MetaFilter's site and server can always use upgrades of hardware, software, and bandwidth, as well as more stable funding for continued support of its small but high-skilled moderation and backend team! If you'd like to chip in, you can donate to Metafilter.

Podcast 90 Transcript

From Mefi Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

A transcript for Episode 90: "Pic Pedantic" (2014-03-06).

Pronoiac set up a Fanscribed page, and this transcript came from there.

Transcript

jingle: (theme music)

mathowie: So, welcome to podcast 90! I'm mathowie. Welcome Jessamyn.

jessamyn: I'm Jessamyn.

cortex: And I'm -

jessamyn: And you're not welcoming me, I'm always here.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: I know!

cortex: Well, but you're always welcome, too, here.

mathowie: Yes.

cortex: And I'm - I'm -

jessamyn: Well, and welcome Josh, cortex.

cortex: Hi there!

jessamyn and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: Awesome! So, it is March 6th, and we are covering -

everything from February 5th onwards. I'm checking out Jobs. Looks like there was a zillion web jobs in the last month.

jessamyn: Which is cool, right?

mathowie: Yeah!

jessamyn: I'm always excited when Jobs starts getting a little hopping.

mathowie: Yeah, instead of the two or three jobs of the last month or two, this is like half a dozen, at least. Front-end web developers, Wordpress stuff...

jessamyn: Well, and I want to go work for klangklangston's mom in Ann Arbor.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Organizing her photographs.

mathowie: Yeah, that's really cool.

Someone with just gobs of negatives. Just organizing!

jessamyn: Right.

mathowie: Pretty cool.

jessamyn: But what I want to know is whether this guy got his vodka delivered last month.

cortex: Ohh! Oh, right.

mathowie: Yeah, that was interesting. Buy weird vodka in Poland? Yeah. That looked cool.

cortex: We should drop a MeFi Mail and just, you know, inquire.

mathowie: Do you want to go to Projects?

jessamyn: Sure!

My tabs are all so small that I can't figure out where any of them are.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: This is a major thing! I feel like this is one of those schismatic things, like different people--

jessamyn: (whispers) Schismatic.

cortex: --do it differently and feel very strongly about it.

jessamyn: (whispers again) Schismatic.

cortex: Like me and Angela, me and my wife have different ways of doing this, and I can't stand having enough tabs that I can't clearly tell what every tab is, like, if there's more than six tabs open, I'm going to start seriously thinking about

culling it. Like, what do I really need open? And if I've got a couple tabs that I really, really need to keep around, but also really, really don't need to look at right now, I'll just throw them in a separate browser window and minimize it and come back to it a week later.

jessamyn: Have you ever used those tab row plug-in add-on things? You get rows of tabs up top, or is that too pathological?

cortex: I... that's too much for me. I don't like that.

mathowie: Ooh! Yeah.

cortex: I also like to keep my browser in general fairly [trimmed ?] down just because when I eventually need to restart it or something it's not a giant fucking project of

figuring out what's autoplaying, and...

jessamyn: Jim's always got that problem. Like, he's like, "Where's that noise coming from?"

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: "My computer's really slow!" And like, you have a hundred and fifty tabs open of stuff from Metafilter you want to read later. Later never comes!

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: Well, was that a lifechanger when Chrome added the little speaker icon in the last two weeks or so?

jessamyn: I don't pay attention to Chrome at all.

mathowie: Awww.

jessamyn: Until they remove the favicons from the bookmark bar, it is dead to me.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: Well, it shows a little speaker on a tab that's playing sound or something?

jessamyn: That's pretty cool, though.

mathowie: Yeah! It is.

cortex: That's clever. That's smart.

mathowie: It is a-mazing. Because a lot of times the thing that really annoys me is, maybe there's Newsweek in a tab, and five minutes after a tab is loaded, it autoplays a car ad or something.

jessamyn: It starts chattering at you, yeah.

mathowie: Yeah! And you go like, "Wow, what is going on?" Which of these spinning plates is the bad one? And then you see a little speaker icon. It's amazing.

Let me see, in Projects... I thought this was a pretty cool simple Project.

jessamyn: That was my favorite one! Hey!

mathowie: Yeah. It's called Notes to Self, and it just sets up--

jessamyn: By nihltn [N. I. Hilton]. Nilton? Nilton.

mathowie: Yeah, it just sets up Post-Its, like old-school OS, or MacOS Post-Its--

jessamyn: Like stickies.

mathowie: He uses your browser's HTML5 cache to keep them there, and you can make a whole bunch of Post-Its and close the browser and come back, and it's always saved up to the moment, and I think there's a way to backsave it to Google Drive, and it's a

weird little, cool little utility.

jessamyn: I thought it was beautiful, was my favorite thing about it, too.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: That it's just nested lists, which kind of is what I've always wanted since I used to have some stupid thing that did it on the Mac Plus, you know?

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Like, I basically want something that replicates an index card, and nothing that isn't an index card.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And this is sort of like that, only nicer-looking. I thought it was nifty.

mathowie: I remember when I first started dating my wife she was using the Mac in like 1995 and it was yellow stickies everywhere on our crazy, crowded desktop. And I was like, "That's kind of nuts."

jessamyn: (chuckles)

mathowie: And then I was super jealous that I didn't have a Windows version of that, and then when I first got a Mac I think I had to run them in classic mode, you know, stickies.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Right, right, right.

mathowie: And I was addicted to them for a couple years! It is awesome. On a laptop, especially, every note you need for yourself is always there.

Any other favorites for you guys?

jessamyn: Well--

cortex: I was amused by the Non-Stop Scroll Shop, which is just a infinite scrolling store of fake stuff.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: Done by ignignokt.

jessamyn: Oh, by ignignokt!

cortex: ignignokt and Metroid Baby.

jessamyn: Metroid Baby.

mathowie: Does it unlock achievements? (chuckles) For how long you scroll?

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Mine says "Free-Range Anglo-Americans."

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: (with apparent puzzlement) "Douchebags"?

mathowie: This is hilarious. It's just a random word generator and photos and... ohhh.

cortex: Yep.

A sort of [gopher's ?]--

jessamyn: Well, the pictures kind of go... there's a spider? A dog? How long do I have to go before I see a picture of my own thing?

cortex: Of your own thing?

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Well, you know, where do these pictures come from? Oh, they're out of stock of allergies!

cortex: Oh, darn.

mathowie: Awww.

cortex: I think they're probably just doing automated keyword-based Google search stuff.

jessamyn: "Octagons, out of stock."

mathowie: It's pretty cool! (chuckles)

jessamyn: "[Meltwater ?], out of stock."

cortex: I've got a badly-cropped picture of a woman in a bikini. Apparently it's "Thinks", and it's $38.99.

jessamyn: (chuckles) I do enjoy that. I don't even know why I enjoy it.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: So here's my idea. I think what you need is a dating website that just shows people's desktops.

mathowie: Ohhhh!

jessamyn: Like, I feel like I would know more about whether I'm compatible with somebody by looking at how they organize their files--

mathowie: Wow.

jessamyn: --than almost anything else. Am I right? Fellows?

mathowie: Wow. That is, yeah.

cortex: I think that's a fair argument.

mathowie: That's nerdier than some sort of nerd meet-up site. Like, that's good!

jessamyn: (laughs) But yeah, no, looking at how people manage their tabs and looking at whether they've got a desktop covered in files? I have enough people that come to drop-in time, and when I see their desktop it's just a disaster. I'm like, "I'm not sure if I can do much to help you, because you have a different problem."

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: That's a lot like... yeah, that's a lot like judging someone by the state of their apartment, but then if you tell them you're doing

that, then they'll spend a lot of time faking it and cleaning up. We have to have an auto--like, when you sign up for the site to put up your profile--

jessamyn: Right. (chuckle)

mathowie: --it goes, "We already took a picture of your desktop 20 minutes ago," and you go, "Wait, what?! I wasn't ready!"

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: Like, that's what we really want to see.

jessamyn: You know, I don't even care if they clean up just to make a good impression. There's enough people who can't do that. If they understand that cleaning the apartment is a good first impression, that's already partway there, I think.

mathowie: Oh, okay.

jessamyn: It depends, you know.

mathowie: I was just looking for brutal honesty.

One of my favorite Projects was this DotDotCo Tumblr blog by redsparkler, and it's just a Tumblr of awesome signage this person sees... finds?

cortex: Portland MeFite.

mathowie: I think these are found online, because some of these are from California, unless they're in California. But they're just amazing signage, amazing old hand-done

fonts from signs. Just so cool.

jessamyn: "Dat ampersand."

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

jessamyn: Where does "dat ass" come from? Where does that come from?

mathowie: I would assume--

cortex: I'm going to go Check Your Meme.

jessamyn: Please, could you check my meme for me?

cortex: I'm going to... I'm gaining knowledge about your meme right now.

mathowie: Because hip-hop. I don't know.

cortex: "Based on a still photograph of rapper Rich Boy, which was taken during a studio visit to MTV's Total Request Live in March 2007. The original picture reveals

the young Southern rapper biting his lower lip while trying to listen to someone speaking in the audience. Since its inception, both the facial expression and the catchphrase "Dat Ass" have been used as a popular response to rump threads."

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Rump threads?

cortex: Rump thre--(dissolves in laughter)

jessamyn: Can you send a link my way, please?

cortex: Sure.

mathowie: Know Your Meme, what? "Dat ass." I gotta see this myself.

jessamyn: Rump?

cortex: Is a rump thread just a thread of pictures of butts? I'm just going to search for 'rump thread' now.

mathowie: I got broken images on the origin.

cortex: Yeah, I don't know what that's about.

mathowie: Awww.

cortex: Come on, Know Your Meme, know your fucking image sources!

mathowie: Know your archives.

cortex: Rump thread.

jessamyn: So it's as if he were looking at a picture of somebody's butt? And then they wrote "Dat Ass" underneath it?

cortex: Yeah, it's like he's biting his lips and is like, "Mm, dat ass," I guess, you know, is the idea.

jessamyn: I guess?

mathowie: I can't believe it's from 2007. I would have assumed it was from '99 or something. It seems like it's been around forever.

jessamyn: Nah, people have just seemed to be lulzing like goofballs lately about it.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Well, thank you, Josh, that was... that was informative.

mathowie: (chuckles) We've learned a lot today!

cortex: Yes, apparently a rump thread is a thread of pictures of rumps, so. Well-named.

mathowie: Hmmm.

jessamyn: Any rumps?

cortex: Yes. Including the squirrel girl from SpongeBob SquarePants, apparently.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: What? What?

mathowie: Whaat?

jessamyn: What?

cortex: Yeah. I don't know.

mathowie: Is this the astronaut squirrel that lives under the sea?

cortex: I landed on the Internet, apparently, when I went searching for some of these.

mathowie: Wow.

cortex: So there you go! Now we know.

mathowie: The less you know, the better.

jessamyn: My output levels seem to be high. Am I sounding screechy to you guys?

cortex: It sounds ok on this end.

mathowie: Sounds good.

