Podcast 128 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 128: DUMPIN' M' BEEF with Jess and Josh (2017-05-11).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Podcast stand for a podcast. Podcast, Josh bar and Jasmine where God was a master the best of the web

Cortex 0:23 This is the episode number 128 of the Metafilter monthly podcast best of the web. I'm cortex, aka Josh Mullard.

Jessamyn 0:31 And I'm Jessamyn

Cortex 0:33 and 128 is two to the seventh. That's a good number.

Jessamyn 0:37 It is the only three digit number that is a seventh power, actually.

Cortex 0:40 Wow. Yeah, cuz like one of the seventh is just one and three to the seventh is something larger. And one to 14. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a big one. It's probably like a five digit number.

Jessamyn 0:54 Three to the seventh

Unknown Speaker 0:58 real time at 721. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:02 yeah, not so big. It's not,

Cortex 1:04 it's not so big. It's not so big. But it is 128. And it is May the 11th 2017 and may 11. His way later than May 1, which is normally what we would aim for. But it's been a very logistically busy month. And so we're just gonna try Mayday. Yeah, was restarting the labor movement? So

Jessamyn 1:27 it was her birthday? Cake. Yeah. Excellent.

Cortex 1:29 Excellent. So yeah, we're gonna do probably just a shortest greatest hits of stuff we liked episode this time, so we can get done. And I can get through later today. And then we'll catch up with a whole podcast train next month, like normal, I expect. But yeah, how are you? Jessamyn.

Jessamyn 1:48 You know, it's probably the first week this year where there have been enough leaves on the tree so that I can't tell offhand. If they're a bird sitting outside my window, I have to kind of wait for them to move and make themselves visible. And that's always something I love because it makes everybody super happy. Because everybody just goes on nuts being like, oh my god, can you believe it? Winter ended and you know, you kind of know what's gonna happen, but you don't totally know. And as opposed to many places down south where either they never really got winter or it's already too damn hot. Yeah, I just like this time of the year, and then my terrible sinus cred. Went away, thanks to health insurance, which I still have and my decision to actually go to a doctor and do something about it, as well as lots of nasal rinsing and a whole bunch of other crappy stuff. Anybody who wants to see the pictures of the stuff that came out of my nose, feel free to email me I will send you those pictures. Sounds

Cortex 2:45 like a meta talk. Maybe a project. That's a good idea. You should totally give up a nice blog entry about it.

Unknown Speaker 2:56 A nice a nice Tumblr. Yeah. Well, excellent.

Jessamyn 3:00 And you and you.

Cortex 3:01 I am good. I have a cat on my lap. So I'm great. Boaty McBoatface just crawled up on my lap sometime about when I sat down to dial you up on Skype here.

Jessamyn 3:10 And she says dial me up on Skype.

Cortex 3:12 Yep, i dalje on Skype. It makes Beep boop touchtone noises clearly if dialing adorable. It goes well,

Jessamyn 3:18 I told somebody that there was a legit cat with a name Boaty McBoatface. They were telling me about something else that was called Boaty McBoatface. I was like, oh friend cat.

Cortex 3:27 I have the best thing called poly McBoatface. And I'm not just saying that because she's sitting on my lap and has claws. For the beer just imagine I spent the entire summer podcast stroking a cat like a villain from a cartoon.

Jessamyn 3:41 Oh, rate because you do have that one eyebrow thing you can do? Yes. You give it the one eyebrow? I'm also good with the one eyebrow so I appreciate it. But you know, I'm not like losing my shit over it like some might? Yeah.

Cortex 3:54 Well, let's let's do some stuff. What are some stuff you like from metal filter? Wow,

Jessamyn 3:58 here's the thing metal filter had the sort of Jessamyn bait article. Literally a couple days ago, like I'm a little bit happy the podcast started late because there's this article called against little free libraries. And it requires a little bit of inside baseball knowledge, but not much. But the important thing to know is that APO set is a metal filter user who is also one of the co authors on this academic article, basically talking about the demographics around where little free libraries, those little boxes that should be full of books, but are really full of spiders and religious pamphlets are in various neighborhoods. And I've always kind of had hate on for these things just because, like you know how you have a thing and you know, there's nothing really wrong with the thing but you just don't like it. Like, you know, somebody who always has to correct that grammar tick, even though it's not even totally wrong. Kind of thing. Yeah. So like you have a box in your front of your house and it's shaped like a house, you have books in it great good on you. But there are some problematic aspects to the organization, which requires you if you want to have one that's branded with their name, to pay them 40 bucks, and then you get on the official map. And if you call your thing, a little free library, and it's not a little free library, they may actually send you a cease and desist order, which seems kind of not Cricut. To me. Yeah. And so these are two gals from Toronto, one of whom is a me fight, who wrote an article talking about kind of the demographics of where these things show up, often kind of neighborhoods that are already well served by libraries, even though the organization theoretically is committed to you know, getting books into book deserts. At any rate, it took off on metadata, like, just man, like cuz then City Paper, picked up the article and wrote a very, like, we're blah, blah, blah, kind of article about it. Which is basically, you know, the case against little free libraries. Have they changed the headline, I believe, since they posted it at first. But So at any rate, it's kind of nerd bait in a lot of ways. But I enjoyed the conversation about it. Avocet showed up and was really gracious about the fact that some people were total assholes, even though most people were reasonable about it. And it just raised a bunch of interesting library culture issues, like what about library fines? What about library service to poor communities? What about blah, blah, blah. And I'm usually a three in done person in any thread that makes me angry, and I actually posted four times in this thread.

Cortex 6:41 That's, that's, that's, that's, that's going over,

Jessamyn 6:44 I left a little secret note to one of the mods.

