Podcast 136 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 136: 2017 year-end call-in show (2018-01-06).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Hey this is that church for and just calling to thank the metal filter community for shepherding through the sorry for shepherding me through my PhD intact. It's been a weird and often kind of terrible year but we're all here and you're all there and I'm thankful for it. So thanks happy 2018

Jessamyn 0:19 I'm clicking I clicked record, by the way. I don't know if you want to record this podcast

Cortex 0:26 or if you're just like talking and we tell people that we talked it's a new it's a new kind of like you know gestural form.

Jessamyn 0:32 I talked to Josh and let me sum it up for ya. Yeah,

Cortex 0:36 we should do we should do like a Rossmann style post podcast, podcast summary, where we each, like, tell a very different version of how the bad cast

Jessamyn 0:45 was really hung up on this squirrel thing. Josh didn't really seem to be awake.

Cortex 0:50 I'm not sure I am.

Jessamyn 0:52 But last time, I mean, weren't like Weren't you drinking last time?

Cortex 0:57 I remember that morning one. Glass of wine one. Yeah. Wasn't even one. I think the one before that was maybe morning. Anyway, this one. This one is episode 136 of the Metafilter monthly podcast best of the web. Welcome to it. I'm Josh aka cortex. And I'm Jessamyn and here we are. It is to July it's July 4. It is seriously nation's birthday. It's it's the morning I did this to myself on purpose. I've known blame but me and so I will just

Jessamyn 1:29 like When's good for you? And I'm like, any time and he's like 730 in the morning works for me for some crazy reason. Are you sure I just took it your word on

Cortex 1:39 appreciate that. Like we're, we're recording audio now. So by definition, this is like success. Yes, it's January. Successful I feel like a successful adult individual accomplishing things. Yes, it's it's Thursday, January 4, and it is 2018. And I'm still writing 2017 on my podcast. Thank you. That's my that's how I do stand up. I tell a joke and I go thank you. And then the cat looks at me.

Jessamyn 2:11 Only the one cat What about the other the other cat

Cortex 2:13 has stopped coming to my shows. Anyway, here we are bright and early. And it is the new year and I'm glad it's a new year. I'm glad the year is no longer the old year because the old year was pretty dumb in a lot of ways. Like not not always but some big ones. I

Jessamyn 2:33 you know this year you know, I came down with the crowd on New Year's Eve. And so as of like yesterday afternoon, I still hadn't gotten dressed in 2018 Like I just been in my pajamas lying in bed like and but I woke up yesterday morning feeling on the mend. And not like I've gotten dressed today.

Cortex 2:53 But I did get dressed yesterday. You could you could decide to today. I mean,

Jessamyn 2:57 it's only quarter of 11 I don't know what to brush things. But I did like I went to the store. And you know did some little things we're supposed to have whatever it is the snow bomb. What is that thing called

Cortex 3:08 the bomb cyclone? The bomb? agenesis? Yeah,

Jessamyn 3:11 I don't find it. We're not getting that in Vermont. This is going to be one of those crazy bullshit things where like Massachusetts, get socked with everything. And then everyone's like rows should Vermont I don't know how you can live there. And I'm like, Dude, look at Massachusetts. Like I'm worked fine. We're supposed to get like four inches. Now Massachusetts will scale like a foot. Gyms already been out shoveling today already. Which you can sort of tell if gyms up and shoveling at this time. There's some chick going down. And injury, it seemed like a good idea to get some pants on and drag my ass to the store. So I did. And I'm actually feeling all right today. So maybe

Cortex 3:48 that's a good feeling that that rally like, you know, I mean, me and me then so we're sort of taking turns having a cold for the last two weeks of the year, essentially, by New Year's. We were both doing pretty okay. But, but yeah, I was like that. Let's take the offseason and add in the slog of taking turns feeling just completely worthless. And you come out the other side

Jessamyn 4:10 damn cold here to like, like negative 20 Negative. So I mean, I'm used to it and my place is warm, but it just means everything else. You know, your friends have their pipes frozen, or, you know, you're worried about your ice dams when it starts getting warm, like it was 20 degrees yesterday. And I was like in a I didn't even wear gloves because I was bald as well. It's 30 degrees warmer than it was before. Yeah, at any rate, the weather,

Cortex 4:38 you can feel that change.

Jessamyn 4:40 But my fever went away. I'm feeling optimistic about things. I'm going to put up my new calendar later today. And

Cortex 4:50 speaking of temperatures, I saw something on Wikipedia the other day where it had specified a temperature range for something in in Celsius Centigrade. Mmm. And then to be clear about the temperatures to not just use what scale it also specified it in Kelvin feels like a great big fuck you that Fahrenheit. Oh no, I'm sorry in case you aren't comfortable with centigrade let's let's define this in terms of absolute zero that will that will help edify the reader. Ah, that's so nerds dirty.

Jessamyn 5:23 But like not even nerdy in any good way. There's got to be a word for that right that like it's nerdy, but in like everything that's bad about the nerds.

Cortex 5:33 Bad bad nerd. Yeah, there should be something snappy for that.

Jessamyn 5:39 CrossTie This is bad. nerding Yeah.

Cortex 5:43 Well, this is this is going to be insignificant part A Colin show, which we called out. Middle of last month, I put up the Google voicemail number it again said, Hey, Colin, with

Jessamyn 5:53 the International thing working?

Cortex 5:56 Oh, you know, I did not. I got some international stuff. So I feel bad. If I had a call, like I posted that immediately, like, stopped to exist as a person for several days. So

Jessamyn 6:06 I should have put mine up then. Because I think I had it worked out on my Skype. We did get

Cortex 6:10 several international calls, which I appreciate that. I appreciate folks taking that whatever. The bucket on the on the fee if that was necessary.

Jessamyn 6:19 You said but yeah, you should offer to give all those people a sticker.

Cortex 6:27 I should. I

Jessamyn 6:27 should. Did you spend $1 on colonists sticker?

Cortex 6:32 Yeah, yeah. Mefi. Email me, and I'll reimburse you with with mild swag.

Jessamyn 6:39 Man, mild swag. That's the it's either bad nerding or mild swag is what we should call this podcast. Yep.

Cortex 6:46 And I'll explore that more in the future. I'll figure out the Skype thing a little bit more. It's hard to get excited as as we've established over the years, about trying to make Skype do things. So

Jessamyn 6:59 yeah, no, I hear you. But I have enjoyed listening to people calling in. It's always interesting to listen to like everybody's accents and where everybody's calling from and people's takeaways from 2018. I mean, I didn't call in it seemed like it would be redundant. But like, you know, it made me think well, there is part of it, where it's like I should have called in. But like, you know, all these people, so many of whom I've met, I've met like a tremendous amount of the people who called in and would really like to meet many of the other people call them. And high point for me is always listening to hexy Dexy. Read his username out loud, because that's just a delight. Yep. So yeah, sorry for people who had kind of super crappy years, as opposed to only the mildly crappy years that many of us had and happy that people were able to find either something good about last year or some optimism for this year and happy that we're all in it together. Either way.

Cortex 7:59 Yep. No, it's really nice hearing people's voices. It's nice having that sort of physicals maybe not quite the right word, but that sort of like, more tangible reminder that, you know, we're a bunch of people out there who happen to meet up via a text based website, but not just the text on the website. So always, yeah, it's always nice. I like the variety and I like the whole sort of mix of where people are coming from. So it's a lot of fun to listen to. And I want to just thank everybody again for calling in it was a lot of fun, and we should we should keep doing it. Because it's a good time.

