Podcast 138 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 138: Don't Leave Me Hanging (2018-02-28).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Jessamyn 0:24 Yeah, so podcast.

Cortex 0:25 Hey, it's a it's episode 138 is what it is of a podcast called Best of the web. That is a monthly thing that we do about metal filter, Josh Mullard is my name aka cortex.

Jessamyn 0:37 And I'm Jessamyn aka nothing.

Cortex 0:40 Yeah. Yeah, no. I think I was thinking about the I feel old because I'm just like, kind of low energy today. So I'm gonna like, go, I am feeling that, but.

Jessamyn 0:51 So feeling a little old and low energy. And I'm feeling a little old because I got mad at kids with a drone. Not out loud, but in my mind too quick, but I feel like maybe maybe it's the turning point. But really what I was gonna say to you before we turned it on was, you know, it's still February and man, February. In the Northern Hemisphere. February really takes a lot out of you. So

Cortex 1:14 we had fucking snow. It was ridiculous. You did? Yeah, no, just like the other week. My golf on the breeze in town. And actually, we had a meet up the other day. And that was very cool. Seeing her Oh, no, shit, that's awesome. Yeah. But when we plan to meet up, it was like, Okay, let's go here. And then the plan was to go to this food cart, beer porch, near my house, and it's great. A lot, but then there was a ton of snow and shitty, but then it all sort of

Jessamyn 1:42 nobody can drive in it. And that's gotta be weird for you being like a late too late to drive driver,

Cortex 1:49 right? I mean, it doesn't come up a time for me because it's like, you know, I just won't drive anywhere because I work from home. So fuck it. So it wasn't really a big inconvenience for me or anything. But it's still like, this two years in a row that we had, like, you know, an impactful amount of snowfall. And like, that's, that's not how it works in Portland every six years, we get like, a notable amount of snow and the rest of time it just like rains. And that's how it's supposed to be. So

Jessamyn 2:12 we got an impactful amount of snow, which was completely not unusual. And it just happened. And then like two days later, it was almost 70 degrees. And it turned into like a like a wet flooding situation, which also just wasn't bad. And it mostly worked. And now I'm in Massachusetts, where there isn't any snow. And it's weird, and it makes me feel weird. Yeah. Now, little weird snow drops are coming up the little white flowers that like they're the first flowers that come up once the snow goes away. Oh, in fact, sometimes before the snow goes away, but it's weird to see them because at home, there's still snow all over the ground.

Cortex 2:51 I'm looking at the Wikipedia page and getting distracted by terms showing up.

Jessamyn 2:58 I only have one thing to say about the number 138. Please do it. The Misfits, an excellent band, deeply problematic. Have a song called we are 138. And as near as I can tell, nobody knows what the hell it means. But basically the first like, poll. What is it? Like the first part of the song like the phrase meter? What am I looking at the opposite of the chorus? That part the

Cortex 3:31 verse?

Jessamyn 3:33 Yes. Thank you. Oh my god. It's just we are 138 repeated eight times and then in the eyes of the tiger. Okay. Yeah. And nobody knows what it means. So I was looking on Songfacts because I'm like, Well, it's the internet. Now. Everybody knows what everything means if it has a meaning, because you can just know everything immediately now. And when I got was got to read a whole bunch of misfits fans arguing with each other about how nobody knows what it means. And it just made me laugh because it wasn't metal filter, and it's so obviously not metal filter in it. Like, you'll read it. You'll see what I mean. And everyone's like, I don't know, Danzig just says it's about violence. And like, I don't know, for whatever reason, it brightened my day, because whatever my day is, it's not that

Cortex 4:22 it's also i It's 69 twice. So it's nice. It's 69 twice. I don't know how to make that work. And he just did. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was too subtle. For me. It was too good.

Jessamyn 4:46 Like, I feel like all the time he makes sure are perfect jokes. And I'm just like, what? Like, half the time I'm saying what because I'm not trying to encourage terrible jokes, but half the time I actually don't understand it. We explains it. It's actually quite good. Yeah. My jokes are a sonnet by Shakespeare.

Cortex 5:07 Well, I mean, that doesn't really count though. Like, it's, it's also a psalm just because there's a bunch of sonnets and songs like, I don't know, I could

Jessamyn 5:15 point that's it's not a particularly noteworthy sonnet is near as I can tell. Yeah. Is it a particularly noteworthy Psalm? Ah, nah. Yeah. Now,

Cortex 5:28 a lot of filler in those those sorts of those songs both.

Jessamyn 5:31 Yeah. And it feels weird to me that they capitalize all the letters in the word, Lord, like, you can't just capitalize the L and we'll get it. So it just seems like somebody's hollering at me. If I want to be yelled at by people about the Bible, I don't have to do that at home.

Cortex 5:45 Enough Enough with the all caps Bible. Seriously. So there's a there's a couple jobs that I feel this month. One is a ukulele transcriptionist.

Jessamyn 5:59 Yeah. PX E. What? 2000. I don't know how she pronounces her name.

Cortex 6:05 I'm not sure that I think of it as px e 2000.

Jessamyn 6:08 Yeah, brindle, Jesse, et cetera.

Cortex 6:11 Yeah. Get a get your ukulele transcription is Trent transcribing, I suppose on without one, and then someone needs you to draw a picture of a photograph and then give you $50 to do it. Another very specific tasks that someone should totally do.

Jessamyn 6:34 That was for Valentine's Day, though, so you should have done that a while ago?

Cortex 6:38 Yeah. Yeah, you should. You'll need to draw very quickly, in order to so quickly draw backwards. Yeah, induce a temporal reversal. So if you can, if you can draw using tak eons, I think it's gonna be the thing with that one. And I

Jessamyn 6:53 like the cool UX researcher job only because part of it takes place takes place in Western Massachusetts, which is a place I could actually envision being somewhere near like, normally I look at these jobs. And I'm like, rap Brooklyn. Bay Area, right. Whatever. Yeah. Like, this is cool doing UX. Research for healthcare product stuff. I think. Public Health. I liked it.

Cortex 7:17 Do it. Somebody go do it. Do the thing.

Jessamyn 7:21 Yeah, for pants, use your pants.

Cortex 7:25 Should we discuss some projects? Because there were some projects? It's kind of we're in? We're in a short month already. February is a short month, and then we recorded like a week late last thing. So we're like, really cut it. So we've got like a really the smallest chunk of I'm we're early

Jessamyn 7:39 this time because we're on the stick. Is that? Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 7:43 Are we on the stick that we talked about that last time? What does that mean?

Jessamyn 7:46 No, we didn't talk about it last time. Was that mean? I assume on the stick means you're driving the car or something. But it could mean like on the pole. And that's no good. Yeah, who

Cortex 7:54 knows? I'm gonna look it up right now. Tell me about some projects.

Jessamyn 7:58 Well, I was in one, which is unusual, because usually I just create one but local Vermonter turtle girl has experience Vermont set of interviews up on YouTube that are actually really nice. And she talks to all bunch of local folks including me about like, crafty nerdy stuff. You did. You do. And so she talked to me about doing materials and it was fun. She's doing a spring fiber arts tour. I think that's an ongoing concern. If you want to go to Vermont and learn a lot about fiber arts for a weekend, she's lady to drag it around. So her project was cool. And I just kind of like what she's doing in general, and maybe doing a beer theme tour in August. Which is cool. Awesome. Nice.

