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Podcast 165 Transcript
A transcript for Episode 165: Take What We've Got (2020-07-03).
Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.
Transcript
Cortex 0:00 A couple of things you
all right, we've got our solid half hour pre roll taken care of a nice little 15 minute podcast and we'll be in an even is wasn't like the first couple episodes like that sort of territory. It was like you and Matt saying, Oh, here's a nice leak. Here's a nice link metal filter.
Jessamyn 0:44 Alright. Matt before?
Cortex 0:45 Well, I know but like, it's like, yeah, so anyway, strange,
Jessamyn 0:50 Matt. But if you get him going, then he gets going. But if you don't get him going, he doesn't like whereas for me, I don't know about you. But like, if I'm not feeling it, I can kind of fake it. And I know I will eventually get into the swing of things. You know what I'm Yeah,
Cortex 1:09 yeah. Well, welcome to episode 165 of the podcast. Does 165 Just feel big? Yeah, yeah. It's funny that like, 164 wasn't that much smaller, but like, maybe it's the round number thing going by five years ago. That's, it's it's a big number. It's a it's a three digit number that's a lot bigger than 100. It's a round number, which feels kind of like a milestone. It's on the top half of this string of 100 episodes. Like it's, it's one and two thirds hundreds episodes almost. Yes. And yeah,
Jessamyn 1:44 yeah, exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Cortex 1:48 I would like to think I could have said it better. But we're taking what we got of the Metafilter multi podcast. That's what this is. And I am Josh cortex Mullard. And I'm Jessamyn. And we're podcasting. It is July 1, we're halfway through this nightmare of a year. And we're still here. And we're together. And yes, yeah. And
Jessamyn 2:08 that's literally halfway through, right. It's like 183 days in there's 180 days left. Yeah, down slope.
Cortex 2:15 I'm sorry, I didn't I didn't refer to my Julian calendar this morning. So I'm gonna have to take your word for it. Fuck, that's one right the Julian calendar. That's the one that word the there's the
Jessamyn 2:26 days I've told you about my level, right dyslexia, right. I can't remember if we are the Julian or the Gregorian calendar without actually looking
Cortex 2:33 okay, actually. Okay. So it is, I believe we are on the Julian calendar is the normal Julian, like the normal calendar we use? I'm trying to think of the phrase for like, this was a thing when I had some corporate job I had previously. Jobs. Yes. And one of them. I don't remember which one. This was a thing. Yeah, it
Jessamyn 2:53 was probably in problem.
Cortex 2:54 It was probably the insurance company job and not the call center company job because like dates, and tracking days correctly, is gonna matter a shitload more for like insurance policies. But like, there was always there was like, what, what's the day in the month, like normal calendar dates as we tend to think of them? And then there's the How many days has it been since January 1 thing, and there was something that was used to refer to that, and I keep trying to call it the Julian calendar. But I don't think that's right. But it might have been referred to as the Julian day or something in like, whatever fucking business conversation, I always had to talk about it with people in email. I'll see if I can pull it during the podcast, it's probably absolutely fucking maddening, then you want to actually have to deal with this on a regular basis? Right? Company 30 years, so fuck it. Yeah. Anyway, but yes, that's, that's where we are. It's July 1. Everything is still weird and complicated and terrible in the world, but not entirely terrible. There's good things in the world too, but also a lot of weird, complicated, terrible stuff. I've been CC going back and forth on that a whole lot. How about you? Me?
Jessamyn 4:01 Well, I usually deal with things being terrible by aggressively throwing myself into kind of working on it, which does mean kind of, by the end of the day, I'm exhausted. And that's kind of good. I mean, I'm spending a lot of time what I would consider to be in my lane, educating people on the racist history of librarianship and particularly library associations, especially in the segregation era, and America and talking to a whole bunch of other local librarians, which is Vermont local, which is itself kind of interesting. You know, both doing kind of education and also like, Okay, so now what, and, you know, that's been good. I think I told you before, I'm on the I'm the Vermont chapter counselor for the American Library Association. And so we completed our conference, first virtual conference, which was, you know, in some ways a shitshow. But in some ways it went okay. But we passed some resolutions about, you know, people's people's rights in libraries and how, you know, getting a group of people together to really reconsider how we use security and police in libraries. I mean, in my world, we would have just been like, fuck no police in libraries. Oh, how about no police? How's that sound? But But realistically, we have to kind of work with that. And so a resolution that the American Library Association is going to issue some official guidelines about how police are used in libraries. I think it's a start. It's not enough of a start for some people, which I super appreciate because getting stuff passed through a giant legislative body sucks. And it's unrewarding. But that's like an accomplishment that I feel like I helped helped draft the resolution. And I helped kind of get people to vote for it. And you know, other than that, it's just like I said, and for mine, it's been like, kind of keeping my head down, except for, you know, the various sort of protests and anti racist organizing, which I've been trying to help with, while at the same time, not really leave in my house that much. Yeah, that's it, making plans to maybe see my boyfriend for the first time in two and a half months. Almost six foot distance? Yep. So I don't talk about that too much. Because I can't get anywhere with it. Like, I'm just kind of pretending it's not happening. You know, we're both okay. We wrapped up our 10 year scramble. Season. It's so dumb, and all my computer's decided to break simultaneously. So, literally, I am typing to you from a computer that has a stuck Shift key. So I have to restart it holding the Option key. And it only works until it goes to sleep. Oh, man. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I pried the shift key off, and now I can't put it back together. And people are saying, so it's got a bunch of little lights staring at me. And people are saying, hey, Jessamyn like, weren't you just asking Bennett filter about a keyboard problem? Yes, but not this one. And my other computer turns off randomly. And so we're gonna vacuum all the dirt out of it later. But for now, I'm just using my laptop. So sorry, that was kind of a long answer to a short question.
Cortex 7:24 No, that's cool. I am stoked about the ALA thing. Especially that's
Jessamyn 7:28 yeah, I mean, it's hard, right? Because it's a huge bureaucracy. And so certain things, they're just suck, and are gonna continue to suck. And for people who are mad and need an organization that works faster and better. It's hard that that's what you have, I don't know of a lot of national organizations that aren't explicitly social justice organizations that can make this stuff work. I'm really hoping that some personnel changes at ALA, which just started happening, our going to make some differences like like the president of ALA, the incoming president. So they've got an executive director whose staff and then the president who's the librarian elected every year, and the the incoming president, who is sort of serious business, just like the outgoing president, who was also serious business about this. Had to LA has his first official act was having ala issue a statement, that was basically like, ala wasn't built on inclusion and equity, it was built on systemic racism and discrimination. We recognize the hurt and harm done to you know, bi POC bipoc library workers and communities due to these racist structures. And like, that's a big deal. I, yeah. And the right direction. I really think you can't just be like, yeah, diversity and inclusion without being like, actually, you know, the founding of this really wasn't that and so we're, we're, we're, we're doing something different than starting from scratch, like, Yay, diversity. We are we have to undo the bad shit that we did first. Yeah. And so I appreciate that. And I do think a national organization, making statements like that is helpful to smaller libraries that are struggling. Yeah. My Library is kind of on board, but many of them aren't, really aren't very much aren't, you know, and how do you how do you work with that? Well, you start changing the culture from above if you have to.
Cortex 9:31 Yeah, and you model that, that sort of like set of possibilities, you you establish that this is, in fact, something that you can say something, you can take action on something that doesn't have to be treated as like, okay, but that would be so complicated,
Jessamyn 9:44 right? And it's like you're seeing with a lot of these Confederate statues, you know, it is one thing to just be like, Fuck it, take it down, burn it all to the ground and start new. It's another to be like, let me explain why you even have these Confederate statues and the harm that they did and why they need to come down for that reason. I mean, watching Mississippi changing their state flag and like, yeah, a week, I think is a really great example, Mississippi has got some real problems still. But watching that happen in a week, basically puts everybody else on notice who was like, Man, my heritage, it's hard to be like, dude, if Mississippi can change their flag in a week, why can't you change your racist mascot? You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyhow, that's, that's my little grumping about that. But some of this stuff needs to be done by boots on the ground people, but some of it needs to be done by major organizations who are just like, No more, no more. And, you know, whatever needs to happen with the police. It also needs to happen to the structures that the police exist inside of, you know, the prison system, the, the, you know, white people mentioned system, the all these other terrible systems. And you know, it's all gotta go. So it's gonna be interesting to see how big organizations can deal with that. Meta filter.
Cortex 11:05 Right, when I take a sip of water
Unknown Speaker 11:10 I didn't know.
Cortex 11:13 This is why we should be doing this on zoom so that like, the government can spy on it, and also the audio quality would be worse. But you'd be able to see the I mean, I still I'd like I need. It is the tool that is working for certain things. It's like, good. But anyway, let's talk about metal filter. Let's I like I like that plan. That's a good one. Hey. Yeah, I guess we just we can start on the top. You know, there's the Mefi jobs. There were several jobs posted in June.
