Podcast 142 Transcript, Otter

A transcript for Episode 142: The World Didn't End (2018-07-06.)

Pronoiac passed the podcast to Otter for an automated transcription.

Transcript

Cortex 0:00 A couple of things you

Jessamyn 0:25 Hey, Metafilter Hey, yeah,

Cortex 0:27 I guess we could like, do a thing. Hey, welcome to episode 142 of Best of the web, the Metafilter monthly podcast. I am Josh Maillard, aka cortex.

Jessamyn 0:40 And I'm Jessamyn and we're gonna talk about metaphysical stuff.

Cortex 0:43 It's July through, you know, I've been thinking about maybe going by Josh cortex Mullard, a

Jessamyn 0:48 little bit. I mean, you mean like, Hi, I'm Josh cortex, malarkey.

Cortex 0:53 But more generally, like I could do that in the podcast intro it would be one nice streamlining maneuver of it, but like, just more generally, like just my sort of, I hate to use the phrase personal branding, but that ideas like, you know,

Jessamyn 1:04 I was the same thing.

Cortex 1:06 Yeah. I mean, I was cortex on the internet for a good long while, like for much of the 2000s I really like I'm a cortex and then I think sometime in the early 2010s, I started thinking No, but it's kind of weird if I just hooked me myself up to this one website that I happen to like spend a lot of time on it work. Well, in

Jessamyn 1:23 your national art stuff is its own stuff, like Yeah, taking your art and that kind of stuff.

Cortex 1:27 Yeah. And so I sort of like pushed towards using Josh Mullard. Everywhere else and not really using cortex because became this thing where I'd be like, but also I'm on metal filter. And there we go. But cortex because we have usernames,

Jessamyn 1:39 and other Are you on any other like social sites? I mean, obviously, your Mullard J on trivia,

Cortex 1:45 yeah. You know, Instagram and Twitter and Mastodon and a handful of other things. Flickr I am Jesus H Shatner, because that was what was funny, like, 2004 When I signed up, but like, I'm mostly just Josh Malartic. We were like, one word or two words, depending on the the username format there. Yeah. But lately, like, you know, it turns out that thing Yeah, but do I really want to kick myself so much to metal filter was a very 2008 thought to have because it is my life at this point. So like, you know, maybe maybe I merged the two again, maybe maybe it starts being like Josh quote, cortex, close quote. Mullard as a as a handle for a lot of stuff. I like that sort of thinking about it. So I like it. Now. It's out in the world.

Jessamyn 2:30 Good. thumbs up from me.

Cortex 2:33 Yeah. All right. I'll get I'll give it some further thought. Maybe next podcast, that'll be intro. Alright, maybe. Maybe we'll we'll just see. I'm gonna forget about this by next month is what's gonna actually happen. That's all right. Anyway, it's episode 142. It's

Jessamyn 2:46 so hey, 42 I got one thing. I mean, because we're just up in the boring numbers, right? Where it's like it's a non totient something blog? Nothing no word anybody's ever heard of, you know, sonnet 142. But bus 142 is the number of the bus that Chris McCandless lived in the into the wild guy. Oh, his his death bus. Just FYI, it's trivia it's not gonna be light and happy.

Cortex 3:17 Yeah, sometimes sometimes we're gonna get real sometimes trivia is gonna tell you something you didn't know you didn't know about yourself. That's that's the nature of trivia trivia.

Jessamyn 3:25 Need to have a minute because I don't really talk to you about trivia that much. But very exciting having you in the learned League. Yeah, you're involved. You know,

Cortex 3:34 let's have a trivia minute.

Jessamyn 3:36 There was a big fight in the forum's there. I don't even remember what it was about.

Cortex 3:41 It was about it was about the the so learned League has a nice little like, clown ball. It turns out as the name of that logo, the alerted league level is just a circle was almost like maybe you could see it as like a gesture cap rating out radiating out from the middle of the sphere. So maybe that's why it's a clown ball. I don't know. I learned these things in the process of reading this right here mentioning because Thorson, the guy who runs the league had changed the ball one day to pride ball, just like a rainbow colored ball to celebrate Pride Month, which he's done before. Yeah. And it's it's very nice thing. Hey, that's great. And a bunch of people, I think basically felt good about it. And then one guy felt not so good about it.

Jessamyn 4:22 Like hey, that's cool. Like, it was such a little thread like hey, that's all right. Right.

Cortex 4:29 I think I think he started I think this fucko wandered into be like, Oh, hey, what's the deal with the logo as well as questions where someone could be asking, oh, hey, I have a question. I think that what they're really saying is like someone please respond to me and tell me exactly the one thing that will make me not say that you're a bunch of fucking jerks for daring to shove your gayness in my face was the vibe that came out very quickly after that first sort of, structurally. Oh, well, I was just curious about this logo situation sort of thing and people like oh, it's about pride month. Just a question. Yeah. Yeah, so it can read neutral at first. And a bunch of people basically took it as neutral but they weren't expecting to someone can be a shithead in the forum's there. And so it's got like 10 or 15. People saying not that arguing. Yeah, it's very weird that there was like an eight page thread on the forums. Like that's nuts for learned League, it seems like,

Jessamyn 5:19 yes. But it was funny to see you in there. Because that's usually like what I think of is like, my, you know, for me place that I am in. And then you were like, Oh, hey, like, Yeah,

Cortex 5:32 well, I got there late. So like, the whole thing had already played out. The guy had gone from like, Oh, I'm just asking a question to be like, Well, I don't know

Jessamyn 5:38 gay, some people in their lifestyle. Some people

Cortex 5:42 don't approve of that sort of thing and blah, blah, blah. And it just sort of went downhill. They you think it would exactly the way you expect it to. But it basically that one guy being a prick, and a bunch of other people just not having it, which was really nice.

Jessamyn 5:55 Write tons of people just being a supportive be super into it. And then the guy in charge basically was like, Yeah, this conversation is over. Yeah, kind of, I mean, in a friendly way, but like, close the thread up, which

Cortex 6:07 Yeah. netfilter Yeah, banned the guy and then close the thread later, after people

Jessamyn 6:15 suck off and or die. Yeah, remember, but it wasn't just that he has appalling beliefs. But he also

Cortex 6:21 Yeah, and you know, it's kind of a funny, it's a weird little bit of like, moderation politics, I guess, there that, you know, I have like, not in a forest and what were you doing way but like, in just like, I'm looking at this and thinking about how I've grown to deal with this stuff over the years of dealing with stuff on metaphor is like, it's it's, it is a little bit disappointing that basically, the guy got banned for telling someone to go fuck themselves,

Jessamyn 6:46 as opposed to getting banned for being a homophobe. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Cortex 6:49 But I also be about it. Exactly. You know, like, like, if I want to get in the shoes of say, hey, you know, that's just this is not an okay way to be, you're gone, you know, but that's me relating to how I think about stuff and metaphor, which is a very different and generally busier conversationally crowd by by, I don't know an order of magnitude easily. So it is different. And it's not so like, well, it doesn't matter it you know, I think Thorson did the right thing and did it in reasonable timing, and everything ended well, but it's interesting to just sort of had to have that reaction to be like, Yeah, but what if, what if we frame this differently and more assertively to say, hey, you know, this is just actually not okay. Like, you know, even if you're being notionally polite about it, it's still not as fucked. So it was, it was just really interesting to see all of that sort of come together into this random threat alert league that I assumed was just the ongoing years long. Oh, hey, there's another logo change. Let's talk about a thing because like, That must be why that latest comment is on page eight is because pages one through seven word discussions of

Jessamyn 7:45 St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day. Yeah, so

Cortex 7:47 that was crazy. That was and has like nothing to do with like learning. We're talking about but

Jessamyn 7:55 no, but that's our Learn like five minutes because I know there's a lot of metal filter people who are on it, and they might find that interesting. And to others that aren't whatever, if you want to get on Learn league drop us a note. Yeah, it's fun. You might get promoted this Oh, yeah. Yeah, from D to C, and D, which is good news for Jessamyn sprain, which I think is doing better than I feel like it's doing sometimes so yeah, that's excellent. So metal filter,

Cortex 8:23 metal filter. Yeah. metal filter. It's been it's been a real quiet month. Yeah, like, I guess let's talk about like, metal talk stuff up front. Because yeah, obviously.

Jessamyn 8:36 That's all that money stuff. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Yeah, you know, employing my I don't work there privilege to

Cortex 8:44 employ the shit out of it. Like, well, and you know, it's the thing. Congratulations are in order. Yeah, no, it's I'm so I'm so happy and relieved and in. Emotionally complicated, but like, almost entirely good way place right now, which is so much better than this time, a month ago when this was sort of like a brewing thing. But we hadn't like put it out there quite yet.

Jessamyn 9:10 And then you were kind of nervous about it, because Matt's always handled that stuff incredibly poorly. And so you know, well,

Cortex 9:17 and yeah, the way stuff went around the first time back, like when it finally came out in 2014. I talked a little bit about this conversation, a couple of threads, but like that was that was a really frustrating experience for everybody. I mean, you know, like for the community, but also for the staff and the way things went down kind of sucked. And but that's Yeah, at this point. That is like

Jessamyn 9:36 a lot of weird grouchy ill feeling which I think was not definitely not there as much this time around.

Cortex 9:43 Yeah. But anyway, coming out with that, that's like, you know, that's obviously there's, there's like some history there. But that definitely informed kind of like the idea of like, okay, we have had a shitty financial year so far. I've met a filter and I put out a big post on June 13, saying, Hey, here's what's going going on, we're running out of big deficits. And, you know, we need some help with this. And let's talk about state of the sight stuff to

Jessamyn 10:08 you included actual numbers, which has really been missing from every conversation about meta filter money since 1999.

