Podcast 167 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 167: The Gang Records A Podcast (2020-10-02).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Cortex 0:02 Welcome to the temporary broadband crapped out on me and so I'm used to trying to find the file that I would normally use but I don't know where it is. So here we

Jessamyn 0:16 are I fell in the mud earlier today so I'm already over I'm already over this day. What cuz what happened I had to psych myself up. Cuz you know normally like we met it at 1pm My time and normally that's when I'm starting to kind of get go and and today I was like, you know, take your trash out which involves going to the transfer stations I'm sure I've talked about. And the transfer station is just kind of a bunch of dumpsters in a basically what's a mud pit when it's raining like it is today. And I couldn't be arsed to put on my boots. So I was just wearing my crocs, which are basically, you know, slip and fall factories. And so I slipped and fell and it wasn't that bad. But like it was very muddy. So I was suddenly very dirty. When previously I had been just fine and getting rid of trash. I was like I can't remember the last time this has happened to me as a grown up like maybe when I was hiking but then I was wearing like proper boots like this time it was just my fault. And then I had to go home muddy and calm.

Cortex 1:25 Thanks for giving us the dirt on that. Welcome to Episode 167 of the metal filter monthly podcast. I am Josh cortex Mullard. Jessamine, and here we are, it is Friday, October 2. If I put a question mark after every word in the date, then it's not a problem. If I give

Jessamyn 1:47 up time, it's time out on AskMe Metafilter. And we're here to talk about the website.

Cortex 1:52 Everyone's skeletons and it's it's time for another podcast. I don't know about you. I am very punchy this morning.

Jessamyn 2:02 I am too. Did you get the news last night or I did

Cortex 2:05 I did I was getting ready for bed last night when I found out that fucking Donald Trump has COVID and I missed the all night long Twitter shot and Freud Gu Fest and got up and caught up on some of it this morning. And it's you know, it's it's a weird thing, right? Because it's not really a great development in general for like the head of state to be potentially seriously ill but also, the fact Donald Trump's so much and the poetic irony of this shit being the one thing that manages to maybe slow him down when like institutions and norms and decency won't. So it's a very weird fucking electrical moment of okay, this apparently, you know, for a whole lot of people. So it's been a it's been a weird morning after a weird night's sleep. And I've sort of had a weird night's sleep the last few nights so it's it's kind of stacked up a little bit. So

Jessamyn 3:02 and it's Sukkot? Yes. Which was already predicted to be wild because Rosh HaShana, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Yom Kippur was when Trump's taxes came out. And everybody was like, Whoa, suck it. It's gonna be weird. And wow. Yeah, yeah. I got the news this morning, when I was reading, like, a newsletter that like, like library person writes, which is always a little strange. Like, I'm never totally sure how much it's fact based, and how much it's just kind of imagining based. And so I read the news and was like, Well, that's an interesting, you know, retcon of this whole nonsense. And then later, I read the news news and was like, oh, yeah, that's actually happening. And it was weird because I had just had sort of a little psychic. Five seconds of bonding with the First Lady over her disdain for having to be you know, do housewife Christmas, where you know if Christmas is your thing, fantastic. But like spending the First Lady's time on it. Even if I don't particularly care for this first lady is kind of a stupid waste of time, and regressive gender roles and all that. So I was like, Yeah, right. And then I was like, Ooh, so those are my takes, I think.

Cortex 4:29 Yep. It's been a it's been a dream. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. That

Jessamyn 4:39 we don't have to dwell on that because yeah, we're done talking about it.

Cortex 4:42 Yep. But, but yeah, let's see. October spoopy. Time, pumped up on AskMe edit filter posting page.

Jessamyn 4:53 I haven't changed my name to a scary name on social media yet because I'm not sure what is scary anymore.

Cortex 5:03 I've been meaning to change mine for a while. It's okay. It's October, I should come up with something. So I'm now to Google for school. Oh, that's good until sometime in the middle of next year when I realized I haven't changed it back. But, but yeah.

Jessamyn 5:20 I'll have to be thinking on it. Oh, yeah. There's first fighting in my yard.

Cortex 5:23 Oh, that's exciting. This is this is just in the air.

Jessamyn 5:27 Like they're flying around fighting with each other. And yes, I'm pretty sure they're fighting and not flirting. Hard to say it's pouring right now today is the rainstorm where all the leaves get beaten off the trees base. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Cortex 5:42 We've had some we've had some rain in Portland, which is nice. And that helped clear up the air after the nasty choking smoke shit from earlier this month or early last month. It's fucking October. But yeah, we've

Jessamyn 5:58 got a weird, like, that was hard for a long time.

Cortex 6:01 It was yeah, it was it was a good solid week of extremely, extremely bad air, buffeted by some just somewhat hazardous air on either side for a while. But then it really did clear out for a couple of weeks, which was a relief. And now it's kind of shitty. Again, it's not nearly as bad but it's still like, you know,

Jessamyn 6:21 because of fires are just shitty because of other. Just

Cortex 6:25 ongoing fires, stuff coming up from California plus, like just an inversion layer that's keeping it around. So it hasn't felt like a bad idea to tread outside as someone with no particular risk factors, but it's like definitely smoky again, someone was very, very read last night.

Jessamyn 6:46 How was life and Eric has headquarters Otherwise, otherwise? Pretty good. Yeah. Good. on keeping on. We've barely been proud of what you've been able to accomplish. Yeah,

Cortex 6:55 yeah. Despite all that, yeah, it's, uh, it's, you know, our cops are still fucking shitty. And apparently several dozen of them were federally deputized through at least the end of the year to the apparent surprise of basically all of Oregon's leadership, except for maybe Mayor Wheeler, who might have known about it since he's the fucking police commissioner also. Yeah, of our fucking I mean,

Jessamyn 7:23 I vaguely know about him.

Cortex 7:25 But yeah, he they are Mayor sucks shit basically, will totally get his ass voted out in this upcoming election

Jessamyn 7:34 fan freakin tastic. Does he have a good? Like, Challenger? Like, is the person who's going to replace him?

Cortex 7:42 Yeah, yeah, there's a woman running running against him. That went to you know, an actual election in November here because she did reasonably well and she seems pretty solid. And there's also a like, fairly popular for a write in candidate right. And candidate I haven't totally caught up on that. But anyway, yes, there are people who want to be mayor who would be better at being mayor than the mayor and hopefully that's what happens. But in the meantime, the cops are still abusive shitheads and Yep,

Jessamyn 8:16 yeah, and that's a problem.

Cortex 8:19 Huge it is. It is an issue.

Jessamyn 8:22 I'm voting for some fat bears while

Cortex 8:23 you talk about the cops nice Yeah, I haven't really kept up the fat Paris thing but I've I've seen it going around.

Jessamyn 8:28 I mean, there's not really much to be caught up on like you vote for fat bears.

Cortex 8:32 It's like a fat bear bracket right? Yeah, it's

Jessamyn 8:34 fat bear bracket. Yeah. And you vote it's very easy. You see how your fat bears are doing there's a couple of fat bears to to take a look at and then you can watch him sit in the river and eat fish

Cortex 8:48 there was or maybe still is going on? I stopped paying attention to it. But there's like a mineral bracket every year. Why don't you write the beginning and yeah, as I think some some geology nerds just do a big like 64 or maybe just 32 mineral bracket tourney where people vote just on a like poll every day or so on another pairing.

Jessamyn 9:12 Mineral bracket is actually just not helpful.

Cortex 9:16 Yeah, there was a good name for it. I don't remember what it hit my radar via somebody on Twitter.

Jessamyn 9:21 Not your wife the geologist? No,

Cortex 9:24 she doesn't really do Twitter like she knows of it but she doesn't spend time on it. So yeah, just know right when the mind virus finally gets loose Yeah, one of us will survive.

Jessamyn 9:38 That's Jim and me too, actually. But uh,

Cortex 9:41 but yeah, so like I started following the account that runs it and I just had to then unfollow it because it was so much there are so many excited fucking mineral nerds out there and it's fantastic. But also, I would have to like just want to use Twitter for nothing but that because the sheer volume of things being plied to and retweeted from that one account. It's like, this is like half my stream now suddenly I find

Jessamyn 10:05 that it leaves no time for baseball. Yeah. Which, it's how's your penguin?

