Podcast 192 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 192: The week between last week and this week (2023-03-05).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

great, good, nice, weird, people, feel, post, thread, little bit, interesting, filter, fucking, talking, job, song, thought, guess, bunch, story, problem

Transcript

Cortex 0:17 So yes, I've hit the recording button, which is what you do at the beginning of a recording. Hey, should we do another five minute discourse on on recording button UI and skeuomorphism? And so on?

Jessamyn 4:47 So it's like you get super hot but also you want something that's going to keep you from getting wet on the outside. Yeah. So yeah, it's mostly just my wrists hurt from doing a whole bunch of like, you're kinda like shoveling

Unknown Speaker 0:03 To the podcast. Next, please come on the show.

Cortex 0:28 Well, I think that was we did that a few episodes. Whereby we did that. I mean, I, you hammered for two minutes about it. About buttons about buttons like the how you tell if it's recording or not recording? How have you simplifies the UI to the point where like, it's just Oh,

Jessamyn 0:42 yeah, well, I think I was talking about don't like the play versus the pause. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's the one that still actually I can't, it breaks. And it really shouldn't break my brain. Like, I'm a grown ass lady. And I understand how things work. But But it's, you

Cortex 0:58 know, it's, it's, this is okay, so so I don't have a whole lot to say about my new job other than like, I have a job now. And it's great to have, you know, a job and in full time, right. Yeah, full time, full time remote work from home. So it's, it's a comfortable fit for what I've been doing for the last 15 years. So yeah, I'm very happy about that. It's a huge relief. Anyone who has been job hunting and is still job hunting, I fucking feel you and anyone who was job hunting and found a job, you know how happy I feel right now. But there is a web form that we use for something at the job where it's there's a little like, on off toggle, like just little CSS element of like, less which rights which for off and on. And it's floating above the label that it corresponds to, which is weird to me in the first place. But because normally it hangs usually, yeah, usually below but okay, do I it's above? Well, you can tell just by looking at context, it's floating over it, it says that there's 50 Of those, in which case, because there's no additional spacing between sub elements. It's the exact same distance from the ones above and below as well. That's annoying. Yeah, I tested to make sure that throwing like a, like a point five em spacer in in the CS, because there's the web interface would actually resolve it. And that totally would, but also, I've been at this job for like three days, I'm not gonna be too much of a pain in the ass about feature requests immediately.

Jessamyn 2:21 But yeah, you know, if you really want to come out of the gate and be that guy, exactly, yeah. Gotta set them up early for understanding what they have gotten into.

Cortex 2:29 I just want to establish good rapport, and then I can sort of like, start being that guy, you know? Yeah. But, but yeah, employment. Yay. It's

Jessamyn 2:37 nice to be employees. And we were talking about touch his job besides that is he was talking about? Well, I don't remember was I talking about or do you were like, you were talking about last week? It's now Saturday.

Cortex 2:48 Oh, right. Right. Yes. So it's Saturday afternoon. We're doing this on a Saturday. And I said, Oh, yeah, I started my new job. And you said, oh, yeah, you started that. You started that last week, right? And I was like, no, no, no, I just started on Wednesday. And you were like, yes. That's what I said. And then we had to establish that you consider Saturday to be next week compared to the workweek sort? Yes.

Jessamyn 3:09 Sorry. I just specifically in that context, last week, in that context, refers to the Monday through Friday that just wrapped up. Okay. And not so Monday through Friday, previous to the weekend before it,

Cortex 3:20 I guess I would say this last week. Yeah. And that would mean that but last week, yeah. But last week for me would definitely be like the week prior. Without further clarification. Yeah.

Jessamyn 3:32 So if you said last week, you would have thought you'd started in February.

Cortex 3:36 Yeah, maybe I'll remember to turn this into an AskMe Metafilter. Cuz, boy, I'm sure we'd get a million opinions. And that'd be exciting. Yeah.

Jessamyn 3:45 could spell some bullshit or not? Because that's against the rules.

Cortex 3:51 I did. Here. This is episode 192. Of the Metafilter monthly podcast. I am Josh cortex Mullard. And I'm Jessamyn. And, yeah, it's Saturday, March 4, and we are recording in the afternoon, and I had

Jessamyn 4:05 just gotten back from town meeting and shoveling what appears to be somewhere between 12 and 15 inches of snow off my car, porch and driveway, some of the driveway. My plow guy came to

Cortex 4:17 do you have sensation in your fingers? Like, do you get like numbingly cold fingers doing this? Or is it more just, it's actually like

Jessamyn 4:23 34 degrees outside which here is that's born? I mean, 30 234 And so basically, no, you know, and you stay super warm. The problem is dressing for it. You know, I was wearing like a flannel shirt under a raincoat kind of like a like a zip up kind of. I don't know what you call it, but like a light coat, and I was sweating. And I felt disgusting by the time I came.

Long the driveway and you kind of knock into an iceberg, you know?

Cortex 5:03 jarring sort of.

Jessamyn 5:05 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What's the worst?

Cortex 5:09 Yeah, a little bit of labor. Whereas I have I've played a video game and read the Internet and it's Saturday afternoon and because I have a Monday through Friday job now it's like, it's Saturday, baby. So

Jessamyn 5:22 it feels like an extra Saturday. Did you just literally pop

Cortex 5:25 open? Did I just opened up a nice Ballard hazy Imperial IPA. I'm, I'm, I'm getting back into normal life here. It's definitely beer o'clock on a Saturday. The time was so good. Yeah. No, I liked the feeling so and

Jessamyn 5:40 we had town meeting, which is, you know, it's democracy and action in Vermont. And it was actually a little lively. I mean, it's a little snore, but also a little lively, because we have this funny cop situation, which is to say my town successfully at least partially defunded, its police force a couple of years ago. Well, it's frigging great. And so we had a contract with the County Sheriff's Department for a little bit of policing. And it costs significantly less than it costed before. And that was great, and et cetera. But then, some shit got shaken up, the Republican Sheriff got voted out of office by a democratic sheriff and kind of took his ball and went home and a whole bunch of people quit. So there weren't enough police to fulfill the contract. So the contract was basically rescinded with like, 30 days notice. And so our select board, you know, if it were me running the town, I just feel like, well, fuck it, no police, then, you know, yeah, whatever. We don't matter. There's no, there's no crime, which is mostly true. But the Select Board really felt like they had to get police. And so they had to, like, make this whole thing up, which now means that we go from a budget of significantly less than it had been to maybe double what it was last year. And the town is weird, because it's made up of four villages. And only the central village, which is where I live, is going to pay for the police. They're the only people who have ever paid for the police. There's no police in the other villages in town. And so it's fascinating because the school is in the village, the hospital is in the village, the police serve the school in the hospital, but only the people who live in the village pay for it. And like I'm all in favor of paying taxes for like, practically everything else. But it's wild to think, you know, our taxes are gonna go up, blah, blah, blah, for cops, who, you know, need all this crap that they don't really need. And, and it's just awkward. And so there was just a lot of people. I think everyone who spoke to maybe maybe 10 or 15, people spoke to it who are all like, yep, vote no on police. Because it's only the people in the village who vote for whether to or not to approve the police budget. Yeah, even though the rest of voting that all happens on Tuesday, you know, to elect the library trustees and a whole bunch of other shit. Sure. Everybody votes on that. But the police is are only voted by the village. And so you know, most people were like, Nope, I'm voting no. And then there's like, maybe two people who are like, but you know, yeah. And it's hard, because I appreciate that the Select Board represents everybody, you know, including a lot of people who really want a lot of police. But I don't think they're the people who live in the village for the most part. And so it just went there was something interesting to talk about at town meeting. I was kind of into it. You know, my friend who lives across the street as the moderator. So she got to basically run the meeting. I get along great with the town clerk. But there were probably 50 or 60 people there in like a 4500. Member town. Because we had this blizzard. Wow, I don't know blizzard. What does it mean to be a blizzard? Oh, no,

Cortex 9:08 that's a good question. Yeah, I don't know. But you know, I mean, apparently in Portland, it means like, you know, two inches of snow. Right?

