Podcast 17 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 17: Piles all the way down (2007-10-23).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, post, filter, totally, library, meetup, music, thought, metal, picture, aol, week, friends, chesapeake bay, awesome, book, long, talk, podcast, interesting

Transcript

mathowie 0:00 and gentlemen, welcome to the metal filter podcast. This is episode 17 of the med filter podcast this week we have an interview with Scotti and recaps from all around the site feeling someone so everyone knows that you know what we're gonna go? What should we asked her

Jessamyn 0:42 skirt. He's another one of those like middle aged women, you know, using metal filter. I mean, school is kind of great because she can basically talk about anything. Yeah. You talked to her about the replacements. He talked to her about meeting her boyfriend on match.com. Her new apartment that she moved into I mean Scotti, like, talks through a lot of the things that she's done in her life on metal filter. So I'd kind of be interested to ask her, you know, because there's a whole bunch of security conscious, oh my God. You know, she gives a lot of advice that talks about her real life, like, Oh, this is when I was married, and oh, this is this guy I met and oh, we're moving in together and we needed advice on you know, an apartment. I met the guy she goes to meetups. And yet she's not really like a nerdy, geeky person. Like she uses computers. But she's not. She's not super techy. It's like called chef, you know, called chef like, has a whole different job that isn't computers,

mathowie 1:36 how these people live. Or their tool doesn't define them.

Jessamyn 1:42 I know it's crazy. So I had a couple two music songs that I liked it we're also kind of liked by other people. Jesus,

mathowie 1:50 I completely forgot about music.

Jessamyn 1:54 Having some sort of problem. I was trying to

mathowie 1:57 be prepared with everything possible. Anything.

Jessamyn 2:01 And you forgot the music, Matt? How is

mathowie 2:03 yeah,

Jessamyn 2:05 what did you prepare?

mathowie 2:06 I picked out like a cool job. I picked out

Jessamyn 2:11 look at the jobs.

mathowie 2:12 I was just trying to someone mentioned it last time that we should spread out our love a bit more like do like a cool project that was never posted on the front page and do a cool job. And there's lots of cool jobs like jobs doesn't have you know, there's no community component so you never hear I just get random emails once a month or two saying like, Oh my god, I just want to say jobs rules because I got to hire this dude. And he's awesome. And we got the best, you know, new employee in the world and we know each other already and stuff like I hear success stories, but um, yeah. That's cool. Let me see. I should just get rid of get these out in the open. So this is my favorite project. That was never

Jessamyn 2:55 Oh, that guy emailed both of us. Yeah, I'm just worried. And I was like, Are you kidding? Dude? That fucking is awesome. And Matt how he will like it too.

mathowie 3:03 Yeah. Halloween out of pumpkin to brew beard it like that's that's hilarious.

Jessamyn 3:09 Well, they didn't like the real way like the heated up the pumpkin. My favorite thing about it was the picture where after three days the pumpkin had rotted sufficiently that the top fell in.

And don't forget, we've got the trifecta three separate topic metal filter music challenge. That's wrapping up at the end of October. I don't know of another podcast before that. So I just wanted to put in a plug for the sounds like Tom Waits. Spooky. And what's the other part of it?

mathowie 3:42 Too many beats or something too many. Something's too many too. Lots of notes. Lots of notes.

Jessamyn 3:47 It doesn't have to be too many. It can be just the right amount.

mathowie 3:50 I was just missing them or miss remembering. Now let's see this a lot of Halloween songs already.

Jessamyn 3:56 Yeah, no, I think I think that'll be kind of great. And

mathowie 4:00 Tom Waits impression awesome.

Jessamyn 4:05 Seat music is great. I mean, the problem is when I travel, I don't download all the songs. I was staying at this hotel with like the worst Wi Fi you could only do one thing at a time on the internet. Because they were having capacity problems. And so they did this traffic shaping thing or it would only allow one HTTP request at a time. And you uploaded pictures to Flickr and you could get to two Meg's and then they would just die. So I had to it was horrible. So I didn't get to listen to any music and I didn't get to well basically do anything. You know, I read the news and was sad.

mathowie 4:37 That socks was in London, the hotel Wi Fi and wired connections just totally sucked and they were 15 pounds a day. $30 a day. It was terrible.

Jessamyn 4:48 That's like Australia. I mean, this London have the same thing as Australia where you know, they have to pay for this pipe to the rest of the world and it's expensive or

mathowie 4:57 I think it's just just fucked up kind of shit can be expensive. So why not make it expensive? Interesting. It was, it was like someone's pointed out Why do cheap hotels have free Wi Fi and expensive hotels cost 20 bucks a day, like

Jessamyn 5:16 people are used to just paying through the nose for everything.

mathowie 5:20 Oh, here's my favorite job. So this will be a new feature of we do. collections manager at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Like sounds.

Jessamyn 5:32 That was my favorite job, too. Yeah, when you look

mathowie 5:35 through it, you're like, wow, anyone that like was into anthropology or archeology or something would probably like this would be a fun job to go to every day like to just do oral history and folk life research and, like, just get the history of the Chesapeake Bay down. And you know, I have no idea.

Jessamyn 5:54 Michener wrote that book, which I think is called Chesapeake, which is about the history of the Chesapeake Bay. I mean, you know how he does it, right? You start out with a trial bite or something, and then like, legs, and then it has a family and, you know, 3 million years later, you've got like, some couple going and eating french fries. got me really interested in the Chesapeake Bay in general. And, of course, it's got the library and tech, so

mathowie 6:18 Oh, yeah, I guess it would be like a library thing. It's just sort of yeah, it just seemed like a cool like, just like one of those weird fun jobs you think of when you're a kid that nobody has an adult gets to have, but like fun, like, a total blast or anyone with any background.

Jessamyn 6:34 Now, I totally thought about that, and Miko actually had. I think this was in meta talk. This is Miko shout out time besides having the Indiana meetups because she's going to be an indie man. And there was a really interesting conversation. We never talked about metadata either. Yeah, there was this really great conversation about topic specific filter sites. Like she works at a museum in

now it's at the Maine New Hampshire line. And pretty sure it's in Maine, and New Hampshire. I'm such an idiot. I have no idea. I get it confused. But she's a folklorist. And so she finds these interesting sort of folklore connections, all over meta filter, and was wondering about getting them all together on sort of a spin off site that was like content for meta filter plus other content, and it was just a really interesting discussion about how that was gonna work.

mathowie 7:27 Oh, oh, yeah. I just found it in the old posts. Oh, yeah. You just post it? Yeah, I didn't see this at all. This is probably may have been a way. Yeah. This is like a weekend. Do you not work on the weekends? No, actually,

Jessamyn 7:47 I suspect it. You may not work on the weekends anymore.

mathowie 7:51 You can't really you know, there's so many stupid family things to do. I was the day before the last podcast.

