Podcast 115 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 115: Boaty McBoatface, with barchan (2016-04-08).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

barchan 0:00 cuz they usually like this cranking mechanism on the back.

Jessamyn 0:03 Right right

Unknown Speaker 0:06 what?

Jessamyn 0:07 No, right? Yes, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 0:08 yeah. And

Cortex 0:10 we're just gonna constantly interrupt just run with it. That's it. We're just

Jessamyn 0:13 like that for a podcast

Cortex 0:22 podcast Josh bar just man where God was a muddy mess well best of the web Hello and welcome to another episode of Best of the web the monthly meta filter podcast. This is episode 115 I am Josh Maillard aka cortex. And I'm Jessamyn and we have with us today special guest bar Ken.

barchan 0:56 Hello, everybody waiting.

Cortex 1:02 We really need to do a video podcast sometime so that waving can come through.

Jessamyn 1:06 ever do a video podcast?

Cortex 1:09 I've thought about the idea. It seems it strikes me as horrible. Like, I can't imagine why anybody would want to like watch me talk.

Jessamyn 1:15 Like, do you want Have you watched those like people who do them but like watching someone in a video look at a computer screen is about as bad as it gets. Right? Yeah, no, it's like everyone's personal, like people who are interesting to listen to, I'd rather you know, look out the window as I listen or something.

Cortex 1:33 Yeah, it's like the visual aid. You know, it's not eating anything. If it's just literally a person sitting there talking, there's nothing wrong with this is the thing. It's not that it's not that you talking is a bad thing to look at, like I have no problem looking at someone. When we're sitting in having a conversation together. It's just that like, all of a sudden, I'm going to dedicate that additional pile of my brain's attention to it just for the sake of verifying that those words are in fact coming out of my mouth like that.

Jessamyn 2:01 And it is a lot of attention. Yeah. Yeah. So

barchan 2:05 I mean, podcasts are great for listening to what you're doing something else. Exactly. Kind of takes away from the point of that. Yeah, yeah.

Jessamyn 2:13 Absolutely. Yes. Okay, visual podcasts. The worst. So, next month,

Unknown Speaker 2:20 you have to put on pants. You

Jessamyn 2:23 mean, you really show that your pants no pants sneakers thing bar can ever since ever since they you do it how thread

Cortex 2:36 Oh, that reminds me this is the one thing we didn't think to say ahead of time, but I'm going to paste a link to a thread into the chat window on Skype. And that's where everything will be shown up. So all right, you can post stuff if you're talking about what you

Jessamyn 2:46 have a link to talk about. You can put it in the thread and make sure you can find the thread I in Skype because Skype is strange sometimes.

barchan 2:58 Okey dokey. Yeah, I don't like this Excel spreadsheet with all my links and threads and everything I was interested in. I've got a dog

Cortex 3:18 this is Sasha.

Unknown Speaker 3:20 Tesla, Tesla. Tesla.

Jessamyn 3:22 What kind of dog is Tesla? She's what's

barchan 3:25 called a five watt. It's a face. It's actually where the word feisty comes from. According to dog breeder pages.

Cortex 3:35 That's crazy. I didn't know.

Jessamyn 3:38 Looking at pictures. They're the best kind of dog.

barchan 3:41 Yeah, they're great. And like presidents wrote poems about them. They loved them so much. And they're totally awesome southern hunting dogs. And she's so full of energy. She gets made run all day long.

Cortex 3:56 Great. Looking dogs. Yeah, no, that's so so the you do it. How? Thread?

Jessamyn 4:03 I don't know if we want to start there with the number 115. Well, yeah,

Cortex 4:06 we should do that. But we should talk about this at some, okay. Plus, it gave me an excuse to something that the pace demonstrative ly into the Skype chat. So I feel very, very, very, like I accomplished something. Yes, tell us Jessamyn, if you would about

Jessamyn 4:20 15 115 is kind of doll as 115. As these numbers go. The most exciting thing about 115 is that it's divisors add up to a perfect square. So like one and 115 and five and 23 equal 144, which is 12 squared. But people don't even know enough about that kind of thing to know if there's an infinite or a finite number of numbers with that property. So fuck those guys. The best second best thing is that there's 115 solutions to a stamp folding problem for a strip of seven stamps. Like that's as good as it gets. And that's not very good. Like, like so if You've got a strip of seven stamps back in the day for waves could you weigh and we've really got to call it something to hell else. Because people like stamps. You know, you can fold them a different number of ways depending on what's on top and what's in between and what goes into the other ones like

Cortex 5:17 folding left or right at each seam, essentially,

Jessamyn 5:19 and and over under. So left, right over on, basically. So there's 115 different ways if you've got seven of them, to have them go left, right over under. But that's, I mean, I kind of interested in that, because I didn't really know that that was a thing. But man, it's not very interesting. Yeah, it's not,

Cortex 5:36 it's not real sexy.

barchan 5:41 Maybe when you have a lot of maps, or anything that's really large, like maps tend to be, it gets really hard to store them. There are so many different ways I've seen people used to fold their maps, and they'll have these very precise methods set out that. And they'll be all proud of these methods. Because your maps does tend to build and build and build and volume. So finding cooling neat ways to reduce that volume is actually kind of interesting and important.

Jessamyn 6:21 The volume the same no matter how you fold it,

barchan 6:24 you can you can reduce your volume a little bit. Yeah. So I mean, your typical mat folding it, it adds a lot of air and bulk. If you just fold it, like kind of throw it together. Sure, fold it in quarters. Yeah, that's, that's the word I was looking for. And so you can you know, you have these fancy little ways of folding them to reduce that that air and get them more compressed. And then you can also fit them in different size cabinets and folders and all that kind of thing. So

Jessamyn 6:58 I'm gonna have to ask my map librarian friends about this. Because somebody had just asked a question like a Mappy question that turned out to be kind of about globes on AskMe at a filter, which I'll mention, I guess later, but it sent me down a little rabbit hole of globes, and people used to carry like little globes around with them way back in the day. And now. Like you'd have a pocket watch and then like a little globe and a chain. Oh, that's adorable. I thought so too. I want a mini globe to put on my pocket watch. But then I would have to wear pants again. So what the hell?

Cortex 7:33 Well, you could just you could attach like a shirt pocket or something. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 7:38 What about a necklace?

Jessamyn 7:39 Pants? I'm not wearing a shirt with a pocket.

barchan 7:44 What about a necklace?

Jessamyn 7:45 Yeah, maybe a necklace? Yeah, like or like one of those like, necklace? What colors that they had in the black?

barchan 7:59 I walked her like three miles this morning. So she went sleep during the podcast. So of course,

Jessamyn 8:05 she's totally nice. He's like, Oh, today's the big Walking Day. I'm up for some more.

Cortex 8:14 Well, I feel like we should say talk a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself to the people. Tell us Oh, people. Alright. Done. Well done. All right.

Jessamyn 8:29 But yeah, tell us a little bit as much as you feel like sharing about yourself so people can get to know you a little bit if they don't.

barchan 8:36 Okay, so I'm a geologist. And this is the point where you might have to yell stop at some point, because you're passionate about what I do. I could talk about all day long. So I'm, I work in the field of stratigraphy, which is the science of the why, what, when, where, and how sediment gets deposited, which then works with the relationships between rocks and time and space. And I usually work in marine environments, both former and current.

Jessamyn 9:13 So that's why you're at the oil rigs.

barchan 9:18 Yeah, so I work in the petroleum industry, and you can Hisun do that if you want. It's not what I wanted to do, but I ended up doing and I actually love it so much that I've tried to quit twice and failed miserably both. This is a really fun job. I get to I do a lot of work on offshore oil rigs. And get to do deep sea drilling, which is really hard and complicated and really super challenging. And that's what I really liked the best about it. But I also hate the oil industry. So there's always this war in mice. All about this giant conflict, I felt

Cortex 10:02 it's a complicated thing. And it's funny. So so my wife Secretariat, she's been finishing up a geology degree, the last couple years, coming back around to it after many years of just working, you know, a job. And so it's been really neat. Sort of, like, it's been neat for her to be able to come back and, or to study something, she's it's really been interesting to me to sort of learn a little bit about geology as a field, just as a result of that. And one of the things that was sort of interesting and surprising to both of us is how dominant our presence, the petroleum petroleum industry is, as an employer in essentially the geology. industry, especially in the United States. There's a lot, a lot of petroleum related work out there. If you're looking for a geology job. So it's not Yeah, it's one of those things where on the one hand, like, well, I don't know about the petroleum industry. On the one hand, it's make

barchan 11:02 hires people, and they're the ones who do most of the GL logical work. And I used to be the federal government and other environmental, like firms employ a lot of geologists, but it's just not that way anymore. Thanks to budget cuts and other things. So even if you don't want to do it, it's a way to do it. Yeah. And it's, it's your application of your skill. And when you're in a profession, you really can't ask for more than that. So it's, it's kind of hard to get out of it and not do it. So I try to make up for it by making sure almost all my research is about climate change.

Jessamyn 11:48 Good. I think that's, that's a completely decent trade off. Yeah. And where are you based? When you're not traveling for work? I'm at a Denver. Nice, oh, Denver's full of 15,000 librarians right now.

Unknown Speaker 12:03 Really? Yeah, the

Jessamyn 12:04 Public Library Association Conference is happening in Denver. Right this right this minute.

barchan 12:10 Wow, that makes me want to run to the convention center and like, run through it the Jessamyn West.

Jessamyn 12:19 Cool stuff, I will send you a link to just what that thing is. And you know, if you're home and want to kind of go down there, there's probably some neat

Unknown Speaker 12:27 stuff. That sounds awesome.

Jessamyn 12:30 See, one of the things librarians and geologists have always had this like, interesting simpatico thing, because it's one of those degrees where like, you can get like a terminal master's and then go be a pro in that field. And since geology is often been historically male profession and librarianship has been a historically female profession, looking at the differences in what geologists get paid, compared to what librarians get paid, is always completely fascinating and interesting. Oh, and taking the Toros, the closing session on Saturday. Oh, my God. Yeah. Which would probably be good. You'd have to, like sneak in or something. But

Unknown Speaker 13:09 I know the convention center. Well.

Jessamyn 13:14 You know, the secret backdoor. She's speaking Saturday morning, I have no or noon. So I have no idea what that will be like. But yeah, so we always think of geologists, when we think about like people who work for government, maybe? Who and how much do they get paid? And geologists were always making bank compared to us who? Whatever, for whatever that means. I know.

Cortex 13:36 If you gotta get more than more than oil money in the librarian,

Jessamyn 13:40 circuit. Yeah. Well, and that's the

Cortex 13:43 major fossil deposits underneath libraries

Jessamyn 13:45 are like people who work in like medical libraries and people who work in law libraries, because those people have an income stream, right? Yeah. I didn't write don't mean to make it all about libraries.

barchan 13:59 We've got geology libraries, almost every major oil company has a geology library with oil with geology librarians

Jessamyn 14:08 who are proud. fully paid. Yeah, but they make

barchan 14:11 thanks. And we save get benefits. Yeah. And yeah, so they're really important. And it's the same they don't get paid more.

Jessamyn 14:22 I agree completely.

Cortex 14:23 Speaking of jobs, no segue. There were jobs on jobs because I feel like I feel there's no segment of the standard structure of the podcast that I feel more consistently like, are we providing value here about them than jobs? Just because like, I'm never looking for a job on jobs. So I

Jessamyn 14:44 work in medicine. I know I know. It's like definition you can never use this part of the site.

