Podcast 185 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 185: A very wearing my bathrobe all day day (2022-05-31).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Jessamyn 0:00 I'm still in my pajamas. Did you actually get dressed?

Cortex 0:03 Yes, I, you know, I haven't done not getting dressed in a long time.

Jessamyn 0:07 Are you kidding me?

Cortex 0:08 Yeah, I'd like I

Jessamyn 0:09 mean, not in a long time since early COVID or not in a long time since you were seven.

Cortex 0:14 Somewhere in between?

Jessamyn 0:16 Since you were 14, since you were 90.

Cortex 0:30 Well, I guess I could say this is episode 185 of the Metafilter. Podcast. I am Josh cortex Mullard.

Jessamyn 0:36 And I'm Jessamyn. And,

Cortex 0:38 yeah, we're wrapping up may here. And yeah, we're

Jessamyn 0:42 early on the on the stick, which feels good. Maybe?

Cortex 0:48 Yeah. I don't know. Me, I feel fine. I feel okay.

Jessamyn 0:56 I'm reading. Sorry. I feel okay, too. But I'm reading the Wikipedia page about the number 185. And I got derailed by looking at the spiral of Theodorus, which I don't know, whatever the fuck it is. But it has something to do with this number. And

Cortex 1:13 Doris, I don't actually know what that is. and figure it out. Sounds It looks cool. It's like a conch shell sort of spiral. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:21 And it's kind of like a hole. It's made up of a whole bunch of triangles. Sort of.

Cortex 1:24 All right. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Okay.

Jessamyn 1:28 Man, reading about math on Wikipedia is hard.

Cortex 1:31 Like, you take a take a right triangle concepts,

you take a right triangle, and then you make another right triangle whose longer straight side is the previous one? Looks like it. So is the Theodorus. Okay, I guess I guess just look it up. Like what is the nature of Theodorus number is what I need to understand here.

Jessamyn 1:55 The square root of 17 and gave up?

Cortex 2:01 Yeah, this is good radio I'm reading about

do you know I won't worry about it too much. I should just go to the Wikipedia page and try and find the number 185. So I can see where on the spiral it is. But

Jessamyn 2:21 it's like the first four triangles have something to do with the number 185.

Cortex 2:26 As far as I might, that might be the that might be the sum of the angles of it or something like that. Yeah, eyeballing it looks like it could be like the first six triangles come out. 285 degrees. I don't know.

Jessamyn 2:39 No, no, not you just like, again, we talked about this. I like math. But like, too much math is like, you know how, like, You're scratching a cat and everything's great. Great. Great, great. Great. And then suddenly, the cat attacks you as if they've been mad at you for your whole life. Yeah, math. It's like that for me. I'm like, Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. What the fuck, you know, and too much math happens quick. And like my sister has this thing where like, you can't really do math with her when it's too late in the day, you know, she gets like stressed and tired like we all do. But like for me stressed and tired doesn't have anything to do with whether I want to do math in my head. But like, you know, if we're at a restaurant or something, and we're calculating that tip in our, in our weird ways. I'll be like, okay, so it's and she'll be like, don't, don't do math out loud. was too late. It's too late for math out loud. Okay, all right. Okay, good. But then sometimes we try and do math out loud at night. Just a bugger. That's tell you about math out loud. You like it more the later it is

Cortex 3:47 what? This? This this? This Theodorus fact is actually I want to say weak sauce. 185 right triangles in the Theodorus thing fit within the first four terms of the spiral that started here. Okay, that makes sense. But like, what the fuck like I, it's okay, if one of the five is just a shitty number with nothing going on. But that's not that's nothing. Right? That's like 17 the number of marbles I can fit in my cheek. I have no idea if that number is right. I guess it depends on marble to and the kind of day I'm having my cat sat on my mouse iTunes

Jessamyn 4:25 by accident. And now it's opening and just not opening.

Cortex 4:29 Yeah, I only ever click iTunes by accident at this point.

Jessamyn 4:34 It's just loading, loading loading. What?

Cortex 4:36 Why there might be a hidden dialog box that popped up into something that's waiting for a button to be pressed because that's a good firm.

Jessamyn 4:42 No, it's not the case. Oh, well, I'm just closing that window and hopefully it's not going to be a problem.

Cortex 4:47 Cross your fingers lalala.

Unknown Speaker 4:59 Your seat All smoke

Cortex 5:12 so obviously we talked we should talk about the big news first, which is that Biden Cliff made some cow tools.

Jessamyn 5:17 Oh my god, right.

Cortex 5:20 That's amazing

Jessamyn 5:21 that in projects or on projects, breaking news,

Cortex 5:25 he put it on projects. Oh, then I use that to do the lazy just press the button to make a metaphor post thing because I've never done that before somehow. And, and yeah, so it's got like, you know, two comments and 10 favorites on projects. And it's got I don't know, a couple dozen comments maybe on Metafilter on the poster made about it. And something like 30,000 likes on Twitter. Yeah.

Jessamyn 5:53 Because he's always got like, occasional, like things that blow up at least I feel like but this may be his blow it up at NIST blow up thing by people who don't even know him, you know?

Cortex 6:08 Yeah. Like having a nice solid. coherent, but also deeply pop culture reference. The thing like this is just though it's, it's good. I'm so pleased with this. Jim. You did a good job with your cow tools.

Jessamyn 6:28 Yes. And I saw him like when he was bending that piece of wood.

Unknown Speaker 6:33 Like earlier. It's like, what the fuck? Like,

Jessamyn 6:36 what did I ask? No, I didn't ask. I just was like, I'll figure it out. He'll, he'll tell me. We'll we'll know.

Cortex 6:45 Yeah, I'm delighted, kind of not to have tried to figure out what he's up to. Because like, when I saw it, I was like, Oh my God, that's, that's beautiful. And anyone who like doesn't know that far side is like, what the fuck is everyone talking about? Which, how do you like it? Young people, sometimes old people have incomprehensible bullshit that we won't shut up about. I spend too much time on tick tock to pretend that I've got some sort of fuzzy anti use culture thing going on.

Jessamyn 7:10 But I'm on TikTok than I do, which is euro time on TikTok. And have I told you about Jim other Jim, my Jim's interaction with TikTok, which is primarily looking at YouTube compilations of TikTok videos.

Cortex 7:23 Oh, that works? Yeah. I mean, this TikTok talked

Jessamyn 7:27 to me about something on TikTok. And I'm like, you remember the rules? You have to tell me if you start using TikTok. Just use a YouTube, just to where

Cortex 7:36 the content man? Yeah. Well, yeah. And the other news is that you're taking over ownership of, of metal filter. Sure, which I appreciate.

Jessamyn 7:53 And I owe you some paperwork, which is pretty good. Yeah, once I got everything I needed from you, which took a while, but it's now finished. Now. You need stuff for me. And maybe I'll just sit on it and see how it feels. Actually, I'm just like I said, it's been a week. So.

Cortex 8:09 Yeah, yeah, get

Jessamyn 8:10 on it. When I'm back to my main desk. It's really weird, like trying to do work at a place. That's not your normal work place. You're a person who always works at your work place, you know?

Cortex 8:21 Yeah, it's disorienting. It's yeah. It doesn't have the same sort of natural Oh, this is what's happening now sort of feeling.

Jessamyn 8:27 Yeah. And like working on my laptop as opposed to anything else. But yes, we should probably say like, you and I talked about this in a series of discussions, but culminating in you know, March, I guess. And you were like, I want to tell everybody right now. And I'm like, It's my sister's birthday. Don't you dare do this. While I'm trying to have a nice time with my family. You were like, cool. And then we had to stick around dealing with paperwork. And I had some conversations with loop just to make sure everybody was on the same page. Yeah. But I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean, there's going to be some aggravating admin, getting it actually, up and running the functional like, currently, you still are the guy with the name on the paper.

Cortex 9:11 Yeah, getting that stuff changed is just gonna be sort of annoying whack a mole for a little bit. Like we like the nice thing about having Luke dealing with the like, as the primary person dealing with like, the actual, like, administrative stuff, and payroll stuff is like, that is all stuff that isn't dependent on that. So they've been able to just like, get up to speed on that and take it off my hands. So it's like, yeah, it's kind of the annoying stuff that you get to do but, but there is less daily maintenance of that annoying stuff. So

Jessamyn 9:39 right well, and it's not annoying to me, honestly, like, you know, I said in the thread, and I'll say here, like, that kind of admin crap I'm not particularly bad at and it just doesn't bother me. It's like taking a test that you kind of know the answers to. It's just fussy. Exactly. I think we've talked about this before but like in the you Okay, they have this concept of admin as a separate aspect of the thing you have to do, right? So like, maybe you teach, maybe you teach a class, right? And like, the class is its own thing. But then there's the admin part of it, you know, like getting grades into the grading system or filling out the paperwork in order to get hired. And I think a lot of people, I mean, I don't think in the US, it's, it's as obvious that admin is a part of things and your relationship to admin, not you, Josh, but like you, anybody affects your relationship to whatever the thing is that has admin as a component, you know, does that make sense? Yeah, like one of the many things that happened this week is I agreed to teach a adjunct lecturer, I agreed to be an adjunct lecturer at the University of Hawaii again, which I'm very excited about, which will be here in Vermont, because I burn and they don't want me to be there any more than I want to be there. But one of the things about being an adjunct is it pays like X amount of dollars. And the other thing is, if you only work for a state university, every two or three years, there is an immense amount of paperwork. And, and sometimes it involves, like, you've got to not only get a notary, you've got to get a medallion signature, like, you know, you got to find somebody with a special box of stickers to put them on this thing that you then mail to Hawaii. And like I don't mind that stuff. But I kind of hate that it, I can watch my hourly pay rate decline, every time I need to get in the car to drive somewhere to get a special signature. And I should probably be less mercenary about it. Maybe, but it's definitely a thing I think about a lot. And I think in the US, it might help us with some of our relationships to things. If we were more conscious about the admin aspects and how we were about that. You know them Yeah,

Cortex 12:10 yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's like that's, that's one of the things is, is to, like I described, this stuff is annoying. I don't really describe it as hard because I don't think it is hard in principle. Well, but what you do it Josh, but But Well, that's the thing, like, what's one of things I've recognized about myself and thinking about, like what I've been doing the last several years, and what I might want to do in the future is like, you know, I know that for me, that shit is more of a burden than it academically speaking needs to be sure and

Jessamyn 12:37 intellectually, you know it to be

Cortex 12:39 right. Like, you know, it's like, yeah, that's never been an issue or it's like, oh, man, I can't imagine how anyone could do this. It's like, No, I'm trying to figure out why I'm not gonna get fucking done, despite the fact that intellectually

Jessamyn 12:51 you know, yeah, like, why aren't I making that phone call? I don't know. Phone calls. I'm not even bad at phone. I just have a thing that I don't understand it fully.