Jessamyn 7:57 Dude, you love your stupid family? Yeah, right. They may listen to your podcasts. Yeah, they

mathowie 8:03 don't. Um, let me see. There are so many. So it's been what three weeks I went to London. It was a blast. London meet you at a meet up. They

Jessamyn 8:15 made you a cake I saw.

mathowie 8:17 Yeah, that turned out to be the only cake I got for my birthday this year. So it was a huge surprise. And it was a few days before my thing. Yeah. But I spent my actual birthday mostly traveling down to San Francisco. I think I spent eff thing. Yeah. And I spent all of 20 minutes at home, you know, on my actual birthday before it struck midnight. And yeah, that was the only cake I got, which is very nice. And I think well better than everybody else who said

Jessamyn 8:40 meanwhile, we had Chris Mir and a big supper party in Vermont, London, or Chris Mir was in my house for a meet up. And then I went to a meet up in Vancouver, Canada, which was totally fun. You know, time is tight. And seawall runner and all the other all the other myopic man. People showed up. It was like eight or 10 people Russell Wong showed up, like just kind of tagged in and said, Hi. So like people I'd known from a while ago and people I just met Joe Keefe. It was just a really, it was a really a really fun group. And it was just like, you know, whatever, dinner and beer, and then I left the next day to come back to Massachusetts where I was at a library conference and I just got home.

mathowie 9:22 London was awesome, because I cola and dashlet were there. So it's just it was awesome to meet people you've been reading for six years or so it was just really

Jessamyn 9:31 right. Totally old home like Well, that's the way I felt with like, time is tight. I was like, I've known you since forever. That button up shirt. I see you wearing the pictures.

mathowie 9:42 He was at the when I went to Vancouver like four years ago, he sort of hosted a meet up and that was great. I think I've seen him a couple times since then.

Jessamyn 9:53 Yeah, so as far as my second Canadian, I think my second Canadian meetup total blast, super fun and You know, just the perfect thing to be doing in Vancouver Plus, there was a couple of mefites at the conference that I spoke at, oh, cool, like library and posse. But it filter people who were also at the conference.

It was a library tech conference, Canadian Library conference. So it was interesting. Usually, I'm like, kind of the techie librarian at the public librarian conferences, but now I was like the public librarian at the techie librarian conferences. Fascinating. I had to get up early. give a talk.

mathowie 10:32 razor thin slicing of audiences.

Jessamyn 10:36 Exactly. You'd be surprised, though.

mathowie 10:39 No, I believe it. Um, let me see. I was when I was going through the last three weeks or so of meta filter posts I liked and the most liked ones. It seems like everything fell into groups.

Jessamyn 10:52 Okay, tell me about it.

mathowie 10:53 I've got like a huge photo group. So let me see. I'll just paste them to you. There's New York photos, there is American city photos. And then there is images from unknown origin, which was like probably the most popular thing on metadata over the last month or so. These are all

Jessamyn 11:14 no other knots. Oh, yeah, Lord Lorenz post.

mathowie 11:18 Yeah. And these are all offering awesome, like 50 year old or more photos. The city ones are trippy, just to see, all the cities just weren't as crowded. 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 100 years ago. And let me see then the server music right

Jessamyn 11:39 now I've loading this giant file. So

mathowie 11:44 let me do my next pile. I think music there's been a lot of music. There's always been a lot of posts about musicians, but I think there's been a good music pile in the last month with humongous these all MySpace music people, which is interesting, like talking about finding needles in the haystack. There's like 30 Cool MySpace Musicians. Flapjacks found. And then Nico Lin posted a Django Reinhardt post on his entire life. And then another one, another French guitarist a couple weeks later. Oh, nice. I like Django Reinhardt. Yeah, it's just like tons of YouTube links. And just second guitarist, I forgot his name already. Just crazy mad skills. And there's tons of like, YouTube, he must do videos or something. I think the music stuff is really getting used well, by the more inside, do you know the new feature?

Jessamyn 12:45 Yeah, because then people can be like, and here's 30 supporting links without having a 30 link post for people who really, really don't want to see that?

mathowie 12:54 Yeah, it's I think it's been working out pretty well. Sometimes. Things are borderline wiki PDF dumps, but the most part, I think the more insight is being used sparingly. Maybe 10% of the posts, and people are just stuffing more background information. And some of these music things can just be monster long if you want them to be works out pretty good. Right? But

Jessamyn 13:15 we haven't seen anybody. I haven't anyhow, seen anybody use it to just be like, here's my giant screed on whatever, which I guess was what I was concerned about, and it just totally didn't happen. And I was just wrong.

mathowie 13:30 You never know. You never know what's gonna happen when we toss out a new feature. There's always unintended consequences, but it's all worked out pretty good. I just sent you an ice pile. It's been a couple

Jessamyn 13:42 you sent me a nice pile Yeah, we on Facebook or there's the polar I saw this I love this post.

mathowie 13:51 The polarized one is cool, you know big news that the Northwest Passage opened up kind of scary but the other one was the mysterious ice circles and this is like the trifecta of cool science and mystery and what the hell and people trying to figure out what the heck is creating these good photographs and good photographs? Yeah, perfect circles of ice in these rivers. And and and I didn't see there was an answer at all, but I kind of came up with the you know, weird surface Eddie's like turning a piece of ice until it melts at the ends to become circular.

Jessamyn 14:25 Right like the perfectly Hey, I hear your cat. Like a perfectly smooth pebbles. Yeah. That you find there used to be a Peanuts cartoon about Linus finds this rock and he believes that it's, you know, over years and years and years been perfectly formed by the river and then it turns out, it's a croquet ball. I'll have to figure out if I can if I can find it.

mathowie 14:48 Very old one. I forgot to mention the London photos.

