link requests, askmefi

January 9, 2008 2:53 AM

I ask trepidly: What say Mefi on link-requesting AskMeFi posts? Are they appropriate for the scene?
posted by Citizen Premier to Etiquette/Policy at 2:53 AM (148 comments total)

Are you talking about requesting a link to your own web site? No way.
posted by grouse at 3:07 AM on January 9, 2008

Please speak English.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:10 AM on January 9, 2008 [5 favorites]

I thought that was PhilCubeta for a moment.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:59 AM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

This post is unclear and open to all sorts of interpretation. You should fix that.


It's perfectly fine to ask for links on Metafilter IN GENERAL. Specific cases may present problems. If you have a specific case, please share.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:10 AM on January 9, 2008

Dunno what you're asking, Citizen Premier.
posted by cgc373 at 4:16 AM on January 9, 2008

Less trepid, more clarity, please.
posted by sneakin at 4:17 AM on January 9, 2008

What you are talking me there is not an idea. The certainty which spreads out is you it isn't sprinkling with your waffle PCP?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:26 AM on January 9, 2008 [5 favorites]

My hovercraft is full of eels.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:31 AM on January 9, 2008 [9 favorites]

I thought it was Bill O'Reilly.
posted by Xurando at 4:34 AM on January 9, 2008

What about AskMeFi questions where someone is like "How do you get invites for such-and-such site?" with the obvious intent of getting a bunch of invites in their mefimail?
posted by pravit at 4:43 AM on January 9, 2008

pravit: no. It will probably be deleted with or without a recommendation that you visit Inviteshare.
posted by peacay at 4:51 AM on January 9, 2008

Citizen Premier,

It's been over 2 hours and my righteous anger is feeling unloved and undirected. Are we going to put these pitchforks to work or not?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:25 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Why yes, it would be entirely appropriate for your to post a question to AskMe that asks whether you should include a scene featuring the protagonist of Legend of Zelda, a pioneer of overdriven guitar, a chimpanzee detective, and representatives from a group dedicated to constructing a global macroeconomic model, in your DYI indie-flick. No problem at all.
posted by googly at 5:34 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Citizen Premier, your question is badly wormed, and its monkey is not laundry if you won't buffalo our azaela pancakes because you don't know fuck about shit, asshole!
posted by fandango_matt at 5:45 AM on January 9, 2008 [9 favorites]

After reading the question 243 times, I'm convinced that grouse is right. Citizen Premier is asking whether it's okay to post an AskMe question that is basically a request for mefites to link to his website.

Um...no.
posted by bingo at 6:12 AM on January 9, 2008

"Trepidly" = in a manner suggesting you're frightened of something lukewarm?

I like it!
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:25 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Will you lot shut up and butt out? He's asking trepidly, not ye shower of gobshites.
posted by Abiezer at 6:29 AM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

Trepid means "timorous, fearful." Trepidly is an associated word in the OED.
posted by grouse at 6:32 AM on January 9, 2008

CP, what they all said: can you rephrase this sucker, please?
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:36 AM on January 9, 2008

Trepidatiously, surely?
posted by Happy Dave at 6:47 AM on January 9, 2008

I had this post translated into glossolalia by a local Pentecostal minister, then interpreted from glossolalia by a second Pentecostal minister. It seems like CP is wondering if it's ok to post an AskMe that requests the answerer to supply links to pertinent websites. Plus Jesus is returning soon.
posted by The Deej at 6:47 AM on January 9, 2008

As far as I'm aware, if you want to be appropriate to "the scene" you need to start wearing metallic leotards from American Apparel and smoking cloves.
posted by SassHat at 7:04 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

When I read the question, I assumed Citizen Premier was asking about questions like, "Can you provide me with links to great places to shop for X online?"

But I assumed that because I've seen those questions on AskMe, and I've never seen questions like "Please add a link to my site from your site."
posted by occhiblu at 7:10 AM on January 9, 2008

Ooooh! He card read good!
posted by evilcolonel at 7:16 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

May I momma dogface to the banana patch?
posted by the dief at 7:19 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

To clear up some confusion (I think), the first three pages of a search on Google for "link request" have to do with that little social practice (sometimes automated) whereby a person says to another, "hey! I'll link to you on my website if you link to me!" So Citizen Premier seems to be asking: is it okay to post a question on AskMefi to the effect of, "will you link to my web site? I'll link to yours if you do!"

