Podcast 114 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 114: I Say It's Spinach, And To Hell With It (2016-03-03).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Jessamyn 0:01 It's practically nighttime here.

Cortex 0:03 It's you know they say it's it's morning o'clock somewhere and then they drink I think it's how that works

Unknown Speaker 0:12 for Joshua are just man when God was the best of the best of the web

Cortex 0:34 this is a really great Bobcat here. Is this. Is this always on? Or is this just something that's happening today? Oh,

Jessamyn 0:39 no, it's just a YouTube. That personal. It's

Cortex 0:42 not live. Yeah. This is live

Jessamyn 0:45 by house. I should probably mention it. But yeah, it's basically in Middlebury, which is couple hours from here, and it's sort of like a 45 pound Bobcat that's just in this guy's yard. sees itself in the screen door and starts making like the craziest yelling sounds is now while the two dudes are like looking at it through the window being like, you couldn't get closer this thing if you were to Zoo and get out there. Obviously. It felt

Cortex 1:11 so so so this is not their bobcat. It's just no no.

Jessamyn 1:15 It's like a wild buck.

Cortex 1:17 That's that changes it a little bit as well. I'm surprised I don't have more footage. Oh, right. Because

Jessamyn 1:22 own bobcat. I don't think he can own a bobcat.

Cortex 1:26 Well, I mean, can is that a complicated word? really put your mind to it. You know whether it's legal and you should? Let's let's really well actually this

Cortex 1:47 it's not talking about my pants. Welcome to another episode of the metal filter. Best of the web monthly podcast I am cortex, aka Josh Mullard.

Jessamyn 1:55 And I've just Midwest and Jessamyn. Shut up.

Cortex 1:59 What? Sorry. There was a pause. There's a little there's little cadence. It's so difficult. I got some weird energy going today.

Jessamyn 2:06 Are you drinking?

Cortex 2:07 No, no, I'm just it's been a busy week and a busy month. And yesterday, just like without anything going terribly wrong, just managed to be kind of an annoying, frustrating day.

Jessamyn 2:19 And that was my day today. So I just, you know, got one of those, like, this medical bill totally wasn't covered. Now. It's supposed to be and they were like, No, you didn't read the special bullshit on page nine. And I'm like, come on. And so we had a conversation and because I've got manners, I'm like, alright, I'll just I'll take this fight where it needs to go, which is not with you. And then she's like, Okay, is there anything else I can help you with? And I just lost it. You can help me with something else. Where can I get hemlock? I don't know. Like, just ah. So I've been doing my deep breathing.

Cortex 2:58 Good on. Yeah. It's been helping. Yeah, well, this is this is episode 114. And today is it's it's it's the third. It's the third of the third. It's March

Jessamyn 3:08 3, three 316.

Cortex 3:10 Yes. And this is covering the last month or so I think we recorded like on the third of last month even maybe? I think so. Sounds about right. And in February. So it's a weird look up. Yeah, let's, let's not, let's not go crazy here.

Jessamyn 3:25 I have to admit, I've been like letting more things slide in 2016 as part of my relaxed attitude towards my life, and even though like I fucked things up slightly more, I'm significantly happier. Yeah. A couple little fuck ups like the, the, my emotional well, being is so much happier that I don't actually care

Cortex 3:48 I am. I'm thrilled to hear that because that is like philosophically, something I definitely struggle with and I think have tended to be semi successful towards, like I tactically just kind of not giving a fuck a little more often seems to usually be a good call.

Jessamyn 4:07 And I would keep it until I saw that it worked for me. And I think there's other people maybe who should continue to give some fucks you know, like, who maybe don't give enough? Fucks maybe

Cortex 4:20 it's a spectrum thing, you know, I mean, and I think finding the balance is a tricky thing. But knowing that you can experiment and try and refine that balance a little bit, I think is a valuable thing that people don't always realize I can do. Like, it's like, it's a it's a matter of principles like no by God, if I'm gonna, you know, be responsible, I'm gonna be responsible and and then yeah, it can be a little bit of a trap. And maybe you can figure out which things you actually really need to be responsible about and which things are kind of more, you know, this this has got some wiggle room like, you definitely need to pay the rent, you definitely need to pay your mortgage. You don't.

Jessamyn 4:50 I paid my rent a day and a half late and it turned out my landlady hadn't even checked her mailbox for two days because she had some sort of arthritic finger problem and she called me in asked me to get her medicine. And I was like, Sure, I'll go pick it up for you. And then I was like, Oh, God, so sorry, the rent was a day and a half late. I don't even know what. But like she didn't even know. It was like a metaphor for my whole, you know, my whole this year, just like the only person that cares about that. It's you. I mean, you know, she'd like me to pay pretty early, close to when it's due. But you know, she wouldn't want me running outside in a blizzard to put a check in her mailbox. Yeah, having a

Cortex 5:30 reliable tenant is probably way more important than day of the month unless, you know, you're in a very specific, tricky situation financially, where things need to line up just right. So

Jessamyn 5:39 yeah, and that's not her. And the first here was like town meeting, and then work in the polls, like literally from what I got up to when I went to bed. So it was not a good day for finding a checkbook or remembering that money exists.

Cortex 5:53 Well, I'm really glad to get that actually. That's, that's, that's really awesome. I think that's, that's a valuable thing to be exploring about your own sort of, you know, life mental balance stuff.

Jessamyn 6:02 Yeah, so I went out word legwarmers today and fuck everybody.

Cortex 6:08 I have been. I've been putting on pants more lately. And that's that's sort of a weird train for me. I'd like to work at home. Well to work, not at home. That's the strange thing. And I still

Jessamyn 6:17 go into the office place. Yeah.

Jessamyn 6:20 Talk a little bit about that. Because I ran into Ryan at the thing. And I made him Tell me about it because I thought maybe it was a club I hadn't been invited to so I was like, I've been invited to and he's like, No, it's an office. You just

Cortex 6:31 need to move to Portland. Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah. Ryan gets six foot six. He is he's rad. Yeah, so So I've been working. Like three days a week, I've been trying to get out and work at this place called the outpost, which is a new sort of permanent shared space slash event space, put together by Andy bale and mill in the waxy throw the XOXO fest every year. Yeah. And so they've been wanting to do this. And they've set up this permanent space. That's sort of a combination. event space for Expo itself, as well as for

Jessamyn 7:06 the same space that Expo has been in.

Cortex 7:08 No, no, it's not. But it's a it's a similar sort of space. It's another big warehouse here and sort of like, you know, inner East Side, Portland. That's a real cool space. And yeah, so I'm just going and working there some days out of the week, you know, which means

Jessamyn 7:26 getting up getting dressed, Angela gets the house to herself more than never.

Cortex 7:30 Well, she's she's doing pretty much yes, she's doing school. So like, it overlaps a little bit to there. But But still, yeah, like, it's been a long time since I was regularly like, out of the house on a regular schedule. Yeah. So it's interesting, and it is a weird change for me, because like, I've decided that what I should definitely do is go leave the house when I don't have to, to do a job that I can do from literally anywhere. So I don't have to go anywhere. Which you know,

Jessamyn 7:55 to kind of like get up and get breakfast, like you would go out and eat. Yeah.

Cortex 8:00 Yeah, it's not like I never leave the house or anything. It's just like, I haven't had to, like it hasn't like, it's not a structured thing. So this is sort of me inventing a little bit of structure. And it's so far, so good. I've been doing a couple of weeks. And the thing is, it's a bunch of other really cool people there. Some of them are mefite some of them are internet people who I know via sort of meta filtri stuff for the greater sphere, but a lot of people who I only know because of XOXO or because of internet stuff. So it's it's really it's really pretty rad. I'm still sort of getting my feel, but it's, it's a nice change, I think the thing is going somewhere where everybody else is also going there to work, but also going there because they kind of want a little bit of social in what would otherwise not necessarily be a social workspace. It's nice you know, it's a little bit different from a coffee shop because with a coffee shop, you know, the atmosphere is pleasant, and it's nice get out of the house, but you know, I'm gonna go there for an hour or two and then I'm gonna leave and no one else there is going to presume to have any specific connection to that experience. So I'm not ready actually drink

Jessamyn 9:02 way too much coffee, which

Cortex 9:02 is always my preference. Always a danger. Like you know, you

Jessamyn 9:05 go in and you don't have enough coffee, then you have some coffee, then you're like, Oh, I really liked this coffee and I should have some more coffee and by the end of it, you're just a mess and then you get on the bus but then you have to pee because you've been drinking coffee for three solid hours and it's always a nightmare. Nightmare

Cortex 9:19 is a dangerous thing. And yeah, fortunately there's no coffee like right next door and there's no coffee in the place yet because they're still sort of getting stuff set up so I actually don't make tea man right? I like coffee too. I am a tea man. i Every morning I drink tea. You know when I get up I make a cup of tea. I probably have another one an hour later. I'm currently drinking one right now. And it's a lot less fun to make tea and it's a little bit easier on my digestion. So like if I'm going to drink a lot of one I should drink a lot of tea. But I actually like coffee a lot. I just haven't really made it my normal default daily drink. We should probably for the best.

Jessamyn 9:55 Speaking of tea, I need to mention that The Anvil CDA from Metafilter sent me some tea in the mail probably for a reason that I've forgotten but it was very sweet. Just like literally like a packet of tea and like a little card shape, like a teacup. And just a little note, enjoy it. So that was sweet. I gotta get back to the number 114. Before.

Cortex 10:17 Let's let's talk about 114 Tell me,

Jessamyn 10:22 ah, not much going on. But it does have a thing that I was sort of interested in is that it's a rep digit. Rep digit. It's like the world's crappiest. portmanteau, which is getting repeated digit in bass seven. So in bass seven 114 is too too, too. Nice. Yeah. Other than that, it's the atomic number of a chemical I've basically never heard of, which is fluvial. Which is, you know, Fleur Rovio.

Cortex 10:52 I don't? Yeah,

Jessamyn 10:54 it's a it's f L. It's an artificial chemical element. And it's kind of it's new ish. Like, I'm kind of reading about it. There's some Russian dude on a stamp. Super. You're of it was named after. But basically, they didn't name until 2004. So no wonder I didn't know it. Because when I was nominally learning about that kind of stuff. To sleeper, it didn't exist. It's right before new Pentium, who none Pentium like one of those

Cortex 11:32 little placeholder things. This is when they actually found so they could get the proper name.

Jessamyn 11:37 Oh, is that true? Or the rest of them just kind of placeholders? That's my understanding.

Cortex 11:41 Yeah. I mean, don't quote me. I'm not a, you're quoting yourself. I'm just saying don't block it. When someone's transcribed this, they should definitely not go back afterwards and use red pen to underline it a couple times meaningfully during a montage and a film. I would not be comfortable with that level of authority being attached to the idea. But my understanding is yes. They they sort of like, well, we know these must logically exist. We haven't found them. We haven't done anything with them. Well, there was another one. There was another one just recently established, or maybe a small Saturday, there was metadata posts about this in the last couple months. And I think it got discussion there. That might be why that's sort of on my mind. As a thing.

Jessamyn 12:19 There's like dipshit examples of rep digits in the rep dig digit will keep your article like I don't know what five numbers in a row that are all the same looks like, you know, like 11 or 666, or 4444 or 99. So

Cortex 12:37 the digits and a rep digit number repeat. It's aa

Jessamyn 12:41 digit. Rams. Are Here you go Josh, I bet you'd call it a REAP digit.

Cortex 12:49 No, I definitely say rep digit. Dang it. It's well, I mean, I can see the argument for like, well, it repeats so it's a REAP digit, right, but, but it's a digit that's repetitious. There's just as easy of a go to

Jessamyn 13:04 the website. It looks like you work in a movie theater.

Cortex 13:05 Yeah. No. Studio. Yeah. No, it does kind of 1920 Let's make a film.

