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Podcast 150 Transcript

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A transcript for Episode 150: Taking a Dinger (2019-03-04).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.


Transcript

Cortex 0:00 A couple of things

well, hey, welcome to episode 150, nice round number of the metadata monthly podcast. I am Josh cortex Mullard.

Jessamyn 0:34 And I'm Jessamyn Jessamyn. West.

Cortex 0:37 And here we are on March the first Happy Happy Friday turned the monthly odometer the shortest month is over and didn't feel particularly shorts.

Jessamyn 0:47 And it's one kind of spring, right?

Cortex 0:51 It's one kind of spring, you know,

Jessamyn 0:53 Facebook, that I have a bunch of people being like, hey, it's, you know, it's like biological spring or ontological spring or like, there's some spring that starts today that isn't, you know, celestial.

Cortex 1:05 I don't know about the lunar spring. Some, you know, like, it's spring on the moon.

Jessamyn 1:13 I've really sort of gotten to the point where like, I just put things into two giant buckets things I'm gonna bother look up and like. Like every now and again, when I tell someone like I don't know, especially when it's something that I could probably look up in like five seconds. Like, it's really clear that like, No, I'm throwing it into that bucket. You want to look it up? Have at it. Fine with me. Orbital spring, it could be anything. Yeah.

Cortex 1:45 Gosh, is it? Is there any 150 facts?

Jessamyn 1:49 I mean, the thing I thought was kind of interesting about 150. Because there's all sorts of shit you can talk about, right? Like if you're like a Rubik's Cube, and you're five things to the side, there's 150 faces on it. But I kind of liked it. It's eight consecutive prime numbers added up. And like maybe there's a math reason for it, but I don't care. I'm just kind of appreciating the magic. Yeah. Yeah, like you start with seven the end with 31 You add those up, and you get 150 That's something you would necessarily think

Cortex 2:17 it does seem like sort of like a meaningless mystical. Yes, but it's still a fact. It's a good one.

Jessamyn 2:24 Yeah, well, because primes are you know, vaguely cool and interesting and do things that you know, things seem not like primes that's even better? But yeah, fuck February Am I right?

Unknown Speaker 2:36 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've had a bunch of

Cortex 2:42 is it or isn't it snowpocalypse stuff in Portland? Oh, never actually really got a proper snowpocalypse but we did have like enough snow on the ground one or two days to make school

Jessamyn 2:54 for you guys

Cortex 2:55 Yeah, it is it is and it ended up not really being as much of a thing as people thought like on like we got a very we got to a very boy cried wolf sort of situation by the most recent one. Which then also turned out not to be a big deal either, but I think everybody had just decided it wasn't going to be a big deal because there'd been a lot of like meat illogical warnings earlier. And I think that was actually a legit warning. Like there was a good model for like, snow and ice and then some warm wind came up from the south and we just got kind of a rainy Portland, which

Unknown Speaker 3:24 is, I mean, does Angel have like a commute? No.

Cortex 3:29 Yeah. So it's it's not a problem for us. Like yeah, we can just stay home

Jessamyn 3:31 kids do your do your thing. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of, right. Like my job is a mile away when you know, my out of the house job. And so I'm just kind of like, those basically fine with me. Although I have to say I did my first lake. I don't even know what the word is. Took a digger digger. A digger when you fall.

Unknown Speaker 3:53 Oh, yeah, no, I don't have some regional

Jessamyn 3:58 library news. And I thought it was great. But I of course, didn't hear it well enough. And it goes in that like, bucket. But anyway, I

Cortex 4:05 just call it eating shit.

Jessamyn 4:08 Like I got to the bottom of my stairs and just like, landed on one knee. And I've been really like, I've stayed standing up this entire season. And we have had some bullshit, right? Like my driveways, a skating rink. Like I drive places sometimes because I can't walk to the end of the driveway in my car. I'll just kind of pinball down to the end where I can get on Drive road. But yeah, it was my first like, falling over and I was like, yeah, yeah. But yeah, thanks for being gone.

Unknown Speaker 4:42 February. Yeah, yeah. Hello,

Jessamyn 4:45 March. i

Unknown Speaker 4:49 Let's see how this one goes. It's a great thing, because we have

Jessamyn 4:51 town meeting, and I always really loved town meeting and I get to like count votes and stuff. And I always really love that. So there's things coming not to buy like, nice.

Cortex 5:03 It's good to good to have the looking forward happening. Should we talk about stuff things on the site and so on and so forth a job. I got jobs on this thing. Winter

Jessamyn 5:14 time always has me more online then. You know, good weather time. So attention. Unusual.

Cortex 5:25 We got the right field. Ms. Ali is looking for an accountant.

Jessamyn 5:31 I mean, who isn't? Right? Yeah. True. Then the malt shop taxes. They're doing a couple weeks there. Yay. You might care as the director. Ah,

Cortex 5:43 did you look it up? Did you establish that I have in fact, a director on the board?

Jessamyn 5:48 You don't own stock? I own all shares. Yeah. Yep. But yeah, did the taxes they cost a fucking fortune as always. So I think we may have the mess. I feel like Mutual Aid Society takeover malt shop this year. I hope it doesn't have to be a hostile takeover.

Cortex 6:08 I was gonna say like malt shops got it feels like low enough operating expenses that like the cost of just getting someone to do corporate taxes is probably a significant portion of its yearly expenses. Right. Yeah. I

Jessamyn 6:19 mean, basically, if I can, you know, talk money briefly, like, you know, we got $12,000 in the bank, which is nice. I think 3000 of that is the money we made last year, because we still have most of the fundraising stuff in the bank, and it kind of pays for itself. Taxes we're about to grant, which is partly because we pay state taxes to Vermont because I live here, but Vermont appreciates it. And and then having a guy do it. It's about 600 bucks, which is competitive, but still money. Yep. And you can't I mean, I'm not doing the Texas myself or your pay. Yeah. Absolutely. Maybe if a nonprofit owned the company, I got to talk to like a real lawyer about this. There's any real lawyers out there who would like to consult for stickers and T shirts. That would be great. I mean, I guess we have money. Also.

Cortex 7:14 Money. Yeah. Money, Money. Money.

Jessamyn 7:17 Yeah. So looking for an accountant. And then there's two good. I mean, there's four jobs, right. There's two good social justice jobs. Roll truck roll is looking for an eff activist focusing on privacy and surveillance. If this job was not in San Francisco, I would take this job if I could. And Daisy ace needs somebody to do a progressive activism site help. They need a CSS developer that they're building with indivisible Somerville, so especially if you're in the New England area, although this could be a remote job. Talk to them. Yeah, nice and probably mentioned Boris his job because it's the other one.

Cortex 8:00 Yes, it is. Mobile plant tissue culture technician in the Guelph Ontario area. So if you're up yonder, and no plant tissue culture, tech nicks

Jessamyn 8:14 and you don't mind eating out of the Guelph area, but it does come with extended health care.

Cortex 8:20 If you if you take a train, in and out would you be paying welfare?

Jessamyn 8:26 What?

Cortex 8:29 No, not gonna bite on that one. I am not. That's a zero there. All right.

Jessamyn 8:37 I'm Ty. I forgot to paste all these into the good. Well, thank you. But yeah, do you know jobs and if you got a job, post your jobs to job one of these days, I'm gonna get somebody to fix my book list. I swear to God,

Unknown Speaker 8:52 you should do it.

Jessamyn 8:54 I know. My taxes are also done except they're not done done. Like my part of my Texas is done. I'm very excited about that.

Cortex 9:04 I still have that stuff in progress, which is normal timewise but anyway, it's March. Let's talk. Let's talk about projects. Let's stop talking about taxes. Tech with taxes. Okay, taxes. Am I right?

Unknown Speaker 9:18 Right. Right. Yeah, right.

Cortex 9:21 I will note the monologue for any late night talk show

Jessamyn 9:26 what's the taxes Alright, so there's a couple of projects I really liked that I would like to specifically talk about, do it one of which is my friend and neighbor Turpin who I haven't really seen this winter because they have a steep driveway. Oh wait, sorry, that's the wrong like my friend and neighbor Turpin who I would like to see more of and his lovely wife, Turtle girl. They do time lapses kind of off the porch of their house and they live up a nice hill. There's kind of a beautiful view of the paddock and alarmism whatever. And you can tune in and see it on the website. But somebody emailed and was like, you know, it would really be cool to see a picture taken same time every day and for just one year. And so basically, Turpin did a thing called noon all year. And it basically takes a picture every day sets it to some really nice music. And it's super short and nice. And I watched the whole thing start to finish and you should do

Cortex 10:30 nice. That was excellent. Yeah, I really enjoyed visiting their place. That was like a fucking decade ago. Jesus, is that true? It is what it was doing that big old Jet Blue right month of meetup junket thing. And I've just, I was just thinking about this the other day, because I had a friend over and we were talking about short films, I guess, or videos or something. And I ended up we ended up watching the few little episodes I made of like the meeting metal filter, just sort of travelogue thing that I was, it was fun. And it was also only like four episodes long instead of like the 20 to 25 I was expecting to make I remembered as we were watching it, why that happened? I mean, partly it happened because it was too. Yeah.