His nervousness about the prospect of asking MetaTalk whether it's okay to use Ask Metafilter to promote his web site seems to have induced him to use the word 'trepid,' inexplicably, as though it were a pronoun, and to convert that pronoun into an adjective. For the record, I believe he was absolutely right to be nervous.
posted by koeselitz at 7:28 AM on January 9, 2008

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Unless you come back here and explain what you meant specifically, assume the answer is no.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:30 AM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

Life: Assume the answer is no
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:35 AM on January 9, 2008

You, sir, are no thomcatspike.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:38 AM on January 9, 2008 [3 favorites]

Trepidity is the tuber of universal ingoodation.
posted by chlorus at 7:39 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

So Citizen Premier seems to be asking: is it okay to post a question on AskMefi to the effect of, "will you link to my web site? I'll link to yours if you do!"


Dammit. The glossolalia interpretation was wrong.
posted by The Deej at 7:41 AM on January 9, 2008

I'm walking through these corridors
Where crime meets pantomime
They're laughing and they're drinking
On the swill of overtime
And no-one seems to know about
The death-wish that they've signed
Ah, life's unkind
Ah, life's unkind

And they see me as a potential new recruit
They rub their hands, slap their backs and smile
But I still wear suspenders underneath my business suit
So needn't worry about me for a while

So to a world without hunger, where royalty face death
(I think the answer's yes, I think the answer's yes)
To the breaking down of barriers of North, South,
East and West
(I think the answer's yes, I think the answer's yes)

Oh, wait -- Paul Heaton isn't a mod or even a member, and the band's broken up anyway.

I think the answer's no.
posted by maudlin at 7:44 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Who cares enough to post to Metatalk but not enough to respond to clarify their bizarre question?
posted by smackfu at 8:28 AM on January 9, 2008

California college kid posts cryptic waffle at 4:53 am? He's probably still sleeping it off.

People on the other side of the world say "huh?"
posted by nanojath at 8:38 AM on January 9, 2008

smackfu, grouse answered his question on the first response, he now knows he wasted his five bucks, he's back off to trying to game the digg.
posted by nomisxid at 8:45 AM on January 9, 2008

I think Citizen Premier's probably been kidnapped, and this is the only way he could get the message out.

There is also this comment that he made shortly after posting:

It turns out it's fake, there actually is a god, and we can all go back to whatever we were doing.

See? He wants to go back. It must be another part of the clue.
posted by Chuckles at 8:46 AM on January 9, 2008

It's not like he's new here: Joined: April 23, 2005
posted by smackfu at 8:46 AM on January 9, 2008

I miss Citizen Premier.

:'(
posted by The Deej at 9:02 AM on January 9, 2008

I think Citizen Premier's probably been kidnapped, and this is the only way he could get the message out.

Does anybody remember the episode of MathNet where a songwriter dude got kidnapped and when the kidnappers have him call the detectives he sings "please do what these people say" to a weird melody, and it turns out that he's actually singing the tones of the phone number from which the kidnappers are making the call?

Because I bet it's something like that.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:03 AM on January 9, 2008 [9 favorites]

YES! The way I remember it, he was a rockstar who wrote songs about dental hygiene, but I can't seem to find any corroborating evidence. Maybe I need George Frankly.
posted by bluishorange at 9:18 AM on January 9, 2008

Does anybody remember the episode of MathNet...

No.../spits on lawn
posted by jmd82 at 9:19 AM on January 9, 2008

And doing a little googling here: that should be "does anybody other than iamck remember...".

Every citation of the episode I can find mentions just the one melodic line, the seven syllables of "please do what these people say", which melody it turns out I've slightly mis-remembered after all these years; the kidnapper's number is cited as 555-7657, but what I sing in my head would be 555-7675.

Beyond that, though, I've got a bigger memory problem, because I've always remembered it as a couplet:

Please do what these people say
They could kill me any day

And in my head, the second line is the melody that is, it turns out, the actual melody, where the first line has my misremembered melody. In retrospect, that second line would be awfully goddam dark for MathNet; it's been sort of an itchy memory for a long time and that's probably part of the reason.

But! There's a reason that I think I reinforced that mistaken recollection: the single melody wouldn't be enough to give the MathNet detectives their number! Touchtones are bitonal—the touchtone keypad is laid out as a grid, with a high register and a low register assigned to the columns and rows, respectively, of the keypad.

So if you dial "2 5 8", you'll hear an ascending scale in the low register and a constant tone in the high scale; likewise, dialing "4 5 6" produces an ascending scale in the high register and a constant tone in the low register.

(Another fun touchtone fact: the dialtone is a pair of tones that are approximately the notes F and A. If you ever need to ballpark tune an instrument, and you've got a phone handy, there you go.)

