Podcast 120 Transcript

jessamyn: (sigh) Poor nerds, it's so hard for them.

cortex: It's hard out there for a nerd.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: (laughs) Let's do a podcast!

jessamyn: That's pretty much what we should call this.

SFX: theme song

cortex: I was all in the podcast preparedness mode yesterday - I saw… yes, your tab saving was a good thing. I gave up on trying to get tabs, like, actually [lit?] up for anything other than music, that's something I really need to pre-prepare, but as a result, I'm just stalling because I have to remind myself again what the episode number is, so…

jessamyn: Oh, it's 120! And I know- so for those who aren't privy to Josh's and my inner workings. We had to push the podcast back a day because Josh's internet mysteriously went out five minutes before we were supposed to record…

cortex: It was amazing.

jessamyn: There was a whole bunch of "but I've got all my tabs!" and, you know…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: well, what can we… you know, whatever. And so you know I figured out how to save some tabs, and Josh got a new [truck roll?] internet modem this morning and now I'm over prepared, if such a thing is possible.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: And you're still catching up on a day's worth of tweets that you missed.

cortex: Yup. It's tricky. And that was after being in the woods for like nine days. Like, the previous week and being on the internet but only as much…

jessamyn: Because you were in Maine, right, while I was in London?

cortex: I guess I should formally say hello and welcome to the Metafilter Podcast.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: It's episode 120, I'm Josh Millard, a.k.a. cortex…

jessamyn: And I'm jessamyn.

cortex: And yes, we were both traveling, we were both travelling, we've both been dutifully distracted even more than usual for podcast preparation purposes.

jessamyn: Yeah, Josh was away, I was away, it's August, my birthday was two days ago, which was the reason we didn't do this kind of earlier, I had a house full of people…

cortex: Yeah, it's been…

jessamyn: not Mefites for once, which is unusual.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I mean Jim was there, but everyone else was like college friends.

cortex: Nice! Happy birthday, by the way.

jessamyn: Oh, thank you very much. Well, here's the great thing, right? Now I'm forty-eight, which is one of those good numbers, right, it's like two times two times two times three.

cortex: Yeah, it's a real solid one.

jessamyn: Yeah! There's a whole bunch going on with that number. And, one-twenty is also a number that also has a lot going on.

cortex: Oh yeah- one-twenty's a factorial, man!

jessamyn: It is a factorial, it's a twin prime sum, and here's the thing that was most interesting - I mean, you can go read the Wikipedia page and it's actually pretty interesting, but one of the things that I learned was that in Old English, Old Germanic, one hundred and twenty, because it was six score, used to be called a long hundred.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: So when you would just say "hundred", back in, you know, back in the day, when was this? In the fifteenth century, a "hundred" was really one hundred and twenty, because it was six score, right, because we weren't quite as plugged into decimal, I guess.

cortex: Right.

jessamyn: Or, people would call it twelfty.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: That's the truth!

cortex: (more laughing)

jessamyn: I know, right? It's delightful!

cortex: I like how this is, this sounds crazy to me, but somehow the word hundred has some sort of innate meaning that clearly means "one hundred", and you can just hear it in the name: "hundred". Clearly that has a very specific meaning.

jessamyn: A hundred, one hundred, yeah!

cortex: It's like an absurd word, but twelfty! Omigosh! You gotta be shitting me.

jessamyn: Right!

cortex: I love language.

jessamyn: So that's kind of interesting. So it's like "one hundred and twenty, formerly known as a hundred! (laughs)

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: So it was fun to read about. And it's one of those atomic numbers that goes to an element they haven't discovered yet. So that's always awesome.

cortex: Oh, yeah yeah yeah. One of the placeholders.

jessamyn: Where they're like "we know it's out there, but we can't figure it out."

cortex: Our understanding of physics suggests it must exist, but who knows where it is?

jessamyn: Right! Also, basketball hoop.

cortex: Basketball hoop?

jessamyn: That's how many inches high it is.

cortex: Eeehh- ten feet!

jessamyn: I mean, it's ten feet, right, but like

cortex: There you go.

jessamyn: I didn't know. I don't pay that much attention to basketball. Although I did watch some Olympic basketball. You do any Olympic stuff?

cortex: I did! I watched a bunch of stuff early on and then sort of tailed off because I got busy with other things, but I spent the first three or four days like just kind of with a window open while I was working the whole time, and following along on the Fanfare

jessamyn: I don't get why professional basketball players get to play in the Olympics.

cortex: It's… it's kind of weird. I don't know. Like it's one of those things where I don't want to be, "Well,

jessamyn: Is it because there's no such thing as an amateur basketball player? kind of, because of how basketball works?

cortex: Maybe? I mean, that was… well that was a big thing, like I remember that was like, getting rid of the hardline stance on amateur status in the Olympics, that's a thing in our lifetime. It was a big change, right?

jessamyn: Well, and it's only for some sports, though, right?

cortex: I don't know, I never followed it that closely. (crosstalk)

jessamyn: Like I think a lot of other people, oh, this is one of those things where you and I flail about and somebody shows up in the thread and is

cortex: (crosstalk)

jessamyn: like "You dinguses,

cortex: Someone please do!

jessamyn: The answer is exactly this."

cortex: Well, you know, I think it happened when I was basically a kid, and so I was sort of aware of it, but I had to ask questions about what the hell any of it even meant. So I didn't really exactly, you know, go reading deep on it at the time, I don't think.

jessamyn: Well I feel like somebody explains it to me every year and then I forget.

cortex: Yeah. (pause) But, yeah, no, it's neat. Long hundred. I like that. That's similar…

jessamyn: Yeah!

cortex: it used to be, a foot used to be twelve inches instead of ten, so so now we call a foot ten inches and we won't talk about the long one instead. It's a big foot. So when people are having trouble finding Bigfoot, it's because it's obsolete.

jessamyn: A foot is twelve inches.

cortex: I know, I'm just trying to I guess crash a future space shuttle or something.

jessamyn: Oh my god, Jim does this all the time!

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Where he sets up this elaborate joke in his mind.

cortex: If there ever was a better reason for putting air quotes around the word "joke" it's…

jessamyn: And I, and all I'm doing at the beginning of the sentence is being like, "That's not true!" And he's like "No, no, no, it's a setup…"

cortex: "Not true, I'm lying!"

jessamyn: I'm like "Aah, I didn't even know you were in joke mode!"

cortex: Yeah, it's tricky.

jessamyn: And he's "you should always know!"

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Which is, you know, pretty… that's pretty accurate, I think.

cortex: One hundred and twenty, well, there's 120 Days of Sodom, that's something, I don't remember what…

jessamyn: I don't even know what that means. Although I just drove past Sodom Road today, there's a Sodom Road in my town.

cortex: Oh yeah?

jessamyn: Yeah! It's just the name of a road for some reason, and there's an angel shop on it, where you can buy, like, all, get your angel gear on.

cortex: There's a, there's a…

jessamyn: Which has got to be on purpose, but I don't totally understand it.

cortex: Yeah. There's a Sabbathday Road, in oh, somewhere in Maine. Somewhere near the, there's a Shaker Village. The last like, active Shaker Village, I guess, is in Maine. I'm probably telling you things that you're like, oh yeah, I live next door, but I…

jessamyn: I do know a little bit about the Shakers, but I thought that active Shaker Village was in New Hampshire, but either way, go on. Shakers are interesting.

cortex: The Internet told us Maine, so who knows. Anyway, there is apparently a Shaker Village and museum and whatnot in Maine somewhere, not too far from [Sebaga?] Lake because that's where we were, and they've got a Sabbathday Road near there, and this is, I took a lot of pictures of signs and made dumb tweets about them, on vacation, which I enjoyed a great deal.

jessamyn: Which I missed, because I was on vacation.

cortex: You gotta go back…

jessamyn: Plus I may not have unmuted you from the last time you went on a tear.

cortex: (laughs) I kept it a little more in check this time.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: One or two funny signs a day. But I wanted to take a picture of the Sabbathday Road sign and post a tweet that said, you know… ah, shit… "Go Shorty, it's…" then a picture of Sabbathday, but, uh…

jessamyn: Ohmigod, that's a reach.

cortex: I know, isn't it? And that may be why I didn't do it- I don't remember exactly. Probably I just

jessamyn: Heh!

cortex: got distracted. I think I asked Angela to take a picture of it, the sign over my shoulder because I was driving at the time so…

jessamyn: So this was like a family, you flew across the country and then it was like you and your family, or you and your friends, or

cortex: Mainly

jessamyn: just the family you like, or…

cortex: Sort of… a mix of things. My little brother, his wife's family is in Massachusetts, and they have I think for years and years done this summer camping trip up to [Sebago?] Lake.

jessamyn: Uhuh.

cortex: They just go for like a week or so, and technically at least four people involved are Mefites, so, including my friend Joel, who was the guy who signed up the prank duclod guy.

jessamyn: I met Joel!

cortex: account back in the… so yeah- so, yeah!

jessamyn: Where do they live in Massachusetts?

cortex: Pfff- I don't remember.

jessamyn: Some town.

cortex: One of those Souths or Easts or [Hadley's?] or -tums, or -hams, you know.

jessamyn: (giggles)

cortex: Every… Massachusetts is a state full of procedurally generated town names, as far as I can tell.

jessamyn: Well, because England is a country full of procedurally generated town names,

cortex: Exactly.

jessamyn: I mean it was really disorienting for us because we went to so many towns, or passed through subway stops, tube stops or whatever, that had the same names as towns we knew.

cortex: Yeah. [Coming up on Needham?]

jessamyn: It's not just, "oh, they also have a Boston", or something,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: they also have an Acton, which is where I went to high school. because Lord Acton, and blah blee blah blah blee blah.

cortex: Yeah, everybody just named shit after people back in the Old Country.

jessamyn: So you flew into Maine…

cortex: Flew into Maine,

jessamyn: got a car?

cortex: yeah, got a car at the airport, drove out to [Sebago?] Lake, spent a week and change there, did some moderating from there, which they had decent data, this campsite, so I was able to…

jessamyn: Nice!

cortex: do it fairly seamlessly. But I was like, I was really making my battery last as much as possible. I took a couple of trips into town just to top off my laptop and my phone.

jessamyn: Oh, so it was…

cortex: I got a solar charger

jessamyn: really just no

cortex: No, this was like camping camping.

jessamyn: Wait wait wait. You didn't have one in your car? You couldn't just run the car battery?

cortex: Aaah, I didn't want to accidentally kill my rental car, and then have to get someone to jump me or tow me from a campsite, so I kept that to a minimum.

jessamyn: OK, fair.

cortex: We drove around now and then, so we did some of that, but nine days is a long time to try and pull that off. I got a solar charger…

jessamyn: You got a solar charger.

cortex: I got a solar charger for the phone, it worked OK. So that helped a lot.

jessamyn: Nice!

cortex: But uh, yeah, it was a good time. But there's a big gap in my internet, because any time I wasn't on the clock, I was like, OK, I gotta put this away and save that battery. So I've been sort of catching up ever since.

jessamyn: Well that was sort of me, too. Right? You get SIM cards, like Chris and Amelia were going to send us SIM cards, but they arrived the day after I left, so we got SIM cards from the airport, and I'm super cheap, so I never want to pay like thirty bucks for a week…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: worth of internet, so I always get not that much, like five hundred megabytes for a week, and I feel like it costs too much money, but then I wind up using like twenty megabytes, because every place we stay has wifi, or we're out on the moors and there's no internet at all…

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: and that was basically it. So also it was just my little phone's battery going like, grind, grind, grind, where's the internet?

cortex: But we should say, you were in London for a Metafilter wedding that you were officiating.

jessamyn: Well, here's the great thing, right! There's a Metatalk thread about this somewhere, and you can find the link, but basically, um, so (chrismear), longtime Metafilter user,

cortex: Yes!

jessamyn: and greenish, pretty longtime Metafilter user, maybe not exactly as long, but pretty close I could probably look this up, right?