Cortex 14:49 Like I'm like the worst. Well, I mean, I can use it for like, you know, we hired the we hired I brought mcareavey So I guess I'll use it once.

Jessamyn 14:59 Use it for gigs like I've occasionally put like little gigs on it. Yeah. found people for gigs and it's, it's great for that because you find somebody you know, nice and smart and nerdy who you'd like. And it's cool.

Cortex 15:11 Yep. I so I feel I feel bad about always feel like I guess we could do jobs but I also have I've got no like no direct, I'm excited for people to use jobs. So it's that's that's the conflict I'm living through. But there are a couple things I'll mention because I like them both as just sort of things that exist within the MFI community. Someone's looking for a videographer for their PAX East booth. That's towards the end of this month. So if you're a videographer on, you know, the Boston territory,

Jessamyn 15:44 looked that up. That was like, it was gonna be really cool. Wasn't there somebody looking for a videographer? at some other point in time, I feel like we refer to another Boston videographer person, maybe.

Cortex 15:57 Maybe Boston is just where everybody needs videography. There's, there's like some sort of like videography, I just like saying videography, some sort of biotic videography like whole like there's,

Jessamyn 16:07 there's, it's cool, because I bet you could get them into packs and get on the floor, right? Yep. Are they not jerks anymore?

Cortex 16:18 That's such a copy.

Jessamyn 16:23 Oh, I mean, I remember the thing. I remember the non recovery of the thing, but it seems like that's been blown over. I don't know.

Cortex 16:30 It's I don't know it. I think it's, I think it was one of those big complicated things where I don't think anybody who thinks they're jerks has any reason that they should have to stop thinking that they're jerks, and I think some of the jerky stuff they've done is kind of a reflection of Yeah, that's probably some jerkish character here. So I don't even want to like try and convince anybody not to be mad at Penny Arcade about anything. Sure, sure. At the same time,

Jessamyn 16:52 I just didn't know what the general feeling was if there was one.

Cortex 16:55 I don't think there's been any huge terrible stuff lately. And in the meantime, people have a lot of fun at PAX so it's like it's a weird sort of your fave is problematic sort of thing where

Jessamyn 17:06 king at that level is problematic, right? Yeah, I mean library conferences super problematic for all sorts of reasons and yet delivered like a lot of value etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

barchan 17:20 Yeah, it's a lot like working in the oil industry.

Cortex 17:26 Yep, it's great. That's a fuck you, you know. But anyway, videoing someone at a booth. There seems like a pretty good outcome as far as things go. Also, someone is looking for a whitewater kayaking and stuff. This

Jessamyn 17:39 is the one that I saw. You want to take scouts on a whitewater kayaking trip to Arkansas.

Cortex 17:47 Like if I have nothing else going on? Like I might be like, Yeah, I do like water kayaker or you know, but I've learned

Jessamyn 17:56 it's just yeah, well,

Cortex 17:59 how how how experienced? Do you really need to be convinced that

Jessamyn 18:03 things could make you choose your job at Metafilter, but taking the job and killing a bunch of boys?

Cortex 18:09 Well, yeah, like, not having anything going on would include probably not running meta filter. Like I'm saying if I was sitting around thinking, You know what, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. And I'm willing to con someone and probably not killing the kids. Moving to Arkansas. Being an instructor in rafting might be a way to go. That's all. It's got a certain reckless romanticism to it. So if you're a reckless romanticism unqualified to caretake children in

Jessamyn 18:34 kayaks I don't know why you skip straight to unqualified that'd

Cortex 18:37 be okay too. I'm just trying to broaden it up a little bit. I'm trying to give more people a chance I don't know anything you do want to mention from jobs

Jessamyn 18:46 high job was the job I was

barchan 18:48 that was it as well. You know, you talk about it being reckless romantic, that whenever I hear about Boy Scouts on the water, I think about this huge thing that happened in Yellowstone. Oh, a number of years ago where they were canoeing on Yellowstone Lake is storm blew up. Drown. Really terrible thing. And so this is why they probably want experience.

Jessamyn 19:17 Drowning is a terrible way to go. I was well happens

Cortex 19:21 grudgingly concede the logic.

Jessamyn 19:25 i Sorry, I was wrong. I did see another thing which was Shepard there. He's on a board of a campus community radio station looking for a station manager. I don't know if that overlaps. I don't think it does. I think March 7, we weren't. But if you're someone with radio station experience and you want to live in Kingston, Ontario, which is actually kind of a nifty place to live as far as candidate goes, talk to him. deadline for applications was two weeks ago, but whatever.

Cortex 19:52 Yes. You know, radio did move slow.

Jessamyn 19:57 Right, but I thought that was a good gig. I know he's talked about I've talked to him about his, you know, working there and the things he enjoys about it. And I know we have a lot of radio people and Metafilter.

Cortex 20:08 Yeah, that'd be kind of read. And the dates. I guess we forgot to say that earlier. I'll put in the post. But we recorded last one on March 3. So we're doing March 3 through today is April 7.

Jessamyn 20:21 Because it's my mom's birthday and my sister's birthday happy birthdays. Yeah,

Cortex 20:27 yeah, say that. 10 time happy birthdays twists. And it's actually not too hard to say I guess.

Cortex 20:34 Yeah. We talking about projects. Sure. What projects did you guys like?

Jessamyn 20:43 Well, oh, go ahead. Oh, no, you I have to find a link to mine anyhow.

Unknown Speaker 20:50 Yeah, that's where I met.

Jessamyn 20:56 thing I like is a thing that has always driven me crazy about the world in that kind of specifically nerdy way. But it's like we're you're like reading a website and then a little pop up comes up that's like, want to sign up for our newsletter and you're like the hell I fucking don't. But like your options are basically Yes. Or something shitty. Like it's some snarky response like No, I hate fun, or something like that. So Dan be who is longtime me fight somebody who I used to know. But I mean, I still know him. But I don't see him around. Like I used to. calls this confirms shaming and set up a Tumblr blog, basically with a text when a site asks you to sign up for their thing. And then the no thank you link is some hot garbage. And angry dog fell in love with it, and posted it to meta filter, which of course got a whole bunch of people enjoying it. And it's flushed out since then. Like it started out as a tumble blog for you down with like six things on it, but people have been sending them and Dan's been posting them and now there's more stuff on it.

Cortex 21:58 Yep. That's one of those tricky things where it was it was is this this may be a little young for the front page, but then Dan was all on it. And so then it became the funner obviated the concern that was otherwise you know, understandable, but like so there's a little chat in the thread on the blue about it, but But yeah, no, I loved it. I it's fantastic at and I've been watching Dan sort of be excited about it.

Jessamyn 22:25 I added one myself, actually, because I asked an asked Metafilter question about a tool. And I tried to sign up for one of the tools and the tool confirm shamed me, tried to confirm shame me into signing up with Facebook, saying no, otherwise, you sign up with a boring old email

Cortex 22:43 motherfuckers seriously, until Facebook until you launch, you know, your actual Oculus Rift interface into Facebook. Serious you're not going to be not less boring than email. You just you know, don't it's a bad look. Wait, wait, wait, what? A Facebook bought Oculus Rift like a while back? That was like the big thing that went made Oculus Rift, that part I know. So at some point, you have to assume they're gonna just like have a VR interface for Facebook, right? Like they've got to be going there at some point. And when they do at that point, they can officially say hey, we're way less boring than email because like we're a 3d tracks you know, environment for your communication. Right now. Facebook is just like, fuck you. You've just got some web 2.0 chrome on top of text, which is what email is just don't be

Jessamyn 23:32 argument is that neither of them are boring. Your email argument appears to be that both of them are born. Well, I'm

Cortex 23:37 saying comparatively, I like like, regardless of whether or not you agree that email is boring. Facebook just isn't that much. Not more. Not sentence good. It doesn't have a big flash. It'd be like it'd be like a man standing around with no pants on pointing at someone else with no pants on saying Look at that, man. He's not wearing enough pants. You know, it's like it's just bullshit. That's like, you better be wearing some exciting fucking pants if you're gonna call shit like that's what I'm saying. Okay, so in this case, an Oculus Rift is pants which is the worst image I'm sorry let's just let's just bail on this whole thing

Jessamyn 24:12 in the UK that's different

Cortex 24:14 just imagining guys standing around wearing nothing but Jesus Okay, not even listen to me anymore. I was I was really caught up in the imagery I trapped myself and I was a real nasty little figure of bass Liske

Jessamyn 24:27 bartender bar can see I've already forgotten let me write this down. What you

Cortex 24:31 can remember it's bar chain because it's like 4chan, but for geology instead of ever.

Jessamyn 24:35 That's gonna be helpful. That's some good imagery. T can none of this is helpful. What helps? Paper C H

Cortex 24:45 what I've learned look at what I've learned is your your name is pronounced. makan? Yeah.

Jessamyn 24:51 Two different things. It has a CH sound yes or no,

Unknown Speaker 24:54 no, not really.

Jessamyn 24:56 I just wrote ch down you just said for chin Josh. I was

Cortex 25:00 I would be in a dig. That was the joke thank you for joining us on the podcast park and I really appreciate you can witness

Unknown Speaker 25:13 like her dog is barking. Yeah, my dog is barking at perfect.

Cortex 25:20 Nicely done that evening. I'd like I'd like I'd like to point out that we've gotten like 20 minutes into this recording and I have not yet launched into saying bark and Oh, is that a type of Dune? And then try to so I guess I'm just doing that now. But

barchan 25:35 Sure. Speaking of segways Yes, that's a great

Jessamyn 25:43 way to mark and yes.

barchan 25:50 And Frank Herbert do quotations.

Cortex 25:53 Yes. Goofus in what the is it made me smile. It made me quite smile

Jessamyn 26:00 of Jesus and gallant. I don't know anything about doing enough. So I don't understand what Josh is talking about. Okay, so,

Cortex 26:07 so more deep was a guy from doing kind of dog guy, kind of the Galactic Messiah who led a you know, Galaxy raising jihad. But, but there's also in the dune books, there's a lot of sort of quotation and almost scriptural back references to the words of melody, because he becomes this like galaxy, you know, influencing figure. And so people sort of start writing down things he says, and some of its pretty mystic and whatnot. And so this group is what Eve is just taking some of that mystic or cryptic or prophetic or metaphorical stuff that Mandeep said, and you know, throwing it onto Goofus and gallant, and boom, there you go. All right. That's your whole thing.

barchan 26:55 And it was awesome. And yes, made my day. Nice kick ass and

Jessamyn 27:04 filter spread. Yeah. I unfortunately have one more that was turned into a metal filter. So these are just the ones that caught my eye, even though I looked at there's no shame. It's nothing. II rule 34. If something exists, there is part of it. This is by fit a meet. Yes, this is so good. And basically it's sort of taking a thing recreated from repurposed vintage porn covers, and then puts up things like exotic carrots, luncheon beats, toaster ovens, ear buds, oral hygiene, fish crackers, and a whole bunch of other stuff with vaguely suggestive pictures on them. It's very funny. And just, it's just lovely. It's really great. It's, it's well executed.

Cortex 27:55 It's got a real scar folk, jerky fork

Jessamyn 28:04 irregular carats probably is my favorite though. It's really,

Cortex 28:10 it's just so visually strong. And you know,

Jessamyn 28:12 yes. Visually. Well done. I enjoyed it.