Jessamyn 8:33 Yeah, and thank you Josh for being willing to do the extra work of dealing with a whole bunch of fiddly little fights. This definitely makes the podcast more complicated than just you and I

Cortex 8:45 There's a reason we don't do it every podcast that's for sure. But I think it's I think it's good way to go. Yeah, so man, that's that's that's it really is early I was this was a tactical error. I was thinking I would wake up full of piss and vinegar I think basically no, no, I actually sort of woke up full of half remember dreams about video games and laser cut design stuff and so we had

Jessamyn 9:16 half remember dreams about library conferences and like Twitter, which is always a bad idea, right? Like I do a good job of like, staying off social media right before bed but sometimes it just doesn't help Yeah, I dream about it anyhow and then I wake up like

Cortex 9:42 anyway, this is

Unknown Speaker 9:47 this is 922-570-3334 a 03. C D, C D D D 819846, D 26999 D one A F for a. What up? Hi,

Unknown Speaker 10:16 this is Graham. On Psych. I'm known as hippie bear. So 2017 my partner of many years came home for good after working away for four to five years, and amazing furry convention weekend in Reno was horribly really sick. A Music Festival in Missoula, Montana witnessed a total solar eclipse. And then backroads for seven hours back home because traffic continued my 30 year streak of seeing every YouTube tour, the 30th year of the Halloween reunion party in my hometown, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we'll be seeing a new Star Wars movie this weekend. But my favorite thing that happened was the July best post contest. And I recommend anyone do that sometime be a prize sponsor. It changes your focus on the site, and it feels magical. Here's to 2018

Unknown Speaker 11:13 This is big Doug Doug churchman in Louisville, Kentucky. And I wanted to say thanks to Metafilter for continuing to be the best community on the internet. A refuge when we need it through this crazy crazy year. And as always, the host of the best gift exchange I ever seen. Thanks again and I look forward to giving you guys 20 bucks a month for the next year.

Unknown Speaker 11:37 Hey y'all, this is movable book lady. I just wanted to say I wish everybody the very best for what's coming. I don't have anything particularly pithy or pretentious to say I amuse myself sometimes better smelter I'm almost two years a member and and it's my haven. So thank you all very much.

Unknown Speaker 12:06 back. Hi, qualitex and Jasmine. Hi, podcast listeners. This is Ali Baba sent me five min a lifeline for me through a really difficult year. Thank you for everything and happy holidays. Bye.

Unknown Speaker 12:20 Hey, this is Oh yeah. Just to ask, Should I be in the Peace Corps that was in the pot. And what y'all were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. It was delicious. So neat, but nine days old.

Unknown Speaker 12:34 Hi, there. I'm Frodo. My user name is Doom snow. I'm calling from Norway. I don't have anything particularly interesting to say. I would just like to find a metaphor for introducing me to so many interesting people with so many diverse backgrounds. I feel like that's taught me a whole hell of a lot about various experiences. It's made me a much more tolerant and interesting person, I feel. Anyway, that's just me saying thank you. You don't have to use this. And nothing that you do. Anyway. Thank you, cortex. Bye. Bye. Good evening. This is endotoxin calling from Albuquerque and I wanted to call in and brag for a little bit say that I helped a person run for mayor here in Albuquerque and he was really some of the best policy choices that I've seen from my home city in a long time and best news ever. He got elected. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for helping out.

Unknown Speaker 13:44 Hello, Metafilter This is diva bat calling in from Melbourne, Australia. Where it's really funny. What the White Christmas except with white people Hall. Anyway, hopefully 2018 is good for you and for us.

Unknown Speaker 14:01 Bye. Hi,

Unknown Speaker 14:03 this is Janet lamb calling from names. I guess the most important fun thing I did this year was to take up the ukulele and I'm gonna play something but then I realized I'd have performance anxiety and I screwed up and I'd want to call back and try again and I screw that up too and cortex we get all mad be like Oh Christ on attempts piece. So instead here's me playing a C chord Happy Holidays everybody.

Unknown Speaker 14:33 Hi cortex. This

Unknown Speaker 14:34 is scruffs a Scottish mefite in Toronto, says it 2017 has been a rough one for a bunch of us. So keep the heat and have a belter of a 2018. Personally I'm looking forward to being a bit more employed next year. I'm just sorry. I can't share a rich sweet Scottish homemade candy with all of you. Or even delicious Canadian maple cookies. If I could, I would. Cheers.

Unknown Speaker 14:57 Hey, this is awkward Rico.

Unknown Speaker 15:00 Happy Holidays, best wishes for the new year to all.

Unknown Speaker 15:05 I am particularly thankful for mefites This year, because three months ago, I was the victim of a really brutal sexual assault, and the people in my life who have been the most constant and the most helpful, other than my family, and a very few real life friends have been my fights. I do not know how I would have gotten through this without you. And if nothing else has come out of my being a member of this place for 10 years, then that would be fine. Because the support that I have gotten from my friends that I've made through this website has been absolutely incalculable. So, thank you, and I love you.

Unknown Speaker 16:19 And that filter, it's Holmesian I just want to thank you for being a continuing source of sanity and reason and good people in my life. And thanks to everyone I've met through this and will continue to be I hope you have a good new year and I'll see you in 2018 Johnny wallflower here.

Unknown Speaker 16:38 Let's talk in yeah, that's all I gotta say, in 2018.

Unknown Speaker 16:46 This is foobie. Just bringing to say hello to all my lovely Metafilter, compadres. Happy New Year, Season's Greetings, Happy Holidays,

Unknown Speaker 16:56 Merry Christmas. Everything like that. Hope you have a good end of the year. And I'm just happy that it is going to be the end of the year because it's been shipped.

Unknown Speaker 17:09 Hi, Matt. This many may be Kathy holidays from the muddy family.

Unknown Speaker 17:18 In Edit filter, this is Celsius 1414. I just wanted to call in wish you all a happy new year, and happy holidays. And to thank you for providing a place of sane and sanity in this last year. In the spirit of hopeful looking forward to 2018 I have been bookmarking various things on Ask me regarding potential creative projects and travel and other optimistic ideas. So thanks for providing that space online and have a great holiday. Bye. Hey, this

Unknown Speaker 17:51 is Josh are 71. And I've been a member of medical for now for about 11 years. And I want to say the best thing about Metafilter for me is the friends I've made in real life through the website, especially Captain Sue, and segments seven. Alright, thanks for all you do.

Unknown Speaker 18:09 Hey, everyone, this is crisis Tom, user 10825. I just wanted to thank cortex and the mod team and mod amerit AI and all me fights for making 2017 a less bad year than it might have otherwise been. And I want to wish you a very happy 2018 to everyone and all of their friends and friends and family and loved ones. So Happy Holidays from everyone here at elections news and of course the borough tax collector's office.

Unknown Speaker 18:45 Hello, this is Slappy underscore pinch bottom, calling from Austin, Texas. I just have a couple of questions along with their answers. The first one is what's the best meal to be served a tectonic plate and the answer is continental breakfast. And speaking of breakfasts, what's the best breakfast to be served upon the drawbridge? Its moat meal.