Cortex 10:10 He's good. He's He's, he's better at pitching than he's ever been. He's one of the best pitchers in the league now, despite having started out as arguably the very worst. Yeah, he used to used to be a zero star pitcher out of five and now he's a three and a half star pitcher. It's it's a big come up for him. A lot of people are saying basically what happened is Gunther got a mech. So he now pitches from inside of a robotic like otaku? Oh, that's nice robot dude. Which is it?

Jessamyn 10:38 I like it for something with our fingers. Yeah,

Cortex 10:41 well, I think you know, good, good, inclusive design and accessibility mind controls can like, you know, compensate for any number of disabilities and, and mobility challenges. And I think that's, that's the story

Jessamyn 10:55 of the lesson for us all. Yeah.

Cortex 10:58 But it's actually been a baseball siesta, which I'm actually really thankful for. Because it just be a weird day to try and keep track of the end of the season if there was an active season this week. So it's kind of like the devs took a week off, which they have done before, once. They took a siesta for a week or two. And I'm hoping that they just like build this in. I think they should just do this every other week or every couple of weeks, to give them time to like, catch up with everything and give them I've always

Jessamyn 11:21 thought metal filters should frickin do that. Yeah, maybe maybe. But not like a week off. But like, maybe time?

Cortex 11:29 Yeah, maybe

Jessamyn 11:30 six hours? Yeah. Saturday, right. Do you work on Saturday?

Cortex 11:36 I do. So we should.

Jessamyn 11:42 Like, I don't know, maybe shadow day from noon to

Cortex 11:47 just pulling something out of a hat here. I mean, that's it. Like, like, actually just talking about how stuff is going with metal filter? You know, that's we probably talked about this in previous episode or two. But like, you know, I, I'm working fewer hours now than I was for the last 12 years. Do you feel about that? I feel good about that. You know,

Jessamyn 12:12 I mean, I miss having you around the clubhouse a little bit? Wow, it's

Cortex 12:17 good. It's a complicated pile of things. Because like, you know, it's been good to work fewer hours. You know, for me in terms of just overall fucking stress levels. Yeah, you know, it's been good to get my head out of some stuff that like my head has been like, in for a decade. That combined, especially with, like, reworking a little bit, what the expectations are from adatok. So that it's not just a 24/7 moderator, wait for something to go wrong thing. And instead of focusing more on, okay, folks talk about stuff you want to talk about? And we'll follow up, you know, on a regular but time limited basis, you know, that's right,

Jessamyn 12:56 but it's not gonna be a 24 hour, we're gonna respond in 15 minutes to any question you have. Exactly. I think, you know, what, let's the, it shifts a little bit more for the community to describe the community expectations, not stuffed, coming down by fiat, which is helpful, but a serious adjustment. So tricky.

Cortex 13:18 Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of complicated adjustment in it. Like, you know, one of the it's been a whole thing of, you know, we brought Jeremy back in recess. Nomada, has been working as kind of office manager sort of executive functioning person, essentially. Yeah, you know, so she's not moderating. She's not expecting to do moderation work. She is following up with, you know, site updates every couple of weeks and follow up on meta talk posts that sort of need sort of moderator input with

Jessamyn 13:55 Google, she makes sure that stuff that comes in over email that deals with, you know, fumble stuff, Josh stuff. Time stuff, if it's the bipoc board gets to that person and somebody is, you know, yeah, it's on a timeline. It's on somebody's timeline.

Cortex 14:13 Yeah. And it's really useful to have that being done by someone who can say, okay, that is what I'm doing.

Jessamyn 14:19 And it plays to her strengths. Let's

Cortex 14:21 be Yeah, like, it's, it's something it's something she's good at. It's something she has, like the mental bandwidth for, you know, at this point, and it's something that she doesn't have to premise against. Unless I'm so worn out by dealing with this moderation situation that I can't make

Jessamyn 14:36 my whole life, let's be honest, like, I mean, she's had some challenges that have come up in this time, including power outages and a bunch of other stuff. But, yeah, yeah, it just means there's a little there's kind of more people to shoulder the burden, and it's been shifted to what the work is. And, you know, I don't know how everybody else feels you could use this thread to talk about it. But like, it seems positive from my perspective.

Cortex 15:03 Yeah, I think it's been, I think it's been a really good thing in general, I think sort of rearranging our hours and redistributing sort of the load of things was really just overdue and like deciding, say, Let's fucking just do it has been good and letting Jeremie sort of like just grab the stick on that. Yeah, has been has certainly been a relief and a lot of ways and sort of a freeing way to sort of step back from stuff that I've really felt like I had to stay

Jessamyn 15:32 shut. Because if not me, then who kind of

Cortex 15:35 Yeah, yeah, like, instead of trying to spin more plates, I'm setting some of the plates down and say, Oh, well, someone else is in charge of this one, they can spin that one.

Jessamyn 15:44 Well, another stuff like, you know, loops been really killing it on documentation that's been going really well, like they've been doing a great job. And time and the bipoc board that's been going really well. And having those people have a reporting structure that isn't going through a person who is also trying to moderate the site, which requires close watching for any number of reasons. Seems like it kind of works.

Cortex 16:06 Yeah. So I'm, I'm feeling good about all that I'm feeling hopeful about it as a good sort of revisiting of stuff. I'm still trying to sort of figure out how to feel about stuff in general in all sorts of life ways. And I'm still dealing with the same sort of complicated pile of sort of anxiety in general, managing my attention span and whatnot that I've been dealing with for the last, like year and a half, couple years here.

Jessamyn 16:34 It's super challenging. I mean, you know, if you want to chat sometime, not for public about, you know, how I've managed some of that stuff. I would be more than happy.

Cortex 16:43 Oh, sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. And some strategies

Jessamyn 16:47 that work and some that I have tried and that failed. Yeah. And

Cortex 16:51 yeah, that's, that's one of the interesting things about like, trying to dig in on some of it is like starting to actually figure that out with other folks. And like, be able to compare notes about it in a way that is, you know, largely helpful, like, not everything, not everything works, not everything is going to be the thing that works for me, but like, understanding people's frameworks, is definitely useful. So I

Jessamyn 17:11 learned a lot of stuff by getting a hang around in AskMe, Metafilter, and seeing how people grappled with their stuff. And you know, just hearing people talk about like, well, you know, this is the thing you can try, but don't expect it to do anything for a couple months, is different than being like, if you don't see results from this in a couple of weeks, just try something else. You know, like, just having a bunch of people talking about expectations for trying things out, was really helpful for me, like, for example, like sticking with meditation, when at first I was like, I have the fidgets all the time, I hate it. I feel like I'm bad at this all the time. Feeling bad at more things is not helping my general outlook. And, you know, but hearing people talk about it and be like, well give it some time, and you don't have to love it. But blah, blah, blah, you can try this stuff helpful. That sort

Cortex 18:03 of, like rate of uptake thing is is tricky for me too, as someone who is like parentally inclined to like, try something. And if it doesn't go right, immediately be like, well, I guess that's not that's

Jessamyn 18:16 like, Hey, I'm gonna start counting calories this week, three days later, how's that going? What? Like, like, it's not even. It's not even like, oh, I decided not to do it in a conscious way. It's like, I forgot I started and, you know, it's an add thing. And like, it's not a big deal for us. Because if it's something that, like, we agree to the two of us, we have better ways of paying attention to it than just leaving it up to Jim to remember, but like, it is tricky sometimes to be able to give something time when you I mean, because one of the things I don't know about you, but like, and then we should really start talking about the website. But one of the things about, you know, dealing with sort of anxiety is that there is this sort of like, I need to make the pain stop. Like, like, immediate, like, I feel bad. I have a toothache I'm starting to spiral about, you know, dealing with the fucking dentist and everything, like what's going to help right now. And I think that draw, you know, tosses a lot of people into, you know, bad behavior, like whatever the thing is that you use to immediately make the thing Stop is not actually a long term useful solution to the pain, but recognizing it within yourself or like with Gemini, if we're having a disagreement about something, recognizing are sort of not great patterns, being like, I just need you to shut up like that helpful to the relationship. And yet it feels like what you need to have happen, and learning to let go of a thing that served you badly but at least served you for your whole life.

