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Podcast 177 Transcript

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A transcript for Episode 177: Good Soup (2021-10-13).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.


Transcript

Jessamyn 0:00 Alright, let's get into it.

Cortex 0:01 All right. Let's get into it did

Jessamyn 0:03 already get into it? We're 39 seconds into it.

Cortex 0:06 Yeah, but yeah, I don't know this, this feels like a social pre roll. Maybe we'll just pretend it didn't happen. Or maybe we won't. Welcome to the podcast episode 177 The smart thing we do, I am Josh kortext Mullard and I'm Jessamyn and I have had my coffee.

Jessamyn 0:24 And I have had breakfast and a shower, which is very unusual for me by this time of day.

Cortex 0:30 Basically, we're highly motivated, highly successful individuals in the fact that we're recording this on the eighth of the month a week after it probably should have come out is not anybody's concern.

Jessamyn 0:41 I had shit to do. So did you? Yeah, it's

Cortex 0:43 tough. It's been a busy bumpy start to the month we were going to record a couple days ago and then neighbors across the corner or probably their their landlords or maybe the city decided to cut down five very large trees and Chip them all and so it's a it was just another day, because boy, that would have been a sonic soundscape. Yep.

Jessamyn 1:06 You know, I don't even think I need to link anymore to the leaf blower. YouTube of the asylum streets FrankerZ singing that song but it does every time somebody's complaining about very large outdoor wood chipper leaf blower stuff. I listened to it. It makes me feel better.

Cortex 1:27 Yeah, I mean, I've we've recorded when there was like, noise from a neighbor before like it like someone running a like, chainsaw down the block or something. It

Jessamyn 1:35 doesn't snow plows come through my place.

Cortex 1:38 This was fucking cacophony. I had like headphones on all day just to like, mute it down. Anyway, but that's not happening. This is happening. We're making the good noises, not the terrible tree chopping noises. They weren't nice trees too. And maybe they were sick. Maybe it's just

Jessamyn 1:53 maybe that's part of your problem here. They might have been ash trees, too. You know, the emerald ash borer is causing havoc with our ash trees and the problems with ash trees is that they're really big. And the emerald ash borer kind of kills them while they're standing. And then they fall over when it rains or snows and ruin everything. Yeah, that's not great. I mean, that's my charitable interpretation of what may have been happening, it's probably something stupid.

Cortex 2:19 I have, I have sort of charitable, more city oriented, oriented, they've been doing a lot of road work around here. And I think they might be doing some work along the street that these trees were on. And they're also like, big trees on a very small medium, like it's a sidewalk and then like a forefoot medium, maybe, and the trees are completely out to the edges of that. So it might be this is going to fuck things up long term, or we are straight up anyway. And we can't do with these trees here or something. Anyway, they better fucking plant some new trees is all I'm saying. I guess

Jessamyn 2:48 you guys don't have the emerald ash borer out where you are. So I am definitely wrong.

Cortex 2:55 Like, so you can

Jessamyn 2:56 just enjoy your ash trees. And you know, and we don't know anything about.

Cortex 3:02 It's a nice looking bug though, looking at this Wikipedia page,

Jessamyn 3:04 it's a really nice looking bug. And I'm on the, I think I've mentioned, like the Conservation Commission of my town. And we made a big report, like we, you know, paid money to a consulting firm to issue a 90 page report to inform the town about how to deal with this and the town has so far just ignored it. And it's, you know, we get real winter all the time here. And so it's just a matter of time before you know the ash borer infested trees that then fall over. And it's hard because, you know, it eats all the trees, and there is kind of expensive, remediate all the ash trees, and there's expensive remediation you can do. So if you had like the one beautiful ash tree, you could pay a bunch of money to save it. But you can't do that to all the trees literally, all you can do is cut them down now or wait for them to fall down or cut them down a little later. Yes, it's a bummer. You know, it's like a chestnut blight or you know, Dutch elm disease. But, you know, I, like I care about climate change, but not in a jumping up and down on my chair kind of way I just try and do what I can and, you know, inform other people about it, but like the emerald ash borer, I'm all like, hopped up about you guys. It's kind of my local environmental concern. So yeah, it has nothing to do with whatever happened to your trees.

Cortex 4:28 Well, good. All right, then. Yeah, I'll take comfort in

Jessamyn 4:31 that. Yeah. I do 177 factor that I like,

Cortex 4:35 Oh, tell me about this 177 Fact.

Jessamyn 4:39 Well, I mean, it's you know, it's got it

Cortex 4:41 don't tell me the fact that tell me about the fact apparently is what give me like set a scene like you know, anyway.

Jessamyn 4:48 Well, it is the smallest size pellet used in air guns, but that's just because I'm scrolling farther down on it. But what I like is this kind of hold on. And I copied and pasted a thing that did not translate, but that it's it's two to the seven plus seven to the two

Cortex 5:08 are seven squared. Say it again, it's it's

Jessamyn 5:11 two raised to the seventh power plus seven squared. So it's got a neat kind of symmetry in and there's a name for this thing. It's a Leland number, which I think is not anything that means anything to anybody. But I just kind of liked that thing. Like I just made it like a doctor's appointment for 1111 at 1pm. And I was like, yeah, that's nice. One. Yeah. So that's it. 177 been a long time. And it's p o z as a Greek number pause.

Cortex 5:48 Named after the millet mathematician Paul Leland lays me somebody you know. Nope. Just looking at the wicked beauty thing. He likes factors, which seems like on on, on. On par, not on par on on time. Brand on brand. Thank you, Jesus Christ. Sure. But yeah, all right. Well, that's early.

Jessamyn 6:15 I feel it's early

Cortex 6:16 days. It's like I've been up for hours. Early

Jessamyn 6:19 for me. I think it's relatively maybe the same earliness so like, when I started this podcast, I'd been up for three hours.

Cortex 6:25 Yeah, yeah. So we're on basically the same sort of schedule, I think there as far as wakefulness goes,

Jessamyn 6:31 yeah. And we've both had some coffee. Yes. And it's sunny here. So Sunny. It's actually

Cortex 6:36 it is sunny here it was. It was it was a little bit cloudy here this morning. And I see like, bright Stark sunlight outside right now. So who knows? I think I might. If it stays nice. I might go for a walk to the beer porch after this. But a half mile up the road. So food cart pod I quite like,

Jessamyn 6:52 I am definitely going for a walk after this too. It should surprise no one, the post office Haha, I'm gonna get my landlady some stamps. And I have a friend who's a librarian who I'm pretty sure it's also a me fight. Um, who collects etiquette books. And as I've been cleaning out my mother's house, one of the areas my mother collected was old etiquette books. And so she had reached out to me and been like, hey, you know, if you have any, I would take them I pay you for shipping. And I have a box of maybe 10 etiquette books of various vintages, one as old as 1821. And they're pretty nifty. And I'm going to put them in the mail tour.

Cortex 7:32 Nice. That's right. I have been we were talking before we started recording others haven't been as productive as I'd like art wise, I'm still putting together like monthly patreon stuff, which is I'm enjoying that it's a nice motivation. Basically everyone who's postcard subscriber gets a postcard every month and then if you're a higher level subscriber, you get like a larger piece as well every month. So it's an it's a good excuse to work. Well it's not too bad like like, like if I'm doing some if I'm working on like plotter drawings, and it's easy to come up with a concept and then create like 10 plotter drawings based off that and like the work was all done up front, essentially, then I'm like, Okay, I like these. I like what's being produced by this process, I'm going to produce 10 specimen of these, and I'll cut them out and I'll address them and those postcards, that's a cinch. The larger stuff is usually want to do something more ambitious and might be a bigger plotter drawing. month back, I actually did print project, like a line or cut print project. That was also like a sort of multimedia thing using an old pair of jeans of mine, like just my absolute most busted out pair of jeans, I wear them literally to pieces. And so I actually printed on cut out pieces of that and glued that to some paper and sent those as postcards. And then last month, I did some experimental oil paintings, like just little ones. And that was more work than would be appropriate for trying to like sell things for $10 which is like the postcard rate. But like it wasn't about like hey, you were buying $10 of work for me it's more like I'm gonna do I'm gonna do you're gonna get something in the mail. But it's a nice structure because it at least makes me sort of like do something even if I don't feel like doing something. But I feel like I've pretty much just only gotten that done and I haven't even really been like posting or writing about this stuff enough. So that's kind of it's frustrating but I did get some stuff off in the mail the other day was what it comes down to is like I need to at least go mail part once a month that I went to the post office and mail to Martin that felt good.

Jessamyn 9:36 Good. I really liked your you left quite an impression with the the leaf prints. I just Oh yeah. So great. Yeah, I

Cortex 9:44 really enjoyed those.