Jessamyn 11:15 Know thyself, my brother. One No, no,

Cortex 11:18 no. Okay, so here's there was definitely some there was definitely some serious like, biting off too much stuff. Like I it was a foolish endeavor for me to assume that I was going to come home from a month long, emotionally like, you know, shirts, Austin thing and physically exhausting. And then immediately launch into a serial video production product project as someone who doesn't have much video production. So that was done like I should have pasted so okay, you know, I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna rest on stock, but yes, and then get to it. But like, you know, that's, that's like, you know, it was, so that that part was like ambitious pacing on my part, and probably didn't help things. But I got through the first like, three or four days of that trip, and got those put together. And then I was getting ready to do the next one, which was heading up to Maine and Vermont, and hanging out with you. And I sat down with that main meeting. Yeah. And we get home. Yeah. And we went over to Turpin, intuitive goals place the next day. Yeah, and hung out on their porch and enjoyed the view. And I think so. And then I and I recorded like an interview with I think Rick sat down for it, probably, and got audio and video on that. And then when I got home, whenever I was working through these things, I get home, I get ready to do this one and it is just completely the file got destroyed. Okay, for that whole like, like, like the video file for that whole like interview was just lost, you just gave up entirely. I did it just like it like I was I was out on this as cantilever it out on the like, the emotional, like the remembrance of my emotional energy, trying to pump through these things and like trying to like balance out my frustration with the process and like the enjoyment of like, revisiting stuff. And then yeah, and then I just killed it. And I was just like, fuck, and like, just

Jessamyn 13:09 and that was all she wrote. Yep. Oh, wow. Yeah, baseball card blog, because that's the one that I miss. The baseball card blog. Yeah, where you take the baseball cards, and you draw on? Oh, I

Cortex 13:21 just got tired of doing that. I mean, I know myself as far as abandoning the problem, like the difference is like the baseball blog thing was like, Okay, I'm gonna just do this forever, I guess. The videos was like, I was gonna do like, I took content over this month long trip, I was just gonna turn it all into videos, and then I would be very much done. Like there was no open endedness to it. It was just a big bite to chew off and turn. Right away. Like having a specific end goal? Yes, yes, yes, no, it's very nice to be able to sort of say, I know where this project ends. And I can sort of manage my pace in that direction. So I've had that going for it that just like disaster, and being

Jessamyn 14:06 completely worn out, disaster may be strong. Well, I

Cortex 14:10 don't know, losing like the whole interview file is kind of a disaster. And I think I think I not only lost it, but I probably managed to destroy it in the process of trying to do file cleanup. And I'd also like accidentally filmed a whole bunch of stuff with a white balance set to like this, like, almost like, witness. Blue that. There were a lot of I mean, I was I was not prepared to do the kind of documentary collection that I was trying to do on that trip. It was 10 years ago is at the root of it. But yep, it was kind of nice looking back at the few that I did put up on my youtube and say, oh, yeah, this was nice, too. And people

Jessamyn 14:48 were fun that was about during the insult jazz era, which I also enjoyed. Yeah, never never tired of that one. Yep, that's a good one. All right. So projects, you have other projects, other

Cortex 14:58 people's projects, projects that were seen. First, I I liked duffles shit solidary

Jessamyn 15:05 has a thing every month

Cortex 15:07 and doubles are a productive member of society.

Jessamyn 15:10 I did not really understand because I don't spend as much time on meta filter and AskMe Metafilter did not have this happening quite so much. Maybe you can explain it in like a Twitter length. What was poop month?

Cortex 15:25 You remember you remember when there was like elephant day? Yes. Poop month is just a month long version of elephant day. Like literally that's all there is to it. Like someone made some sort of poop related post and I think someone else made one that probably was not coordinated. I mean, I read sort of joking about it and ran with it read

Jessamyn 15:40 the thing on meta talk. But I felt like I was gonna have to engage with content. Maybe I wasn't. I don't know.

Cortex 15:48 Well, I mean, it was it was mostly like stuff that touched in some way on the subject of like, you know, poop or whatnot. Like, it wasn't people like posting pictures of poop smeared on stuff. You know?

Jessamyn 16:00 Why did you even say this was just sort of England?

Cortex 16:08 England, you cut out for a second. I don't know why you're saying you're from New England, because we

Unknown Speaker 16:12 can't tolerate this. Oh, okay. Well,

Cortex 16:15 sorry. I mean, I got a couple I got a couple complaints from people saying, Hey, what's with the boop. That's like, look, it's it's it's just a running joke. I'm sure it'll peter out soon enough. But, but

Jessamyn 16:30 so back to duffel.

Cortex 16:32 Anyway, duffel made these magnets. And they're magnetic and just ticking by themselves. It's just okay. Wait, it makes $1 I make a dime. That's why I should on company time.

Jessamyn 16:42 You say magnets that magnetic magnets.

Cortex 16:47 Do I say magnetic? I guess I say magnetic. Yeah.

Jessamyn 16:50 Okay. Yeah. Okay. Just adding it to my little fun. Yeah,

Cortex 16:54 we should really make a full list of these. If someone has the energy to go through the hundreds of hours of podcasts, and we just

Jessamyn 17:04 say the wall again. But it anyway. Yeah, no. Yeah,

Cortex 17:06 I can just recite a list sometime if you like.

Jessamyn 17:09 So yeah, this is a classic kind of socialist. You know, I'm gonna take it down during work, because you don't pay me enough for how much you make off of my labor. Yeah, magnet. They're cool. Yep. And they wound up on metal filter proper. Yeah. And that was cool.

Cortex 17:33 Yeah. Good, solid wall project. Really appreciate the whole

Jessamyn 17:38 Yeah. And I think we should stress again, like, no matter how small, right? Like we'd really, you know, more people doing more stuff on projects is always basically Great. Yeah, so do a little thing post about it, feel free to. So as far as things that are relevant to me, personally, I really enjoyed caffeine monkey solar nerd. Everything you want to know if you're gonna stick solar panels on your roof or your backyard as somebody who is solar curious, and has been getting a whole bunch of energy efficiency stuff done at my dad's house down in Massachusetts? One of the questions we really ask is, is solar gonna solve a problem for us? Because obviously, there's upfront costs. But there's also a lot of incentives, but there's fewer incentives and this administration in the last administration, bad man. And so I'm really looking forward to poking around in this and seeing if I can actually answer that question. For myself. Yeah, that's nice. website,

Unknown Speaker 18:41 I should take a look at that.

Cortex 18:46 We've never really like explored it, but it's like one of those things where we could we could

Jessamyn 18:51 imagine Portland would also be a place that was pretty supportive of, you know, green energy types of things. So yeah, I

Cortex 18:57 think that there are probably some incentives around and I've we've got neighbors who have some solar, which is like, a good sign, I guess, as far as that goes.

Jessamyn 19:04 And there's a lot of like solar farms around here that do this kind of CSA almost for solar, they'll sell you kind of a share, and then you get a deduction from your, from your power bill, but you don't really own the, the solar, you know what I mean? And yeah, it's always seemed like a little bit of a racket, then again, getting something put on your roof seems like, you know, potentially dodgy territory only because roofs are super structural, and blah, blah, blah. So at any rate, I am very interested in this project. Also, Josh, you did a project that is so cool. I would like you to talk about it. I did

Cortex 19:45 do a project I made and I talked about this in a previous podcast, I think but

Unknown Speaker 19:52 but this is your project about the project, I guess, right? Yeah,

Cortex 19:55 I made a I made a mango sponge stained glass. Pease, basically like a 15 inch by 15 inch rendering of the same Menger sponge. Little dude that shows up and a whole lot of my work and yeah, it was it was a really interesting process not as challenging as I thought it would be. I mean, it was. Yeah, well, I mean, I was worried

Jessamyn 20:21 that it's gonna be just the worst but well that's the thing

Cortex 20:25 I wanted this I knew nothing about stained glass going into this like I know stained glass exists and that was like literally it. So I went in expecting to find, you know that some aspect of it was going to be particularly like, fiddly or dicey. Maybe physically difficult to accomplish. I was, I was wondering if some of it was going to be involving, like, really unpleasant or caustic materials? The lead

Jessamyn 20:53 that you used to put stuff together technically is kind of unpleasant or no, yeah.

Cortex 20:59 Well, I mean, the so there's solder, and I've never soldered before. So that was another thing. Like I don't know if I'm going to be any good at this at

Jessamyn 21:06 all. I'm super sorry. You've never soldered before but okay, I never

Cortex 21:09 did. I never did any like electrical engineering. I never did any sort of like WPI Yeah, but I started to computer science. Like, you know, some of the programming stuff got stuff I did got metaphorically close to the metal, but I never actually touched anything metal. Okay. Yeah, like I ve friends who have spent plenty of time with a soldering iron, but like, I never put anything physically together. So. So yeah, it was just going in cold on that. And yeah, so I just didn't know. I mean, I kind of I went in to learn about the process and find out if I even liked it at all. Turns out, I really do like it. And it turns out, it's not too bad. And the project was just, I sat down, you know, a couple days after it was done. Actually, maybe the day it was done. I've been taking like pictures throughout like like over the course of the six weeks of the course I kept taking pictures at different stages and towards the tail end once I sort of understood the whole process better. I took some supplementals are like, Okay, here's this step in this step in this step, starting from like a sheet of glass, I'm getting too old and soldered together. So the project is just like the project, like I made, I made the stained glass, but the thing I posted was like the documentation of the making of the stain.