Cortex 13:03 Yeah, that is weird. That was something I used to have, like, a real thing about and I've gotten better, but I think partly because I stopped using the phone for fucking anything unless I had to. Yeah, brought down the frequency. But like, you know, I had I had a fucking outgoing call market research call center job. Oh, my

Jessamyn 13:19 God. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's all right. For God, if I knew

Cortex 13:23 I was already done with it before. Like, when I started hanging out more aggressively on Metafilter in like 2005, or strength scanning paperwork? Well, no, no, I was it was because I got laid off along with like, everyone else left at that office, probably in the shittiest way. And suddenly, unemployment and time and that was a very wearing my bathrobe all day sort of period. But as I started saying, metal filter a lot more. And that's sort of what I started, like getting more actively involved rather than it just being sort of, you know, amusement reading and whatnot. And so yeah, it was already sort of the by God at that point. But ya know, it was like it was for Gartner research. From back when they still did outbound research like that, like, we were a Primary Research Center, which means we actually talked to people and ran shady polls and surveys with them. And I think essentially, Gartner was like, You know what, fuck this noise. This isn't profitable enough. Let's just go back to buying other people's research results in creating second tier executive reports on it and blah, blah, blah. And I can't emphasize how not interested I ever was in anything about

Jessamyn 14:32 sure you just like I'd prefer to have a job.

Cortex 14:35 Yeah, it's like the same thing with the insurance imaging job I had, like, there was nothing interesting about that job. I was excited to leave that to work full time filter back in 2008. Because like, you know, it's like it's the job that was there and I learned stuff about it. And so I can find myself talking about the things I learned in it and I was like, but I don't I don't even care about this stuff. I just I had to put it in my brain so Yeah, fuck it, but like, you know, do market research for a few years. Just like outbound calls, it's just, you are going to either get over a general disinclination to use the phone or you are going to get over having that job. Because it's one or the other, like, you don't have a choice, you're making calls all day. Right. And at that point, I think I got pretty nerd to a lot of the things that previously had been like, I don't want to use a phone. And yeah, so it's, that's backed off a bit over time. Like, I've got a little bit more of the add on, I can make a phone call thing going on, but it doesn't really bugged me the way it it did at what point in the way I think it does by the lot of people. And that's super incoherent. Like, why is my brain this way? sort of way? Right. Like, it's not like, it's not like, Oh, I was, you know, my parents were killed by a telephone and a dark alley after a screening of Zorro. You know, it's like, no, it's just like, it just sucks. Who wants to be on the phone? Right. But like, for some

Jessamyn 15:50 people, the etiquette that I understand doesn't work on the phone a lot of times because people are coming at it across purposes, for whatever reason. Yeah, I mean, I could list the reasons but none of it's a real, for me at least reason. Like, there's some other reason that I don't fully understand and partly, McCrone is lady you get to make choices, and that's my choice. But it's weird, because when I come up against people who are making a similar choice with email, you know, I'm like, What the fuck you don't use fucking email? What like, and, but I think part of that is, you know, if you use email for a job, the presumption is you're actually using that email, you know, yeah. Whereas I know a lot of people like, you can just email them at their job, and you'll just never hear from them. And like, that strikes me as odd. But you know, the more people I work with a drop in time, and the more people I see who have inboxes, you know, with 10,000 emails in them, and they just kind of read things and then maybe do something and then their inbox fills up some more like, they don't file they don't, you know, I can, I can totally understand it, even if I don't intellectually grasp it kind of,

Cortex 17:05 yeah. There should be some universal middleman service that like all kinds of communication can go into. And that used to be emailed Josh. Well, yeah, but you know, yeah. But,

Jessamyn 17:19 like, right now, you can pretty much move anything from one to the other, you know, get your email on your phone, you can get your slack and your, you know, email, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's one of the great things about,

Cortex 17:31 like a black box, middle man thing, like, it's what I'm thinking, like, you just have the box and you put whatever you put into it, and then you send it to whoever it's gonna send sent to in the box just automatically in the way that they want whatever they want. Exactly, you know?

Jessamyn 17:45 Yeah. No, I liked that idea. Sort of an accessibility tool for the neurodivergent it's one of the things I've been really interested in working with loop, right? Because loop is in a different, you know, communication style than me. And, you know, I just asked them at one point, like, Okay, what works for you, I can't hang out in the slack all day, because then it just tells me there's 17,000 things I need to get. Because most of my slack is just idle bullshitting with friends. And when I'm busy, I don't do any of it. But if I'm, if I need to do something for work, I may be need to not hop into a slack. And Luke was just like, oh, you know, WhatsApp works great for me. And I've never used it before. Just never had a reason. And that works great. And it's been really nice. Because, you know, Luke was just like, This is what works for me. And I'm like, great, I can figure that out. And it actually is what works for them. So great. Perfect.

Cortex 18:45 Yeah, no, this this is a thing that like, I have been, it's disorienting in a pleasant way to not necessarily know the details of any of that stuff. Oh,

Jessamyn 18:55 god, that was so funny when we made the announcement and you You panicked because you wanted to make sure everything had been clear with me which was so sweet of you.

Cortex 19:06 So that was that was a hard raising 10 minutes. Yes, this was this was what the signup date on Wednesday where it was announced that Jasmine is going to be taking over ownership

Jessamyn 19:14 which like loop and I had planned and like I was busy all day and so we had literally planned it down to like the half an hour kind of okay, it'll happen about here here's the draft of what we're going to say how is that is the transition team okay with it blah, blah, blah. Like we did a lot of stuff. Yeah,

Cortex 19:30 you do the stuff you set it up? And yeah, like there was no reason I needed to know about that because like we already knew about it. But I had been making a point to probably everybody's annoyance at this point of you know, not talking about it until it was decided to talk about it as far as your involvement. And I was worried that there had been some sort of crossed wire that had gotten it in there and that like he had been included without you knowing in which case you'd be like what the fuck up but that was not the case. Everything was in order and I just like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't need to know this. This is okay.

Jessamyn 20:03 Right. I didn't have to be involved in this at all. How nice. Yeah, this is great.

Cortex 20:06 Good. Well, so yeah, I had to I had to charge my laptop to use it the other day because I hadn't like charged it or used it in a while. And I realized like that was one of those. Oh, you don't realize that the headache is gone until you realize it's gone sort of thing where

Jessamyn 20:24 right I didn't have. I don't have to have it charged at all times. So I can bring it to the coffee shop. If I have

Cortex 20:30 a coffee shop or even just on the couch, like, you know, keep an eye on the site on a slow night while watching TV with Angela. And I haven't had to do that. Like, it's like, oh, oh, shit. That's neat. That's pretty cool. Right? So I reflexively started chewing on a dried cranberry there. And I apologize if any of that chewing came through. I

Jessamyn 20:50 didn't hear any chewing. Good. Good. Although I'm a lucky person. And that like chewing sounds don't really bug me. Like, I know there are many people like that. And that must be really hard. Yeah, but if I heard you chewing, I just be like, slightly rude. But whatever.

Cortex 21:06 I think I avoided the noises. But I was realized I didn't hear affecting my diction a little bit. As I sort of tried to talk around the cranberry. Cranberries are trouble. Yeah, yeah, boy. It's weird. It's weird. And it's nice. And it's weird. And it's nice. Yeah, this whole this whole thing? Like it's Yeah,

Jessamyn 21:26 I mean, we'll see. There's certainly a lot of unknowns. I mean, I think, you know, right now we've got the transition team. I'm loosely paying attention to that. But not, you know, I've had a lot of nice chats with Luke had a lot of nice chats with Brandon, who, you know, is Brandon Blatter who's somebody I, you know, normally get along with and speak with, and? I, I'm not sure exactly. And I don't need to, which is great. How, how, and when the transition team becomes the steering committee. But, you know, the real hope is that we can get more of the decisions that are made about the community made by the community. Yeah, you know, you know, up to an including, like, I'm happy being the owner. But if if somebody else feels like, I need to not be the owner or a large group of somebody else's, let's put it that way. Like, you know, maybe that changes, right? Like, like, you know, you don't want a steering committee, like going off half cocked and being like, we're firing all the admin teams and blah, blah, blah, but they should have input into governance. Yeah. And members have been able to in any way other than sort of meta talk and email. And that's really what we're hoping. And it's challenging, right? Because you have to figure out how to do that without putting more work on the people who are already disadvantaged by having more work put on them by society. So we'll be figuring some things out for sure. But

Cortex 23:08 yeah, I mean, it's, it's a complicated project like this is this is one of the things like, I'm excited to see what happens. And I think it is going to be a good long term, sort of like movement and change for metal filter. But like, it's going to be work, it's going to be, it's going to be complicated, it's going to take figuring stuff out, and it's going to take, it's going to take something more than having someone who just has to make the call every time and like that is like the one upside of having sort of the more traditional benevolent dictator thing that, you know, started with Matt is like, you know, if there is one person who is like, the buck stops here, person, just making all those calls, you know, how they're going to call them and just like, that person just does it.