Cortex 8:40 Nice folks go go see their stuff. Yeah, you know them. Also get on the stick means get going or get moving. Make it was not entirely clear if the in reference to like, you know, a gearshift stick or airplane, or you an Urban Dictionary. I was looking at a couple things. I usually don't accept etymology from urban dictionary for anything, like a week. But I also don't accept entomology from anywhere else usually without like looking harder so maybe maybe maybe it derived somehow from like driving or flying but maybe that's just some shit people made up because the phrase cut out and it's actually something from the 19th century or whatever.

Jessamyn 9:26 Makes sense. That's what I thought the stick. I mean, that's like the the plane. Do you have an Oxford English Dictionary subscription? See, now that I'm a Harvard fellow, I don't have access to shit.

Cortex 9:38 Oh, yeah, go through the library here. I'll also talk about this project and then I'm gonna look that up.

Jessamyn 9:43 Alright, can talk about the project I'm going to talk about before you talk about the one you're clearly going to

Cortex 9:47 talk about, well, maybe I'm not gonna allow you talk about your project. We're gonna look at thing.

Jessamyn 9:51 All right. That project I'm going to talk about is by Uncle Glendinning, who actually is a woman in technology, and basically wrote this out I'm really cool thing. It's a Google document. And it's sort of about like, hey, one of the things they say about why women get paid less than men to sort of apologize for rampant sexism in everywhere is that, well, women don't really negotiate as hard. And I know that's been true for me in places that I have worked that maybe people have heard of. And I think it's probably true for a lot of people. And so she wrote a document about how to do that negotiation for people who really kind of need to be stepped through and have a script. So, you know, I don't know how to do this. I mean, I know I've had this thing in the past, like when I interviewed for a library job, and they were just like, This is what the job pays. I wasn't really sure if what they meant was, this is what the job pays period. It's a state job, there's no wiggle room, or we're gonna tell you, this is what the job pays, we would appreciate you to take this, but realistically, you know, we expect you to negotiate at this point, and I didn't negotiate and maybe I could have gotten paid more. Who knows. So if you're one of those people who has those curiosities, especially if you're female, but I don't think it necessarily matters. Go read this. It's good. So thanks. Nice, Uncle Glendinning. I think this is a really good thing you put together and it'll be helpful to a lot of people.

Cortex 11:25 I am having trouble. I'm having trouble finding anything definitive. On the stick on Oh, no, it is not great for slang. So or at least,

Jessamyn 11:36 I think we probably need dictionary modern American usage. Yeah. Or we can throw it to the peanut gallery. Yeah. Get on it. Tell us incredibly helpful.

Cortex 11:47 I liked this project that just went up. Yesterday, I think,

Jessamyn 11:53 from Josh, is it the one about Markov chains, and also has a twitter bot?

Cortex 11:57 It is that is that is what's going on? Well, it also has

Jessamyn 12:01 me about it, because I just figured you would so I didn't even read it.

Cortex 12:05 It has, it has a page as well, along with being the twitter bot. And I like the pages the main link. And I like that just for having its own sort of treatment. Like it's this big, huge full screen thing on a desktop browser on a phone, it's probably not quite as goofy. But like, you know, it's got a little bit more character when it's got its own page presentation than when it's just a twitter bot. So I appreciate art Leung going the extra mile on this. But basically he took, you know, a couple of decades of blogging and fed it into Markov engine and, you know, he's producing wavelength resynthesized output and it's, it's about what you would expect, but I enjoy. I like seeing that sort of thing done. So that happened. Good job our level.

Jessamyn 12:47 Nice. Yeah, it wasn't a very productive month, actually. I mean, I kind of feel like we could basically mention every project. You know, the couch to ADK writing bootcamp is not a Remo when. Well, now, next month. Anyone?

Cortex 13:08 I just, I just closed a window accidentally. Josh, this is just the worst. No, it's a challenge. Yeah, it's a curse day. I just

Jessamyn 13:17 rocket night basically did this couch to ADK writing bootcamp, which is an eight week fiction writing course in podcast form, which I think a lot of people would appreciate. I have no ability to do anything with fiction because it's not widely known. But I have no actual imagination. But I really like people who have imagination reading what they write.

Cortex 13:38 I have I've tried several times, and I haven't tried in any recent years. And I I don't know that it's an imagination problem. For me. It's like a process of writing long form fiction thing in general. And the apart is I don't do it except for like, once every few years for 30 days. And it's not a good way to really develop a like skill set and a sense of craft, but yeah, no, no, I feel like there's I feel like I feel more comfortable, like bullshitting than I do. writing fiction, even though I realize if I could find a way to sort of hone my bullshitting approach that essentially is writing fiction, but I don't know.

Jessamyn 14:18 Like, the songs that you write are often, I mean, not all of them, but a lot of them have a fictional aspect.

Cortex 14:25 Oh, yeah, that personal problem. It's, I just don't write any 50,000 word long songs. That's that's where it gets tricky. It seems like

Jessamyn 14:33 Yeah, well, 50,000 words is too much for a song. Yep. Let's Bob. What? Like, longest song, what's the longest song that actually has words in it? Well, I mean, it didn't it got to DeVito

Cortex 14:49 in what like, Oh, are we just type running time of the recording or like word count of the song? Either because I feel like like if you

Jessamyn 14:58 go running, it isn't a novelty song. That's a song somebody would have heard of.

Cortex 15:01 Sure there's like, I mean, there's album length songs like there's Pink Floyd put out, you know, like, echoes off of metal is like a whole side is like 24 minutes or something. Well, What songs do you like that are long? No, no, I

Jessamyn 15:16 know. It's my I taught but I'm,

Cortex 15:19 but then you got like you got like, I mean, honestly

Jessamyn 15:23 wanqi Isn't it? Well for

Cortex 15:25 just playing running time? Yeah. And if you look at Bob Dylan really does have a lot of songs that have a lot of verses. So he'd be up there for like, successful, you know, pop musicians with very long songs. Don McLean's American Pie is tediously long. I don't know. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I don't think people super fondly remember most of the songs that would be on the word, the side that were nonetheless popular, because they just get sick of sitting through them. Alice's restaurants certainly got a hell a lot of words in it.

Jessamyn 15:53 A song

Cortex 15:54 that's a song, it's a song. It's, it's not it's not a song with much of a melody, but it's a song. All right, like what else is it?

Jessamyn 16:05 Like a prose poem poetry,

Cortex 16:08 there's, there's, there's background music, there's a chorus. I mean, we, we're not going to deconstruct the nature of, of, of songs. Right

Jessamyn 16:19 now. American Pie has like 830 words in it.

Cortex 16:23 That's a fair number. It's too many, too many listen to

Jessamyn 16:29 how many words? While you research

Cortex 16:49 that I will also mention this project from a complicated history, which is a ukulele song book index and chord tracker. So, you know, with the ukulele, you know, right. You know, I feel cool action here that should come together. But ya know, it's a it's a cool tool. It's like you click on some chords to say, Oh, I know these chords. I'm saying, Oh, well, these are the songs that you can play, then, you know, it's that whole thing. We're like, what can I cook with these ingredients except for? Ukulele chords? So it's a it's a nice project.

Jessamyn 17:19 Houses restaurants like 2400 words.

Cortex 17:21 See? That's, that's yeah, I mean, and that even includes

Jessamyn 17:25 the this piece papers got 47 word 37 cents. 50 as one word. That's, that's that's because it's all one big hyphenated word and whatever lyrics website I looked up.

