Podcast 160 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 160: That Was A Bood Posscat (2020-02-07).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Cortex 0:00 A couple of things you

Okay, Josh, Hey,

Jessamyn 0:31 man, how you doing lie to me?

Cortex 0:33 Yeah, I'm great. And this is an episode of a podcast about metal filter. And it's 100 and 60th. One. You know, welcome to that.

Jessamyn 0:46 160 Here's what I learned about 160 getting a glass of water is in the UK, you used to be able to do this thing called dial a disk for like, almost, I don't know, 25 years. You could call the post office already. I don't the post office somehow and hear songs that were on the charts in the UK if you dialed 160 on your phone, back when dialing was dialing. Yeah, with the dial. Pretty deep though, right? You did? I did that. No, you didn't.

Cortex 1:21 You know, I mean, I feel like it maybe I heard that phrase at some point, but I don't like know anything about it. So like, yeah.

Jessamyn 1:28 Yeah, I just heard what I really hope is snow falling off my roof. Because if not, I'm under attack. Let's cross our fingers, shall we?

Cortex 1:41 Yep. Okay, done. Okay, done. Read on. The fucking movie that Tom Clancy? No. Patrick Swayze? Yeah. No, it's like a Red Dawn. Oh my gosh, that classic. I hope it's always misrepresenting something. But like 1980s Red Scare shit. Like, it's like, I want to say early 80s film about a small town. That's one of the places or maybe the place. It's been a long time. But the Russians invade I'm reading. So yeah, just like the Russians invade and then small town band of patriotic Americans fight them off or some shit.

Jessamyn 2:30 We did it in 2012 with Chris Hemsworth.

Cortex 2:33 Yeah, I didn't see that when you see that?

Jessamyn 2:35 Like you're proud of it.

Cortex 2:37 I mean, it didn't seem like a movie that really needed to be remade

Jessamyn 2:42 was in that movie, JENNIFER GRAY was in that movie. JENNIFER GRAY, who was in one of my trivias I think recently for like getting a nose job and then becoming unrecognizable. There was like the celebrity skin. One day special. I didn't know that one. I didn't do so well on that one. All right. Well, I never saw the movie. I don't think I saw the Chris Hemsworth movie. Looks like there's an old school computer in it. Neat. Well, we're three teenagers band together. All right.

Cortex 3:15 All right. Yeah. So we were saying before the pre roll, that we're probably gonna keep this one real short, which we may turn ourselves into liars about but in case it turns out to in fact be short, you the listener now for warned. Hey, would you like a better filter?

Jessamyn 3:32 Hey, well, I'm

Cortex 3:37 as was that just to flat out getting into it?

Jessamyn 3:42 Maybe I was looking at. I was looking at projects and just thinking about projects, but maybe looking backwards

Cortex 3:51 projects or a meta filter. Like, just everywhere. We're going off format. We're going

Jessamyn 3:55 well, we talked about PLC takeover, which was less people were doing it last month. And there's some good threads about like, Well, how did it go? And then there's like a white allies thread where people are talking about things that are difficult. And those are, I think all useful. And then somebody Dr. Astro zoom, called out that there are some good disability threads on the front page. And they're excited about it and was like, hey, maybe we should do something like that on disability related posts, which I think would be delightful. It's kind of a short thread right now.

Cortex 4:32 I'm in meditation or something. foments there.

Jessamyn 4:35 Yeah. And whatever. Meta talk has had some great stuff. The only other thing I wanted to mention for meta talk, I guess we're just going backwards. Sure. This time is the best post contest wrap. Yeah, and if you're somebody who's kind of iffy on meta filter, you prefer to stay in the green where it is safe. What you might want to do is use this January best post contest, thread and results to Give you some good jumping off points of stuff to get involved with. And I just have to give a special call out to you or not there who basically seem to post a really good post in every single category. Like, you know, I think they used it as like kind of a jumping off point for ways to get a little bit more involved with the site. And so there's a whole bunch of prizes that are given out I gave a prize to Bella Donna for the best posts on a rural topic. There were six posts, they were all really good. Bella Donnas was about people that live in places in Sweden, that used to have Swedish witch hunts. And it's still got its own slightly quirky culture. And it's a pretty interesting post. But if you're somebody who's like, I just kind of want to look at like the, the cool stuff, and maybe not the kind of grind, grind political stuff or whatever. It's a good jumping off point. There's some political stuff there too. But it's a lot of kind of like cool stuff on the internet, which I've said before is my favorite stuff on metal filter, even though I enjoy that metaphor. altar is many things to many people.

Cortex 6:11 Yeah, likewise. Yeah, a big shout out to Taz for doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Hey, thanks to us. I suppose. She's been great. So

Jessamyn 6:20 terrific. She's such a sleeper mod, right? I mean, not

Cortex 6:24 only she does work at night,

Jessamyn 6:26 at night, you know, but I feel like she does her work in in this in this kind of very quiet and patient way. But like, just makes the site better with the work that she does. It's cool. Yep.

Cortex 6:38 Yep. I liked this super dumb fucking thing on Metafilter. I made this metaphor post about the super dumb fucking thing. Which is Josh, guys, on TikTok putting on our balls,

Jessamyn 6:54 huh? You gotta warn a person?