Jessamyn 9:45 Do you have like a personal relationship with your post office by this point? Or is it just still that you kind of can't,

Cortex 9:51 ya know, it's, I don't spend that much time there. And yeah, it served enough people that it would be hard to develop a relationship unless I was in there every single day which Like a pandemic, especially is not one I want to do that. I mail as much stuff without even having to like stand in line as I can check out a self service like, you know, self service postage calculator and the DOD, the big Grady. It's great. Yeah, it's slow, but it's not bad. Yeah. It takes a little bit longer than like, you know, self checking at the airport. But but it's still pretty quick. And it's definitely quicker than standing in line if there's three or four people there. Yeah. So I do that. And I do a lot of stuff. Most of stuff I sell, I sell via Etsy, and I can just print out labels from home. I just got a little four by six inch thermal printer. So I can do that really easily. Which is pretty rad. Oh, that's cool. A sort of save us both some trouble gift from my wife who has the printer upstairs. This is definitely cheaper, faster. Yeah, yep. So yeah, I just kind of don't have that much reason to interact at the post offices.

Jessamyn 10:56 I just go in and yell about the Hanukkah stamps, because they were showing they were showing somebody ahead of me that Christmas stamps. And it's a joke. I hope it's they think it's a joke. I think it's a joke, where I'm like, What about the Hanukkah stamps? And they're like, they're not in yet. And I'm like, But Hanukkah is before Christmas, or like Jessamyn I'm like, and you know,

Cortex 11:16 I would enjoy having a friendly, antagonistic relationship with the post office. But I don't think I don't think that people working at the post office would be like, in

Jessamyn 11:27 so lucky with our postal employees, because I've lived in town, 14 years, and people come and go, and like, we've just been so lucky that the people who work there have a tendency to like have a good sense of humor, you know, I go in and yell about the joy, probably once a week. And they're just, you know, they're there for it. Like, they don't hate him, like, I hate him. And so I'm always the Postmaster General for those. Yeah.

Cortex 11:53 Jesus, at Lewis to joy.

Jessamyn 11:57 And, and it's interesting for me to hear the reasons they don't despise him, the way social media despises him, you know, like, they don't like him. But they don't think all the stuff he's doing is really trying to fuck up the post office, you know, and so I'm there to have a conversation about it. I'm interested in that perspective. And, you know, when there's not people waiting in line, we have conversations about it. And when there are people waiting in line, I fuck off, because nobody likes to be behind that person. I don't want to be that person, that person all the time, other places. And, you know, I don't want to like walk out of the post office and have somebody be like, she's just a little lonely. So God bless her. Well, cuz there's people like that at the library. And like, you know, we do the best we can, right. Like, if somebody really does not have a lot of human contact, we try to both honor that and be a human contact perspective. But also acknowledge that there's people behind them who may be waiting and may need to get in and out a little bit more quickly, and you try and find a way to make it work. You know,

Cortex 13:01 I've had that issue a couple times at the at the beer portrait was talking about where like, there will just be someone who, at first I thought this guy was like, maybe one of the owners. And because that has happened sometimes like the owner comes by and sort of chatting with a bartender. But no, he was just some guy who just would not shut the fuck up. And it was talking to everybody in line and talking to the bartender as like it was palpably slowing down. People just want to get some fucking beer. You know? They want to sit down waiting in line at the beer. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's it's it's a quick thing. It's in and out. You know, you want somebody to go with your karaoke chicken. But yeah, just guy wouldn't and that's, that's less of a like, that's not the sympathetic. Oh, this person needs humor. This this. This guy just thinks everybody wants to listen to him talk. And you know, just fuck off guy. Let me

Jessamyn 13:48 Yeah, exactly. I know what you mean. Oh, speaking of just places, we get beer. My local place that I used to go every week for trivia, just had their first trivia last night. Like, inside in a bar. Like, you know, and somebody texted me about it. And mercifully I was working. So I didn't have to, like, either make a complicated decision or be judgey about my friends decisions. But I was like, wow, I am not there yet. You know what I mean? Like, it's not a place where it's, you have to be vaccinated, or it's not a place where like, the people who aren't eating and drinking are masked, which I don't even think that matters in a restaurant. But it was really interesting to me because clearly there's and then the place was if not packed, at least at enough teams to do trivia. And man, it felt weird because I was simultaneously like, wow, I miss in person trivia. And also like, Oh, hell no.

Cortex 14:46 Yeah, no, same. It's it feels Yeah, it feels weird.

Jessamyn 14:49 Yeah, I mean, not that feeling weird isn't basically what the last two years have been like.

Cortex 14:55 Yeah, you know, it's, it's it's a big old soup. It's a good soup. There's a TikTok meme, where there's just the audio of like a little bit of like silent and maybe eating noises and then someone saying good soup. And I saw a bunch of TikTok riffing on it. And I don't know what it's from. And it's I just realized I'm like repeating it without knowing the context at all, which is such a dangerous move with any kind of meme. So maybe it's a Pepe

Jessamyn 15:23 the Frog? Well, I don't think it's like that. From girls.

Cortex 15:27 Okay. Literally, I

Jessamyn 15:30 got this in point five seconds from Google.

Cortex 15:32 I didn't look it up. No, I kind of enjoy the process of not knowing that like to find out or I don't Oh, good.

Jessamyn 15:37 I am your reference librarian. Adam Driver. And it's a thing that he said on girls, and it's in No, your meme.

Cortex 15:45 All right. Well, there we go. I there I see Adam Driver. Okay. All right.

Jessamyn 15:52 Well, that's terrible. Then he just he talks to himself basically, alone in a diner. Well, that's pretty great. No, no, after he says goodbye to whoever he was the person who he was dating on girls. I have never watched girls, I find what's her name? Almost impossible to watch

Cortex 16:12 Lena Dunham. Yeah. I've never watched girls either. I don't really have I like Adam

Jessamyn 16:17 Driver. He's a tall drink of water. And, you know, I guess he was involved with maybe the Lena Dunham character or somebody else. But that's where that's from. So right

Cortex 16:28 now we know who knows why that was coming back around. Suddenly. It's been a big thing on TikTok.

Jessamyn 16:32 I mean, if I mean, who likes

Cortex 16:35 TikTok? So who knows? Anyway? Yes.

Jessamyn 16:39 Anyway, yes. Good soup. Which I'll have to be maybe the name of this.

Cortex 16:45 Maybe I'll put it in it. Yes. It's always a crapshoot at this point. Like usually I remember if we put something in there as a title. And sometimes I'm just like, I need to get the podcast out. Free Association go. And it's

Jessamyn 17:00 a great job getting it up super fast. Last month, if I recall correctly. Yeah,

Cortex 17:03 I think I got it turned around like that day, which was nice. Maybe I'll do that again today. Oh, but maybe I'll go to lunch.

Jessamyn 17:08 Why not?

Cortex 17:10 Yeah. I work this evening. So it'd be good time to

Jessamyn 17:14 Yeah.

Cortex 17:17 Should we talk about metal filter stuff.

Jessamyn 17:19 My sister says hi to betta filter, by the way, which I said hi to Josh. But she may be meant everybody a metal filter? I don't know.

Cortex 17:28 Like this. She She meant both. Hi to everyone. And also Hi specifically to Josh. Like it's a bipartite you have

Jessamyn 17:36 to remind me you have met my sister.

Cortex 17:39 I think I'm God. You know, I actually don't know if I've ever been in the same room with Kate. Like, I know. I know who Kate is. I know Kate's face. I know. Your stories. And I think yeah, I think we have interacted on Twitter a little bit. I don't know that we've ever like properly met met. So weird, sort of.

Jessamyn 17:57 I don't think so. But I'm not. I'm bad at this. And I'm getting worse. Like, I'll go, you know, I'm having that problem where I'm like, Oh, hey, nice to meet you. And people are like we know each other.

Cortex 18:10 I definitely I increasingly have that problem with like, my history of meetup stuff. Like it was a lot easier when I've been working for Metafilter for like, a couple years. And I met up with people on that big JetBlue thing as like, I kind of knew if I'd met them or not, mostly I just hadn't. But now like, you know, 14 years on, I if someone comes to town, I really have to like do a little bit of research on myself to figure out if I have a record of interacting with them sometimes, just because like I can't do it. I don't have I don't file stuff away that Well, like I will have a perfectly pleasant conversation based on previous conversations. But those may have just been on meta filter, or they might have been impersonal. Like I don't know, I need to write, I have to shore things up.

