Podcast 123 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 123: NOT ME THAT DAY (2016-11-30).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 How can I stand for a podcast? Podcast? Josh bar joke man when God was embody the best of the best of the web

Cortex 0:22 gotten better about just not burping. It's still a lot of you know, I mean, I spent my childhood trying to do like what trying to not burp

Jessamyn 0:31 well like not burp on purpose. I can

Cortex 0:33 sometimes I've had to sort of try and develop it in an attempt to be a civilized adult because I spent my childhood getting really good at burping.

Jessamyn 0:42 I have also really good at bourbon. So it was kind

Cortex 0:45 of got to being a, you know, riding a bike sort of thing where it's really hard to get the whole muscle memory thing to cut it out after you spend like several years trying to really nail it down.

Jessamyn 0:56 I totally know what you're talking about.

Cortex 0:58 I imagined Mary Lou Retton occasionally found herself just doing like a backwards handspring on the street. I just burped you know, it's the same. It's basically the same level of physical ability and discipline. Anyway, you're listening to medical her podcast. So 123 Best of the web metaphora monthly podcast. I'm Josh Miller, aka cortex.

Jessamyn 1:19 And I'm Jessamyn West, aka nothing, just gentlemen.

Cortex 1:24 It's very existential, like the aka nothing could like bring in a sort of like the sense of hey,

Jessamyn 1:29 nothing. It's my DJ boy.

Cortex 1:30 Yeah, like that. I like that.

Jessamyn 1:33 Well, you know, it's been gray for days, like piss down rain all day yesterday in Cambridge. And, you know, you just want to like, sit out there with your mug of tea or coffee and think about things.

Cortex 1:44 Yeah, well, yeah. I've been to a lot of trying not to think about things when I

Jessamyn 1:49 need to. And it's easier on a sunny day when I can go outside and get shit done.

Cortex 1:54 I mean, we should. Yeah. It's December. No, it's still November. It's still technically it's November 30. As we record this, we're really ahead of schedule for us. It's not even quite the end of the month. Yeah, the end of the month, but it's still the month that's ending rather than the beginning of the next one. I'm over explaining this. But anyway, we talked on the last podcast about looking forward to this podcast and sort of like the return to normalcy and finally being done with this horrible election situation and and all that. And then

Jessamyn 2:29 did we know horrible is the new normal. Exactly. So

Cortex 2:32 So with, with Trump winning and the last several weeks being people sort of struggling to cope with the anger and frustration, disappointment, tight and all that? Yeah, it's we're in a different I'm definitely in a very different headspace than I thought I would be for this episode. But, but Metafilter still exists. So we're still doing a podcast about it.

Jessamyn 3:00 And it's almost December. So this is the time so here we are.

Cortex 3:04 So yeah, so So there we go. So how are you doing?

Jessamyn 3:08 How are you doing?

Cortex 3:10 Yeah, I'm getting along. I'm not pleased with the situation. But But yes,

Jessamyn 3:18 I'm not either. But you know what? Bernie Sanders is still one of my elected representatives. And something. I don't like to brag.

Cortex 3:26 But yeah, and folks in reps in Oregon have been pretty good so far on doing things like saying, you know, what, you shouldn't be racist and be president, you should not put Nazis in your cabinet and advisory position. So that's been kind of like there was no it

Jessamyn 3:47 was one of the other things about getting out of Cambridge City is that Bannon is actually speaking at the Kennedy School of Government today. So there's protests and all bunch of stuff. And I was just, you know, yeah. Beat feet out of there.

Cortex 4:02 Yeah. Get away from the crowd. Yeah. Well, it's episode 123.

Jessamyn 4:10 Where I'm feeling a little melancholy. Yeah.

Cortex 4:11 We'll, I I'm torn between desire to like, dig in on the election and a desire to have this be a little bit of a bastion from that. So we'll probably waver uncertainly back and forth and not managed to be successfully entirely either, but

Jessamyn 4:27 I don't have strong feelings either way. So I will follow your lead in particular,

Cortex 4:31 we'll see how it goes. 123 That's that's a good sequence numbers. It's the counting

Jessamyn 4:37 work for getting off in the weeds with numbers now where they're just not that interesting or distinct from one

Cortex 4:43 Yeah, I feel like I feel like I feel like we've already been in the weeds in the weeds are just getting taller and easier. Yeah.

Jessamyn 4:49 Once we left 111 behind, for whatever reason. So like 123 has its lupus number. It's the 11th member of whatever sequence. It's the emergency telephone number in Colombia. But what's interesting to me about 123 is that there's an entire Wikipedia disambiguation page for the number combination 123. It's, you know, Lotus 123 Jello 123 A 123 inning, and probably like five or six different songs that are called 123, including this fun little number, that I'm sending you a link to buy a band called chips, which is a, who is a, like a kid music band from you know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, they've got an album called The world of chips. They're a Dutch pop group. And that's what I was listening to when you call nice 123 The world of chips. So yeah, the numbers actually struggle, although I do love the ideas of yet to be discovered elements. So unbid Trium. That's its atomic number.

Cortex 6:03 Nice. Because by try, I guess, 1230. Like, that's the deal with like, the placeholders Right? Like, it's all the names, they're dressed up a little bit fancy to not quite look like they literally call it 123. But that's like, that's what they're doing. They're like, like, that's,

Jessamyn 6:23 and that's a good point. 123 in Roman numerals is Cx xi. So it's got one of one thing to have another thing. That's nice. I mean, it's kind of how numbers work, but

Cortex 6:42 you get what your you can from them, you know?

Jessamyn 6:45 Well, that is exactly just how I feel about everything in general. You know, like, you get what joy you can out of whatever.

Cortex 6:54 Well, hey, quick jobs. There's three jobs currently up, there's a regulatory and analyst for conservation and energy efficiency in Minneapolis.

Jessamyn 7:05 So yeah, Midwestern Midwestern jobs.

Cortex 7:09 If you if you if you live there, or are thinking of a reason to move there, boom, there you go. There's a web video troubleshooter Christy's looking for. And that is, I think, just anywhere. So you know, if you if you know your html5 video chops, get in an audit. And then evil spork is looking for an agent for homeless in Chicago?

Jessamyn 7:36 Yeah, did you read that post? It's actually kind of interesting. Like, there's a person, they're homeless. They need kind of a cocci person to sort of help them with things. Yeah. Even sparks got some money, but doesn't really know how to kind of do the things, but would like kind of an agent to help them do the things. It's a really neat idea. I'm sort of curious to see what happens with it. But somebody in Chicago who's looking for kind of an ASIC nation might be interested in that. Yeah.

Cortex 8:06 Because I mean, that's, that's, that's a huge thing. Like one of the one of the, like, shittiest ironies about like, fetishizing, the idea of pulling one up, oneself up by one's bootstraps, is the idea that like it gets successively harder and harder to manage your bootstraps? The shittier situation is, and so if you've got someone, right, well,

Jessamyn 8:29 I mean, that's the difference between institutionalized poverty and oh, I just ran out of money. Yeah, get out. Like you don't have friends with money. You don't live in a situation where, you know, you don't have your social safety net. And so sometimes just somebody stepping up and being the person who can sort of at least help you manage that,

Cortex 8:48 yeah. If someone who has the sort of the time and the energy and the the fallback to rely on that they can take the time to do something that you may not have the resources to deal with, because you're dealing with such a shitty situation then yeah, that can make a big difference. So yeah, that is that is a really interesting possibility there and I hope I hope it works out well.

Jessamyn 9:11 Yeah, me too.

Cortex 9:13 That's jobs. Boom, boom. You can find projects there was a bunch of different projects this month. This is like looking for the upside a

Jessamyn 9:30 lot of energy responses. Yeah, yeah. That's I had the same feelings that a lot of people kind of dove into like, or I should really do something. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people made some nifty looking web things. Exactly. back just a lot of people made a lot

Cortex 9:50 of websites. Yep. Another thing posted just yesterday, a site called called gov.us.

Jessamyn 9:56 i That was one of my sort of top things well, because that's I think what a lot of us are doing right that people are like, well, at least I can.

Cortex 10:06 Yeah. Like, even if you don't have the the skill set, or the wherewithal or the organization or whatever to like, go out and get involved in sort of brick and mortar bit of activism or whatnot, you know, you have a phone, you can call your reps, you can set aside the 1015 minutes to go, like, do that.

Jessamyn 10:30 I mean, it's not even 10 or 15 minutes. It's four. Yeah, three to like, I make phone calls in the morning, and I'm done. By the time my coffee's ready. You know, it's just mostly, I mean, the thing that's interesting to me from a library perspective, is making sure the calls you're making are really like, you know, there was that call Paul Ryan and tell him about health care kind of thing. And it was really unclear if that was a this needs to happen right now. Or this is a thing Paul Ryan was getting information about before, but it's a number that still works. So you know, somebody what I want to see is somebody who can be like, this is I swear to God, this isn't a chain letter. Yeah. Like, you know, direct us appropriately. And it's one of the things I like about this website. Straightforward. Here's just a couple things. Here's

Cortex 11:16 the thing, go do it. There's also right hand right on

Jessamyn 11:21 this, you and I picked all the same stuff.