Unknown Speaker 19:20 I urge you to remind him that failure should never lead to despair. Despair looks only to the past in business and in love. The future is now when our future president needs it. Wearing Zucker hereby the quiz to him his second chance. Hey ho blue folk This

Unknown Speaker 19:40 is Sam Azada here, just say I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season got everything you want and not everything you deserve. And have a better one. Bye. Hey,

Unknown Speaker 19:55 I'm not actually a member of Metafilter I have never signed up I don't have a user Id but I have worked on the site for a good 12 years and just wanted to wish everybody who is listening to this podcast a happy holidays. And I appreciate all of the input and links that you guys provide. Mehta filter is a great site. So take care guys, and keep up the good work.

Unknown Speaker 20:20 Hey, it's Michelle Lee. I have no idea what I want to say here. But I feel like it's vastly important that I say it. I think there must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

Unknown Speaker 20:29 Happy holidays. Hey, this is Dan says the blue Austin, Texas. It's the winter solstice, I'm sitting on Town Lake. And looking across, we're just past peak beauty of the day, it's the water still pretty darn silver. I call it the silver are my favorite day of the year. And my favorite hour of the day.

Unknown Speaker 20:53 I'm gonna hope that y'all are having a great day. Talk to you. I met a filter. This is bond cliff. And I just want to say that I have a cold. So I would appreciate it if you would make me some soup. And tell me a story. And thank you for being there for me. And I hope you all have a great year. Goodbye.

Unknown Speaker 21:13 Hi, this is RMD 1023. And

Unknown Speaker 21:17 Metafilter has helped keep me sane this year. And hopefully everyone at Metafilter is going to have a better 2018

Unknown Speaker 21:25 Hey, everybody, it is 602 A

Unknown Speaker 21:32 and I am having some insomnia, so I thought I would call and yeah, this year was kind of a good year. I had a lot of fun on metal filter. You guys kept me sane and alive. I probably annoyed a fair bit of you with all my incessant video game posts. But hopefully some of you found some joy with that. And you know, I hope that 2018 is better than 2017. And yeah, I will end this because I'm rambling with some good words of wisdom that I've never ever forgotten. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, select all and no, no, I messed it up, up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, be a select all that will get you 30 Extra men we all need 30 extra lives. 2018 I hope is a good one for all of you. Take care.

Unknown Speaker 22:39 Hi, this is Walter bear, and just calling to say thank you all so much for being such good, kind, thoughtful, forthright, funny, and sometimes very serious people who make this place my home. I appreciate it more than you can ever imagine. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker 23:07 Cortex Hi Jessamyn Hi Metafilter This is rangefinder 1.4. And a big highlight for me this year was getting to work with a talented Billy be and not on display on Wi Fi music projects. And I look forward to finishing more collabs in the future. So shout outs to greenish and it the NOC and everybody on me for music. And also to me fight cancer man for being an excellent friend and to the Nephi staff for your dedication and hard work and to everybody contributing to make metal filter an awesome community and so yeah, yay for music. Yay for art or science for getting involved however you can. Yay for llamas and games EA for the mefite podcast EA for the best poach contest and meta cocktails, and EA for kindness. Hang in there. And I hope that 2018 is a brighter year for everybody.

Unknown Speaker 24:13 Hi, this is single from Chile.

Unknown Speaker 24:15 It's been a weird year I'm ending up okay. I've actually been happy. Not in spite of what's there because of all the people in the world. It's kind of hard to explain.

Unknown Speaker 24:27 But medical delete part of that. I love all you guys and hope you have a great year, by the way.

Unknown Speaker 24:35 Hi, this is elephants vanish like a plurality of elephants. And I just wanted to say hello and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all of you, just for being you and making this a really, like wonderful place. It's been hugely important in the last eight years. You know, I'm a little on the lucky side. As one example, I met my beloved friend actually populated through Metafilter and we traveled coming around with country together. Done karaoke on both sides both coasts. And yeah, I guess I just want to say hello and enjoy the season thing goofy songs and indie well, okay, so

Unknown Speaker 25:14 Good evening Metafilter we're chill here. Speaking from the Conservatory where will this indulging in a splendid evening cup of tea. One is currently absent from the Metafilter during the cricket season, and also due to an unexpected liaison with a member of the aristocracy. One will resuming H went with a Metafilter in due course. In the meantime, one wishes only sites far near splendid health, interesting opportunities and marvelous fortitude over the year ahead. Hey, this is Dan

Unknown Speaker 25:56 trick. Spelled STI N D zyk. And I just wanted to share what I thought were some of the best jokes I heard in 2017. The first was I've given up asking rhetorical questions. What's the point? Like Alexei Sayle said that the second non alcoholic beers like a vibrator without batteries. They'll fill you up, but there's no buzz. Russell Peters said that and finally my favorite. The question you always have to ask yourself is is my depression back? Or am I just hungry? Sophie Huggins said that

Unknown Speaker 26:39 a great year

Unknown Speaker 26:41 this is not on display. And my message for all the metal filter people for the year 2018 Is bots once again that message is thoughts Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 27:28 User mandolin conspiracy here. As we bid farewell to the year that was in wonder warily into the year that will be I just wanted to wish all of you all the best in 2018. Take care.

Cortex 27:39 I don't know. I guess we could mention some metaphors.

Jessamyn 27:41 I have a bunch of posts that I like.

Cortex 27:46 Yeah, we December both contest. In fact, I

Jessamyn 27:50 gave a price. Kurt, did you give a prize? I

Cortex 27:51 still need to nail that down today. Obviously, it's been a it's been a weird turnover in the new year. But but you have no there were several posts, I had asked for geometric art and people there were seven posts tagged with that they were all quite nice and covering a variety of ground and you're seriously

Jessamyn 28:10 telling me you have to choose from among seven posts?

Cortex 28:13 Well, I mean, I need to write it up a little bit. I need to like I could just say, Oh, I like that one best and go save. I like that one best. And but you know, I feel like I should put in a little bit more. I

Jessamyn 28:22 mean, that's kind of what I did. Okay, well, fair enough. Maybe

Cortex 28:24 I'm overthinking it. I'll get to that really one way or the other? Yeah, I know. Shocking. I had a conversation with a friend the other day about someone had used the phrase beam plating. Oh, it was so Kenji who I don't, personally I haven't followed. So I was like, Oh, this is this is this person that like, but there was a thread about Kenji where Kenji showed up. And, and mentioned, something about being plating in the head led to the side conversation about oh, they must actually really be, you know, Lurker, then, because they know the phrase been plating and

Jessamyn 29:02 because it's kind of an inside another frame was like, Well,

Cortex 29:06 I don't know, people people use that elsewhere. I was like, what and I got really excited about it turns out it was just a misunderstanding. I think we had, I think we'd ended up in a place where a plate of beans had gotten conflated with hill of beans. And so the familiarity of hill of beans made them feel like it was plated beans was being used, and yet anyway, so it was sort of like a false alarm on a crazy linguistic sort of side side conversation. But in any case, that was a cool thing. People like that. The whole Kenji situation. I don't know if that ended up with a military post or if it just

Jessamyn 29:40 I don't I know nothing about this. So we've got this little chat window and we'll link

Cortex 29:45 Yeah, that's I like this idea. This is gonna change everything. This is gonna revolutionize the podcast. What were some of the things you'd liked? We had the December postponed, both contest a to die at 7:49am Folks,

Jessamyn 29:58 it's 1049. I've been awake for several hours cheating. Well, my December post contest topic was books and reading. And so the two winners were basically, I don't know if I made this explicit, but like, there's certain people that make posts that just always seem to like be exactly up my alley. And so part of this was not the people who have won my best post contests before and so one of the people who I think had won before but I don't remember was movable book lady who actually also did call in Hello, welcome to metal filter is a you know, relatively new book only two years, but she consistently makes posts about book stuff that I consistently like. But she also made this post about manually operated elevators, which is not about books at all, but like, just like a super fun, weird post about like, you know, elevators that still have a person in them that that run them. Yeah. And it's this cool article that's in the New York Times. And then she recommends a book, The intuitionist, which is, I guess, an elevator mystery. The intuitionist School of elevator inspectors pitted against the empiricists cool,

Cortex 31:28 it doesn't all just happen inside a single elevator.