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: People! (laughs)

cortex: Both goodbees, from the site.

jessamyn: Yeah! Basically when I first went to London, which was two years ago, we had a Metafilter meetup. Yeah, so Amelia's from 2008 on the site, and Chris is from 2001. We had a Metafilter meetup, like, "hey, meet and greet, jessamyn's in town, blah blah blah." So we went, had a meetup, and there was maybe ten people there, a couple people from the States, and Chris and Amelia were both there, and it turned out they had some stuff in common, like, you know, choral directing, you know, because they're both music people. That is in addition to being like huge internet nerds. And so they got along like a house on fire. And so then they, you know…

cortex: flfflh- I did not know that expression, that's amazing! (laughs)

jessamyn: What?

cortex: "Like a house on fire."

jessamyn: Really?

cortex: Yeah. no…

jessamyn: OH, man, I've been saying it

cortex: I don't know that one.

jessamyn: more and more, and I don't know where it came from, and I'm probably using it incorrectly. But, so I got this note from Amelia basically like, "Oh, hey, like, you know, we totally are getting along, and it's awesome, and next time you come to England, we'll take you out for a drink, thanks for introducing us." And I was like, "great!" So the next time I came back with my sister, we went out to dinner with them, and they were this schmoopy ridiculous couple, of course, which is awesome. And then later they were like, "hey, we're engaged, and we'd love to have you do the ceremony." And so unlike in Vermont, where I'm legal, and like usually I do the the legal part, and maybe people get like a fancy officiant to do something else, this was actually I did the ceremony part of it, and then I don't know what they did for sort of paperwork for the rest of it, but they got married - Amelia's from kind of Devon kind of like a little bit south and a little bit west of London, so you take the train for a couple of hours. And they got married out on the moors in Dartmoor, which is a big park there. And so like every single picture that people have put up on the internet, because it was kind of a cloudy day but it was raining in the morning, but then it got a little bit - like it is the most… English of

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: English things. Because they're like out on the moors, they've got great outfits, all their friends are snappy dressers, and then there's like me and my sister, ah, actually my sister had a beautiful dress too. I was just there looking like me. terrapin and turtlegirl were there, and, um, you know, basically it was it was, it was awesome! But it was in the middle of nowhere, and it was beautiful, and they had a great time, and we had a great time, and so we went to London, spent a couple of days there, and then went down there, spent a couple of days there, and came back out.

cortex: Nice!

jessamyn: I put the ceremony online if people want to

cortex: Oh excellent, yes.

jessamyn: People wanna… want to see it. Because it's funny, because I've known Chris since 2007 or 2008, so I could trace the knowing them part, which is usually part of what you put in the wedding ceremony, through all of my emails.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: So I, you know, broke one of the Metafilter cardinal rules, and was like "let me just read you from these kids' emails!", you know. (laughs)

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: They, I mean, I checked with them, they said it was OK. (laughs) And so now they are married. It was awesome. And they, they are Tucker Mears now.

cortex: Nice!

jessamyn: So, Chris Mear, Amelia Tucker. And apparently most people call Amelia Mia. And so everybody was like "She's going to be Mia Mear, that's awesome!"

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: She's like Mia Tucker Mear. Thank you.

cortex: (taps rhythm) It's got a good cadence.

jessamyn: There was this crazy cheese tower, and somebody made a cake… I don't even know if I have a picture of it online anywhere, that's like two little cats by a waterfall. Like it's this fondant masterpiece. And it's like the two of them as these… I don't know. I'll have to see if I can track it down, because it's the most beautiful thing. It was Mia's brother and his wife put together this incredible cake.

cortex: Nice! That's pretty awesome.

jessamyn: Yeah! So that's where I was.

cortex: [Congrats you kids?]

jessamyn: Mia and Mear photos. It's a secret group. Let me see if I can track it down. But…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: But, so, that's why this podcast is late, and will be covering…

cortex: Ah…

jessamyn: whatever the hell it is.

cortex: August 3rd through September 7th is today? Yes, today is the 7th.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: We're recording Wednesday September 7th.

jessamyn: Yeah, exactly.

cortex: There's a [lot of golf?] for a second. Um, yeah.

jessamyn: What was that? Golf announcer?

cortex: You know, when you get the very low steady description.

jessamyn: I used to fall asleep to that kind of stuff.

cortex: It's a good thing to fall asleep to. You've got a slow approach on the…

jessamyn: So here's an image from the Facebook thing. Just take a look at that and tell me that's not completely amazing.

cortex: Oh, wow. That's crazy.

jessamyn: And it's literally that. It's not like there's a big building behind us. There is nothing.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: You drive, park in a farmer's yard, and then you walk to the middle of the field where there's a rock, and everybody gathers around the rock. There was like a hundred people. It was super super cool.

cortex: That is pretty great.

jessamyn: Yeah. Yeah, pretty pleased. Happy with how it all went. I think they are too. Yeah, and Jim posted the Metatalk thread because he was basically at home kind of following along

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: at home. Oh, and everybody sang a Beach Boys song as part of the wedding ceremony.

cortex: Oh, nice, yeah!

jessamyn: Jim recorded that song for Metafilter Music.

cortex: I saw that, that'll be in my little roundup later.

jessamyn: Well all right!

cortex: All right!

jessamyn: All right! So.

cortex: Well, let's…

jessamyn: How was that? Now we're all home.

cortex: Yes. Now we're all home, and I have internet again, and we're recording a podcast, and Call Recorder won't fail.

jessamyn: I have internet.

cortex: I think I got the updated message now that I updated Call Recorder correctly. It now just warns me about recording videos, so I see what you were seeing too. The previous message was much more terse, and seemed to be saying "hey, maybe I'll just shit the bed. Maybe I just won't record."

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: I was like, "Aaah!"

jessamyn: How would you feel? How would you feel about that?

cortex: Yes. Assuming that doesn't happen, people can listen to us talking about that hopefully not happening. This is good,

jessamyn: Great!

cortex: I feel good about this. Let's talk about

jessamyn: Let me make sure my Call Recorder is actually recording now

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: that we've been talking for twenty minutes. Yes, it actually is, also I'm jetlagged too. You unjetlagged? Were you jetlagged?

cortex: I was a little bit, I mean, I was, you know, getting up earlier there, because it's camping, like I wasn't getting up early at the campground exactly, because I didn't need to for my work shifts.

jessamyn: But if you get up at seven at the campground it's four in the morning your time.

cortex: Exactly. You know, and it's camp and

jessamyn: Early even for you.

cortex: sun comes up, so you're not really going to sleep in. Or at least I'm not, I know some people who can like

jessamyn: You gotta have a hat, and you pull it over your eyes. That's the secret.

cortex: That could work, that could work. Plus all the children in the campground need to not be screaming. There's a lot of, like, you know, eight, nine, ten year olds having a good time there, which, you know, I'm there, it's camping…

jessamyn: Can't even imagine.

cortex: It's what you do, but yeah.

jessamyn: I mean, we had a one night, like child-nado, that's when all my friends from college come here, with all their kids, and the kids basically wreck the house for thirty six hours, and then everybody goes home.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: So there's one night where I go to bed late and then wake up to the dulcet tones of children childrening. And one night a year is about my limit, so… I mean, I love these kids, I couldn't love these kids more, but I love sleep. A lot.

cortex: Yep, sleep's pretty good.

jessamyn: So. Yeah, yeah.

cortex: Lack of sleep and children is pretty good. Alright, let's…

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: let's talk about Projects.

jessamyn: Yeah, OK, let me find my Projects tabs, because all the, all the, um, all the fricking fave icons are still roughly like different shades of green?

cortex: Oh, for Metafilter?

jessamyn: I feel like they are.

cortex: I feel like if we really wanted to differentiate them we could blow out the contrast to make it like not faithful to the other color scheme.

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: Like Projects doesn't have to look a whole lot different from the Blue or the Green,

jessamyn: Which is what most of my tabs are.

cortex: Yeah, so.

jessamyn: Well, wait, was there anything in Jobs?

cortex: Oh, Jobs. Poor forgettable Jobs.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: This could have been the podcast where we just let it slide on by. Uh…

jessamyn: Oh! My screen is wide enough that I see six Africas.

cortex: If you're looking for a position as an administrative assistant to an accounting practice in Quebec,

jessamyn: No, it's a remote position!

cortex: Oh, is it? OK.

jessamyn: Pretty awesome!

cortex: Oh, right, it says it right there. Oh, I didn't look and it, oh, no, didn't literally read the words written on the page. Uh, so yeah, there you go. There's your jobs update. (laughs)

jessamyn: Well, and there's somebody who wants help, just doing some contracting to set up an index exhibit site. Which I don't totally know what it is, but somebody who has an etsy site and they just want somebody to help them.

cortex: And if you're someone who knows what that is, boom.

jessamyn: Get it indexed so you can find it on Google.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Ah, user hellomina, who I think makes watch straps? Not sure. I assume, based on their thing. But yeah. Not a lot of jobs! People, post your jobs!

SFX: (music)

cortex: All right, now let's talk about Projects.

jessamyn: All right, well, Projects. You know, I feel like nobody did anything in August. Like, there's a lot of really good Projects, but Projects seems like it has fewer things than most other months.

cortex: It's felt like a quiet month in general. I think everybody is taking vacation, or wishing they could take vacations…

jessamyn: Just too hot to do anything.

cortex: Yeah, or following the election and drinking. You know, so maybe it's not like the big creative month. But there was still a bunch of stuff I liked. I liked…

jessamyn: Yeah!

cortex: the futile fonts, by scruss. Based on an LED display, based on Commodore 64's pen plotter, which I think is pretty great on both fronts. I like the look of them. Definitely getting your 80s computer font feeling going.

jessamyn: (gasps) Wow! Those are something special!

cortex: Yeah, they're nice.

jessamyn: Wow, that's really great! That's cool.

cortex: I like the

jessamyn: [The way it goes?]

cortex: plotter one in particular for being in that… like plotters, plotters are weird, you know? They- did you ever really use a plotter for anything?

jessamyn: Nah! I mean I know what a plotter is, but no.

cortex: Yeah. I took an architecture class at one point in, well, drafting class, in high school, and we

jessamyn: I took drafting in high school, and we didn't have plotters. What?

cortex: I dunno!

jessamyn: Eh.

cortex: We had a plotter, and a couple of CAD workstations, and I basically spent my days

jessamyn: Oh, that's right, you're younger than me. We just like drew things.

cortex: Yeah,

jessamyn: With pencils.

cortex: Well, that's mostly what we did too. We got a demo of the plotter just to shoot- show how it works, but it's like "OK, now go, go sit down and do your fucking drafting."

jessamyn: Yeah, "here's your triangle."

cortex: Exactly. I just… I got my work done quickly so I could play with the AutoCAD machine.

jessamyn: Of course you did. (laughs)

cortex: Then I found out we didn't have a math coprocessor, and that's why the rendering took so darned long. Oh, it's unfair. But I dunno, a plotter is like, it's got the same sort of weird sort of… this was a technology that didn't win, sort of feeling, as vector graphics displays. You know, with the whole draw a line

jessamyn: Right, Asteroids!

cortex: from here to there

jessamyn: Tempest!

cortex: Yeah, exactly! I love the look of those partly because it's something that came and went, you know, and rasterized displays just make more sense, so that's what we're doing. A plotter is kind of the same thing, right? I'm sure there are still people who use plotters, and maybe there's things that plotters are exceptional for, and whatever, but at the same time, printers just kind of got good.