When Steve Stringbean (it turns out that's the dude's name) sings his little seven-note melody to the math dicks, he hasn't given them a phone number, he's given them a template for a set of possible phone numbers. It could be 555-7657, but it could just as well be 222-4324, or 825-1684, or any other set satisfaction of [258][258][258]-[147][369][258][147]. That's 3⁷ = 2,187 possible numbers!

For that matter, he could be singing the melody along the high-register instead of the low register, in which case the set is [456][456][456]-[123][789][456][123].

So you see how him singing two separate lines with two different melodies would have been useful? With two melodies representing the two touchtone registers, you'd have an EXACT number to work with. With the two that I remembered (555-7675, 555-7657), you'd get this overlay of sets in the style of what I just laid out above:

[258][258][258]-[147][369][147][258]
[456][456][456]-[123][789][456][123]

From there, it's just a matter of identifying the digits that satisfy both sets:

[258][258][258]-[147][369][147][258]
[456][456][456]-[123][789][456][123]

And blammo! We've got our number: 555-7942.

Actually, you could get two exact matches for numbers; you'd want to try it with the two melodies as high and low registers, but I don't want to bother with the swap.

If anybody remembers whether any of this was addressed in the MathNet episode, lemme know. Whether they discussed anything like valid (or plausible) prefixes for the phone number, no idea. Whether there was any other diegetic constraint that narrowed it down, ditto.

I think my point here basically is that MathNet was a fucking fantastic show.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:36 AM on January 9, 2008 [33 favorites]

Mr. Cuckoo from "The View from the Rear Terrace" still gives me nightmares.

also: "I'm Peeved."
"Well I'm beginning to feel a little ticked off, myself!"
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:51 AM on January 9, 2008

Because I don't know what else to do, I'm tempted to flag this as sexist.
posted by ORthey at 10:04 AM on January 9, 2008

cortex, you just blew my mind.

I think that that Mathnet episode was the final nail in the coffin of the "555" cliche.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:05 AM on January 9, 2008

Does anybody remember the episode of MathNet . . .

cortex, that melody gets caught in my head from time to time, all these years and it's still there.

In the world of MathNet, Steve "The Floss" Stringbean = Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen

Not only was MathNet awesome, it was punny.
posted by annaramma at 10:24 AM on January 9, 2008

what the hell is that site that pulls up random words from your posting history and constucts sentences out of them? damn that was funny and i can't find it.
posted by lohmannn at 10:27 AM on January 9, 2008

MATHMAN - MATHMAN - MATHMAN - MATHMAN - MATHMAN -

...

"2 + 5 = ...?"

... 6?

AAAAGH!

-GAME OVER!-
posted by koeselitz at 10:29 AM on January 9, 2008

By the way, the show is Square One, people. MathNet was just a segment on the show. Here's a Wikipedia article about MathNet. But look out! It doesn't cite any sources!
posted by koeselitz at 10:32 AM on January 9, 2008

All I know is 554-5381 plays Camptown Races.
posted by jamaro at 10:34 AM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

lohmannn, are you talking about MarkovFilter?
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:37 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

By the way, you're looking for story arc 1.3, "The Problem of the Passing Parade."
posted by koeselitz at 10:37 AM on January 9, 2008

yeahhhh markovfilter. thanks cortex.
posted by lohmannn at 10:40 AM on January 9, 2008

A swift kick to the guy. You will not regret it.

Yeah, goats are smart. Sometimes they get this look, like they know more than 60W, and probably draws around 20 - 30 at idle.
posted by lohmannn at 10:41 AM on January 9, 2008

koeselitz: MathNet was aired on its own, as well. As for me, I love Square One just as much.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:46 AM on January 9, 2008

You can also play the first few bars of Van Halen's "Jump."

5-6-4-4-5-5-6-4-4-6-5
posted by slogger at 10:48 AM on January 9, 2008

quin and a team of Sherpas spend three months fighting to the top of the summit, after numerous close calls and several near aborts of the mission, the time has finally come, we are at the holy shrine and about to have the secret wisdom of the ancients bestowed upon us.

I approach the temple, nervous because in the next few moments, I will have the Universal Truth, and I'm unsure how this will change things for me.

I see the holy man. He is sitting cross legged and is as serene as any creature I have ever laid eyes on. I summon my courage and ask,

"Link-requesting? Cool or bogus?"

There is a long pause, and then he grants me a beatific smile, "My child," he explains, "Assume the answer is no."

He then stands up and kicks me with great accuracy and astonishing power, directly in the crotch. As I lay there, sobbing and wishing for death, I realize: this is the way I will die. With all the answers and full of pain.