Cortex 6:48 That so that whole thread, I'm aware of it, but haven't read any of it yet. Because again, busy, but also just that was like, a day off. And I'm more and more trying to do the thing, where if I find out that there's some big juicy thread on my day off that maybe I don't spend my day off reading it, because I can just catch up next time I have a shift. You know, if there's if there's this spare time, work life balance, I know I'm really I'm making an effort. It's it's an ongoing project, for sure. But But anyway, so that's, it's nice to get a summary there. Because yeah, I can only the barest glimpses of what was going on there.

Jessamyn 7:21 And it was sort of a great combination of things, which included an interesting topic, but raised in kind of a less good way, like the article I thought was really good. But the article about the article was a little bit over the top, and that a lot of metal filter, people can relate to directly on many sides of the issue. Because some people have little free libraries. Some people are librarians who hate them. Some people think the word library doesn't really apply. Like they think the word Library is a generic word, not a specific word, you know? Yeah. Like why do you think it's all about you, blah. And so it was I just had a really good time kind of romping around look at it was interesting to me.

Cortex 8:03 Nice.

Jessamyn 8:04 We have about you. Oh, sorry.

Cortex 8:06 I just, I just say we have a as far as I can tell, unsanctioned book thing, spider house afraid of a neighbor's house that's shaped like a TARDIS. And so

Jessamyn 8:16 well, I mean, that's the thing, right? When you see really creative, cool things like that, it's hard to have anything negative to say about it, because just how cool is that? You know, somebody through their creativity that way? And who cares if it's like a white thing in a white neighborhood that helps white people like that's not an indictment of any one thing. But there may be issues with the larger movement, you know what I mean? Exactly, which has nothing to do with that TARDIS, which I'm sure is adorable as shit. Yep.

Cortex 8:48 little free libraries. A land of contrasts. I I like this thing that scrubs posted.

Jessamyn 8:57 Scott is the one who made the crazy Candy Crush ever. For didn't I thought he made it.

Cortex 9:06 Totally believe it. I just like

Jessamyn 9:07 it. He's from Toronto.

Cortex 9:11 Yes. Yeah, I

Jessamyn 9:12 think it's called tablet.

Cortex 9:14 Oh, did he bring that to the expo? Well

Jessamyn 9:16 yes. Because he told me you've had it that's okay.

Cortex 9:19 I remember the fucking okay I'm sorry I'm gross. Makes a lot of cool stuff so

Jessamyn 9:23 well. Right which cool things crusted are you talking about

Cortex 9:28 exactly in this in this case what he did was post something that I totally wanted to post so he's an asshole but no, no, it's it's really rad thing called a minor.

Jessamyn 9:36 He did the markup for the post and that itself was 256 bytes long. So why don't you Why don't you talk about what this thing

Cortex 9:44 did not catch that. It's the first guy that is it didn't want you know, I would jump in right I was jumping right into like dump my beef about not getting the post it so I didn't eat real beef. Dumping beef. Okay, we've got a title now. Dumping.

Cortex 10:00 All right. All right. So this post is, it's a Commodore 64 demo, called a mind is born that some guy put together and demo for those who don't know what demo means, in this context, the demo. Actually, the demo scene is this sort of broad collection of people getting generally impressive audio visual things out of often relatively underpowered computer hardware. So the demo scene was always sort of about like, pushing hardware to its limits. clever ways to Yeah,

Jessamyn 10:39 so I knew a guy who used to do this by throwing complicated postscript at a printer and trying to get like the printer to draw a thing from like the raw postscript code. Sure, but it was really pushing like the ram of everything, and some Yeah, work. And sometimes you take down the network.

Cortex 10:56 Yeah, if you, if you pirated PC games in the like, you know, 80s 90s, like, cracker demos would often like be attached to the resulting distributed software. So you'd get like your copy of something that you didn't have to pay for. Which don't do kids, that's totally legal. But anyway, you'd get a copy of the game, and it would, they would have cracked, like the software protection. So you don't have to, like look up the number on the wheel or anything more, they just fixed that bit of code. So it just lets you play the game without looking too bad. Yeah. And this is like, this was my exposure, the demo scene was like that sort of thing. And then they would sort of advertise so there'd be like a dot nfo file, talking about who didn't mad props to all the pseudonymous folks involved and shout outs to other cracking crews. But often, there'd also be some sort of like, greeting in the form of a demo, like showing in big sign waving glowing, colorful letters, you know, this big banner greeting saying, you know, shout out to, you know, mad freaks, blah, blah, blah, that that just sounded like the most adult trying to sound like the kids versus fellow kids. Yes, but But you know, it's the big, colorful things. And it was all about, like, you know, that looks so much better than like a normal PC game might. But it's because they're doing smart, clever hacks that don't really apply.

Jessamyn 12:14 I'm looking at this now. And it's really bizarrely neat. Yeah, so

Cortex 12:18 a mind is born just the demo, just watch the YouTube video. It's just like some weird glitchy graphics and some cool music. But when you read about it, it's insane. And what it is, like it managed to get like this complicated, like music and graphics thing coming out of just a very tiny bit code to under 36 bytes is nothing. It's ridiculous. Like the header file for a random image is probably larger than that, you know, you could fit the plain text into a couple of tweets. So it's, it's, it's great. And it's a great read. And the, the Read is really kind of technical. So like, you may read through it and be like, blah. I mean, I honestly was, I couldn't follow half of it. But I enjoyed the process of trying to so I thought that was really cool. And the result is really cool. And it's a good job. Bye. Bye stress. Who is my mortal enemy now?

Jessamyn 13:06 Yes. So yeah, my two because he filled me all up on sugar when I was in Toronto, and now I just have memories of that meetup was just like, candy. I think I found a bug on the website. Can you click this link and tell me if that is broken?