My last favorite project was this UX Launchpad post by jay, jargon? Jay raggon?

jessamyn: Jeragon!

mathowie: I've never had to pronounce that!

cortex: (theatrically) It's a dragon!

Oh no, guys look out! It's a dragon!
That's what it is.
(laughs)

jessamyn: Dude, that guy found a review I left on AirBNB this month.

mathowie: Oh cool!

jessamyn: And just dropped me a note. "Hey! I'm on Metafilter, I was looking for a place to stay in Manhattan, and I found your review. Hi!"

mathowie: This is so funny. It's someone who's been a member of Metafilter since the year 2000, and I had no idea he was a famous designer at Microsoft, and he's doing a one-day user experience seminar in Seattle, with the person behind Omni Group, super famous Mac and iOS designer, a small studio that makes Omni Outliner and they used to make the Omniweb browser and stuff -

jessamyn: Right, I remember.

mathowie: And so they're doing a one-day talk in Seattle.

(ringtone goes off?)
It's just funny. It's people who have always been around, turn out to be somewhat famous. I had no idea.

cortex: On a related note, a spammer left a comment in the thread that we deleted.

That's not really a related note at all, actually. I just thought it was funny.

mathowie: I saw that while I was loading it up. That was a person I was putting on a watch list.

So, $300 if you're in Seattle.
Famous people will teach you how to make webapps work.

jessamyn: Yeah, he is very talented. I thought that project was neat.

I enjoyed this slightly link-heavy project by redbeard, which is called Deep Sea Dubstep, which is a video that talks about how wood that falls into the water becomes a thing that lots of critters -
like, it's a video. But basically it talks about... the dubstep thing? Does it have music?

sfx: (video plays in background)

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: About the wood that falls into the water and then the critters all flock around it and how it creates some sort of interesting stuff around it. And, it got turned into a Metafilter post by billiebee that just, it's just got beautiful photography and it's sort of talking about it, so. I guess there's a crowdfunding thing, but the guy who posted it to Projects

didn't mention that, which is fine as far as I'm concerned, and yeah, it was just a neat thing. He chunked a whole bunch of logs overboard and filmed kind of what grew up around it.

mathowie: Oh, neat.

cortex: Neat.

jessamyn: Yeah! I mean, a lot of times we have a lot of sort of webby Projects, and I sometimes like the Projects that have actually very little to do with the web sometimes.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: So that one. Science. I think that was the only other Project. I mean, I love all the Projects, but I think that was the only ones on my list.

mathowie: Sweet. Any others of yours, Josh, at all?

cortex: I'm good. You guys have covered stuff I like, so... perhaps we should Metafilter it up!

mathowie: [??] Yeah. Me-ta-fil-tarrr!

jessamyn: Well, because I have my segue [ˈsɛgwɛɪ], I linked those two, so...

cortex: Wait, you bought a Segway [ˈsɛɪˌgwɛɪ]?

mathowie: (chuckles) No, she just segued [ˈsɛgˌwɛɪd].

jessamyn: I just like hearing you say sag-way [ˈsæg ˈwɛɪ].

cortex: No, seg [ˈsɛɪg]! Seg ['sɛɪg]!

mathowie: Seg [ˈsɛɪg].

jessamyn: Sssseg [ˈsɛg].

cortex: Segue [ˈsɛɪˌgwɛɪ].

jessamyn: Egg [ˈɛg]. Egg [ˈɛg].

mathowie: Segway [ˈsɛgwɛɪ].

jessamyn: Egg [ˈɛg], what does a chicken lay? Matt?

mathowie: Eggs [ˈɛɪgz]. (chuckles)

jessamyn: Augh!

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Josh?

cortex: Oovum!

jessamyn: Aeugahh! (laughs)

cortex: Egg [ˈɛɪg]. It lays an egg [ˈɛɪg]. A chicken lays an egg [ˈɛɪg], which you put in a bag [ˈbɛɪg].

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: Which makes the bag [ˈbɛɪg] sag [ˈsɛɪg].

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: And then it gets eaten by a dragon [ˈdɹɛɪgən]

mathowie: Neat. Dragon.

cortex: Did I mention the dragon [ˈdɹɛɪgən] thing? I--

jessamyn: Yeah, well, you started yammering about it and I was talking about something else already but maybe you should get back to that.

cortex: Well, no, no, that was a jragon [ˈjɹɛɪgən] thing I was trying to... that's completely--(dissolves in laughter).

jessamyn: I don't understand. As per usual.

cortex: Months ago, I think maybe bugbread MeFiMailed me after I said dragon [ˈdɹɛɪgən] in some podcast context and he's like, "Is that how you say dragon [ˈdɹɛɪgən]"? And I was like, "Yeah, that's how I say dragon [ˈdɹɛɪgən]!" And it's the bag-sag [ˈbɛɪg ˈsɛɪg] merger or something?

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: There's some linguistic term for the specific bad habit I have.

jessamyn: Sure, no, I totally know what you're talking about.

cortex: Anyway. Dragons [ˈdɹɛɪgənz]. That's what it's all about.

mathowie: (exhales, probably not fire) One of my... let's get back to Metafilter.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: What?

mathowie: One of my favorites--

cortex: Wait, no, Jessamyn was segueing.

mathowie: Oh, right. No, she did already!

jessamyn: I was saying I already segued!

cortex: Oh, okay. Oh, right, right!

mathowie: Boom! We're in Metafilter World. (chuckles)

cortex: Oh, okay. The Metafilter post and the Projects post.

I'm caught up now.

mathowie: Yay!

cortex: Please proceed.

jessamyn: Aughhh!

mathowie: I loved this video of two schlubby guys in a pizza parlor in Utah--

jessamyn: I love it already.

mathowie: --doing a cover of Toto's Africa--

cortex: Oh, god, yeah.

mathowie: Which, I don't even like that song that much--

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: --I think I kind of hate that song, but you watch this video and you're like, "That was the most amazing goddamn thing in the world--"

jessamyn: Why?

mathowie: It's just so good! And I'm like, "Why is this so good?

It's just two middle-aged dudes!" And then it turns out they have a YouTube channel with a gazillion views and subscribers--

jessamyn: Oh, so they didn't just stand up while they were eating their pizza, they were in a band.

mathowie: Yeah. But it's very local dudes at the local pizza place and you can hear plates clinking in the background, so.

jessamyn: One guy looks like Louis C.K.

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: Yeah, exactly.

jessamyn: The other one looks like you, Matt.

mathowie: (laughs) And apparently people claim that maybe they took the video recording and dubbed... because I'm like, "His voice is so good!" And they're like, "Well, they might have

recorded that in a studio and synced it up to this, because--"

cortex: See, and I left a comment saying I don't think so.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: Not because you couldn't do that, but because--

mathowie: It's too much trouble.

cortex: Yeah! It's a bunch of work. You know what you can do, is you can just mic reasonably well--

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: --and do a take when people aren't being super fucking noisy, and okay! If you've got a voice, you've got a good voice, and if you're going to use some autotune you can process it on the signal straight from the mic. So there's no need to go to a studio to get reasonably good sound if you aren't fighting a bunch of

serious acoustic challenges in the space you're recording.

mathowie: Yeah. Yeah, it just kind of blew me away that these guys have been doing this for like five years on YouTube and just, they're just way better than they need be. (chuckles) Which, I don't know why they're so good. It's songs I don't even like that they just do so well.

jessamyn: That's a nice song.

mathowie: They're doing straight-up covers, like super-religiously to sound exactly like the originals, every song. They don't really do much new with

it or make it their own. But they're all very, very good, very enjoyable, and it's just funny that this is just schlubby-looking guys at a pizza place. It's good. It's way better than it should be.

cortex: Yep. I also enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed another musically-related thing, which is this post about the time signature of the theme from the original Terminator.

mathowie: Hmm.

cortex: Which is actually, the piece is not super-involved, and actually a couple of people in the thread were kind of disappointed that it was not a more serious critical music-theoretical take on the whole thing, but--

jessamyn: Can you hum that? I've completely forgotten how that goes.

mathowie: Yeah, is it famous?

cortex: (ominously) Ta-tun ta-tun ta-tun-tunn tun ta-tun ta-tun ta-tun ta-ta--

jessamyn: Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

cortex: (sings) Bree-nee-nee! Yeah.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: Yes. It's got a funky key signature, because the guy who was putting it together back when he was putting it together was just sort of improvising, and his looping wasn't quite perfect when he put it together, and so

it ends just being weird as a happy accident. And it's a great little thing! It's got a weird sort of stilted feel to it that works really well with the mechanical sound of it. But anyway, it's sort of a look at that and then some people got chatting about funky time signatures and counting and whatnot there. It was kind of neat. Especially since the Terminator 2 theme is the same guy, substantially the same motif, but then he did sort of redo it and this time did it more to a straight signature,
did like 6/8, I think, took out of some of the weird lopsided straggling feel of it while still sort of seeming like the same--and people in the thread are talking to some extent about how that's so weird because they remember it being weird and then they try to count 13 against the theme and they couldn't because they were listening to the Terminator 2 theme, which doesn't have the same--

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: (descending pitches) Ha-ha.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Hmmm.

cortex: Anyway, I thought that was kind of fun. Just a random odd little thing.

mathowie: Neat.

cortex: And it's crazy.

mathowie: Da-dun da-dun dun.

jessamyn: I enjoyed this... it was actually a post from yesterday. You remember, oh, Stephen Glass, that guy they wrote that movie about who was the guy who wrote that stuff at The New Republic and made that shit up and there was a movie about him that featured the guy who then went on to play Darth Vader, and since then getting fired and all sorts of bad things happening due to his own incompetence, he went to law school, and has been practicing. He's a paralegal, and he's passed the bar!

mathowie: Whoa!

jessamyn: But, because he can't pass the character and fitness part of it, because he's a lying scoundrel--

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: --he hasn't been able to practice and get his law... I mean, he's got a degree, but he's not, he's unable to practice.