Jessamyn 11:43 Yeah, I think there's a lot of good be five jobs. I like this one, which is from Meet Bob, who's been back around again, which has been great to see him. He wants to do some educational company, maybe kind of a big thing. Hard to say. Big deal. Speculative. But I think it's actually a real job. And so if you're somebody who's like an admin person who's interested in kind of like international educational development, you should definitely talk to him. I can guarantee he is lovely.
Cortex 12:19 If you are a project, or product manager type person in the vicinity of New Castle, Delaware, hey, there's a job at zenith,
Jessamyn 12:30 Zenith television people?
Cortex 12:33 I assume so. But I don't know.
Jessamyn 12:36 I didn't see it.
Cortex 12:38 No, next posted this and yeah, check that out. Oh, Phoenix,
Jessamyn 12:44 market leader and bathroom consumer products, not the television people, interesting. Bathroom consumer products. You know, I'm really waiting for all these work from home jobs to materialize. You know, I felt like, I felt like when Twitter and like some of the other big companies were like, oh, yeah, we're just converting to like work from home jobs. Like that's just it. I'm like, okay, indeed.com should completely fill up with work from home jobs. And it just kind of hasn't happened yet. Or like edtech people, right? Because all these teachers are trying to figure out how to do the next semester, you know, and that's on the forefront of everybody's mind. And oh, my gosh, so difficult. But you would think that there would be more middle management jobs that would show up in those ranges. And they haven't quite yet. Because here I am in Vermont, with like, five half working computers. And my internet mostly works like, hey, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. And ah, sorry, moving around my tabs. Tracy has a small business that had a WordPress site kind of Frankenstein together. And it's got a blog and a podcast. And it promotes astrology services, and Patreon and a couple other things a decent paying job. Help them redesign it, show show them some examples. But that's a nice, nice, solid, Woody webI job. So hey,
Cortex 14:21 and Phoenix, he is looking for an API technical writer. And that's another remote position.
Jessamyn 14:25 Hey, what does that even mean?
Cortex 14:28 Probably API documentation.
Jessamyn 14:31 Contract decorator. help us improve. Right? I could do that. Oh, I don't have any programming experience. Yeah. Isn't it always the way Josh? Yep.
Cortex 14:40 Yeah. And there's, there's a couple more things in there, too. There's enough jobs that we probably should just not go through all the jobs. That's a good, that's a good month for jobs. Yeah.
Jessamyn 14:47 And, you know, if you've got more jobs, but the job site, you know what I was thinking about today, as I was mulling over things to talk about, like, Wouldn't it be kinda nice if there was like a running sidebar on metal filter jobs, which was just like a really cool job you found somewhere else on the web.
Cortex 15:06 Like, just signal boosting. Yeah, like
Jessamyn 15:08 kind of the way, like, if you're in fanfare, you can add a link to a review of that show in a little sidebar. I mean, there's ways it could be spammed and whatever, but you should do it, you know, in some fairly mellow way. But like, every now and again, I see a job. That's just the coolest and like, whatever, I put it on Twitter, and I signal boosted there.
Cortex 15:28 Yeah, but you're not looking for that job. You're not offering that job, where would that go on.
Jessamyn 15:34 But I do feel like, you know, it's maybe something that the deep nerd culture of metal filter would have the perfect person for. And a lot of times I will ping the person and be like, maybe you should get an account on metal filter, or maybe you already have an account on metal filter. You should post this because a lot of eyeballs will see it. But yeah, I just have always felt like our, you know, especially like just, you know, opportunities for people. Yeah, who do work at home or who do have like different challenges in kind of, you know, mainstream work situations, finding like the cool work at home job that does this, that or the other will be kind of neat. I often think about that. Like what else would I like to see? Round all the other things I like to see. So
Cortex 16:21 should we move on to projects? Yes. All right projects. There are some projects there's there's one from just yesterday that I am delighted by this was from overeducated alligator who made a site called singing Bush dot online which I still cannot fucking get over the fact that we have a ton of TLDs that sound like jokes people made about the Internet back when they didn't understand the Internet. Like hey, where's my dot horses? Something someone would have said in like 1998 is a perfect parody of the idea of people not knowing about websites now it's like oh, that's no he probably someone probably has registered Where's right God horse. Anyway, the point is over educator has ADD to seeing Bush dot online an animated singing Bush from Three Amigos and three amigos was a foundational fucking movie in my childhood. So like
Jessamyn 17:15 this is maybe one that I either haven't seen or haven't seen in such a long time. Yeah, that I don't entirely I mean, that's the one with like, John Candy Steve Martin and Martin Short.
Cortex 17:25 It's a Chevy Chase, not junk candy. Oh, and there are three silent film actors who play the Three Amigos in like early 20th century. And then they get hired by someone from a small town in Mexico who's being ravaged by the terrible warlord El Guapo. And is under the impression that the three amigos are real heroes and not a bunch of like dopey actors from Los Angeles or whatever. And, and high jinks ensue. And it's like, you know, it's one of those early SNL cast movies before like SNL cast movie started to feel like they were really trying too hard.
Jessamyn 18:02 Nigel Roxbury.
Cortex 18:03 Yeah. So instead of like, you know, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, make a movie. And it's funny, and it's like, you know, it's still a little bit of a goofy mess the way you
Jessamyn 18:11 expect. And so SNL spin off movie, I felt like that was a little bit more before kind of the SNL machine had really Yeah,
Cortex 18:18 like, I mean, I'd be curious to hear about that. I don't really know if there was a sense of a machine back then. Or if it's more just like these people knew each other. And they were making movies,
Jessamyn 18:29 because it was John Landis, right? Who was sure. I don't remember, I'm like looking at Wikipedia now.
Cortex 18:37 But in any case, it has it has that vibe in retrospect of being alright. This is what we ended up seeing a lot more. Also, as an aside, I asked for people to check on the mailing list and they did not see your email. So there's something weird going on. We'll check on that. Yeah, that is what I mean. Like, literally, the email is not there. Did you not see my email? I saw your email and I assume Trimble site to send it to Trimble? No, because I saw that Trimble was on it too, and that they would get it. So there's something up with email there. Anyway, the point is, yeah, that's weird. We had some other birth with email recently, too. So I took the server mixture.
Jessamyn 19:14 And as I've told you, and I'm going to tell you again, on the record, I think having email that comes in with the word urgent in the subject line is actually getting a lot of stuff, flagged as spam, and you should fix it and you haven't. That's another thing that could maybe go on the list. It can have some other word.
Cortex 19:31 It's urgent. I think we'll just I think we'll just ditch it entirely. It just has to get implemented. Which implementation priorities this is tricky that way, but we should get rid of it because it's not doing us any
Jessamyn 19:43 use. And I think it is sending stuff to spam so might
Cortex 19:47 be well and the fact that like the people who use urgent the most are spammers. So that's, that's why
Jessamyn 19:52 exactly. I mean, it could it could even have like attention mods in the subject line and I think it would probably be fine. I mean, it's not like it's aggravating for me, sort of continuing to be on the mod email list. But realistically, if I'm on the mod email list, I have opinions about things. And I would like to have fewer opinions about Metafilter briefly. So I can just I can segue back into being a user after being kind of a part time mod for a couple months.
Cortex 20:21 Yeah. Which, which thank you again, for that that was useful and has made it possible for us to navigate this whole hiring and training process. In a normally tangible
Jessamyn 20:32 way. Bad shifts, like the kind of Saturday, Sunday afternoon shift would not be the greatest because I have a boyfriend and that's when I see him. But well, you know, if my shits out the window, I may as well be able to use that to good advantage. Like, I'm gonna have a two day weekend this weekend for the first time since before and it's gonna be interesting. I don't know what I'm gonna do a little freaked out
Cortex 20:56 a little bit have a hard time figuring out what to do with time off when I actually do take time off. It's a little bit tricky.
Jessamyn 21:03 Yeah, yeah. Well, and also, it's kind of holiday weekend. And around here we have a terrible COVID compliance. We have super low numbers, but as a result, we also have nobody doing shit with like masks or anything. And it's probably fine. It doesn't affect my day to day life, but it does affect my making plans to do a thing on a holiday. You know what I mean? There have been all these tiny breakouts, the tiny breakouts are all like groups of families. You kind of know what happened. And I just don't want to be near any of those people. So we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll just stay home and bake. I could work yeah, baking has been good. I enjoyed the metal cocktails. What's cooking. I like talking about food. I like getting recipes from people. And I like it when it's not so hot that I can't turn the oven on which it was a week ago. When is better now.
Cortex 21:57 Excuse me. And
Jessamyn 21:59 also I know over edge over educated alligator in person, and she's delightful. And I owe her a dinner. Because I think as I told you she did illustrations of my sister's cats for a holiday time present. She drew a picture of my cats. My sister's cat says heroes. Yeah, same person. Nice. Very talented.