Cortex 13:22 Oh, one of one zero 190 votes,

Jessamyn 13:25 I was just gonna go look and see what I voted for on projects just to see because we didn't really talk about projects, but maybe there was something I was

Cortex 13:34 theory, I have a theory, I think

Jessamyn 13:37 zero and then it goes to the next page and it goes 21 to 20. Yeah,

Cortex 13:41 no, I think I think I think it's trying to go I don't know. That used to work. Yeah, I think something might be broken. They're definitely broken. Yeah, I will get you make a notice and contact for me

Jessamyn 13:56 is right here. I just dropped it in Skype.

Unknown Speaker 13:59 You're in charge. Okay. Well, all right.

Jessamyn 14:03 Yes, so I don't know about projects just it's you know, I'm curious wasteland

Cortex 14:09 then funky with the URL there in a strange way weird. Well, what else would you like?

Jessamyn 14:16 Ah, ah, let me see. Um, let me see if this was where? Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 14:25 I'll tell you what I liked.

Jessamyn 14:28 My all my stuff was on AskMe Metafilter. Well, that's cool. It happened at the end of April and I didn't really mention it at the time. Because there is one thing I don't think I mentioned last month, which I wouldn't mind mentioning mention it which was because I don't think we got to it last month, which was overeducated, alligator, great username, talking about one of Boston's spied houses, the skinny house, which is an 11 foot wide million dollar house that's for sale in Boston. And it was fun. because a lot of the people in that thread or like the Boston posse, well, not as many as I thought, but some, and it's just fun talking to it. Yeah, talking about it. It was one of those things where, you know, I just wanted to go bullshit with people about this topic. And yeah, that's where I could go. Do we have

Cortex 15:15 a conversation recently on the podcast about spied houses? I feel like maybe we did. But oh, God, maybe

Unknown Speaker 15:19 it was last month. Josh?

Cortex 15:22 No, let's not worry about it. We're talking about Google it but in shortest white house is a house that someone doesn't sell around and want them to because there's a link to it in the post. Yeah. So go check that out. But I

Jessamyn 15:36 did alligators post, but I didn't get to it last month. So

Cortex 15:40 I liked thing from ethnic knocked, which is no shock. But he was the Boston Metafilter. That was totally unintentional. Segue. Thank you. If anybody asks

Jessamyn 15:54 you always like to post it I don't even understand. So high rule is what these words mean in this order.

Cortex 16:00 This is high rule map projections by ethnic knocked, it's a project he posted, I rule a person high rule is a place high rule is the land in which the game The Legend of Zelda takes place. And

Jessamyn 16:11 that's an important piece of information is that's

Cortex 16:13 why I just provided it as he does at the beginning of the post. So honestly, you're just you're just being difficult. Now. Wait, where does it say that assuming the nephew of high rule? How would I know that? What

Jessamyn 16:23 does this mean?

Cortex 16:24 Okay, take it back Nintendo Entertainment System? Oh, gosh. Yes,

Jessamyn 16:28 I am a middle aged lady. Okay.

Cortex 16:31 I think I, I acknowledged this was not a explained post or comment about the post. Nonetheless, Hyrule is the map that is in which Zelda takes place and what Ignacio has done here.

Jessamyn 16:46 So it's like a 2d map, right? Yes. dry run around.

Cortex 16:49 Yes. And so he's taken this and applied some projection transformations to it as if it were various kinds of, you know, global maps, and you know, do Mercator and so on. And it's just, and I enjoy, it's fun.

Jessamyn 17:06 You. Wow, wow. Oh, and there's a whole thing on GitHub. Nice. Nice guy with a click back. Oh, I do have to tell you. Yeah, I have a 13 year old intern for my drop in time, because he needs to do meetings, community service credits for school. And so he needs to do something. And he's like a computer Head Kid. So he comes to drop in time and helps me help people. And all that's my project. I did a Storify of all my tweets about dropping time. But anyway, he's like this gamer kid. And so we actually had a conversation about Legend of Zelda on Tuesday. So I really should be able to maybe do a little bit more talking about it than I appear to be able to. Because like, he's been over it for years. Right. But his little brother who's nine, maybe just started playing it and just finished. I don't know something. Wild something. Yeah, yeah. So the older kids like, Yeah, but he doesn't know that. Like, I've got all the swords, and I saved all the princesses, or whatever the hell I don't even know. But, and I was like, God, you're gonna grow up and be a terrible man. Unless, like we do something right now to stop you from being this way. I was like, well, that's cool. But like, see it from your brother's perspective? Because he's, you know, he's one of those kind of like, he's really excited about dropping time, but like, not super great at not grabbing the mouse or whatever. And so we kind of learn how to do that. And he learns about like, how little some people know about computers, and it's been helpful. But yeah, Legend of Zelda, Zelda, he has all the sorts. Well, high rule. There you go. Hi, rule. Now I know. You know, I probably heard people say that out loud. And I assumed it was like an adjective not a location.

Cortex 18:48 Nope, that's location. You might hear people say Hylian as the adjective or reference to things having the Hylian Yes. Yep. Well, you know, it's, it's a three year old franchise. What do you do? I guess, I guess anyone's pretty good. Also, people really like to draw porn of Lincoln, the Zora Prince. Getting it on? It turns out,

Jessamyn 19:12 how can you even forget it? Yeah. I don't want to have this conversation with you or anyone.

Cortex 19:22 I'll mention another project to real quick, which is burning the days which is just a new site slash mailing list thing that Dobbs is doing he dropped back in?

Jessamyn 19:32 Oh, yeah, I'm on that list. Actually, I signed up for it. I think before he posted it to projects. Likes, dubs old time meta filter person from back in the day, who's had various kinds of mailing list. stuff going on. And now he's got a new thing.

Cortex 19:49 Yeah. Good writer. Go Go sign up for his mailing list. Yeah,

Jessamyn 19:53 very good writer. It's one of the shortlist of mailing lists that I'm on.

Cortex 19:58 What else do you like?

