My parents' 50th wedding anniversary is in 15 days, and I don't know what to do for it. My sister and I are trying to come up with ideas, but there's the looming spectre of the fact that most of the time in the family, it's been a big party for someone's 50th.
A party isn't going to happen. I didn't plan one, and we're way too close to ask people to show up now. Not only that, but most of the family that is still alive is elsewhere in the country. Not including there's still plenty of pandemic risk, or other risk to be had with various viruses.
So, we're looking for alternatives. As it happens, my sister befriended a talented portrait artist in college who was able to make a lovely charcoal rendering of one of their wedding pictures for their 25th. I'm starting to think she should've banked that one for the 50th. I remember one year she and I got our mom nice cards for mother's day, and nothing else, and she kinda freaked on us. I'm worried that something similar will happen this time around. Mostly because I just don't want to deal with it.
Anyone have any good suggestions? The running suggestion is some kind of 1973-related thing, like a list of events and happenings in that year, a card, and a gift certificate for dinner. I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think that was kinda weak.
For my parent's 40th, we tracked down about twenty or so people who attended their wedding, and had them record video messages about what my parents were like back then (couldn't take their eyes off each other, so much in love, you crazy kids, that kind of thing). Then my sister and I recorded bits of things we remembered my parents doing for each other as we grew up, little romantic and supportive gestures and so on. We hired a friend of mine who's a talented video editor to put it together. Paid him about $300, which was the total cost. It was a SLAM DUNK. My mom watches it at least once a week, and cries pretty much every time.
Takes a bit of effort, but might be an option.
My wife did something like what Trichy suggests through the site https://getmontage.co/ got my 40th birthday. I thought it worked quite well.
If you want to go the 1973 route, check out www.uncommongoods.com, where they have this NYT collection of top stories from the past 50 years that might save you the effort.
Thank you both, these are great ideas. The montage is perfect for getting around having a party with a bunch of people who probably wouldn't fly here anyway even if we had started planning a year ago.
Could youtube please add a button labeled "Hello yes the band I am searching for has been together for fifteen years, and as such they have more than five videos. Please stop making everything except the top five search results be unrelated suggestions, or results for a search I did yesterday, or random youtubers who are all Jacob Collier or Adam Neely for some goddamn reason"?
Could youtube please add a button labeled "Hello yes the band I am searching for has been together for fifteen years, and as such they have more than five videos. Please stop making everything except the top five search results be unrelated suggestions, or results for a search I did yesterday, or random youtubers who are all Jacob Collier or Adam Neely for some goddamn reason"?
sounds like probably not, but does the band have a YouTube channel?
It's more a general rant about YouTube search. Like if I watch three videos about baseball, then do a search for something completely unrelated, once I scroll down a bit half the results will be about baseball. Or even random other stuff that people who like baseball are supposedly interested in. It's bonkers.
Searching on youtube feels like this:
me: I want to see live recordings by [band] please.
YT: ....do you though? [Band] isn't very popular, so it's probably not what you want. What about Rick Beato? His videos are related to music, so pretty much the same thing.
me: No, I'm going to keep scrolling down until I find [band]
YT: What about Fortnight videos? I know you like those, because you searched for Factorio last week.
me: ...
If you're searching for a specific thing and it's not in the initial set of results returned, you probably need to change your search terms.
Per my email, the point is that you're searching for something there are hundreds/thousands of videos about, but you want something other than the top 5-10 results (because you've seen those already, but you still need more, because you've lost control of your life and you're a ravenous content-devouring void).
The best solution I've found is to add random words to the search - e.g. "[band] live from" will often have different top results than "[band] live". Alternately you can append song titles or similar, while using the length filter if you want concerts instead of just individual songs.
Yeah youtube search sucks. I will do search for something like "Interview with the Vampire episode 1 review". There are many videos with this exact title but youtube gives me game of throne reviews, vampire diaries review, whatever show that is popular and not interview with the vampire. Then I also get things like barbie channels, or things related to other things I watched but have no connection to the vampire tv show. I also get reviews for the movie which is understandable but adding tv show doesn't improve the search.
To find the videos I wanted I added the channel names to the search which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I remember I couldn't find a video that I had a perfect word for word search for but it was in my feed for days. I'm thinking they might have shadow banned him for being a gay. I noticed they don't treat gay dudes talking positive about gay sex as they do homophobic racist complaining about the gay woke sex in the show they haven't even F ing watched. Why are those videos easier to find than the positive or even neutral videos.
I go and try to find reviews by Chinese for Mulan or other movies based in China and it is like pulling teeth. Whatever AI they are using obviously favors white dudes even over white women.
Then one of the trans youtuber had her videos taken down for responding to a horrible person talking about how trans people are grooming kids for sex. They took her video down for talking about sex but left his gross videos up, makes no sense.
I wonder if searching for those videos in Google/Bing search would work any better. Sounds like the YT search algorithm is geared toward trying to make you watch search results-adjacent content, which is dumb.