Cortex 17:39 So on the low, low end, but 2400

Jessamyn 17:43 high end? Yeah. 2400 is the low end. Yeah.

Cortex 17:46 Yeah. All right. Well, hey, you know, talking about you know, talking about Metafilter the big MEFO.

Jessamyn 17:56 Watch. Brandon way,

Cortex 18:01 like the big MEFO like, lordy, lordy, look who's MC 40? I don't know. Metafilter the blue, the front page? www. Yeah.

Jessamyn 18:13 Well, I made a post that I like, especially because it's one of those things where I liked a thing. And then it had a seamy underbelly of a thing. Right. So there's a guy he has a 727 and he lives in it in the woods.

Cortex 18:27 I was specifically gonna mention this to you. And I want to know, like, is the seamy underbelly the thing people were talking about just the end with the death camps reference? Or is there

Jessamyn 18:36 guys is super weirdo creep? Yeah. So this,

Cortex 18:39 this is a good post. And it's about a guy named Bruce Campbell. But not that Bruce Campbell's

Jessamyn 18:46 Bruce Campbell already Fascinating, right. Yeah.

Cortex 18:49 And yeah, this is guy. Angela had been telling me about this because she read it when he put it up. And then I was just like, catching up on she

Jessamyn 18:55 wants to go visit but maybe not anymore.

Cortex 18:57 What's weird, you know, like, Okay, so here's the thing, Guy builds this airplane. Or he buys this airplane and reworks it and this property out in out in the Hillsborough area. This is outside of Portland is like basically halfway between my house and Matt's house is where this guy's plane is. Oh, seriously? Yeah. What we're trying to figure out because Angela is volunteered at the rice Mineral Museum. That's also out in the sort of Hillsborough area, but it's a bit north of where that plane is. So they're not like right next to each other. Yeah, so if you're ever in Oregon, you want to see some minerals go to the rice Mineral Museum, it's read.

Jessamyn 19:35 Does Angela work there in a public facing? Or is she in the back room like cataloging and classifying documents, special things? She

Cortex 19:41 does volunteer work, reorganizing stuff, and she's helped them with some database stuff and some data entry and so sort of miscellaneous

Jessamyn 19:49 cool, she liked it. That's a pretty equivocal. Yeah,

Cortex 19:55 she hasn't been doing it as much since she had the leg injury

Jessamyn 19:58 which she likes. See Susan is a longtime thing. Yeah, she's done

Cortex 20:03 an audit on when she has availability, but then she was working time and then she had a leg injury and but yes, but yeah, that's a cool place and she likes to and you would like it to if you go and see it go see the right back to what you're saying. Sorry. Who's also out in the woods in that part of the Greater Portland region? Yeah, he as your post attests, he referred work this 727 As his home and it's a ongoing work in process and has been for a while and probably will be

Jessamyn 20:35 a six year old kind of single nerdy dude. Which whatever, like, I think that's kind of nerd normal. But then there's a video with him walking someone around the place. Yeah. And it turns out he's maybe deeply creepy.

Cortex 20:50 Yeah. You know, it's funny because like, I didn't get like a super creepy feel from like, like, little bit of creepy but creepy and sort of a kooky. This is someone who would actually turn an airplane into a house in the woods sort of level like, like, kooky, creepy, which I'm like, no red flags there. But he just keeps doing this thing, where he loves airplanes, and he thinks they're a huge resource that we should try and recycle. And everybody should basically build houses and structures out of them. And okay, that's idiosyncratic, but whatever. But instead, what he keeps saying is that what's happening is like, on the order of like, three of them a day, these are hauled off to death camps, and then immediately executed and uses that exact phrasing, again and again, once Yeah, like three four times in the video, and it's just like, to what did but do you? Have you ever said those words out loud? Anyone who then blinked at you about the fact that you said those words out loud about airplanes, and not about like, people who actually got shipped off camps and execute because their airplanes buddy? Their airplanes? Right, right. There's some major historical events that I'd like to review here.

Jessamyn 21:58 Right. So maybe not creepy, as much as clueless. But definitely, it was the thing that a lot of the metal filter, and rightly so yeah, kind of stumbled on, even though everything else and that whole thing was so weird. Like, I literally found out about that dude, because I was reading like a Reddit wallpaper subreddit, because I was looking for a new wallpaper for my computer. And I found a picture of his house and was like, that's amazing. And then in the comments, which I've read, there's people who linked to the stuff that I eventually linked to. Yeah. And then I just saw some other person who put it up on Instagram, who was like, hey, this dude is somewhere in Scandinavia. And I'm like, No, he fucking isn't. Again, but I assume it's one of those like, what do you call it when two people come up with the same idea in different places? Like Darwin and the other? Yeah, I'm trying to reward Leibniz and Newton. Yeah. Spontaneous. What? Yeah, man, we're

Cortex 22:57 like, I want to say parallel evolution. But it's not you know, that's that's evolution. That's not ideas.

Jessamyn 23:03 PSAP though,

Cortex 23:04 I think there's, I think there's

Jessamyn 23:08 term more specific word that is escaping us

Cortex 23:10 failing to get at it. So

Jessamyn 23:13 we podcast too early, and you're not awake yet. And we podcast too late. And it's too late.

Cortex 23:17 I know. There's got it. There must be some sweet spot, but well, you know, and if it's like, it's if it's not a workday, then I can just sort of like say, hey, let's do 10 o'clock in the morning, and that's probably just about right. But like, I don't want it

Jessamyn 23:27 it doesn't that doesn't that mean, it's the weekend?

Cortex 23:30 Yeah. Or what? Tuesday? Wednesday is really my proper weekend. Those are the days that off.

Jessamyn 23:39 That's your weekend. Yeah,

Cortex 23:40 I mean, I said I have Saturday off to work Sunday work. Thursday, Friday, Monday. And you know, I have days off where I do work because I'm an idiot the bottom business but

Jessamyn 23:51 Well, I mean, cuz you own the business.

Cortex 23:53 Yeah, kinda have to do that stuff. But yeah, I've got a weird midweek weekend. And it works out. Okay. There are upsides to that. But

Jessamyn 24:09 I have some other things I liked. I'm gonna filter besides

Cortex 24:11 my own posts, so many of them let us push forward on this, though

Jessamyn 24:15 I did enjoy that. Of course there by the usual suspects, but you know, the usual suspects are good. Fizz, for example, is a good usual suspects who did a just Okay, I gotta get this off my chest. I kinda like Smash Mouth. Like, I have friends who are friends with Smash Mouth and by all accounts, they're incredibly nice people, but for whatever reason, everyone just loves to hate Rockstar. And so Phyz put together a

Cortex 24:49 falseness.

Jessamyn 24:52 Thank you. Hey, now you're an all star shit. Okay. So there's a whole bunch of YouTube videos where if they do that song only people do crazy things like remember we did the at the podcast once we did the thing about the bees it's the movie but every time somebody says the word be it gets faster or slower more upside down or something like that so this is like Smash Mouth all star but it's a spontaneous play on piano do it in public smash Smash Mouth all star but it's chiptune that's actually pretty good I think Smash Mouth all star but it's jazz and it's just kind of fun for the most part because you know people just sort of enjoy Oh see all star by Smash Mouth but every other word is B from the B movie

Cortex 25:41 yep no no see this this this this post now that you bring it up it reminds me that I had been meaning to go like consume the entire thing because like this is like exactly the kind of place that I want to spend four hours like yeah, no I like like the cross pollination of these weird memes I'm super into I actually have a huge amount of affection for people goofing around with Smash Mouth specifically because of Neil city Reagan's mashup albums Guy Yeah, so like mouth sounds and mouth silence and mouth moods all you know smash some extent. Yeah,

Jessamyn 26:16 Smash Mouth moods.