Jessamyn 13:12 Well, it looks like the beginning of Trailer Park Boys is what it looks like. To do. Didn't didn't

Cortex 13:23 feel like 114? Like, feels like it should have something to it. I don't know what there is. It's just, there's a little there's a feel.

Jessamyn 13:32 Yeah, but it doesn't. Yeah. Or if it does, it's

Cortex 13:36 like could be the number and a really, really shitty, like, who's on first sort of comedy skit about like, a number is like, Oh, give me a number. 114 Okay, yeah, no, give me 214 No, that's and I don't know where to go with this. But the idea that 114 versus 14, you know, maybe maybe something someone work on that get back to us. We'll work it out here with

Jessamyn 13:58 my mouth open kind of smiling. Waiting. Since we can't, you know, we don't have any

Cortex 14:08 you know, anything in jobs jumped out of you this last month.

Jessamyn 14:11 Ah, didn't look in the same spot to. Oh, oh, it looks like kind of the normal stuff.

Cortex 14:22 Some graphic design DevOps engineer at the harbor,

Jessamyn 14:26 which is probably all right. Yeah, that sales stuff. Oh, yes, of course, DevOps engineer at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. That's probably the best job of all time.

Cortex 14:36 That does some pretty rad. Well, I mean, if you like doing DevOps, I guess

Jessamyn 14:39 I don't, but I would like somebody who, who is.

Cortex 14:44 Who is that user GHC.

Jessamyn 14:47 Oh, I know him. That's

Cortex 14:51 John Hadron Collider, I think right. Bringing it back to the super heavy element discoveries.

Jessamyn 14:58 I've got to know him. I probably probably met him. Well, at any rate, that job looks amazing because the Harvard Library Innovation Lab is cool. But they're looking for people who can deal with Linux, people who can deal with tools. Like it doesn't look like they have. You know, I mean, part of the job responsibility is build cool stuff that surprises us. I kind of wish I'd seen this job earlier just so I could get around more people. While they're still

Cortex 15:28 tired. Yeah, amazing. The turnover before I actually get the podcast out. So you know, I also I like that we have we have jobs available in both Washington DC and Washington State this month. That's Whoa, like, Wait, there's two of them. It's amazing. Anyway, by the

Jessamyn 15:45 time this podcast comes out, I'm going to be down in DC, for Computers in Libraries conference, and I don't think it's a huge mefite gathering time, but I should probably, you know, if anybody's going to I know at least one me fight who lives near there, who I'm going to try and get together with so maybe I'll, I'll go looking into meetups

Cortex 16:05 through a little IRL out there. Make sure we talk about projects, because there's so much stuff.

Jessamyn 16:12 There's so much stuff. Even my little sad overlooked project. I mean, it wasn't overlooked. But it was one of these weird things. I went down to Brattleboro. And I made a video of the woman who made the copper plate etchings for my cousin's book. And I made a little video. And like it was a lot of work. And I got paid for it. Like it was a little job. And then I posted it all over social media. And like, it may as well have just been like a sleepy cat meme, like like, it just nobody had very little. Like, it got fewer thumbs up than like a picture of my own foot. You know what I mean? And so I was just, I was a little like, what happened? Like, would people tell me if it wasn't very good? They would I think, like, like, I would have thought if it actually weren't that good people would have been like, well, it looks like you really tried

Cortex 17:09 or something. It's sort of awkward energy.

Jessamyn 17:12 Not a lot of uptake on Twitter, not a lot of uptake on metal filter, not a lot of uptake kind of anywhere. And it's like it's not an awesome thing, but it's like five or six minutes. I worked hard at it. It's got 30 or 40 edits in it.

Cortex 17:25 Yeah, no, it's it's a weird that. I'm sure we've talked about this once or twice before on the podcast, with music too, right? Yeah, no, no, totally. Um, it's, it's totally just a thing where like, you really have no idea like, if you it's one thing like, like, like, if you really build in a hook, if you really like, you know, okay, I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and pander, then you probably are gonna get some sort of reaction. But beyond that you never fucking know. Like, it's always the weird thing that I didn't think anybody was going to notice it, like ends up being a huge thing. And then half the time when I'm really convinced that like, oh, this, this is really something people are really going to love this. This is Neyland zeitgeist,

Jessamyn 17:59 that I thought people were gonna love it, but just that I thought people be like, Wow, you worked hard on this. And it looks great.

Cortex 18:05 One, that's the thing like people, people, people, people never really know. Unless you're like being super, super loud and obnoxious about like, oh my god, I'm this thing and like really promoting the hell out of it. You never know. Like, I saw this go by I was like, Oh, neat. Jessamyn made a thing. And I never got back to it just because like, it's been a busy month, five whole minutes, you know? So like, no one could be better positioned to noon, which is tricky. Yeah.

Jessamyn 18:29 So I'm like, I'm gonna now write a blog post a little video so that I can talk about my feelings about. So I just wanted to mention it again.

Cortex 18:41 Now you're getting it now. You know, it looks neat. I want to sit down and actually watch it sometime. I won't do right now.

Jessamyn 18:47 To like, I actually took some original music and paid the guy for it. And then Jim, and I edit it and does something like it's a three minute piece. But we did some edits to make it loop a little more. So now it's a six minute piece.

Cortex 18:57 Nice. Yeah. I remember doing ad hoc belly dance music edits for a friend of Angeles a couple times, where it was like, I've never really thought about the idea of like cutting up someone else's music, but it's like, well, I need my set to run exactly this long. It's belly dance music, you can probably get away with a crossfade is like okay, boom. Yes, here's exactly eight minutes and 20 seconds

Jessamyn 19:18 of belly dance music. Like Soma FM has a weird channel called suburban Goa. And a lot of that is kind of belly dancey type music

Cortex 19:30 looks great for working. It's it's great. Yeah, it's sort of like getting the Groove Music, you know, doesn't tend to be vocally heavy. A lot of really great percussion variety, but not like crazy in your face trying to fuck you up sort of change, right? Yeah, Billy Bass Music, a plus Metafilter podcast review of belly dance music. Okay, so there's a bunch of bots and stuff this month.

Jessamyn 19:54 All right. Why don't you talk about the one that I'm waiting for you to bring up?

Cortex 19:59 Is it well See, but I don't even know which one you think I'm gonna bring up. I'm gonna just start with the most recent one the Vandelay industries, one from Bert random. Okay, that was not it, but keep going. So Vandelay industries is a bot, that's, you give it a line of dialogue from somewhere in some episodes of Seinfeld and return an animated GIF of the appropriate scene or scenes, which is omit it's like it's,

Jessamyn 20:26 and future is outrageous. Yeah.

Cortex 20:29 And it mentions Frankie Act, which is a bot that was a thing. So like this is, it's crazy to me how much this is like the actual, like, seemingly casual, effortless realisation of like my wildest sort of super cut dreams that I was having, like, you know, five years ago, and you didn't, I should, that'd be a lot of work. But what if you could, and it's like, nope, here it is. It's just so these things exist. Vandelay industries I love. I love Seinfeld as a cultural artifact, probably more than I like, loved it as a show when it was on because I didn't watch it super regularly.

Jessamyn 21:02 But I found it irritating as a show. But but whatever I want to love everything it kind

Cortex 21:08 of was I mean, is it like you liked it if you'd like to do you like to partly because you just liked that, but But yeah, the idea of Seinfeld as like a great cultural, historical artifact of the 90s. I'm kind of in love with so. So I'm delighted to see this particular variation, but just the whole principle to like this, eventually, this is gonna be the thing for literally every TV show ever made. There'll be instant access to an animated GIF on demand of the senior thinking of, you know, it's just like, clearly the role

Jessamyn 21:38 we've all wanted, because we send each other these riffs of, you know, like, I can do that with New Yorker cartoons, for example, you know, I say it's broccoli, and I say To hell with it, I don't have to say it, I can actually just send you a picture of that cartoon. And I remember we talked about the sometta talk once and people are like, how do you know like a New Yorker cartoon from the fucking 20s? Like, what is wrong with you? And I'm like, I don't know, we all read New Yorker cartoon books when we were kids like, it's, it's normal within the niche of people for whom it's normal. Exactly. Like me.

Cortex 22:11 I'm sure I could do the same thing with farside. Specifically, you know, I haven't even like read a farside script. 10 years, but like, I consumed

Jessamyn 22:17 ginger in public conversation. And the person I was saying it to did not understand what I was talking about. But someone else overheard me and email me later and was like, did you say blah, blah, Ginger and conversation like that farside cartoon? And I was like, Yeah, and it didn't occur to me that that's not something that everybody does all the time. Oh, that's fantastic. So he was charmed. So that was that was good. Yeah.

Cortex 22:44 And just like, just the distance there from like, you know, it used to be like the equivalent was to this like, to frickin eight or this family industry things was, you know, well, I'll go to the IMD B page and hope that they have that line in the memorable quote section. So we've gone from there. Yeah, yeah. So we've gone from there to just go for it. You know, and here's the animated GIF on demand. I think it's fantastic.

Jessamyn 23:09 I say it's spinach and I say To hell with it. See, this is what happens this is why I need animated GIFs on demand. That's fantastic. Because my memory is fallible. The new relaxed Jessamine doesn't know anything.

Cortex 23:22 The new relaxed Jasmine just knows that new relaxed Jasmine doesn't know anything embracing

Jessamyn 23:27 like, oh, look it up later. Exactly.

Cortex 23:31 Finding it finding the actual failure points for this will be the the interesting thing for you figuring out where you actually have to rein it in a little bit. Because you're like, Yeah, I'm gonna cash the fuck out of this whole stage. And so like, here's

Jessamyn 23:44 like, like finishing your words. Yes. So here's another one that I liked. This is Shepards. Little project, which is a thing in real life and as well. Awesome webpage highlighting the thing, which I think always helps. Basically, he described it, and I've met Shepard in real life. He likes art. He built a single serving Art Gallery, and hung it on the fence outside his house. It's got a little timer. It's got a light. He features work by local artists. It's a two week cycle. Dark changes every couple of weeks. Come

Cortex 24:20 on. It's so great.

Jessamyn 24:23 And the web's the thing he chose to you know, highlight the thing looks great. The website is some kind of I think it's just sort of responsive. I don't know if he built it. Sorry. Shepard looked like an HTML five up thing but maybe he did it himself in which case even awesomer and I guess it got posted a bit of filter by a shin cats and cat. That was cool. Also, I just you know what a neat little thing there. You know, we moved to our place. We like this thing, and we made an art gallery. It's tiny.

Cortex 24:52 Yeah, no, it's really it's, yeah, I'm a big fan of the whole general concept of like a weird yard. And that's that seems like a particularly like, nice, approachable take on it versus like, Oh, I know I just just I started a literal tire fires a statement about the political election process. You know that's interesting too, but it's not quite. Hey, check out this rad art I don't know where the tire fire thing came from exactly. I don't know you could like literally set like the figurative tire fire versus like literally setting a tire on fire as

Jessamyn 25:29 a garbage fire.

Cortex 25:30 That works too. I don't know. Yeah, I wonder if I wonder if that's actually anything that's got any sort of regional strength to or if it's just which metaphor you happen to have run into on the internet? Is a garbage fire something you feel like it's like long standing. Garbage

Jessamyn 25:44 fire. I don't know. I just heard something recently described as a garbage fire. Maybe it was the Trump campaign and I was like, I was like That's exactly right. Because not only like or something was like hot garbage. And so hot garbage garbage fire kinda.

Cortex 25:59 I think it might have been like hot mess endorses garbage fire it refering aliens endorsement of Trump. I think I saw that someone who got some

Jessamyn 26:07 Twitter. Like, I don't like tire fire I never think of is a thing. Not that. I don't I don't mean that other people don't I just that's a metaphor. No,

Cortex 26:19 it's I guess just as a visual it jumps out at me. Like I just the I like the idea to look the smell. It's it's a very specific, evocative sort of bad fire to be dealing with.