Cortex 11:25 Well, you want to grab this one.

Jessamyn 11:27 For sure. Right hand right hand, Rohan worked with a really good designer, and aspiring Falconer, which, of course, got my attention immediately. And tech activist Willow, I don't know if you know, Willow willows kind of amazing, does some really interesting things. She's kind of in the Cambridge area. And they made basically a database of sort of different women's rights people, people of color, immigrants, climate change people, people who need support. And if you are like, I just want to help, but I kind of don't know how to help. It's a very nice looking website. And it can kind of help you do a thing. And there's feedback. People are sort of chit chatting about it. I mean, not to chatting to chatting, but um, oh, God, I don't know how to pronounce this username cichlids. Kate, Kate, how do you pronounce that word? Ei. The first post comment on that thread? No. All right. I know enough to know, I don't know how to pronounce it. But at any rate, there was a good like, how did you pick these people? We want to know how you put it together. And so there was a little bit of back and forth, which I appreciate it. But essentially, if you're looking for like, Who do I donate to? And then I also am really hung up on good design.

Cortex 12:55 This is. Good. So the flip side is that I know it's this the cloud. Quickly we have manifested the the struggling to decide what to aim for fun or aim for election talk. I'm struggling. I know what I'm talking about myself. i It's, I'm sorting myself out. I don't know. There's a bunch of stuff. That's also like as much as anything, there's several things that are like sort of like, hey, take action, hey, here's stuff that needs attention. There's a lot of stuff that's more like, sort of just Trump centric stuff. Like Carolyn G made the Trump mirror which basically is just, you know, there's the Trump mirror is an idea that came up during the whole election campaign process that usually when Trump says some dumb, outlandish thing or insult someone, it can be interpreted as essentially projection about his own self perception, what lies beneath the narcissistic mask, if there is such a mask, it's also possible that Trump's mirrors and a strictly ironic device because it's stuff that He's incapable of perceiving in himself, rather than like, you know, projected self loathing or whatever, but either way, you know, it's, it's a thing and it's, like, really easy to look at the shitty says and say, Okay, well, this is you realize you're describing yourself right now. And so, you know, Carolyn's you made a bot that just sort of tweet some of the things he said it out of context, and that's sort of on point and like as someone who has like strong opinions about the various ways in this guy in which this guy is like, on a personality and aesthetic level shitty aside from everything terrible about the political implications of his presence, you know, I get that but at the same time, like, kind of I am kinda I'm kind of done spending time focusing on trying to kind of burn Trump, you know, at this point like, it's, we're sort of past the Comedy Central Roast portion of the program.

Jessamyn 15:10 Well, that doesn't solve a problem for me. I mean, I think for other people, that might be useful catharsis. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that's really hard, right, is that you may have friends, people in your orbit, whatever, who you share an incredible amount of stuff with. And yet what you feel is a useful response to your feels about this might not be somebody else's. And everybody's so touchy, that sometimes it's hard to talk about. Exactly. Because I think for some people, this completely works. And then yeah, for other people completely, does it.

Cortex 15:42 Yeah. I think the fact that just like everybody's in their own particular spot, you know, is a big part of it. Like, I don't mean to say like, oh, well, this is a bad project. Or another thing to do. I like I'm linking because I kind of like it. But it's, it's interesting how, like, you know, I'm, I'm figuring out where my personal territory is right now. And other people are in slightly different spaces. And I think I think I got sort of like, angry and cathartic a little bit earlier. And so like, I'm on a different part of the curve denial. Yeah. So yeah. But there was also some fun stuff on projects this month, there really was there was I'm trying to find to scroll right the fuck past it. But

Jessamyn 16:23 well, while you're looking for that appreciated Griffiss thing, talking about how he had a post on Twitter go viral, and what the hell that was like, and it's interesting, both because, you know, I know Griffis and I know that that's not the world he inhabits sort of all the time. And also just, it's interesting. I mean, for the people whose brains I care about it sometimes really is interesting, getting a deep dive into them thinking about a thing that happened. Yeah. And so this is just like a long and medium essay, talking about what it's like to be somebody who kind of hangs out on Twitter, but then all of a sudden, nothing happens. And you kind of realize I how it can turn against people, and a whole bunch of other things just by having like one thing turned into a thing. Yeah. So I enjoyed reading it. I you know, there's something about mediums interface I just really like. And so reading things on there is just more fun than reading them other places anyhow, and as well, all the other reasons.

Cortex 17:28 Yeah, they're sort of yeah, they they've definitely nailed that feel, which is interesting. It's like it's it I have complicated feelings about that. Because on the one hand, like, that's great, like they've put together a nice interface, and it's sort of pleasant to read. On the other hands, like, should that be why it does, you know, yet another round of sort of de federating blogs. I mean, I realized, totally, cows are so far out of the barn at this point that is like, oh, no, like, it's hard to blame medium for anything. They're just like, doing a nice job of it, but But it's like, oh, yeah, another we're never going back to

Jessamyn 18:06 gratulate Tori, and they have made certain design decisions that I do think affect culture like that. It's much easier to launch your stuff, all rights reserved than it is to put a Creative Commons license on it, you only get tags, so cat tags can't be used for any useful purpose, cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I like reading that way. So that's something also but yeah, I have the same kind of, you know, rock kicking feeling about it at some point.

Cortex 18:32 Yeah. But yeah, Griffes article was was interesting. Partly because, like, like, I've had the occasional thing like, pick up steam and get retweeted a whole bunch. But it's never been something that was fight starting. Like the closest I've comments, like, a good joke or something. Yeah, I got like, maybe like 100 likes and sub portion of that of retweets off some little tweet storm about Trump a couple weeks ago and got a couple people who were clearly searching Trump as a keyword to, like, come up with the arguments, but like, even that, that was like, it was a couple random potshots and you know, whatever, don't don't even bother to fucking respond. And that's it. So a different scale Lock, lock block. That's all like yeah, so I've never really had that experience of like having something actually blow up where people really wanted to argue about it. With you. Yeah, exactly. So one of these days maybe it will be a fun experience to have but but yeah, I'm glad.

Jessamyn 19:26 Like even looking at like numbers and stuff like that. Right? Because for people who have like stuff on Twitter and stuff on medium, like getting the clicker even like getting the look at the numbers. Yeah. Is is a cool, interesting part of it, but nobody else gets to see your numbers. Yeah. So I enjoyed just that really basic part of it.

Cortex 19:45 I dug this random will thing this is from Mapes. And it is a collection of interesting things they've seen while looking through some sort of electron micro scope at very, very thin metal film sections, I guess. So, you know, super super, super thigh super thin slices of of metal that were deformed in various ways. And so it's just a collection of images of those. It's like, you know, it's Wow, very specific niche thing, but I did

Jessamyn 20:20 not click through because I couldn't even parse the title, but I'm glad you gave me the nudge to do that. This is interesting. Yeah, no, it's it's pretty darn cool. Wow. And what a neat little roundup of that too. Cool. Thank you. Mapes.

Cortex 20:37 Yeah, if anybody's looking for a cross stitch pattern yet here you go. You've got some stuff. Run with jazz tech put out some new T shirts. Oh, I didn't

Jessamyn 20:47 even see those ABCs a lot of times. Oh, Brand X.

Cortex 20:51 Well, yeah, I have that thing where they come by the ABCs of evil. There I've pasted it. It's you know cute illustrations of sort of kawaii villains and such. As for Alex and it's a little Alex on Clockwork Orange D is for displays it's a displacer beats there's a cute little purple kitty and adorable Freddy Krueger you know an adorable owl they're humongous. W is for Weeping Angel from

Jessamyn 21:20 low pan is great.

Cortex 21:23 And you know they just have done good teasers before so no shock keep making the good T shirts.

Jessamyn 21:31 I like V is for he who must not be named Baltimore.

Cortex 21:36 Oh right. Like they closed the tab and I was like wait fees for I got caught up on V for Vendetta. But that's that's kind of weird as

Jessamyn 21:44 well. So you didn't go for the obvious while and you know, that's not an evil person but a right. Yes. And I wanted to point out Annika cicada Yeah, long time me fight basically got together a thing called the lipstick ends of tomboy femmes just sort of a book documenting her gender transition. And if you can't afford it, send her your address. She'll mail you one. And, yeah, just a very sort of cool, interesting thing. Way to go. Thanks for writing it down. That is helpful and useful. And was happy to see it.

Cortex 22:24 I remember seeing that come through like and it was it was the night and it's like, it's like, Hey, this is that looks really great. I'm glad that is out there. You know, I got a nice album that day too, is like hey, I've been waiting for this album for weeks now. I'm super excited about it today, Wednesday, November 9.

Jessamyn 22:44 You know, I didn't that was my one kind of story. Right? Because, you know, everyone remembers where they were when like I worked election day all day, right? I was running for election I was working the polls. I mean, I got reelected that was not a question but like I went to bed and they hadn't called it yet because I was so tired and I'd been up all day just and so I didn't find out like I got up the next morning and I made kind of a deliberate choice to like get up and have my coffee and go watch the birds for an hour before

Cortex 23:17 you know that's that's smart.