Cortex 26:20 That's the mouth Yeah. So like I've got a huge amount affection for fucking around with that song. And that's sort of come around to it in that sense. And I don't know someone someone made a point

Jessamyn 26:29 maybe once told me

Cortex 26:33 somebody once told me this might have been a metaphor or a comment. It might have been just someone on Twitter or something but sort of made the point that like, you know, really a Smash Mouth had never been successful. Everybody would fondly remember Smash Mouth. Is this just weird little idiosyncratic like Neo beach music band that was a blip back in the 90s. And the fact that we've heard basically, Shrek destroyed Smash Mouth if Smash Mouth had any chance of really what

Jessamyn 27:03 it is right? Because I didn't see Shrek it till so much later that I just never that connection isn't that big thing for me. But yeah.

Cortex 27:11 So yeah, it's uh, it's weird. But no, I'm gonna go back to that post and eat it all up. Because? Yes, good. That is my thing.

Jessamyn 27:21 Good. I mean, did you look at meta filter this month because I have a whole bunch of stuff I enjoyed.

Cortex 27:26 I did. I did a lot of monitoring.

Jessamyn 27:29 Spend a lot of time in the politics.

Cortex 27:34 I'm having a hard time tracking down the stuff I liked as much I did like this sort of hodgepodge round up wrap up on the Canadian USA hockey game and Scott Moyer, of Moyer and virtue, the figure skating team from Canada, Tessa virtue and Scott Moyer, who maybe they got gold, I don't remember. Anyway, they did. They did some real good skating. And everybody thinks they're doing it or maybe they're not doing it. And it's his whole sensation. And then he was at the Canada USA hockey game, the gold medal match. That spoiler alert the USA one. But it's very close. It went through over time into a shootout and he was there and shouting at the refs and stuff. And so anyway, it's a nice,

Jessamyn 28:28 he was captured shouting at the wraps in his Canadian jacket.

Cortex 28:32 So the thread turns into this just like nice sort of goofy all around discussion of him shouting at the game and the reffing and hockey game itself. And also, Moyer in virtue, and it was just kind of a it was a nice little like of the moments we're getting late in the Olympics, sort of post. I enjoyed it.

Jessamyn 28:52 Do you? Did you interact heavily with the Olympics generally, like are you an Olympics watcher person? Or are we watched

Cortex 28:58 a bunch of it? Actually, we like we did a lot of watching of streams in the evening, you know, be like the NBC site, we used my mother in law's like cable login to

Jessamyn 29:09 Jim and I use my sister's cable login to do the same thing.

Cortex 29:13 Pretty good way to go.

Jessamyn 29:15 Yeah, it totally worked. The thing that was so weird was I was talking to a lady that comes around here and like, helps out with the house waters to plant to feed the birds and stuff. And she's like it, she only watched it on broadcast TV. And so she was like, What the fuck, like, there were no medal ceremonies. And I was like, Well, every medal ceremony was on, you know, the streaming thing. And she was like, and I wanted to watch the US Canadian hockey game and all they did was showed like the shootouts at the end. Yeah. And it occurred to me that the people who are watching broadcasts now probably this is the first winter Olympics. This is true for actually have the worst experience, you know, because the NBC app is robust now. out, and you can watch whatever the hell you want. Like we watch all the like eight finals for whatever the thing is where you flip up in the air and the skis and the tubes or whatnot, because we can just watch all of it, you know, and nobody was interrupting us telling us where somebody lived or what their family looks like, because I don't care, you know, like ski flips, or whatever. Or if you want to watch their family stories, there's a family story stream, go watch it and mine. Yeah. I was impressed. Yeah,

Cortex 30:30 it wasn't bad. Like, I was. I was annoyed. Sometimes we end up on like, the main NBC sort of broadcast ish stream. And that was like, but yeah, what's going on? It also depends on how much we wanted to like watch a ton of a single event versus lately. Let them hop around a little bit.

Jessamyn 30:46 We must always wanted to watch a ton of, you know, a single event, although they also had some little like YouTube be like clips. So like, they had this one that was like the five worst jobs at the Olympics. And one of them is like being the bottom guy on the two men lose. And they interviewed the guy talking about how weird that is. That's great.

Cortex 31:09 To see there were other Yeah, Olympics. Yeah. It was good.

Jessamyn 31:15 And I noticed that the main article in that Scott Moore thing, what goes to an Instagram picture? It's not even there anymore. So a lot of this, like, kind of Yeah,

Cortex 31:27 like people. The video stuff was gone weird, too. And people were just sort of speculating that it's just the IOCC or whatever. It is being a huge pain in the ass. I mean, like, stuff on the internet, don't link to content. What if we could have gotten paid for that instead?

Jessamyn 31:43 Right Well, here's, here's a post that I liked. Because it just like, was relevant to my interest right at the time. Like, I like this band foo, Manchu. And for whatever reason, Jim and I were talking about it, I don't know if like it came up on like, my iTunes, I don't know what the hell but existential dread had literally just made a post on metal filter that they have like a new album. And they're like this basically kind of what they call 90 stoner rock band real fuzzy and loud. And they looked a little bit like the band that was part of the closing Olympic ceremony last night actually. But like, this thread was just people who liked this music talking about this music. It was a small thread, not a ton of people in it. Not a ton of comments or favorites, but it was exactly what I wanted at exactly when I wanted it and it was great to see it. Thank you. existential dread. Nice.

Cortex 33:02 I enjoyed speaking of Neil's SEO Regan I swear to God, I didn't set that up on purpose, but he put out a game. I think just the day after the last podcast.

Jessamyn 33:12 I don't understand anything about this guy.

Cortex 33:14 He's just a guy who makes weird stuff. Did you ever see the enemy mutations back in? 2000s Colin mockeries ventriloquist dummy mouth singing along

Jessamyn 33:26 this is I think how people feel when people talk about sports.

Cortex 33:30 So Nielsen Serega just has made a bunch of weird shit over the years and I only sort of I mean,

Jessamyn 33:33 I respect the fact that you like him. I'm just amazed like my world in his world don't overlap at all. Considering how much you love him. You probably

Cortex 33:40 have been exposed to something he made on the internet. I just don't know how to put his name on it just because he's made so much weird shit on the internet. I don't like

Jessamyn 33:49 anything weird. Really? At all normal shit. I just watched videos of blind people playing video games on YouTube that is what I do.

Cortex 33:58 Okay, well anyway, he made a game where you bring monsters it's fun go breed some

Jessamyn 34:03 like you breed them with each other to make new different kinds of like

Cortex 34:07 the first comment in here you you successfully bred ghost and Jason Vorhees their child is a beautiful Jason var ghost, you know make

Jessamyn 34:15 does it have pictures to or just text?

Cortex 34:19 That's hilarious. And the best like the best part of it is like some of the combination names are pretty obvious. Like take a Frankenstein and a giant ant and you get the not so crazy giant bolt necked ads, but you put the money in brackish water is gonna

Jessamyn 34:37 illustrate this for me.

