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Podcast 187 Transcript

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A transcript for Episode 187: Man, It's A Hot One (2022-08-30).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.


Transcript

Cortex 0:00 We didn't get any good pre roll stuff to proceed this so it's probably not going to be cold open this was a good post. I'm making a note here. Huge success. It's hard to overstate the Lynx is quality matter filter. Well, this is episode 187 of the metal filter monthly podcast. I am Josh cortex Mullard. And I'm Jessamyn and here we are. Yes, it's it's it's just the very end of July and it's hot as fuck in Portland and has been for a week and I hate that. And I turned off the air conditioner

Jessamyn 0:46 last hot here.

Cortex 0:49 Yeah, it's it's, it's what? Merely 90s? High 80s He's doing it for a month. Yeah.

Jessamyn 0:55 Oh, no, it's like 80 here. Yeah. Okay, that's,

Cortex 0:57 that's

Jessamyn 0:59 absolutely within reasonable tolerances and not that muggy. So it's, you know, it's fine. I don't, I don't like stay on top of the weather too much. Because like, nothing I can mostly do about it. So like, at night I checked, like, what the weather's for tomorrow's going to be like and what the weather for tomorrow night is going to be like, so I know what today's weather and tonight's weather is going to be like, and then I refuse to pay attention to the rest of it.

Cortex 1:25 I kind of don't pay attention at all, and just find out when it's going to be warm, because people are like despairing on the XOXO slack in the Portland channel. And then I know it's gonna be hot, because we were like, Fuck, it's gonna be hot. And then I sort of gird myself for that, but I don't want to think about it ahead of time, basically. Because like, you know, if it's going to be hot, I'm going to be miserable no matter what thinking about ahead of time, it's just like some extra misery. So. So I'm just living through it in the moment here. And yes, I did turn off my windows, my windows, window air conditioner unit for the podcast, because it'd be a lot of background noise. And I want everyone to understand what sacrifice I'm making in the name of podcast production.

Jessamyn 2:03 Yeah, when when Jim and I chat at night, if he has his window unit on. I don't know if it's because of his headphones or something else. It it kind of compresses the background noise, and sometimes levels his own voice with the air conditioner. So like he's talking, but I kind of can't hear him. Yeah, the whirring noise like I don't know what it's doing,

Cortex 2:28 if he's being relatively soft spoken that could be from well this is this is this is one of the things with like audio compression is like, when you do audio compression in the general sense, you're taking the signal, and you're sort of picking a point that everything below that you kind of want to ignore. And so it will take everything below say minus 20 decibels which is like fairly quiet. Versus like everything in audio production is like you've got zero decibels is like your nominal like loudest ceiling. And then everything below that is counted down in minuses. And anytime you go above that, if you go to actual positive numbers, you're probably sort of peeking, and then that's where you end up getting like distortion crackle. This is a very simplified version. But that's the basic idea. It's like minus 20 decibels is like 20 Best decibels quieter than the loudest signal you expect. So if we're having a if we're recording for the sake of like, podcasts, if you're we're our conversation like loud laughing is going to be zero and normal conversation is maybe going to be more like between negative six and negative 10. Then we could say okay, well, if we do compression on this, we want to make all the important signal here a little bit like louder and compressed and consistently loud, then we'll say negative 20. Negative 30 decibels will be our sort of influx inflection point for the compression curve and everything under that'll get a lot quieter, just cut out entirely. And everything above that will get sort of squished up and all be more similar. Yeah, and yeah, if you've got someone soft spoken, and you've got like loud background noise, that can be a real nightmare. And it's easier to do with audio editing, because you can look at this and like take, you know, take sort of a sample of the recording and adjust the compression threshold or whatnot and like mess with it. But like, if you're just talking into a headset on a chat program, no one's doing live EQ mixing on their fucking like, random voice chat. So you just get whatever it does. And if it picks the wrong spot for the amount of background noise versus someone's voice, yeah, you can end up just like making the air conditioning like louder instead of like,

Jessamyn 4:23 that's kind of exactly what happens. And so you know, there's, it's like a ticking time bomb of like, turn off the air conditioner, talk until you're miserable. Like, go to another room. Well, and

Cortex 4:35 this is Oh, sorry, sorry.

Jessamyn 4:38 Well, like Jim moved last weekend, so he was in an older apartment that was less airtight. He had to run the AC more it stayed hotter indoors. He moved literally on probably the hottest weekend of 2022 So far, you know, like him and his friend and a van and oh my god like it just sounded miserable. But now he's in a place that's like smaller couple towns over his bedroom doesn't have air conditioning and it has like those sliding windows that you can't easily put air conditioning in. But it's got like a wall mounted AC unit in the living room, they can actually kind of make real make real active and lower the temperature of the whole place. So now we can talk without kind of a window unit just crank crank.

Cortex 5:37 Like, like a window unit is a great solution for contained spaces and like it's cheaper than almost any other sort of air conditioning thing. But like it is a fucking noisy thing. Like it's a real

Jessamyn 5:49 I was shocked at how not expensive it was. We were talking a little bit on pre roll about just I've never put in a window unit before I've never been anywhere with a window unit before that wasn't like just an air b&b or something like I've never lived in a place with it. And you know, my power company is great. And gives you kind of a weekly here's how your week's Power is compared to last week's power. And I'm like, Oh, great, super helpful. But I looked in like, you know, it's the kind of before you started using the window AC and after. Not actually that much more money. Shockingly.

Cortex 6:29 Yeah, you know, it's one of those things like, like, you can be budget minded and like, you know, avoid running the AC much and turn off the lights and whatnot. And especially with like modern, like, low wattage lights, like, you know, these things don't not make a difference, but they also don't make the kind of outsized difference that I feel like 80s sitcoms made them sound like

Jessamyn 6:50 like, right, right there was the real thing to do if you want to save the planet is stay off airplanes and quit driving your car, right? Like to the extent that you can. And you know, we've spoken about this before, but I feel like not having kids really helped for me. Yeah, I feel okay about okay, I have window AC that I turned on for two and a half hours at night.

Cortex 7:09 That's my major contribution as well. Like, you know, kids one car, you know, we can fucking like light charcoal on fire. If we want it will probably still be coming for the median American.

Jessamyn 7:20 Yeah. And, you know, obviously, everybody's trying to do the best they can and whatever their circumstances are like, the last thing I want to do is be judgey about other people's choices, but like those choices work for me. And you know, my landlady passed away a month and a half ago now. I guess it

Cortex 7:37 was before the last one, right? Was it? Yeah, we may. We may not have talked about it. But we really didn't talk about like, much more than like, thinking about metal filter and internet stuff with with loop last. Oh, that's right. I guess I've totally like or two months conversation.

Jessamyn 7:51 Yeah. Yeah. And so you know, she was flinty, just in terms of like, it was never clear to me if it was like more of a save the planet thing or more of a save money thing? I mean, why not? Both right. But like, you know, she would walk around at night with a flashlight, so that she wouldn't turn her lights on. I think once you're in your 90s, you can be like, whatever the fuck weird, like eccentric you want to be. But she also would get a little get a little snippy with me about where you're, you know, doing this thing. And I'm like, Man, everybody's got it differently, like, you lived so long that you've used more energy. Like, yeah, you know, like, like, you want to be that sort of voluntary human extinction principle and be like, Well, I don't know, you live into your 90s. Here's, here's her open. That was in the times, by the way, just Oh, no, link a link for that.

Cortex 8:52 Yeah. So I saw you tweeting about that.

Jessamyn 8:57 Yeah, well, cuz I got kind of taken to task by one of my friends about not telling her, which. I'm going to talk a little bit about that friend a little bit later in this podcast. But so I just kind of was like, Well, I guess it's really true. Like, I didn't, I didn't really make an announcement on. I mean, I think I put up like a little thing on malt shop because I also move it up the road and made an announcement about that, but I didn't really put it on social media didn't really put it on Facebook didn't really and I was like, well, maybe

Cortex 9:31 it would have been fine if you wanted to. But like also that doesn't seem like specifically your responsibility. Like it feels like a rare thing. You know,

Jessamyn 9:39 but people feel how they feel right and, and we worked it out. Ultimately, I think she was just not in a great place and was feeling disconnected. And that was kind of how she worked it out. But also, we waited almost two months, six months before they got like a proper obituary even in the local paper. And so a lot of people, I don't I don't think we talked about this in the last podcast, but like, you know, I'd be at a party like sitting around having beers with people, and they'd be like, How's Ronnie and I'd be like a sheep died. Like, it's so awful, right? Because like that everybody was in touch with her on a day to day basis, but a lot of people were in what they consider to be decent touch with her. But like, you know, she kind of made a decision to enter hospice and like, died quick, you know, and that was the plan. But as a result, there were a lot of people left on the outside who might have wanted to know, and because she's not my family member, you know, like, her relationships with individual people. You know, they had to face the fact that she didn't she put them in a different place. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so that was just awkward. And I was like, oh, man, please God, like, get an obituary in the paper. Because I think her family was all in the loop. Everything went well. She was well supported, like as these things go. But yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of tricky. Who you tell who you don't tell. Whose news is it? You know what I mean? Because like, it's a little important and relevant to me, but it's really kind of her story about her. Yeah. And then every now and again, somebody would just buttonhole you. On the street wanting to talk about their feelings about not having heard and I'm like, I can't, like, be here for you for this. Like,

Cortex 11:34 what if what if you knowingly, what's going on with this person lose your job? What if What if you were being refilled?