Jessamyn 26:31 Right. Right. Tire fires are black and stinky and smelly. That's what oh, about that.

Cortex 26:37 Someone posted on milkshake the other day a GIF of a tire swing on fire that I thought was like that, taking it to the next level. That's

Jessamyn 26:43 that's really you know, we had a tire swing growing up, and that just seems hopelessly quaint. Nowadays.

Cortex 26:49 They're made out of a tire. Yeah, no, there were tire swings in my elementary school playground. They're probably still there. It was real tires, real tires, tires, metal, metal chains, a trio of metal chains on the horizontal one. I think they might have both been horizontal. Yeah,

Jessamyn 27:07 those are awesome. I don't think of those as tire swings. They're like something else. But I mean, whatever. There's swing that that's that's a tire. Yeah,

Cortex 27:13 let's do that. Exactly. There might be another name for it. But, but I seriously injured myself on one one time in elementary school, I was pretty sweet. I still have a significant scar on and dent in my left shin where I got spinning real fast on it than whacked into one of the six by six support. That's always the

Jessamyn 27:31 concern. Yep. I'm gonna send you a picture that you are going to love looking at. which is me. My cousin whose book I just did the movie for? My sister and my other cousin all on the tire swing at my childhood home. Oh, nice.

Cortex 27:49 That is a that's been 1975.

Jessamyn 27:51 Maybe that's a tire pile?

Cortex 27:55 Yeah, great. That is That is some genuine old school kid having fun in the yard. Action right there. Yeah, nice. Yes. Well, here's one. Here's here's one I'm excited about that is more just I look forward to checking it out.

Jessamyn 28:12 Still not the one I'm thinking you're gonna I'm just working

Cortex 28:15 down. There's so much. So community. management.org is a community manager community recently started by user gone to crow baton.

Jessamyn 28:27 I always love that user's user names. It's

Cortex 28:29 a great username. And it looks like a neat site

Jessamyn 28:31 right? Now this person, what is going on? Who are these people very exciting.

Cortex 28:37 All these all these all these metal filters. Like tears in the rain. I don't know where I'm going with that. Anyway, it looks nice. I'm throwing it out there because I want to look into it more. And maybe other people be interested too. But I got as far as getting interested logging in being interested to poke around and then my week disappeared. So I can't say anything more about it just looks interesting. So I'm excited to check that out.

Jessamyn 29:02 That user around. And that's cool. And I think I told you, oh, we were texting that I went to beyond comments. This Yeah. I cannot say enough good things about the coral project. The work they do. And this conference was just this was what Ryan Gantz was at was just a bunch of kind of journalists, mostly comment manager people, learning how to make things better. Nice crowd one day at MIT. Free, the, you know, they had some grant money from the Knight Foundation. And I learned about a bunch of cool tools that people are using to help make news journalism comments sites better and one of the examples that they use is something they're using it the Willamette week out by you.

Cortex 29:52 Oh, you I have seen Yeah, I have heard that.

Jessamyn 29:56 It's like a thing that makes you rate to other comments before you make your comment. Should it has this bizarre calming effect?

Cortex 30:02 Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of like I think of that in my internet shorthand as the GarageBand. model, but not the GarageBand. That still exists. I don't think this GarageBand still exists, maybe it does. And not the apple recording product. But there was a there was a music sort of sharing and discussion site for basically musicians, and bands and whatnot called garageband.com, or something like that. Oh, no. And you would load up? Yeah, so I'm kind of guessing. Maybe they existed, they rebranded? I don't know, but but the whole idea was, like, you know, everybody could participate. But what you did was, you could upload a song and get reviews from people on it. But you had to basically pay for your participation by also reviewing other people's stuff. So you had to sort of like, go in and explicitly shared, like, review me. Yeah. And, you know, the economically it didn't work out super great. In terms of comment quality all the time, like you would get a lot of like people who were clearly figured out how to write a paragraph very quickly. But still that idea, you know, it's sort of the downside is you kind of have to have people willing to make the energy. But the upside is, yeah, maybe it does create this kind of averaging effect and sort of slows things down a little bit. So yeah, I've heard about civil, I haven't really spent any time on the Willamette week site. So I don't know. But yeah,

Jessamyn 31:16 I talked to somebody who either work there or was real familiar with it and said, it's made a huge difference. And just it was just a bunch of really nice engaged people like I, you know, I had a table where I was like, sitting with the one of the Community Engagement Manager, people from the Washington Post and a couple other people from Vermont, like we were at the Vermont cable, the people that, you know, work for the local, the local monthly paper, and that kind of stuff. Like it was just all day, we had a rapid prototyping session of how would you make something that helped make comments better kind of thing? Yeah, it was just really well done and well managed. And when people talked about communities that work meta filter kept coming up. So I was on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. And I ran into a couple researchers, at least one of which I think I'm gonna put directly in touch with you, because he used metal filter, the info dump stuff in his research, and I was like, you know, we can probably get you some corpus stuff if you just don't make it public, but need it for research. And so I'll probably put you guys in touch. Oh,

Cortex 32:22 yeah. That'd be awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a really neat event.

Jessamyn 32:27 Yeah, long story short, getting community people together to talk about community stuff is thumbs up and way to go gone to grow 10.

Cortex 32:38 I also liked I mentioned real quick and let you cue something up, visit to cement land by daddy. It's just a bunch of photos from a place called cement land which is, quote, an abandoned unfinished industrial playground amusement park kind of place if you're new. And yeah, so if you are in that sort of thing, it's great. It's it's, you know, real sort of like, you know, weird industrial Urban Decay sort of territory. Somebody creepy, somebody dilapidated concrete and so on. So it's pretty cool. Nice photos.

Jessamyn 33:10 Nice. Well, I was. I don't think we even need to mention ethnic knocks bought about a bot in the streets, but it's no cloning sheets, except to say he's done it again. Yep. But the thing that I was hoping I could hear you say out loud, was this post?

Cortex 33:28 Oh, yeah. Dungeons and Dragons. Exactly. That's what I'm gonna go with.

Jessamyn 33:36 It's i What even is it's a little bot that does made up Dungeons and Dragons. Stuff I didn't even look at things you might be doing in a what is in a key

Cortex 34:00 store, like a d&d game set in an IKEA store is I guess how I would care to like, it's like little capsule descriptions of various scenarios from an RPG, except for all of the objects in it are IKEA stuff. So yeah, I mean, it's brilliant. You know, you get

Jessamyn 34:17 God's tiny Nietzsche tiny way. Yep.

Cortex 34:23 That's very challenging. And I think that could have manifested posts. I think it did. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 34:27 And then it went over to Metafilter. Robert, was posted by winter sweet.

Cortex 34:34 Yeah. Let's see what else.

Jessamyn 34:40 Just kind of those were my big ones.

Cortex 34:43 I know. I've got at least a couple more that I was stoked about, along with several other cool things, but maybe I'll not go into literally everything. Oh, one thing I did want to mention. I feel like maybe this got teased before or, you know, I think I just had a Mefi email conversation with him about it. Jay Harris has a A book compilation. Oh, I

Jessamyn 35:02 think we had we knew it was coming up.

Cortex 35:03 Yeah, that's probably it. So So J. Harris. Big roguelike. Nerd if you can believe that bundle. Yeah, I think we saw that. Yeah. So so he's got that book. So if you if you'd like roguelikes or like Jay Harris is writing about it or think you might go check that out, because that's pretty rad.

Jessamyn 35:19 Oh, I have another Dippy pronunciation question. Do it. That game where anybody can make the rules and the rules change as you play the game, which is spelled n o m, I see. Yeah.

Cortex 35:29 I see. No, MC.

Jessamyn 35:30 Thank you. Okay, I say it, but I never say it out loud. And I talked to somebody else at this conference. And he said nomic and I was like, what?

Cortex 35:38 Well, I mean, it's yeah, it's weird because like, I think no, MC is like the like formal pronunciation to the extent that Peter Suber, the inventors on the record, but I'm not sure I'm gonna just make that up. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure. Unless it completely rewired my brain.

Jessamyn 35:54 No, you're pretty You're pretty. You're probably right.

Cortex 35:57 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he just sort of Yes, yeah.

Jessamyn 36:01 Yeah, I have no idea. Which

Cortex 36:08 but ya know what it's like, Oh, Hi, Jim.

Jessamyn 36:13 Well, cuz he was an heirloom and my sister went to heirloom and so he's a Berkman guy. And so I've Yeah, he went to college where my sister went to college only a lot earlier.

Cortex 36:24 That's kinda like me and Dean Kaman. Inventor of the Segway. Yeah, wait, so let me ask you speaking. We're gonna segue into segues. It's like the greatest day of my life. So hoverboards, which I think I may have talked previously about how I had a big rant on another podcast I did about how they're not. They're not real hoverboards and I was thinking about like the Lexus actual hoverboard. That's a shitty hoverboard that would never work anywhere besides a special thing. And I had no idea that like these little two wheeled mini segways were actually a thing with the hoverboard brands are so confusing, but now it's a brand. Hoverboard is a brand I believe. Now here's the thing

Jessamyn 37:02 that makes non hoverboards. Yeah, no,

Cortex 37:04 no. My question is, is hoverboard actually a subsidiary brand of whatever, deem Caymans company is the Segway company. I had sort of assumed it was a competitor. But then someone made an offhand reference to it being like, Oh, yeah. And like, oh, maybe this is them actually trying to put something on the market that they can sell. But maybe that's all I'm I'm hoverboard. Curious, I guess is where I am right now. I need more information about something that I already have kind of a bad attitude about. And yet, I have an idea at Web. Yep. And it's in the comments on this podcast, but was please answer my question. I can't make less effort here.

Jessamyn 37:41 Well, and that's a really hard thing to well, it's really hard. But you look it up on Wikipedia and you get to self balancing two wheeled board. Are you sure it's not hovertrax?

Cortex 37:54 I want to say I want to say hoverboard as a brand. But maybe it's not. Again, like I'm operating on far less information than I should be.

Jessamyn 38:04 Like, I just scan this article and well it says See also segway PT. O two wheeled self balancing, smooth transition. Personal Transporter. What am I even doing it myself? Josh?

Cortex 38:21 Sorry. Well, let me let me mention one more project. Because this is this is the greatest thing in the history of the world. Basically, user

Jessamyn 38:30 learned medication adjusted, you're like a total Gracie.

Cortex 38:33 I'm usually not

Jessamyn 38:35 hyperbolic like this.

Cortex 38:37 I've just I'm trying to try and have some energy and I think I'm I'm exceeding my efforts there. Yeah. Anyway, so loop li RP user learning.

Jessamyn 38:47 It's just one of these things where you're just gonna throw a bunch of letters around and I'm

Cortex 38:50 no, no, but it is a thing where you do throw a bunch of letters around. You heard Larry,

Jessamyn 38:54 you said lert. But I heard list but now I'm looking at piko eight and is so

Cortex 39:00 loop longtime Mefi posted project called writer for piko. Eight writers in one who writes and what it is I know

Jessamyn 39:12 what the word

Cortex 39:14 I'm telling the listener it's piko eight piko eight is that weird fantasy console programming system that I was super gaga over last summer and fall. What did you make? Did you make I made a bunch? I made a bunch of little dune games. Yeah. Yeah. and various other things I made on Weegee in its this last week or so

Jessamyn 39:36 I've been ever made by such.

Cortex 39:40 Yep. Rest. So writer, loop made a word processor for the piko eight video game console. And the thing is, it's a fake video game console. So it's got like a D pad and a couple of buttons, which means there's no way that you can use it as a Word processor that way, unless you map various keys to various buttons and whatnot, and use the D pad to change between uppercase and lowercase and punctuation and spaces, like you were typing on a very badly designed phone basically.