Cortex 20:00 That's, that's the nature of coping mechanisms, right? They are things that help you cope with immediate, you know, immediate stimulus and

Jessamyn 20:10 right, take your hand stuff. Yeah.

Cortex 20:13 And figuring out how to how to recognize those recognize the limits to which they are useful. The limits to where they are, you know, actually, appropriately better than, you know, the thing they're, they're dealing with, you know, and then navigating that that's, like, that's been a whole fucking process over the last, you know, year and a half for me especially is like, trying to say, Okay, well, I'm not going to just like solve this problem properly. But I can find ways to mitigate the fallout when it's like, really happening.

Jessamyn 20:47 Right, and having a little bit of psychic space so that you can observe the thing without just being stuck in

Cortex 20:52 Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this is this has been a podcast.

Jessamyn 20:59 Yes. Yes. The I don't know, we could just get anxiety corner.

Cortex 21:03 We could just talk about you know, dysfunction and anxiety and whatnot for the whole hour. You know, the whole hour I say about a podcast that routinely runs 90 minutes. But you know, the metaphor,

Jessamyn 21:13 the seventh inning stretch, they always say like, it's a 30 minute show, and it often will run two and a half hours, you know, and they'll be you know, every 15 minutes, they'll be like, we should just really wrap this up. Because, you know, it's like a 25 minute show. And like, every time they mentioned how long this show is the length gets shorter, but the show gets longer. That's excellent. Yes, it is. Excellent. So yeah. Hey, Metafilter filter. We've got two jobs this month. Tell me about them. Well, one of them was the result actually of a AskMe Metafilter question in which Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Pinocchio jet had to leave their apartment was gonna move. I don't have that much stuff there. But my friends have moved. I need somebody to pack up the apartment. But I would like to be able to like talk to somebody as they're packing it up, because maybe some stuff doesn't need to come blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, it was a short asked, but it filter but Meizu pointed out like, hey, you know, you could actually post this in Metafilter jobs. Because maybe you know, someone who's local, that would be a great little job for them. And, you know, I don't know if they found someone but hack. That would be awesome little job. Pack a few things beyond video chat. They were looking for someone a couple weeks ago, so I don't know. But yeah, the little job. And then the other job is in Western Massachusetts, the only Massachusetts town that starts with West that my father never lived in or worked in. I know. That's, that's what I know about Weston, IT architect. Jenkins here is looking for that person for Biogen who I think had that huge conference where everybody sneezed on each other and Massachusetts got COVID. But that's probably not this company. Conference, but they're looking for an IT architects, they need help with platform innovation. And who knows what that is, but it's probably a good job. And, you know, Jenkins, your longtime mefite Oh, look them up.

Cortex 23:32 All right, jobs.

Jessamyn 23:34 That was it. If you have jobs, gig jobs, or volunteer jobs, or you just need a little help with a thing that maybe somebody in your area could give you a little help with? Jobs,

Cortex 23:46 jobs. Alright, projects, projects. It's been kind of a quiet month for projects. I feel like everybody's been dealing with like, fucking everything. Right?

Jessamyn 23:57 It did seem I mean, I feel weird saying this, because I feel like I say this every month. But September vanished faster than other months. And I don't think it's just because it had one less day. Then. January, July and August. It just went away for me. Like, what? It's August, October where even fuck all right. Ah, so I'm glad to hear that other people shared that feeling.

Cortex 24:22 Yep, no, I feel like Yeah. I mean, we we joke, every podcast at this point about time having lost all meaning, but it really it's strange. It's a strange experience being alive right now. But there were projects. There were some projects posted. One just the other day that I'm pleased with just on the sheer premise. Thomas Park doing a little jokey blog thing called chess patch notes.

Jessamyn 24:54 I understood all these words and yet And

Cortex 25:01 so it's so patch notes, the concept of patch. So I

Jessamyn 25:05 understand what a patch note is, I think, right? It's like you put a thing, you add a thing to some code, and then you add a comment about what that little thing is supposed to do, right? I do get this thing

Cortex 25:19 in the context of games in particular, there tends to be patch notes about like, wait, I'm looking at it.

Jessamyn 25:23 Oh, it's great. Star Trek. Star Trek fun.

Cortex 25:28 Oh, so yes, it's it's a delightful take on. Yes, if chess were developed iterally by a software developer, making public patch notes as they make changes to the mechanics of the game,

Jessamyn 25:41 this isn't a good idea, just in a general sense. Like, this is a comedy. Like this is an extensible comedy bit in general. And in this case, it's applied to chess, but oh my god, I would love to see this applied to all sorts of things. General updates, checkmate is now required to win, you can no longer win by capturing all pieces other than the king. I didn't know that was true. See, learning, learning. Well, I enjoyed this, also very recent project by just this guy, you know, automatic pixie dream girl, basically, like, hey, try some stuff. It's very twee. They they point out, and you can just like pick a little adventure. And it just gives you I mean, I don't know if you've seen like, there's like little card decks that sometimes will do this, right? Where like, you pick a card from a deck, and it just gives you like a thing to think about in a different way, or like a word that you whatever, if you need external inspiration to do certain things. And in this case, like do some adventures get out of your house. So like, code the beach in a way that you can go or make something you don't want into something you like, or dance like no one's watching, for example, naked. And then you can submit adventures. And then there's an FAQ. Talking about how Yes, Manic Pixie Dream Girl is kind of a crappy trope, but the website is just to you know, give you give you a nudge to try something else.

Cortex 27:25 Yeah. Mike sigh Park by

Jessamyn 27:32 Miss Miss Cooper always say miski Park and I have no idea how they pronounce that.

Cortex 27:37 Mascot perk. Has

Jessamyn 27:41 the mic. Yeah. Park right.

Cortex 27:45 Yeah, that's what I wanted. Anyways,

Jessamyn 27:47 last name is Science Park is my feeling

Cortex 27:50 there's there's another season of The Last notes podcast that he's producer on. It's up and

Jessamyn 28:00 weight loss like the TV show?

Cortex 28:01 No, no, like, I think like as in misplaced. Oh, like it's not no, it's on lost. It's it's music. It's music stuff.

Jessamyn 28:11 Yeah, well, I know all of his like, audio recording stuff that he's done. Yeah. For some reason I hadn't. I hadn't, you know, I should start adding some stuff to projects, too. I've definitely been up to shuffle. Thanks. I should to up to a couple things.

Cortex 28:26 Been a couple things. Yep. And then post up to a couple things on project.