Jessamyn 11:41 Right? But like, I would think people would look at me and be like, Oh, Jessamyn is like on a slightly more inner circle of grief in this situation? Maybe? Yeah, maybe? Or maybe not. I don't know. Do you know? It's tricky stuff, basically.

Cortex 11:57 Yeah. It's weird. It's weird. So you're still you're still in the old place for now is where you put

Jessamyn 12:04 the just really this week, I made a date for a moving company. Because like I moved in here in my 30s I'm not moving my stuff out. To old this apartments up two flights of stairs. No, not doing it for end of August. So you know, I'll be moved out before my birthday. You know, Virgo month of leisure fucking it up every year since 1999. Basically,

Cortex 12:35 it's the journey, not the destination. If you found yourself utterly leisurely, you know, in the whole of August, where would you have to go from there? You'd be like, Oh, well. No longer can strive for this. Done that.

Jessamyn 12:50 Yeah. So I'm, I'm nervous as hell about it. Because they show up really early in the morning. I don't sleep well, this is a problem. They're not flexible on it. But like packing is going really good. Like if there's one thing I am good at, is getting packed. And

Cortex 13:07 this does not surprise me. Like we've never discussed it. But like this feels like a huge thing. I feel like you would be able to organize your belongings Well,

Jessamyn 13:13 yeah, go to the liquor store for boxes, bring all the boxes inside pack, all the boxes clean out, like what I did this morning was I have a bat closet, which is like, almost could be like a very tiny bedroom. Like it's a big enough closet. But it's closet. And I just found out last night where the mice have been getting into and out of my house, because it's in the very back of the closet a place I have not looked at since I moved in here. But like I got that closet all cleaned out. And now I can put the boxes and stuff that the movers are going to take in that closet. So they're out of my kitchen and everywhere else. And it's just great. Like it's so satisfying. Like, you know, because there's some somberness and leaving this apartment, I've loved it. I feel weird about buying a house. I mean, the House Situation worked out for me but like, It's too big. It's going to be expensive. I knew the and moving boxes around and doing something physical that also I'm good at feels like a good way to keep my head in a positive headspace. You know, yeah, it's a mixed bag. But at least today and like a lot of this week, it's been going pretty well. Excellent. Yes, thank you.

Cortex 14:34 Oh, I remember the little thing I was gonna say earlier when I was talking about compression was like the one other thought like I had on there to contextualize it in a way that people might recognize is zoom calls have a very aggressive cut off. And so you rarely get much background idli noise and zoom chats but also people cut out right more often. And that's just like that's picking another point on that. Like it's it's it's closer to zero point where the compression inflection isn't there. Just really aggressively cut stuff so it's you know, everything's uses a different thing. There's that now feeling very strange.

Jessamyn 15:09 No makes sense. I totally get it

Cortex 15:13 but popup um, let's see, I know it's fucking warm like this is this is the feeling up keep saying and like conversations go on for more as five minutes as it come back around, you know it's too fucking warm. So that's going to be my repeating contribution. But yeah, other than that I went to Montana with my mom.

Jessamyn 15:34 Hey, was that like family trip or? Yeah, it

Cortex 15:37 was like it was like random road trip honestly she was going up to visit my sister who lives up there and my bio dad's side of the family has a cabin on a lake up there and so was my sister was up there for the week and my mom had planned to go visit her spend time with her and my nephew. And and then my mom's sister was going to be your co pilot and then had a scheduling conflict. So I was like, Hey, do you want to go to Montana for like, five days? And I was like,

Jessamyn 16:02 well, that's a big trip.

Cortex 16:04 It is so fun, do I because I haven't been up there in a while. And I like kind of miss the place but also it's like that's Oh, let's drive 10 hours both ways. But then, like, I'm as unemployed as I've been in, you know, 18 years right now. So like, this is pretty much fine. Yeah, just fucking fuck off to Montana for a while and it was nice. You know, it was nice. It was weird. It's weird spending time with family and extended chunks. I like my family and also like, I like not being fully exposed to all of my family's internal stuff all the time. But I really did a lot of sitting around in the shade and drinking beer and I reread God Emperor of dune and that was that was pretty much my week and it was

Jessamyn 16:48 all doing just one of the dune books or Yeah,

Cortex 16:51 it's the fourth one it's kind of like the the cockpit not not capitulating the Capstone I think arguably of like his narrative because there's a couple of books after that but they're widely and I think fairly regarded as not so good. But I think God Emperor's kind of like the big sort of PSD resistance of of the dune books. But yeah, but I never I don't think I bullied you into like reading that far. And I'd be fascinated if you did, but also

Jessamyn 17:22 book and I decided that was it for me, and then I read the Mars trilogy.

Cortex 17:26 Yeah, I think that's fair. Maybe if maybe if the dune movies keep going. It'll be enough motivation to bother with later books, but we talked about this before, but

Jessamyn 17:37 seeing the dune movie yet either, actually. Oh,

Cortex 17:39 you should see it. It's good. No, I plan to look forward to seeing the second one too. i You should see the David Lynch. Oh, no,

Jessamyn 17:45 I like that one. Okay, I mean, I saw that and then forgot literally everything about it by the time I read the books.

Cortex 17:53 Nice. Yes. I thought so. Yeah, I don't know. Let's let's like, What's that stuff we do on podcast we talk about stuff on on metal filter. So yeah,

Jessamyn 18:02 we'll dive we'll dive into dive into that website.

Cortex 18:08 And I gotta, I gotta remember 187

Jessamyn 18:11 Yep, I gotta recheck my favorites because what I normally do is I just like open up the last one month of favorites. But this needs to be the last two months of favorites because we mostly talk about the website.

Cortex 18:25 Yeah, we really didn't get into it last month. I like you've linked to the Massachusetts route 187. Wikimedia page and specifically to like the sign for 187 with a detailed explanation of the construction of the sign and that actually pleases me a great deal. Of course. Is there anything interesting about route 187 in Massachusetts?

Jessamyn 18:52 There is one I'll be honest I didn't know it existed like it mmm mmm I don't I don't love the way Wikipedia deals with like showing you an image and not taking you to Wikimedia Commons basically.

Cortex 19:20 I know of 187 as like the murder number

Jessamyn 19:24 1879 an undercover cop. Yeah, that one

Cortex 19:29 yeah, so some some bits of hip hop somewhere other apparently there was a movie. There was a movie in 1997 called 187 I don't know anything about this had Samuel Jackson

Jessamyn 19:43 I yeah, I didn't know that. But yeah, this isn't like lower sort of Connecticut a part of Massachusetts, which is why I don't really know it goes through Agawam I guess which Agawam is notable because it has one of the first Just zip codes. I think it has the first ZIP Code

Cortex 20:06 numerically 00001. Or

Jessamyn 20:08 it isn't even. It's like, no, no, I'll have to check. It's like 00010 or something like that. Like it isn't. Hmm. Good podcast.

Cortex 20:25 Yeah. This is this is a thing actually, I don't think I've ever looked up is like the sort of like methodology

Jessamyn 20:31 0100101001.

Cortex 20:34 Alright. Like, I've never I've never looked up the methodology of like zip code assignment. Like, there's clearly some regional trends like like Portland has a lot of nine, seven somethings

Jessamyn 20:44 numerically from east to west.

Cortex 20:46 Yeah. But is it? Is it? Is it east to west strictly by like, what is it latitude or longitude? Or is it like east to west by regional chunks?