Cortex 22:24 You're covering the bases over educate. I'll get her. Yes. Anyway, that was that was our long complicated way of saying good job on seeing Bush online. I'm delighted by it.
Unknown Speaker 22:31 Yes. No is the matter.
Jessamyn 23:00 Well, at least speaking of other things that I found delighted, delightful. Thomas Park, Tomas Park, Thomas Park al Jaffe, he's retiring at age 99. I should also say rip Carl Reiner, though I assume there's a thread about this. Yeah. And. And there was that folden, which was a big deal part of my childhood because I was kind of exactly the right age, right? Were mad was like a tiny bit titillating. But like, really. And like you go back and read it now. And some of it's a little difficult because of course, it's you know, humor comes from exaggeration. And so some of it is very sexist and racist, and a problem. But it's still fun. And basically, Thomas Park did a Mad Magazine fold in effect in CSS, where you can basically look at an A thing that was a fold in and like mouse over it, and it'll fold itself on a webpage. And it's really good. And I noticed the second one is completely metal filter colors. Seriously, tell me it's not right.
Cortex 24:13 No, no, I'm going to look at Yeah, that that's a pretty solid. Oh, oh, 6699 blue there.
Jessamyn 24:18 Yep. Yep. But this is just, it's lovely. It's CSS. It is classy. And you can just write it with HTML. And it's really cool. And I always I always kind of like this. And of course, then people are like, wow, it doesn't work on iOS.
Unknown Speaker 24:37 Like I mean, I free thing it won't work on my phone. It's
Cortex 24:43 it's tricky. Like I have so much less enthusiasm to try and build little web toys at this point that I did like 1015 years ago, partly because like, I don't want to fucking deal with like the amount of framework it was required to do a dumb little thing that just even functions well on desktop and mobile. will let alone anything that involves anything complicated like it really has. It's a mixture of things have gotten more complicated. And also I've gotten more aware of wanting to make sure things work on stuff like 15 years ago, if I made a dumb little joke website, I wouldn't have thought twice about whether or not worked on phones, phones were less of a thing. And also, I just wasn't prioritizing that. And now I'm like, well, if I'm going to make a tiny little scrap of a website that I am never going to update, I still want to make sure it also has a proper, you know, reactive code for mobile, so that it won't just be tiny little text in a thumb, you know, like, like a thumbnail on someone's phone. I want it to like flow. So it's readable text, and like, it doesn't take a ton of work. Do that for something that does literally nothing. But anything that's fucking interactive is gonna be so much more of a kind of a nightmare to navigate, I would imagine.
Jessamyn 25:52 Right, right. Right, right. I mean, for me, like my, my sort of first thing is, does it work at all? And then my second thing is, is it accessible? Like, you know, basic level labels and alt text and everything else? But beyond that, I just doesn't work on edge for Windows 10.
Cortex 26:15 Yeah, anyway, good job on that, dude. That was nice. And yeah, there's a bunch of other there's a bunch of other projects stuff, too. I haven't spent basically any time with the stuff on projects this month, but I saw stuff that is on my Oh, I want to get back to that. One of those is of a poet, made a puzzle game. It's just a sort of Logic II puzzle combination lock game, which I tend to like that sort of thing. So at some point, I'm going to try and spin it up and give it a go. Yeah, but haven't played Yes.
Jessamyn 26:59 Dang it. Yes. Yeah, I have one more obviously, obviously. I mean, obviously, because if you know me, I mean, I really feel like you're
Cortex 27:11 the Colombo of this podcast. There's always just one more thing. Is that is that is that that's the thing. It's Oh, you know, he'd be like, Oh, okay. Well, I guess you didn't I guess I'll just, oh, you know, one more thing.
Jessamyn 27:26 Right. Well, I feel like I'm
Cortex 27:30 highly original. The original cut of the Princess Bride right at the end. Grandpa on the way out, turns around says add one more thing and then Kevin ends up going to jail for murder.
Jessamyn 27:39 Fuck Josh. I thought you were gonna teach me something interesting. I'm sorry. You just set me up. Meanwhile, Jim is like texting me like from his fucking porch. He's like, I'm going into a meeting. Wish me luck. I'm like, buddy, I told you. I'm podcasting. Why are you continuing to text me? And it's just because he loves me. Which I'm sure is you know why you tell me these terrible jokes. Because that would have been great. Up until the point where it became a terrible joke. Also, let's not joke about prison.
Cortex 28:12 That Well, okay. Oh my god.
The point at which I've stuck laughing like an idiot because I should yeah, anyway. Yes. Fuck the carceral state. Right. Kevin did not actually go to prison for murder and he shouldn't have. Yes, let's move on.
Jessamyn 28:34 But that would have been me saying that would have been great. Well, sometimes I feel like if like, like, Okay, I'm gonna backup. I've been watching more things on Facebook Live lately. One of which I'll get to later. But the other which like I belong to this, like trivia competition thing called the Inkling, which is like a print. Like, you pay a little bit of money and you get like, kind of a cool pin. And like a 40 question trivia thing that you get to complete over like a month, or two months or something. But then there's like the big like, we tell you the answers on Facebook Live, right. And so I don't know if you use Facebook live much at all. But like, there's, there's kind of a chat. It's like Twitch, right? There's like a chat thing that kind of runs down the side or twitches like it, I don't know. But basically, you're all watching the same thing. And then there's kind of like a grab as chat room where people are talking and sending emojis and clicking likes and whatever. And and it's fine, but like I don't interact with Facebook very much at all. But I keep it for reasons. And it just sort of occurred to me that because I've gotten really deep into a couple Facebook Live things. All of the sudden Facebook has a ton more information on me than they had in the past with my very carefully curated not much interactions. And so I was you know started think about kind of the Facebook Borg machine and like Well, now suddenly they know stuff about me. And those things are that I like baseball and trivia, whereas they basically never knew any of that before. And so I think about that with metal filter where, you know, this podcast, I talk a lot about the kinds of things I like I'm at a filter, which are specific kind of thing, and that you talk about the kinds of things you like, I met a filter, which is a specific kind of thing. And I almost feel like we could get to a point where like, some AI bot could literally go through the set of links and stuff that we talk about on the podcast page and tell me that of course, I would like this bird call identification competition project by Kai butuh. Because basically, it's a machine learning competition for bird identification. Nice. Which is a surprisingly difficult problem. I'm not surprised. But you know, of course, but like a really interesting thing working with Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Cal Academy of Sciences. And so trying to kind of figure out how, how this goes. And you know, the basic thing as John Goren asks in the thread is like, oh, it's like Shazam, for birds. Why is, right, because that's what we want, like Jim recorded and, you know, it's an asked me question this month, like a random bird call, he kind of got a picture of the bird, but he could definitely loudly hear the bird call. And he's like, it's not like anything, I think. And so Jim believes there's like, a million kinds of birds that he's likely to see when realistically, there's probably, you know, because he lives in the suburbs, and there's only certain, you know, birds, but like, it wasn't one of the 10. And he was confused. And you know, somebody with a good ear in the thread was like, oh, that's, you know, a cardinal, because of these reasons, you can hear another version of it here, blah. But it's the thing that human ears can do pretty well. And computer ears are actually kind of shit at it. And so I was really interested to see this project post, because it's tricky. So it's like, you know, you have to train it, obviously, on a corpus, and then what corpus do you take? And that's a big deal. But library. At any rate, yeah, fascinating. And an AI robot would have served this to me if we were living in a positive future, as opposed to this hellscape where we find ourselves.
Cortex 32:34 Yeah. Which, you know, here's to the hellscape. I've got a, I've got a pint glass of water that I'm drinking from, because that's a good amount of water to have for the duration. I was
Jessamyn 32:47 sure you were gonna say pine cone.
Cortex 32:49 Yeah, I've got a pine cone of water. Well, but the thing is, it's a pint glass. And so like, I have this tendency to want to cheers to stuff. And so I'm choosing to literally no one because this is a strictly audio medium.
Jessamyn 33:03 Everybody knows me. Well, I
Cortex 33:06 am but like, you know, no one, you would know it was happening unless I said, so I guess I'm just telling you that that I'm hoisting a class hardly to. I think the hellscape is what I was hearing. So I don't even know where I'm going with this. But
Jessamyn 33:17 as per usual, okay, um, well, and here's another thing about like, you know, all my broken computers, and but also all the broken interfaces, like Facebook Live is very CPU intensive, especially if you're viewing it on an older computer, which all of mine are, right? Like, when I complain about my computer that's not working very well, you should know that Matt bought it for me when I worked at meta filter. So like,
Cortex 33:45 twigs on it gives you
Jessamyn 33:46 an idea of like, what the fuck my problem is. But um, but like Facebook Live, you know, you can use emoji on Facebook, right, but the emoji viewer on Facebook is terrible. Like it itself is memory intensive, when it definitely shouldn't be. And so a lot of times, I'll have like messages open in a different window. And I will, like pretend like I'm gonna send a text, use the searchable emoji viewer that's there. And then find the emoji copy the emoji and then paste it into Facebook. And at doing this, it's totally like, you know, all of those things my mom had held together with rubber bands, and all those weird like paper clips bullshit, like, totally ganked together things. But you know, I have my own and I know there's an immune emoji viewer and the Keyboard Viewer and I know you can search it, but for some reason, it makes it really hard to copy the emojis out of if anybody knows how to copy the emojis out of useful the character viewer, I would like to hear about it. Because I have a hard time I like to search for emojis because they know what they're called. And the Facebook thing doesn't let you do it. So yeah, cheers. Here's two emojis.