Cortex 10:16 Yeah, yeah. And it seems like it seems like the way to go. And I felt, you know, it's a little bit nerve wracking, honestly. But it felt like the right way to go. And I think people really appreciate it. And I'm really happy

Jessamyn 10:29 to be able to then put up a new boundary, right, like, boundary was we don't talk about the numbers, then if the boundaries like, wow, we're gonna talk about some, but we're actually not going to talk about others, no matter how much you want to.

Cortex 10:40 Yeah, yeah. And I think we're in a pretty good place of being more transparent than we ever have been now, and I feel good about that. And I think kind of want to just sort of carry that forward. But yeah, so we, I put up that post, and we talked a bunch about it, and people were just really kind of amazing, is it's, it's so weird. It's weird, because like, and I've tried to get it as a couple times in comments and, and follow up stuff. But I mean, to short circuit this, like the the spoiler alert is that people really, really, really came through. You know, we we said like middle of June, that we were $1,000 a month short. And that the savings were getting uncomfortably small as a result, and in a few months, we were just going to be in trouble. And I expected people to come up with a few $1,000 a month, like no matter what, like I check, like just a news out there

Jessamyn 11:36 outside of grownups is really nice like that, because many people have jobs and careers and spare money so that people who maybe don't, it balances a little more towards the jobs and careers angle and less the, hey, I'm 19 and I'm still in college. And yeah, I really have extra money after my barista job, which is also fine. But the balance is important. Yeah, that

Cortex 12:00 led to the fact that the fact that there's this total heterogeneity to like the makeup of who's on Metafilter. And like, in a big enough group of people, you're gonna have people in all sorts of positions there. Yeah, like, you're gonna have people who are feeling really comfortable financially, you're gonna have people who are not, and it's really, it's really fucking important to me that Metafilter has all those people there, like, that's one of the things we talked about is but I'm throwing things all random order here, but like, it's just so much to talk about. And I don't want to talk about it for two hours, but, but people really, really, really, really showed up like, within like three days, two days, I think we had like an extra 3000 A month already, which was kind of what I was hoping optimistically we might get to, because that would just like, give us more runway to figure out everything else about revenue, right definitely wants to figure things out. But we were there in like two days. And then like, by two weeks later, it's like up to just about $10,000 a month of new, recurring, and that's on top of the 7500 or so people had already been getting as of like this time last month. And that's just, it's insane. That's almost half of our budget. It's a ton. It's an

Jessamyn 13:10 stainable part of your budget, as opposed to whatever the fuck happened to the world of advertising.

Cortex 13:14 Yeah, I mean, people's individual circumstances gonna change over time. And you know, someone who is giving, you know, 20 bucks a month right now might need to cut down to 10. Or someone might just need to stop for a while because I've had some financial issues. And all that is like normal, and that's superduper. Fine. Like everybody is, you know, this is a collective effort. And it doesn't come down to any particular person break their back to keep the site up. But like, you're not going to have a third of metal filter all of a sudden say, oh, shoot, you know, what I need to do is get rid of my Pay Pal right now. Right? I

Jessamyn 13:43 mean, barring a collapse. Yeah, well, yeah. You took a pay cut a little one? Yeah. Did I read that correctly? Yeah.

Cortex 13:49 No, it's like, you know, if we need to cut things down, like I can start there. I pay myself a little bit more because I have all the, you know, business ownership and running responsibilities. But it also means I have a little bit headroom, and I don't have a huge expenses looming right now. So it's like,

Jessamyn 14:05 Right, no, I think I think that's an admirable way to go.

Cortex 14:09 But I am, I'm also relieved that it looks like that doesn't need to be a long term thing. So that's, that's great. But yeah, no, we're in. We're in good shape. And that is such a huge relief, and I am so hugely grateful about it. It's, it's kind of hard to convey. But yeah, so it's, it's been tremendous. It's been really, it's been really reassuring. It's been people have been hugely supportive. And yeah, I'm gonna just kind of go in circles on that. Try not to get verklempt but, ya know, it's been it's been fantastic. And one of the nice things about it is it's been really energizing in a I mean, partly a cathartic way. You know, I knew things were rough financially, and then the team knew stuff was financially and Then the site new stuff was financially and like we talked about before, I tried to keep that on a pretty constrained timeline. But still, it was one of the things where you just kind of sit on it worrying about it until

Jessamyn 15:09 well, and you know, my last two years of Metafilter were that, you know, what's Matt basically every three months, saying he was maybe gonna have to close the site down in three months, because money, but then he figured it out. But then, yeah, nothing else happened. And he just wouldn't share it with the community, which meant we all had to kind of eat it, which was very stressful and bad. Yeah, around. Yeah. I understand kind of why that happened. But it doesn't mean it wasn't terrible. Because he wasn't clear with us. Yeah,

Cortex 15:41 in retrospect, it's, it's, it's clear, in retrospect, how much of a problem that was, but you know, yeah. So anyway, it's, it feels good to move quick on it, it feels good to have just sort of like been more transparent about all the details and let people know exactly how the site works, and why this is the money that we're spending. And I think

Jessamyn 16:00 it makes people feel better about something they're giving money to, which I think was a competence. They didn't always have in the past, not that they didn't trust you. But it's kind of nice. They don't have to, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Cortex 16:12 You know, I mean, I mean, the, because I've

Jessamyn 16:15 known you forever, but somebody who maybe doesn't know you so well is like we're given this guy, how much to do what and that money goes where, and

Cortex 16:24 things I've seen, like, sort of compensation is

Jessamyn 16:28 service for God's sakes. Like it's so crazy people give you any money at all. And yeah, I totally understand it. Yeah, well,

Cortex 16:34 it's like there's, there's, there's definitely something to be said, just for the accumulation of goodwill, which is something that I've got a half written essay, I'll get back to at some point that I started writing. It started off as a really good angry essay, when it was like about, like, a day before we made the post up. And I was really just like, consumed by all of my feelings about stuff and the state of the ad market. And you know, he started outlining this thing. And then we made the post and then everybody was incredibly supportive immediately. It was like, I'm not as angry. I gotta come back to this thing later. But like, it's funny, like, I've heard, you know, not people saying this to me, necessarily, but like seeing people who, like I know. And I like and respect, I think they're good people who do good stuff on the internet. Nonetheless, you know, I see chatter on the web, sometimes from people when the news broke, they like, what the heck are they spend that money on? It's like, well, but it's the site, you know, we're spending it on, on having a site. Like, it's weird how there's this disconnect between like, oh, meta filters, great meta filters. Oh, it's such a, it's such a great example of what the web computing also why why would you spend that is like, well, the two are very directly related.

Jessamyn 17:39 People with jobs running the place, you have health insurance, yeah, committed to that job as their job. Super important. Yeah. Which if I can tangent you only because I think we're not gonna if I don't step in here, as happy as I am for you, that I may have a tiny job, which I'm doing some product health stuff for GitHub, which I'm only mentioning, because the onboarding has been the absolute most ridiculous last 36 hours of my life. And I mentioned this to you, because I included you for a reference because why the hell not. But like, you know, jobs are like, you fill out all your paperwork on the internet now. And I have to do my I nine stuff which has to happen in front of a person, which means you have to go to a place and it's not just like, go find a notary, like it was for, you know, redoing my will. It's like, go to one of these approved service centers, and you have to make an appointment online. And if I was still in Vermont, like I'm in Massachusetts for the summer, but if I was in Vermont, I would have literally had to drive 70 miles to go to New Hampshire. In order to have somebody look at my passport and fill in a piece of paper, just so I can work like 10 hours a week for GitHub, it is the craziest damn thing I've ever seen. And you know, the good news is you can basically write whatever you want in a box when you fill out a form on the internet. So you know, I sent you a link to like the various ways I have been signing things. I had to swear loyalty to companies I've never heard. I had to say that I'd read documents I'd never read. I mean, the guy I'm going to be working for GitHub is lovely. And he's like, I am so sorry about all this. I'm like, I have to tell you, I have a sense of humor, so it's fine. But it's also nice that I don't absolutely need this job because this is so dehumanizing. Yeah, so, you know, I get emails that are like just barely in English, and I don't even think they're not in English because I'm dealing with outsourced labor. I think they're not an English because the person writing them does not give a shit. You know what I mean? And whatever, but I just I feel so bad for people for whom this is really what they have to do in order to just, you know, work in the world. A lot of tech nowadays now because everyone's like GitHub, they're so cool. And don't get me wrong they are and I think they are even though Microsoft bought them.

Cortex 20:07 Yeah, it's gonna say we're discussing your your, your new small gig at Microsoft own GitHub. Feel IP via Microsoft owns Skype. Whoa. So it's, it's a good thing. I'm on a Mac, otherwise we'd be in real trouble. I

Jessamyn 20:21 feel like until I have done my first 30 minutes of work, I do worry a little bit that they will fire me just talking.

Cortex 20:30 I was gonna say it seems like it's firmer now than it was a few days ago in that sense that like we're not saying a major company.

Jessamyn 20:38 Like it's just so weird. I can't even use my own laptop. Like it's just very strange. But yeah, now that I've completed all the onboarding, assuming that the guy in Fall River doesn't see anything amiss with my passport, I think it's a done deal.

Cortex 20:50 Because good. Well, that'd be cool.

Jessamyn 20:54 Thanks for giving a reference if they require one.

Cortex 20:56 I haven't heard from anybody. So I think they just they just Googled me say, oh, yeah, he's good. And then left it at that. That's all my websites were missing. This guy's definitely yeah. Oh, I'm sure court Texas.

Let's talk about let's talk about jobs. There's a we have a job site. It's a

Jessamyn 21:41 ibori job that looked amazing. Employers looked for they're looking for a distinctive collections coordinator, meaning basically someone who's going to be in the sort of digital engagement distinctive collections thing, overseeing a digitization lab and student workers and doing complicated digitizing stuff. It looks super cool. I Villanova in Pennsylvania.