Jessamyn 20:56 It's close to latitude longitude. But because like big cities, obviously, like, suck up a lot of zip codes. Sure. It's not super accurate. But like, for example, when I was writing my book, you know, 10 years ago now 12 years ago, and I wanted to, like, just get myself motivated. And I had like a final word count of somewhere in the 90 1000s. I think. I basically added up my word count every day and looked at that zip code, and then was drawing myself an imaginary line across the country. Yeah. And it is mostly a line across the country. You know what I mean? Like, it goes up and down north south a little bit, but it pretty much stays east west, you don't wind up with a lot of like, back and forth.

Cortex 21:47 Yeah, like, I mean, that's yeah, that's that's sort of what I was wondering is like, you know, like, I know, Portland zip codes are mostly nine, seven something, something something, you know, and Washington has nine, eight something something something at least the parts of Washington, I know zip codes for. And then we got like 90210 down in, you know, Beverly Hills, which is a small town in California that he may not have heard of. But, but like it like whether there would be like a lot of nine oh, stuff in like the LA area, or whether like tracing a line down the country, you get like nine, seven something, something something like do south of Portland, that sort of thing I've never looked into so.

Jessamyn 22:26 Yeah, and I mostly kind of knew this because I used to work at UPS. And you needed to kind of know the zip codes if and they basically chunked them into like 13 regions, something like that. And so you had to know loosely. This number is in this 113 regions, which Yeah, kind of an interesting and interesting exercise.

Cortex 22:51 I was just, I was just picking curious news brain the other day about light infrastructure programming, like like traffic light infrastructure, because they they work for the city or ODOT, I'm not entirely sure. I think I think they work on roads for the city. So they know all about this infrastructure now. And I've always like had only the vaguest impression of how like traffic light timing worked, and to what extent it had been modernized to be networked, et cetera, et cetera. And I found it interesting, I won't try and reiterate everything, because like I, you know, it's five minutes of me doing a bad job of remembering details. But it was, like, there's something really interesting about like, weird civic infrastructure problems that like need, like, a big systemic solution and how it gets there, and what exactly it lands at, and so on. And I feel like zip codes, like it's a slightly different scale, but this is sort of the same thing. It's like, you had to have a system, you know, when they when they assigned numbers to the major interstate highways, like they clearly decide, okay, well, we're gonna go like, you know, left to right. And, yeah, or west, east and south to north and give him big spacey numbers. So like, I 90 is like, the northern most major interstate, and that runs east west and like, 10 is the southern most and so on. And stuff like

Jessamyn 24:14 social media, like every now and again, being like today, I learned kind of because I

Cortex 24:20 think I saw I think I saw one about the interstates just the other day as part of law. I was thinking of that. It's like, yeah, someone's like, holy shit. I was like, yep, that's the thing. Yep. Sure is. Anyway. He was in projects. What's been let's see, I think we covered every dot horse domain last time. So some point after that. I'm just trying to figure out where I left off. I guess it's June. June is new stuff.

Jessamyn 24:46 Yeah, because we were talking to Lou. A lot of a lot of last month I had a whole bunch of stuff that I liked in projects. Did we have jobs? Do we do jobs? Oh,

Cortex 24:59 yeah. Go Go for it.

Jessamyn 25:01 Well, I mean, metal filter steering committee is looking for people to nominate themselves. And then there'll be a process that they're still hammering out to figure out who's going to be on the steering committee, big responsibility. We love people, even if you don't feel like you're incredibly active on the site, if you're active enough to be listening to this podcast, you might be a good person for the steering committee. And there are two posts in the mefite jobs just about, about kind of what that is, and what it could be, I don't know, if Shepard found somebody for their kind of web dev, we need to convert text that's on this kind of website and put them onto a different website. But it's like, you know, it's a little there's a limited budget, it's gonna take a while it doesn't pay amazing. On the other hand, the work is not super complicated. If this is, you know, zone you're in and you'd like it. So contemplate it. It's a it's a decent looking, it's a decent looking job. Nice. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't really look at the jobs particularly. You know, just Chan who know that's not Jessie Chan. Is it just a chin? J. Jason Chan. I thought it was J. Chang who I knew. They're looking for a UI UX, intern again, pay, you know, not amazing, but you can deal with client facing web tools work for a website with the name of a fish. And yeah, you can. If you know about how mortgages and real estate works, and it's another Canadian job. You should check it out.

Cortex 27:03 Alright. Let's see. So yes, projects. There is well, okay, I love this as an absolute shitposting satirical little thing that devils Ranch was made called woefully neglected.com. Yes,

Jessamyn 27:21 that was on my list as well. Oh, my gosh, it's just

Cortex 27:24 a it's just a website that was built to be like, not updated for like 10 years. And the last update was apologizing for the lack of updates. And then all the links are, like, broken in various ways. And it's just, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I love it.

Jessamyn 27:41 Yes, it is. It is a great sort of single serving great joke site for you know, many of us who have been around the internet for a long time, are like, yep, yep.

Cortex 27:56 And then and then sort of inflecting off of that, but in an actual functioning good stuff, Old World blog thing. Nelson just posted his link blog, which is an actively ongoing, updated blog, he's managed for like, last 19 years now it says in his thing. So yeah, like, you know, an actual functioning site that just is still kick along, kind of like, hey, you know, Metafilter So, yeah, so that's, that's a nice book into that.

Jessamyn 28:28 I was looking at, um, let's see, fan doll, did a post that's just about kind of thinking differently about IUDs. So I believe this is sort of brought to the forefront with a lot of the Supreme Court nonsense that's been going on. And this is basically, you know, Sandahl is biologically male and understands that it's kind of odd, maybe that they're the ones who are doing this, but they got some good feedback from other me fights about things to kind of think about, you know, what, it's, it's sometimes very uncomfortable having your IUD put in even though it can be effective birth control, it sometimes doesn't work for people, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, so thinking about, you know, thinking about this, yeah.

Cortex 29:28 The the maybe speculums don't have to be cold metal conversations, like, what if we tried at all to incorporate the concept of like, basic comfort and whatnot into, you know,

Jessamyn 29:42 because in a lot of ways, because of, you know, institutionalized sexism, a lot of stuff that could go better for women, or, you know, other other people who could use IUDs at I guess female presenting in many cases would be you know, could go a lot better. If you felt people were paying attention to it. Like there just aren't as many people in the space who are like, let's make things better for people with uteruses. You know, it's just not. It's not where people want to be innovating, there's not as much money available to make IUDs less uncomfortable, for example, and because of institutionalized sexism, there are people who have a lot of feelings about birth control, reproductive technology, generally, etc, etc. So I appreciate the effort on this and I do think they got some good feedback about ways to think about this. But I appreciate the people are thinking about it. Basically.

Cortex 30:55 There is this nice little making a watermelon chair from green. Really pen.

Jessamyn 31:02 I feel like I saw this somewhere else on the internet. Maybe I follow Torley pen elsewhere.

Cortex 31:08 Oh, maybe? Yeah. I just I like them. They're cute. I have a half an antenna up about Greenwood carving because that's something that Angela has been doing off and on and has recently gotten back to. We actually went to the hardware store and got a a good wood splitter and a decent like four pound mallet because we just did not have like the stuff to properly split a good log and, and that's gotten her back in action. She's working on a spoon and yeah, it seems like a nice time working on a spoon. Spoon is a classic. Fantastic. It's just complicated enough to be like a good, interesting project without being super complicated. So I need to be very expressive with a spoon. Make all kinds of spoons.

Jessamyn 31:56 Yeah, I thought this watermelon chair just looked really really cool. Yeah, it's adorable. I also just because it appeals to the completionist was good to me. That's one sit drab is a new transplant to Bellingham, Washington, and are going to all the all the diners in Whatcom. County, Washington, which you know, just, it's neat. I'm looking at their blog now and the top post is misery it's supposed to hit 95 today. Ah, sorry, sorry.

Cortex 32:42 Oh, I was looking at the right and they're saying I've decided to eat and review each one based on the following criteria which I hadn't read that sentence before I started reading the criteria and thought it was like maybe names of diners and so like vibe. Okay, Song heard. That's a weird one. Coffee. Okay, did the yoke pop. Now that's interesting. Who names their shop did the yoke pop, but

Jessamyn 33:06 maybe we should I like it. But also

Cortex 33:08 did the yo Pop is a good question. You know, like I just I had a tasty breakfast today. And it was like bacon and cheddar potato hash in a little like, you know, cast iron griddle and two poached eggs. And one of them did like nicely goo and the other one I think cooked too much. While it sat there waiting for me to open it up. It was like, you know, it's still good, but it was like, I didn't get drizzle. I just got like, like seven minute egg type just set up egg out of it. You know what the egg does? It's,

Jessamyn 33:38 as you know, I'm not a diner egg person. So I don't know what the egg does. I'll take your word for it

Cortex 33:43 depends. It depends on what you do with the egg. You know? Do you like a runny egg at all?