Jessamyn 23:52 Then you also got a lot of that what we call work in the RAF, right, where, like, people direct all their attention and energy towards the boxtops here person, and then don't maybe, you know, engage in good faith with the rest of the community. They're like that says it's okay. So, or whatever.

Cortex 24:08 Yeah, there's, there's lots of problems there, too. There's also the problem if that person becomes maybe sort of a bottleneck. Hey, so yeah, like, I don't know, it's, it's fascinating. And I look forward to seeing what happens and I'm really glad that you are, like, involved with this. And also, I'm glad that you aren't like, feeling like you are obliged to spearhead and take on every bit of it. Like, you know, it's changing everything up. And redistributing is like it's a complicated project, and it will probably be messy and confusing at times and some stuff will have to be tried that doesn't end up working out very well. But that's fucking okay. I mean, like, That's the history of meta filter, too. It's just like, where are the touch points on trying things and having them not work out? Well, you know, that has changed, that will change but, you know, it's it's a whole it's a whole process and I'm curious to see how it goes and

Jessamyn 25:00 Yeah, I mean, I, that's the part that I'm the most concerned about only because sometimes when things are messy, and you have to try things out again, sometimes you wind up, you know, either harming or creating Strife for the people who you're trying to help in, trying to try things out. And, you know, I'm hoping we can get some of that, right. I'm hoping we can get people from the groups who feel like Metafilter hasn't maybe been there for them to see how that could be better. But I also know it's a big ask, right? I've seen a lot of people on social media, be like, oh, you know, Jasmine's in charge, maybe I'll come back. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm not. I mean, cool. Like, a lot of them are people, I would love to see, you know, sort of back around. But I also feel like, I don't want to set people up for disappointment, because, again, I'm not running the entire world of modding. You know, I have input. But you know, Lupe, is nominally in charge of the mods, but the mods are also kind of in charge of themselves, like they always have been. And, you know, we're listening for input, I encourage anybody who hasn't taken the metal filter user survey, which is linked in the banner on the site to go do that. Even if you're not a current metal filter user, although if you're not, I don't know why you'd be listening to this. But, um, and yeah, I feel like it's going to kind of be a long process. And we kind of hope that, you know, community support holds out so that we can keep trying things. And, you know, that were that were prepared a little bit for the different ways things could go. Right. Yeah.

Cortex 26:41 And that's, that's one of the things that I like about having a broader structure of having like the transition team, and eventually the steering team. And having having sort of mod duty split a little bit more. is like having more people involved broadens the sort of interface for people who do have like, wants and needs and concerns. Yeah. And it becomes less of, because this is, yeah, this is like, the biggest concern I had in putting it to you to take over ownership is like, it's hard to really get away entirely from like figurehead effects, even when they aren't, you know, coherent and meaningful in terms of how you think about the site, like, it's not your job to make sure everything goes right all the time on Metafilter. In fact, we've talked about boundaries, it's not your job to make sure everything goes right. Most of the time in most contexts, like you ownership stuff, not moderation, not mediation, like it's not your job to satisfy everyone's wants and desires, which I think most people get, but like, it's hard to get away from that sense that like, well, I'm dissatisfied, I'm taken to the top. So the top is the reason I'm dissatisfied, and so on. And so

Jessamyn 27:47 well, it doesn't mean people aren't going to try regardless of what my actual role is, right? I've definitely gotten some email like, Oh, now that you're in, maybe you can fix this. And I'm like, you know, steering committee would be great for that. But you know, Lupe and I are also working on kind of a list of like, people who have offered to help and what their skill sets are, you know, and hopefully, that also be like, what their knowledge bases are, like, I know that there are some, you know, groups of people that feel that metal filter does better or worse by people like them. And, you know, it's not your job to educate us about that kind of stuff. But sometimes just knowing that there are people who have a background in this, that or the other mean that, you know, we can draw on their experience. So, you know, reinventing the wheel is not a necessary thing.

Cortex 28:39 Yeah. And I think that that notion of finding a way to get people in a place where, where you can match up their desire to help with an angle in which it's actually practical for them to provide help like that concrete project, maybe? Yeah, yeah. And it's a tricky thing to do. But it's like, it's great when you can pull it off. And I think more focused on that. I mean, that's kind of the thing with the transition team in the first place, like, you know, that came together, partly because I was talking to people like, Who, who do I Who do I know? Or who do other people know? Or who do people suggest who like, have a skill set that is good for this, rather than just like a vague desire to help Metafilter who like has, like, some experience and sensibility and like, how can we get a group of people together who have, you know, via a variety of different vectors into that and and that works a lot better than just saying, Hey, first six people to live, you know, raise your hands. Because the skill set you want should be tied to the project you're working on, not just to

Jessamyn 29:37 Yeah, and I've been totally impressed with the work of the transition team to the extent that I have been involved with it, which to be fair has not been much I feel really good job and have been really communicative and you know, kind of there for people to kind of explain stuff so that that's not always you, or that's not always loop that has to be doing that.

Cortex 29:58 Yeah, exactly. You know, take Some of the load off of the mod team, but it also distributes a load among the people taking it on there. So like, yeah, like, it doesn't have to be something where like Brandon has to answer every question or Mocha pickle has to answer for questions like, people can tackle what they have available, they can hand it off, they can spread it around, and that it lightens the fucking load. You know, I mean, this, this, this goes all the way back to like, when it was you and me and Matt and like, we managed to deal with a busy and at times in Kohut meta filter between the three of us in a very messy way, but like, you were a big advocate for like, bringing on more people and turning it into like a team with actual shifts, right. And that's, that was great, because it, it helps you know, all else aside, just by bringing in more kinds of brands and spreading the workout both like, and it was, it was a huge improvement to the overall, sort of like,

Jessamyn 30:55 everybody hurts all the time, except that who doesn't work on weekends?

Cortex 30:59 Yeah, the early days, were not like a healthy balance, you know, it's easy for me to look back on them fondly, because like, it was all news and exciting. And it was, it was a hugely positive change from like, my shitty insurance job and the shitty market research job before that. And, you know, I don't, I don't regret that. And I don't regret that it was like the mess it was. But I recognize that like, it could have been less of a mess from the get go and probably been like a better situation for everybody. So moving towards that overtime was good. And sort of doing that same thing at this point with the transition team and new ideas feels like a replication of the good of that sort of change that we already did more on the internal professional paid moderation side years ago. So

Jessamyn 31:47 yeah, I think one of the tricky parts like that's coming up soon is going to be how we can receive help from people who will need some level of access to the site more than they do. Now. I know loops when working with fumble on, you know, more granular levels of access and control. But what I'm hoping is, you know, we can have somebody who's in charge of like, doing a reality check on the FAQ, or updating all the places where it says cortex and replacing them with, like, whatever those things are, because people are already emailing us, like this says, and I respect that people are helping, but you know, it's one thing to bring the thing to the attention, it's another thing to be able to complete the thing. And some of that is going to mean access. And some of that's going to mean, you know, work for fumble, who is you know, already doing stuff?

Cortex 32:40 Yeah. And I, that is something that like, you know, some of those aspects of stuff I talked with Trimble about, you know, earlier this year, or last year, about thinking about that approach, like thinking about a good framework for trying to develop sort of more granular access to things. So I think that's something that's has at least had some thought put into it. I don't know how ready tool sets stuff is. And I don't have to know, but I'm

Jessamyn 33:06 hoping I'll be checking in regularly. And, you know, I think one of the main things I'm hoping to be able to be the person for is being like, hey, that thing you said you do last month, is that done? If not that needs to be done by next month?

Cortex 33:19 You do you do have a you have a better capacity for just sort of doing that than I've ever felt like I did. So I think that'll be a I think that'll be a positive thing. Cool. I think I've always had sort of a, you know, but no, no worries of not sort of, like instinct in my planning and organizational Oh, God

Jessamyn 33:40 and I am exactly the opposite. And I have to like smooth those edges. But being like you said it was going to be done. It's not done. Therefore, we're enemies until you finish it and like I need to work on that. It's just how my brain works and needs to be slightly different.

Cortex 33:56 It's it's, you know, it's a process of adaptation. Yeah. You'd nudge these things as they go. Yeah.

Jessamyn 34:03 So talking about the site Hey,

Cortex 34:05 I guess I mean, yeah, all this. Why don't always spent so long talking about

Jessamyn 34:09 I mean, I'm assuming there are people out there who are interested in kind of the nitty gritty about governance, but then I'm assuming there are other people

Cortex 34:15 who are not. I feel like I feel like hitting both is like a good idea. Like

Jessamyn 34:19 nine out of the 11 people that listen to this podcast are probably at least tolerant of this level of

Cortex 34:25 discussion. Exactly. Exactly. And the other two are like Alright, guys, get it you're ready

let's talk about Metafilter stuff. You know what you let's Yeah, what's been on projects I already talked about cow tools.

Jessamyn 34:58 What else? spin on projects. JK Robin did this kind of interesting news brief daily brief, how do you know what's going on in the news without having to deal with a whole bunch of different spin doctors thing. And so you know, it's kind of a subscription based kind of the Get get the headlines, you know, does have like kind of a word cloud on top, which I feel kind of weird about, but it does give you an idea of really what's happening in a number of kind of major areas, you know, who died, what are the big things people are talking about a little more specifics about some of the things that are that are really the big things. And, you know, this has basically been a thing that's been around at some level since, you know, the 1990s. And now, they've turned it into a thing for the 2020 tos and it's kind of really nice to look at, and kind of straightforward. I've definitely subscribed to some of these things that were similar but not as broad. And, you know, I like the way this looks we'll see.

Cortex 36:16 Yeah, that seems nice.