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: It's not like the dot matrix printer with this form feed coordinate paper vs. this crisp-ass plotter. Now it's like "oh, geez, I guess we need to maintain the plotter." So yeah. So a plotter font is like, that's just hitting something just right for me. I dunno. Good work, scruss. I like those fonts.

jessamyn: Yeah! I'm reading about contemporary use of pen plotters. "Even thirty year old pen plotters typically still function reliably and many are available for less than one hundred bucks on auction and resale websites." Huh. Neat! Alright, the thing I liked was… (extended thinking sounds) billanon… I feel like I knew how to pronounce his name at one point, bil-anon? Ohhh, bil-a-non… At any rate, we bonded early on because we were both at the MIT Puzzle Hunt back in the day, when I was still puzzle hunting.

cortex: Nice.

jessamyn: Before I stopped puzzle hunting, which was two years before my team won the Puzzle Hunt! But he and his friends made a real life Puzzle Hunt, and they ran it in July, but now you can play it, if you want to. So it just looks like it's neat. I haven't even started digging around in it because I was afraid if I started then I would never do any of the rest of my work, but I just think that's really nifty, and it's also just cool that they put the whole thing together, and I just thought it was neat. I mean if you look at the work they did to put it together it's super, you know, there's all this branded stuff, you know, they have all these signs, everything. It just looks really cool, and so I kind of loved the event as well as the fact that, you know, there's a puzzle available. So.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: It just looked like super neat nerd fun and it made me happy.

cortex: Check this out - on aubilenon's profile page - this is something I didn't know

jessamyn: Does he still have that barfing pumpkin?

cortex: He's got a smiling pumpkin at the moment.

jessamyn: Uhhoow, OK.

cortex: But he's got two twitter feeds. I didn't even know we would even let you do - he's also got for on two different twitter feeds, and he's got two twitter widgets in there.

jessamyn: What do you mean you didn't know?

cortex: I didn't remember

jessamyn: What do you mean you didn't know?

cortex: I thought we did a… I thought we did a one to one on social media stuff.

jessamyn: No! I though that after we added tumblr you could have more than one.

cortex: Ohhh, maybe that's why. OK, that would explain it.

jessamyn: Back in the day. Also I did not know that he ran the Facts about Eggs

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: uh… Oh, and here's a crazy thing. The first person he retweeted is somebody I went to college with.

cortex: Huh.

jessamyn: That's crazy. How do they know each other? They don't know each other.

cortex: It's

jessamyn: Apparently all the people… everyone else he follows is somebody from Metafilter, but he retweeted the guy I went to college with.

cortex: That's bizarre.

jessamyn: Who I don't even follow on twitter. How? How? HOW?

cortex: (slurps)

jessamyn: How.

cortex: Howie Mandel?

jessamyn: You're there with your tea, ain't ya?

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: I heard ya.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I heard ya!

cortex: I…

jessamyn: Slurpin'!

cortex: I have three beverages. I have some tea, I have some water, and I have some like ruby grapefruit seltzer or something.

jessamyn: Ohh. Is it, is it, is it, um La Croix? (pron: /kra/)

cortex: No, this is much more flavorful.

jessamyn: We've started drinking La Croix, and somebody told me it was fancy.

cortex: Eeehh…

jessamyn: I mean, not fancy, but whatever kids today call things.

cortex: Whatever.

jessamyn: No no no, I'm the other demographic. Middle aged lady.

cortex: Yeah, it's seltzer water, you know? It's a brand of seltzer water.

jessamyn: It's got flavors.

cortex: that's reasonably available. So, we buy

jessamyn: It's got flavors!

cortex: Yeah, and that mild flavor, kind of super mild hint of flavor that was so disappointing to me as a kid, when I grew up on New York seltzer.

jessamyn: Oh, god, yeah yeah yeah!

cortex: I think we talked about it on a previous podcast, but in any case, yes, yeah. That was… I thought seltzer was just a funny name for clear soda, until I tried…

jessamyn: For crappy soda. (laughs)

cortex: actual seltzers. Yeah, it's like "oh, no, OK." Another project I liked, I'm going to go on this pen thing. It's a nice twofer with that pen plotter font, is elementarypenguin has been doing broad nib calligraphy for the last two years, and blogging about it.

jessamyn: Oh, that's great! I just saw lorem ibsum and was just like, "uugh, it's some kind of fonty blah." Oh, wow!

cortex: Nope!

jessamyn: That's lovely!

cortex: Yeah!

jessamyn: Awww.

cortex: No, they're doing a really nice job, that's some…

jessamyn: And,

cortex: that's some pretty sweet looking

jessamyn: Treaty of Westphalia! That is awesome.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Makes me smile. Wow! You know, when I was a kid, my mother did this. Like, she…

cortex: Calligraphy, or blogging?

jessamyn: (faint choking noise) Think it through, Josh.

cortex: (laughs) Please continue.

jessamyn: (sighs) That was like her hobby, you know? like, she would do this, and when I was in, like, early high school, I remembered that I could like have her like calligraphy up some Billy Joel quotation. To, you know, give it to some boyfriend or something like that.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: She was always willing to sorta do that stuff. But she got really good at it. And it's kind of, you know, it's the right, it's the right thing for exacting people. And, but, this is particularly amusing this blog because of course there's a lot of you know, there's elementarypenguin's name done in black nib, in wide nib calligraphy. Or, like, there's the "Don't @ Me". Or there's the actual words "Lorem ibsum". Oh, this is lovely, that's really cool.

cortex: Yeah, it's cool stuff.

jessamyn: I like that a lot.

cortex: Calligraphy's one of those things where I think I should try and learn that, but think "oh, but the whole process is just like really really really really practicing", which I'm terrible at, so, uh, it may never happen.

jessamyn: Yeah, it's like me and ukulele.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I just wanna play ukulele but I don't want to learn ukulele.

cortex: Yeah. Slows down the learning process.

jessamyn: It's the gifted child problem.

cortex: I want to have learned to have done.

jessamyn: Yeah. You know, the chip, the chip, the chip, the chip, I want the chip. Ukulele chip.

cortex: (drinks) Yep.

jessamyn: Alright, so, I loved voletta's giant website about Handspan Theatre Company. It was like a big deal, that did a whole bunch of like puppet stuff and, in Australia, and there's basically a big lovely website about, you know, twenty five years of this theatre, and it's just beautiful.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I really feel like there are (sighs)… you know, I don't want to be Old Man Yells At Cloud here, but

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I didn't (laughs)… I really do feel like there's value in just websites that track things and just have lots of content and stuff to look at and read. You know, like it's not an app, it doesn't do anything, it's not blabbity blah, it's not a single serving website that tells you if Trump's fingers are any bigger, it's just a beautiful history of a thing that these people cared tremendously about, and it just looks awesome. So…

cortex: Yeah, it's really nicely done. There's a tremendous- there's like information about every big and small production they've done, the whole, like, you know, (tapping sound) history of everybody involved in the company, it's… yeah. it's…

jessamyn: Yeah, and I just think it's the coolest, and I love that people are still doing this kind of stuff, and I especially love it when they do it well, and this made me happy, and did not get a lot of comments, for whatever crazy reason, but xingcat, who we mentioned last month because he did the long hair

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: video blog thing, is like, "Hey! I'm a late in life puppeteer, and this is awesome!" I mean, I think we have like a little handful of puppeteers - I know ocherdraco did puppeteering stuff for a while, gregnog certainly does with Little Friendies, you know, I feel like we need a puppet, a puppet themed subgroup!

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: and anyhow, I love this. So. It's great.

cortex: Marionettafilter.

jessamyn: Wha-wha?

cortex: Marionettafilter.

jessamyn: What?

cortex: (slower) Marionetta filter?

jessamyn: Who?

cortex: Mar… me… see, it's… I'm taking the word "marionette", and then I'm attaching "filter", like "Metafilter"? So it's like Marionettafilter.

jessamyn: I was like, who's Marion?

cortex: It's like… it's like a portmanteau. It's like I took Natalie Portman, and added a toe…

jessamyn: Or a palimpsest.

cortex: Portmanteau.

jessamyn: So angry at you.

cortex: (laughs) Anyway! Nice work there.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: That was… that was a good one. I like ignignokt's latest bot, "demakebot". I've got… I actually have complicated feelings - I like it partly for how it like both does and doesn't work for me.

jessamyn: Uhuh.

cortex: Like it basically does super like low pixel versions of images, and the thing is…

jessamyn: It takes an image and turns it- it's like that thing where it's like, what is this… a picture of, and then when you stand back across the room, it's a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

cortex: Yeah, but applied just in general to a bunch of things shown at very, yeah, large resolution.

jessamyn: So how does this not work? It looks like it basically just works.

cortex: The way it- it doesn't consistently work for me, I feel like there are images for which it really works in an interesting way, and then images in which it just sort of looks like, well, it's pretty, uh, it's too low resolution of that picture.

jessamyn: Or like the whole thing is green, or whatever. Yeah, I'm scrolling through now and I think I see what you mean.

cortex: uh, like, like this one for example. I think this works well, I like this one. This is the briar tweet from the 6th of September. And you know, it's not clear what's going on here, but it looks like a nature scene, there's a path, it looks like human figures, and the human figures reduced to maybe like ten pixels each, and you know, in the context I'm saying, "oh, it looks like a guy in like, maybe a brown jacket, guy in a black shirt", and I like it because it's just so almost not there, and yet it's there, and that's sort of breaking down of the image into really, really limited components and still functioning.

jessamyn: Well, that's how I kind of feel about "Babbling", where if- the one from today, where if it didn't specifically say that, I would be looking at someone like "I don't even - ahhhh - uhh, you know - forest fire?" Like, I would have no idea, but as soon as there's that like one word of context,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: then I'm like "Oh, it's a brook, and those are trees, and I think that's the sun and yeah, you can bring your own stuff to it which I also like.

cortex: Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. Some I like better than others, but I like the… the algorithmic nature of it.

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: I think I like the especially simple ones that still work at some limited degree and you know, everything else is a little bit of a crapshoot for me. But

jessamyn: Right

cortex: I think that it's an interesting pile of stuff to look at. I enjoy the fact that it's generating these things as a process. So, that was cool, I liked it.

jessamyn: Cool! I think that was it for me in the projects that really kind of poked me, so do you have more?

cortex: I think I have one… oh, this was a really… really interesting one… OK, so this is from luckynerd, and it's called Kevin's Files. And…

jessamyn: Oh, I saw this and didn't click through to it.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I was a little bit afraid it would make me sad, so…

cortex: Well, it's interesting, you know, it's… it reminds me of dmd's punchlines with no setups thing, but, like, without

jessamyn: Right

cortex: the simple funny context, you know, it's, you know, luckynerd's husband died a couple years ago, and I…

jessamyn: And I remember that when it happened, I believe.

cortex: Yeah!

jessamyn: Yeah! I do remember it when it happened.

cortex: And so they've been going through it, and posting, you know, stuff from the hard drive. And it's really interesting, because on the one hand, like, you know, I mean, there's something fundamentally of course about death, he was like, the premise of his blog is, you know, someone died and… but at the same time, it's really interesting the way it's not like, "this isn't like, someone's dying words, this is just like someone's life in all its weird little, you know, random banal details, you know, as left on a computer. And so it's like the context makes it sort of interesting, but it's also interesting that that is a kind of context we have, now? I dunno, there's something so much more varied and casual about, like, the things left behind on a computer, I think, than

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: it would be if you find someone's personal effects either there's nothing there, or there's like, you know, a journal full of secrets or something, like, there's two ways you could go there, but we do so much stuff on the computer, and, like, if you use a computer for writing and note taking and casual stuff, you know, you get this whole broad mix of just stuff left there. So I think it's a really cool project that's a really nice and interesting thing to do as sort of… as a memoriam but maybe also as a project, you know? I can't say offhand, you know, precisely

cortex: how luckynerd feels about it, as a project,

jessamyn: Sure sure sure.

cortex: so yeah, I thought that was very cool, and a pretty interesting read, pretty interesting thing to sort of think about as a process, so.

jessamyn: Neat! Well, I'm glad you, you know, sent it up the flagpole so I could actually take a look at it without just being like, "Urrgh! Um, I'm a little nervous about this, so…"

cortex: (laughs) No, I think it's definitely worth checking out and, I think, safe to do so too. (laughs)

jessamyn: Thank you. Thank you.