Cortex 35:01 Yes. Should we move on to Metafilter? Proper? I would. All right.
Jessamyn 35:09 What I don't
Cortex 35:12 know. Let's talk about medical term. All right. So
Jessamyn 35:15 what I was talking about before is, you know, I finally made a post about what I've actually been doing with an awful lot of my time, which is watching seventh inning stretch on Facebook Live, which is Josh Kent or the Fenway Park organist, and also musician in a lot of local Boston bands as well as the baseball project. He doesn't have a job right now. Or rather, he's a part time librarian at Harvard, of all the things. So like Horace Rumpole, I hope you guys get to work together at some point. And he basically does a request show from his house every day at three except Saturday, Sunday, because his wife is a reverend. And so she has riveting to do. And he plays requests and talks about baseball. And there's a little community of people that goes between, you know, I don't know, 150 people that like 400 people when they get major media mentions, and you can like, make requests, he played LMFAO party rockin for me yesterday, and from his home and it's just a great way to spend an hour in a day. And you know, I made like a little post about it on Metafilter. May I forget it?
Cortex 36:37 I feel like maybe we talked about this. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 36:39 Well, I forgot to remove it. Like Wait,
Cortex 36:42 no, that was just that was just two weeks ago. Now. There was a month and a half ago. Fuck. Okay. Anyway,
Jessamyn 36:47 that's simultaneously happening at once.
Cortex 36:51 That's our new clip show segment. What are we talking about last month?
Jessamyn 36:58 At any rate, that's still good. And so now you can contextualize all of my facebook live stuff with that's the thing I was watching. Yeah. All right. I can actually talk about the rest of metal filter because I did sure
Cortex 37:09 I guess there's a post from from yesterday. Spam and Kim Chi posted about the schwa and and linked Soozee Azzam which is the podcast that I I'm sure we've talked about it before. But yeah, do a podcast I very much like calling Susie Azzam where they just talk about a different linguistics topic every, every every couple weeks every month. I'm trying to remember what their timeline is. Anyway, I've been my podcasts are a mess right now. But anyway,
Jessamyn 37:42 new a podcast in two months, because I haven't driven anywhere for more than four miles since.
Cortex 37:47 Yeah, so me and Angela sit around, like do like craft art stuff in the evening and listen to a podcast. Oh, nice. So we've been able to do a lot of podcasting. And also I've not enough because I can only do so much, you know, of that in any given Well, it's like a
Jessamyn 38:01 one minute equals one minute thing, right? I mean, that's a challenge. Yeah.
Cortex 38:06 But anyway, the schwa the schwa is in English, the schwa. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a really interesting sort of, bit of Clue linguistically, it's this sound, this unstressed vowel sound that is hugely permeated through our language and language. In general. It's like, the unstressed vowel the schwa and schwa. Like thing, it's not just an English thing, it's in English, it's this huge central thing, different, different languages, and even different like dialects within a language will have different sort of sounds, pulling holding the same role of essentially being this kind of transitional thing. This this is called an unstressed vowel shot. If you think about it, when you make that noise, your mouth is just kind of chill your tongue is just kind of chill your tongues in sort of the center of your mouth. You know,
Jessamyn 39:04 it's funner than you think.
Cortex 39:07 And this is this is written as an upside down E is the IPA rendering of the schwa. And it's the sound that like you don't really think about like it's, you know, we don't spell things with an upside down E. You know, but there's a ton of vowels in in English and particulars, you know, English is what I'm familiar with from speaking it. And it's most of the context I have for what linguistics I picked up over the years. And it's it does a tremendous amount of work while not seeming like it's there. It's kind of like the way articles do a ton of work in in, you know, the English language. We use the an app and am constantly like, it's hard to put together a sentence of any length that doesn't involve articles, but we also don't really think about articles, you know, like, they don't seem like they have a big semantic charge to them. Like the point you're trying to make in any given sentence is not the word though. It's
Jessamyn 39:59 for Um, words versus function words, right? I mean, I think it's the same thing with pronouns and that people have been really being like, Yeah, but actually pronouns do a lot of heavy lifting and how we construct, you know, our sort of gender ideas in our head. And so they're hard to change, because they're function words, but they're very important. Because they also kind of mimic as former
Cortex 40:20 and they have a flexibility to them that we don't think about until we're actually trying to change how how we use them, you know, that's the thing like, like, if you were coming from a habit of not having definite article versus an indefinite article, and you came to English, and there's love versus a, you know, that's, that's something that would really strike you. But at the same time, if you just didn't really think about the idea of navigating between definite and indefinite articles, and then suddenly, something, put it on your radar that you need to think about that. You might think, oh, but it's really hard to navigate. That was like, Well, no, you navigate it all the time. You just don't think about this use case usually. So you're not used to. Right, right? Right, right. Anyway, so the swash shows up all over the place in very interesting ways. I'm looking forward to listen to this episode, which I haven't listened to, I could probably guess a couple of things I'll touch on just because of my interest in the subject. But mostly I want to go listen to it. And I want to say hey, go listen to this podcast. It's a very fun podcast. It's very accessible. Gretchen and Lauren are awesome about sort of talking about linguistics without getting deep in the fucking weeds or burying things in jargon. It's
Jessamyn 41:27 all over Twitter. She is super friendly and talkative. And so if you want to get an idea if you would like it, checking her out on Twitter would also be another way.
Cortex 41:37 Yeah, and I'm sure someone mentioned in the in the thread, but like, she's also the author of because internet, which we've talked about that. So good, which is another very good source on internet and language and stuff. So anyway, I really, I'm glad to see that then I'm gonna have to get caught up on my link doozy Awesome, good.
Jessamyn 41:54 Great. I wanted to give a shout out to this post by back up into fulfilling a request that was made in 2006. For basically a post about I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this right. It tore my my Aruna Maturana major Ana, basically a person who was a heavy duty scientist, did some amazing work, and then vanish. And what happened, what do people think happened? Et cetera, et cetera, people are fascinated by it. And this post, but I think he does a really good sort of overarching look at it not not a whole bunch of, I mean, it's one of those nine comments, 44 favorites kind of thing. But really well done. Really interesting. And it's kind of one of those things that I think makes a great metaphor post because there's kind of like the hook, which is like, well, this is kind of what this post is about. But then if you want to read more sort of supporting stuff, there's a whole bunch of supporting stuff around it very useful.
Cortex 43:08 Yeah, that's nice. Yeah. I really enjoyed finding about the band. X IEXEY E. This is a post that yes, Aman made Yeah, there we go. And they're a experimental metal band. fronted by a guy I wasn't familiar with, but apparently everybody else's name Colin Stetson. Who is I playing saxophone
Jessamyn 43:39 that helps. That does
Cortex 43:41 help. Okay. Anyway, it's, it's fantastic. It's just like it's it's it's weird instrumental metal, led by saxophone it's like saxophone and synth and drums and nice. I think guitar in there too. It's really great. It's really great. They've got like one album, and then they've got a live album of them performing that album. They're both very good and I've listened to them a bunch since post went up, which I feel like okay, it was like a week ago okay, it makes sense that I've listened to I haven't really been listening with nonstop but I've been listening to it a bunch
Jessamyn 44:18 I don't think I mean, I don't know about you, but like I have I've listened to very little new music just because like the same Enos of everything is actually somehow easier to handle. If nothing changes.
Cortex 44:30 I go back to comfort albums. Yeah, at various degrees of depth of comfort a lot. Like I tend to really have like two or three albums in rotation, but I don't usually listen to the same album more than like once a day because I don't want like really, really wear it out from fatigue.
Jessamyn 44:43 Interesting. I'll just set something on repeat and listen to it for eight hours until I'm like, Yeah, I can't I can't do the song is coming. I
Cortex 44:50 know it. I know that I enjoy it more even in the passive listening if I'm moving through stuff. So all this, someone's discography today, I'll go through like the entire Sleater Kinney does the day sometimes. But like, I'm not going to listen to dig me out eight times in a row because I'm going to start to like, check, just to get worn out on it. And I don't want to feel worn out about an album I really like so yeah. Anyway, this is good exercise. Good. I really liked it. And I appreciate it hitting my radar. And yes, man made a really nice post about it. Like the post could have been like, literally listen to this album. I'm like, okay, solid. I'm on board, but
Jessamyn 45:28 more stuff like, Oh, here's who the people are. And here's where you might know that I want to find
Cortex 45:33 out more about him because it does seem like the people who did recognize them, like holy shit is Colin Stetson. Sweet as like, okay, there's something going on here. Right? Right. Right, right. That's a good listen. Or you might absolutely hate it. Like, it's definitely sort of like, if you did this. Well, I'm
Jessamyn 45:47 not even gonna think about listening to it. Yeah. But I'm sure it's lovely. And I'm going to suggest that Jim listen to it because he will probably like it. Finisher I will not.
