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Podcast 92 Transcript
A transcript for Episode 92: "Numb and Number" (2014-05-13).
Pronoiac set up a Fanscribed page, and this transcript came from there.
Transcript
- ♫ ♫
- (Opening music plays)
mathowie: So this is Episode 92 of the Metafilter Podcast featuring me, Matt Haughey and ...
jessamyn: Me Jessamyn!
- (long pause)
cortex: And me, Josh (laughing)
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: (Laughing)For God Sakes!
cortex: I'm sorry!
jessamyn: What the hell is wrong with you? You are like ...
cortex: (Laughing) I just suddenly got an I.M from a friend asking about ....
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: Turn it off!
cortex: He's been having some bad luck lately
- and so I saw an I.M from him saying, "Oh hey. If you could ...." and I am like, "Oh shit. What's on fire now?" And so I had a moment of like friend concerned
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: and existential panic right when we were doing it.
jessamyn: Should we just start this over?
mathowie: (Laughing)
cortex: Yes let's skip it again. (Laughing)
mathowie: No, no. It's good. It's gold.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: Oh that's so good.
jessamyn: 92 is a pentagonal number.
mathowie: A what?
cortex: Ooh! What does that mean?
jessamyn: Uh it mean that ...
cortex: I mean I know what pentagonal means
jessamyn: .. you can make a pentagon of dots.
cortex: Oh!
jessamyn: There is like an animated gif that's actually pretty cool so like you do five and then you make a pentagon around the five
- and then you make a pentagon around that.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: So like there's one, there's five, there's twelve, twenty-two, thirty-five, fifty-one, seventy ... and ninety-two!
mathowie: Huh.
jessamyn: Not that much interesting about ninety-two. Sorry.
mathowie: Why isn't it divisible by five? Ugh.
cortex: Cause that's not the way that shit works, buddy. Get a pen and work it out.
mathowie: The only thing interesting about ninety-two ...
jessamyn: Oh look who's all snobby now. Now that he is back around.
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: Hey I am on board for being snobby about math stuff.
jessamyn: It's an Erdős–Woods number. Do you know what that is, Josh?
cortex: Uh.. what was the name? I know erdish but ...
jessamyn: Erdős? [ER-dish] Is that how you pronounce it?
cortex: Or [AIR-dish]
jessamyn: [AIR-dish] Woods?
mathowie: I thought it was [air-DOS]
jessamyn: A number that there exists a positive integer A such as the sequence A, a+1 ect; Going to A+K. Each of the elements has a common factor with one of the endpoints? I'm not even totally sure I understand it.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: And the answer is ninety-two?
jessamyn: Well ninety-two is a number that fits that criteria.
mathowie: Oh.
jessamyn: It also fits the criteria of there exists a number where the first digit is nine and the last digit is two.
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I'm just saying Wikipedia sometimes reaches.
mathowie: Yeah. Well yeah if you gotta make a page for every number on the planet, sure. Gotta reach.
jessamyn: I wonder where they stop? They must stop at some bigger number, right?
mathowie: A thousand? Maybe?
jessamyn: Well I don't know, right? I bet a thousand and one is there.
mathowie: I'm sure infinity is there.
jessamyn: I'm just going to dick around with this for a little bit.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: Thousand and one is totally there. It is after a thousand and before a thousand and two.
mathowie: It's just like Wikipedia (slash) number?
jessamyn: Ah, Wikipedia (slash) parenthesis numb .. er ..
mathowie: Oh right. Number.
jessamyn: .. slash, number, underscore number because it's not the year 92, it's the number 92.
mathowie: Or not the movie one thousand. (Laughs)
jessamyn: Right. Right. Right. Exactly so like 92 looks like this.
cortex: There is a movie called One Thousand?
mathowie: Yeah. It was pretty cool to two thousand and one? Um... (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs) I cannot parse you for humor at the moment.
jessamyn: (To herself) One thousand .. one thousand and two...
mathowie: (Laughs) It was mostly ...
jessamyn: I can never parse the guy for humor.
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: It was mostly Vikings and there is a big ax in the ground. I don't know.
jessamyn: It was all who and then it was downhill from there.
jessamyn: So
cortex: (Laughing)
- j: Ten Thousand and One does not have a number page.
- (Still laughing)
mathowie: Whoa. So I guess that is infinity. Ten Thousand. It's the biggest number Wikipedia -
jessamyn: Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine!(9,999)is there. Hey! Guys I think we are getting somewhere.
mathowie: (Laughing) We're honing in on some stuff. Wait!
jessamyn: Ten Thousand is there.
mathowie: The Fourth Thousands! The Nine Hundreds! Wow they have a -
jessamyn: Ten Thousand and One is not there?
mathowie: They have a number series ..
jessamyn: (Talking to herself) Let's see if Ten Thousand and Two is there...
mathowie: Whoa.
jessamyn: (Talking to herself) Ten Thousand and Two? Not there. I have answered my own question. The best. The best.
mathowie: I can't believe there's like a number widget at the bottom of the page.
- With like.. what they know about every number in hundreds.
jessamyn: It's really cool. I think.
mathowie: (Deep breath)
jessamyn: Well I mean it depends on how you feel about numbers. I like -
mathowie: I'm just amazed they came up with content for Nine Hundred and Twenty-Three (923).
jessamyn: Here is a list of selected five digit numbers between Ten Thousand and One and Ninety Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: So they only do select numbers.
cortex: Yeah it's crazy.
mathowie: Yeah the Nine Hundred page is like a whole like something about every page and Nine Hundred and Twenty-Three is
- - You know what it's big fact is? It's thirteen times seventy one.
cortex: Whut?
jessamyn: That's cool.
mathowie: Do-do.
jessamyn: I mean prime times a prime? Or is seventy one not times a prime?
cortex: Seventy-one sounds pretty prime.
mathowie: Seventy-one sounds prime-y.
jessamyn: (Laughing) Sounds prime - But you know so does some of those other ones that aren't.
cortex: Oh. Sure. It's a danger.
jessamyn: I like weird number because -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: - because when I look at where it says weird number? I think it says weird nummer. Like nummer than thou? Or whatever.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: (To himself) Oh. What's a weird? Oh ..
cortex: This toad saliva extract is a really weird nummer.
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: See? Exactly!
mathowie: Wow. It's good. Ah alright so -
jessamyn: Alright.
mathowie: Metafilter. Um -
jessamyn: Alright.
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Alright.
mathowie: There's some jobs ..?
jessamyn: I didn't look at jobs but I did look at projects. Although projects did not have a lot going on. Tell us about jobs, Matt?
mathowie: There's was .. there was two okay jobs. One was really cool. It was a hacker in residence for a non-profit.
jessamyn: Oh! I saw that!
mathowie: Yeah. It sounds kinda like they are trying to make a Sunlight Foundation in Brooklyn kind of thing where -
jessamyn: Oh Really? In Brooklyn.
mathowie: (Chuckles)
jessamyn: (clapping softly in the background)
mathowie: (Laughing)It sounds like kinda you know ... non-profit you are going to use like city APIs and make stuff all day. And that seems kinda cool.
jessamyn: No, I thought that looked really cool and then didn't somebody email us - or whatever - and was like, (mean voice)"Full stack engineer .. blargh blargh blargh"?
mathowie: That was the same thing.
jessamyn: Okay (laughing)
mathowie: And then there a weird - sounds like a cool opportunity for a job I would never want to have - which is -
jessamyn: Oh! The PETA job....
mathowie: Yes.
jessamyn: Yeah ...
mathowie: Work for PETA investigating cruelty - like ugh God.
- That reminds me of when people say they worked at Facebook or You Tube's Compliance Teams? How they would basically have the job for three months and then quit because it was like the worst things humanity has to offer? That you just stare at all day - I guess? I don't know. That sounds hard. Like a VERY hard job. Like maybe you are born into this job and you are not built for it.
jessamyn: I think some people are really good at that kind of stuff and I - yeah. I'm not that person. But -
mathowie: I mean the research angle sounds fun but --
- the other everything else about it sounds kind of soul crushing. But. You know. It's a pretty cool job at PETA. In Virginia.
jessamyn: And here is a cool thing. The url actually has a hex code for the color in it?
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: So you can change the url and make the page look different. I haven't seen one of those in a long time.
mathowie: Wow.
jessamyn: Isn't that a little weird?
mathowie: It's like they are inviting hackers. So let me see. What's ahh... 669900 to be Metafilter Blue ...
jessamyn: Dude
mathowie: Nope. That's green. I got them mixed up.
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: Oh. It's just the bars at the top.
cortex: (Still laughing)
jessamyn: It's only the bars.
mathowie: Agh! Man.
jessamyn: But I mean they probably passed that because it has to do with like it's probably a category indicator but they just pass it with the url?
mathowie: (Chuckling)Or like maybe it's like email clients give out colors? I don't know that's really weird. I have -
jessamyn: You could probably change it to be like some graphic or something? You know - starving puppies or ..
mathowie: (Chuckles) Too many drop tables?
jessamyn: (Laughing)It's really where I draw the line
- on facebook is starving puppy stuff. I mean starving baby stuff too? But no one posts pictures of starving babies. Everyone's like here is a starving puppy! Give money to whatever and I'm like I-no-ahh- it's some weird problem I have. Can't do it.
mathowie: Oh it's the Sarah McLachlan commercial problem that ten of men -
jessamyn: I have to close my eys and have somebody tell me when it's over -
mathowie: (Chuckles)
jessamyn: - and those commercials are three times as long as any other commercial.
mathowie: They totally numb me to the problem! Like -
jessamyn: No! They
mathowie: I guess it angers me. I don't know.
cortex: It's sort of a commercial number?
mathowie: Oh!
jessamyn: Ah!
mathowie: (Whispering) Oh God. So good.
jessamyn: (Laughing)You started it!
cortex: We have a theme for the day!
jessamyn: You started it with Who! (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: Number Number .. Nummer Nummer.
jessamyn: You started it. (Laughing)
mathowie: Nummer and nummer is what this is called. (Laughs)
jessamyn: Oh God! That movie was on tv the other night?
mathowie: Is it good still? It's great, right?
jessamyn: Noo, no! I mean yes but I didn't wanna watch it? Like I was trying to get to the DVR but I am doing sling box so
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: ... like every command takes like 30 seconds?
- And so I am forced to watch this movie while I am trying to get the television so show me something else?
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: Yeah. I turned it on like Jim Carey and what's-his-butt are like in a jacuzzi together? Like a hotel heart-shaped tub?
mathowie: Oh yeah. Farting? Or something was the big joke?
jessamyn: I don't even know. I don't know. I couldn't tell it!
mathowie: There's a number two coming out with those guys I think in a few months.
cortex: Which is weird because they had made the -
jessamyn: Didn't they already do a number two?
cortex: Sequel and prequel.
mathowie: But that was a prequel with young versions of them. It was -
cortex: Yeah and so now the whole hypocrisy
jessamyn: Oh and now it's like an older version of them?
mathowie: Now it's them. Like with them playing them. Is that like ten years ago though? Like it's been a while.
cortex: It's been a while.
jessamyn: Is Jim Carey getting less work because he's an anti-vax lunatic?
mathowie: Is he?
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: Holy shit. I mean -
jessamyn: Is he?
mathowie: - I know he's a lunatic, but wow.
jessamyn: He was? he may be backing off from that completely in a defensible position, lately.