Cortex 6:56 Well, I mean, I'm definitely what you know me saying these words is going to do but yes, I click the link first. There was a soy sauce challenge on TikTok TikTok. If you don't know what it is, is like Vine except

Jessamyn 7:09 not vine, like, except it doesn't it doesn't have the six

Cortex 7:13 second constraint is the big obvious difference. Okay. And then there's a new thing called bite that is like, Vine reborn. But now it's called bite, I guess. And yeah, it seems to have gotten kind of a rough start when they launched. So I don't know what's happening there. But anyway, TikTok is where all the kids are, except for probably the kids aren't anymore because no one goes there anymore, because all people, but now as far as adults are concerned, TikTok is where all the kids are. Like, owned by Chinese Corporation. And there's some

Jessamyn 7:53 like in the library, like soy sauce on your testicles. And

Cortex 8:00 so here's the thing. There's these things called taste receptors that exist in the body. And as you might guess, they do a lot of work in the old tongue, because they're attached to taste buds and taste buds have like, you know, specific chemical sensitive reactions that delivered nervous information to the taste receptors, which deliver to the brain and then your brain goes, boom, I taste a flavor. Okay, that's

Jessamyn 8:22 my sister had a cold. And then all of a sudden, everything started tasting terrible. And she texted me in a panic, like, Oh my God, my taste is coming back, right? Yeah, but maybe not today. Set yourself an alarm to check out your taste is in like two and a half days. And two and a half days later, she texted me and was like, You're right.

Cortex 8:43 Like it tastes. Okay. Well,

Jessamyn 8:47 I'm still not sure why I'm looking at this. So

Cortex 8:49 the thing with the taste receptor and the taste buds are receptors react to specific chemical things, but they don't do the tasting. And the part in the sense that we talk about that's the taste buds on your tongue, they like actually process information into flavor information that then interacts with the taste receptors, which goes back to Brain and that's how you taste things. So you have taste receptors in other parts of your body to including your nuts.

Jessamyn 9:12 Not my nuts. Well,

Cortex 9:15 people who have nuts have them in their nuts, generally speaking, at least, and I think the various other places, but what they don't have is two things. One, they don't have taste buds on the taste receptors in their nuts and two, they don't have taste buds on the outside of their nuts.

Jessamyn 9:28 So very confused about all taste receptors in your nuts. It's just

Cortex 9:33 the some kind of nervous tissue that responds to specific kinds of chemical things. You can't taste shit with your nuts. That's the thing. This is a post about people trying to take it with their nuts, which can't do because you don't have the fucking hardware to taste things. And it's not connected correctly. It's just like, Yeah, it's so so it's it's someone someone on fucking Tumblr or something, basically found a paper that talked about the locations of taste receptors, and they noticed that included testicles, and

Jessamyn 10:04 they're doing this they're like guys you wouldn't believe watch testicles on TikTok I can't No,

Cortex 10:09 I can't all this happens off. And honestly that pisses me off as much as anything about this whole fucking thing is it's all this off camera hygiene shit because they'll delete your vote video if you like, show an actual drunk other like I mean, it's probably good in a way that they don't have guys pulling out their nuts all the time but at the same time if the whole thing is doing something with your nuts like I read dipping your nuts and twice I was like okay, well, I have a clear idea what's going to happen here and that wasn't even what happened. So anyway, the point is, kids on TikTok are sticking soy sauce on their balls or their balls and soy sauce and then pretending to be able to taste it or fooling themselves into who cares is TikTok they're dumb kids doing stuff for attention. That's fine. It's funny. It's goofy. It's incredibly stupid. I enjoyed the whole thread. It was very it was very internet is what it was going on there.

Jessamyn 10:58 I love it.

Cortex 10:59 And that's the podcast for me. Thanks for listening. Everybody.

Jessamyn 11:03 gotten a little bit of your groove back?

Cortex 11:05 Maybe I think I think I might you know, it's those. It's the soy sauce. I really dipped it in the soy sauce. Been trying to make that happen a little bit. That's not really working. I'll say it's not I mean, figuratively.

Jessamyn 11:18 Well, since you use the word because I'm gonna

Cortex 11:24 here's where this is going.

Jessamyn 11:25 I'm gonna move over to because Internet book discussion on fanfare Gretchen McCulloch is I'm pretty sure Wow, a book discussion with no discussion. Get over there. Internet people. Basically Gretchen McCulloch is I think a me fight but I'm not 100% Sure. She wrote

Cortex 11:46 this fight low QB me fight? I'm not sure I feel like she is I feel

Jessamyn 11:49 like I saw her there. She definitely is conversant in metadata.

Cortex 11:54 Yeah, she knows of meta filters. Yeah. And she

Jessamyn 11:56 and she writes about the internet and how we talk on the internet. And this book is supposed to be amazing. It'll come as no surprise to anybody that she is great on twitter, and like very, like, funny and kind of self effacing. And like, she's a nerd like us, right? So we all kind of interact there. And monkey toes started a thread that more people should pay attention to. It's a couple of weeks old. So you've still got some time on fanfare to talk about this book, which talks about talking about the internet. Go there.

Cortex 12:33 It has been very well received. Gretchen is awesome. There's been a bunch of posts on the front page of metal filter about stuff she's written. She's done. She does some column writing on language stuff, too. Yeah, just sort of where the book came from, to like, you know, she, you know, she sort of fell into this niche of being this internet language person. So

Jessamyn 12:55 great, cuz she's just in general, but she's a fan of internet language. And so put the two together. And now she's a writer about being a fan about internet language. Yeah.

Cortex 13:06 Yeah. She's read. Go read the book. Yeah. There was a thread about Bach's cello Prelude. I mean, that's not specific

Jessamyn 13:20 enough to understand. Oh, there's

Cortex 13:23 this guy named? Yeah, there's this guy named Bach. Oh, music.

Jessamyn 13:27 I thought it was like a cello made out of a box.

Cortex 13:31 That box cello? Yes. No. Bach wrote a suite of, or several cello suites at some point, six of them that are like the Bach Cello Suites, which he probably wrote other stuff for cello too, but I don't know. I don't follow that closely. But anyway, there's this very famous Prelude, the prelude to the first suite in that set. Qiyamah burden Dean doomed? Beauty didn't do yet.

Jessamyn 14:05 It's like every commercial.