Jessamyn 40:14 Sure, well, or an old just an old phone, right? Or would it have to be old and even worse designed,

Cortex 40:20 I think old and maybe not worse, but at least less familiar, which makes it worse. It's like a combination of like, keying stuff in with, you know, old 10 button, flip phones sort of thing with the intuitive usability of like, bye, bye. It's about me like, like, this is a thing. I've spent enough time with it to manage to eke out a small sentence and it was torturous and wonderful specifically, because it was such like this is a terrible idea. Well, wonderfully execute read

Jessamyn 40:51 about everybody coding, right? It makes you appreciate the people who can really do it or the people who can really do it but specifically use their talents to make wacky stuff you know what I mean? When

Cortex 41:04 that's what I feel like this is like this is this is a wonderful idea for something that would never ship as an actual product but that's kind of whole point is like lurpak made it anyway and I love that the thing is I want to see someone I want to see someone get good at this word process I want to see someone get so used to the interface that they can actually like speed run typing out a paragraph of text like the preamble the Constitution in a minute, because I believe someone would be able to if they really put the time in like it's it's awkward, but it's not

Jessamyn 41:32 right story written in in piko, a writer and writer for FICO eight,

Cortex 41:37 if someone could manage to code piko eight code in writer and then like export that to piko eight that would be like the best that'd be like an amazing sort of like all right, I can see why you're so enthusiastic. Anyway, it's wonderful ulurp You're awesome. I just been getting back into piko eight the last couple of weeks and I'm really happy to be back to it and so that was that was earlier this month that I saw code I was like oh that's yes. Why not to doing this stuff so

Jessamyn 42:04 I'm gonna take a break so that I can scoot and refill my water all right. Humble yourself for roughly 90 seconds I guess so all right. Humble yourself

Unknown Speaker 42:20 mm.

Jessamyn 43:08 I'm also grabbed a cough drop great to go on a walk it six which shouldn't be any problem but we'll be our our hard stop.

Cortex 43:21 Oh, sure. I went in telling myself well, it's okay if it turns out to be short podcast and I don't think that's gonna be a problem

Cortex 43:45 have me I can use it anymore. It's good to see, or shall we move on to a metal filter proper?

Jessamyn 44:05 Yeah, let me do it. Oh. Oh, you know, I just made a pet post today, by the way. Oh, yeah. Yeah, about floating churches. Nice. How does that say about it? It's one of those posts. There's not really much you can say about it. But I was basically somebody asked question on asked Metafilter about the decorative arts don't really know what that is. So I did what I always do and went to Open Library and kind of dicked around looking at, you know, stuff that was under the decorative art subject heading. And then I found this really interesting book there, which is the official descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the great exhibition, which was this huge thing that happened in London in 1850. Where a bit like every country submits just a ton of shit so that you can go like, look at the stuff from those kinds. trees. So that's all pretty interesting. But then I looked at what was in the exhibit for the United States. And one of the things that was in the exhibit for the United States was this model of this floating church. And the whole concept of this floating shirt was church was that it was for sailors. And at the time, there were so many sailors and they were considered such a subclass of humanity, that you had to make a special church to try and capture them on the water. Because among the lands, like you, like I read some stuff about, you know why, I mean, it's basically a church on a barge, but like, why they did it. But it's got like a stained glass window and a bell. And apparently, it's called, you know, Church of the Redeemer, and it was basically in the water in Philadelphia, for sailors because you couldn't get them to go inside. So I got as far as this picture of this thing. It was like I got to figure out more about that. And then figured out a little bit more about it and then made a little post. So yeah, that was, that was my thing. Let me go find my favorites for the rest of my things.

Cortex 46:17 I'm, I'm paging through my recent activity real quick.

Jessamyn 46:22 So you have Josh,

Cortex 46:25 I it's been it's it. It's been a week. It's been a week. Okay. I mean, I can talk about what it was. It's been, it's been, it has been such a week. It's been,

Jessamyn 46:39 you should have told me on the download just what you're grappling with. Oh, no, there's

Cortex 46:43 nothing even interesting. It's just like, it's spinning. It's it's been it's been busy and hectic. Are

Jessamyn 46:50 you guys having a baby or something? Oh, god.

Cortex 46:52 No. Not that there's anything wrong with that? No, no, no, it's just

Jessamyn 46:58 you know, we're pregnant. But we can't tell you. We're pregnant for like two and a half months. So I'm just going to be super weird now for 10 weeks.

Cortex 47:05 I totally sympathize people who are stuck in that position. But it does. It does feel like a weird thing. No, I it's it's just been a really busy week on the site. It's been a busy week, just with random stuff. You know, there's no, there's no good story. It's just like, Thank God, it's Friday. Am I right?

Jessamyn 47:21 Well, I'll tell you about one of the things that I liked, which was basically G went made a post about okay, go who we basically seemed to pretty much post about every year, at least on music. On music videos, I met a filter. You start with a letter and you just go with a different word for no reason. Autocomplete just you relax. Jessamyn is Autocomplete is on the fritz. So okay, go did a video in zero gravity. And it's pretty great because they're really great. And then Hell Girl posts the making of and talks about the making of the whole thing. I mean, basically they puked 58 times. Eight times while making this zero gravity video. The whole thing and it's one single take except they cut pieces out in the middle like the puke arts and a whole bunch of stuff but basically you should probably go see this video because it really is one those like Best of the web things Yeah, and I still have not watched it that's crazy shit for ever. They are there to be them every

Cortex 48:32 they I guess it's a it's a nice problem to have consistently putting out really great videos that are was like, oh my god, so great.

Jessamyn 48:40 Or good. I mean, I like they're kind of brand of pop music. Yeah. So it was it was and there's like women who are not in the band, who do kind of choreographed zero G. I don't even know what you call it dancing, acrobatics, like they do some cool stuff. Also, in the course of this video, the whole thing is interesting. And that of course, watching a bunch of betta filter people being like woo is it was just a nice kind of upbeat, happy to read.

Cortex 49:11 Let's all enjoy a good music video and a nice song. So that's why it's nice for me to be sometimes I am super excited about something I didn't expect to be all that excited about because it's sort of one of those Well, it's just never going to happen. But apparently they're really really really moving forward on movie version of Stephen King's The Dark Tower

Jessamyn 49:33 is one of those books that was about when I stopped reading him. So what's the Dark Tower? Can you like give me like eight words.

Cortex 49:42 A a gunslinger slash night in a crumbling world named Roland tries to traverse the world and find his way to the elusive Dark Tower which seems to hold the world together but is itself crumbling.

Jessamyn 49:56 So it's like a quest kind of Yeah, it's

Cortex 49:58 a big question. goes on,

Jessamyn 50:00 because that's kind of his thing or no

Cortex 50:02 no not really. I mean it's it's weird because it's kind of like his magnum opus the series but it also had a big big pause in the middle and then he got back to it after he got hit by a car and almost died. And so there's a whole lot of Stephen King's worldview changing like right around book five. And for for better or for worse is deadly for the weird like the series ends differently than probably any would have thought it would in the first couple books.

Jessamyn 50:31 But is it like last where it ends? Maybe you feel like different from how it started? Like, do you feel like people were like fucking around or

Cortex 50:40 kinda I mean, there's, there's sort of a sense of like, whether Stephen King knew what the hell was going on. By the time he was a few books in and so the way it ended, like, I don't know, if it could have ended a very, very different way, you know, if he actually managed to finish it 20 years earlier, whatever, but it's a big complicated thing. People have strong feelings about it in very different directions. I like it all in all, I think it's sort of a weird, flawed series, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Okay, but I'm excited about the movie because they put in fucking Idris Elba in as the Gunslinger, which is like, Oh, God, let's I guess I'm sold. I don't care if it's a piece of shit. And then the antagonist guy in the series. The Man in Black is gonna be Matthew McConaughey. And I'm immediately imagining like rust coal from True Detective and so yeah, I'm excited about that. I'm excited about it, because it's a thing but like, you know, post saying, hey, this movie is getting cast. It's not amazing poster, I think. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. You know? So so so no shade intended.

Jessamyn 51:36 They're complaining about Ghostbusters yet? Yeah.

Cortex 51:41 I actually see mostly people complaining about complaining about so it's complicated. I haven't touched it yet. I'll go watch the trailer and read up at some point. But anyway, this is the movie is exciting. Idris Elba is fantastic. People are talking about Dark Tower on Metafilter, which I'm always a sucker for rolling up Elde longtime Metafilter member with like, that's literally the character from you know, the the books has been excited in there and geeking out and we're starting up a book club specifically for The Dark Tower. Cause people were like, hey, which is gonna

Jessamyn 52:15 be my next question. Because, you know, books has been I mean, when did books get going?

Cortex 52:19 Like late October? It's been a while and a couple months now. Yeah. Yeah, we were going to try and get on it a lot faster. And then just ship kept happening. So man, a man. So we're coming back to it. But yeah, we're trying to bring books around a little bit more. And part of that is just saying, hey, you know, if you really want to do a book club, even if we don't have anything super formal set up for it, just let us know what your plan is, and probably just say, hey, go for it here. You can post about books now, you know. So we're gonna go with Dark Tower.

Jessamyn 52:44 I've been reading more sort of post apocalyptic stuff. And I should probably think about that, like, I just finished the second of the third in the wolf series. Like we're in big silos and we live underground and what's going on? And now I'm reading seven Nevers,

Cortex 52:56 have you. I haven't read it yet, but I like Stephenson, so I'll get

Jessamyn 53:00 love hate with him. And so far, I'm really really liking this. And I should like, think about whether anybody's talking about it a metal filter, because I also started picking up some old like detective series, like I always, like really catch up on media in the wintertime. So I've been reading like detective Murdock and Dr. Blake and like weird, fussy men with no emotion solve crimes. There's probably people talking about a metal filter, and I should talk to them about it. Because otherwise I make Jim talk to me. And I mean, bless him, but he really only sort of cares. Like, oh, so that guy's the detective. Are they together those two? No. Simmering relationship? Really?

Cortex 53:43 Yeah, no, you should. You should. You should think about. You could organize on you could totally talking about some books? Yeah, no, I'm really excited about that. I'm excited.

Jessamyn 53:54 Talking about some books. Yeah. Let's talk about the lady who was nominated by Congress. And can I just say, a couple hours after the nomination went public. I got a call from the personnel people at the White House being like, are you stoked? It was lovely. So the lady who they nominated, this is a post by Abby or at the VE, and she put together kind of summing up the issues. But it's cool. The lady they dominated is amazing would have been my first pick. I didn't even think she was pickable because she's a little too activist than zero activist or not a drip like Billington. And so there was just a fun thread where we could all get together and be like, Oh, and one of the guys who actually works at the Library of Congress, let me scroll down and find on him.

Unknown Speaker 55:05 For God's sakes, I'm working.

Jessamyn 55:09 This thread, one of the guys who works at the Library of Congress kind of popped in and was like, Yeah, you know, that's pretty interesting. This is what it's like for us working at the Library of Congress. It literally may have been at a different thread. And Mr. Moon Pie, popped in. He works at the Library of Congress. I wasn't sure. But it was just it was nice to get to chat about it and kind of an inside baseball way with some of my favorite librarians. So be happy but it's awesome.

Cortex 55:35 A similar momentous news of the nation and the culture front. I liked this post about a Tumblr blog that just posts edits of album art from various albums to make them Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith.

Jessamyn 55:51 I don't even understand that, you know,

Cortex 55:55 Aerosmith fan. And Sweet Emotion is a song I don't think it's an album. I think it's just a song. Let me there's also an album, not an album.

Jessamyn 56:02 So what did they

Cortex 56:03 they just taking random random covers from various other, you know, famous or semi famous album covers, and just photoshopping them so that they are advertising Aerosmith. Sweet Emotion instead of whatever was the original content of the album. It's, it's just a random dumb idea. Does super

Unknown Speaker 56:24 random for dumb

Cortex 56:29 fucking movie album cover? Love it? Anyway, you

Jessamyn 56:35 know, it's like user submissions. And it's awesome. Yeah,

Cortex 56:38 it's just kind of pure internet and I am loving it.