Jessamyn 9:15 No, but here like I walked to, because I couldn't get my car out of the driveway. And so I walked to the town hall and you know, what was probably a little less than a foot of snow. You just walked down the middle of the road. You know, but I think that kept a lot of people home who might have otherwise come. Yeah. So I don't know. So it was very interesting and very lively. Yeah. My arms are like, we hate you. And I'm like, you'll get over it. I'm just waiting to get strong. Like, I've been shoveling probably every day this week. When do I get strong?

Cortex 9:49 I think I think getting swole may be a somewhat more long term. I don't

Jessamyn 9:52 want to be I just want to be stronger and not have my arms hurt the same amount.

Cortex 9:56 Well, I mean, it can be very slightly small, subtle. First of all, but but but yeah, I think I get the impression it's sort of a long term thing. Like I have to keep doing strenuous, like, you know, muscle building exercise over the course of like months.

Jessamyn 10:12 Maybe next time I take a shower, I'll do a little flexing in the mirror. Mm, see? Yeah. Because as you know, I cut off all my hair.

Cortex 10:18 Did Yeah. Last? I don't remember if it happened last time, or if I just tell you at the meantime,

Jessamyn 10:24 because I feel like I sent a picture. You know, abusing my authority. Everybody looked at my picture. Tell me I looked nice. But I feel like that helps you lose, you know, I weigh less with less hair. You see my neck better?

Cortex 10:41 Drop a little dead weight. Exactly. It's one, you know. The hair doesn't wear weigh that much. Right? But it's all on your head. So you're disproportionately feeling it so well.

Jessamyn 10:51 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right.

Cortex 10:54 So you wouldn't feel as much if you shaved your back. The same amount of hair mass, you know, just because the musculature holding it up is differently arranged.

Jessamyn 11:04 Josh and Martha I have a hairy back.

Cortex 11:06 I mean, I mean, the old me wrong.

Jessamyn 11:08 I love a good hairy back. But no

Cortex 11:11 more than generic you a person. If a person were to have like a heads worth of hair on their back and shave it off. I don't feel like it would have a meal less like yeah, we'd be less of a load off. Although probably be a major, you know, textural change. Say someone who's like your shirts

Jessamyn 11:29 feel we? Yeah, exactly.

Cortex 11:31 You know.

Jessamyn 11:33 Alright, so.

Cortex 11:35 Yeah, I guess yeah,

Jessamyn 11:37 there has been no jobs. Let's just get that out of the way. I'm gonna tell people, they should post more jobs. There have not been any jobs.

Cortex 11:54 Or they've come and gone so quickly that we didn't see them.

Jessamyn 11:58 Yeah, good question. I mean, it's possible,

Cortex 12:00 there could have been 500 jobs all snapped up immediately. Like that. I mean, that could have been like, that seems really unlikely. But you know,

Jessamyn 12:09 when you load the Jobs page, do you just see a bunch of little boxes where there would be little pointers? Or do you see it supposed to look well? Like, you know, if there is a job in a place normally there's like a little pointer, like image over the place? Oh, like

Cortex 12:28 on the map up top? Yeah, up on the map. That is currently not loading for me. So no,

Jessamyn 12:32 oh, you don't see the map at

Cortex 12:34 all? Are you? I've got a white space instead of a map content. So I think something's funky on my end. Oh, we're on on there. And I don't know. I don't know what state the API Yeah,

Jessamyn 12:44 cuz what I see is a map and you know, just says United States because I believe all the jobs for us right now. And then a bunch of like, boxes that look like they would have like an arrow and an icon or

Cortex 12:57 something. And well, maybe there maybe there's something going on. Somebody wants to let us

Jessamyn 13:01 know what you're seeing. Yeah.

Cortex 13:05 Anyway, yes. Yeah. I don't know. Almost like just thinking, thinking about you know what it is, I think about the job thing, and the problem is like the most recent job up there is job number 2000 That no one wants to break the round number stream.

Jessamyn 13:23 Of course. Josh, you've nailed it.

Cortex 13:26 Yep. There it is my keen insight into the secret code of the world. But yeah, projects. Here's a project that I appreciate this is for more spin looks like it got uh, oh, yeah, I

Jessamyn 13:38 got this is great. And it drove me crazy. Like that concept drives me crazy. But why don't you

Cortex 13:43 Yeah, this is learnable which is like Word or maybe layered. I just it's little but I just wondered why. I guess it's gotta be turtle. But like, you know, I think it's little because it's a lie and instead of just playing Wordle so like, take Wordle but also it lies about one of the answers it's like you know, fucking those those Tropi crit guards from creep or No, no, no, it's all Cretans are liars. That's right. Anyway, point is lies. The people from Crete classic, it's a classic paradox. It's like you're talking

Jessamyn 14:18 about I was like, looking at another thing and then came back and I was like, that's

Cortex 14:22 not not You're not. I've heard people say Cretans? Yeah, maybe that's the thing that I say cretin. But then then No, no I ever had talked about crit, then it's a problem.

Jessamyn 14:31 I say cretins, too. I just I just was like, I didn't know you met people from Korea. And I thought Yeah, people. Low intelligence. Yes.

Cortex 14:40 Yes, no, there's the classic like paradoxical aphorism of some, some philosopher who was from Crete sit quipping that all Cretans are liars. And so like, but if that were true, then he's telling the truth. But if he's telling the truth, then it's false. And you know, yeah, anyway, little more has been made a variation that involves some lie. That's fantastic. And

Jessamyn 15:01 so I haven't played this. So basically, each answer, like, most of the stuff it tells you is the truth. But like one of the things is off. Oh, I get it, it picks ones. Yeah.

Cortex 15:13 Like it figures out what the answer would be that you'd get as your normal world feedback and then like picks one of those and tweaks it to make it wrong. So you have to like, so you have to, like figure out by, by, by inference what the lies are based on inconsistencies in the truth table of the answers you've gotten so far. And it sounds like it's still a work in progress. But the basic thing is there and works. And, yeah, so I appreciate incredibly that concept. I like anything that gets into weird, shitty misinformation and unreliable

Jessamyn 15:48 narrator kind of stuff. Whereas it just makes my brain break. And I'm like, No, I just need people that just tell the truth. Well,

Cortex 15:55 it's tricky to because you really have to be careful about what sort of puzzle you try and apply that kind of trickery to because you want it to like be tricky in a way that is sort of fair to the puzzle, too.