Baron, I tried the literal of what you wanted, followed by the word review. In this form:
“Interview with the vampire episode 1” review
And that gave me tons of reviews of episodes 1 and sometimes 1 and 2. I’ve always used double quotes for “search for what I say, not what you think I mean”.
I wonder if searching for those videos in Google/Bing search would work any better. Sounds like the YT search algorithm is geared toward trying to make you watch search results-adjacent content, which is dumb.
This is the answer! You are a man and/or woman of distinction and welcome to marry my sister any day. In other news I am very stupid for not doing this to begin with.
Baron, I tried the literal of what you wanted, followed by the word review. In this form:
“Interview with the vampire episode 1” review
And that gave me tons of reviews of episodes 1 and sometimes 1 and 2. I’ve always used double quotes for “search for what I say, not what you think I mean”.
Oh yeah and there are even reviews by black people and women. Maybe timing was the issues, do the search now vs when the episode aired.
Gwen Stefani is older now than Wilford Brimley was when they shot Cocoon.
What?
My god, is she in her 50's?
Gwen is now 53.
Wilford was 51 when Cocoon was released.
I just noticed that, in games that are focused on piloting a vehicle of some sort, I have a strong preference for first-person view in games with combat and third-person view in games without.
One of my short list of resolutions for this year is to try out new things musically and stop being perpetually years behind the times, so I went to several different websites and music YouTubers I like, and started making a Spotify playlist of albums off their "Top X Albums of 2022" list.
It's already over 22 hours long, but even if it tops 60 hours, I figure that between commuting and driving and dicking around at work or taking a walk, or whatever, I can find an hour a day to listen to a new album, which means I oughtta be able to be "caught up" on 2022 by... Memorial Day, I'm hoping?
We're gonna see how this goes.
My parents' 50th wedding anniversary is in 15 days, and I don't know what to do for it. My sister and I are trying to come up with ideas, but there's the looming spectre of the fact that most of the time in the family, it's been a big party for someone's 50th.
A party isn't going to happen. I didn't plan one, and we're way too close to ask people to show up now. Not only that, but most of the family that is still alive is elsewhere in the country. Not including there's still plenty of pandemic risk, or other risk to be had with various viruses.
So, we're looking for alternatives. As it happens, my sister befriended a talented portrait artist in college who was able to make a lovely charcoal rendering of one of their wedding pictures for their 25th. I'm starting to think she should've banked that one for the 50th. I remember one year she and I got our mom nice cards for mother's day, and nothing else, and she kinda freaked on us. I'm worried that something similar will happen this time around. Mostly because I just don't want to deal with it.
Anyone have any good suggestions? The running suggestion is some kind of 1973-related thing, like a list of events and happenings in that year, a card, and a gift certificate for dinner. I wouldn't be asking if I didn't think that was kinda weak.
Just wanted to say thanks to Trichy & Mao for the great ideas. They both loved them. Couldn't have gone better.
Not wanting to spam this thread too much, I made a thread for discussing AIs if anyone's interested.
Hulu gave me an ad for a Christian dating app while watching an episode of The Handmaid's Tale. I mean, read the room Hulu.
That feel when you search for a thing, and all the top results are things named after, but otherwise unrelated to, the thing you searched for.
(Here the thing was "panther modern", which is apparently both a musician and an exhibition space.)
And the street gang that helps Molly in Neuromancer.
Also mine is the programming language 'Dart.' Thanks, google.
We use an issue tracking tool that used to be called “Version One”. Virtually impossible to Google about.
Luckily they changed the name… to “Agility”. Now actually worse to Google about. Sigh.
And the street gang that helps Molly in Neuromancer.
Also mine is the programming language 'Dart.' Thanks, google.
The gang was, of course, the thing being searched for.
As for ungooglable language names, I'd imagine the Go programmers have thoughts about that 
But if you search for "Panther Moderns" with an "s", the William Gibson Fan Wiki entry is the first thing that appears. The next 3 entries are also related.
Or, if your eyesight is poor, or your monitor sucks, you could end up searching for "Panther Modems."
So there's a famous book of horror stories from 1895 called "The King in Yellow". Then there's a short story by Raymond Chandler with the same title, in which the narrator says that phrase and then mentions that it's the title of a book he once read.
I was thinking today, is that some kind of weird author flex or what? To write a story and have a character name-drop another story, and then just make that the title of your story?
It's a way to connect to or borrow from other works. The 1895 King in Yellow borrowed several names from Ambrose Bierce (Hastur, in particular). Lovecraft later put Hastur, the short story collection itself, and even its author into his mythos, saying that in the cthulu mythos universe, Robert W. Chambers based the idea of The King in Yellow on rumors he had heard about the Necronimicon. Also using the reference as the title is a bit unusual, but not that much. A lot of shows will give their episodes that reference other works names that are extremely similar to the things being referenced.
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