Thanks Metatalk.
posted by quin at 11:00 AM on January 9, 2008 [4 favorites]

cortex, you made my day.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:05 AM on January 9, 2008

From Citizen Premier's MarkovFilter:

Seems fairer than catching the shark on a tiny stretcher in the white shirt in Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, too.
Also: GO AWAY YOU FUCKING TALKING HEADS
I thought this was a link just gained 5 pounds.

I think everything is clear now.
posted by languagehat at 11:07 AM on January 9, 2008

No, no it's better as 5-6-4-4-5-5-6-4-4-1-2
posted by anazgnos at 11:10 AM on January 9, 2008

That was awesome, Cortex. I loved MathNet almost as much as I loved 3-2-1 Contact! ("is the reason…").
posted by klangklangston at 11:16 AM on January 9, 2008

One time, I was in a sold out movie theater for the premiere of a blockbuster (can't recall which), and we arrived late and were relegated to the front row. When the previews started, they were blurry and difficult to watch; slowly but surely, cries of "focus!" began echoing throughout the large room.

After a few minutes, the majority of the crowd was chanting in unison: "Fo-CUS! Fo-CUS! Fo-CUS!" over and over, demanding that the problem be rectified.

A friend of mine sitting next to me in the front row slowly got up, faced the crowd, put up his hands, and the theater hushed. After a couple moments of silence went by, he spoke:

'I... AM... FOCUS!"
posted by ORthey at 11:40 AM on January 9, 2008 [14 favorites]

I guess now we know how to keep a clusterfuck thread open for a while... leave everyone in suspense over what the OP was about.
posted by scarabic at 11:56 AM on January 9, 2008

This thread reminds me of a thought puzzle I came across long ago...

You awaken in a room with a window and a door. There is a desk in the corner, and an office chair that is missing one wheel. The window is open, but sealed off by bricks. There is an electrical outlet near the desk, but the walls are otherwise bare. You try the door, which is naturally locked. A 60-watt bulb illuminates the scene from the ceiling. You can reach the light bulb by balancing precariously on the chair. It seems unwise to do so.

You examine the desk. The desk has one drawer in the middle and three drawers on the right hand side. The middle drawer has a four-inch length of copper wire, nail clippers, a comb with a few wispy strands of hair, and three pieces of Dentyne gum. The hair is not your own. The gum looks old. In the drawers on the right hand side, you find nothing but a blank shred of paper.

You hear music coming from a distant source. The same song repeats, over and over. You feel as if you have been here before.

What color is the squirrel?
posted by malocchio at 12:01 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Mathnet (and square one) rules. Thanks, Cortex!
posted by inigo2 at 12:05 PM on January 9, 2008

Ugh. I don't think koeselitz has it quite right, nor grouse. I doubt this is about directly asking people for a reciprocal link to one's site, and grouse's interpretation of the question seems a little too obvious for the poster to have bothered asking, since the answer to "Do we approve of posters directly asking people to post a link to their site in Ask MetaFilter comments?" or "Do we approve of posters hiding their identities to attempt to dishonestly get people to post links to [what then turn out to be] their own sites?" is quite obviously "No."

It seems clear to me that what Citizen Premier was asking was probably something akin to the following:

Should we as a community continue to give our approval to threads on Ask MetaFilter that request the link to and/or the name of a site the poster has "seen at some point" and subsequently "forgotten," knowing that such threads could potentially be attempts to game the system? And if we were to approve of some such threads, but not others, what metric could be employed to distinguish legitimate link-request questions from illegitimate ones?

As we've seen (and as ikkyu2 pointed out multiple times in the GiveWell MeTa callout), such questions could easily be (and probably have been) used by the unscrupulous to get a link to their site of choice seen by thousands of AskMe readers. Thus my guess is that Citizen Premier asked this in the context of the whole GiveWell thing, which was of course just a slightly more elaborate version of this kind of request.

Here's how the GiveWell question would be phrased, under Citizen Premier's presumed rubric:

I saw this really cool site a while back that offered a new way for people to find out what charities would make the best use of their donation—but I forgot the name! [more inside]

It really was a great site. I think it had "Give" somewhere in the title, and was a compound word with capitals—similar to MetaFilter, in fact. The guys that founded it got written up lately in some major newspaper, but I can't remember the charity's name, so I haven't had much luck finding it. It's a new organization, so my attempts to Google it haven't turned up much. Can anyone help?