Jessamyn 36:19 Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. And the other thing that I really liked that I saw in projects was foods did this thing Yeah. Where you can look at the stuff you've bought on Amazon if you're an Amazon person because Amazon lets you export your shopping history and comma separated values. But this thing lets you slice and dice as they say how you've spent stuff by year by category by item blah. And you know, you can kind of learn things about your about your shopping and the code is open source so you can just grab it it doesn't it doesn't phone home or tell anybody anything about you. And yeah, foods put it together and I am interested to take a look at it. See how it does.

Cortex 37:10 Yeah, that's great. I am just delighted by this project from secret dark called every dot horse domain. Oh, as they say is a simple website which lists every dot horse domain, all of them in one place. It is not alphabet. alphabetize because horses are not alphabetized I mean,

Jessamyn 37:31 wow. Butter horse. Yep, burrito horse.

Cortex 37:38 Silly horse. AmeriTrade dot horse, right horse.

Jessamyn 37:42 grift. Horse. grift horse. Where's that? I got to figure out what that is. Suck horse.

Cortex 37:51 Pickles the horse derp

Jessamyn 37:53 horse. What is hope it says Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'd hope it's a weekly podcast. Oh, no. It's a weekly podcast about the comedic side of Flim Flam cons and grift. That's cool. I mean, that actually makes sense. Why it's that?

Cortex 38:14 I don't know national show jumping championships that horse feels like they didn't understand that you shouldn't probably actually be using the dot horse domain. I feel like they were trying and I don't know. Jazz. It's an interesting question.

Jessamyn 38:25 Points to T shirts you can buy with a jazz horse on it.

Cortex 38:29 Well, I mean, figure out like what portion of these seem to be actual people who were like finally a domain TLD for me versus Haha, it's dark horse.

Jessamyn 38:39 Because I was gonna say like, do you think you shouldn't have a dark horse domain if you're like a Tereus works person?

Cortex 38:48 I don't know like it seems like it seems like it would make sense to have one right and yet it it's such a joke. That you know what I expect to see is stuff like Oh, man. I was just looking at cow dot horse by horse

Oh, okay. Here's cow dot horse now. thing is it's a dumb little website and I love it. But also it forwards to a different domain. Your domain is cow dot horse you're clearly maintaining because it forwards Why is it not? Why you're not keeping it up?

Jessamyn 39:30 Well, does it forward to something better?

Cortex 39:33 No, it forwards to what is it? Just like? Mo manos.com/mu. Which you know what? Let's see what else is on momentos

Jessamyn 39:43 butthole pleasures didn't resolve to anything just FYI. Pooping that horse.

Cortex 39:52 Mommies no Manos is someone's like slick looking. Like design. professional website, and mementos.com/mu is a graphic web design is my passion joke with terrible drawings and terrible web design. And that's perfect.

Jessamyn 40:11 Man. Most of those are just placeholders. Yeah.

Cortex 40:16 I think you know, those those that are some of them maybe at one point where something and then seems like you know, I don't actually care about my fucking jokey dot horse site, I'm gonna let the thing

Jessamyn 40:27 I mean, some of them just seem parked. Like they bought them because maybe there was a sale and then kink dot horse page cannot be displayed. Good.

Cortex 40:40 Anyway super dark also has an explanatory blog post on their blog, boat dot horse. So if you want more information, check that out as well. Yeah,

Jessamyn 40:54 I love this.

Cortex 40:55 I think it's fantastic hours of pleasure. Um, otherwise not up to speed on projects at all. There's some other stuff we recorded like late April, so I don't remember exactly

Jessamyn 41:07 where to record early May or it just came out in early May. Yeah. Yeah. late April with an early May release. Okay, so I'm gonna tell you if we're doing the podcast, looking at the website is still your job?

Cortex 41:20 Oh, sure. No, no, no, I just I haven't been projects in detail. We, you know, we killed easily our projects, talking time already talking about Site Administration stuff. So I just, I'm just saying I have no further links on projects at this time, Your Honor. Well,

Jessamyn 41:34 and there's not that much going on in projects right now also. So that's fine. I just wanted to make sure we had

Cortex 41:40 our expectations clear. Yes. No, I like

Jessamyn 41:43 rolling into the podcast, and I don't care anymore.

Cortex 41:46 Yeah, I still like it here. I still hang out. My god. What is it this is one of the things is like I don't approve any projects anymore. Now I find out about projects by remembering to go to projects. So it's like a little more like, Oh, I gotta visit the website.

Jessamyn 42:01 So who approves them? Like all? Super? Yeah,

Cortex 42:05 everybody on the mod team can like and it's been that way for a while. So I was already only doing it some of the time. But in the process of going and doing it, I would still end up looking at projects accidentally more often. And now I need to get back to like, doing it on purpose more. I'm looking forward to but shall we move on to medical to proper? Sure.

Jessamyn 42:34 I have to remember why I put this on my favorites list.

Cortex 42:39 I'll do one real quick while you figure it out. Okay. There is a post from just yesterday from cosmic owl. And it is the site dark patterns dot games note not dark patterns dot horse.

Jessamyn 42:51 I mean, maybe that redirects to it. You don't know.

Cortex 42:55 Who knows? It's a it's a web site that reviews mobile games based on the presence or lack of shitty psychological bullshit that goes into game design. So like, Yeah, I'm sure we've talked about dark patterns before. But for anyone who doesn't know the term dark pattern is a way of just describing a sort of design decision that is intentionally negative or manipulative. Essentially exploitative, in some sense. So Google

Jessamyn 43:26 wants you to sign up and add your phone number, which actually isn't technically required, but it says skip for now in tiny text at the bottom because what they want you to do is think it's required as an example.

Cortex 43:38 Yeah. Or like, you know, a gentler side of this well, gentler is specifically about like, things that are like, you know, hey, do you want to sign up for a subscription? Yes, I'd love to know I hate learning. Like it's just a very, you know, just bluntly stupid way to do it. But like,

Jessamyn 43:54 that's for like Dan BS. Thanks for confirmed shaming. Yeah, there was a whole frickin firm shaming dot. I'm gonna go look that up. Well, yeah. Okay.

Cortex 44:02 Anyway, so this is looked at that. And this is the thing that is close to my heart, because there is a lot of shitty design exploitation in mobile games. Partly because it's really hard to sell a mobile games, that's a very self reinforcing pattern where people associate mobile games with being cheap to free focus on free charging for a game is the best way to like cut down the number of downloads you get by an order of magnitude at least, which is insane, because it costs money to make good games. And like five bucks is cheap for a game someone had to make. But it's very expensive for a mobile game. So you have people making games and putting it out for free. Okay, it's free. How do I make money off this? Well, I could put ads on it. And people do that. I could sell in app purchases, and people do that I could sell an in app purchase that lets you make the ads go away, you know, for $5 And you know, right, that one's not bad. Like honestly, if you put out a good game for free and I'm enjoying it playing it enough that I'm kind of annoyed at the presence of ads and expect to keep playing it. Yeah, I'll fucking pay you five bucks to make it go away. It is rare that I find a game where that price point is good and the game is worth it, which is frustrating. Yeah. But anyway, so this this idea of like reviewing this stuff and cataloging it based on how well it avoids these things is beautiful to me because like, I just download shit off the app store from the game section. Now and then. And it's like, it's such a crapshoot, like nine out of 10 of them are just bad. One out of 10 or eight out of 10 of them

Jessamyn 45:24 are not even what you're expecting, right? Like, yeah, like, I thought this game was gonna do this, but it does this stupid thing that I didn't want. But I thought I was pretty sure

Cortex 45:32 and there's a lot of that like, there's we probably talked about this too before, but like there is the the tendency to advertise mobile games by showing off a non core component of the game that they jammed into it just because it looks like the kinds of things people download games because they saw so like the weird little Can you solve this trivial logic puzzle that the video is completely fucking up over and over again, and you're screaming at the screen? Hey, download our game. He's like, okay, yeah, kind of like logic puzzles all download and then I won't be an idiot with it, and then find out oh, this is an unrelated game that has this minigame, we passed it on to it. So like, right.

Jessamyn 46:06 And I'm not even sure how to get to it. But that's what I wanted to do. And I wind up doing something else.

Cortex 46:10 Yeah, but that and like, you know, games like really working around disposable in game currency to like, spend 99 bucks on a pack of gems that you will use for throw away booths, and then be out of real fast it's like that is a standard fucking model. And

Jessamyn 46:24 that's it same nine cents. I think you mean the 90? No.

Cortex 46:29 It is prevalent. If you play a lot of these games and look at their like in app purchases for like the gems or the coins or other currencies, you will see packs starting from like $2 for a pack of 50 up through 9999 for like serious

Jessamyn 46:43 is that because it's over 100 bucks. Like there's some,

Cortex 46:47 I think it's just because the same reason gas prices are in nine tenths of a cent is like 99 is less than 100. Okay. I don't think there's any other logic to it just that it's feels very slightly less fucked up if you keep it to two digits. But no, there's like, and people spend money on this ship. Because like whatever people are weird creatures and have, you know, disposable income and or gambling addicts. Or, you know, the whole idea of exploiting whales in this space is a huge part of the business model for a lot of things, which is to say, you don't need 10,000 people to pay five bucks to remove the ads on the games, you need five people to spend like $1,000 Each on your fucking in app currency, because that's the decision they're making with their money in their life. You know, and it's like, so yeah, anyway, there's a lot of other more detailed things going on. But that just whole general thing a pisses me off. And B is a fascinating portrait of all the weird nooks and crannies of this emergent design market. Mobile gaming is such a fucking trash heap of people figuring out how to make bad exploitive, exploitative design decisions, that having a website that

Jessamyn 47:54 will make it into the app store and get well reviewed so that other people will Yeah,

Cortex 47:58 oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn't know it's easy to get well reviewed. If there's like a financial incentive to create shitty good reviews for any fucking game. Right? If you see a game with a 4.9, it might be a piece of shit. If you see a game with a 4.3 It's almost certainly a giant piece of shit. Because otherwise you don't have to fight so hard.