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: But he didn't used to be. Oh! Can I ask you guys a quick question about movies?
mathowie: Sure!
cortex: Yeah!
jessamyn: Spiderman 2? Awful? Like I saw it-
mathowie: I haven't seen it.
jessamyn: -and I thought it was awful. But now I'm wondering if that's just... I don't know.
cortex: I didn't see it because I just didn't care very much, I guess.
mathowie: Yeah. There's been so many Spidermens, and this was--
jessamyn: (laughs) Spidermens.
mathowie: --to reboot the entire thing.
cortex: Not all Spidermen!
mathowie and jessamyn: (chuckle)
mathowie: I think that was in the dance sequence in Spiderman 3 five years ago, I tuned out for Spidermens forever. I'm done.
jessamyn: Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed the last one with the Emma Stone and that guy.
mathowie: Mm.
jessamyn: And then I decided to watch it because he was really good on Saturday Night Live, but then my sister and I saw it and were like, "Oh my god, this is awful!"
mathowie: Was it really ba--yeah.
jessamyn: Yeahh!
mathowie: What's the Rotten Tomatoes on it? Like, it's bad?
jessamyn: What'd you say?
mathowie: What's the Rotten Tomatoes on it?
jessamyn: Oh, good question. I'll look it up.
mathowie: It's probably... I'm going to guess because it's comic book nerds who write that stuff give it way too good of a rating. Holy shit!
jessamyn: Oh, and it's like, how do you even look it up, because, you know.
mathowie: Oh, it's got a 54%, that's not great. Whoa, Godzilla's got 85. How can... whaat?!
jessamyn: No, no! Amazing Spiderman 2.
mathowie: Holy shit. I was thinking of testing out FanFare on movies with just really dumb, one blockbuster.
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: We would just go, "Hey, let's watch it," and have one thread.
jessamyn: Oh, good. This makes me feel better, 54%, because I just hated it! But I like all the actors, the special effects were amazing, and yet the movie was terrible.
mathowie: Was it all CGI everything all the time, though?
jessamyn: No! But a lot of the CGI was also really good, and then it's got this crazy ending which, whatever, not talking about it, but
- ahh! Alright. Sorry. Go on. We'll talk about metafilter but -
mathowie: Ooh. Spidermen.
jessamyn: Spidermens. Spidermens is a great word.
cortex: Is that how you say Spiderman?
mathowie: It just sounds funnier.
cortex: Well yeah it's great - I just wanted -
jessamyn: It's very funny.
mathowie: As someones last name. Like Joan Spidermen. (Laughing)
jessamyn: (Laughing)
cortex: I just wanted to know if it was -
jessamyn: More than one spiderman is spidermen.
mathowie: Spidermens.
cortex: I just wanted to know if this was actually some specific weird little linguistic tick with you that I have never picked up on.
mathowie: I think I did it as a joke two years ago and I didn't stop.
cortex: Oh. That's always dangerous.
jessamyn: Because Matt does not have linguistic ticks like you and I do in the same way. So I'm always trying to catch him in one.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: All I remember is a European freaking out when I said something was really gnarly.
- (Laughing)
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: I thought that was the strangest -
jessamyn: And you know, like I am from California - this is completely appropriate.
mathowie: It's pretty awesome, right?
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: It's gnarly. Like I would say that's gnarly. Why are you jumping up and down at that? Like that -
jessamyn: See? To me gnarly has changed over time? Where gnarly used to be like oh it's really cool and now gnarly's like that is a bad injury.
mathowie: Yeah. Game of Thrones is gnarly. (Laughing)
jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
cortex: Gnarly has come to be
- - it's self resembling. Gnarly is now -
jessamyn: Huh. What's a word for that? There's got to be a word for that, right?
mathowie: Are you becoming gnarly numb to it?
jessamyn: A word that looks like what it is?
cortex: I don't know. I mean it's self referential I guess but that's not very -
jessamyn: Yeah but that's like onomatopoeia. That's different.
cortex: Yeah. Yeah I don't know.
mathowie: Should we talk about - we should probably talk about fanfare since we're talking about -
cortex: We should, yes.
jessamyn: I am enjoying fanfare.
cortex: That's the big thing.
jessamyn: Are you guys enjoying it?
cortex: Yeah, I am.
mathowie: It kind of exploded with the new shows
- and I had to cringe approving a couple. (Laughing) My Little Pony. I don't know what the uptake is going to be.
jessamyn: Shut up, Matt. You be nice on the podcast.
mathowie: I'm kidding. Uh , yeah I don't know what the uptake will be.
jessamyn: You are not.
mathowie: It's interesting. It's still following the same pattern of 500 comments on Mad Men and Game of Thrones and five comments on - you know an average like .. little .. thing.
jessamyn: Well I think we've got a sort of deal with the like notification and awareness things because people aren't checking fanfare to see if their shows are there. So right now you gotta kinda rally your peeps in order to -
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Interact with it. And I think that will change over time. And there will probably be some notification things that we build? Maybe?
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: I think there's a bunch of visibility stuff to it- you know and just making it a little bit more like visible. There's probably still plenty of people on the site who have no idea it exists even though we've got it up on the title part because who goes and checks to make sure they know all the items ect;
jessamyn: There's a new thing in the title bar that changes once every year and a half.
cortex: So yeah I think we are going to be creeping up basic visibility in part. And also yeah just those discovery
- tools and tracking tools to make it easier for people to go from zero to reading about their favorite show in as little time as possible.
jessamyn: But it's definitely like a show talking about a group of people so I'm sure it will be fun. And I'm really looking forward to talking about stuff like - whatever - like SNL where I don't have to worry about spoilery stuff -
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: - because I'm not that great at that
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs) Spoiler alert! This skit lasts three minutes longer than it should.
mathowie: - Than it should, yes.
jessamyn: (Laughing)
mathowie: Like this has a way better use case
- for things like the My versions of sites. (Laughing) Like I mean my shows would be super important here and -
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: And something that we could totally build. Yeah and maybe -
jessamyn: Right but there's a new thing. I think the hardest thing is going to be like people who - like are like call me when there's a Bewitched thread.
mathowie: (Laughs) Right.
jessamyn: Or something that is one of seven thousand things and you need to sort of figure it out. I mean because we are using IMDB to get authoritative names there may be a way to sort of plug that in where you can have a wishlist and so when the thing exists
- you get pinged or whatever.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Yeah. There's some weird shows I didn't know existed. A lot of these like - an Australian comedy about like Germany won World War 2? And Hitler rules Europe in the 60's (1960's) and it's a comedy? Like I kinda -
jessamyn: Whut? Whut?
mathowie: - want to watch it because - yeah it sounds so weird. It's like a spy team is trying to kill him. Trying to kill Hitler in the 60's Europe where -
jessamyn: That's network television? Or what is that?
mathowie: It's in Australia.
- It's called Danger 5.
jessamyn: Okay.
mathowie: It's so - and another thing. There's something called Arrow which is like some sort of Robin Hood reboot? I never heard of it.
cortex: Oh. Yeah. No.(Laughing) It's fucking Green Arrow. Oh man.
mathowie: Oh. Okay.
cortex: I'm not even interested in it but it's ah - you know just another Marvel property getting run out there.
mathowie: Oh God.
cortex: Or wait- Arrow is DC.
mathowie: Oh. Jesus.
cortex: I think. Green Arrow ? Green -? You can tell how much attention I have ever paid to this character. But I think Arrow is DC.
mathowie: It looked like Batman except with arrows.
cortex: Yeah. Kind of.
mathowie: A rich guy at night who solves crime with arrows for some reason. Like okay. That's awesome.
jessamyn: Huh. Yeah.
cortex: Is he British in this show?
mathowie: I don't know.
cortex: Because I want to say Green Arrow was a British character Oliver Queen. See I might be - someone - someone is probably screaming SCREAMING into their
mathowie: Yeah. Totally.
jessamyn: (Laughing)
cortex: - computer screen right now because I'm switching up two guys or whatever. Well no but it's - there's Hawkeye and there's Green Arrow and they were sort of the same guy but Hawkeye is the Marvel one. And Green Arrow is -
jessamyn: This is like Roman and the Greek Gods -
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Who cares.
jessamyn: Or - is it exactly? Or not quite?
mathowie: Nah it is kind of a -
cortex: I don't know how close they were originally I think it's possible that one character was kind of the answer to the other early in the history of both but at this point I think they are sort of different guys.
mathowie: The interesting part of fanfare is like it's finale season. Big time.
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: So -
cortex: Yeah we are coming up on all of those big end of -
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: Yeah it's kind of weird we have to end it and these things need to be quiet for nine months or something. But like people are way into the last of everything so it's pretty interesting and I think it
- - I mean it's kind of like lucky timing, kinda. I think if the -
jessamyn: Yeah I know timing is perfect and then we can back up into older episodes that people can talk about over summer time or whatever.
mathowie: And by the time September comes around we can be like well this is what works and what doesn't since people went nuts at the finales. But there's always new stuff coming out every June. I just heard some major --- God not -- ugh some HBO thing is rebooting. Oh the Walking Dead I think is coming back.
cortex: Yeah. We got Orange is the New Black is dropping soon.
jessamyn: Ah!
cortex: So yeah.
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: I kind of like that nature of TV at this point.
jessamyn: And Community is cancelled so fuck ya!
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: Yeah I know. It sucks. There was actually -
jessamyn: I can't believe that after the end of the last season where they're like we'll totally be back. How does that even happen?
mathowie: And then actually - I didn't like the first couple episodes then it got really really good. And those crazy episodes they did with like, you know, the GI Joe one was just totally frickin' nuts. Like that must have been six months of work. That was insane.
jessamyn: Yeah. Super weird and I was very surprised
- and well and I didn't think they were going to be able - I missed, you know, Donald Glover, but they have done okay without him.
mathowie: Well he said he was going to come back, too which is weird like a month ago in some interview. He's like Oh yeah like it'll be easy to write me back in because I will just return from my trip and blah -
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: And like I was like ooh okay.
cortex: Season six will be webisodes with Donald Glover just standing quietly on an empty set
mathowie: (Laughing)
cortex: - for a half an hour at a time.
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: Nah they will have him on the front of a boat disguise disguise. So fanfare was fun.
jessamyn: I blame Joel Mchale for the
- his dismal performance at the Press Correspondents dinner.
mathowie: Oh. I didn't see it but I heard it was bad.
jessamyn: It wasn't bad but I mean they had a lot of good people over the last couple of years and it was just normal.
mathowie: He's not a comedian.
jessamyn: He's not stand up. He's not stand up.
mathowie: Yeah. He's not going to hang. Why didn't they get someone good?
jessamyn: Oh! And did you guys see this? I know it's unfair because all I want to do is talk tv with you guys but like-
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: The guy who's replacing Colbert?
cortex: Oh Yeah! Larry -
mathowie: Larry Wilmore. Yes!
cortex: Wilmore doing the Minority Report.
jessamyn: The Minority Report.