Jessamyn 14:52 mentioned it mentioned it I didn't know it'd

mathowie 14:54 be in the photo pile. I'll just find the URL and throw it in the pile. Did you see this crazy YouTube thing? A kid in the basement making videos with a sister, they're just bizarre and funniest shit. What were they called legend on the unit.

Jessamyn 15:14 You know, somebody says blah, blah, blah, weird YouTube videos and my eyes kind of roll up in my head.

mathowie 15:19 If you just watch any of the single like YouTube links, you're just like, oh my god, like here's a really bizarre creative kid in his basement making funny intentionally and unintentionally funny stuff.

Jessamyn 15:35 It's just and I trust blasts off implicitly you know if he thinks it's gonna be good for Metafilter I believe he's probably right. He's part of our younger born with a chip demographic. He's a tastemaker. What can he say?

mathowie 15:50 My very, very favorite personal last few weeks was this one on French bike racing. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Rand in your essentially, it's a super long grueling endurance races, like 1000 miles in a day and a half or something with no support whatsoever. Like carry on tools, tubes, maps, everything. Like it. There are always extreme events like go from San Francisco to Tijuana. You know, in a day with nothing. Go We'll meet you there. Yeah, so so

Jessamyn 16:24 1500 people fail to finish. That's pretty good. The highest attrition rate in the history of the event.

mathowie 16:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the PD P be? Yeah, Perth, Albany. Perth. Is that the one? What? Like? No, it that one's worse. Yeah, so it's this long, long bike race? Yeah, you have to qualify for it. And, man, it's really cool. And a few people in the thread have actually, you know, worked on or done it or been around it. It's not competitive. It's a cooperative. So several writers, you know, writing packs and help each other out. And

Jessamyn 17:02 you'd have to write I mean, it's got to be one. It's like mutual support or die. Yeah. It's like mountain climbing or something like,

mathowie 17:09 yeah, it's Yeah. And everyone's like an amateur. There's no money in it. It's just like, just done for the love of cycling psychotic distances. And

Jessamyn 17:21 this user is right. It's somebody who's been a member since 2002. Is they've made three posts. This is one of them. They have one user links to them one time.

mathowie 17:32 Yeah. Awesome. This is an awesome more inside you know, I guess it's starting to get Wikipedia like but it's just really amazing. Cool stuff.

Jessamyn 17:42 Well, and especially in a situation like this where you're like, Oh my God, that's really a fascinating thing I knew nothing about and now I can learn all about it.

mathowie 17:49 Yeah. Oh, it's Paris. This Paris to breast and back to Paris in four days or something? Is like, many many miles

Jessamyn 18:00 Rocky Mountain 1200. And oh, God, Perth. I mean, Paris is so far away. Yeah.

mathowie 18:04 Perth to anywhere and back. It's got to be a long one. Well, because it's the

Jessamyn 18:09 world's most remote city as I think I told you before I went there. And holy crap it totally

mathowie 18:14 is. There's like nothing in the middle there and it's way out at the end of Australia.

Jessamyn 18:19 Yeah, although it's beautiful. It's on the coast and oh my gosh, did I love it there but yeah, crazy. Totally crazy.

mathowie 18:26 Um, yeah, I think those are all my favorites metal filter.

Jessamyn 18:29 I didn't spend as much time on metal filter this in the last in the last couple weeks I of course enjoyed in in my weird way. The the Breast Cancer Awareness Month best breasts in movie history slightly controversial. Yeah, post what cuz there was that like, sort of LoL tits post. You remember though, it was like a YouTube post which was just all these like hottie actresses like taking their shirts off. And it was just it was like one of those like money shot movie things which is just all those parts when the girl takes off her shirt and I thought that was like, but this was actually film threat putting together you know, little blurbs and little YouTube's about the 50 best, you know, best racks or whatever movie history and I sort of liked the post it was a little weird because you know it's theoretically the breast cancer awareness month thing and so people were really split in the thread about whether it was at all appropriate to talk about breast cancer awareness and Mae West having a nice rack in the same you know, in the same post and film threat whatever like they're not known for being the most tasteful tools in the shed. But you know, I enjoyed it is just like, I mean, less posts, I tend to think are just really, they tend to be lame. Like they have to be really good for me to be like Oh, awesome list, but I enjoyed I enjoyed that. that particular list post trying to think if there was anything there may not have been. Well, there was that cryptic comma seven post there was the Radiohead record announcement that never ended day on the first of October.

mathowie 20:16 That was the cause there was a hoax a week before that they're gonna have a new album, surprise everyone, but it was total hoax. But then it actually came out to be true. I don't think the first guy was right. But I think it was just coincidence. So everyone wanted him deleted, because it wasn't true. And it was a hoax. But it turned out to be true. And then the whole pricing thing was like the whole internet breakthrough.

Jessamyn 20:39 Yeah, so right. And did you did you read that? Oh, I'm trying to think there was a website like how much did you pay for the album.com or something like that? I'll go find it. But basically, it was figuring out like, they did a survey of people who bought the Radiohead album, and

mathowie 20:56 like a 10 bucks each, probably, yeah, it

Jessamyn 20:58 was like three pounds, three and a half pounds, something like that. So seven, seven American dollars, something like that. I can dredge it out of my out of my history. But it was kind of

mathowie 21:09 someone smartly pointed out, though, that like, this is sort of a first mover advantage thing where when everyone's doing it, it would just be really boring and tedious. And nobody would pay for anything. Or, I mean, it would definitely go down. So if they can show that they made an average of $10 per album, it's really like people's guilt of years of you know, downloading. And if there's 100 albums available at this kind of pricing, they wouldn't be paying 10 bucks an album each average, you know, it'd be a lot lower.