Cortex 28:17 I liked this. This is just from yesterday, actually. This project from CG egg it? Who is CJ, CJ CJ egg, it looks like Yeah. Who is actually pretty new user too. So yeah, new stuff from new people. But it's a urine glitch. It's basically writing about the process of getting into making color chart, image manipulation and sort of filtering and weirding stuff out. And sort of talking about from the perspective of hey, like, you know, making stuff, even when you're not like a capital A artist is still legit and good for you. And, you know, talks about sort of doing this in the, in the time following their father's death, and sort of like, you know, just making pictures. So yeah, it's nice. It's got a bunch of cool pictures. It's got a nice sort of, like, Here's a basic way to do this sort of thing. And I just liked I liked the whole thing. I like the imagery. I like the sort of narrative and walkthrough aspect of it. And yeah, a bunch of cool stuff to look at.

Jessamyn 29:28 One of the things that's great about media and as a platform is that you can put a lot of big strong photos on it and well illustrate a thing you're trying to talk about the visual.

barchan 29:40 This is awesome. I love it when people talk about process behind something I know nothing about.

Jessamyn 29:46 Likewise, this is

barchan 29:48 an especially you talk about more than just the how but also the why and how you get inspired. Yes, awesome.

Cortex 29:56 Well, it's really interesting because it works well. for stuff that like I immediately like visually get if it's a visual thing and stuff where I'm sort of like, well, okay, you made a thing, but I don't really know what's up because like, if I, if I get, if I'm like all about it at first glance, you know, learning more about how it was put together and whatnot is great. But if like, if it doesn't immediately catch me, but then reading about, like, where someone's coming from that can be really interesting. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a, there is some substance here, even if like it didn't, like, you know, if even it was even if it wasn't effective, like click bait for me visually. Like, even if I'm not sold immediately, it might be really interesting once you sort of know where it's coming from an How was made and sort of get this insight into some craft or process that you just didn't know anything about. So well. I've

Jessamyn 30:44 a lot of stuff. I'm actually participating in this funny little. This funny little kind of online thing. Let me see if I can find you a link to it. I think called grok your enthusiasm. It's from a friend of mine that does, who does these little like, he does a website called high low brow, he's probably on metal filter, I should get him to post this to projects. But he does this little thing like you know, 25 linked little blog posts on a theme usually like friends of his who contribute. And the theme this time is things you're enthusiastic about, like weird things. So like people writing or writing posts on like the 1973 Sears Roebuck catalog, the like wake walk, the survival sampler, a whole bunch of stuff, I wrote one on moss that's going up later, like next week, but just you know, something you're into. And so it's fun reading about stuff that other people are into, especially if it's someone you know. So what they're into helps you understand them or it's a thing you know, so what they're into helps the two of you connect or whatever agree completely. Yeah.

barchan 31:53 This is kick ass. I'm enthusiastic about this enthusiasm.

Jessamyn 31:59 Well, it for me, it was a really interesting process, figuring out like, whatever. I'm the person who likes to put moss in jars and whatnot. But I was like, Well, why is that? Like, what is it that I care about that thing? What do I think about it? So it was helpful for me to think about why I liked it. Yeah.

Cortex 32:15 It's yeah. It's an interesting sort of, self reflective process that I I'm trying to decide whether like, I find myself naturally doing that or not on a regular basis.

Jessamyn 32:28 Talking about like, you know, like, the little whatever the eight bit Star Trek game is that you're making whatever the hell that is. But like,

Cortex 32:37 farts? Oh, that's a side project. That's a side project. That's federal? Oh, I'll find the link.

Jessamyn 32:46 Part of what I've enjoyed about that, like, I don't care about eight bit stuff, or Star Trek, particularly, but I care about you. And so listening to you talk about working the problem is super interesting. Even if I don't even care that much about the problem. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's, you know, it's more about you. It's something that you're jazzed about. I mean, I think at some level, it's just fun to see people who are engaged with their world, however, that is,

Cortex 33:11 yeah. Yeah, no, I've definitely I've definitely, I feel that way.

barchan 33:17 It's really interesting, because we often spend a lot of time thinking about things that we're bad at, or that we've messed up. And we don't spend as much time reflecting it at why we're enthusiastic or happy or good at things. Yeah.

Cortex 33:33 Okay. You know, sometimes you just need to fight your way through this guy's collecting beans to perpetuate the process.

Jessamyn 33:45 Hold that thought, because that's another thing. We're going to talk about. How,

Cortex 33:49 man, there are so many different things could have been the touch point in that sentence, too.

Jessamyn 33:57 But I'm sorry.

barchan 34:03 What the hell is that person trying to catch?

Cortex 34:06 They're being they're being they're being the more you eat, the more you toot?

Jessamyn 34:11 He doesn't need any beans, you know,

Cortex 34:12 also

Jessamyn 34:14 isn't really like Do you have more beans and you then you get more firepower. And then that helps you?

Cortex 34:19 That's the idea. Like Like, there's you're looking at the entire game, such as it exists right now, because I just spent like half an hour on it. But well, there's this thing going on this month called the low res Game Jam, where you have to make a game that's like 64 by 64 pixels is as much screen space as you get. Which if you're used to doing like, like generous expansive screen stuff, that's probably really scary. But for me, I've been doing this microwave stuff where it's already just 128 by 128. So I'm like, okay, I can make a little smaller here. So yeah, but anyway, so I figured I could spend a couple days putting together Border Patrol over the course of the month and have a little bit of entry and

Jessamyn 34:56 have that's awesome. People would love it right? Yeah.

barchan 35:00 Yeah, but my question is what do you do with these powers of fire? Just shoot.

Cortex 35:07 I think I think it's just going to be sort of like trying to navigate a maze, something like that. So you'll have to, like fart efficiently enough to get to beans in time to be able to continue making progress. Or maybe it's

Jessamyn 35:17 a it's a tough scroller, right or whatever those things are called. I mean, I understand side scrollers but what is it called? If you're just heading up? In the same way? I'm platformer?

Cortex 35:28 Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like, like sidescroller is just like the sideways facing 2d perspective. So like, a sort of Tower Climbing platformer,

Jessamyn 35:36 I guess. Yeah, yeah. Like, well, Donkey Kong, you get to the top, but like something like you

Cortex 35:40 kept going. Yeah, something like that. Something in that vein, we'll see what happens.

barchan 35:44 So it's far for Charles like a metaphor for real life.

Cortex 35:47 Right, right. You're always reaching higher. That's you've nailed it. You've you've found the you found the aesthetic core of the game. I want to mention one other project. I liked just a simple little thing that's up my alley, the cookbook title generator from veggie boy. And it just generates cookbook titles at random like the Paleo cooking cure,

Jessamyn 36:12 or the ingredients science eating scheme.

Cortex 36:15 The ingredient free meal plan, the irritable gourmet family table, the drunk nutritionists diet

Jessamyn 36:22 oil nutrient delivery

barchan 36:24 system. And what was great about this is that this is the same person who wrote the book. Well, it waffle.

Cortex 36:34 I have not made that connection. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, veggie boy. Self declared cookbook author.

Jessamyn 36:42 I shake fan, waffle. Pig waffle fan. I learned how to make cookies in my waffle iron. And it was really like, oh, man, at all new thing. And now I've clicked on Will It Waffle and see you later guys.

Cortex 36:56 Seems like you can get in real trouble with that. I haven't even considered it. Because it's

Jessamyn 37:01 really just a heating thing that puts good patterns on stuff. And there's a lot of food that doesn't really need to be cooked or baked. Exactly. It just needs to be kind of warmed up and refined a little.

Cortex 37:11 Yep. Yeah, and I imagined Oh, man, he'd get like this nice sort of surface like caramelizing on the sugar in the

Jessamyn 37:19 eye Exactly. No Yes.

Cortex 37:38 My two cars

Cortex 37:56 Shall we shall we move on to metal filter proper? Yeah. I quite enjoyed this post. This was from filthy light feet, filthy light. It's such a strange name. I've never seen it before I have to sound it out. That's the the hydraulic press. Terrific. This is a collection. And this is weird, like, filthy life. They've got this, I think sort of on the upswing. Because this is just like, this is a finished guy, I think with a machine shop. And he's got a hydraulic press. And so he just does. videos, like, you know, like 234 minute videos where they take a thing, and they put it in the hydraulic press. And then they you know, apply a ton of pressure to it and they see what happens and it's the guy and his is the guy and his wife basically just, you know, say let's see what happens. And then they do it then THEY GIGGLE like it. It's and, and that's the whole thing. And it's wonderful. Like they're having such a good time. Like his wife, I think is like, you know, helping out like filming or whatever in the background. And so there's always him saying, Okay, let's see what happens. Puts it in there. What the fuck, and she's just giggling like crazy. And oh, it's super charming. And the guy's Finnish accent is super charming. And the whole thing is just and it's funny. You can sort of like if you go through the videos in sequence, there's a point at which people clearly started paying attention where all of a sudden he's aware that like, yeah, there's a lot of people watching these videos rather than like, you know, a few. And I imagine he's made more sense of the post went up, but I haven't been monitoring so I'm kind of curious to see where it goes.

Jessamyn 39:48 I hope more than seven times.

Cortex 39:51 I wouldn't that one has a super weird like it came up in the thread. We're like, what the hell happened with that paper and it's really interesting like, you know, they fold it they fold they folded they followed and then bam, and it's turned into like this plastic, then it explodes. Yeah, it's sort of explodes into a bunch of plastic chunks. And people are like trying to figure out even what the hell happened there. But ya know, it's it's great. It's super charming million

Jessamyn 40:16 people watch this guy tried to fold this paper.

Cortex 40:19 Yep. It's taken off.

Jessamyn 40:23 totally fun. Yeah. And then watching people who are just nerding about him getting his fingers near it. Like it's his own, you get

barchan 40:32 it makes you really nervous. If you've ever seen an industrial accident of any kind, and you see him with his fingers getting near the president, you're just like screaming at him. It's away from it. I have to admit, I had the

Jessamyn 40:46 same reaction fingers are too close. I've only watched industrial accidents. And like the videos they show you in shop class, so maybe yeah, I'm too cavalier about

Cortex 40:57 I once cut into my thumb with a jigsaw. In middle school, and, you know, not not terribly bad it was it was really like, in retrospect, it was a pretty superficial injury as far as jamming your thumb into a jigsaw goes so we could have, you know, so it went like maybe an eighth of an inch deep. And this is across like, about like, kind of like on the far side of my thumb from the bottom of my thumb nail, like on the pad of the thumb instead of talking. Anyway, it was it was very weird. And that's been my only first hand experience with the with industrial, you know, experiments,

Jessamyn 41:33 accidents over the top of one of my fingers with a meat slicer at work, you know, being a 13 year old who works at a deli counter, which was not a good idea. And I have a funny fingerprint because of it. But I think because I was young enough and the injury was bad, but not really bad. Then I developed a very healthy I mean, because we had like a woodshop in the basement at my house. And so my father was always like cutting his fingers up. And my mother was always like, don't go down there. And so I think we grew up with a sort of inherent, healthy, at least personal fear, but I just figured out there people whatever.

Cortex 42:10 Yeah, man, I gotta not ever, like murder anybody. I just realized that my thumbprint must be slightly extra distinctive, because it's got a weird line down it.

Jessamyn 42:21 Well. No, here's the question though. The big issue is as far as your potential future of as a murderer. Have you had your fingerprints taken for any reason?

Unknown Speaker 42:30 I don't think so. Because like I will get you even as a bank. Ah,

Cortex 42:35 I will. I'm gonna give them my thumbprint that's weird. I have been with the same credit union since I was like 16 but that would have been post injury so if they did take

Jessamyn 42:48 ever taught in the school, the insurance company didn't take your fingerprints.