Speaking of things to listen to that some people enjoy and some people really don't enjoy. I just wanted to sort of point out not in I love this thread. But in an it was a really interesting thread. And it's one of the things I love about metta filter was what the fuck is going on with the fireworks. Right? In the wake of George Floyd's murder, and lots and lots of protesting and people just get out. Citizen versus cop activity going on. Many people are reporting lots of fireworks. And many other people are like ads, right before Fourth of July, whatever. And so there's sort of an open question about what the fuck is going on with the fireworks. This thread was not always easy. There were a bunch of people who had, you know, various sort of pushback things to say about it. But I enjoyed getting to read from a bunch of not necessarily invested people. Not that you aren't invested in your community, but you're not part of Team fireworks are team anti fireworks. You're just a person in a neighborhood reporting what's going on where they are, you know what I mean? Because like, here in Vermont, where I live, there's the same amount of nighttime, maybe fireworks, maybe gunfire noise, right? Yeah, that's my report. And gunfire isn't weird here. It's normal. And even though that's weird, whatever. And so I really read this thread with interest. I mean, I also read it kind of with Mod eyeballs, because, of course, that was kind of my job at the time. But it was just super interesting. Because, you know, is it a conspiracy theory? If you think X, Y or Z? Is it not a conspiracy there? Is it a completely reasonable thing to think because one of the things we know about the police is that they lie, frankly. And so when you're when you're looking at what official statements are about things, but then trying to kind of read between the lines and be like, Well, why would they be saying that thing? You know, there's a good chance, it's not true? What can I learn about that? And so it was an interesting hive mind, like I said, not always an easy thread to read. But a bunch of people came to it with good links, things to think about, et cetera, et cetera. And um, you know, it was a difficult thread, but it was a thread that I thought was had utility, and it made me happy that meta filter was here.
Cortex 48:49 Yeah, I, like I had misgivings about leaving the post up originally when it came in, just because like, well, this is sort of like a link to a Twitter thread. Yeah, it's a link to a Twitter thread. And so we're basically the content we have is people having to navigate a Twitter thread and a specific take on it. And as footing for this, that's difficult, especially if there is like a sense of people being like, okay, but it's this sort of conspiratorial thinking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But leaving it up, I'm glad that the thread had as much thoughtful content as it ended up having it and yet, like Ray came out of that thread, with a much broader set of sort of contexts for thinking about,
Jessamyn 49:28 well, that was exactly it for me. Like, I'm like, I don't know what fireworks in this city are like, normally, you know, and hearing people talking about that, where fireworks are legal and where they're not legal, how much people know about the legality and the non legality of their fireworks situation. Yeah, very, very interesting. All the way all the way all the way around.
Cortex 49:50 Let's see there was this really great piece of animation that I liked. This is this is another sort of like thread that goes A handful of comments. And that was it. But I really really liked the animation. This was a post by 1970s antihero to an animation called twins in paradise that's about five minutes long. And it's a very trippy, very effectively, visually and audio design sort of broken, like nonlinear narrative look into a pair of like young twin girls who are clearly like national, like tennis champ, like level competition. And sort of talking about drugs and depression and sort of a cynical dystopian view of the nature of the world.
Jessamyn 50:41 Another thing I am not clicking.
Cortex 50:44 And this is a thing like we ended up adding, I'm gonna
Jessamyn 50:47 ask you Did it have this content note at the beginning? Because I'm looking at how this thread went in the notes?
Cortex 50:53 Yeah, it didn't initially and like, yeah, that's like, part of the context here is there were some comments leaving from someone who basically had an immediate, like, bad reaction while they were having a bad time. And like, I think their reaction is like, they felt what they felt like, you know, so we ended up like cleaning some of that up
Jessamyn 51:08 just, by the way, about suicide and nuclear, whatever. Yeah, yeah. But we
Cortex 51:13 also didn't want the thread to be about that. One person specific reaction, especially since they were immediately after was like, oh, boy, I'm just having a bad day, please. Let's not do that, of course. So we added it. Yeah, that was a thing that happened during one of traveling times, shifts that day. And we talked through just adding a content note. And they wrote it up and added to the post. And now people knew what they were getting into. So hey,
Jessamyn 51:35 great. And for people who like that kind of thing. It is good.
Cortex 51:39 Yeah. Because like this is this is the same things that make it worth having a sort of a note about the content are what makes it a really effective piece of animation. Like it's very good. It's and it's not good in some dumbfuck edgy sort of like, Oh, check it out drugs and suicide. It's like, it's just, it's, this is a very weird comparison to make, because totally, it's not there. But like, it's kind of like a alternate five minute long animated take on some of the themes in like, Infinite Jest, like we're playing tennis, and a dystopian picture. Like, it's weird, right? Like, I put that out there very purposefully, because I don't think that's what's going on with it. And I think it's more interesting than it would
Jessamyn 52:15 be, that is a take that is interesting and pushes good buttons for you. This is a great short version of that. Yeah.
Cortex 52:22 If you want a five minute long that actually has an ending. You might really
Jessamyn 52:30 like death and or destruction.
Cortex 52:32 I mean, it's five minutes long. And if you want to watch it, what I do not, then then find out.
Jessamyn 52:38 I'm gonna make Jim watch it and tell me what happens. Sure. Okay.
Cortex 52:42 So yes, there was that on a much more like, bland, pleasant note, there's also foci for analysis made a post about a page illustrating easing functions. Which does, he says in the post objects in real life, don't just start and stop instantly and almost never move at a constant speed, this page helps you choose the right easing function is what it's an animation and sort of simulation thing. If you think about how something goes from moving to not moving, you know, it has to follow some kind of curve of deceleration or acceleration if it's starting to move. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that. Anybody who's done like their first attempt at computerized animation has made something go faster by making it go, you know, x faster every second. And you just get this weird live. Oh, that flew into the fucking stratosphere, apparently, because like, Oh, that's not how that's not how acceleration works for
Jessamyn 53:45 anybody who's done, you know, PowerPoint slide transitions. Yeah. Notice, kind of what's graceful and what's not.
Cortex 53:53 Yeah. All of that stuff comes down to you need you need a way to describe the curve along which acceleration of
Jessamyn 54:01 character limit, characterless?
Cortex 54:03 Well, you know, you've got you've got, you've got speed, right. And then you've got acceleration, which is a change in speed over time. Right. That's when those kinds of things and then jerk is changing acceleration over time. And it probably goes on beyond that, but like, jerk is, for one, obviously, the funniest of the bunch. But also, you know, it's, it's, it's this tricky thing where, yeah, I mean, it is a calculus thing. If you want to get into it, it's like, you know, it's taking that, you know, that derivative, and dealing at a next level up, you know, how quickly is how quickly something is changing, changing. Which is fun to say, anyway, it's a nice, it's nice illustration of a bunch of those things. And it's one of the things where I think everybody has had some experience with but you may have never sat down and thought, Oh, I really need to think about how to model the easing of this motion. Like that's, that's when you're actually fucking getting down to the metal on it. But you may find it interesting to look at because it's like, oh, Okay, yeah, like Yeah, PowerPoint. Yeah, animation. Yeah.
Jessamyn 55:02 Great, great. Jerk limits.
Cortex 55:05 It's awesome. It's
Jessamyn 55:06 no, that's really interesting. That's
Cortex 55:08 the internet needs more jerk limits.