Jessamyn 21:38 Right, right. Yeah, no, of course not. And the other thing that I found kind of interesting was, you know, in the general just Blago world, is people being like, and people are still trading it on the peer to peer networks. What the hell, like as if like the answer is to shut down peer to peer. Yeah. And other people are like, dude, period parts are just easier than that freakin Radiohead website like,

mathowie 22:00 yeah, the web. Yeah, I had to download from an illicit source because the

Jessamyn 22:06 man, nobody has to download from analysts had to

mathowie 22:09 have it on day one, the site was unavailable for the whole first 24 hours, and you can't even pay for it. So it was like, oh, yeah, well, here's a super fast download sitting right here. Might as well check it out. And what do you think? I just barely gotten into touch it so far. So I haven't listened

Jessamyn 22:27 to it yet. But of course, it's creating this big issue in the library community. Because you know, what, what do you do if you can't buy the thing? Or touch it or put a label on it? I mean, we don't have a way to circulate digital only media that doesn't come from a major media corporation. You know what I mean?

mathowie 22:46 Wow. Yeah, my library does audio books, I think, is a digital, like they have the CDs and the cassette tapes, but they also did like, your overdrive. I don't know, it was some weird company with tons of DRM. And there's some sort of way you could download like audio books in like,

Jessamyn 23:03 overdrive does that net Library is the other one that I'm aware of. But it's this huge clusterfuck

mathowie 23:07 like, you gotta be on Windows and the thing self destruct after two weeks, it was like, Oh, God, what a mess. And

Jessamyn 23:13 if you're the library, you buy the thing. And even if somebody listens to it, and 15 minutes, or, you know, a day, you can't recirculate it for two weeks, and you pay for the thing, and so you only get 26, circulations out of each item that you pay for Oh, right. Yeah. And

mathowie 23:29 it's this non destructive digital file, but it's, quote, unquote, out when someone has downloaded it, like, that's just ridiculous.

Jessamyn 23:37 Right, right. Right. Right. And, and but, you know, it's the only model that allows libraries to circulate digital content, and keep track and do statistics and everything else. This is that Radiohead website, but yeah, so you know, I'm interested in using this Radiohead album thing to just kind of like push the envelope and be like, what do we do when artists start releasing things digitally? Only? What's our response? Do we just say, Oh, get it on the internet? Like, we don't circulate it? Because we can't hold it? I don't know. So

mathowie 24:09 archive.org is pretty good about that stuff. But I mean, as a sort of central repository.

Jessamyn 24:15 No, I mean, they're totally awesome. But it just means that your public library is left like, no, I'm sorry, we don't have Radiohead new album, you'll just have to get it yourself. And then once you get all your content yourself, why no library.

mathowie 24:28 If archive.org ever achieve the dream of digitizing everything ever and having an archive of it, then librarians are sort of, like bloggers, they're like, Here are these 10 awesome things out of the giant pile@archive.org that we can give a number to and source it and stuff.

Jessamyn 24:46 Right? But you've got to have geeks who can program that in so that you can get statistics and that becomes because it's all about the numbers.

mathowie 24:53 You know, it's really usage.

Jessamyn 24:56 Usage Statistics often determined funding either directly or directly,

mathowie 25:00 right? Crazy. I know

Jessamyn 25:03 I was in my bed business model I heard

mathowie 25:06 I heard one of your podcasts the whole thing about how we could never libraries would never start today. It's just impossible.

Jessamyn 25:15 Oh, I said that on the Yeah. Oh, I said that.

mathowie 25:19 Well define that podcast if someone's podcast or Chronicle of Higher Education. That wasn't your podcast, you were just the guest.

Jessamyn 25:29 But I mean, it was I was, ah, I was in the podcast. Yes. Yeah. It's not my, I have no podcast. This is my podcast. Yeah,

mathowie 25:39 that's pretty good. And I think the digital, digital audio books points to like, here's like a new product that just doesn't work. Because they're so freaked out about people stealing it. Even though you can just get the CD version of a book, go home and rip it like instantly. Right? Have a permanent copy yourself.

Jessamyn 26:03 And I do that a lot, too. I'm kind of surprised that libraries are still allowed to even buy digital media like that. I mean, like, you know, digitize double media. Cuz I mean, that's what I totally did at the public library. I checked out like every book on tape, I wanted to get home and burned it. And

mathowie 26:20 I always thought, yeah, Library's doing DVDs always in weird like movies, right? The whole video store business model they're messing with. I guess we try and eke out a few AskMe Metafilter. Good ones. Of course. I shouldn't be calling that 10 minutes or so.

Jessamyn 26:42 Okay, let me let me check my favorites because I do have some

mathowie 26:45 I found mining groups to

Jessamyn 26:49 you were just it sounds like you're on Strattera this week or something like you just found all the

mathowie 26:54 favorites. And yeah, I've just been making it a habit to anything is remotely interesting. Marketing is a favorite. And then going back not not looking at it until it's time to do the show. And then it's like, that's exactly what I've been doing. Yeah, this is how I see piles of, you know, self help. I would say these are the Self Help pile and it's terrible at small talk.

Jessamyn 27:18 That one was great. You could, you could see people in the thread were totally like, dude, if you and I were together on a business trip, and you started reading a book, I would flip out on YouTube and other people who were like, what, what? What? So it was interesting watching the two sides kind of talk to each other. It really civil it stayed really simple.

mathowie 27:38 Oh, god, yeah, they're on a trip. They didn't say a word to each other. And the person thought it was awesome. That was kind of sucky. And then the middle one, I think was how much working in home lack of human contact? How much can you take? How much can one person take? And I think the other

Jessamyn 27:55 member seeing that one? Let

mathowie 27:57 me go. The third one. The third, I was like, How do I shut my brain that's telling me enjoy my life like nagging thoughts. And I think these are all trends of often we see these in these self helpy kind of questions. But these are things that like, I think I have a problem with all three of these things.

Jessamyn 28:15 Right? Working at home, love it, reading a book around other people always shut my brain up and enjoy my life. I actually commented in that thread. So yeah,

mathowie 28:23 we're crappy at small talk. I find the more I work at home, the worse I am at parties. Like I have no idea what passes for water cooler talk anymore, because I'm totally out of

Jessamyn 28:33 our website before I go out. Just so I could be like, oh, yeah, I saw that article. Being up on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And the internet is enough for most, like three years ago, it was kind of weird to talk about the internet. And now everybody kind of talks about the internet.

mathowie 28:49 Yeah. People that, yeah.

Jessamyn 28:53 That Lampson was the one I liked, which was the classy behavior thread, which turned into of course, an interesting side derailed discussion on class.

mathowie 29:04 This is not ironically, actual classy behavior.