Cortex 42:52 I don't think so. No.

Jessamyn 42:54 I might not be able to get ups and for working in a school and so I'm always a little worried because I my fingerprints actually are like on file, you know,

Cortex 43:04 do the click to fingerprint for for passports it's not on the passport? No, no. Yeah, I don't know. I may have avoided fingerprinting. Yeah, go me. Your current

Jessamyn 43:14 murder is intact.

Cortex 43:15 Okay. Of course now there's this, you know, audio description of my my thumbprint which isn't going to help me out. But

Jessamyn 43:22 I didn't understand it. So okay, good. Good.

barchan 43:29 I've seen some pretty good industrial accidents. So

Jessamyn 43:34 you go on, like geology accidents are like rig

barchan 43:38 accidents mostly. But I also grew up on in logging and ranching and mining countries so yeah, that's it guys who had missing pinkies and getting them pinched off. Yeah, I mean, I don't really I mean, I think the WORST ACCENT I've ever seen is someone a metal grinder into their stomach.

Jessamyn 44:03 What is happening to this podcast?

Cortex 44:06 We're just we're just going to we're going we're going places we're exploring new ground.

Jessamyn 44:11 Why there's no video?

Cortex 44:14 Slideshow and

Jessamyn 44:17 a metal right what is that even how like on purpose? No, no.

barchan 44:20 I mean, it was a complete accident. They just weren't watching what they're doing. And they were grinding down some metal after welding it right into their belly. Oh, god. Yeah,

Jessamyn 44:31 that's a bad accident to the worst.

barchan 44:35 Yeah. I think I've seen some deep loving accidents. Do not want to Google those.

Cortex 44:40 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If you're wondering what that don't just don't

Jessamyn 44:44 just leave it better than it sounds.

Cortex 44:47 It's gross. Maybe we should move on for hire listener. don't like to be like yeah, come on. Give me more. Yeah. I like to Uh,

Jessamyn 45:00 wait, now we just talked about what you liked.

Cortex 45:03 What did you like? Well, that's a good point. Actually, that's fair.

Jessamyn 45:06 I like just completely like value neutral post by word. Sure about modems. little clips, pictures of little modems, some uses of modems and how you could use a modem, some modem pictures, and some other past posts on metal filter about modems. So like looking at, like, you know, old pictures of stuff. I mean, you know, it's one of those things where all the old timers get together and they're like, back in OT six Power BI out and they talk about, you know, it's got like a fun little thread of people reminiscing about stuff. And I don't know. Yeah, lots of little pictures, dialogue guru.com. Phones, and I don't know, I just thought like word shark clearly put a lot of effort into this thread. And I enjoyed it

Cortex 46:02 this way. So nice way to go with a roundup post too. You know, it's like, it's not so much here is 20 different. Here's some 5000 word essays, nor is it like hair. Here's a link to Google search for modem instead. It's it's got a nice bounce. Look, you know, here's a bunch of cool pictures of things to look at.

Jessamyn 46:19 Exactly, roughly my age and so the things that are kind of, you know, have to do with timing. They, they're exactly kind of the same for me. So he's like, remember this and I'm like, I do remember Papa,

Cortex 46:37 dogs we should have we should have a dog as a guest on the podcast sometime.

barchan 46:42 My dog she's a little

Jessamyn 46:46 She sounds nice.

Cortex 46:52 Well, yes, someone, someone throw something out there.

barchan 46:56 It was a great month for headless bodies. The meta filter. And I think my favorite one was the one word Shakespeare is missing his head, dear person.

Jessamyn 47:14 I did not see this thread. But I just finished reading this book called cranial collectie which is about other people who got their heads stolen like Mozart and heightened. And then Shakespeare got his head stolen. And I was bugging my friend who wrote the book, dude, now's your time. Get on all the TV shows. You're the foremost expert. Dude, I'm finishing another book. I don't know if I can. But this was this was cool. The whole story was cool.

barchan 47:47 I love it. There's an actual term for this.

Jessamyn 47:50 Well, I'm not sure if Colin made it up or not. I just finished the book. If you want to read it, I can send it to you. That'd be awesome. Yeah, send me your send me your address on email or

Cortex 48:01 on Skype, and I'll put it in the envelope. I feel like as soon as you put it on the camera, by a copy. Sorry. Because I feel like as soon as you put it on the title of book, it's a word. Like it may not be a word. It might be kind of a nouveau riche word, but it's still it's a word like that's pretty legitimate, like, you know someone. Yeah,

Jessamyn 48:18 I think that may have been the word you were talking about? No, no, no.

Cortex 48:22 Yeah, it's neologisms are the nouveau reshift of the vocabulary world, right? It's like, you know, it's like, once it hits a certain status, you can't deny that it's in use, even if people sort of look at it kind of shitty. And you know, that's, there's some interesting class parallels there. That's all I'm saying.

Jessamyn 48:42 In his book is super interesting, because it's all about back when phonology was a big deal. And so people would steal skulls specifically, to like, kind of advance their phonology collections. So there was a time when everybody got their heads stolen. And then it kind of like wound down because after a while, people didn't really care. And they realize different things about the head and the brain and their relationship to each other. And so yeah, fascinating. And so but then Shakespeare's head may or may not have vanished.

Cortex 49:16 Yeah, it will. And it's interesting. Like, it sounds like they used some sort of scanning to establish that. It doesn't seem like there's a school where there should be a school. But one of the interesting things I thought in the thread was a couple of people pointed out there had been like, sort of, you know, chatter to some degree, you know, the hundreds of years ago about the idea that like, well, maybe it already wasn't gonna, like, maybe I'm not saying I'm just saying, if someone wanted to reach in and steal Shakespeare's goal, they could. That's all I'm saying. Peace out, you know, and it's like, okay, so and now we're like, Yeah, but we invented scanning. So. Yeah. So yeah,

barchan 49:56 it was really interesting because, like people were they were bringing these two sent links and you can almost sounds like you could almost go back in time. The all these different little tidbits that have popped up in Literature Through the years, and maybe when his school got stolen

Jessamyn 50:14 by just what kind of stuff people are putting out there. Yeah.

barchan 50:17 It was just, it's just the best. And it used ground penetrating radar, which is really very favorite radars. Doesn't

Jessamyn 50:27 everyone want that? It's like, it's like the metal detector only cool and works.

barchan 50:31 Yes. Yes. I mean, and it uses so many useful things. And I'd never thought that I didn't know that it was used in archaeology like that. So that was just a really cool thing to learn about. From that threat, as well as it as a geek.

Jessamyn 50:51 Well, and you know, the people who do the ground scanning, whatever the stuff like half the time, they're just looking for whatever, right? Like they're looking for, like sewer pipes or whatever. Not interesting stuff. And people like who's the guy that's got the ground scanning radar? Hey, we got an interesting job for you. And then that guy's like, yeah. My whole life has been leading up to this moment. So

Unknown Speaker 51:16 for Shakespeares head. I'm the expert. Yes, great.

Jessamyn 51:24 So yeah, I thought that was pretty awesome. That was, that was fun. Oh, that kind of reminds me. I had a thread that I wanted to point to Josh does this and I've never done it before. But a thread that's not from this past month.

Cortex 51:38 It's okay. It's allowed me.

Jessamyn 51:40 Let's buy we had a deal. Kyle, basically about mommy Brown, which is Oh, yeah, color. But it's a color that was used to be made from mummies, maybe. And then there was a hole. Now I'm trying to remember why I wound up in this damn thread

barchan 52:02 and up there because of that. Library of pigments. Yeah,

Cortex 52:06 I think that was a thing.

Jessamyn 52:09 Because there was a library of pigments. Was there a library of pigments post? I bet there was

Cortex 52:13 right. I don't know if there was or not, but it was definitely been around. Yeah.

Jessamyn 52:18 Yeah, well, and I had said that around because you know, it's a library. Okay. I type in library of pigments metal filter, and I wind up on my own Wikipedia page.

Cortex 52:31 What if that's, what is that? What if that's the actual like, that's the afterlife? That's hell like hell. All of your Google searches just leading back to the document about your own life, edited by other people on the internet.

Jessamyn 52:44 Post, which now I can mention that. And then Horace Rumpole, who is of course, a librarian at Harvard has been there. Then somebody talks about mummy Brown. And then I was off to the races. And I was like, I'm gonna make a post about mommy Brown. But then it turned out there was one from a couple years ago. Balls.

Cortex 53:02 But at least it looks like it was a decent post. So

Jessamyn 53:04 yeah, and a thread that was not as both threads were like kind of short. Not super, you know, people weren't, like, heavy into them. They didn't start a lot of conversation, but whatever, you know, super interesting. And I like both of them. I

Cortex 53:20 bet. And this is just sort of workshopping out loud. If you really wanted to, like turn this from like a 13. Comment post into like 100 Plus comment post. You just rewrite it instead of this absolutely fine and good. Presentation. We have to say they ground up fucking mummies for die. That's you're above the fold. Everything else below can be just as like reasonable as it is here. And people like what grinding up a fork and mommy Holy shit. It was assholes. Because like the life and death of mummy brows like I don't know who that is. That must be some English lady. You know, it's like there's there's a danger. Like, from context, it should be like, no, no, no. pigment. Okay, that's okay. But you know, you got to go for the jugular. If you really want to snag in that sweet, sweet internet joking in amongst your thoughtful conversation. Yeah. This has been workshopping your posts with cortex.

Jessamyn 54:14 skill to offer though many people are concerned.

Cortex 54:17 Well, I don't know. I mean, I like I like a short, thoughtful thread too. So like, I'm only half endorsing click core. Yeah, Texas teaches you how to ruin the internet he loves. Follow my advice, and I can resent your decisions. Yes. It's not a good. It's not a good plan. I'm not thinking that's true. I wanted to mention this complicated, weird thing that happened with the node package manager. This was a big thing a couple of weeks ago, and I'll do a little bit of explanation. Yeah, this is uh, So JavaScript is a language that people use for fucking everything on the internet because it basically runs in the browser. And so you've got this magical thing that you Write it. And then more or less, it'll work on anybody's computer on the internet, if they have a web browser, which is, you know, quote unquote, everybody now it's, it's, it's a very easy to wide target platform. So people do stuff in JavaScript, JavaScript is a weird language, because the way it sort of came about over the years, and one of the things about it is it has almost, it has a very small standard library, which is like the library that for a given language everybody has access to and can depend on. And so people sort of like collect the existing bits of code they want to use, in addition to the stuff they're actually going to write from a variety of sources. And this is managed by the node package manager, which is a big as opposed says, it's the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world. Basically, if you want to do some mathy thing, instead of writing the code to do that mathy thing, you say, oh, include this, do a mathy thing library. And that exists on the NPM ecosystem. And you say, hey, include this. And it'll pull from that. And then when you run your code, it'll grab that. And everything's hunky dory. It's a good idea. Open Source, everybody can like collaboratively work together. But you get weird things. Like, what happens if someone gets angry about a thing that happens and then pulls all of their code off of NPM? Which is what happened here? And what if some of the thing is

Jessamyn 56:22 the story was so weird? Because basically, there were lawyers from a thing, who said quit name and your thing, that thing you want? And the guy was like, fuck you assholes. And the NPM people were like, Nah, they got a point. And so then he took his ball and went home.