Jessamyn 48:15 Right? There's no such thing as a game with like a three braiding.

Cortex 48:19 Yeah, yeah. So yes. So a site like this is great, because it's saying, hey, let's actually talk about games in terms of how well they do this stuff, rather than relying on the absolutely fucking unreliable market itself.

Jessamyn 48:30 So usually, if games and speaking nominally meta filter, you remember our discussion about segmental, which I think was last month, but it might have been,

Cortex 48:39 yeah, massively every month for four months now. And I remember, I feel like we talked about,

Jessamyn 48:44 well, Samantha got bought by a company and you know, come on, good on Novalis dt, like, you know, no shade on on that decision. And the company that bought it is actually they seem okay, you know, they slap some ads on it and did a couple other things. But they've made also some improvements. But as someone who's in the Reddit, some mental group, just because sometimes you go there for hints, and it's, it's a nice little, you know, low friction community, like the people who made the game actually showed up in the group to be like, Hey, we're the people who own it, and we've got some changes in the works, but if you have things you want to know about, and they have made some changes to it, like whatever that I don't personally, like, because they're trying to, you know, make one site that looks good on desktop and mobile, you know, instead of having a responsive stylesheet that switches, they just have kind of one that is like looks good on both. But it's been interesting watching them kind of iterate. You know, they at 1.1 of their designs had a whole bunch of emoji, like that went along with the responses, you know, like, Oh, you did this. Well, you Get a fire emoji or whatever. And everyone's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, make it stop. And they were like, Okay. And it stuck. So it's been interesting watching that, as someone who's, you know, kind of involved, but it did occur to me, like, you know, they made a couple style decisions I didn't really agree with and like, I like the game a little less. And it's weird, because I would not have thought that would have been how I would have felt about it. Yeah, but the weird little Chivo power up vibe you get from doing well feels different if it's given to you in a different look and feel. And I don't like this one. It's much and it's just been interesting to kind of think about moving forward, you know?

Cortex 50:40 Yeah. Yeah. The, I feel like part is like, the simpler the design is in the first place, the bigger the impact you're going to have from any even kind of subtle change in a way that wouldn't be the same. It was something that was kind of busy to start with.

Jessamyn 50:58 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was very slimmed down and slender, and actually fairly well thought out. You know, that gave them some feedback. Like, hey, I noticed you added a thing to the FAQ. But like, everything else in the FAQ was a question. And you added a sentence, and questions, and maybe, and they changed it. But yeah, you know, I think people don't always think about how much thought goes into some of this stuff. Or some people are just lucky, and good at good design right off the bat. I don't know which one, you know, David Turner is but it was a great. It was a great design. And now it's still pretty good design, but no longer great, I think, Well, yeah. I liked this post by Devil's rancher, which is about mechanical watches. And it's essentially, like a really long, very clear blog post, about how the inside of a mechanical watch works with like, just amazing diagrams that kind of let you explode the different parts of the watch so that you can see what is what is happening and how it works. Like nice, you know, I think I think watches are kind of having a comeback in a funny way. Because now that there's a lot of people wearing smartwatches there are now I feel like more people wearing on smartwatches just because more people are wearing watches nowadays, or fitness bands or whatever the stuff is. So it's been nice to see more people wearing watches. I've personally enjoyed wearing my wrist watches more over the last couple of years. And this is just a beautiful, long essay about how a mechanical watch works.

Cortex 52:54 I immediately wondered if this was the same site as when I made a post about I don't know year or two ago. And it is like yeah, Bartow was gonna fuck up his name but trojanowski GENACHOWSKI. Yeah, this is like if you if you look at the archives of the blog, like there's a whole bunch of these. Yeah, the thing I posted was like, internal combustion engine. So was about this time last year must have been. And yeah, it's the same thing, just like these excellent, excellent animated diagrams and 3d views into stuff that like really get down into like, the nitty gritty of the parts in a way that is much easier to look at than like, just sort of like dry diagrams. I look forward to actually reading through this one. I think I was just talking with a friend who had been getting into, like getting interested in mechanical watch stuff. And I think maybe this was the impetus was, was she saw this on the site early in May. And it was like, Oh, hey,

Jessamyn 53:53 well, and I don't know if I mentioned it to you at all. But like, when I went to Passover, last month, I wound up sitting, you know, they had like, and you sit here and you sit over here and I'm like, why are there assigned seats at Passover? This is weird. But I wound up sitting next to like the eldest daughter's boyfriend. And then the eldest daughter was on the other side. And I know her and I like her and her boyfriend's like kind of adorable nerd guy, and he has like a watch collection. And so he and I got to sit around and talk about wristwatches. And it was just great. I was like, Oh, this was actually a very smart seating decision. That's neat. And it was cool to see, you know, young people, because he's got to be 20. You know, interested in kind of old tech and this thread on metal filter is neat. Because, you know, I think one of the things that metal filters kind of the best at or the thing I enjoy the most they're, you know, after a community that I've been involved in for 20 years, is that kind of like nostalgia and also into the present stuff. You know, like I remember my first watch or Like, this is what I use a watch for now, blah, blah, blah kind of thing. And it's nifty. So there's a lot of different people posting links to a whole bunch of cool stuff in.

Cortex 55:09 Yeah, it's nice when that sort of like collective continuity on a subject comes out from the folks participating the way you can get that, like, good long stretch of like, you know, 20 plus years of like, talking about that based on people's life experiences and whatnot, and it becomes, yeah, more of a more of a whole sort of timeline of a thing rather than just like the single moment of it. That's great. Yes. Speaking of my friend who was looking at watches, she also was talking to me about ridicul

Jessamyn 55:47 Oh, of things. Jim, have

Cortex 55:49 you seen the loves

Jessamyn 55:50 doc doll? And I find it on, like, unbearable?

Cortex 55:55 I still need to try playing it. Well, you haven't played it? No, it just it literally came up in conversation the other day. Oh, yeah, I should try that up. So I know, I know what it is. I just haven't played it. But yeah, it's like, it's, you're trying to figure out what Wikipedia article you're looking at? From like, their top 10,000 or whatever.

Jessamyn 56:12 Yeah, they're 10,000 vital articles. Okay.

Cortex 56:15 And basically, you start with almost everything redacted except for like, stop words like, you know, articles and pronouns. And then like you unredacted step by step, and you try and get it as quickly as

Jessamyn 56:29 you guess words. And it'll then if that word is in the article, it will unredact that word, and then you keep going. And the object is to figure out the title of the article. In the fewest guesses. Yeah. Yeah. Jim is weirdly good at it. And I can't do anything with it.

Cortex 56:50 If you bring the right sort of structural thinking about like, what would go into a Wikipedia article and what language would be used and sort of like 20 Questions narrowing process, it seems like you could probably, like break things down pretty quick. So

Jessamyn 57:03 yeah, and I think he's just yeah, got got an approach. Yeah. And the approach works well, so yes. Oh, and that's a fun thread too. Because you know, then people can be like, Oh, this is how I did. Oh, this is how I did. Oh, this is what's weird about it. Oh, there's Jim's comment. Yeah, I got today's in 556. guesses, and I still felt like a fucking champion.

Cortex 57:30 Let's see.

Jessamyn 57:31 Well, I have a one opes are that's the same link. Hold on.

Cortex 57:38 I'll just paste it. We'll talk about it again. Take two.

Jessamyn 57:41 Hey. So this is a post by Jim that I really liked because it was based on a zine that he was reading in my bathroom. So it's basically these. I think they're in I guess, I'm not 100% Sure. But basically, they set up these, like, public pay phones, but that are actually connected to like via kind of, like some network. They're sponsored by some network. So it's as if like, you had a house, you had a public Wi Fi network. You put a payphone out in front of your house, and through software and voice over IP machinations, that payphone was able to just make free phone calls. And so this group hotel, fixes up public telephone booths, and then puts them into public spaces as free phone call locations. And it's there. It's an interesting idea. And, you know, I think for most younger people, the idea of having like a payphone where you could put in a dime and call anywhere in the country just seems weird, both that you would pay anything, but also that anybody could use these phones, and that they were just ubiquitous. Yeah. And they aren't anymore. In fact, I think there was big news, when the last public payphone got taken out of New York City, I think this month. And, you know, people talk about, you know, public phones, it's like an equity issue. So that, you know, people have access to them, but then other people. Pardon me, other people are like, Ah, they're just used by drug dealers. And Barbara, you know, to which I say, Who cares? And I doubt it. But you know, the whole idea of phone calling or the ability or the right to have a phone call being considered like a social usefulness or a social good, like it's interesting working at a public library, right, because we have a phone. The library is public. Technically, that phone could be available to people. It isn't in like almost every case except if you're a kid calling for a ride home will usually let kid Just use the phone there and like nobody else and it's just a it's an interesting way we think about that aspect of you know social communication right yeah

Cortex 1:00:13 yeah that's fascinating.