Cortex 34:38 Someone should do that. There's like 990 combinations or something like that. So it'd be a lot of work but if you combine Cookie Monster and the Gremlin you get midnight snacker Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's funny. He's a funny guy. He made a funny game. Go play the funny game. Also this other guy. Made a post or or gender made Post about a guy who made a sphere out of 42,000 matchsticks and then sets it on fire.

Jessamyn 35:05 I feel like we knew leveling up of this general phenomenon every couple of years, it kind

Cortex 35:13 of feels like the way it would go, right? You know, someone's just got to come up with

Jessamyn 35:17 what I'm saying. And I feel like it's on metal filter.

Cortex 35:20 Oh, probably, I would like to if someone is bored and wants to do it, I would like to see a retrospective of metal filter posts about people building things out of matches, and then setting them on fire. It'd be nice to just round that up.

Jessamyn 35:32 I'm going to include a link to when the thing is actually starting to be on fire because it's like a minute 50 into it.

Cortex 35:39 There's this whole meditative section of putting it together. That's like, I kind of think it's kind of satisfying.

Jessamyn 35:47 I do not share your feelings. Okay. Well, time is money. Mullard

Cortex 35:53 does not watch all six minutes of a video of a giant ball of matches,

Jessamyn 35:57 nine and a half see you have some sort of mental Time Compression.

Cortex 36:01 I just didn't watch the end once it burns once it switches to a different camera angle. At that point, you've already sort of seen it sounds like whatever.

Jessamyn 36:08 No, I liked the different camera angle, because then it's like burning from the back. And it's smoke. Yeah,

Cortex 36:14 no, it's good that there are multiple camera angles. I just didn't need them all at once at the time that was watching. It's like wants

Jessamyn 36:21 to talk about in this thread. I don't know more than the new foo Manchu album, apparently,

Cortex 36:24 you know, people like oh, no,

Jessamyn 36:27 I'm selling the midnight snacker.

Cortex 36:28 Okay, that won't have much more complicated. Do you have anything else on a normal amount of comments? Oh, my highlights?

Jessamyn 36:36 Great. Well, I have just a couple more that I actually enjoyed and participated in, which is usually what my threshold is, on months when I'm participating. So Barack Obama and Michelle Obama had their portraits for the National Portrait Gallery, which are different than portraits that are going to be hanging up in the White House. And they each had, I believe.

Hold on one second. Sorry. To interrupt. Well, I was just checking because one of these guys names is Hindi. And I wasn't totally sure if the Hindi was male or female. So they each had a African American painter. And both of their portraits are really interesting. And I saw them on malt shop. And of course, like any good internet person, I was like, I have feelings about this that I need to talk about on the internet. And so I came to metta filter and was not disappointed. And it's really interesting, because both of them are not your usual portrait. You know what I mean? Like they're Barack Obama is like completely surrounded by greenery. Michelle Obama, that picture of her like, isn't super representational, and her skin is gray, instead of, you know, the color she is. And so this post, which is by post Killian, basically is a thread where people kind of talk about like the choices that were made by the artists, the choices that were made by the Obamas to get their picture, what does it mean to have a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it really, because I don't know that much about art, really, but I like to learn, I like to know about it. And I didn't have a strong feeling like, it sucks. I want to fight with everybody. I was just like, hi, I feel weird about this. I'm interested in knowing what other people thought about it. And this was lovely for that. Nice. Yeah, good. Mostly decent conversations with a couple, you know, a couple little, slightly prickly whatever. But yeah, loved it. And the thing about it was,

Cortex 38:43 sorry, colon in front of that. That seemed like a very good summary of Metafilter. Pardon me, please.

Jessamyn 38:54 And then it was cool later, because then I had friends who actually went and saw them at the National Portrait Gallery. And it gave you a completely different perspective, like seeing them in a gallery setting. And they're giant. I mean, these pictures are really big, which lens are completely I couldn't tell from the pictures that I saw of the pictures of the paintings, how large they were. So at any rate, I just felt like I learned something and metal filter made me ever so slightly smarter. Yeah. And last, and sort of favorite basically, this was sort of a, you know, a gym post of a thing that we had found. I don't even remember how, Oh, I remember how so Zooniverse is basically a website where you can go and they do like crowd sourced help us with this project by doing a little tiny piece of it. And so it was Black History Month. And so the Boston Public Library did a thing where they have a whole bunch of correspondence from anti slavery activists, but it's all handwritten and they need somebody to help Then turn the handwriting into searchable text. So they did it on this crowdsourcing site called Zooniverse. And so that's cool. But Zooniverse has a whole bunch of other like super cool projects that you can, you know, at your computer help for five minutes, and maybe help, you know, identify wildlife in somewhere in Africa, or somewhere in Wisconsin, or look at stuff in the galaxy, or et cetera. And so Jim made kind of a fun post, which actually turned into a thread that was like, sort of, like weird, like, 84 favorites and 20 comments, but like, you know, it's a thing that sort of people. If it's your thing, it's your thing is essentially it. I've passed it around to friends of mine, and now I have friends of mine who just, like sneak in and do it all the time. Like there's Montana cam, which is just the stakeout basically dead animals, and then carrion feeders come and so they get these amazing pictures of eagles. Hmm. And it's and it's the whole thing. I mean, it's partly just so you can kind of see what's up with the eagle population, but it is weird and gross. And but you know, right up my alley, so was kind of interesting.

Cortex 41:13 Yeah, that's pretty great. Yeah, cruisers like hey,

Jessamyn 41:18 right. There's crows in a lot of them there are. What are the magpies? And it just depends. There's a whole bunch of different projects, but usually you're helping some kind of little nonprofit organization do their little nonprofit thing. I mostly look at Wisconsin cameras. And there's just watch watching a lot of deer wandering around. Every now and again, though, as you would expect. Every now and again, though. You see a bear.

Cortex 41:47 That's neat. Yeah, I'll

Jessamyn 41:48 find you a link to my my pictures that I found Jim and I could share a little picture folder. So whenever we find a thing, we can save it to a little. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. So you can be like, Look at the little the bear that I found or look at the weird thing that I found. Hold on EU and now they just added Supreme Court notes, SCOTUS notes. So if you want to help take the Supreme Court annotations and turn them into something that's keyword searchable, you can tweet. Yeah, so you know, these are my weird pictures. teager fighting with each other, a deer with their mouth open, lots of Turkeys lurking around being creepy. Bears bobcat. And it's interesting because I just like to fuck around. And you can name these, whatever you want. And so I named it with just three asterisks because I wanted it to be first and all the alphabetical list. But if you look at what it says in the URL, it's actually called star star star like STR dash STR dash str, which is kind of adorable. Also the word my bullshit.

Cortex 43:01 This beer with its mouth open.

Jessamyn 43:03 Isn't that funny? So good. I mean, it's probably chewing. But

Cortex 43:09 who knows? Yeah, but like those three frames, you need just that. That's pretty good. gift that whatever. I don't know.

Jessamyn 43:17 Whatever me Mullard.

Cortex 43:19 I, we've talked before how I don't even remember what pronunciation I prefer. Like, you have to surprise me, I think even for me to find out what I'm gonna say

Jessamyn 43:31 in the middle of the night to figure out what your actual pronunciation is. Yeah.