Jessamyn 18:50 Well, and that used to be me. I think I mentioned this maybe last month, but like Facebook has deprecated the lists feature where you could like add, I mean, it's like Twitter's list feature, right as Twitter's list feature is ramping up Facebook just undid there's where you can have like, you know, let's say like the 20 people I'm friends with who are also my neighbors, and I could have a list like neighbors and so before I go to a party, I could just do a quick scan of the neighbors list. Just to make sure you know people are doing okay, nobody had a pet that died. Like maybe there were milestone things that would be worth knowing about because of course, like I see people in person a little bit now but not still not much. But now you just go to the thing that says neighbors and you just see not that and I'm not sure if maybe there's another way to get there. But I yeah, that is the thing that is important to me kind of like cribbing on like what's the big news for you know, subsets of people. Yeah, my sister who has a Metafilter account and has used it to favorite one comment by me ever.

Cortex 20:05 That's, you know, said was like a determination.

Jessamyn 20:08 Yeah, I mean, I think she just likes to have a login. You know, I think sometimes she has thought maybe she would get involved but just as not and

Cortex 20:20 let's see, looking through metal filter stuff. There is one active jobs post from someone username model works hiring an aviation writer for social media for model works. This is definitely like the main writer. Yeah, aviation enthusiasts who can write contents. So if that's you go for it. This is a good example of someone really being sort of like, Oh, I'm going to use this as a job listing service. And it's like, less interesting from a community perspective than I would like imagine most job stuff would be but at the same time, they're not spamming their use it the way they're supposed to. So there you go. If you want to write about aviation on social media for someone

Jessamyn 21:02 is actually, you know, he made a project post about a shipping container that he made. Oh, except they didn't. It is gone from Instagram.

Cortex 21:14 Oh, oh, maybe there's aviation writer or podcast about history of questionable. Yeah. Anyway, who knows?

Jessamyn 21:25 So funny. I don't. I tried. Now looking at it, the YouTube video and it's interesting. I mean, clearly, it's a business like, that does these things, but whatever. Hmm. Funny. All right. Well, aviation writer cool. Yeah,

Cortex 21:41 there you go. projects I have, I have been the opposite of dutiful and actually following what's going on projects. There's a bunch of things that look interesting to me. But I've checked out nothing. So I'm just going to sort of do the blind. Oh, I like the sound of this thing for my entries. But I don't know if you have any specific ones you have in the chamber. Maybe

Jessamyn 22:01 I made some comments on some projects. Maybe not because I posted my thing last month. I have not been well again, because like September, it was just a last month for me as much as like, it would have been great if it hadn't been. But it wasn't. So yeah, go ahead.

Cortex 22:24 I liked what I picked out of this animation put together by Clawson about mapping genetic variants, I have not read enough to describe it. So I'll just assume that's, you know, written well in the thing, but it's cool to look at it seems to be sort of mapping, sort of genetic variation and drift. It's got some nice little music and hey, there's Hilbert like curves in there, which is a big easy thing for me to get sucked in on. I'm trying to write I think I might have actually just been talking with Clawson in some context, about Hilbert curvy stuff, maybe Twitter, DMS or something. Anyway, it's nice, I like it. And I want to learn more about it and watch the whole thing through. But that's, that's one of my Ooh, that looks like a thing for me things.

Jessamyn 23:14 Well, a thing for me is Simon W's data set, which is like SCTE, like cassette desktop, it's a os MacOS application, it's open source. And if you have SQL lite databases, or even CSV files, it's basically kind of a massager for them. Where you can clean up data explore data, published data, I've used similar tools and in fact, I took a library carpentry class and part of it was teaching people who are like library people who kind of know computers but not really beyond that kind of how to do this stuff. You know, let's say you do have like, a weird spreadsheet or a weird database or whatever but your data is kind of dirty. And so it makes it just a headache and you're cleaning it by hand and like you know look no further Yeah, this is a this is a cool thing. And you know, you can look at they have a sample version you can explore every power plant in the world so cool. And And it's nice because there's a couple people in the thread talking about like wow, so excited that this is open source. Let me help you figure out how to explain this. And like I said, I use a different tool for this but I'm always looking for like good Mac apps that do cool things and especially open source ones so thanks MW

Cortex 24:41 there is speaking of carpentry. It's a post by brachiopod who decided to copy a mid 14th centuries BC stool. Oh, they saw it at Museum and so it looks like they built it and blogged about That and that sounds delightful. And looks like you've got a post on Metafilter too. But yeah, I want to check that out. It is a cool looking stool at a client's Oh, wow.

Jessamyn 25:09 Because it's got like weird joinery in it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a remarkably because I thought this was gonna be such some three legged thing that looked like it was carved out of a stump. And it's it's very not. It's beautiful. And

Cortex 25:25 yeah, I'm looking through the blog posts and this is fantastic.

Jessamyn 25:28 Yeah, well, and I'm always here for you know, weird carpentry because of course my semi famous cousin is everywhere. Doing his semi famous custom chooses. Sorry. Sure.

Cortex 25:43 So he's a carpenter. And then we're tuition.

Jessamyn 25:46 I'm just gonna, you know, it's one of my favorite Hal Hartley movies. Jesus was a carpenter. I dig carpenters.

Cortex 25:54 I don't know the movie.

Jessamyn 25:56 Oh, really. It's the unbelievable truth that had now murdered actress Adrienne Shelley in it. Oh, man, treat yourself. It's a really kind of neat movie. And I've always considered that it had sort of a Portland vibe to get to watch what was unbelievable truth and hardly still turn and stuff out. If I'll find you the wiki link. It's actually also the name apparently of like a comedy show with that weird nerdy comic guy. David.

Cortex 26:31 Not wrong. Yes. The the, the head weird, awkward. Comedy nerd guy.

Jessamyn 26:40 I mean, is there an awkward or nerdier comic guy than David Mitchell. Okay,

Cortex 26:44 he's very good at it. And he's, he can really apply it in a variety of, you know, circumstances. You were taught. were you telling me or was someone else telling me about the spin off death massacre with him? And like comedians doing outdoor tasks? It's like outsiders,

Jessamyn 26:59 I think, Oh, God, definitely not me, because that sounds amazing.

Cortex 27:03 Yeah. And I think that's him hosting. And yeah, I don't know, I might have the name wrong. But anyway, that's the thing that's apparently going to happen. So I'm excited about that.

Jessamyn 27:12 Well, it's not 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. So you should maybe see this movie. Yeah, I should see that a budget of $75,000. That's always a good sign. Yeah, I liked it. I'd be interested to know if you liked it, because I saw it a long time ago. And so it's maybe a movie that doesn't age well, but maybe it is. At any rate, they talk about Jesus. And yeah. Jesus. Let's see. I like Adam Rice's bike stickers. But designs that tweak the I mean, what does he say? Tweak the nose of cycling tradition? So they're just like, funny little stickers that he made that are HTF you ride lots Shimano? I think I don't entirely even understand all of these.

Cortex 28:06 Yeah, but I don't think I understand. But I'm not a bicycle person.

Jessamyn 28:11 Right. But I appreciate that. He is a talented designer, and I almost always like what he comes up with.

Cortex 28:20 Oh, they look nice.

Jessamyn 28:21 See Strauss has a new book coming out? Yeah.

Cortex 28:25 That's just like a subtle like Project post. Is it go hey, by the way I know Knology

Jessamyn 28:31 unity. You're like are you kidding me? Yes.

Cortex 28:36 Another very much this is this is basically pandering to me and I didn't even notice it until I was looking through today was IG docked, posted a channel vocoder walkthrough, which I love vocoders and I'm really curious to see what this is.

Jessamyn 28:51 I've talked about what channel vocoder means. I don't know

Cortex 28:55 what a channel vocoder is actually. I mean, I I I think that's basically what a vocoder is fundamentally. I'll have to watch this website. Let's see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, probably. But in brief, a vocoder is it's an electronic.

Jessamyn 29:09 I know. Maybe you want to explain to the audience's

Cortex 29:13 it's electronic instrument. That's sort of like a voice synthesizer. But it's not creating a voice you actually feed it speaking or singing and then you trans like that through another signal. So you could like play an Oregon and talk into a microphone. And what you would get was basically the tambour of the vocal speaking, followed, like but but it's got the character and the sound of the Oregon it's an interesting, it's an interesting sort of synthesizer approach to combining vocals or any two sounds, but vocals is what's most commonly associated with it because that's where it's sort of magical. Laurie Anderson's Oh Superman, and a number of other songs, but that one in particular, have prominent vocoder stuff there's some there's a lot of vocoder stuff in bits and pieces places Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek classically goofed on SNL like 15 fucking years ago or whatever. The Oh, what'd you say, you know that you only meant well, that's that whole song is like nothing but her singing and vocoder. And it's anyway, I love a vocoder. I'm excited to see this thing TikTok made about voting. So yes,

Jessamyn 30:29 yeah, and I just looked at the walkthrough. It's a nice sort of explanation if, like me, you just don't really understand what this stuff is.