Jessamyn 22:17 It's so interesting, because I've got a friend here who's a stained glass artist. And so I feel like I pretty much get kind of I mean, he does a huge epic, you know, multi $1,000 for a job kind of things. And it's fun to watch him. But you know, he's been doing it like forever. So he never kind of talks about, like how you get this part to do the thing or how you so I've known what all the tools were but not quite how it all went together. So I found this post that you made pretty great in that respect.

Cortex 22:50 I'm glad so yeah, I don't know it was it was a lot of fun and weird. The weird follow up to it. I was just posting on Twitter about this the other day is I was getting towards the tail end of this project. And my mom like texted me to say, Oh, hey, do you want grandpa's stained glass stuff? Oh,

Jessamyn 23:12 I saw that on Twitter. Yeah, what now?

Cortex 23:15 That's yeah, exactly. And like, so my my dad's dad passed away over 20 years ago. But apparently he had been doing stained glass in the latter years of his life. And that stuff ended up sitting in his garage for many years after he passed, and then my grandma passed away. And that stuff, like sorting out the estate. I think my parents basically just wrapped up his stained glass stuff that was sitting around and brought it home. And it's been in their basement for 12 years now. And they're like, Hey, do you want this? It's like, Yeah, and so they brought it by and he's got most of the most of the kit. Like you need a variety of tools and accessories to like, responsibly working on stained glass, you could work irresponsibly, on it with a smaller set of tools or no I get it but uh so I need to sort of fill it out before all people actually really work on stuff at home.

Jessamyn 23:59 Is there anything that I could maybe get from my buddy up the road or is it just random shit

Cortex 24:04 is just random shit. Like I the first thing I'm going to do is like talk to the instructor that I took the classroom because she's doing an independent study thing every term too and that starting up like next Wednesday, I'll have my first independent city class where I can go in and just sort of work in the studio there. So I'm gonna keep working on stuff there and sort of pick her brain about how best to go about filling out my my kit at home. So I have a working workstation at home too. Right? So yeah, I don't think there's there's nothing really pretty mysterious or special or rare about it and stuff I need. I just need to buy a couple pairs of pliers. I need to buy some, you know, ammonia for cleaning in the class off I need to buy some paper towels get a face shield. Just little things. But yeah, it's it's, it's, it's cool. It's good stuff. I really liked doing it. And it was it was nice seeing that show up over on the blue as well and and I saw it popping around a couple of places on the web. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I feel pretty good about it. Anything else you saw from projects? There is I have no idea what grouse did but grouse certainly do the thing. And I'm just gonna say you know what if someone's getting research done fucking al mentioned it. So graphs is doing something with

Unknown Speaker 25:20 sequence stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 25:23 So genetics there's there's nothing I could say about this will be informed enough to not just sound like me being an idiot so Hey, girl said something interesting. If you know anything about what the fuck he's talking about, you may find this

Jessamyn 25:36 interesting to know makes and they made the software that they've been using available for free, which is very cool. Yeah.

Cortex 25:45 And yeah, there's there's other stuff to go go. Look, there's there's several projects that are Hey, I wrote or recorded a whole bunch of stuff that I haven't had the time to even dip into. So like if you want some reading or some podcast stuff. There's that too. So. So yeah, go check out projects. It's more than we're mentioning. That's our new That's our new model.

Shall we talk about metal filter?

Unknown Speaker 26:35 Yeah. Okay, good. Okay.

Jessamyn 26:39 So, um, you know, there are always these threads that I call pandering threads as if you know, Metafilter were all about me. But like ones where I'm like, you know, if meta filter really just was Jessamyn filter, and I was only the one posting only the things. It would include lots of posts like Carmike as librarians on horseback posts. Like it's kind of an evergreen. Like, I feel like this is not the first librarians on horseback post, but maybe it is. I'm not actually sure. Iris gamble, of course, puts a previously up there, which is a post of mine from 2006. Which is, I mean, they kind of mentioned the WPA, it's definitely not even a double post. Although if you can double post from 2006, right. But it always gets all the librarians together in the thread. And sometimes they talk about like the new stuff like The Kitchen Sisters have a podcast called The keepers, which talks about random librarian that are doing interesting things. And, you know, an ad about me for Wilkerson. It's actually a very short thread, but one that makes me one that makes me happy. So thanks for America. Nice. Yeah.

Cortex 28:00 My stuff is not remotely sorted. So if you got another one, go for it. Ah. The problem is my recent activity is very top heavy with some it's been a busy busy month and politics talking

Jessamyn 28:12 about libraries with another perennial favorite poster and favorite topic, Mendelian conspiracy. The University of Groningen University Library city center, those are a bunch of weird sentence was not going where I thought it was. They put on display pictures of stuff they found in books, or that have been left I guess, in the in the library. And one library shared a picture on Twitter of a burrito that was found in the book. So at any rate, people returned books with all sorts of nonsense in them. And librarians know this, but it doesn't kind of hit escape velocity that often. And so this post sums up a couple different places that talked about it. stuff in books, burritos, burritos, burritos.

Cortex 29:14 Like that banana in a laptop. Someone was reading his

Jessamyn 29:17 book about the history of jello and it's on my nightstand that I picked it up the other night, and there was a clattering sound. And I realized I had used up a rat for a bookmark because it was late. And I was in bed. I didn't want to get out of bed and it was the closest solidus thing I could Yeah, because I won't fold the corner down. Right? Because that's yes, no. And, you know, I have a worn burette since I got my hair cut. So they're everywhere, right? They're just like, propagating, you know, lint. And yeah, that was but you know, I would have returned that to the library with the thing right in the thing. So yeah, stuff in books.

Cortex 29:57 There was a lot It's so my resection is full of like politics stuff that I just don't like, none of it's interesting enough that I want to get into like, Bernie announced that he's running and you know, the President is a giant piece of shit. And I'm just gonna leave it at that I'm

Jessamyn 30:14 okay with Bernie running. And if people want to fight me, I'm over here and for Biden, so

Cortex 30:19 I'm just not even interested in the fight one way or the other. Like, I've just like, I've been traumatized enough from 2016 primaries that I'm like, Okay, well, this is obviously a thing that exists, but whatever, I don't care.

Jessamyn 30:29 Anything about that. Speaking of

Cortex 30:32 we put up that's, I mean, how do you mean, do

Jessamyn 30:37 you treat politics threats any differently in the run up to the primaries? about it? Out? No. I

Cortex 30:44 mean, there's nothing either way to say part of that. We've been talking about general strategy and expectations, that sort of seeing how things go. I mean, to some extent, like the one thing I would say is that we put up meta talk talking about sort of bracing for the primaries, and I think that helped a bit at the time. And we've had this big Bernie thread that I feel like, I'm kind of thinking of as a Containment Zone, almost

Jessamyn 31:07 like Bernie here don't Yeah.

Cortex 31:11 Well, and to some extent, like if we need one big fucking tiring Bernie thread where everybody's just kind of like their worst self, fine, there's the one let's let that be. And I don't know if that's a viable long term plan. But for the short term, I'm kind of looking to say, okay, it is kind of a containment for that specific topic, which was going to be a big thing. And to some extent, if people are frustrated that like there is containment going on and other threads. I mean, we're gonna point to this fucking thing, because it was a, it was exactly the big kind of annoying mess you would expect it to be. And we did a lot of work to try and mitigate that. But if everybody's just kind of like, starting, you know, having gotten out of the wrong side of the bed on it, and you're just not going to get

Jessamyn 31:50 Bernie always looks like he got on the wrong side of bed. Ah,

Cortex 31:55 yeah. Good Hair that way. Yeah. Anyway, I've done the thing where I'm complaining about how I didn't like a bunch of threads that I'm not gonna mention.

Jessamyn 32:04 Sorry, I that's kind of my bed. So no, no, no,

Cortex 32:07 I started off there. I thought this was an interesting thread. And an interesting thing, even though it's kind of like a bummer internet thing. But there was a big post. There's a post this is by the man of twists and turns of an article on the verge about oh, God, Facebook moderation.

Unknown Speaker 32:23 I did not read this. Yeah, it's I mean, it's interesting about

Jessamyn 32:27 this, and it gave me headaches.

Cortex 32:29 Yeah. It's you read it, and you're like, oh, boy, those people's jobs really suck. And there's nothing really new there. Well, it makes me feel actually much, much better. Like, I have frustrating days on metal filter, certainly. But like, the quality of that frustration is very different from humanizing say,

Jessamyn 32:48 I really think that's a difference between Josh Mullard metal filter, and Matt, how he met a filter that like the emotional, how power you doing of the people that work, there is something you personally care about.