Jessamyn 55:10 Right? Here's another thing, where Metafilter just happen to segue in with my own reading. Oh, the two giant blue jay on the suit, having a hard time balancing and trying to eat at the same time. Birds are so interesting. Hi, Blue Jay. All right, Allie Brosh. We know Hyperbole and a Half, yes, we kind of came out. And then like, nothing happened for a long time. And I just finished reading her book. And it's a great book. And I think I talked about this maybe last month. But the end of it is kind of weird. Maybe I didn't talk about this last month. So like, obviously, she, you know, part of one of the things people really liked is, you know, obviously, she's got adorable writing and a great sense of humor. But you know, she was also grappling with depression and talked about it in a way that people found really accessible and useful. And I had read that online and found it interesting that the book has this kind of extra part at the end that either I hadn't read online or wasn't online, where she kind of talks about dealing with like, intrusive thoughts about like, how to deal with the fact that you're actually a shitty person. And it's interesting, because simultaneously, she's talking about, you know, intrusive thoughts, and like, this is a mental construct, and whatever. But she's also really pretty much there being like, but I am actually a shitty person. And it's hard to read, obviously, because kind of you feel like, objectively, you know, this person, and you can say, like, of course, you're not a shitty person, like, bah, bah, bah. And so watching her grapple with those thoughts, and watching her kind of construct a method of managing them without actually kind of confronting them or dealing with them was hard, like, and, you know, you kind of finish the book, and you're like, well, that's, I'm really glad I read that. But God, I hope she's okay. You know, and then she had had a book that was supposed to follow that, that kind of just never happened. And like, you know, the story could be, well, she just got offline, you know, and found her happy place offline. And she doesn't, she doesn't owe you anything, you know, what I mean? Or the story could be, like, she had some really serious mental health challenges that she's still grappling with, and she's not in a constructive creative space right now. And so all of the sudden, it fell all the sudden, to me, you know, because I'm not that close in it. She's got a second book, and it's gonna come out in September, which looks like it's actually gonna happen, as opposed to not gonna happen. And it's gonna be really interesting to sort of see how that is, you know, it seems like it's kind of mostly done, as opposed to mostly kind of a problem that is sort of weighing on her. And I'm really interested to, to read it because I was concerned at the end. And, you know, I was chatting about it with a friend of mine who's like, also a big fan of hers. And, you know, I've read a lot of like, graphic novels about people with mental health problems, because it's a theme. And hers was one of the ones that I found the most like, concerning specifically, because I'm like, I feel like you're talking like you've got this figured out, but it still seems like you're really kind of stuck in it. I hope you work. I hope you work that out. Right? And, you know, I don't know her. Like, I'm not gonna start being a person that yells at her on the internet, but I was kind of like, so yeah, yeah. So thank you for the thread. J. Harris, was, you know, good to hear a couple other people chatting about it. I didn't really interact that much, but I was happy to thread existed.
Cortex 58:55 I've got one more in passing. And then I figured we'll move on to ask. I I enjoyed this thread about Goldman sands, which is the new typeface that Goldman Oh my God commissioned.
Unknown Speaker 59:08 Oh, my God. Yes.
Cortex 59:10 So here's the thing. I don't give a fuck that Goldman Sachs put out a new typeface. Fine, whatever the fuck. It's a great big jerk off motion. But I enjoy typography discussions. And I enjoy discussions of sort of branding typography even when it comes up. And there's some of that in here in this metadata metadata thread. And so thank you people on netfilter for having interesting discussions, despite the fact that the subject itself is just fucking Goldman Sachs. Like it's an interesting it's an interesting thing in multiple ways and like thank you Jetta, because for making the post because I think it was it made for an interesting discussion. And it's a weird thing. Well.
Jessamyn 59:44 Interesting. That's who I'd like to be talking to about this.
Cortex 59:47 Yeah. So yeah, just that if you want some weird typography discussion, check that one out, but I have nothing else really to say about the topic. Other than, you know, fuck capitalism.
Jessamyn 1:00:00 Oh, and speaking of the AI robot that I've now decided exists, told me that I should read this thread about a library's reopening at not the great time to be reopening. This was a thread by crunchy potato and I have a what? Oh, interesting. This is not a thread by crunchy potato. But I have a thread by crunchy potato to talk about. This is a thread by Jen fullmoon. Just talking about some libraries that are dealing with starting to open up and some of the unique challenges that you have to deal with being a quasi government agency. And also trying to be open to the public in places where COVID is still not really even remotely under control. So don't really want to talk about it. Except that this thread is interesting for the me fibr Aryan posse, who I am always interested in talking to and about, and I'll probably dive into it, because I didn't see it at the time. But I'm looking forward to engaging with it. It's hard. It's really hard for libraries that have to open and solidarity.
Cortex 1:01:13 It's nice if you can hop into it. Yeah, no, I was just returning from this morning. But Multnomah County Library has gone fine free as of this morning, which is very exciting.
Jessamyn 1:01:23 You know, what happened to the Multnomah County librarians, what they were basically repurposed during the time that the library was closed, to work with homeless populations, which is simultaneously good that homeless populations, people experiencing homelessness had trained professionals to work with them. And at the same time, librarians are not trained to work with people experiencing homelessness in a shelter situation. And so it was also super fucking shitty at the same time, huh? Yeah, no, I
Cortex 1:01:52 did not know about that.
Jessamyn 1:01:53 I've got a friend who works in melanoma and Oh, my God, like it was just not. I mean, and what do you do, right? You're a government employee, you grow where they send you. And you're just lucky, they decide to send you to the library every day if you work in the library, because sometimes when there's an emergency, you need to go somewhere else. So it was really, I, you know, I just kind of followed along with her and was like, wow, wow, we're not having that problem in Vermont. Number one, kind of our COVID rates are incredibly low. And number two, most of the libraries are so small, that they just kind of closed completely, but did curbside and there was kind of only one person. So kind of a different sort of problem, then you're a giant library and the public has to be able to come in and use the bathrooms and you spend all your time wiping shut down. Yeah, totally, totally a pain. But yeah, Multnomah County find free, very progressive, good on them. And I think more libraries are doing that. Because how are you going to tell someone they have to go out in a pandemic, just to avoid paying you a nickel? It's bullshit.
Cortex 1:02:59 Yeah, yeah. Yes, AskMe filter.
Jessamyn 1:03:05 I wanted to talk about this thread by crunchy potato not to draw. Oh, what?
Cortex 1:03:10 Yes, yes. No, yes. Proceed? No. Just I thought I was cutting you off and talking about one more medical to throw the last medical treatment. So we were on target and just started jumping up and down in front the camera for no reason. Camera. I don't know. Figuratively. Cheers. Cheers. If I set the glass down real loud, people can tell. There we go.
Jessamyn 1:03:34 I don't want to get into this too much. Because I think it's kind of personal with crunchy potato, but they've got a relationship issue that has been sort of coming to a head and there is a thread which is like, what do you wish you'd known going into your divorce and it's a very good opportunity for people who have been in lots of different relationship dissolution situations, to share advice to maybe make things go easier for someone who's having a really hard time. So I don't want to like you know, put some laser beam focus on it to be like, let's look at this person's relationship but like just a lot of people, including myself, I went through a divorce my divorce was actually pretty straightforward and many peoples are but you hear about the ones that aren't. And so it's nice to have kind of a cross section of random people who had good bad average above average below average divorces talking about it, not the easiest thing in the world. But you know, kind of share some advice and help me make my make my walk a little easier. And I liked it. I liked it for that and crunchy potato. I wish you I wish you the best with that.
Cortex 1:04:48 See, there was a late update. I always enjoy it when that happens.
Jessamyn 1:04:55 Late updates. If you have an old closed, asked Metafilter thread you can Email the mods and they will put a final update on it for you. Yep, psi.
Cortex 1:05:05 I've done that for Kayla Pearson who asked a question back in 2017, about Zen monastery and meditation centers, for retreats, and they ended up finding some of the work for them and added a note about that. So three years ago, when they had some transportation from the Oscar
Jessamyn 1:05:23 some transportation questions, and this will make it a lot easier for people who have a similar transportation situation to know what they're getting into. Yeah, no, I thought that was awesome. Speaking of my own garbage computer situation, I asked Metafilter if I could fix my own spacebar on this stupid keyboard, which was two broken computers ago? And the short answer is no. But the longer answer is, it turned out I had a different keyboard and a drawer. And now I'm using a plug in keyboard because there's those magic keyboards that you can just plug in and recharge with a, you know, USB cable. And then there's the ones that suck down all your batteries. And I didn't want that one. But then I've got a keyboard before that keyboard, which is just USB, and it turns out USB keyboard, not so bad. So thank you very much for different people who tried to help me in this thread, I now have a completely different problem on a different keyboard with a spacebar, that's or a shift key that stuck down, which will basically work until I reboot the computer. And then I have to hold the Option key down. But I now know who to talk to about Mac keyboard issues. And I got some good advice in that thread. So thank you for people trying to help.
Same way. Did you look at AskMe Metafilter. At all?
Cortex 1:07:09 A little bit.
Jessamyn 1:07:11 There. I'm just gonna keep going.
Cortex 1:07:12 If Yeah. So there was anonymous question that it's kind of a heavy topic. It's someone trying to get insight in terms of first person experiences from people talking about making the decision. Oh, this was fascinating. Yeah. When when dealing with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, and basically saying, I'm I just don't even know how to find first person accounts from people who have gone through this decision making progress process. And it turns out, there was a couple good leads in the threads basically about things to search for in like what people use to refer to that, that you could search on, which the asker followed up with us to basically say, okay, that that was really helpful that, that let me start finding this stuff. So I appreciate it. And, you know, a few people had answers, someone put in an honest answer talking from a personal perspective about their experience with it. So yeah, it's like, it's obviously, you know, it's a difficult and painful subject from multiple fronts, but it's also one that is worth being able to hear people talk about. And so I thought this thread worked out well that way. It's, it's a good resource for people who are trying to sort of navigate that territory and figure out, you know, what people's experiences and thinking is like, so?