Cortex 30:39 Yep. Whereas I understand it, but I always forget the details. So if like, it's gonna be useful for me to

Jessamyn 30:46 it's a little refresher, a little brush up? Well, it's

Cortex 30:49 one of the things like it's, it's the, it's the electronic instrument and the synthesizer, adjacent thing I most care about, like, I'm not nothing against a decision, I've just never been a synth guy. And so like I don't have a lot of other grounding in sort of the mechanics and the signal processing of synthesizers in general. So like, vocoders have always been a little bit of a mysterious thing, because I don't have that other context. Whereas I think if I was a big synth head, I'd be like, Oh, so it's doing the butter the dough. Okay, sure. So yeah, I don't know the context of store it. Yeah, those are some projects. There's a bunch more, there's actually a bunch of projects up from September and a couple coming in here at the start of October and go check them out. If you're making a thing if you have made a thing posted on projects. And if you're looking for fodder for a front page post, go look at projects, see what people have made. And maybe there's something else like oh, hey, this make a good post. Go for it. It's a it's an easy way to make a post without having to do much research first. You can just find a good thing.

Jessamyn 31:47 Yes. Yeah. I posted to it last month I or month before last. Got some good feedback.

Cortex 31:54 Excellent. Shall we talk about Metafilter?

Jessamyn 31:59 Let's talk about Metafilter. Let me I mean, let's talk about this post that was made just hours ago.

Cortex 32:09 From God

Jessamyn 32:10 from er, vos, how do you pronounce that name?

Cortex 32:14 This is probably something we've done before we should really like make. It's based on the name of LeBron.

Jessamyn 32:22 Er advice. But it's Hungarian and it's

Cortex 32:27 yeah. I'm gonna go I'm gonna get get

Jessamyn 32:30 out woot. Woot Firth, which was, I don't know IPA, one of these days. At any rate, I love this post. Because essentially, it's a website called just the punctuation. It's an online tool that strips everything except punctuation from plain text, and then arranges the results. And so of course, emmalin, Jr. gives you just the punctuation from the Treaty of was Fallujah. There's just the punctuation from William Carlos Williams, which is to say none. And. And, yeah, it's just, it's, it's neat. I love it. It's a Clive Thompson. Post originally over on medium that. Wow, Clive looks very different in his medium picture than in his Twitter picture. I thought I knew what Clive looked like. And I clearly don't. And so he made this little web tool that you can kind of learn some stuff about yourself, and oh, gosh, I can already imagine where this would. Where this would go. If it were me, it would just be all parenthesis. And a couple like and dashes that are supposed to be m dashes.

Cortex 33:51 I'm guessing I would have like a solid mix of semicolons commas and periods with some hyphens thrown in there. But it's I wonder like, I think of myself as someone who over uses semicolons

Jessamyn 34:07 I think the world under uses semi colons What the I

Cortex 34:11 mean, that's that's the position in my heart of hearts. I take Yeah. But but but but but relatively speaking,

Jessamyn 34:18 I hear Yeah.

Cortex 34:22 But also, I think if I analyzed like my meta talk posts over time, probably the semicolons have gotten down, because I've made an effort to like, simplify my fucking sentence structure. And so you know, why make it one sentence when it could be three shorter, more readable sentences? I

Jessamyn 34:37 think people had pointed out to you in the past that your verbose style that works great for spoken English comes across in a very specific way for written English, which I think does not convey your intent. Yeah. It's complicated. Because I feel like I understand in many cases, what you're trying to say. And in some cases, I'm like, Ooh, I wouldn't have gone about it that way, though. Oh, yeah, I think you're discursive. And that doesn't work for me. Yeah, I

Cortex 35:04 tend to like my natural instinct is to sort of cantilever out sort of related clauses and ideas into a more complex or like, paragraph like sentence because like that,

Jessamyn 35:15 that like ADHD retelling, right? Like, I don't know anything in particular about your, you know, narrow typicality or a typicality.

Cortex 35:24 It's definitely it's definitely not off the mark. That is something I've come to sort of be aware of in the last couple years is like, you know,

Jessamyn 35:31 I will I will definitely, just tell me if this looks familiar at this picture.

Cortex 35:40 Yeah, no, I this this. Yes.

Jessamyn 35:43 It's Jim, in a nutshell. Especially the part where you finish the story, and then you want to hollow Oh, God, I'm sorry. I. Yeah. But ya know, I know what you're like, I like to think maybe I tell stories the first way, but probably it's just an abbreviated version of the second way.

Cortex 36:04 I think one of the things I when I think about how I tell stories in person, I think one of the things I tend to do, when I'm sort of speaking extemporaneously is front load a lot of mid story details, and then sort of work my back way back to the initial point, which

Jessamyn 36:18 is, God does drive that. Yeah. He'll be like, here's that thing. And I'm like, this is pertaining. We had two weeks ago, what you've got to save remember that conversation first? That's the first part. Yep.

Cortex 36:37 So I will, I will do that to Angela, sometimes, just by, like, I'll start addressing the specific bit that I think is interesting. And then she'll be like, I don't know where this is going. And I don't know where this is starting. And also, I don't know if there's something I need to be worried about. Could you start with the whether or not something to worry about and then explain the details? Okay. That's a good point. Yeah. I think I think one of the things you

Jessamyn 36:59 you live with, it's maybe a little different, because you have a little bit more shave, shave frame of reference, but I get

Cortex 37:05 Yeah, yeah. Like she she knows that that's a thing about me. And she knows to say, Oh, wait, is this something that you know, versus like, Oh, this is obviously just a story, and you'll get there. But I guess what I'm saying is, I think there may be a reflection of that in the way I tend to want to make longer sentences and sort of build out clauses in that, like when I'm doing it in writing, I can sort of go take those early bits and put them back in front. And then it's sort of like, keeping it all together leads to this thing with semicolons, colons breaking apart, sort of sub clauses and whatnot. And it's like, Yeah, but what if I do another editing path and just turn it into normal sentences is basically, right practice I've been trying to do more in in sort of public writing. So yeah,

Jessamyn 37:48 I think I am trying to use for your parents medicals. And it turns out for me, it is super hard. Because, you know, I have like extra facts I want to jam in there. They go in that sentence, but the sentence is already too long. Yeah.

Cortex 38:05 Yeah, I love a parenthetical. And yet, it's so difficult if you're really trying to go for like clarity and concision. Like the right place to put the parenthetical is sometimes just nowhere. And that makes me so sad. Because like, I just, I want to be able to footnote in the hyperlink the whole thing as I write it, but like, unless I'm intentionally going for, like a cumbersome stylized thing. No, I just have to, I have to throw the parenthetical way or put it down below or

Jessamyn 38:30 let me tell you, we've I'm sure had this conversation before, but footnotes make long footnotes make me furious. Right. Like, I just can't like David Foster Wallace love him so much. But his tendency to put like a whole paragraph in a footnote, so that you have to, like put a finger on a page and then go down and read it. Yeah. Like I just, ah, we'll see.

Cortex 39:00 He saw. Did he have both footnotes and endnotes an Infinite Jest? Or was it just all

Jessamyn 39:04 I want to say? It's just you did?

Cortex 39:06 I did. I enjoyed it. I read I read two thirds of it, which is as much of it as he remembered to write so

Jessamyn 39:14 yeah, this is the second man I've spoken to this week who has read Infinite Jest while I scoffed.

Cortex 39:20 I enjoyed it. And I understand why it drives people fucking crazy. And I don't think like it's that I'm right. And they're wrong. I think it's it's a frustrating book that happens to appeal to me in some stylistic ways and in college

Jessamyn 39:33 stuff, where you know, he has that tick. Yeah. And yeah, it just, I can't read that way. And so I try to keep that in mind while I'm putting in my third parenthetical in the middle of a sentence being somebody's angry, like, and you know, it's fine to just be like, Wow, fuck it, but I'm not writing fiction. You know what I mean? Like, it's not friction and I'm trying to convey an idea. And so if I am enraging somebody in the process, like maybe that's on them, but like maybe I'm just not getting my point across and just being, you know, either irritating or kind of to self, you know, to wrapping myself up in something that is not about me kind of Yeah. Now.

Cortex 40:24 Anyway, to get back to the idea of posts that were posted very recently, I've gotten those posted even more recently, which has gone up since we started recording and I listened to this the other day, maybe via maybe veal malt shop. But Bill McClintock made a mash up called I can't get closer for that. And it is a matchup of hollow notes and Nine Inch Nails. I can't go over that and closer and it's so fucking good.

Jessamyn 40:49 We talk about like a mashup maker last month, maybe maybe, or was that to like kids? It was I think it was a post Jim made. And it's like it's like a thing that makes and I'm actually going to it was WC Mike all your mashups belong to us.