Jessamyn 33:47 I don't eat eggs as eggs ever. Okay,

Cortex 33:51 well, then, then you probably don't have feelings about that. Or you've had very strong feelings about now. That's why but yes, yeah, I make

Jessamyn 34:00 a tasty Dutch baby. I'll eat french toast that's about if it's edgier than French toast. I'm pretty much passing on it.

Cortex 34:06 Yeah, the French toast is like, you know, getting fairly picky. I like I like I like a runny egg. I like like a like fried egg sandwich. I like you know, eggs over easy with, you know, toast and bacon and that sort of thing. Let's see what else is there? I don't know, go.

Jessamyn 34:27 Oh, I probably mentioned this in the past but like when I was a kid and my father was working for a technology company, and after his big project shipped, but it became clear he was kind of a son of a bitch to work with for and they kind of farmed him out to go work on making inroads with the Japanese sister company. So he spent a lot of time when I was a child, you know, 1112 Whatever, go into Japan, which was kind of more novel then just because for Americans just because it was more of a headache to get there and et cetera, but he would always bring my sister and I stuff back. And he always brought my sister Nitu K, like these little carved sculptures. Yeah. And so she has like a whole bunch of them in her home. And it's one of the things like, I think one of her most treasured possessions like from my, from my father number one, but just in general, just because they're so interesting and cool and whatever and so, glint, made a dolly, like one of those AI, things that does netsuke K, and if you look at like, you know, the Instagram or Twitter, they've also put it together in a print book. Like, they're amazing. Like, they're photorealistic looking. And they just look really cool. And it wasn't just like, oh, you know, feed a title to the thing and get the thing back. Like, there's a lot of tweaking and trying to trying to make it make it better, more realistic. And just so as a project, like number one, that things are cool. And number two as a project, kind of coop project, it's extra cool, because they did a whole bunch of extra work to

Cortex 36:25 know and it's, it seems like a it seems like a good choice of subject to because like you can get a little bit of flexibility from the fact that you're dealing with like a figurative but expressive carving rather than trying to go for like photorealistic face reproduction. You know, there's a lot of things you could look at in a small wooden carving that wouldn't bother you if they were slightly off, because that's just kind of the nature of the thing. Right? So being able to like take that. Maybe it doesn't get it quite right. But it gets the vibe right on something like this is a really smart way to go.

Jessamyn 36:57 Your eyes smooths out some of that stuff, anyhow.

Cortex 37:01 Yeah, like if someone's nose is on a little bit sideways, you're really going to notice because we have a ton of, you know, brain space dedicated to pattern recognition related to you know,

Jessamyn 37:10 human faces symmetry and yeah, like,

Cortex 37:13 yeah, if you look at like the Stormtrooper one, like I look at it, and I feel like the brow ridge on it is a little bit off, but a little bit off and a little, maybe it's a slightly lopsided carving, but who cares? It's a little carving, you know, it totally falls back into it, you know, the planet one with the high mountains. Like I think maybe there's something a little funny going on with the shading around it, but also like, whatever it works,

Jessamyn 37:33 right? And it looks like a real thing, not just like a kind of an AI. Yeah,

Cortex 37:39 yeah. So it's, it's really impressive. And it's interesting to see where people are very successful with this stuff, and where people sort of run aground of the problems with it. And you know, a lot of it depends on like, tone and subject matter that you choose. And the different. There's, like I have a couple other projects posts here I'm going to mention that are also the same sort of vein of like aI generated imagery. There's one here from let's see, which one do I have here? This is from Lippia. Libyan Yep. Which is AutoExec dot cat, which is a great dos joke. I love it. But also it's a I generated art and comics, about arts about cats. And it's if you look at it, this is like, a whole different story, like compared to the itsuka stuff, like this stuff is clearly weird and surrealist, and it's like, weird computer art. But it's very effective in this context, because like, it's like this is supposed to probably feel weird and all over the place and not quite right and that surrealism, you know, fits the subject too. So I think there's also another very effective use of this technology. Mid journey I think is inclined towards a little bit more weirdness like this whereas Dali is a little bit more capable of seeming not weird if you if you tune it, right. I think mid journey is also always just a little bit funky. But then if you want funky it's a it's a good choice. And yeah, these are delightful. And there's a cat and maybe Niles Crane, maybe Frasier maybe a mix of the two I need to reset my password on on Instagram on the web, so I can't actually read the captions for shit sake what Yeah, I never used Instagram on the web. So like every time I come back from like, oh, yeah, I guess I could use that so no need to log in to do fucking anything and I don't know what my password is. I'm gonna have to like look it up on my phone and I just don't want to fucking do it. I don't want to do it.

Jessamyn 39:32 Anyway, and you you're probably better off especially if you pay any attention. Yeah,

Cortex 39:38 no, it's some shit. Boy, they that I should I should pull up a couple things I read because like there were a couple good commentaries on I think that my main source of news on it was rusty Foster's today in tabs which had a nice roundup of other people's takes on it but but yeah. Oh yeah, you are you We're just noting I see in the chat. That was what was it? Rami?

Jessamyn 40:05 Yeah, yeah. That happened early July. Yeah.

Cortex 40:09 I think that may have happened in the vicinity of Montana. And so like I just wasn't even around to dork out about it. But

Jessamyn 40:19 yeah, basically they got extra access to Dali to and had an open thread in meta talk for suggestions and then would show you what what the what the suggestion that's like what what what it came out as? Yeah Lisa Frank style illustration of rainbow dragons eating cake that kind

Cortex 40:47 of there's one okay there's one other

Jessamyn 40:50 adult imagery. Oh, yeah. All right.

Cortex 40:54 There's a there's another project called the Kubrick times from malevolence just posted a couple days ago. And this is the same sort of vibe, using Dali, as well as GPT. Three, which is the current sort of state of the art text generation AI thing to create articles and pictures for the fictional headlines from newspapers in 2001. Which is a great fucking concept. You know, it's just like, throw away filler, like on the, on the future iPads, essentially. And then they're like, Okay, well, let's let's generate text and imagery based on those headlines. And here's that, you know, set of newspapers from the movie, which I think is delightful. And the best part of it is, like, if you just looked at this without knowing the context, you'd think it was like some other random fucking, you know, news site, some sort of like, news, chum. So yes,

Jessamyn 41:50 yes, it's an it's an AI telling you some made up stuff.

Cortex 41:55 Yeah. And this is this is another vole dot, what the fuck site project because we've mentioned some a malevolent stuffs before,

Jessamyn 42:03 so much, so much good things there.

Cortex 42:08 Think that's all I'm gonna pull up for now from projects, otherwise, we're going to have to like skim hard. And that's just not going to be interesting.

Jessamyn 42:14 Yeah, no, don't do it.

Cortex 42:15 Should we talk about Metafilter? Proper?

Jessamyn 42:17 Sure. Let's talk about Metafilter proper.

Cortex 42:19 Let's take an interlude. I want to say something that I can say more generally than I ever have in like years, and years and years. So what's going on in metaphor lately, like I have not been like, I'm aware of the transition team stuff happening. And I've seen posts about, like, the nomination stuff for the steering team, but like, I've really, people have been not calling on me for information about this, which is great. And so I don't know any of the details. It's, is there anything interesting to talk about there?