Cortex 14:06 Yeah, it's in fucking everything. It's a super, super ubiquitous piece of classical music. Anyway, this is just a post about that. And it's a nice like, 10 minute long video from a cellist talking through basically how the piece works, what's going on with it, it has a musical construction and what's interesting about it and why it works and why it has an interesting sense of movement and what kind of little tricks Bach is pulling off with it. And I just, I liked that piece of and listened to a lot of that set of cello suites actually the last year so he's got some good like, you know, distressing music for me for for whatever reason, like cellos, a good sort of vocal range, so to speak. And so I've heard that one a bunch and the first couple times I've heard is like, Oh, hey, this is that song. I know and after that was like, Oh, hey, yelled at Yeah, okay. And the fact that I haven't gotten sick of it speaks very well of it because It's it's, you know, it's a super ubiquitous piece of music and it hasn't been talked about Canon for me yet. Yeah, so yeah, so it's a nice video and a nice little bit of discussion in there. And yeah, like that.

Jessamyn 15:13 I was, I was at drop in time and I have this 15 year old intern who's about the only like, plug in I have two younger people, except for the younger people on metal filter. And he was like, Do you like pirate music? And I'm like, I pay for like, like, what do you do? Right? He's a child. And, and then it turns out he legit meant pirate shanties and ship. Yeah. And so we had this and to him pirate music is just kind of raucous Irish music. You know what I mean? Like that kind of stumpy. stompy Irish music and I was like, Oh, if you like this kind of music, you're gonna love like, tonnara when, like this Malian desert band, or you're gonna love this other thing. And we wound up actually having like, a fun conversation. Without it being, you know, either like, you know, kind of one of those onion belt conversations where I'm like, Oh, I really liked you know, I had that on cassette, or him being like, you know, I only streamed stuff directly into my nose or whatever. pirate music. Yeah, it's just, you know, music segways are not a segue. I have nowhere else to go with that. In fact, talking about going, I enjoyed this question by narrative priorities about space elevators. Hey, like, let's say a space elevator was a real thing, right? People certainly talk about them a lot. Let's say one was real. And let's say you were in it. It's kind of the reverse of that question about like, you're in an elevator that is plummeting. But can you step out right before the end and then not get smashed? This is like, Okay, you're going up in a space elevator? Do you get weightless? Like, people at Quora seem to think so. But they're a bunch of fucking idiots. Like, can you point me to a real source? I love how you know, Quora. It's not a real source, because they fucking aren't. But I love that everybody knows that now. goofs. But there's a whole bunch of sort of interesting commentary about how physics works. And, you know, I was basically this many years old when I learned that the zero gravity is only because you're like going around the planet as fast as you're like that you're falling, but sideways. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't really get that before. And Jim explained it to me. And of course, as is my way, I'm like, you don't know if I can anything? Of course, zero G. I read it and all these sci fi books, he's like, let me explain. And I was like, I don't believe you. But you know, we looked online and read about physics. And I was like, oh, man, I had no idea. And there are some people in this thread that are is actually sort of explaining it in nice simple terms. Yeah. Which I always you know, enjoy. And then there's some nonsense, but like, in general, not a lot of nonsense. And it talks about space elevators and it gives narrative priority some good feedback for writing their book. Most I thought so.

Cortex 18:18 It's always Yeah, I kind of wonder if there will ever have seemed like such a giant pain in the ass, like, infrastructural project to actually make work.

Jessamyn 18:27 I like I have a bunch of irrational anxieties, but one of them is that something happens to me and I dropped dead right on the cusp of like, this huge game changing technology that allows us either to go to space or like, upload our brains into whatever. So like, everybody who's still around gets to basically live forever, but I dropped dead like two days before it you know what I mean? Yeah, I have concerns.

Cortex 18:54 Yeah, but you know, if you did then Hey. You know, you're not gonna care.

Jessamyn 19:02 So, yeah, but I can worry about it now. Will

Cortex 19:05 I belong? Sure. If you want to, I don't want to. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna judge you for worrying about it.

Jessamyn 19:11 No, I'm sharing it with you specifically so I can kind of shake it off.

Cortex 19:15 Okay. Okay. Then I will I will be your sin eater and take this bad idea and I love it chew it up and poop it out like a goat in the desert.

Jessamyn 19:25 I really slept a metaphor earlier in that sense. Yeah.

Cortex 19:28 Well scape goats. Do you know that? Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Speaking

Jessamyn 19:32 of anxieties. Let's there's this great asked Metafilter thing by cat's pajamas about being a doormat. Like, Hey, I've always been kind of a doormat. Like other people kind of. I let I care about other people's priorities more than my own priorities. And, you know, I wonder if it's like, self esteem, or I'm not really sure I'm assertive in my marriage. So that's good. But I still feel like like other people are kinda taken advantage of me. Are you somebody who used to be more like me, but you got to a different place? And how did you do it? And there's, you know, some, some good feedback, some, you know, some less good feedback, of course, but like, you know, talking about kind of boundaries and how you can sort of figure out what you want and how to not, like how to be nice and be like, well, that doesn't matter, you know, and, versus being like, well, that actually kind of did matter. And it didn't go my way, or how to, like, leave things alone. So it's a good kind of processing exercises, a whole bunch of comments from people being like, well, here's ways you can get to a slightly different place like both and kind of reframing how you feel about interactions, because part of doormat Ness, or feeling bad about it is literally just how you feel about the interaction, not what happened. Like, if somebody's not stealing your money, you can kind of decide how to feel about it. But then part of it really is like figuring out which things matter and how to say what you mean. And you know, there's some ask guests culture and factors and other asked guests asked me to filter thread that's super interesting that I'll try and track down. But a lot of people just gave up some really good advice. And I felt like, I felt like it was good. Like, I like it when I feel like somebody's really kind of puzzling over over a thing. You know, like they have ducked, kind of grappling with a thing. Yeah. And people chime in a way that I don't know helps, I guess. Yeah. Now, I don't know how to find that other thread. That's alright.

Cortex 21:43 Is it? Is it if it's meant to be it'll come to you?