Cortex 33:01 I mean, I think there's an aspect of that, I think, I think we've collectively learned lessons there and gotten better at saying, you know, what, some of the really gross bullshit, we just No, no, we don't have to try and navigate that. We just fucking banned someone, and you're

Jessamyn 33:14 willing to step up and just be like, nope, yeah, Nope, we're no bring you out of here. No, yeah. Which I think was something previously was not quite as. Yeah. And so yeah, it's going.

Cortex 33:25 Yeah. But I mean, even at that, like, you know, it's not like we were debating whether or not to keep this graphic Murder video around or whatnot, you know, it's like, well, no, that's right. Anyway, it's, yes. It's kind of reassuring by comparison, but like, it's just

Jessamyn 33:41 like, this thread, because now here's Matt talking about content moderation.

Cortex 33:46 Yeah, well, anyway. That the post on the verge was interesting, the discussion and the thread was interesting. But it's also like, interesting, almost for not being surprising. Like, there's nothing really, really new in that urge post. And people talk about like, Hey, didn't we talk about this already? And say, Well, yeah, it's still, this is an ongoing problem. Where if you try and scale up something that involves huge swaths of content, and then you can't actually manage to moderate it ethically, you know, you have a problem. And the solution to that problem never seems to be stopped doing this thing that we can't do ethically, which is like keeps being a fucking problem, but

Jessamyn 34:25 throw the amount of money at it that you need to throw at it, which isn't always just putting more butts in seats. It has to do with learning lessons about how to how to do the thing, right, yeah, it's not just a bunch of minimum wage jobs and a bunch of people you kind of burn through and dispose of it. Exactly. Eating a culture that doesn't encourage that bullshitty behavior in the first

Cortex 34:47 place. You try and get that ship coming in, you know, you can actually accomplish something that doesn't necessarily have to be dealing with all of it. reactively after the fact. I mean,

Jessamyn 34:56 you know, Twitter could ban like it's 1000 or 10,000 most horrible people, you know, Ahsoka, Facebook?

Unknown Speaker 35:02 Yep. And yet, and yet, right, yeah, because money.

Cortex 35:10 Anyway, that was interesting. But on the much lighter side, I also genuinely enjoyed this bit of internet gouffre from foon, who makes all kinds of wonderful stuff. And they made a it's called Sierra def generator based on like Sierra adventure games. But it's actually a collection of a whole bunch of death and dialogue, screenshots from a whole bunch of video games where you can type in whatever you want and create an image. And so yeah, it's a short thread of people goofing around with it. I had a good time with it made a few and, and yeah, it's just, it's just kind of delightful. Like, there's something about like, the ease of being able to do something marrying the recognition of this familiar screenshot with, you know, sort of, you know, graffiti text, essentially.

Jessamyn 36:02 generator from death pages of I don't totally get it, but I mean, I love it. But no, I

Cortex 36:10 think the original concept was like Sierra Sierra adventure games like Kings Quest, and so on. That, you know, you would die and get some sort of message about your death.

Jessamyn 36:22 Oh, I get it, I get it. And then they just take things up at the end of the

Cortex 36:26 Yeah, but then they just kept adding other stuff. So there's a bunch of things that are just like dialogue pages from various games to or, you know, title screens or stage like screens. And, you know, just they, throughout the actual specific pixel font being used on each of those contexts, so that you get to play it's got the right look and feel. I think there's literally

Jessamyn 36:45 only one of these games that I have played. Yeah, yeah. Oregon Trail.

Cortex 36:50 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you probably played MS DOS at some point, right.

Jessamyn 36:55 Is MS DOS in here? Yeah.

Cortex 37:00 Just in a in a bigger list. That's online. Let's see. It's right between.

Jessamyn 37:08 I see what you mean.

Cortex 37:11 I was still I was looking at it at a second go. edit that. It's out of no it's out of it's out of order. It's between Doom and dream web. It's under D as in DOS.

Jessamyn 37:23 God damn it. Yes, I have definitely played Ms. dosh. And Oregon Trail. And that is Oh, and doom actually. That is it. Yeah. Pretty bad if we can have learned on the video game, like I played video games nonstop, Junior High in high school, but then mostly did stop. And so I found the video game mini league to be excruciating. Although interesting, because clearly it was it was well, well put together. But I was just like, What? What? What? Like, I was just like, I don't know, everything is World of Warcraft. And then had to had to stop. You didn't play that. Did you? You don't play the mini leagues?

Cortex 38:11 I did not know. I haven't done any of them yet.

Jessamyn 38:13 Some time, because

Cortex 38:14 maybe I would do better than I do in the No, I forfeited last night. I didn't. I didn't really, really forfeit. But I have a couple times. After. Okay, so it means it was after 10pm When I realized Oh shit, I didn't do that. But it wasn't what happened yet. You got it? Yeah. And I've gotten in under the wire a couple times, like, just after 10. And it was fine. But last night, I was like, getting ready to clock out is like 1055 just hanging off for a few more minutes for nifty to check in and take over and and then it's like, Oh, shit. And I went to learn Liga. Yep. I haven't filled out those questions. So I did a very quick job. And I think I only like, would have gotten to write if I'd gotten credit for it, but then apparently was too late. Ah, which is fair, because they like the deadline is 10 o'clock. So the fact that we're doing it like, you know, almost

Jessamyn 39:08 an hour later with a couple minutes from where the Yeah, well, I

Cortex 39:11 think I think what I get the impression that like, you know, someone goes through and adjudicates everything and so they do it. I mean, they close

Jessamyn 39:16 it, and then they score it. And then there's kind of a secondary scoring, where everything that didn't make the first filter gets eyeballed by human eyeballs, which I've always respected the crap out of, because that is not easy. Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta be a weird way to go to bed.

Unknown Speaker 39:32 Yeah.

Cortex 39:34 So I think I think basically, the maybe it's too late thing is probably like, well, let's see how quick we get done with everything else. And if we don't get to yours before you sneak it in late, then you're set but otherwise, yeah.

Jessamyn 39:45 So how are you doing this season? Otherwise? Not

Cortex 39:49 great. Not terrible. I mean, the forfeits probably going to junk me up a bunch, but I was like, somewhere around the middle of the pack so far. Okay.

Jessamyn 39:55 Yeah, I mean, I am not not in the middle of the pack, but I'm up in see now. Oh, oh, wow. Oh, I know. So I've lost four times one three times. I've already played Jim last to him in a brutal rubbing. Normally we tie, which is like the cutest thing ever, you know, because they just really know each other really well. But now Yeah, so I'm like 16 that a 24. And if I wind it back down and D it'll be a mercy. That was my that was my Learn league minute. Oh, and learned league redesigned a little bit. So they took their forums kind of off the front page. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, they have like, you know, kind of the last. They have the commissioner announcements on the front page, but all the forums are tucked in the back page. People were crabbing too much. Yeah. There was a little bit of crabbing, that happened. I have actually gone 852 matches without a forfeit.

Cortex 40:49 You are better than I am. I need to I just need to actually make myself a reminder to subtly reminders,

Jessamyn 40:56 a little beep on your phone because it really does take five minutes. Yeah. Yeah, you made a promise. Yes.

Cortex 41:04 All right. I'm trying I'm trying to filter. The here's a fun thread that Johnny wallflower posted that was not about poop. It's about malapropisms. The text on the front of it is Hello, my name is Paul. I have a PhD in physics and thanks to a random brain freeze forgot the word for photons. So I had to call it a shiny chrome for my colleagues.

Jessamyn 41:30 I remember that thread. Oh my god, that was so good.

Cortex 41:33 It's an excellent collection of people talking about forgetting words and saying the wrong thing and so on. And it's a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it. And

Jessamyn 41:40 plant was spikes. Forgot fire hydrant and said St. geyser. Well, and I was just I just finished reading a book, Tana French's book called The Witch elm, which is a you know, if you know ton of French, this is one of her books, and it's not part of the series. It's a standalone. And one of the things that happens in this book, which is not really a spoiler is that one of the protagonists gets assaulted in his home, like just, you know, break in and they beat him and so he has kind of a head injury, which, you know, that can really be a bad way to kick off a book. And it wasn't great in this book, but that's kind of how she is, but like, so part of the and then some weird shit happens, right? And so part of the book is all about him grasping for words, because he's writing it kind of after the fact and so he's like, you know, what I meant to say was disease and what I meant to say what I wanted to say was bad feeling. And so there was like, a lot of you know, over and over and over again, and you can see him get better as he's able to kind of find the words. It's a very subtle, interesting book for that part. But some of the rest of it is that yeah, but this thread was fun. It was holiday with turkeys. Face love. Danger floss. Street Tunnel. That's my favorite one. I forgot the word for ally so I call it a Street Tunnel. My name is Ali

mouse pig horse rabbit is super fun. Yes, good. Good. Good call out

didn't spend a lot of time in Better Shelter this month. So if you have more,

Cortex 43:49 I got a couple of equipment to toss out anyway. We can let you tackle asked me. There was a nice little puzzle game posted by this might have been right maybe I mentioned this at the the last one depending on the timing. But anyway, I'll mention again, Lin Joplin jet I don't know how to pronounce it. But it is a puzzle game you play in your browser on your phone. And I like it. That's it's a logic puzzle game. You're either sold or you're not and I have nothing else to sell you.