Jessamyn 31:32 Who even knows maybe it does. I don't know. But I liked the post. And I enjoyed the conversation. And it was just kind of a quintessential metal filter thing for me. So made me happy. Nice.

Cortex 31:46 I guess I'm glancing through projects. There's a bunch of good stuff on projects too. It's actually one from just the other day copying and pasting links, that's a thing. This is from soccer shot first. And it's a weird little generative project called our audience includes, which just generates a bunch of random very specific demographic groups. So like households with demonically possessed errs users of gemstones dogs whose anima suggests they may action users of fireworks in bulk

Jessamyn 32:19 mobs of artisanal encryption, I love it.

Cortex 32:23 And I think the idea is if you if you click on one or tap on one, it'll save that as something that someone is in and then sort of remember those and probably some feedback in there. But it just like you know, it's it's goofy little Dada stuff. I love that sort of thing. So I enjoyed that. There's also a very cool procedure procedural planet generator from our Conan, who has been doing a bunch of cool game programming stuff the last couple years it's it's a procedural planet generator, generates planets procedurally, it makes up planets, it just generates planets or, you know, descriptions a picture of a planet. Yeah, no, click on the link. It's,

Jessamyn 33:06 it doesn't make me

Cortex 33:08 just like, it works in your web. It's real. It works in your web, Jesus Christ.

Jessamyn 33:15 Like little bubbles periodically set themselves on fire to spread their seeds,

Cortex 33:21 you know, comes up with a name and a description and some statistics and a rotating, you know, or, like, revolving image of a planet. And, you know, it's

Jessamyn 33:30 it's a celestial conjunction, the planet is plunged into darkness every 13 years, click to get another planet.

Cortex 33:37 And it's the sort of thing that you would expect to see in a video game basically, as we're like, a background system for like some sort of like galactic conquest game or galactic exploration, you're gonna have, you know, a billion planets, you know, at least allegedly, and you got to come up with those somehow. And so this is, this is the kind of approach to actually be fueling something like that. But in this case, as our coder just made it as its own thing, you know, it could end up being the background for something but it could also just be a way to go look at random planets.

Jessamyn 34:07 Yeah, I like it. They spin in different directions they go is different speeds. Local, the local animals which I'm always interested in because I'm being set upon by squirrels, Josh,

Cortex 34:19 yep, I think we lost all that squirrel talking to in the B roll but you've got a home got

Jessamyn 34:25 a squirrel situation here as the bomb cyclone approaches, and all the local mammals are losing their shit and they're like, they're attacking my bird feeders with great vigor.

Cortex 34:38 Well, your your bird feeders essentially the bulk oatmeal been at the at the grocery store, so they're just making sure they got some stocked up before Baba Genesis fully sets in.

Jessamyn 34:48 How do they know I'm always curious about that

Cortex 34:51 barometric pressure Maybe? Or maybe or maybe maybe we're just applying that assumption To to what is actually just normal winter squirrel behavior it's hard to say another thing I like though, is suit anvil made a mastodon bot which is like a twitter bot except for on Mastodon Mandelbrot set views just as various zooms into the Mandelbrot set, which is a famous and quite nice looking, complicated fractal. It's that weird. Boba shaped one with sort of like a snowman. I'm telling the listener I know. I know. You know, I'm just trying to set the scene anyway.

Jessamyn 35:47 listeners. Okay, I mean, it's just,

Cortex 35:50 I mean, I can I can try and do that. I mean, we may actually listeners, the manual, or artificial,

Jessamyn 35:58 otherwise, feels like you're mansplaining to me something I already know. Well, but

Cortex 36:02 we explained that things we're looking at, I don't know. I'll see if I can think of a listeners feels very artificial. It just feels like

Jessamyn 36:09 it's like a button.

Cortex 36:10 It's yeah, it's the bug Mandelbrot, the Mandelbrot but,

Jessamyn 36:16 Mandal, but

Cortex 36:20 yes, it's cool. I liked the Mandelbrot set. It's cool. Those are images from it. So, you know, and

Jessamyn 36:26 it's cool it it's a Macedon. But I also wanted to mention dirt dirt, who did a intimated advent calendar, which is the the reason I love it is, you know, it's a pretty simple web thing. But he's been doing it since 2009. And he links to his own original project that he posted. Oh, 2008. I don't know why he said 2009. At any rate, it's cool. It's an animated art advent calendar. It's fairly stupid, I hope in a good way. And so you can click on it on the day and see some animated goofball thing that he did. But it's, it's been running for a long time. I like dirt, dirt. And I thought that was a funny little project.

Cortex 37:12 And I really liked that eyeball on the on the 15 or 17. But that's the number in the 2008 calendar. That's good. Yeah, let's see what happened. Is that a cat? Did I hear a cat? Yeah, no, it's actually I didn't think to feed the cat before the podcast. So Bodie has wandered around on my desk, knocking shit over and meowing about food. Because that's, that's the kind of cat that Boaty McBoatface is. She's in occasionally vexing ways.

Jessamyn 37:43 Adorable and hungry. By mammals,

Cortex 37:47 yeah. It is. To be excited to have access to your squirrels.

Jessamyn 37:53 I would be very excited for her to have access to my squirrels.

Cortex 37:57 She's tending to she. The real issue here is she she likes to flip her tail around, and she's walking underneath my microphone stand and flipping her tail around so it keeps trying to knock it over. But I bought a new I bought a new microphone. Replacement suspension rig. I can't remember the name offhand. But it's isolation reg that uses some elastics and a couple of separate pieces to hold the microphone floating in space to eliminate things like table vibrations and whatnot from the from the sound

Jessamyn 38:36 for music, or is it for podcasting,

Cortex 38:40 both this is the mic I use primarily for podcasting. I'll also do some music recording with it sometimes. And sometimes the audio in the last year or so has not been great, because there's been a sort of like lumpiness to it. And that's been because those last acts on the previous thing broke. And I was coming up with various ways to sort of hack around that including the last couple of podcasts resting on top of winter hat to keep it sort of isolated a little bit but yeah, that's nice. A prepper rig. Yep. Good. It's back in action. And I've got a new working desktop computer after the last one died before the previous podcast. So everything everything's coming back to desktop computer to yea.

Jessamyn 39:25 Chill fixed. It helped me fix it with other people. But yeah, and it continues to work, which is lovely. Because that's always the question, right? Like, it starts working. And you're like, is this gonna keep working? Or is it just working for a day and I can just get all my data off it and then it's just gonna fall apart. kept working. Yay.