Cortex 43:34 What's like the thing you can find out what someone's dominant foot is by just shoving. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. And then they'll throw their dominant foot. Generally speaking, you know, I'll

Jessamyn 43:45 just say stand on one foot.

Cortex 43:47 That would probably work pretty well to

Jessamyn 43:51 push somebody it's not assault. Either way. It's got that going for it.

Cortex 43:54 Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely time in place to to use the shipping method.

Jessamyn 44:02 I'm just trying to figure out what foot dominance

Cortex 44:09 it's very important. You don't bias it by warning, definitely.

Yeah, sure we talked about last minute filter. Yeah. Let's talk about filter.

Jessamyn 44:39 I also like to estimate a filter. Here is just a very nice, kind of little heartwarming title. Please help me find my last heirlooms by the user whose name is Marfa, Texas was asked that 1204 and they fit Get it out at Ah 258 I think the next day, no, that same day. Yeah, they figured it out like half a day later, was like jammed in the back of a drawer by mistake. But I mean, isn't that great? Like, that's the kind of thing that's not supposed to work, but totally worked?

Cortex 45:19 Yeah. Well, it's just like, you know, when you when you've looked in the obvious places, you just have to find the places that aren't the obvious places. And like, it's, it's like naming all the songs, you know, you know, hundreds 1000s of songs, but someone said, list all the songs, you know, you're gonna come up with a certain amount, and then your brain just is tired. You know,

Jessamyn 45:37 right, you have like eight and you're like, there are no more songs.

Cortex 45:41 There's no reason it wouldn't be the same thing like, you know, trying to think of specific places to look inside. I

Jessamyn 45:48 think part of it though, is when you filter stuff through your eyeballs, like some people are really good at, like looking at a place and being like, Okay, I've looked there, and other people aren't it for whatever reason, like noticing if something is out of place. Like, I went up to my bedroom last night, and like Jim had left me like a little note before he went home, it was so cute, whatever. But also, I noticed that there was like a birthday card that he'd gotten me that I keep on my nightstand that was in the trash. And I was like, Okay, I know, that wasn't in the trash before. And long story short, I was like, Chip wouldn't have thrown away the birthday card gave me and I think like mice knocked it off the nightstand and the trash happened to be right next to the nightstand. But like I could tell as soon as I walked into the room, like something was different. Whereas I think for a lot of people, you know, they take out the trash and wouldn't even notice that like something had fallen into it. Because well, whatever, who you can never know where things are. Yeah. And I'm always interested in the people who can notice when something's out of place, and the people who think those people are uptight, lunatics because my experiences, they date each other, but

Cortex 47:00 there was this, this post from color proof saying, hey, my best friend's dog died unexpectedly yesterday. And it's terrible. And I didn't even read this. Well, you know, it's like, you're already past all the bad stuff like a dog died. That's terrible. Yeah, no, no, it didn't turn into a bunch of horrible dog stories. It was, you know, here's a nice thing you could do, or here's what I did. And it's it's actually it's not super long, but it's just a, like a handful of nice suggestions and whatnot. So it's actually just a nice read rather than a huge bummer. So there you go.

Jessamyn 47:40 Yeah, what's that the Walmart like her best friend's ex boyfriend ran the dog. I thought everybody I met a filter was going to be like, first get a restraining order.

Cortex 47:50 Yeah, it didn't come into it. This this did a good job of actually like there's not even any deleted comments from someone who stormed into say, Well, you need to just everybody actually was like, Oh, I will answer the questions you are asking. Okay, so that was good job. Everybody. Solid reading the room and self control in the restraining order. Yeah. Yes. Obviously.

Jessamyn 48:11 I enjoyed this. How do people use words posed by a shot fish is Scott fish. Catfish

Cortex 48:24 is check fish. Yeah.

Jessamyn 48:27 So at any rate, this person is married. And they have he has they have a vacuum and a rotating power brushed thing. Or no, they've got a device. And it has suction and a rotating power brush. He calls it a sweeper. She calls it a vacuum cleaner. Who's right? Et cetera.

So well, it there's some regionalism to it.

Cortex 49:01 Yeah. Well, that's what I'm thinking like, like, I'm like, well, obviously the vacuum cleaner because that's what I call a vacuum cleaner. But like, that's just I know that that's because that's what I call it like sweeper. Sure. I guess some people call it a sweeper.

Jessamyn 49:12 Well, and there are sweepers which are like push sweepers. Yeah. But the question is whether something that employs suction can ever be called a sweeper or whether it's always a vacuum, and it's a good natured, good, like disagreement, you know, so it's not it's not like helped me prove my dumb wife wrong. And but I enjoyed listening to people talk about what they call a random thing. In their house. Oh, which reminds me, I did ask that question, which you encouraged me to ask after the last

Cortex 49:44 I forgot to post mine. Yeah, tell me how yours when

Jessamyn 49:47 nobody else sings along with the toilet.

Cortex 49:50 Okay, I forgot that. That's even what the question was. Wait so

Jessamyn 49:53 well, it was like it was like, do you hear songs? Like?

Cortex 49:57 This is a podcast about things that I forgot what We talked about in a previous podcast apparently

Jessamyn 50:02 that's okay. That's basically my life. So yeah, I have a beloved forgetful boyfriend also. So we were looking at the you what page and like when water is running, I hear melodies in it. I usually like sing along. So like when I'm brushing my teeth, I hear like hey ya by OutKast, when I flushed the toilet, I hear this, like, Dr. Pepper commercial from the 70s. Like, in my house, like not any toilet. But so to me, that's like, just kind of one of those normal like things like, oh, anytime you smell green grass, and, you know, fresh cut grass that reminds you childhood or whatever. And so I just figured I would do what everybody else does and be like, is this weird or normal? And everybody be like, you're normal? And? I mean, some people did. But it was a lively conversation.

Cortex 50:56 That's excellent. I gotta go back and check that out. And I'll get around to asking mine too. I think I just ended up feeling like a little bit like, should I google this first? Am I intentionally not googling just to have an excuse, but we'll see.

Jessamyn 51:09 Did you get two questions a week? I

Cortex 51:10 know, I should just be burning. I don't know. Maybe once in the last year, I asked about our stuff sometime a couple times last year, early this

Jessamyn 51:19 year. Oh, that's right. I gave you some advice about how to dry your stuff. Yeah. So did that work out in the long run? Not my advice. But just advice in general.

Cortex 51:28 I got some good advice I'd have to revisit. I'm real bad at going back. Like I don't know, I'm a terrible asthma user. I don't know. I don't know why they're letting me run the place. But

Jessamyn 51:39 I mean, I don't think they're letting you I just say

Cortex 51:43 I liked this thread. Speaking of art stuff is a question from Cal Zephyr. Basically. I mean, the headline is, how do I become better at spewing bullshit in art college? And they're saying, hey, you know, it's like, I'm struggling with my art degree. And actually, I'm gonna be giving it up. But I'm not done with it yet. I've got stuff, you know, for a few more months. So I need to figure out a way to get through the process of saying stuff about my art in a way that will satisfy my professors, because I say what I actually think about my art, and they're like, that's not good enough. But I don't want to say dumb bullshit, just to fill space. But apparently I have to. So how do I

Jessamyn 52:26 do? Or you have to? Yeah, find some way you can talk about your stuff. Yeah.