And so it's interesting, because as you know, we have a lot of lawyers on Metafilter, and then we have a lot of armchair lawyers, and listening to them talk about this.
Anybody who goes to law school, and I lived with a law school student for a while, the character and fitness thing is something you agonize over, like, if you've ever done anything wrong, you know, because it's the only vaguely subjective part of being able to practice, to being able to pass the bar, and--

mathowie: How did they do that? Is that interviews or essays or what, or background?

jessamyn: You have to submit forms, and then to basically tell the truth, and then they can sort of decide and I guess they can do it? I don't even know if they can do a...

it's not very deep, is what I recall.

mathowie: Hmm.

jessamyn: But basically, he hadn't even when he applied, Stephen Glass hadn't even told the truth about, "Oh, hey, I'm that guy who got fired from The New Republic!" And they were like, "Oh, come on, what kind of an idiot... augh!"

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: But it's an interesting discussion! The post itself, which was by SpacemanStix, was a really good post. And then the discussion was just kind of lively and interesting! I enjoyed it, even, I know

yesterday, a post yesterday does not really sum up the entire month, but...

cortex: Eh, you know, it's yesterday's part of the last thirty days, you know.

mathowie: So this is all from 1998, so he was like the guy at the New York Times that made up all the stories of 1998, I guess?

jessamyn: Jayson what's-his-name, yeah.

mathowie: Jayson, yeah, something. I don't know.

cortex: Voorhees. Jason Voorhees, I think.

jessamyn: Yeah, and the movie I think was called Shattered Glass, and it was kind of almost like a straight-to-HBO-ish movie. But the guy who's in it did become the guy who was in the Star Wars movies, and it's

he's very good in the movie, so for somebody who's looking for a "What's this all about, then?" it's kind of a good...

mathowie: Wow, so--

cortex: We're talking about Anakin, Hayden Christensen?

jessamyn: I'm pretty sure, yeah. Is that--that's not Hayden Christensen.

mathowie: No, no.

cortex: Yeah, no! Hayden Christen--unless I'm having a total, well, unless we're talking about James Earl Jones, I mean...

jessamyn: I am not talking about James Earl Jones!

mathowie: It's an older dude. Oh, Hayden Christensen.

cortex: So who went on to play--(laughs) I told you that!

mathowie: I thought you were talking about the guy on the cover.

jessamyn: Hayden Christensen is a lady! You mean this Hayden Christensen?

cortex: Hayden Christensen? Hayden... you just pasted the Metafilter thread again.

jessamyn: Goddammit!

mathowie: That is the Star Wars kid. Yeah, the Star Wars kid is a little kid.

cortex: No, yeah, no, not the young, not the--

jessamyn: Not the Anakin one! The one who--

cortex: Well, he's still Anakin in the second and third prequels.

jessamyn: Aaaah! Sorry, I'm the worst.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Yeah, that guy, I think. Hold on.

mathowie: Alright, we got it.

cortex: Aah, Jesus Christ.

jessamyn: Well, because I was thinking about that guy who was in--

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Yeah, that guy. The guy who was in--

mathowie: My favorite post--

jessamyn: Shut up! Do you have someplace to be? --who was in Sideways. What's his...?

cortex: Paul Giamatti or the other one?

jessamyn: The other guy.

cortex: I never saw Sideways.

mathowie: Oh, that other guy. (laughs)

cortex: (laughs) But I know Paul Giamatti.

mathowie: The guy from Wings? The guy from Wings?

jessamyn: Thomas Haden Church, sorry.

cortex: Ohh, oh, okay, yeah, him.

jessamyn: Sorry, I hear Haden, and alright. So go on, Matt. Sorry.

mathowie: My favorite--

jessamyn: I'm not sorry.

cortex: Wait, was it Teresa Nielsen Hayden? I don't...

mathowie: Oh, god.

jessamyn: I'm not sorry.

mathowie: Stop.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: I just said 'stop' but it was S-T-P, I took out the 'o'. Go!

So, my favorite post of the month by madamjujujive was the post about PicPedant, which is brownpau, beloved Metafilter user, is running a hilarious tweet account where he--

jessamyn: Oh, I've been following this! It's amazing. Sorry, go on.

mathowie: Yeah. So there's like, there's this wave of dumb...

well, I mean, they're entertaining Twitter accounts that just grab some old famous photo of a famous event from an angle you've never seen before, they just pull something up that's timely.

jessamyn: Like those mustachioed dudes with the selfie kind of crazy shit.

mathowie: Yeah, right, they just did that the other... or on Lincoln's birthday they'll post a photo you've never seen of Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt getting new suspenders in 1926. And it's like, the Atlantic did an article about the people behind some of the biggest ones.

There's like four or five with like a million followers, and it turns out--

jessamyn: How do those things make money? Because...

mathowie: I don't understand!!

jessamyn: (chuckles)

mathowie: It's like two teenagers in high school are just doing the History in Pics one, and they somehow make $40,000 a month. I don't understand why or how, but. There's some famous event where someone started one of these accounts, got super popular, and then sold it for several million dollars? In a couple months, they had a million followers, so they just--

jessamyn: You're not allowed to do that! That's against the rules!

mathowie: I know. They sort of kind of did it though. But anyways, brownpau basically, these accounts are famous for just posting a historical photo, they never say who took it--

jessamyn: Completely uncited.

mathowie: Unsourced, un... sometimes they're just plain wrong, it's the wrong year, it's the wrong location... because they're just, and then everyone retweets them, and you don't know what the truth is, so if you go to @PicPedant on Twitter, it'll be like, you know, "That thing two days ago was actually taken in

1936, not 1928, it was actually in Chicago and not New York, and the photographer was named blah." It was just (chuckling) really great, that brownpau's doing this, and he's just doing this on a lark, because he was just slightly annoyed by the unsourced photos that are just being passed around millions of times and said--

jessamyn: Well, and it drives everybody crazy, so it's a wonderful service he's doing.

mathowie: Yeah, and some of the photos are from the '60s of Kennedy, or they could be

from, they could be of Obama and stuff, and you're like, "Those photographers are still alive! You know, you might want to mention their names."

cortex and jessamyn: (laugh uproariously)

mathowie: And I think all these famous Twitter accounts probably don't want to go down that path because maybe they owe those people money, probably, totally. But...

jessamyn: Well, it's kind of an untested area of law, as I understand it.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: I mean, I'm just one of those armchair lawyers. Posting a picture to Twitter, ehhhh, you know,

is in a gray area. But aaah, I don't know.

mathowie: And a lot of these are also about, they're kind of debunking the photos, like, "That's actually a composite photo made of three different shots from, here's the originals and stuff." And I think Slate did an article about the rise of these things, and then did a little feature on PicPedant, which I thought was awesome.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Nice!

mathowie: And brownpau had no idea, like, "What? I was in Slate? What?"

jessamyn and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: And they mentioned his whole name! They were like, you know,

his whole real name, and I was like, whoa. So yeah, that was really cool.

jessamyn: That's a little funny.

Oh, yes, I should... I don't think I mentioned this in the last month's podcast for some reason. Did I mention the Pete Seeger obituary thread? I mean, he was dead by the last podcast, but I don't think I mentioned it.

mathowie: I don't remember.

cortex: Huh, yeah, I don't know if it really came up.

mathowie: I don't think so.

jessamyn: Well, it was a nice post that nickyskye made, and there was a whole bunch of just good remembrances and it was a nice obit thread.

I'm one of those goofs who (laughing) kind of likes obit threads sometimes. Because you just hear interesting stories and that kind of thing.

cortex: Yeah, no, they can be... I don't always go digging into them, but if it's someone I've got some little bit of a cultural hook to, I really do like it when it turns into people digging into interesting little bits of their life or their work or experiences tied to seeing what they did.

mathowie: I think I was walking around the house and I turned the corner and my wife was wiping tears off her eyes, like (sniffs) augh! And I was like, "What are you doing?" And she's like, "Just reading the Pete Seeger thread on Metafilter!" Like, Pete Seeger died, and we both had not a ton of connection to it. It was just like, "Oh, bummer, that guy who seemed pretty cool." But I never really, you know, didn't know tons about him. I don't think she did, totally. I mean, she kind of knew of him.

jessamyn: Sure, sure.

mathowie: And she was reading that thread, and it totally, she was breaking down, going like, "God, he was so great!"

jessamyn: Well, because the people who were really touched by him and moved by him were very touched and very moved. He was one of those guys who really had a vision for how he wanted the world to be and went out and did that thing, all the time, relentlessly, and had a good long life in which to do it, you know, so.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And his wife died I guess last year, and so it seemed like he'd had a great run, so you didn't have to be like, "RARR, stolen from us so soon!", but more like, "Aww, let's reflect on his life and

everything else."

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: Yeah, the--

cortex: It's funny for me, because I sort of grew up with folk music, but I grew up with it very in the background, like, my parents did folk group stuff when I was a kid, just casual with friends sort of stuff.

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: So I was exposed to a bunch of folk music but not in a me being attentive sort of way, so I probably know a bunch of Pete Seeger songs, but I don't know that I know them, you know, it's one of these things where I feel like at some point I'm going to sit down and look through his discography and be like,

"Oh, that's a song by him! Oh, that's a song by him!"

jessamyn: We grew up with the Pete Seeger kid albums.

cortex: Ohh.

jessamyn: And oh my gosh, if you know any kids, in fact, you should get some for Zelda or redo some of--

cortex: I thought you meant kids. I'm not going to get some kids! No.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

jessamyn: No, no, no! I'm aware that you're an uncle, however.

But he's got these kids' songs that are just terrific. And they're fun because they're not just fun to listen to but they're for singing.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Like, his whole deal was not like, "Listen to me being fancy on my banjo!", but

like, "Everybody should sing together. That's going to make the world a better place."

mathowie: Aww. Awesome.

jessamyn: So you could get some of these songs and you could go sing them!

mathowie: Sweet!

cortex: Seems like a good thing.

jessamyn: I think I made a playlist of, yeah. I made a little playlist of kids' songs and other good Pete Seeger songs.

cortex: Oh, nice.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: That works.

There was the Facebook thing with the new pronoun stuff they added.

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

cortex: Which led to a big long Metafilter thread, but that reminded me, after someone asked it there, about the gender field round-up I did a few years ago for Metafilter's freeform one, and so that got me off my butt to rewrite that and regenerate it.

jessamyn: Hey, nice work!

cortex: So, yeah. So there's currently 2,743 different labels people on Metafilter use for their gender field.

jessamyn: "Male, female, M, F"... hey, F is 292, which is the same as my username!

cortex: Ha-hah!

jessamyn: "Dude, lady, yes, girl, XY, XX, guy, man, boy,

male, femme, woman, bloke, chick, male..." something. How do three people have an A with a little hat trademark symbol?

cortex: You know, it's probably some Unicode thing. It's probably like a Venus sign or something.

mathowie: Yeah. And we might not allow it anymore. (chuckles)

cortex: Well, I think it's actually just the way I'm filtering the text when I run this.

mathowie: Oh.

cortex: Since I'm terrible about stuff like that.

mathowie: And I think in companies when asked to do something like an open-text field for gender, they always go, "No, the data has to be

- Blah! It's a bit field!"