Jessamyn 44:15 Is it speedy? Or is it kind of normal? Normal so

Cortex 44:19 like a contemplative, like you know there's it's there may be a timer somewhere but I don't remember it but it does. Or no, no, no, it's all like working out okay, this must go there. So this must go there and sort of filling in the grid

Jessamyn 44:32 100 blocks lately, which is just another one of those like, you make a line and it disappears and but you can kind of if you're good at it, play it for a long time. And it's kind of my like, all right, I'm switching into nighttime bedtime mode game, but now I'm starting to be like, maybe there are other games. Besides this one. I usually play like one new game every five years. But you know, I kind of like what they do to my brain. They kind of unhitch it from whatever the nonsense So for the day, so I can move on to the nonsense of the night.

Cortex 45:03 Yeah, I tend to, I tend to, like try out a new puzzle game or two every year. And I have a few familiar ones that like, I've been like coming back to for a few years and, you know, mix it up a little bit. And yeah, it's sometimes it's a good like before bed, sort of, like just shut the brain down thing. I have a tendency to lean a little bit on to like logic puzzles, spatial logic puzzle games, which is not always the best fit for that, you know, sometimes it works. But like, to some extent, like, it's almost like reading a boring book to fall asleep rather than like, because you are enjoying the book. What I feel like worry about sometimes, like, I'm gonna lay in bed, and I'm gonna play this until I get really bad at it. And that point, okay, that it's time to just put the phone down.

Jessamyn 45:45 See the opposite. I'm like, you can play until you get around where you make 1000. And then you go to bed. But then every now and again, I'm like, shit, it's late, and I am dumb. What do I do? Or I get a high score, because I'm so tired. I eventually, yeah, get bad at it. Yeah, I did. I know, this isn't sort of Jessamyn 's book recommendations. But I do read another book. I read lots of books. I did this great thing where I help this woman with her Wikipedia page. She wrote this great graphic novel called pashmina. And somebody had written her Wikipedia page. And it was awful. Like, just there was typos. And there was a lot wrong with it. She's a friend of a friend. So I fixed it. And I was like, Yeah, send me candy bar, coffee, whatever. She's like, Hey, do you mind if I send you a bunch of graphic novels? And I was like, oh, in fact, that's what we kind of dynamite to she sent me her graphic novel, and one called the silence of our friends, which is about civil rights stuff in Texas. But she sent me one about Tetris. And it's done by this guy. Box, something. But basically, it's about the licensing issues surrounding Tetris. I don't know if you know any of this stuff. Like, Box Brown. It was made by a guy in Russia, which I think we all know, but like Russia kind of owned it. Yeah. And he didn't make any money from it. But then these companies that wanted to license it outside of, I think the USSR at the time, had to kind of fly in and negotiate with like these Russian, you know, basically, kind of Mabi kind of dudes. And like the holster and different companies allowed licensing for different stuff. Like, if you're into that level of weird nerdery it is so good. And if you're not, it's still actually a very good looking well done graphic novel. Yeah, that

Cortex 47:41 sounds interesting. Like, I know, like, I don't varying degrees of detail on that story I've heard over the years. Like, my first awareness of it really was the fact that there was competing versions of Tetris for the NES.

Jessamyn 47:56 Right, right, right in this country about like, why that is? Yeah. And Atari was making NES games for a while and like, that was like a huge clusterfuck so it was a little dull to read. You know, it's like that one star wars where you're like, really, this is about trade negotiations.

Cortex 48:14 I don't Okay, so the problem with the Phantom Menace is not that it was about trade negotiations, that the stuff about trade negotiations wasn't even any good. Like, give me an actual like, toothy dig in and hard on like, you know, galactic economics negotiations. I mean, dune has a bunch of fucking like, you know, corporate conglomerate stuff going on and it works Yeah, put

Jessamyn 48:35 it down. Yeah. Yeah, knows,

Unknown Speaker 48:39 anyway. But yeah, that's interesting. That's that's a nice kind of

Jessamyn 48:43 a plug for that. While we're talking about sort of if you're somebody who's into little puzzle games, you might also actually really like this. This graphic novel by Box Brown, published on first second, who's probably the best graphic novel publisher there is.

Cortex 48:59 And if you are into bread and George Michael 80s era can't even dancing can't even freelance Demiurge made a post it's just a goofy weird little snippet of video. Of like VHS of like a couple things spliced together a woman sort of talking about and this is how you can make bread and the guy who looks like he's out of it like an 80s music video like dancing with bread dough and then cuts back to the lady and it's all it's just like it's a goofy weird little bit. I

Unknown Speaker 49:32 love that guy. Who is that guy?

Cortex 49:35 I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't remember if anybody found any details in the thread or not?

Jessamyn 49:42 Oh my god, the 80s Yes. Such a strange time. Oh, I actually did have one post. Post.

Unknown Speaker 49:51 post. Post Yeah.

Cortex 49:56 The words thing

Jessamyn 49:57 span and Kim T basically A an article from popular.com talking about the sort of old chestnut of, you know, Eskimo Aleutian people, people from northern areas indigenous folks having 50 words for snow. It's an amazing phrase because every word in it is wrong. Basically, this guy Aaron, body Beatty wrote a piece about why, you know why we thought that and why it is 100% super wrong. I'd found like I'm popular has some really interesting writing on it lately. And this was good. And of course, Metafilter throat goes predictable, predictable.

Cortex 50:45 I've seen a few deletions.

Jessamyn 50:48 Yeah, well, and of course, like, you know, lobster mitten, who knows a lot, I'm sure about this, you know, general topic, because like I, you know, took linguistics classes. And we learned kind of overly simplistic linguistics at the time, a million years ago, when a college that is now in danger of closing actually made. I wonder if that made metaphor that I didn't even look. But So at any rate, people who have like linguistics backgrounds are, of course, interested to talk about this, but then people just want to make dad jokes. Also just show up and they're like, Yeah, but nobody ever thought about this before. But I enjoyed the article that was linked to and yeah, it was, it was neat. And it kind of harken back to my college time, which I appreciate it.

Cortex 51:35 Yeah, I should, I should give that a read when I get a chance. Cuz I'm familiar with some of the overall linguistic issues with

Jessamyn 51:44 paperwork, hypothesis, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Cortex 51:47 And people not understand lay. Yeah, yeah. I don't need to restate poorly stuff that is in the actual article. But yeah, I should go read that, because I will probably enjoy. Yeah, see more details. One other medical post I mentioned, because this was just like an interesting bit of creative drama, I guess I would say, post by unilateral about a photographic artist who basically got busted for being full of shit about what her photographic process was. Tell me more.

Jessamyn 52:23 So there's this woman who number of things, right?

Cortex 52:26 Yeah, this woman who had competed in and won a whole bunch of contests involving, basically photograph like editorial photography, or photographic montage, you know, like cases where like, these were explicitly expected to be like, sort of art using photographic assets, you know, like, it's not like a portrait of someone, it's like, a manipulated set of images to create very plainly artificial image. So it's not a question of like, oh, this person lied, and said they took this photo. Yeah, because if you look at these things, they don't look like they don't look like photos. They look like illustrations using photographic elements, which is what they basically are. The problem is, I guess this woman sort of used a whole bunch of other people's imagery, including other photographers working in like art, photography, and also a lot of like, existing stock photography, to create these photo montages and whatnot,

Jessamyn 53:20 contest, taking the photos yourself. Yeah, super hadn't.

Cortex 53:24 Yeah. And then the contests almost universally specify that you have to be using only material that you have yourself taken. So like, the idea is that you're supposed to be cobbling together your own original photographic material to create whatever you're creating. So basically, she broke the rules of every single contest she ever won and has been retroactively denied all of those and removed from listings and whatnot, and basically just got super caught super duper cheating by someone who'd like, put two and two together and then did a ton of research to say, okay, look, every fucking thing this woman has ever made, like has explicitly violated the terms of the contest that she then one using other people's source material. And it's just like, it's it's a weird mix of like, you know, cheating and creative competition and the forensics involved in tracking it down, as well as things were like, once you know, to look for something, you could start finding it real easy. It's like, I mean, it's like how you every once awhile, like we would find a spammer on metal filter, who like had sort of flown under the radar for a while. And then once you think, Oh, wait, is there involved with that? Then you go look into the poster history, like Ah, fuck, and there, they did that one and that one, like, I remember a couple occasions where we like deleted four or five of someone's posts years after the fact saying, Well, this was all a big pile of stuff linking from this person, but we didn't know look until we need to look, you know,

Jessamyn 54:47 right, right. So this is sort of that same sort of like luck and all of a sudden,

Cortex 54:51 well yeah, it's easy to find what you know, you're looking for it and yeah, so there's that sort of story is interesting for the like, I enjoy it. I don't know if enjoys enjoy is quite the right word. But I enjoy I do like, I'm very interested in that sort of forensic process as it plays out sometimes. So. So it's an interesting read on that front. And I think that's it for me for for medical later. Let's Shall we talk about ask Metafilter I

Jessamyn 55:18 have to say I'm looking at metal filter because I'm looking at it in Chrome with the ads on and I just saw an ad for something I liked. That's bizarre. And

Cortex 55:30 it's, you know, those Yeah, the ads we've been running with carbon the that's all been it's been a pretty good thing on the same, like, it does have the same sort of vibe as the deck had, you know, which is kind of the way we're

Jessamyn 55:43 like, this is middle aged lady Jessamyn.