Cortex 52:30 And it's an interesting question, because like, there is this like, whole thing of like, how much of talking about art is talking about complicated things with specialized vocabulary, and how much of it is saying, blank, justifies its artistic newness. And I've definitely been thinking about that a lot, as I've been engaging with painting the last year and a half. And the threads pretty good. It's like, it's got people sort of tackling it. And to some extent, people sort of breaking apart like, well, there is BS, but there's also communicating in more detail, the straightforward things that are driving your process. So you, you can't just an answer, like why did you paint this? Oh, because I like that. That's not good enough for our class, not because you're not bullshitting. But because you're just not like communicating anything you like. So if

Jessamyn 53:21 you have some sort of why otherwise, why are you in art school as opposed to somewhere else?

Cortex 53:25 Yeah, like and you know, if nothing else, if the reason you made this is an enigma to you that you can't even puzzle out because it is in the murky depths, talk about the process of trying and failing to puzzle out those murky depths. But you know, like, talk about why you're doing it. And so sort of, I feel like people did a good job of sort of breaking those two things out and saying, like, well, here's what you actually need to do. And here's the thing that you sounds like, you don't want to fake your way through doing and those two can be two different things. So yeah, it was good. It was it was a bunch of interesting conversation, I thought. Nice. So good job.

Jessamyn 54:01 I liked this, just one of those asked and answered, Your Honor. Basically, I need to produce for printing eight and a half by 11 sheets with four concentric rings of 27 circles. God dammit, you know, and then somebody's like, oh, just go to this page and type in this code that I just wrote for you. The end? Yeah. You know, half an hour. Perfect. was nice. I don't even understand the question almost, but I can understand the answer, or that there is an answer or that it's answered. And it made me happy because it was just nice. Yeah, you know, it was a question from tenderly and it was an answer from AWS. 17576. Nice.

Cortex 54:48 There's a lot of there's a lot of good tools for this sort of thing. It turns out I've been sort of finding more of them in bits and pieces as I've been doing so like geometric art stuff for like laser cutter and paper cutter stuff. And yeah, it's like There's a lot of good ways to generate geometric figures with fairly simple code, essentially, like not like you need to be a programmer to do, you just need to, you know, figure out how to use a simple tool set and learn a couple of functions and like, to the degree of like, if you can manage to sum up a column of numbers in Excel, that's about the level you need to engage at. And you can deal with graphics. And it's just like, it's not tools that anybody ever teaches anybody to use outside of specific scenarios, because like, it's not super broadly applicable, but there's no reason people shouldn't be able to do that. So yeah, that's really nice outcome.

Jessamyn 55:38 Yeah, and speaking of things that are just like, oh, that's kind of nice. I like this post by Sukra, which is just like, you know, when I'm anxious, sometimes I try and like, just do little things that make me feel a little bit safer, a little bit better or a little bit comfortable, just like a little thing. Do you have a little thing? I bet you have a little thing. And it's a long thread of little things. Little things make you feel just a little bit better, if you feel an anxious, etc, etc, etc. And I think it's helpful.

Cortex 56:09 Yeah, no, that's great.

Jessamyn 56:15 And lastly, for my list, anyhow, to wrap up, Black History Month. Fish sauce, is working on a critical project about cyberpunk and really wants to read more cyberpunk that they may not have read before, specifically, if at all possible stuff by people of color and women, maybe people who things that maybe were thoughts that cyberpunk when they came out and then weren't or whatever, whatever, whatever. Just a really nice thread of like some books I should read, basically. So excited about it.

Cortex 56:53 Nice. Yeah, oh, I will mention one of the things that came up just because it was for like, part of like, the political dialectic. On the side, there was a thread of conversation about keeping up with the news in one of the reason, catch all threads. Then someone rightly said, Hey, this kind of asked me thing. And so doctors I saw that said, how do people keep up with the news in the Trump era? Because like, it's a little bit not you answered

Jessamyn 57:18 a question. I forgot that I wanted, like, I saw this. And then I was like, oh, I should go read that. And then life intervened. And then I lost it. And there it is.

Cortex 57:30 High five,

Jessamyn 57:31 hey,

Cortex 57:33 lowercase o right. Slash? Yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 57:40 You taught me that? Yeah. Actually, I think you taught me Don't leave me hanging when I had no idea what you were typing. But tomato, tomahto. It's all of it. And there's a couple of really good shout outs for me fies own fire pH, ire fire, who does a really terrific newsletter, and also what the fuck just happened today, which is, yeah, fight fire with fire by Metafilter zone. And what the fuck just happened today. I really like fires. newsletter, which I read every time it comes out, partly because there's always like a joke at the end, like something that made her laugh, and also something that you can do. So you know, call this person do this thing. Write your rap a letter, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't always work per se. But like, you can at least, you know, feel like you're doing something. And I feel like that's kind of a useful part of long haul organizing.

Cortex 58:40 Yeah. To have to have anything to do. It's like, nice to have like, a little bit of direction. Yeah, she does a good job with that. Like that. And what the fuck are the two things I would end up recommending to someone if I was having that conversation? So?

Jessamyn 58:53 Yeah, I mean, I'm really surprised to tell you the truth, how much news I get from Twitter, but some of that is also just how little news I consume nowadays that isn't local to me. You know, like, I keep up with the issues and harass my representatives. But you know what, whatever is happening at a high level, I kind of get the headlines and don't actually need to read about it because I don't need to read about it.

Cortex 59:20 Yeah, I get that sufficient exposure, willing or otherwise to just keeping up with the threads moderating besides that, like I've basically stopped looking at external news sources independently. It's like, Oh, I'll go check something every once awhile, but I'm not gonna go sifting for more news because I'm good enough.

Jessamyn 59:39 Yeah, I'm full. Yeah, but these threats are good if giving people places they can look that aren't the same old kind of stuff.

Cortex 1:00:00 If I could do a quick music minute here. There's gonna be awesome people keep making good music It's good stuff. There is as usual too much but some things I'll specifically mentioned overlapping Elvis as he is want to do did some nice acoustic music. That's the word music, the black and white reg old song that has banded a super nice job on so go listen to that. I guess I put these in the shows I don't necessarily have to say go listen to them, but hey, go listen to them. There is a delightfully off kilter and unsettling Valentine's Day song from Eustace Scrubb that they basically put together specifically to be sort of weird so static busses odd percussion and old sad political or angry poems mashed together

Jessamyn 1:01:11 right I will stay completely away from it even though I'm sure use describe as a delightful person

Cortex 1:01:17 it's it's weird it's not like terrifying. It's just like off kilter. Like it's definitely the it's got a strange like,

Jessamyn 1:01:25 see whenever you say that I hear diva bat saying off kilter Metafilter.

Cortex 1:01:31 There is, fu snark did this neat synthesizer thing called a natural carpet, sort of a few things layered together and I'm digging it. There's a very nice piece from Kara venturi who's been posting a bunch of stuff I just can't post like four character Venter songs every month. But this is real nice sort of slow build little electronic piece from him. And then a nice pretty sort of lonesome acoustic you know, song and like like voice and guitar or maybe it was a guitar like instrument I don't remember. But from cord writing the song nowhere to be found. I thought it was very pretty. And yeah, and a bunch of other stuff like chocolate cat posted something and it's busy enough of other stuff that for once I'm not even mentioning the chocolate cat song specifically, but there's definitely chocolate get song. Go listen to your cover. And yeah, Music Good job, everybody. Man. I really feel like I'm just like, like, like lurching the the engine onto the property as the engine breaks down.