Jessamyn 21:49 If it's, oh, yeah, no, here it is. I found it. It's meant to be. It came to me. Hey, yeah, this was just an I remembered it. Because I commented in this thread. This is for Demisse, Artemis for demist. I don't know. Basically being like, hey, if you're somebody who grew up with guests culture, how did you learn to have a relationship with somebody who was more of an ass culture? You know, ask people, How do you help your guests, people feel comfortable, blah, blah, blah. And so there's a little bit of like, you know, these people are wrong, but not very much of it. And like, for me, just talk about me briefly. Like one of my parents, I had one parent of each, right? Like, my mother was very, like, ask, ask, ask, and my dad was very, like, guest guest guests indirect. What the hell is he thinking, blah, but he was big into kind of manners and decorum, but he kind of wouldn't tell you what they were. Whereas my mother was always like, ah, like, just sort of out and about, about everything. And the two of them had more miscommunications. I think that me and my sister did with either of them, because we were kind of a little bit of each. And so anyway, there's a whole bunch of people talking about partnerships with people in relationships, who are slightly different from them. And how they worked it out mostly.

Cortex 23:06 Well, good. Yeah. I was gonna throw a meta filter posted in there, like this esoteric programming language called when Yan or when yen? Tell me more. It's a well an esoteric program like it's by Daisy catch. Yes, posted by Daisy K. And an esoteric programming language is basically a programming language that is designed specifically to be kind of weird or unusual.

Jessamyn 23:37 So esoteric has a specific meaning here that isn't just the meaning of the word esoteric.

Cortex 23:42 Yeah, it's it's sort of a genre of programming stuff. Yeah. Like I mean, it means what it means but the if you say esoteric programming language to someone who's a programming language nerd, they'll know what you mean, as a broad class of things rather than trying to think oh, well, what? What fields? So there's like, oh, so technically, it was like, be funge is a classic esoteric programming language, Haskell. No, no, Haskell is just a functional programming language, but probably committing some terrible sin by misclassifying. It but no, Haskell is just. Yeah, it's it's, it's Haskell is not hugely used comparatively. But it's just a it's a good programming language, esoteric programming, which is tend to have some curious gimmick built into the conceptualization of the language itself.

Jessamyn 24:25 And so in this case, it's only in traditional Chinese characters and quotes.

Cortex 24:29 Yeah. So So yeah, that's, that's, that's the odd one about this one is it's like it's using that specifically as its content and looks like someone was talking in the thread about how it's based on TypeScript, which I don't really know anything about. I know the name of and it's got a nice formatting setup to let it output to look like classical Chinese texts as well.

Jessamyn 24:52 Well, appears to know something about Chinese characters is like oh, they use this thing and it means this in In Chinese, but they're using it for variables. And it's cool, though, because I don't know much about the Chinese language or the alphabet or sorry, not the alphabet. And it's just great listening to people talk about it.

Cortex 25:12 Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the things we're like, I appreciate this as a as a concept, and I appreciate the look of it,

Jessamyn 25:17 but I can't really interact with.

Cortex 25:21 So like, Yeah, I can't I can't usually get my get my my paws into it. But I, I kind of appreciate that. Like, that's a that's a thing. Yeah, they started computer science in college. And, you know, I used C and C++ and some Java and Perl and a bunch of other things. And to some extent, like, there's this question that like, occurred to me dimly at some point in college that like, well, but all of this is in English. And that's kind of weird, but Well, we're what I'm studying computer science

Jessamyn 25:49 in, right? And you're like, Well, I'm in America.

Cortex 25:53 English, but is it? Yeah. And the thing is, like, I don't know enough about what the state of things was in 97. And I don't know that much about what the state of things is now in terms of broad uptake of non English characters in some of the major programming libraries. But it is kind of a weird thing, where they're like, there was this almost assumed, like, everything's going to use roman characters. And like, in college, it didn't necessarily become totally clear to me that that was kind of a weird thing. But also, it was not a program in which we were going to have a lot of opportunity to discover the whole wide world of other character sets support. So I don't know it was an odd thing. But it's nice. It's nice in that sense, just to see something that is explicitly embracing some other kind of,

Jessamyn 26:39 right, another way to do it. And here's another way to do it.

Cortex 26:42 But yeah, I just thought it was a cool project. And it's nice seeing it show up on multiple because I had seen it like go by on Twitter. I think like some programming nerd. I follow had mentioned it. And then I was like, Oh, that's cool. And then I think I didn't turn that into medical person. So I don't really know anything about this though. And then someone else did. So good job days. Okay. Thanks for doing the thing.

Jessamyn 27:00 Hey, I think I speaking of sort of mentioned on Twitter, aren't Garf Garfunkel his reading list? I think one of the reasons I even have a meeting reading list is because Jasper's friendly bear posted about it on metal filter in 2008. And then this last month to oh, did we okay, maybe that's maybe that's why it's on my favorites list. I like favorite a bunch of stuff, and then I unfavored it after the podcast, but the favorites are dangerous. Well, they're chronological. Right and so this one was the one I hadn't unfavored it probably because it hadn't shown up. So, all right. Art Garfunkel fuck it he's still reading.

Cortex 27:46 He's still got those books. Oh, I really was happy. Another thing I was happy to see show up on the front page that I didn't get around to posting myself is rebound made a post about the self portraits of ginger and soon who I friends with Nora from the XOXO community and she has been doing a series of basically paint a like projects on various famous paintings and other pieces of art. places the faces with her own face, you know, so every everybody in the painting turns into Asian woman and thick frame black glasses. And it's fantastic. It's really great,

Jessamyn 28:30 because she's got a distinctive look. And so when you put it into paintings where you're expecting this kind of blase, very dull, kind of anemic looking white lady, it really it really changes to just the way it looks. This is awesome.

Cortex 28:45 Yeah, no, it's a really fantastic Raj has been working on it for a couple years now. I think

Jessamyn 28:49 there's her as the hot and Todd Venus. Yeah. There's hers. Frida Kahlo. There's hers. whistlers mother. Oh, there's hers flaming June. Well, and what's so great is so many of these paintings are like you're kind of you kind of know them from other places.