Jessamyn 42:46 Ah, no, not particularly. I mean, not that there's not a bunch of people who have been doing a bunch of hard work, which I think has been good. I mean, the thing that impresses me the most, with the transition team, is just how kind of usefully flexible they are. Because you know, that it's a small group of people trying their best. And every now and again, there'll be like, Okay, we've made this decision. And this is how we're going to move forward to like, do the steering committee thing, and then like, somebody will show up, and then a talk being like, Oh, I've got this concern, you know, either about my specific situation, or about a thing I think maybe you didn't think about, you know, and my knee jerk reaction is, like, at some level, like, but but they worked so hard, but like the transition team, unlike me, which is why it's good that they're doing this, and I'm not or you're not, can kind of take that feedback and discuss among themselves and find better solutions that accommodate more people that make it more inclusive to the extent that they can. I mean, I think there's certain limitations, just because of like, you know, money, for example, that's going to make some stuff really difficult. But I've really been surprised as the wrong word. But I've been impressed by their ability to work with the community to try and find optimal solutions to the extent that they can you know what I mean? And so what's going on, kind of this week is self nominations for the actual steering committee. I know that Lou met with the bipoc board who has, you know, some of their own thoughts and ideas about this, and they're writing up some of their notes about that, that's going to go also to the transition team, but I you know, I just, I just feel like it's going good and I only hope we get people who are aware of the commitment and are able to meet that commitment and feel like feel like they're good people for this. I mean, my only real concern is just We'd like a range of different kinds of meat fights, not all just the people who spend all their time in meta talk, not that there's anything wrong with that. But I think part of one of the things that's been great about having Luhan time as moderators is that they don't come with so much entrenched. Here's all the fights that have ever happened on Medicare. Yeah, and they can just kind of moderate based on the documents that we have, and the decisions that have been made about things. And and I think that's a real benefit. And so I'm hoping we can get some of that with the steering committee as well, like people who really have a sincere belief and willingness to want to see the site, do okay, or even be better, but maybe, you know, are kind of a lurker or have just been around for a while at kind of a low frequency, like all of those things should be okay. And so, you know, crossing fingers about that. And to be honest, I've mostly been trying to stay out of it, just because that was my promise, you know, I have opinions, most of them don't matter. And I just need to lump it. So occasionally, like, I'll back channel with Lou, or with someone else, just being like, wow, my opinions, and then I shut up about it and get on with my day,

Cortex 46:25 I'm gonna do what they like with it. That's, that's been part of why I've been like, just kind of pointedly not like paying attention to the threads. It's like, you know, I know, I'm going to have like thoughts and feelings and whatnot. And also know, that like, I've explicitly made it not my job to do that and made it explicitly not other people's jobs to accommodate my opinion. And so like, well, what if I just like, what if I just, like stand back at a distance and not like, silently get all up in this thing, which is, I think, been a good decision. Yeah.

Jessamyn 46:52 I mean, for me, it's a little like, it's a little challenging, because I hang out at meta filter, anyhow. Yeah. Yeah. And I contribute in meta talk anyhow. And so in some cases, I've literally had to be like, well, this is a thread I would contribute to and participate in. But because of my specific role with what's happening, maybe it's not appropriate for me to chime in here. I'll talk to Lou they're in charge. They can reflect what needs to be reflected. Or, or you know, Brandon are curious, new or warrior. Queen, word queen, sorry. I knew it was like, yes. warrior queen, or, you know, Adrienne, like the people who are in those roles. Part of really sincerely having other people be in charge is having them really sincerely be in charge. Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's about what's going on. happy about it.

Cortex 47:56 Work as always, everybody, I really appreciate everything everybody's been doing to try and figure this out.

Jessamyn 48:01 Yeah, me too. So back to metal filter. Filter, I made one of those posts that has 19 favorites and two comments. Yes, I read a book called trubiz, which is a fairly recent novel, about a cast of characters, sort of centering around a residential school for the deaf. And it was really interesting because it had a lot of people with different relationships to Deaf culture, like maybe a children of deaf adults, a child of deaf adults, student or maybe somebody who grew up in a family that was like generationally deaf, and so they grew up, you know, speaking ASL as a first language, somebody who had cochlear implants, but that didn't really work very well. So they didn't really learn English. And they didn't really learn ASL, like, what a mess. And the school is in danger of closing. And there's a bunch of other stuff going on. At any rate, I read that book. And at least one if not multiple characters in this book are non binary. And so it got me interested in like, what are the ASL terms for many of the different kinds of non binary or trans or different words? Yeah, and and are they new? Have they been around for a long time? Because we, you know, one of my favorite things about ASL is how it's an evolving language, right? That, that the community decides sometimes what the sign for, like, an emergent word in English will be because ASL is not just, you know, the English words put into

Cortex 49:42 Yeah, it's not just it's just not it's not just like spelling everything as a transliteration. It's yeah, it's its own. It's got its own grammar. It's got its own.

Jessamyn 49:49 Yeah, and fingerspelling is a thing, but it's a very small part of the thing. And so I went on YouTube and looked stuff up and I found Rogen, Shannon. Who's a deaf guy who's queer, who talks about, you know, does a YouTube video in ASL but you can turn the captions on and read along if you don't speak ASL and talks about the evolution of the signs for trans people and topics about trans people have, you know, like terms like body dysmorphia? You know, or adjacent adjacent signs, and transphobia. And the videos are pretty interesting and talking about how sometimes people from outside of the community, so like Deaf people, but people who aren't in the queer and trans community, maybe are like, Well, I think the sign should be this and they're like, you're not part of this community. And so it talks a lot about, you know, the intersectionality aspect of the whole thing. And I was just fascinated, fascinated. And then there was another YouTuber Britain, a non binary trans person, and you just have to read the cap, like read the transcript, there's no, there's no captions, even talking about that. And talking about what these what these signs are queer signs are in other countries, because ASL is different from British Sign Language is different from French Sign Language, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought it was fascinating. I think a lot of people were interested in it, but there's not so much to say about it. Just like, huh,

Cortex 51:27 yeah, what mostly it's people like, Oh, this is an interesting thing. I didn't know about that. Like, you know, there's not necessarily a lot to say, like, Oh, neat. This is interesting.

Jessamyn 51:35 Yeah, exactly. So it was fine with me. I was really pleased with that post. And people who are interested in Deaf culture would like it, and also the book troupe is is quite good.

Cortex 51:45 Nice. Yeah. I enjoyed about a month ago, this video of people installing a manhole which is just like a German video of a manhole cover replacement. And it's noted in the comments that like, I don't understand, okay, you know, what a manhole is? Do you know where Germany is?

Jessamyn 52:06 No, mostly.

Cortex 52:09 There's like a man hole is like, you know, there's the infrastructure that supports that. Just like the manhole cover. Like there's the manhole and it's like a tube that goes down into the bizarre tub, subterranean world beneath our cities that like the first time I understood that was a thing at all. As a kid. I was like, mind blown. But anyway, like they were replacing an older manhole cover infrastructural thing with a modern one. And so it's just like a short video of like, taking out the old one, you know, cutting up the sidewalk, pulling out the old one, putting in the new one.

Jessamyn 52:36 Oh, so like a whole manhole cover? And the thing that holds Yeah, the road.

Cortex 52:41 Yeah, the whole man hole itself, they basically replace. And it's just a nice little leg. Like, I don't know, it's 10 minutes. I think that it's all in German, but like, you know, you can kind of tell what's going on. And someone someone noted farther down in the thread, like, hey, part of the reason this is like, so polished and whatnot is like, this is definitely like, promo video from a company that replaces manholes.

Jessamyn 53:05 Sure, but whatever, you know, yeah, good.

Cortex 53:09 So there's, there's a little bit of like, the popping the bubble on the oh, those German efficient and well, it goes those companies, you know, efficiently promoting their work, but, but who cares? It's you know, so I thought it was nice. It was a, it was a good time. And I also enjoyed this thread that Janelle posted, of course, because it's about cool. Sort of,

Jessamyn 53:31 hey, scarf, right?

Cortex 53:33 Yeah, yeah. And it's just some excellent stuff. It's the complexity 2022 exhibition of a bunch of really interesting, weaving work, people doing all sorts of stuff, including, like one of the things. I don't know if the front page varies, but there is, let's see, I'll put a link to it here. One of the things they have is barlborough ori yardage by Beth Ross Johnson, which is a I guess, a joke of about kind of Japanese stitching that I got maybe independently maybe convergently interested in. In the last Yeah, I

Jessamyn 54:15 get it. I get it. Yeah.

Cortex 54:17 Yeah. So like, that was a nice little like, Oh, hey, but anyway, it's all fascinating stuff. It's, it's one of those things where, like, you know, having learned a little bit about weaving on the sort of like background of Angela and Janelle, who said before it's like lives nearby both of them have done a bunch of weaving stuff that I'm like, Oh, this is fucking cool and like I haven't really been actively doing any of it myself but like, I like have a little bit of language and vocabulary for it now so I can look at this I was like, oh, oh, in a way that previously I would have been like, Oh, well that I guess that's nice looking but had no idea was going on. So anyway, that's cool. That's some cool fucking weaving stuff. Go check it out. Yeah, pretty pictures of good fucking textile work.