Jessamyn 20:00 I'm ordering from masculina filter. Do

Cortex 20:04 you have more things to do? Do whatever you like. We're just going all out of order. We're just going all out of order

Jessamyn 20:09 Muppets. What are they? Oh, gosh. This question from 322 was basically asking, all right, is there like a muppet origin story? Like, is Kermit like a frog? Frog? Is he from our frogs? Did he get special powers through something? Gonzo? What is it? And it's just an adorable thread of people talking about this topic. And about you know, like, like Rolf the dog has interacted with an actual puppy like, do they know? Do they know? Like a muppet frog and a muppet bear can be twins, like, and so people go through different parts of Muppet dumb with, you know, support for various claims about where they came from. And it's just a fun, great nerd, thread. Bruce Springsteen, muppet. Everything's awesome. It's awesome. It's awesome. I love it.

Cortex 21:16 Basically, someone needs to put up a technical manual, like they do for the Star Trek stuff.

Jessamyn 21:21 Yeah, yeah. Well, and I don't know if there's if there's answers, I mean, Star Trek all that reminds me of a part of the website we never ever talk about. And we should because it's fun. fanfare a little bit out. So Chris Pine was on Saturday, live this past weekend. And like, Saturday Night Live is the one thing I go to fanfare to kind of talk about. So Chris Pine who played Captain Kirk on some of the Yeah. tours or Star Trek? The technical manual? Yes. Yeah. You say, Okay, good. I thought maybe you said Star Wars that I was gonna really just be off in the weeds.

Cortex 22:05 I might, I might have had Star Wars while thinking I would think Star Trek. Have to go to the tape, which I never do. So

Jessamyn 22:12 one of the things that was fun about this discussion thread is they did like a Star Trek sketch, but like old school, Star Trek, not new school Star Trek. And so Chris Pine was playing William Shatner playing Captain Kirk which whatever. But there was like a guy playing Sulu, who, like a lot of people in the audience. And Jim was like, oh, it's that guy. And I was like, I don't know who you're talking about. I don't know who this guy was. And first comment in the fanfare thread was that the guy was basically he's a longtime Saturday Night Live. Crew member. He's been on SNL since 1975. And he used to play Sulu in the old Star Trek skits on Saturday live from 1976 that's all so this was basically 40 years later, he's still playing Sulu on Star Trek parodies on SNL and I would not have known about it if not for FINTRAC right. You're awesome Good job.

Cortex 24:20 I really enjoyed in stupid things on the internet and in Silicon Valley. I enjoyed the the thread about and really the whole phenomenon. The juicero thing. Yes. i Okay, so I've never, I've never said yes. So I hear juice roll in my head. And I've avoided actually hearing anybody say out loud. Like, is it juice row instead or to Cerro? I don't,

Jessamyn 24:45 I've never heard anybody say it. I live in Vermont. Nobody knows what this is. Tell people about this story and they think I'm making it up.

Cortex 24:52 It's amazing. It's like it's on the one hand if this had not ever blown up, it would just be another gadget And whatever some people who have the money for this would own it and wondering, Hey, I've got a juicer. Yeah, it's my fancy juicer, and that's it. But on the other hand, it's so fucking stupid on the face of it that the fact that it then blew up when people stopped and said, hey, what if? What if I just squeezed the bed? You know? Right? And yes, well, and

Jessamyn 25:20 they're defensive, it is indefensible, you know that they're like, but it's got to tell you if your spinach is expired, and people are like, Why don't you just sell spinach that isn't expired? I bought my fucking spinach from you. I bought it from you. Yeah. It was fun to lols around. Yep. metal filter people.

Cortex 25:40 Exactly. That's, that's basically like, there's, there's no, there's no meat. It's because it's juice. But, but it's just it's kind of nice. When there's like an easy outside target that like, isn't complicated. It just like nope, someone actually just came up with a dumb business idea. And a whole lot of people ran with it until they stopped.

Jessamyn 25:56 Oh, speaking of which, is there a fire festival?

Cortex 25:59 Oh, God, there is and I haven't read it. There was another busy day. And so I didn't actually read the thread. But There sure is. Let me find it. Because those what do

Jessamyn 26:08 I type I typed in festival festival metal filter into Google and I still found it. Good thread here by my dad. And I, as you might expect, I have sort of mixed feelings about this. Because the sort of schadenfreude of feeling good about rich people feeling terrible. I'm not sure is the total way forward for us as a society. Sure. But the mismanagement of a project with one of those kind of like, well, it's fucking easy. All you have to do is throw venture capital at it. And then you wind up with the thing at the end, works for apps and doesn't work for camping. You know what I mean? Like, it works for anything that doesn't have a human element, which was not this festival. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. To just sort of watch this kind of happen. Yeah. And now somebody pointed out appropriately, that now there's a a perfect New Yorker caption for every for every New Yorker like Christ, what an asshole is. Let's just do it and be legends, man. And if you read the Twitter thread I just linked to you it's it's pretty great. Yep. So it's hard. Great. And it's also it's unclear by the reporting. Just how terrible it was, like were you in a bad tent with food? That wasn't luxury? Or were you actually in danger? I mean, as near as I could tell, they were around the corner that like it wasn't a private island do around the corner from a hotel. Like, like, that's shitty, but you're not like in danger of getting deported by ice

Cortex 27:50 or yeah, there may be an aspect of here not being I don't know, leave distinguish between really bad festival conditions and actually being in danger. But like, yeah, it's the nature of the sort of gleeful Oh, my God, this is such a fuckin mess nature of it means of course, we're probably getting a somewhat skewed view of like some of the more pedestrian details on the ground. And

Jessamyn 28:10 yet everybody's hardest struggle is their hardest struggle, right? Like,

Cortex 28:14 sometimes sometimes your Instagram plans just don't come through. And that's, it's hard.