- That is going to be fun. Can't wait.
mathowie: Yeah. What was he? The head black correspondent for Daily News? Daily Show? It's going to be great.
cortex: Senior Black Correspondent, yeah.
jessamyn: Senior, yeah.
mathowie: Yeah it's going to be so good.
jessamyn: The best.
mathowie: That is going to be so good.
jessamyn: Alright projects was really - there wasn't a lot in projects this month I was surprised.
mathowie: Really? I thought?
jessamyn: Well, yeah.
mathowie: I've been approving a lot, but - let me see...
jessamyn: (Counting to herself) One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight!
mathowie: My favorite ...
jessamyn: When did we do the last podcast?
cortex: Beginning of April.
mathowie: April first or second.
jessamyn: Oh maybe it was just a counting problem that I have.
cortex: Yeah I feel like you are counting wrong (Laughing)
jessamyn: You know I am good with numbers but not so good with counting.
cortex: (Still laughing)
mathowie: Here's a good transition. Here's a good segue project. Brandon Blatcher worked on a stop motion animation summing up the last season of Game of Thrones. I think this came out right before Game of Thrones came back on the air and it's pretty good. Pretty funny and looks like a lot of damn work to make paper cutouts that walk around and talk and stuff.
jessamyn: He's talented.
- Oh I guess that it's late in May that's --
mathowie: (Laughing) Another awesome one was the New Orleans photos one. Did you see it?
cortex: Oh yeah!
mathowie: It was just fucking great! And there's nothing to -
cortex: Well I remember because komara wrote to us to say hey
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: I'm not sure if this is really good enough for projects and ... (laughing) it's like No -- this -
jessamyn: And we were like are you kidding? Those are really good pictures!
cortex: (Laughing)Go post those awesome pictures. Jesus Christ.
mathowie: And it's like it's at Exposure which is sort of like the medium for photos and God the storm photos are amazing.
jessamyn: We were just talking about Exposure a couple of months ago.
mathowie: Yeah. Derek Powazek just started working for them.
jessamyn: Oh! Nice!
mathowie: And it's just beautiful full bleed photos and the ones of the storms in New Orleans are totally amazing.
jessamyn: Maybe I should try that for my trip photos from my last trip because, you know, frozen ice, ferry, blah - that would be cool.
mathowie: Yeah. Oh yeah. You'd be surprised how - I mean I use the site. I have a little profile there and stuff. And like photos I thought were like
- eh I kinda like this one. When you see it like ginormous and you get a lot more detail out of it like it's pretty cool. It's not - it's nothing like flickr. It's nothing like any other site. Like it's pretty cool. And it's a great way to show like here's that trip or here is that day. And it's just one long scrolling thing big picture style. You know, you can choose to make them big or small or any way you want.
jessamyn: And you can put little captions on them, right?
mathowie: Yep. Yep. And uh - so it's not - the only thing it's not great at is like lots and lots of words
- so it's like if you have a couple of paragraphs and like twenty-eight photos that will probably work the best versus five hundred words or two thousand words and eight photos. Like it's not going to look that great, but -
jessamyn: Now I've been making people suffer through my two hundred and ten photos and ..
mathowie: (Laughs) yeah this is ..
jessamyn: Yeah I'm like another hotel room! Another hotel room!
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: And they are like really? And I'm like yeah they are all different! And either you are interested in that, or not.
mathowie: Sweet! You could do your year in what guest rooms.
jessamyn: Oh! Guest rooms! Yeah, yeah.
mathowie: As one scrolling page. That would be kinda awesome.
jessamyn: You know, that would be really cool, actually.
mathowie: I think they limit you to something like nine or twelve photos for each of these groupings and but - I mean that is why they have like titles and stuff for each one. But it's cool. Very cool.
jessamyn: Cause you guys saw the crazy room that I stayed in?
mathowie: I didn't see it ...
cortex: Yes. Yes.
mathowie: Let me see how crazy is it?
- m' It's the Dorothy Draper suite at the Grande Hotel?
- Whoa.
jessamyn: So not only that but the curtains that go full wall opposite me are that tart and plaid.
mathowie: Eww. That is not relaxing.
cortex: And the mattress is actually a belows for a giant bag pipe.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: There's just like plaster crap on the wall.
jessamyn: Yep. It was crazy. The whole thing was crazy but like they - I mean their whole deal is like look everybody's got a hotel that's clean with decent rooms and good food? We need to be something you're going to go home and like tell your grandkids about. And you have to admit, this is the way.
mathowie: Mackinac. What is Mackinac?
jessamyn: It's an island that's in between Michigan and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?
mathowie: Uh huh.
jessamyn: Like in the water there? So I went there to give a talk but it was still frozen cause it was colder than it was on Mars up there this winter.
- So it was a very interesting trip in addition to just being in weird hotel.
mathowie: Was that the famous thing that people could walk on the ice and take photos of or is that somewhere else? Like remember we had the coldest cold in like a lot of years?
jessamyn: Oh yeah! I don't think that was up there but I think that was somewhere up in the Great Lakes.
- I know what you are talking about.
mathowie: I thought it was upper Michigan because it's right - I mean you could walk to Canada or something and but there a like frozen waterfalls. Maybe that was not the right island. That looks too far off the coast.
jessamyn: Yeah this was a couple of miles, so it wouldn't have been a walk.
mathowie: Do you have to ferry there?
jessamyn: You have to ferry and of course the ferry's don't run if the lake is completely frozen.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: - and so we were going to maybe fly and there's 500 people coming to a conference at this hotel and the ferries can take like fifty people at a time once a day-
mathowie: Aw, Jesus.
jessamyn: They got the ice breakers
- out there all weekend cause they are not sure if they are running ferry service or not. It was all very dramatic and I have to say the Michigan librarians are the nicest most mellow people faced with this complete bullshit. Like what do you mean the ferry's not running and I have to wait in line for six hours in a small room to wait and see if I can maybe get to the place. Like we could not even get over there? We had to spend the night like in the town instead of the fancy hotel. And everybody was just mellow. Mellow? Really nice? And like oh well what can you do?
- And I'm like, "What? Wow."
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: Just super mellow it was - but not mellow in like that kind of California passive-aggressive mellow kind of way -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: - but actually like relaxed. Really strange. It was good times. Really good times. So I will put together an exposure thing an --
mathowie: Sweet.
jessamyn: - leak out my big story.
mathowie: My last thing was this Keepskor game? So -
jessamyn: I didn't understand it when I read about it.
mathowie: Yeah so TNLNYC made this iphone game that basically grabs your friends tweets
- and then says -
jessamyn: Dude this guy's gotta 3 digit user number.
mathowie: Yeah he's old school. Tristan Louis I think it is?
jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah.
mathowie: And like it grabs tweets from your friends and then goes who said this without attribution on it-
jessamyn: Oh! Like that metafilter game we used to have?
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: And it was - and I was like that's a great concept to - and it was very social and stuff but like I (Laughing) I fired up the first version and it like autotweeted on my behalf and there's no way to share when I've got something funny.
jessamyn: Oh God!
mathowie: And like they ended up fixing it and it was (Laughing) they issued a patch. Like they issued a new version. Like they apologized but like um yeah. Like it was - it has potential. I should probably revisit it, but uh it was kind of fun to play. Like I think
- I was about 80% right most of the time? Um but -
jessamyn: I am not awesome at that even like with metafilter people and I follow a lot of random librarians so -
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: - that would be yeah.
mathowie: Yeah well I mean it was easiest of course when someone said something identifying
- you know like
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: - pet/hobby was and I was like oh that's the uh that's the puppeteer person I follow.
jessamyn: Right. My wife so-and-so, yeah.
mathowie: Yeah. That makes sense.
jessamyn: Exactly. I also like this project only because um -
mathowie: Oh yeah!
jessamyn: - like it's one of those things that I'm sure only works in like a couple really high population cities but it's 913's post called Truck Please. And it's basically like moving sucks so we've made it easier and if you're a person with a truck you can basically post your information
- They are actually in twenty cities? Which is not bad and I like it because there's this like ginger beardo in the header image which of course like - what's not to like, right? And uh-
mathowie: I wish there was more of like- I wish you could just like cruise it like you can't really browse it at all. I mean. There's a fake one?
jessamyn: Right. Right. Right. Now I know what you mean. It's got some -
mathowie: I wish could look through all of the current, you know, truck bids or whatever I guess. I guess people bid on it -
jessamyn: They probably do that on purpose so that you don't
mathowie: Yeah.
mathowie: I guess it's like an auction. So it's über for people with a truck but it's also like an auction.
jessamyn: And for one-offs.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: So like you can't have like a favorite truck driver I assume.
mathowie: Yeah I mean I am sure that would happen someday but yeah I've -
jessamyn: And you know über doesn't - I don't even know what that is because we - it doesn't - we don't .
mathowie: (Laughing) I have some crap in my side yard and I was just thinking God I got like - I only have one or two friends remotely that have a truck and it's like husbands of friends of friends and I'm like -
jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
mathowie: - Aww man and then some that's -
jessamyn: Sometimes with those people you just trade off?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Like you're like I'll fix that email problem you have. You get this crap out of my yard.
mathowie: (Laughing)Yeah so I'm interested. It looked cool.
jessamyn: What? I liked the website.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: I liked that design-ey style that more and more people are using? And I would like to figure out how to do it easily, you know?
mathowie: Yeah it looks clean and simple. They're probably using a framework for that. But, cool.
jessamyn: Yeah. I thought it was nice.
mathowie: There's this weird project I didn't try out. But it sounded like a cool concept which was
- like an iphoto app that goes through your videos and uses computer vision machine learning to figure out which are the notable keyframes and like -
jessamyn: AHH! AFRAID!
mathowie: It makes photos out of things you've taken on video.
jessamyn: From keep_evolving.
mathowie: I never tried it but it looked like a good concept like to get -
jessamyn: I'd be interested to try it and see how it works. It doesn't appear to have a lot of attention which is too bad cause it does look really weird and neat.
mathowie: It seems like a tool we need
- that doesn't exist. But on the other hand I don't take much video with my phone. I take more photos. So -
jessamyn: But do you do like vine-y stuff? I mean..
mathowie: Well once a month. Like -
jessamyn: Meh.
mathowie: I mean if I was taking a notable video and I wanted a photo out of it I would you know switch to the photo app and also take a photo. But this is cool for those times when you don't have that time on your hands. But, yeah. I don't know.
jessamyn: Great.
mathowie: I kinda wanted to try just to see how it works.
jessamyn: That actually leads directly to one of the ask metafilter threads that I saw? So I don't know -
mathowie: Boom!
cortex: I'm gonna bust your seg because I have to mention a project.
mathowie: Oh. (Laughs)
jessamyn: What?
cortex: Sorry.
mathowie: Was that rogue like?
jessamyn: What was that word that you said?
cortex: Uh ..
jessamyn: Bust my what?
cortex: Bust your seg.
mathowie: (Laughing)
cortex: Seg, short for segue.
jessamyn: I can't even. I don't even know if - ugh.
mathowie: We're inventing language here. Keep up.
jessamyn: Josh pronounces things funny.
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: Well I'm sorry bust your [seg] seg?
jessamyn: Seg like egg. Rhymes with egg.
cortex: Yes seg rhymes with egg. (Laughing)
jessamyn: (Laughing)
cortex: You know what comes out of a dragon? An egg!
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Sorry just had to -
cortex: It's in the beg!
mathowie: Oh! The quad points thing.
jessamyn: Bust your chops. What is this?
cortex: ignignokt did up an interactive explanation of quadtrees.