Jessamyn 54:57 Yeah, no, it's beautiful. This is The sort of, there are two kinds of Jessamyn bait threads, one of which is this one found in a library book, as opposed by tools. And during Oakland library posted just this big sort of page on their website of things that they have found in library books, art, notes, photos, artifacts, bookmarks, crochet, lists, written stuff kids did. And it's just a, it's just a fun, a fun kind of fun kind of one. That's awesome. And then second one Jessamyn. One is just a post by storyboard about the Merlin bird app, which helps you figure out what bird you saw. And you can upload a photo now and it'll do some AI stuff, and try and figure out based on what you are and loosely what your bird looks like. What the situation is

Cortex 56:09 nice. Yeah, just sort of a failover. Like, if it can't figure it out, it just like uses dolly and cheapy two, three to make up a bird. That's, yeah, that's that's definitely the pink spotted warbler Ship.

Jessamyn 56:24 Ship warbler.

Cortex 56:25 Should warbler should warblers better? Yeah,

Jessamyn 56:27 yeah, well, because we learned in meta talk or maybe you didn't, but like

Cortex 56:33 that whole thing was recently in meta talk. There's a very good chance I didn't

Jessamyn 56:36 Yeah, no, it's Oh, I don't even remember I think it was oh, like lifestride

Cortex 56:41 or something. What? Like one of the chat threads.

Jessamyn 56:45 Yeah, it was like like unwritten rules but one of one of the things that Taz sort of talks about is like adjectives in English have to mean like opinion size, age, shape, color, origin material purpose and then

Cortex 56:57 the the surprisingly concrete totally unwritten priority of adjectives in English is like it is a fast that's another one was like every once in a while someone on tours like holy shit.

Jessamyn 57:09 Right so shit warbler, not worthless shit. Yes. Although I don't know if warbler is worthless probably yeah case.

Cortex 57:17 Yeah, I mean, warbler I think is Yeah, it's a guy there's a there's a good name for that kind of noun but I don't know. Yes. But it would be a big green shit warbler not a green big shit warbler. And according to the rules, which which we should establish are not like, literal universal rules either, just like very weirdly subtly baked in habits of, of English usage. Like you're allowed to say, green big shit warbler, if you want to. It's not, you know, you're not forbidden.

Jessamyn 57:53 Right? And people will understand it. It'll just seem

Cortex 57:57 has that slight offers to it? Yeah. There is. There was a post, Molly realized make a made a post of a song by the regrets, which I just was happy to do. Because like, the regrets are great. There's just a young band that does good sort of loud pop Rakesh stuff. And yeah, it turned into people saying, Oh, I like this song by them and other people saying, oh, you know, if you like them, you might like these guys. And so if you want a little music, go check out that post.

Jessamyn 58:32 I just noticed that my uncle is named checked in a post that I had otherwise failed. faved and then, um, I don't think I knew my uncle had been mentioned in it when I faved it but it's basically about Stuart Brand, the like, the whole earth catalog. Oh, yeah. Hi. And Wesley see linked to kind of a bit of a hit piece about that. He's a huckster. And, you know, there's just like, there's good news, bad news about brand, right, like, I think many older white dudes, but he's definitely done a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. And, you know, I think like many people with a really high profile. You're always gonna get to trackers regardless of kind of how great you are. Basically. And you know, this was all taken care of. This is all talking about California in the 70s. Kind of, and I'm reading by gol Yee ha or go all Yee ha. talking basically about my uncle like, Oh, him and Brad both came from privilege brand came from three to four Wasp generational wealth coyote came from first generation Jewish wealth. Brand skirted around the Bay Area scene, Coyote went all in there were initially friends, they diverged over time, Coyote slowly became fed up with brands positioning. And they, I guess the book that my uncle wrote, I think, has like a confrontation between the two of them, which is really interesting, because I didn't know. I mean, I knew that about my uncle. I didn't know that about brand, but I was just like, yeah, Bran. I have like a weird feeling about the dude. And so I linked to that thread. And Oh, guess what? was talking about my uncle. So interesting. So that? I did I did toss it in the Yes, I tested. Yeah.

Cortex 1:00:39 Yeah, I want to say, I think I'm remembering right, that brand gave a talk at XOXO years ago, I think focus more on cool tools than on

Jessamyn 1:00:51 on. Well, that's Kevin Kelly. So are you sure.

Cortex 1:00:54 That's okay. That's That's what I was trying to figure out. I think it was Kevin Kelly.

Jessamyn 1:00:58 Who's his own slightly odd duck, older white dude.

Cortex 1:01:03 Yeah, I think it was Kevin Kelly. And I think it was in the context of partly the whole earth catalog. But he's talking about cool tools stuff. So that makes sense. Because I was trying to put that together. And I wasn't quite getting there.

Jessamyn 1:01:16 Yeah, and the whole earth catalog. I mean, I don't know if you kind of grew up with it. But it was like meaningful to me because my parents had it. And it was in the house. And so you could flip around and learn about like, oh, I can get a geodesic dome like the one restless Nomad now labs in you know, or I can do my own farming, or I can do this. Like it just gave you ideas about access to things that you could

Cortex 1:01:40 have, I want to say it was probably around and I never engaged with it. There was a lot of sort of generation back kind of hippie ish stuff, like hippie and post hippie stuff are available to my childhood, because like, both my parents were sort of hippie ish people in the in the

Jessamyn 1:02:00 right, right, as fine as mine. Were too. Yeah.

Cortex 1:02:03 But like, they weren't, like thrusting it on me. And I was like, you know, I wanted to be playing Nintendo

Jessamyn 1:02:08 most of the time. So there was some good pornography and some of them. See if and

Cortex 1:02:13 like, if I'd known,

Jessamyn 1:02:15 you'd have to apply, you'd have to apply yourself to really find it. Yes.

Cortex 1:02:18 Yeah. Yeah. So but, but yeah, like, it was there in the background. I have a post that really I like the comment, well, actually seeing it. More than the post itself. It's a post called 10 million power. It's about mobile game ads. And it's just like, it's totally fine little YouTube video. But it, I watched it, I was like, Man, this feels kind of lightweight. And I feel like this guy's kind of like winging it on a lot of this stuff. Like it's one of those things where it's like, it was less a really good discourse on the nature of mobile game ads, and more someone kind of doing a reaction video to mobile gaming ads, which again, is very meaty. But then there was some conversation thread sort of going back and forth on some of this stuff. And some of the guys stuff that guy was claiming and how he's framing and stuff. And then jewelry came in. And basically Mark Marshall McLuhan did it by saying, you know, hey, I worked in this sector, and here's what's actually going on. And then like, paragraphs of like, good sort of breakdown of the nature of the weird fucking mobile game economy, which I know we've ranted about before about how people don't like paying for mobile games. And so people who make mobile games monetize them in lots of shitty dark patterns. Right, right. Right, right. Yeah. And like, these ad, things are sort of a weird spin off of that. Like, if you can't get eyeballs on, you're basically the same game everyone else was making. You can get eyeballs off of weird ads with oddly compelling narratives that have nothing to do with the actual gameplay. And that's kind of what's going on. But anyway, Joe just got a great comment on it. And some follow up comments throughout the thread. And yeah,

Jessamyn 1:03:57 there too, because wherever I don't know where he's working now, but like was working for like, Bioshock for a long time.

Cortex 1:04:04 Yeah. Robert has been in games. And I think that's one of the interesting things is like, they really have kind of like, arguments slash dialogue going on, because writers coming from kind of like a triple a production perspective. And I think Childers coming from a sort of mobile game. And they have different demography is, but there's also a lot of weird collisions in sort of expectations from those like, styles development, like, you know, so like, you can sort of screwdrivers saying, Well, this is sort of like the thing, the issues I have with mobile stuff, but you know, also sort of coming from a little bit of a AAA thing, I think. Yeah, it's a great conversation is very interesting. It's, it's one of the things where like, the post was perfectly fine. Conversation side turns out to be great, right? Yes. And I don't know if jilda just hasn't been around very much recently. Or if she hasn't, I just wasn't noticing but okay, children. Yeah, cuz when you talk to The thread was just shouting killer.

Jessamyn 1:05:02 That's been one of the funner things like being around me fi this summer. You I do see some of the old names popping up again. And I I like that. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. So that's been nice. Last one I had for metal filter was this one Buy Box, which is just about the women who built grunge. It is an article on long reads, and then box links to a whole bunch of good YouTube videos. A lot of bands that you've probably heard about not 100% accurate history. And ah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just just really good. Tons of good. Tons of good videos to watch. And people show up and add even more. Even more good. Oh, yeah, the muffs Boss Hog. Susie's petals. Like, ah, so good. So good. Yeah,

Cortex 1:06:02 I have a Metafilter friend who one of her claims to adjacency to fame is that she declined an offer to join Bikini Kill oh my god back in the day. But I don't know if that's like blowing up your spot to say anything more beyond that. So I'll just say that's a thing. fascinating to think of. And also, sleet. Sleater Kinney. So, so close to my heart that like Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:06:29 yeah, I saw them. I think out here in Vermont, actually. In Burlington. Yeah. When they were coming back around. I mean, I saw them in Seattle, probably a ton of times. But like, Was it

Cortex 1:06:39 like the woods era or like when they came back after that, like with a more recent couple albums

Jessamyn 1:06:45 would have been 1415 years ago now? Probably.