Cortex 41:14 I did not notice it.

Jessamyn 41:17 I didn't notice it. I specifically used words to explain it to

Cortex 41:21 you. Well, sure.

Jessamyn 41:22 But if it only over a month ago,

Cortex 41:24 if it only happened during the podcast, and I forgot to go back and engage with it afterwards, it might as well not exist.

Jessamyn 41:31 Seasons is why you need to listen to your own podcast.

Cortex 41:34 Oh, I can't imagine.

Jessamyn 41:36 I do it. This is we have Okay, here's your princess you and I could but this is the biggest one.

Cortex 41:43 I can listen to a podcast I recorded like a year later. Like I'm not going to mostly but I can do it. But if I like I listen to podcasts forever though, I have a few times I've listened to a few old episodes of this podcast. I've listened to old episodes a couple times of the crapshoot that I was making with Churchill and we have such films to show you that was making with Griffis are going new. Although they're making Hulu's making a fucking Hellraiser and I'm so excited and so who knows maybe we'll get back together

Jessamyn 42:19 the band back. You really should consider it at least. Yeah, no,

Cortex 42:23 I would totally considered like the reality is Yakko has so much more than Oh my god. Yeah, few years ago like that. You know, small child has a handful.

Jessamyn 42:34 Even even adorable one like that one. Yeah.

Cortex 42:36 Yeah. Helios. Helios. seems great. Yeah. But ya know, we'll see what happens. I'm excited for it seems like it's probably pretty early in production still. So anyway, I can't get closer for that is great. It's a good matchup watch it.

Jessamyn 42:51 I will. I will watch it after this podcast. Speaking of videos that are things we've already seen before, Demi did his 21st day of September video on the 21st day of September. And it's you know, 2121 Very cool. This one was huge. It had like a demo, you're doing amazing at the end by Earth, Wind and Fire themselves. And the last comment which actually came in just a couple of days ago, he's raised over a million dollars for this quite likely. Last 21st of September video I donated I know a lot of other mefites donated. And if you have not seen this video, treat yourself to this video, because it's just so full of joy. And there's a lot of like, funny bits in it as always.

Cortex 43:49 It is it is allegedly the last which is you know, we'll see what happens like, I think I think Demi means it like, sure. Well, I don't think he's doing a joke about it being the last one. But also it's hard to say for sure what will happen next year well, and

Jessamyn 44:05 maybe he said that before. And basically he was raising money for three different organizations this year. The West fund the Imagine waterworks and the sunrise movement, so you know, Southern stuff, abortion rights, education, access, et cetera. So it's just Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. So if you don't want to donate through his website, but you've just liked the work that he's doing, you can also donate to those individual organizations, but just Yeah, so fun. So fun. So

Cortex 44:38 far. It is fantastic. He's fantastic. I'm looking at the quality of the light coming. Oh, it's because it's going through a piece of yellow stainless. It looks like it's super smoky outside. I'm gonna go like no, it's just on this one spot on my desk near me, because it's going through some mutual class. All right. Oh,

Jessamyn 44:54 my buddy. I'm gonna send you a picture of what it looks like outside my window right? right now because it's essentially like peak foliage in Vermont. And yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty impressive. Let's see if I can text actually you and not not and not other Josh, who used to have your phone number. Okay, your phone number Ensign six, five. Yes. All right. I'll send you this.

Cortex 45:22 My Social Security number is just shut

Jessamyn 45:24 up. There's a bird. And that's what it looks like outside my window right now.

Cortex 45:33 Waiting for this to show up. Not seen it yet. This is terrible audio. Why am I doing this? Oh my god when it shows up.

Jessamyn 45:42 All right, I will let you know. Okay, it should have been sent now that my house got like, a no worse all of a sudden. And so it means that I can't zoom with Jim anymore. And I have to FaceTime which I don't love. And I can't figure out like what the problem is. And look, there's a little titmouse looking at us. Yeah. I'll do the bird report. While while we're podcasting. I have seen a white breasted nut hatch who we all call web nut. And looks like well, because there's also RB nut, the red breasted nut hatch. And they're kind of those like funny little upside down birds on the trees. And it looks like three titmice and one chicken II so far less. Yeah. And they look at me and I'm sitting about three feet away from them. It's kind of neat. So instead of Hilter Demi

Cortex 46:36 Demi. Yes. Yes, go dummy. Here's it's been a big like week for giant internet shit shows.

Jessamyn 46:46 Hasn't it though?

Cortex 46:48 My favorite that there was a post about is Ozzie Ozy Why

Jessamyn 46:53 don't even know this one. So go

Cortex 46:54 on what doesn't even exist? It's it's been a pretty quick

Jessamyn 46:59 Oh, that's a media company that never Yeah.

Cortex 47:02 Ozzy Ozzy media. Well, they existed, they just didn't have. Yeah, if you have missed out on this Ozzy was a media company that's been around for several years and sort of branded itself as like being like, the hip first to discover up and coming people. You're sort of like BuzzFeed, but more with it and literate sort of thing. And it turns out basically, it

Jessamyn 47:28 was any particular, like demographic, or sort

Cortex 47:32 of like, media and entertainment awareness internet, you're clued in front on the internet, like, you know, like they're discovering people before they got big and whatnot. And they recently the thing that sort of like blew up recently that led to everything else is revelations that among other things, they were trying to set up some sort of media partnership or something. And so among other things that folks they were trying to partner with, maybe that maybe this was for some VC fundraising, which is apparently all I've ever done really is make YouTube videos that nobody watched and then raise millions of dollars from venture capital firms. Dummies. Yeah. And so part of I feel

Jessamyn 48:11 like Geez, what's the better way to like, I mean, I don't like calling people stupid as an insult, but I do like, you know, venal grifter types to have. Oh, yeah. Give them money.

Cortex 48:27 Foolish. Capitalist Grifters. shitheads. I don't know. Like, yeah,

Jessamyn 48:32 I mean, capitalist grifter. shithead sums up everything.

Cortex 48:35 That's kind of the main thing, like, you know, they might even be smart in what their shithead capitalist grifting is. But you know, regardless, it's all shooting right there. Good. Yeah. I'm sorry for anybody tuning in to hear nice things about VCs.

Jessamyn 48:52 That metaphysic Yeah, I

Cortex 48:53 know. I don't think that's probably a problem. Anyway, the thing that jumped the first thing I heard about recently was that they had been having a meeting, I think, with a VC, like funding candidates. And the, the capitalist shitheads, of course, reasonably wanted to hear from things like their partnership with YouTube and whatnot. And so they got a YouTube exec on the line. And it was a little bit weird, but whatever. And then they called to ask some follow up questions. And they called the guys actual number. He was like, I didn't talk to anybody who were you. Because it was the CEO of Ozzy who was interpreting impersonating a YouTube exec, I guess. And the interesting thing is this did not immediately lead to everything blowing up finding out about this was part of everything blowing up after the fact, because apparently everyone was involved was like as well. Okay, that wasn't great. But let's just keep doing what we're doing, I guess. Yeah. So anyway, this this has led to a bunch of attention and people sort of looking at all of their claims to fame and finding out that they're all completely hollow and there's kind of nothing there and yeah, and the whole thing is melted down Brooklyn,

Jessamyn 49:59 or was it about Two white dudes from Portland.

Cortex 50:02 I don't know for sure that the figurehead actually Carlos Watson is a black man, I believe. But you know, we're making strides on equality because the black man could be a terrible VC grifter. That's awkward. But anyway, the whole thing's a mess. I mean, like, right? It's, it's a big, it's a big pile of bullshit that you can kind of imagine every step of once you start hearing about it, and it has collapsed utterly under the weight of actually finally getting the attention that they've claimed for years that they maintain, once people started paying attention to Ozzy and it's just it's, it's audacious bullshit. Like, that's the thing, like it's stupid. It deserves to fail, and it has failed. But there's like fun audacious details in the breaking down of figuring out just how stupid every single bit of it is. So I've enjoyed that one. I've enjoyed that one more than the other things like that have been big internet meltdown, things like kidney Facebook whistleblower stuff, and I didn't even read the kidney stories.

Jessamyn 51:06 Neither did I was hoping you could tell me which person to root for. The Facebook whistleblower stuff was the most interesting for me, not because of anything we learned about Facebook, but because the woman who was the Facebook whistleblower was actually the student of a friend of mine, at engineering school, and my friend got called to, you know, give a comment about her and was actually wound up quoted in The Boston Globe article, because of course, the whistleblower is not as available for comment. But people who knew her certainly were and she was always a deeply principled, interesting person. And that was something that was interesting. Sort of ancillary. The metal filter thread only because I already face yeah, and I gotta say, here's the one. Here's my one great Facebook story, though. Okay, did you just burp at me,

Cortex 52:05 I just managed to stop a burp and I deserve a sticker.