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: "It's gotta be A or B." And then I think with some quick checks, we found we could guess the... we could plop the gender into two piles if you really wanted to, like, I think we got 93% of them into male or female from that crazy list. So, you know.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Well, and we have queer and genderfluid and trans members. And you can even tell a lot of times when people opt for one of those. I think it's a lot better than having some stupid pulldown.

mathowie: Yeah. Oh, yeah, and I went to Facebook to look at it, and I think they took them from user suggestions or something? Because the capitalization was all over the place. Like, I picked 'cis male' or something, but it wasn't capitalized in the same way I've always seen it. I was just like, "Can you guys just clean this up and make it look real?"

Like, I don't know. It was weird.

jessamyn: This is funny. There's some duplicates. Like those two, "I love music, comedy, and football. I hate children, doesn't matter. We'll get along fine." They have different spacing?

cortex: Yep. Yeah, I didn't do any aggressive processing on it to try and find close matches. But that is interesting, because yeah, I kind of wonder if that's someone's extra account and they just used the same field but ended up with an extra space somehow, or if someone else was super inspired

and decided to go with that, or what. I don't know. Or someone went from one account to another and closed the first one and kept the gender field. I don't know.

mathowie: Hm.

I was trying to wonder what the opposite of tomboy was the other day. I don't even know if there's a term for that. Like femme guy?

cortex: Well, it's tricky, because tomboy is a really socially acceptable way to characterize a girl--

mathowie: Right.

cortex: --who's just more boyish and rough-and-tumble, but we have historically had a really hard time societally not

being a dick about expressing the opposite concept.

mathowie: Someone said 'nancy boy', and I'm like, "That's kind of a put-down." (chuckles)

cortex: Yeah, that's kind of a problem.

mathowie: (chuckles) Yeah. Just kind of not cool. Yeah. Okay.

Did you see the, Josh, I wanted to ask you about the boozy popsicles thread, which I didn't know that was a thing, that there was such a thing as booze plus popsicles. They call them Poptails, or, I don't know, they came up with crazy names.

cortex: I did not see this.

jessamyn: Cocksicles.

cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: (laughing) Cocksicles!

jessamyn: I'm just reading!

mathowie: I know. I think that's what people call them. But there's--

cortex: "Give me a cocksicle, straight up."

jessamyn: Ehhh!

mathowie: So there are these recipes.

cortex: Which would be with no ice? Wait. Yeah, that's weird. I'll have to look at this. Because it's...

mathowie: And when I saw it, I was like, "Why doesn't Portland have a bar that has nothing but popsicles? Come on."

cortex: (laughs) Food cart incoming.

mathowie: Yeah, like...

cortex: They should definitely launch that during a rainy March. This would be just the time.

mathowie: Yeah, right.

It would have to be difficult! Because alcohol changes the freezing point, flavors get really weird when they're
cold, you have to make them way sweeter than you want just because it gets dulled when it's ice-cold.

jessamyn: "Coffee, cream, bourbon, and butterscotch sauce."

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: I bet that's really good.

mathowie: I asked Andy Baio, because he was like, "Euh, popsicle booze." He said he made--

jessamyn: (laughs) He's already over it?

mathowie: Yeah, he said he went to a bar or he made popsicles, he said it was the worst thing ever. Like beer--

cortex: See, beer is not what I would want to make a popsicle from!

jessamyn: Beer doesn't... beer is the wrong thing, though.

cortex: Why would I want to... yeah.

mathowie: Fizzy... it seems like it would be a good base.

jessamyn: But fizzy things don't freeze right.

mathowie: That's true.

cortex: I think a sweet Manhattan popsicle might be pretty good.

jessamyn: You get slush. Cosmo popsicle?

mathowie: It seems like... yeah. Or a strawberry daiquiri would probably easily turn into a popsicle.

jessamyn: Or a ginger lime rum popsicle?

cortex: Mm. Could be good.

jessamyn: Come on! It's a lack of imagination.

mathowie: Oh, my favorite part is, worst-case scenario, you have a slushie at the end. (chuckles)

cortex: (laughs) A boozy slushie.

mathowie: Yeah. If everything goes wrong, you get a slushie.

jessamyn: Well, and then you start to slur your words and people don't know if it's because you're drunk or your tongue is frozen.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

mathowie: Hey, plausible--

jessamyn: That's my problem with popsicles generally, I'm like euhbleuhbleuhbleuh!

mathowie: Plausible deniability.

jessamyn: I can't talk so good.

cortex: You know, I want to mention this because I bet we didn't mention it. It's the sort of thing that I might have mentioned on the previous podcast but I don't think I did, even though it [was read ?] the other month.

jessamyn: This is why you need to listen to the previous podcast like I do.

cortex: Who has time?

jessamyn: Me!

cortex: I'm not even [??].

mathowie: Is this a roguelike game?

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: No, this is Flappy Bird, it's a post about Flappy Bird--

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

cortex: But it was like two days before we recorded the podcast.

jessamyn: By cashman.

cortex: And I think that was at least a couple days before it turned into a huge thing. Like, this was still, Flappy Bird was something we were just amused that was this game everybody was playing and complaining about in the thread. And--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Can you gentlemen explain the Flappy Bird thing to me, as somebody who never went near it?

cortex: Okay, so Flappy Bird is a real simple game.

jessamyn: Okay.

cortex: You've got the pipes from Super Mario Brothers, and then a gap between them.

jessamyn: Don't know what that is, but I can imagine.

cortex: You know, the green pipe from Super Mario Brothers.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: You've never seen Super Mario... oh my god. Okay.

jessamyn: I can imagine! I know what the screenshots look like. I had an Atari.

cortex: Okay, so you have a big pipe, and then you've got a pipe above that pipe and a space in between, and then you've got a bird who needs to fly between those pipes without touching either of them.

jessamyn: So is it a sidescroller?

mathowie: Yes.

cortex: Yeah, it's a sidescroller, it's just constantly scrolling to the side, there's pipe after pipe after pipe that you have to fly through--

jessamyn: And you just fly in between them by tapping? What do you do?

mathowie: Yeah. You tap to flap.

cortex: Yeah. Every time you tap, the bird flaps and gains a little bit of upward

momentum.

jessamyn: Is it social?

cortex: No, no! And it's hard, because it's just a pain in the ass to control your bird because he's not super, like there's, gravity is operating fast--

jessamyn: Like Woodstock.

cortex: --and it's, so it's, anyway, it's a real simple game, and--

mathowie: But it's really, really hard. But it's... yeah.

cortex: And it's really hard, and it blew up. It just exploded.

jessamyn: Everyone decided it was wicked fun? Is that...?

cortex: Well, I think everybody was like, "This game is hard! You should play this game!" And then people did, and it was like, "This game is dumb and it's hard," and then they played it a bunch more

and then they told their friends to play it.

mathowie: "You should play it," yeah.

cortex: And it just turned into this gigantic thing, and then there was this gigantic backlash, because people were like, "This game is shitty! Why is everyone playing it? They're just playing it ironically!" It's like this weird--

mathowie and jessamyn: (laugh)

mathowie: Yeah, there was a lot of games journalism about it.

cortex: Yeah, and the guy who launched it took it down.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: He was like, "Hey, I'm glad my game was a success, but it also ruined my simple life. I take it down." I think it was like--

mathowie: He was in Vietnam.

jessamyn: And so if you take it down, that just means no one can download it anymore--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --but you can keep it?

mathowie: Yes, yep.

jessamyn: download it anymore, but you can keep it?

mathowie: right. Yes. Yep. Right.

cortex: right, so I've got -- I've got a collector's item on my phone now, because I downloaded it before. I don't know what happens if I need to reinstall my iOS.

jessamyn: so I would have to jailbreak my phone if I wanted to wedge Flappy Bird into it?

cortex: Yes. Or you could --

mathowie: you could just ask someone on the street to borrow their phone and play it for two seconds and throw it against the wall, because --

jessamyn: Nobody down the street from me has Flappy Bird on their phones.

cortex: or download one of the thousands of clones people made the next couple weeks. Because everybody else was like, "Flappy Bird? Everybody liked that! I should make a Flappy Bird clone." And it's the easiest game in the world to clone, and so it just flooded

mathowie: Yeah, that's true, there's a million clones

cortex: clone, and it's the easiest game in the world to clone, and so it just is flooded with shitty, shitty quick ripoffs.

mathowie: ...a million clones. So the funny part is, jessamyn, it's just a simple, simple, not even a maze game. And the trick is it has really heavy gravity that's kind of variable, so it's really hard to play, but it's super simple, so you can see what you need to do. And it's super frustrating but fun. The funny part is, I want to throw my phone against the wall, that was everybody's first -- cause your score will be

mathowie: phone against the wall, that was everybody's first -- cause your score will be 1 or 2. Like, you can try it 50 times, and you'll get through 2 pipes and it's over.

cortex: Yep. You get to 6 and you're feeling really badass.

mathowie: And the game is over and it's really nervewracking to even get to 5 or 6 because you're like, "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die any second now!" And the funny part is, I played it online, there's a zillion clones of it, there's one of -- Sesame Street did one, Bert --

cortex: Flappy Bert?

mathowie: Yeah! Flappy Bert! And Bert,

jessamyn: Uh-oh, I see where Josh's mind is going

mathowie: yeah, Flappy Bert! And Bert --

jessamyn: Uh-oh, I see where Josh's mind is going immediately.

mathowie: So you see where Bert is vertical in nature. It's way harder to play Flappy Bert than Flappy Bird. So I was sitting there in a browser getting one or two in Flappy Bert, going, "Oh! This is so hard! Oh! This is so hard!" And then I picked up Flappy Bird and got a 25? And then I started playing more of these browser clones and they make the physics even harder.

cortex: It's sort of all over the board. Some were easier, some were harder.

mathowie: Yeah, I had a

cortex: It's sort of all over the board. Some were easier, some were harder.

mathowie: I haven't found one that's easier, so the funny part is every time I go back to Flappy Bird I do better and better. So now, I'm technically good at Flappy Bird and I can get 30 to 50 points on every game and it's not that hard anymore just because I've got all the timing down. It's so weird.