Cortex 1:06:50 Yeah. That would have been like the woods. Yeah. It was a great fucking album.

Jessamyn 1:06:54 Yeah. Because my partner at the time was really into them. And so we saw them and I think he actually met his future wife at a later Sleater Kinney show. So yeah, more power to everybody.

Cortex 1:07:09 I've got a piece of stained glass that I ended up naming Sleater Kinney. Like it's, it's all Lincoln, it's, it's you know, it's like wireframe cubes. It's like a very sort of thing, and not like, particularly Sleater Kinney sort of thing. But I'd like I listened to like their entire discography start to finish in the process of making it. Oh, neat. And then I was like, Yeah, well, I listened to the bit Sleater Kinney and it just like, you know, three pieces and, and that day, they announced they were I think Janet Weiss announced she was maybe leaving the band, or something like that. Some sort of weird timing like that. But, but I liked that band. And I like that piece I made.

Jessamyn 1:07:48 Good. Well, you probably liked that post. Do you want to move on to ask Metafilter?

Cortex 1:07:52 Let's do it. What do you got?

Jessamyn 1:07:53 Ah, let's see. Well, the, um, hold on one sec. I just have a bunch of them. I would like to say thank you to the AskMe Metafilter community for helping me with my I'm having a hard time and my friends are having a hard time. And I'm having a hard time with my friends hard time. anonymous question. Like, I think the only reason I made it Anonymous was I didn't want my friends to track me through. Yeah. Asked me to filter. But essentially, I have two friends like a newer friend and an older friend, both of whom were being slightly weird with me. And I simultaneously wanted to like, you know, be there and be a friend to them. But also being like, I just, I'm not sure how many spoons I have to deal with this. Give me a read on this. And, you know, I'll probably I'll probably follow up at some level by saying like, hey, things with friend one actually worked out better like that friend one, I think was going through a rough patch. And I think I got a bunch of like what's it called ambient radiation? Collateral damage. Like,

Cortex 1:09:12 yeah, like that? Damage?

Jessamyn 1:09:14 Yeah, I think I got that from her. And I think at the point at which she was doing better, we patch it up a little bit. You know, like, I'm sensitive in a general sense when I feel like my friends are like, what I perceived to be kind of going after me. I'm like, What the fuck is happening? Even though I think for some people, that's their fail mode when they're having a hard time. Other friend is a friend who's a little under resourced and a little I literally don't know kind of a nice way to put it like she seems needy. You know, she doesn't have enough other people in our peer group. If I'm being honest. It's probably because she's difficult, you know, but she's also like neurodivergent And probably, and when I'm doing okay, like, we go for walks together and talk about stuff, and she's also my age, and she's creative and interesting. But she's been in a kind of a difficult space for like, a long time. And the thing I didn't mention in this thread is, you know, she started, like showing up at work. And like, I work at the library. So like, you can't have somebody leave. You know, like, if I were, if I were somewhere else, I'd be like, well, I need to, you need to, you need to do your own thing I need to get to this, but like, the library is not that busy, you know, when she knows I can kind of bullshit and like, friends will show up, and they'll show up and bullshit with me for 10 or 15 minutes, but then they'll fuck right off, right? Like, she will literally show up at drop in time, if nobody's there, and just kind of hang out until like, I go home. And like, I get it that like, she's not. She's not being a creep. But it winds up feeling creepy. Like, she's just trying to fix her shit. You know what I mean? But it's gotten to the point where I had to, like, put up boundaries that are weird for me. Like I'm, and she lives two doors down for me. So you know, if she sees me walking around, she'll like, text me and be like, want to go for a walk? And I'll be like, no, like, I don't feel good. And I've, you know, had some like sinus dental crap that I've been working through that is really hard. That like, I don't even like to talk about because I'm just trying to power through it, you know, and I'm going to the appropriate medical people. But it literally was like one of those things where, like, you know, she'd walked me to the door of the library, and I'm like, I need to walk home alone. And like, that's awkward for me.

Cortex 1:11:44 Because yeah, it's it's, it sucks when you can't just like get off with basic like signals of like, okay, well,

Jessamyn 1:11:51 can I get that sometimes you can't like, I totally respect that. But I also am like, I feel like the last time I didn't walk home with her or the time before I didn't walk home with her. It's clear. And we had a pretty frank conversation where I'm like, Look, it's not you. Cuz she asked me flat out. She's like, Are you avoiding me? And I'm like, No, but I think I've been really clear that I don't feel good. I'll let you know at the point at which I feel better. When I don't feel bad. I'm okay, hanging out and would like to hang out. But you're not my friend who can make me feel better. Even if you might like to be that friend. And it's so weirdly awkward for me. Because I do have some friends I can hang out with and to be honest, a lot of my friends right now I just can't. And yeah, and that's okay. And my friends understand. And she because I think she's newer, and because she's probably neurodivergent. It's real difficult. And because I am anxious and sensitive, I don't want to be like, Look, stop coming to the library.

Cortex 1:12:58 So that's rough. It's a

Jessamyn 1:13:00 long way of saying thank you AskMe Metafilter community for helping me think through ways to have better boundaries around this. And things are working out a lot better with friend number one. And a friend number two situation is still a struggle. But I think I've been really clear about where I'm coming from. Even though that doesn't solve the problem. I feel good about. Feeling like I've been clear.

Cortex 1:13:26 Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a real good use of ask right there. A slightly less superlative but I'm gonna stay still say still somewhat useful, because I kind of got what I wanted. Use of it is my question from yesterday, about when car stalling fell off as a sort of trope. Oh,

Jessamyn 1:13:48 I saw that movie the TV, which I feel like this car that I have now is the first car that I've had that didn't randomly stall for no reason.

Cortex 1:13:57 Well, this is this is one of the fascinating things to me because like, like this feels like everything people saying makes sense to me in here. And like I think my sense of the timing out on it probably does map more or less to the introduction of more modern fuel systems and the fall off of manual transmissions, but like, I can

Jessamyn 1:14:14 definitely part of it. And oh my god, fuel filters full of crap. Definitely part of it.

Cortex 1:14:20 And I can't ground any of that. And personal experiences, I think because I really didn't start driving. Like 1012 years ago, we bought like a brand new Mazda three hatchback. And it's never given us any problems at all, you know, it's like, it's just no, it's a car and it works. And it's zippy. And it's great. So like, you know, I know, nebulously from like my childhood and like early adulthood, being around and in other people's cars and seeing the stuff on TV and in movies, but like, I think the only time I've ever had the experience of a car stalling on me was like that one time a few years ago that Angela and I went up to Maine for a week and drove around in a like old restored VW Westfalia manual. And that's the only time I've run driven a manual either as I think it did actually, probably stall in me at a traffic light one time, I was like, Oh, this is that thing. Okay. And it was fine. But

Jessamyn 1:15:07 yeah, I mean, I think it's amazing. You were able to drive a manual car at all, you know,

Cortex 1:15:13 I did an okay job of it, you know, better than I was worried at night. So. But yeah, so it's like, it's all it's very, it's like, it's one of those things where you are just saturated with pop culture about something that you have like zero personal direct experience with and like, I was realizing in conversation that like, oh, yeah, this is one of those things where like I have, because I'm sitting in a sitting and drinking a beer in a booth. And there was construction going on, like, just on the other side of the wall of this place. Like they were doing major road construction and like, so a machine would like do something for about 15 seconds, where it'd be like, violently rattling everything, and then it would stop and it's sort of like this, like sputtering stopped. It was like, man, it's like, it's like a car die. Like, why do I know that? And why was that a thing? And why isn't that a thing anymore? That led to this question. But yeah, like it's yeah. It's nice seeing people who definitely have way more idea about like every piece of it answering and saying, Oh, well, you know, this and this and yeah,

Jessamyn 1:16:12 right. Yeah. No, I thought it was a really interesting question. I was like, oh, man, am I happy that cars are different now.