Jessamyn 28:21 So I have to ask Metafilter threads that are only related because the subjects both start with T EA, but I thought that they would be helpful, and I know you like tea, so I thought I'd lay them on. Yeah, let's do it. Here's a company that makes tea bags for regular tea, and for iced tea, how are they different?

Cortex 28:42 Oh, you know, I saw this question go by.

Jessamyn 28:44 Turns out there's an answer. Yeah. And it's explained by a couple different people. You know, there is a little bit of science behind it. It's not clear if these companies are, you know, employing the science

Cortex 28:59 but, but in principle, there could be a reason.

Jessamyn 29:01 Yeah, in principle, there could be a reason I enjoyed reading and it's a short thread. And then my husband and I are thinking about getting a teardrop trailer behind our Subaru Outback, but we haven't done it before, let us know. And as somebody who's kind of a teardrop trailer fetishist. I like the idea. But I don't really know if I'd like to thing and, you know, it's one of those things where if a teardrop trailer were like, $1,000, I might try but they're like $8,000, so I probably won't. Yeah, but so listening to people talk about it and following some links and clicking around gave me an enjoyable 15 minutes of thinking about it again.

Cortex 29:37 Yeah, just sort of occupying teardrop Taylor's space for a while. Just thinking

Jessamyn 29:41 about it. Yeah, good thread. And it's good to hear about Metafilter people talking about it because they feel like they're similar to me, you know, they're not like all rugged outdoors people. So if they think, you know, if they think a thing would be would work for them. It might work. For me

Cortex 30:00 yeah exactly yeah I have friends who just bought a teardrop trailer last summer and kind of experimentally because they haven't like been big campers but they ended up like super loving it like we were all camping together and and they're like onboard for like they came out for a couple days last summer and this summer they're like let's come for the whole week you know, so like they're definitely converts like it's worked out very well for them. So far, so nice. So you won't necessarily die if you buy a teardrop trailer that Josh Mullard endorsement.

Jessamyn 30:31 Well, and I used to have a Subaru Forester and now I've got like a Honda CRV, which theoretically, if a forester can tow it a CRV can tow it, but I have a hard time understanding that. So I've just kind of been like, Ah, it's too hard. You can't understand some things which is, you know, failure mode of my own personality. But there it is.

Cortex 30:51 I liked and was too late to post as well, this one, but I think I refrained saying so in the in the thread this time, but MC Mike Namira posted the sequel to a previous post about B su K ball in a Rube Goldberg device. But it's a narrative Rube Goldberg device and it's so fucking adorable. It's just like three balls rolling around track and they're getting in trouble with some big mean black balls chasing them.

Jessamyn 31:24 Do they talk? Is that racist?

Cortex 31:26 No, it's uh, I don't think so. No, I think I think these are just abstract, colorful bottle balls.

Jessamyn 31:34 It's a choice, right?

Cortex 31:36 I suppose it is. I got more of a cannonball feel from it than a race relations commentary personally. But it's also I don't know, it's Japanese. I just I so want to stop the spec. And the subject of weather, I'll move on. Anyway. It's super cute. And you should watch it. And it's just great. It's just like a Rube Goldberg device. You know, it's got the same level of like clever little janky tricks and whatnot. But then there's this whole narrative about these three brothers who are trying to safely make their way through saving the one brother who got in trouble, and it's great. So I enjoyed it a lot. Go watch it, it's a nice thing. It's a nice fun thing that I like.

Jessamyn 32:14 Nice. Good. So I have a couple. Two days in or two posts, same day and meta talk. We this is kind of wrapped up this time around. But I feel like I always need to put in a plug for if people want to join an online trivia League, and they are of the highest quality reputation, they won't forfeit and they won't cheat. They should talk to the metal filter people who are in the learned League, and there's a thread here talking about it. Even if you're not that good at trivia, because I'm not that good at online trivia, you should think about it. And that was posted the same day, as I got stuck on a train for seven hours. Yes. And Gwen made a funny post because I was just basically I took a train back from New York City. And I got like, three stops away from my house. But that's actually like an hour by car. And the train stopped because there was a train ahead of us stopped, and it was gonna get going any minute now. But it didn't for six hours. And then they gave up and called a bus to take us home. And by this point, it was midnight, and I got home at 130 and I was supposed to be home at 630 but like I'm what what, you know, my community management skills went into like, you know, I started like going around talking to people because some people were pissed. There are people who like paid like 60 bucks to like get a taxi cab home, you know, because they're like, What the fuck yeah. Or if you've got kids like the food there's expensive and whatever. So I started like talking to people then making a bunch of funny tweets about stuff and I had a little one person dance party in the quiet car because there wasn't anybody in the quiet car and I didn't think anybody I was just being on Twitter being a as you know being an idiot but then it got posted to meta filter which at because we had internet so it was actually kind of fun to chat with people while stuck on a train and Kota Amtrak refunded all my money food trip because they inconvenience me unduly I guess, and I wrote them very nice like, Hey, guys, I know you can't help it. Sometimes the train is late. But seriously, like you could have taken us home on a bus like five hours earlier. Let us

Cortex 34:38 Yes, it was just thinking of like a Safeway comment and I'm just not gonna bother so I'm going to tell you about another thing instead. Which is is a post I made I made a bunch of posts in the last month I've been trying to do that more and I've been enjoying it a lot and I sort of got derailed. I'm gonna try and get back to that derailed see train segue. There we go. Now I got it.

Jessamyn 34:59 Hey, I'll give it some time.

Cortex 35:01 Anyway, I made this post about postal pieces, which is a bunch of competitions

Jessamyn 35:05 and bait. How did I miss it? Oh,

Cortex 35:07 no timing. I don't know, a guy named James Tenney, a composer wrote a series of short musical compositions

Jessamyn 35:15 to link to, yeah, well, it's,

Cortex 35:17 you know, it's like conceptual art from like, the 60s 70s. Like, I wanted to find like, I feel like someone could make a really nice site out of this, but, you know, probably be involved, like getting a hold of the actual composer and getting permission to do that. So as it is, you can have to dig around a little bit, but all the music, so each of these it's a bunch of competitions, each of which is like, very simple, like, puzzle pieces, because he wrote them on postcards. You know? They're not necessarily short.