Jessamyn 29:08 Well, that was the question. And other people, including myself were like, actually, you know, calling something classy is often done by people from a certain class, et cetera. But then other people got kind of miffed at that and there was an interesting an interesting kind of back and forth.

mathowie 29:26 Like a hot button word among my friends for like, I guess it's a pejorative, like, God like Las Vegas. Yeah. TransAm Las Vegas. Yeah. TransAm Las Vegas hair gel. Totally classy. I like the wide there's a high preponderance of douche bags and also like those things Oh, wow.

Jessamyn 29:45 The cooking the cooking thread. We always have one that perfect spinach salad which just

mathowie 29:51 didn't see that. Well. Yeah, it's ago salad comes up a lot.

Jessamyn 29:56 For some Oh, I'm sorry. What were you gonna say? I was thinking

mathowie 29:58 the to the The most interesting one I thought the whole week was like what is every country's its beta, you know, the beta with the three as E that sort of epitomizes the UK to an outsider and person's like what website community sort of epitomizes, you know. And there's essentially like a Hungarian web community and a Malta web community and a Scotsman community and a Singapore hangout and stuff.

Jessamyn 30:30 Oh, interesting. I didn't even see that. Oh, although Esteban is the person who did one of the music. He's the user that did one of the two songs that I recommended for the music part. Oh, that's how I know users.

mathowie 30:44 Yeah, it didn't get a lot of responses. But just to know that there's weird communities out there other countries

Jessamyn 30:49 that just want to be like the moon again. So my local what I just said, one people one live on Earth, we like the moon.

mathowie 31:02 I think the other awesome super popular, you know, on the vein of like, give me a book, you know, to read about every subject on Earth. This one was the mnemonics like mnemonics to help you remember something? Oh, yeah. That was

Jessamyn 31:18 great. The ROI. Participation ones. Yeah, Kings play chess on fine glass stools,

mathowie 31:25 just because you'll know that like you're going to learn 100 new things you didn't know that everyone. Everyone has their tracks. And these are zillion of them. Very cool,

Jessamyn 31:33 might help you know them. This, this was one that actually led me to a webpage that I really liked. The I'm looking for a disturbing image, I came across a flash shot taken from a completely dark auditorium containing several 100 Japanese college men in their underwear in total darkness. Ring any bells? And other people are like, oh, yeah, totally did. And they, you know, they linked to it within within within minutes. But if you go look at the picture,

mathowie 32:02 holy cow. That is right.

Jessamyn 32:04 I know. It's really cool. And when I was traveling, and I was preparing a talk, and I was trying to remember this thing that I thought I'd read in a Malcolm Gladwell book, yeah, and I just asked one of those total, like, can you read my mind? I forget something I knew. But I posted it like the night before I had to actually put this thing together. What is this article that I read, I thought it was something by Malcolm Gladwell. But it turned out it was a Temple Grandin. Like something about autism, and iconomy got it in like, you know, two hours, three hours. And I got to use it in my talks, the links right to the Google Book thing. So I just wanted

mathowie 32:45 to say six out of an animal behavior book, that is freaky,

Jessamyn 32:49 because I knew it was a book that I'd read in the last three years. And so as soon as she said that, I looked at my book list, and I was like, oh, that's gotta be it. I don't know how she found that. She's genius. But I mean, pretty interesting, don't you say?

mathowie 33:02 Yeah, totally. I haven't asked any questions lately. I felt like here's a good food one, which was what food items help you lose weight. So it was kind of the double asked me. Like diet, weight tips, plus cooking tips in a way that I've never seen before, which was like what specific foods Did you stick to to lose weight, which was kind of cool, because you can get recipes out of it, and you get weight loss stuff out of it.

Jessamyn 33:31 And it's it kind of spherical, because it's really pulling man.

mathowie 33:35 It's true. Wow, this is really Oh,

Jessamyn 33:38 the other one. You said you had a whole bunch of picture ones for metal filter. Yeah. I also enjoyed the what are some of the most beautiful, all Inspiring Public interior spaces you've ever seen? Because a lot of people talk about stuff they saw in their own where they're from. And so you get like people from Canada being like, Oh, this thing in auto was really good, or people from wherever they are having seen really, really interesting stuff. Didn't see that. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah, it's just a really nice list. And you know, I checked out a whole bunch of those pictures.

mathowie 34:13 The British Museum was awesome inside and every time watching European travel shows, you know, any church you go into is magnificent.

Jessamyn 34:21 Yeah, I saw some of your pictures from your trip and somebody was talking the salt Nam at the blue mosque in Istanbul where I've actually been to somebody was talking about oh, someplace with a parquet floor. I don't even remember if it was, Oh, yeah. knacks was talking about how Krannert Center in Urbana Urbana Illinois has a lobby. That's a city block of walnut park a one of the beautiful interior spaces you'll ever you've ever seen. And it's pretty neat looking

mathowie 34:51 at the strange beautiful interior I think of is Portland airport. What You have to go under the entire parking garage along the single hallway. It's like yeah, no, I've been there. A quarter mile long hallway of just unbroken carpet. And like there's just something really like meditative about walking that quarter mile on carpet or half a mile like it's just ridiculously long.

Jessamyn 35:21 See, that's the way I get from my hotel room to the lobby that I was just like walking down hotel hallways forever, and it loses its appeal after maybe Vegas.

mathowie 35:32 something beautiful about like, in a sort of how there's something about the Portland when it's kind of like a curvature of the earth in it or something that is just not a boring interior space, if something really cool about it, the foreshortening or something is oddly interesting. I found like two of the saddest stories, just horrible, sad stories. These come up once in a while and asked Metafilter like to within a week of each other one is a guy like the worst divorce story ever with someone who is horrible with money. It's like, person's like recently split up. And it's just a supermassive like a deadbeat husband who has like 1000s like 10s of 1000s.

Jessamyn 36:17 She's getting an audit and yeah, he's getting

mathowie 36:21 audited for what he did. But they're not together anymore and just sell a house but there's no money to make off the house. It's like, Oh, my God, totally super fun.