Jessamyn 52:09 All right, Chico for you. I, as people may know, have this like six foot foam being baggy thing that's at the second floor of my father's house that was gotten with much, much hassle up into that room, it is very heavy, it doesn't fit easily through any door. And it is a total pain in my ass. And now that end, we used to like sit in and play video games. And it was kind of comfortable and kind of fun. But it takes up just a huge amount of space. And I've kind of decided now that we're merging my mother's and my father's household now that they're both dead, we can maybe get rid of the stuff that isn't specifically bringing us joy. And so I was like, oh, fuck it, like it's not even gonna fit in the dumpster. I can't lift it, blah. But there's a whole bunch of like, buy nothing groups, all over the world of Facebook, right? Like just everywhere, you can give stuff away via Facebook. And in some places where you can't maybe leave something on the side of the road, because it's a six foot beanbag that you can't even move. It's actually a great way to sort of get rid of stuff that is trash to you, but useful for somebody else. And so I put this thing up on the local Buy Nothing group. And within minutes, I had like 10 people being like, I'll take it next, next, next, next, next, next next, you know, and so this one woman was like, I can pick it up tonight. And at this point, it's like 6pm. And I'm like, great. And so we started texting, and she's like, when's too late, and I'm like, at 1030 is probably too late. If you can pick it up before 1030 We're good. I'm like, it's super heavy. So you've got to bring two people when she's like, I'm bringing my husband. And I'm just like, great to strong people because I don't know this woman. But you know, maybe she's big and strong, but just want to make sure it's clear. She's like, Oh, yeah, my husband, weightlifter bodybuilder, all this stuff. Great. Super. So they're like, we're 10 minutes away at like, 10 And I'm like, that's fine. Perfect. They show up. Her husband's a weightlifter bodybuilder and she had hip surgery the day before and is in a wheelchair and can't actually leave the car, which fine, it is what it is, but I thought I was pretty clear. But now they're in my driveway. And I'm like, I mean they are two people, right? Right. No lies, no lies detected, right. And so me and the husband then had to basically and I am not big, you know like I am medium strong for my size which is small. And so me and the husband had to like kick and punch this thing through a doorway through it off a second story porch, and then got it through a doorway and then jammed it into the back of this minivan where there really wasn't enough space with it for it, but we did manage to like get the door closed. And it was really one of those, like, failure is not an option situations, because once you have the thing in the driveway, like it's not going back in the house, you know, and we actually managed to work the whole thing out. And you know, whenever anybody is saying how much Facebook sucks, like, number one, I do not disagree. But number two, I cannot think of any other way I would have been able to, because like, even Craigslist doesn't quite work. And it's like, you know, 50% flakes and all this stuff. But like Facebook, you get the people because if they don't show up, there's 11 other people take your thing from you. And even if they're 50% flakes, it's still like five bonafide people who take the thing. So I anticipate spending an awful lot of time getting rid of things on Facebook over the next like six months. All right. And my sister has informed me that the water filtration system at my mother's house is now fixed. We're gonna Hey. Thank you to her.

Cortex 56:20 I've got one more for Metafilter that we can ask, Hey, wait, don't you know, and also whatever? Yeah, are you? I did sorry, I did that the typical the difficulty, I guess I just don't have already. The typical thing is I have way more Metafilter and you have way more AskMe Metafilter. I was I was making an assumption without checking with you. And for that. I apologize. Great.

Jessamyn 56:41 Thank you. How did the video have 4.1 million views but 200 likes? They bought a bunch of fraudulent views. Oh, interesting. I never think about that in terms of YouTube. But it does make sense.

Cortex 56:52 Yep. It doesn't really convince anybody who's paying attention. But hey, again. Maybe your main priority as a VC is not paying attention.

Jessamyn 57:01 Parent seems to be so yes, please go on. And I hope you're not gonna post the one that I'm gonna post because I'm very excited about the one I'm gonna post.

Cortex 57:08 I hope not Well, the one I'm posting is a post by mosquitoes.

Jessamyn 57:12 Isn't that wasn't mine. But she does great posts. It's Thompson again, Clive Thompson, who brought us the punctuation generator.

Cortex 57:22 Yes, it all comes together. Well, this. This is a post he wrote about rewilding your attention in terms of thinking about like actively putting your attention to places other than basically centralized feeds like this comes back about around us or like the Facebook and whatnot thing of saying, hey, you know, part of part of why you end up feeling like, you're not seeing interesting stuff is like you kind of have to go for a walk sometimes. It's a lovely post. Yeah, I really liked it. And yeah, I left a early comment in it. Because this is something I think about a lot in terms of like, you know, where am I looking? And what am I getting out of where I'm looking from the internet? And how does my sense of the internet and my relationship with it depend on whether or not I'm sort of getting out of sort of ruts? Like there's there's a value to familiarity, but there's also like a danger of sort of, like not doing a little bit of work to you know, poke your head out. And so yeah, I don't know, I it was a nice read gave me stuff to think about resonated with me. Russell discussions I

Jessamyn 58:28 really like about like library, Twitter, besides the fact that it's pretty low drama, unlike library, Facebook, which is just like everything else. Like library, Twitter is sort of a combination of like, let's talk about our jobs. But then also, like, let's talk about interesting things from our collections or things that our, you know, our organizations or institutions are doing, and you wind up with, I mean, obviously, a lot of it's sort of intellectual nerdery in in at least a specific direction. But it's a lot of different types of things than the usual types of things. And also, there's just a lot of joy in it, you know, that it's just like, people being really excited to share something interesting that they have, it's not the whole sort of like, engagement, you know, click driven engagement, which is often shitty stuff or bad things or if you don't care about this, you're not paying attention Shamy stuff or like lifestyle, competition, types of things, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's a nerdy aspect to it, but it goes out in so many different directions that I feel like that helps me do some of this, you know what I mean? And the other thing is just reading a lot of weird, random different books, you know, going to the library and seeing what's on the shelf. I mean, surprise, surprise justments on about libraries, but, you know, gives you a different idea than if you're just relying on recommendation engines or ama Sounds like if you like this, you'll like that. Because obviously, they're trying to sell you more books, whereas the library doesn't give a shit. You know what I mean? They're not trying to push anything on you. And so you will end up finding random interesting things. I'm actually gonna go go read this thread because it sounds like it's totally up my interest. Clive Thompson is smart. And and I'm interested in what mefites have to say about it, as well. Because it is like, you make an interesting point in your comment there. You know, the whole idea of the old internet, in many cases was, I mean, obviously, early porn, but also just a lot of people with their kind of weird, quirky nerdy habits, because it was nerds on the internet. And so they could share the things they were interested in and cared about. And there was always something kind of neat about that, at least I thought so. And Metafilter can be like that when I you know, help myself refocus. And I'm not just blabbing with librarians on Twitter, it's neat to see what the metal filter population comes up with, because they're samey in one way. And then very not samey in a different way. And that makes it fun and interesting for me.

Cortex 1:01:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:01:14 So this was an article that was in Wired, that then was made into a post by CGC, 3730. You're all thank you for letting me watch your Plex for all these years.

Cortex 1:01:27 ICIJ. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:01:29 very much appreciate it. And basically, about a woman who kind of realized that there are a lot of articles on Wikipedia that are vaguely Nazi adjacent. And in many cases, the Nazi associations are downplayed, or the things that actual Nazis actually did, are turned into things that don't make them seem like horrible human beings. And so this woman just kind of decided she was gonna mix it up on Wikipedia and get better content concerning the actions of Nazis because there are a lot of people on Wikipedia, who are, if not Nazi apologists, flat out fascists and Nazis, trying to rewrite history about stuff that Nazis did. I've seen this occasionally, because it overlaps in weird areas where I am. And it's, it's scary, you know, it's scary and appalling, because in many cases, people who are Nazi apologists, white supremacists or otherwise, fascists are like deep get into the mud arguing errs. And it can be really difficult because they were you the fuck out, right. And part of Wikipedia is written by the people who can last the longest in the arguments. And so I respect the hell out of this woman. I did not actually get into the article, I read the article, but I didn't read this post. Because sometimes when people start talking about Wikipedia and meta filter, they can get a little strident.