Jessamyn 16:05 Well, I get a ball ultimately, like if there's too many lies, it's like, well, what even this is how I feel about books with too much magic.

Cortex 16:14 Because then Then why does any plot problem actually exist? Right?

Jessamyn 16:16 The magician first magician, they're like, here's this bell pew. Oh, I respond with this spell. And because it's all I mean, in some cases, there's really good internally consistent, magical worlds. But in many cases, there's just a bunch of random shit that can happen. And then it's random. Not interesting. Yeah.

Cortex 16:36 Yeah, exactly.

Jessamyn 16:37 We were talking on pre roll that I've read some unsatisfying. Yeah.

Cortex 16:41 I mean, I don't want to, like make this the Hey, dunk on a book thing. But is there a good example of I can't

Jessamyn 16:46 jump out here. Remember, I just know that I've read some that either just seemed like super too dark, or just not quite enough. They're there. You know. And I think normally, I would just kind of stop, you know, and for whatever reason, I sort of persevered, thinking, well, maybe this will turn around and it didn't. Yeah, not necessarily magically themed books, either just, I don't know, just had a weird run. I'm written some good books now. And I just finished a book I highly recommend, which is called Babel are on the necessity of violence and account of the Oxford translators revolution, which essentially is a book with a tiny amount of magic in it takes place in sort of early 1800s. And the whole concept is kind of a metaphor for the Industrial Revolution overlaid on top of the actual industrial revolution, where you can have like these word pairs, where one is a word in one language, and one is word in another language, or the same word in a different language. And the tension between the meanings being slightly different, can itself create like a slightly magical effect that can help. And finding those word pairs and understanding other languages enough that you can understand etymologies becomes what the translators do. But then it turns out, they're just doing that in service to Empire, which is deeply unsatisfying, because many of them are people of color, who have been taken from their native homes, because of their language facility, but then they're using it to essentially,

Cortex 18:27 you know, support the empire that colonization. Yeah. And

Jessamyn 18:31 it's really well done. And it was, That sounds

Cortex 18:34 fantastic. I, I really, I really like it when I like a mechanical magic system. I like I like it, I like it, when there is something that's not so much, oh, we came up with a basic rule set. So this is how you can cause magic to work. But rather, like, we've discovered that there is a mechanism by which something that is functionally magical, because we don't understand it, and neither terms happens. But also, we really are having a hard time figuring out how it works and how best to manipulate it. And it's, it's basically fussy technology with terrible documentation

Jessamyn 19:06 that is mostly this. I mean, there's clearly like a little bit of magic involved to you know, so you have because obviously, it has like an effect that is not is not an actual physical effect. But in general, you have to have these little silver bars that have the words etched on them, and you have to put them in a place and you have to keep them polished or outsole thing falls apart. Yeah. And maintaining those silver bars becomes kind of a grift for the translators, and they make money doing that. And so it's in their best interest to not make that you know, I could go on Yeah, no, that sounds good. A really good book when after reading a bunch of like, fine, but kind of lackluster ebooks. This one was so up my street. Oh yeah. happy about it.

Cortex 19:48 I am currently rereading harrow the ninth I reread getting the ninth. I don't know these times. Oh, this is the locks tomb series. By Tasman Muir, I think As the name of the author, she's great. They're wonderful. They are sort of weird, sort of Hive, like sort of very alternate setting high fantasy science fiction, Tumblr. Stories like, like it's Tumblr in the sense that like, the author is an extremely online 21st century person. So there's lots of like weird, little, like, subtle riffs and jokes and sort of like,

Jessamyn 20:30 love that stuff I've casually seen when I read that.

Cortex 20:33 Yeah, exactly. I laughed out loud many times reading the first two books because of things that like, if someone didn't know what they are, there's always a slightly odd turn of phrase. And instead I'm like, Oh, I get it. I get that joke.

Jessamyn 20:44 It's like, did you see other Jim made a bunch of Lego minifigs? Or Maxi fix? Yeah. And part of you know, he sort of made them and talked about making them on the internet. But then one of the last things he did was he set them up in that whatever that stupid four panel. Oh, my God, I'm not even going to explain this. Right? Yes. I'll send you I'll send you a link to it. But like it was very, very subtle, right at first cropping because he's on you know, on Twitter, like at first cropping, like fucked it all up. And so he was like, god dammit, like my joke. And, but then he posted it again. And it's just it's such a like, joke on top of a joke. Yeah, just ridiculous.

Cortex 21:36 Well, the locker room books are very good. And they have a very, like, magic exists, but it's not like magic magic in like a woowoo. And now there's wizards things so much as like, like, let necromancer Is there are there necromancers who deal with like, death energy, but it's like, it's got this whole training and discipline. And sort of like theory and science to it aspect, that's a running theme through the books, to the point where like, it's not treated like a Oh, and now a wizard will solve a problem. It's like, okay, well, we know exactly what we can and cannot do with bone and sufficient, you know, support energy based on these known theorem, right? And

Jessamyn 22:14 don't get me wrong, I don't want to be thrown shade on wizards. You know what? I but I just I don't want anybody to feel like I'm, yeah, I just, it's not my jam. If it is your jam, more power to you,

Cortex 22:27 you can do great storytelling and fun things with like magic that just fall on. Hey, it's magic, you know, and everyone has a different magic system and the different ways of thinking about that and the degrees to which that's like, worked out in detail versus left as a bit of like, you know, subtle characterization, the universe like, yeah, it just depends on the story you're telling and how you're telling it. I just happen to like it when someone gets like mechanical and disciplined about how this stuff is functioning, even if it is unquestionably weird, supernatural, non technology non, you know, inexplicable stuff at some level. So.

Jessamyn 22:59 Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, good. I'm glad. Yeah. I mean, it must feel wild to you to have like weekends.

Cortex 23:06 Yeah, I mean, this again, like, this is like, this is the first day of the first weekend I've had in a meaningful sense. And in a while, it's really been, you know, the weird blur of unemployment and like medical care before that I had to schedule but also it was like, Dude, did you? Yeah, like it got better than it had been when I first started but, but it also got worse.

Jessamyn 23:27 Yeah, no, I Yeah.

Cortex 23:29 It's an interesting place to be anyway, projects. We have other projects. Yeah,

Jessamyn 23:33 I liked the st. Jason digitize put together, which is just like word searches for his dad. His dad's name is Perry Perry likes word puzzles. They made a website about it. And they even made metal filter word puzzle like with with metal filter or noise. And it's just, you know, it's the you can turn the hints on or off, depending on how, you know, how, how, how much you want it to actually be puzzling. Oh my god, it's adorable. The Metafilter ones adorable. But, yeah, it's just it's a fun little thing. There's a ton of word puzzles if you know somebody who likes word puzzles that the user interface is lovely. And it's just, it's just, it's just neat.

Cortex 24:20 Yeah, that's, that's, that's lovely. There is a nice project from soon dark. Oh, nice visualization of their exercise in Toronto, basically, because of like gyms closing now because of COVID. They decided to like, Okay, I'm gonna do a lot of walking and I don't want to like you know, just walk the same path all the time. So I'm just gonna, like try and mix it up. And so there's these series of maps that they've posted that sort of track that, that that that history of walking over the last few years and in a few different views, and it's very nice. Look at it. I'd love a good, you know, data visualization of like, you know, mapping geography.