Jessamyn 23:19 I figuring it out I stayed

Cortex 23:20 up late election night and got to bed I don't know midnight or one at work the next morning there's gonna be I mean wasn't going to be good day anyway so it didn't really matter but yeah,

Jessamyn 23:34 well I'm work must be crazy. You know,

Cortex 23:36 it has been it's it's finally I would say this week it has sort of like calmed down. Like you know, the election discussion stuff is still busy and there's check plenty of other stuff going on on the site. But it's, it has come down from that crazy peak we were at right up at the point of the election. And then the week after was like, just like continued to be breakneck week after that started to ease up a little bit, but was still very busy. At this point, the energy has come down a little bit people have I think sort of gotten past at least sort of like the panic and early sort of manic reaction to a little bit more deliberate study. Interaction with the site so

Jessamyn 24:22 slightly more long haul planning. Exactly. Analyzing things aren't gonna change on the site immediately. Yep. No matter what you want. Yeah. Yeah. Okay,

Cortex 24:32 yeah. Well, let me mention one other real quick check. The Touch bar on the new MacBooks has been whole thing you

Jessamyn 24:41 know what that is out? Is this real? I think

Cortex 24:45 I think they're out I haven't kept close track of it either. Like I've got a perfectly working Matt book at the moment. So I just don't worry about it for ideally a few years. But But yeah, like those are out I guess, and grant parks made a little All tiny touchbar pianoforte which is probably the thing I've liked most about like a screen on Yeah, it's it's a touchscreen. It's a tiny, long, thin touchscreen, literally

Jessamyn 25:11 this is the first time I've looked at a picture. Yeah.

Cortex 25:13 So it's like, you know, it's an arbitrary display and also touchscreen. It's a tiny, weird, badly lit, it's like they accidentally here's my theory, I think what happened is Apple accidentally put in an order for some iPhone screens. And somebody fucked up the dimensions. And so instead of doing like, they were

Jessamyn 25:33 like, we've got these long skinny ones instead. Yeah, that'll be $2 billion. Yeah,

Cortex 25:38 no, no, it's not supposed to be three inches by five inches. It's supposed to be, you know, point three inches by 50. Yeah. And then like, well, we got to do something with these. So and then they just pasted them onto a bunch of

Jessamyn 25:50 they really do seem like a bolted on ridiculous. It's weird, like, solve a problem for any class of people.

Cortex 25:56 Yeah, and I haven't dug in on this at all. So you know, presumably, someone at Apple has some very good arguments for it. Or maybe it's like, hey, it might turn out to be pretty rad. But But yeah, it's easy to look at and say, I haven't really gone beyond because I don't care. I'm not gonna buy one right now. So I'll just let the internet figure it out for me. But yeah, it seems kind of weird. But this piano thing is cute. So I like that. If I had a MacBook Pro, with this touchbar thing. That's probably what I would

Jessamyn 26:30 put on. So it runs little apps. You can run little Yeah, it's

Cortex 26:33 yeah, it's just it's it's its own little. Yeah, it's a whole thing. Anyway, there's there is there was a very lengthy metadata thread about it, that I thankfully only had to skim very briefly because people weren't getting in too bad of a fight about it. My how we've grown as a site, the Apple arguments have gotten a little bit more even keeled.

Jessamyn 26:56 The other bizarre thing about being in Cambridge, right? I'm like, totally in this room, doing talking about innovation for libraries and doing things that help everybody blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it must have been like, 3040 people and everybody had a Mac. Yeah. And like, don't get me wrong. I like my Mac, but like, they're not the dominant market share, you know what I mean? Yeah, like, at all. Sorry, one person, the Mac, the lawyer, the lawyer who's doing this great project about fair use, and I'm very excited about it. But yeah, it was, and not even Linux, like you would think there would be more than zero. Linux people, but don't Mac Mac, Mac, Mac. And I had one too, so you know, I should pretty much shut up. But yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:41 weird. Yep. Sometimes everything is fucked. Sometimes everything's an unrelenting pile of chips. Sometimes you don't know what to do. Where to go. b Are you gonna get through this? Well, you write it down, you sing it out. You don't get you don't have to keep on even when everything is fine. Keep your eyes open, keep keep your eyes keep on keep on keep on keep on going and even one everything is Phox

Cortex 28:38 shall we? Shall we talk about Metafilter

Jessamyn 28:43 Yeah, we should it's occurred to me I have participated very, very little in metal filter and I believe I have not participated in metal filter proper at all in November. And that may actually be like, I can't remember the last time that happened.

Cortex 29:02 Yeah, yeah, no, I've I haven't been that far aside because obviously I didn't show up but some stuff.

Jessamyn 29:08 But I literally did not make a comment even though I've been all over asked me to filter as usual. And I've been in metadata as usual. But just sort of what I was going to prepare for this and to kind of figure out what I what I was going to talk about I was like oh I didn't participate and everything that super popular is all about the

Cortex 29:32 fucking let's begin looking through my recent activity to remember what stuff I was talking about. And there's a lot a lot of political stuff not not as much goofy stuff as you do because I think I just didn't have you know, for a couple weeks I literally didn't have well most of the month related and have a whole lot of bandwidth to fuck around with.

Jessamyn 29:53 So yeah, enjoy, like things I saw. There were a lot of like things I saw elsewhere on the internet, and it came to Metafilter To like, talk about them, except I didn't wind up talking about them, but I often wonder reading about them. And this one I knew as soon as I saw it like all over Facebook, Julia, Julia, Julie pleases post about how to talk to your reps when you have social anxiety. Yeah. which plugs into kind of what we were talking about earlier. She's, uh, you know, comics, she does comics, a comics. Oh my god. Do you just feel like there's like words missing from your head that like, you're pretty sure used to be like, she's an illustrator. She's a graphic novelist, cartoonist. Oh, God. And so she did. Cordelia did this really good. Here's how it actually works. And you can read through a thing. And it explains how to make it work. And actually, it's okay. And it's useful and important. And there's other ways to get involved if this is just not going to work for you. And so not only is it a good thing, but you know, it went through the internet like a wildfire, because a lot of people can relate to that. Yeah. And so, you know, people shared their little stories about making their little phone calls, there was a sort of an analogue meta talk thread, I think just after the election, right. That was okay, what are you actually doing? Yeah.

Cortex 31:19 Sort of nailing down specific actions and whatnot.

Jessamyn 31:23 Yeah, like, get going and do some things. What are you actually doing? And this thread was just a mini, a mini version of that, you know, somebody who called the wrong representative, whatever, like this. And so, you know, people talked about getting it going, and I was like, Yay, team, everybody's just kicking the ball down the field. Cool.

Cortex 31:45 Speaking of yay, team, those those cubs, they won that thing. So

Jessamyn 31:51 that was a thing seems like a million. So I assume you're saying that because there was actually a better filter?

Cortex 32:00 It probably just reminded me Yeah, like, I don't even I like not know who pays ball way, but I just don't, I don't really care about baseball, particularly. I have a good genial attitude towards it. And that's about it.

Jessamyn 32:15 I watched the final game, but I had to work early the next morning, so I went to bed before the last five minutes of the game, which apparently were amazing. And I did miss that.

Cortex 32:25 Eyebrows. McGee is a big I don't I don't I don't know if she's a huge sports fan, per se. But I think she was sort of noting that living in Peoria you kind of have a probably a little bit more than average are going to be invested in sports narrative, just because there's a lot of sports fandom around. But yeah, she was she was very much watching the series. And, and. And yeah, so I got a certain amount of play by play on the broad strokes just in the company slack as she was like, I can't believe this is happening.

Jessamyn 32:58 Right, right. Right, right. I learned how and how exciting in my only interaction with Metafilter people about the baseball game was the Cubs appeared on Saturday Night Live in not one but two sketches. And one or two B fights thought maybe that was a little too much. Because I always go chat about Saturday Night Live over and fanfare. It's like I do that. And like watch Elementary and I talked to be fights about it. Yeah. And those were that was it. I suppose it'd be too much.

Cortex 33:30 I suppose. I should note that we did have a how many like 900 comment, the fanfare thread about the World Series. So that was fun. We set that up and other

Jessamyn 33:42 jetlag sports into fanfare, which I really feel like works. Well.

Cortex 33:47 Yeah, right. Yeah. No, people seem to really enjoy it. It's nice to have like a dedicated place for it. Rather than like sort of lurching into maybe a thread on the blue somewhere, and then people don't know how to find it. So

Jessamyn 33:59 I make a kind of a fakie post, which is basically like games on Yeah, exactly.

Cortex 34:03 And that's something we set up relatively recently. Just be like, Okay, well, this is we'll just do this and when we need it, we'll do it. And that's what we did. flipbooks two

Jessamyn 34:11 threads that don't make people really pissed off. You almost can have the kind of live blogging shit that we don't normally have in metal filter. Yeah, you know, like, I'm just reading the comments in this in this thread. Like, holy shit. Pinch me. You said it. He looked great. His first time at bat. Oh my god, like, like some of the comments. Oh, fuck. What a pickoff. That was sweet. Yeah. It's not gonna never allow this kind of stuff in political threads. But you know, it works fine when everybody's kind of like go sports teams. Yeah, because whatever, even if you're not rooting for the Cubs, yeah. Nobody's gonna get in a fight about it. At least not a metaphor.