SFX: (music)

cortex: Uh, so yeah, well, that's Projects, shall we move along to… The Big Blue?

jessamyn: Sure! Uh…

cortex: The Big White With Occasional Blue Highlights, as some of you like, like to see it?

jessamyn: As I said, I was gone for a lot of this month, but before I was gone, I did make my own post about bottles, which I enjoyed, and I don't even remember exactly why? Like normally, there's a reason, you know? Like, if I'm making a post on Metafilter, I'm probably like, I read a book, or I saw a thing, or maybe somebody said a thing, and, um, I don't think I mentioned this last month, because I think it was after the thing, but it was basically one of those nerdy… again, here's a guy who made a site with a ton of content and it's just all about old bottles.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: And I can't get inside my head to know - I think I was looking something up about something else and the guy was like, "Oh, well, bluhbluhbluhbluhbluh… bottles!" And I was like, "What?! That's a thing? Yeah! Look at this guy's crazy giant website of things." Oh, yeah! I found the site because I was looking at an article called "The Bewildering Array of Owens Illinois Glass Logos."

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: And then they popped up this website. But that was my contribution to Metafilter. I try to, you know, keep my hand in and put something up every month, if I remember. So, bottles.

cortex: Solid. That's solid Metafilter.

jessamyn: I thought so, I thought so.

cortex: I liked… I'm just going to throw this one out as just my post that I favorited because I wanted to come back to it at some point but I haven't actually dug in on it… uh…

jessamyn: This has the word "ontological" on it.

cortex: (laughs) Yes, this, this is the post [surrounded?] by the man of twists and turns on "Ontological Nihilism." (pron: ny-lism) /ˈnaɪəˌlɪz(ə)m/)

jessamyn: He does good stuff.

cortex: And I think this came

jessamyn: Nihilism? (pron: nee-il-ism /ˈnɪhᵻlɪz(ə)m/)

cortex: I think (/ˈnaɪəˌlɪz(ə)m/).

jessamyn: Are you serious? How can we pronounce every word differently?

cortex: I don't know! I feel like (/ˈnaɪəˌlɪz(ə)m/) is fair. Like, we annihilate things. We don't a-knee-hilate things.

jessamyn: No, but

cortex: Actually we do, but that's a different word, right?

jessamyn: You… you had… you may be actually right, I just, um, I'm just always surprised. I'm sorry, go on, please.

cortex: Anyway, it's about, uh… yes, it's, it's about… uh, theory of being that… takes the radical sounding thesis that there is nothing at all. You know, things, things do not exist. And there was a bunch of variations on what the definition of nothing is, what the definition of things is, whether nothing exists, or, everything exists as a single thing, etcetera. But, uh, but yeah. It… this came out of a Metatalk discussion somehow, I don't even remember exactly. It was like a hop and a skip, and someone made a joke about making a post about it, and then man of twists and turns…

jessamyn: And there we go!

cortex: Boom! And we got this big old… so yeah, if you're looking for nothing to read about, you know…

jessamyn: (exasperated) Oh my god…

cortex: that's about nothing, then, here you go. Last month I mentioned that weird Seinfeld script, this month it's ontological nihilism.

jessamyn: /ˈnɪhᵻlɪz(ə)m/.

cortex: (laughs) Is this…?

jessamyn: It's like you don't even care how words are pronounced!

cortex: I, I…

jessamyn: You're just obstinate.

cortex: I, I, I'm a… I'm a descriptivist in the most self serving way.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: I believe that language is however I use it.

jessamyn: "Meaning is use."

cortex: Yep. And use meaning.

jessamyn: That's Wittgenstein for ya.

cortex: Um… (laughs)

jessamyn: Well, and I also feel that you went to a technical college where you didn't just sit around and get high and talk with dorks about this kind of stuff all the time? Which I…

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: feel like I kinda did, and so every time I see it coming up again, I'm like "UGGH, it's like being in college!" But for you, it's totally not like that, it's probably fun to look at this stuff as an adult without having the baggage of having talked it

SFX: [missing audio?]

jessamyn: in college.

cortex: Yeah. Yep. For me, college was much more technical arguments about

jessamyn: Right, right, right.

cortex: I mean we did our fair bullshit philosophising, but none of use were big smokers, and it was mostly talking about computer stuff.

jessamyn: I mean, to be fair, I wasn't either, but everybody else was.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Which maybe was part of the problem, actually. (laughs)

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: "Oh god, you guys, I just wanna go to bed."

cortex: (Hell is) listening to other people while sober.

jessamyn: Yeah, yeah.

cortex: That's pretty much the worst.

jessamyn: So, a thing that I liked, which is sort of interesting, both in kind of what it is, and what it isn't, is digdoug's post about free printable USGS quads. So, essentially, it's you know, those big maps that the USGS used to make you pay for, but now are kind of available if you look for them on the internet, but these are basically, if I'm understanding this correctly, set up so you can print it on normal sized pieces of paper, like it breaks up into little… it's processed so it fits on a normal piece of paper.

cortex: Oh, nice.

jessamyn: So, like basically you can go to… I mean, this is one of my favorite kind of stories, right? It used to be that you would have to buy these things from the government, or people who would sell them to you, and it was super obnoxious. Then, people started a sort of crowd sourcing project, way back in the early days of crowd sourcing projects to basically… because the maps are public domain, but they would sell you the files, because of course it takes the government time and effort to make them, right?

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But so once the files are sold to you, you can just give them away if you want to, and so there was this "Free The Maps" project, and now all the maps live on the Internet Archive. You know, full disclosure, I sort of work there. But,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: (laughs) But they're kind of big and weird, and odd sizes, and whatnot, so this is basically National Geographic, uh, making them useful. Also with an interactive map so you can find them, which is itself kind of challenging. And then you can print them out on normal sized pieces of paper.

cortex: Yeah, that's pretty rad.

jessamyn: Bad… Ass!

cortex: That is pretty damn rad.

jessamyn: So the whole thing just makes me super happy, and it's another one of those threads that got a ton of favorites, and like, some comments.

cortex: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's one of those things where like, maybe some would have a… I have a super interesting anecdote about the production of quads, but, you know,

jessamyn: BUUT, probably not.

cortex: Hey, check it out, I love this thing, you know, and so you've got a certain number of people who say, "Hey, this is great, I like this", and a whole bunch of people are like "Favorite, checking it out later. Oh yeah!" So, (mumbles) it works. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

jessamyn: Yeah! So I was happy, this is the original website for the Free The Maps website from 2006, and I am excited, because I am the person who bought the Vermont maps,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: made them available to everyone.

cortex: Nice.

jessamyn: I thought so.

cortex: That's pretty great.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: Uh, I liked…

jessamyn: More from Metafilter?

cortex: Have you been watching

jessamyn: No.

cortex: Stranger Things at all?

jessamyn: No.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I knew Stranger Things was coming out of your mouth…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Unless it was going to be the other one, uh, the hiphop thing that everyone's watching on Netflix, and I'm not watching either one of them.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I've heard I should, but…

cortex: Stranger Things is fun. It's like eight episodes…

jessamyn: I'm, I'm…

cortex: It's a weird mix of, like, horror, (crosstalk)… eighties Spielberg…

jessamyn: I'm a little concerned… it seems like a whole bunch of upset children.

cortex: There's… I mean, I don't know, there's upset children at times, but…

jessamyn: But like, hhhh… (sighs) I dunno.

cortex: It's, it's charming, it's, it's, it's a nice bit of like period piece stuff-slash-horror-slash-you know, like eighties Spielberg-slash-oh hey, look, Matthew Modine's in it.

jessamyn: I do like him. A lot! I had like a terrible horrible crush on him

cortex: Oh yeah?

jessamyn: back in the Birdy days.

cortex: I always thought he was just goofy, but, uh…

jessamyn: He may be goofy.

cortex: I wasn't in the target demo. I dunno. I like think of him as oh, the guy from Full Metal Jacket. Uh, so,

jessamyn: Oh, really? I think of him as, he was in Birdy and he was in something else about that time, where he was actually somewhat handsome and interesting, I think. (background bird noises)

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Maybe not, though. I mean, I have questionable taste.

cortex: Well, I like… in Stranger Things, anyway, any question of whether you should watch it or not, etc, blahbluhblahbluhblah,

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: It's got a great title sequence. Super simple, slow zoom in on overlapping letter forms, while they're coming into alignment to spell out Stranger Things in sort of glowing neon, with this fantastic synth

jessamyn: OH WAIT A SECOND! Is that the thing that every damned person on the internet has been making fake…

cortex: That's…

jessamyn: Oh, thank god, Josh.

cortex: the thing that every damned person on the internet has been making things of, yes. So…

jessamyn: If you did not exist,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I would have to invent you to solve these problems for me. Oh, thank you.

cortex: There's your context. So that's the title sequence from…

jessamyn: Bam, context!

cortex: Stranger Things settles in over a [duly?] Synth thing to that thing, saying Stranger Things in a… basically that font. So that generator's not perfect, people get critical in the thread a little bit about the details that it doesn't quite get right, but not in a super grumpy way or anything, but mostly everybody's using the generator to make funny words.

jessamyn: He was in Hotel New Hampshire and Shortcuts, I think those were the two things I remember.

cortex: Ah. I don't remember either of those.

jessamyn: Oh, really? Shortcuts is very good.

cortex: I should see it sometime. I've heard of it. But, uh, I've seen Short Circuit, does that count? I've seen Short Circuit 2!

jessamyn: It totally counts.

cortex: It's basically the same thing, right? (laughs)

jessamyn: For all I know, yeah, sure. Sure it is! That's really cool, though. I mean, I've seen the generator, it's showed everywhere… somebody sent me an animated birthday card that was that thing, and I was like, "Ehh, thanks, I totally get this joke." And I totally did not get this joke, and now I do.

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: Sort of like when everybody was doing Too Many Cooks, you know?

cortex: Yeah! When I was… I was not right johnny on the spot with Stranger Things - I think I watched it, like, maybe a week or two after it came out. we started watching it. And so I ended up seeing…

jessamyn: Which was when, a month ago? When did it come out?

cortex: Um, a month and a half? I wanna say it was the beginning of August.

jessamyn: To me, it's one of those Pokemon Go things…

cortex: July?

jessamyn: when all of a sudden, everybody knows about it…

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: and I'm left being like, "What? Was I asleep for a time?"

cortex: Yeah. And it's one of those things where I saw like people started making jokes that were, it turns out, sort of spoilers, but I didn't have enough context to know?

jessamyn: (exhaling)

cortex: Where it's… something happens in episode three that's set up with a visual in episode one or two, and so…

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: you have no idea what's going on while you're just seeing the stuff on the internet with all Christmas lights and letters, and then I watched the first episode and I'm like, "Oh!" And the second episode, like "oh, fuck! That must be what's going on there." And…

jessamyn: Right! Because my attention…

cortex: …the third episode…

jessamyn: was directed towards it.

cortex: it actually happens. Yeah, now

jessamyn: Like, "pay careful attention to the sled!"

cortex: Exactly. (laughs)

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: If, if they just had a picture of the sled as the cover art for Citizen Kane. Ah, well. Uh…

jessamyn: Right! (laughs) Exactly. Well, man, this is just awesome. I learned so many things talking to you.

cortex: I'm an educational guy.

jessamyn: You're not, though,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: that's what's so great about it. Because some people really are, and they're like (deep voice) "Jessamyn, you really should blarblarblar." You know, like you have friends visiting, and they kind of lecture you on like, things, and like, you know, sometimes internet people are kind of lecture-y, and there's nothing kind of wrong…

cortex: Yeeeah.

jessamyn: with it really, but it's a little tiring.

cortex: Sort of pushy and didactic in kind of a way that not necessarily meant to be anything, but…

jessamyn: Yeah, you're like, "Don't assume I don't know anything."