Regardless of whether Citizen Premier reappears to clarify his actual intent, I'd be interested in what we think about the matter, 'cause some variant on his question occurred to me as well as I read through all the GiveWell stuff last week.
posted by limeonaire at 12:41 PM on January 9, 2008

That's a compelling theory, limeonaire, but I'm not clear on what it has to do with the magical number nine.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:49 PM on January 9, 2008

My interpretation is that this Metatalk question is in regard to the Legend of Zelda series.
posted by smackfu at 12:55 PM on January 9, 2008

I was always partial to the magic numbers 3, 7, 18 and 36, myself.
posted by limeonaire at 12:55 PM on January 9, 2008

(Dammit, someone used that joke already. How about chain-related instead?)
posted by smackfu at 12:55 PM on January 9, 2008

Well all I've got to say is, after looking at what this particular drug has done to many people think twice about back when you get a few prostitutes around where I spent so much on console systems? You can try to do an em dash in html.

Whatever, eh.

Schroedinger, anon's having trouble with timeistight - had a massive dpse of lift, it would start out OK and when I spent so much where you can now; and that amount would be cool to like it.
posted by Mister_A at 1:16 PM on January 9, 2008

I am just looking for a used car. What is all this?
posted by never used baby shoes at 1:17 PM on January 9, 2008

I understand, languagehat.

YOU JUST MADE THE LIST ND¢

FWIW, zombies prefer to be leaders. I didn't chastise the guy who started the KKK." The implication is that World of Warcraft has ported the I Have a Dream speech, surely a double, but it's a consumer-level science mag. If Discover published the mathematical underpinnings of this post as awesome—I just like an interactive agency (previous position), I worked closely with them. Mr. Bird's actions betray a lack of respect for this elaborate stunt, by which I point you once again excessive moderation has crushed a post because it was pretty mortifying when that girl from Cobbs Creek (a poor/working class blach neighborhood in Philly) disappeared?
posted by Mister_A at 1:17 PM on January 9, 2008

cortex, what the hell were you thinking when you wrote this?

They Will Find Our Naked Corpses Face Down in the future, I'll follow up.

If specifically adding those things I have this horse, and this callout and snipped comments notwithstanding, people have said in the dropdown resets to "24 hours."


I'll stop now. Now meaning pretty soon.
posted by Mister_A at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2008

Doh! That will teach me not to read Beowulf or the Charter of Cnut today). It may be produced. The big thing I'm picking up from your post is worded leaves me feeling somewhat disappointed.
posted by never used baby shoes at 1:24 PM on January 9, 2008

Forget the donation. Someone suggested it to make up for it, and move on trying to ramp this up more now. Yes, I engaged in sock puppetry. The final comment from my pocket. I'm not offering this in return for your ceasing your criticism, I'm offering it to make money or scam people.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:42 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

I am making this comment solely so that I can say later "I posted in that thread."
posted by tkolar at 1:42 PM on January 9, 2008

Every citation of the episode I can find mentions just the one melodic line, the seven syllables of "please do what these people say", which melody it turns out I've slightly mis-remembered after all these years; the kidnapper's number is cited as 555-7657, but what I sing in my head would be 555-7675.

I've never seen this show, but it seems like it would be a lot simpler to give some kind of oblique hint about the key signature and then sing the appropriate scale degrees. If you indicated E major, you could sing B B B D# C# B D# and you'd have the number. Like how Stephin Merritt interpreted the prompt "1974" when he did that song for NPR.
posted by ludwig_van at 1:51 PM on January 9, 2008

So, did Citizen Premier pull a Ripper and die from whatever he was on when he posted this last night?
posted by dersins at 1:57 PM on January 9, 2008

Ummm... what does any of this have to do with me? Seriously.

I am just looking for a used car.
posted by ND¢ at 1:58 PM on January 9, 2008

ludwig_van, it was a short-form DragNet parody with a math-and-reasoning slant, aimed at school-age kids; I don't think they could get away with the presumption that most of the target audience would be able to trade in a keys-based, numbered-degrees version of the discussion, basically.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:01 PM on January 9, 2008

Yes. You lack compassion, human decency, and the role it plays in your snark. Anyway, it's here.

Indie is just being an ass. Must you hijack the thread that will output useful statistics on a blunt, patronizing tone and seem pointless, but if it's not in real time using free software.

I'd be upset if an editor corrected my usage of "based off of" does not help to clarify that?

What scody said.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism was the intermediate level class, mind you.
posted by ludwig_van at 2:07 PM on January 9, 2008

MarkovFilter: what scody said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:09 PM on January 9, 2008

Auuuuughhh. luwdig_van's comment just SPRAINED my BRAIN.
posted by tkolar at 2:18 PM on January 9, 2008

Surrender by Cheap Trick sort of gets to the party, but I just saw them play and they never charged me. Plenty of nice folks working there. I can't speak to how it may be fostering broader community change, but it should be easy to learn to play, but I've really enjoyed seeing his backing band grow crazier and crazier facial hair. At a show in Brooklyn last week it was a writer from the brink.