Cortex 22:08 That is excellent. Yeah, loved it. On a much smaller scale yesterday is looking for someone to do some color separation of artwork for some screen printing they're planning to do so if that's your bag, go get yourself 100 bucks.

Jessamyn 22:22 Nice. They don't have anybody for that yet.

Cortex 22:26 What do you mean, I? Well, it's still a job. Well, that's that's one of the many things we will probably revisit in the coming months as we revisit things. I'll get back on a bagel chain about that at some point. But let's

Jessamyn 22:37 say you're trying to phase out the classic version of Metafilter. And I'm just telling you right now.

Cortex 22:45 There's also a natural history museum, senior web dev thing. We can talk about this, we can talk about this a little bit, because I'm not actually. I mean, here, here's here's what's important to me about the classic theme is that it is useful and functional for a lot of people. And that is an important enough reason to keep it around unless it's strictly necessary not to. So I'm not really talking about phasing it out. On the other hand, I can I know there's a bunch of people on the back end. Well, yeah, I mean, here's the question is like, people don't care about the classic theme, because of the codebase. They care about the classic thing, because all the look and feel and operation stuff that it presents. So like it's possible, what we could end up doing is basically supplying a real close match to the classic theme as just a different cosmetic look of the modern theme. And if if I was able to just like do that, like if I could snap my fingers and make that just exactly how the site worked under the hood, it would in fact, be done already. In practice, it's probably more complicated than that. But it's something we really haven't taken the time to look at. There's been other priorities. Yeah. And so you know, we've spaced basically spent the last four years maintaining both themes in parallel. And I think it's basically time to stop and look and see can we can we synthesize some more, you know, if nothing else, we might be able to make the classical theme and the modern theme, play off the same files more consistently, so that the differences really are more minimal, you know, something like that would actually save some headaches and avoid the thing where like, because this just came up right in meta talk, you made the very good observation that

Jessamyn 24:20 somebody's waiting Gibbon, who I've been working with just on the GitHub archive of scripts was like, Hey, I've been like mailing the mods to ask about getting the sidebar thing, but maybe you have more traction with them to get the GitHub script thing linked in the sidebar. And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I thought that's already there. I'll drop a note. And it was already there,

Cortex 24:41 but only on the classic theme because there's different source files for the two sidebars and meta talk and it's like, well, that's what if that's something that we can fix, you know, what if things like that can become more, you know, even if we don't get as far as actually literally making the classic theme, a sub theme of the modern theme, you know, we can probably fix some Have these things up and also look at where we can sort of sync the two up more in terms of what's on menus. The classic Mobile Theme is like part of the big headache because it really is a third theme. It's not just the classic theme. It's a separate codebase you know that right? Does and it's a pain in the ass. And it has suffered because it was never designed. metaphor was never designed with responsive design or mobile view in mind, because metaphor was 9999. You weren't reading your, you know, you weren't interacting on the web on a significant way on your phone. If you had a phone that could like do web stuff at all, which you know, they existed, but it was like such a, I remember in college people doing development for I can't even remember the acronyms of the now dead web protocols that we use. Oh, yeah,

Jessamyn 25:43 no, I remember like early blogger people, some of them like the guy who I think did bumped.com. Like was like an early phone web developer. And I remember him showing me some of the stuff that he worked on on a flip phone. Yeah, like people weren't

Cortex 25:57 doing this. But yeah, it was it was very much like a thing you did, because you could not a thing you did, because there was any kind of market really, like, certainly not a casual web browsing consumer market, like, you know, you kind of had to be into development for mobile on the cutting edge or using it for maybe some sort of inner city application where it was worth it. Versus today, where like, ya know, half of our traffic is probably, you know, on phones. Is that true? Yeah, yeah. Which is that that's one of the ugly revenue trends for everybody is that there's not as much screen space on a mobile phone as there is on a desktop, which means there's not as much space to get ads on there without completely obliterating your user experience, which means mobile ad revenues, just not as good. So the trend towards mobile is kind of bad for ad revenue, just by default for everybody.

Jessamyn 26:47 And in order to turn that around, you'd need to have an app, I guess, like,

Cortex 26:52 is that option, that's not that's not really turning it around so much as just like tacking hard in a different direction. Like you could get away from the the ad space on mobile thing by having an app that generates money by different means, like you could have it deliver ads directly inside or you can make it a paid app, or, you know, there's several things you can do. But that doesn't change the problem that small screens don't accommodate. Got it? Got it. Got it, you know, so it's kind of like, yeah, parallel tracks, I guess. Anyway, so yeah, what about comes down to his classic wasn't designed with mobile in mind at all, because mobile basically didn't exist. And then when mobile started to exist, Matt built up classic Mobile Theme as sort of like a weird little hacky job, you know, patching some mobile assumptions into it. And then time went by

Jessamyn 27:37 Metafilter that Matt enjoyed, I feel like tweaking with the code base to make it into a thing that was kind of sweet was actually something he was not only good at, but enjoy it.

Cortex 27:49 Yeah. And I think he MPV got a lot of like, cool stuff done, because of that sort of positive Oh, hey, let's add this energy. Like there's a lot of stuff on Metafilter that I like that has specifically that kind of history to it. But it also doing mobile sort of by hand in the late 2000s was very hacky, and it hasn't

Jessamyn 28:07 stopped, like, you know, clicking on an exclamation point on mobile is a nightmare. And the fact that that doesn't have like a button or something. Again, it's just

Cortex 28:15 yeah, and it's something that's I've got a long list of things to revisit. Yeah. So this is turning into a very long diversion to basically, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to kill classic. I'm trying to figure out how we can make metaphysical work for people who like classic, and maybe make classic work better for them and et cetera.

Jessamyn 28:34 Response,

Cortex 28:35 it'll be a whole thing. You know?

Jessamyn 28:37 This isn't an argument. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. It's just a discussion. Yeah, it's, I can't even chime in on that meta talk. Because I am so lateral to that conversation. Like, no, no arguments, no. No fighting, debating. And yet, you know, I'm aware other people are more right than me.

Cortex 29:00 Well, and it's probably that's what we're talking about. This is this meta talk about it was put up yesterday from bio Geo and that had actually sat for, I don't know, probably a week, maybe a little bit more, because No, I remember. Yeah, we had had a whole eye. So one of the things I was saying earlier is aside from like the Oh, no, oh, things are okay, catharsis, feeling good about stuff. There's also been a lot of sort of energy as a result of conversations that come out of this. And most of those energies, and those most of those conversations been positive, some of them have been a bit more fraught, we had a very good post from psychiatrics about like, Hey, here's some things that might help with community engagement, which just kind of had the bad luck of being right in the storm of feelings from that sort of like crisis and catharsis and you know, people can almost like get more about stuff like when maybe things are okay, and the immediate crisis has passed, because then there's a little bit more permission. I feel like too well, because, well, let me tell you something,

Jessamyn 29:57 hadn't up and for some people, the only way to defuse that is, yeah, I'm stations that might be more negative than they. Yeah.

Cortex 30:06 And I don't mean this dismissively at all. But I think there's a tendency like it almost, it's almost inevitable, like, you know, it's a big emotional thing, there's almost always going to be a difficult conversation where big energy comes out. Of course. So you know, and that was that was a that was a that was kind of like the fraught thread. And then, out of that, partly, I think biogene was posed about, hey, well, let's talk about how we argue versus fight.

Jessamyn 30:33 That was a really, it still is actually like a really constructive threads. It's Yeah, bring a lot of their own feelings about arguing and fighting, which can be complicated, because they may not necessarily have to do with netfilter. Like, that's me, right? Like, I have very strong feelings about arguing and fighting, that are so much bigger than meta filter, they probably don't belong on that thread. You know, thanks can't be constructively applied to that conversation. Yeah, even though I probably have some other opinions about whatever, like, moderating and how things go wrong, that might be useful. And so I've been thinking, if there's a way to talk about those things without being like, and here's how I feel about arguing. Yeah,

Cortex 31:13 yeah. Well, it's been like, like you said, it's been really good, I've been really happy with it. I appreciate the the patient's getting it out there just because like, this is going to need some attention. Like we have to pay stuff out, because it's been such a busy few weeks. But yeah, it's been really good. And it's been nice. And it's been like, that's really heartening to see people able to sort of like, move past the big emotions of the crisis and catharsis and sort of like, take a breath. And then like a week or two later, sit down, say, Okay, let's talk analytically about these things. And what I want from Metafilter, what I don't want from Metafilter, you know, what works for me when other people do it, what creates problems for me, et cetera, you know, everybody's sort of bringing their own in there. And when they're bringing in sort of like that, oh, look, this is the family dynamic I grew up with, and that's why this is a no go for me. They're saying that, you know, they're communicating that like, carefully and clearly, and it's great, because like, yeah, that context does exist, it may not be something that you know, is about Metafilter. But you know, everybody who's on medical care has their own background in their own life in their own context. And being able to be aware of that, when you're talking about how you react to stuff and being able to sort of put that into an explanation of why this or that assumption doesn't work for you. That's all really good stuff. So that's been really nice. I've appreciated that so far. And there's just been a bunch of activity and meta talk and people talking about like, hey, what a fun thing we could do. People kicking off meetups, people brainstorming about this or that, like, you know, fun site thing, bringing back some old ideas that had been, you know, lingering in the background, like, Oh, hey, what if we talk about QuickBooks stuff? Again? You know, what if we talk about purchase, what if we talk about, you know, this or that. And that's been really great. That's been nice. And we've been doing a lot of, you know, background work mod side, you know, just sort of like prioritizing and organizing stuff that we want to work on. So we're getting the free form flag textfield thing rolled out,

Jessamyn 33:04 it was pretty good, are you gonna get rid of the other, you can leave other in there.