Unknown Speaker 35:47 It's written out on postcards. Yeah. And yeah,

Cortex 35:50 it's, it's, in a sense, like, very algorithmic in general, like, you know, it's more like, here's a musical idea, go execute it, rather than I will write out the score of this whole thing. But in some cases, it's literally both the cello Graham link in there. I really like because it's got the drawing, along with the music you're hearing and the music is like several minutes of two cellos playing together, and they're just playing these slow sliding, contrasting tones that look just like the drawing on the postcard. And,

Jessamyn 36:19 ah,

Cortex 36:19 I saw these the other day, I just I really liked him or the other the other week, I guess, time. So yeah, I really, really liked that. And it's like, it's, it's a couple hours of music altogether. And it's, you know, it's it's really minimalist, conceptual music. So if you're not into that sort of thing at all, you may not be interested, and I'm not, but But it's interesting to have it. Yeah.

Jessamyn 36:39 And I don't have to be everything. Exactly. Oh, I forgot I did make a post this month, but only one. What did you post? I posted a thing about Jay Cruz, who's a DJ in Los Angeles. And he's been asking rappers who come into the studio to freestyle the words to the popular children's book, llama llama red pajama, and ludicrous. So he's been doing this like for a while, but for whatever reason, ludicrous whether he's cute or popular or has crossover appeal, who knows? Suddenly, like it's on NPR and it's on, you know, places that you've heard about kind of as Ross nation says, when I saw this being shared by other white folks on Facebook, I was worried it would have the tone of quote, see, rap can be fun and non threatening, unquote. But I am pleased to see it is actually delightful. Nice. Yeah. So you know, it's llama llama red pajama feels alone without his mama. It's like a It's a it's a book about being anxious. You know, it's for kids like little kids. Yeah. But it also lends itself to some dope beats. And so I made a little post about it, because I saw the ludicrous thing. And then I was like, Oh, wait, there's eight more on YouTube. Five more. And one of them is by Migos I think, who are like some hip hop group from the south, who like, came out with Oh, bad and bougie which apparently is some sort of completely amazing breakout song that everybody's freaking out about, and there's just a crazy video that's nuts. And Jim apparently knows all about migos and was like, oh migos they're like butt butt. Butt butt butt butt butt butt butt butt butt starts rattling off all but just stuff about it and we watched Hip Hop videos together.

Unknown Speaker 38:37 Yeah migos migos

Cortex 38:42 we had a meta talk thread about Mastodon

Jessamyn 38:48 there was actually I feel like I got into Mastodon two days too late to be on Mastodon dot social and now I'm on octopod dot social and I don't know if it's the same.

Cortex 38:57 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm on I'm on DOD, social, but I don't really have a clear sense of what it's like being on other things because mostly people I'm following on are on other instances anyway, so I have sort of a weird mix,

Jessamyn 39:11 right? Like maybe I don't care, but it makes me feel weird because I'm like, Oh, but I wanted to be on the original thing. I think that is just me being ridiculous.

Cortex 39:19 Yeah, I think in theory, it really just doesn't matter. Like you know, Mastodon social has the advantage that it probably won't suddenly disappear just because it's such a core thing

Jessamyn 39:28 but maybe acted on that social went away I have no idea.

Cortex 39:31 But then I think I was just set up so favorited by post I did I want to go back. I want to go back and listen to it now and I forget things if I don't think I'm trying to get better. Yeah, no,

Unknown Speaker 39:45 I hear you there. Anyway,

Cortex 39:47 yeah, the Macedon fever has died down but a bunch of people in the meta talk and in the thread on the blue talked about it and I'm enjoying hanging around there. It's like it's chill now that it's not like everybody like is this going to destroy Twitter. It's like Halo Here's, here's this new furry cartoon I drew. And I'm just like,

Jessamyn 40:05 hanging out and post. I was like your example you're not trying for.

Cortex 40:07 Yeah, not me. No, I'm like, Hey, here's a painting I made today. But

Jessamyn 40:12 there's a lot of enjoying your painting on Instagram quite a lot. But I still do and I still need to work out a transaction for that one I'd like to obtain,

Cortex 40:20 yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to like mail it without destroying it, but without spending a ton of money. So So at some point, it should, in theory show up in Vermont. I'm just gonna send it to you anyway. And then we'll figure out the barter, whatever. But part of the bargain will be I might send you a painting that got destroyed in the mail. So we'll see what happens.

Jessamyn 40:36 I'll send you a broken terrarium then. And,

Cortex 40:39 yep. Anyway, if you're interested in Mastodon and they haven't figured out what the deal is, with this whole thing, it's not too late to just join up and hang out talking about Yeah, check those out. And you know, pipe up in the meta talk thread. If you want to ask questions or whatever would probably work fine.

Jessamyn 40:54 I find that Twitter still mostly works for me. I know. That's kind of weird, but no,

Cortex 40:58 I think I think if Twitter isn't going wrong for you, there's nothing wrong with it like it does what it does.

Jessamyn 41:03 Yeah, well, and last month, um, last month was the probably the most, like popular month I've had not that that's why I do it. But like I responded to a tweet by Ivanka Trump that kind of got sent around. And mine wasn't the most popular of the responders to Ivanka, but I'm a person a lot of people know. And so it was weird, because last month, I was getting a bunch of random feedback. Mostly good. Somebody called me a whore, but like that ours, but that was like the one thing, right? Like, I don't like that when that happens. But it wasn't. I wasn't the target of a ton of abuse from everywhere, you know what I mean? And I reported it to Twitter and Twitter timed out the guy until he promised to behave. Which was very interesting to me, because that's kind of not how that generally works. But it is weird, because now this month on Twitter, where I'm just doing my same shit, and not talking about the Trump's, because fuck them. There's less engagement, and I can feel that. And so that's like a weird feeling to feel that absence, even though the engagement I had wasn't what I wanted. You know what I mean?