Cortex 56:36 Yep. And it happens that in the case of how NPM is currently organized, taking his ball and go home really means take his ball and go home. And the 1000s of people who were using a little piece of his ball, because it was just out there in the ecosystem was running a thing that they built, yeah, suddenly just got broke. And the thing that makes it feel absurd is not that like, it's not like this guy wrote a giant totemic super useful library that a bunch of people were depending on because Okay, well, this is the tried and true best way to handle this complex series of trigonometric functions or something like that. Like it's not like a big towering edifice of really useful code that the guy then just made vamoose. The thing that bit everybody asked was a tiny little tiny little bit of code that just adds some padding to a string. So if you've got like a, if you need to fill up a 10 character field, and you've got like the word, but you've only got four characters, this little left pad thing would throw like six spaces, in front of butts, so that it would then actually be taking up 10 characters. You know, basically, that that sort of super simple task is kind of thing, anybody could roll themselves pretty quickly. There's nothing wrong with using a library function for it. But using a library function that literally only does that one thing. It's kind of silly. But a lot of people do it anyway, because it was there. And that was just the ecosystem and it goes away. All this stuff breaks just because of that one dumb little thing. And so yeah, it was a clusterfuck basically was a huge clusterfuck surprisingly, and people

Jessamyn 58:09 had to kind of act fast, because there was broken shit all over the Oh, yeah. Like he did the thing. He didn't just threatened to do this. Maybe he threatened and they ignored him. I don't know, I

Cortex 58:17 think he just I think that was part of the thing is he just did straight up do the thing. He was like, No, I'm not gonna put up with his bullshit, and boom, and yeah, he just like, did it. And then people, I think they got something sort of fixed in place, after an hour or two, after making the decision to just change their policy on that subject. Like, yeah, we'll do the thing we never do, because too much shit is broken to stand by that in this case. So they sort of replaced his thing that he deleted back in place, which isn't even that weird, because it's like, it's, you know, freely available open source. And it's just sort of the nature of some of the logistics of code that someone else couldn't literally replace it in place by just writing it. But anyway, it's a it's a thing. It's, it's a heck of it. And it was, it was interesting to read through and get people's takes on it, because I don't follow any of this like,

Jessamyn 59:09 guy whose stuff it was he was on Twitter kind of talking about his own aspect to the whole thing. Like there was a lot of you know, there were a lot of medium articles talking about why the whole thing happened. You know, we I mean, depending on how you come into the story. You know, you may have sympathies that lie with kind of either side, and it was interesting to get a chance to read the multiple kind of deep parts of this.

Cortex 59:38 Yeah. Yeah, it was nice getting a bunch of you know, it's funny. I didn't even know about the thread until I saw someone complaining about it elsewhere on social media. And it's like, well, this is where like, if you are seriously in this territory, you probably have strong feelings about JavaScript about package management. about all kinds of related things. And you may be annoyed at other people's strong feelings about it too. And so yeah, it's like, combination super interesting. And also sort of like nerd fight for anybody who's close to the subject. So. But yeah, I thought was really interesting. And I think it's it seems like a readable thing, even outside of any sort of programming context, just sort of understanding the social ramifications of it. So that was pretty cool. What else you guys got?

Jessamyn 1:00:34 I think those were my big things from added filter. And let me see if there was something like I commented in that I really wanted to that I really wanted to pull out. Bar can.

Cortex 1:00:48 Oh, no. Did we lose bark?

Jessamyn 1:00:50 Josh?

Cortex 1:00:53 I was I was talking. Did you end

Jessamyn 1:00:57 up making now?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:58 I muted it because the dog was barking? Oh,

Jessamyn 1:01:00 don't worry about it. I mean, I don't you know,

barchan 1:01:03 I didn't want to interrupt Josh's very long.

Jessamyn 1:01:07 We never do the podcast.

Cortex 1:01:10 I don't know why people. I don't I don't know why people don't interrupt my very long stuff more often.

barchan 1:01:17 Anyway, there's this great thread about a week on the road with a female trucker. And a lot of comments that was really interesting read. And

Jessamyn 1:01:28 also by Fizz is one of your favorites. You and you and fitness seem to have a simpatico. Um, maybe?

barchan 1:01:35 I don't know. Yeah, I guess now that I'm looking at my little Excel spreadsheet, there's a lot vices on there. Okay, it was an awesome little short essay about what it's like to be a woman truck driver. In a field, it's not really that understood to begin with. And I just thought it was a really neat little post that didn't get very many comments.

Jessamyn 1:02:06 And it's on Buzzfeed, which has actually been doing more good long form journalism lately. Yeah. More often than never, I actually wind up seeing stuff on Buzzfeed, where I'm like, Oh, hey, also, I've always kind of wanted to be a female trucker. So I think I'll have to set this aside to read.

Cortex 1:02:24 I will say that one of the few comments that's got is one of my favorite comments of the last month from suits yourselves. My parents drove truck, I was conceived in a sleeper cab parked at a truck stop in intercourse, Pennsylvania. It's really gross that I'm telling everyone that I think it's a wonderful little like, yeah, like, like, that's amazing. Well, but see, here's the thing. This is this is a local person, and a friend of mine. And so I I know she is not like making it up. Because she's, yeah, no, she's not someone who would like go bullshit on metal filter. And I have never heard this. I am uh, I'm delighted by this, this revelation as part of the outcome of my friend. I wanted to mention, just as a nice thing to listen to and watch if you want to, but this sort of goes back to the watching people just do a thing that makes noise. There was a post by goofy foot linking to a trombone player. Steve's not in the post, but it's, anyways, he's he's a good trombone player, known as such, I guess, but he does medley of Queen songs. On four part trombone, just like you know, recorded for overdubs with four different camera angles. And it's great. It's really nice. I mean, I'm a queen fan, so I'm kind of on board with it. But it's also Queen does not sound like for trombone. So you sort of wonder going in, is this going to be like, Oh, well, you had a nice idea, but But it's great. It's just really great. He, it sounds like there's I left a comment saying something like I really like how much this brings out the arrangement and sort of the harmonic richness of the songs even when you set aside the sort of charming bombastic of Queen actually performing and stuff. But it's a really nice list. It's like 14 minutes long because it's a big medley, but it's really nice. I recommend it to anybody who doesn't mind either queen or trombones.

Jessamyn 1:04:34 Speaking of things to listen to I forgot one of the ones I wanted to mention was Nikki Skye basically got the scoop on the fact that the British Library, released 8000, Afro pop tracks, through their website, and you can go listen to them via flash, but listen to them because of course there's one of these super nerd comments that probably should have to just flag right now.

Cortex 1:05:03 I'm not I'm not on the clock though and see it.

Jessamyn 1:05:07 But it's just a cool thing the British Library did. Hey, here's a bunch of awesome music to listen to. Yeah. Archives program. Go listen, bam, lovely Nikki sky great post

barchan 1:05:17 you know one of the things I love about little posts like this is you once you get to know people on the meta filter you just kind of you think of who loves posts like this? And you think oh, I can't wait for so and so to see this and just fall in love with it. And

Jessamyn 1:05:34 right I'll often like go bug kind of older members. There's a post on it thing. I haven't seen you around for a while but yeah,

Cortex 1:05:42 come check it out. I'm sure I'm sure I can do a thing. Oh, I also want to mention this collection of vines by Mefi is formerly owned DW rollin. See, he closed his account at one point I

Jessamyn 1:05:58 can How do you pronounce me FYI?

Jessamyn 1:06:02 Me Five All right.

Cortex 1:06:03 Okay. Anyway good dude. funny dude. Put together he started doing just very short any Wait, what are you telling he closed his account at some point on metal filter, but that's like, I don't remember any drama or anything. And he's active on Mefi club and a cheerful fellow so anyway, curious new made a post about his collection of vines over the last year or so he's done like 200 very short jokes on Vine. Like, you know, fitting it inside six African set a punch line, etc. And then a little bit of a musical sting to it. It's there. You know, they're all done hash pipe. And, you know, that's definitely up my alley as far as that goes. But just the going through them as a sequence I found really great for great for a laugh.

Jessamyn 1:06:59 Completely hung.

Cortex 1:07:00 Oh, man. I blamed buying.

Jessamyn 1:07:02 I blamed buying two. Or maybe adblocker plus fine. Oh, that

Cortex 1:07:06 could be? That seems like that'd be a whole whole nightmare scenario.

Jessamyn 1:07:09 Me try force quitting. I'm quitting.

Cortex 1:07:13 Well, let me tell you about another post I like as well. Giant roundup post. This is one of those I will enjoy digging into this at some point posts from Philippi. Light beef. Again, double this podcast well done. Speaking machines, the history of synthesizing speech, which is basically a great big roundup of the whole historical record of speech synthesis, because, you know, I mean, speech synthesis is the thing we think of, I think, you know, if you don't think about it too hard, you know, oh, it's a computer thing. Like right computers. Learned how to talk at some point, you know, you remember playing around on a Mac classic or whatever, and you could get it to sing talking.

Jessamyn 1:07:53 I did a post on the talkie mousse.

Cortex 1:07:56 The Talking mousse, which one's talking loose? It's the thing to

Jessamyn 1:07:59 talk to the Mac Plus,

Cortex 1:08:00 Oh, okay. I didn't remember the name. I remember you could you could select a few different voices on the Mac I was on at school. And one of them would sing it would seem like hollow the Mountain King the first like couple lines and the melody. So you could like put in arbitrary words and it would just like seeing them in this weird Cindy voice. Like speaking machines are history of synthesizing you know, just do that. And I would try and write up little songs that were to the tune of Mountain King to make the the computer sing just to just a weird people out. But anyway, where he's going with this and where this post is going with this is like long before computers, people were like, Hey, I wonder if we can synthesize speech, like mechanically. And so people have tried all sorts of complicated, weird ways to use physical processes to synthesize speech with machines, and it's really fucking fascinating and worth looking into. So go check out this post and learn you something about all the crazy shit people got up to, because there's a whole bunch of crazy historical ingenuity there. And that's what I have to say about that.

barchan 1:09:05 So I've got one last one. Do all the crazy. Can't talk about this month about talking about Boaty McBoatface. Yeah,

Cortex 1:09:14 yeah.

barchan 1:09:18 So awesome. And I know a researcher who might have some poll with this board and I emailed them and like basically emailed me back fuck off. I really I have

Jessamyn 1:09:36 to, is a really great Twitter too.

Cortex 1:09:41 I'm super, super in in in the boat, if you will. For Boaty McBoatface I really I really want that.

Jessamyn 1:09:50 This has people vote in public on the internet about anything.

Cortex 1:09:54 It's obviously such a bad I like your conversation that led to Yeah, well Let's do that was like a conversation between people who just have not spent enough time on the internet. But you know, I mean, you can imagine so much worse outcomes in terms of internet games voting thing. Boaty McBoatface is goofy, but it's like, it's just wonderfully happy and goofy. So I really, I really, I really hope they do.

barchan 1:10:22 I hope so. Because I am going to do everything I can to get a research position on this because I want to write a paper so bad and I'm gonna use that name as many times as possible. In that paper, it would be so awesome.