cortex: Well it's one of those things where you just have to build up the timing.

mathowie: And it's just -- playing the really hard ones really hones your timing really quick.

cortex: Yeah. I don't actually have any roguelike posts to mention this podcast

cortex: I don't actually have any roguelike posts to mention this podcast.

mathowie: I think there was one!

cortex: I did make a joke about Roguey Bird as just a screenshot I made in a text editor. And then I actually sat down and spent two hours working on building it up before I realized this is not something I care about enough to actually lose the time to try to make this work.

mathowie: Did you see the Braille one where someone did it in a web browser?

cortex: I heard about it. I didn't actually look at it I don't think.

mathowie: You play Flappy Bird in the browser URL address bar. The URL is a bunch of Braille characters and you see

mathowie: address bar. The URL is a bunch of Braille characters and you see the little dot moving between the pipes. It's crazy.

cortex: That's awesome. I'll have to check it out sometime, I just never got around to it.

mathowie: Yeah, Flappy Bird was crazy.

jessamyn: Werrr. Well, Thank you for that lengthy explanation!

cortex: There you go!

jessamyn: But yes, that was a good post by cashman. I would like to talk about the thing I haven't seen yet, which is there were two good House of Cards posts. One just a couple days after House of Cards

jessamyn: posts, one just a couple days after House of Cards had gotten released, just talking about binge television, which was sort of interesting, and Netflix stock going up. And then one where people could actually talk about House of Cards. Because the other one made a little joke about "No spoilers!" says @BarackObama, whatever. But then people were like, "Grump grump, you're not supposed to post spoilers!" And so then they posted another one. And I just found out that Season 8 of Trailer Park Boys is going to be on Netflix

jessamyn: found out that Season 8 of Trailer Park Boys is going to be on Netflix.

cortex: I have never watched any Trailer Park Boys.

jessamyn: Oh really? I think you might enjoy it.

cortex: I think I might too, I just never got around to it.

jessamyn: I thought I wasn't going to like it. And in fact, a friend tried to show it to me, and I'm like, "Uhh, this seems like weird subculture tourism and makes me uncomfortable." But now I've decided it's funny, which either means I'm wrong or it's funny or something in between. But it went seven seasons and then it was over, but now they're gonna have a straight to Netflix season, which is gonna be good.

mathowie: Oh, neat. Neat.

cortex: Nice.

jessamyn: And you might enjoy it.

mathowie: I randomly watched half of season 4, not knowing where to come in.

jessamyn: Well, it almost doesn't matter.

mathowie: I knew some of the background of the characters, so I enjoyed half of season 4, but then I realized, it's basically "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" in Canada - same, really jerky characters that are tough to love.

jessamyn: The people are even a little more down-and-outers than "It's Always Sunny," but yeah.

mathowie: It's a lot of that -

jessamyn: It's a lot of weed humor, if you enjoy that kind of stuff.

mathowie: Or it's a lot of quote-unquote "hero of the show" is lying and stealing, and you're like "I don't know if I should be rooting for his awfulness." But it's very funny. That's cool, it's going straight to Netflix.

jessamyn: You've got to root for Bubbles.

mathowie: Right. Bubbles' poor cats.

jessamyn: Right, him and all his cats.

I was happy about that, I enjoyed the House of Cards threads -
just because, I don't know, ever since the Super Bowl I've been like, "Oh, yeah, sometimes it's fun to talk about TV online with people."

cortex: Yeah!

mathowie: I started watching season 2 of House of Cards, when I had some downtime, but I haven't gotten, I need to get through it. They're so intense, they're insane.

cortex: Yeah, we're about halfway through.

jessamyn: I have not started. Do you have anything to tell me about season 2? A non-spoiler thing to tell me about season 2?

mathowie: I just said it. It's pretty intense, that's all. (chuckles)

jessamyn: I just heard that season 1 was more story-like, and season 2 was more like, "Augh! I hate all these people."

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: In the first episode something crazy happens, and I tweeted about it, and someone goes, "Oh, man, wait until you get to the tail end of that season," and I went, "Ohh, it's going to get worse?!"

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: That was rough! And the one thing I hate is when writers tweak with the viewers, when they throw them under the bus.

jessamyn: I don't like it how Downton Abbey killed all those people.

Speaking of which, when's Game of Thrones coming back?

mathowie: (chuckles) "Speaking of killing everyone..." April something?

jessamyn: Okay.

cortex: I still haven't seen more than season 1. I gotta... like, I'm up to date on the books.

jessamyn: Of Game of Thrones or Downton Abbey?

cortex: Game of Thrones. Downton Abbey I'm... mostly up to date on. I haven't been watching the new season if it's actually started airing yet, but...

mathowie: I think it's over. Yeah.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I think it's over. I think they had the Christmas special.

mathowie: I didn't even watch the end of Game of Thrones, the last two of last year, because I was just getting so sick of it. (chuckles)

Like, "who's left? Nothing's fun any more."

cortex: See, having read the books, I'm enjoying the idea of watching the TV show, because on the one hand, getting drawn up by the drama of the production, but on the other hand, totally knowing, more or less. So the whole Red Wedding that everybody, you know, freaked about when it aired on TV, I was just (laughing).

jessamyn: You're like, "yup!"

mathowie: "Where were you in my book club six years ago?"

cortex: Seriously, me and a hundred thousand other people were all just like "yeah, it's pretty sweet!"

jessamyn: (titters)

cortex: "Yeah. That fucked you up, didn't it, huh? Yeah, yeah."

jessamyn: "Yeah. Yeah."

cortex: "Didn't see that coming."

Speaking of television, there was a post just the other day about a fake chef doing bad cooking pranks.

jessamyn: What does it mean to be a fake chef?

cortex: He's not really a chef, he's posing as a chef on morning news shows.

mathowie: But he actually got an appearance on a real -

jessamyn: They know he's fake?

cortex: They didn't know.

No. He scammed his way on as a guest chef doing a 'let's cook a thing' thing. And I saw the title of this post, or the main link of the post, and I was like, oh my god, it's those guys! And then I clicked through and it turned out it was in fact those guys.

jessamyn: Which guys?

cortex: These guys who do something called the Found Footage Festival. They collect weird video and do a tour thing.

jessamyn: Those guys.

cortex: And they did K-Strass, the yo-yo master, years ago.

mathowie: As a thing.

cortex: Was a previous similar thing, where they got on morning shows as a guy who was a yo-yo master and he'd go on and he'd stall a bunch and he'd make awkward conversation and then he'd be terrible with yo-yos.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: And the whole thing would fall apart. And they would just do this again and again and again on every morning show they could scam their way on to.

mathowie: Dude, I can't believe--

jessamyn: How do I get on morning television?

mathowie: They pulled this off--

cortex: I think you just have to have an idea and a willingness to annoy other people.

mathowie: They pulled this off five times? Is that what this says?

cortex: Yes.

mathowie: They got the fake chef... how is that possible?!

cortex: Well, it's not like the morning shows have Interpol working for them, they're not going to be like, "Hey, we--"

jessamyn: Or that they watch morning television themselves.

mathowie: That's true.

cortex: That'd be like listening to your own podcast. I mean, think about it. (laughs)

jessamyn: Shut up! I do that. That's important.

mathowie: People in Wisconsin wouldn't care what happened in New Hampshire's morning show, I guess. Ohh.

jessamyn: Sure they do. They're always trying to angle to get better cheese.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: You heard me, Wisconsin. Bring your A-game.

cortex: Wheels within wheels.

mathowie: Nice.

cortex: Cheese wheels.

(laughs)

mathowie: I loved this post that ColdChef made about AirPnP, which is just a public database of public restrooms in America. But the best part was his comment where he made the post, the whole reason he made the post is so he could tell this story about how he showed up to radioamy's house for Mardi Gras a few years ago, and she let him in and she said, "The bathroom's over there,"

and he said, "Yes, I know. I've peed in this house two times already, randomly."

jessamyn: Aaaah!

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: "Over the last 15 years," and then he tells a story where he stumbled into this house once when it was a drug den and then came back to it and met an old lady who let him in and he got to use it again. And then a friend lives in it. Just the craziest, same apartment, three different people owned it, three different worlds. New Orleans is crazy.

cortex: Oh, ColdChef.

jessamyn: Enjoyed that story very much. ColdChef, you panderer.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: Throw him some beads. Cut the guy some slack.

jessamyn: We all wore Mardi Gras beads to town meeting this year.

cortex: Yeah?

jessamyn: I don't know why? We have a town moderator who's Metafilter's own kellygreen, and for whatever reason, this was a wear your hat, wear your fun hat and wear your Mardi Gras beads to town meeting this year.

cortex: I totally support that, but I gotta say, and I say this entirely with love--

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: Vermont strikes me as one of the least Mardi Gras-ish states in the country.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: It just--

jessamyn: Quebecois and... what's the, culturally, the people who speak French in New Orleans are called what?

cortex: Creole? Cajun? It's a whole mishmash.

jessamyn: Cajun!

mathowie: Cajun.

jessamyn: Quebecois and Cajun aren't necessarily that super different. I don't know.

cortex: I guess. Yeah, no, no, I don't have a good argument here, I'm just,

for some reason I think Vermont and I think, I'm imagining a lumberjack wearing a bunch of Mardi Gras beads, basically.

jessamyn: That is exactly what you would see, yes.

cortex: And it just seems, it's got a certain delightful dissonance to me.

mathowie: I should probably go--

jessamyn: Right. You can't flash anybody because it's too cold.

cortex: I guess Utah seems less Mardi Gras-ish than Vermont.

mathowie: Oh, yeah, that'd be the least Mardi Gras.

jessamyn: Yeah, we--

mathowie: But I guess yeah, French, Catholic, yeah, I guess Quebecois could...

jessamyn: Yeah. It was a good time. They, Chandler, we have our thing in the music hall, and they

actually put sticky notes under some of the chairs so that maybe you could win tickets to the music hall if you were sitting in one of the special chairs.

cortex: (laughs) It's like being on Oprah.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: There's a little photograph. That's me in the front with the Mardi Gras beads on, but I have--

mathowie: That's a cool sweater.

jessamyn: I love that sweater so much.

mathowie: It's the best sweater.

cortex: That guy is so happy about his ticket.

jessamyn: The tickets are expensive, you know! That's probably 40 bucks worth of tickets he's holding.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: In that little Post-It.

mathowie: Should we, anything else on Metafilter? You want to go to Ask?

cortex: I got a couple things.