Jessamyn 1:00:14 Yeah threads not particularly long but there's a couple people in there talking about stuff and you know I highly thumbs up the zine that I bought because I'm just interested in telephony that the food tell people sell for cheap

Cortex 1:00:30 I knew you're interested because I'm also tell it phonic going for telepathy joke there and it didn't it doesn't really work or do you think so? Hmm, maybe I can tell. I don't know I'm I'm running as fast as I can from this bit. Like this. I liked this post from brainwashing about phenylephrine and how absolute shit it is. So you know how there's Oh, yes. So sudo F adrene. Is the pseudoephedrine matter, whatever. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, is the thing that makes Sudafed work. And

Jessamyn 1:01:11 I think it's ephedrine, yeah. Yeah,

Cortex 1:01:14 it's the thing that is chemically closely related to methamphetamine. And that's why people can use Sudafed to make meth. And that's why it's fucking a pain in the ass, you know, to varying degrees to just buy some fucking Sudafed, but not if you buy the stuff that is just sitting out on the shelves because instead of pseudoephedrine has got shit in it, which just doesn't fucking work, which I guess anybody who's expecting it to work after using normal Sudafed, like, has had that experience. And the same thing is in DayQuil, and a couple other things. But the point of the post is like it's it's a it's a blog post by Derek Lowe, who has this long running column called in the pipeline about chemistry. He's a pharmaceutical chemist and his blog I have is on my list of things that I can just sort of read if I'm, my hands are busy, and I need to read something for five minutes that I won't necessarily totally understand because I don't really know chemistry that well, but I picked up a little bit and he's an entertaining blogger when he's writing his short blog posts about chemistry. So him writing about how phenol Efrain is just shit is it's an it's a comforting read to see it like no no because for you back that

Jessamyn 1:02:27 and I've never had a doctor talk to me about fake Sudafed. You know, like if I'm having real bad sinus problems, which in fact, I have this week, another wonderful joy about this fucking week. And you know, I've been living on like, Sudafed, Sudafed, or rather generic drugs or Sudafed, it's still Sudafed

Cortex 1:02:48 so yeah anyway if you want if you want to read in detail about like the lack of any fucking clinical support for bothering putting this shit on the shelves it's a nice and satisfying read and like you know, brings up the question like Well then why is it even on the shelves because you want to be able to sell people something?

Jessamyn 1:03:06 Well and apparently thread like some people need actual prescriptions to get Sudafed in not the US but other place. Yeah, well, and it's

Cortex 1:03:16 you know, it's it's mixed around. I think I can technically buy Sudafed over the counter, like by going in and show an ID and going into the I promise I'm not a meth dealer database, but the only times I've actually used to defend the last few years it's been because the doctor has said hey, let me write you a subscription for a couple weeks of Sudafed and I don't use even nearly that much because it works but it's also not It's not fun. Sudafed is like you know, by itself it's just like I feel shitty and wired and dried out and it's effective for attacking bad sinus stuff. So sometimes it can be worth it for that but like it's you know, I don't find myself thinking you know, I think we just like Papa Sudafed chill out. It's not the Yeah, it's not a

Jessamyn 1:04:03 I mean, I'll be honest Sudafed really helps me focus sometimes yes. Feeling but I feel like part of it is just that I don't feel terrible anymore. And part of it is you know, I've probably got some level of like, you know, non clinical level add that it knocks out a little bit

Cortex 1:04:23 yeah, I mean, there's there can totally be that I haven't had that actually with Sudafed once or twice where it's like sort of recognize that aspect of it were like, you know, I might have been wired but I was able to be productively wired in a way that was you know, handy in the moment but but there's probably better ways to do that. So anyway, but yeah, anyway, I appreciated that and it made me feel pumped my fist righteously in there that Yeah, fucking

Jessamyn 1:04:47 eyebrows has a good comment in there. Yeah, there's everybody like is like I know right.

Cortex 1:04:59 Um, I've got a couple more Metafilter things.

Jessamyn 1:05:02 I have a couple more I'm trying to look at the things that I've commented in real quick.

Cortex 1:05:07 Well, I will mention a horror show while you're doing that, that is like you know shot and 40 horror show but if you want to read about a whole big pile of dumb fucking cryptocurrency going badly, and there's been a bad time lately for cryptocurrency, hurray, hurray. There's a post that Chevron had made about the collapse of Luna, which is the partner currency to Tara, which also had a bad time because they're tied together. And yeah, it's, I'm not even gonna try and sum it up. It's cryptocurrency horseshit, it's people trying to reinvent the wheel financially and finding out the reasons why the wheel was designed and regulated the way it has gotten to be over the last several 100 years. But it's kind of fascinating, and it's kind of shot and Friday. And then yeah. So yeah, that's a thing. If you want that sort of thing, go check out that thread.

Jessamyn 1:06:02 I, you know, in the, you know, right up my street post, I don't think we mentioned this last month, was this post by box, noted that a filter librarian. Basically, there's this library advocacy group called every library, they try to help libraries who are dealing with, like funding challenges. And they've created this thing that they call the band bookstore, which is essentially a place where you can find and purchase all of the banned and challenge books in the US because oh my gosh, like there have been along with just sort of the rise of white supremacy and a whole bunch of anti woman anti GLBT stuff. There's also just been a lot of weird attempts at taking over what kids should be able to read. Did we mentioned this last month now,

Cortex 1:06:58 it may well come up now. And it's sort of a perennial horse shitty thing, like this post wouldn't have been up. But

Jessamyn 1:07:06 yeah, when did we record the podcast? late April. Okay, so yeah, this post wouldn't have come up. So it's just a, it's one look at this. And of course, it's a conversation by people just talking about banned books and how to deal with it if there is somebody in your jurisdiction who is a young person who would like access to these books, and maybe you don't or can't buy them. Brooklyn Public Library is offering library cards to teens, in places where there are where there is library censorship. So I left a comment in the thread, just letting people know that I like every library, but I have sometimes mixed feelings about them because they're not because the organization so some of the money that you pay to them just goes to pay their staff and their staff are great, but I don't know. It's hard, right? I don't know. I don't know what their what their rating is on. What's that? Man? What's the rating site for like, you know, nonprofit and, like do gooder organizations. Why can't

Cortex 1:08:16 Oh, well,

Jessamyn 1:08:19 maybe. I think it's like, yeah, at any rate.

Cortex 1:08:24 I'm Amelie thinking that fucking Holden. dipshit. So that was good. Well,

Jessamyn 1:08:30 fucking man, man. Like, they're like a real sort of player in the space now. And every time I see them, I just get livid.

Cortex 1:08:42 Yeah, maybe they're doing great now. Maybe Maybe they grew one. fucky but yeah, for anyone who doesn't know if the auger we're talking about years ago, charity, startup site thingy called give Well, spammed AskMe Metafilter pretending to talk to itself about how great GiveWell was and how their competitors sucked.

Jessamyn 1:09:05 Yeah, there's actually a page on the Metafilter wiki that I am dropping a link in to When did this happen? 2007 2008

Cortex 1:09:15 Yeah, I was I was brand right at the job and, man that that whole fucking thing anyway, but not them. That's not who you were

Jessamyn 1:09:24 taught? Yeah, and Miko called the called the meetup Popo on them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god, that was so wacky. That whole fucking thing, which was on for a while, and I don't know if it still did and you know, more power to whoever did the bulk of the work on the Mi fi wiki here because this is a nice summary of that thing. Yeah, man. That would be one thing that I would love. Like, one of the things get out like sometimes when I'm just like lying in bed trying to fall asleep and not think about whatever I'm trying not to think about. I'm like What would I love to see on metal filter if it could like, be there and be functional. And I'd love to see jobs expanded to include like community jobs, you don't like things that you could do for metal filter, only you can find them on jobs, and most of them probably don't pay, but maybe sometimes they would. And like somebody who could really, you know, give the wiki some love would be nice, because I used to be that person for a while, haven't really been in a while, we had a lot of users, many of whom we don't have anymore that were very assiduous with the wiki. And it would be neat to see, you know, some some, some newer members or more different kinds of members, sort of get involved with it, because it kind of is a way that community can remember its stuff besides just deep linking to a thread, it may be made some context to be understood.

Cortex 1:10:52 Yeah, it seems like this sort of thing that like, especially if like, a couple of specific maintenance projects, were like called out as things to start with, like that could be kickstarted from a metal talk thread and sort of get some people into the into the flow and find out who currently is like, oh, yeah, that's, that's my gym. Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah. I liked this post. Another secret dark things secret dark, having a good podcast is a post about a fight called Secret. What I mentioned a project of theirs earlier, I think I'm just like, I think so. I think so I think. And if I'm wrong, then this doesn't make any sense. And if I'm right, then who cares?

Jessamyn 1:11:34 Anyway, with my own. Oh, yeah, they did the horse domain. And I just kind of lost by their username, sorry, secret dark.

Cortex 1:11:45 Post about a typeface called occlusion grotesque, which is a typeface that is developing new variations year by year based on the carving of I think was just Helvetica into the bark of a tree and then letting it grow and change year by year. Which is fantastic. It's a it's really Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:12:08 to fall.

Cortex 1:12:10 It's really nice. And I like there's good documentation on the blog post about it, and a nice picture and some videos. And I've really, I liked the concept. I liked the result. And I like how much it ties to sort of ideas about, you know, geometric metric manipulation of surfaces, like anybody who has used like, you know, a outline or Expand Selection thing in Photoshop or whatever has seen similar blobby results at times. But yeah, similar in some ways, and not in others. Yeah. Like, I really like the M, the movement you get on the M and the sort of constricting and narrowing of the central leg of it even as the right which

Jessamyn 1:12:48 is not what you expect, necessarily. Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 1:12:51 And then I mean, this is the sort of thing that I like to do with like, pottery ship and want to do more work on myself as far as like generative art. So like, using a tree to do it, it's like a nice, very slow way to go. And the threads interesting. There's, I'd like I don't want to, like just argue my side of a thread extensively on the podcast. But there is some concern that comes about doing mean things to trees that I feels like, trees are pretty hardy. And this is not the this is not the kind of damage of tree surfers even incidentally, a lot of the time. So I think that's probably over worrying about it. But at the same time, you know, if you're someone who's like, Hey, I see people do shitty things to plants, then I can see it bother you. So how visual result is great.