Cortex 1:10:41 So we very recently got a new cat. What? Yeah, no, we adopted a cat last Monday, Monday last week. Sure. It's obligatory I will find some but

Jessamyn 1:10:55 have you put them up? Put

Cortex 1:10:57 them up on Twitter. In fact, I made I'll try and find it. I made a Twitter I made a Twitter post fucking I'll try and find my tweet. That's the word I'm looking for. It's difficult to search for

Jessamyn 1:11:12 I'll find it you can just talk about your cat

Cortex 1:11:14 well it's a very cute little tuxedo cat a three year old cat she she came to the shelter with a name nya which was nice enough but we didn't really feel strongly about it. So Secretary talked about it for a good like week and a half and went through a lot of possibilities. And then we finally settled on naming the cat Boaty McBoatface because like I'm in love with this whole thing and what a great name for a cat because it's like fuck you were naming it that and even if the caller like boldface for short or whatever, we've been calling her Bodhi. You know, Bodhi both it turns out we call her to boat. Boat face. Haven't haven't fallen back. But anyway, she's adorable. And her name is Boaty McBoatface. And I'm so happy like your vet. She does she does she's even she's got a slightly funny was our

Jessamyn 1:12:02 tha is and ginger beers cat that Josh and I both know.

Cortex 1:12:06 Yes. One other cats but an awesome cat. weird little cat with like hypoplasia proprioception problems. Something? Yeah. So real, real funny. Walk walk super goofy, wobbly. Whereas Bodie walks just very slightly weird, and we're not totally sure why but she might have like, like a bit of Munchkin, a bit of Munchkin in the back legs. The vet was like, trying to figure it out and felt like her kneecap was in a pretty weird place for a normal cat legs. So she might just be slightly like, like slightly jacked. lately. Legs. Yeah. Like now enough that it's obvious, but enough that it's there. Anyway, so Boaty McBoatface, I'm like 110% in on the whole thing. And I so far can hope that they, they, they they just run with it and say yes, you know, we decided we do this and the people who've spoken and we'll allow this ridiculous thing to happen. Because what a great name for a boat.

Jessamyn 1:13:07 I mean, they fucked up by making it open to the internet. It's just the name of a boat. I mean, this is kind of what I love about like, the ways the internet and the physical world of real things overlap sometimes is you can really get goofy shit like this that just winds up being fun. I mean, I get that, like serious business people are maybe not super into it, and I sympathize. But that, you know,

barchan 1:13:33 well, as someone who's been an ocean research vessels, that sadly that's the kind of name you give to a boat. Because in a really, I mentioned this in a really serious way. Can you think of a better name to inspire kids and get them excited about the work that you're doing on it? No. Guess what? Just love this name. And you can make these little toys and T shirts with Boaty McBoatface on it. And they would totally get

Cortex 1:14:04 it. Yep, kids are gonna be like, Oh, man. Shackleton Yeah, that's

Jessamyn 1:14:09 a guy to be like, this is the gravitas that this boat deserves like they're like wow, it's

Cortex 1:14:17 news. All right, that's Metafilter What do you got?

Jessamyn 1:14:53 Well, I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff as always, I have too much but one of the ones that I thought was interesting because I was like, Oh, I didn't know that. was questioned until I started really thinking about it was Canadian home cooks dealing with measurements and grocery store, because of metric and imperial units, because Canada doesn't use all metric. They use some, and they swap a lot of food with us. And so how do they, you know, I got this person and drew esque, you know, got a cookbook that uses entirely Imperial measurements, but also knows that there's a lot of metrication metrication in Canada. So how does that work? Like, how are most cookbooks? How do most Canadian cooks like who cook at home deal with things? Do packages have double labels? How does this work? And talking about his Canadian roommate who told them once that it was 20 degrees outside but also to turn the oven on to 375? What is that?

Cortex 1:15:56 Well, it was a pizza oven. You know, it was real hot, real hot.

Jessamyn 1:15:59 Right? But so you know, it was the, you know, a chance for our Canadian mefites to talk about the things that they do and what they use. And I just, I learned a thing. Along with that thread.

Cortex 1:16:10 I had never thought about that. Yeah,

barchan 1:16:13 yeah. It's and I just can't I just gotta say, I love all our Canadian mefites are also awesome.

Jessamyn 1:16:24 Likewise, they are interesting. I learned tons of stuff from them. And when the times I've gone to meet ups in Canada, they have been super fun.

Cortex 1:16:33 I think they're just okay. No, Canada, I have no actually, in all earnestness, I am quite fond of every Canadian fit. I've met and yeah, I've been up to man. Even G Man even even. Yeah, let's see was he is a very nice man. The one time I met him in person. But a bunch of people in Vancouver. I hung out with because we were up there last year for a geology conference. Angela was going to and

Jessamyn 1:17:04 I had a great good time at Vancouver. Really good time at the Vancouver meetup.

Cortex 1:17:08 And Geraldo gets down now. And then and his fellow. Smile such I'm so bad with usernames, even. Anyway, very, very friendly gentleman, we see everyone's wanting to come to Portland and nubs is up in Calgary area, I want to say yeah, a bunch of a bunch of a bunch of nice.

Jessamyn 1:17:32 And I just connected with Mefi, who asked a question about whether she should get a library degree in Canada, which is slightly different question than getting a library degree in the United States. And so I connected with her over email and put her in touch with like seven Canadian librarians I know. And that was really fun. Nice. Yeah.

barchan 1:17:53 So along the lines of the Canadian kicking question was the six Tene 31 Sugar question.

Jessamyn 1:17:59 I love this question. By Eniola.

Cortex 1:18:05 Who's a neighbor? Of of me, lives nearby in Portland.

Jessamyn 1:18:11 Nice. Well, I was curious about this question, because it they clearly had a thing they were doing. Yes, that was a mystery.

barchan 1:18:22 I wanted to know what it was. And tell us what you're doing. Because they

Jessamyn 1:18:29 were researching a whole bunch of stuff. Clearly, as people were giving them information, like the question was basically what was sugar like in Europe and 1631? I didn't know if they were writing a book.

Cortex 1:18:40 Well, she's been working on a chocolate cookbook. So this could be this could be that maybe she's trying to work out some specific recipe.

Jessamyn 1:18:52 Oh, that too. Like, you would get sugar in a lump? And then you'd get sugar nippers? Yes, I know. Wow. And then that would help you kind of cut up your lump of sugar.

Cortex 1:19:06 Fascinating. I feel like we should have named the cat Sugarloaf sugar nippers.

Jessamyn 1:19:11 She named that cat. Maybe you need another cat.

Cortex 1:19:15 Maybe? Maybe. Oh, you know, let enough time pass.

Jessamyn 1:19:20 Right. You can always try out your name. So that's what's great about cats. Maybe you should get hamsters. They're even better for that. Ooh, yeah.

Cortex 1:19:26 Or rats. Yeah, that's neat. I never would have thought about that. I guess I just watched we started watching the first season of great British break off because we watched the most recent one when it was active. And it's like, Oh, hey, that was a nice pleasant thing to watch at night when we don't want to be stressed out by drama. Right. And they were talking about the development of the biscuit in Scotland like the second episode and that was sort of, I guess in the same sort of territory

Jessamyn 1:19:54 but where the biscuit is like a biscuit or a biscuit is like a cookie cookie

Cortex 1:19:57 and there's one guy on the on on the show. Who has like, you know, cooked outside of like England? And so he was saying cookie and we did a double take watch of the cookie what he's saying, but he's saying cookie, that's, that's the right word. And why are they why is he using the right word? And he's like, oh, yeah, it's based on a recipe from when I went to New York and, and also this one from Paris, and I was like, oh, okay, so getting out of England, I guess. anyone

Jessamyn 1:20:23 thinks about the Bake Off never seen.

Cortex 1:20:24 It's fun. It's like reality television. That's not shit. It's really kind of impressive. Which I feel like that's more common in general with, like, British stuff. Compared to American reality TV, but

Jessamyn 1:20:38 they're not quite as tawdry.

Cortex 1:20:39 Yeah, what's weird, you know, like the Gordon or Gordon, what's his face? The yelling man the yelling cooking man.

Jessamyn 1:20:47 I don't watch any of those shows. Sorry. Ramsey.

Cortex 1:20:50 Yes. Yes, his his, his his original show. Like in England. It was like he was still sort of a shouty man. It was still reality TV, but like he seemed like a person who had opinions. And then we watched some of the American one it just like it. Like he was literally a pinata caricature of himself. Like everything was so much worse. And anyway, I liked this question, just because I'm hoping someone will come up and answer it. I couldn't help but please help me find a horror movie from the 1970s or 1980s. This is for maldron. And it's got a description of things they specifically remember. And there's three answers so far, none of which are like the answer. And then that's that. So if you saw some movie in the late 70s,

Jessamyn 1:21:34 the band falls asleep. Yeah.

Cortex 1:21:37 Waking up in suffering. Yeah. It's one of the things where like, this sounds like a scene from a horror movie, but I haven't seen it. So. So if you've, if you've watched horror movies, go check out this question. Maybe?

Jessamyn 1:21:49 Wow, no, I didn't even see that. And I was oh, this was my sister's birthday. So I was I was off the internet for a couple days. That's

Cortex 1:21:57 all right. Yeah. But yeah, what else? What else?

Jessamyn 1:22:02 I enjoyed. Oh, you know, that thing where you're trying to copy the link, but then you delete it? And then I don't even know how to get it back. How do I shit? I literally don't know how to solve this problem. History. Brother. What? Are you just like making jokes.

Cortex 1:22:28 today? Did you open it then close the tab? Or? No,

Jessamyn 1:22:31 I just I was like, I was highlighting the URL, the copy it. But then I backspace. That's tricky. So then there was no URL, and I couldn't get it back. And the funny thing is, it's a question about technology. Oh, we should talk about counterculture in the 60s. The overlap of like kind of hippie counterculture, and like tech counterculture.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:52 Sounds amazing.

Jessamyn 1:22:56 Because people have written a lot about it. Like this guy. Termite was kind of like these things seem kind of the same. I'd like to know more about it. And people are like, oh, yeah, totally. You need to read Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba Baba. And it's, there's a whole reading list of like, fun shit to read much of which, at least I knew a little bit of because my father was doing technology and was kind of a hippie. Not exactly. Because a lot of it's like Bay area. So you know, same people, same places, and people have written about it. So short thread. Excellent. And does my favorite metal filter trope also where the user comes back and was like, oh my god, this is so great. If you've got any other ideas keep on coming. And like that's the last comment. Like the number of times that happens where people like keep on common thread killer

Cortex 1:23:48 it's just Doom it's it's the the magic words.

Jessamyn 1:23:52 The magic words that are

Cortex 1:23:55 rolling out at your peril. I am I am super light on asked me this month. I'm really

Jessamyn 1:24:04 Oh, really? Yeah. I've just stuff that I like,

Cortex 1:24:07 well just go for it. Because I've got I've got a bunch of stuff in my my asked me history this month, and it's all me leaving notes.

Jessamyn 1:24:13 So there's multiple biographies of a famous person.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:18 This is a great question

Jessamyn 1:24:21 by Christie, because it's hard, right? If you really want to read about Josephine Baker, there's four books in the library. And if you just want to go buy something that's not most popular on Amazon, how do you how do you make a choice? So, you know, people who knew the thing you know, I think I turned off my light show librarian contributions. Greasemonkey script I need to put that back. Because some of these people must be librarians but I don't. Maybe they're not. Anyhow, how do you pick a biography? enjoyed it, and then cry Outland asked a question about settling. It's who runs satellites. I want to learn a thing about a satellite who's responsible? Tell me who could talk to and the thing that's amazing about this thread besides just it's interesting is metal filter user, Rob rockets is like, Oh, I do. And then totally just, I mean, this is like, the nerdiest comment that I read probably this month, and was like, so then there's the fo T member aside, what are two spacecraft subsystems from the local expert right now I'm the Fermi EPS power guy. And my subsystem is nominal. Each blah, blah, blah. You know, but he's into it. It totally answers crown lands question in depth. And it's cool.