Jessamyn 25:06 I love liquor too.

Cortex 25:08 Yeah. It's kind of nice. It's like, oh, yeah, Flickr that exists. Yeah, like I started an account there.

Jessamyn 25:14 Yeah, no, that's, uh, that's neat. And, you know, I've now gotten in the habit of saying, saying it how Dan Hahn says it like, up I'm gonna go for a stupid walk for my stupid mental health. That's what I do. And you know, it mostly, it mostly helps a lot, honestly. Yeah. So

Cortex 25:35 that's sort of gotten out of the habit as as the the weather has been shitty, and I should try and get back to it.

Jessamyn 25:42 Oh, man, I walk in all the weather here. Like, unless I'm like, in actual danger of getting like run over because nobody's plowed anything and nobody will be able to see me in fact, like, I had a real setback the other day because I got this great jacket at the thrift store. It's one of those kind of like, long like comes down past my butt. Because all my other ones are like go to my waist. And it's got one of those like, like fuzzy hoods, you know, that like your, your head kind of sits back in like the hood flips over your head. And then it's got like, like failures const Yeah, it's so good. And then like I was walking around with it and the zipper just because it's snuggie on me, but like, I think that's normal. I don't know, maybe it isn't, but the zipper was like I give up and like exploded and now it was zip up. And I had to like you know, go on YouTube and figure out how to change a zipper and then I went to like zipper shipper.com or something like that and got a zipper sent to me in the mail and it's almost here. But it had because

Cortex 26:44 of you. It was a US posting about maybe on on malt shop about discovering that every zipper has like a zipper size marking on it.

Jessamyn 26:53 Ah, was it mall topper was

Cortex 26:56 Macedon. Yeah, that could be some of it. I saw Yeah. I did not I have no idea. I was like I was I was this is tremendous. Like, like, it's one of the things that immediately probably makes sense because probably they don't have just a billion bespoke zippers. They've probably got some standardization.

Jessamyn 27:12 Standardization. There's like four zippers for the most part, you know, yeah.

Cortex 27:16 It never occurred to me.

Jessamyn 27:18 No. Fascinating. I was so interested. And that's what I found out because you know, the

Cortex 27:22 fascinating it's a fascinating because it's fascinating.

Jessamyn 27:31 Are you still here?

Cortex 27:35 I feel like we haven't done that bit in a little. I feel like it's been a couple of months.

Jessamyn 27:39 Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this is this is me collar and about it on on. Yeah. But I basically there's a lot of terrible YouTube videos about How to Fix A Zipper because of course, Hi, my name is Jessica. And today I'm going to talk to you all about zippers. Zippers have been used since the 12th century to fasten and you're just like, oh my god stop.

Cortex 27:59 So to YouTube incentivizes eight to 10 minutes videos, so I'm obliged to like pad the fuck out of this thing because I want to monetize it. So let me tell you the history of this recipe. So I did

Jessamyn 28:11 find like a perfect channel that really was like, here's the No bullshit way to replace a zipper. And now I'm just waiting for my zipper to arrive. You know, which should be next week, meaning starting Monday. And

Cortex 28:25 wait. So last week is this Wednesday that just passed? Next week is the Monday what is? What is this? What is Saturday? Well, no, like you're saying like Monday, two days?

Jessamyn 28:37 What's if I'm saying this week? When do I mean? Right? Well,

Cortex 28:40 well, you said next week, like it's gonna come next week, on Monday. So like, are you talking two days from now or nine days from now? Three days from now? Okay, so at least so Monday is next week consistent? Well put, okay. Hear me out. If Wednesday is last week, like Wednesday, for three days ago is last week and Monday, two days from now is next week, then this is a week in between two other weeks. Saturday and Sunday. The weekend is in between two weeks. Like two different weeks, neither of which is which would make it like a third middle week.

Jessamyn 29:15 No, no, that's what I that. Yeah. So like if if I'm saying what is this week? What is it because there's nothing if there's last week and next week, but there's no week in the middle of

Cortex 29:24 it. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't work. It's Oh, I I am so upset.

Jessamyn 29:33 In general. Not knowing how the inside of my brain works. I'm sorry. I had to have no

Cortex 29:40 but I kid I genuinely enjoy.

Jessamyn 29:43 Oh, no, I know what you mean. It's yeah. But yeah,

Cortex 29:46 yeah, that one? I don't know. I don't know about that.

Jessamyn 29:49 I just don't things on the weekend. That's

Cortex 29:51 well, yeah, that's fancy. That's it. That's a really good. That's a really good basis for it like that. That is what this strange week between two other weeks is it's the We can shut the fuck up. And let's not worry about the calendar. Yeah, philosophically, that's great. So yeah, we are in a we're in a void space.

Jessamyn 30:11 I'm certainly in a void space. Yep.

Cortex 30:14 Yes. Really excited about my new job. I have a work laptop and I just closed it at the end of the day. And then I don't look at it again until the next time I have to work. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's incredible. I don't know. It's just it's that's a hell of a thing.

Jessamyn 30:28 The one time I had a work laptop was when I worked at GitHub for 11 days.

Cortex 30:33 Well, hopefully I'll do your tenure.

Jessamyn 30:36 You probably will. Do they make you use that work laptop for everything? Like if you logged in from a personal computer? Would that be against the rules? Yeah, that was part of my problem with GitHub is I was like, I can't make this thing work on the Chromebook. And they're like, add, just use your laptop. And then I use my personal laptop. And then that was part of the

Cortex 30:54 Yeah, no, no, no, they're very serious about compliance. Like it's related to finance. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, no, no. If my laptop stops working, I just won't do that kind of work until they shipped me a new and sort of thing. And I've got a work phone specifically for two FA for that laptop. Yeah, it's like, the real deal shit. Which I appreciate because it's, it's cool. How siloed it will be is amazing. Anyway, yeah.

Jessamyn 31:22 Right now I am sitting at my desk, on my laptop in front of my desktop machine. Because if you'll recall, tricast doesn't work on my desk. No reason we have ever been able to figure it out. So I have a really nice desktop machine that I am, unfortunately, completely unable to use for this podcast. Like if

Cortex 31:42 you want for like, 2023 we can make it the year of like a new, like web based podcasting software, like, you know, no offense to Ray casts, but also like, we're just using it because it works.

Jessamyn 31:53 Yeah, it only sort of works via tricast problem. Like it probably has something to do with something on my desktop computer. Holding the headphone port, you know, the sound stuff hostage for reasons unknown? Yeah, because I can use everything else. Yeah, maybe I'll just try and debug it. Sometimes. It's just hard to debug. Because whenever we're on tricast, we're sitting around recording the podcast. And the last, so

Cortex 32:19 yeah, if you ever want to just spin up a bullshit non podcast tricast discussion? I'm happy to just recite bad puns for

Jessamyn 32:28 ya, because it's probably just uninstalling and reinstalling drivers to be honest. Like that, but who knows? Right?

Cortex 32:35 Yep. All right. Well, do you have anything specifically else from projects you want to mention?

Jessamyn 32:40 I don't I I always like looking at people's stuff there. So there's more

Cortex 32:45 things go look and submit your own stuff. If you're making something or he made something, go put it up there.