Ooh, just one more: "Kick" by INXS.
posted by otolith at 2:27 PM on January 9, 2008

Apparently I like music.
posted by otolith at 2:28 PM on January 9, 2008

I am making this comment solely so that I can say later "I posted in that thread."

Nthing tkolar.
posted by wafaa at 2:41 PM on January 9, 2008

I'm quietly and calmly saving the whales.
posted by limeonaire at 2:46 PM on January 9, 2008

I'm waving the sails.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:53 PM on January 9, 2008

I'm quietly and calmly saving the whales.

You're going to feel really foolish on your death bed with all these whales you've never used just sitting there.
posted by maxwelton at 3:03 PM on January 9, 2008 [3 favorites]

If I were Britannia, I'd waive the rules.

#1 on my private list of wittiest album titles of all time.
posted by koeselitz at 3:10 PM on January 9, 2008

Ok, did that MathNet get repeated alot or do some of you just have freakish memories? I vaguely recall the show, but why do I only recall it in its broadest strokes? Did you watch it again recently? Do you have like phenomenal recall? Or have I just killed too many brain cells with booze? (Although, I'm a firm believer that brain cells are like pack animals in Africa: hunters kill the weakest ones, but in the long run, the pack gets stronger after the weakness is bred out). Cortex, what kind of stuff do you delete from your brain when you fill up your disk with this kind of stuff? Or is this where the name cortex came from? So many questions?

Hey, anyone have a link to that web comic thing that had a white background and stick figures where someone describes history from the beginning to the end with nuclear explosions and weird voices and scribbles and stuff?

Is that the kind of question that Citizen Premier is talking about? Who cares?
posted by dios at 3:35 PM on January 9, 2008

cortex: He's not singing the difference between tones, is he? Maybe transposed to a higher register? Because, IIR my training C, DTMF tones were chosen so that no two keypad positions have the same beat frequency.

Ah, who am I kidding, this'll be lost in the end-of-thread noise anyway...
posted by Pinback at 3:42 PM on January 9, 2008

Oh yeah? Okay, yeah. My eyes are very clever. You shouldn't go away because of all these people to give up smoking just so that people don't think you should try and find an appropriate picture of my own.
posted by h00py at 3:46 PM on January 9, 2008

Ok guys, I got it figured out. If you take the phrase:

I ask trepidly: What say Mefi on link-requesting AskMeFi posts? Are they appropriate for the scene?

And take the first letter of each word, you get:

IATWSMOLRAPATAFTC

Then you can rearrange and get:

"Coastal Armpit Waft."

So what happened is this: Citizen Premier is being held captive. His captors allowed him to post ONE question to MeTa, but they didn't know he knew code. He's telling us he's in a coastal location and that the pit smell from his captor is wafting into his room, slowly killing him!

He also tells us what he's being fed, with the same letters rearranged again:

"Parfait tomcat slaw" and "fatwa apricot malt."

We have to go save him.
posted by ORthey at 3:55 PM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

dios: You don't have any memories that have perfect clarity?

Two weeks ago you met the most beautiful woman at a resort in Fiji. The waves crashed around you as you made love. You remember almost nothing about her anymore, but instead have every Subway commercial from the past five years committed to memory.
posted by ODiV at 3:56 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

dios, I don't know if I saw that episode of MathNet more than once, and it's been probably fifteen years since I saw it; but I watched a lot of MathNet (and Square One in general) as a kid, and I can top of mind only pull out a few specific episodes/moments off the top of my head, so this is really just a testament to how much of an impression that particular episode made on me.

I'm not sure I would have really been willing to admit this at the time, having been a lot less secure in my nerdity at age 12 than I am now, but it's really just incredibly cool that there was a show where math nerds were pseudo-noirish heroes. I was always excited to see them breaking down a case on the blackboard, me watching and trying to jump ahead and nail down the problem before they finished revealing it in the script. Square One was really kind of the perfect show for me.

He's not singing the difference between tones, is he? Maybe transposed to a higher register? Because, IIR my training C, DTMF tones were chosen so that no two keypad positions have the same beat frequency.

I've got no formal training relating to DTMF tones, Pinback, so any formal definitions you remember are a lot likelier to be accurate than my armchair descriptions. I don't know what the actual intervals of the two touchtone registers are, but they sound enough like chromatic whole-tone intervals that I've always thought of them as such. Likewise the F-A major-third interval of the dialtone: I don't know if that's what the interval actually is, but to my musical ear that's what it sounds like, and its close enough for funk.

