4 millions and millions February 9, 2015 3:42 PM   Subscribe

The 4,000,000th answer was posted to Ask MetaFilter today. No bigs.
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 3:42 PM (64 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite

It's a pretty great answer, too!
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:47 PM on February 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


ALWAYS DECLAW MANSPLAINING TATERS!
posted by lalochezia at 3:54 PM on February 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


FOUR MILLSIES
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:56 PM on February 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


I note that user's profile photo is of cats.
posted by arcticseal at 3:58 PM on February 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


So by now we should be able to have an algorithm that goes to the database and posts an answer for pretty much every question, right? Question is asked, then answer is posted, marked best, and thread is closed in milliseconds.

pb? Or is this more in cortex's wheelhouse?
posted by ODiV at 4:00 PM on February 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


When you go to post new questions, there is a good bit of code that tries to figure out similar questions to the one you are asking, and I'm constantly amazed at how close old questions are to what I'm asking. About a third of the time, I don't end up asking the question since it was covered before.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:02 PM on February 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, I've definitely had that happen once or twice as well.
posted by ODiV at 4:03 PM on February 9, 2015


And they're all delmoi!
posted by cjorgensen at 4:11 PM on February 9, 2015 [9 favorites]


I was sure it was going to be one of mine.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 4:14 PM on February 9, 2015 [14 favorites]


btw everybody says "millsies" now
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:23 PM on February 9, 2015 [7 favorites]


Millsie? Isn't that Mark Hamill's nickname (but don't call him that to his face unless you really know the guy).
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:33 PM on February 9, 2015


is "milly" a thing? It seems like it should be, like "hey, my rich grandpa died and left me 2 milly in the will!"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:51 PM on February 9, 2015


About a third of the time, I don't end up asking the question since it was covered before.

Totally. A few days ago I had actually typed up a question thinking it was too obscure to bother searching for and it turned out there were 2 full Q's about it in the archive.

Congrats, Lil' Green. You're all grown up.
posted by gwint at 4:51 PM on February 9, 2015


Come on Metatalk - we can't let Ask away with this. Surely there's people here who've been silenced ALL THEIR LIVES, and have time to share...
posted by pompomtom at 4:55 PM on February 9, 2015


We'll just keep making metatalk comments until the schmoopy and the grar come out even.

Schmoopy is way far behind.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:25 PM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Whoo, right above my far less deserving comment! I feel like I get to be a part of history, but not actually do anything!
posted by Diagonalize at 5:32 PM on February 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


If only you had charged $5 per answer by now you would be able to ride your solid gold bicycle into a mountain of dollar bills.
posted by biffa at 5:34 PM on February 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


The award for this accomplishment is an itsy-bitsy statue, right?
posted by Turkey Glue at 6:01 PM on February 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


Neato!

I think the kids today just say mil nowadays.

btw everybody says "millsies" now

says the man who brought you meff-ite

posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:01 PM on February 9, 2015 [20 favorites]


just as prometheus brought fire
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:18 PM on February 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


If you could read one answer every 10 seconds, it would take 66 weeks to read them all.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:29 PM on February 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Metafilter is a support system for AskMefi.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:41 PM on February 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


is "milly" a thing? It seems like it should be, like "hey, my rich grandpa died and left me 2 milly in the will!"

Surely it's, "Left me two milly in the willsie!" And don't call me Millsie.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:16 PM on February 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's beautiful, man.
posted by jonmc at 8:17 PM on February 9, 2015


Metafilter is a support system for AskMefi.
Which exists to provide things to talk about in MeTa.
posted by dg at 8:38 PM on February 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Hooray for AskMeFi - four milly
Great answers, and none of them silly.
None pointless or chatty -
That drives the mods batty! -
And would make the site go downhilly.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:57 PM on February 9, 2015 [20 favorites]


^ #1
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:00 PM on February 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


"is "milly" a thing? It seems like it should be, like "hey, my rich grandpa died and left me 2 milly in the will!""

Is Lil' Wayne a thing?

btw everybody says "millsies" now

Only Rich Dicks.
posted by klangklangston at 9:16 PM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Personally I'm devastated it wasn't in "Stories of empathic cats" but please just keep celebrating anyway.
posted by supercres at 9:28 PM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


is "milly" a thing? It seems like it should be, like "hey, my rich grandpa died and left me 2 milly in the will!"

You really don't want to know. I prefer your definition.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:55 PM on February 9, 2015


Ha! An answer containing Merton no less:
"There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end."

And it's a good answer, IMO.
posted by clavdivs at 11:08 PM on February 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Just another million answers to grind out until we get that last achievement and unlock infinite lives. Keep it up guys, nearly there!
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:52 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Congrats AskMe! You have won the right to name an infinite number of cats.
posted by pianissimo at 4:15 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Are you ready?

Cortex, show her what she's won.




It's a BRAND NEW MOTORHOME!!!!
posted by Meatbomb at 4:17 AM on February 10, 2015 [6 favorites]


I've been contemplating how to make the perfect omelette (while experimenting with small changes to my approach to making them). To ask or not to ask, that is the questioner's meta question.
posted by infini at 4:30 AM on February 10, 2015


infini, the answers you seek lie within.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:25 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Just another million answers to grind out until we get that last achievement and unlock infinite lives. Keep it up guys, nearly there!

If all 150,000 users went and dropped 7 answers into random Ask Me questions it would make the mods' day.
posted by biffa at 5:50 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Jacques Pépin (oblig.) (warning: fork used in non-stick pan)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:27 AM on February 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


A few years back I had a regular writing gig doing educational booklets for a theater company in Pennsylvania. One of their shows was a biographical thing about Anne Landers, so I wrote up a "history of the advice column". History generally places the "birth of the advice column" with an English paper run by a guy who claimed he had access to a whole team of experts that could offer crowd-sourced answers to any question at all (really it was just him and a couple friends); I started there, went through all the print history, but then ended with AskMe, arguing that in a way, it was itself the actual manifestation of that first guy's intent. (I also got to use this picture to illustrate it, which just pleases me.)