Cortex 1:25:46 No, that's amazing. That's, that's, that's super awesome.

Jessamyn 1:25:50 Yeah. Was it was a great thread. I did not even think it was gonna turn out with like, that cool of an answer. Yeah.

Cortex 1:25:58 Like, it's gonna be super super. Well, you know, I think they pretty much run themselves open space, you know, come on,

Jessamyn 1:26:04 a lot of like, my best guess from watching television is, or,

Cortex 1:26:08 technically, technically, the moon is a satellite.

barchan 1:26:13 So there's a tiny little question, and it was about women's underwear. And I thought this is just such a great question. Because this is one of my favorite kind of questions on ask, I wonder. And I actually, like went and took out my underwear and looked at it. Because it's just one of those life things that you don't really think about, or you've maybe wondered from time to time, but never thought enough to ask and then somebody comes along and asks that you just learned different things, and people talk about it. And just love these kind of asks,

Jessamyn 1:26:50 was there an answer? So it's about Josh, I don't know if you even understand this question. But like, I don't, I don't quite like nylon underwear, underwear. It's not made out of cotton. There's a little like, right in your crotch area, kind of cotton pad thing. Oh, okay. And it's an it's an it's just whatever. It's not like padding or like menstrual supplies or whatever. It's just a thing. So, but it's sewn into the underwear. And it's always sewn in on three, not four sides.

Cortex 1:27:20 Oh, so like one of one of the sides is just not there's no seam. There's no,

Jessamyn 1:27:24 there's no sewing. It's not attached. So you can hide something in there maybe. And I thought like maybe it was some old time remnant from like, you know, some weird, Arcane menstrual system that I did. And it was just a holdover. Like you don't use the thing anymore. But it used to be the they'd also sell a thing you could put in there when you get your period. But no.

Cortex 1:27:48 Nope, just just, it's easier and leads to less warping.

Jessamyn 1:27:54 Well, yeah, exactly. Because they're stretchy.

Cortex 1:27:57 Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, like multiple materials in all sorts of contexts are trouble when you attach them to each other. So why not underwear?

Jessamyn 1:28:07 Yeah. And so then if you go read the Quora answers, you just wind up hating? Never really the core answers, but they do give some answers that are useful. But it's like some dude being like,

Cortex 1:28:20 yeah, I just, I just, I just wish the answers. Underwear. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:28:24 I actually went back and flagged an old John MC. comment for me 10 years ago, in a thread about, I think breast reduction surgery. And John MC was like, Yeah, I kind of liked it the way they are. I'm flagging it anyhow, fucking.

Cortex 1:28:45 And I'm not I'm not gonna say flat out that I will never delete something from 10 years ago when gets flagged, but I'll be honest, I at that point, I'm sort of like an archivist motor like, well, you know, if, if we were fucking up 10 years ago, we already done fucked up, you

Jessamyn 1:28:59 know, somebody might enjoy reading it over in my town. So I think there's a good chance. So you know, I'm not sitting at home being mad and flat, I'm sure. See this.

Cortex 1:29:12 Let's see what else you got.

Jessamyn 1:29:14 Ah, there was this human relations, one that looked like it was gonna be weird, but actually wound up with a lot of good answers just the way I think Metafilter can do, which was user Dynamo oh five, who asks a lot of kind of relationship questions, but basically like, hey, if I put a date and I like someone, and I want to kind of fool around with them, like, What the hell do I do? And there's a lot of, you know, see, you know, somebody who's, who's maybe anxious and maybe, I mean, I don't know, I don't know a lot about this person. But you know, there was a lot of people who gave a lot of very caring very kind of genuine Ed Nice. Yeah. You know, like, like, these are the things you can do this is what's useful. If you're not sure if that kind of thing will work, maybe it won't, don't worry about it. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it's nice there is I thought people took a question that could have been kind of iffy and turned it into something that not because the question was iffy, but just because you would have gotten peanut gallery type answers, and actually gave considerate thoughtful responses. I thought that was nice.

barchan 1:30:29 Yeah. I've been following this particular person asks, as they've been asking them, and it's so great, where, you know, as you start doing that, sometimes you really start to care about them. And you really want everything to go well, and you just, you're cheering them on, I don't know how else to put it.

Jessamyn 1:30:50 Right. Right. You think they're asking the right questions, and you want things to go? Well, for them?

barchan 1:30:54 Yeah. And I think that has a lot to do with how this I think maybe other people are doing the same thing and how this went, you know, kind of fell out. So it was really nice.

Jessamyn 1:31:04 Yeah, as opposed to, which wasn't not nice. Um, but the one about the guy who was like, I drive for Uber, can I ask someone out? Who? There wasn't anything wrong with that question, but it did come from the sit? Well, I mean, it came from the same point of like, I have no idea. But like, I drive for Uber. I've had a good conversation with somebody, maybe I want to ask them out. How would that work? Yeah. And people were kind of like, don't, don't don't do this. But they were also most of them. Not all of them. I mean, there was a couple kind of answers that I felt to be roughly concerned. trollee like, I would feel so bad. And I'm like, well, that's not what they asked. So see, now I'm looking at the deeper to find this. Did you delete this?

Cortex 1:31:52 Does this still exist? I don't think we deleted it.

Jessamyn 1:31:56 They did add Uber tag for crease?

Cortex 1:31:59 Well, I don't know. Well, I mean, I don't know the question is not really about Uber anyway. And so you know, it's more about a thing that happens in the contract. This happens to be Uber Eats. Yeah, that's someone who has no great love for Uber. I don't really mind it not being tagged. I guess. It's checking that.

Jessamyn 1:32:17 So I can't find this, which is probably just fine. But but,

Cortex 1:32:21 you know, maybe he was a Lyft driver.

Jessamyn 1:32:24 Yeah, um, but the person came back at the end and was like, thanks. You know, I wasn't really sure. That's why I asked thanks for the unanimous responses ignored the people who were like, What about the children and manage to, you know, I think take away the right. The right what I felt like was the right answer. Yeah,

Cortex 1:32:44 yeah. No, that was I was kind of worried about that. There. It was because like, this is, this is an okay question to ask. But I am worried about the, the the caliber, like not in the sense of quality, but in like, you know, size of bullets of answers you're gonna get, because it seems like I kind of expected it to be pretty like, hell no sort of response. In general. That's what they got. But But ya know, I was really pleased to see that follow up, saying, Okay, actually, I hear you guys. Right.

Jessamyn 1:33:15 I was actually just wondering, instead of like, What the fuck is wrong with you, people from which I saw one of those and asked me to filter this month, I don't even remember where it was. But it was definitely one of those things where like, the user came back was like, Oh, by the way, how dare you all lead? Into bla bla bla bla. And I just,

Cortex 1:33:35 yeah,

Jessamyn 1:33:36 I mean, it happens.

Cortex 1:33:37 You ask your questions, you get your answers. Yeah, I

Jessamyn 1:33:40 asked a question. And I got some weird answers. And there was fine. You know, happens. I complain to you about it over email. Now. I feel much better.

Cortex 1:33:48 Yeah, it's good system. Do you guys have any other AskMe Metafilter stuff you want? Or should we do some?

Jessamyn 1:33:57 I think that's it. Let's talk about this. You do it? How thread and whatever else you want to talk about?

Cortex 1:34:02 Yes. Yes. You do it how? This is what? A few days ago, right? This is just like from the third or something? Basically, yeah. How do people do shit that they argue about whether or not they want to do it?

Jessamyn 1:34:21 Molly was having a discussion with a friend about whether you use the top sheet or not. And she said there should be a page on the wiki about these things. That like it's not just like, Well, some people put the toilet paper over the top and some people put it over the bottom. It's like, some people do it some way some people do it the other way. Neither of those people really knows that the other person does it differently and like that there's a way to do it differently. And then they're horrified by that super fun for conversation, especially when they're not there when they don't have values assigned to it, you know? Yeah.

Cortex 1:34:52 Yeah. And I would say like the obvious references the standing versus sitting debate, which of course is mentioned in the post itself. When wiping that is, apparently some people stand. But yeah, no, it's yeah, it's just it's it's the perfect kind of like, it's a very meta filtery sort of thing to both argue about and share anecdotes on. So it's a great big fun thread full of stuff. But we were talking before we started recording about, I think a couple of your specific answers bargain. Oh, well,

Jessamyn 1:35:32 because now I know because I knew we were going to be talking you bargain. And so every time I would see you like in the thread talking about something, I'd be like, we're gonna talk about that. For showers. Yes. Favor?

barchan 1:35:46 Yeah. I'm a total after Panzer. Er, I've never really thought about that. There needs to be a term for that. But yeah, I can't I come in the house, I take out my pants or whatever I'm wearing. And unfortunately, sometimes I fail to take off my shoes. Where I do this. How do

Jessamyn 1:36:09 you even do that mechanically?

barchan 1:36:10 Well, because I tend to wear like TVs or real minimal issues a lot. So it just really caught my eye. And I don't wear tight pants. And I raise my shorts. So I just couldn't take it off. And it doesn't buy me and I don't notice and then my husband will come home or whatever. And I'll be sitting on the couch. Amazing. I'll still be wearing my sneakers and he'll get a bit of a kick out of it. That's excellent.

Jessamyn 1:36:40 Yes. See, I'm not an after pantser but it's mostly because I'm like a never get out of my pajamas person. Like, if I get home, I put on my pajamas. Usually if it's in the evening, and I don't leave. I mean, I'm in my pajamas right now. Like, I I like I don't get dressed unless I'm going out. Yeah, so I'm not sure if it's strictly after pants or something. Something worse,

Cortex 1:37:04 whatever got pants on, they stay on basically for the rest of the day. You know, maybe maybe if I like I take a shower in the evening, I'll switch into pajama pants. But usually it's like, you know, I put it off as long as I can. But then they're on and then it come off right before I slide into bed.

Jessamyn 1:37:18 Well then there are like morning after shower people which I'm surprised is not a debate, but I guess it's not a debate. Like morning, evening shower people. You know, pajamas, no pajamas, do vai versus top sheet. I started the wiki page. And then I don't know why anybody else didn't. Like the great thing about the wiki is wiki is that no one ever does

Cortex 1:37:45 at the attrition rate for getting as far as going over the wiki is just like yeah, that's the

Jessamyn 1:37:50 give them better talk thread is we should start a wiki page. And then someone's like, Okay, I totally did someone else a single other person in that thread, which is now how many comments?