Jessamyn 28:31 Hey, yeah, here's, here's my idea, actually. So well, things were I was telling Jim like, Oh, hey, I'm doing this new thing. And like he's watching me because like, we're on Zoom. And like, I'm like talking about this new thing. And he's watching me and I'm talking about it. And he's given me kind of a look. And I'm like, why are you giving me that look? And he's like, did you just take on another project when all you've been doing is bitching about having too much to do? And I was like, Yeah, but this one's fun. So basically, there is a pretty interesting open source kind of Flickr host it yourself kind of thing like I remember when PB built his own Flickr. Yeah, yeah. So there's there's a thing like that now that's like WordPress, like like, it's not like WordPress, but like, you can take the software and install it on your own server. And and it has a Flickr importer. So unlike almost every other way, you can take your pictures off Flickr, this will maintain your albums in your tags. And so like I'm happy with Flickr and I'm happy continuing to use it, but like my mother's and my father's pictures are they're just stagnant, right? Like if people are commenting on it, I'm not really seeing it. If people are sending little notes to those people. I'm not seeing it. Like I would like them somewhere where I could control and manage them a little bit better than having a log in My mom and login is my dad and, and but I'd like to do because some of them are weird, right like my father's got like old computer pictures and like old satellite tracking station pictures and they're super cool. And so I was like, you know, I could probably suck those all into a database on a hosting site like I Biblio where they'll host anything for free as long as the content is free, and slap a Creative Commons license on it. And use this tool, which I don't even remember the name of it, but it looks easy. And then go play with pictures on my own website. Hurray. So I'm going to try and do that I'm going to get like West photos dot site. And it's going to be like Elizabeth West photos dot site Tom West photos dot site. And then if my sister wants it can be Kate West photos dot site. And maybe eventually I'll get sick of Flickr or they'll get sick of me. And then I can move my own pictures over there. Nice. Yeah, it's gonna take forever and it probably won't work very well. But for right now, it's nothing but possibilities. No works. Speaking of photographs, one of the other projects is web 5280s. Roadside New Mexico. So writing in Mexico, right in Mexico. Riding a motorcycle through New Mexico back back roads and it's actually a very pretty, I mean, pretty is understating it, like there's gorgeous black and white photography of towns that kind of used to be more of a thing than they are now. And, you know, 8000 tiny motels that I would like to stay in. You know, some fallen down stuff, some beautiful clouds. It's neat. So, take a look at it if you like that kind of photography, old cemeteries. Oh, it's just gorgeous. Gorgeous. Very nice. Yeah. Nice work. Sean. Sean looks familiar. He plays Celtic music when he's not tooling around on his Indian Motorcycle. I'm reading his about page.

Cortex 32:14 Well, that's why he looks familiar. It's a whole old Celtic motor bike. Now I got nothing.

Jessamyn 32:21 What? Alright, well probably mentioned the other project, because we've mentioned the other other

Cortex 32:27 evangelists. Yes. Dng has a project called places in space.

Jessamyn 32:34 Love it. Love it already.

Cortex 32:36 I have not looked at yet. But I've enjoyed the end use previous stuff on projects. So yes, there's that as well describes it as a episodic ultra low phi and occasionally experimental science fiction cereal. Which you know, sold.

Jessamyn 32:52 And as of a couple days ago, there's a few more episodes, so it's good that we waited. Yeah, timing, timing. Do we mentioned brainwaves?

Cortex 33:01 Passes feel like so I feel like we talked about that last episode.

Jessamyn 33:07 I feel like we did too, because we talked about y2k stuff. But that

Cortex 33:10 would be weird to talk about it not like point to it. So well. Let's see. Hey, to probably refresh you. Yes, brainwave wrote an essay about sort of y2k and why institutions institutions took it seriously and putting that sort of in the context of discussions of climate change. So yeah. And that's projects. We ran the board. Yeah.

Jessamyn 33:32 Put more stuff on projects did a web thing you did not web thing. You did a thing you can talk about on the web. We'd like to hear about it projects are fun.

Cortex 33:41 Do it. It brings me joy. Do it for me do it for I tried to find do it for the Gipper joke there and I know don't do it for the Gipper Skipper,

Jessamyn 33:54 right. That's one of the tweets that I thought was interesting for today. Like how do you think we would have felt if Ronald Reagan got AIDS back in the 80s?

Cortex 34:03 Fierce fierce, ironic weirdness. I mean, it's

Jessamyn 34:05 because it's the same basic situation right? Like he was a total jerk about the AIDS crisis and in fact, actively, you know, maybe actively is the wrong word. But like, through his sort of disdain and attention in general bad behavior more people died than needed to and

Cortex 34:27 it's, it's a weird it's a weird comparison to try and sort of through because there was so much absolutely blatant homophobia tied up in the AIDS crisis that like, parsing out what the political calculus of Reagan having AIDS would look like. is like, that's a whole other side mess there. It's it's it's an I don't know, it's an interesting comparison. Partly because COVID feels so absolutely. Like like comparatively without even any sort of cultural charge other than fucking racists calling it the China flu, etcetera, right. Well,

Jessamyn 34:59 I just want to say Well, and the fact that it you know that it disproportionately affects people of color and everything else. Like, even in Vermont, you know, the one of the whitest states, where you would think like, if people are blaming this on, I mean, I don't know, right, people have a whole bunch of reasons why they think that's true. But they did publish a report about like, you know, how people of color in Vermont are disproportionately, you know, affected here. Yeah. And

Cortex 35:31 but there's no like, there's no, I don't feel like there was a strong cultural awareness of that is like what I'm saying, I don't feel like there's, I don't feel like there is a dominant cultural framework and message tied to that, if anything, it's the opposite. It's like people are just no one in the white power structures wants to put a particular focus on the fact that this is disproportionately affecting people of color, because that would just throw even more light on it being fucking outrageous how how shitty the handling of it has been, but like, you know, there's not that there's not that same valence that I don't know, this is a lot to try and dig into, while punchy and lost sleep. But, ya know, anyway, fuck Trump is basically the refrain to come back to. Yeah. Should we talk about metal filter? Sure. Let's talk about the blue.

Jessamyn 36:21 First of all, I don't think we can mention the blue without talking about the fact that I have been making posts nearly every day. You have all of September and then do your hair cut? Yes. Which thank you for updating that. Because Oh, my God, were you going to be put in the hot seat today? That has not happened? I know. You've got stuff going on? We're coming around on this.

Cortex 36:45 Yes. Yeah. So like, Yeah, let's talk about metal filter and the fundraiser stuff. Because yeah, both of those things are part of the fundraising. We've been trying to do a sort of positive fun job on this this last month. Yeah. Credited Jeremy for pushing out that restlessness. It's been. It's been

Jessamyn 37:00 nice, because I feel like everybody's been able to find their part of it. Like, for me, writing posts is fun. And it's a little bit of an interesting stretch to try to write posts about topics I know very little about. You know, for you, you can get people all jazzed up about cutting your hair. And you know, you're good at drawing little pictures with, you know, little stuff on it. I would have liked to have seen more of them. But I think a Tete time has been doing dream months. I don't know if that's wrapped up at the end of September or not. But that has been fun. Like just seeing a bunch of posts about dreams. Taz has been doing the chat filter posts on the main on the main page. Do we have things other things going on that I've forgotten that?

Cortex 37:52 I don't remember there might be? I think that might be that might be the run of

Jessamyn 37:57 it? Yeah, I think so I can I can check. Here's the post. And yeah, oh, this thread is close for archival?

Cortex 38:07 Oh, well, I'd better do something about that. Yeah. Me talking and trying to do things at the same time, it's always good radio.

Jessamyn 38:18 So at any rate, I made a bunch of posts. And that's been really fun of unfortunately, of course, you know, I had, I don't know, maybe 30 people who signed up and I did all the fun ones first, or the easy ones. And then the ones that I have left are either more complicated or longer, or I know less about them. So it's going to be a challenging couple of days. But I think I'm, I think I'm up for it. Thank you to everybody who contributed because, you know, it takes all of us and it's it's been nice to see people getting behind it.

Cortex 38:55 I'm going in updating all the fundraising threads so they'll stay open. And I'm seeing again that some dickbag went through and like flagged the hair post and every comment and up to the point at which point they were having whatever weird tantrum they were having there. Oh, man. That's rude. People. Yeah, I mean, people are people are dumb. I mean, I know people were grumpy about I mean, people people in general are crazy, actually. But occasionally, individual people are like dumb and shitty.

Jessamyn 39:23 I don't see I don't see flags on this. Did you just delete

Cortex 39:26 the heroin? No. Yeah. Are you an admin view? I don't know.