Jessamyn 1:02:39 You did great. You're pulling it into the station. You're done. Go take a nap or have a drink or whatever the heck it is that you do.

Cortex 1:02:49 I might I might go play some more Subnautica I'm really into this this undersea diving exploration game right now.

Jessamyn 1:02:55 Subnautica Yeah,

Cortex 1:02:57 yeah. Isn't it?

Jessamyn 1:03:00 Is that like a play on words? Like it's a submarine but also it's underneath the water? Yeah, ish.

Cortex 1:03:05 I don't know. I don't know if it is super meaningful. Like it's there's definitely trying to play on the idea that you're doing this like you know, wandering around underwater. But you crashed your futuristic spaceship crashes over ocean planet. And then you have to like cobbled together basic survival stuff and build yourself an underwater base and figure out what's going on and build better equipment so you can dive deeper and there's monsters down there and it's all very good. I'm really enjoying that

Jessamyn 1:03:30 actually. Sounds kind of fun.

Cortex 1:03:31 Ya know, it's pretty good.

Jessamyn 1:03:33 But you know why I think that why? Because Polaris was my favorite video. This

Cortex 1:03:38 is I there's I mean, it's I mean, there's

Jessamyn 1:03:40 no bass. Yeah, in Subnautica or in in Polaris. Oh, I'm looking at the monsters right now.

Cortex 1:03:49 It's pretty good. If you want some, you know, fictional undersea flora and fauna, it's, it's just chock full and the sound design is great.

Jessamyn 1:03:59 I sometimes wonder why I don't really get into video games that much.

Cortex 1:04:03 I imagine. It's just sort of like a dispositional thing. And also, to some extent the investment in like, you know, the machinery specifically for it, like Subnautica I don't know how much of a beefy machine you need to run it. But you know, a lot of games that are on Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:04:17 I mean, I guess also it's like a Mac PC thing a little bit. I mean, I have that, you know, PS to hear it play some fun games. It's just like, it rarely rises to the top of my list of what I want to be doing with my time. Even though I enjoy it, like, you know what I mean? I don't mean, like, throwing shade. No,

Cortex 1:04:33 it's just the balance. Like you know, there are times when like I've been heavy video game player, obviously from our conversations over the last many years like you know, it's a consistent thing that I find a lot of value in but I have like ups and downs times even then like there was in the last few years, there's been a couple periods where I wasn't really kind of playing anything for like six months. And then like there's like this week where I'm just nose down in this game as much as possible for like, right so Old Days. Like, this is definitely the I kind of wanted to be playing Subnautica podcast not not in the sense of that feeling like Oh, but I can keep playing like

Jessamyn 1:05:11 that's the way I felt about tagging animals in the Wisconsin wildlife camera for like, four or five days like I tagged 800 animals and then for some reason it just that feeling went away. Yeah, like I still enjoy it, but I don't I'm not like one more. I don't have to eat dinner yet. A couple more. Yeah, I don't have to go to the bathroom yet. Wait.

Cortex 1:05:32 And, and what it's working, it's really working. And I think it's just it's easy for me to get in debt with video games, they they provide that sort of engagement hook? Well, for me for whatever reason, right? Whereas I've got a bunch of art books and I don't have like a new art book to talk about since the last podcast because I've been sort of playing video games instead of like doing my reading. I've got a book about Mel Bochner his work that I need to like power through in the next day or two and return before like the late fees start stacking up because someone else put a hold on. Oh, that's the worst but Subnautica man Well, I mean, if I had it for three weeks, it's my fault.

Jessamyn 1:06:08 Your fault.

Cortex 1:06:10 It's my it's my very final

Jessamyn 1:06:11 tax on the poor.

Cortex 1:06:13 Well, no, that is uh, the fees are real low. And the problem is not the fees here. The problem is that like someone put a hold on it, and I should let them go ahead and have the book.

Jessamyn 1:06:21 Right? Hey, for my knee. Ken Jennings was never a medical two person was not that I know of. Okay, I just finished his book, map EDS, which is about five years old and is just a super fun. Hey, something has been chewing at my cable of my headphones. I just noticed it has little bites. Ah,

Cortex 1:06:46 nice. Do you think it's Vermonter? Do you think is local? Like? You're right. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:06:54 that is the weirdest damn thing. I'm gonna go fix it before anything happens. But any rate, map peds? It's all about people who are super into Maps. So nerds who are in the maps, go read this, you'd like it. And I know he said my trivia nerd group, which has a lot of overlap with metal filter nerd group. So I just figured I'd ask him a little annoying, but this book is really good and not particularly annoying.

Cortex 1:07:17 Yeah. Yeah. And I have I found it mostly amusing to the extent have been exposed, but I don't think there was ever a metaphoric connection. And it's just like the sort of person that Metafilter enjoyed. I will mention some metal toxic real quick, while I'm thinking about now we can finish up. There's a thread that I enjoyed, and it's still sort of slowly burbling along called What have you been making lately, where I love that thread. psychiatrics was just like, hey, well, you've been making. And like Gail, there's 150 comments, people saying, Oh, I was doing this, or Oh, hey, I think he made his red. And you know, so I heartily recommend checking that out to see what people are up to. There is a no filter card clubs, things spinning up as sort of a follow up on the Valentine's Day thing, which I participated in. Wonderful.

Jessamyn 1:08:03 I believe I'm already behind, however, which is,

Cortex 1:08:08 I think the card, the card club thing seems a little experimental. So I'm not going to try and summarize how it works. If you're interested in sending and receiving cards, and not too worried about possible asymmetries there, go check it out. Because it seems like a really fun idea. But it's, it may be a little bit more a little bit more complicated than the Valentine's Day one where it was like, send five receive five or send 10 receive

Jessamyn 1:08:29 10. Well, I mean, I think it's really cool. It's just it's month to month. And so like I have two cards to send this month, but at different dates. Yeah. So I have to just get it together and put some stuff on my calendar. I think I just haven't slotted it into my routines yet.

Cortex 1:08:42 Yeah, I'm curious to see how it will. I'm expecting it's probably gonna evolve over a few months as people sort of like see what works and what doesn't, but, but it's a cool idea. And I say, hey, go send people some cards and get some cards, and that'll be fun. Yeah, spread some joy. One other one dimension. This mega post about mega mega post. Yes. Fantastic. Huge, huge. nerdery.

Jessamyn 1:09:07 I do wish we had gold stars to hand out.

Cortex 1:09:11 I sent I showed I mean sent little wooden coins to the winners in the runner ups of the best post contest. So maybe, maybe I'll cut out little stars to send people for stuff too. It's kind of fun. But yeah, this this better talk post is crazy. And good job, not the water.

Jessamyn 1:09:30 Yeah, very good job. It made people very happy and people who are looking for something to do. You should go to the mega post about mega posts and find your Mega post that brings you joy and spend a little bit of time learn some stuff. Yep. Yep.

Cortex 1:09:44 All right. Well, I think that's a podcast. I think we did it.

Jessamyn 1:09:46 I think it's focus. So good talking to you, Josh.

Cortex 1:09:48 It was always good talking to you as well.

Jessamyn 1:09:50 Good luck. Get your energy back. Getting mine back. All right.

Cortex 1:09:54 It's a deal. Okay. Talk to you later. Goodbye.