Cortex 1:03:21 I've noticed that and I'm not here for

Jessamyn 1:03:23 it. Because, you know, I'm one of those people, just like Facebook. Wikipedia mostly works for me, but I do not. I acknowledge the ways in which it is shitty, including this way. Right? You know, if, if I were not seeking, were you out in an argument, their content winds up remaining on Wikipedia. And that's not how it should go. You know, but the article is really interesting. I appreciate that. Ceej posted this here, and I'm just Yeah, I mean, Ambrose and has a great, a great summary. Don't just stand back and say she's doing good stuff. Go to Wikipedia right now look up the last public racist. You saw giving their opinion on TV and make their Wikipedia article slightly less, euphemistic. I definitely do this within my tiny domain on Wikipedia. And it's a little scary. And it can sometimes be hard. But I think it's also really worthwhile. I also do some work on Wikipedia, where like, when there's a famous husband and wife team, and you find out the husband has an article and the wife doesn't, or the husband is mentioned on the wife's article, and the wife isn't mentioned on the husband's article, and you go, you know, mentioned mentioned, and talk about it and et cetera. And, yeah, I mean, I get why people maybe don't have time for Wikipedia, but I do think for me personally, it is worth it and interesting. But that is my last

Cortex 1:05:02 Well, so sorry, I

Jessamyn 1:05:03 got side derailed reading comments, check me out reading the comments. Yes, we can move on to ask Metafilter if you'd like to.

Cortex 1:05:13 Let's move on to ask Metafilter I would like to great. What do you got?

Jessamyn 1:05:18 Well, I have to, you know, because I've got them all open and tabs. Right. And I thought I had one open twice, because they both start with, can you? So I'm gonna do this as a twofer. One of which probably will give you like deja vu because it's like, can you help find the current location of this old Vienna address? Which you may recall we did with Yankee Fogg a long time. Yeah. And in this case, it's Misty horn, asking about a address from 1928. And they couldn't find like, they were like, Oh, it's this street. You know, that address exists? And she's like, Well, yeah, but I can't find that on the city map. And basically, it's like the way the there's like a postal code that's included with the street address, which makes it you don't think the thing you're looking at is the address. Like, if you're not familiar with Viennese addresses, you wouldn't be able to sort of get that. But yeah, user A EMF and user 15 l Oh, 615 ello. Six, pronounced 15 ello. Six, clicking through.

Cortex 1:06:39 Please see those from

Jessamyn 1:06:40 Vienna. You know, chimes in, and they were actually able to locate this on a map, and I appreciate it. So back to my other twofer, because what did we say about these weird discursive storytelling things? I love to this question, which was buy grumble be old timer grumble be? Basically like, Hey, I was reading the New York Times Book Review, there was an interview with this woman. And you know, they asked like, what's your favorite book No one's ever heard of, and she mentioned this book and talks about it. And he's like, you know, why can't I find this book? And it's never mentioned anywhere. It doesn't appear to have been published anywhere. It doesn't seem like she's lying. What's going on? And so people were like, oh, you know, well, the author was Mennonites, so maybe she's talking about somebody else within their community. Maybe it was just a manuscript and so blah, blah, blah. And then poke camps. Me fight poke camps, shows up basically, the day after this was posted, and was like, Oh, David Scott, that author you're trying to figure out he was my uncle. Let me tell you what I know about this book. And fascinating comment. You're right. It was a draft manuscript that got kind of given around this author Tues toes, I don't know how to pronounce her name. Got a copy of it and then the book was never published.

Cortex 1:08:16 That's that's pretty fantastic.

Jessamyn 1:08:17 And and then it was actually written in a man a man by somebody else. Oh, so Fournier wrote it gave it that another author wrote it gave it to this person who chose thought was the author, so she was actually wrong about it. And then grumble B actually heard from the author who was interviewed in the New York Times Book Review. Fascinating. Fascinating, fascinating. Such a great such a great interesting thread and it was good to see grown up around Hey, girl, we'll be

Cortex 1:08:53 bigger on will be. Yeah, I want to go back to the previous one in that too. For note that. There's like there's, there's a couple of classic ambiguities in rendering and different languages that show up like scrubs his initial comment, putting it as like, I think this is Gryffindor grasa. And then,

Jessamyn 1:09:17 right, because the address is like in like, written by hand, is that right? And

Cortex 1:09:21 I'm sure it's print. It's like black letter,

Jessamyn 1:09:26 but it's in that black black letter. I

Cortex 1:09:28 can't remember. But yeah, you've got the long s in there, which looks like an S if you don't know it's or looks like an F if you don't know that's a long ass which is a and then a very close current. Maybe it's just straight up a single doubled character of c k instead of d. And then and then gas of course is just like, cut off because like it's writing street every single time I guess. Yeah, no, that's that's kind of great. Anyway, I liked that. I liked that weird hard to parse ambiguity and How a familiarized i gets

Jessamyn 1:10:03 those again, like, it's one of the great things about getting a lot of random eyeballs on your thing, right? It's not just oh, you're all same friends who may have similar experiences to you. You'll have somebody who lives in Vienna, somebody who's good at, you know, this, that and the other and it's just I yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah.

Cortex 1:10:25 Yeah, that's great. Yeah. If it was unsolved, I would have told fribble to go look, but Oh, Ray

Jessamyn 1:10:31 Ray. Oh, well, you might want to point Trimble to it because they might be interested in it.

Cortex 1:10:37 Yeah. Also high stress. I didn't mean to, like make a point of dunking on your misreading of hard to read script in a different context.

Jessamyn 1:10:45 Yeah, no, I can stress is one of the 11 people who still listen to this podcast. So hey, Stuart, how you doing? I have more. So many more, bring it on, bring it on. From titles. Just the headline says it all should my child's school's PTA except cryptocurrency? No, but oh, God, but like why? No. I mean, this is why they're asking. But there are people in the thread explaining you know what's wrong with cryptocurrency, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know, they also talk about how there's a you know, an organization called the giving block, which will basically take cryptocurrency from people who want to give it to you. And then they give the nonprofit the funds minus some processing fee. And so part of the problem is, giving block doesn't actually kind of reveal what they're, you know, what their fees are, which is a pretty important thing. And then there's a lot of people just talk and sense about, look, if you care about the climate, don't encourage anybody to, you know, to buy and sell crypto in this way. But then other people were like, you know, there are other charities that are using it, maybe you should talk to them, if you really want to what's in it for them you know, situation, et cetera. So yeah, it's an interesting thread. I love to dunk on crypto and blockchain stuff in general. I'm on like a publishing publishers and authors and librarians mailing list and oh my God, so many people are talking about like do NF T's have the solution for you know, D, distributing ebooks? And I believe the answer is Fuck no. But there are a couple people there who are like serious, like crypto blockchain people who are very smart about it. They didn't just like read one article in Wired and decided they knew what was up. And so I learned from them, even though I think the answer is still no. It's interesting. Oh, red breasted not hatch RB nut just came by. It's It's interesting hearing both educated and less educated. Oh, hell no. Not that. Oh, hell no, people aren't the people I don't agree with I agree with but you know what I mean? Like people who say no, for good reasons. And people who say no, for bad reasons. It's interesting to learn about but God and fts. So stupid, yeah, yep. Yep. Jim just got his shingles shot. That's the Jim report.

Cortex 1:13:24 Excellent. Good job. Yeah, we did. We did not get shingles.

Jessamyn 1:13:28 Yep. I mean, you know, this is following me getting shingles three or four years ago and well, not enjoying it. So I've been yelling at him to be like, get your shingles shot is June as you can kind of thing.

Cortex 1:13:39 The second best time to get your single shot is now single shot, get your single shot, single shot, she's she sells shingles shots. By the shoe store. I glanced around the popular stuff. I like the look of this question. This is from dancers with light saying, you know, what are your nervous system reset hacks? Basically, what do you do in the moment to reset your sense of feeling okay, after something really unpleasant? And this is interesting to me. Because, I mean, I think that's probably interesting to plenty of people because you know what, that's how to regulate yourself emotionally and get yourself back in a better place if something upsetting happens, because hey, upsetting things happen. Right? And if you're in prone to anxiety, it may be like, you know, if hypothetically speaking, yeah. But I like this, I like this as an asked me question because there is a bunch of answers from a bunch of different people and that is kind of that's a good resource to have because like things that work for one person aren't going to work for another person. And so being able to look at like, all these different takes people having all these different experiential things is probably a better well to draw from than just like, well, there's this book that you know, if what it says works for you, it works for you. And if not, well, tough shit. So yeah,

Jessamyn 1:15:00 I just read a book recently, actually, I don't know if I had talked about this last month at all, but it's a book called calm and sense which has an ampersand, which does hell with my bookless software, but it was basically written by a woman who, you know, it's survived multiple cancers dealt with a lot of medical anxiety and other anxiety and wanted to put together exactly that kind of thing, like a book that was full of tips for people. And, and it doesn't necessarily it's not qualitative, like, it's very quantitative. I mean, you know, she has sometimes said, Oh, this works for me or whatever. But there's a lot of like, you know, maybe medication works for you. And that's terrific. If it works for you. Maybe, you know, maybe it doesn't in which case, like try something else? Or maybe that's not what you want to do. Maybe you're someone who has a strong spiritual core and so you know, finding different ways to pray could be helpful, or whatever. And I just like super appreciated it. Did you type me the number one for some reason?