Jessamyn 39:30 Oh, no, not the heroin. I was looking at fundraising one let's metal filter. Just so I can share the joy of like, what the hell? What is Oh, and then they quit? Yep. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Cortex 39:50 It's the it's the weirdest little sort of like bits of the the cultural narrative of like being, just saying cultural narrative a lot this morning, that tiny little things that don't matter that are part of this job, you know, like, I prefer it when things are chill enough that those tiny little things are the most notable, like weird things to happen rather than like the endless fucking chaos of 2020. But, but yeah, yeah, weird job. It's a weird job. It is weird. What are we talking about meta filter. So at the moment if you've been making posts, and it's been fantastic,

Jessamyn 40:27 yeah, it's been super fun. And I've been learning some things. And, you know, I've got kind of a formula. I've been doing it for a long time. And I like making posts and often I'm just not that inspired. Like, like, I think I mentioned this last month, but like Adrian Han has really made an effort at contributing to the site more just in order to kind of be the change. And I liked that idea. But you know, it's just these four walls in me and sometimes there aren't other things because I don't talk about current events really or politics or really kind of dicey. Look who fuck to over in the media kind of stuff. And so trying to find, like, Oh, how about this Japanese musician slash performance artist who came out with a concept album last year that nobody understands. But you know, I don't have to understand it necessarily to be able to post about it as long as I'm not you know, being like tea he joke joke. I don't speak Japanese. So this is funny. Like, you know, there's nothing funny about it, except the humor built

Cortex 41:36 into it. People Tarot post I yeah, yes, I didn't even catch it. That was one of yours.

Jessamyn 41:42 Oh, my God. And the songs are so weird and interesting. And the guy is interesting. And you know, the first song on this concept album is all like, a baby inside the mother's womb singing advice to the dad about how to be a good dad. And he wrote this song, you know, an hour, an hour a year after his daughter was born. And so you kind of believe that a little bit of it is, you know, personal. And you know, he's the Pineapple pen Apple guy. And, you know, he's got a persona, that's this one thing, but you look at like, the pictures of him at home with his wife and daughter and like, he's a completely other guy, which kind of makes his performing stuff that much more interesting to me. Yeah.

Cortex 42:27 There's something here other than like, Oh, he's doing his thing again. Right. He's being weird, Jim.

Jessamyn 42:33 Yeah, right. Yeah. So. So just like

Cortex 42:38 that, and shout out to all the gyms we know.

Jessamyn 42:41 Shout out gym, other gym, etc. And, yeah, you know, learning about medieval dirty jokes learning about, you know, or just talking about, like the hope cemetery and bury where I went. But a lot of people don't know about, you know, the 1918 Spanish flu memorial that was there. And, you know, I do wonder, because, you know, we talk about how Of course, saying the Chinese flu is racist. Like, do people feel the same way about calling the 1918 flu? The Spanish flu? I would assume so. But I don't know.

Cortex 43:16 I remember this is I shouldn't even try and follow through on this because I can't remember the details. But there was an interesting sort of story on how exactly the Spanish Flu ended up being called the Spanish flu. And I mean, it had something to do with basically other countries being so shitty about they're taking it seriously that acknowledging the existence of it as a threat was identified with Spain so something interesting might have been sort of ironically, Spain took it seriously and therefore everybody decided to call it the Spanish flu is like Well fuck you guys. How about the you dumb English assholes flu you know? I like it but that's a very vague paraphrase it may be getting it completely backwards so hey, you know doing good good work here sharing information with our audience other stuff on metal filter I enjoyed Cardinal things post about the guy playing Crusader Kings three who ate the pope

Jessamyn 44:10 All right, back it up. All those words. Okay,

Cortex 44:13 so there's a game called Crusader Kings three it came out very recently. It is the sequel to a game called Crusader Kings to Josh. It's been I mean, slightly goofy, but it's worth knowing that like the context here is Crusader Kings Two was this strategy game that has been like in play for many years now. Like it's been a while since it came out. And people have done all sorts of weird stuff because it's like a it's like, you know, a medieval era political strategy and conquest game, but it's not like build the best tanks. It's like, okay, let's get up to all of the weird fucking marriages and internetseiten squabbling and fights for you know, the heir to the throne. On and sabotage and spycraft and weird, weird political bullshit like that could potentially happen among these, you know, vying for power over the course of, you know, decades and centuries, and you know, lineal lines, like you know the person you start playing as dies, and so you end up playing as their air.

Jessamyn 45:19 awful lot like that ridiculous baseball game you're into?

Cortex 45:24 Well, it's sort of I don't know, it's it's a little bit more serious face than the best stories that come from it make it sound like it's, you know, it's kind of like a serious strategy game. It's just that if you really want to have a strange plan, you can probably execute it because they kept adding stuff to it partly in response to the fans like wanting to do weird stuff. So Crusader Kings two went on a long time this way. And then Crusader Kings three is finally out. And it's clearly sort of embracing a lot of the things that sort of made crusaders kings to infamous for being such a weird sandbox of political intrigue. So like the fact that someone managed to eat the Pope was a logical, like, conclusion of the systems built into the game. Like it's not even like you. And now if I press this button, technically, what would have happened there is I guess that would have been a no, no, you just have the option to literally devour someone as part of the character. Okay, yeah. So So you know, a guy, a guy made a point of playing a game where he managed to eat the Pope, and you know, wrote about it and post about it and turned into discussions of Crusader Kings and strategy games, and also a lot of puns, which is, you know, kind of, Hey, your happy place? Yep. So it was a good time. I enjoyed it was a lot of fun. And I'm enjoying all I think we had a post last month at some point about someone doing something in Crusader Kings three with bears. Like, can you just play the game as bears or something like that?

Jessamyn 46:51 Got a segue. Got a segue? Yeah. Well, I mean, finish your sentence.

Cortex 46:55 Okay. Well, that's it. What does that say? Wait, give me that's fair week. Oh, it is yes. Fat bears.

Jessamyn 47:06 Yeah. So I don't know how I first learned about fat Bear Week. This time, I think it was a picture on malt shop. And the general idea is there is the the website explorer.org always has really good cameras, right? Like nature cams. So you can like watch the cat and the cat rescue. Or you can just look at a field or you can watch baby hummingbirds feed each other, or my favorite nest flicks, which is birds, birds, but they do a thing every year, or have for a couple of years, which is called fat Bear Week because they follow the same bears around at Katmai National Park. And you know, the bears start out skinny. And then they just eat and eat and eat and eat in preparation for hibernation. And so they just mostly sit around in the river and let fish jump into their mouse, and a whole bunch of other things. And so basically, they used to use to vote on Facebook, which was there. And now they've got it all up on the website. So you get to vote for the fattest bear, which is really just a way to kind of drive engagement, right. But you also get to learn about bears. And my favorite part of this post by fight or flight is there is a I think it's in this post. Sorry, oh, yeah, the dedicated humans behind the footage. Like one of the things I've always wondered about these nature camps that aren't just like a cam on a pole, but are actually you know, somebody's panning and scanning and focusing and whatever is who does these jobs, and outside online. I mean, they're not jobs, actually, they're volunteer positions, for the most part, but outside online has a great kind of look at what it takes to do those jobs. Like you work your way up to bear cam. From like, Puppy cam or hummingbird like whatever you there's, there's a whole hierarchy and pecking order in a world that I didn't know existed and it is fascinating. So this post was great. It links to previous posts. So noscope chimes in with I found this post disappointing for a very gay reason, which made me laugh. And yeah, so you know, if you just need to kind of get outside your own head for a while, sit around and watch a bear try to eat a fish and the thing that's the best about the bear camps is most of these bears are standing in rivers. And so there's this like river sound in the background that like you don't even know it, but it is relaxing you it is a nod in your mind as this is happening. And these bears tend to be happy and healthy. So it's it's cool. Yeah, thank you You for the post fight or flight and thank you to I believe it's rangefinder but I'm not 100% Sure, who made the post over a malt shop so that I became more of it. Excellent. Yes.