Cortex 34:52 Yeah. Plus, it's like it's it's, it's a little bit less than 1000 comments over the course of like, the whole, the whole series. You know, it's not like it's not like people post sticking to it or comments on our this is like, yeah, seven games. That's that's all right then. So yeah, I don't know two seemed like a good thing people seem pretty happy with it. I was thinking maybe I would keep track of it and then I just completely didn't

Jessamyn 35:13 keep track of like

Cortex 35:14 the the actual series as it was playing out. Like maybe I'd sit down and actually try and watch some games but nope, wasn't happening did not have the spare time things I liked a metal filter that's that's what we were talking about. There's this post it's just a baby stealing a phone. And so running around, you know, filming itself on the phone and running from its mom and it's just a short little goofy baby video and then people started putting it to music and it's it's it's so simple and so dumb and I loved it.

Jessamyn 35:47 Like I did not have short like

Cortex 35:50 Yeah, it's like it's like a 12 second video the baby running with a phone. And then you know, it's set to like, you know, Yakety Sax and a bunch. And it's just beautiful. It's the dumbest, goofiest little thing.

Jessamyn 36:08 Baby running from the police. You're right, you're right. This is great. I

Cortex 36:15 encourage everybody to go watch that dumb baby video. And it's 20 variants. But there was also Desert Bus happened.

Jessamyn 36:25 Yes, I I finished a book about video games. I think I was telling you in the last podcast death by video game. Yeah, highly recommended. And they have a whole thing on Desert Bus. And then desert bus was coming around, maybe you should explain what Desert Bus is.

Cortex 36:40 So Desert Bus desert itself is a video game made by Penn and Teller years ago. And it's just the dumbest worst game ever, like on purpose, the whole the entire game if you're in a bus, and you're gonna drive from I don't remember like Las Vegas to somewhere in California or something like that. It's like an eight hour drive. You do the drive in real time down this straight as an arrow boring pile of highway in the desert. So

Jessamyn 37:08 follow along with us like it's an eight hour game,

Cortex 37:12 not not not like eight figurative hours, eight actual hours to drive from end to end along a straight highway in a bus that doesn't go terribly fast and is needing an alignment tune up. So it tends to veer a little bit to the right, if I remember. So you have to you have to steer but not like you know, action steering just like every once awhile, you need to sort of nudge it back to the left because it's drifting a little bit. And your reward, if you managed to get all the way across the highway, that eight hours or so is you get a point you get one point and then you can drive in the other direction.

Jessamyn 37:47 So and they do this for charity, right? Yeah, so yeah, so Desert Bus for Hope is the worst game of the

Cortex 37:51 World. Yeah. And it started as I think basically as a as a well meaning joke, and then it was like, as long as people keep donating, we'll keep driving. And now it has turned into this like you know, Dave Yeah, thing Yeah. Where it's just like this utterly, utterly terrible video game marathon. And they do it just as a charity

Jessamyn 38:17 Desert Bus for hope. And you can watch it on Twitch and it's ridiculous. Oh my god and Tricia Lin made this great really thorough really wonderful post about it.

Cortex 38:26 Yep. So if you don't know about it read up on the post because it's pretty cool.

Jessamyn 38:31 Hey, want to read print material about it there's a chapter about it and death by video game which is actually a pretty good book.

Cortex 38:38 And all societies you know, next next November, you know, be ready for it and you can be there in real time. I think you can watch the whole archive too if you feel like watching it after the fact but

Jessamyn 38:46 yeah, they've raised over three and three quarter million dollars already by doing this goofy thing

Cortex 38:52 and this was this was totally a you know what, this is a fundraiser and it's on the front page. And this was like a slur letter left a comment right up front saying you know what? It's okay, that occurred it's one news still. Yeah, this this Yeah. And this is a mod file. I'm just gonna say look, you know, this is we kind of need something nice right now. This is an institution I did. Fiat Fiat. I never know I've never had a sense of what the correct way is. Well, yeah, but that's like a car But see, that's okay. So here's my thing. I hear Fiat as a car. And then I'm like, Yeah, but is this one of those things where someone went with a brand but then went with a slave I feel like pushed away from the brand pronunciation

Jessamyn 39:32 I kept why they made the brand that damn maybe yeah, because it sounded whatever imperious

Cortex 39:42 but then it's also a European car and so is it necessarily me the same as like, you know, English friends? Yes. The amount of effort the amount of effort I put into trying to treat

Jessamyn 39:53 the comments how do you pronounce I at Yeah. I think Oh, go ahead.

Cortex 40:04 Oh, all right. I liked I'm never gonna honk again, by But tomorrow is another day, which is a, you know, I mentioned this in the last one because I was apologize. I'm gonna just mention again 31st Yes, but anyway, I'll just mention it again because God dammit, it's bike horn sample music, go listen to it, it'll tie in later, I'll come back to it. But there we go. Well, okay, yeah, I'm sorry,

Jessamyn 40:30 wow, I always enjoy this time of year, sort of the after Thanksgiving and before the rest of the holidays, fights about Christmas. And so, cash for lead. Like, it's one of those things, I think I've mentioned this before I moved to Vermont, and I just had to make my peace with the fact that, you know, rural Vermont celebrates Christmas, the end, and I can like it or not like it, but I can't make the world change. So I just had to, you know, kind of decide how I felt about that, because I don't celebrate Christmas. And I find Christmas to be a little oppressive in some ways, but but whatever. So I, you know, tried to find things I like about it, and et cetera. But I do now enjoy kind of as a spectator sport, arguments about Christmas. And so this was basically a long article on Patheos patheos.com. That essentially is talking about when it's appropriate to play Christmas music, but you know, that's on, it's on a sort of religious See, blog, and has, you know, information about well, what kind of Christian Are you whatever. And then there's a related linked post about two plants getting up and about, which is better and also Jesus's born. I don't even know what Oh, yes, it's a post by action populated roughly this time last year, the only Christmas carols that are any good at all a definitive and absolute list fight me. So I recommend going back to that one. As you read this one. And of course, then it just turns into a whole bunch of people lacing up about Christmas music. I enjoyed it most. Yeah. Yeah, just kind of a good let's all band together and grab asked about something that's out the election.

Cortex 42:23 There was a post that I enjoyed reading, it's one of the things where I don't want to complain too much, because it's really just sort of like the story of something that happened. And I'm going to tell it worse than the post does. But in short, Pignataro did something funny at her comedy show at Carnegie Hall. And I enjoyed reading about it. And so you should too.

Jessamyn 42:43 Jang, can you just type it in the comments, so I don't have to read anything else. What actually happens? I mean, I love taking the Tarot, but I don't trust Pignataro. You know, well, to

Cortex 42:56 be fair, like the the article in the post is a description of what happened at the show. It's not like, written by TIG so it's you're not signing up for specifically Oh,

Jessamyn 43:04 the article itself is not trolling. Right, it's documenting

Cortex 43:07 the trolling, basically about,

Jessamyn 43:10 check it out. I do enjoy her.

Cortex 43:12 I mean, the pitch of it is basically she finishes up her show by saying and as a special, a special guest, you know, gift for you all because you've been such a great audience. The Indigo Girls, you know, and then like turns to the curtains where they're going to open widen those Indigo Girls, we're gonna play some music, except for that didn't happen. And then she spends several minutes continuing to try and make that happen. And that's all it's it's funny. Taking her was great. I would have loved to see it happen. But yeah, it didn't.

Jessamyn 43:42 And I love for dinner.

Cortex 43:46 But it's

Jessamyn 43:50 there is one Jessamyn pandering post this month, at least the one that I saw, even though it's also a recent post, but basically it's, you know, little tardigrades, we've all seen close ups of them. They don't actually look that interesting, not close up. But you can the Stanford tardigrade project has an easy guide for finding your own pet water bears and sleeper made a little post about it. And the reason this is Jessamine focus is vaca Pinta has the first comment, and basically talks about how he saw them and it was basically like picking up moss looking at it under the microscope. There they are. Which I appreciate it. And I felt like that comment was just for me, so I like to read it nice.

Cortex 44:39 Yeah, there was a post just a couple days ago from fizz. I skimmed but

Jessamyn 44:47 this the month that fizz made fizzes 1000 poster that was a month or two it was like a month or two ago. All right. I just know I comment. This was like,

Cortex 44:56 fizz did relatively recently crossed the 1000 posts the front page told which few have dared and so good job with that all trying to get up in the meta talk portion of the program. But yes, this post was ESPN, ESPN article. See because it sounds like I said a word for penis.

Jessamyn 45:21 What are you still talking? Yeah.

Cortex 45:23 About that. So So

Jessamyn 45:25 I assume it's just you pronouncing some crazy things.