I made a recording a couple years ago that used faux-DTMF sounds as part of the arrangement. It was a song I did for my old Aural Times project, called AT&T to Acquire Bellsouth.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:01 PM on January 9, 2008

RIP Citizen Premier. He truly was our premier citizen.
posted by Eideteker at 4:11 PM on January 9, 2008

RIP Aural Times. It was truly my favoritest website EVAR.
posted by dios at 4:12 PM on January 9, 2008

"And take the first letter of each word, you get:

IATWSMOLRAPATAFTC

Then you can rearrange and get:

'Coastal Armpit Waft.'"

Anagrams are my shtick. Please stake out your own turf.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:13 PM on January 9, 2008

lol square1

Also, DTMFA tones? WTFA?
posted by Eideteker at 4:14 PM on January 9, 2008

do some of you just have freakish memories?

Yes, freakishly useless. I will forget a name 15 seconds after being introduced, but I still remember most of the words to 8 Percent of My Love.
posted by annaramma at 4:18 PM on January 9, 2008

Also, DTMFA tones? WTFA?

Heh. Well, everybody knows that the proper channel for a good dumping is the telephone, so hey.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:30 PM on January 9, 2008

annaramma, you fascinate me.

~~
Ok, seriously: that question about the link to that stick figure cartoon history lesson with the weird voices and explosions and scribbles? Yeah, I actually was serious about wondering about that. Because someone called me earlier this week and their voice made me have an associative flashback of that cartoon and I can't really remember it.
posted by dios at 4:35 PM on January 9, 2008

P'raps something like this?
posted by annaramma at 4:48 PM on January 9, 2008

Anagrams are my shtick. Please stake out your own turf.

"Anagrams are my shtick" = "Grammarian Says Ketch!"
posted by ORthey at 4:50 PM on January 9, 2008

No, that's not it annaramma. I am remembering something on a white background with poorly drawn characters. I think at some point "wtf" is used. Though, that voice in the video you linked did sound like this PA that called me.
posted by dios at 4:53 PM on January 9, 2008

I demand anagrams for annaramma!

My apologies, I'm a little over-caffeinated right now.
posted by annaramma at 4:58 PM on January 9, 2008

(Never mind. I found it. My description was off. Except for that voice. It's a match. My memory is EVIL.)
posted by dios at 5:20 PM on January 9, 2008

RIP Aural Times. It was truly my favoritest website EVAR.

Seriously. I still hum a few bars of German Cat Had Deadly Strain of Bird Flu from time to time. "If you see a feline... / Better make a bee line..."
posted by whir at 5:22 PM on January 9, 2008

Link, dios.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:23 PM on January 9, 2008

Yeah I guess that wasn't very clear. Hmm. Trepidly is a word, by the way. I was trying to ask if questions such as "what are some good cooking websites?" are alright. 111 posts later, is there an answer?
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:48 PM on January 9, 2008

Sure. Unless you run a cooking web site and you have a sockpuppet give that as one of the answers.
posted by grouse at 5:52 PM on January 9, 2008

yes
posted by bove at 5:54 PM on January 9, 2008

If you read through the archives of this site called AskMefi (don't want to post a link here; just google it), you will find your answer, I think.
posted by chinston at 6:03 PM on January 9, 2008

Yeah, that's fine. (Note: non-fine incidents will come along to annoy us in due time.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:07 PM on January 9, 2008

So you can probably delete posts 1-110 now cortex.
posted by eyeballkid at 6:10 PM on January 9, 2008

Comments, not posts.

And you can delete these two as well.
posted by eyeballkid at 6:10 PM on January 9, 2008

Wait -- Paul Heaton was right? Woo-hoo!
posted by maudlin at 6:12 PM on January 9, 2008

Just in case anyone here's interested, and missed it: my FPP on Jim Thurman, creator of MathNet, voice of Mathman, and much more. Square One was to my childhood what Metafilter now is to my adulthood. Aw. I love you guys infinity (there is no end, each power, you extend).
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:16 PM on January 9, 2008

I was trying to ask if questions such as "what are some good cooking websites?" are alright.

Check out this rockin' AskMe post.
posted by bingo at 6:36 PM on January 9, 2008

Trepidly is a word, by the way.

And it's a totally gusting one, too!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:41 PM on January 9, 2008

Trepidly is a word, by the way.

Yes, but is it cromulent? A cromulent word embiggens the smallest vocabulary.
posted by never used baby shoes at 6:47 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was trying to ask if questions such as "what are some good cooking websites?" are alright.

A question you should *never* ask is one that asks for websites that contain large multi-lingual vocabulary lists.