Jessamyn 56:44 Speaking of love at it. Oh, guys, you guys need to take the credit for the 15 years ago, all your base? Anniversary? Yes, sir. The day after Valentine's Day. And you What did you do you change the font for the one thread?

Cortex 57:06 Yep, changed the font to a pixelated arcade style, like square, jaggy thread.

Jessamyn 57:14 And then they mentioned it and better talk. I'm pretty sure. So for people who might have missed it, because they didn't look in that thread. Yeah.

Cortex 57:23 Or if they commented before we made the change. And then just we're reading in recent activity that was like, Why is everybody suddenly so confusing about the text of this thread?

Jessamyn 57:35 So yeah, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And that was a good time.

Cortex 57:39 I like a good goofy, fun thread. You know, you don't want to do them too much. Because then it becomes passe. But then yeah, every once in a while, it's like, I

Jessamyn 57:46 don't remember you ever doing it before? So it was with comics.

Cortex 57:50 It was Comic Sans matte one time did it in a thread talking about like, passive aggressive notes in Comic Sans, I think. And it was great. It was fantastic. Just sort of ice hearing. But also everybody had a fantastic time writing writing up notes in Comic Sans, because they could. Yeah, yeah, it was a it was a good time. It was nice to have that it was nice to goof around with the pump was also just nice to have her buddies are like having to oh my god, we're all ancient beings.

Jessamyn 58:20 I remember that with what feels like my current brain. Yeah. You know, like I remember looking at I mean, that was one of the first kind of like, dumb memes that I can remember that made me laugh because people were riffing on it. Yep. And that and that, depending on where you were in the mean, propagation. You either thought it was the funniest thing alive, or you were totally over it. Yep. And that could be a matter of days. Like I remember finding out about it. And it wasn't. I mean, I remember finding out about it before it was totally over, I guess. And so watching it propagated and watching people riff on it was delightful in a way that you know, after that, things seemed just like that had been if that makes sense. Yeah.

Cortex 59:05 Yeah, no, it's really interesting to think about it as being something that like really was at the front of what it feels like a very normalized kind of Riffey you know, meme culture

Jessamyn 59:16 everybody does that now. It's almost like theme Yeah, rare Pepe is

Cortex 59:21 the way that the way that memes have gotten a lot more sort of widespread in their production to because like all your base part of the notable thing was like a bunch of people like a bunch of people on something awesome. Awesome. And a bunch of people on another forum did a bunch of work

Jessamyn 59:34 something awesome did branding.

Cortex 59:37 Wow, that was very generous to me. Yeah, something awful. I don't know taxes

Jessamyn 59:43 paid me awful thread and it was too popular I think and so they tried to get people to sign up like they put it behind their paywall. Yeah, I think they

Cortex 59:52 did. Which was a weird and clever move

Jessamyn 59:55 all your base. Yeah, I just remember. Yeah, like well,

Cortex 59:58 and you know, that used to be worthy. seems came from like, if there was a great big pile of like, meme riffing, it was because some forum went to town on it, right? Like, you know, it'd be something awful, or it'd be one of the others may, you know, maybe FARC, you know, there used to be these, like these clearing houses of the actual work of getting together and riffing on a meme. And now it's gotten so decentralized. Now, it's so much like, everybody, like a meme is a meme, because it's really moving around. And not just because like, you know, a couple dozen people who hang out in one specific space, you know, we're bored that day, it's like, it can be enough for someone to like just putting it on Twitter. And it's funny, and then immediately, people just like, from everywhere, might go at it, you know, very ad hoc, and very independently. And it's just kinda interesting to think about that that specific change in the landscape, which probably sort of matches up pretty well with the move towards really broad social media versus the slightly more centralized, you know, blogging culture of,

Jessamyn 1:00:57 right, where everybody's kind of sharing the same internet. Yeah.

Cortex 1:01:01 So yeah, I don't know. Just an interesting thing. But yeah, it was a very fun threatening case. I had a great time with that all around. And some nice, nice little history stuff in there, too. Lego Mansur, a couple other people sort of were like, oh, yeah, here's here's what I remember about the specific day that that happened. 50 like

Jessamyn 1:01:17 filthy light thief.

Cortex 1:01:17 Yeah. So yeah, it was neat. It was neat. I enjoyed it. I'm gonna share a terrible idea of a post. This is from Slater who posted something that is just dangerous later, another long time, or like 2000 user four digits. This is a game called minefield. It's Minesweeper. Except for it's massively multiplayer. So you go, what does that even mean? Oh, my God, it means you're playing minesweeper on the same infinite plane is everybody else who's playing. Also, when you when you hit a bomb, it doesn't end the game, because it'd be pretty horrible if you had an MMO where as soon as anybody made mistake, everybody loses

Jessamyn 1:02:00 weight. I'm totally confused. You like flags and other flags and Domo cones up at the top? And

Cortex 1:02:06 you can you can choose a custom flag for your marker when you successfully flag a bomb. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:02:15 so somebody chose the demo code?

Cortex 1:02:17 Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's custom ones. And you can you can choose whatever you like. And yeah, you get positive points for correctly identifying bombs, you lose points for fucking up. And that's it. And it just crawls out forever and ever. And it's kind of amazing. And the thing is, I don't even like Minesweeper, really like Minesweeper when I was first and I kind of say this in the thread. But when I was first exposed to Minesweeper on a regular basis, I wasn't really into related kind of puzzles. And I liked computer games a lot. I like video games. I like console games. And so Minesweeper was always like the shitty random thing I was stuck with when I was like at work on a computer

Jessamyn 1:02:54 and couldn't find, like a computer that you didn't have anything better to

Cortex 1:02:57 do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I have since played a bunch of games that are like more in that same logic territory. So it turns out I'm probably kind of on board with Minesweeper, too. But I clicked on this Minesweeper, but I lost hours, hours that that week, you know, when I say it's been a busy week, partly what I mean is like, I kept playing minefield, it's like that. Yeah, last week, I definitely lost a couple hours, like downtime hours to like, you know, there are new video games out that I'm excited about playing. I've been playing some of them. But then I spent like, two hours one day on it, like, I have nothing I need to get done. It's my day off. I'm gonna play some video games. There's no nothing's on fire. And then just like two hours later, like, oh, shit, I just I've been playing mind field the entire time. But yeah, it's surprisingly good. Like, if you like Minesweeper, it's great slash horribly dangerous, because it's so chill. It's just like a really, it's so easy to sort of fall into it. So and it was it was really badly overwhelmed the day the post went up, so like, it took me until like, the next day to even be able to play it, I think, but it seems to calm down now. So thanks. And also I hate you, Slater.

Jessamyn 1:04:04 thinks that I hate you. There's a solid planks and I hate you. I'm the man of twists and turns, who was actually mentioned in bluebird was this 1000 Yeah. This wasn't it. But he's done. 1000 posts. Yes. He was mentioned in meta stock. He made this slightly cryptic. I mean, it's not really cryptic, just click on it. But basically, it's a link on Wikipedia that if you allow it to geocode late bloomers, excuse me, if you allow it to geo locate you, will give you like 10 or 11, six 911 of all random numbers. Wikipedia pages about stuff near you. graphic. So like mine basically does the train station in my town, my town, the radio station in my town, the church and the next down the bridge in the next town, the church the other town, the other other town, the state, New Hampshire grants and then to covered bridges. Nice. What do you see when you click it?

Cortex 1:05:13 Several nearby sports fields. The University of Portland nearby High School. A no longer existent Portland University. Some parks the giant Paul Bunyan statue in Kenton, the moot Hey, the St. John's signal tower gas station which is actually just like a pizza joint. I mean, the gas station pizzas doing it's like in an old timey gas station but yeah, yeah, it's it's it's not bad. It's a weird mix of kind of boring infrastructure in some some cool local things.

Jessamyn 1:05:45 I mean, it's just kind of interesting to see like the you know, I mean, it may also be that the geolocation doesn't really do much. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know if it's actually showing where I live personally, or if it's just showing kind of where I live in general.

Cortex 1:05:59 Yeah, like, the IP. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So also you accidentally said God, originally, and I'm not bringing it up to like, you said wrong. I'm gonna because I think we should just make that a word now, because it's shorter, which means it wins. So yeah. Oh, yeah. No, you totally need to let it God. Yeah, I got God that, you know. Also, you need to be like a mobster from New Jersey, apparently. But yeah, I favor. All right. That's the word

Jessamyn 1:06:26 especially has there been a was there a post about all the dramas on Wikipedia? There wasn't there was one that got deleted, right.

Cortex 1:06:34 I think I remember seeing the deletion go by, but I wasn't on duty. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:06:38 Yeah. Head of the Wikimedia or the Wikimedia Yeah, the head of all of Wikipedia, the CEO stepped down after a lot of sort of grumpy controversy. And a lot of people are talking a lot about it. But there's not a lot of kind of public facing. Let's explain this for somebody who's not in love with the inside baseball,

Cortex 1:06:58 was that kind of issue with a post was like, there's just like, this needs to be better at not being inside baseball to.

Jessamyn 1:07:03 Yeah, it's just a difficult issue. So somebody will make that post, I assume, but it's just been an interesting week for them or a couple of weeks for them. That's what I noticed. Oh, here's a beef I project. That was I guess, the very end of January, but I don't think we mentioned it, and then it got posted.

Cortex 1:07:22 Did we bring it all in?

Jessamyn 1:07:23 I don't know. If we talked about this. The single serving recipe thing? I

Cortex 1:07:29 think we did. We did talk about? Yeah, like I peregrym Pickle. Yeah. Making I don't know if we talked about the post but we talked about the project. Okay, so yes. And still nice project. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:07:38 cooking, and it's a great post cooking for us. We must have talked about it. Yeah,

Cortex 1:07:43 we might have been like right on the cusp of the post itself hadn't happened at all. I don't remember. This is how the sausage is made. I really liked this post about smell dating. Smell dating? It's a you know, it's a service where you, you sign up and you send in a T shirt or something? I think they send you a t shirt and you wear it for three days without deodorant. Wow. This is uh, this is Sam Levine and useless press is who's

Jessamyn 1:08:14 decide if you like the way that person? Is it a real thing? Before we get too deep? No, here's, here's because I'm so gullible.

Cortex 1:08:20 Here's the thing I'm gonna say so trusting. No, but I could also answer. Yes, I think I think what it is, is I would believe that the folks who put this together would actually follow through on anybody who actually wants to try it, even though they don't

Jessamyn 1:08:37 intend to be serious lately full of blackheads.

Cortex 1:08:41 Oh, is this the video in the background of someone smelling the garment?

Jessamyn 1:08:44 leading me to believe it's not an actual thing?

Cortex 1:08:47 This is this is the thing I think I think it's a joke. Like it's clearly a joke, because the useless press stuff is full of wonderful, weird internet sort of humor, but at the same time, I had not. Well, I I think there's something to the idea of, you know, smell mattering. But I think I'm also willing to believe that if someone actually paid them money, they would in fact, do the described thing like I'm willing to believe they would actually send take returns of smelly T shirts and send them out to other people who signed up. If 12 People actually sign up like I don't think they would expect it to end well or anything. I don't think this is a product that they necessarily believe in but I'm not convinced that they wouldn't do it. Like that's that's the weird i don't know place like it's clearly a joke, but it's a joke I can believe they would follow through on even though I can also believe people would want it. You know, very specific people would want it to be a service that they would then be disappointed to find out was not being treated with the kind of reverence or reverence reverence. Reverence is the one that you send a beret t shirt revenue

Jessamyn 1:09:50 revenue. Jam that movie. Let me tell you right now I'm sure Leonardo DiCaprio is a nice person. torture porn. That movie. I

Cortex 1:10:02 have not been inclined to see it.