Cortex 55:47 Well, sure, but in terms of like the ad content, Oh, yeah. Not like, you know, like, hey, hot girls now, you

Unknown Speaker 55:53 know, Oh, God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally

Cortex 55:56 weird. Oh, shit that add sensors.

Jessamyn 55:58 So old lady dress with pockets. And I mean, old lady, you know me. But, you know, but it was like a dress for a lady my age. Yeah, with pockets. That looks amazing. And now I'm completely distracted. Because because, you know, I never want to go shopping, you know. So it's kind of like strike when the iron is hot, you know? Whoo. But anyway, yeah, let's get back to let's get back to it. I just want to point out that whatever you're doing for your ads, it appears to be working.

Cortex 56:30 Yeah, I think I think they're doing they've been a pretty good match. So I've been happy with that. All right.

Jessamyn 56:35 So AskMe Metafilter. So interesting. All the time. Besides that one question that has made me furious for a day.

Cortex 56:44 Yeah, we can just leave it at that. If you want.

Jessamyn 56:47 I am. That's okay. I'm leaving it. I you know, I typed something crappy into the comment when I flagged it. And now I'm done. I hope whoever was

Cortex 56:56 where I saw it and nodded and was like, abbeyfeale. Yeah,

Jessamyn 56:58 enjoyed. Enjoyed it. Okay. So this is a question where at first, I was like, Why did I fail this question, but basically, it's by NK KNKK. And trying to think about what to do about bulbs. You know, look, I've got incandescent bulbs die mad about it. Can I put higher rated bulbs in stuff that says, don't? And so of course, you know, the general question, answer is no. But then there's actually a lot of really good answers from people who really understand how light bulbs work. So flagged tablet has a really good comment in there. Shawn and Puckett kind of explains what the difference between kind of warm and cold LEDs is. You know, I think maybe the reason I flagged this was because I had a bulb that I had to replace that I actually had a similar question about, like, it was one of these things where it kind of reminds me of this, Matt Cutts. We basically he sort of talked about, could tell that he's an older person. Now hold on one second, maybe I can find, you know that you're an adult when you're excited about a really good light bulb. But I had my light bulb burned out, and I replaced it with a fluorescent, that glued as if it were like a lunar pod, you know, you know that like glow like you're on the moon, even though you've never been to the moon. But you know what that glow looks like. And I couldn't deal with it. Like, I literally would not turn on the light in my hall because I couldn't deal with it's cold, creepy Clow. And then Jim brought me a warm led from home. And now it's amazing. And so, you know, I looked at this thread on AskMe and a filter and got some sort of explanations for how and why that works the way it did. And yeah, I enjoyed it. geeking out about light bulbs go last Metafilter I loved it.

Cortex 59:04 I thought this question was interesting. It's anonymous question from someone just sort of trying to suss out whether and what they should do. But

Jessamyn 59:12 yeah, I read this and read all the answers to

Cortex 59:16 Yeah. And it's it's an interesting read, like, you know, I don't have any first hand experience here. I don't know how I would navigate that if I was there. And there are plenty of questions asked about like, what's the actual plan and the efficacy and what do I think, you know, is this going to be something that works for me long term? Or is it something that's going to happen to then be over and then nothing's changed, etc.

Jessamyn 59:37 Alcoholic and there's a bottle shop around the corner, like, Am I just setting myself up to waste a bunch of money or time when this isn't the right situation? And yeah, I mean, I love the recovery community on Metafilter because they are so compassionate and so helpful, you know, like you very rarely get people anymore at least. Yeah, being like, wow, like, I drink that much and I'm fine. But I mean shit. I, you know, you used to see that a lot. And you know, now you just get more people talking kind of openly and honestly about like, well I tried this or I had a family member who tried this or this thing you should think about instead of just going after your first principles. I mean, I feel like it's the thing that's changed about metal filter. It's the thing that's changed about the world. And I was happy. I hope that user gets some advice that helps them whatever they decide to do about it. Right? Yeah.

Cortex 1:00:36 This is actually from this morning since we started recording this podcast. Someone was saying Help me find this movie clip thing of this animated Aardvark. chisels SS channels. Three ever figured that out? See hazards to houseless? Asked about? Yeah, well, yeah, it was Charles. Anyway, they got an answer in six minutes. So there we go. Classic. Open and shut. Asked me.

Jessamyn 1:01:07 What? I don't even understand. I don't know. I don't know. The movie. Oh, that thing. Right. Cool. That's so great. Yeah, I missed it. Because I've actually been talking to you.

Cortex 1:01:24 Yeah, yeah. No, it's just, it's popped on the front page. It's like, Oh, hey. So anyway, good. Good work, everybody. That's, that's, that's the one and done.

Jessamyn 1:01:33 So here are a couple song generation threads that I thought were nice and that I think are always great to mention, because maybe you have the perfect song that hasn't been mentioned in the thread. But one of them is tongue in cheek songs about historical topics. So like fun songs that also teach you things. And there are a bunch of great ones, I hope. I think mine is Big Bang. Because for me, it's the Big Bang Theory. You know, our whole universe was in a hot dense think than 50,000 years ago. Expansion started that, have you anything? No? Nope. All right, that the theme to the Big Bang Theory is like that.

Cortex 1:02:20 Okay. I'm vaguely aware of it.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:26 That's fine. Actually.

Cortex 1:02:27 I've actually I've heard the themes have been big, very live, because I ended up at a Barenaked Ladies concert somehow.

Jessamyn 1:02:35 Oh, and everybody must have lost their mind. There's a whole

Cortex 1:02:38 there's a whole long story. But yeah, it's like, it's kind of like, you know, they've, they, they they made those albums that were big in the late 90s, early 2000s. And they did the theme to Big Bang Theory. And so that's kind of like, that was the content of the show. It was weird. Some of their lyrics really have not aged well, but they're still singing them because those were the hits. And that's kind of weird.

Jessamyn 1:02:57 Right, right. Well, they're Canadian. Right. So they're just kind of cheery and

Cortex 1:03:02 yeah, I mean, they seem like close enough guys. They seem happy to be doing like this still as far as that goes. But I mean, the old apartment like it's a song partly about someone who had anger and management issues that are not acknowledged at all in the song and like everybody's singing happily along with the part punching a hole in the wall. Oh, I don't know that song. It's It's It's weird. There's there's there's a couple weird lines and a couple Barenaked Ladies songs where you're like, looking back, and we're just like, it's very sort of like, Wait, I don't know. It's just a song about how that you're looking this logically, but with mixed feelings back on that relationship. And Oh, also, you punched a hole in the wall that time? That's the buddy. I don't know that. Anyway, sorry. I really got off on a thing there.

Jessamyn 1:03:49 Well, but I mean, I know what you mean. No, I mean, when those things don't age, that's one thing. But then when people are continuing to sing them, you're like, wait a second, I need a little acknowledgement that what happened there. Was that okay.

Cortex 1:04:00 Yeah. Like, have you processed this in the ensuing 20 years that you've continued to perform this online? But yes, anyway, anyway, they seem like nice enough boys.

Jessamyn 1:04:14 Yes. And then the companion question, generating music that I hopped in early was songs that take place during a nuclear blast. And in fact, there's a surprising number of that ha. I knew some of them. And of course, these were a bigger deal, like in the 80s and 90s, when there was more nuclear panic as opposed to like global warming, panic or other sort of, I'm a little bit more nervous about some other stuff. But like, that used to be what we were always worried about, for some reason. It's hard to get my head around it. And I guess like there were a lot of people Pop music songs during that time that talked about literally nuclear blast. Yeah. And I didn't know that I melt with you was a belt that

Unknown Speaker 1:05:15 I didn't either. I'm not sure

Jessamyn 1:05:17 it is now I guess it is. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So at any rate, yes, that was another

Cortex 1:05:27 interesting because that one mentions the one I was gonna mention like that specifically apparently was prompted indirectly by the covers of songs that are not ska, which I'm trying to remember where I saw that, maybe maybe a friend off Metafilter who saw this thread or something, but mentioned it in the context of saying, Wait, there's scar songs that aren't covered? Which was kind of a weight burn but also, yeah, but certainly, there is no shortage of Scot covers of non Scott song so I'm not surprised to see a lot of answers showing up in this thread. Like the the cover of come on Eileen, by the gimme, gimmes. I think someone mentioned one of us. Yes, yes, they did. Which is seems like the canonical? Or maybe maybe I'm thinking of maybe I think I think I am thinking of the Save Ferris cover. But I think me first also did it anyway. Yeah, I had friends who were in discard in the sort of Scott revival. Late 90s. When I was in college, I definitely was exposed to a fair amount of both the originals and the covers.

Jessamyn 1:06:34 Yeah. Great. Well, people who can help people generate lists of music, those are great places to start,

Cortex 1:06:41 that is a thing to do.