- Uh .. it's uh .. (Laughing)
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: And now you're going to have to do a jessamyn explanation of quadtrees.
mathowie: Did ignignokt use this digitalization?
jessamyn: So let me get this right - it's trees with four legs?
mathowie: (Chuckles)
cortex: Uh yes. Yes. It's four legged trees that have sharp claws. No. A quadtree -
jessamyn: (Laughing)
cortex: - is a -
jessamyn: It's friends with the train.
cortex: It's a tree that has a maximum of four - a tree as in a graph. So you know know you start with a point at the top and then some diagonal lines coming down to like a family tress thing.
jessamyn: Nah I know. Why don't they just call it a graph?
mathowie: Oh! Remember the missing person post? The same person posted like six months ago? The missing? You don't remember? it was like a tree view? Where did this guy go? Who did he talk to?
cortex: Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
jessamyn: Oh yeah! The funny story - yeah!
mathowie: That was using this. And it's the same person. This is like the -
jessamyn: Oh ignignokt. Well ignignokt is one of the Boston people. I know him.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: He's asked
- some great questions about - his wife's pregnant and their house has lead in it and what are we going to do?
mathowie: What? Jesus.
jessamyn: I know.
cortex: Eh. Well you know lead. It happens. Ugh .. (Laughing)
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: You shut up. You have cats.
mathowie: Don't eat the walls.
cortex: Ugh. Trust me. Ugh. A quadtree is just a -
jessamyn: No. I get it.
cortex: -in an emotional sense it is a tree that has a limited number of branches from each node? No more than four? But they are used a lot in for example 3D game engines.
jessamyn: Woo!
cortex: Because sorting through an entire 3d world for a level of something could be a pretty big task once you finally really really optimize i. So I am familiar with it in that context. But it's used in both gaming and also in just sort of search based stuff a lot to sort of streamline -
jessamyn: This is amazing. I totally understand this now.
cortex: Yeah. It's a neat thing. So it's just really really really cool.
jessamyn: I just scrolled through one page and I'm smarter already.
mathowie: (Laughs) And that's using D3 which is like a javascript
- scraping engine, right?
cortex: I guess, yeah. I don't know anything about D3.
mathowie: I've heard about it. Mutterings from like MAP friends. GIS people.
jessamyn: Yup. I see how that goes. Wow.
mathowie: Sweet. So! Ask Metafilter!
jessamyn: That's really talented. I'm glad you uh interrupted.
cortex: Yes. I'm an interrupter. It's what I do.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: My segue - which I am just going to get back to right now.
mathowie: Get your segue on.
cortex: Just yeah. Let's rewind and time for the segue.
jessamyn: (Makes a blooping rewinding sound) Because! User krunk
- was using his iphone? His? I think?
mathowie: Whoa!
jessamyn: on IFTTT which, you know, I love IFTTT. I I use it to find things on craigslist.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I use it to get my instagram on my facebook. Whatever. And then he was using it to do like a really basic thing? To upload photos to dropbox? Except it wasn't uploading stuff to dropbox because he hadn't set up the dropbox yet? And he got a 7.5GB data bill and he's like what the fucking what?
mathowie: So was it air messages or something?
jessamyn: No! It's not! It's the way IFTTT does it's stupid thing is it uploads all your photos and then has little alerts that tell it which ones of those photos to send to dropbox but it takes all your photos first.
mathowie: Oooh. Wow.
jessamyn: From you. Without telling you until this guy got this bill and he's like look on the one hand I am pissed because whatever it's expensive but on the other hand this is so not how this app is supposed to work. Like why - how can - Wha? Brr! and so a whole bunch of people
- actually sort of like tweeted at IFTTT like come on guys. Really? Really? And they're going to refund his data bill is the happy ending to that story.
mathowie: Oh nice.
jessamyn: And probably have a much better warning -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Because basically you know if you are using this stuff on your phone and it gets all your seven gigabytes of photos and then you never used the alert - that's kind of bullshit.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: You know?
mathowie: Hm.
jessamyn: So it was nice that the awareness got
- raised and you know he was a decent dude about it. And I tried to amplify his signal and -
cortex: There's a whole bunch of IFTTT people on metafilter that are members that work there so that's good that they saw it and responded to them but they (Laughing) didn't do it in the thread.
jessamyn: Yeah and he was -
mathowie: It was probably embarrassing.
jessamyn: Well it is kind of awkward, right?
mathowie: I might use -
jessamyn: Like if you're a good programmer
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: And your program doesn't do this on a thing people pay for bandwidth on.
mathowie: I'm like - I would use this. I was thinking wow why would you use this recipe because I already have like dropbox
- auto backup everything in my photos album to dropbox but I would use this because screenshots are different you know? And I don't take very many and having them in a separate place would be kind of neat.
jessamyn: And you probably need them for a special thing and you don't even wanna take them into iphoto you just want them to go somewhere.
mathowie: Right. Yeah.
jessamyn: Great!
mathowie: Cause others are saying ugh I don't like the way this UI works. You know? It would be good to be able to revisit those. But -
jessamyn: Right. But it's not a picture of your family.
mathowie: (Laughing) But to upload your entire album to pluck those out is terrible.
jessamyn: (In a scary voice) Terrible.
mathowie: Ugh.
jessamyn: But probably it's because of the way you know the I don't know what you call it but like the walls that are between the apps?
mathowie: Well they could have done it. They could do a little more programming on the client side that just says the EXIF data has to be screenshot then upload.
jessamyn: Right. And they know.
mathowie: And they just - they said let's check it on the server side instead (laughs) which is really lazy.
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: And stupid.
jessamyn: Right. It's alright. I was happy that worked itself out because the guy was on one hand justifiably pissed on the other hand people
- were like well whatever! And so it was nice that it worked out.
mathowie: Um I loved the uh amazing waxy (laughs)
jessamyn: Yes!
mathowie: Story of like the old upcoming had this little red wavy texture and I remember it was from like an album? And maybe it's Frank Zappa? And which one was it? And -
jessamyn: Eleven days - Eleven years ago - I can't remember-
mathowie: Fifteen minutes later Rob Beschizza, who's like one of the editors of Boing Boing goes it was this one.
jessamyn: Is that how you pronounce his name?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: okay.
mathowie: And it's like - it was the back of the album so there was no way to search for it online. Like Andy was looking at Zappa covers which are the fronts of the album. You hardly ever see the back.
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: So he was never going to find this on his own.
jessamyn: I went searching for liner notes. Like I tried to do a bunch of searches because I'm like I think I got this. But yeah. No.
mathowie: I was just like Andy you're a good researcher why have you not looked at this Frank Zappa - you could probably show me a page of all Frank Zappa covers. You know. Like how could you not find this yourself. And then. But it was the back of the album
- Which makes sense.
jessamyn: Yeah. And google lets you do an awful lot of massaging but not that level of stuff. Yeah I thought that was really cool.
mathowie: Um. Yeah. That was amazing.
jessamyn: This thing that came up in that metatalk thread? That zarq did about like what I've learned? Uh that like 15% of people don't have this funny little ....uh ...
cortex: Muscle?
mathowie: Muscle?
jessamyn: Little muscle?
mathowie: What?
cortex: Well it's a vestigial muscle that uh - yeah I thought this was neat too.
jessamyn: Back when we had claws.
cortex: It was a muscle responsible for activating basically the retraction of claws -
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: Which does not come into our daily lives very much as contemporary humans.
jessamyn: As much as we might want it to.
cortex: Yes.
mathowie: Unless you are Wolverine.
cortex: Yes. Presumably that is his secret.
mathowie: Huh.
cortex: Everybody has the claws he just has the muscles working.
- Uh, yeah. I think(laughing)basically this - a thousand metafilter members over the period of, you know, twenty-four hours ago, all started poking at their wrists and flexing their thumbs.
jessamyn: Figuring out if they had it, didn't have it. Some people have multiple ones?
mathowie: Looks like I have two. But uh -
jessamyn: So basically this is an Ask Metafilter thread from 2009 referencing or - that has been referenced - for a more current discussion on MetaTalk. But I thought it was pretty interesting.
mathowie: Ah sweet.
jessamyn: I have one in both hand. Like one in each hand.
mathowie: You know what a dumb thing I looked up the other day? Which I thought was bullshit according to Wikipedia? (Laughing)
jessamyn: Can only imagine!
cortex: Well, I hope the answer is The Holocaust.
mathowie: (Laughing) No.
jessamyn: Ha ha ha! You better shut up!
mathowie: (Still laughing) This um .. it was a like asparagus pee. What is it again? And so I look it up on Wikipedia and it's like sulfur that we don't break down. Sulfuric acid -
jessamyn: Wait. I think I know where you are going with this. Right?
mathowie: It said something like (laughing) Wikipedia had claimed according to scientific studies which I followed links to
- and I still think are bullshit.
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: Only 22% of the population can smell asparagus pee.
cortex: Anecdotally, I really believe that number.
mathowie: Really? I just -
cortex: Because I've only brought it up (Laughing) you know it's one of those things - it's one of the harder ones to just randomly poll socially because it's not like you can actually do active testing -
mathowie: (under his breath) Asparagus pee.
cortex: with anybody but your best friends. "Hey! Come smell my pee!"
jessamyn: Well I could make jokes about it. Remember that movie Wolf where Jack Nicholson pees on that guy's shoes and then makes an asparagus joke?
mathowie: No. I don't remember that.
jessamyn: Is it just that everybody knows that? But most people kinda laugh along but they don't really understand the joke?
cortex: Yeah I don't know. I think for anybody who hasn't smelled asparagus pee they might not know that they haven't smelled it? And they are like oh yeah I can still smell my urine after I eat asparagus! You know, so until you like really get down to it I think it's really easy for people to assume if they don't smell it, that they don't know that they are missing it. Cause it's a really -- I can smell it and it's a really potent thing. like-
mathowie: Yeah 22% seems
- ridiculous to me. It seems like 80 to 100 is what I - among my friends. I mean you can make asparagus - like you return from the bathroom and your like Ha Ha asparagus omelet this morning! Wow! And everyone laughs and they know what I was talking about like oh man so weird.
jessamyn: It's from the movie Wolf with like Jack Nicholson pees on James Spader's shoes.
mathowie: (Laughs) Oh man. So it's asparagus? I don't? I've never seen that sounds awe-
jessamyn: Oh God. The movie is actually kinda good. Um but yeah -
mathowie: I was just surprised
- it said there is a genetic basis for smelling the sulfur?
jessamyn: Well I was going to say maybe it's a genetic thing-
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: - so that everybody in your family who's probably on the short list of people you may talk to about pee related questions?
mathowie: (Laughing) Yeah .. (Laughing)
jessamyn: Maybe?
mathowie: I don't know anyone who does - there's never gotten a - nobody's ever told me they don't smell asparagus and pee. Like -
jessamyn: But it's a negative result, right? Like I mean -
mathowie: It doesn't- yeah. It doesn't come up very often. But -
jessamyn: I guess we can start a survey. Josh? You know what it smells like, right?
cortex: Yep. It smells like I ate asparagus.
mathowie: So we are the amazing 22%
jessamyn: Well and I didn't eat asparagus.
cortex: (Laughing) That's the secret to Metafilter Moderation.
mathowie: Well the Wikipedia article did say people might be embarrassed to answer that survey question? In studies that they did?
jessamyn: These people talk about wiping standing up.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Oh. You don't mean OUR people?
mathowie: (Laughing) No ... yeah, yeah, yeah. Wikipedia was saying maybe the data is problematic because people don't want to tell a random researcher what - that they can smell pee? I don't know. I was surprised. It's like- if you look up asparagus pee on Wikipedia you'll see the 22% and I'm just like that's got to be bullshit.