Jessamyn 1:10:04 Oh, me neither. But ah, yeah.

Cortex 1:10:08 Anyway, I enjoyed this discussion of smell dating, I enjoyed the degree to which people were somewhat hashing out the degree to which it was real or not. And then people started talking about smell to like as an actual factor of attraction. And so it's, it's kind of the perfect mixed metal filter response to such a weird hand wavy Joe, kind of thing I love the whole thing about

Jessamyn 1:10:31 him always talked about that, how we feel like, you know, we have a kind of compatible smell profile, whatever that means. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, he's not a particularly stinky individual. Neither am I. The way we smell with each other is a thing we like, it's hard to explain, but like that matters. You know, like, there's some people I've definitely been with where I felt like I was with them, despite the fact that their spell was like not right. Yes, not. Whereas Yeah, Jim's not that.

Cortex 1:11:06 Yep. I was interrupting you telling me what else you'd like to ask you. What else?

Jessamyn 1:11:13 Oh, well, Cashman made this great post that zipped all around the internet. But he made a very nice post about NASA's visions of the future calendar images. And the thing that's most amazing about these images is that they're all free as in beer, like you can have them and do whatever you want, which is cool. And because I'm reading seven eBiz, or whatever the hell it is. I'm extra into space tourism, me kind of stuff.

Cortex 1:11:45 Yeah, I saw these going around. They're really nice.

Jessamyn 1:11:48 Yeah, I mean, I when I think of NASA, I don't really I mean, I don't not think of design, but I don't really think about design, I think about other things. And so seeing something like this, where clearly someone had some graphic design fun with it.

Cortex 1:12:03 Yeah. The whole sort of like, yeah, that's sort of faux 1950s Take but ya know, they're really nice. I think that was one of things I liked. Last summer in Huntsville is like they've got, you know, they've got the space center there. And they've got, among other things, a little art gallery, and it's got a collection of a bunch of space related artwork, essentially. Oh, that's cool. Include some really rad sort of like Russian like Space Race era, stuff that just like weird and colorful in a way that like American space design wasn't even when it was otherwise. Cool. So it's just really fantastic. And literally sort of fantastical looking, aspirational, space man progress. stuff in there that I should I meant to like, learn more about it, maybe make a post and maybe I'll try and figure that out eventually. But yeah, space art man space starts great. I like some space art. I also liked this post about trap covers, which was a complicated and actually kind of, at times sort of annoying thread in a way that sometimes you know, discussions of pop music. Travel. It's a it's basically a sort of age, rap, hip hop, dance music, weird smear of genre, territory. And I'm, I'm out of my depth on it, because it's not really a whole area that I have a whole lot of experience on. But basically, it's a kind of variation on a southern style rap,

Jessamyn 1:13:38 hip hop, dance and dub, so it has really heavy under beat. It's got a really good tempo that's like 70 to 110 beats per minute. But it also has a bunch of synth and sampling or over the top of it. And the thing

Cortex 1:13:49 is, the specifics of the trap genre don't even really matter for the post because like the whole thing, it's a jokey, it's a jokey meme that got running where it's it's not so much about this is the important thing here is trapped specifically as a genre. The important thing is inverting sort of like the white people doing folky covers of black music. And specifically acoustic covers of of Beyonce information. Oh, I

Jessamyn 1:14:14 bet that went well.

Cortex 1:14:15 So again, do

Jessamyn 1:14:19 not ban this person whose comments you deleted all of I don't I don't think so. That sounds like it. But anyway, this thread looks very different to someone who is not me.

Cortex 1:14:32 But anyway, it's a bunch of ones basically it's it's what it comes down to is a bunch of people posting short like 25/32 snippets of like rap restyling of what could be fairly described as the white people music equivalent of flipping over like formation so like, you know, hey Jude or a racist songs, or you know, Nirvana. I think there's a couple police covers in there. Basically, people just kept running with it and just having a fantastic time. Great One of the SpongeBob SquarePants theme it's fantastic. Anyway, it's a lot of fun. It's a bunch of really goofy people, you know, people having a goofy time, like radically redoing songs as a nice sort of like, slightly fucked up but not like, you know, angry fucked up and version of the Hey, I'm gonna do my soulful cover of hip hop song as a lily wipers and thing it's caught. There's a mix of weird complicated cultural, and racial politics in here. And also people just having a fantastic time goofing around on a musical idea. And on the balance that falls much to the this is just sort of fantastic site

Jessamyn 1:15:44 for me, and people are just having a good time. And for the most part,

Cortex 1:15:47 yeah, and people were pulling out a bunch of other good examples and also trying to pick apart exactly the genre definition of trap. And so I'm

Jessamyn 1:15:55 like, like, like they do.

Cortex 1:15:56 Yeah, like, like you do. So anyway, is all in all a bunch of fun stuff in that thread. I liked the contents of that post a lot. So yeah, it was pretty great.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:07 My body's less by my mind is last answer and myself in machine that silver every now long live in the dream.

Cortex 1:16:31 Ah, let's proceed directly to ask Metafilter.

Jessamyn 1:16:35 Fantastic. Okay. I think the best, my most interesting got so many people into it, and it was fun thread of all of this past month had to be hired to be looking for emphatic warnings against really bad ideas throw. Yes, which was basically by JK Caesar. So he's our whatever. Basically, I like reading extremely emphatic warnings that something is a bad idea. Like, never use this function. Mail mail extension cords are an illegal dangerous fire hazard and possibly immoral. But basically, I want to read more of these signs, find me more signs that of course, the top one has to do with some kind of equipment, which basically says, danger Do not touch. Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the entire time you are dying. Yep. So it's a thread full of like awesome warnings. And it's just kind of delightful because of that.

Cortex 1:17:43 Yeah. Yeah. No, that that that seemed like a whole lot of fun. I saw that popping around on Twitter a bunch, I think just the Yeah, the the the intersection of, of the dullness of warning signs and the personality of like, but I really mean it.

Jessamyn 1:17:59 Right. And seriously, we need to actually stretch this in any way possible, because people are just going to do it anyhow. And we need them not to as much as possible.

Cortex 1:18:11 There was a this was one of the so usually when when I'm getting rolling towards podcast, I have my wife, Angela, Secretary on site will. Secretary She

Jessamyn 1:18:25 sounded like you said Secretary,

Cortex 1:18:26 Secretariat. No, she was not by any stretch of the imagination. My secretary, she is actually a racehorse, who was famous. Right? Let's just be clear here. You know, I never I never got that baseball made from Secretariat. JOCO I think those early Simpsons something like that. Here's a baseball made from Secretariat. And I had no idea who or what Secretary it was when I first saw that that episode. So I but somehow the the line stuck with me. Anyway, she she pointed out this is the homemaking blogs written by a childfree author which basically someone's Daisy saying, Hey, I like to read lifestyle blogs about homemaking, but maybe not so much with everything being centered around, you know, the writers, kids, you know, as someone who's, you know, parent free or child free. Anyway, so it turned into a there's a great big pile of excellent recommendations

Jessamyn 1:19:29 for something I can connect emotionally to so I'm looking for people who don't have kids, that's certainly people who have kids.

Cortex 1:19:36 Yeah. And I mean, there's blogs in here that have people who have kids, but it's not like their blog isn't about my kid. It's like, Oh, also, I have a teenager but like, so yeah, it's just sort of a nice, nice collection of slightly different takes on because that is definitely a thing like, you know, I don't spend a lot of time reading lifestyle blogs. And it's partly because, like, there tends to be sort of like that familial orientation that as much as that's great I don't relate to it at all. I'm not really there. So

Jessamyn 1:20:04 great, not your thing. No, I hear you. I often like reading about people my own age who are doing things that are my own age appropriate, which is not being grandparents. I mean, not that that's not appropriate. It's just not appropriate to me, like not a parent, not a grandparent interested in other things, interested in other people's kids, but not not much to read about them. So yeah, yep. Yeah, I remember seeing that when it went across. For a quirkier take on questions. Fox in the snow asks, Is it okay to bring tools to a cemetery to dig out a grave marker? Basically, she has a she he Fox in the snow has ancestors who are buried in a cemetery that's kind of grown over, they have a map? And is it okay to bring tools to clear the growth off air? Or when people think that was weird? And so basically, they haven't asked yet? The short answer is ask but you know, people talk about stuff. Some people do this. Some people work in a cemetery office or know people from cemetery offices. So it was just sort of an interesting thing I never thought I didn't know the answer to and then it turned out, I didn't know the answer to it. It was interesting to hear people answer it.

Cortex 1:21:27 Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Because like, yeah, what do you do you just otherwise use it? Yeah, no, I'm just gonna say, that's lost forever.

Jessamyn 1:21:35 Well, and we've got like a family cemetery, sort of for like part of the family, but it's in Vermont, and I'm curious about it. But you know, I might go there, but didn't know any better. And it's good to sort of understand who you need to talk to.

Cortex 1:21:51 This was kind of a interesting, just little one. Someone asking, basically, how do I get not cable? You know, this is? Well, Alex Goldman actually asking to speak to that. But anyway, saying,

Jessamyn 1:22:06 Oh, I remember this question, because I have a similar lateral to this question. But sorry, go on.

Cortex 1:22:11 Yeah, well, he wants he wants it needs to reduce phone con tracks, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a cheaper bundle. And it comes with cable. So great. Except he doesn't actually want the cable and

Jessamyn 1:22:29 drill hole in his house doesn't just doesn't need it. But they have to send the guy. So what do you do?

Cortex 1:22:35 Yeah, yeah, like how to navigate this. And basically, I think came down to

Jessamyn 1:22:40 how did it wrap up? Because I remember seeing that when it started. But I didn't.

Cortex 1:22:45 There's no wrap up yet. Like, the answers went through, like the next day. And there's been no, like, final follow up for Alex. So. So I don't know. Hopefully, we'll find out. It no one no one really came up with any silver bullet, I think it kind of came, it feels like it sort of came down to a well, you know, it may be hard to accomplish the otherwise sensible thing you're trying to accomplish.

Jessamyn 1:23:04 See, that is what I am going to be trying to do we have DISH TV at my father's house. And it's stupidly expensive for what amounts to basically four channels that we really watch. Yeah, I really would like to get a couple channels, but they're not just over the air channels. So I'm trying to figure out if there's a way so we could just pay for cable, but you've got to rent a box for 20 bucks a month and like I don't mind paying for cable but I really mind renting a box. But they don't seem to have a byo box situation that works or you have to have a PC not a Mac and so I've been what the kids today call researching, but I may just kind of throw myself on the mercy of AskMe Metafilter and be like, how there's got to be an easy way if you don't mind messing with computers, which I and so I'm interested to figure that out. I ask my and my sisters like whatever it is we just can't pay Comcast any money for it. I don't care like that's fine. You know what, whatever. But like you know, maybe I could buy a myth TV or build a myth TV but like Is that easier than it used to be? Is it harder?

Cortex 1:24:19 I have no I basically given up on worrying about actually watching like TV when it happens. So it simplifies

Jessamyn 1:24:28 a lot to watch it when it happens but I'd love to like not steal it like I'd love to legit have access to it. Because right now, I mean I steal stuff that I actually have access to because it's easier to steal it than it is to just watch it I don't feel good about that. Yeah,

Cortex 1:24:50 I want to my this is this is the new category of invented best title for asked me, this is a question. It's a The question someone's looking like trying to figure out how to deal with Puppet yeah has it has an uncomfortable sofa and is trying to fix it in a lot of other dogs. It's actually interesting if you're into like furniture management stuff or have an easily Bruce but I suppose, but the point is the title of the post is Home is where my butt is, which is I just saw two thumbs up, right? Who can't? Can't agree with that. Your question could be chat filter, and I will delete it if you title it that I'll just, you know, so homeless. I'm lying. I will delete it in a hot minute. But

Jessamyn 1:25:33 speaking of that, that reminds me actually of choco cats like there was the meta stock thread, which we'll probably talk about for five minutes in five minutes. But you know, the kind of hey, what's new thread in meta stock and Taco cat specifically has kind of a funny story about their couch, like, hid their couch was leaking an insane amount of feathers like it looked like there was a chicken fight on it every day, no matter how many times I plucked it, and they poke you when you sat down, like needles. Yes. And they got a credit to the couch store and they picked a new couch and they're gonna sit in the couch most part of their report. I was actually very pleased at the speedy resolution to this person who was very concerned instamatic that all of their kids voice memos from their

Cortex 1:26:21 phone were gone. Oh, trees. And

Jessamyn 1:26:25 they were very very worried. And it turns out they just hit the thing was in a different it was you know, it was one of those like, Fuck you iTunes things.