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But you just, you know, just talk, and I learn things, but you're not like that, and so it's refreshing.

cortex: I try. A little bit.

jessamyn: (laughs) Not too hard!

cortex: Not too hard. I… that'd be overdoing it. I also enjoyed this strange thing- I just left a big comment in this thread about it, but someone (crosstalk)

jessamyn: Oh god!

cortex: mashup of … so the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders at some point did a lipsync routine to Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe.

jessamyn: One of the best songs of all time… pop songs in the last five years.

cortex: Great song, although have you listened to her new album, Emotion? It's … oh, so good.

jessamyn: No, I assumed … maybe I have? If it's on pop radio, I've heard it.

cortex: You've probably heard one or two things. It hasn't been hugely big.

jessamyn: Uhuh.

cortex: They did a… I Really Really Really Like You was the single they tried to push, like, well before the album came out last Spring.

jessamyn: Oh, I remember! I wasn't really into that song.

cortex: That's like my least favorite song off the album. The whole album

jessamyn: Wasn't she on Saturday Night Live doing that?

cortex: is really good.

jessamyn: I feel like that was the other song she did on Saturday Night Live.

cortex: Oh, she might have, yeah. I haven't seen a musical act on Saturday Night Live in a while. Anyway, Emotion's a great album.

jessamyn: That's right, I saw your comment in this thread. Who flagged it?

cortex: Someone [has?] flagged my comment… oh man! I dunno. They flagged it as Other,

jessamyn: Oh.

cortex: so I'm going to take that as just, like, in the spirit of the thing. Um, anyway, so Dolphins Cheerleaders do a lipsync, a choreographed lipsync of…

jessamyn: And there was like five thousand awesome choreographed lipsyncs to…

cortex: Oh yeah.

jessamyn: this song when it came out, and they were fun.

cortex: That song was huge, it was all over the place. But the cheerleaders did it, and then some dudes in the military did a knockoff of their specific…

jessamyn: Shot for shot remake.

cortex: Yes, exactly. So someone took this and put them together but…

jessamyn: And it's unwatchable.

cortex: They literally interweave it, like it switches back and forth from one to the other, like five times a second. And it doesn't, like, sync them up with the normal run of the song.

jessamyn: Right. Normally when you do this, you have one soundtrack, and you just like click back and forth on the video.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: This actually gets glitchy on purpose, clearly on purpose.

cortex: Yeah, it does the full audio of both, swapping back and forth so

jessamyn: By steering wheel, I don't know if we mentioned that.

cortex: Yeah, uh, yes, steering wheel posted this. And it goes back and forth so the three minute song becomes six minutes long, and it's like in slow motion, and glitchy, and weird, and you get the lining up the two videos where they line up, and the not so much where they don't.

jessamyn: It gave me arrhythmia.

cortex: It's… it's…

jessamyn: And I am dead.

cortex: It's really unpleasant to watch in just a basic visceral

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: experiencing something that is not friendly to your senses way.

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: There's nothing bad that happens in the video

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: just a couple of different videos of different choreographed… choreography. But you know it's like a blinking light, you know, it's, uh, if you're not photosensitive, it's not going to be a problem for you in the way it would be for someone who's gonna have a seizure, but it's still unpleasant, like, you don't wanna blinking strobe light in your face all the time, and so, like, yeah, I love this! It's like staring at a strobe light and listening to a broken soundtrack. But I really did like it, I thought it was really interesting.

jessamyn: It was

cortex: and worth sitting through for the experience.

jessamyn: like buffering, you're listening to like buffering audio back in the RealAudio days, over and over and over again. Or like a skipping CD, sort of. Yeah, I mean I really, it's… it's… it pushes all my hate this buttons

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: so I skipped it, but I appreciated the work, I just couldn't

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: personally interact with it at all.

cortex: So anyway, if you'd like more detail on this, go read my long, flagged comment in the thread. (laughs)

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: But yeah, I thought it was neat.

jessamyn: Rightrightright.

cortex: Um, yeah. What else you got?

jessamyn: Um, well, there's a sort of a longer story that has manifested itself in a post that is great on its own, but then also has the wacky back story to it? So, the post, that you probably saw, is wordshore's…

cortex: (laughs) Yeah.

jessamyn: um… Edible Uses of Cheese post. Which just has lots and lots and lots and lots of great links to uh, I think mostly recipes, but maybe not entirely? about cheese. And so that's awesome, right? But as well, people may not, if this were not your thing, have been… have been

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: What am I even…

cortex: Sure. Just inflect and run with it.

jessamyn: Basically he had a post- wordshore did - on Ask Metafilter which became, and this is so goofy…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: like a bit of a cult classic! (laughs) Because it starts out, "For complicated/irrelevant reasons, a friend has suddenly acquired eighteen pounds of Red Leicester cheese. But it needs to be moved in the next seventy two hours. What do I do?" And so that's one thing, right? People are giving a lot of advice, people are like, "What do you mean, you have to…", whatever. And so, the post over time, gets a couple more updates about what happened, including kind of how it resolved itself. Also, kind of an FAQ about the situation there… I think I'm in there, somewhere, because I'm, you know, wordshore has got library training, and so he's got some funny, I think I'm in there, and he posted something on my Facebook page about

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: the wrapup to it, but it's all very very funny and amusing in its own encapsulated way, and the last post that wordshore made here is on August 18th, but then the Edible Uses of Cheese post was a week later on August 25th. So that's the whole kind of universe as I understand it. But it made me happy, also because at the wedding that I went to, which I'll see if I can track down a photo here, there was actually- and we left before, because, like, the wedding was kind of chilly, I didn't bring a, like a change of clothes, and I was also kind of tired and exhausted, but, um, there was a cheese tower. So there was a cake, just like normal, but as well, there was a tower of

jessamyn: amazing cheeses, because everyone

cortex: Nice.

jessamyn: loves cheese. So I have probably eaten more cheese in the last like month because

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: also lots of people brought cheese to the party over the weekend. Because I guess that's one thing you feed children that they really enjoy. Different cheeses, I think. You know, just like, I think I had a grilled cheese for breakfast? At any rate, there's been a lot of cheese in the world, and in my world particularly in the last month or so, and so this post came at a really good time.

cortex: Excellent.

jessamyn: I will find a picture of this cheese tower.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Oh, yeah, there it is! There it is! Hold on one second, and I will send you a picture. Take a look at this. Read it and weep. You know. The English love their cheeses.

cortex: Wow!

jessamyn: I know, right?!

cortex: That's a big pile of cheese wheels. That's beautiful.

jessamyn: Well, I'll try and link it for ya, but if you can't see it, it's essentially seven cheese wheels of gradually smallening sizes on top of each other surrounded by, you know, flowers and greenery and a whole bunch of other things. And then, piles of crackers.

cortex: It's leaning a bit too, it's literally the Leaning Tower of Cheese-a.

jessamyn: (simultaneous) Cheese-a.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: (laughs) I know, right? Yes, so. Enjoyed wordshore's post in that- one of those kind of "I enjoyed it, but didn't click on any links" (giggles) kind of way.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: But if I needed to, I know where they would be and, you know, it had a lot of comments and a lot of favorites, it was a good place for people to hang out and talk about one of their favorite things.

cortex: I liked this post from - who is it, schmuel510? This is a more traditional mashup. So, in a sense, it's a palate cleanser, but on the other hand, a lot of people really hated it, because it's, you know…

jessamyn: Why do people hate Allstar so much?

cortex: Ahh- I think it's, it's funny to dislike Smashmouth and also,

jessamyn: I'm just gonna click on this

cortex: Allstar got played to death.

jessamyn: and listen to it for about ten seconds. But, yeah.

cortex: So it's… yeah.

jessamyn: Go on.

cortex: Anyway, it's…

jessamyn: Oh, it's not even a video

cortex: Naw, naw, it's just audio. It's just a traditional audio mashup of Tori Amos' Winter with Smashmouth's All Star, and it just sort of… it works the way mashups work, you know, it feels like a Neil Cicierega sort of deal, but I don't believe it is.

jessamyn: You keep saying that guy's name, I still don't know who that is.

cortex: He's the guy who did…

jessamyn: I know, you've explained it.

cortex: Mouth Sounds! You know… yeah, he's great.

jessamyn: I refuse to remember who he is.

cortex: He's going to be at XOXO this year.

jessamyn: Oh my god, this is brilliant!

cortex: I could probably touch him. Um, (laughs)

jessamyn: And what's really great is listening to it while you kind of natter on about it over the top.

cortex: Yeahyeahyeah. No, if you're listening to the podcast now, definitely go find this and put it on too, and experience it. I dunno, it's it's it's it's well done, it's put together well, it's not the most interesting mashup in the world, but there's something about the fact that it's taking these two musical acts who are so diametrically…

jessamyn: Polarizing.

cortex: Yeahyeahyeah. They're both polarizing, they're both very different territories, and they come together - I feel like I… I feel like kind of an idiot because like, "the amazing thing about a mashup is it can juxtapose those elements from unrelated pieces of music." But still, like

jessamyn: The thing is, a good mashup finds two really different things, and then sews them up together in a really cool and interesting way. 'Cause, like, this totally, like, changes the whole, like, rhythm of the Smashmouth lyrics, and one of the things that's so Smashmouth-y about Smashmouth is their attack, you know?

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: The vocal attack. And, um, so it, uh, aahh, it just makes it different! And I, I love good mashups too, and this is really a,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: you know, good mashup, I think.

cortex: Have you listened to Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence? 'Cause you really should.

jessamyn: Is this that Neil guy?

cortex: Yeah, it's that Neil guy.

jessamyn: No, he's dead to me, Josh.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Dead. To. Me.

cortex: Just because the podcast… 'cause I won't shut up about him?

jessamyn: No! But because it's just not my thing.

cortex: Oh, OK.

jessamyn: I mean, yes, I listen to it when we brought him up on the podcast

cortex: OK, OK.

jessamyn: whenever that was, and it's… it's not my thing, but I feel it's a little bit like one of those reddit things? Like, you're like, "no… ", I mean, not like that you're like this, but that, like, "well, he's everything to all people!", and I'm like, "no, just not for me. Dead to me. No."

cortex: He's very specifically for whatever he is. So, no, I respect that.

jessamyn: Thank you.

cortex: In a "you're wrong!" kind of way. Because he's so great.

jessamyn: It's important that my boundaries be… get respected.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: About this crazy bullshit.

cortex: What else have you got?

jessamyn: What else have I got? Well, um, you know, a thread that could have gone worse…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: that I thought… (laughs) well, that I thought was interesting, and actually had, um, except for a couple people who just dug in and were ridiculous, for the most part the conversation didn't go terrible… (laughs) I know this sounds highly qualified, but, essentially, there's an article on Medium by Sara Benincasa, who kind of kills it on Medium, uh, she's a comedian, comic writer, interesting lady, she's also kind of a "woman of size", uh, and more so now than she used to be, and, you know, she's kind of a social, public person, and so, you know, that's an obvious thing, and so she gets, like, a, you know, the kind of letter that every damn person gets, which is kind of like "grr! I'd like to talk about your appearance! Bluh!" But like basically someone like "Why did you gain weight?" And instead of being like "Ugggghhhh!" or like "Whatever!", she actually makes kind of a fairly

jessamyn: long essay with a lot of kind of cool pictures of her, sort of talking about the things that were going on in her life, and like the harassment that she deals with, and a whole bunch of people who really don't give a shit that she's fat at all. I mean- and, as they should, I should point out. But like they don't give a shit about her size at all, they're just… they just care about her as a writer, and as a performer, and all the stuff, and she kinda talks about this, in this kind of funny, amusing way. I mean, she gets a little "Rarr!", which I don't think is unwarranted, but it's a really interesting essay, I thought, but- and as well, Metafilter was mostly able to… talk about it, actually,

cortex: Yeah, I know, yeah.

jessamyn: Which I appreciated also, and so, I like her on Medium now. And I'm not normally one of those people who's like, aahhhh… I don't know. I don't really follow the Health At Any Size movement, although I support and respect it, I find this kind of stuff a lot of times sort of difficult and it turns into a lot of weird me-too-ism, or You Go Girl! stuff. I just like this more than I usually like stuff like this, and as well, it went well on Metafilter, for the most part, which I appreciated the hell out of.

cortex: Yeah. We did delete one thing saying "Calorie expenditure less than calorie intake"

jessamyn: Pssh.

cortex: which, like, "Thank you! Thank you for the contribution."

jessamyn: And a couple of people who were like (bro voice) "I don't care, I think she's hot."