Jessamyn 1:06:43 Taking, taking a turn another list generating thread that I really liked only because I hate Reddit. And sometimes. And I don't want to hear about it, like, you know, don't say garbage company. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of very good subreddits that are actually completely useful and helpful and solve problems for people despite the fact that Reddit is garbage company. So this thread by ACB. Wait, fuck, this is an edit talk, you guys, you guys in your threads in the wrong place. At any rate, this was the second metal talk that did this for me this month. But it was a metal filter post about Reddit, which I didn't read because garbage company. And so ACB started a What are your favorite sub Reddit community, I'm gonna just pretend it's in the AskMe Metafilter part of the site sure that you know about what some of the good subreddits are. And there's lots and lots and lots and lots of them. Like there's one that's just like our slash Heavy Seas. And it's literally just crazy pictures of crazy oceans. And I'm just done talking to you. Because all I'm doing is looking at these bonkers pictures of the ocean. We're done. Goodbye. It's been there's some

Cortex 1:08:13 really good outro playing ocean simulation in a game that isn't remotely about like, like rough ocean simulation that I've been playing and so I won't even get on the game because it's just a battle royale that whatever but it it has dynamic weather and when the weather gets bad the water that's otherwise just sort of like gently rolling gets into some real frosty white peaks stuff that gets up above the level of the boat you're in if you're in a boat or if you're swimming Gosh help you it's like it's it's really very impressive for no good reason in a game that does nothing with it. But I love it. Look at this great city water.

Jessamyn 1:08:50 I mean, yeah, the answer is because somebody decided they were into it.

Cortex 1:08:55 Yep. And I'm happy is this completely superfluous part of this this unrelated game I'm enjoying.

Jessamyn 1:09:01 And here's the other thing I have to say about Reddit, right that somebody posted fucking try to log into goddamn Reddit not wrong with this website is my question. Somebody like found a random photograph that I had taken. And posted it to our funny what

Cortex 1:09:33 I feel like that's that's such a setup for a worrying outcome. Please continue. Oh, no,

Jessamyn 1:09:37 no, it's fine. It's just like a random picture of like, actually a funny gravestone,

Cortex 1:09:42 here maybe I remember this. Yeah, but posted

Jessamyn 1:09:45 it to our funny it wound up like 91% have voted to get 75,000 up votes, which maybe is normal for Metafilter I don't for Reddit. I don't fucking know. Right? But like somebody I saw it cuz somebody posted it to Twitter, I was like, god dammit, I took that picture. Put it up on Flickr and like, I don't know, 2008. Six, like so long ago 2009 Because basically, the joke is lady's dead. And the tombstone reads 1917 dash, and then it says to zero, and it's going to be like some dates after it, but she wound up dying in 1999, but clearly bought the headstone before that. So it says 1917 and 1999, but with a two zero above it crossed out. And then beneath that the kicker, she was an optimist.

Cortex 1:10:44 Well, let me ask you a question. Do you think it actually happened that way? Or do you think somebody said, look, if I if I die, if I die before it hits? 2000? Put this on my gravestone, because I would like to think that Doris played that thing to the hilt?

Jessamyn 1:11:03 No, no, me too. And I don't know. And you can see why it wound up on Reddit, because it's super funny. Yeah. But you know, I just basically posted was, and I posted in the thread and was like, Oh, hey, I took this photo 2005. And then, you know, the person is like, I you know, I hereby grant you all the karma that this thread generates, which of course, they fucking can. So, so I just posted it on Twitter, and people enjoyed it the end. So that was a filter thread, but a meta talk thread, about the best subreddits but I found it really useful. And if like me, you think Reddit is a garbage site? Maybe you should open your mind and realize that there's some good stuff with Zack Bantam, which says stoned to death? Know,

Cortex 1:12:19 there is a asked medical question that mentions librarians.

Jessamyn 1:12:25 Oh, yeah, I commented in this thread.

Cortex 1:12:28 Did you see if you did, I don't think you did. She did not.

Jessamyn 1:12:32 I think maybe everybody said what I was gonna say yeah, up to?

Cortex 1:12:37 Well, the question is our phone books disappeared. person went into library and asked for a phone book. And they were like, Oh, that's nice. Just online now. So the question is our phone books just going away? Which, you know what? Mobile phones not landlines and having the internet anymore. It is kind of a thing where this used to be this. Like the phonebook was the way you found out a number. And now like, I can't remember the last time I looked for one every Yeah, and yeah, which payphones wherever. Exactly. So it is it is an interesting sort of like, oh, here is the here's the specific march of time and

Jessamyn 1:13:11 assistance, right? Can't just call a person

Cortex 1:13:15 directory assistance. I've just assumed it still existed, but it was useless because no one has anybody's new mobile phone number.

Jessamyn 1:13:22 Oh, that's a good question. I don't think it

Cortex 1:13:25 I haven't tested this at all. So someone says you can still call for

Jessamyn 1:13:29 one? Totally what you would do, right? You'd call 411. And you talk to a person or do you dial the operator? Yeah. And you'd ask him? Questions. You know, sometimes you'd ask for phone numbers. Sometimes you just fuck around if you were a child. I can't imagine what those jobs are like. But yeah, we still have them. Like, there's definitely still phone books here. They get them at the post office, they're supposed to give them to everybody. Most people who know what's coming, tell the post office to hang on to their phone books. And that's kind of how that dance goes. Yeah, but ya know, I thought it was a really interesting, really interesting, and one of the things we get in Vermont, which is, you know, I don't think that surprising at all, is like local phone books, right? So there will be a you know, a school project or something like that, that will basically get all the phone numbers in the town, and then compile them into like a local phonebook that has like 2000 numbers in it, and then you can buy ad space in it and sell it as, like a fundraiser or something. You get a lot of people in town like I know the town I used to live in in Bethel. You know, that was the phonebook you had in your house. And if you wanted to call somebody in town, you'd have that phonebook and people can Read the full book for 10 years because nobody ever moved. I mean, you know, it wasn't actually that crazy a proposition. Yeah. So I was confused between that. And this asked me to filter thread by RGB, which is, hey, I've got a bunch of ziens. I'm trying to figure out where to donate them. And you know, I did that thing, which was like a DM do. Because I have a friend who runs the Barnard zine library, and I wanted to kind of, you know, connect them, but I didn't want to put all of her info there because I didn't want every zine person who has, you know, 20 zines has Yeah, about it. Yeah, but it's a good thread talking about where the zine collections are. Yeah, I

Cortex 1:15:43 think I saw some spillover chatter from that somewhere else, because people were all talking about scenes, and a couple of friends were like zine making people back in the day. So they're like, oh, yeah, I found my old scene and index there. I was, I was vaguely like the idea of making a zine. I've never actually made one.

Jessamyn 1:16:01 Yeah, you know, they're fun projects. You could probably find a little zine making workshop somewhere somewhere near you.

Cortex 1:16:08 Yeah, yeah. No, I know, a couple people in town who still like do stuff in that territory. So I should just like pick their brains. But yeah. Well, any other any other asks, you will, of course, bring it.

Jessamyn 1:16:21 Um, one of my favorites in terms of something that's actually probably going to do a thing for my life is orange discs. Help me smell like a man. I'm a woman, I want to use men's cologne or scent. I like the sense for men better than those for women. But I don't want to have to dig through a million kinds of colognes. I like woodsy, spicy, cedary masculine without smelling like generic perfume or Irish Spring. Where do I go. And of course, I wind up like looking these things up. And everything is perfume, and it costs a fortune. But it is very, you know, in terms of like, you know, putting it on a list for holiday time or birthday or whatever. Like, here's a whole bunch of things that smell awesome. And I like I like just think about it. You know, especially because only like half my nose is working because it's the winter. And so yeah, a lot of people have really good advice. Excellent. And I don't know why I did two more. So one, it's always good. To come back to we went to the Bennington Museum in Vermont the other day. It was cool. We like quirky museums, what other ones might be good, and it's a thread that probably should be longer. That includes stuff like the whaling Museum, which is very cool the Museum of Surgical Science, which I have personally been to, and, you know, just the songbirds guitar Museum, the American precision Museum, the National Museum of funeral history, the main street Museum, there's a lot of them around here, actually. And my favorite museum, isn't that I think should be on this list isn't there, which is the birds of Vermont Museum, which was basically a guy who carved he was a woodcarver, and carved all these birds, for my little museum up a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Very cool. So I'll leave that. I'll leave that post open. And then lastly, this thread, which is you know, kind of interestingly complicated, which is Ambika mantis. What things are hard for you to do at work in kind of a human interaction sense? And how do you deal with them? And better? Yeah, you know, one of the examples is librarians who have to tell patrons that they smell bad, which not all of them do depends on the policy. It's not necessarily always a thing, you know, having to tell elderly people that they can't drive anymore. My 94 year old landlady just went to get her driver's license reinstated after an accident, and she did not get it. And she was mad. And I cannot imagine what it would have been like to be the person in the DMV to have to be like, No, you don't see well enough out of that one I you have in order to be able to be on the road, because it sucks to have to tell someone, they can't do that. And so it's a thread of people talking about different weird problems. You know, there's something super wrong with your computer. There's something super wrong with your body. There's something super wrong with your work. There's something super wrong with how you play this game. And it's just an interesting thread about sort of the, you know, personal interaction stuff that is actually very interesting listening to different people. Talk about the difficult things they have to do with their jobs. Yeah.