Cortex 29:05 Yeah, exactly. Ah, you have that sort of like background awareness. Even if you don't know, offhand the details of that given painting. It's like these are famous images and so I don't think so. I'm trying to remember where she is. I'm not sure she might be in New York. I everybody from the XL community who's not a Portland I just assumed they're in New York now. Or San Francisco maybe? Right?

Jessamyn 29:27 There's like four places they live because XL

Cortex 29:29 are literally anywhere else in the world. Because like there's there's mefites from various places who have been to EXO as well. skyrace lives up in Canada.

Jessamyn 29:37 I have met scrubs butter tablet, man. Yes.

Cortex 29:43 And Tomash lives over in Hungary and nice come out a couple times. Now I want to name everybody else too. But I'm not going to be able to pull all the names right now. Yeah, don't but yeah, Good folks. Good folks. Good folks. Good times. Great podcasts. Que what MFI is trying to go into some sort of oldies station ramble there, but I didn't really have it. What else did you like?

Jessamyn 30:13 Well, I liked the fact that we're back on track with sports ball. So there was a, I'm trying to find it out here this there was a Super Bowl thread fanfare because well, because there wasn't, I feel like I don't know if it was the World Series, or there was some other like, big sports ball thing. Yeah, where it was on fanfare. And I was like, Ah, that was like, one of the things I like about sports is to be able to enjoy it with nerds, you don't like there's a lot of bad things about sports, obviously, also like, and I'm not sort of Pooh poohing that. But I feel like something to enjoy goes away. If I enjoy it with nerds. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm sitting around at some bar, and everybody's high fiving, and yelling and getting scary. That's not a fun way for me to enjoy sports. But like, you know, if I'm watching the game at my friend's house, when there's food there, and everybody's children are running around, which is what we wound up doing, it was really nice. And then, you know, then there's a little thread that I can sort of check into when I just need to kind of tune out, like we were in this house. Oh my god. So my friends live up the roads, we could walk there, which was nice, which meant we could drink if we wanted to, which I tend not to, but still could if I wanted. And they had like pig downstairs and they had two TVs set up, which was kind of cool. But then they were I think they had like Google subscriptions, or YouTube subscriptions so that they could watch the Super Bowl. I don't know how they were watching the Super Bowl. I only know that it was streaming. And there were two TVs, one in each room, the two rooms were opened up into one another, and they were off by 30 seconds. Two minutes. And so if you sat in the middle, it was basically like a recipe for dissociative experience.

Cortex 32:04 Steve Reich televised. Yes,

Jessamyn 32:07 exactly. It was exactly that. But the good news was, I'm an anxious individual, as I'm sure I've mentioned, basically, every three minutes since we started this, and so I could be in the slow room. And then if I heard everybody yelling in the vast room, I would know something was gonna happen. And I could watch even though the whole thing was kind of chaotic. I mean, it was it was like, there must have been like, 30 people there. So it was really you weren't just like, shut up. I'm trying to watch the game. But like, it meant that I wasn't surprised by stuff, which actually I found kind of okay, like, I'm one of those kind of internet people who really doesn't mind spoilers. It's, it's better for me to be like, Oh, hey, something's coming up. I'm gonna watch her shut up for a second. There's some sport thing happening. And so again, a lot of the fanfare commentary actually came in after the game was over. Like it was just people talking about how they felt or you know what they thought about it and you know, hey, go go Kansas City. I have never won one of these. And so that was cool. And, you know, Trump tweeted some idiot thing about the other Kansas City like a dummy that he is, and fun, and like, you know, talk about the weird advertisements because there are some weird advertisements. Nothing super fun. You know, baby peanut, that was kind of funny. But so I enjoyed I enjoyed that thread. Very times.

Cortex 33:34 You think the words baby Yoda were uttered in the pitch meeting that made that baby peanut thing? Right? Because like the timing is such that they totally fucking put that shit together after Mandler Well, I

Jessamyn 33:44 mean, maybe we get baby everything now and I'm not complaining. You know?

Cortex 33:50 Just yeah, I just, I don't know. I'm not sure Mr. Peanut is baby Bojack baby Bojack Horseman. That seems problematic

Jessamyn 33:59 unwatchable for me. So I don't even know what it's about. I do see

Cortex 34:03 young Bojack many times in fact, that flashback to the show. Oh, really as parents unhappy marriage and so on. The whole show like it's, it's, I really liked Bojack Horseman but it's not like it's not very fun watching for something that has so many funny people attached and so much funny writing and stuff in the details. Like, you know, they're trying to say I haven't finished it yet. But I know it's it's out there now.

Jessamyn 34:27 I've been watching a little mosque on the prairie.

Cortex 34:31 I do not know that. Ah, well. It's 90

Jessamyn 34:33 episodes of Canadian TV about essentially the central conceit is there is a mosque and a small Muslim community in a town called Mercy in rural Saskatchewan. And they basically share space with the church with the church has a very dwindling population but a very nice minister. He's Anglican. And so it's like it's mostly about the imam who comes from Toronto to you. sort of have this be his mosque, and about the different Muslims that live in town and the way different people in a rural town deal with Muslims in town. And, you know, and there's lots of different kinds of ways that different people are Muslim, which is great, of course. And it's Canadian, right. So at the end of the day, they're kind of all friends. Even even the weird slightly racist radio show guys, kind of a bumbling buffoon. And, yeah, and it's all on YouTube. So it's really easy to watch. I'll have to see if there's any. I don't think I think I looked and there's not any fanfare.

Cortex 35:38 Yes.

Jessamyn 35:40 I can't even find it on fanfare. Like, even by typing in the typing box.