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Which, you know, thanks for continuing to do that, because that's obnoxious. But, yeah, the thread was interesting, and part of it also was people were interested in like, "Why are you even responding to an internet troll? You know, that wastes your time and annoys the troll" kind of thing, um, or doesn't annoy the troll. But, so, it was an interesting conversation about a topic that's sometimes kind of difficult, and I really appreciated it, so I wanted to call it out as something that was working, which was good.

cortex: Yeah, totally.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: I liked this thread, uh, as much as anything for like, it leading to me mostly, like, it's not a big thread, but I'll say the name of the thing, then talk parenthetically about it. artw made a post about, uh, an article about Norman Rockwell doing space paintings, and a bunch of related stuff, like the history of sort of art.

jessamyn: I didn't see this at all.

cortex: Oh, it's great!

jessamyn: Oh, this was from yesterday. It was from my birthday.

cortex: Yeahyeah, you were busy birthdaying. Two days ago? Yeah. Anyway,

jessamyn: Yah. Monday.

cortex: um, counting is hard. I don't want to do it any more.

jessamyn: OK.

cortex: Anyways, space and art! It's great! Uh, it's sort of like, keys off, the main article keys off of, uh, story about Norman Rockwell trying to get his hands on a spacesuit, so he can actually do the goddamn painting that NASA wanted him to do? And NASA didn't want him to give him the spacesuit, because it's like the Space Race, and the Cold War, and secrets, and whatnot, and… so they ended up, like, letting an engineer basically bring it to his house, or his studio, and babysit it all day, and take it home at night, and then

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: have to do it all again, so he could get it done. So it's interesting, you know, the painting they end up with, this is 1967, and Rockwell ends up doing this painting that looks like a painting of a photograph of a Moon landing sort of situation.

jessamyn: Uh huh.

cortex: You know, they got the details right, obviously NASA had been developing all this technology long before we actually went to the Moon, so it's not crazy, but it's also, you know, it's interesting. Um, but then it sort of goes back into some of the older stuff too. And I think I mentioned probably podcast during or after the trip to Alabama last year, how neat it was seeing some of the space art in the, uh, Space Museum thing- I can't remember the name of it. Uh, they've got a space museum in Huntsville. Cause they've got that NASA…

jessamyn: Right, because they've got a launchpad or whatever, right?

cortex: Yeah, anyway, so they had a bunch of Art, and it was neat looking at that in person at the time there, so this is sorta keying me back to that, as, yeah, this is cool stuff. And there is all this, like, you know, uh, Space Station art that ties into this too, like, you know, futuristic, ah, pictures of, like, you know, uh, villages in space in big, you know, uh, cylinders and whatnot, and… I grew up looking at that stuff, because my dad just had some of those books around, so it was kind of like, "Oh, yeah!" Whole mush of happy space stuff, basically. So, I liked (crosstalk)

jessamyn: And then everybody gets to talk, sit around, blahbluhblahbluh, space!

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: Which they enjoy. Those are fun conversations.

cortex: Yep. Ah, yeah…

jessamyn: I didn't really have a bunch of Metafilter stuff, actually, most of my stuff was in AskMe for this month.

cortex: Well, why don't we, uh, move on…

jessamyn: I'm looking at the comments that I made, and I made, like all of five comments on Metafilter.

cortex: (laughs) I've got a bunch of threads

jessamyn: The last one, which is very

cortex: I didn't mention

jessamyn: unusual, even for me.

cortex: because they're all election related. I have, ugh, the election…

jessamyn: Talk, talk about something else that's dead to me.

cortex: (laughs) Oh, uh, yeah.

SFX: (music)

cortex: Anyway, yes! Ask Metafilter. Whaddya got? Let's talk about it.

jessamyn: Well! Ask Metafilter, I thought, was super fun this month, and always. And I, you know, I don't, like, when I go on vacation, like, I don't check Metafilter really, and as well, I don't go back to it, so there may be stuff from a week or two I didn't see, but from before I left, and I'm pretty sure we didn't mention this, 'cause I think it was late in the day when we recorded, but, um, bq, basically was like, "Hey! I learned some stuff on Metafilter that maybe not everyone gets goosebumps…

cortex: Yeah!

jessamyn: …and not everybody can see stuff in their head. What are some other things that not everyone can do? So, like, not everyone can roll their tongue, not everyone can taste broccoli, whatever. Um, but it's just kind of a stupid human tricks list of things certain people can do, or can't do, and it's just fun to read.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: 'Cause there's a bunch of it.

cortex: Yeah, exactly.

jessamyn: Jason can blow up a balloon with his nose,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I can't even imagine what that would be like. I can turn my tongue upside down both ways, um, some people's pinky fingers don't touch when they're holding the inside edges of their hands together. Hey, mine don't! Hey!

cortex: You're…

jessamyn: Hey!

cortex: Wait, so what the hell?

jessamyn: And so everybody has a whole bunch of like, funny

cortex: (laughs) What's this with the pinky fingers? I need to know! I don't understand!

jessamyn: Um, let's see. I think this is weird. Uhh, it's like, people who have a little bent end of their pinky…

cortex: Oh, like it doesn't, like, touch their ring finger when…

jessamyn: Like, when you're holding… see, (orangedisk) explained it in the thread,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: and I thought I maybe I had it, but now…

cortex: I don't wanna, I don't want to derail, I'll look it up.

jessamyn: But now I thought I didn't have it, but basically it's a thing about whether your pinky kind of bends in towards your, in towards your ring finger or not.

cortex: Ah.

jessamyn: Oh, you know, that was a thing that I learned from people in the UK. They don't call their little finger the pinky.

cortex: What do they call it?

jessamyn: They don't have a pinky, they don't have a pinky toe. They just call it, like, the little finger.

cortex: Oh.

jessamyn: At least the people I met, who may have been bullshitting me, let's be honest.

cortex: Yeah, that could be. Maybe they're just Game of Thrones fans, and they're trying to up their Lord Baelish.

jessamyn: What? What?

cortex: Um, Game of Thrones thing.

jessamyn: What?

cortex: It would have killed if you were watching Game of Thrones… uh…

jessamyn: Still.

cortex: yeah.

jessamyn: If I were still watching.

cortex: Yeah, yeah. Peter Baelish…

jessamyn: Oh, because he's that Littlefinger guy.

cortex: is Littlefinger…

jessamyn: I love that actor so much. I hope he gets other work, because I can't stand that show.

cortex: He was in that whatever, that Mazerunner sequel, I think?

jessamyn: Was he?

cortex: Based on what I saw in that trailer?

jessamyn: Because he was awesome in, uh, The Wire.

cortex: Oh! I didn't know- I still haven't watched The Wire. It's getting…

jessamyn: What??

cortex: sort of silly at this point. Now I think it's all on Amazon for free, and I just gotta set aside the time

jessamyn: You'd actually, I think you'd actually enjoy it.

cortex: and be in the mood for it, you know.

jessamyn: Do you like that sort of stuff?

cortex: I do! I generally do, so I think I would really enjoy it once I got into it, it's just like, it's deciding that that's the new thing that we're setting a block of time for. It's,

jessamyn: Yeah, I know, I hear you.

cortex: a bit of a pulling a name out of a hat. Uh, but yeah, at some point, at some point.

jessamyn: So, like wait, if you're…

cortex: Like if everybody on that show turns out to be someone who I really like as an actor. I didn't know Idris Elba was on it, and, uh…

jessamyn: Ohhh! Not only

cortex: Yeah, you know?

jessamyn: is he on it, but he is hot as fuck on it. Like, he is just… his character is just smoking hot, like that supposed to… I mean, not only is he just in general an attractive man, or whatever, but he is specifically played to be

cortex: Like, that's his character.

jessamyn: Yeah, that's like his personality trait, and you're just, like, "Oh, god! This guy!" Like, it's really great. I think my only complaint is, I mean, there's a lot of female characters, but it's mostly a show about dudes, you know?

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But a decent amount of female characters, more than usual, but still maybe not enough. So, wait, if you're holding your palms facing you, and you line up your pinkies, so they're like touching each other on the inside side…

cortex: Oh yeah, yeah.

jessamyn: Do your tips of your… does, do they touch all the way up to the tips of your…

cortex: No,

jessamyn: fingers?

cortex: They definitely bend towards the ring fingers. I see what you mean now. It's like I'm making a book with my hands.

jessamyn: Yeah! But like,

cortex: Yeah, nope, they don't. They just veer off.

jessamyn: But I feel like that's normal, but then orangedisk links to a thing that talks about how it's all kinds of messed up.

cortex: Interesting.

jessamyn: Yeah, so, any rate, there's a whole bunch of fun stuff in that thread about the things

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: not everybody gets a cough reflex when they put a q-tip in their ear, some people can, like, wiggle one ear, or not the other, some people can squirt saliva from underneath their tongue, some people can't sneeze anymore. At any rate, it was a fun thread, and I always like those kind of, like, "Everybody can contribute! What's a goofy thing I don't know about the world?" kind of thing.

cortex: Yep. I, uh, let's see, there was a couple things in that vein, oh, you know, the one I thought was really interesting, um, anyhow, this is sort of like getting into the, well, shades of Chatfilter, but maybe there's an upside to Chatfilter, depending sort of debate, as always, but, uh, (this comes from)

jessamyn: Listen to you! Sacrilege!

cortex: I know! It's [???] put me in charge, see what happens. Uh…

jessamyn: There's actually kind of a secret note from Josh in this thread.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: that says "It's fairly chatty, but I was in a good mood, and interested in the answers. MODS GONE WILD!" Just FYI.

cortex: "MODS GONE WILD!" was written in all caps. Um…

jessamyn: Mods gone wild. Yes.

cortex: Yes.

jessamyn: So.

cortex: This was a question from signals, saying "When you talk to yourself, inside or outside your head, what do you call yourself? Do you use your given name, your family name, a nickname, what?"

jessamyn: And again, this would have been a fine not-chatfilter question if there had just been some "I'm trying to solve a problem, I have a question",

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: …whatever. But fascinating,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: fascinating thread. The tags are interesting because they are "name, person, champ, self, honey, girl, dude, rabbit".

cortex: So we get, you know, some hint

jessamyn: Don't know, don't know why

cortex: of where signals goes on that front.

jessamyn: Yeah!

cortex: I thought it was really interesting, like, like, the variety, the people… I'm definitely, I left a comment thing saying basically "I never do this." camp. So it's really interesting to me to read different people talking about all the…

jessamyn: So you don't talk to yourself in the second person like that?

cortex: No, no!

jessamyn: Like, "Hey, Josh, let's get going!" or whatever.

cortex: No, no, I really don't. It's, it's… I've been trying to monitor my sort of self-communication, I guess, the last couple weeks to sort of see if I like do it and don't think about it, or whatever, but I think I just really don't.

jessamyn: When I do it, it's just clearly like, like an affectation, you know?

cortex: Sure.

jessamyn: Like, I'm like, "Past Jessamyn left me a cookie." Seriously, it's like that, because I'm trying to become more aware of how to like set myself up for success, and like, be a little bit more mindful of myself in the moment, and not just be like, "Life is a thing that happens to me!" kind of thing, kind of. But that's the only time I do it. Other than that, I literally don't… I mostly don't, except when I'm kind of making it happen for certain things. I definitely don't have, like, a nickname for myself.

cortex: Yeah. And, so, yeah, it's neat to see what a variety there is there. Um, so, yeah.

jessamyn: Yeah, well, and I was surprised at how many people, like, are mean to themselves, know what I mean! (laughing) Like when their word for themselves is "idiot".

cortex: Yeah, yeah.