Jessamyn 36:30 out there. People are dangerous, dangerous for you.

mathowie 36:34 Yeah. And the other sad story is someone coming out to their family who's like religious and this the worst thing happens and the person's basically like their best. You know, their closest family member friend was their sister who always seemed to understand everything. And she just went started quoting a

Jessamyn 36:52 bunch of Bible verses. Yeah, that's Oh, there was a lot of great support in that thread though. Thank God. Yeah.

mathowie 36:58 Oh, she's calling Scott. He's calling. Oh, good. Let me see if I can throw her dough. Hello, hello. Hey, Mario. Let me see if I can throw you in another one. Yeah. Sweet. Hi, steady.

scody 37:14 Cool. Hi, how are you?

mathowie 37:17 Oh, we got it works.

scody 37:18 It works. It works. If my reception starts getting sketchy. I'll just start wandering around. So tell me if you can't hear me at some point. Okay. Wandering around the tar pits. I'm gazing upon the tar pits as we speak

mathowie 37:31 so don't fall

scody 37:33 No, no indeed.

Jessamyn 37:36 Are the tar pits filled Tari

scody 37:39 filled with tar. And then it's like sad little dioramas of the mastodon dying in there.

mathowie 37:46 Oh, that's right. You work at LACMA? Right?

scody 37:48 I do. Yes. I work at LACMA,

mathowie 37:51 the LA County Museum of Art. Correct. And the Brea Tar Pits are like right next door right?

scody 37:58 Exactly. We're on the same kind of Park Complex in us in the middle of the city. I was really disappointed when I first moved to LA I thought like the libreria tar pits would be in this kind of crazy vast prehistoric looking area so I was really disappointed that you know it's just people selling hotdogs right down the boulevard disappointed hear me? Yeah,

Jessamyn 38:24 no, no, no, but I have I've been there like, you know, historically, I had friends in LA when I went to college and I would go visit them sometimes during spring break and it was still freezing in New England.

scody 38:34 s&d. There now,

Jessamyn 38:37 here. It's literally freezing. But um, I mean, like at night, it literally freezes but it's not freezing. Like I'm cold all the time. Like it's warm outside. Right now this instant. That's good.

mathowie 38:50 I think to have a lack of a membership. That was something I did all the membership I used to have on I live in LA that was something I did all the time.

scody 39:00 Well, for goodness sake, you should come back and visit us.

mathowie 39:02 Yeah,

Jessamyn 39:03 I'm back in visit Matt. Howie.

scody 39:06 Come back, come back.

mathowie 39:10 Didn't really even do an intro for Scotty. Why don't you do one? You do one?

scody 39:18 I don't want to do one. Let's do it. Mikey.

Jessamyn 39:21 Well, Scotty, what's your what's your user number? I'm trying to remember how long you've been around. I've

scody 39:26 seen something 16 for 20 Something I've been around for about five years.

Jessamyn 39:31 Scotti spent on metal filters seemingly forever. I I first noticed her on metal filter because she used to post a lot about Paul Weller from the replacements. And I knew that and I knew that she liked music all the time. You know, I learned a whole bunch more about Scotti. She used to be married same as me. She was dating a guy that played the banjo. She worked in a museum she was really tall. Oh, I think I remember when you posted in one of those like, I hate skinny people threads and you're like, fallen skinny, whatever, like

scody 40:10 it's not my fault. It's my thyroid.

Jessamyn 40:13 Right? I've got thyroid problems, and it's totally not my problem. Not my fault. Don't hate me because I'm tall and skinny. I have a disease

scody 40:23 and cancer and Marfan Syndrome, so I get to eat brownies whenever I want.

Jessamyn 40:29 Sukkot thank you for definitely, like a Sukkot people sort of said, and I got to meet Scotti, when I went down to Los Angeles, I guess it was last December about a year ago at a wonderful metal filter meetup that wound up at the Jumbos, titty bar, and we had a very good stick with our friend. And ever since then, I've wanted to have Scotty on the podcast to be another, you know, woman with with attitude to talk to us about whatever. So that's that go

mathowie 41:01 awesome.

scody 41:07 ask the first question.

Jessamyn 41:09 Well, I was mostly curious go to because you're not I mean, I don't mean this in a disparaging way. But I don't think of you as the typical like, Girl nerd uses computers all the time, whatever. Like there's a lot of us who are like, super techy, I live with my grinder attached to me in programming. But like you strike me as someone who's kind of more of a like, Well,

scody 41:32 I mean, what, what? computer user, what

Jessamyn 41:35 dragged you onto the internet and kept you there, and then wound you up at meta filter for so long. And I know you're also admitted chat and monkey feel like I don't even know.

scody 41:45 Monkey filter. But yeah, I'm on meta chat as well. Um, we would join me on initially was got back in grad school. I was on AOL. Believe it or not?

Jessamyn 41:56 That I won't tell.

scody 41:59 Although now everybody knows. And my roommate and I were always on AOL. This was back when you still pay by the minute on AOL, like the early 90s. Yeah. And we got dragged on there a lot. Because you remember, because I think you posted in this thread about the TV show the states on MTV back in the early 90s. I love a lot of the states tell me about the state. My roommate and I in grad school were complete state addicts. And we found that there was a little chat room on there with fellow state addicts. And so we started we dropped mine in chapter and then the guys from the state found out and so they would drop by and chat. And then like we exchanged some numbers and Michael Ian Black like called me once and I chatted with Michael and I know it's totally not about Tony, handsome, great guy. He's like, Yeah, come out to New York. So I've been living in New York previously, like connect to New York, I'll take you out for chicken, shawarma. And the fool I am of course, I never went back to New York to go out to conform with my buddy. And I know I am a fool. And now everybody knows. My life could have been so much different. So so that was that was kind of what got me on the internet. Oh, and then it was like shortly after that. I remember when Kurt Cobain killed himself and I was quite freaked out about it. So like my only solace was talking with people on their Cobain. That's what got me on the net. And I just kind of never got off. But I'm not I'm not terribly computer savvy. I mean, I, I often do relative to my parents. I'm like this insane computer whiz because I can come home and empty their cookies. I'd like suggested they should have maybe an antivirus software on there. And then I can then you know, load it on there. So I am a computer genius, but relatively few people. Like when when Matt emailed me.

I'm like, I don't know what that is. I was like, I don't even know how to pronounce it.

Finally, a coworker of mine sort of had to pat me on the hand. And it's a computer thing where you can talk by the phone to the computer. Why would anyone want to do when you have phone?