Cortex 45:28 There's a rare video game cards, called stadium events. It was an early Nintendo release. It was later rebranded along with the family fun fitness map, which itself was rebranded as a Power Pad. And this was this was the PowerPad was the thing that was like, if you ever remember seeing this, it was like a bunch of buttons laid out on a mat on the floor, kind of like a DDR precursor. And so there were games that you would play by like, running and stepping on the button.

Jessamyn 45:57 Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, I have on those like DDR mat, so I know kinda how

Cortex 46:02 it was like that. But the shittier. And like, you know, so the classic. This was one of like the launch things like one of the one of the big bundles with the Nintendo back in the day, you could get like the, you get the Zapper version of the Nintendo. So it shipped with Mario, Super Mario Brothers and also duck hunt on the same cartridge and come with Zapper, well, you could also get one with the Power Pad and track and field as a three game card, which was amazing to me as a kid that that was possible. And it had the power in the PowerPad really did not do very well. And they eventually just stopped bothering with it. And if you owned it, you would just if you read the threat like I enjoy this as much as anything for the resulting threat of comments. It's not like it's a couple dozen comments, but it's all people sort of digging in on Oh shit. Yeah, fucking PowerPad thing. Where like, everybody like to a person's like, oh, yeah, no, we would just like get off the pad and crouch down and hit the buttons with our hands instead of trying to run on it. Because it was easier to go faster and win. Anyway, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for the nostalgia is very much tying into key stuff in my videogame childhood. Yeah, well, and

Jessamyn 47:11 there's fewer and fewer opportunities, because so much of that stuff is so Nietzsche. It's hard to like you're you're rarely going to I mean, maybe in Portland, but like, you're rarely going to be at a party where somebody's like, oh, yeah, that one little thing, but a meta filter, you can actually find like a group of people who can, you know, talk about that experience. And that's actually very cool. Yeah. I had one more little one, which was from sort of the beginning of the month, mostly just because I like the title. And because it's snowed all day on Thanksgiving. This post is called New England complaining about the weather since the beginning. And it's by Cubby. And basically it looks at the first American folk song which is written in English, which is basically a list of grumps to hope by early Puritans. And then there's a cover tune of it done by I don't even know who this is done by. Well, it's not much of a cover. It's a fairly traditional take. But at any rate at you know, for people from New England, who know how much we'd like to grump, and talk about whatever and how that long cold winter must have been in everything else. I appreciate Kobe putting together this this post didn't get a lot of love, but I liked it. And it's all about Woburn which Adam G Reilly pronounces route three down from Beretta and Chelmsford.

Cortex 48:41 Really England man

Jessamyn 48:43 he's the guy who does universal hub that website that's all kind of like Boston area all the time and I love it when I see him show up on metal filter because he runs his own little kind of local metal filter and he's good guy. Yeah.

Cortex 48:55 Nice. Yeah, I have a couple of posts that are in the oh, I should get back to that and I remember to favorited mode that I mentioned real quick. One is the uncertain history of Hollandaise big old post by filthy like thief in the style of read big old post by filthy like beef, beef. And it's it's a big fucking post about the history of hollandaise sauce, which I like hollandaise sauce, and so that's great.

Jessamyn 49:22 Oh, god, it's got eggs and lemon in it.

Cortex 49:26 It's Benedict. Yeah. But I got

Jessamyn 49:30 my not my thing. Dutch baby is as easy as it gets. There's a

Cortex 49:34 there's a sort of, oh, we were young and innocent. Then though, because this came out. He posted this in the number of second it was a spin off after a big discussion of hollandaise sauce came up, I think out of references to Egg McMuffins in reference to Evan McMullen back when we were still thinking, Well, what if Macmillan pulls off some extra EVs from Trump and he loses by even more and that somehow turned into a discussion of hollandaise sauce be like hey guys, maybe he's just Just go find a post about hollandaise sauce and stuff.

Jessamyn 50:03 Like these. You'll see that's good intel because otherwise I was like

Cortex 50:08 yes, that's that's the that's the secret history of the holiday sauce post. But also eyebrows made a post that I favorited and have not gotten back to at all in just found on my favorites. Oh yeah, I want to go back and read this. the Never Sky disc a mysterious bronze disc dug out of the ground in in Germany somewhere. And yeah, it's like just like it's one of those weird hey, here's an artifact of someone doing something we're not totally sure exactly what's up. And then there was like, you know, and

Jessamyn 50:43 they had sold it on the black market and nobody knew it didn't have Oh, right. I remember. I feel like I saw her talking about that somewhere else on metal Metafilter because I've just looked at this picture recently. Did you put a link to it like on milkshake baby? I don't think so. Like I get all of my information. Someone else

Cortex 51:04 probably got today's I haven't. But and there's

Jessamyn 51:09 what a great post what an interesting story. Yeah, there's a man sitting in the library talking about something about myself

Cortex 51:20 this morning? Chapter two will have you do you want to talk about AskMe edit filter.

Jessamyn 52:02 I would love to talk about Asmat filter AskMe edit filter was full of stuff. The thing I wanted to point out was remember back in the day, when like we had an idea for an AskMe Metafilter. That was all an April Fool's joke. That was all apocalyptic like how do I you know, get the the rate accoutrements for my underground bunker, you know, post apocalyptic kind of jokey joke stuff. And like we were thinking about doing that. And then we decided not to because it seemed like it might have been making fun of people who had serious issues, or were paranoid or whatever. I kind of felt a little bit like some of metaphysics are over, like some of AskMe Metafilter over post election November, you really looked like, like what we thought was going to be kind of a joke. AskMe Metafilter, like eight years ago? Yeah, just because people are really, and justifiably, I don't mean to be poking fun at people at all, justifiably very concerned about what's going to happen to them in you know, their specific situation, whether it's because they're transgender, whether it's because they're immigrants, whether it's because they're, you know, they've got some uncertain legal status for various reasons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So AskMe medicals are kind of blew up. And the good news is, you know, our community is kind and our our community is helpful. And so lots of people gave lots of good advice. I specifically went talk to my town clerk, for somebody who was trying to figure out like, you know, I got married before my partner transitioned. And now I'm not sure if our marriage is going to be legal. If there's some future shit that goes down. Could we just remarry, again, in a state where gay marriage is 100%? Legal? And I, you know, talk to my town clerk who was like, Yeah, consult a lawyer, but but gave me some useful information about Yeah, what what to ask and how to do that. So there was like, a lot of that going on. Most of those things did not, you know, hit my kind of top, whatever list, but I just wanted to point out sort of as a phenom. It was nice to see so many people being helpful to so many who are concerned.

Cortex 54:16 Yeah, cuz that was, that was definitely a sort of conspicuous thing, to the point where, you know, we had a couple conversations with people over contact form about like, Well, hey, I've noticed this is do you want to? Or are you guys planning to do something about it? I think with the idea that, you know, people people see a pattern like it's one thing if there's like, a couple questions on a given day,

Jessamyn 54:36 you know, when there's one Halloween is like, yeah, care for costumes.

Cortex 54:40 Exactly. So do we do a click here for you know, deciding whether, yeah, which ultimately, we ended up just sort of keeping an eye on we pruned a couple of things and sort of let it play out some and I think that has worked out. Like everything else. It's come down a little bit. People have gotten a little bit better about saying, Okay, well, I should figure out if This is a question someone already asked. And

Jessamyn 55:02 so right, right, right, right. So that said, things I enjoyed that were mostly kind of list generating things was specifically Hey, you know how there's a number you can call and get the weather. And then there's dial a buoy, and Toronto Public Library has dial a story, this question from Gotanda was like looking for other numbers that you can dial that have like phone trees that you can go through, that will deliver information that are in English, because they, I think, I don't know if this is their plan, or this is just sort of an idea. I thought it would be useful. Ted thought, He's okay. He lives in Japan, he may teach ESL for having like, students be able to dial up and then kind of listen to prompts and navigate through stuff and then wind up at the end with like, a little thing. And so there's like fun. Your emergency Hall and Oates hotline, you dial 719 26 Fascinating story, dial a song from They Might Be Giants. You can get the time from NIS t. So there's a whole bunch of like fun, you know, fun stuff, and leave a message voicemail for Santa's that kind of thing. In fact, there was not as many awesome ideas. It's one of those things. 14 answers. 83 favorites. Yeah, so if anybody has any more things, you can dial please put them put them in that.

Cortex 56:30 Oh, man, you know, sort of similar, but like a much more extreme example of like, you know, lack of enough answers. Question from Gamarra for president saying, hey, oh, I

Unknown Speaker 56:46 love that.

Cortex 56:48 Alright. You remember that time magazine that had the sort of Goetze looking thing? I was watching this. Yeah. And so yeah, me too. It's like as like, what else happened like that? And then there's like, nothing. Crickets, unfortunately. But yeah, I ended that's my activity. And I forgot about it, because there was no activity after that. This was, you know, week and a half ago. So if anybody does no examples of here, you know, please go get back to this question after the fact. And, and fill us in. That reminds me I took a picture. I never posted Twitter. I'm just going to do it right now. While we're talking. I'm gonna look it up and post. Someone Someone in my neighborhood made a jackal entered that was very clearly supposed to be a spider. Except maybe it was goats. That sort of like it was just, yeah, just now remember that. So tell me about another Ask me while I while I tweet this?