Jessamyn 32:50 Or if you saw something you like, put it up on the filter from projects.

Cortex 32:56 Which we had a couple people do on these and that's that's always nice. And also like, we're coming at this like we it was like a week and a half into February when we the last one so we just don't have as much to go or either.

Jessamyn 33:06 Yeah, I guess that's true. We're a little bit more on the ball this

Cortex 33:09 time around. Shorty month this time. Anyway, and February

Jessamyn 33:13 was short. So yeah. Which Happy Women's History Month. Have you heard about Rosa Parks? I mean, yes. That's what women's feels like. To me. It's like people telling me about the same women I knew about and not about like, you know, other other women besides the women. We know about. I want to hear more about Wilma Mankiller, even though we often hear a lot about Wilma Mankiller, because people's knowledge of native history is not great. But yeah, I want to I want to hear about more radical interesting women. Yeah. I want to hear about Yeah,

Cortex 33:54 yeah, dig in on it. How that reminds me of a friend of mine told project that I probably talked about years ago when it was like, sort of an odd I don't know if it's an ongoing thing, but it was rejected princesses was the name of it. Oh, sure. There was a medical post at some point. Because it's, it was just good. But yeah, this is a guy named Jason Porath, who I am lucky enough to have randomly befriended because of XOXO. But he just did like an ongoing long series of sort of like illustrated write ups about like, you know, problematic women not problematic and like the capital P fucking problematic men sense but like,

Jessamyn 34:34 problematic to history for

Cortex 34:35 whatever reason. Yeah, you know, they were they they were poorly behaved. And, you know, some of them were like, you know, probably also like bloodthirsty, you know, conquerors and whatnot, but you don't hear those too much either. Anyway, yeah. Just reminds me that it was always fun reading his stuff, because he was like, you know, like, hey, let's not just do like, you know, yeah, the four approved sanitized. Women that you're allowed to talk about because they don't scare any But again, the establishment. Yeah. radicalized that shit.

Jessamyn 35:05 Yeah. And just to talk about more different people's stories, yeah. Frankly, like, yeah, yeah, there's there's lots and lots of people doing interesting things, many of them women for this particular month, but just in a general sense. Yeah, you

Cortex 35:19 can go beyond just like the, you know, major entries in that one old printed encyclopedia you have.

Jessamyn 35:24 Yeah. Well known to Africa. Let's hear more about her.

Cortex 35:29 But, yes, metaphor, let's talk about the blue. All right. Let me Yeah, some posts.

Jessamyn 35:34 Let me let me let me bring up my get my stuff. Do you have stuff? Do you want to?

Cortex 35:41 I'll I haven't pulled them up yet. I'll throw one out from today that I am looking forward to reading into the links on but it's a post from Brian about the genetics of charitable dogs, which is like looking at the genetic history of canines, basically, in the Chernobyl exclusion, areas around that. Like, it's okay, it's just like there is measurable genetic drift that is likely attributable insignificant part to the higher levels of radiation in that area. So there's like degrees of I don't know if outright speciation, but like, you know, genetic change is measurable in this population of dogs who continue to reproduce exist. So it's, it's just, it's, it's one of those things that comes up as like a natural effect of, you know, a significant radioactive event. But unlike, it's interesting, partly because unlike the people who decided to stay or move back into the exclusion zone, where you have people with a sort of sense of agency, and at certain point, you can't say, Well, you know, I guess you're gonna go live your life, you know, it's dogs, dogs aren't going to, like have the same sort of relationship with the news about, you know, radioactive stuff. They're just going to live there. And yeah, so I'm interested to look into more of that and see what all has been sort of found in the new because it's like a new article from nature sort of updating sort of information on this. But yeah. I mentioned it, partly because it does not seem like it's like, oh, the here's a bunch of dogs in terrible distress, which is like, here's a weird new chapter for this subset of dogs, you know, like, they're there. They're alive. They're living there. They're reproducing, you know, life goes on.

Jessamyn 37:30 Sorry, Jim is doing that thing where I tell him, I'm podcasting. And then Hi, Jim texting. Like, don't get me wrong, like it's good. I should have Do Not Disturb maybe on I guess I turned Do Not Disturb on on my desktop machine and then not on the laptop because I have to text you in order to get the link to this. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. The one just 100% making sure that we did not.

Cortex 38:02 Yeah, it's a little duplications. All right. I don't

Jessamyn 38:04 like it, though. I feel like it means my memory is terrible. And I would prefer to just check. But the the thread that I enjoyed being a part of and I enjoyed reading along with, is this one by situation normal, linking to substack. interviewing the last man without a cell phone.

Cortex 38:28 Oh, I saw that I thought was passed by but I did not to

Jessamyn 38:31 spoiler alert, he has a cell phone, that's son of a bitch. She just doesn't use it much. And he's like that guy, you know,

Cortex 38:41 like, is that guy who doesn't have a television? I don't know if he's that.

Jessamyn 38:44 But like, he has a cell phone, but he doesn't like to use his cell phone. And so he's extraordinarily difficult, as near as I can tell to, for certain people to, like, interact with and deal with. But he's just like, I'm making a statement and etc. But I mean, I think I think that's the joke if the tags are right.

Cortex 39:08 But the tags are humor and lols. Yes.

Jessamyn 39:11 But maybe they're just making fun of the guy. And at any rate, the thread was just a lot of people talking about, you know, how much you are required to have a cell phone to sort of interact with with modern America. And what's that about? And it's interesting to me, because, you know, my technology is specific, and I was kind of a late cellphone adopter. And it was definitely the only reason I had a smartphone was because Mac bought them for us whenever that was. Yeah.

Cortex 39:44 It was like 2008 I think,

Jessamyn 39:46 yeah, pretty late in the game. Well, I mean, I guess it was early for iPhones, but just in a general sense. I didn't use it for a long well, it

Cortex 39:55 had been the same. It had been the same for me. I'd like I'd had a flip phone and I hadn't seen a reason to spend the money to do some But else but like, well, if you want to spend the money, I'm sure. Yeah,

Jessamyn 40:03 yeah, exactly. And so talking to people about it. And you know, I definitely know around here, you know, Vermont, especially, and I'm sure there's other places like it, but I've just noticed it in Vermont. There's a lot of exceptionalism around technology that people not only maybe don't have technology, which is fine, like it's a choice you can make, but are kind of proud of, they're not having of the technology, even as they inconvenience the people around them. Because they're taking what they perceive to be a principled stance, and maybe it is a principled stance, I don't know. But but there's a certain extent to which was I, I don't think this had happened the last time I talked to you, but like, I was invited to dinner over at people's houses that I didn't really know that well. And like I went to sit down, was I telling the story, I tell remember. So I was waiting to hear what happened. I went to sit down and my phone was in my pocket. And I took my phone out of my pocket and put it facedown on the table. And I was told by a person older than me that we don't have cell phones at the table as if I were a fucking six year old.

Cortex 41:04 You did not tell me this because fucking furious.