Cortex 1:26:32 iTunes, sadly putting something in a directory other than the one you would ever think

Jessamyn 1:26:35 the user interface made it unclear where the things were that were actually on your computer, but that you couldn't see you know, like when they when they did all your shit behind the whole movies tab.

Cortex 1:26:45 Yeah, exactly. It's sort of reorganizing it helpfully into the file system somewhere.

Jessamyn 1:26:50 Yeah. So a couple of users real fast. Were like, oh, look here. And instamatic was like, yeah, so that made me happy. Short. Happy.

Cortex 1:26:59 That was a damn relief. That's great. Yeah, there was a this, did we? This might have been right on the cusp of last episode.

Jessamyn 1:27:08 Tell new relaxed gentleman has basically retrograde amnesia for every happened more than four days.

Cortex 1:27:14 It's a good way to be. I feel we talked about this. I think maybe we did. It kept going like it was it would have been that morning. So it's kind of hard to say but anyway, Arthur made a

Jessamyn 1:27:24 lot actually hard to say we could just go look the fuck up.

Cortex 1:27:28 That's that's effort. Conscious hip hop for newbies. Basically Arthur saying, hey, I want to know more about good, good, hip hop. That is not, you know, shit. That's gonna make me feel bad. Can I said it was hers? Yeah. Well, that's one of the things where it's like, yeah, I mean, there's it's not it's not a personal question. It's just like, hey, recommend some music. So it's not like, oh, yeah, that reminds me that time that Arthur was trying to find some music, you know, it's it's not a big life event thing, but going into a great big collection of good stuff.

Jessamyn 1:27:59 I love this kind of rap, actually. Mostly because it's not all bitches and hoes stuff. Yeah. In addition to being good message and other good stuff. Yeah.

Cortex 1:28:10 There's some there's some good music if you're still looking for music, some good

Jessamyn 1:28:13 conscious rap. Yeah, I enjoyed this thread from Beach, which was basically Hey, I'm working on myself a little. And part of what I need to do to undo some of my perfectionism is to deliberately do stuff that's a little outside my comfort zone. So like, pick something on the menu you don't normally eat, or wear clothes don't really go together or do something, add a character or do something in a different order. And she was kinda like, I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out what some of those things are. So it's all a thread about like, how to do things that are a little weird. You know, like, wear socks with sandals, or try putting on one sock for the other sock. Which may be where that started is.

Cortex 1:29:05 I don't know. It started in a it started in a politics discussion thread. So I don't even know

Jessamyn 1:29:10 I think it started right here by nite owl basically saying do it the weird way. And then somebody probably got a bug up there, but about it,

Cortex 1:29:20 should we, we should try and track that down. Maybe I'll see if I can look real quick.

Jessamyn 1:29:25 But it is sort of interesting. Like when you tried to do something that you kind of always done in the same way to patterns and habits. Like you can kind of feel the synapses in your head going. Pew like if you mouse with your other hand for me, like if I leave the cabinet doors unlocked it makes me open. It makes me crazy. Like I just can't be still if until I shut all the cabinet doors and it's bizarre. But so learning to be okay with that is I think what this person's therapist is suggesting that they do

Cortex 1:29:56 having a cabinet door open doesn't bother me but I I have a thing where I get kind of annoyed about like, doing something and then undoing it quickly. That gets in the way of having a positive attitude towards chores. Sometimes if I let my brain be stupid about it, or like,

Jessamyn 1:30:10 if I answer like I did the dishes, and now I've just got to like, make more dishes. Well, that's so

Cortex 1:30:15 much like that. I'm at peace with like, yeah. You're never gonna

Jessamyn 1:30:19 have everything off paper plates if it was not completely unsightly.

Cortex 1:30:22 Do you have a dishwasher?

Jessamyn 1:30:24 I am the dishwasher.

Cortex 1:30:26 Well see, I think that's made a huge difference for me. Having the actual dishwashers washer and ya know, for me, it's like so we've got a we've got a water filter, not water filter, but like a water heater upper as Zojirushi water boiler instant hot water. So playmakers Yeah, so you just you and ours is done like hooking the wind and you just pour water into it to fill it up, right. And it holds like three liters. So you know, fill it up, everyone's done with a couple of pictures full of water. And the picture we use to fill it up lives in a little drawer under the sink. And then to get at the thing, I sort of stand in front of that little cupboard. So the reasonable human being thing to do is to open that cupboard, pull out the picture, close the cupboard, fill up the water and water thing, open the cupboard backup, put the picture back and

Jessamyn 1:31:14 you gotta close and open the cupboard.

Cortex 1:31:15 Exactly. And there's part of my brain. That is no, that is fucking not going to happen. And so instead, I'll like leave the cupboard door open for this whole, like, minute long procedure, and it'll prevent me from getting uncomfortably close. It's awkward. But somehow it's better. Like even though it's super awkward, and it's saving me like literally no real effort. Yeah. So that that sort of thing. You know, it's great. Yeah. Brains,

Jessamyn 1:31:38 Internet people. That level of particularity is super not unusual. You know, I think it's more than norm than the outside the norm having a thing you're picky or fussy about

Cortex 1:31:51 different things for different people, but having that sort of thing, whatever the thing

Jessamyn 1:31:54 is, yeah, I mean, I just I just kind of call it all superstition, because it's really not like, I have a reason. And it's a very important reason. But it's bullshit. Like, my reason is bullshit. And I can tell when I explained it to somebody, you know, usually Jim, well, why do I have to do this? Well, because, you know, and I feel like it's math. It feels like math. But it's not it's just habit and superstition. And I just have reasons reasons. Yeah. So learning how to, and whatever, like doing it your way, if it's just you doesn't really matter. But as soon as you try to interface with other living, breathing entity, whether it's like your friend, your partner's your cat, like, you got to learn how to give and I think we all know kind of people who are not good at that. Not very good. And so, you know, I think beaches therapists advice is good, like, learn how to undo some of this and then that'll help you just learn how to be in. In the, in the discomfort of it. Yes. That was interesting. Just listen to different people's ideas of what that would be. You know? Yeah, there's

Cortex 1:33:08 a certain amount of lens into how different people even view comfort and discomfort based on things. Yes,

Jessamyn 1:33:12 yes. Fascinating. And it was a lively friendly thread because you don't you don't fight

Cortex 1:33:20 as long as this sock and shoe fight doesn't actually break out. I checked I checked a comment that kicked off the actual derail on medicals that led to the meta talk post there and there's no reference to this post but it's not impossible that someone had been reading it and sort of

Jessamyn 1:33:35 just tell Are you like a sock shoe sock shoe person or

Cortex 1:33:41 my mom's sock sock shoe shoe? Okay.

Jessamyn 1:33:44 Me too.

Cortex 1:33:46 I believe that sock shoe sock shoe exists and it was interesting sort of seeing what situations people argued for I'm behind on that and other people said I haven't I basically haven't read them at a talk thread or the hey what's new even though I'm excited about reading both just because again you know busy time management whatever so I'm looking for to catch up on those but I love the question I love the question and I love I love the way it's instantly accessible build tomorrow's questions were like people who've never once thought about having an opinion about it immediately have an opinion once you bring

Jessamyn 1:34:17 like the shoes into or out I think that's when those things that people are more have thought about because it involves other people Yeah, but chooses usually a personal thing although you know, I guess if you're a parent you know that's probably a thing you pass down although to be honest. I'm trying to even like remember like my family putting shoes on because like me and my sister I'm definitely like a shoes off in the house person. She's more of a shoes odd in the house person. So it's a little weird because like we grew up the same, how come we're different, but you know, I also live in kind of mud Town USA and she lives in someplace that has like She wears shoes to work. So she's in work shoes a lot, whereas I'm not pretty much I'm only putting on shoes if I leave the house. Yeah. Which is a different overlap with work? Well, I

Cortex 1:35:10 feel like it's one of those things too. The thing with shoes is like, like shoe on or off in the house, etc. It really it's so environmentally dependent, like both literally in terms of like, yeah, do you always have muddy shoes, because that's where you live in work, then you're probably gonna take your shoes off more. But also, like the environment of the other people you're there with, like, you know, do you move into a place that has a, like, shoe policy? Sort of, if it's an apartment, maybe? Do you live with someone who has strong feelings about the shoe thing, you know, all of these things, you know, to the point where even though it's one of the things, it's probably like a real ingrained habit thing, it's also one of the easier habits to change, because there's a really literal threshold where it's going to, if you need to make a change that takes place and Okay, okay, here, I need to take off my shoes, whatever, you know, it's a weird combination of something that probably everybody has sort of a preference for, but also the circumstances you're in are gonna so override that preference, if it clashes with those circumstances that totally fascinated by

Jessamyn 1:36:05 how much people will take their preferences and turn them into this is how the world works. Yeah. You know what I mean, not this, we didn't see it with that, but there was definitely some, oh, I don't know, there's a current thread and ask Metafilter about my sister in law's a bitch helped me deal with her kind of thing. But one of the things that happens is this, these people went to stay at their family's vacation cabin, but the family billed them for electricity while they were there. And there were definitely like people, mostly on one side, but some on the other side, being like, well, that's just how it works. Yeah, like on on both sides, like that's total bullshit, or AD, that's how you deal with it when you have a shoe.

Cortex 1:36:49 Yeah, it's a funny thing, too. Because you get something like that. It's like where it comes out of, there's probably a reason that it exists as a dispute. And anybody who's had to deal with it braking one way or the other has probably had to navigate through

Jessamyn 1:37:02 the lawn below, on. And now I got to actually figure out finish your sentence. And I'll yeah, no.

Cortex 1:37:12 threat was like, if there's some sort of weird thing where there's not really any obviously, objectively, you know, fundamentally correct solution. But it's something where you need a solution, which is, well, that's, that's the thing. Yeah, cause like, like, it's, it's maybe kind of arbitrary in, in, in abstract, but in practice, you have to come to a conclusion, you have to come up with a system for dealing with whatever it is with resource sharing with, you know, anything like that. And so because you have to come to a decision, maybe it's even little bit rocky, the process of getting to that decision, maybe if you go in sort of abstract on it, it's a little bit rough to figure out what the actual choices, but as a result, you've got a certain amount of emotional energy and conviction tied into the idea of that being the way to do things. And so even though it's just like, kind of a dumb, whatever, let's just make a decision thing. Yeah, it starts to feel like no, this is the way that will work. This is how we deal with this, this is the correct solution to this problem that doesn't have any great solutions. So we picked one, it's important that we not re litigate this every time. So this is just how it is.

Jessamyn 1:38:15 So this is the threat. It's one of those property damage things. Jim back out of a driveway of Bob's house, he slipped a tire off the driveway, he dug a hole in the yard. Mom wants it repaired professionally. Jim doesn't want to do this and wants to do something else. Who's right? And different people had very different opinions on it, and I wound up very unlike me being like, because people were like, What the fuck? It's just a lawn and I'm like, do any of you guys have like a fancy lawn? Like I don't here at home but like my dad's house has a kind of fancy lawn and like you know, it's actually not trivial to make a fancy lawn re fancy again and even though I think Bob's probably a jerk in this situation. I actually found myself like standing up for fancy lawn having people because

Cortex 1:39:14 you're cool the bourgeoisie West

Jessamyn 1:39:17 that is because I'm like it actually does cost money to like put this stuff back the way it was and if some random guy was like, Oh, just come over with a shovel. I'd be like to the no like but But I get it but it was just a fascinating conversation because a lot of people had a lot of different opinions and the OP which was my left sock, really basically kind of came down on the Bob's a fucking asshole. Answers, which was fine, but I found the whole thing. Fascinating watching how how people answered it and dealt with it.

