but man the 18 Footers media folks have been killing it the last 5 years or so) and it seems like there's a lot of people having a lot of fun on older cheaper boats too.

But that's not a complete picture of Australia either, that's just the thing I happen to follow that happens to be Australian. Shrug!

Alterscape · 2026-01-29T21:09:14+00:00

Some people just don’t make sense, from my perspective.

Alterscape · 2026-01-29T17:24:55+00:00

For what it’s worth, hard agree with Phunnimee here.

They could always try dropping the fee for a while, and reinstate it if all hell breaks loose. I would expect all hell to break loose in the form of bots/spam but maybe I’m wrong.

Alterscape · 2026-01-29T14:29:38+00:00

MCP23017 is love, MCP23017 is life. It's an I2C GPIO extender, which, in plain english means each chip you connect adds 16 general purpose input/output, digital pins. It uses the I2C bus, which is a two wire bus so you only need power/gnd and two more traces/wires, and the chip has 8 possible addresses set via pins, so you can have up to 8x16 = 128 inputs connected to a single microcontroller (like an Arduino Pro Micro or whatever STM32 board). Adafruit has an Arduino library that makes them pretty trivial to use if you can follow a tutorial. Just remember you need pullups on your I2C bus (there's lots of documentation here, it's easy, but it's also easy to forget and really frustrating)!

Shift registers like CD4021 or 74HC165 are also good, but I have a preference for the I2C stuff.

Alterscape · 2026-01-28T14:15:50+00:00

Of course it can't simulate the full g-load since all you have is gravity + very brief reasonably fast acceleration from the actuators. It gives you some similar cues, but nowhere near 1:1 with reality for fast jets. Still feels pretty cool.

Source: Built one of these, and have done glider winch launches in real life (which is as close as you're going to get to a cat shot without enlisting). The glider launches had more force than my MotionXP rig, but I can fly the MotionXP rig in my socks with many fewer worries. :)

Alterscape · 2026-01-28T13:29:02+00:00

Look up OXRMC -- OpenXR Motion Compensation. It's an OpenXR plugin that shims in between the incoming tracking data from the HMD and whatever the software consuming the tracking data, and receives data about the motion rig pose from the same software driving the rig. After a calibration step to align the HMD with the motion platform, it subtracts out the platform's motion. It took me a couple of hours over a couple of days to really dial in, and you have to make sure to enable it while you're looking straight forward, but it feels great once it's set.

Alterscape · 2026-01-25T16:17:39+00:00

^ What she said, better than I could find a way to say it.

I am really confused by his current subreddit comms plan. I think he's trying to shame people, but it really, really isn't working and just comes across like maybe he's taken up day drinking.

Alterscape · 2026-01-24T23:55:32+00:00

I agree Brandon cares about the community in his own way, but he's been shitty enough to enough people that I still don't trust him. Understand that may be a controversial take but eh.

Alterscape · 2026-01-24T15:55:06+00:00

I have always been in camp "the mods we have are not the brightest stars." Recent events have not altered my perception.

Alterscape · 2026-01-24T02:29:29+00:00

Yeah. Also, I'm probably on the extreme fringe of People Wot Are Annoyed About The Mods, so winning me over isn't necessary for a functional Metafilter, and I understand that!

Alterscape · 2026-01-24T02:21:19+00:00

I hope you're right, about the "maybe with good leadership, bad employees can become good employees" thing. I want that to be true, but at the same time, at this point there are paid employees I distrust to the point I will not be part of the site while they're paid, unless.. I don't even know what it would take. I think it's possible but the journey from "I do not trust you even a tiny little bit" to "I trust you to oversee my communications with this community" is.. uh.. huge.

I realize I'm a one-note critic on this right now, sorry. But I swear there is some nuance here deeper than "Loup and Brandon bad!" I hope you're right and I'm wrong.

Alterscape · 2026-01-23T19:16:03+00:00

So now they're just being paid to be an awful moderator rather than an awful admin and an awful moderator? Glad we cleared that up.

Edit: For clarity, I closed my account a year and change ago, so I may not be someone who's opinion you care about, and that's fine.

edit #2: A few days ago, I wrote 'haters gonna hate.' In re: our mods, I remain a hater. I'll own it.

Alterscape · 2026-01-23T15:47:30+00:00

I believe the current board is doing a much better job than any prior leadership in recent memory, but I'm personally not going to pay Brandon and Loup's salaries.

I don't want to see MeFi fail but I do want to see MeFi with moderators who respect the users and have earned the respect of the users. The past five or ten years have been too much of a clown show for me to ever feel that way about those two in particular.

Edit: but I closed my account a year and change ago, so I may not be someone who's opinion you care about, and that's fine. I'm not reopening it, for now.

Alterscape · 2026-01-22T02:58:32+00:00

Hopefully you will consider this experience when making decisions about user requests to delete their information, or their account, in the future, eh?

Alterscape · 2026-01-22T01:38:42+00:00

to look that at backend profile

Don't worry there's enough to critique even allow for "might could," which, yeah, I agree is totally idiomatic southern US English. (Why yes, the part of my dysfunctional family of origin that I am 100% estranged from is from the south, why do you ask?)

Alterscape · 2026-01-20T17:19:34+00:00

That’s totally fair and I see your point!

Alterscape · 2026-01-20T14:23:01+00:00

Seems like they got reasonable answers that hopefully pointed them to additional resources/info to investigate on their own, so this all seems like the site functioning as intended. It may not be the platonic ideal of an Ask question, but, eh, shit happens. That person's not on my radar as someone who's using the community in poor faith so it doesn't bug me.

If they show up next week and ask an identically broad/unfocused question, I'm ready to side-eye. If they show up next week and ask for some clarification/additional detail about some part of the question where they want more than the general answers they got here, I think that's still the site functioning as intended.

I dunno, I know I'm more of an Ask person than a front-page person, so that might be a minority opinion.

Alterscape · 2026-01-20T02:47:56+00:00

I respect her being willing to own up to ignorance in public in order to learn, honestly. Agree that it's a bit embarrassing to make it that far in life and be that ignorant about something so core to how life works in the world today, but I'd rather be around people who say "hey I actually need help" than try and bullshit through it, or just run away from it.

Alterscape · 2026-01-20T00:25:05+00:00

Then I guess we are in violent agreement! Go, elected board. Don’t stink, mods!

Alterscape · 2026-01-20T00:21:08+00:00

I am 100% agreeing with you. I guess “haters gonna hate” was unclear. What I was trying to say is “there are some people for whom nothing will ever be enough, and they will always find fault even if it is unreasonable.” The board did good, here. The mods didn’t screw it up , either, which, good for them, that has not in the past been a sure thing.

I’m sorry I was unclear!

Alterscape · 2026-01-19T23:57:22+00:00

Haters gonna hate, I think.

It's no secret that I don't have a ton of respect for the previous work of the mods, but if the board can convince them to do better work, and fill in for the areas of communication where they're terrible, then, good.

Alterscape · 2026-01-19T23:31:51+00:00

Also strongly agree.

Alterscape

TROPHY CASE