jessamyn: Or something like that. Which, you know, I, I, I wonder about. Or they call each other, you know, they call themselves "girl", they call themselves "sexy", they call themselves "we", you know, "we need to do this, we need to do that." But, yeah. Fascinating thread! And, uh, what was the other, there was another, like… Oh! There was another, uh, chat, chatty in that everybody could mostly have an answer, but not chatty in that there was a very specific reason for asking? Um, was (tries different pluralizations) toddles's?… toddles'? Toddles's, um, "Hey, I'm going to be a manager. I've been asking my friends so that I can

jessamyn: help prepare. I want to be a good manager, and what I want to know is", you know, you've had jobs, what did your best manager do, what did your worst manager do. So that I can learn how to be a better manager, and how to avoid being a terrible manager. And it's fascinating, because, you know, obviously there's lots of different ways bad managers are bad, and different ways good managers are good, and so reading this thread I think had a lot of really good, just, information on what people… and there's not a ton of, like, (pause) like, kind of wiggle room, you know? It's not like one person's good manager is another person's bad manager? I mean, a little bit, but not a lot.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Just a lot of variants on bad management and variants on good management. So it was just interesting to… interesting to read about.

cortex: Yeah, and I saw that one. That one I think got on a lot of people's radar, I saw it going around a bunch on twitter, in a way that, like, every once in a while you'll see a Metafilter thread that just, like, sort of gets interest from a non-Metafilter sphere. And that one I think…

jessamyn: Yeahyeahyeah.

cortex: there was… like, to some extent, I'm sure some of that's like, body bullshit, where there's like "ehhh, but!" Likelikelike, manager questions at [???]

jessamyn: Right! (laughs)

cortex: On twitter…

jessamyn: Yeah, I totally know what you mean.

cortex: But there, but there were also a bunch of people who were actually like definitely saying "Ohmigosh, go check this out!" and like, springing off into anecdotes about good manners and shooty managers too, so. It was kinda interesting to see it do a little bit of like, uh, a phenomenon, um, sort of thing, as occasionally happens.

jessamyn: Yeah! So I, I enjoyed reading it, I read it kind of all since it went up, and I contributed briefly, and uh, yeah. I mean, it's hard to manage, right? But it's, uh, also hard to be managed, I think, and I think a lot of people… my take from reading a lot of that was that there are a lot non-mindful managers out there, you know, who just look at their job as a job, but don't look at it that they have responsibility to other people. I mean, I know at the Archive, as much as I like them in kind of general, like, nobody …they don't take management seriously, you know? So, like, I was leaving for a vacation on Monday, and I was like, "Alright, I'm going to be away for a week! Uh, did you guys get someone to take over the job I do?" And they're like, "Oh, no, why don't you ask someone to do that for you?" I'm like, "Oh, seriously? Like I told you I was leaving a month ago." That's the manager's job. But they don't… the managers don't look at themselves as managers, so it doesn't occur to them that they could help, like, make a path for someone else.

jessamyn: They just think everybody's gotta be there on their own path. So, I got to bitch briefly about that.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: But I mean, it's funny, right? Because I mean, if you're a manager, theoretically what you can do is, you can help… I mean, you know this, you're good at this… that you help the people who nominally work for you to kind of accomplish what they need to accomplish, you know?

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Not just be like, "I dunno, just handle it! Rarr!"

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But there's a lot of "I don't know, just handle it.", or not taking management, uh, stuff seriously. And, you know, that's what I, one of the things I enjoyed when I was at Metafilter is getting to be a manager and have the people who work for me, you know, help them solve their problems, you know? Help them get better outcomes from their work, like, I think that's fulfilling work, but it's kinda service work, you know? And so I think for people who think of themselves as doing a thing that isn't that, that isn't a soft skill kind of thing, they don't, they don't take pride in management stuff because it doesn't feel like real work, I think, that's what I think.

cortex: Yeah, yeah, it's a different sort of territory, and different people have very different… both sort of experiences in having it introduced to them as an idea of something they need to purposefully do, rather than something they need to get out of the way.

jessamyn: Right, rightrightrightright.

cortex: And, yeah, like you said, like, different people, there's, there's definitely places where people may want two different things, if they're two different people in two different contexts but, most of it's pretty consistently, like, this is a good thing, that's not such a good thing.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: So, yeah, no, the concentration of… in there, and all that sort of stuff running together was pretty cool to see.

jessamyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I enjoyed it.

cortex: I'll throw a quicky reference to one… there's a question from lynnever asking about cooking shows, Youtube style. Which, uh…

jessamyn: Oh, I didn't see this at all, and this is something I would like.

cortex: Yeah, she's basically saying, you know, like, well produced, like, kind of home production stuff, you know. And, uh, that seems like a good thing if you're into that, I could see enjoying that, and there's several answers…

jessamyn: (laughs) Do you watch cooking shows?

cortex: Well… not really? I, I've watched some every once in a while.

jessamyn: And you guys cook, right? I mean, some?

cortex: Yeah. Yeah, well, we're not like, amazing chefs or anything, but we, we cook, you know, we, we, we make food at home on a regular basis.

jessamyn: (laughs) Yeah, and both of you do, right?

cortex: Yeah. Um, and you know, we watch the Great British Bakeoff, which was great. Which is not super practical cooking, but it was fun to watch.

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: And it's… it was not shitty as reality tv goes, which is always refreshing when, uh, the UK puts out stuff like that?

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: Uh, but yeah, there's a giant pile of stuff in here.

jessamyn: Yeah, and, uh, ikonaut actually had, uh, late comments in the thread with, like, some really good lists…

cortex: Yeah!

jessamyn: of

cortex: Like a couple dozen.

jessamyn: "Hey, if you like Italian… If you like Modern Southern… If you like Korean… If you like gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free… If you like healthy cooking via Australia…". Yeah, lot of stuff. 'Cause I've just never gotten into the cooking stuff, but my sister loves that stuff! And, so, you know, every now and again I'll kind of sit down with her and be like, "Hey, tell me, you know, tell me what you like. I'd like to, uh, see something that's interesting to somebody else."

cortex: (pause) Yep. (burps) 'Scuse me. I had a burp.

jessamyn: Speaking of another, uh, list generating question, uh, this is from azalea_chant, and it's, uh, "I'm looking for books with nerdy protagonists!"

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: With this crowd? That's a pretty good, uh, that's a pretty good, uh, pretty good question, so, you know, lots of sort of different types. She's looking for kinda, you know, spec fic, but speculative is OK, but also, you know, non-fiction if you have it, and so there's just a great list of, you know, our favorite books with nerdy people in the, in the roles.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Mostly, mostly middle school, but it can also be, uh, YA style. But as a list generating thread, I thought it was good. And that was one of the things I was going to bring up in Metatalk when I feel like I have some free time is, you know, the wiki has this awesome, um, ah, (typing), basically uh, "Read Me" page which is just, uh, compilations of Ask Metafilters about reading. And it hasn't been updated I believe, let me check… Yeah, nobody's touched it since 2014, and it would be awesome to get the last two years of Ask Metafilter questions about books

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: sort of sorted and put on that page. Because it really is an amazing page of, "So, you like culture and society? Would you like feminism books? Non-coolness books? Urban sprawl books? A book which changed your mind?". Like…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: it's just a really cool, uh,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: collection, and this made me remember how much I like that, and we should… I will make a post about

cortex: Yeah, you should totally make a Metatalk post.

jessamyn: kinda keeping that up.

cortex: I, uh, hmmm… anything else for AskMe right now?

jessamyn: I have a couple more, um,

cortex: All right.

jessamyn: a couple like, "Well, you told me!", um, questions,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: including "Is it appropriate to knit during a classical music concert.".

cortex: Aw, jeez, yes.

jessamyn: And, "I'm not going to let people websurf at all during work.", you know, "I'm getting pushback from employees, help me figure it out." Both of them…

cortex: (laughs) That's because your employees want to kill you!

jessamyn: Both of them are cases where the person asks a completely well-meaning question, the response from Ask Metafilter was overwhelmingly like, "Ohmigod, don't do that." I mean, not overwhelmingly, I guess, but… strongly in favor of. And, you know, got good feedback from the person who asked the question, like, "Alright, I'll, you know… I'll, I'll try doing something else, then."

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: So, I liked it. 'Cause I am one of those people who, like, I go to the movies, or I go to a music concert, and if someone's like fiddling with their hands, right in the… my range of vision, I have a hard time snapping out of it, like, usually

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I can, but I don't at first, and so it's challenging. And so there's a lot of people like me in that thread being, "Oh god, please don't do that."

cortex: (laughs) "Please don't constantly fuck with my peripheral vision. [I'm excited to do something other than…?]"

jessamyn: Yeah, yeahyeah, and you know, Jim will often do that, just because he's a twiddler, you know, like it's kinda amazing we're together at all, some times, because he's so fidgety, and I'm so, like…

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I just sit there like a corpse. You know, while we're watching a movie, like, I just do not move around at all.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But, you know, to each their own, right? Like, it's easier for him actually to focus on the movie if he's, you know, moving his fingers and toes around or something like that.

cortex: Yeah. And I, I…

jessamyn: So, we watch movies at home more often, and that seems to work better for us.

cortex: I'm definitely more a fidgeter that secretariat is, so… uh, we have to work that out once in a while too. Like, I tend to scootch my feet around. For, for no reason. Like, I'm not accomplishing anything, my feet don't need scootching, but, like,

jessamyn: Sure.

cortex: I'll just be scootch scootch scootch, "Hey, can you not do those?" "Do what?" "Dude." "Oh!"

jessamyn: Right. Jim's like, "I HAVE AN ITCH!"

cortex: And I'm not even aware of it.

jessamyn: And I'm like,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: "You always have an itch when we're watching television, like you are the itchiest man." Like, he wound up with some kind of, like, we went out to Frugal Frank's, like, my favorite dented can store, on my birthday, just to like, buy weird dented shit, but, like, they had the Halloween stuff up? And a lot of the Halloween stuff I think is probably from, like, last Halloween? So it's got all manner of like, mold and spores and funguses and… he put on one of the masks,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: to be like, "Hey, hey hey!" And then he just wound up having like

cortex: (gasps)

jessamyn: having an allergic fit for most of the rest of the day. you know,

cortex: Aw, Jesus.

jessamyn: so we sat down to like, watch TV, or watch a movie, and he just is sneezing every twenty minutes, and I was like, "Dude, what is going on?" And he's like, "I don't know, it must have been that mask I tried on! (sneezing noises)" So, yeah.

cortex: That's, that's pretty solid.

jessamyn: Which he can watch a movie and sneeze through all of it. I actually can't watch a movie with a sneezing person.

cortex: Ehhh…

jessamyn: Ehhh…

cortex: As a sneezer, I both understand and, it's also like, "Ehh, but, I have to sneeze."

jessamyn: But do you have, like, you know, will you sneeze like constantly for twenty minutes? Or…

cortex: Nah. Not usually. I'll have like a short sneezing fit. Maybe I'll keep occasionally having a sneeze, ah, but although

jessamyn: I've never seen anything like this guy's ability to get something stuck in his nose.

cortex: (laughs) I have, but it's mostly… it's usually my cat, so…

jessamyn: (laughs) Right. Right. Right, yes, exactly. And so the personal web surfing at work thing was also, like, you know, the guy came back and he's like "Alright, I totally… I totally hear you.

cortex: "I hear ya."

jessamyn: Thank you for… thank you, thank you…"

cortex: (laughs) Yeah, it seemed a little bit more like, "Uh, OK. I get it. I get it." Uh,

jessamyn: Yeah, and you know, it came from every, every good place, but I think it was one of those X/Y problems, you know, like,

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: "I'm worried about ransomware attacks." Completely reasonable thing. "So, I'm not letting anybody surf the internet at work at all." Ehh…

cortex: Yeah, that's not gonna work.

jessamyn: And so, yeah.

cortex: Yeah, exactly.

jessamyn: Maybe, maybe it won't work. But, people gave like lots of… very few people were like, you know, "YOU DICK!", you know, most people were, like,

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: "Oh, well, maybe you haven't thought about… lalalalala."

cortex: Yep.

jessamyn: And, uh, that was good. So, yeah, that's my last Ask Metafilter for, that I, that I at least can think of. Feel like I asked Ask Metafilter something? Oh, yeah, I just have this terrible crinkling couch. Forget it.

cortex: Ohhh. Oh yeah.

jessamyn: It's fine. I'm over it. I'm over it.

cortex: Alright, alright. Uh, well, I could do a quick Metafilter Music Minute here, 'cause…

jessamyn: Well, and greenish made that

cortex: there's music… post…

cortex: Oh yeah, greenish put on their podcast, their music podcast. That what you were gonna say?

jessamyn: Yeah. Well… yes? Yes!