Cortex 33:08 I think long term, we'll probably get rid of other and probably rework the reasons in general, I think, basically, we'll roll this one out, as is probably this week, just to get it out. And like really properly live, test it. And then I've got a whole checklist of stuff to look at about sort of, okay, now, how can we update and tweak flags a bit, make it easier to click on flags, make the reasons list a little bit more short and concise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? So that'll be nice. That'd be a fun next step.

Jessamyn 33:35 Yeah, I think it's been good. Well, Metafilter.

Cortex 33:38 So I guess so. You want to talk about projects a little bit? Yeah, there's been some projects,

Jessamyn 33:45 where I put my projects,

Cortex 33:47 I will, I will kick it off with this excellent. new Tumblr from fizz called Jazz hands, which is just nothing but screenshots of hands and fingers in anatomy. It's just like,

Jessamyn 34:01 I was looking for jazz hands. But this is not where my jazz hands.

Cortex 34:05 Yeah, there's no actual jazz hands. Well, I don't know that there's no jazz hands. But it's not most of it's just me. Yes. But yeah, it's just like this. I love that sort of like, just like, just because, like, that's a classic sort of obsessive little Tumblr blog thing. And, you know, I used to do some things like that. And I'm not so much these days, but I like it when people do. So. I've enjoyed that a great deal. Yeah,

Jessamyn 34:27 I guess. Single single single issue tumblers are fun. I really enjoyed I was a little confused because I was like, Wait a second. This is a meta filter post. Oh, no. It's also a project. Filter user lays created a thing called Hip Hop radio archives, which is not only sharing, like hip hop radio shows of the 80s and 90s, which is really besides like tape swapping and like live performance, where a lot of people learned about like what was going on in hip hop, but also kind of contextualize it. Like, what was going on? Sort of at the same time and you know what else was was happening then it's a really great thing. Lise is storing the files at the Internet Archive which is great, which means there'll be around and then it got posted to Metafilter by cichlids Kayleigh I do not know how to pronounce that username at all. But and it was a was a kind of a short but well well liked thread. I just think it's a really great who pulled out some you know, things you might like, you know, Dr. Dre and cervix a lot like it's capital rap show jazzy J and Afrika Bambaataa, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's just very cool. And if you're somebody who likes Hip Hop even a little you will like this a lot.

Cortex 35:53 Ya know, it's a really tremendous piece of work. Oh, right. This one. Yes. Practical key cabinet. This is this whole video. It's so good. Well, it's funny because like,

Jessamyn 36:09 it's not long for what it is. But I my patients for videos is short. Yeah, I've watched this whole thing.

Cortex 36:15 That's great. Yeah, it's a custom clockwork cabinet built to like, very slowly produce a key rack so like, yeah,

Jessamyn 36:27 now this may be just a Europe versus United States thing, but like, does the word key cabinet

Cortex 36:31 mean anything to you? Not to me? No.

Jessamyn 36:34 Okay. Me neither. So I just didn't know if that was me. Or

Cortex 36:37 yeah, just maybe a regional difference. But, but yeah, that's it's wonderful. It's just a delightful piece of craft work that happens to do a thing and an impractical way

Jessamyn 36:46 does a whole bunch of other wacky things by twirly pen

Cortex 36:49 and the video the video we should we should note is like two minutes of detail shots of the various mechanics of this thing working but it actually only takes like eight seconds to get your key so it's not crazy it's not it's not two minutes actually get your keys it's just too long to be just shows you

Jessamyn 37:05 all the little parts do and do and all their little things. Yeah, no, I thought this was so good. And just the kind of sort of nerdery Metafilter thing that I love It's really wonderful. Yeah, I think those were my two main projects I don't know if you have other ones

Cortex 37:22 I also am excited about and I haven't gotten around to reading through it yet way about Egypt turn ashes how is the Egypt turn ash and I think it's Egypt urn ash but like it just flows.

Jessamyn 37:35 Anyway Egypt turn ash to as if it were Egypt turn it. But you said Yeah,

Cortex 37:39 but yeah, that's exactly what it is. Now. They open up to them comes to him with there's nothing in there except for a charred radish or something. Yeah, I realized the radish isn't a turnip. But it's I don't want to say turn up again. Because

Jessamyn 37:51 don't make me have to talk about the legends of the turnips again. Okay.

Cortex 37:55 So parallax is this new strip from our strip comic from Egypt, urn ash, who has posted some very cool comic stuff before on projects. And this is the new one and it looks lovely. It's got really great art and I read a couple pages is like Yes. And then I've just had no time. But I look forward to getting to it because it looks super rad. Oh, jeez, I had a couple others but yeah,

Jessamyn 38:22 it was posted to Metafilter by RT W. Oh, excellent. Where it became another kind of short but well loved Metafilter thread.

Cortex 38:30 Yeah. And there's a bunch more stuff. You know, we've talked about projects being quiet and projects was less quiet this month. And it's great. So go go go read all the stuff on projects. Dang it. Dang it. Geez, geez gum

Jessamyn 38:48 talking like an 1890s prospects?

Cortex 39:14 There was I just saw something on. This was probably a metal filter post that I clicked on, and then haven't gotten back to the thread. But I think it was a vice article about I finally watched this sentence for the first time and I've been like it. Oh, here it is. I guess we're talking about metal filter now. So that's perfect. Just someone who like grew up. They missed the heyday of Simpsons, and then they were always been vaguely culturally aware of it. But like, by the time they sort of were really aware of it as a thing to watch. Everybody had concluded that the good seasons were the early ones. They couldn't find those on any streaming services. Like I just never bothered. And then my coworker is like you're crazy. And so I took some recommendations and I watched 11 episodes and you know, there's some stuff I liked about it, but also Homer is awful. And what's the fucking gender politics of the show? And why are they we shitting on people who are like trying to do good things and Again, Homer is just the worst person ever and but I like the meta humor in the

Jessamyn 40:04 kind of the protagonist. Yeah. What's that about?

Cortex 40:07 So I have not looked in the thread it's possible to thread is horrifying shitshow I'm assuming, but I it made me think of that the whole Simpsons quoting thing and how more and more quoting this instance is going to be not just like that thing people do on the internet, but that's the quoting the Andy Griffith of like, you know, the next generation What the fuck are all these old people doing? Like it's gonna get so abstract voting

Jessamyn 40:31 is not that different. I, you know, I'm going out on a limb here. But you know, like, it was an all dude very of its time and place. Yeah, kind of humor, which hasn't aged well in kind of our intersectional present in some ways. Like, it marks you as a certain kind of person, even though many of those certain kinds of people are very good friends of mine. But it's not just the kind of like, oh, nerds are going to agree that this is the height of comedy. And I think it's the same with the Simpsons.

Cortex 41:06 But, uh, but yes, anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. And it occurs to me I was just saying, like, quoting Simpsons is a thing that old people do is maybe going to be a thing but utterly re mixing out of any kind of recognition. The Simpsons is definitely more of a young people thing. And that's kind of an interesting set of contrasts.

Jessamyn 41:26 Is it? I mean, is that based on a thing that you've seen, or is that just a prediction you're making?

Cortex 41:32 No, no, no. Like, that's based in part on my personal obsession with the ongoing steamed hams meme.

Jessamyn 41:38 Is this one of those Josh explained things to me moment, I

Cortex 41:40 guess. Have you have you avoided steamed hands?

Jessamyn 41:43 I feel like I won't even talk about Okay. Well, when I think it's an expression really unkind things Dan Savage used to say about

Cortex 41:52 Oh, geez. Yeah, no, don't no, no, no, no, no, no,

Jessamyn 41:56 no, no. We talked about this in the last podcast even and I forgot it. Maybe

Cortex 42:00 it's a short skit from a episode of The Simpsons. There was a two minute long sub skit in this episode full of skips, and it was about Seymour Skinner, the principal of the elementary school and superintendent, Superintendent Chalmers, who's the superintendent of the Springfield school system, I guess. And Seymour has superintendent Chalmers over for brunch and but then he burns his roast or lunch rather than, for instance, rows and what goes in gets from craftsy burgers from explaining the plot of this is a bad idea. Basically, it's a short dumb sitcom set up where possible things happen. People have remixed this thing endlessly in the style of like steamed hams except this except that steamed hands except it's all star steamed hams except me every time is a steam that goes 15% Faster steamed hands except etc etc etc. And this is not a fresh mean but I love it and I will never stop loving it. And I don't even

Jessamyn 42:54 know how we got to the point of first draft and I know I'm getting you now

Cortex 42:58 the people who are like re mixing steamed hams probably many of the people read mixing it online as just mean material were born after that aired, is like there's this generational thing where like it is now. Archival stuff that you pull out and be weird with same thing with like, there was the whole Simpsons vaporwave thing a couple years ago. Like you know, it's just like people doing real spacey vaporwave music over weird trippy slowed down recovered Miami sunset feeling Simpsons clips just I love that that is maybe going to be a second life as even as we stand around saying I can't believe this show stolen air why they bother? It's gotten so bad. Other people like Yeah, but what if we put it through? Spaghetti? Spaghetti grinder meat grinder? I guess? Spaghetti? extruder What do you call that thing that you make spaghetti with? Ah, like put in the pasta dough and then out comes spaghetti.

Jessamyn 43:51 I guess like the playdough. And when Plato does it, it's like a bumper machine. Yeah,

Cortex 43:55 like a non Play Doh Fun Factory. With Simpson stuff. Anyway. I'll stop talking about that. Now. What were you gonna bring up?