Cortex 1:39:51 Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a really good example of how that can be such a weird, contentious thing. And also still okay.

Jessamyn 1:39:59 to sue you and everyone's like, come on, Bob. Not cool. Yeah. So we should probably follow along because I'm gonna have to go and go for a walk with my walking buddy and a little bit.

Cortex 1:40:15 Let me do a quick. Nice. Oh, I mentioned some music and a couple nice things, John Maeda talk and yeah, well music. So the big music thing, of which I don't think any of these things are actually examples but the big music thing is Greg posted a meritocracy. I know I really nailed that, didn't I? Greg paste made metal talk post saying hey, post music covers of songs you only know about because of metal filter.

Jessamyn 1:40:47 DC Asik on metal filter in general this month, he posted a crazy thing and asked me to filter about demanding people describe last to him. And

Cortex 1:40:56 that was a good one. That was a there's some really good answers in there.

Jessamyn 1:41:00 It was good, but also crazy. Yeah. But

Cortex 1:41:03 anyway, he posted this, which I really love this idea for music challenge. I'm gonna try and participate a few times, probably, if I can get myself going. But the the idea is, you know, there's been a lot of music posted about on metal filter, why not record a cover of a song that you know about? Because it was

Jessamyn 1:41:21 even know Yeah, or,

Cortex 1:41:23 I mean, you can know it, but you need to like know it because you found out about because of the like I could do like see as chandelier. I only even though it was a huge bomb song. I only found out about it because of the metadata posted about the music video. And then I'm like, that's one of my favorite pop songs last few years now. You know, and interpret it loosely. If you found out about the song because it was on music, you could still do a cover of it. If you found out and asked me Sure. I'm thinking about doing a cover of the theme song to Atelier a Netflix series that's English language, well subtitled English release of a Japanese drama about an underwear lingerie company. I think the Japanese title the show was just underwear. But it's got this, it's got this, it's got this theme song that I am not super into at all. But at the same time, it gets stuck in my head because we've watched a bunch of episodes of the show. And I found out about that from some metal filter friends. So technically, I found out about that from metal filter. So maybe I'll do that. Anyway. It's a fun idea. People, people should like to do it. Even if it's just like a dumb little ukulele thing. Or you have to talk to your friend who plays

Jessamyn 1:42:32 the ukulele.

Cortex 1:42:34 There is nothing done about the ukulele. Ukulele is great. I own two. I didn't mean to malign a ukulele. I apologize

Jessamyn 1:42:42 to play, what am I supposed to do?

Cortex 1:42:46 You're supposed to record a cover of a song you learned about a metal filter. That's that's what I didn't mean, you know, you know, you know, you know, I'm on board with ukulele. You know, I'm

Jessamyn 1:42:55 I do say you should watch your language.

Cortex 1:42:57 I'll be more mindful about avoiding my accidental youth bashing. Anyway. That's a great idea. People should do that. But now I'm gonna mention three songs that have nothing to do with that. They're just songs I like to run metal filter music. There's a I have trouble finding myself saying this because I'm not a big fan. I think I said as much as the comments. I not a huge fan of knocking on heaven's door as something I have to listen to people perform. It's a folk song. It kind of is. But this is a really nice version of it. This is a really nice sort of dreamy version by user, Eddie Jones. I highly recommend it. It's real nice. It's very not Axl Rose. And operatively Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan. Yeah, so Bob? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Net. Yeah. I'll do the rest of the

Jessamyn 1:43:50 just say. I was listening.

Jessamyn 1:43:58 The podcasts were like your volumes way down on my side. And my volume is way down on your side. And we kind of talked

Cortex 1:44:03 with the guests. And guess what we might have said, yeah, what? We should do a metaphorical podcast and we refuse to discuss Metafilter at all, just as a solid couple hours of pure digression. You know, this is the half and half of you know, at the Good point, good point.

Jessamyn 1:44:22 Because I would totally do that where we pretend we're on crapshoot or something.

Cortex 1:44:26 Just absolutely, yeah. Oh, wait. Well, three of your podcasts

Jessamyn 1:44:29 get like cycled around. Yes. And bring back the comics podcast audience so much on the other podcast.

Cortex 1:44:34 Oh, no. All four of them. I love No, no, no, that the audience members I was. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:44:44 well, that's what I mean. Yes, you might turn them on

Cortex 1:44:46 can be dangerous. Anyway, I also like this song by Appleseed. It's nice. It's knowing what better to do than mess with the arpeggiator The answer is nothing because it's a great pile of arpeggiation stuff with some since I Have arpeggiation arpeggiator an arpeggio is a quick run of notes generally up and down a portion of a musical scale you did exactly you do. Yep. So, so RPG, an arpeggiator is a bit of usually synth equipment that has a pattern, some some pattern of notes is going to run up and down. And then it sort of runs up and down them at a given, you know, tempo or whatever. A common way to use an arpeggiator on a sense would be if you play a chord, if you hold down like three notes, it'll just doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo up and down the lock up to a tempo and then riff on it. So a arpeggiators are fun. They're very, like a very cynthy synth thing. Like, you know, it's very particular to that piece of musical equipment, even though you there's arpeggios and classical music or whatnot, but not like our PE G or PGS.

Jessamyn 1:45:56 You gotta wrap this up. Yeah. Anyway,

Cortex 1:45:58 it's great, you should listen to it. And one more, there is a song by the negative influence called worthless that he describes as not knowing if it's too much of a whiny millennial thing, which is kind of kinda what's not too much it is. It's, you know, it's, I'm tired of doing complex guitar parts. So here's a single take single mic, just a my voice on the guitar, and it's nice. It's I like his voice. I like the sound of the thing. It's very under produced, because that was the whole point. But But yeah, it was nice. I liked it. It pleased me, therefore, I'll mention it. And there's a bunch of other stuff, too. Jim has been posting carried adventure has been continuing to post good stuff chocolate cat put something up a bunch of a bunch of people have mentioned a bunch of times in the podcast. So I'll I'll not go into detail this time. But

Jessamyn 1:46:46 people are continuing to do good stuff,

Cortex 1:46:49 lots of it lots a lots of good listenable stuff there. So check it out.

Jessamyn 1:46:54 Maybe doing a cross the ocean comp, like they want to work together because they both have a hard time kind of getting things out the door. Nice. And so they may try and work together and see if they can get a thing going by both encouraging each other. Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Cortex 1:47:10 I really want to encourage greenish I guess I'm literally doing so at the moment to do some more musical podcast stuff, too. Because I really

Jessamyn 1:47:16 liked that letter I wanted to write you because

Cortex 1:47:20 I'll tell you what I'm going to tell you. And then I'll tell you what, and then I'll tell you what I told you.

Jessamyn 1:47:24 I hope you enjoyed this letter. Male in the essay

Cortex 1:47:27 structure. Anyway, that's music stuff, but everybody should do the covers. But also there's nice stuff in meta talk the last little bit one thing as we talked about earlier, but just in case I forgot to paste it. We are getting more with books. So if you're into talking about books on fanfare, Comm, check out the metal talk thread. You can drop me a line directly if you want or the contact form. If you're interested in running a book club or doing other bookies stuff, let's just figure it out and do some more of that, because that'll be rad. And yeah, we mentioned in passing the Hey, what's new mefites thread, just sort of like if something's going on with you, and you want

Jessamyn 1:48:02 to share bad news or neutral news or just an update.

Cortex 1:48:06 Yeah, exactly. pop in and say so. And everybody's welcome. It's nice to just touch base a little bit.

Jessamyn 1:48:11 I talked about work in the polls. Excellent. Excellent.

Cortex 1:48:16 Also, we are gonna all link to the existing thread, but it's possible by the time this podcast is out, the update will be out. But we're adding some more color to meta filter on the classic theme.

Jessamyn 1:48:26 I didn't understand this. But my thing just stays the same.

Cortex 1:48:30 You use the plain theme. So everything's got to be white. So there's classic, plain

Jessamyn 1:48:32 and new is that like,

Cortex 1:48:35 so they're the classic was what it always used to be the blue, the green, etc. And then. Yeah, and

Jessamyn 1:48:42 yeah, I was reading the whole thread super confused.

Cortex 1:48:45 It's a little bit confusing. So you weren't the only one. So anyway, the classic colorful theme has had white backgrounds on several sub sites, because as we added new ones, I think basically Matt was like, oh, let's we'll figure it out later. And then re

Jessamyn 1:49:01 personation that

Cortex 1:49:06 so that's a sort of kept getting put off. And finally someone wrote to us a while, like, like last week and said, Hey, can we do this? We can probably do it, but we have to figure it out. And so they said, Okay, posted mattock, boom, and they did and we thought about and we're like, yes, people seem totally on board with this. Let's do it. So there'll be more color on the classic theme. And we're also changing the cover of color IRL, if you wanted to do that forever so it's gonna look slightly less like baby poop now. Which

Jessamyn 1:49:33 for playing people, you just you're gonna change the little banner color across.

Cortex 1:49:37 Yeah, there's a tiny little bit color up top right. So yeah, otherwise you'll notice no difference. Also, we fucking relaunch the gopher server because you told us to

Jessamyn 1:49:47 this minute I know so much. Bottom of the all your base thread. Yeah. Me that they used to be a gopher server. So I posted to bend a talk and you said no. And you didn't mean it. Well, to be fair, what's fair? You said no. PB said he said

Cortex 1:50:05 PB said he didn't have any of the materials. So he couldn't bring back the gopher server. She basically immediately started talking about Yeah, but we could launch a gopher server behind the scenes, right? So as usual, you know, when when PB says no, there's a chance what he means is, wait, hold on second. Let me okay. Here it is just played out behind the scenes this time.

Jessamyn 1:50:26 Yeah. Well, I was thrilled. I haven't really even looked at it that much. But I was kind of interested. I mean, it's one of those things where I always think my winters are not that busy, but they're actually kind of busy, like, not in a bad way. But I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll totally spend two days learn about gopher service outs, the new Librarian of Congress, and I spent the entire day on Twitter on the phone with reporters. So that Yep, you know, did not get it. So it's, I'm glad to be able to mess around with yours. It's lovely. I love it.

Cortex 1:50:54 Yeah, I'm so glad we did that. And we'll think about if we can build it out. Or it's one of the things where like, I don't expect a lot of uptake. But for like for a handful people, it's like the best thing. So why not, you know,

Jessamyn 1:51:03 really is the best thing. And I just also think it's like part of kind of what makes Metafilter cool. Yeah, that was that there's a lot of old web people. So there's actually a group of people who find it cool. And I feel like it's kind of almost a litmus test for the other cool places. I mean, well, in one specific way. There are other ways to be too cool. Don't get me wrong. But like, you know, it's the good part of Hacker News that thought that was a neat thing to talk about, you know what I mean?

Cortex 1:51:30 Three comments with that, like 200 Comment Hacker News thread that had anything to do with meta filters gophers or everything else was which is fine, whatever.

Jessamyn 1:51:41 That they were even excited about it. I was like, Yeah, you know, that's the part of hacker news that I like.

Cortex 1:51:45 Yeah. So yeah, it was fun. And, you know, I'd like to keep doing fun stuff like that. We'll see what happens. Anyway, well, yeah, well, we wrap it up, you gotta get to your walk.

Jessamyn 1:51:55 I gotta get to my walk. I got walking to do Yeah.

Cortex 1:51:58 likewise,