Cortex 35:48 It doesn't show up there if it hasn't been submitted. Oh, okay. So I would suggest a show. It'll show up there. Yeah,

Jessamyn 35:53 great. I'm gonna be like all 90 episodes. Do it's legit. What do you think, but there's like some great actors in it. Only one of whom I had seen before, she was in a couple episodes of Orphan Black. And it and it was all like 10 years ago, kind of you know, it ran for a long time a while ago. At that. It's just nice. It's like a kind of a gentle, cozy Keighley funny,

Cortex 36:16 she'll be a good like, dumb, annoying thing to do. And you're a big fan of like that one actress from Orphan Black, you know, the one who played one of the characters that Tatyana Milani plays, just like pretend not to realize another character. So yeah, I mean, yeah, the rest of them are fine. I kind of like, you know, the, but that's, but yeah, yeah, she she heads above wrestling the rest of the cast. You know, I don't know what she's doing there. You know, just really run the

Jessamyn 36:45 show still going? No, I think it's over. Did it wrap up?

Cortex 36:49 I think so. Okay, I'm not 100% Sure.

Jessamyn 36:52 I got to I, I got to the point with that show that I got with last, where I was like, they don't have any idea. They're just writing stuff. Like, they don't have an arc. And she's amazing, but it was super dark, or at least a little too dark for me. And I appreciate the hell out of it. But I was like, so but I would maybe like to read how it wrapped up because I liked the story. Which also like Jim and I had a great weekend. But one of the things we didn't do is watch the end of good place. And so I've had to really kind of refrain from engaging with too much content online.

Cortex 37:27 Yeah, no, we we did get around to watching that. But we had to sort of like dodge a little bit. Yeah.

Jessamyn 37:35 Yeah, I'm all the way except for the last four episodes here. The ending is good. That's all I know. Looking forward to it. Yep. Good enough. And if I want to, I can read ahead on fanfare.

Cortex 37:45 Oh, you know, like, I like the cameras. Metafilter or s Metafilter. Post he he made a question. Yes. Help me name my fictional cult slash brotherhood slash organization, something for presumably, like d&d sort of situation. But yeah, he's just like looking for a name for his sort of benevolence.

Jessamyn 38:05 Like, you know, New Orleans crew kind of stuff? Well, I

Cortex 38:09 don't know for sure. Like, I got the vague impression that this might be in the gaming context, but or it has to do with this little skulls. I assume that's where the skull thing came from. Yeah. I may have completely invented the idea that there was a gaming context for it. I think a lot of my thinking comes in the sort of territory of, like, gaming stuff is where you would be coming up with this, but yeah, could just be a totally stylistic thing. Maybe it's going to do a zine, that'd be rad. But yeah, cuz KMR does all those cool little stuff school,

Jessamyn 38:38 he makes little stalls, and he hides them around, and he puts clues on his Instagram. And people find them. And sometimes he sells them and raises money for stuff. And it seems to be something that gives them a lot of joy. And that's super cool. I think they went to Hawaii to like, there was just this brief period of time where like, everybody on my Twitter was in Hawaii for some reason. Like, seriously, like, like three or four different people for metal filter. And I was like, but they didn't seem to be hanging out with each other. It was just coincidence. So it was like it took all I could do to not be like, Hey, you should hang out with this other person is in the same state as you. Yeah, no, that was a good. That was good. AskMe Metafilter question. I enjoyed it.

Cortex 39:21 It was like an inside baseball admin tool development thing, but we have this idea. This is really just like a admins, mods, quality of life thing to no one else will ever see this tool, but like, we do a lot of following threads. That's kind of thing. So the jobs like, you know, there's probably going to be like, you know, 20 or so threads that are kind of on the mod radar at any given time, you know,

Jessamyn 39:45 there there's like click, click, click, click, click, click, click gate links to click up

Cortex 39:49 on things that people have mentioned. For years now, we have been managing that through a mix of following that stuff and recent activity and following that stuff by keeping spare or tabs open for the stuff that seems likely to have acted like

Jessamyn 40:02 tagging somebody in in Slack, I think, right?

Cortex 40:05 Yeah. Well, yeah. So like, it'd be passing off, you know, saying, Oh, well, this and this and this. And this is kind of on the radar. And because because you know, I would fall, I would leave it in the mod note in a comment, or I would just add it to my add the threads my recent activity and watch it. And then at the end of my shift, if there felt like there was still probably action or something, or might be, then I would pass it on by saying, hey, hey, here's, there's this thread, this is what's going on with it, so that someone else would be able to then put it in a tab on their browser or put it into their recent activity, right? Because we use the same recent activity that anybody else in the site uses. And we got into a conversation about this fleet last year, I think, November, December about like, you know what,

Jessamyn 40:44 this is dumb. It kind of sucked. Well,

Cortex 40:47 I mean, I've talked about this on the podcast before. And I didn't mention it this time, because didn't happen. But one of the things that happens sometimes when I'm sitting down to get rid of the the podcast, where we're going through the podcast together, is I'm looking for the threads that I liked that I want to mention. And I'll usually go to my recent activity, because I spent a lot of time in my recent activity. That's where stuff aggregates for me. But, you know, a lot of the time we're like, okay, skip this angry post, skip this politics posts, skip this gray thing. Okay, here's shity shity shity. Okay, shit, you know, like a lot of it a lot of stuff in my recent activity has for years been work stuff, which, you know, for the purpose of getting work done works, but kind of sucks, or my pleasure reading and, you know, the podcast process and whatnot.

Jessamyn 41:27 And so about Metafilter, is mods also hanging out?