Jessamyn 44:05 Oh, you mean metal filter stuff? Yeah. Wow. My favorite post. It actually got really confusing. We were talking earlier about like, I'm not reading 2017 on my checks, right. But like, so I saw a Twitter post about this canal that was drained in Amsterdam, right? And they put everything they found online, right? And I was like, this is the most amazing thing. I totally have to go to meta filter and tell everybody about it, except that it's probably there. And in fact, I noticed that you know it the one of the things about the website that's so cool is you can remix it right. And so I noticed not only that, but somebody remixed some of the stuff that they found to make something that looks a little bit like a metal filter logo. And then I went to metal filter. I mean, it's clearly supposed to be a metal filter logo. It's adorable. It's wonderful. And so I went to metal filter and I saw the post that my god laundry made. But somehow I don't know I was hot and sweaty, something it's been really hot here. I somehow thought it had been posted in January. And so I didn't even scroll to the bottom. I thought the post was already closed. And I was like, Oh, well missed opportunity, and that I didn't engage with the goddamn thread for some reason. And just now I'm happy that it's still there. Yep. If that makes sense, totally. No. And

Cortex 45:32 it's like there's always something very slightly disappointing when like, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna post this. Awesome. I got there.

Jessamyn 45:40 Well, and somebody got there months ago, so I can't even be in the conversation, which is what I thought I encountered, but in point of fact, the threads completely still open. Yeah, we just posted a couple days ago. And I just misread it because who knows what my problem is? And so I got to you know, kind of reengage with it again after thinking guy could not

Cortex 45:59 Yeah, which is great. And either way it's there's there's something there's also something nice about like thinking oh, this be grand Metafilter and like finding out Oh, someone else thought so too. You know, it's sort of gratifying. Churchill? My buddy, buddy, Jesse and some time co podcaster. You were on that episode of That was fun. Our old podcast and he's been on this one one time.

Jessamyn 46:22 Like camping with him. Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 46:24 He also posts he didn't get as far as finding out that it had been posted and he made a double post and I got to delete a really stupid deletion reason it was a very happy little moment for me. So it worked out very well. I liked this post from quince. Just total riffing thread you know, is just basically a tweet saying every book or play title should be written in the form of Are You There God, it's me, Margaret.

Jessamyn 46:49 And you there football? It's me. Charlie Brown.

Cortex 46:52 Are you there? Meaning it's me man. Are you there? cow lick me bread. You know people just like going there.

Jessamyn 46:57 Luigi, it's me, Mario.

Cortex 47:01 I saw bump someone else got there first. I was like, oh, that's though but no.

Jessamyn 47:05 Anybody? It's me comfortably. No.

Cortex 47:11 It's it's wonderful. Basically, you know, I love riffing threads. And this was a spot on riffing threads. So

Jessamyn 47:17 it makes me miss Brad. That one crazy thread that he was in all the jokes. Oh,

Cortex 47:24 yep. Rip, dude. Yeah, there's also this wonderful thread about just robot clothes like industrial robot clothes. You know? Nearly you've got industrial diamonds. See this by Dr. Danger? Yeah, yeah, by Dr. Danger, and it's just nice. It's a short little thread, but it's like a wonderful collection of robot stuff. And it has a link someone threw in there. I think Harold 74. Did I remember that right offhand? Yeah, Harold 77 were posted an old video that I think probably was a metaphor post many years ago about a close folding robot. And they've got this like sped up video of it just folding one cloth after another and it just has such a What the fuck is going on? Look, every time it picked up a new piece of cloth. Something, something very anthropomorphic going on with my reading of it, but it's just wonderful. And I love it. So that was nice, too. I'm gonna go briefly watch it. Yes, I'll talk about another thing while you watch that. And then you can start laughing in the middle of a sentence. Bond Cliff made a crazy roundup post about Weird Al Yankovic current music tour, which

Jessamyn 48:29 is in Canada and probably won't even hear this because he's barely got any Wi Fi I think.

Cortex 48:37 catch up later. Yeah, anyway, he did a great big round of weird has been doing a tour, the self indulgent, ill advised vanity tour where he and his band have been playing like a sit down show that's more acoustic, no costumes, no set changes just sort of like playing music and digging into the back catalogue. And it's kind of a cool thing. If you're like he

Jessamyn 48:54 normally does these like shows with screens and a million changes and like all the hits and yeah, exactly Stan this robot thing at all. I'm a minute into it. And I'm just not. It's just

Cortex 49:06 it's just folding cloth. It's looking at a cloth and rotating it to map out the 3d structure of the thing is holding. And then it's grabbing it and adjusting it so that it can carefully fold it that's It's impressive that the robot did that. Just say good job robot.

Jessamyn 49:21 Job. Don't you make me be nice to a robot. This is how we get you know,

Cortex 49:27 this is how we don't get murdered. This is this is how we keep the basketball disc at bay are like, hey, it's good that you folded that club. You're a good robot. I'm proud of you. We want to be supportive. We want to create a welcoming warm environment for the robots

Jessamyn 49:40 feel like Wasn't there a thing like last month about like, why more of the robots that we talked to don't require you to say thank you. Like, why isn't that part of how we're supposed to talk to robots that could have been programmed in and isn't I remember Matt talking about it on Twitter. I don't really know. I'm sorry. Go on with what you were talking about. No, anyway.

Cortex 49:59 At the cliff and among other things on the tour weird islands band have been playing like a different cover song every night and like straight faced basically they just doing covers of all sorts of classic and you know, maybe in some cases more recent songs so like doing a cover psycho killer or blistering the sun, Johnny be good. A whole bunch of things basically a different one every night. So he put together a post linking up all the ones he could find of YouTube footage of these covers, specifically so if you want to see weird I'll do a whole bunch of like, straight face covers of like classic songs deep cut covers, kind Yeah, like not not what not what you would associate like, you know, he's like, the song parodies and like pulpits are so strongly part of his brand and like just straight up doing a song for its own sake is kind of unfamiliar. So it's it's really cool. And I have a lifelong appreciation for Weird Al

Jessamyn 50:56 the same drummer since 1980. And his name is Bermuda Schwartz, which is hilarious. Yep.

Cortex 51:01 You kind of you kind of get the feeling that if you got a drummer today would not be named Bermuda shorts. But, but that's worked out. Yeah. Sure. Try. What? Shorts, shorts. Yeah, for me. Like it's like it's like Bermuda shorts, but it's actually shorts. Yeah, it's

Jessamyn 51:20 an excellent job. Yeah,

Cortex 51:21 exactly. I agree. Fine.

Jessamyn 51:24 Well, I thought you were saying you wouldn't be named that today because there's something wrong with it. No, no, no,

Cortex 51:28 no, I'm saying like, I think magic. No, no, no, I think I think I think hiring if you're weird. Alan, you're hiding. You're hiring a drummer in 1980. That drummer going by Bermuda shorts feels like completely appropriately inevitable. And I feel like if you're Weird Al hiring a drummer in say 2015 che, he might find someone who goes by or chooses to go by Bermuda shorts, but he also might find somebody goes like, oh yeah, my name is Todd Weltschmerz I, yeah. I play drums. You know, it's not quite as like the wackiness has been clipped somewhat by like the musical legitimacy of weird Alice career was my thought. I know that's a very long tangent. Is the world where do you thought of I was trying to think of something. And that's apparently what came out. I don't remember what Weltschmerz is and now, it's like something terrible.

Jessamyn 52:14 It's world pain.

Cortex 52:15 Oh. Well, I was I was German. I was I knew as German. I'm just glad it didn't. Yeah, I was thinking about. Are you okay? Yeah, no, I think about Verner Herzog earlier I think that just must have got that in my there's something very, some very funny. Herzog. Oh, Herzog, Waldo? I think it came from the are you there? God, it's me, Margaret thread, I made a wall of joke. And then someone linked to a two minute long, jokey interpretation of Werner Herzog reading Where's Waldo? Oh, god. Yeah, love it. What else for metaphor? What else did you like?

Jessamyn 52:53 Well, I liked for my particular female perspective, this post by Marcelo Epps, which basically it's another it's a vise article. And, you know, people talk a lot about sort of inclusivity and equity, and how do you get people to, you know, why aren't there more women speaking at more sort of mainstream tech conferences. And so this is just an interesting conversation about like, hey, people who wear skirts, whoever those people are, if you wear a short skirt, which is not super abnormal, because that's what people wear nowadays. And you have to go to a conference where you have to sit in a high chair and perch your knees on it. And then everybody in the audience is basically staring up your skirt. That's kind of a problem. And it's awkward. And hey, people who are designing conferences, like do better. And it's not like one of those shitty, like, mad at everybody. But it's like, you may not have thought of this because you're not there in a skirt. But it's a real thing. And there's lots of people who wear skirts and you should be working on it. And motherboard slash vise has like a whole design bias section. But then there's like lots and lots of good cheer stories. Nice, you know, both on the link thread on Twitter, and then also in the, in the thread itself. And I of course, because this is the thing that has happened to me, especially because like, I almost never wear skirts. And like the one time I did I wound up with one of these like chairs in kind of on your on a riser where everybody can stare up your skirt. And the good news is I'm me. And I was like, yeah, no. And they're like, What do you mean? And I'm like, Fuck, no, like, we're not doing this get some furniture and they did and it worked out okay, but like, not everybody can just, you know, snap their fingers and be like, This is bullshit. And so it was nice to have a thread to talk about it in kind of a friendly funny way. Not like an ad everybody sucks, but like yeah, It's a thing and like, you know, especially like if you're somebody who uses a wheelchair to get around, and especially if you know, you're at a conference and people frickin know that the number of stories about people who can't get up to a stage or who have to, you know, who have a podium to deal with, which is totally unnecessary. A lot of times because people who do especially smaller conferences, just don't even have agency or feel like they have agency over a stage or the technology or the microphones. I mean, there's been another thing that's been going around. I mean, maybe it's just library and Twitter. But talking about how using a microphone at a conference is an accessibility issue. You don't just get up there and you're like, Well, I'm pretty loud. People can hear me, right? Even though that's, for me, you know, often mostly true. The point of fact is it's not totally true. And microphones are there so that everybody can trick and hear you, but people don't think about it and especially if you're somebody who doesn't go to a ton of conferences, which a lot of times conference organizers haven't or doesn't go to a lot of conferences, which in many cases a lot of people who go to conferences Haven't you don't see it as a trend you just see it as a one off and so I found this article is really useful because it talks about how it can be a trend and it's a trend that people can do better on without you know, making people feel bad or having to call anybody a racist or whatever the thing is, yeah, what's cool good conversation Mark low EPS I thought it was a good good post let's

Cortex 56:30 do that. Backed up by angry crowd chanting bro equivalents.