Jessamyn 41:08 Yes, well, I was fucking furious. And especially because it was kind of, you know, I was, it was like, I was invited to a dinner party of people I didn't know very well, it was me. Two other people who are younger than me, one of the person older than me, and the people who are hosting who were really nice people who I liked a lot, were older, but they're definitely have that kind of like NPR VPR generation, like, they really believe the way they view the world is correct. You know, and, and, and it's not like, we agree on almost everything politically. So it's like I, you know, I didn't want to make a thing out of it. But the places we don't agree are, you know, my burn it all to the ground stance, which is one thing, but also my enjoying technology, which is another thing, right? And so, you know, every now and again, we talk about some technology aspect, and they'd all be like, well, you know, the guy prides himself on like, looking at a paper map and remembering where he's going and not having a GPS, which good for you. But exactly, me nice. My brain doesn't work that way. And there was just this kind of implication that maybe, you know, I or whoever hadn't tried hard enough, which again, I resent. And so, you know, I put my phone on the table, I was told to not put my phone on the table. And I told him, I wasn't taking my phone off the table. And we just stared at each other for a two beat. And then we moved on and had our dinner. But like, you know what? Like, as you can tell, I'm still mad a little bit. Yeah. Um, and so it's interesting to me to see different people's perspectives, not only what their perspective is, but how normal they think their perspective is. Yeah. Because I'm a heavy user of technology. And I'm aware that's outside the bell curve. But I don't know if these people who are low users of technology kind of understand that they too, are outside the bell curve. Yeah, I mean, so this thread, back to metal filter was really interesting for me, because there's a whole bunch of people that had stuff to talk about.

Cortex 43:15 Yeah, it's all to decide whether I want to go back and read because it's this kind of thread that I think I would find both interesting. And I guess here's the question, how much was there people like, really feeling that their position was correct. And what the fuck is your problem?

Jessamyn 43:28 Very few actually. Okay, then I should go back and there was a little bit of that, but not much. I

Cortex 43:34 mean, there's there's gonna be a little bit like it's the bell curve thing, you know, all over again. But yeah, as long as it's the bell curve.

Jessamyn 43:42 We've got the knobs like is there a new curve? I don't know about?

Cortex 43:46 Yeah, there's gonna be there's gonna be people who are like normal about it in the normal distribution center. And then there's gonna be people who are like, extremely fussy and a few people are extremely anti fussy. You Yeah. The L curve. It's it's it's a statistical analysis of the episodic content of every episode of The L Word. Series Ron I mean, that'd be good blog Yeah,

Jessamyn 44:13 I'd watch Well, I have a bunch

Cortex 44:15 of things from I

Jessamyn 44:16 have a couple more most of mine are actually in AskMe Metafilter

Cortex 44:20 Okay, well, I will hit you with a ton of the blue then heavy with a ton of the blue first and foremost curious new made a post about a webcomic called Kill 6 billion demons, which they have mentioned to me before and I had never gotten around to looking around and then was like well, it's on the front page so I guess I did finally look at it and it's great. Oh my god, it's weird and beautiful. It's like it jumps like within the first few pages into basically some girl boyfriend was killed when they were about to have sex but not in like, like it was terrible and violent but in a weird strange fantasy sense. Not in like a you know, home invader sense like a demon comes with the rope. Oral basically kills them both but she doesn't really die so much as absorb a key to one of the many dimensions of space into her forehead and then is transported into a land of demons and starts learning about this extremely expansive explained in situ mythology of the nature of the multiverse and the fall of Heaven and the rise of new gods and it's fascinating it's great it's beautiful look at it's like I I'm taking it in little chunks just to not like burn through the whole fucking thing, but, man, it's great. I really like it. It's a great fantastical weird webcomic full of strange lore and world building and yeah, so Okay, curious do you got me

Jessamyn 45:38 man? I'm just looking at like the first few pages of it and it just ah, like, it's cool looking. But like who's her boyfriend? He seems creepy. He's walking a lot is he a bad man?

Cortex 45:52 There's a weird sort of sweaty hyper characterized nature to the whole thing like I don't know if he's ever gonna come back like he just like it's not even a spoiler It's so early he like he just straight up gets killed by some random demon from another dimension, like in the very beginning of the story. And you know, and it's not so yeah, yeah, so we know nothing at the beginning about him and we still don't know like probably, you know, 5060 pages in his as far as I've gotten but but yeah, it's gorgeous. If you're looking for a weird beautifully drawn what is going on here story. I'm really liking it. It's it really seems fantastic. Me on a very different aesthetic notes. There was a post from Dig Dug about a choir choir choir performance of rainbow connection featuring Kermit the Frog. For anybody who hasn't seen him before choir choir choir does great big Seagull on events like 1000 people coordinated and singing along to some well known song like Adele did when at one point and but as it's a really great vibe, if you like a big sing along because it's a great big scene along and in this case, it also has, you know, Kermit singing and his rainbow connection. And it's nice to watch. And a lot of people relate just immediately, like, I can't watch this right now I'm at work and I can't, like cry. Oh, I'm going to and you know, that also, there's, there's another classic song, there's the Gonzo song, was it someday I'll go back there. I can't remember the name. But that one also came up as like, let's go on. So thinking about like his home planet implicitly and maybe someday going home and it's a sort of sorrowful, hopeful campfire song. I don't think it has quite the same footprint as rainbow connection as kind of like the or muppet. Yes, really sing along song,

Jessamyn 47:47 but you know, moving right along.

Cortex 47:49 Yeah. But probably Nobody cries it moving right along. Anyway, it's nice. It's a nice performance. And that's a nice thread full of people, you know, just like a few dozen comments of people talking about aspects of it, the Gonzo song and just sort of Jim Henson and a certain amount of argument that I admit to being part of about the actual interpretation of whether there are in fact that many songs about rainbows which was prompted in part by a link in the post itself. But But yeah, it was nice. I liked it. It was fun. The performance is very nice. It's it's I love remote connection. It's it's it's a great sing along song. So doing it great big sing along is a good thing to do.

Jessamyn 48:30 I was just watching Ari Shaffir, who's a fairly problematic Jewish stand up comic talking about rainbows. Like he's one of those like, I like him because he's like, he's, he's, he's unapologetically Jewish in a way that I kind of enjoy. Like he was he was raised Orthodox and didn't leave sort of the Orthodox faith until he was in his 20s. And so you know, really kind of has a deep understanding of the Jewish faith but he's also like kind of a do your own research Joe Rogan. And so some of his stand up comedy is hilarious, because it you know, talks about things about Judaism that I think are funny and true and interesting. And then

Cortex 49:18 you've got like Seinfeld, Larry David Jewish. Yeah. Which is like, you know, like, yeah, Seinfeld was a very Jewish like sitcom. York,

Jessamyn 49:27 in a way that is really interesting, you know? Yeah, like the whole, I believe. Now. Now, I'm trying to remember the name of his special, but I think it's just Jewish or something like that. Like, it's all about Judaism and like weird, quirky, interesting things about Judaism. But also, like, maybe he doesn't really like women that much, you know, like he was raised in a completely sort of Orthodox environment, and even the women have the role within it. It's not an equal role, you know, but he did a whole thing about whole shtick, as we say about rainbows and how rainbows are like gods packed with the Jews. And I probably bring this up every other podcast, but it was very funny. And was the thing I thought about when I talked about when you started talking about this. And when I think when I hear about the rainbow connection, that's always what I think of weirdly enough, off to off track down

Cortex 50:23 that that bit.