Jessamyn 44:16 My cell phone doesn't work at my house. So you know, that's, that's part of it. You have to

scody 44:21 have it. I have to have it. I'm sure at some point, I will eventually have it like I was resolutely not going to ever get a cell phone. This is like a badge of honor for many years, but I eventually succumb to the cell phone thing. So the kind of I'm a late adopter.

mathowie 44:36 Let me see. Gosh, we had some questions. I can't even remember what they were.

scody 44:43 forced them out of your head. I'm

mathowie 44:44 sorry. I'm still laughing about AOL and COVID.

scody 44:52 My students I was teaching them and my students came into the class the next day and they all knew that I like was like the TA music freak They're like, Miss Cody, are you all right? And I'm like, No, I think we have a drink

Jessamyn 45:08 in Seattle when that was happening, and that was my god, I mean, it was a huge. I mean, I remember going into library school, I was in library school at the time being like, and the people I went to school with really not. On that same level, there was a couple of big music fans and me, and we were just saying, Oh, my God, and everybody else was like, I don't really understand this popular music thing.

scody 45:33 And the kids are listening to

Jessamyn 45:37 you exactly, exactly.

scody 45:40 I mean, you got you got the impression at that point on the, you know, on the news reports, of course, you know, my news was at that point was being filtered through MTV. So you got the sense like the entire city had fallen into mourning.

Jessamyn 45:52 That was true, and there was this big memorial service at the Space Needle, but like Courtney Love was a still around, be soft and see. Kinda crazy. Anyhow, so I remember. She led the whole crowd in this as little as all asshole chant. Oh, my God, it was a very weird. I mean, you kind of got it right, like suicide makes a lot of people unhappy. But it was very strange. So of course, people who didn't know Kurt Cobain were now like, I don't understand any of this right now. And people who had known me felt like that was a weird Memorial and Courtney Love was kind of weird and especially what? Oh, right.

scody 46:40 It's really terrifying. I find her to bring us back to Minnesota. You know where she is his trip?

mathowie 46:48 Oh, no way. Yes. Stripper Jesus.

Jessamyn 46:57 I worked in Seattle and she bounced a check there. So we had from Courtney Love over our over our cash register in the Don't let these people buy things.

scody 47:12 See her escort her out?

Jessamyn 47:13 Exactly. I was waiting, waiting.

scody 47:17 Awesome. For you to be like, I'm sorry, ma'am. I have to show you the door. I have to call security. That'd be great. Jessamyn. That would have been fantastic. Your

Jessamyn 47:25 credits no good here.

scody 47:28 I don't care about your record deal.

Jessamyn 47:31 How did you make the leap from AOL the manifesto?

scody 47:35 Well, let's see. So at some point after Greg LeMond of Chicago and realized that AOL was just awful, so now I got online some other way. It's all sort of been lost in the mists of time. Just sort of surfing the net a lot. And, you know, I found that it was through James, is it lowercase or willekes? I don't know how you pronounce? Well, it's because I used to read, you know, the gallery of regrettable food and all of that. Before we get crazy neocon but only neocon I have to assume that.

Jessamyn 48:09 You found that out. I remember when I found that out too. Like how did you find it out?

mathowie 48:16 Oh, dude. She was on metal filter before September 11. He used to post a lot. He was like fun loving, quirky guy into retro stuff on metal filter, right? And then how I knew about him origine. I remember specifically when he emailed me was like, I've never participated in metal filter again, because someone made some really asshole comment about his child like, oh, that's bad. And then September 11 hit and everything changed. Do you know his brain? That's how

scody 48:47 that because I know that it came from his site. And I think it may have been a link in his bleak saying something about those damn liberals. And I was like, Oh, I have to check out some of those.

mathowie 48:59 I would say the traffic from lilacs probably started in 2000 with oh, look at those quirky stuff. And that filter people found and then a year later turned to those goddamn asshole left.

scody 49:11 I was part of the those goddamn apples wave and I thought I'd check out some of that. So

Jessamyn 49:18 Right. Well, and they talk about music because, you know, music

scody 49:25 all over that. That's how I got into medicine. And I was sort of lurking there for about a year. I think I think memberships were close at the time I started reading and then they weren't you doing it was like 25 people a day or 50 a day or something?

mathowie 49:40 Yeah. And I did math poorly and like 100 would come in and stuff. Yeah. It was supposed to be like 10 A day at midnight. And then I had member Australians are pissed off because it was like, nobody was happy. But yeah, and whatever I was doing to count the number of users that signed up, the math was off and Same way, it would shut down after like 75 or something instead of 10 people.

scody 50:07 Oh, God, I must have gotten in on that accidental 75 number at

Jessamyn 50:12 some point. Cool. I think you must be like the second or third person we've talked to who got in it as a result of some loopholes. So you weren't supposed to have been able to have done that. And yet,

scody 50:26 you came into the backdoor now you won't leave?

mathowie 50:31 Yeah, it always makes me glad that there were these accidental breakthroughs.

scody 50:35 Yeah. I'm always amazed by people who I noticed on, on their posts on there. And I always get this feeling like, Oh, they've been around forever. I want to check out their comments. I seem to think I liked their comments for so long. And then you hit on the user page, and they just signed up three weeks ago or something. Like, oh, there's metal filter authority about you. And then within that we were to people who've been around who some don't know how the place works, like, they'll make a weird post, and then it'll get it'll get, you know, take it off. And then they'll post the question like, Why was my one link post to a new silver item taken away? And we've been on it the six years. I just

Jessamyn 51:16 got an email from that guy today. That's a second email after I explained it explaining it again. Clear, sinner, yeah, it's just unclear. It's unclear.

scody 51:33 It's clearly because of your political affiliations.

mathowie 51:35 Wow. Scotty, you've asked 51 questions. Good lord. Yeah,

scody 51:44 I'm an inquisitive sort.

mathowie 51:45 Let me see it started in what 2003 Four. So yeah,

Jessamyn 51:48 well, if you look at the tags, it's all about California champagne divorce New York City. Records. In your frequent

mathowie 52:00 tag, should I get jaw surgery? What do I do after surgery?

scody 52:04 It was my first one and I did get the surgery and almost died because we found out this assassinating we found out during

haemophilia on top of everything else who knew Yeah, so yeah, I was supposed to be in the hospital for a day and I was in the ICU for four or five days and five gallons of blood they gave me and yeah, it was exciting. So I was bruised for about a year and a half I had like a sophomore year and a half let's hope was about six months those those photos that dishes took at that one meetup with me in the makan shirt that clumps are like black eyes and atomic bomb and that picture Oh, interesting.