Cortex 39:47 We had the, as we mentioned, the best post contest. I'll link in all the the four threads from that since we did sort of like the weekly updates week to week

Jessamyn 39:55 Yeah, huge props to eyebrows McGee for doing a lot of the heavy lifting on keeping got momentum going. I thought that was fun, worthwhile and really worth the the extra work going into it.

Cortex 40:07 Yeah, she did a great job on that. So I appreciate that. We also had weirdness with IMDb and fanfare IMDb just

Jessamyn 40:17 tell me tell me about that they changed some API's or just got rid of some API's

Cortex 40:21 I guess is what they did they just like they used to provide an XML API interface. So basically, you could use RSS feeds to pull data for various things, which is what we did because like what could be a more meta filter approach to dealing with media consumption than to use RSS feeds from media information source? And IMDb decided, well, maybe not that so much after all. And apparently they quite decided this kind of quietly and I had to go find a statement from the CEO on a third party sort of customer support web site to find out that this had happened and even that was sort of like

Jessamyn 40:56 what happened with tiny letter I had to read the tiny letter was shutting down or maybe shutting down through an article in Ink Magazine. They didn't add the fuck off.

Cortex 41:06 Well, it sounds like tiny letter it's like more like it's it's like impending doom Right. Like it's they got bought by someone who has been declared that they don't intend to actually well, they've

Jessamyn 41:16 been like a side hustle of MailChimp. Okay, and so what they're gonna do is roll well, maybe they did actually, I don't know where tiny letter came from originally, but I thought they were always a thing of MailChimp. Yeah, but it's but it's basically like, we're gonna roll this stuff into Mailchimp at some point, but tiny Letter is free. MailChimp isn't above a certain number of signup people. And so you know, figuring out what you're going to do when you're not sure what the offer is, is annoying. And they you know, they haven't like updated their Twitter in a year. Like you kind of knew something was up. But now they're Twitter's like, Don't worry, everything's gonna be fine. And everybody in their Twitter's like, come on you dicks. Like you can't like make a public statement about this. I know you have my email address. Come on, etc.

Cortex 42:05 Yep. There was a weird server. I guess I'm just gonna talk about stuff from adatok. That's the that's the flow. It's gonna take today. It's like, just a month in meta talk. But there was a college show. Really? Yeah, exactly. So we're just gonna do a little bit of stuff and call that good. There was there was several people asked, and then CGG made a meta tag post asking about weird thing in the edit window where the edit window

Jessamyn 42:32 window is bigger that we got two extra minutes. Yeah, it

Cortex 42:35 was like it was creeping up to like, you know, five and a half, six, six and a half minutes on the Edit window instead of intended five and

Jessamyn 42:42 workable because like, people were like, whoo,

Cortex 42:46 yep. People were excited, because like, oh, yeah, more time to mess around. But, but the problem it turned out and I feel very, I feel good that I sort of guessed the right general situation, because it's not necessarily my wheelhouse. But the clock on one of the servers was off, and it was off compared to like, like, one piece of software was saying, okay, the start time is now and then five minutes from now is when the window will end. And another server is like, okay, so five minutes from now. That's seven minutes from now. Okay, cool. Time server went away. So we've got a new redundant one. But yeah, it's a weird little thing.

Jessamyn 43:29 I continually am impressed at fumble. I'm sure. It wasn't just fumble, but like fumbles ability to kind of untangle this, figure it out and deal with it, considering that it's not a site they built. I mean, they're, they're

Cortex 43:41 doing all of the actual work there. And that was, that was my biggest, like, fear was like, oh, no, we're gonna find a new tech person. And PD had done a fantastic job of building out and sort of revamping and ordering and making sense of the medical care codebase. But it's still,

Jessamyn 43:57 your honor for Matt and his mercurial fields to which I also think is an important part of the PB role that was not to be translated into the fribble role. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like you're whimsically like fumble. I would really like this new feature that we're gonna launch on Friday before you go on vacation. Yeah, that

Cortex 44:15 dynamics changed a little bit for sure. But in any case, like, you know, it's like fumble had to sort of figure out what the state of things was. And PB I think helped make that very doable. But I'm also so continually impressed that Trimble has managed to just they're like, oh, yeah, no, I know what's going on there. Okay. Yeah, no, let me go find out. Okay, that's sorted out. Yeah. This is this is why someone else does this work.

Jessamyn 44:39 Yeah, I mean, that must make you guys really happy because it's just seems handled and it also seems like if she comes up, that can also be handled, you know, so I don't know. I was, I was happy to see that. Speaking of happy to see and if we're just calling out in meta talk. I also really liked this post by hippy bear. That's just like 99 comments about times metal filter helped you or helped other people or helped you, other people or whatever. It's just a schmoopy thread of like, people telling stories. I mean, some of the stories are kind of the, you know, the old metal filter chestnuts of a time, you know, Matt did an amazing thing. But sometimes, you know, it's just people talking about how they made a friend, or how a person was there to help them when they were having a hard time or how they were in a dark place. And something that happened on Metafilter helped them not be in it. And it just, it made me happy to just read about things that were helpful and things that people have gone through and things that you know, we're we're going a little bit better, especially because this year has just been bad. Yeah, it was it was nice to nice to see that. And hippie parents send me a hat in the mail and I sent some maple sugar candy, because he got like, like a Nine Inch Nails hat that just says anxiety across the front. And I thought that would be good for me to wear. And and I was like, well, I'll send you some things. And he's like, I don't know what what things you have. I'm like, I don't know, this kind of thing. And we settled on like maple sugar candy. And then I realized I had completely overestimated how easy it would be for me to find maple sugar candy in town, like an in town meeting don't need to get in the car, right? Like you would think I could just walk out and it would be somewhere

Cortex 46:29 but everything's constructed of maple candy in Vermont. Yeah,

Jessamyn 46:33 you just snap it off the light posts and everything but it turned out like the place is this my usual go to was out. Because it's January and usually sugaring seasons in March and so have it are December and so people have it there may be out of it at but it meant that I got to make a little post on Facebook on my local community Facebook, like where do I get maple sugar candy. And now I've got like 17 recommendations, it turned out? Well, it turned out that like I had gone to the wrong gas stations like I had gone to three of the gas stations. But the fourth gas station is where the maple sugar candy actually was. But it meant that I got to stop by the sugar house on the way out of town and pick up some snacks and mail them up back. So hey, happy bear, this was good post and hey, I'm looking forward to getting my hat in the mail. One of these days,

Cortex 47:21 there was a fun meta talk post about learning to copy and paste. There we go. Hey, neural networks. Um, nomnom was like,

Jessamyn 47:32 entirely.

Cortex 47:34 It's just it's just goofy. I posted sort of an explanatory reply to it. But basically, they're asking about doing sort of weird neural network regenerated, fake, you know, post text and asked me stuff. And Dan Han did that a few months ago, actually. And it's great. Yeah, he's fantastic. And then there's just a bunch of goofing online. It's not a super long thread. But people sort of used a couple of other generators to make things and it's, it's fun, and it's funny, it's,

Jessamyn 48:04 it's without irony. Help my sister get over pizza. Rejection of people we should totally discourage is great. Oh, it's so awesome.