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I think so. Well, I'm trying to… I closed the tab like a dummy because I was closing my other tabs. Oh wait, "Recently Closed Tabs". No, it's not there. Shit. (pause) Yes.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Why don't you just keep talking.

cortex: Alright. Yes, well, uh,

jessamyn: (sighs)

cortex: there's good music, I like to do… I'll mention a few things I liked. I'm always, like, "yeah, I never want to be like… anything I don't mention I didn't like." But, like, you know, (mumbles) I want, I wanna keep it short, so…

jessamyn: That's the problem with the podcast all the time, right?

cortex: Exactly, exactly.

jessamyn: There are lots of people creating lots of awesome things all the time. I didn't even talk about the Olympics!

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: We, we talked about the Olympics on Fanfare, and I felt like

cortex: Yeah! that went really well.

cortex: Yeah, I know…

jessamyn: Sorry, I don't mean to derail from your Music…

cortex: No, no, it's fine!

jessamyn: That was very cool.

cortex: That was a lot of it- I really liked the way [to do?] it that way, I think it worked out pretty well, we had a big catch-all thread for everything and then we had specific breakout event threads for different events. With, like, you know, mixed amounts… some of them were kind of small, some of them got up some steam, a hundred comments on their own right. Um,

jessamyn: And now there's a Paralympics discussion going on.

cortex: Yeah, Paralympics are starting today, so we just started up a thread for that, got a little banner at the top of the page to point to that, we'll side bar it later, and, and yeah, so, uh, yeah, I was pretty happy about how it went, it was kind of fun watching the Olympics, you know, it was a pretty good Olympic time.

jessamyn: Good. Oh, here's the link to greenish's post, because it's the July By Women

cortex: Ah, yes.

jessamyn: ah, like, the winners of the July, or whatever it was… July by Women Challenge Songs.

cortex: Yeah. Which was, do, you know, a song by a woman, or as a woman, or, like, you know, if you're a woman, it was on. Or collaborate, or etcetera, so on. Yeah, so, so, she's put that together, which is rad,

jessamyn: Yes.

cortex: And uh, I don't whether or not I have… I think I may have avoided, uh, well of course I avoided because it's more recent stuff than the stuff that would have been on that. Yes. Uh, anyway, yes.

jessamyn: Whaat?

cortex: So, Music I liked- there is, "Just A Stranger" by erikgrande- Erik Gran-day? Erik Grand-y? Erik… I dunno how he does his username. Uhhm, but anyway, it's uh, it's a nice uh guitar and vocals thing, uh, works really well, he mentions he wants some percussion and someone else mentions, hey, uh, no actually, you've got some nice attack in the guitar there. Which is true, it's…

jessamyn: Oh, this is great! I love it.

cortex: got a really cool sound to it. There is, uh, a really great song by chococat, which is like, I repeat myself,

jessamyn: I know, right?

cortex: but, uh, he did this… I love the premise… it's, it's a great sounding song, uh, once again chococat wrote and recorded a beautiful sounding song but in this case it was done for a song fight thing, where the challenge was to

jessamyn: (gasps)

cortex: have an obvious flaw, and what he used was like, bad feedback from a noisy amp, well, not feedback, but buzzing on an amp, which is, like, it's every person who's played electric guitar, electric bass has run into this, it's a pain in the ass, you learn to sort of mitigate it with equipment and technique and whatnot, but sometimes you're just gonna get amp buzz. And so he just made that, like, really really part of the song. It's fantastic, it just really really works.

jessamyn: Oh, well that reminds me of the, the band, whoever the hell they are, I don't even know how you pronounce their name, Wooden Shjips? (pron: Wooden Ships) Even though there's a j in there?

cortex: Sure.

jessamyn: And they have like, some fuzz guitar songs where, like, the amp noise is really kind of part of what they do. And it's

cortex: Right. ohhh, it's so good. I'll have to check that out.

jessamyn: So good.

cortex: Uh, you mentioned earlier, Jim's uh, "God Only Knows" cover which he did on…

jessamyn: Yeah!

cortex: banjolele, or…

jessamyn: And this was a sec… a secret! Because basically they, uh, um, this was a song that everybody sang along to at their wedding. Like, they literally put the lyrics in the wedding program. And then one of their friends led everybody in, uh, singing on it, and Jim knew about it, so he recorded this so that when they kind of got back to the internet, they would… they would have it.

cortex: Nice.

jessamyn: And it was my restrung… yeah.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: It's a banjolin.

cortex: Yes, alright, I'm sorry. I said banjolele, didn't I?

jessamyn: Yeah, I don't… ennnh. It's all the same.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: It's all the same. And a slide whistle. You know, if you're into that kind of thing.

cortex: It's… it's… it's… definitely a little bit goofy and off kilter, and what feels like a very intentional way,

jessamyn: Yes.

cortex: notondisplay doing his thing

jessamyn: Yes!

cortex: and I found it very charming. And, it's it's it's a good song. And now that I know it ties into the wedding, that's even better.

jessamyn: Well, and I got to listen to it. We actually listened to it streaming from the Metafilter website when chrismuir and greenish drove my sister and I to the train station. 'Cause that's the other thing, you're like there in the country, and so people need to drive you places. You know? It's not like… you can't get a cab, like, you're just on the side of the highway, somewhere, and hopefully somebody will show up and take you to the train, you know? c; Yeah.So, yeah. And we all got to listen to it together and that was great.

cortex: Yeah. And then there is uh, "Night Train to Memphis" from OverlappingElvis, it's just some real good live recording of some, uh, old timey film music. Uh, and it is super nice.

jessamyn: "Corwin Bolt and the Wingnuts".

cortex: Yes. (pause)

jessamyn: I sort of feel like I know OverlappingElvis from somewhere else? That's weird.

cortex: [Yes, it's…?]

jessamyn: His name sounds really familiar.

cortex: (crosstalk)

jessamyn: OverlappingElvis, do you know me? (pause)

cortex: I don't think he can answer you live.

jessamyn: I'll figure it out.

cortex: I think you'll have to…

jessamyn: Oh! We didn't do any, uh, any guided meditation in the middle of this podcast.

cortex: Oh, well. Just go back and listen to the stuff in the middle of the last one.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: We should put [meditation?] music as its own track, and then people can listen to listen to it all the time.

jessamyn: You know, that's a really good idea, it would actually be really fun to do some… 'cause I have a guided meditation thing where you like, can press a button, and they'll play music in the background, 'cause I guess some people like that? And I always do it quietly, but I was like, well, I should try this. Un-listenable! Like, like, the music is loud, and it, and it has like, beats at the opposite place from where like the

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: beats of the talking are. It was so unrelaxing I… I just couldn't do anything.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: It was just horrible.

cortex: Oh, we could, we could, we could, uh, do a little bit for [the colabbo?] there…

jessamyn: (laughs) Yes. Just do a little…

cortex: Make some… uh… Anyway, that's a…

jessamyn: A little light plinka-plinka…

cortex: that's that Music Minute. Uh…

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: Um, I'm trying to think if there's anything from Metatalk specifically I want to call out, but, uh,

jessamyn: I dunno, I've been busy… I've been having fun talking about "derp" today.

cortex: Ahh, jeez.

jessamyn: And I should probably repeat what I said uh, to you before we actually got this started, I felt like… I mean, I always think you do a really good job at kinda diving into the middle of this stuff when people have been arguing for, you know, half a day, and being like, "Well, you know, an interesting thing to think about is, is this kind of, you know, thing ya think about, uh, you should think about it." kind of, but what's interesting is, you know, there's always people like, "Well, what are we gonna not be be able to say next?" and your quotation, which is my favorite, and a little too long to be tweetable, is, "Show me the person who speaks in truly unfiltered, unconsidered terms, and I will show you someone who experiences constant overwhelming social difficulty that absolutely overshadows any notional discomfort in being obliged to think about whether a word they don't have a problem with is a problem with other people." Bam! (popping sound) Very good, I think.

cortex: It, it does ramble a little bit, but, uh,

jessamyn: No! I mean, you get the point though! The point is, like, "Look, you want to speak totally unfilteredly, you've got worse problems than just whether or not it's OK for you to say derp."

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Seriously. Like, seriously. And I think, I think that's, uh, worth pointing out. You know, I mean, I love these conversations, I really do think talking about what things mean, and what, what does it mean for something to make other people feel bad, and how do we deal with that. I think they're useful to like, go around and around about again. But, sometimes it's also worth kinda stepping in and be like, "Look, no-one's saying you can't be that way, we're just saying if you're gonna be that way maybe other people are going to think that you're kind of a dingus. Happens."

cortex: Yep. (pause) Uh, we should also mention, uhh, Happy Fun September, which that… (laughs)

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: that thread obliquely…

jessamyn: Right. While we're watching…

cortex: references the title of…

jessamyn: this isn't Happy Fun September.

cortex: Yes. The actual Happy Fun September thread, you know, is basically filthylifethief… (laughs) filthylightthief, uh, saying, "Hey! Uh, you know, it's politics and blugh, and end of Summer, but hey, let's have just happy and fun posts! Let's do some more of that." It's like, "Keep Metafilter Weird", but, uh just more like, "Hey, goofy fun stuff." Which has tended a lot towards animals so far. But, uh…

jessamyn: Is that true?

cortex: Yeah. People… I mean, animals are pretty fun, and, and that's how we ended up on the, the discussion about derp, because there was a perfectly nice post that unfortunately

jessamyn: Oh, by johnnywallflower.

cortex: (had that) in the title. Yeah, it's all

jessamyn: It's all, "Fifteen Derpy Animals".

cortex: Yeah, exactly. Um, but otherwise, hey, animals are nice. Um, so yes, if you're, if you're thinking to yourself, "Mmm, I dunno, this is kinda goofy, but I dunno if it's quite a post." Uh, maybe lean a little more towards going for it.

jessamyn: This is the month for it! Alright.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Absolutely.

cortex: Maybe give it a shot. Uh, and yeah, I dunno, there's other stuff in the archives, but I'm kinda… I think, I think I'm feeling spent, I think we should wrap it up.

jessamyn: That sounds great! Well, Happy Birthday pb!

cortex: Yes!

jessamyn: Happy Birthday me! (pause)

cortex: You're not quite twins, but you're close enough.

jessamyn: We're both, we're both, we're both Virgo birthdays.

cortex: Yeah, that's what matters.

jessamyn: Yeah.

cortex: It's Virgonic. It's Virgonic…

jessamyn: The Virgonic month of leisure, we both should take some enforced time off, which I'll be doing as soon as I'm done talking to you!

cortex: Yep. Alright, well, why don't you, why don't you get on that, and uh, I'll talk to you ohh… uh,

jessamyn: Next month.

cortex: some time next month.

jessamyn: Three weeks! Something like that.

cortex: Yeah! Yeah, maybe we'll snap back to the first, maybe we won't, we'll see what happens. I think I might…

jessamyn: We're just crazy and unpredictable.

cortex: Yeah, you never know what you're going to get.

jessamyn: Wooo!

cortex: It's wild. (laughs)

jessamyn: Woooo! Woo!

cortex: (laughs) I'll talk to you later.

jessamyn: Talk to you later.

SFX: Music