Jessamyn 52:46 I remember that picture because that's that was the start of the Scotti is hot meme i

scody 52:55 I hate having my picture taken and it was really I was really self conscious. But I just had the jaw surgery. And I thought that I looked like completely deformed and scary. I remember begging the ship not to take my picture and not to post the pictures like I was in tears when you can't you can't you don't understand I am a monster

Jessamyn 53:14 helped with that. You know we really liked

scody 53:16 him because everybody likes that photo. So I thought oh, I guess I could put that on my little salon personals ad. I'm gonna start shooting again. And you know, my my now boyfriend saw the photo and thought it was cute. So big fishes.

Jessamyn 53:35 Thanks to Shiv

scody 53:38 who thank him as well. I should send out like a big podcast shout out because when Tom and I actually moved in together last last week to this she was in town and volunteered to help move my furniture. House for me.

Jessamyn 53:52 Doesn't do it could have

mathowie 53:55 could have heard his photo taking finger Come on.

scody 54:00 Wrapped up there was kind of like a finger sling that

mathowie 54:02 he was using. Special glove.

scody 54:06 Exactly. It's very special gloves. So we get this shouldn't just like the nicest guy in the planet.

Jessamyn 54:11 The New York Times says he's only 28 Is that possible?

scody 54:15 It is true. He's exactly 10 years younger than me. Wow. I know. He's a he's a he's a young man. I think that's why he volunteered to help because he's still in his 20s Like all of my friends and it's already been 40 but like yeah, good luck with that. Too busy.

Jessamyn 54:30 work again.

scody 54:34 Exactly. So let us know we can bring your housewarming party next month. And tell me what time to show up at your house. Do you need the ropes and I can do it was pretty amazing.

Jessamyn 54:46 Did you have to let them sleep on your couch?

scody 54:49 No, he totally could have he could have. He could have done anything. I would have given them cash. But he drove back at those folks but we took him out for dinner. He could have stayed he could have had any of our possession. Somebody wanted to keep the secret about anything. My boyfriend couldn't believe it. He closed the door and he just looked at me. He's like, wow, this is pretty cool. It's not a bunch of weirdos.

Jessamyn 55:10 Your invisible friends are excellent.

scody 55:13 Your online internet friends are better than my real world friends.

Jessamyn 55:20 Tom has already met me and high tech underpants.

scody 55:23 That's true. That's true. So he knew that you were all real and cool. So

Jessamyn 55:29 moderately Cool. Hi, this is Greg and his also known as high tech underpants

scody 55:36 working together,

Jessamyn 55:38 right, I think we met him there and all of his friends.

scody 55:41 Yes, that's exactly a bunch of his friends were in town from Tacoma and they were like, Dude, your girlfriend is meeting us at the strip club. And she's bringing friends from the inner

mathowie 55:57 sounds like the start of a penthouse letters

scody 56:00 to penthouse you'll never believe what happened to me. Well, what are you going to jumpers?

mathowie 56:10 Gosh, I used to live there is never again too soon. Actually. I'll be there next month. Yeah, but with my with my two year old daughter.

Jessamyn 56:21 Yeah. She's adorable.

mathowie 56:25 I'll be there the week before Thanksgiving. So I actually have to kill time every day when we wife's Conference in Long Beach.

scody 56:35 And there's I believe there's a meetup plan for 1717

mathowie 56:39 Let me see. I think I need

scody 56:42 to put you on the spot. You're like, oh,

mathowie 56:46 when is Thanksgiving? I think I am there. I think I would have to tear myself away from family obligations. Has

Jessamyn 56:55 your wife ever been to a metal filter? Anything that besides you NPB getting together and playing with the week?

mathowie 57:01 I don't Oh yeah. I dragged her to a Portland meetup before she's she liked it she we hung out for a kiddie and a few other people and she thought it was pretty cool.

scody 57:13 You didn't meet her via medicine or via the internet?

mathowie 57:16 No no in grad school like 1015 years ago

Jessamyn 57:20 like like normal people.

mathowie 57:23 Normal people

Jessamyn 57:24 you know school

mathowie 57:28 you know what the first Yeah, I had a borrow her scanner and like file server like that's how dorky she is also so

Jessamyn 57:37 awesome. Right? I remember that. Like that. Yeah.

mathowie 57:44 Um, let me see. We've only gone about 20 minutes. It's probably good enough.

Jessamyn 57:50 Well, the last question of course is how do you pronounce me F phi?

scody 57:55 Phi? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Nobody else who says otherwise is in solid malarkey.

mathowie 58:02 I was in a minority in London everyone says Mefi there Missy. Oh, something

Jessamyn 58:09 serious Chris says me phi Chris mir are like

mathowie 58:12 two people out of like 30 that were saying me phi phi.

Jessamyn 58:19 Now hold on that nonsense. Anything else? You?

scody 58:23 Oh, sorry. I'll have none of this messy business.

Jessamyn 58:26 Exactly. Exactly. Cortex. Are you listening?

scody 58:31 And I'm an editor. So it's official. That trust me, I'm an editor.

Jessamyn 58:37 We should have you square off with language hat. You know, West Coast editor. I'm pretty

scody 58:44 humbled by language hat though. I'd have to say he is like the king. He's really the king.

Jessamyn 58:48 He is kind of the king, isn't he? Yeah. Anything else you'd like to tell our assembled metal filter podcast audience of you know, my mom and a couple other people?

scody 59:03 I don't think so. I'm sure I'll think of something scintillating. The second I hang up but

Jessamyn 59:08 we'll be sure to post it in the thread as soon as we put this Yeah,

scody 59:11 I shall.

mathowie 59:12 Questions. Okay, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Thanks guys. The tar pits I try not to see ya. When we were young

Unknown Speaker 59:46 we came across a pile of cigarettes. Each filter is smeared with lipstick He said God said God damn god damn God to hell you both shell itself is meant by this guy Dale Dale know I thought she was pretty she thought I was sweet she sent me letters that were sent in I knew there was something she wanted me now say down down down down state say god damn god damn God jail Charlotte in jest to him Dale Dale yeah dam dam dam dam found to be something was missed out something miss something you missed law was dissolved guys dale Earnhardt Jr.