Jessamyn 50:24 Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is on on YouTube, so you can probably wish you could like Control F, right? Show me show me that. Show me that part.

Cortex 50:36 Yep. I find sometimes if you like do just like Google, like, as much as Google is fucked in so many ways. Like there's a degree to which like, typing in a short description of something like mimetic and Contentful will get you to that sometimes, you know, better than you would have expected. So maybe if I typed in like, you know, rd Schaefer, Russia fear Shaffir.

Jessamyn 51:00 Right, you could probably find somebody else who had already done

Cortex 51:02 that work. Exactly. Yeah. I got a couple a couple of social media ones. I hear. You hear about this one? Just yeah. Okay. Thank you. That was that was my attempt to do a vague riff on a Jay Leno. hacky monologue. Oh, you hear about this one? Oh, yeah. There's a couple of you. Oh, yeah. But yeah, it didn't really. Anyway, there was a Quint made a post about an essay. Well, newsletter, whatever. Newsletters are just essays. They're fun. Anyway, it was an issue of garbage day, which is a very, like good, fun newsletter. And this one was rounding up sort of like the sudden sort of approach of more social media paywall things coming along, because like Twitter, obviously doing the Twitter blue thing as part of Elon is giant fucking disaster.

Jessamyn 52:02 This isn't working. Yeah. But then

Cortex 52:04 like, meta is doing something there. There's been rumors like or rumblings elsewhere of stuff, but like, partly partly just met it doing it makes it all of a sudden, oh, okay. Well, the other giant fucking elephant in the room is doing it. And you know, YouTube does,

Jessamyn 52:19 right? Is that becoming a social media norm now? Yeah. And so like, is this

Cortex 52:23 thing like, is this the moment where there's going to be this hard push to try and get people to do subscription social media, when it's for years been, like, premised almost entirely on the fact that it is free with maybe the occasional upsell on Facebook sites for their business promotion? Shit. So anyway, it's it's, it's a topic that, you know, plenty people are gonna have feelings about and thoughts about, it's kind of a thing of the moment. And it's a nice, big discussion about a bunch of bunch of aspects of that. So I enjoyed that.

Jessamyn 52:52 Yeah, well, it's a nice thank you crowd for talking about this kind of stuff I feel like

Cortex 52:58 then there's also on the sort of younger social media side, but also the older side of the younger side, but also from Quint, who's just hitting the social media track lately. Tik Tok has this new teenage filter. I don't know if you've interacted with this or seen it,

Jessamyn 53:16 I am not basically on TikTok. But like I have used TikTok. So

Cortex 53:21 sure, well, they have like they're constantly rolling out filters and there's like, like official ones and make me look like a teenager. This will what it will do is it will remove your sort of nasal nasal labial creases, and it will smooth your skin in general with kind of a blur and maybe do some things to your hairline if especially if you have no hairline anymore. And bald people tend to get a little bit of like crop of stubble. But yeah, just a sort of like it does a smoothing and sort of de decreasing like in the sense of removing creases sense is the overall

Jessamyn 54:00 thing of like, some people were like, well, social media filters do

Cortex 54:03 Well yeah, but just going for it. And it's it's really fascinating. The post is premise partly around people sort of really sort of like having a reaction to this sudden like weird time warp view of themselves. And they've got a link of Twitter thread of examples which is actually great. That's what I would especially recommend looking at a sort of both see and and action and sort of see how people reacting because you have this really interesting mix of people reacting with a mixture of sort of wonder and confusion and shock and in some cases like really emotionally overwhelmed reactions to suddenly relating to this latter day, adult confrontation with the idea themselves as a younger person, for any number of reasons, you know, people who had like shitty abusive childhoods or like didn't really have a chance of like, just feel like a normal teenager. People who are like experiencing, you know, a real sense of loss because of maybe like body changes and whatnot, and having this sort of like immediate access to like, this sense of a younger self, you all sorts of things like people right? There the the examples, like their videos, so there are people talking on TikTok, to some extent about how they react and why they're reacting. And I thought that was really interesting, and at times, you know, sort of genuinely moving to look at people having these various kinds of reactions. But it's also it's fascinating, partly because I think it's hitting so strong. And I said something like this in the thread, but like, it hits, probably partly because it's video like it's real time video. So it's not just like, right, right? It's not a photograph with Yeah, it's not like a DHT photo through a filter. It's like, people are able to see themselves reacting as a younger version of themselves, to the feelings they're having about seeing, like the feedback loop there. Right. Right. Right. Right. You know, sort of a tremendous thing. That's intense. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a it's another interesting thread, interesting discussion, people talking about different aspects of it. I think the technology in this case is really sort of like, more interesting than almost any other filter thing, because it's doing something other than like, Hey, here's a goofy look. Or, potentially, here's a deceptive thing. It's like, No, this is, to the extent that this does anything, what it does is create a very personal space for the person experiencing it. Because it's going to land on yet public because it's on TikTok. Yeah, yeah. If you decide to post it, yeah. But

Jessamyn 56:21 like, that's the ones that people have decided to put Yeah,

Cortex 56:24 like, that's the thing, you could just load it up in TikTok. And look at it and like, not make a video like that's what I did. It does not work on me. I'm not I look nothing like my younger self. My face is a little bit rounder. Now. I didn't have facial hair as a teenager, the way it like, it can't take your facial hair off. Yeah, like and it does a weird job of it, and it makes it lighter instead of darker, which it would have been if I could grow it. Yeah, it's like, it's it just like I'm not the target market. I think, I think that works better in general for for femme faces. That's another really interesting and at times, kind of powerful thing is like people who are post transition, looking at a version themselves as a teenager that they never, for, you know, any number of reasons got to like, experience at the time, right? Gender, you know, coordinate way. And that's really fascinating. And really,

Jessamyn 57:12 I think I told you, right, like, this is a public story. So I'm not like, you know, telling a private story, but like Lucy Sant who transitioned as a 60 year or some odd year old person. Um, one of the things that prompted her transition was, I think it was like a zoom filter. Where, like, me, because you know, there's all those filters. I actually love the little filters that will like, give me like a mustache, because I like, yeah, what I look like with facial hair. And, you know, I could consider myself lucky that I also, that's probably the wrong way to put it. But like, I just, I'm comfortable with my gender. But I also like looking at myself with facial hair, like cool, that works. That works. But, you know, Lucy talks about, like, what it was like, for her. Basically looking at herself as a woman before she transitioned. Yeah. And suddenly, you know, that was like the egg cracking moment, basically where she was where she was like, oh, like, that's how it was supposed to be. You know,

Cortex 58:21 that looks right. That makes sense to me. Like, yeah, that yeah, and the whole concept of

Jessamyn 58:25 and it really wasn't until that realization that I think she was really aware of it. And then after that, it was like, zip, zip zip, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna move in this direction, like immediately and, you know, it was kind of a it was great thing for her. And I can imagine if you transitioned later in life, being able to see a younger transitioned view of you might be, you know, really, really super powerful.

Cortex 58:53 Yeah. Speaking it's segue time, speaking of trans issues, in a less fun way, but a notable of the moment media culture way.

Jessamyn 59:09 There was a post sake, right, yeah.