Cortex 1:16:21 Like, I recognize I'm spoiled. They're like, I never have owned a ship box. And I never will own a ship box. Probably. Because I'm not like a I don't want I'm not a classic car guy. I'm not going to track down. Fancy should

Jessamyn 1:16:34 not even imagine what it is like to have never owned a shitbox. I felt like I owned ship boxes, like solidly through to like two or three cars ago. Yeah. But yes, I enjoyed how fast Jesse the K fixed invincible summers, weird Apple device syncing problem. And like invincible summer did a really good job of like troubleshooting the stuff and trying the staff. And but it turned out Jessie Kay's answer that was given within the first hour.

Cortex 1:17:16 Nice off the problem. Good work.

Jessamyn 1:17:19 So that was cool. I was I was like, Oh, I'm going to look into this up. Nope, already handled? Great.

Cortex 1:17:27 I, you know, I think I've said this before, but like I've always slightly disappointed and also relieved when I find something where like, I might be able to answer that. I don't know if I can answer it. But I might be able to Oh, someone else answered it. I didn't know their answer. I wasn't gonna be able to. But I can imagine a different circumstance in which they hadn't answered. And I would have known Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. Good. Like the best of both worlds. Yes, I get that speculative. I could have done that. And also like, hey, yeah, someone else did it. What else do you have? For me? I have literally have that one. I'm done.

Jessamyn 1:17:59 I have a bunch of them. Here's one bye. Bye, Will. What ho will, whoa, wanted to find other videos that included like fans like, like, videos where they bring fans up to play with the bot, which are super fun. And this is a thread of them. Which, which I like. And fabulous at the very end has a bunch of very good. A bunch of very good suggestions. And I have a bunch of like, ah I have a bunch of like, sort of list generation things. Including hacks for kitchen and pantry. I've got a tiny kitchen not enough storage. I'm trying to figure out how to make your kitchen a happy space. What What can you do with a kitchen you don't have a lot of ability to do stuff with? Yeah, which I which I think is a really good. A really good question to ask from please be kind from user please be kind. This one. I've been commenting in a lot today. This is read Nikki? Like, Hey, have you had a loved one who's catastrophically or terminally ill and had to be a caretaker? What helped, you know, just helped me think about the things I need to do and God only knows like a lot of people in my demographic are really dealing with this right now in various ways. And so there's a lot of people with advice about doctors advice about medical stuff, advice about talking to them. about things, advice about, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I commented a couple times, because my favorite life hack is like before the cable company has figured out that somebody has died, get on the chat support with the cable company, and do whatever you need to do to the cable, like, you know, like, when my landlady passed away, she had cable TV and cable internet, I use the internet also. So the internet was going to stay on. But the cable TV, no one was going to watch it. And so her family who are themselves in their late 60s, wanted to just take the cable TV off, but of course, dealing with like a giant cable company is just a nightmare nobody wants to deal with when they're grieving. And I was like, Oh, well, I know the answers to all our secret questions. Why don't you just let me handle this? And so I just got on chat. And I was like, this is Ronnie sobered. I'm 96 years old. I don't want cable TV anymore. And they were like, we could sell you and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I just want cable internet. Stop it. You know? Well, you can stream No. But like, that works. You know, I did this with my father. I did this with my mother, like, people die. And if you talk to the cable company, and you're like, I'm the executor for the estate, they're like, send us a death certificate, son. You know, it's just all this bullshit. And it winds up being incredibly difficult to do basic things. And yeah, but if you get chat support on the line and can answer all their secret questions, you can do anything. And it's amazing. So that's my, that's my one weird trick. And I hope everybody in Britain Nikki's family is is okay. And I hope Yeah, read Nikki's. Okay. And then speaking of older family members, I have this post by PDX hiker looking for comedies to watch together with mom, who is very picky about comedy and didn't like Ted lasso. So what the fuck, you know? And so there's a bunch of like, good, good, good suggestions of you know, maybe this person's mom appropriate shows to watch together. Which I thought was nice. And I got another couple things on my on my to watch list.

Cortex 1:22:26 Yeah, I should look through this. Yeah. Yeah, that's some stuff. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's good. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, well,

Jessamyn 1:22:35 yeah. Definitely, like some nothing like some good comedies. So I have one more. Do you have anything else from AskMe? Metafilter? No. Okay. This is some real Berenstain Bears shit. It turns out the chorus in suicidal tendencies song institutionalized, does not use the word institutionalized. They use the word in an institution.

Cortex 1:23:04 I saw people talking about this on Twitter. And for me, this was perfectly enjoyable because I really, I'm aware of the song and I'm aware of like, you know, the, you know, all I wanted was a Pepsi thing, but like, I didn't, I didn't really know this song. Like, I didn't grow up, like listening to I saw

Jessamyn 1:23:21 suicidal tendencies in concert. I just can't. I can't. Can't

Cortex 1:23:28 Are you? Are you a full on institutionalized? Yes, person. All right.

Jessamyn 1:23:34 I had no idea. So I this post

Cortex 1:23:38 wreck? What? Yes. Oh, my gosh. However, in the covers by Census fail, and BRAC they seem institutionalized. And I was wondering if there was like a band named BRAC, but no, it is BRAC from Space Coast is apparently covered. That's excellent.

Jessamyn 1:23:50 Yes. Yeah. So the whole thing's Fascinating, right. But basically, the original song by the original band has lyrics that almost everybody doesn't think are the lyrics.

Cortex 1:24:02 Yeah. That's great.

Jessamyn 1:24:09 And that's it for me. All right. Well, assuming this is out before August 7, which hopefully it will be consider self nominating for the steering committee people who are listening to this podcast you're the kind of person we probably like on the steering committee.

Cortex 1:24:26 Yeah. If you if you care about the site, which you certainly do if you're listening to this podcast because otherwise you know, other than how entertaining me and Jessamyn are and if Yeah, if you think you can, like put in that this is one of the hardest things with volunteer stuff is like finding that intersection of care which is I don't mean to be dismissive but but like, you know, caring about something is something you can do without necessarily having to commit time and effort to it right. But if you can do a little bit of time for if you feel like that is something you've got in you to like do for a little Well, that's that's the right setup. And yeah, definitely think about it. And, you know, inquire to the transition team if you have questions and put your name in there and yeah, got it. Yeah, keep this boat floating.

Jessamyn 1:25:12 Yeah, we'd appreciate it. I appreciate it. You'll get to set policy work with looping the rest of the wonderful moderation team. And

Cortex 1:25:23 I think my only comment on meta stock stuff beyond that is that yeah, I'm retired. My take got updated.

Jessamyn 1:25:29 Has the tag this has still those documents and paperwork. That tasks Yes, that

Cortex 1:25:33 one. Yeah. Well, technically, I owe state some paper. If I've learned anything, like, calling out technicalities, and well, actually, you on the subject is gonna work out extremely,

Jessamyn 1:25:43 extremely well for you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Cortex 1:25:46 100% on that, but we're getting there.

Jessamyn 1:25:49 I mean, I just pander to my base. Yep. No,

Cortex 1:25:52 you've actually been extremely flexible and supportive about all this. And I superduper. Appreciate that. That's part of why I was hoping you'd be willing to do it. So thank you again, you're my

Jessamyn 1:26:02 friend guy. I, you know, I want this to work for you as much as I want it to work for me. Yeah.

Cortex 1:26:07 I think we're getting there. I think we're getting there. There'll probably be some music. Cuz I'm just volunteering work for APHIS. But he's done the last couple times. So but I don't know,

Jessamyn 1:26:17 it's gonna be Thank you very much advice. Again, like, this is wonderful that you've stepped in to do this part. And you know, if you don't feel like you can be on the steering committee. There's other little jobs you can probably help with. We have contributing people who if you have a specific skill like yet for us, at first, we can you can find another way to help the site. So don't feel like if you can't do the steering committee, you can't contribute or participate. Because of course,

Cortex 1:26:44 there's there's there's lots of things that could help out in little ways that lean into that is probably a really good thing for us to keep doing. Yeah. In the long run as a as a community. Great. So yeah, all right. Well, I think it's a podcast and I'm going to turn my air conditioning back on and stop dying now. So yeah, good times. Good fun. Good Eats.

Jessamyn 1:27:09 Yes, yes. And Mefi cafe I don't Yeah, okay. yourself off. I'm gonna go. Clearly need to Yes. And I'm gonna go measure some rooms and figure out what fits where.

Cortex 1:27:20 All right. All right.

Jessamyn 1:27:21 Good talking to you, Josh.

Cortex 1:27:22 Yeah, later friends later, friend. And goodbye, everybody.

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