jessamyn: I'm ready to move on.

mathowie: Lightning round.

cortex: I'll be quick, then.

jessamyn: Let's vote.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

cortex: The--I'm just doing it!

jessamyn: (chuckles)

cortex: The other big video gaming Internet phenomenon of the last month--

mathowie: Oh, right.

cortex: --was Twitch Plays Pokemon, which Rhaomi made a nice post about, and it was a bunch of people on Twitch, which is a video streaming service that specializes in streaming video games, so you can hook your game up to it and people can watch you play.

jessamyn: You were talking about this before, like, a long time ago, right?

mathowie: No, it's pretty new.

cortex: It's just the last podcast.

jessamyn: Oh, okay. So no.

cortex: So yeah, no.

mathowie: I saw it on TV years before.

cortex: I've probably talked about Twitch before, but. Anyway, Twitch Plays Pokemon, somebody hooked up a GameBoy emulator playing Pokemon Red, an old GameBoy Pokemon game, hooked that up to a Twitch stream, and then also hooked up an IRC bot to the chat stream for that and let people give commands, like LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, START, A, B, so that they

could collectively collaborate to control the game and try and beat Pokemon, but this is sort of a problem, partly because when you get 70,000 people in a chat room all shouting at once it gets a little bit crazy, but there's also a between 20 and 40 second delay between what happens in the game and most people watching the stream seeing it, so even if everybody was doing a really good job of giving commands relative to what's on screen, they're giving commands relative to what was actually happening thirty seconds ago in the game.
So when you have to do something like get 10,000 people all together to walk across a narrow ledge by hitting LEFT ten times in a row without hitting DOWN, you can lose a good day or so to that, which is the sort of thing that kept ending up happening.
But, since then, I guess they actually beat the game! Which is kind of amazing.

mathowie: Yeah. That just happened like yesterday, right? Or, I heard...

cortex: Yeah, last couple days, at least.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: It's great because this has led to a bunch of other people trying to futz with things like these. Someone hooked up the Twitch Plays Pokemon commands to a Tetris game they were running, so the people trying to play Pokemon ended up accidentally also playing Tetris, unbeknownst to them.

jessamyn: (laughs) Funny.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Group Tetris.

cortex: Someone set up a Twitch Plays Cookie Clicker, although it never really took off.

jessamyn: Don't even mention that. Dead to me.

cortex: Yeah? Dead to you? How did it die?

mathowie: (chuckles) Come on.

jessamyn: It's just, they added a whole bunch of new shit!

cortex: Well, that's the awesome part! There's new shit that you can do.

jessamyn: Aughhhhh! How is that awesome?

cortex: Because prisms are so much more productive than antimatter condensers were.

jessamyn: They're like, "Hey, you're in 11th grade! Now you're back in 4th grade!"

cortex: No, no, it's like, "Hey, you're in 11th grade, and we invented 12th grade!" And 12th grade's got burritos and all the Froot Loops you can eat, you know? It just keeps getting better. It's like more.

mathowie: Euhh.

jessamyn: It's like more. Except it's not.

cortex: Don't think of it as being far from a goal, think of it as your journey continuing. It's like, if you were like, "Oh boy, today is the day that I die," and someone was like, "Oh, actually, you know, we just added a bunch of more years to your life," you wouldn't

be like, "Ohh, darnit!" Well, I mean, maybe you would if your life was terrible, but...

jessamyn: It is sort of like a bunch of more years to my life... playing this fucking game!

cortex: (laughs) Well, you don't have to. Plus, you can just leave it running, you know.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Well, I didn't. That's why it is dead to me.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

mathowie: What was your last link, Josh? (chuckles)

cortex and jessamyn: (laugh)

cortex: Oh, I was just going to mention the crazy Bitcoin-ness stuff.

mathowie: Oh, right.

cortex: Which is continuing to develop and also crazy Internet phenomenon stuff, but yeah, there was a big thread a couple weeks ago about

Mt Gox...

jessamyn: Oh, I've been loving that! There was a new thread that just popped up I think today.

cortex: Yeah, yeah! Matt was telling me about that before you got on the phone, because I was wondering if there was going to be a new thread about the whole Time Magazine, was it, with the...?

mathowie: Newsweek, I think, doxxed him?

cortex: Newsweek, Newsweek.

jessamyn: Quick quiz! What does Mt Gox stand for?

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: (chuckles) I know. It's the Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange.

mathowie: Yep.

jessamyn: Aah! (rising pitch) Magic: The Gathering! (laughs)

But I'm sorry. Go on about this thread.

cortex: Yep. Not even for trading actual Magic cards online, for trading

online Magic cards. It was an exchange for the digital versions of the cards, which I'm so amazed...

mathowie: Did they invent the digital versions, or were there actual digital?

cortex: No, no, no, no, there's a whole online Magic: The Gathering.

mathowie: Ohh.

cortex: Yeah, the people from Wizards of the Coast got smart and said, "You know what we should do? We should cut out the whole 'production cost' aspect of this thing."

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: "And just charge people for nonexistent cards."

mathowie: Virtual, yeah.

cortex: Instead of charging them too much for actual paper.

mathowie: Oh, man.

cortex: It's kind of brilliant. Anyway, that whole thing's been fascinating, and if you somehow have

not known what's going on, that's not a bad place to start to figure out what's been going on lately.
And I'm done. That's all the Metafilter for me.

mathowie: Cool. Sweet. Ask Metafilter favorites!

jessamyn: All right! Ask Metafilter. My favorite question. "In Steal This Book, Abbie Hoffman states, 'We know two foolproof methods to fly free, but unfortunately, we feel publishing them would cause the airlines to change their policy.'"

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: "Ever since I read the book as a kid, I wondered what those methods were. Presumably they're antiquated and safe to discuss. Any ideas?" By Mayor Curley. And a couple people had some suggestions.

mathowie: Acting like you're part of the crew... what's deadheading?

jessamyn: Deadheading is going, like, if there's a flight that goes one way, but then they need to bring the plane back to another place?

mathowie: Oh, right.

jessamyn: They'd fly the plane with nothing on it just to get it back to where the airport is that it needs to be at.

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: It's a thing you do with buses, I think, more than with planes.

mathowie: I was amazed at, there was this story out of San Francisco, this weird lady who's trying to stow away to Hawaii, and she's been busted three or four times now, and she's banned from SFO.

jessamyn: Oh, good lord.

mathowie: And yeah. But it's following, I heard an interview with Huey Lewis, who described in 1972 how he'd got onto a free flight to London and then backpacked around Europe with no money, he just played little, he busked,

he was just a busker, he'd make enough money to make dinner, he hung out in Europe for a year or two when he was in his 20s, post-college, and then... but his stowaway technique was like, you go to the airport, and in the late '60s/early '70s you would hand gate agents your ticket and you would hold your envelope that held the ticket that said American Airlines on it, and they would hold your tickets an hour before the flight loads, and they would just, you walk by, you show them your ticket holder
and they let you on the plane. So he said he just pulled a ticket holder out of the trash and just walked up and went to London.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Whoa!

mathowie: He just took one of the worst seats in the back by the toilet and nobody ever told him that wasn't his seat and he was in London the next thing you know. So this lady in... which is mindblowing that security used to be so lax that that was possible. And this woman in San Francisco today, it's the same thing. She was grabbing people's receipts in trash cans,

and she was saying she was there to pick up a daughter, so they let her past security, and then she would just sit on seats, but now they count, you know! They're just like, "Why do we have 27? Why is there... I have 26 on this paper."

jessamyn: Right. And they know where everybody is supposed to be in every seat also.

mathowie: (laughs) Because computers, and so yeah, she's been busted sitting in a seat on a plane waiting to go twice, and she got busted at security the last time, so yeah, she's banned.

But yeah, the stowaways. I didn't know this was possible to fake.

jessamyn: Well, I remember reading that when it came out, just like people used to talk about, "Ooh, making free phone calls!" And that was a thing you could do if you knew how to do it, even up until the '80s when I was messing around with phones. But air travel feels like it's been locked down for longer, although maybe it's just that I wasn't really air traveling before. So it's just interesting to read people talking about it in the thread.

mathowie: That's pretty cool.

cortex: I thought this thread was kind of interesting. It's... (laughs) I just feel weird when I'm like, "Oh, I remember this thread I had to delete stuff from."

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: But there was a thread about someone putting Harvard College--

jessamyn: Oh, fascinating!

cortex: --versus Harvard Extension Studies on their resume and whether it was an ethical breach.

mathowie: Ohh!

cortex: The consensus in--

jessamyn: It's a question by kinetic.

cortex: Yeah. Because the thing is, Harvard has these Extension Studies that aren't the same thing as

enrolling in a degree program at Harvard, but it is--

jessamyn: But they're not totally not the same, either!

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: They are classes given by Harvard.

mathowie: But how do you explain that?

jessamyn: They're just not Harvard University or Harvard College or whatever.

cortex: Yeah. Well, I think the straightforward way of how you explain it is you say, "Oh yeah, I took this Harvard Extension Studies course."

mathowie: Right.

jessamyn: If you're being above-board, you say "I took classes in the Extension School."

cortex: Yeah. And if you want to not be so above-board, go, "Yeah, I went to school at Hahvahd, yeah."

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: "I took some classes at Hahvahd."

cortex: And just hope nobody asks any questions, yeah.

jessamyn: But it turned into this, of course, grump grump grump about people being fake-os, or other people being snobs, or... I mean, because, you know, Harvard just gets people fussy about things. So it was very interesting to read people's preconceived notions, even though it turned into grump.

mathowie: I ran into someone in LA that used to always say that they went to UCLA, and they went to UCLA extension courses,

which I took for fun.

jessamyn: Right!

mathowie: It's not even as hard as community college, it's just these half-assed classes at night, they're more like seminars, and I took a fun movie class, and it had always annoyed me that this person was always like, "Well, I've studied a lot at UCLA about this web stuff," and it's like, that's an extension class about Flash you did on one Saturday. Come on, dude.

jessamyn: Right. It's different.