- That does not sound right to me. Umm.. I love the other popular question of (laughing) What's the approximate capacity for party attendance at Wayne Manor in Batman movies? (Laughing)
cortex: (Laughing) Yes.
mathowie: You would go through every Batman -
jessamyn: Wait! I didn't see that.
mathowie: (Laughing) People were talking about like you know he always throws rich guy parties and then things happen at those parties and then people talk about every Batman universe like -
cortex: Yeah yeah. In the core comments it's like -
jessamyn: By agregoli!
cortex: The uh - the Batman you know you know the Wayne Manor is kinda a problem - that's what people get into in part because the Wayne Manor's been represented in a bunch of different ways and it's been canonically destroyed and rebuilt. You know? And so -
jessamyn: And it's got that underground that's basically the size of a small city.
cortex: Yeah. But you don't throw a party down there, so. You know.
jessamyn: Right.
cortex: So yeah it's -
jessamyn: Well and I was just in this crazy hotel where I had dinner in a room with 500 people. Like (makes strange sound) you could do it. They just couldn't all
- stay.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Um.. that was pretty cool.
jessamyn: Here is a -
cortex: Speak-
jessamyn: Oh. Yeah?
cortex: I was going to say speaking of - since we have been talking about fanfare stuff actually -- no that's the wrong (laughing) week actually. Speaking of a random AskMe I was watching earlier.
jessamyn: Okay I am just going to pretend you didn't even what? Go.
cortex: (Still laughing) Uh Yes. Question from a few days ago about basically hey I am interested in fan fiction but I've never read any of it. What should I read?
mathowie: Oh. Nice.
cortex: I feel like that has come up like in the past once or twice before, too. But it's one of those things where
- a bunch of people suddenly like oh yes this thing that I like! You like this, too? Let me me tell you about this thing. So I guess if you've been reading fanfare and need to get more ...
jessamyn: FanFic!
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: The weird part is um you want really good the best fanfic but then if you make the best fanfic, you sometimes get shutdown by the copyright owners for making your -
jessamyn: Right. If you are too popular.
mathowie: Like I guess there's a couple famous stories that made up shit that was like that was you know kinda like
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, where you take a minor character and you go, "Let's do Alice in Wonderland from Third Guard."
jessamyn: The perspective of the rabbit!
mathowie: Yeah. And it's amazing, and they publish it, and then Disney comes after them, and then they actually go to court and it sucks, and it's weird, yeah, it's weird.
jessamyn: Well, although, with the exception of The Wind Done Gone and really big things like that, people will get pissed at you for copyright, but writing a story is usually not a problem.
mathowie: Right.
jessamyn: It's just once you start publishing it and/or making money off it. I mean, not always, but Disney in particular fucks about that.
mathowie: Yeah. Especially because they're stealing from the public domain like everybody else.
jessamyn: Aughhh! So bad. So bad.
mathowie: So this is a, yeah, this is an interesting problem. "Give me good fanfiction, but not so good they got sued and shut down." (laughs) But I guess we have the web now, and you can just publish.
cortex: Yeah, it's less of an issue.
jessamyn: Can I ask kind of a stupid question about fanfiction?
cortex: Yes.
mathowie: (chuckling) Are you going to say, "Is it all about sex with the main characters?" and I'm going to say, "Probably yes."
jessamyn: Well, that's specifically slash, right?
cortex: Yeah, yeah.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: So fanfiction on its own is not necessarily anything.
cortex: Right.
jessamyn: It's just fiction by fans.
cortex: There certainly could be sexual stuff in fanfiction in general, but...
jessamyn: Sure. And I'm not, you know, (laughing) I don't mind, I'm just trying to make sure I'm using my terms correctly.
cortex: Yeah. Fanfiction's just the general genre.
mathowie: But it includes that, right?
cortex: Well, sure.
mathowie: "Ron Weasley brushed his hair away from..." (chuckles)
cortex: Yeah, I think if you're not primarily writing the story of two characters having a romantic or sexual
- relationship, then people would probably not blink at you just calling it fanfic. If it's really all about that time that Spock penetrated Kirk for the first time--
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: Aaah! You don't have to use that word!
cortex: --that's probably slash. I meant as a transporter accident. I don't know what you were thinking about, but he just beamed into--
jessamyn: Oh hey, that leads... okay, see, it leads perfectly into...
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: Set phasers to awesome.
jessamyn: ...my favorite Metafilter post, but I have some other Ask Metafilter things I want to talk about, so hold that thought. Hold that thought.
cortex: Holdin' it.
jessamyn: Alright. Because I also did like to read about the, Naberius' question about, they've got a car stereo, the car stereo tells you who's playing, but if it's in day mode versus in night mode you get an extra letter? In day mode?
mathowie: (chuckles) Whoooa?!
jessamyn: In the display. Which is crazy.
mathowie: That's some bad programming.
jessamyn: Well, and so he asked about it. He asked about it? She asked about it? They asked about it?
- They bury us. By Naberius.
mathowie: Oh was it Donald Fagen came up with Donald Fag? Wow. That's unfortunate.
jessamyn: Well that's exactly it, right?
mathowie: That's weird.
jessamyn: Donald Fage which is a brand of yogurt but then it was Donald Fag at night. Not good.
mathowie: That doesn't make any sense - the - well I'm thinking like the programmer who is in charge of the dot matrix (Laughing) allocation of pixels.
jessamyn: Although funny, right?
mathowie: That doesn't make any sense.
jessamyn: I like it because it said unnecessary questions in the tag? It's the only question tag. Unnecessary Questions.
mathowie: (Laughing) I love the uh Bon Clift store - uh - Bon Clift asked a question of like a whole bunch of 12 year old boys that are having a sleepover at my house. I guess featuring his son. Famous from the Death Star -
jessamyn: Shamus!
mathowie: - from years ago.
jessamyn: I have met Shamus.
mathowie: He's 12 now which is kind of awesome
jessamyn: I know! I've met him!
mathowie: And uh him and a friend is coming over like what's a -
- what's like a comedy movie that's kind of you know appropriate for twelve year olds but you know maybe above their (laughing)more than that but not too gross out and too much sex and not too much bad language. And it basically devolved into a -
jessamyn: Nothing. Nothing I have to explain. Too much?
mathowie: Yeah there was a big a devolving into whether or not the Goonies is a good film (Laughing)
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: Or it's horrible. (Still laughing) It was kinda awesome cause I was on the firmly on the I thought Goonies was great until I tried to
- rewatch it a couple of years ago. It's the worst thing I've - Like I couldn't - I couldn't even handle 20 minutes of it.
jessamyn: Right and he's talking about the other people's kids thing. Like look my kid knowsthese words. Other people don't and blah!
mathowie: Well he was asking specifically like when - like and I have thought about this too. Like when do you dip your child toe into adult cinema? or like, you know, more than -
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: - Like Disney crap and when I was a kid I watched fucking Rambo when I was like ten it was horrible but, you know
- I grew a little. (Laughing) I don't know. Like, yeah.
cortex: (Laughing) For me it was like Aliens when I was eight.
mathowie: (Laughs) Yeah and and like that does not even - that does not happen in my daughter's world. Like she wanted me to turn off Star Wars after she saw Darth Vader in the first like eight minutes. (Laughs) And I'm like c'mon! Sometimes this world has bad people.
cortex: Well you gotta say that is some solid character design. All things aside, you know.
mathowie: Yeah. Yep. So yeah. It's good. A bunch of like sorta kid-friendly comedies that are PG-ish and uh people
- battling about them. (Laughs) I thought School Rock was a surprisingly good kid's film.
jessamyn: That was a great kids film! And it's like fun and yet Jack Black is in it who does other good sort of adult stuff.
mathowie: Yeah and he seems like a piece of shit in the first half hour and then he has a heart of gold and it comes around and it's good.
jessamyn: And, you know, he talks to the little girl about you know who else has a weight problem? Me.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Like that things, which I, I don't know, I always thought it was sweet.
mathowie: Yeah.
mathowie: Aw, man. I marked this as a favorite and never came back around to it. Of like tips for low maintenance. Like if you are a dude and you want to look sharp but you want as low maintenance as possible like I never came - I marked it as a favorite and never came back to it.
jessamyn: If you want to be low maintenance for yourself? Or for like dating or something? I didn't see this because it was duped. I can't help them with clothing or grooming.
mathowie: (Laughs)The thing is like how do I make my life simpler? But I still look like everything is on point.
- Like wear some short -
jessamyn: This guy gets his eyebrows threaded? How is that low maintenance?
mathowie: I know. It sounds nuts. Oh I found - oh God someone made a joke tweet that like changed my life. It was like grab a razor, put on like a number five on it and just shave your eyebrows like as if you are shaving them off - and it's - (laughing)
jessamyn: Oh! Neat!
mathowie: It takes twenty seconds once a month and it's amazing.
jessamyn: And then they don't like grow over the top of your glasses or whatever.
mathowie: No. Like I was - yeah. I made some [Khrushchev?] joke that I was getting to that
- and a friends like-
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: Dude! Razor! Number five uh you know, whatever you call the clip on thingies for it. And uh just buzz it. And that's like an inch or a half inch. It's pretty long. It's like the longest setting. Put a razor on the longest setting and just drag it across your eyebrows.
jessamyn: Nice!
mathowie: And I was like oh my God it's ten seconds and it's amazing. So those kinds of things.
jessamyn: This is a nice helpful thread though.
cortex: I guess I do not have very many of those yet. I've got like a couple eyebrow hairs that really get crazy if I ignore them. But I just grab a pair of scissors and -
jessamyn: You're not - you're not that hirsute a dude. Although
- I don't know what you look like cause I keep asking you for pictures
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: of your haircuts and never never receiving them.
cortex: You know I just thinking I was actually pretty happy with the sort of the bedraggled look my hair was in yesterday. I should have taken a selfie.
jessamyn: I was talking to my sister. She came to visit this weekend and she's got like long really nice hair that she gets tinted and cut and blah! And I was like you know we always spend like five minutes of every podcast talking about how much we hate getting our hair cut. (Laughs)
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Every month!
mathowie: It's the worst.
jessamyn: Still haven't gotten a haircut. Mine's just growing.
mathowie: Sweet.
- I thinks that's all I had for AskMeFi.
jessamyn: I had one more funny like basically a comment in a really weird - well -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I don't know. Not really weird. But, as these things go. Kind of an interesting tech thread. Basically I have to explain to a seventy-five year old non-techie person the difference between transferring a url and transferring a domain. And then kind of went on about what they think this means? And you know it's one of those weird things where you're not sure if the person asking the question fully understands what the hell is going on. And then
- basically - who is it? Ah rada had a very nice - like look I don't know why you are doing what you are doing. But here's the actual difference between the things you are talking about but really you need like lawyers and like stuff or whatever. But it was a really interesting conversation about how you describe to tech novices or tech idiots how - like what does it mean to have an email address vs having a web address vs having a single web page
- like didn't you have this issue when you sold or bought back pdrblog, Matt?
mathowie: Uh, not really.
jessamyn: Like you wanted to keep old pages intact or something? Or no? Did you not -
mathowie: No. No there's no problem. I still had everything. I think they are talking about like apache redirects vs like giving away a domain? Just like transferring a domain completely? I don't know. I didn't read the question -
jessamyn: Well and the OP didn't really come back to talk about - well they did a little bit. Like I want to give up the website
- but keep some email addresses and make them totally private.
mathowie: Oh yeah. I think that's something - that is lawyers.
jessamyn: So basically somebody needs to do the mx records - what did you say?
mathowie: That's almost like a lawyer thing that you are asking for?
jessamyn: Of course it's a lawyer thing! (Laughs)
mathowie: (laughs) Well I mean it's like if you worked at Time magazine and it was time.com and everyone knows you as Bob@time.com and then you leave and you go- Oh hey! Can you just forward that email for six months afterwards? Or forever if that's not a problem? like that's something that's not like techies are supposed to answer. That's more like
- yeah, policy.
jessamyn: Right. Well and a lot of it depends on like what exactly does your contract say?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Because that's really going to depend on how you explain it because these aren't normal words that normal people use to describe normal domain transfers.
mathowie: (To himself) Domains vs urls. Weird. I guess maybe they want to keep all the urls intact for SEO junk? But that's -
jessamyn: It looks like they just want email like -
mathowie: That's weird. (Laughs)
jessamyn: I know, right?