Jessamyn 57:46 Oh, yeah, sure. Well, there was this one, by Sarah Jane, who basically said that her nephew came out as transgender before Thanksgiving. The family wants to support him, but they're not. They don't know what the hell to do. And, you know, he's introverted. So talking to him about like, how can we best support you maybe isn't the best way to start? And again, you know, it's historically a topic that doesn't always go well, especially because the question was asked, and using some slightly red flag language, I'm sure accidentally, but still. And so a bunch of people just came to the table with a lot of really good links, advice, things you should know, how to be the most affirming and the most supportive of this family member. And so you know, with all the, with all the crap, it was nice seeing people kind of get together and be like, good on you for trying for the most part. And here's some things you can do. Very helpful. I mean, there's been a lot it post election kind of lists generating, here's what you can do, here's who needs help. Here's who bla bla bla bla bla bla bla that have sort of specifically been aimed towards people who could probably use the most help. And this was one of the threads and asked Metafilter that kind of came along those lines and one of the other ones and this there was couple variants about this one, but this was the one that I saw us first sky crashes down. It's like we're making holiday cards. I do not feel cheery or optimistic. And basically in short, I'm trying to find a good quote to print inside that acknowledges without directly talking about it, the dumpster fire that has been 2016 I think Oh, are they had a very similar? I'll have to see if I can find that thread. Because he's got like a baby and a baby on the way I think and same kind of thing. Like how do you send a message of fellowship to people who you care about without being like, whoo, everything's fine blah. And let's see if I can find it. or are they? Excuse me? clicking, clicking? Yes, I want to put a topical message on my family's holiday card. Clicking

Cortex 1:00:16 radio ladies, basically,

Jessamyn 1:00:17 they're all like, you know, white Americans took some professional photos, but they don't just want to put sort of a pithy thing. And they would like to actually kind of get across the point like, you know, should scary a little bit, and that people are afraid, and how do we acknowledge that, but also, you know, send a holiday card. And again, there was some good, yeah, there was some good suggestions.

Cortex 1:00:40 I have a sort of, in that same mode, and I think you maybe answered this, I still haven't read the thread. But this is another favorite English because I really want to get back to it. Exact knocked, asked a question the other day. Basically say, hey,

Jessamyn 1:00:56 oh, that's totally I go to pumpkin. Yeah, right.

Cortex 1:01:01 Yeah, you can ignore posted, go speak, go to pumpkin. posted this, you know, thinking on creative work in times of real political trouble, which basically saying, hey, you know, I'm upset about the election of Trump. And I'm conflicted about spending my free time on creative work, because, like, I feel like I should be doing concrete things sort of going back and doing, like, you know, I feel like I should be trying to accomplish, you know, mitigation and fighting and pushing back on this stuff. But at the same time, I only have so much spare time during the day, and I kind of want to spend that on, you know, my, my art stuff, my creative work. How do I cope with that conflict and like, and I really, really feel that too. And like, that's, that's why I was like, oh, favorited Gonna, gonna go try and get in on that. Because? Because it is tricky. Like, you know, it's like, there's, there's the idea that like, you know, doing creative work is going to somehow save the world, which I don't think it's where most people are coming from. It's like, you know, I've certainly been, I've been I've had a real uptick in my, in general creative output the last couple of weeks and very little of it has been specifically political. You know, it's like, the cross stitching and mangers bunch thing, you know, and stuff like that. That's not me trying to, you know, make a statement about Trump. That's me just kind of keeping myself busy. Yeah, and, you know, it's paradoxical because like, to some extent, I've realized how much value I get out of doing creative stuff, because I oftentimes I'm not working on that stuff so much. And then I realized that like, oh, shit is shitty. And all right, this is one of those outlets. You also had

Jessamyn 1:02:43 your you make your one minute post, we can I mean, your one minute song, we can get to that when we get around to music. But I mean, you know, some of your output has been in that direction. And some has not.

Cortex 1:02:54 Yeah. And it's it's a weird thing to grapple with to think, Okay, well, if I'm, if I have this spare energy, you know, what should I be doing with it? Now?

Jessamyn 1:03:03 Do I have any spare energy? Is it okay to spend any of it? Yeah, just doing creative stuff? Well, and, you know, somebody linked to Tony Morrison, the Tony Morrison article, I think we brought up maybe last time on the podcast, I've been talking about a lot. Like, you know, artists need to move forward and not just sit there sort of paralyzed by dread. This is an essay that she wrote in March, but people have been March last year, but people have been kicking around to the internet. Yeah, again.

Cortex 1:03:34 Yeah. So yeah, that's the thing. That's a whole that's a whole thing.

Jessamyn 1:03:43 Wow, I was just looking for I had marked this thread to come back to later the financial success for one post, which was basically like, Hey, I totally follow sort of financial spite dried mango, financial blogs, but the denominator seems to be that they're all couples. Like, I've read these blogs, but what about I want to see bloggers who are just like, you know, financially independent, maybe early retired single woman perspective. And Harvey kilobit has some suggestions. And then he's the only person who comments and then there's no more comments. kind of interested in the answers? Yeah, yeah. 46 favorites, essentially one comment.

Cortex 1:04:37 You gotta do some numbers on that again, sometime do another round up of like, high ratio questions.

Jessamyn 1:04:42 Yeah.

Cortex 1:04:44 Because like, you know, it's it's a thing like, like with stuff like this to an extent I guess the podcast could be doing this. But what like, the idea of explicitly like spotlighting stuff where it seems like there's a lot of interest compared to the amount of response to this. Can we You throw more eyeballs at this, can we really say, hey, go, go get on this if you've got something to add to it, or is what we're seeing here actually, not bad luck, but the natural distribution of the availability of actual answers versus interest. What if there's really what if this is just a conspicuously, you know, lacking bit of demographic representation in what's out there? And the reason there's, like, almost no answers is there's almost no answers. You know, it's hard to know ahead of time, but it'd be interesting to try throwing a firehose at it to like, at least give it a second sort of chance to turn some stuff up.

Jessamyn 1:05:36 Right? Well, look, you know, it might be sort of a meta talk like, um, you know, another unloved threads, yeah, Roundup or whatever. But I mean, it is kind of fascinating because Because of this, I learned about iari forums, which is for Early Retirement Extreme, basically, but good people who really want to get financially independent like now and what they're doing and people you know, it's just a forum BB forum kind of thing. Yeah. But you know, there's interesting people telling their funny stories about that and I've been reading JB Roth's Get Rich Slowly, this month, like that's one of my print books. Not because like I'm like woo financial independence, but just because it's a good book I've been meaning to Oh, not get rich slowly. Money the missing manual, Get Rich Slowly, his blog money, the missing manual, the book. Yeah. But you know, it's another great kind of tips for thinking about money. And it's really interesting, which made me look at this. And I was like, ah, more, more answers more answers. So yes, team more answers.

Cortex 1:06:33 Get on it, folks. Secretary pointed this one out to me, I think because she was curious if I knew about it, and I was not familiar with it either. But it was a question from Lara the great about a meme sticks leggy out real far.

Jessamyn 1:06:51 Never heard of it, either.

Cortex 1:06:53 And I was instantly like, this is great. And they are they're basically saying, hey, what's the backstory on this? I like this, but I don't know where exactly it comes from. And it looks like people pretty much nail it down and then potentially updated. Know Your Meme to include that information, because it's somewhere that largely great had already looked. So. Yeah, it's you know, if you'd like if you'd like people to actually amoebae out. Yeah, it's pretty great. So there you go. Meme accomplished, there are times I think, I think at times about like, trying to be much more aggressively, like, on top of this stuff, like should I be like, cuz person or as a person, your job as a person, not not as a job thing, I don't think there's any particular need for me to be like, super conversant in like, you know, developing memes to manage Metafilter. But it's one of the things I always enjoy. Getting out of Metafilter is like, you know, coming across these goofy things, and, you know, it's like, like, what if i What if I did just, like make this like a much more upfront part of my, you know, cultural literacy schedule, you know, I try and, you know, keep up with pop music to some extent because like, I I, whether or not I'm super into any given song or artist, I feel like it's useful to like

Jessamyn 1:08:12 pop with it, so I can do passably well at trivia.

Cortex 1:08:15 See, though, you gotta you got to clear motive there to yes. But yeah, I don't know. Memes. Man. These memes these kids today with their memes. Oh, my God, I'm like, I'm 70 years old. Anyway, I enjoyed that.

Jessamyn 1:08:35 Good. Up to being at the holidays. Please recommend some good punk hardcore Christmas songs for hoopy Oh, nice, which actually had 29 favorites and 26 answers. So we're getting better. Feeling better filter a lot was marking things to read later.

Cortex 1:08:52 I'd be really curious to look at the numbers and see if that was measurably the case, I would not be shocked.

Jessamyn 1:09:00 But there's lots of good advice and they are funny. And yeah, appreciate it.

Cortex 1:09:05 This is a solid playlist right here in the making.