Cortex 1:19:54 That is, that is neat. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's plenty of like metaphysical things I can think of but also it's like A lot of them are mostly dealing with people who are not at a great place. So they also make great public chatter. People, people have a hard time sometimes dealing with life. And that spills out on medical term in ways that can be challenging for us to deal with while being both compassionate and doing the basic things we need to do so.

Jessamyn 1:20:18 Right, right. I mean, sometimes you have to tell people like, I'm really sorry, your life is falling apart, but you need to stop talking about it. Yeah, I mean, that's super hard. I can think of examples from when I was there. I can think of examples that I know you guys have had to deal with in the last couple years. Like, I'm sorry, this thing's going wrong, but you need to stop being that guy who shows up in every thread about that topic. As to you know, spill about your thing. Yeah, exactly.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:45 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Cortex 1:20:49 Anything else on us?

Jessamyn 1:20:51 No, I'm just writing a comment in the resume thread. And then I am done.

Cortex 1:20:56 I'll do a quick meevo Music Minute. Yeah, that sounds some songs that I liked stuff on music. There's a great little bouncy trip to anything from cue Ben. that I found very enjoyable. I was looking at it like kind of a beat up kind of thing. Yeah. Like, let let like, like, like cynthy BBB, people. And yeah, I enjoyed listening to it. And it was fun. And they said, you know, this is a palate cleanser for the upcoming challenge. So I don't know if that means trying to get the bloops out of the system before Kate Bush or getting a glimpse into their system before Kate Bush. But either way, I'm excited to see what happens. But speaking of leaping and BlueBee carried adventure posted something that's not leaping bluepay, which is, you know, carried adventure makes really good. bleeps and bloops. So this is a sudden swerve. But doing a duo with a guitarist friends carried interest playing bass. And so yeah, they did a recording of them working through a tune called Freddie the freeloader while occasionally cursing while talking about it. And that sounds fun. It's very charming, nice chilled track. It is the end of February, which means it's the end of the RPM challenge, which is the yearly alphabet A month challenge that I've done a couple times in the past and various mefites have done. Pyramid termite does it pretty much every year? I think, yeah.

Jessamyn 1:22:25 Turnout is very good at you know, cranking out a lot of stuff. Yeah. Music generally sorry.

Cortex 1:22:33 But no, yeah, like I think pretty much every year he ends up posting, you know, 1012 tracks from the album he did in February. And so it's March 1, now we're seeing stuff coming out of the tail end of that and been enjoying some of it. House by the river has this kind of sort of Latter Day Tom Petty feel to it that I was digging on us isn't into it.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:53 Oh, nice.

Cortex 1:22:57 And then yeah, rip. Tom, that parent termite parent is alive and posting music. And then Nikka spark heads. Another rocker I'm enjoying called to the Knights Can I just sort of feel? And yeah, then that's the music. musics. Good. Hey, that's all I got.

Jessamyn 1:23:21 Great. Thank you for that music minute. Is there anything going on? Besides the results of the best post stuff? And the usual stuff? In meta talk?

Unknown Speaker 1:23:33 There probably is.

Jessamyn 1:23:37 Switched friending?

Cortex 1:23:39 Yeah, if you're, if you're playing if you're, if you're playing games on on the switch, there's a mutual friending thread.

Jessamyn 1:23:47 There's a treaty by cilantro to please take more pictures at your meetups, even though there's all sorts of good reasons why people don't think about doing it because they're fun.

Cortex 1:23:56 Yes, yeah. And I feel like meetup picture culture has gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of the site. But also just like, you know, I think you know, encouraging people to do it is like there's people choosing not to, and that's fine. There's people just not thinking too. And if you'd like to, and you're not, they could do that thing, too. Hey, that's a good idea.

Jessamyn 1:24:16 And if you want to go to a meet up, but you don't want your picture taken, just let people know. Everybody is cool about it, because Jason Scott's not on the site anymore. Anyway, that is exactly the problem. You know, it is oh, yeah, I

Cortex 1:24:30 just I don't want to spend brain time on it. There's a funnel thread from cod saying, Hey, I just noticed this comment that I left back in 2010 got its first favorite. How did it go? That's like nine years from comment to first favorite. So is that the record and we talked about? Is it the record, it isn't the record, it's not the record and someone immediately shattered it even if it had been the record by doing something with 18 years and we talked a little bit how you by calculated how you might search it, how you might cheat at breaking the record, etc.

Jessamyn 1:25:06 I mean, all you got to do is just find somebody's comment, the earliest comments in the thread and face something right? Yes,

Cortex 1:25:13 go find the earliest unpaved thing, but then that will no longer be labor and someone else would have to come and fav something else. But if they waited longer than the interval between those two to do their favor, then they would have the longest one anyway. But if you went back, see if you then went back and unfavored and re favorited the older thing later, you'd so you know, there's there's definitely some very stupid jockeying that could be done.

Jessamyn 1:25:37 Well, and I have to say, this isn't really about stupid jacking. But I've appreciated all of his kind of conversation starters in meta talk. Universally fun, although, although Listen to me. There was the one about you know, something that's embarrassed you. And it actually led me to think that I don't really have a good perspective on embarrassment. You know, like, like, every time I look back at something that was embarrassing from basically anytime after I became kind of a grown up, like there's part of it that still Wente to me, and I don't have that like, hahaha, that was hilarious. I fell down and drop that cake kind of thing that I think other people have an easier time with. And I never knew that was true about me. Because I don't know, it just doesn't come up, right. It had to ask, I'd be like, I don't know, it doesn't really seem minor. But it really was hard to think about something that was kind of like, it used to be embarrassing. But now it was funny. And talking about it isn't awful. Either for me or for the people listening because I think in some cases, like the example I wanted to music was like getting hit in the face with a Frisbee on my birthday and then winding up with a black eye for a week, which like, makes me laugh like crazy, right? But like, I can understand why other people wouldn't find that funny. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's hard to translate what the embarrassment turned funny is because it's so very specific to my lens and a lot of the normal embarrassment. I don't find funny, you know, like, I was kind of a shy, introverted kid. And so a lot of that stuff was genuinely unpleasant at the time. Yeah, faded, but didn't fade into something funny. It just went away. Yeah. But I mean, I don't look back on it now. And I'm like, That dumb kid. I look back on it now. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that felt bad.

Cortex 1:27:37 Yeah, yeah. It's less potent. But it hasn't like transformed in me calm become

Jessamyn 1:27:43 a joke. But it's clearly true for lots of other people. And so I read along with interest in how other people it sort of dealt with it. And I actually think I'll probably call my sister at some point, because she tells these stories. No, no, because she tells the stories about embarrassing things turned funny in a way that indicates that she clearly has this skill that I do not have, you know, and I'm curious about that. Or maybe she could look at the thing from my past that she thinks would have been embarrassing and is now funny that I kind of get my head around because everything I come up with is just, you know, oh, that Tom I teased that kid in gym class, and he broke my arm and everybody in the party flakes. Yeah. Which to me fits that. But I am smart enough to know it doesn't for other people, you know? Yeah. At any rate, yeah. This is threads have been really interesting and fun. And I think they, you know, they help meta filter, get to know meta filter, right. As new people come in, as older people kind of cycle out or come back for a little bit. It's been cool just to provide the turnaround. Stories with them.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:51 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right.

Cortex 1:28:55 I think I think I think I'm, I'm all done. I'm a lot of stuff.

Jessamyn 1:28:59 Great. If you're somebody who uses mole trap, we got t shirts. Yeah, that's my bumper. Yeah.

Cortex 1:29:06 Angela this morning, my bumper. On your car?

Jessamyn 1:29:11 No, no, like, little ads that go on either side.

Cortex 1:29:14 If I thought you were doing a non rhotic Boston accent thing. I was, oh, well, that sounds like Oh, I see. I meant like, like on your car as in the sense of dropping your art not like on your car as in? Are you talking about an automobile specifically? Like your pocket car? And the bumper. Okay.

Jessamyn 1:29:33 I have a whole bunch of, you know, cognition problems. I think it's, uh, well,

Cortex 1:29:37 I was I was making a leap there and then like, Why isn't she making the same leap? I'm making for no apparent reason.

Jessamyn 1:29:42 Always happened to the gym. We'll be having some chat about something. He's like, by the way, that lady was totally wrong. I'm like, what, what? What are you talking about? And it'll just be some conversation we were having like two days ago, but it's been going on in his head and he just assumes I'm right there with him because why would I be because 90% of the time I am in fact man the 5% and I'm not I'm just like,

Cortex 1:30:07 What the hell are we lay a little groundwork

Jessamyn 1:30:11 for any any groundwork at all? I think what I usually wind up saying, like Throw me a bone guy like

well, I hope you have a great weekend. You too.

Cortex 1:30:25 let's uh, let's go let's go weekend it up and maybe this will be posted before or during or after? Who knows? Alright, good.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:34 Thanks.

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