Cortex 48:18 But there's also a thread that I was very happy about the idea of who were the bloggers of meta filter, which feels like it's so it's extremely 2018 that that is a question that we need to ask versus like, just like, obviously, a normal part of the entire medical user base

Jessamyn 48:34 filter was basically only bloggers when it first started and even when I got here, yeah. That's, I mean, it was a blog, the people who were on it were bloggers, beginning and

Cortex 48:46 yep, that's the whole thing right there. Yeah, and

Jessamyn 48:49 this overlaps nicely with thing going on in my in my real life, which is that there's like a sort of 20th anniversary bloggers for like the old school bloggers that were blogging and, you know, 9097 there's a little collection of them on Facebook being like, you know, we should have like a event or a get together or a thing. And it's a lot of the people whose blogs I used to follow in like the late 90s are, you know, 20 years older, but still kind of screwing around on Facebook, many of whom are still blogging, just chit chatting about what's been going on with them and it's been lovely so if you're excuse me if you're a very old school blogger and would like to chat with other old school bloggers get in touch with me and we can add you to that add you to that group. So I mean, you know me I've been blogging this whole time I mean, kind of slow motion blogging but blogging right.

Cortex 49:50 Just killed that that didn't.

Jessamyn 49:54 Well, like you know, I did my here's, well, here's my story. So I Make a book list every year of like the books I read. And I've been doing it since I don't know, 2004 or whatever. And it was a joke early on, because as you know, I assume, you know, like one of the early kind of internet nerd things was like Art Garfunkel and his list of every book he's ever read. I'm sending you a link I'm looking at this kept a list of every book he's read since like 1968, which is interesting, because this year I was born interesting to me. And so like I kept a list people are like, Haha, aren't comfortable. Ha. And I always kind of make that line. But then I sort of noticed, as I was writing my book list this year. Oh, hey, Art Garfunkel hasn't updated his book list since 2016. And I went to search my email to see I don't remember, like I was searching for Garfunkel to see if I'd made this same joke on some mailing lists before and found an email that I'd written to Art Garfunkel 's website last year, which I had totally forgotten about being like, hey, it doesn't look like arts read anything since 2016? Like, is everything okay? And I still don't know. But I may just copy and paste that email into a form again, in order to get some closure on my concern about Art Garfunkel is reading? I think I do

Cortex 51:18 that. Maybe he maybe he just finished he was like, up? No, I read all the books. I'm done. Turns out there's exactly 700 notebooks left.

Jessamyn 51:27 Right. I don't know, do I do you know, I, you know, I had to decide this year. Because I wonder sometimes if like the quantified life is just a way to kind of keep yourself on the Habitrail, treadmill, whatever. And not, I don't know, take time to enjoy the flowers or whatever. Like, you know, reading can become a competitive Act, or you you read you finish a book, not because you want to read the book. But I decided that I'm pretty much okay with it. But I do think I

Cortex 51:54 think there's worse things to do for complicated, questionable motives than read a lot of books. Like it seems like that's probably a pretty okay, bad habit to have. But

Jessamyn 52:03 just but just the collecting of stats, you don't I mean, I mean, I think I'd read even if I weren't writing down the books, but the question is whether writing down the books affects my relationship to reading.

Cortex 52:14 Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally feel that. I've been sort of thinking about some of my own sort of like, creative output and recording of creative output stuff the last couple months and thinking about blogging, think about social media, thinking about sort of like the way I make stuff and how much I managed to decouple that from turning around and immediately sharing the stuff that I've made. Well, it's

Jessamyn 52:41 interesting, right? Because it seems like you found a really interesting, middle path with a lot of the sort of painting and creating you've been doing with the laser cutter and whatever that new thing is, you got, like, if you can, like mostly do that thing, but then put a picture on Instagram, it seems like you're able to stay on top of that, when you're like making little comment comics and putting them on a blog that seems to like not be a sustainable thing for you.

Cortex 53:06 Yeah, I think part of it is finding a balance in the amount of time I put into making the thing versus the time I put into making the recording of the thing, right? Because I mean, I like I like sharing the stuff I make. And it's honestly it's a motivator for me to some extent to go back and take this thing and then put it out there and then get a couple of comments. But I also do I want to spend two hours a day documenting the process of making stuff I don't think so you

Jessamyn 53:30 designing a blog or getting your RSS feed working? Yeah.

Cortex 53:33 Which is a weird spot that I'm still in right now trying to figure out what I'm gonna do there. So it's been on my mind, but

Jessamyn 53:39 did you store did you get your store backup last

Cortex 53:42 night yet? No, that's a couple different things I need to do there still. So we'll see what happens there. But

Jessamyn 53:48 so your store is just a picture of your Yeah, did we get like feedback about the mall this year, I noticed you guys took it off the banner kind of early on,

Cortex 53:55 you know, we should figure out a better way to manage that next time part is I think we'll maybe try and not do so much stuff in December. It was like, you know, end of the year, and, you know, so all the, you know, holiday season stuff coming up and of your stuff coming up. And then we did the best post contest and the mall and it feels like it all sort of smeared together and as a result we didn't have as good of visibility for the Mall as I think we should have in retrospect. So I think we'll we'll try and do that different next year. Another thing to think about is like there's no reason we couldn't just have them all up all year if we wanted to do it

Jessamyn 54:29 that way. Always. Yeah, always my my suggestion. So maybe that'll

Cortex 54:33 be maybe that'll be the new thing for 2018 as well like revisit the model a little bit and figure out a way to just make it sort of like because if we could we could do like basically you know a combination meta filter merge page and also the mall stuff as like hey, here's your meta filter commerce go get it I think I

Jessamyn 54:49 think that's a great idea honestly. And I mean now that like ever since PB I think PB made that made the or was it fumble? I'm sorry. Oh, made the made it them allow that they've been able to edit their own entries. Right like, like you do it once a once a year, but you could theoretically do it once a month, right? being like, hey, now's the time to revisit your entry. Like it wouldn't be that hard so that people can keep their stuff current. So

Cortex 55:23 yeah, yeah, that would have to be part of it. So it's not just like a check in once a year. It's a take care of your thing. So we'd have to figure out some details there. But that's a possibility.

Jessamyn 55:32 They've had the same thing up for, you know, years and years and years. Yeah. You have that available and accessible to maybe people who are new a metal filter?

Cortex 55:40 Yeah. If it's if it's a if it's a going venture, then you know, it's if it's still going, then why not? That's a possibility. You

Jessamyn 55:47 need to put one of the bots in charge of outreach. That's my suggestion.

Cortex 55:52 Maybe? Maybe? Not. It's not it's not the outreach thing so much as the putting a mod in charge that doesn't necessarily want to say, Oh, by the way, here's your additional duty go to No, no, no. No, no, it

Jessamyn 56:05 was super busy there.

Cortex 56:07 Yeah. You know, it's something that we could look into. And we've talked about that sort of thing a bit before. So I think we'll come back around and chat about it some more. But yeah, I don't know. That's some stuff. I don't know. Do you have any more urgent business? I think I think we could probably just call it a podcast and say, Hey, we chatted about some stuff and go listen to these calls.

Jessamyn 56:27 Let me double check. I haven't asked any questions this month.

Cortex 56:41 While Jasmine's looking let me tell you a joke. I heard

Jessamyn 56:44 really have a joke.

Cortex 56:46 Yes. Knock knock. Convinced joke. Yeah. That was a portrait. I've heard this so Knock knock. Who's confused goat? Confused? Stupid. Got that from tremble or eyebrows in a Slack discussion that day? Because

Jessamyn 57:09 well, it's important to have you know, we've talked about this before, but it's really important to have like a joke you can just do on demand. Right? Yeah.