Cortex 42:15 It's a whole weird thing.

Jessamyn 42:17 Yeah. And it's not one that I that really comes up a lot in my life. Because, you know, I hang out on Metafilter on Facebook, where I have kind of a steady level of back and forth with people that rarely spikes or dips. And so now that there was a spike, now it feels like

Cortex 42:33 going back out thing that's weird. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I haven't been I haven't been like putting out like, potentially, you know, internet attention worthy projects so much in the last couple of years, like, not nothing but like I used, there were like, every month, I'd have a new thing.

Jessamyn 42:51 Chivo I saw that you were peeking up. This was a thread that should have gotten a lot more attention.

Cortex 43:00 I think it was just did I think it was it's just a niche enough of an idea if you don't,

Jessamyn 43:04 so it's so it's I should back up. So it's going to mean, made a meta tag post just a couple days ago, like Google has that featured snippet, dipshit thing that they do. Click a link learn a thing by just reading. But you can search for words, and Google will pull out stuff. And my favorite example is like you search for Shirley Temple and you get this really confusing. Google gets really confused and confuses her with did they fix this? Oh, they fixed it. Oh my god, I've never seen Google fix. It used to be if you searched for Shirley Temple, Google would mix up parts of Shirley Temples wiki page Wikipedia page with oh, maybe it's because I spelled her name wrong with this Baronet guy who actually was born a completely different time. And so it would show you a picture of Shirley Temple, but then be like, and she was 186 years old. You'd be like, what? And she was a dude, which whatever, but no, but what? So at any rate, the snippets are a thing that like Wikipedia does on purpose. And Google does on purpose. And so going to mean notice that if you search for the word Chivos the thing that comes on top is a blog post that you wrote about the word so we're gonna, I'm tagging you in now. So now you can go on with what you were going on with. Oh, I don't even know what all right. Did I lull you into?

Cortex 44:38 No, no, it's fine. Yep, that happened. I was just gonna say I think it's, it's sort of a niche, pitch a niche. It's a niche pitch. Sure. I'm running with it. And had a little bit of a little bit of a kind of like, you know, go fight. You know, what other examples are there which I don't know how exactly you go looking for these. So all of a sudden, like the main participatory thing and the framing of Post is a thing that's hard to do that no one's going to bother with. So maybe maybe that did it. But also maybe it's just like, Yeah, I don't know. But I was I was delighted. I thought that was fantastic. And not just because it was my weird old blog post showing up. I just like yeah, and serendipity, man.

Jessamyn 45:15 And some people noticed. Been plating just comes up with Urban Dictionary. And her Jurf gives a snippet from the meta filter wiki. And so, you know, there's probably other kinds of inwards to meta filter that would show up with

Cortex 45:34 Yeah, but I probably wouldn't, like go plow through the wiki page on jargon and like, you know, check everything.

Unknown Speaker 45:40 Right. But yeah, I like

Cortex 45:44 that cultural penetration with Chivos. Like, there's no reason I should be an authority on Shiva.

Jessamyn 45:48 Well, that's the thing though, it's because you did a long, let me talk about this. And you're not fucking Urban Dictionary. Yeah. And you did it long ago that it was before it, you know, seemed like, I mean, you basically like, beat out Penny Arcade who has a comic about it. So that's not the same. And you know, some weird blog post things. So yeah, I mean, you did a good job. And it was clearly about that thing.

Cortex 46:21 Yeah, I suppose in that sense. It's not bad, like in terms of targeting so okay, I'll allow Google I'll allow you to highlight my blog.

Jessamyn 46:28 I can't believe they fix the Shirley Temple thing I want to get off the phone with you so I can go tell people because that never happened. I thought it was going to wake for months Josh maybe they

Cortex 46:38 learned from that they found out Oh, we got to keep an eye on what's going on with this jasmine. She's She's a thought leader she says she's a thought fluency I think fluency

Jessamyn 46:48 she's a winner on the internet who complains a lot is what she is and rarely rarely gets any you know, satisfaction from internet fights with giant companies who fucked things up.

Cortex 46:58 That's pretty much the human condition right there you laid out I thought you were gonna say that they mixed up like partly surely temples biography and partly like a recipe for the drink?

Jessamyn 47:07 Not from your hands. No,

Cortex 47:09 no. Okay. Can I just say it surely this is this is how my brain works for like everybody. I think who listens knows this already. But like it's just basically constant free association as they surely have. Oh, yeah. It's a virgin cocktail. Oh, that reminds me a friend of mine recently had a baby and his last name is Vestal. And it's trying to figure out well there's that purple Heron lyric from whiter shade of pale about 16 Vestal virgins going to the coast. I was like, should I make a joke about how we should have 50 More babies real quick. And but then you're calling babies virgins. And that's weird. I mean, obviously true, but also what? And so I've never ended up making that joke. So this is this is the abandoned halfway workshop joke. I was going to tell another friend in a different context that has nothing to do with this because of Shirley Temple. All right, I like this meta talk post, meta Cocktail Hour, which I continue to think are fantastic. I have not

Jessamyn 47:58 participated in there are still people, including my neighbor, who were not clear that this is a thing that eyebrows has been doing for a while now that are fun.

Cortex 48:07 There is always there's always that like degree of porousness and awareness about any entertainer on the site is my feeling like you can shout from the rooftops, like with our maximum volume, we can leave up a banner for a month about something and make a meta talk post and sidebar it and best of it, and a bunch of people will see it, but like not everybody. And so like a month goes by and then you bring that up again. And there's still gonna be plenty people who

Unknown Speaker 48:33 are gonna like, wait, what, what, and this is the thing you do now.