Cortex 41:31 Yeah. I like, like, I like it when I like reading the site, you know. So the impact this had had, like, once I once I brought it up, and I think it's something we'd sort of noodled on briefly before, but I brought it back. I was like, Hey, I was thinking about this again, what if we built a mod specific radar tool, so we could get this recent activity like function, but in a shared mod? View, that was alternate from recent activity, so we don't have to look at that stuff in our personal recent activity. And fribble said, Yeah, let's do that and knocked it together. And it, the initial version came along very quickly. And now we're sort of like sprucing it up and figuring out, okay, now that we remember, we can change things about this, what else would be nice? So we're sort of iterating, this whole new tool, but you know, it's fucking great. fribble did a great job, threw it together, they were just fucking on it. And all of a sudden, I can load up my recent activity and not like, preemptively brace. And that's really great. That's a really no strange. It's made me sort of realize how quiet my recent activity can be. If I don't comment in a couple posts today, because like, there's just not updates to like the three week old threads that I had commented in. So I'm sort of getting trying to get back in a habit of like, oh, I should, yeah, go poke a couple things. And you know, leave a comment or add to activity just so like, there's action there when I want to say, Hey, show me some good stuff in my recent activity. Great. But yeah, so that only took us like 20 years to figure out was a useful tool for moderators. But we figured it out. And we've implemented it, and I'm very happy about it. And thanks again for Apple for making that happen.

Jessamyn 42:58 Thank you fumble that's so lovely. I need to, according to my contract mentioned this maple syrup post. Basically, Maurice has a quart of maple syrup and needs to use it and wants to hopefully use large amounts of it. What do you do?

Cortex 43:21 Is this because there's a space cowboy?

Jessamyn 43:24 Thanks for love.

Cortex 43:25 Yeah. Okay. glad we did that.

Jessamyn 43:31 Well, and there's just some suggestions because I mean, this is a problem, right? Like, I finally I don't know how long I have had a gallon of maple syrup in my refrigerator, probably since I almost moved in here. And I finally didn't entirely use it up but decanted into into the smaller container that I use for actually maple syrup. But sometimes it's hard to like use a lot of it, especially if you're not like a big sugar person, right? Like I've got a ton of molasses. And nothing, no recipe uses more than a quarter cup of molasses. I'm gonna have this molasses my whole life, you know? And so it's good to ask people I should ask people what to do with the molasses. I should see if I can do with the molasses what they did with the maple syrup. Maybe I'm gonna make cookies tonight. Tonight. But anyway, I like that probably

Cortex 44:19 one weird trick.

Jessamyn 44:21 Right? Maybe. Oh, speaking of you said one weird trick but if you had said if you had said one weird tick.

Cortex 44:32 What? No, I like it. I like it.

Jessamyn 44:35 Agent rocket is a Quizmaster for a trivia night and they have a general category that incorporates repeated words or phrases now this came out I think the day before we did the podcast maybe? I'm not sure but at any rate, it's enjoyable because it's just a whole bunch of people being goofy about like, you know you remember badger badger badger badger or like buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo or developers of Alpers developers, developers Location, Location Location, like everybody's got one or more.

Cortex 45:07 And we talked about it because I feel like I remember within recent the excitedly shouting Ballmer because the developers, developers, developers, so alright, but yes,

Jessamyn 45:17 so maybe we already mentioned it? Well, I've got this little trifecta of AskMe added filters that are all library related. What gift can I get for my wife to celebrate her new job as a librarian from none of the above. And, you know, their stuff, I actually got an maybe I'll have to find a picture of these, these adorable kind of like Van style slip on shoes. But the the, the pattern on them is like library checkout card. So they're like, wait, and they've got those like thin stripes on them. I'll have to find a picture from Jim they are they were such a good gift. He's like, I know, this is kind of like I bought it on the internet gift gift. Because normally we give each other like sweaters from the thrift store and stuff. He's like, but really, you had to have these and he was right. And then from Daisy as we got Daisy ace and Daisy K, our town library is building out its library of things. We're in a rural town in Massachusetts, aging population, blah. Here's the things we have. What are other things that libraries actually lend especially like, is there any data about any of this? Because it's kind of a thing you read about like Woon our library's lending ukuleles but like you never hear, like, but do they circulate? Like, do people break them? Like what happens? Right? Like even on the librarian side of things, you know, you kind of wonder and so Daisy is asked the question and had some answers. And then the third rule of threes. Is this from TJ hunt to hunt. Have you ever said that out loud?

Cortex 46:59 Yes, because I think it's terrible. And I think I had explained at some point, that for years, I had read it as Ted wound, just no, that doesn't mean anything, just like just like his name must be Ted Hoon. And only found out that I was wrong after I think maybe typing the wrong thing. And I met a talk thread a year or two ago and then realizing oh, my God, I've Berenstain Bears myself.

Jessamyn 47:29 Right, right, right. And so this was basically, hey, I use overdrive on my device. I get books out from three different libraries. I get hoopla from two libraries. Maybe I could use Libby, how do I keep track of all the digital content that I can get from various places? You know, help. Yeah. And so people give them some some, some good advice. But basically, it's you know, it's a good question, right? Like, a lot of people not always, but a lot of people can use more than one library. But it becomes really confusing to like login, logout, like, how does it work, blah. And so I liked it. So those are my three library posts.

Cortex 48:17 Next, I have a couple follow up type meta talks. One is a very long term follow up type thing. There's a documentary producer who is working on a documentary project related to the Kc and Nicole has

Jessamyn 48:31 contacted that person and never heard from them. I don't know. I'm just saying don't clip in case somebody else did.

Cortex 48:38 Yeah. But yeah, anyway, if you if you have memories about the whole case, in the cool thing back in the very early 2000s, do

Jessamyn 48:48 you want to like give like a two sentence summary of what it even is for?

Cortex 48:53 Nicole was a cheese it's it's been 20 years since I really had to think through it. Right. You know, Casey, Nicole is a person who didn't exist who got very sick and died. And her mom was very sad and also got money from people.

Jessamyn 49:08 And her mom was very public about her daughter's illness on the internet. And it was kind of before everybody had a GoFundMe. And a lot of people were really kind of plugged in to this person and trouble and her death. And people like gave the woman like money and stuff and oh my god, like blah. It was like back in the early blogger days when there just weren't a lot of bloggers.