- But I was interested to read it because people -
mathowie: Why was there a seventy-five year old person involved or is that what they were just using as a metaphor for -
jessamyn: No I mean I think the seventy-five year old person is the person that owned the domain and now was trying to sell it but they want to keep email addresses.
mathowie: Oh. Oh right. Okay.
jessamyn: I think?
mathowie: Okay.
jessamyn: Lots of questions!
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: (Laughs) I've got questions.
cortex: I- I -
jessamyn: Well remember where I - oh sorry?
cortex: I was just going to say I was aware of the question because I had posted a think a response or two by the asker and I was just so befuddled by trying to make sense
- of it but like I just - my brain refused to engage.
jessamyn: Right well you know me. I'm all like digital divide! Blah blah blah! And so, yeah. The seam digital dividee. So remember when I told you to remember that thing-
cortex: Right.
jessamyn: - about the Spock penetrating Kirk nonsense -
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: - that you were talking about?
mathowie: (Still laughing)
jessamyn: yes. The thought holder. I've been holding that thought very very very carefully.
mathowie: (laughing)
jessamyn: Well let's bring that back around to The Welk's post about the College of Arms releasing an official guidelines on the effects of same sex marriage on heraldry.
- I'm going to go fix a typo in that right now.
mathowie: What's heraldry? Is that like how you draw stuff?
cortex: Let's reach around to Whelk's post. Um heraldry- that coat of arms.
jessamyn: No. No. No. Heraldry is like your coat of arms. Like did you see the Tudors? Or you know how people with Game of Thrones are all like his sigil, their flag and all that nonsense and you're like whut? I don't even know what you are talking about.
mathowie: So they made rules for like two dudes or two women in the crest? What they can do?
jessamyn: Yeah! And there's real rules. And they just- like there's always been rules but now they've extended them
- so - cause it used to be like it the guy and the woman like then the guy's thing does this and the lady thing does this but now it's like well if there's two women you gotta do a different thing and blah. Whatever. But it was just, you know? More just dominoes along with Arkansas and their same sex marriage thing which is kind of a big deal by like kinda fussy people being like oh right. Same sex relationships we gotta do a thing sohere you go.
mathowie: Huh.
jessamyn: And I thought it was cool.
mathowie: (Laughing)It's funny to see like impaling each other is - (Laughing)
jessamyn: Well that's why I thought about it.
cortex: (Laughing)
mathowie: (Laughing)We need rules on impaling people.
jessamyn: But I read about it on Restless Nomad's uh twitter. I put it on my twitter. It was prob - maybe she read it from The Welk's twitter. Who even knows. But interested.
mathowie: Wow. Neat. (Reading to himself) What if he's a bottom...? Ugh.
jessamyn: Stop. Stop. Don't even. Don't.
mathowie: (Laughs) I'm reading the comments. They are funny comments.
jessamyn: yeah. The comments were kinda funny.
mathowie: I have a billion favorites in Metafilter. Let me see.. Doot-dee-doot.
jessamyn: I think maybe about three or four.
mathowie: Doot-dee-doot.
cortex: Well let's do a billion (laughing) let's go for the full bill!
mathowie: Oh!
jessamyn: Yeah I got all day gentleman -
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: - so uh -
mathowie: My first favorite of the month was one you posted, Josh. So I will circumvent your self linking (laughs) here. That uh there was a robot playing -
jessamyn: Is this about Threes again?
mathowie: Yes it was. Robot playing Threes live on the internet was like a fun Friday thing that happened.
- Just because the robot was really good at it! And it pissed me off a lot because -
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Because what?!
mathowie: Some guy wrote a Windows script.. it was on Windows even! You know it was like so pathetic like a little text file that he wrote for I guess recognizing patterns and -
cortex: There's nothing inherently wrong with executing code on Win- (laughs) -dows.
mathowie: I know. But when you see a robot do a better job then you? You get those Mad Men feels about being replaced. Like this this goofy little -
jessamyn: About being replaced playing video games?
cortex: Like Mad men?
jessamyn: Do you worry about this at night?
mathowie: Oh no. That's like a current trend in the last two or three episodes of Mad Men that they got uh -
jessamyn: Oh. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't understand at all. Mad Men is dead to me.
cortex: Mad Men.
mathowie: That they are being replaced by IBM. Mad Men. (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: And so yeah it was this stupid robot was getting higher scores than I have ever seen
- in this game and it was just following super basic rules sets - which I thought I was pretty good at following myself but apparently I'm not that good.
jessamyn: Does Threes just go forever?
mathowie: yeah.
jessamyn: Okay.
mathowie: And they have like something like five people on Earth have gotten to a certain level- some tile that's ginormous. Like six thousand or something.
jessamyn: Neat!
mathowie: Um yeah so that was pretty cool and horrible to watch.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: I liked how the Wikipedia thing for Threes actually - I didn't know the official word for Threes was like Yahoo and it has an exclamation point as part of it?
cortex: Yep.
- (Cortex and Jessamyn together) Threes!
- (long pause)
mathowie: Yep.
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I'm still stuck on 2048 and just stuck.
cortex: I didn't get drawn in by 2048 as much as threes itself. I've been working on a dumb little lumberjacky game that -
jessamyn: Oh! Right!
cortex: That's still not ready for public consumption at all but it's making it's way.
jessamyn: You gave me a peek at it though. I enjoyed looking at it.
cortex: But I was thinking someone said something well you should make into a 2048 clone and like turn trees into groves and groves into forests and so on. So maybe I will do that as a little side job at some point once it
jessamyn: A side job to your side job?
cortex: Yes.
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: yes. A little a little mini game in the game, you know? And I can call it - the thing is I can call it Trees! and it's just -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: That- that is super smart. I agree. I love it.
cortex: At that point I kinda have to so yeah. We'll see what happens.
jessamyn: I love it.
cortex: I really enjoyed the hell out of this mashup album by Neil Cicierega (plays with pronunciation of last name) I have no idea how he says his name but Neil
- Neil made a mashup album called Mouth Sounds
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: that features prominently samples
jessamyn: You can just call him trapezoid.
cortex: from Smash Mouth - why? I don't get it.
jessamyn: No that's what it - I don't know. I am just reading from the google results.
- Somebody asked him directly how to pronounce his last name and he said nothing so fuck that guy.
cortex: Ah. Okay well fair enough. Neily C .. as we call him on the internet
jessamyn: Oh! [See-sir-ee-gah] says TD Chopes.
cortex: Cicierega? Okay.
jessamyn: Were you trying to talk about something because ...
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs) This mashup album Mouth Sounds is fantastic and it features a lot of Smash Mouth in it which is normally the sort of thing that I would say they are trying to discourage someone but it's just kind of amazing. He does a fantastic job of putting things together. Recycling Smash Mouth like motifs, as it were, throughout a bunch of stuff is great. I'd heard one track off it a few days before
- I saw this post. He posted somewhere his mashup of All Star and John Lennon's Imagine.
mathowie: Hmm.
jessamyn: Oh! I saw that zip around.
cortex: It's amazing!
jessamyn: It was really popular.
cortex: Yeah and so this is a whole album that that is not even really - that's actually kind of a sedate not particularly audacious (laughing) portion of the album.
jessamyn: Yeah.
cortex: I can't recommend this enough. It's starts weird and it stays weird and I thought it was just fucking delighful
- It was kinda like Girl Talk on the bad acid.
jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah.
mathowie: So it's just Smash Mouth and Daft Punk?
cortex: It's not just. It's a bunch of stuff.
mathowie: Oh.
cortex: But it features heavily us Smash Mouth
jessamyn: (humming a song)
mathowie: (Laughs) This is so weird. So it's just weird. An hour of weird?
jessamyn: (Still humming "Ain't the sharpest tool in the shed...")
cortex: yeah I mean the opening track is almost sort of like a little -
mathowie: Best of?
cortex: Extra odd piece. It's not even precisely an overture but uh setting the tone a little bit but --
mathowie: (Laughs)I just saw the title Mouth Sounds. It just sounds awful.
cortex: (Laughs) I think it's not intended to sound great.
mathowie: It set you up. It's a good set up.
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: And it's Rustic Etruscan's post. You know. Credit where credit is due.
cortex: Right. Right.
jessamyn: What ho, mods!
cortex: What ho!
jessamyn: I enjoyed this pretty terrific giant deepest hole in the world post !
mathowie: Oh yeah.
jessamyn: By AlonzoMosleyFBI. There is a place in Russia called the Kola Penninsula that is
jessamyn: just a jump away from both Norway and Finland. At this remote locale, people can visit a crumbling cinder block building in the middle of nowhere that is surround by debris. Amongst this debris is a nondescript metal cap secured with a dozen rusting bolts. Beneath this cap is the(spoken louder)deepest hole in the world! You know, sometimes I don't even care if Slate trolls me. I'm actually wanna buy what they are selling?
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: And this is one of those cases.
mathowie: Wow. This is like - this is the
- - my father-in-law worked in the fracking industry for a little bit?
jessamyn: Oh. Good Lord. Don't tell anybody.
mathowie: Well he was like an engineer. And this is like - he was telling me about the idea of fracking like in the mid 90's? And it was based on a lot of this crazy deep Russian drilling that they said, "They went so far down they started to feel the effects of the Earth's core and we could maybe boil water down there." You know, for free. Free energy!
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: And that's - this is why - I wonder why they don't have zillions of earthquakes there. Since we get them here.
mathowie: But, yeah. I've heard of this hole. A lot. Seven and a half miles.
jessamyn: yeah and it's just a small post on Slate and then he has a couple of links of, you know, there was an article on Atlas Obscura which of course where Slate copied it from because they are terrible. And uh yeah. It's just a nice post and people were interested and it was cool.
cortex: I love the little detail about the screaming souls thing just because every once in a while I end up on Snopes for something that's not like oh I wonder what the deal is -
- but something more like I know what the deal is and it's just like this straight faced delivery of scientists drilling in Siberia when too far and ended up punching a hole through to hell -
mathowie: (Laughing)
cortex: - Where screams of the damned drifted up to them. Status: False.
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: (Laughing)
cortex: FYI that one's not true.
mathowie: Because -
jessamyn: It's a big N-O on that one.
mathowie: Because we say so. (laughing) I was -
jessamyn: Right. Because Hell isn't real.
mathowie: I was totally fucking amazed by the
- beer mile post. The beer mile - the guy - you have to - so you are going to run a mile and you have to drink a beer after every quarter mile and you open it with a beer. So I think - I think there's four beers and four quarter miles run and it's times as a single thing including all the drinking. And a guy ran it and it's the first sub five-minute beer mile ever.