Cortex 1:15:59 Not on purpose, but apparently, hey, I don't know how that works. I

Jessamyn 1:16:03 don't I don't know. I thought that was like an owl. Shit. I thought maybe you were like leaving. Or something like Oh, Jasmine's talking about books again, just cut this part. cut this part out. But like, one of the things is, a lot of times when you read stuff written by anxious people, they can themselves and I have this problem in spades. Be rigid about, like, what they think is going to work for other people. Like I'm rigid about what's going to work for me because it fucking works. Hold on telling my friend

I'm sorry, so sorry.

Cortex 1:16:52 It's nice to be able to sit together in silence. Even listening, even listening to your podcast on

Jessamyn 1:16:59 the lake. Sometimes people can be rigid about things that will also they think work for other people. You know, like yeah, that they're they're either like my Acupressure is all woo or like Acupressure is the only thing that works for this specific thing. Or rah, rah, rah. And, you know, one of the things I appreciated about this book was that was very similar to this AskMe meta filter thread, where it's just like, lists generations of things you can try. And, and it's helpful. And, you know, people have good ideas. And all those things are helpful. scream at full volume for 30 seconds. To be fair, we enjoyed doing that at my mother's house.

Cortex 1:17:44 I've never really been able to do that. Like there is a degree of this inhibition involved in just outright screaming that I it's not. I

Jessamyn 1:17:52 usually have to be yelling something. You know, like, I can't just go go ah, like, I have to be like, god dammit, Mom, why did you keep these canceled checks from 1965? But it feels really good to say at at very high volume.

Cortex 1:18:08 Yeah. I can see the loud I've had occasions where like, that's good. Angrily loudly making music has worked a little bit but that's just outright screaming is it's yeah, no, I don't know why. Yeah, well, it's always a quiet child.

Jessamyn 1:18:23 Yeah, god, me too. spookily quiet, I think. And it's weird. I'm like I'm talkative. But I'm also a very quiet adult, which I didn't really realize until I started dating the noise machine. If he is quiet it is because he is dead. He's not even quiet when he's sleeping. I do not know a quiet Jim. Ah,

Cortex 1:18:49 well, what else we got

Jessamyn 1:18:50 here is TMS Tiamat what is the oldest thing I can buy? Just to have, like, I want to own something that's really old. But that was made by humans. That just kind of reflects history and humanity. I have a small place. I'd like it to be under $500 Cheaper would be good. Thinking about coins, but not totally sure. What do you got for me? And so you know, there's interesting, like pieces of papyrus. You can get arrowheads, you can get old axe heads. Excuse me. Weird hiccup. You know, ancient Roman coins, which are sometimes really good. Augustus crunch has some sort of good suggestion of like old amulets from catalogs of antiquities. And I just kind of liked, you know, the interestingness of it. You know, spitball talks about like, hey, there's some interesting stuff made by Native Alaskan artists, but you may not be able to Move them in and out of the country and blah, blah, blah. So think about these things. But, you know, those are those are interesting, et cetera, et cetera. And it was just it was just a neat thing to just think about and contemplate. People have some good advice. I found it very interesting to be like, Oh, what's the oldest human made thing that I have in my house? You know, probably an old coin. To be honest. I don't know.

Cortex 1:20:30 Yeah, I had no idea actually.

Jessamyn 1:20:31 Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting little thought experiment. Probably some old coin in my house. But even those aren't very old. I may have books. In fact, right now, I have a book from the 1820s. And I'm wondering if I have anything else in my house that's older than that.

Cortex 1:20:45 There's a real, very real chance that there's nothing in my house that's older than my house. Like it's early, early 20th century house like 1906, or something like that, right? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. All right. So you got a couple more, I feel like I feel like we're long in the tooth.

Jessamyn 1:21:05 Alright, I have a couple more and I can, I can bang them out. All right. So this one from we're sure about, you know, it's kind of a blog post as an asked Metafilter post in some ways, but it the question at its core is interesting, because, you know, there's mane and tail shampoo and ketamine for horse surgery and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what other products that originally made for horses, although honestly, it could be any animal I think, are now used by people. And so you know, people talk about like treatments for ringworm. Different kinds of saw salve, salve, salve, bag balm, which used to be used to treat dairy cow otters is now something people use to for their hands in the winter, fingernail cream, blah, blah, blah. But it turns out, there's a lot of things. And I was surprised. And it's a it's an interesting, it's an interesting thread. Yeah, in general.

Cortex 1:22:12 It feels like there's just something sort of like evocative about using something on horses. Like if you're using the same medicine that is sometimes used to treat like dogs. It doesn't have right quite the same vibe as you know, horses,

Jessamyn 1:22:27 right? Because horses idle thought though horses are cool and yeah, and big and big and generally good luck in and Yeah, who knows? So my

Cortex 1:22:38 other a lot of people functionally mythical? Yes,

Jessamyn 1:22:40 yes. Preventing maggots in the trash. You know, I don't know why I favorited this. I think

Cortex 1:22:51 if you had a mega trash you never you just excited about maggots.

Jessamyn 1:22:59 Um, I feel like it was oh, I know why I favorited this because Jack karaoke just has this great solution that made me so happy that I didn't know would work and I favorited it literally to favorited so that I could remember at some point because Jimmy occasionally has like fruit fly issues and like no big deal. We all have them. But like, basically, you can get like one of those little square fans. They're called like a muffin fan. And I did not know they were called muffin fans but like how cute. And you can essentially make like a very easy little thing with like a basically a PC fan, a pair of pantyhose or some kind of stretch material. And then you put a tiny piece of banana in it and the flies are not really good fliers, fruit, fruit flies, and so they just get sucked in and scooped up and then they don't lay eggs in your trash. So thanks, Jack karaoke, I thought that was pretty interesting.

Cortex 1:23:57 That's pretty great.

Jessamyn 1:24:00 And question that never got answered. But I faked it because I want to read this by case of MC trying to figure out a story I read about a teen a widower librarian comes into work and discovers his research PC has been mysteriously updated and can answer any question. Whatever it is, I totally want to read it. But I don't know the answer yet. So I'm hoping somebody maybe who hears the podcast will maybe do this. And last but not least, happy ending story where centrifugal centrifugal is having a very stupid problem with the water shut off valve and has a leak in their bathroom. And other if they can't fix the leak in their bathroom, they're gonna have to turn off all the water in their house all weekend. God damn it. And they actually got Ah, pretty good you know, get a pipe wrench do this thing need more leverage figured it out and they got all fixed in a couple hours and they didn't have to turn off the water their house all weekend. So thank you very much rockin data and other people who were offering advice to help help centrifugal. solve their problem. And that's it for me.

Cortex 1:25:29 That's that's the story. That's what plumbers and capitalist shitheads both know, leverage. Leverage is powerful. Yeah, okay. Let's just stop there.

Jessamyn 1:25:42 Pretty low pawn podcast. So I have to say there have been a lot of cuts from you tonight.

Cortex 1:25:47 But I've been I've been I've been I've been off my game there. It's it's interesting. I don't know what the what we need. Like we need like a vector mapping of every podcast episode on like, several different fronts like you know, energy distractibility Pong level,

Jessamyn 1:26:04 right? Do we have to both take a break in the middle and pee and come back kind of thing? Noise

Cortex 1:26:09 diagram analysis, the

Jessamyn 1:26:10 whole history Bird Count weather report? Yeah.

Cortex 1:26:13 So someone listened to, you know, 200 hours of medical podcasts and do some data entry. Not me. All right. It's a podcast that's called Good. There was stuff on meta talk and fanfare and stuff and too And dude, go look at those we don't

Jessamyn 1:26:31 know love tases post the Season of the Witch which was basically on acknowledging that it's you know, Fall Winter incoming in the northern hemisphere, but like, spring summer in the southern hemisphere. And so it was like, kind of a fun thread of people talking about to in typical seasons at the same time, and I enjoyed the jumble.

Cortex 1:26:52 Yeah. So okay, I'll toss the link there there that we've now we've covered it. All right, well, I'm gonna go walk to that lunch.

Jessamyn 1:27:01 I'm gonna go to that post office, and then maybe stop by and see my friend in the yard. She was the one who texted me earlier that she's going to be out for a walk. Excellent. It's a great day for it.

Cortex 1:27:12 Well, I think it's a plan. I think it's a plan. I think it's a podcast. Fantastic.

Jessamyn 1:27:14 It was good talking to you as always, Josh and you. You just go get that lunch.

Cortex 1:27:20 I'm gonna get it. Get it

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