Seriously. You do that and you pretty much just wasted your question for the week and then you have to wait to ask another one.
posted by tkolar at 7:32 PM on January 9, 2008

That's amazing. Upon hearing the explanation for the original question it actually makes sense now when I go back and read it. It's not quite midnight here and I think I can say my horizons were broaden a bit.
posted by Green With You at 8:29 PM on January 9, 2008

According to researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, the armpit odor given off by elderly women can have a "mood enhancing" effect on those fortunate enough to be within sniffing distance.

(disclosure: I am in no way affiliated with Monell, but I have been known to stick my nose in the armpits of old ladies.
posted by netbros at 9:02 PM on January 9, 2008

So i got to the bottom here and no one seems to have noticed, cortex...

From there, it's just a matter of identifying the digits that satisfy both sets:

[258][258][258]-[147][369][147][258]
[456][456][456]-[123][789][456][123]

And blammo! We've got our number: 555-7942.

You meant 555-1942.
posted by blacklite at 10:21 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Don't worry, Citizen Premiere, they're just making fun of you because they're jealous. There are only a few of us, and we're very special. They wish they could be special, too, but they can't, and that's why they sometimes make cruel jokes and tease like this. I understand you completely, and the answer is "Go to Amsterdam. Take mushrooms."
posted by Meatbomb at 10:36 PM on January 9, 2008

Damn it. At work, in the plain theme, the bolded characters were pretty much not actually bold and I had to squint to check my own work. Good catch.

RIP, Mr. Thurman.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:51 PM on January 9, 2008

But what color is the squirrel?
posted by tyrantkitty at 11:28 PM on January 9, 2008

I don't think I can make this any more clearer. If the AskMeFi post is of the kind which feature predominantly comments whose very theses espouse links rather than advice, will it be accepted into the community--as a full-lived post--and thusly not expurgated whenceforth into the static Mefi aether?
posted by Citizen Premier at 11:58 PM on January 9, 2008 [6 favorites]

I kinda like my three year old grandson's plan — play all day then take a nap.
posted by netbros at 12:23 AM on January 10, 2008

I don't think I can make this any more clearer.

I see what you did there.

Also, your question has already been answered.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:54 AM on January 10, 2008

There are very, very many posts like that, Citizen Premier. See here, or here, for examples. But since those are so obvious and easy to find, it's reasonable that people would wonder if you meant something different by the question.
posted by taz at 1:02 AM on January 10, 2008

Jeezus, Citizen Premier, asked and aswered! ANSWER: UNDEED! (DON'T) DO IT! YESNO!
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 3:52 AM on January 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was trying to ask if questions such as "what are some good cooking websites?"

Woohooooo!!! So my glossolalia interpretation was indeed correct! Which means, Jesus is returning soon!
posted by The Deej at 5:40 AM on January 10, 2008

OED:
1911 Daily News 13 Nov. 4 With a show of boldness, but really trepidly and distrustfully.

Hey, remember that time Citizen Premier asked that weird question and everybody spent a day trying to figure out what he was trying to say and then it turned out he meant something really dumb like "if I hit my head on the wall hard will it hurt?" and we all had a good laugh and then we got really drunk and fell down? Those were the days!
posted by languagehat at 6:41 AM on January 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

Every time I see something about "Nyack, NY", I think of Mathnet.
posted by inigo2 at 6:46 AM on January 10, 2008

So are we going to get an askme about cooking websites or not? I am dying to tell everyone that I like Cooks Illustrated a lot and find it well worth the subscription fee to have access to every issue of the magazine online.
posted by TedW at 7:26 AM on January 10, 2008

This thread was so much more fun before the question got explained. Oh, well.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:53 AM on January 10, 2008

Yeah, OK, right, but: what if I was to post an AskMe question that was primarily looking for links? How would that be?
posted by Abiezer at 8:00 AM on January 10, 2008

DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.
posted by languagehat at 8:14 AM on January 10, 2008

Here is my ascii art Link:

^ o o ^

(____)



I suck at ASCII art.
posted by Mister_A at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2008

*poops in punchbowl*
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:19 AM on January 10, 2008

Hey, was that Catherine The Great in drag standing on the refreshments table?
posted by tkolar at 10:55 AM on January 10, 2008

You want links!?! I got your links! RIGHT HERE!
posted by grateful at 10:55 AM on January 10, 2008

HA! I win.
posted by occhiblu at 12:46 PM on January 10, 2008

Sorry, I didn't realize my question had been answered. I guess I should have assumed it was, since every other possible question was answered, as well.
posted by Citizen Premier at 10:31 PM on January 10, 2008 [2 favorites]