Got a whole little flurry of like not much to say other than than this was great posts. I'll mention a couple of those to actually, there's a very nice post from movable book lady about an architect named Ricardo Bofill Bofill that I just have not seen. I don't know architecture at all. So it's not real.

Jessamyn 57:11 That I like brutalism. So this makes me happy, because I didn't see this.

Cortex 57:15 Yeah, there's some very nice, it's a nice mix of stuff. Some of his stuff is very, very, very clean and simple and blocky, you know, I left a comment saying how much it struck me as looking kind of like flat shaded voxel stuff in, like contemporary video game design. Which I'm sure like it's putting the cart before the horse because like, maybe people who design architecture and video games look at architecture.

Jessamyn 57:37 But wouldn't it be crazy if they didn't either?

Cortex 57:40 Yeah, like some of it could be coincidence. But also, I think probably people doing this kind of work. People look at this, like, oh, that's what I want. But also some more ornate complicated stuff. And it's very cool stuff. So I enjoyed that. I really, really liked this post from Griffiths, about a new song called I Love My boyfriend by a I believe New Zealand musician named Princess Chelsea. The the song is great. The video is great. And then he's talking about Twitter's like, Well, I wanted I was thinking about making a big long post about this, but I was like, You know what, YouTube, just playlist stuff. And it's right, you go to YouTube, like this is great. And you're like, Okay, well now I'm gonna look at 50 more of these videos. So it's kind of a perfect moment

Jessamyn 58:20 to see other stuff by the people. So what do you like about this video?

Cortex 58:24 I like liked it. So the song is good, the videos nice. It's what I like about the video is just it's got a nice sort of like chill vibe and a weirdness to it that I super appreciate. It's just this solo musician, but she's dubbed herself in video wise, dubbed composited herself in five different times and five different outfits like point being the various musicians in the band sort of thing. And it's nicely done. But one of the interesting things is you can just go on this deep dive because she's been making music for years and years and years. And there's this whole progression back to Super, super low five video compositing Dora curry, you know, back in like 2009 2008. And it's just, it's like this world opening. Oh my god, there's this rich, rich vein here. And like, that's one of my favorite things is when a medical post is not just hey, this is a rad thing. But this is the tip of a Radness iceberg. So

Jessamyn 59:17 right and you can click around and spend all afternoon doing this.

Cortex 59:21 Yeah, yeah. So I thought that was really great. And Princess Chelsea's read because go check her out. I thought this post about basically blind gamers doing good in fighting games was interesting. It's a short discussion thread, but people get a little bit some of why fighting games specifically. It's like, especially like 2d Fighting. It's there's a lot of timing elements in like player versus player one on one fighting duel games, which is part of why you can develop a good sense of what's going on in the game just using sort of the stereo field and timing elements even if you can't really see which is what's all about And that's a really cool, interesting thing. It's not really, it's not exactly an accessibility thing directly, but it ties into some of what people think about when they're thinking about accessibility design, fighting games just happen to accidentally, as much as anything fulfill a couple things that a lot of video games do not so much make workable for visually impaired gamers. So I thought that was really cool. And my other drive by cool thing was this posed by ragtag of 1000s of watercolors commissioned by the USDA, in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it's just if you want watercolors,

Jessamyn 1:00:40 oh, a Twitter that does just the apples.

Cortex 1:00:45 Yeah, of which there's like 3000 or something. As beautiful, beautiful watercolors

Jessamyn 1:00:51 posted. Oh, that's your first comment. Oh, yeah. Twitter about it.

Cortex 1:00:56 No, yeah. But yeah, just really, really, really gorgeous watercolors. Nice bit of basically, you know, government art

Jessamyn 1:01:05 that you can just have,

Cortex 1:01:06 yeah, so that was my giant storm of dry by posts.

Jessamyn 1:01:10 I have probably two wonderful, which is by me Ray. And basically, it's a shelter for dogs. But it's testing out a housing situation where the dogs can actually kind of hang out together. They don't all just, you know, have to sit in cages. And so dogs can develop their personality, they can socialize, they don't degrade over time. So this is me Ray, who also adopted their cat millionaire from the shelter and Millionaire is of course, just freaking cute. And then funny me also comments later in the thread that the you know, if you've heard of one dog, you know, shelter, you've probably heard of the old friend, senior dog sanctuary, which is, you know, very elderly dogs, and now they have a live cam. And you can go just watch old dogs hanging out together, nice at the place. And of course, I wouldn't really recommend it this week, because it's really fucking hot. And they're just sliding around being hot. Not so lively. But at any rate, it's kind of adorable. And I just liked that thread. And the other one I really liked was speaking of the weather, this one by hot monster, where it's kind of a video that was like, Oh, interesting. The link to the video is broken. Oh, it's from March. That's why. So at any rate, you can find the video if you Google it. The video itself is like kind of funny. But like the threads because it's basically like, you live with somebody else. But then when you live by yourself, you get kind of quirkier, and quirkier. Basically, with your own kind of individual tics, you know, you no longer close the bathroom door. When you pee, you talk to yourself in a British accent, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, there are many mefites, who live alone. And so this thread, which I somehow missed in March, when it actually happened, is kind of a funny thread of people sharing the wacky things they do when they live alone. Nice. I'll see if I can actually track down the video because you see the video because other people should probably also watch that.

Cortex 1:03:30 Yeah. Hopefully they just move it around on the site. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:03:33 no, it's because I watched it before I interacted with the thread. And it was kind of funny, but like, the videos not as funny as the thread of talking to Metafilter people. Yeah.

Cortex 1:03:44 Oh, I have one more medical people. Someone I mentioned, actually two, and then we can move on to ask. Whatever. There's a lot of Metafilter, Miller's middle middle, middle letter, Merleau mirlo filter. Next month, nothing but wine posts. I've had some coffee as part of the situation here.

Jessamyn 1:04:06 And this is an exercise. So I'm a little wound down here a little wound up. Afternoon here and it's morning. They're

Cortex 1:04:14 posed by Maecenas. That seems possible. Anyway, this is a post from middle last month about a comic called John. It's really too too short like four page comics I want to say by an artist named Gail Guillet Galligan and it's about Jon Arbuckle is sort of, but it's like Jon Arbuckle if this is the John Arbuckle, who's more of a contemporary anxiety ridden and who has a whole life versus Yeah, he has life he's, he's loses his partner. He's got a cat. He's got a dog. They're clearly the inspiration for Garfield and Odie, but they're also actually cats and dogs and it's just sort of about John and his like his anxiety as a person and a creative person and his partnership with Liz and sort of working through some of that stuff. And the first cartoon, it's about him like meeting her friends finally, and him being anxious about it, but then it ended nicely. And the second one, he goes to Comic Con. And the second one in particular just got me and apparently a lot of other people just getting sort of theory about a Garfield fan comic, but it's really, really wonderful. Like, I, it's good, like June 21. This was about a week after the big announcement on the site, things were looking better. I was deep in my fields, but I'd already read this thing like previously by chance, like weeks earlier, and gotten sort of teary about Nick came back to just a screencap it on Twitter to say, Oh, hey, this showed up on meta filter, and I'm getting to get about a good like, Oh, it's just I don't there's something there's sad, like, in a bad way. No, no, it's sad in a good way. It's just no, no, no, no, no, it's, it's totally safe. And it's just, it's just kind of wonderful. It's just like, it really hits this perfect human note of sort of worry and creative stress and worrying about like sort of being in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing or being you know, out of touch with what's going on in your life. And then having one of those like little confirming moments where it's like, oh, shit, you know, actually, there's something to what I'm doing here. And it's just, it's really great. Just go read it. It's super good. I loved it. I'll stop talking about medical post. Now. Do you want to talk about AskMe? Metafilter?

Jessamyn 1:06:24 Absolutely. So had out of hell got the bug out of their air?

Cortex 1:06:30 Yeah. God, this fucking Oh, this thread? Oh, man. What a goddamn ride.

Jessamyn 1:06:37 Yes, she had a bug in her ear. She went to the doctor, the doctor was like, it's fine. Like, you know, these ear drops will kill the bug. They didn't. Everybody was like, seriously, go back, this is bullshit. And then found an EMT who could pull a moth out of her ear. And there are some super gross posts you deleted. So thanks for that. Rather, like people just being super gross about insects in the year in a way that is completely unnecessary.

Cortex 1:07:20 People we understand we understand the prompt but no, just don't. Just try and help. Let's Let's aim for helping.

Jessamyn 1:07:28 Yes. So that was that was a joy because it ended really good. Let me see if this one ended well. So here's this crazy, sorry, I'm trying to use the word crazy a little bit less than I am not doing very well at it. This completely interesting post by theodolite. Basically, they change the car battery. The car model has this weird bug that they know about from reading on the internet. See, it's

Cortex 1:08:00 like a button. It's here. Yeah. Very nice. You have to

Jessamyn 1:08:04 enter the anti-theft code in order to get the radio to work again. But it won't work unless you're somewhere without radio set perception. Which is, you know, makes no sense. But it's also true. So they're in Chicago and need to find an underground parking lot where there isn't a lot of radio reception and so the thread is just people talking about what the deepest parking lots are in Chicago and as of as of now they still haven't gotten the gotten it all the work but I remain hopeful.