Jessamyn 1:08:30 Yeah, no, I thought that was interesting. I read that with interest because I topic I don't know that much about and I was interested to learn more about it along the lines of like, I feel weird asking this question. And yet, I thought this question by WD Mike was actually pretty interesting. They're like, okay, I get global warming. I don't you know, I'm not a global warming isn't a thing, person, but I'm having a hard time understanding, you know, average temperatures making a huge difference. Can you just kind of explain this to me, and there's a whole bunch of really nice, yeah, very friendly, helpful. Explanations in a way that is, I think, helped him answer his question without being like, global warming, rah, rah, rah, rah kind of thing.
Cortex 1:09:20 As as as a lay question it makes it makes sense for it to feel counterintuitive. Like we don't experience weather, like on a personal day to day level, like, you know, everybody obviously understands that weather changes, and we have a sense of like, the difference between cold weather and warm weather and the idea of it being warmer, but we don't think about those things in terms of small degree changes, like no one's like, can't fucking believe it got two degrees warmer than it was three months ago. It's a miserable like, you know, that's not the scale on which we operate. So not having a good way to immediately translate that to the kind of systemic effects that you get when you actually change the globe. Makes sense? Like yeah, what why is why is this small all like, and I think of like stuff like candy making like I've never done it because it sounds too fucking silly to me but like, you know, if you're trying to like temper chocolate, you have to like get just the right range of. And it's the difference between like chocolate chocolate would be cold chocolate can be warm chocolate ice cream, hot chocolate shirts, chocolate, but it turns out the difference between like, you know, two degrees with your chocolate, trying to do something delicate matters. And the ecosystem is a big complicated thing full of delicate effects. So sorry, did I get distracted with chocolate? Yes. I was finished with a podcast and you can have some chocolate.
Jessamyn 1:10:39 You look like blood in the house. Like, you know, I can like chew on some sesame candy or something I just love. And not
Cortex 1:10:49 did did your family ever vote carob phase Did you ever have to like have care of instead of
Jessamyn 1:10:53 we never even got to the carob phase because we didn't have chocolate. Like my mother was like, kind of wheat bread. I mean, I ate a lot of peanut butter and stuff that wasn't like, per se health food. You know, we didn't have the almond butter phase. But like we didn't really have candy around the house. Except I think I've mentioned this before, but maybe not boxes of Hershey bars because my father was dangerously underweight. And so there were boxes of candy that were only for my father who didn't actually want them. Because he was just stressed out and I don't know, like when he got nervous he get pukey. And so he just maybe he had an eating disorder. I honestly don't know. But like I can remember as a kid. Like, there was chocolate that was only for dad. And it was the weirdest damn thing. But for me, I mostly have the like salty snacks person around the house. I'm trying to think what Yeah, and like sesame candy and stuff, which I actually kind of like, our friends went through carob phases, and I have to tell you, I did not enjoy it.
Cortex 1:11:59 I don't remember having positive experiences with
Jessamyn 1:12:03 it. It's not any good. Yeah,
Cortex 1:12:06 it was I mean, it's it's its own thing, right? Like carob was just the thing. It would be like, Oh, that's cool. Like there's a lot of shit that I like now that I did not like as a kid because either I arbitrarily didn't like it or I didn't like it as a substitute.
Jessamyn 1:12:18 ruined it like my mother couldn't cook vegetables were the damn that it turns out, well, cooked vegetables are amazing. And I just thought I didn't like vegetables. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm there. I'm there with you. Alright, I loved this question. In my dream world. I'm out of here by noon three, because then I can go watch seventh inning stretch. I loved this question about, okay, you've got synesthesia, you're looking at a nine and it's a color to you. What if you slowly turn that nine? Upside down? So it becomes a six? At what point does the color poor? Does it change? Because you see numbers as colors? Right? Yeah,
Cortex 1:13:07 that's a good question.
Jessamyn 1:13:09 Fascinating. Not a lot of answers. But basically pretty interesting in how people experienced it. So this was by bug bread, who longtime, you know, metal filter, metal filter user, one of the 17,000 crowd. And yeah, it's just a really interesting, really interesting thread. Hearing people sort of describe a phenomenon that I have only kind of, you know, that I don't have so it's interesting hearing other people talk about it.
Cortex 1:13:39 Yeah. Yeah, synesthesia is one of the things that I simultaneously wholly believe is a real thing, because brains are amazing. And I know lots of people who've tested it. And also it's so easy as someone who has experience be like, Yeah, but is that real? You know, it's like I have to like, navigate my brain away from the part was like, Yeah, but you know, maybe, maybe just cuz I don't fucking experience something.
Jessamyn 1:14:00 Because it's pretty easy to say it's a thing you have without their being able to ensure like, I knew at least G MRIs.
Cortex 1:14:09 Yes. And I like I'm sure I knew someone in high school who if if, if the specific claim they made was not literally Oh, I have synesthesia. They definitely said they had something else that they didn't experience. Yeah, because fuck in high school, whatever and like high school truth telling and vying for attention it's probably not the best model in which to analyze you know, the rest of the world you know, right outside of the fucking president. Sorry, sorry, flipped out.
Jessamyn 1:14:39 You're having a nice time.
Cortex 1:14:41 We were doing so good. I apologize. I enjoyed this question that I don't know ever got. It really got a clear answer but I in a cleaner which is very fun to say out loud in retrospect, asked you know, what's the correct term for this specific kind of Oh, not sue Donna mistake I'd like sort of like someone writing something and identifying themselves by sort of a status. So a concerned parent or representative, the Council, a lady, you know, things that someone might sign rather than their name or something more specific.
Jessamyn 1:15:17 And it's different depending on whether you're talking about as I think this author is, the author identifies herself as a lady versus how you sign something. I mean, I think men pin got it with sobriquet. So, so Bricket
Cortex 1:15:33 Yeah, I say sobriquet. But who knows the readers dilemma, but it's okay.
Jessamyn 1:15:41 Yeah, it's really interesting. And hopefully, they say, maybe they're going to do a FPP about it. And I think that would be terrific. Yeah, I read the beginning of this. And I didn't really follow up to see kind of what people had to say, fascinating. I enjoyed only because it is relevant to my personal interest. Dobbs lives in a loft and is trying to figure out what to do with his plants. And here's a whole bunch of pictures, give him some plant advice. But there's a whole bunch of people I met a filter who are great at plants, who have planted face basically, because I've got a whole bunch of plants, I think I've mentioned many times that I've been kind of moving around my apartment, because normally I'd be here for a couple of weeks, and then gone for five days, and then here for a couple of weeks. And you don't get kind of the day to day impression of your plants the way you do if you're basically in your house every day always, which is what I've been doing now. And so I feel like I've got more information about my plants. Very interesting. And so I read this with more interest than I might have otherwise. And threads still open and Dobbs is still looking for advice. So if you have plant advice, if you've got experience with light meters or whatever, yeah, get in there, get in there. Ah, on another thread that I had advice about, including the divorce thread is the choosing how to get cataract surgery threads, which was basically somebody who calls themselves a lady, I am not making this up. That is literally their user name. Basically has an older family member with some health conditions, but who also needs cataract surgery? How do you balance COVID risk with needing to get this done. And Jim had a fast growing cataract that he got taken care of, I think two years ago. And that was definitely a concern. Like, you know, do you have to get it done quicker rather than later? How do you make those decisions? You know, what if the doctor says later, but you really can't see out of that eye, you know, and now with COVID risk sort of layered on top of that, I mean, he's got the second eye to get done. And he's been thinking about it. And one of the things a lot of people, including me, pointed out in the thread that there's a pretty good chance cataract surgery will be done at a dedicated cataract surgery place which is different from being in a hospital. So there's COVID risk because you come in touch with people, but not because you're in a hospital that may have actual COVID patients in it, right. But it was just as an interesting threat, a whole bunch of people being like, well, here's some things to think about. You know, people can probably live with cataracts for a really long time. Think about what the other things are that they're going to need to be able to do and deal with in their life.