Jessamyn 1:09:08 And then speaking of solid playlists, my last thing from AskMe Metafilter is opposed by de Capricorn just wants to like watch a show where characters try to achieve their goals. So like parks and rec, you know, the way Leslie Knope is just kind of working towards the things she wants and makes progress. And so you know, people just kind of have sitcoms where people kind of work a little bit towards what they want. So if you're somebody who wants to watch something where there's actual things moving forward and not the same knuckleheads and the same thing over and over and over Groundhog Day style, yeah, I recommend I recommend this thread.

Cortex 1:09:58 There is a incidentally didn't come up with a thread I'm looking at someone suggested Breaking Bad, which, I mean if it wasn't for you just like you're you're answering the question.

Jessamyn 1:10:08 Thanks for you can't explain why it's funny without spoilers. Well,

Cortex 1:10:11 no, no, it's just breaking down it's not a sitcom at all. And I think there was just someone like here's a couple good suggestions. Oh, and maybe also this and the maybe also this was where their their brain just slipped in they forgot about the like, fundamental concept that this is a sitcom in which Breaking Bad is so complete all the time. Oh, yeah. No, I'll do it. It's I totally feel it. It made me laugh to see it not because like, ah, but like, Oh, man. Yeah, that that feeling? You know, we we get we get email from people when that happens. A fair amount, which, obviously you you would remember that sort of thing in your time here, but like I always liked.

Jessamyn 1:10:47 I'm one of the people that emails Yeah, hey, this knucklehead? Can you guys do something about? Well,

Cortex 1:10:54 you know, which I always appreciate is like, well, you're technically technically you are the tools that if you want to do but you're right. That's not your job.

Jessamyn 1:11:03 Right. Oh, god, that's really interesting. Now, I mentioned this to you before, but like I've moved on from the Internet Archive wrote a little thing. Yeah, etc. It was just basically like, I wanted to either work more there or not work there anymore. And Brewster was like, what you do is important, but not enough to pay you like it's a real job. And I was like, fuck it. But like metal filter, I'm still like, on all the mailing lists. You know, I still have my email address. Like, I think they're kind of hoping not that metal filter to this because metal filter totally did not fit. Like, I'll just still kind of work, you know. Figure it out. I've still as near as I can tell, got all the tools. So yeah, if anybody needs help with Open Library, just email me directly, I guess. I'll see if I can help you with your shit. But you know, we'll have to work out some kind of trade in cash money. All right. I'm just going to assemble you know, logins. I mean, because now that I met, you know, a fellow in the Library Innovation Lab, I also have a Harvard Library Card nice gets me into the building, which you can't get into otherwise. But other than that, not that much, but it does mean I can get like any PDF on the internet. So I feel like I'm amassing every kind of power you can have that isn't physical strength or money. Excellent. Nerd powers

Cortex 1:12:27 Yeah. I am both more or less prepared for music. I'm gonna go ahead and do a quick roundup.

Jessamyn 1:13:09 Challenge is amazing. And awesome. Yeah.

Cortex 1:13:11 Well, I'm more prepared than usual, because I finally like you shouldn't was Greg got totally caught up on it this month, which I don't always do. But I didn't make my little pre selected list of songs I was going to use. So I'll just sort of wing it. But the challenge. So the challenge right now. This last month has been 60 seconds and under. And it's actually the second time we've done this challenge. We did previously a year ago, two years ago. I don't know. I don't remember exactly. But I remember. But But yeah, it's it's basically trying to log in, you know, a minute or less. And we've had several entries so far. It was three years ago. It says so in the in the post that creators put together. Time flies it does. It's crazy. But yeah, we've had several contributions over the months. And it's been a lot of fun sort of looking through them. But

Jessamyn 1:14:06 the first thing was this month,

Cortex 1:14:08 was it okay? Yeah, yeah, no. So the challenge is, it's exactly what it sounds like, you know, just do a song that 60 seconds or less, and a lot of people aim for about 60 seconds and a lot of people aim is for less. There are a couple of great very, very short things. There's also a very noisy trip going back and forth outside my house. I don't know what's going on there. Maybe it's a street sweeper last garbage truck. I don't know what the hell it is.

Jessamyn 1:14:38 Anyway, try to get your attention. Like

Cortex 1:14:42 they did also power speed so just driving back and forth. But yeah, oh geez. Where is this? I can't find it. i Oh, I'm struggling jar full of people by Grumpy Bear. 69 who I'm certainly mentioned before Uh, this is, this is a 12 second song. I will probably have used it already as an interstitial in this recording when it comes together, but I'll just read the lyrics for you, which is you can find everyone in a jar on the hill if you look for the jar full of people 12 seconds in and out. It's beautifully done. And it just, I just, I listened to it a lot yesterday and just laughed. Because it's it's amazingly like it's just so nicely done. And it's so short and weird and visual and unsettling.

Jessamyn 1:15:33 Totally points out like it's the opening montage song to like, a TV like it's a television jingle almost.

Cortex 1:15:43 Yeah, it's like a jingle to like some very strange animated British television show or something like that is what it feels like. Yeah. So I really I really enjoyed that. Beef with the have put together a six second avant garde thing that it's not a ton to listen to them. It's perfectly nice.

Jessamyn 1:16:03 Act six seconds. Yeah. Yeah. But

Cortex 1:16:07 but it's really this is this is about the write up. There's a he wrote up a couple pages about sort of like the the project itself. And that's really interesting reading. It's like, slow music, like the tuner and 78 year long performance. This is a condensed version

Jessamyn 1:16:21 was talking about this. Sorry, I didn't realize that this was the thing you were talking about until you started. Yeah, yeah. Jim was telling me about this and how much he loved it and how much I was like, that's not I mean, that's art. Not music. Kind of whatever. Yeah, I admire now, I'm listening to your song.

Cortex 1:16:47 Yeah, I recorded Very good. Yeah, it's I recorded a song I was trying to get something written and I ended up putting out this exactly 62nd long song. Turns out if you need 60 seconds, you can do it at 120 beats per minute and do exactly 30 bars, and then boom. The math lined up nicely. But yeah, we did it. Yeah, that was kind of weird. Random. I think that was nice. It made it boingboing linking to some interstitial site music player like player.fm or something like that. Guy. What do you do? But yeah, it was nice to see it there. And I saw on a couple of tumblers on

Jessamyn 1:17:21 Twitter and be like, Hey, you monkeys fix it? Yeah, I

Cortex 1:17:24 just was I figured it out after the fact. And I was like, Okay, who cares? Right? Not me that day is the answer is who cares?

Jessamyn 1:17:32 What not me? That's not me that day. I liked that. I liked that. Just as a phrase. Not me that day.

Cortex 1:17:40 But there was also there's a bunch of good stuff. I like this weird little. I like this Sci Fi series theme from a user M decks. New User. I think this was their first music post. It's just a short little bit of music for some sci fi thing they're working on and it's it's nice little bit of orchestrated stuff.

Jessamyn 1:18:04 That's very good. That's pretty well done.

Cortex 1:18:06 There's recording by the dailies. I'm not sure I was gonna say Sally s but there's an E in there so anyway, song called objective truth. I don't know Cohen's catalog well enough to know if this was in fact a Leonard Cohen cover or just a song bout or inspired by Leonard Cohen but it's documented as for Leonard and Leonard Cohen when died so that's a thing

Jessamyn 1:18:40 along with all sorts of other people Yeah.

Cortex 1:18:43 Florence Henderson. Fidel Castro it's been a 2016 man I don't know how much of it is subjective impression and how much of it is actually yeah Ron glass which I felt really bad someone made a like obit post right away for it but there's like a thin little like variety blurb that wasn't even finished being written and so let's do something better. And I deleted it and then nothing and then the next day someone made a better post is like okay Oh,

Jessamyn 1:19:11 thank God I was gonna be like, do I have to do one right now?

Cortex 1:19:14 No, it's it's it's hard to that'd be a weird thing if that's how we responded to like rushed obit posters like well we need to make sure one happens I guess so i It's now my job which I write I don't I there's a there's a ton of good stuff. It was really nice sitting down and like just taking the time to properly listen to a bunch of stuff yesterday I'll mention one more le EUR a by Eric grin that I really really liked. But like a bunch of other good stuff, too. There's it's just go listen to music. God dammit. I'm pretty sure. I think greenish is getting together the next music podcast too. So that'll be our second shot. But

Jessamyn 1:19:53 yeah, Jim said he went through and did kind of a sprint through music to like, leave lots of comments on stuff. Yeah, be like, hey, you know, I like this. This is good, whatever. He's been doing a lot of music at home, just as his kind of way of working and processing. Yeah, a bunch of stuff. And so he's like, it would be helpful probably, if I gave people the feedback that I appreciate when they give it to me. Exactly. Hey, nice work.

Cortex 1:20:17 And you can see that sprint thing. So I was like, like I was going through. And it was clear to me that like, Jim had done that earlier than I still ahead of you. Yeah. Like pebbles done that, as well. So you know. And so it's, it's a little bit goofy, but it's also you know, it gets comments on things. And it's nice. And I hope people like I always assumed people use recent activity, because I do and so I'm like, oh, they'll totally see this. But what if they like, they post it and they watch it for a couple days? And then they're done? And they never think to go look back and go, Well, maybe they'll never see that comment. But what do you do?