Cortex 1:08:41 Yeah. I enjoyed like I don't this didn't get an answer but I liked the question. Like not a definitive answer but a question from funding me basically saying hey, where did this this is what babies smell like thing come from in terms of like the fragrances used for baby products? You know not not not right not how do I get around this but like the smell Yeah, when did When and how did this become the thing and there's there's some stuff getting into some people point out that like, well, it really depends on where you are not everywhere uses the same stuff. But like, Well,

Jessamyn 1:09:15 I found that really interesting actually that like in different countries the smell associated with babies is not the same.

Cortex 1:09:21 Yeah, yeah. Austria, it's Kameel. But yeah, it's an interesting question. Because like, it's one of those things where like, I guess is the answer is probably go find that 190 9% Invisible episode that addresses this, you know, it's such but like, it's like, yeah, this happened somehow. And why and how and when is actually a really interesting question to try and pin down so I thought that was cool.

Jessamyn 1:09:47 Yeah, no, I thought it was I thought it was very cool to I enjoyed this question by valency Rachel, were basically like, Okay, remember how everyone was doing like the QA? On Mari decluttering thing so like it's three years later our Murray condos book still relevant. Have you done it? Did it work for you? Was it interesting? Did you keep it

Cortex 1:10:12 up? Did Did anybody say they weren't finding joy from it? So they got rid of the book.

Jessamyn 1:10:16 I mean, joke about the whole Kumari thing, right is that Marie Kondo had kids and completely changed completely change, but her perspective changed a little bit like that kind of super judgy. You know, anybody can just get rid of almost everything, blah, blah, blah, didn't, you know, didn't pan out once she had children, like, you know, she had to kind of adapt. But actually, there were a lot of people who talked about, like, you know, some of this work, especially people who had to move, who, you know, got rid of a whole bunch of stuff, they talked about the sections that are like sticky for them. And that was interesting. So it's just kind of a good thread about like life after KonMari and how it went, and particularly relevant to me, because I'm dealing with, you know, households of stuff this summer. And one of the things my sister and I did this weekend was we went through, because my father had like, had lots of bookshelves of kinds of books that were like, for looking at, you know, she like a lot of like coffee table books about boats that are beautiful, and kind of what you get for the man who has everything, but like, they bring no joy to me, like, the only joy they bring is that they're kind of blue. So they all kind of like that matchy matchy thing in my head makes me happy. But realistically, they're not going to be with me in the next 10 years. And so maybe they shouldn't be with me for the next 10 minutes, right. But I can't make those decisions myself. And so my sister and I spent 20 minutes and just gutted a bookshelf of not our books in order to like, you know, we pick 10 or 20 that we like, and we'd like to kind of keep around books that belong to my grandparents, I found like my grandparents, weird, slightly bitchy bookplate that they used to use, which I did not even know was the thing I'll find online, you're telling me about this? You probably saw it on Twitter. Yeah, probably. And we may have jammed talking about it a little bit. Because like my grandparents, I love my grandparents. But my grandmother was kind of bitchy, like, she was just a little like mean and judgy and whatever. And so they're bookplate is basically like, our first wish is that you may really enjoy this book. And our next wish is that you may remember where you borrowed it.

Just right. So it was really fun to go through. And we probably you know, we've got piles of books, and there's like a local library that has a book sale, and they'll take All right, so we're just gonna get rid basically. And you know, I find I do feel just a little, a little lighter about the whole thing. And so that was nice, and I appreciate this post.

And then one other one I like just because it was one of those like, hey, there's some metal filter experts, which I always enjoy. Is this question from shakes that haunted dusk? Who does repair works for electronics, which means a bunch of like soldering and shit in the house. And you know, there's like, they've got a partner and a cat. And you know, what's, what's the thing. And then pinback, who actually knows how this shit works, shows up with a slightly friendly way of being like, Hey, you guys don't know what you're talking about. Maybe don't talk about it. And just like lay some science on what is going on with your solder and a whole bunch of other stuff. Dead wax and yester and a bunch of other people show up range to offer more information. So it just turned out to be a really smart thread. And you know, a little bit of like, well, maybe you shouldn't do that in the house, kind of but like yeah, whatever you do, what you can do. And so I just thought it was a good thread of sort of smart people giving advice.

Cortex 1:14:32 Nice, ya know that. So I mean, I've I've been using a laser cutter in my basement for about six months now.

Jessamyn 1:14:38 Yeah, those things are great. You put them on projects, right?

Cortex 1:14:42 I know. It was big W

Jessamyn 1:14:45 i Those are amazing.

Cortex 1:14:46 I will get there. No, I'm super excited about that. And I've actually sold a bunch on Etsy when I finally put up an Etsy but it was like right, mixed in with the time of the announcement and whatnot. So it's been it's been very sort of like this is a backburner side project. I'll put more attention on it when I have more attention available. So no, I'll post on projects sometime in the next month or two when I get stuff sorted out. But it's been a lot of fun. But in any case, the laser cutter itself, it's a big machine in the basement and it uses a laser to vaporize things and cutting wood, that mostly means wood smoke, which is not necessarily too bad. Although if you're cutting plywood, there's probably some laminates in there too. So you want to source plywood that doesn't have toxic laminates. But in any case, you know, it creates a whole bunch of fumes. And when you buy this thing, it comes with a built in powerful fan and some ducting. So you can route out of the house like like a dryer vent, essentially. And I've got that set up. And it's it's sealed pretty well. So my basement smells a little bit like I've been burning things, but doesn't have a giant cloud of toxic fumes in it, which is good. But like there's the question of how good does the venting need to be, you know, what's safe? And the problem with this is that people who are going to be asking this question the most are people who own a laser cutter. So you go to the Glowforge, a mindset Glowforge, you go to the Glowforge forum, and you have people saying, Okay, well, let's talk about venting and whatnot. And so the people who are asking it, and the people are answering it all on the same boat that they've all spent several $1,000 on this machine. So they are all really motivated to say, Well, I'm pretty sure it will be okay.

Jessamyn 1:16:15 On the one hand, make a bad choice. Yeah, like,

Cortex 1:16:17 you know, on the one hand, people aren't talking very seriously about safety. And like, you know, no one says, Well, you don't really need to vent it. Everybody's very clear that no, you absolutely need to make sure you've got venting, working. But there's also that question like, yeah, Are people really going to commit fully to safety, when they're already several $1,000 in the hole

Jessamyn 1:16:33 is on a continuum, right? Talk about that with internet privacy. I'm like, online shopping is safer than driving to staples in a snowstorm. But less scary. I mean, you know what I mean? People having to assess risk, people are terrible at it. Exactly. Because you can't if you can't get to a point where there's no risk, you have to balance a bunch of shit like money and whatever. Yeah,

Cortex 1:17:01 yeah. And people ask me about the Glowforge. Like, oh, yeah, I'm wondering about it. But like, you know, living in an apartment and like, I want to say, Oh, this machine is amazing. This really is great. But at the same time, like, if you're living in an apartment, I don't know if you can get away with Glowforge it's noisy, it's smelly. You've got to duct it to somewhere. Like it kind of feels like freestanding house or a workshop somewhere. is so much better have a plan. You know, it's it's weird owning something that I'd like a doozy ask about but also wanna be like, I don't know if I can actually recommend my pets

Jessamyn 1:17:26 or like, right, yeah. Well, your cats are cool. You're like don't? Yeah, you know, unless you

Cortex 1:17:32 have to understand they're expensive. And they stink. And it's a bunch of work, which is basically, exactly.

Jessamyn 1:17:39 But yeah, you've got to touch another mammals poop for the rest of their lives.

Cortex 1:17:45 Yeah. Another ask I liked actually just because this is an interesting sort of recurring thing. Anticipation maneuvers rival the process is very interesting. Yeah, I posted a question about basically, what should I do with skin tones on emoji? I'm white. And I either do use a white skin tone for emoji or leave it default news, yellow. And both of those seem potentially problematic. How do I navigate this? Like, you know, do I

Jessamyn 1:18:12 Right? Are you saying like, Hey, I'm a white a white person? Yeah, you use the white emoji?

Cortex 1:18:17 Or don't? Are you saying, Hey, I don't have to think about race, because I'm colorblind and race doesn't matter. So I'm gonna use the yellow emoji, you know? And like, yeah, there's there's a real conflict in what you're trying to accomplish, what you're signaling. And I've seen this come up in, a couple people mentioned, this is like, alias came up in the slack that I'm a part of. Right. So it's, it's a really interesting, complicated issue. And it's nice to see people basically just talking about and sort of grappling through some of the implications and whatnot. So I thought that was a good one.

Jessamyn 1:18:47 I liked it. And the one, of course, that was close to my heart, is this anonymous post from very early in June, which is basically somebody who works in a public library in a segregated county in the US, I'm assuming it's the South, but it just occurs to me, they don't say that. So and they have a coworker who is racist, like, racist shit, and but it's a public library, and how do you deal with that, like, some of its kind of micro aggressive, but some of its just frickin aggressive, aggressive, and making choices that you know, slightly, don't support the libraries that serve people of color, while you know, like not giving them the better books or whatever, and basically an attitude of contempt, but like, you know, I understand first amendment, but also we're a public thing, and they're not going to get fired. So how do I navigate this, basically, and so you know, there's a lot of good advice in the thread. I gave some advice that I thought was useful, but it's super difficult situation right? My sister needs to deal with this sometimes at the State Police dealing with people who are, you know, racist or homophobic or transphobic especially when they're really trying to kind of do restrooms, right? And it's her job to be like, you know, I kind of don't care what you think. But this is the policy and you know, you need to just do it. And this person's trying to figure out how to how to do that with at their at their job. So Tricky, tricky library shit. Those maybe were all of mine.