Cortex 57:19 I just like that one for the cultural context required.

Jessamyn 57:26 I feel like there was a really what? It's, it's

Cortex 57:31 thicker this this is this terrible radio? And forget it. Definitely not

Jessamyn 57:37 good. I'll leave it I'll leave in the comments if I need. But I basically felt like there was like some really cool fun asked Metafilter like question that somebody asked. And then like, I got to answer it really fast, because I was on the internet's librarian. And it made me really happy. But I can't use the it's sort of hard to find those things when you want to look for them. So I can leave it in the comments. But basically, this is mostly the Colin show. I'm really excited that everybody called in. Thank you, Josh, for putting this podcast together. Thank you for all mods for slugging through December. Oh, I remember the one thing I was going to ask you. How do you feel the month is gone with the slightly different approach to political threads? That seems like it's actually gone. Okay.

Cortex 58:20 I feel like it has gone okay. It's been it's, I don't need to put

Jessamyn 58:22 you on the spot. It's really ugly and messy. But like,

Cortex 58:26 I think it's been a good thing. It's a little bit messy, just because we're sort of figuring out how exactly to make it work. You know, day to day, week to week, but all in all, I think it's been good. I feel like people were really pretty responsive to the stuff. We ended up laying out in the meta talk posting,

Jessamyn 58:44 I think you guys manage the message really, really well. And it's a joy actually to just sort of watch like, hey, we actually give a shit. Yeah. And it may meant you had a good discussion.

Cortex 58:56 Yeah. I mean, it's such a complicated thing. You know, I mean, I've seen people, you know, saying, well, but if everybody's going there, why would you want to change that which I sort of get that instinct, but like, I talked about the post, I like just the sheer volume, just the sheer pace of it is not workable.

Jessamyn 59:11 And that is really tricky, right? I think we've seen things like that. I don't remember if it was smashwords, or one of those kind of like, indie publishers basically decided at some point that they were going to like stop doing their romance line. And the romance like readers and writers were like for gracious, huge, whatever, but they also meant that the brand became disproportionately aligned with one genre that wasn't the genre at somebody's gonna have to fill me in on the specifics, because I don't remember it and without Googling, but I feel like it's kind of the same thing, right? Like it kind of needs to not be meta filters brand to just be like, where everyone comes to fight about politics or talk about politics. Yeah, at the expense of everything else. And I feel like I've noticed a difference in people engaging more with the rest of the site.

Cortex 59:58 I feel subjectively that way too. I'm I'm curious to run some numbers and sort of analyze the quantifiable side of it. But it's felt better. Like the politics threads are still busy, you know, they're still gonna be, you know, 100 or two comments a day in them, you know, they haven't gotten quiet, but it feels less firehose, it feels a bit more manageable. It feels like people are kind of making an effort to not just like, you know, say, Hey, I'm in a bad mood. And, uh, here's metal filter. So bar,

Jessamyn 1:00:23 eyebrows has been spending some time in chat. I don't know if other people have been. And so it seems like Jack's been a more viable concern for people. And that's been good. Yeah,

Cortex 1:00:31 that's been a little bit busier. And so, ya know, it's, it's basically it's going good. I think we're still sort of figuring out some of the details and figuring out, like, I feel like there's a little bit of rubber band around the end of the year, start of the year here where people are, they've got time on their hands, and it's easier to be sort of chatty, so we're probably gonna have to keep doing sort of waves of pushback to help keep it settled. But but it's going well, I'm, I'm pretty happy about the move. And I feel like it's been better for the site the last several weeks as we've been making that happen. Good. happy for you. Yeah. And yeah, let's let's let's call out a podcast, a pleasure talking to you. And I look forward to having a more full on podcast next month, but I'm also totally okay, just leaving it there this month. I think

Jessamyn 1:01:17 that'll be just great. Thanks for doing all the extra work with Collins. And thank you everybody for calling in. Yeah, absolutely.

Cortex 1:01:22 You're all fantastic. And I'm super glad you're here on this website that we can hang out on together. So all right. Happy New Year, everybody.

Jessamyn 1:01:31 Happy New Year, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:36 Hello, Metafilter. This is Tiger bear. I'm calling you from nighttime Austria. It's the day before Christmas. Strike that. It is the day before New Year's Eve. I've been a big fan of that culture for many years. I've gained a lot. I've contributed very little. And I wish everyone to have a much better today than they had in 2017.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:15 Love me.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:19 Hey, this is Gotanda. It's news Eve here in Tokyo. And we're ringing bell at the local temple to expiate all of our sins for 2017.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:37 did not call you. So if you want to say hi to the medical term people just say hello.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:47 Georgia saying no. And yes,

Unknown Speaker 1:02:58 yeah. What trends do you think that a filter would be? Faster train.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:15 Anything. That's right, baby. All right. I hope well, that wasn't comprehensible, but have a good podcast.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:24 Hi, Josh. Hi, Jessamyn. This is Song Dog. I'm out snowshoeing today and nine degree weather and thinking of you. I've often been asked to listen to the podcast on a run or walk. And you've kept me entertained. And so I'm thinking of you now at the end of the year, and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for the podcast. Thank you to all the mods for doing such a great job on the site, and to everybody another filter for keeping me informed and entertained as distracted over the last year and help last 14 months. Very much appreciated. So Happy New Year, everybody may the next year be better than the year before.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:06 This is language that song dog just reminded me to call in so I'm calling in. If I sound a little Snuffly, it's because I seem to be coming down with a cold anyway. Just wanted to say Mefi that's messy. has been an oasis of sanity in a crazy year. And I hope for a better year for all of us next year and Mefi keep on messing by now. Hi,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:34 this is Kay Tomash I just want to say thank you to everyone who is running

Unknown Speaker 1:04:42 Metafilter have a happy 2018

Unknown Speaker 1:04:47 Hi, this is Claude Cooper. I just climbed out of the clink after those clueless cops clipped me over the timeless activations of the cleric Clifford and her clunk clanking clean copper players have no clue as to what manner of clannish voice to clammers club this podcast is. I will remain close now, in the new year while I clamor for clemency. Have a nice day.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:20 Hey, it's turtle, CH URL turtle. It's New Year's Eve, and I'm pretty on brand. Right now. I'm a few whiskies deep in cocktails, I'm making myself at home. And I was just thinking about this and thinking about what really the theme of 2017 was, for me. And for I think that the theme of 2017 was loss, and what that means and what we need to learn from that and operate like a lot of us, it kind of started with the end of 2016 and the November election there, but for me, it also, you know, that parlayed right into the next morning, and the first thing I found out was that I was losing my house. And in the ensuing weeks, it also came to pass that I lost my job of 13 years in my relationship with several years, and that really kind of cast the specter across the rest of the year for me. And so I kind of decided that it was important to come to grips with what, why this idea of loss exists and what loss means. And, and I really liken it to how, you know, we have these animals in nature who have to shed their, their skin or to, you know, cast off their husk or crawl out of their shell, in order to kind of you know, for other reasons that a creature in Nature needs to do that, and why it's important that a creature and he needs to do that and leave part so much behind in the process. And, you know, as I look forward to 2018 I think that in the same way that you know, death is so important in life because it clears the way for the next thing and creates, you know, the groundwork for what comes after that we look forward to 2018 with you know, and carry the responsibility of making sure what comes next is as goes so much further than what came before and it's so much better than what came before and takes all the lessons we needed to learn from what came before. And as a kind of look forward to 2018 what I carry into that is the sense that we are up to the task. Thanks, love you. Bye.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:41 Hi, this is the wrong kind of cheese. I love that metal filter gives me a place to feel useful and proudly geeky and a little less righteously indignant, I'm wishing a Happy and healthy 2018 To all of you buy