Cortex 50:12 i So I'm, I'm excited about a thing and there's a post bail thing. And the Venn diagram is weird because I haven't actually read the post yet, even though I want to go in there and party. But sissy raiga has a new album out this guy. Yes, mouth dreams, which is the follow up to mouth sounds, mouth silence and mouth moods. There's a lot less Shrek on this one. Maybe, maybe no smash mouse. In practice, there's probably like, a dozen little references I just haven't noticed yet. Because I haven't listened to it enough. But it's I love these albums. He makes these wonderful, goofy mount matches, too. And there's, there's there's a new one out and it's got some very good songs on it. That I think even people who can't sit through an entire album, like think of this would probably really enjoy listening to in isolation. But yeah, I love it. I'm happy about it. It's the best part of my year. Is it really, it's, it's it's a high point. It's definitely a high point I should talk about this. I may have mentioned this at the time last year. But at last year's XOXO. When we were able to have an XOXO fest because there wasn't a pandemic. Niall actually did a preview of this album in progress. And it was an incredibly goofy, wonderful time with like 100 people packed into a small room, which was also a thing we could do then. And Neil played the album, and they set it up so that the Slack channel for the XOXO we set up a closing party channel where people could post things that would then show up on the screen in a weird, drifty psychedelic way. While we listened to the album, there was just this visual cacophony of people like racing to make relative jokes at every new little twist in the mashup album and you know, it's a mashup album. So elements of different things keeps showing up in strange juxtapositions. SpongeBob shows up very early on the album. And so there was a running SpongeBob theme throughout this entire hour of like audio visual madness. And that was like one of my favorite moments from XOXO last year, which is one of my favorite, like, short set of days, like every year that it happens. So having this come back around and being able to like not only enjoy that, yay, there is a new Neil album out but like, have it tie into that extremely positive memory of that, ah, here's like, it's a really nice thing. It's to the point where, honestly, this thing, this album came out and I didn't listen to it for like, almost 24 hours, because I was waiting for the right moment where it be like, Okay, now this is the time to truly properly enjoy this. And I was like, you know, what, if I'm in kind of a shitty distractible mood, and I'm not getting things done, why am I putting off listening to a thing that I know I'm gonna get a bunch of joy out of, instead of saying, you know, fuck it, now's a great time to listen so

Jessamyn 53:05 that you can do and actually maybe focus on let's be honest, yeah,

Cortex 53:08 yeah. I mean, that is, that is an aspect of it. Like I kind of like I want to be, I wanna be paying attention when I listen to this. Because I'm gonna listen to it like 500 more times. So it's okay if I don't catch it all the first time. Right? But yes, very excited about that. Very excited for everybody else in the specific niche of people who are excited about Neil's this Iriga mouth albums. Yes, cool. And at some point, I'll go into that thread and say some small portion of that.

Jessamyn 53:36 Good, good, good, because that is really nice. And it is nice to like, have memories where the memory is actually just kind of a good thing you think about that makes you feel good in the present, not like a thing that you're thinking about that was good in the past. And right now you're like, but now. So I have two related benefits or posts. One is mine and one is not mine. The one that is not mine? Is this one by Medusa. Basically, it's an article on defector.com about a person who becomes obsessed with terrible houses on Zillow. And just kind of writes about, you know, Zillow, surfing and specifically Zillow, surfing through, you know, pandemic times, basically, and then a whole bunch of, but it just becomes kind of an interesting blog buddy blog conversation about some of these weird homes and who owns them or how do you take care of them? Or like, what's the thing and for me, actually, you know, idle real estate surfing was one of the things we would do when we were all kind of limping around at my dad's house like me, Kate and Jim usually Jim would go to sleep because he does not care. And you know, Kate and I, we kind of look at random houses in the area, just like because They're, especially in kind of what's kind of a vacation community. Like the insides of these houses are weird. In a lot of cases, like, they're just, they're designed almost for no one. You know, like, there's definitely like that Airbnb vibe, that like places that only exist as Airbnbs have, where like, they've got kind of like not great, like the cheapest viable furniture, and like, you know, decorated stuff that you get from like home goods, or whatever. And like, not that there's anything wrong with that if it's your style. But once you've been to like two or three Airbnbs, that are all decorated exactly the same in completely different parts of the world, you're like, Oh, this is kind of a trophy thing. And like vacation places, same stuff, right? There's tons of stuff piled in the house, for like, what you might do if you were gonna hang out here. But in many cases, people are just dropping, you know, air dropping in for a weekend or whatever. And so it just became like a pretty interesting thread for chit chatting about homes, vacation homes, real estate surfing or whatever. And then juxtaposed with this post that I made, that Adrian Hahn, it was his donation. Like, here, I make a $20 donation, post the thing about all the office space that's going empty, because of the pandemic times, and what the hell is going on, which actually turned into kind of a very chatty thread, about a lot of people who are working from home or who used to work from home and who aren't? Or, or, or what happened to their world of work. Yeah, visa vie their offices, you know, like a lot of Metafilter people have always worked from home or often do. But a lot of them also had offices, many of whom don't anymore, and are gonna go back to offices after pandemic times, or who aren't and making different choices. So it was just, it was an interesting thread to like, get to know me fights, talking about offices, which is not a particularly controversial topic. And it's just interesting, it was interesting for me to hear kind of how other people live, because like, I've worked from home, most of the time since forever. But I've always had like other places I was able to go, which I kind of don't right now. And so it's it's been interesting for me making that adjustment. So hearing other people's adjustments, like well, I used to spend my commute time doing XYZ thing, which is now a thing I no longer do or whatever. Interesting. Just learn some stuff. It was interesting. And and it wasn't what I had expected. It wasn't what I thought that thread would turn into and so it was kind of neat that that it did.

Cortex 57:40 Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I've got where is it? There we go. What other posts that all mentioned because I liked it is the guest the paint post, beautician made a post about a guy who watches paint get mixed and sort of narrates his suspicions and his feelings about what's going to come out at the end. I it's it's such a goofy thing. Like he just posed these tiktoks Where you know, an automated paint mixer video of an automated paint mixer like reading the UPC and then pouring the pigments in and hymns or like watching to see what balance of colors are going in and trying to speculate.

Jessamyn 58:27 That's yet the videos of the paint. I don't even

Cortex 58:31 know presumably someone just fucking post some on TikTok because people post fucking everything everywhere. But I haven't looked into it. I saw some of the

Jessamyn 58:39 talk. I think TikTok lets you do right. It's like you can have a commentary on someone else.

Cortex 58:44 Yeah, like that whole re mixing and sort of do wedding thing is so fundamental to TikTok. So yes, I've seen a couple in passing, I mentioned as much in the thread. And I've got this like sort of marked as I'm gonna go watch some more of these fucking videos. But it's it is. It's hard to convey how delightful I found it based on a description of it. It's just me

Jessamyn 59:04 loving it already without Oh, I'm loving it already without even the sound on like, I'm just watching this guy reacting to looking at this. All right. I love it. Thank you. So, to me,

Cortex 59:19 I will mention two threads that we can just like not bother to discuss at all if we don't, but they were notable. There is the thread about Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying and then there is more recently, late last night early this morning. I guess that's right about Donald and Melania Trump testing positive for Coronavirus which other Republican people keep testing positive for today too. It's going to be such a weird fucking domino should show there. But anyway, those are significant threads and, and yes, gosh, yeah. So if you somehow missed those and need to listen to podcasts, find out that there There's a couple reads for you. Very different tones between them. I would say,

Jessamyn 1:00:05 I've got one to wrap up with on maybe more of an up note. All right. I'm from will. I'm looking at his name. I know I've been told how to pronounce it.

Cortex 1:00:22 And it's that WNS, that's

Jessamyn 1:00:25 why it's just a really sweet post about a redditor, who's also a genealogist found an urn with the ashes of a veteran, and then figured out who he was, and got a little funeral for him. And it was just kind of one of those sweet like, I believe there was a time when, like, making special effort for people who had served in the military was more normative. And I think there were good things about that, like, I have a critique of the military, I have a critique of, you know, weapons, I have a critique of a whole bunch of things. But that whole, like, thanks for helping the country aspect of you know, people who perform military service is one of the things like it's a thing I like, it's a thing. It's interesting to read, like when GJ writes about it called Jeff, Twitter. And, you know, I've got friends who are veterans, and it's, it's, it's a thing we talked about. And so this is kind of a neat story about, like, Hey, I needed some help. And I figured out how to do it. And I got a military funeral for this person 50 years later. And it's just, it's, it's a sweet, it's a sweet story. It's a great post. I'm glad it got moved over to Metafilter. From where people were talking about it. On on Reddit,

Cortex 1:01:58 yeah. All right. Shall we discuss the AskMe Metafilter?