I always thought my grandmother went to Columbia, because that's what everybody in the family used to say.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: And my father was like, at one point, was like, no, no, no, she was at some business school, it wasn't Columbia at all. It was some kind of Columbia Typing School for Ladies or something. I'll have to track it down.

cortex: She was actually running drugs from Colombia.

mathowie and jessamyn: (laugh)

jessamyn: If only! But it was one of those things for people who have particular status feels about it, one way or the other, either that it's totally okay to say whatever you want,

or that that's completely inappropriate or whatever. Yeah, I enjoyed reading that thread as well.

mathowie: One of the most amazing, touching threads I've seen in a long time was this thread by deliciae [ˈdɛlɪˌsiˌeɪ]?

jessamyn: deliciae [dəˈlisiˌɛɪ]!

mathowie: deliciae [dəˈlisiˌɛɪ], about how does someone with Stage IV cancer find the one? Like, "I was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage IV, I'm 44 and it was just a few months ago,

that's gonna be a dealbreaker, right, if I start dating?" And there's just so many wonderful comments from people saying, like, and there's some stories about people whose partners have passed away, and there was actually someone who had a six-month relationship with someone that started when they were stage IV. Mostly the consensus was, someone says, "I can't handle it," or
"We're not even going to go on a date," they're not really worth... it's not the right person! But you will find someone who can handle it.

jessamyn: But there are right people out there.

mathowie: Yeah, yeah. It was really, it's just so good. I was going to put this on the Best Of blog, but I couldn't even pick one or anything to call out, just the whole thing was really good.

jessamyn: Well, and it may be one of those things that's better mentioned on the podcast anyhow, because the Best Of blog perpetuates in ways that might not be super useful.

mathowie: Yeah. Right. Yeah, I just wanted to be like, "Hey, this is just really good all around."

jessamyn: Right, right, right.

I enjoyed... there was a really interesting comment, or set of comments, in the African languages among enslaved people in the US, which was sort of a straightforward question.

mathowie: Huh.

jessamyn: But was basically like, "What happened to the African languages from slaves who were brought from Africa and slave people? At what point did their languages end? Did they end? What happened?" Basically, "I don't understand this, what happened?"

And user zaelic, who I've seen all over the place talking about interesting language and culture stuff, basically did a research project focusing on surviving Yoruba language communities.

mathowie: Ooh, neat.

jessamyn: And sort of talks about how this worked in the United States, how this worked in other places that had a slave trade, how the different ways that slavery worked impacted that, and there was just some fascinating, fascinating discussions of

what happened and links to first-person perspectives and, gosh, what did somebody say? The last person who had... maybe I just need to track this down, not try and look for it while I'm talking to you.

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: Is this the thing where people say those shelter islands off of North Carolina have...?

jessamyn: Yeah, Gullah. Gullah's a Creole language that's on the coast of I think South Carolina?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Language. Or the Gullah people speak, I'm not sure what their language is.

mathowie: Huh, I never thought about that. That'd be, you'd think that language would survive as a way to basically speak without getting beaten, you know? Pass secret messages, you know? But I guess... Maybe at night?

jessamyn: Well... except you got seriously punished for doing that.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: I mean, it's a really odd and kind of upsetting story, right?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Because it's like native peoples in the North where specifically teaching you to speak English and specifically teaching you to forget your mother tongue was a thing.

mathowie: Right.

jessamyn: And that makes it really problematic to figure out how to get around it. It's not just like you're in jail.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: It's a completely different kind of situation. Yeah, no, I can't remember whatever the fact was that I was looking for.

It must not have been in this thread. People talking about language groups.
But yeah, interesting and a lot of people had interesting things to say from first-person experience, which was cool.

mathowie: Very cool.

cortex: There were a couple of late follow-up things that came in over the month in AskMe that I ended up putting in for and they were kind of cute, one of which was someone who was looking for a children's book about anthropomorphic Arthurian pigs.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: And they apparently got an e-mail from someone who had seen the thread, you know, someone just Googling or whatever, saying, "Hey, I think it might be the Hero of Hamblett! And also, here's a sequel." And apparently that was totally it.

And then in sort of a more classic "What is this thing? It has attributes x, y, and z," and it turns out that at least one of the attributes is not actually (laughs) an attribute of it, was someone asking, Metroid Baby asking about
this song they heard that sounded like Adele's "Someone Like You", and people had a bunch of ideas, but no one could quite pin it down, and it turns out, like a couple years later, that it was a Blondie song.

jessamyn: Blondie!

mathowie: Hmm!

jessamyn: From a completely different decade, right.

cortex: It was more recent. Yeah, yeah. So in a sense it's like, "Oh, yeah, Blondie, because '80s," but no, actually, Blondie, when they did their comeback album in the 2000s or whatever.

mathowie: Wow.

cortex: So yeah, I thought those were both kind of great.

jessamyn: Those are neat. Yeah, it's one of the arguments I make for people to have contact information in their profile, is because if somebody does read your completely unanswered and unanswerable Ask Metafilter they can get in touch with you, or maybe with us, to be able to, you know.

cortex: Exactly.

jessamyn: "Oh, I actually know what the thing is!"

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Yeah, I'm glad we added the feature to post those long-term updates, because it's delightful that once every month or two we get these weird, "Eight years ago, a user wanted to know about this. I am the writer of

that, and it is called..."

jessamyn: Right, right, right!

mathowie: And you go, "Yes! Closure!"

jessamyn: Totally.

mathowie: My life is just the eternal search for closure, I've realized. (chuckles)

jessamyn: I think that's fair.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I enjoyed the "How do you win at thrift shopping?" for people who spend a lot of time thrift shopping. This was also Metroid Baby, who I guess has been all over this podcast.

cortex: She's got questions, man.

jessamyn: She got questions.

cortex: She's like Jesse Ventura. She's just asking questions.

jessamyn: But, you know, I go to the thrift shop and I get a lot of clothes from the thrift shop, but I don't have much

of a system, I don't really think about it?

mathowie: Yeah, what is the system?

jessamyn: And so it was really interesting to read people who take it more seriously or who dress better, probably, just talking about what they do and how it works.

mathowie: Everything's early, be in nice neighborhoods, go early in the day. I've always heard, find communities of, try to pick out the city near you that would be most likely to have rich old people that...

jessamyn: I think somebody said that.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Especially if you don't mind wearing dated but sharp vintage stuff.

mathowie: Right, that these people die and they just dump their closets into these stores and sometimes it's handmade jackets and stuff, it's just incredible.

jessamyn: I delivered several Brooks Brothers suits and probably a dozen shirts to our local thrift store when my father died. Because what do you do?

mathowie: Right.

jessamyn: They don't fit anybody I know.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: The styles aren't current enough.

I don't want to eBay my dad's stuff! I'd kind of be happy if somebody in my town could wear it and get some more life out of it, you know?

mathowie: Yeah. Yeah.

jessamyn: Like, we kept his funky t-shirts, but his stupid work shirts? Who cares?

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: But they could be somebody else's very nice stupid work shirt.

mathowie: I saw someone said, go to church thrift basements in really nice neighborhoods.

jessamyn: Always. Always.

mathowie: The way my uncle spent the early 2000s just being like an eBay flipper guy, where he would,

he was a toy expert, so he would just, he bought $2000 Barbies for a quarter, just sitting in a church basement in a nice neighborhood, you know, kids' old toys from... but it's that one 1959 Barbie that's worth a gazillion dollars. And now he hates it. I've been on vacation with him, and he still is like, "Oh, hey, there's a thrift store, I should check it out." But every person that works--

jessamyn: It's like work to him?

mathowie: No, but every person that works there knows what Google and eBay are and

when he sees something, he'll be like, "Oh, that looks interesting, how much is that?" And they'll be like, "It's $77.92."

jessamyn: Aaah! Yeah.

mathowie: And he'll go, that's exactly what it's worth. Like, these people know! This is unbelievable! There's no more little old ladies who sell things for a quarter anymore, everyone just looks it up.

jessamyn: Oh, yes, there are. They live in my town.

mathowie: (laughs) Yeah. He needs to go farther out.

jessamyn: Right. Tell him if he wants to come visit--

mathowie: There was a great--

jessamyn: --I'll take him on the thrift store [??].

cortex: It could be a combination Mardi Gras/thrift...

mathowie: Thrift tour.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: You can probably go to the thrift store and buy all these beads that we were all wearing at town meeting.

mathowie: Awww.

There's a, as usual, once every couple months, there's some amazing thread of 'show me all your amazing podcasts', and there was a very good one with a gazillion good podcasts on it. I wish I drove in a car four hours a day so I could keep up with all these... I see a lot of, half a dozen of these links I've actually clicked before, and I have no...
I just wish I had more time to listen to all these podcasts. There's so many.

jessamyn: Absolutely.

mathowie: But this is just gold. I can just look at it, I don't think there's a bad recommendation in this entire list, just a billion awesome podcasts.

jessamyn: I had the same, a couple more Ask Metafilter recommendation threads, just right along those lines, including "Rock Out With Your Doc Out," by Jane Austen--

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Which is about documentaries, and good documentaries, and then

"On the boundary of the real and fantastic," which is a normal title, but the user is (pleasedly) escape from the potato planet.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Which is about... well, that's actually not sort of a reading generation, it's more like, "I want to hear about weird Fordian times type stuff, but I basically just want to make a list." So it's got fifty links, funny, weird stuff, et cetera. And then, "I need more good non-fiction," by ninazer0,

which just generates lists of things to read, especially food books, because we didn't really have a food post this month, which is unusual, so you can get these books and read about food.

mathowie: (chuckles) Wow, Salt comes up in every one of those threads about non-fiction.

jessamyn: Kurlansky's a really good popular accessible writer. You can kind of recommend him to a lot of different kinds of people, because he's thinky enough for thinky people

but he's accessible enough for people who don't really like reading that much, and he's kind of clean, I guess, so things aren't going to be too creepy. I mean, he hits a lot of buttons. It's the kind of 'why does everyone like Dan Brown?' kind of thing.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Except he's a little, I think, more better than Dan Brown. But I don't honestly know.

mathowie: Oh, this documentary thread's pretty good, too.

jessamyn: I thought it was cool. Because I love documentaries, and it's one of the things that I really miss from the Netflix world,

is... and now they have a lot more in the way of documentaries, but when it just started, it was a lot of kind of poppy movies and very few documentary things. I was always like, "More! More documentary stuff!" And a lot of them you can find on YouTube if you don't mind if they're older or watching them slightly lossy.

mathowie: My favorite thing to do now is to load up Apple TV and go to the documentary genre in Apple TV's movies area, and it's always like, "Oh my god, that's that thing I heard about on NPR three months ago that never played anywhere here."