Unknown Speaker 1:07:57 a metal filter, it's just Andrews Happy New Year, you continue to be the one thing that just makes my life totally delightful in the face of all other horrible things. Speaking of which, I have a New Year's wish that I sort of wished for for a while. Can we put together some sort of network of new sites just in case you know, like society collapses or something? Because I keep thinking that you guys all have probably the knowledge that we would need to survive collectively. Let's think about it. Hey, happy New Year

Unknown Speaker 1:08:26 is Hello, it's January 1 2018. This is Lester bitten and I am hurtling down the highway with my complaining cat in the backseat. So this is Ozzie.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:58 You have to understand is that most of the time when he's making that noise, his eyes are closed and he has a very peaceful look on his face. Oddly enough, so that's the sound of a contented cat in a car on the highway. Up to date, so happy 2018

Unknown Speaker 1:09:19 Hi Metafilter This is choco cat calling from beautiful downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the early day of 2018. While it's been a absolutely shit, dumpster fire of a year, I thought I would play a song that comes from your country that's always meant something to me in hard times and I'm hoping that it will do that. You don't need something for everybody down there in the United States. Just walking over here to the drums. It's pretty minimal kind of a thing. My son George, say Hi, George,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:06 place and glockenspiel.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:10 Anyways, Happy New Year Mefi GM b

Unknown Speaker 1:10:17 one little green flag Gumby can do to come to if you've got a car and Gaby that part of us

Unknown Speaker 1:10:52 love you Metafilter more can I say really

Unknown Speaker 1:10:54 says it all

Unknown Speaker 1:10:56 right. Hello, this is Pallas Athena putting out wild bells to the wild sky. Flying Cloud the frosty light. The year is dying in the night. ring out wild bells and let him die. ring out the old ring in the new ring happy bells across the year is going let him go. ring out the false ring in the true ring out the grief that sat to the mind for those that here we see no more. Bring out the feud of rich and poor bring in redress to all mankind. Wring out a slowly dying cause of ancient forms of party strife ring in the nobler modes of life with sweeter manners pure laws bring out the want to carry the film that baseless coldness of the times. ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes but ring the fuller minstrel in ring out false pride and free blood. Pacific slander and the spiked ring in the love of truth and right ring in the common love good. ring out old shapes. Our disease ring out the narrowing lust of gold ring out the 1000s of wars of old ring in the 1000 years of peace ring in the valley and man and free the larger heart the kindly are hand wringing out the darkness of the land ring in the Christ that is to be

Unknown Speaker 1:12:37 Hi, hello.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:42 Oh no, it's gone. You broke it.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:44 It's still recording you too.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:48 Hey, cortex, this is a bunch of me fights from Sydney, Australia and we've all been drinking wine for several hours.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:55 Me fight me fight. I will fight you big disagreement.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:58 Anyway, this is his thoughts were read thoughts.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:01 I'm TAF AKA,

Unknown Speaker 1:13:03 Miss fish, mollusk.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:05 Usually we have a lot more mefites here. But we're missing quite a few people tonight because it's the holidays. So we're gonna do a round of usernames of people who are missing. We have smoke who never comes to anything because he's like a parental responsibilities. We love him so much and his family's

Unknown Speaker 1:13:20 better than he is. He's got a lovely

Unknown Speaker 1:13:24 family are awesome, but we do miss him too. Yeah, yeah. And then we've got Ksj for kJ. kJ is

Unknown Speaker 1:13:32 drinking tonight. KJ is who is mean ukulele player.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:38 Things and my children love him more than me. Who else?

Unknown Speaker 1:13:42 Play Cora. Awesome, but she's an

Unknown Speaker 1:13:47 OB. OB

Unknown Speaker 1:13:50 Yes, accidentally took him he's a little person to two and a half hours of Latvian choral music today. Oh, good God. Yeah, this is actually a true fact. And he said that if he is his son said, Take me home dad. If not, I'm going to melt down and he was worried that if he did not take his little one home, that he would in fact stab him in his sleep tonight.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:12 From what Carl was saying he's got no excuse for not being here.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:15 Yeah, well, Latvian choral music two and a half hours. Requires some recovery. Yeah, yeah. So I said Fair enough. Next time baby.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:24 Jade Pearl was here but had to go

Unknown Speaker 1:14:25 home to home because she does a terrible Australia. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:29 Thank you Minnesota for sending us Jade pillow. She's lovely. We love her.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:33 She looks like a dream. Oh my god. Did you have her to her past to sell anything? She's promised

Unknown Speaker 1:14:38 me meet.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:39 So meet her meet everything's amazing.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:42 Is that a bad thing? Make bones is

Unknown Speaker 1:14:44 what the hell? I haven't gotten there yet. But I'll let

Unknown Speaker 1:14:47 you message she does have a vibrator. She's trying to get rid of

Unknown Speaker 1:14:49 yeah, do not do not take used vibrators. No,

Unknown Speaker 1:14:53 just try to get rid of it. It's like completing packaging. She does what she says I write it. I think it's I think that's it Oh, I've only heard about

Unknown Speaker 1:15:04 vibrator then contact Jay Paul. At least slightly. Gently used us it was fresh in the pack moving

Unknown Speaker 1:15:14 on. That's everybody that we would normally have here. The cheese Monster Monster.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:21 We said her name before we pushed record

Unknown Speaker 1:15:23 so tough. Tell us what we're all doing here.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:28 It's a bit existential isn't it? So? So we're at shadow night at our house tonight doll which happens as a every Friday it occasional Friday in Sydney. Australia. Not that not that occasional not okay, occasionally not Fridays feel sad again.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:47 So on Fridays, what do you do? On Fridays?

Unknown Speaker 1:15:50 We get drunk. Okay, so inspired by Friday night meatballs on Metafilter. At some stage, I think was on the blue. We started charter night doll in Sydney, which is an open house at our house, we make doll which is vegan, so we can invite anyone we like and the idea is you bring someone to introduce if you'd like to share something if you like and you stay as long as you like, and what are you doing? You know, you invited me? Yeah, I guess if you like, so they go. That's it tomorrow night inspired by Metafilter. And that's where all the mefites actually meet up. mefites now meet up in Sydney at my house.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:27 So what we'd like to do is read you a section of the most oz poem we could find.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:33 Joy is bloody fleeting. Life is bloody short. What's the use of wasting it all on Bloody sport. Hit your fucking tip Dre to a bloody star. Let your bloody watch would be Australia bloody. Ah.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:49 I'm actually a New Zealander. I have no part in this. I think I need to make a cheap joke now.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:55 I'm sorry for swearing in the poem. You can you can be Fidel if you're a day to say count and we'll see what the Americans do. I told you to use counting all

Unknown Speaker 1:17:03 the way through. Okay. I think I think we need to round this. I can do this counting. Anyway for me. mefites Happy New Year. Kwanzaa

Unknown Speaker 1:17:14 Hi, varous here. Here's my year in a nutshell. The most exciting that happened 75 I found another job shouldn't be your identity. And I'd like to thank mine. But it's hard to find another way to define yourself. underlaid capital