Jessamyn 1:02:05 We should ask Metafilter. Always great. First thing, we're going to start with skeletons. Skeletons. Yes. So long haul trucker has a very small, one, tag 15 words. Aside from the ability to stand upright, how has our skeleton assisted us in dominating the animal kingdom?

Cortex 1:02:25 This is a good question.

Jessamyn 1:02:27 slightly odd question. But also, you get what they're getting at. And there are some straightforward answers like thumbs talking, that kind of stuff. But then you get some, you know, kind of meaty, meaty answers about you know, not opposable toes, how we walk, being able to grasp stuff, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it interrelates with our other systems, Bartleby has a really good thing talking about like, Well, look, cheetahs are fast, but they're not fast for very long, you know, their energy peaks at a point where their blood gets too hot. So that's, like, cool off or it can't run anymore. Whereas people are really good about, you know, humans are good at being able to kind of sustain work over time to do what they need to do, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So, this is where a thread, it's still open, if you know things about skeletons, and I think it was a great way to kick off October honestly, and I was interested to learn about that especially because, you know, Twitter skeleton, Twitter is just all about that 12 foot tall Home Depot store, and I don't care so much about that one.

Cortex 1:03:41 Okay, so the thing about that skeleton is that was before it blew up on Twitter as a thing more recently that had already been canonized as the form of former Charleston shoe thief, batter Antonio Wallace.

Jessamyn 1:03:57 What is even happening?

Cortex 1:03:59 That's, ya know, someone someone wonder they're coming up with lore for Tony, they were like, what's the deal with what's the deal with Wallace? What's the deal with was, oh, maybe he's that 12 foot tall, Halloween skeleton decoration that they sell at Home Depot. And that became canon and well, insofar as anything is in canon in baseball. He subsequently got traded to another team and then got incinerated. So So rest and violence Tony Wallace, but

Jessamyn 1:04:26 is that what they say? And guess what?

Cortex 1:04:28 That's what we say ever since. Fan Favorite Landry violence got incinerated a couple seasons ago and that turned into saying rest and violence I've got a song in progress that I haven't finished called rest and violence that's sort of a at lines about 44 women except for it's more like five verses about five baseball players. But anyway, uh, turns out I had something to say about baseball after all, and it's that if you see that he's bony. Tony, you did

Jessamyn 1:04:57 you? Yeah, my crabs aren't doing particularly Well, but they're not doing terrible either. Man

Cortex 1:05:01 the crabs are the fucking Yankees what they are at least they were for a week they were just like, sort of like smugly planning to do well and then did very well and like, kind of nobody was on board with it so which is unfair of me I shouldn't give them that hard time because it's not like it's a you know, deck Josh,

Jessamyn 1:05:20 you shouldn't have done that just because I told you I was enjoying you know, you got all Jelle with me.

Cortex 1:05:28 I take it all back. I'm so glad that you signed up for baseball. And I'm I'm glad that you're getting a little bit of the up and down drama of sports.

Jessamyn 1:05:36 Mostly am just reading wow, I haven't logged in for a while. And I just logged in and like, Oh, I think maybe mine was a moist talkers anyhow, I was probably wrong about everything. Whatever. Yeah. But it has been fun to like, you know, get that newsletter and

Cortex 1:05:58 shelled. Oh, yeah.

Jessamyn 1:06:01 I pray to my person was.

Cortex 1:06:04 I will. I'm just gonna I'm going to physically restrain myself from getting into more details about baseball right now. But yes, yes. AskMe metal filter skeletons 12 foot tall skeleton, Tony Wallace rest and violence. What else you got?

Jessamyn 1:06:20 Well, tons of stuff. Actually. Here is a kind of a question by not a thing that seems like it might be asking about one thing, but it's really kind of asking you about something different. I'm looking for philosophers and thinkers, who can help them ask questions about like the nature and history of roads. So not just like the history of like, how did blah, blah, blah road get built, which is interesting, actually. Because the highway that goes through here that split our town down the middle, just went through 50 years ago. And so there was a big thing in the newspaper, about like, 50 years before this, there was no highway and everything was like dirt, roads, and et cetera. So then we got a highway, and the town was split into and everything got different. So basically, they're looking at, you know, people who sort of philosophically think about roads. And there's a whole bunch of interesting if you're somebody who likes to look for a things to read, that aren't just novels, or books or whatever. There's a whole bunch of really good feedback here. Because I think a lot of people know about like Robert Moses, you know, he built New York in a certain way to keep like, certain people in certain people out of various locations, and like, Fuck him. But like, there's more to it than that. And so, you know, desert shore shows up and says, Hey, my PhD dissertation was about the philosophy is place. Here's, here's some ideas or like, here's some things that you can look at to read about, you know, Langdon winner who talked about Robert Moses and wrote about it without being that person and et cetera. It's just it's a really it's a direction I haven't thought about Super much and I was happy that other people not only had but had suggestions.

Cortex 1:08:17 Nice. I am interested in this ask medical post that went up like literally, like five minutes ago. Help with chord progressions for lucky Sue, which is a song by a band called min I trust, I guess I've never heard the band never heard the song. But they're trying to figure out chords for because it's brand new, and they can't just look on YouTube. So, so we'll see if someone gets there. Or maybe

Jessamyn 1:08:45 it's on YouTube, but the song itself is on you. Yeah,

Cortex 1:08:48 yeah. So I think trying to figure out what the current one because that's a it's a challenging process to figure out chords until you like develop a good skill set for figuring it out. So maybe, maybe we'll get off the podcast recording, and I'll give it a listen and see if I can knock it out for them. If someone hasn't heard it gotten there, but great, yeah.

Jessamyn 1:09:06 I enjoyed because we've had Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot since we last talked. This is carrying comfort being like, hey, neither my wife for I was raised in a home that died did High Holy Days, we don't have like family traditions. But we are now attending services, and there aren't in person services, and we have a baby. We're thinking about establishing some home traditions. Talk to us about what you did at home for high holy days. And we can think about what to talk about what to do, or how we deal with it. And so there's a whole bunch of people just talking about, you know, what was what was useful, including some delicious recipes, one from Marfa, Texas that looks like dates stuffed with almond paste, Rosewater, cinnamon and carbon umum Oh my god. I bet it's delicious. And so just people talking about kind of what their what what they do for major holidays. And it's a it's a nice short, September 11 thread.

Cortex 1:10:11 Yeah. I can keep going. Keep going. Sure. laid on me. I got nothing. Oh, okay,

Jessamyn 1:10:19 so what the hell is up with professional athletes and their luggage? Why do you bring your luggage to the game? Aren't you getting paid a million dollars, why you got to carry your own bag. And it turns out that because of how travel works, and how you know when you get to the game versus when you get to the hotel versus bla bla bla bla bla, usually the bag that you have that you show up at the stadium just as like your personal items, stuff that you don't want to get slept over to the hotel. And I guess there's certain people who have vaguely fashion oriented Dopp kits and acidic so this zebras, zebras question, but acidic links to a whole bunch of pictures. Not a whole bunch, three of like NBA stars, and they're tiny bags that they carry around because you know, these guys are basketballs, people, I believe more than other people are fashionable, or at least some of them are. Like, I don't think of baseball people as being the same way though. Maybe they are. I don't know. And I think

Cortex 1:11:28 that's probably a fair distinction. I like like, without speaking confidently from outside, you know, either fandom, you know,

Jessamyn 1:11:36 but if I had to think of like the best dressed athletes that I have seen, they're all basketball players.

Cortex 1:11:42 Ya know, it seems like it's much more of a basketball culture like it feels like it ties in with like sneaker culture too, right? Like, right, like Air Jordans, but not a whole lot of I don't know, Ricky Henderson's. I don't know if there's ever been like a real baseball shoe that like gets into that same sneaker head territory as like, a shitload of basketball stuff. Right? Right. Right. Right. It feels like it's maybe all of a piece.