They always show the most recent documentaries. But it's always three or four things that I've heard amazing things about in the last year.

jessamyn: And are they free or cheap or...? I've never bought anything from them.

mathowie: Yeah, they're cheap, I think rentals would be like $2.99 or something. But it's always just, to me, it's like, oh, that's those things that I just hear about media, and I never get a chance to experience, because...

jessamyn: I have a hard time with media queuing. With books, somebody mentions a book in

Metafilter, I just put it in my PaperbackSwap wishlist, and eventually I'll either get it or be reminded of it. But with TV shows and media I don't have a good filter for that.

mathowie: Yeah. They do have wishlists in Apple TV, and I sometimes will be like, I don't have 90 minutes to watch on this, but, you know. They just had... what's it called, 12 O'Clock Boys or something? It was motorcycle gangs in New York that ride dirt bikes.

Everyone tweeted about it, and there was a Kickstarter for it, and it was on NPR, and everyone was like, "This is an amazing weird genre of this weird subculture," and then it never played anywhere! I'd never even... maybe it was at a few film festivals, and then never...

jessamyn: Right. There are a bunch of things that are amazing movies that mostly just hit the film festival circuit and then you've gotta dig for them.

mathowie: Right, and then... yeah. I remembered, I was trying to track down the Dr. Bronner's soap documentary--

jessamyn: Somebody was just telling me about that!

mathowie: Yeah!

jessamyn: That just hit my radar, too.

mathowie: Five or six years ago, I heard someone interviewed the daughter of the Dr. Bronner's guy, and I heard it's not even that great, but it was at South by Southwest, I think, when I was there, and I couldn't go see it, because I think I had to speak at the same time, and I was like, "Man, that seems so up my alley. This weird thing, I want to know more, why was that guy so insane? What is the deal?" And then it did the festival circuit and never went anywhere, and then I think it just showed up on Netflix

in the last year or so, so I was like, "Oh, finally!" So I just keep waiting to have 90 minutes to sit down and watch it.

jessamyn: See, that's why you need a driver.

cortex and mathowie: (chuckle)

mathowie: "Oh, drivar!"

jessamyn: (affected voice) "I'm going to go into the hinterlands."

mathowie: (chuckles) Well, where there will be magical Netflix bandwidth all over the way.

jessamyn: Oh, yeah, that's right, the whole streaming thing.

cortex: Euhh.

jessamyn: (imitating him) Euhhh.

cortex: Yep. (laughs)

jessamyn: Gentlemen?

cortex: Any other AskMe?

jessamyn: Other things? That's my AskMe list.

cortex: I can do a quick MeFi Music Moment, because people keep posting good music, and I don't think I did this last time. But there's a handful of nice... there's a bunch of nice stuff!

But I really liked, for example, there's a track from a brand-new user named groklock, posted a song called Stealers, it's a nice atmospheric acoustic rock thing
that I found enjoyable.

jessamyn: That's a good username.

cortex: Yeah! It's a pretty good name. It's got a nice cadence to it, groklock, you know.

There's also Tooth Reef Wharf Hive, which is from user mubba, posted notably yesterday during what became Worf Day.

jessamyn: Worf Day! I did not understand that at all.

cortex: It's just, you know--

mathowie: Accidental things.

cortex: A couple people accidentally had the sound 'worf' in their posts, and a few more people ran with it. And notably, nobody made any super shitty posts, which was nice self-control.

jessamyn: That's always nice when that doesn't happen.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Ooh, that electronic.

cortex: But yeah, the song's neat, it's got this cool sort of polyrhythm stuff.

mathowie: Wow, there's a sample in there that hurts my ears.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: From user mubba.

cortex: Turn it up and it'll stop hurting your ears. That's how it works, right?

mathowie: (skeptically) Sure.

jessamyn: Mmm.

cortex: es_de_bah posted a nice grunge Nirvana-inspired take on Row, Row, Row Your Boat based on a mishearing of the lyrics by I think their kid? I thought that was pretty great.

jessamyn: How do you mishear those lyrics?

cortex: Well, if you're a kid! Kids are terrible at words. They're totally shitty. (laughs)

jessamyn: You're not going to tell me what the kid heard, I just have to listen to the song?

cortex: Oh, oh, oh! "Life is but a dream" becomes "Spider on a dream", is what the kid heard, and so the song is called Spider on a dream.

jessamyn: Oh, that's nice.

cortex: And the lyrics are all a flawed take on Row, Row, Row Your Boat! And it's just kind of great.

We also had the literary music challenge thing, was the most recent one? So do songs based on famous literature or whatever. And TheNegativeInfluence did a nine-minute-long sort of Alice in Chains acoustic-session-sounding thing--

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: --on The Raven, just does the whole goddamn thing, which is...

jessamyn: "Seriously though, it's nine minutes long. I'm so sorry." (laughs)

cortex: (chuckles) But it's kinda great! And it actually sounds good. It's just one of those things where do I want to listen to the entirety of The Raven done in the style of some college rock?, and if so, then hey!

Until I Find You is a track by BlerpityBloop, (laughing) also a great username.

mathowie: Nice.

cortex: I think I've mentioned some of their other stuff before, but it's a sort of chill-out road trip song with some really nice counterpoint harmony layering stuff in there based on a John Irving poem, I guess?

jessamyn: Nice.

cortex: Which may, I think that may not have even been the only song done based on John Irving. Maybe that came up in the MetaTalk thread that suggested the whole thing.

But also, there was some awesome partytime chiptune stuff by CarrotAdventure, who I always enjoy their stuff, and I think... oh, yeah, the song's just called partytime, and it's totally partytime.

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure plays as underscoring under the following dialogue)

cortex: So that and a bunch of other stuff, but.

jessamyn: I'm listening to it right now.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: That should be my new ringtone.

mathowie: (chuckles) I want that to follow me around wherever I walk.

cortex: (chuckles) Seriously.

mathowie: Like, sidescroll through the world in that.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: I think that's what I was listening to, Matt, when you dialed originally.

mathowie: Yeah.

sfx: (underscoring ends)

cortex: And so I picked up the phone and I had theme music and it was partytime.

mathowie: It was very good.

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: Yeah!

mathowie: I think that might be our outro music. Awesome.

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: That's a good idea!

mathowie: Anything--?

jessamyn: So the only other thing I wanted to mention, if you're done with your Music thing, Josh?

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Is beryllium posted a "How can we make ThereIsHelp even better?" and it occurred to me, by reading the comments in that thread,

that maybe not everybody knows about the wiki page ThereIsHelp, which has a lot of resources for people who are dealing with issues of suicide, depression, ways to get therapy and find therapy or deal with rape and sexual assault, alcoholism resources, depression resources. It's just a MeFite put-together kind of long, helpful, I hope, page of resources.
So for people who don't know about it, it exists! For people who are interested in helping make it better,
there's a thread on MetaTalk, and thanks for beryllium for bringing it up again, because I think it's always a good thing to know that we have, and I think it's a nice thing that our community put together.

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: Cool.

cortex: I suppose I could link the Worf Day MetaTalk thread, since we mentioned that too.

mathowie: (chuckles) Worf worf worf worf.

cortex: Oh, and a couple other little things there in MetaTalk as well. We did the favicons in the last couple days, and that was a whole thing.

mathowie: (chuckles) God.

cortex: It was a wonderful thread, partly because a lot of people were like, "Wait. Wait. There was actually any difference between...?" So you've got the people who are pixel hounds...

jessamyn: People who are like "Oh god, thank you so much."

cortex: Yeah. "Thank you so much, I really needed it not to be quite so jaggy on my Retina device." And other people were like, "Those are literally the same picture." And then some people were having caching issues, so they were literally the same image when they were trying to compare two different ones, and oh, it was great.

jessamyn: You know, I think you could probably make an animated GIF, because I can see the difference between them.

cortex: Yeah. A GIF would be a good way to show that there is actually any change, for people who doubt it.

mathowie: "I can't... I can't see the difference!" This is hilarious.

jessamyn: So that they can go blink, blink, blink...

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: You have one eye, Matt.

mathowie: Yeah. No, it's like, it is cached and everything, like, ohh, I can't... yeah. I redid them four times yesterday.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: I spent all day tweaking them and stuff, and yes. It was a crazy amount of work for something that's so ridiculous and small.

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: They look awesome!

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: You did a great job. Go you!

mathowie: It's--

cortex: (simultaneously) An--

(pause)

cortex: Oh, go on, sorry.

mathowie: (again simultaneously) Oh, shoot.

cortex and jessamyn: (laugh)

mathowie: I was just going, "What's this? Neat."

cortex: Also, there was a post last month just saying, "Hey, how many old-timers are still around?"

jessamyn: From ctmf!

cortex: Yes.

jessamyn: I don't know why you don't say people's names.

mathowie: Pronouncing's hard!

cortex: I try to focus on the post, not on the user, man! Yeah, I forget, basically. It's a good policy.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: I just get excitable and I just bulldoze. Anyway, it was fun because inevitably with these it brought out a bunch of old people, we got a few requests to reopen accounts or change passwords for people who were like, "Oh, hey, I want to make a comment, but I haven't logged in in

seven years." I always like those, so that was kind of nice.

jessamyn: I like those too. I enjoyed that thread very much.

mathowie: I was amazed when we did the stats for the end of the year that two-thirds of every account ever logged in in 2013. That blew me away.

jessamyn: That's neat!

mathowie: I thought so many people had just atrophied and were gone-gone, completely gone, but yeah.

jessamyn: Maybe there's something wrong with your data!

mathowie: Perhaps!

cortex and jessamyn: (chuckle)

mathowie: It was way higher than I thought.

cortex: Oh my gosh, one other thing, because I don't know if this, because I hadn't followed the brownpau thread with the Twitter correction stuff, but apparently he was on BBC World News a couple hours ago?

mathowie: Really? Wow!

jessamyn: Whoa!

cortex: So there you go. He's a...

mathowie: Neat.

cortex: Go brownpau.

mathowie: Go pedantic correcting.

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: (chuckles) Sweet. Awesome. Alright! So, that sounds good for this month.

jessamyn: I think so! Nice talking to you guys, as always.

cortex: Indeed.

mathowie: Nice.

jessamyn: Yay, February, the hell with ya.

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: (laughs)

cortex: Weird short month, what's your fucking problem?

jessamyn: RARRR!

mathowie: (chuckles) Bye-bye.

jessamyn: Oh, and don't forget to set your clocks ahead.

cortex: Oh, god, yeah.

mathowie: Oh, bummer.

cortex: Everybody go and just piss that hour down the toilet.

mathowie: Yay.

jessamyn: I need that hour.

cortex: Seriously.

mathowie: See ya.

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, continued)

sfx: (Music: partytime by CarrotAdventure, end)

Credits

  • beryllium, 199 segments
  • Pronoiac, 10
  • night_owl, 9
Retrieved from "http://mefiwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Podcast_90_Transcript&oldid=7424"