Jessamyn 1:13:34 I just finished reading the Mars trilogy. Have you read that by Kim Stanley Robinson? No, I have not. It's the reason I thought of it when you mentioned this is because there's a part of you know, it's three books long. It's got to be over 2000 pages. And it was good. I liked it. But one of the kinds of essential conflicts is the tariff formers versus the essentially non tariff formers. We want to be the scientists that study Mars and its pristine state. And you know, of course, the argument becomes like, well, if you're on Mars, you're fucking up its pristine state simply by existing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know, when you're reading like a really long because, again, a long trilogy, sometimes it's difficult to determine exactly what it's about. Like, I can sometimes get impatient for the ending, because I feel like when you see how it wraps up, then you'll understand what the author thought the book was about, you know, like, what conflict gets wrapped up who gets the final word, that kind of thing. And it's really interesting in that, you know, there's lots of fights that happen all the way through this book. But essentially, the ultimate conflict was perceived to be, you know, Tara formers versus Mars. You know, don't Don't touch Mars, and they wind up kind of coming together in this way that you wouldn't expect, I guess. Which was, you know, was interesting to read, but I think about it in the sort of same way, right, like, does a tree know any of this? I don't know. I mean, I think my best answer is, I don't know. Probably some people have done some science on it. I am not that person. Yeah. Another thing I just thought was useful to know was Xenon did a post about Kottke, who has a lower user number than me? Who is taking some time off from his blog after 24 years? Because he needs a break? And, you know, good for him? sabbatical. Everybody deserves a sabbatical. He's been doing khaki more than half his life. And he, you know, has had a family, you know, because it's marriage split up like a whole bunch of things happen. He's gonna take some time just off, off, off. No guest editor. Nothing. He's maybe gonna be a little bit more active on Instagram. And, you know, good on him. Really?

Cortex 1:16:20 Yeah, fucking do the thing. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:16:22 I mean, I follow him on. You know, I follow him on Twitter. He definitely gave a shout out to Matt in the, in the sort of bottom of it. And hey, there's a little there's a little blog role at the bottom if you're looking for other people, other people to pay attention to.

Cortex 1:16:46 Let's see, I think I think that's everything I'm going to do for Metafilter. You want to do some? Ask, share? We're an hour and 18 is

Jessamyn 1:16:57 very important. Important early pre roll. All right,

Cortex 1:17:03 I needed to get that discussion of cow tools taken care

Jessamyn 1:17:06 less important. Here's a quick one. When is this movie streaming? It is streaming on June. When will this movie start streaming? It will start streaming on June 7.

Cortex 1:17:18 Asked and Answered. Yes.

Jessamyn 1:17:21 Yes. And then you know, people are theater. Oh, this is this is a person who cannot go to a movie theater for reasons. And then of course they get maybe you should go to a movie theater answers, which is always absolutely aggravating to see. I totally appreciate why people do that. But oh my gosh. So yeah, the Opie's response to a deleted comments still stands, because that's probably probably pretty important. Okay. Yep. You.

Cortex 1:17:53 I have two math tasks, actually. One is the one that I posted last night, a couple of beers in saying, hey, how should I learn linear algebra? Because I was talking to a friend while drinking said beers and was like, you know, what, I still haven't really learned linear algebra,

Jessamyn 1:18:09 linear algebra, just like what is

Cortex 1:18:11 that? Matrices? I guess, is the good short answer.

Jessamyn 1:18:15 Can you use a few more words?

Cortex 1:18:17 Not really, because I haven't studied linear algebra. It's

Jessamyn 1:18:19 like, How's it different from algebra?

Cortex 1:18:23 They're unrelated as Oh, my God. I mean, they're not this is this is gonna drive fucking every math person, like, who knows just yelling at the screen. But here's the thing, linear algebra, it's, it's it's its own thing. I learned a little bit of it back in college, because I had to

Jessamyn 1:18:40 get up on Wikipedia, just to like,

Cortex 1:18:42 do 3d programming stuff that I was doing. And it was a prerequisite for a class I took. And I talked my way out of the prerequisite. And then I had, like, I don't know how the fuck to do these matrix things they want me to do.

Jessamyn 1:18:54 Oh, like linear equations. So like a x plus b squared equals c kind of things?

Cortex 1:18:58 Sure. I so I didn't, I didn't do linear equations, or differential equations, or there's a bunch of math that I didn't do for someone who's so enthusiastic about math and studied computer science, but that's where I am. So anyway, people have had a bunch of suggestions already. So I'll dip in and have it sounds like maybe this professor stringy stuff that people are suggesting would be a good fit for me. But I've got several avenues to pursue. So thanks, everybody who answered so far. Great. And my one other one is there was a question from who's telling allies saying hey, how do I express a sort of polygon as a set of triangles that, you know, chop it up to a bunch of triangles? Like they're working on something?

Jessamyn 1:19:43 Oh, like, Is there are there equations already that explain? Yeah,

Cortex 1:19:47 yeah. And the answer is always yes. There's, there's lots of ways to do it. And depending on what you want to do, and how you want to do it, you might do different things. And people have had recommendations for that. And yeah, so I don't know very, very mathy 24 hours on That's metaphor for me. Cool. But that's all I got there. So now it's all you

Jessamyn 1:20:05 got. Oh, the thing I wanted to mention before that I forgot was the trees and the font and the Helvetica. I actually got a point maybe two points on trivia for knowing the name of the font Helvetica based on, you know, a, a quiz slash clue. I'm doing, you know, medium wretched, but at least I'm in the middle of my Rundle on trivia.

Cortex 1:20:29 Did it was it presented in contrast to Arial? Or? I'm curious about that, because

Jessamyn 1:20:35 Oh, yeah, it was talking about how it's like, named after a. I don't remember it was like it used in some like, it's one of the most ubiquitous fonts, blah, blah, blah, named after the Swiss town of you know, that bla bla bla bla bla so so, you know, it was like that, or Geneva basically. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, Yes. And you know, there's the fucking movie. But apparently, the movie is not as well known as you would think. Yeah, it's

Cortex 1:21:01 a it's a perfectly nice little documentary,

Jessamyn 1:21:03 great little documentary, I thought, like exactly the right length, which I so rarely say about documentaries. I watched documentary about Byard Reston, this weekend. And it was great, but I wanted it to be like twice as long, because I had many questions that could have been answered in a longer documentary. Okay, Sachs and Kane asked this question, which was, hey, his dad passed away recently, there's a whole bunch of fine art objects as mom was left with. Sorry, quick pronoun, check and realize, doo doo doo. Okay. Don't know, sex and cane. You know, here's some inventory, I kind of need to figure out how to find an appraiser. And here's some questions about that process. And also, I'm in Texas, if you have advice. And actually, there are some really good early comments, including one from rabbit bookworm, hey, I work in Fine Art insurance. And I recommend art appraisers every day, and then a long comment from more to Adams who also recommend different people who could be in different societies. And then there's just one more comment from Sal CERF who just finished this process, etcetera, etcetera. So, yeah, it's kind of nice, because, I mean, one of the things I think, I'm definitely feeling in my cohort lately is, you know, many of us are getting into the age where our parents are either needing help or dying. And there's a lot more, you know, helped me deal with my elderly parent or helped me deal with, you know, the estate of my parent or help me deal with my weird feelings after my terrible parent died, or whatever the thing is, I just, yeah, maybe all those questions were there before, and I just didn't see them because they didn't seem as relevant to me. But man, I see them all the time now. And I'm like, Oh, yeah. Okay. And this was, this was one of them. And I felt like it was they got really good answers. Yeah, by the right people to give those answers.

Cortex 1:23:14 It's a specific, complicated thing. And then like, if someone knows their shit, that's boom, that's that's what you hope for. Go ask Metafilter.

Jessamyn 1:23:22 Yeah, I know, Jim. Jim's lease is probably not gonna be renewed, which he is pretty, you know, bummed about because he kind of likes where he lives, but he does hate his upstairs neighbors, which is probably why his leases and kind of be renewing, because they've lived there for 20 years. And, you know, just have very specific, that, you know, they blow up the landlord's phone whenever there's some like low level conflict, which isn't really a conflict, you know, yeah. And so, you know, one of the things he's really worried about is like cleaning the apartment after he leaves because the landlord is always down on him for the place not being clean enough. And I think it's probably clean, but cluttered, you know what I mean? But, but I don't know, I haven't been there in a while. And, and so, you know, he asked on AskMe Metafilter. Like, how much is it going to cost me to get a deep clean of an apartment after I move out? I live in the Boston area and got a bunch of people. I don't even have a link for this. Sorry. Got a bunch of people. Just you know, who were like I live in that area. This is this is what it costs kind of, I don't know if you can hear the dog snoring behind me. No, this was this was another asked Metafilter question I don't need to get into but it was one of the things I mentioned earlier. Showering sons, you know, had alcoholic father who died and was trying to deal with conflicting emotions. And, you know, they're 38 and you know, I'm pretty sure my alcoholic father died when I was 41. And I was like, well, like, I'm sorry, I have information for you on this. But I have information for you on this. And you know, it felt good to be helpful. And also, you know, it feels good to have some shitty thing that you went through. Maybe being useful for someone else. Yeah, you know what I mean? Let me think of I don't even have a link to the gym, gym clean out question. I like this thread. Only because it came up with many radically different answers. It's from Wesley See, whatever happened to the squatters, like, there was a squatter scene in the late aughts, early 2000s. You know, and there were sprayed hoppers and hit chalker hitchhikers, and zines and blah. What happened? And, you know, there's basically two kinds of answers, one of which is like, well, this kind of thing happened. And the other, which is like, you grew up, and those scenes are still there, you're just not in those scenes anymore. And I liked it only because, you know, there's people with more information than me. I mean, I mentioned ziens, earlier today, and I still read them, but I was never deep into that scene, and I continue to not be but I have friends who are or at least are sort of seen adjacent. And, you know, it was it was good to see what other people say. You know, in other parts of in other in other parts of the country. Yeah. This one was interesting to me, because it was one of those things that never would have occurred to me if I hadn't seen a whole bunch of people talking about it. This is a thread by dress to kill. Asking about the phrase, I'm so proud of you. So, you know, they always feel weird, saying, I'm so proud of you to anyone who's basically not a child. And they're kind of not sure. Like, is it normal to say that, is it not? Is it patronizing to say that to a grown up? Do you tell your partner or somebody who's like your social equal, that you're proud of them? Like, is being proud of somebody implying? Um, you know, that they don't even understand the last part of it. But at any rate, you know, like, basically being like, look, when somebody does something cool, I tell them, I'm happy for them. But I feel like if I tell them, I'm proud of them, it either implies I had something to do with it, or it implies I'm in a superior position relative to them. And if you look at the answers in the thread, and I didn't, I haven't done the analysis, but there's definitely people on both sides, many people being like, yes, it's patronizing as fuck, and other people being like, No, I say that all the time. I just think it's a nice thing to say to people. And I'm somebody who falls on the ice always felt weird about it. But I've tried to say it more because I like it when people say it to me.