I have one more, do it. And that's my last for AskMe Metafilter, which is another classic asked versus guests situation. This is by fingers and toes. And basically this it's it's a hypothetical, so it's got nothing to do with COVID You're going to host a small party. You call somebody you're like I'm making hamburgers and tomato salad sound good. And you hate tomatoes, or tomato salad or something. And then the question is, is it better for you to be like actually, I don't really eat tomatoes. Maybe I'll bring something else like have a friendly but no tomatoes conversation? Or are you as the host supposed to just suck it up and be like sounds great, but potentially put your host in an awkward situation where they're hope they're serving you something that you don't like and they notice and that makes them feel bad or they make too much tomato salad and et cetera. So what's the etiquette? And like every single thing on AskMe Metafilter just people have a For all sorts of different when I was talking to you, I think in the pre roll, this was the thread I had to kind of stop following after a while, because there were a couple people who were like, This is the only way, you know, like, like, how dare you not give an honest answer, or other people being like, watch, like, you never tell somebody if you don't like the food or whatever. And a lot of people were like, well, it really depends on kind of how you ask what your connection to the host is, what the event is. But I enjoyed it. Because as a Martian who learns most of my social norms by listening to other people talk about etiquette because I don't understand it was raised by wolves. I enjoyed seeing everybody's take on this, because I, I know how I felt. But, you know, I also wasn't confident in my, like, you know, how, like you say, like, Well, what do you think, but also, how strongly do you feel about that? And I was like, Well, this is what I do. But you know, yeah. Like, with a random stranger versus with my friends, you know, because I often find is somebody who's got a couple major dislikes. But in general, food is fine for me, that if somebody asks, I'll be like, Well, I don't really eat whatever salmon. But then I wind up being the salmon person at the party. And people wind up being like, Well, we were gonna have sin, and but Jessamyn doesn't eat it, and just turn it into a thing, because some of my friends are dicks, you know, just because like, they're trying to be nice and friendly. But in fact, they're just, yeah, not doing that. And so it really depends on what the environment is. And I enjoy it. This thread very much.
Cortex 1:21:40 Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm I look at it. And I'm like, well, obviously option to just like, just yeah, don't be fucking chill. But like, I can immediately put it in the context, like, I'm thinking about getting together with the small group of people I'm likely to get together with who I know are all also chill, unable to navigate that without being weird. And who we get together on a regular basis, like, and that's an that's very different from like, how do I approach this novel, ad hoc group of people say, and so I can see, I can see all the like, I can imagine, like, 20 different comments in this thread without having read at first.
Jessamyn 1:22:12 My friends are asking because they want to know and which of my friends aren't? Don't want to know. They're just, they're just giving me a heads up so I can bring something or eat some mouse. You know, it's like the friends who you're like, can I bring anything? And they're like, No, totally don't. And then you get to the party, and like, 75% of the people have brought something and you're like, I was told not to bring something. Is that the no, that means? Yes. Because I don't hear that. Know that. You know, it's like, it's like the dog whistle that the dog hears Yes.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:45 Means Yes.
Jessamyn 1:22:46 I do not hear. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so that was me. The other wrap up Ethan's besides,
Cortex 1:22:54 I mean, it's been a busy month in the world has been a busy month on meta talk.
Jessamyn 1:23:00 Oh, and please, if you're watching Black Monday, come and talk about it on fanfare with me and Le VOA, because I love this show, but it's not getting a lot of traction on fanfare yet.
Cortex 1:23:11 I should check that out. Oh, my God, it's so good. Yes, we've we've we've been talking a lot about race stuff. Meta filter, anti racism, feature stuff, culture stuff. It's been about a month now since Lupin time started working. And they've been like working working now instead of just in training, which is great. So they've been showing up more visibly on the site. Traveling time in particular has been spearheading getting going on a bipoc advisory council. And that's in a hey, let's figure out how to do this stage. But they've been taking point on that. And that's been some interesting discussion already. And I'm looking forward to seeing how we can support helping that move forward. There's a couple big threads we have had sidebar, there's that word or battered up at the top of the post. There's that one. And then there's also from earlier in the month, a thread more just generally checking in on how moderator team antiracism stuff is going how the site's doing in general people sort of inviting everybody on the site to sort of check in about how they're doing what they're feeling what they want to see happen. There is let's see, what's the other thing Oh, we just made a change. We added a filter for comments on the site that will catch and stop a comic going through if it uses the N word. This is from a feature request X team posted a few days ago Great. Basically saying hey, let's just stop that from happening. And I was a little bit slow getting
Jessamyn 1:24:58 oh, let's just tackle chin Let's just stop.
Cortex 1:25:00 Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can get into conversations about reference and whatnot. But hey, let's just stop it was a request. And, and then I'm gonna acknowledge, like I responded early on with, like, Hey, this is what we because we've been working as a mod team on ideas related that trying to figure out a way to set up an alert system to catch stuff that didn't get flagged. And I kind of opened up the thread responding with thoughts about that, which on the one hand, great that we're working, on the other hand, wasn't what Eckstein was specifically answering or asking for. And I got around to saying as much later in the thread, but you know, that sucks. I should have just like been responding to the text of the threads. So that's something I'm continuing to kind of work on. I know where people are looking for hearing sort of response to the specific question rather than a breakdown of the scenario, which is very much how my brain tends to work and say, Okay, let's look at the background context on this.
Jessamyn 1:25:50 And I think you like to explain your process. And I think sometimes that's what people are looking for, and especially the verbosity by a white dude is not the right way to start those. Yeah,
Cortex 1:26:02 exactly. So that's, that's something I'm still struggling to check myself in where and how I fall into the old habits of sort of like, well, here we are, I'm at a talk, let's talk about a thing, right. But in any case, what it comes down to is, we figured out how to get basically a basic version of this solved
Jessamyn 1:26:22 in Florida harassing you to add my own words. Yes.
Cortex 1:26:26 So that's, that's an interesting, if you read through this thread, you know, one of the things you see, you know, possibly along with a great deal of frustration, if it's not what you're in the mood for when you go into the thread is people talking about some of the complications that come with trying to tackle a wider variety of words and have a more complicated sort of, is this being used as a slur? Is this being used in a regulatory way? Right, right.
Jessamyn 1:26:49 And those are hard usage. And that Yeah,
Cortex 1:26:52 yeah. And that's, that's a difficult thing to deal with when you're dealing with a large word list. But the request was for, like, let's do this word. And that's the request that we got handled. So from bull yesterday, got working code installed after some drafting and testing and checking it out in the staging server, and that's in place. Good. So pay. That's, that's a nice little incremental thing. And I appreciate their quest to push to try and figure out how to do that. What else there were a couple other little things in, we've been talking about reworking the flag button that's a little bit lower priority than some of the other things we've been working on in more of these racial justice oriented discussions. But that's something that's still sort of in progress, is trying to figure out, hey, let's maybe make it easier to use the Flex System, let's make it more like literally physically easier to click instead of a tiny little thing, throw some text on there that identifies it rather than just an exclamation point. So you don't already have to know what it is to know what it is. So that's something I expect we'll follow up on in the near future hear from has been doing some prep work to make that possible. And, and yeah, there's also just a person of color only thread that was started early last month. This is this is again, a thread for people, specifically self identifying people of color on the site only this is not a thread for white people to want to read to and share their thoughts, even if they're intended to be supportive or whatnot. This is just This is a dedicated space to say no, that is one thing we can assume will not happen here is people wandering in and doing that so that people can have discussions that don't have to factor in that. So if that is something that you are looking for, that's also there. And yeah, that's, that's, that's kind of like the big stuff. There's also a couple like nice, like little things. There was a question from still moving about the deleted post, blogs, there's a couple Blogspot blogs that are in forever. And I think basically just the maintainer has not been staying current on metal filter. And so I talked through like, well, here's the very basics of how it works. So if the person maintaining it previously isn't able to suddenly just start a new one. And Zach Lipton has basically done just that and spun up a new site that has asked me and metal filter deletions listed. And in the future, I guess, you know, probably what we'll end up doing is pointing people to that if they're curious about it. So if you've been missing those blogs because they were not updating, know that there's some new ones you can go in there and get your deleted post. Log that way.
Jessamyn 1:29:36 Ah, nice.
Cortex 1:29:41 Oh, and one one, just nice. Better talk chatty, there's been a bunch of nice Meditec talk chatty threads, but like, you know, you can call them at a talk and read them. But there's this one that I thought was very fun from Daisy as asking about, you know, oh, very specific, obscure, expert response. You post on AskMe Metafilter about something niche and someone wants to say, Oh yeah, this is what I do. This is what I did my doctoral thesis on or this is why
Jessamyn 1:30:05 I wrote that script of yours. I was the one who built that. Right. That's my book. Hi. Yeah. Does that? Yes.
Cortex 1:30:13 It's it's several Dubs and comments from folks pointing out these various different things. And it's a lot of fun to read through and a bunch of like, fun sort of site history in there. Nice. So yes, and yeah, I think I think that's everything I wanted to do on a meta talk rundown. We'll let you go watch your your your baseball thing,
Jessamyn 1:30:30 my baseball thing. Boop, boop, boop on he's had a whole bunch of like, special guests on like, he had the Red Sox announcer for the last 30 years. Like he brings them in on Zoom and you're literally watching like a phone cam zoom interaction with him and like famous baseball people. Fascinating. So interesting. So yeah, it's it's my it's my stories, basically. Yeah. So yes, thank you, and always great to talk to you. Likewise, I hope you have a good a good July and
Cortex 1:31:05 I hope I hope anybody has a good July. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best. I'm sorry, go watch your baseball. I know eyes. Sear. You know, I know I you know thank you. I appreciate that. And I likewise hope for you and for everybody listening that we do manage to have a good July. Yes. Okay.
Jessamyn 1:31:29 Let's go for let's go for it. Alright, guys, talk to you later. Bye.