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: And people in the thread are like wait-wait-wait everyone shut up because I tried this in college and like eleven to thirteen minutes is really amazing.
- You know, like this is so hard but he keeps running a sub four mile and drinking beer really fast. Like it doesn't look - if you watch the video it looks like a normal thin runner guy. Like that's the thing about running. You can't -
jessamyn: Right and it's only like a minute over the fastest mile of all time ever.
mathowie: (Laughing) Yeah. And it included stopping for beers. It's amazing. It's so hard what he did. I cannot imagine. So hard. I would be
- I would be impressed if I could do it within under 15 minutes. I just cannot drink a beer super - four beers- that fast.
jessamyn: Oh my God and of course -
cortex: Right. It's a whole skill on it's own.
jessamyn: - the thread currently - oh sorry?
cortex: I was just saying yeah - that's a whole independent extra (long pause) (laughs) What's the word?
jessamyn: Thing? Stuff?
cortex: Skill! It's like a bi- it's a spring biathlon. You have to develop - you really have to develop your beer drinking skills there. Is what I was trying to get at.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Right. Right. You have to be good at beer drinking in addition to
- everything else and my favorite thing? Is at the end - oh look! Wenestvedt (stuggles with pronunciation) Whatever - Will - What ho, Will! You're in this thread! Emptythought ends on a hilarious note uh "TURN DOWN FOR WHAT!" cried toad..."
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: You guys have seen that turn down for what video, right?
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: (Laughs) I've heard the song I have not seen the video I gotta track it down.
jessamyn: Oh my God! Because the song, whatever-
cortex: There is a serious pop culture hole in me.
jessamyn: The video is so crazy fucked up.
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: In like every kind of awesome weird
- I-don't-know-what-I-was-just-looking-at way? that I really recommend that you uh you check that out.
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: Oh wait! No I did see that. I saw that before I had like gotten the song stuck in my head so I forgot what song it was. Yes! That is an amazing video. It's fantastic.
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: And one of the guys - the guy who's in it - the main like first guy is actually one of the directors. Wait! Has nobody posted turn down for what?
cortex: I think. I think somebody did.
mathowie: I don't know what the video looks like. Huh. I just heard the song.
cortex: I thought somebody did. I thought I saw it in passing.
mathowie: I was walking down the street with my daughter the other day and some guy just leaned out of a car window
- and said, "Turn down for what?!" And then drove -
jessamyn: That would bother me.
mathowie: It drove away and I didn't know what to say to explain what just happened (laughing) Oh there is this dumb song and it's got a dumb thing and ... (laughs) So weird.
jessamyn: maybe I'll just check for DJ Snake because it looks like nobody's posted it? And that's impossible.
cortex: I found it. It was middle of last month.
jessamyn: Oh. Thank you. Thank you.
cortex: Yeah. It just doesn't say the name in the thread.
jessamyn: Anywhere. Oh! But it is in the tags.
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: Great. Yeah and I liked that emptythought ending on that beer mile post which I also enjoyed.
mathowie: (laughs) That turn down for what joke. I like the idea of half marathon but 13 beers in 13 miles would be really difficult.
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: That is a lot of liquid to carry around in your belly.
cortex: I feel like that would seem like a great idea until about mile six. And uh -
jessamyn: Because I don't know about you guys but like beer just like makes me pee. Like like it's - it goes right through you no matter what. I don't -
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: - know if everybody's like that?
mathowie: 22% of you are (Laughing)
cortex: I think most people pee after they drink beer.
jessamyn: But like quickly! Like it shuts down your kidneys or does a thing.
mathowie: Oh.
cortex: Oh.
mathowie: Makes me tired which would be bad.
cortex: I usually have a couple hours before it like - like if I'm not like actively just going to the bathroom anyway periodically. Like a couple of hours after I start drinking beer I'll be like oh -
jessamyn: Oh! Here you go.
cortex: - I drank a bunch of beer. Time to -
jessamyn: Mental Floss has an article about it.
mathowie: Oh my God this Turn Down For What video is incredible.
jessamyn: Yeah. Right.
mathowie: Now I know what you are talking about.
jessamyn: And the guy at the beginning is one of the directors.
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: And then that woman? The crazy like twerking woman? Is actually a, you know, a (What's the word?) I'm thinking like abstract dancer? What does it mean when you do dance -
mathowie: Oh. A modern... lyrical -
jessamyn: Yeah she's a modern dancer who deals with a lot of sort of issues of sexuality and gender so at first I was like oh my God they made that woman do that because I am a terrible person oppressing myself -
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: And then I'm like no! This is like her thing! She's really into it and so she did this
- great part of it and just everybody in it is like an interesting person.
mathowie: Dude this video is amazing because it's like these are all vine jokes? Like six second vine jokes made into like a five minute movie.
cortex: Well yeah. I saw it before I actually saw the video I saw like five or six gifs or you know, I think I found them as gifs rather than vines. But in either case it's like yeah things that like out of context -
jessamyn: Right I saw them all over mlkshk and I was like what is this? Yeah.
cortex: - and I was like this must be from something but I have no idea what.
mathowie: Like all the stop motion
- jokes that people do with vine where you look like you are moving across the ground and like all I can see how that like this is cool. This is like the zeitgeist in a mov- (Laughing) in a like all the vine jokes at once. Oh my God is this crazy. Exploding boobs?
jessamyn: Supposedly alcohol inhibits vasopressin which keeps you from peeing and so you just pee a lot.
mathowie: Oh.
jessamyn: I am reading about it on Mental Floss while you guys were watching this video.
mathowie: Yay!
cortex: So you know that thing -
jessamyn: I'm reading about science you're watching the lady twerking with the man with the
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: Yeah. I don't know. I love this video so much.
mathowie: That is -- aww man I had no idea.
jessamyn: And like you shouldn't love it so much because it's weird and kinda gross and the song is kinda weird and then of course you can watch all these other choreographed Turn Down For What riffs on it that's pretty hilarious.
mathowie: Maybe a couple of crazy referrency posts. The watch 43 Werner Herzog movies online -
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: - was amazing and there's a
- there was a something -
jessamyn: Whoah!
mathowie: The other one was what's his name -
jessamyn: Going to Maine! From Going to Maine!
mathowie: Errol Morris movies also streaming. Where's that post? That one also had a billion favorites. Errol Morris - 30 Errol Morris movies that can be streamed was also a thing.
jessamyn: Have I mentioned that Herzog and I have the same birthday?
cortex: I don't know if you have.
jessamyn: He's a little older.
- (Long pause)
cortex: (laughing) I wish I could do a good Werner Herzog impression
mathowie: (Laughing)]
cortex: - and say something.
mathowie: Funny German thing who looked into my soul. (Laughs)
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: Yeah I started watching the Cave of the Cave one which I saw in the Theater.
jessamyn: Oh! That is a wonderful movie!
mathowie: Yeah and it's - people have just uploaded them to you tube. These are like so not cool or legal but you know, I guess they're available.
jessamyn: Well and a lot of them are old. I mean they are from the 70's and 80's which are things that you tube just doesn't seem to defend as -
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: -as aggressively as other stuff.
mathowie: No one is going to report it. Like nobody really cares.
- But yeah Cave of Forgotten Dreams was working last week. (Laughing) And it was great because it was just some random person's account with those cheesy "I claim no copyright! Please don't shut this down!" (Laughing)But you think you tube would put a search for that in the descriptions.
jessamyn: I love watching people plead that stuff in the comments.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Like "I just really like it, so don't .....blah blah blah"
mathowie: And it's - yeah. You can make the case that if you are blogging scenes of it you can get away with it. But to just
- put up the entire movie. (strange voice)"I like the whole thing! Everyone should see it for free!" Is a little weird.
jessamyn: Yeah. A little weird. Like well go tell them to (strange voice) "Fuckin rent it like normal people or whatever."
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: (Sighs)
mathowie: Any last posts?
cortex: I would also like to mention (laughing) oh you know what? I think I'm just going to mention it again and be quick about it. Jeff Goldblum's laugh turned into a ten minute long loop and then also dance remixes -
- which I think I mentioned last time
mathowie: Whoa.
cortex: Then I looked at the date wrong.
jessamyn: I don't remember this.
cortex: Okay. Well there you go.
mathowie: I don't remember this.
cortex: Uh, Dr. Jeff Goldblum's (laughing) is that how you say it? From Jurassic Park. He's got a weird laugh and -
jessamyn: I love his character on Jurassic Park.
cortex: Yeah. Oh yeah.
- (long pause)
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: I should watch the later film sometime just for the - like I didn't watch them because I didn't expect them to be particularly engaging but it retrospect I can totally go for some more Dr. Ian Malcolm even if it's in sequels. Cause hey Jeff Goldblum -
jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- Well sometimes you know a good character can make the mass sequels. Although not in the case of Spiderman 2.
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: Nope.
mathowie: Spidermen.
cortex: Return of the Spidermen.
jessamyn: Ugh. Every actor in that movie was amazing. And yet horrible.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: They even had what's his name? The uh sideways guy?
mathowie: Oh Paul Giamatti.
jessamyn: Paul Giamatti! As like a crazy German monster mobster guy? He's amazing!
mathowie: Weird.
jessamyn: Tattooed face!
mathowie: Whoa.
jessamyn: And still could not save that movie.
cortex: Well and yeah. I mean like we're talking the Star Wars prequels in the same sort of way, right?
jessamyn: Eh. Are we? Are we now? Yes!
mathowie: Yeah. I know.
cortex: I mean the cast was good.
jessamyn: Yes!
cortex: Yah! Yah! You know! It's -
mathowie: Well it's not directed by (laughs) it's not directed by Lucas so
cortex: Those prequel things - Yah!
mathowie: - (laughing) it's not going to be horrible. Like Lucas is a -
cortex: Well, yeah. No, no, no! I'm talking about the existing prequels.
jessamyn: No he's talking about the All-Star cast.
mathowie: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh right.
cortex: The ones he did make. Right. Great cast. Shitty movies. You know.
mathowie: Right.
jessamyn: Even maybe the writing is okay and yet - I mean were all saying the same thing. But yeah.
cortex: Yes.
mathowie: What's-her-name is soo good of an actress
- - in the first one? Natalie Portman! I've never seen her be terrible except in Star Wars movies so something's wrong.
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: Right. Right. I remember when -
mathowie: You just sit there and read wooden lines. Just ugh.
jessamyn: - when we were all like, this is really about a trade negotiation?
mathowie: (Laughing)
jessamyn: Oh this is awful.
cortex: (Laughing)
jessamyn: How am I going to explain - why is a ten year old excited about this?
- (Mathowie and Cortex laughing)
mathowie: (To himself) Trade negotiations.
jessamyn: So what is this, Josh? The link you threw and I do not- ?
cortex: Yes this is something that actually happened last month. Just a nice little piece on
- - I don't remember if it was Grantland or SB Nation? SB Nation! Metafilter has been making me read sports shows lately even though I don't really follow sports at all. It's just -
jessamyn: Yeah! Me too!
cortex: Pulling it off.
jessamyn: Well with Michael Sam how can you not?
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: (Louder) How can you not? Guys kissing on ESPN. So great! So great!
cortex: Hell yeah! Suck it squares!