I also got totally stuck with a video projection problem in the middle of a rehearsal for my very last stage gig - but the theater had WiFi, so I went to the Green. Y'all answered fast enough that the director included AskMetafilter in the "special thanks to" section of the program.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:20 AM on February 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


Oh, and I didn't add in-thread - I actually celebrated the successful implementation of the Green's advice in the theater by cueing up a video for "Superman", and projecting that onto the huge screen in the empty theater to groove to while I cleaned up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:47 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Jacques Pépin (oblig.) (warning: fork used in non-stick pan)

Yep -- note he's just deftly moving the curds around, not gouging at the pan. It's easy once you get over the idea, but the whole procedure takes practice (he said, still learning the procedure).
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:56 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Cast iron is the way to cook.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:05 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


The "World of Eggs" episode of Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home is one of my favorite things in the world.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:51 AM on February 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


I thought today would just be another ordinary day, but then I woke up to this! WHOO METAFILTER ROCKS!!!

also CATS!

Also if you like that quote and haven't read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I super recommend it because it is the best book (and thanks to this post for reminding me to reread it!)
posted by augustimagination at 9:52 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dear EndsofInvention,

*burp*

infini
posted by infini at 10:25 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also, I'll spend the next few days having my usual Round Number Hangover, when the flags on askme comments all puzzle the shit out of the pattern-recognition part of my brain because WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING SOMEONE FLAGGED THAT STARTS WITH A 4, NOTHING STARTS WITH A 4, ASKME COMMENTS START WITH A 3 AND QUESTIONS AND METATALK THREADS WITH A 2 AND METATALK COMMENTS AND MEFI POSTS WITH A 1 AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS SUPER SHORT
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:26 AM on February 10, 2015 [11 favorites]


The problem was that I was, if I say so myself, the master omelette maker, back in my early/mid teens, when a grand 3 egg one with sausage, cheese, tomato et al, was my Saturday morning special (weekdays the schoolbus came at 6am, far too early to eat).

And for some reasons unknown, I hadn't really made one for past 20 some years, so, like Pepin above, I got stuck because I didn't use it.

Thanks for the omelette links y'all ...

ps. I use a tablespoon of flour instead of milk or water.
posted by infini at 10:30 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's a pretty great answer, too!

Sufficiently great that Kanye won't have to intervene anyway.
posted by Kabanos at 10:47 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


No bigs.

No kidding.
posted by y2karl at 11:02 AM on February 10, 2015


You know, when we get to 5 "milly", we should totally have a prize package waiting. A cast iron pan, a big bottle of vinegar for all their cleaning needs, a macbook air, and, of course, a gift certificate for a couple hours of therapy.

It's too bad Don Pardo just passed.
posted by bonehead at 11:09 AM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


By that time we'll be calling them "millzos".
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:11 AM on February 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


"A few years back I had a regular writing gig doing educational booklets for a theater company in Pennsylvania. One of their shows was a biographical thing about Anne Landers, so I wrote up a "history of the advice column"."

I'd love to read it.

"By that time we'll be calling them "millzos"."

Miyans, milts, mibbles, mignons, meezos, meals, megs, misses, and limons will happen first. Millzos won't until AIs are deep mining the wayback for ironic nostalgia captchas and hit this exact moment.
posted by klangklangston at 11:59 AM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you could read one answer every 10 seconds, it would take 66 weeks to read them all.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:29 PM on February 9 [4 favorites +] [!]


Gee thanks, just what I needed: scientific proof I have spent at least a year of my life on MetaFilter.
posted by chavenet at 1:55 PM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also, I'll spend the next few days having my usual Round Number Hangover

This is the kind of comment that makes me feel how much I belong here.
posted by ambrosen at 2:37 PM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS SUPER SHORT

are you aware you are 'shouting'
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:43 PM on February 10, 2015


Oh man, did I ever talk about the time I played around with the idea of creating Super Caps for when you need more emphasis than normal CAPSLOCK can manage? My thought was, take each pair of lowercase and uppercase letters, and then for each pair try to analogize the transformation from lowercase to uppercase in terms of number and shapes of strokes, and apply roughly the same transformation again to the already uppercase letters, and whatever comes out would be the supercapital letter.

I've got zero skills with generating type and so it never got past some notebook sketches but the results were sort of interesting if less EMPHATIC than just straight-up Zalgo-ish. Highly encouraged as just a bored napkin doodle exercise some time.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:51 PM on February 10, 2015 [13 favorites]


what
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:52 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


I believe he's saying a:A::A: ?
posted by Wolfdog at 4:02 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


I cut letters out of magazines and paste them to the screen when I want emphasis. Then I eat the paste while the favorites pour in.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:05 PM on February 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Marianne Moore!
posted by clavdivs at 4:13 PM on February 10, 2015


OOOOOooooooOOOOOh. So SOMEONE'S allowed to count "meaningless" base-10 counts of a piece of data and have it mean something.
posted by frecklefaerie at 7:42 PM on February 10, 2015


DTMFA!
posted by mazola at 9:17 PM on February 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Happy 4 millionth, Ask!! That is straight-up super amazeballs.

Out of curiosity, can someone pull the links for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd millionth?
posted by DarlingBri at 11:51 AM on February 13, 2015


Out of curiosity, can someone pull the links for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd millionth?

1 millionth
2 millionth
posted by John Cohen at 5:56 PM on February 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


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