Cortex 48:37 There'll be diminishing returns. And so we've been doing this for months now. And I feel like it's sort of catching on with people pretty well. You know, we get emails suggesting new topics and people inquiring about timing and whatnot.

Jessamyn 48:48 Well, and it's a Saturday night post or Saturday afternoon evening post that eyebrows McGee does. That's just open thread. Yes. Talking about big idea. Yeah, but not a strict. Yeah. Yeah,

Cortex 49:02 kind of an antidote to some extent, to all the bullshit in the world right now. It's nice to just like, let's know, let's just let's just hang out just for the fun of it. For the fun of it as a community. Let's hang out and talk about stuff. And it's great. That's wonderful. And I really liked this one from last month. On influential media. This is not the longest metal talk, tale thread we've had. But I really liked the variety and degree of detail of answers is basically people talking about like stuff that was kind of formative media when they were a kid. And if you want a way to get a little bit of insight into what some of the other people you see around on on Metafilter are coming from culturally, like it's cool. It's great. It's like, you know, I mean there's there's not a huge surprise that, you know, some of us were like, oh, yeah, I read a lot of Stephen King as a kid or I watched aliens.

Jessamyn 49:48 You know, Jim's never seen any of the Alien movies. Really.

Cortex 49:51 He should. He should he should fly out to Portland. We'll do a movie where

Jessamyn 49:55 he would love to fly out to Portland. He's in Arizona right now visiting his parents and part of The issue is he sees them twice a year. And you know, he's got a kid, you can't really leave time too often. And so I'm like, Dude, you got to, we would love to come out.

Cortex 50:11 You're always welcome, anytime, just show up unannounced and will inflate the inflatable queen mattress.

Jessamyn 50:17 You are saying that, and you do not fully mean that because I would do that and

Cortex 50:22 mostly me that I would appreciate it. Like I head up on the flight over at least you know, maybe maybe a couple days we'd

Jessamyn 50:28 have Wi Fi on the flight because we'd be Jet Blue. Yeah, exactly. So we're gonna come stay with you. You'd be like, my brother and his whole family

Cortex 50:36 will not be here. Not this weekend. Not this week. Jim's

Jessamyn 50:40 got a CPAP he needs a place to plug it in. Oh, we got power

Cortex 50:49 you gotta want to mention even in our efficiency, we've we've hit our limits.

Jessamyn 50:56 No, the only thing I wanted to mention was the latest one meta tag tail our your alter ego. Cuz usually I show up in these threads at some point, either Saturday or Sunday to be like, Oh, hey, blah. I like talking to meta filter people. It's fun. This one was hard for me. Like if you were a plant or an animal, what would you be and I had a just, I died was stumped. I wasn't sure. It took me a while. We'll spend some time watching

Jessamyn 51:32 YouTube videos about Golden moles because they pop maybe that's what I would want. But it's hot where they live. So I didn't know. But it was weird because normally I can bullshit about anything. And I was just I was brought up short. Wasn't sure. Did you answer this?

Cortex 51:46 I did not. I have not gotten there yet.

Jessamyn 51:49 If you were an animal, quick, if I was an animal,

Cortex 51:51 I would be a sloth. I just like sloths. I don't think I'd really be a sloth.

Jessamyn 51:58 They grow so they move so slowly moss grows on them. I would

Cortex 52:01 be I would be a beaver.

Unknown Speaker 52:03 Beavers good. Beavers. Good.

Cortex 52:04 They are. They're good enough to create a project etc. I'll go with B or plus Oregon. So hey, you know, Oregon. Oh, it's the Beaver State.

Jessamyn 52:14 I thought well, I thought they had like Oregon's

Cortex 52:16 plus they have Oregon's I'm like most mammals. They have internal organs.

Jessamyn 52:20 I was I? Well, and it's interesting that you say that because I have recently taken a photo. Let me see if I can find it. Before we wrap up. Have a yes, you'll like this. I got lost in Boston because I'm a tool and I can't follow a map. But it's always fun because I don't have any place I really need to be. And so I thought I was going to the Boston Public Library. But instead because I hadn't checked the dot again that I was walking towards I wound up at the Grand Masonic Lodge library. Like I was just killing time, you know, so this was fine. But they have this kind of cool logo. That is two giant beavers. Yeah. Dove and olive leaf standing on a croissant. Maybe I already knows what's going through

Unknown Speaker 53:12 eggs. I can't tell. Yeah, yeah.

Jessamyn 53:15 Yeah. Follow reason.

Cortex 53:18 It's like three castles with like a chevron in between. It's a river and then. Yeah, bone arrow. Yeah, masons,

Jessamyn 53:26 right. Yeah, pretty interesting. But I thought it was actually kind of cool. So I didn't and then by the time I got there, I knew where the library was, because it wasn't there. But then it was going to close in 20 minutes. So I was like, oh, fuck it. I'll walk around.

Cortex 53:40 It works. Well, I'll do a metal filter music second and just mentioned a track from the last month that I really liked, which is optimist by choco cat. stuff. I always love chocolate. God, you're amazing. And this is a very nice song off an album he he put on put out last year called lemonade. What? How do you do that? I think it just happens to be a good question. He may have mentioned in a previous music thread. Anyway, it's really nice. And you should listen to it and you're about two because sorry, you already did because I'm putting it on this. So there we go. Boom. I think that's a podcast. You good?

Jessamyn 54:20 Yeah. Good to talk to you. As always. I'm gonna go hang out with my friend's dad who's closing down his dental practice and I hear their sandwiches.

Cortex 54:28 Excellent. Gotta get those dental sandwiches.

Jessamyn 54:31 Yeah, but I'll upload this file before I get back. All right. Good talking to you. Yeah, it was great talking to you too.