Cortex 1:20:54 There was stuff in meta stock.

Jessamyn 1:20:58 A lot of stuff in meta talk, I can I can give you a sprint through meta talk. Yeah, go for it go for a return of you what, which is one of my favorite things were basically a way you've always done a thing. Somebody asks a question on AskMe Metafilter. And you realize that, like, the whole planet doesn't do things the same way you do. And like, in some cases, there's things where, you know, people who do it differently, right, like, like you have a shoes off house, other people have shoes on houses, you might have strong feelings about it. But you know that other people at least do a thing in a different way. Whereas some of this stuff is like what, you wipe your butt standing up or sitting down or whatever. And so you're not even aware that sort of people are doing this thing. And so basically, this was another this was a how do you do this ask Metafilter thing, which was essentially, which way do you face in the shower. And it turns out, there's a lot of different ways to do it. And people have questions, like, and it matters if you're like, short or tall, right? Because like most of the time, I'm in the shower, I can, I can barely reach the showerhead, much less, do anything with it. So if I'm facing the shower, it's, I'm either very far away from it, or it's spraying me right in the face. Whereas I can get like water on my shoulders if I face away. So at any rate, lively conversation, and then I went through and added some of the things from the last time we talked about this to the Metafilter wiki page, which I enjoy and appears to be basically my own private little playground because a lot of people don't use it as often as it is as awesome as it is. So people might enjoy revisiting it or they might enjoy that thread partnered with I didn't even know these were a thing, which was a post by Stewart effect basically, did you learn something about yourself that you didn't know you needed to know? Because you read AskMe metal filter?

Cortex 1:23:00 Yeah, this Oh,

Jessamyn 1:23:01 I didn't know that. I have this kind of eczema. I just thought I had like some weird fucked up skin problem that I would never understand. But I read the thread and now and so now there's a whole thread about it, which includes a massive people talking about falling asleep and hearing somebody say your name which happens to me, but it literally wasn't a thing I knew happened to anyone else. I just thought it was like my weird head. Yeah. Fun thread loved it.

Cortex 1:23:30 Here's fizzes, one killer post post, or rather than amount of twists and turns is post about business 1000 posts. As previously mentioned, now mentioned again, while linking to it, there's there's a there's a certain degree of abstract belief in the connection between the words I'm saying and the links I'm linking, podcasts posted, like, I'm a terrible judge of exactly how useful it is or necessary to is to mention the things while linking them or linking them while mentioning them. Because then I'm going to put this together after the fact. And it's all going to make sense to me anyway, because I was there. So I have no idea if the links, the way they end up getting arranged and mentioned in the podcast end up being confusing or whatnot for anybody,

Jessamyn 1:24:13 people just want to be able to find the link somewhere in the list of links. So it doesn't really matter when they come in. Particularly. I mean, I think the thing that's really been great about the podcast, for me, personally, is just that it's now up within a day of us recording. And I think that's super helpful just in terms of currency, and then the world hasn't kind of changed around us in the meantime.

Cortex 1:24:35 Yeah. Yeah, like I'd like Legos. As much as the state of the world in this podcast is different from the state of the world. We were imagining during the last podcast that was at least not like, recorded on November 8, in the mornings, like well, we all know what's gonna be going on tomorrow and everything's gonna be great. So here we go. Yeah, Glad, like having to like post that. On the eighth of the ninth would be Yeah, that would have been rough.

Jessamyn 1:25:07 I very much enjoyed this thread, which was talking about like, hey, look, so maybe the world has changed, and you don't want to hang out with your family for Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever, hey, if you could host some people let people know and open their doors. And if you need a place to go, here's the thread to see maybe if there's people in your area, and it didn't seem like that many people kind of got it together over Thanksgiving. But I definitely was like, hey, people can come over here and watch movies and eat Chinese food on Christmas. And I've got a couple people coming over. Yeah, from you know, the general sort of Providence area.

Cortex 1:25:48 Yeah. And I think there's there's definitely interest in sort of like the the Christmas side of it, too. As much as the thread at the time was sort of concentrated on the, the looming Thanksgiving holiday as the classic terrible family situation. Right. Definitely. Yeah, there's definite interest on the Christmas end of it, too. So. So yeah, no, that was that was really that was really nice to see.

Jessamyn 1:26:09 Yeah. And my guess is they'll probably be another one, like, closer to Christmas. And like, Christmas, New Year,

Cortex 1:26:15 you know, yeah, that's what I'm imagining. Probably, like, you know, early to mid December. I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of spins up its own.

Jessamyn 1:26:22 Yeah. But people in the loose Providence area who just want to sit around not do a damn Christmas thing at all. hang out and watch movies with us. Please. Look me up.

Cortex 1:26:35 Yep. And and, as I said in the thread, you know, if you're in Portland, OR coming through Portland, and just want to have a topic of agnostic beer, or cup of coffee, you know, met by mail me because I'm, I'm always down for that. Nice. I liked. Well, we mentioned, you know, you mentioned and I don't remember what he linked it. But what are you doing thread and meta talk for sort of people talking about this specific, discrete actions they've been doing in response to election stuff. Yeah. So if you're looking for, it's still going right, yeah, it's still still moving along. So I would say if you're looking for, you know, ideas, or wanting to sort of share where you are, that that's a great place for it. It's, it's nice, because it's so utility centric, you know, it's got more of an ask me feel than a metal filter election discussion, feel in the sense that it's right, well,

Jessamyn 1:27:29 and it's not just being like, wow, go do this thing. It's more like this is what you could do that would be helpful.

Cortex 1:27:34 Exactly. So I want to mention just because it's a good thing, it's like that's not a useful thing to mention at this point, because they've already done assignments and whatnot. But cookie swap is going and that that got organized earlier this this month. So every year Mefi bake cookies and mail each other cookies, and people are doing that again.

Jessamyn 1:27:59 Cool. And secret Kwanzaa I think is wrapping Yeah, I think by now mailing the mailing date past, whatever. Just just happened. And so we're, we should see more people talking about that. I didn't participate this year, but Jim participated. So it'll be interesting to hear how it all worked.

Cortex 1:28:15 Yeah, no, yeah, Angela is doing cookie swap. And Kwanzaa this year, I was doing that because like, I don't want to sign up and then not follow through. You know, it's it's one thing to not follow through, it's another thing to not follow through as a guide. The site says, like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna not over commit on your part. It's, it's a lesson I've learned through not being that smart several times previously over the years. So you know, just just play it smart. There's a thread it's interesting, and maybe a thing for people to look at if they want to think about this stuff that got posted shortly after the election, Odin stream posted about basically thinking about encrypted communications if you're concerned about super helpful posts. Yeah. So if you're if you're thinking about privacy and communication and the idea that they Trump administration is not exactly good even by you know, federal government standards to trust with your your identity and communication whatnot. Stuff think about some stuff you could consider making part of your online and communication routine. So some, some decent discussion about their about pros and cons and stuff, but basically not a bad place to start with brainstorming.

Jessamyn 1:29:28 Yeah, no, I thought that was good. I was heartened to see all the different ways people who wanted to do with thing but maybe couldn't figure out how to get it together. Yeah. Good advice from people.

Cortex 1:29:37 Yeah, exactly. Oh, and one other. I liked this. This was just something that we had been talking about sort of mod side like stuff to do on the site that isn't just doom and gloom, and eyebrows monkey that the idea of doing a sort of just hey, what are you up to what's going on sort of chat thread and meta talk that she ended up calling meta cocktail hour.

Jessamyn 1:29:58 Like just A Friday kind of open thread for like, how's it going? Yeah,

Cortex 1:30:03 and I could see this being something we just make a regular habit of because it's nice. It's nice to have like, it doesn't need anything to kick it off. It doesn't have to be specifically about something. It's just, hey, let's you know, let's just take it easy together. Which was one of the things I think is nice about metal talk when it when it can happen.

Jessamyn 1:30:22 I agree. Well, you have to have some kind of reason usually. So yeah, it's a good kind of

Cortex 1:30:27 no reason. Yeah, no reason reason. So yeah, and I'm sure if we're getting some other stuff, but I feel like we've we've wandered into longest territory so any anything else? You specifically, were thinking about this month? Oh,

Jessamyn 1:30:48 this is gonna basically nudge me to get a little bit more involved in metal filter proper because I was away and now I feel like I should come back. But AskMe edit filters to glint along and I think you guys are doing a really good job under fairly difficult circumstances. So I'm, you know, glad Metafilter exists as per always, I don't know what last month would have been like if I hadn't had kind of an internet hangout place that wasn't a garbage fire. Yeah. So it's been great.

Cortex 1:31:15 Totally. Alright, well, I think I think I think let's call it let's call that a successful podcast. We showed up all

Jessamyn 1:31:21 right, nice work. Yeah. Put it put it on the on the plus list

Cortex 1:31:25 indeed. Accomplishing and then yeah, we'll

Jessamyn 1:31:30 nice talking to you and we'll convene again in the new year. Yeah, yeah. All right. Okay, all right.

Cortex 1:31:36 This mass mailings are just out here we're okay see you later. God. Machines