Cortex 49:32 Yeah. What was like a Live Journal or just a Blogger account? I can't remember. But anyway, yeah, it was it was that thing and it was, you know, Munchausen syndrome by Muppet, essentially. Right. And

Jessamyn 49:43 so what it turned out was the pictures were of a real person. The real person was still alive. Though this woman had basically faked that that person was her daughter. She faked phone calls because people talk to this kid on the phone theoretic Actually, you know, she faked phone calls making her own children pretend to be this person who was again, like the photographs were of a real girl who was alive. But then she made a whole internet death thing and then got found out big. And it was like a really early internet thing where like, some people were like, weird. And other people were like, Dude, she just lost her daughter, you know, like,

Cortex 50:26 yeah, there were extremely strong feelings on metal filter, and elsewhere. But like, this was like a big thing in the early days of metal filter, too. So it was a very kind of central event that was full of weird feelings and drama and whatnot, as it developed. So if you didn't know about it, that's what that's about. If you're like, oh, shit, yeah, I remember I exchanged emails with quote unquote Casey or something, this documentary producer, we'd love to hear from you. And on a much smaller scale, in terms of update more recent there was a meta talk post from Sally Brown about that post about the glitter industry not wanting to talk about who their number one customer was, I missed

Jessamyn 51:07 it entirely.

Cortex 51:10 It's just like, I mean, go check out the original post, you know, it's just kind of an interesting sort of short, I want to say like article and maybe a video talking about glitter, its industrial uses. And among other things, there was the mystery of who the number one purchaser of this industrial glitter was. Because they very much would not talk about and that turned into sort of a thing. And it turns out, maybe it's the boat industry. Maybe the boat industry, you know, those glittery sparkly boats that exist, maybe that's because of glitter. Turns out is, is the answer, which is a very boring answer. And also maybe sort of the answer is boats. Yeah. speculation that it could be just like a really weird fragile masculinity thing. There's like, Well, dude, love boats, but dudes, you know, glitter is for girls, but like that. On the one hand, I want to say that's fucking ridiculous. On the other hand, a lot of shit is fucking ridiculous. So hey,

Jessamyn 52:02 endless thread. I mean, because I clicked the link and Sally Browns post. And it says endless threads solves the mystery.

Unknown Speaker 52:11 Yeah, I don't I don't know that podcast, so it's just some podcast. Looks like it.

Jessamyn 52:17 Dudes. Yep.

Cortex 52:19 Anyway, that's a couple updates from at a talk about stuff by God. Great. And then yeah, I don't know. I think I think that might be it. I think I think I'm gonna commit myself to doing the shorter podcasts that I claimed I was going to want to do.

Jessamyn 52:32 I think so. Oh, we talked about some stuff. We should mention the Palindrome. Yes. I kind of didn't pay that much attention, but whatever. There's some funny download drops in the thread. Yeah,

Cortex 52:45 yeah. Yes, it was a nice Palindrome day. We won't get another one that was for a very long time. Maybe the year 3030. Maybe there's one before that. I might depend on how you do the dates. I guess. You know, there'll be Palindrome days that aren't quite so fancy. Yeah. Anyway, that's a podcast we did it. It's a miracle congratulations to me and you and everyone listening we're all winners and yeah, you gotta

Jessamyn 53:19 know No, I was just looking at frickin palindromes. Ah I'm gonna keep using my ad blocker so I can answer this question.

Cortex 53:29 What do you call a camel that has heads on both ends? a palindrome after

Jessamyn 53:39 Yeah. Ah,

Cortex 53:41 attentive Macedon, readers will have seen that joke already. But it felt it was worth bringing to another channel, January 2020 21.

Jessamyn 53:46 And December to 2021. So there's go right

Cortex 53:51 yeah. Okay, that's that's fine.

Jessamyn 53:52 I'm just dropping some science on Yep.

Cortex 53:55 I was. I was overstating it. Thank you for factor

Jessamyn 53:58 and 10 days. Learn play starts up again.

Cortex 54:01 Yay. Oh, man. I'm gonna be fucking traveling. You're

Jessamyn 54:07 better get advanced access Josh malarkey.

Cortex 54:11 We will have access to the internet so we'll be able to do it. We just have to me and Angela both have to remember to do it during like a travel weekend setup. Yep, yep, we'll set them up. You can do it. But yeah, that's exciting. I didn't. I don't know if we really discussed this, but I did not. I didn't. What's the fucking word I'm looking for. forfeit. I didn't forfeit once last season, I finally had a season where I didn't forfeit once. I did very badly but I did very badly in rather than didn't very badly.

Jessamyn 54:47 I'm basically playing in the science fiction and fantasy mini League, and I have lost every day, except the one where my partner forfeited. I don't eat and I read science fiction every day.

Cortex 55:07 I didn't do any of the topics specific one so far because like, I bad enough when it's general, like, you know,

Jessamyn 55:12 sometimes it's better when it's like in your wheelhouse. I mean, and it's just a really good mini League, but it's hard. And it's fun. But it's hard. And I, like, I don't usually lose this badly. But at any rate, so I'm looking forward to general because I'll probably do better.

Cortex 55:30 Yeah, yeah. No, it'd be nice to be back in it. Yeah. Nice to

Jessamyn 55:33 be back in it. And we have a code of conduct now. And, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I miss it. Alright. I hope you have a good trip. Yeah,

Cortex 55:44 no, it was good. I hope you have a good night trip. being frozen inside your house in Vermont.

Jessamyn 55:51 Yeah, I storm it's fine. Yeah. Heat. Like normal there. Right. So yeah, yeah, no, it's super normal. Yeah, I didn't want to clean this off my car anyhow, fuck it. I'll just let it melt. I got I got food.

Cortex 56:04 All right. All right. Well, melt that snow and yeah, just gonna wait for it. Good. Good. Good podcast and I'll talk to you next month.

Jessamyn 56:13 Get Pascal? Probably. Forget it. Yes.

Cortex 56:18 But Posca pass your class got everybody. Skip. Pass.