Jessamyn 1:12:07 Yeah. So at any rate, it was an interesting question. And I learned some things and got to look at some fashionable basketball players, which I appreciated. And then I really liked this question. By Lewis Weaver, Lou wood. That person, I

Cortex 1:12:25 can't even help until your link Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:12:26 Louis Weaver, Lewis Swiper, the woods, whoever, basically being like, look, how do the bits and bytes move around in the internet? Like I get it, but I don't totally get it. Can somebody help me understand, really what is happening? When I send a text, like, explain it? Like I'm five, or like high school, or something? And there are some really good explanations from a bunch of you know, kind of nerdy, nerdy smart people who understand this stuff. And hit and yeah, it was really, it was really fun thread. Lex. Yeah. And you know, if you if this is your Curiosity topic, oh, my gosh, this thread is the answer for it. Because it's a bunch of people who really understand this giving you a bunch of links. So that, pardon me? You can really understand.

Cortex 1:13:23 Yeah. All right, two more favoriting. That good?

Jessamyn 1:13:27 You should one, which is a callback to a thread from 2017. I think I didn't mention this last month.

Cortex 1:13:35 Just go for it. All right. Total competence, King buzzy

Jessamyn 1:13:39 looking for a job, a bad behavior situation. looking for another job trying to figure out how to navigate talking about the bad situation. And they updated. Why is this? I feel like maybe I mentioned this six months ago. I

Cortex 1:14:01 didn't mention that again. Fuck it.

Jessamyn 1:14:04 They got a job after the pandemic hit. And we're very happy. And I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before.

Cortex 1:14:11 But anyway, we did mention this. But congratulations again, still happy because the way

Jessamyn 1:14:15 I the way I line up everything for the podcast is I favorited at all. And then I go through and I unfavorite like that month's favorites posts because that's the only thing I use favoriting for for posts, almost always. But then if there's something that was older, I don't always delete that favorite. And so then I mentioned it on every podcast because it's just a turn around all day. Right. And last, but certainly not least, what captured my heart this month was churchgoers posed question. In elementary school, I was shown an educational series teaching library skills set in a post apocalyptic world, and the protagonists are trapped in a library and use the card catalog to look up information shouldn't be about defeating a robot Centaur monster who was laid to waste the earth on public broadcasting about 1985 What the fuck? Yeah, I

Cortex 1:15:12 never heard of that. That's amazing. No,

Jessamyn 1:15:14 me neither. Gemstar answered it in half an hour. It was on Mississippi Public Broadcasting television in 1985. And theoretically, it's gonna be a I've watched the first episode, it is weird, super weird. And the whole series isn't on YouTube, which is sad. But oh my god, it's called tomes and talismans. Like, I can't even imagine what this was for. Like, it's just so strange. But like, you know, basically, these people get stuck on Earth after these creepy creeps takers over everybody else. teleports off of Earth, and these people are stuck in a library trying to figure out how to save the world.

Cortex 1:16:03 This feels like a very, very dark take on what was that the from the mixed up files of? Yes, something

Jessamyn 1:16:12 Ms. Bazeley? Frank Wheeler? Yes. Such a good book such a good book. And, and yeah, and specifically there, those kids are in a museum, these people are in a library. And so you kind of get the feeling while you're watching the first episode, that you're kind of learning some stuff. You know, like, Can I look this up over here? No, no, no, that's fiction. We need to look this up over in nonfiction. Nonfiction is organized by the Dewey Decimal System, like that kind of stuff. So I'm just howling watching it. But it's also got a creepy plot, and you're like, Oh, God, I hope they get off the planet. Oh, shit. They're trapped in the library. And? Yeah, yeah, it's delightful. And it's an asked Metafilter question that got kind of asked and answered very quickly. So you might have missed it. And if you like this kind of weirdness on YouTube, that would be some

Cortex 1:17:08 nice. All right. Anything, anything else in there?

Jessamyn 1:17:14 Oh, not for AskMe Metafilter. I think just, you know, fundraising stuff is going good on meta talk. And the past is a different country, which now currently has as many comments as my user number, which Kismet? It's very

Cortex 1:17:27 nice. Is his minimum number. What are you talking? Sorry? Oh, my God. I sat on something earlier, instead of interrupting you. And that was I felt very, like a basic functioning human about that. So oh, you know what it was? We were talking about the bears. And you were talking about how they have the good cams. And I was thinking like, well, if Bear Grylls showed up, then he'd be a cam girls.

Jessamyn 1:17:50 Oh, yeah. That's pretty good. It is.

Cortex 1:17:54 And also, like, never like, like, you know, it's just pure free association, but I'll take it. Sure.

Jessamyn 1:18:01 There is a fucking fuck thread if people feel the need in meta talk right now. And they're just been good medic cocktails, I feel like and um, yeah, hopefully, there'll be another one this weekend. Looking forward to doing a little bit of work. There is site update, number five. Stuff is happening. People may have missed but time they put an update in that thread, just saying there's some updates on the advisory board. If people are interested on it. There's like a little page about it and people have donated so that the people on the advisory board are getting paid for that. And that's good. And yeah, if

Cortex 1:18:39 folks want to support that process, you know, doing a one time or recurring contribution specifically targeted towards providing honoraria for those meetings is a great way to do it. And yeah,

Jessamyn 1:18:51 and you can still vote I think, for chat filter topics. Oh, no. Number four just got posted a couple days ago. So about your cat evaluations. Yeah, pet pet cat.

Cortex 1:19:06 I think it was pet but there's a lot of cat content. As it turns out,

Jessamyn 1:19:10 looks like cats. Maybe it's just cats. Okay. Performance reviews for cats. Yeah, adorable thread full of people talking about their pets and on the blue. And you should go join up. Yep. chat it up. Yep. All right. Anything else going on for you? I've been following along with Last Week Tonight on fanfare we are doing a little bit of overhaul slow motion on the social stuff. Stuff.

Cortex 1:19:45 Yeah, I've been I've been I've been following lace ball on fanfare I've been while I've been posting the baseball stuff on fanfare even and since we're on the siesta week. It's been a quiet one this week. I thought you know, I'm very slow picking up on this but I'm realizing like part of the work is in time feels so weird. With this podcast this month is like the last one we did like the middle of last month. So it just hasn't been that long either. That's not true. Yeah. No. It was posted like maybe three weeks ago. Maybe maybe.

Jessamyn 1:20:14 It was posted on the 11th. And I think we did it. Yeah. Just due to after my birthday a couple days before.

Cortex 1:20:21 Yeah. Anyway. But yes, well, I'm spent good podcast.

Jessamyn 1:20:27 Yeah, it was good talking to you. As per usual, I hope your your weeks continue to improve. Yeah, we'll

Cortex 1:20:34 see how it goes. feeling optimistic. And yeah, all right. Well, hey, here we go. Take care out there, everybody. You know, do the things wear a mask?

Jessamyn 1:20:46 Stay in touch? Yeah. Wash your hands.

Cortex 1:20:49 Yep. Happy Happy spooky season.

Jessamyn 1:20:52 Yes. Happy happy dancing pumpkins on the AskMe Metafilter. Post page.

Cortex 1:20:56 Go get haunted by the ghost of Dewey Decimal. Do we know Thomas Dewey probably

Jessamyn 1:21:01 know Thomas Dewey is the other guy.

Cortex 1:21:04 To Melville Dewey. Yeah. His name is Melville Dewey. Yeah, really? Now that's a plate I don't know. It's just like, it's got a it's got a shirt. It's got a thing to it. Like a guy a guy named Melville inventing a classification system for books feels like a weird sort of Moby Dick joke or something.

Jessamyn 1:21:22 Now I feel like you're on drugs.

Cortex 1:21:24 Sorry. Yeah. Oh, once again, I blew past the obvious off ramp and into this strange cul de sac of conversation where the podcast has officially gone on too long. So now we're stopping for real? Love y'all. See you in a month.

That's still maybe there'll be more music in the next podcast, but it's Friday. I'm tired. I'm so tired. Aren't you tired?