Cortex 1:38:00 To be fair, to be fair, let me let me paint an analogy. Few people sitting around their friends, there may be musical people

Jessamyn 1:38:06 who want a comment, we should start

Cortex 1:38:08 a band. Yeah, should we start a band and you can end up having like an hour long conversation about what that band

Jessamyn 1:38:15 would be taping one character though? Well, here's

Cortex 1:38:18 the here's the thing, like you can get a lot of conversation about exactly what would it be involved in this band if you started and then you could still turn around and not actually even once get together and like rehearse, you know, and so it's interesting, it's easy to talk about it. Like editing the wiki page is like actually showing up to rehearsal you know, it's like it's it's not hard, but it's an effort. It's like it's the putting on pants part of the process to tie it back around. Yeah, is it I don't I'm running with it.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:48 But Dan memories depending on

Cortex 1:38:52 it's it's all about that narrative. There were several other just sort of nice fun threads on meta talk in the in the last month and I often feel like I just sort of avoid like digging in them at the top because I don't think Oh yeah, and this was a thing people are grumpy about but but positive stuff. There was a post on the morning of April 1 of BI c mc G. about it being National Poetry Month in the US in April and

Jessamyn 1:39:26 internet April 1 entirely. And so I missed this,

Cortex 1:39:30 ya know, it's funny, like, like, we were getting ready to post the Metafilter April Fool's post and I was like, well, there's no reason we shouldn't laugh so just put that through and I was a little worried someone who's like is this way this is a joke. How's the poem about my butt? brokenhearted but ya know, it's so if you if you want to read people's favorite bits, poetry and share your own boom, there is your throat for the month for the month. Basically, so yeah, it's kind of perfect. And in happy mefite News. P gern. Filled gern had to do quadruple bypass surgery

Jessamyn 1:40:12 is home from the hospital and yes, okay. Yes. Happy to hear that came

Cortex 1:40:16 through doing well,

barchan 1:40:18 that was so great because it was, it was almost a fight where he'd been gone long enough where you didn't know how long it takes to recover and come back from something like that. You don't know whether or not to be anxious. Yeah, everything's okay. I'm so happy to see

Cortex 1:40:31 that. Yeah. And I had been, I was not as anxious because I had been sort of in contact. I got a phone call from him. And I feel bad about this, Phil, just because it must have been such a frustrating situation. But I think I basically got a he gave me a call that like the day they pulled out his chest tubes or whatever. He's like, Okay, well, now you can use voice again, and he could not use. So we had a conversation that that had a lot of not conversation as he sort of like was like, I thought I'd be able to talk better. But so I got to hear from him basically right away, which was great because like, Hey, you're there. Excellent. But, but yeah, anyway, so he's, he's, he's well, and recovering. And that is awesome. There was a post about shoes. I don't care about shoes at all. Honestly, I've just never had like I wear a pair of shoes until they fall off. So I can't really get excited about this read but I'm excited

Jessamyn 1:41:25 as far as the asked and answered three comments in and did not go back and look at it

Cortex 1:41:32 as 40 Something comments. So get your shoe talk. If you're like

Jessamyn 1:41:39 I can't wear any of those funny little flat shoes. They're not shoe enough for me. Yeah,

Cortex 1:41:43 you need you need some structure. You need some infrastructure. Yes. It's a it's a dirt road and you need a you need a raised bypass. I don't know. If you need a cloverleaf I I'm not pulling up in a good road building terms.

Jessamyn 1:42:02 Look at some of these flats. How are those $135

barchan 1:42:08 so I don't get about a lot of those are like are they made of like, some kind of odd leather that you can only get in the Alps? If something why are they that much? Just some fabric and a soul? Yeah,

Cortex 1:42:23 it's a mystery. Yeah, beyond my kin. In other clothing news, the wealth posted show us your Sunday best post on Easter.

Jessamyn 1:42:34 I enjoyed this thread very much. I was around for Easter.

Cortex 1:42:38 Yes, it was. It was a it was a nice time. It's a nice mix of people actually talking about like occasionally showing off nice easter outfits. A lot of people talking about you know how they're wearing, you know, dirty underwear and socks.

Jessamyn 1:42:51 Somebody really say dirty pics. just projecting worse.

Cortex 1:42:57 I'm playing. I'm playing. I'm playing fast and loose with the truth today. Apparently I'm just I'm prevarication. confabulating

barchan 1:43:05 I have to say the welke put more effort and thoughts into his Easter outfit than I've put into my outfits my entire life.

Jessamyn 1:43:14 My entire wardrobe. Yes.

barchan 1:43:17 And and I'm so impressed by that. I don't get it. But I'm really impressed. I admire it.

Jessamyn 1:43:24 His mid century gay villain look. That's what he called it.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:33 He likes dashing and dapper

Jessamyn 1:43:35 he is a well put together man.

barchan 1:43:38 And you know how much you know, one of the things I admire about that is you know that, that must take a lot of energy and skill. And it's just awesome.

Jessamyn 1:43:50 Yes, I do admire it from afar is one of those traits I like entirely

barchan 1:43:54 Yes. Yep. I've no idea how you would even approach thinking about an outfit like that.

Cortex 1:44:02 I guess an investment of of time and effort and developing a skill set, you know, over a period of years. Sorry.

barchan 1:44:08 Yeah, no, exactly. That's

Cortex 1:44:13 Carnegie Hall. In lieu of a actual medical term Music Minute this episode because I've just been that disorganized. I'm just gonna say yay, greenish put out another episode of her music podcast.

Jessamyn 1:44:28 She's so talented.

Cortex 1:44:29 She is awesome. And she collected a bunch of good songs and

Jessamyn 1:44:34 put gems on it Donald Trump yeah, that's all pig so sweet of her.

Cortex 1:44:38 Yep. So So yeah, by proxy, go go read that post and listen to her podcast and boom, it's like I did a job without having to do it. It's great.

Jessamyn 1:44:48 So yeah, yeah, comment in the thread because it closed Yeah, too

Cortex 1:44:51 late. Sorry. But you can comment and all the individual music threads themselves, because they'll stay open forever. Read Jim

Jessamyn 1:44:59 has been collaborate Wait a long since emailing stuff back and forth doing music collaborating, Jim's been real stoked about it. That's awesome. That's super Yes. Yeah, it's been cool.

Cortex 1:45:09 But, uh, but yeah, I think oh, I guess I could link to the actual April Fool's thread too, that we did. That went well, right? Yeah, no one ever really well, it was nice I was,

Jessamyn 1:45:18 you want to explain it for the people who may have just staying away afraid.

Cortex 1:45:23 So so what we did this year is we came up with a way to do some server side processing of comments to improve them by doing some somewhat overzealous autocorrect type maneuvers. So, you know, changing one version of it's for another or there, there and there and so on. Found a bunch of like, little standard like common spelling and typo peeves, and also word mistakes, and create a system that would introduce those two comments. And so PB got it coded up to basically take whatever you actually wrote and then kind of suck it up a little bit. Or a lot depending on what setting what spell force you assign. Yeah, you could, you could choose between relative levels like semantic breeze if you just want a little bit or lexical Gale, if you want a more robust spell force or orthography typhoon if you're really really serious about your

Jessamyn 1:46:23 I never got to the preferences. Yeah. No, because I was I was not really around. So I saw that thing. I made a comment. I followed it along. But yeah, I never got to the perfect Yeah. Oh, what a delight.

Cortex 1:46:38 It's a bit you know, I took I took the great big pile of text approach to it, which on the one hand, I enjoy, like writing up the copy for the Tumblr blog for the the horrible douchey company that we invented. You know, I liked writing up the didn't see that straight face to metal talk text itself. But it's one of the things where it's like it's it's a pretty dry joke. And then, and then people more or less God is like, oh, it's fucking perverts. All right, good again.

Cortex 1:47:09 Yeah, we've got we've got two guests. It's awesome. Dogs. Dogs are dogs, but ya know, whatever. Well, people seem to enjoy it. They seem to get the basic idea. And so yeah, I was happy with that came out. No, PB was a champion, getting it all wrangled. And yeah, monster mittened did a whole bunch of wrangling of the actual vocabulary word lists in conjunction with them. And then we all kind of brainstormed a bit on that. So it was nice. It was fun. It was a good April Fool's.

barchan 1:47:32 Yeah, my husband sent that link to me when it first popped up and said, is critics making fun of you? Because as I said, it's terrible. I have such terrible grammar errors and misspellings and my comments and sometimes they like keep me awake at night. Like no, I think it's this April Fool's fight. Yeah, he is. He's he's more of a lurker. Okay. So he doesn't really comment very often, but we he's on it just as much as I so excellent. Yeah.

Cortex 1:48:08 Yeah, no, I was absolutely as much as anything I was making fun of I was making fun of myself because I actually fuck up. It's a lot. I was slightly trying to drive Jessamyn crazy because she she cares a little bit although New, relaxed, Jasmine cares less. I was definitely going after people who are overly pedantic, which I often am to about like peeves and stuff. Because like that anything Yeah. And then just sort of just celebrating the goofy, like, like, the main thing is like, I like April Fool's jokes, where there's something you can play with, you know, I feel like the ones that have gone over best on metadata over the years are things like that, like the interactive, literary AskMe Metafilter thing we did a few years ago was great, because people could actually go in and like do play along. And that's so much better than saying, hey, guess what, I made up a terrible lie that either you'll be super disappointed to find out isn't true, or you'll be sort of angry ly relieved to find out isn't true. Like those were the words like,

Jessamyn 1:49:07 well, it was a Friday. So Friday is a lot of times your wind kind of dips and out stuff that they kind of want to bury for the weekend. Any regardless of the date. So I just spend the whole day confused at everything. Yeah. Trying to be like, Is this a real? I mean, like, some of the stuff was clearly not real, like Gmail and their idiot Mike drop idiots. Those dicks. Yep. But some of it, I just wasn't sure. And I was like, Whatever, I'll wake up on the, you know, the third. And if it's still there, I'll assume it's a real thing. See, I

Cortex 1:49:36 had the opposite problem. Like, I had no difficulty with stuff I ran into on the day. You know, I kind of avoided a fair amount of stuff, but still, I saw obvious jokes and whatever. But it's like the next couple of days of people who were slow to like repost stuff on Facebook, where it's like on the third so I was like, Oh, check out this is like, really? Motherfucker. Right? April Fool's hangover. And

barchan 1:50:01 I was one of the people who got caught with that stupid Google mic thing because I saw it come up and it came up for me the night before me too. Oh, stupid girl and a fucking April Fool's. And I forgot about it. Do Yeah. And then I forgot about my muscle memory. Yep. Click Send an archive. And I was like, sick fuck. What did I just do? And I couldn't find it again. I'm so picky.

Jessamyn 1:50:26 Once you archive it, a new message won't drag it back. And so Josh, we almost didn't schedule this podcast. I'm like, That's not like Josh did ever write me back. Oh, tons did and it's responses archived. Oh,

Cortex 1:50:41 that is amazing. I was unaffected by that, thankfully. But oh, yeah. Well, I think I think we should wrap up because we're closing right in on two hours here. Great. So thank you, again, so much. BarCamp for thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:58 flubbed it, thank you so much.

Cortex 1:51:04 And I didn't even I didn't even force us to talk about dune anymore. Or photography.

Jessamyn 1:51:10 Or that net hat game you like so much?

Cortex 1:51:13 Well, I Yeah, but Barkhad isn't the name of a roguelike or

Jessamyn 1:51:17 what is bark in the name of

Cortex 1:51:18 It's a type of Dune. It's a type of

Jessamyn 1:51:22 type of Dune even mean

Cortex 1:51:29 dudes are formed by interactions of like when

barchan 1:51:34 ya know, bark, bark con dunes are kind of doing you get starting some bark, dance and parabolic dunes. So,

Cortex 1:51:45 let's get enough Barchan dunes together and you end up like a transverse dune.

Jessamyn 1:51:50 Dune or like in the world of

Cortex 1:51:52 the world of CNN, oh my god.

Jessamyn 1:51:55 Talking about the book. I was

Cortex 1:51:57 I was for once making an effort not to I was I was showing some restraint and this is what I get. Next. Next Next episode, we're just talking nonstop about Frank courage. I tried.

Jessamyn 1:52:08 I just tuned you out. It was like blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, All right, I'll check my email or something.

Cortex 1:52:13 All right, well, yes. Well, thank you again, bargain for joining us. Thanks, everybody for tuning in.

Jessamyn 1:52:23 As always. To be