Cortex 1:20:34 Okay, maybe I'll do a quick music minute here. Because people have been posting music good, it's good now like it. Let's see what we got. There is a nice little Cover Song By corduroy who I don't know if we've mentioned in the last few episodes, but always make a nice stuff that's a cover of a song called forget about by Sybil bear. And it's just some pretty ass corduroy stuff. There is a really fucking good, like, comes with a content warning because it's sort of about suicide and not committing suicide, but it's a really rad song to just like, sounds great. It's got a nice big, heavy rock thing going on from Nika spark called a light. There is this is kind of great. This is from a brand new user named 20 year lurk who signed up in the last couple of weeks, I think on the tail of the financial news like oh man, yeah, I've been reading forever. Maybe I should participate. So they posted a Lo Fi recording of sort of Saturday not satirized exactly but reworking Joan Baez song and has a note in there saying I'm not certain such weird ullery is entirely appropriate for Mefi music. So mods delete and shy to the green as necessary. And I saw that I was like, Ah, you and left a note saying no, be weird. This is what it's for. The there is there's several. There's a couple of weird things in here that I really liked this. This took me by surprise. Oumou basically sent musical accompaniment to a Colbert skit or little Colbert bit, where he just exemplifies this weird vocal thing Colbert was doing while making fun of shitty people.

Jessamyn 1:22:29 I'm gonna have to see that for myself, too. Yeah,

Cortex 1:22:33 it's really hard to convey. You just listened to it. It's 38 seconds long, and it's wonderful. And then there is the sort of memorial post by spotcap. SP ut GOP have a song that he worked on. He they they've worked on years ago with a friend who has since passed away. And SpecOps posted some other beats stuff he's made on music before. But this is sort of like a callback. And it's really nice, like musical memorialization. So that and there's a bunch of other good stuff. There was a great metadata thread, someone posted saying, hey, there's a bunch of good music. Let's talk about music playlists, make a mixtape. I'll try and fight it here. But but in any case, yes, music is good. We're going to try and put some more attention on that. I want to do another like, album. Thing. Sometime. We've done some collaborations before it'd be nice to do that again. Yes.

Jessamyn 1:23:38 Well, in speaking of music, but not music that metafilter.com I have to give a shout out to Spike Lee Major Tom Dick and Harry Connick Jr. Mints, yes. Because this is just like fun, dumb stuff. Basically, there was a metal filter thread about what basically movies that would more or less scan the same but arguably make for more interesting replacements for the titular film referenced in the chorus of deep blue. Something's 1995 It Breakfast at Tiffany's, which if you you know, don't know, it's like, and I said, What about Breakfast at Tiffany's? And she said something bla bla bla bla. And so Spike Lee thought dot basically said I'm going to Chicago with coworkers for a trade show. Last year, we ended up at a coke karaoke bar. None of us did it. This year, I'm slaying breakfast activities. And I'm going to do it with Bourne Identity police academy, Bridget Jones diary, the Bourne Supremacy and the Princess Diaries. So this is basically when he said he was going to do it in April. And then he did it in June. And it's just awesome. I was very happy for him. I met him at like at an Austin meetup a million years ago. And he's a really nice guy and that was a happy story.

Cortex 1:25:00 Yep, that was great.

Jessamyn 1:25:01 Hey, speaking of can I get more than 999? Contacts? Yeah, probably jam. Probably jam

Cortex 1:25:07 probably follow up with us. We'll see we'll put a budget. Didn't we? Definitely raise that already for you or did you get to that

Jessamyn 1:25:15 is that you change the error message which had a typo in it.

Cortex 1:25:20 Okay. Well, that's that's basically helping. We can probably do that.

Jessamyn 1:25:25 That's what I figured. I just, you know, I meet people and then I can't add them unless I kick someone off. Yeah, that's tricky. Thank you. Maybe you should do is kick the people off who are dead. But then that feels bad. Yeah. So

Cortex 1:25:36 the point you can probably make that number go up.

Jessamyn 1:25:38 I keep track of all the librarians. So it's important

Cortex 1:25:42 that it's an it's a key function. A couple other metal stocks worth mentioning there was a nice sort of Roundup catch all thread for the families belong together rallies happening everywhere. We're talking

Jessamyn 1:25:54 about that weekend. I'm going to look forward to reading this actually.

Cortex 1:25:58 Yeah, no, it's pretty nice. And there was also a Pokemon Go Friend Codes thread, because they added Friend Codes to Pokemon Go.

Jessamyn 1:26:10 Friend Code do for you? And

Cortex 1:26:11 I don't know, I haven't touched him forever. But that's there. So if you're playing Pokemon Go, hey, I mean, presumably? Yeah. You know, I was really confused actually, when that went up, because like, I thought they already had those in a real estate thinking of Animal Crossing. So that makes more sense.

Jessamyn 1:26:27 What I what I what I read about it.

Cortex 1:26:31 Stone Weaver suggested a couple of weeks ago that we do a hopeful summer sort of general theme posting thing over the summer. Not necessarily, like a posting theme month, per se, but just like, hey, you know, let's, let's talk about good stuff. Let's make posts about good stuff. And that's a nice idea. It's also sort of helpful winter, you know, I mentioned like, hey, hemispheres. But basically, hey, let's, let's, let's, let's post nice stuff. And people

Jessamyn 1:27:01 did the magnetotail. Post. What later on Saturday, the European mefites could have it at the proper time for them. Yeah, it's a nice experiment. I thought,

Cortex 1:27:10 yeah. So and we may keep tweaking that to see what works out best. You know, the thing I've said about that, you know, and clearly the best way to get this message out is to mention in passing 90 minutes into a podcast, but it's also just, it's also okay, just to make a chatty metal talk. Yeah. So like, you know, if you want to, if you want to say, hey, here's a fun thing to chat about, just do it. That's fine. Like, I'm getting on board with that i i genuinely enjoy. People just thinking, You know what, I like to be having a fun time here on this community with people I like. So, you know, go for it. It doesn't have to be officially sanctioned. And also, we've been chatting a bunch about merch, this thread has sort of run its main course. But if you're coming in late with oh, wait, no, I've got this merch idea or this thing I want, you know, yeah, go toss it in the thread. We're just sort of collating a whole bunch of ideas there. And I'm going to try and get some stuffs. First couple things out sometime soon here. I think I'd sort of promised to do something by the end of the month, but it was a lowercase p promise. I'm working on it. But we'll, we'll do some stuff soon. And there's some cool possibilities for where we can go with that in the long run. So yeah, bunch of bunch of stuff. I'm

Jessamyn 1:28:16 gonna see what you do with that.

Cortex 1:28:19 Wanted to mention, I didn't get the links together. But fanfare continues to be something we need to do more work on. But in the meantime, I'm just going to look it up. We've got World Cup stuff going on. Central World Cup. And there is, boy, hundreds of comments. I'll just I'll just post several threads here. of things that have accumulated as it's been going along, to do all right. Copying and pasting and talking at the same time just never quite works out. So I'm just going to fill space. But anyway, I'll throw some links into the post. But there's the US World Cup you've been enjoying it a bunch and it's thing that's happening. Hopefully it's not actually over yet. I don't think it is. I think it's like in like late bits now. I want to say it but but yes, anyway, that's been fun. It's been a very busy thing on fanfare has been nice. People seem to be enjoying it a great deal. Also popular favorites. So this is a one of the little changes that we've made that I feel really good about that we've been sort of thinking about for a while. We've pulled the political mega threads out of popular favorites. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:29:34 yeah, it's bad. And that's a great idea.

Cortex 1:29:37 It's it's such a nice little thing. You know, I mean, there's still going to be serious stuff. There's still going to be occasionally politically related stuff, you know, showing up in the comments, but it's so nice to go over. Because people are saying lots of smart, incisive, epicyte things in the political threads. But as a result, so many people reading them, it just takes over the fucking page. It's like, Hey, what are the 20 best angry comments about the US political scene? You know? That's not really what popular favorites is supposed to be. So we've gotten that fixed fribble went in and did some tweaking under the hood to filter it accordingly. And it's nice. There's a bunch of stuff that's like, not the most depressing stuff about the American political scene on the popular Favorites page, and it's really great. And I'm glad we made that change. So that's the thing that I'm super happy about. Yeah, I don't know there's so much there's so much stuff I'm I just kind of want to reiterate how sort of happy and relieved and heartened and grateful I am about the state of the medical community and how supportive people have been because it's just it's it's insane to think that this is my job it's a big part of my life and I'm I'm so much happier that we're where we are right now than where we were a month ago looking down the barrel of the ugly ad market.

Jessamyn 1:30:53 Oh, life different in a way that's positive. And that's cool. Yeah. You know, the way that you didn't have a lot of control

Cortex 1:30:59 Yeah, yeah. So to know that like there is this community making this work is just humongous. So So Thanks, everybody. You are read and I don't know what the site would do without all Yeah, but then again, without all your it wouldn't be the site. So I guess that's just the way things are supposed to work. And yeah, I think that might be a podcast. Great. All right.

Jessamyn 1:31:25 Well, I'm on it. I want to say goodbye to G Man. I love you.

Cortex 1:31:29 Oh, yeah. You should link that in there too.

Jessamyn 1:31:33 I like that in there too. All right.

Cortex 1:31:34 Yeah. All right. Well, all right.

Jessamyn 1:31:40 We're gonna stay cool cortex. Yes. Slash cortex. Mullard

Cortex 1:31:44 Yep, there we go. It's got a snap to it all right. I will talk to you next month.

Jessamyn 1:31:51 That sounds lovely.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:54 On the corner my bed every morning nice to snow and back economics taken rescue inside last night the seat from my kids got waste on a terrible cow was as vicious as wolves brings me to machine being just turned the door handle bridge all my uniform, blue pants flannel putting up sure half outwards and I'm doing somebody else's work sign up for this you know good morning kiss. Me have a great surprise from another world. It's brutally cold with it. In the fridge. Chris has shot chocolate cake and bread stare half awake at the window with trees cars, trains move at their own pace, laughing the Lord Amma lands please adjust my head down pull over, covered by the Lord's grace down the hall.