- (Mathowie and Jessamyn laugh)
- But yeah this article about sort of the network of bag man involved in
- funneling money to
- college players and college football in the -
mathowie: Whoah!
cortex: - I guess the basically the Southeast Conference. Is the focus of it -
mathowie: Wow.
cortex: - just where the guy was doing the work. Putting the story together.
mathowie: This is -
cortex: Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting sort of long form look at sort of the guys who are involved in this weird sort of network of totally, you know, illegitimate money that none-the-less moves around. And a lot of people moving it around aren't because they are big players they are just doing it because they're guys who have
- the cash to do it and have sort of bought into the idea of like the home team and to some extent just taking care of these kids and so -
jessamyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
cortex: the really weird moral muddle - on the one hand you are totally bribing, you know, college and high school you know football players in total violation of all of the regulations about this. But on the other hand sometimes you look at it and say oh it cause it is a cynical move to try and improve the team and sometimes you are saying well hey you know, they are going to play on our team anyway and they are broke and we can give them a little money!
- So it's a weird smear right across the -
jessamyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
cortex: - whole range of that. And I thought it was a really interesting read.
mathowie: Wasn't there the like Winners of the Championship last year the like one of the MVPs of the thing was like I ate Kraft macaroni and cheese last night because that's all he could afford? Like he was on the number one team in college-
jessamyn: Oh!
mathowie: - football. Because of all the crazy
jessamyn: No wait. Wasn't that the basketball kid? Or are you talking about someone else?
mathowie: Oh yeah. Maybe it was the basketball kid.
- And because of all the crazy NCAA rules you're not allowed to basically get money from anybody for anything and ugh it's so weird. And you are in a sport that is generating tens of millions of dollars for like networks and colleges but the players themselves don't get paid. Ugh man.
jessamyn: Yeah.
cortex: Yeah. The whole situation is bizarre.
jessamyn: But, but like the solution to that is not -
mathowie: It's problematic. I had no idea that was cash (laughs)
jessamyn: is not to allow people to buy off kids. It's to - yeah.
mathowie: There should be some middle ground.
jessamyn: Well like that-like the cheerleader thread.
mathowie: Yes.
jessamyn: You know? The cheerleaders barely get paid and they have people tell them how to wash their crotch out? You know? At the same time as they are bringing in a ton of money for football. It's awful.
- (Long pause.)
mathowie: So anything -
cortex: Yeah. (Laughs)
jessamyn: You guys did not read the cheerleader thread.
mathowie: No!
jessamyn: You didn't read the cheerleader thread.
cortex: I saw it in passing. I did not read through it. But I've been familiar with that phenomenon. I remember finding out about that like way back - when I was a kid because the
- Blazer dancers. It was the same thing. It's one of those things where at least at the time and I'm guessing probably to some extent this is still the case but I don't know if the NBA is as bad as the NFL still at this point. But yeah it was totally like you know these were women who were showing up at every game and doing the cheer and crowd moral stuff and I think they basically got paid maybe a small stipend but it was like it was not a job even though it was a full time/ part time job.
jessamyn: They get paid less than the fricking mascots -
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: - for NFL pro stuff.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Less than the mascots.
mathowie: I remember a kid in college. A friend I went to high school with in college was like when the Rams were still in LA? And he was somehow in the entourage in football as some sort of helper boy. Was like a 20 year old? And it sounded like he got to fly everywhere. He got all the free clothes he wanted. He got paid something pretty well. He only had to work on weekends when he wasn't in college so it worked out.
jessamyn: Good thing he wasn't female!
mathowie: I know! And then I remember hearing
- about - he said like cheerleaders - he told me back then that cheerleaders made like ten grand a year or something and it was pathetic. But and I was like no way. And then so I was glad to see it explode into a national story.
jessamyn: Right. Into a big shame on you thing.
mathowie: (Laughs) Cause it's - I figured things had gotten better? But apparently not.
cortex: Nope.
- (Long Pause)
- (Laughs)
jessamyn: All right. Moving on! We agree. This is terrible.
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: Terrible things are terrible.
cortex: Do we have any fun stuff from MetaTalk for the last -
jessamyn: Wait! Wait! Wait!
cortex: Oh. I'm sorry.
jessamyn: Hold up!
cortex: I'll just hold that thought. I'll stop and save.
jessamyn: Farley Mowat dies and he was an amazing Canadian writer, Very nice post by gingerest and I just wanted to mention it because it was good. I like obit posts and this was one. And Farley Mowat was a National Treasure and I enjoyed the obit post which I thought was well done.
cortex: All right.
jessamyn: That's it! Try again.
cortex: (Laughing) Well I didn't actually have anything set up. I was gonna say-
jessamyn: What?!
cortex: Well I was going to say did we have anything to talk about for MetaTalk other than fanfare which we've already talked about and we've had
- several threads for, but.
jessamyn: Well I mean I mentioned this sort of zarq what-did-you-like
cortex: Oh. Yeah yeah the uh -
jessamyn: You know. Just cause it was one of those like tell-me-a-thing-that-you-learned-that-you-enjoyed I mean whatever. I'm paraphrasing it terribly. You can just read it your damn self!
cortex: Yep.
mathowie: (Laughs)
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: Ah humans can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming seasons.
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I didn't know that!
mathowie: Oh this 666 posts tagged with death was kind of awesome.
jessamyn: Yeah. Oh and Josh it was your birthday.
cortex: It was.
jessamyn: So Happy Birthday.
cortex: Happy Birthday.
mathowie: Oh yeah.
jessamyn: How was your birthday?
cortex: It was good. I had a nice time. I think I posted my day so far at some point in that thread and -
jessamyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did.
cortex: But yeah. It was nice. I'm older. Keep aging.
mathowie: (Laughs)Nice one.
cortex: That's what happens.
jessamyn: How old are you?
cortex: Ahh 35. Now. I believe.
mathowie: Yo!
jessamyn: Oh! That's a good age! I can send you my Ring Lardner book about turning 35. Except I think I finally just gave it to the thrift store because all my friends are older than that.
cortex: (Laughs)
jessamyn: I'll see if I can find it for you.
mathowie: I think 35 is when you have to do a new drop down in most websites (Laughing)
- You're now in the 30-
cortex: Oh shit! I've crossed the demo haven't I?
mathowie: 35 - 44! You are no longer -
cortex: I'm out of that 18-34! Fuck Ya'll!
jessamyn: Target demo! And I just left that last year. So I'm now in the 45-to a million range.
mathowie: Ugh.
jessamyn: I know. (Laughs)
cortex: You will start getting mailers for Lexus's and -
jessamyn: No it's AARP, Josh.
cortex: Oh yeah (Laughing)
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: It's AARP
cortex: My wife gets AARP mailers all the time because she had a joint checking account with her Mom -
jessamyn: Yep!
cortex: Uh like in high school and and the record never went away
- and it's like Angela and Ann and it's enough that someone along the way was like - oh must be -
jessamyn: As if they were a nice old married couple. Yeah. (Laughing)
cortex: So yeah. She's going to be really really prepared for retirement age after like, you know, thirty five, fourty years of mailers.
mathowie: (Laughing)She must have the weirdest google ads that automatching - (laughs)
cortex: (Laughing) Google ads seems so transient though. Like you know, I see whatever I looked at at amazon last week. Like -
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: Like right now apparently my target is belt
- sander belts because I bought a belt sander belt online and so -
jessamyn: Sweet.
cortex: - I'm just going to hear about that for the next week.
mathowie: Well that's why I was freaked out about - when I opened up facebook the other day and it had something I searched you tube for like two or three weeks ago and said hey you still want that thing?
cortex: (Laughs)
mathowie: And I went whoah! Like I've only seen the things where it's like lingers for hours to maybe a day or two? Not two weeks.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Like holy shit. Jesus. Ads. (Laughs)
jessamyn: (Laughs)
mathowie: All right I think that's -
jessamyn: I'm amazed that you guys still see them. But yeah! That is me. that is my last month on MetaFilter. What about you guys? Last month?
cortex: It was a good month.
mathowie: That's about it.
cortex: I monthed it. I monthed it up (laughing)
mathowie: It's finally summerish.
jessamyn: Any music? Josh?
cortex: Ah. We're going to go with the Mouth Sounds because I failed to do the round up a head of time.
mathowie: Tsk. Oh!
cortex: Everybody got to music.metafilter.com and uh listen to some music.
mathowie: The music app should be dropping any day now.
cortex: Oh yeah yeah.
mathowie: So that will be -
jessamyn: Oh! Wait! Tell us more about
- that. I forget about the music app.
mathowie: Yeah. There's a MeFi Radio app that basically just pulls, you know, the recent lists?
jessamyn: Oh nice.
mathowie: And it pulls in any uh and it has the podcast as a tab (laughing) which is easy. And then it has all your playlists and you can make - you can basically mark favorites in that app. It doesn't talk to our server so you just have like a favorite list inside the app. But uh yeah -
jessamyn: That sounds nice! I'm excited for that!
mathowie: And it runs just like a real music app
- so you can switch it to - you can switch it to other apps and just listen to MeFi music going in the background which is nice and it's simple and it works.
jessamyn: Looking forward to it.
mathowie: And it'll be free and it should be out soon.
jessamyn: You could also just fade out to Pharrell's Happy song we all like and Jim had made this post about the dogs on the beach with that as the background music?
mathowie: (Laughs)
jessamyn: It was kinda nice.
cortex: I actually don't like it very much. I mean I don't have like a bad -
jessamyn: You don't like the song?
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Or you don't like the video of the dogs on the beach?
cortex: No, no, no. The song.
jessamyn: Huh!
cortex: Not in a oh-i-hate-that-song sort of way
jessamyn: No, no, no.
cortex: It hasn't clicked for me as just a -
jessamyn: Just don't push your little buttons.
cortex: - pop arrangement. It's like Ehhh.. I see what you did there but that's just not moving me. So -
jessamyn: Shrug off, yeah.
cortex: - so everybody else fucking loving it - is - (laughing)
mathowie: Hmm!
cortex: - a little bit tiring although it feels like it is sort of fading out at this point so.
- But yeah. I just felt. I felt ---
mathowie: (Laughing)
cortex: I don't know. Left out is not quite the right word. I just- I feel like I am at odds with the pop culture universe on that song and it's a little bit
- disconcerting.
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: That's all.
jessamyn: That's all.
mathowie: Out of step with humanity.
- (long pause)
- Um all right. Cool. I think that wraps it up!
- ♫♫
- (Outro song plays: Love That Makes Me Laugh by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon)
- ♫♫
- Playing: outro song: Love That Makes Me Laugh by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon (Con't)
- ♫ ♫
- Playing: outro song: Love That Makes Me Laugh by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon (Con't)
- ♫♫
- Your love is like a a chunk of gold
- Hard to gain, and hard to hold
- Like a rose that's soft to touch
- Love has gone, and it hurts so much
- Well and Why
- Must the same love that made me laugh
- Make me cry?
- Well now you think of love as sitting on a mountain
- Think of it as being a great big rock
- Won't you think before you started to roll it down
- Because once you start it, you can't make it stop
- I've given all I have to give
- And if you don't want me
- I don't want to live
- Well and Why
- Must the same love that made me laugh
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me lay in my pillow
- Just cryin' like a weeping willow
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me mess in my pillow
- I'm just cryin' like a weeping willow
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
- Why you wanna make me cry?
Credits
- tangerinegurl, 184 segments
- 11, beryllium