But, you know, but it's clear that many people don't see it that way. Like whenever Jim says he's proud of me for something. I always feel great about it. And so I tried to say that more to him. But I'd be cautious seeing it to somebody else, because I wouldn't want them to think I was infantile as an infant infantilizing? Yeah, them by saying that or saying I had something to do with it. And I wonder how much of it has to do with pride being like, like a sin? You know, if you believe in sins?

Cortex 1:28:34 Yeah, I got it is, I feel like I should read through the answers on this. Because I think it'd be really interesting to see the specific spectrum of things that come up, because I can imagine a breadth of answers to this, depending on people's specific experiences. I imagine a lot of people who felt specifically Navy negative feelings about it. Also, I've had a negative experience of dealing with someone who was just being kind of shitty, and that would really poison the well. They're like, I don't, I don't tell people that I'm proud of them very often. But I do every once a while, and it's because I'm actually really proud of them. And it's usually like, it's I think it tends to be probably something that when I use it, it's like a fairly intimate thing. Like, if it's if someone who I don't have a real close relationship tells me about something they did that was cool or hard. I say, That's fucking great. Or that's cool. That's awesome. You know, but like, if it's someone who I know well, and they did something that I know is a thing that was maybe hard for them to do like, like a big deal for them to Yeah, like, you know, like, if I have a friend who like makes follows through on a hard like they're trying to work through a difficult breakup, and it's hard to go either way and they've been holding off and then they finally make the decision even though it's really difficult and painful. You know, that is something that I will tell them I'm proud of them for because that's more than just like, Oh, hey, you didn't eat things like you did a thing that I know and you have told me is hard for you and really requires an effort. And like when you do that you deserve to be told, you know that it's not just you in your head, like, feeling right, your community, you know and want to Yeah, you know, so I think for me like because of that, because I don't really encounter it in other contexts either. Like I have generally a positive feeling about it, but it's also, yeah, it's because of a lack of those absolutely plausible, rhetorically shitty cases where it would suck. So Right. Yeah, yeah. So that's really interesting. It's one thing that feels like, in the end, the answer is not about the phrase, I'm proud of you. It's about everything contextualized in the use of that phrase, so it's, it's gonna be different from person to person, because those contexts are gonna be so different from person to person, right?

Jessamyn 1:30:49 Yeah. And then I think the last one that I have is this late in April, but I'm pretty sure we didn't mention it last month. Is it wrong from corpse in the library? Is it wrong to use these antique postcards as postcards? So basically, corpse in the library has a ton of antique postcards. And, but they're old? Like, is it okay to just put them in the mail? And they she basically is like, Oh, when I have some from Massachusetts, and I was like, what? Massachusetts? Like, Hey, um, suits, and I feel like she mentioned in the thread, maybe not like, I thought she had some from like Devon's, which is like, yeah, Camp Devins, which is like, right. Two Towns over from where I grew up in Massachusetts. And yeah, on the east coast.

Cortex 1:31:47 She's She's local. I, yeah, you're a local ish. Yeah. And

Jessamyn 1:31:50 so I was like, I was like, number one. sandom. Number two, send one to me. And she did. Excellent. Yeah. Good outcome. Yeah, it was cool. So thanks for the postcard. And, yeah, I just think more people should send more mail. So all right, put

Cortex 1:32:06 stuff in the mail. I'm a bit behind on my Patreon rewards of like, monthly art postcards. Really? Yeah. Can you believe it? Especially the last couple months now. But uh, but I enjoy sending them and I've, I've turned out to enjoy more than I had thought about ahead of time, the process of sort of evolving the USPS in like art making by like, creating something and putting in the mail, and it's gonna get like, you know, stamps and barcodes on it. And that's now part of a piece by the time it gets to whoever it's going to write. Right? It's fun. It's

Jessamyn 1:32:38 sometimes you can choose like cool stamps, depending on kind of what you're sending. And,

Cortex 1:32:42 yeah, although I've not been thoughtful enough to bother with that so far, like, use a stamp that I have on my wall right now. That's fine. Whatever, it's been there.

Jessamyn 1:32:51 That is fine. So I had one meta talk through a dimension. Okay, which was just I really liked this paperwork and bodywork idea from brain Wayne, which is about, um, you know, do you have paperwork or some light exercise you've been putting off? Why don't we do a community call where we can do that stuff together? You know, and the idea is, like, you turn on the Zoom, and then you're with other people, but you're mostly like working on your own shit. And you kind of become an accountability group. And they have a regular schedule for these. And if it's a thing that you think would be helpful, you know, sign up.

Cortex 1:33:35 Ya know, that seems, it seems like a really nice idea. I like I like that sort of, like, low stakes, not like a social event, not like an obligation, but just sort of like a social, like, space that exists on, you know, so you can sort of like be with people without having to feel like you have to do anything. But unlike Yeah, it's a good setup. I

Jessamyn 1:33:56 just thought it was cool.

Cortex 1:33:58 There are a couple other meta talks worth mentioning. We talked about the transition ownership news, and that was talked about in the most recent site updates. So read that for more detail. There was a nice little piece that I provided a little bit of context for but it was, you know, started without me and it just wanted some comment for me as well about metal filter.

Jessamyn 1:34:22 I didn't wind up reading this because it was in the middle of kind of, I was still mad at you because I hadn't heard from you. And I was like, I don't want to hear that. He's been talking to other people.

Cortex 1:34:32 I yeah, now that guy just emailed me and I was like, okay, and you emailed him back? Yeah, it was one of the days where I was answering emails like this is like you're not right. It's this is part of why I'm getting the fuck out is because like, I don't want that arbitrary failure to do basic things that I know are entirely doable to get noisy shit. So yeah. But yeah, like thank you again for your patience.

Jessamyn 1:34:59 But what was By option part of it.

Cortex 1:35:02 I mean, you could have been like, yeah, you know what, fuck it. And I'm glad you did that in my head. Thank you. Well, and that's that's the right place to do it. That's where That's where I've done a lot of things. I moved on to do the correct thing. So you know, it's like, it's it's in the it's in the job. Anyway, it's a nice piece. It's just quite

Jessamyn 1:35:19 happy with how it came out.

Cortex 1:35:21 Yeah, yeah. And it was, it's a nice little read. And there's some positive comments. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:35:24 and this is really, for the most part.

Cortex 1:35:27 Yeah. And, and then maybe like, most importantly, as far as like thing happening right now is the meta filter user survey, which you mentioned, up at the top. And we have links literally at the top of the page in the site banner in the sidebar, but it's this is a transition team was put together to gather more information about sort of where people within the meta filter community are at in terms of wants and needs and their thoughts about the site. And if you can take the time to go do it, even if you're a casual mefite Even if you're just sort of lucky. Go do it, like more information is gonna spell it out. Yeah, I still need to do it. Hey, I don't plus, I guarantee you like the one person the transition team already knows a lot of thoughts, aside from his me, like, they couldn't get away from it in the process of getting this started. But yes, go go go do it. If you know other mefites Who would be inclined to do it, but might not be paying attention, pass it on to them more information is useful. This is a good way to get information that doesn't just come through the kind of complicated mediation of a meta talk thread, where you know, you don't get the same sort of broad take, you get fairly focused and often very subject specific takes on stuff. So yeah, get get it out there, help the transition team get some more data to work with and help design the future of the community to support the community. That's the whole fucking thing. Fantastic. And yeah, and that's, that's, I think that's basically it. And this is, you know, this is a thing we were talked with early on to how I need to still like be reading the site and can't just show up to the pocket is like, oh, yeah, don't read that filter. I don't have to read meta talk. I might not talk about mental talk. That's fine. This is this is the thing I can be like, you know, hey, Jessamyn what was happening over on that great,

Jessamyn 1:37:11 although I do have to mention, I don't have to read it either. Fuck off.

Cortex 1:37:15 Well, you know,

Jessamyn 1:37:16 but do what we could do enjoy the minute talk tails. Yeah. About the rest of the site, I often find that it's good to participate in those sorts of community building exercises if you don't participate in the other stuff. Although for you personally, I'll give the same advice that I gave Matt like fuck off for a month or two, just to like, remember what ya did with your time before

Cortex 1:37:41 well and I will say I am I am already at this point. Like enough of the transition stuff has gotten done and I managed to relax enough about enough stuff that I really am finding myself having a better time just enjoying my time on Metafilter because it's a like place I like to go and that's great already. And being able to like not feel an obligation to keep up is also great but like for now it's like oh, it's nice. It's nice No I'm just I'm reading this thread because I want to I don't want to read that thread so I'm not going to what a great setup what an excellent lie

Jessamyn 1:38:12 good I'm so happy for you.

Cortex 1:38:14 Yeah, no it's good.

Jessamyn 1:38:16 Well not being unhappy for me so that's a good yeah.

Cortex 1:38:20 I'm glad it's not zero All right, it's a podcast we did it we went 140 This is our new recent record. Well, maybe it'll be shorter after editing I don't know. But yes, I'll get this stuff off dead.

Jessamyn 1:38:37 Thank you Ed. Both again.

Cortex 1:38:39 Thank you and yeah, we'll we'll talk in a month and whatever else I don't know things stuff it's a positive good see on the site

we should clarify because it was pre roll that this is because your house sitting not because you've suddenly realized your house is full of,

Jessamyn 1:39:15 oh gosh, no, no, no, everything's cool. But I'm dog sitting

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