Cortex 59:12 Curious new made a post about the collective letter from contributors to the New York Times about their concerns about the editorial bias in the New York Times about transgender and non binary and gender non conforming people and it's really

Jessamyn 59:25 sorry, I couldn't quit the New York Times again. Yeah, it's a

Cortex 59:29 really good letter. It's really well written it's really well put together and it just like underlines, people who've been paying attention already know how fucked the New York Times coverage is, but it's nice to see it so plainly stated. With so many under signers and the New York Times in their you know, resulting response has been like as feckless and full of shit as you probably would have guessed if you were not feeling wildly optimistic about it, but, but the letter itself was good and the attention it is helping bring is good. And God, maybe it'll have some fucking effect in the long run. But yeah, that was a good thread. I don't think it was particularly bumpy. There were a couple of comments. I don't know. But well, and

Jessamyn 1:00:14 if you want to see the sort of earlier, sort of what it was coming under fire for, I mean, obviously this is like, a long time in the making, but there has been some recent stuff that was really sort of part of the problem. And darling, darling, darling Bri, basically has a thing where there's a retrospective article. Yeah, what happened?

Cortex 1:00:39 Yeah, from just not what happened, but

Jessamyn 1:00:41 you know what I mean? Like, do we get kind of a? Now now that we know what we know, let's, let's trace what happened and people's opinion about what went wrong?

Cortex 1:00:55 Yeah. So you know, fucking sort your fucking shit out New York Times.

Jessamyn 1:01:01 See, that's what I want. Women's History wants to be I just want it to be like, you know, all trans women have, you know, through the ages, to the extent that we know, you know, who was trans historically, a long time ago, but like, you know, what, what, what kinds of what kinds of things they did, and I've seen different little projects that have done something like that. And they've always been sort of deeply gratifying, because they're not always people. Again, it's not it's not the Rosa Parks people of the world and the people whose stories are worth telling. One thing that I did want to mention that I liked on the phone was this post by gotta be funky, which is the breakfast store is a doctor who also does YouTube stuff, and who has a three year old and does this series called playdough surgery, which is Play Doh, not lay toe, where you can see what a surgery is going to look like. But without having to watch a surgical procedure, which I think for some people are, you know, feel squeamish about and they're actually really kind of neat.

Cortex 1:02:10 Yeah, they're really delightful. And it's, it's a great point, sort of balance of like getting at that idea of sort of the anatomy and the process while like so abstracting it with like colorful primary colors, and like, you know, plastic tubing and what not that like all of the squeak basically is gone. Which is a really impressive sort of line to manage to walk. And I'm sure like for some people, like there might still be squeaky just as a conceptual thing. But you know, it doesn't have that. Like it's not. It's literally not visceral.

Jessamyn 1:02:42 It's intended to be specifically not visceral.

Cortex 1:02:45 Yeah. Yeah, no, that was that was that was I saw a couple of those. And I really enjoyed that. So that was a, that's a great, great call for a post. I have a I'll knock through a few more real quick. And then we can move on to ask metal filter. I was sort of fascinated by this write up in this post from Etrigan about the sort of history of the band live years, but like, you know, kind of since they were big, briefly in the 90s and

Jessamyn 1:03:21 interested in live in a in a weird way. There was a there was a question that involved lives lyrics that was like on trivia, like a week or two ago, and I'm about the lead singer is really odd, dude, I haven't seen this thread at all. But

Cortex 1:03:40 yeah, him being an odd dude is definitely comes into the discussion. I noticed while still somehow being the least shitty guy involved in terms of Well, that was

Jessamyn 1:03:49 gonna be my question. I see the content warning of domestic violence. That

Cortex 1:03:54 there's a third party outside of the band itself. Who that comes up with, like, as far as I can tell, no one in the band was like, horrible that way, but they worked with a guy who was horrible. And that's kind of part of the whole weird story of the last many years with the band and their bad fortune. But, uh, but yeah. Yeah. What was the question about the lyrics?

Jessamyn 1:04:18 No, it was it was it had to do like, it actually comes up in the thread. Like, there's a there's a there's a line like, I think it's like the placenta falls off the table or falls to the floor. Yeah, the percent of falls to the floor. And I think the question involved like, what, what falls to the floor in the live song? And I don't I don't even think it was regular Match Day. I think it was like a mini league. But I was like, what like, I know that band. I know most of that song. And I literally didn't know that's what the word was, until seeing it at trivia like a couple of weeks ago and there are a lot of holes

Cortex 1:04:58 to the floor right before The angular opens. Yeah. All right. Well, he says placenta and he also says intentions and another verse which comes up, there's some confusion in there, whether there was extra censored version of the song, or someone's just misremembering the fact that intentions and placenta were both in there. But there's also a like, there's a whole running theme in this sort of people having basically the moist react. Yeah, Center as a word, no song, which, anyway, it's an interesting thread. It's a really interesting read, just like, I had no idea. It's it's weird. It's like, this is a primo, this band had a hell of a bad time, partly because of bad decisions they made. And yeah, the lead singer guy seems like the only guy who stayed out of weird, bad, terrible investments with a con man. And he's like, Look, I just want to be in this band. And if I had to get rid of the rest of the band, do that. Okay. Right. Right, right. It's interesting and weird. I had no idea. I hadn't really thought of live as anything other than a band that put out that album Throwing Copper when I was in high school.

Jessamyn 1:05:54 Right, great. Well, Throwing Copper was a album that a friend of mine sent to me on cassette when I was living in Romania, when you didn't have access to like, you couldn't just go out and buy music much like there were some like people who were selling kind of dubs of stuff, but they were terrible. And so it was like some of the only new music I got for that year.

Cortex 1:06:17 And you explain to our younger listeners what a cassette is.

Jessamyn 1:06:24 It's a way we used to get music. It was very important for a period for a decently long period of time, like I had cassettes from when I was a tiny kid. until like, CDs really started to kind of replace them. And I almost never bought, I don't think a lot of people bought like commercial cassettes kind of though you could. But like they were great for making mixtapes for people, right? Yeah. Because,

Cortex 1:06:52 I mean, like, people were definitely off the radio music on cassette, like I see these really sort of like started to come into their own when I was in high school. So it was like a weird transition. I remember arguing on the bus over the relative value proposition of CDs in some totally foolish we've

Jessamyn 1:07:07 all had that argument. Yes, yeah.

Cortex 1:07:11 Yeah. Speaking of music, they live the same ways. Nocturnum had a post about the hell quarter, which is a custom guitar amp made by the Norwegian Swedish. I don't remember what the Nordic Nordic accent like craftsman. He made, he made a guitar amplifier where instead of a speaker that plays the sound, it has 25 plastic recorders, each of which plays a different notes. So it's like a sort of MIDI recorder translator for the music that comes in it's yeah, he's very fun. And there's a link down at the bottom. That knocks him at it as well about a analog kazoo distortion actually made which is much more like what I wanted. But there's a couple other links to other good where's it just it's just weird fucking entertaining. Like Bad Idea executed well,

Jessamyn 1:08:11 somebody who enjoys and knows it's a bad idea.

Cortex 1:08:15 Yeah, like it's in the spirit of like, Hey, I had a bad thought I'm going to pursue it. That seems to like his whole theme. I think his channels like behind the mistakes. Good title.

Jessamyn 1:08:26 That is fun. Oh, I've got one more. Oh, one more metaphor, which is from fiasco de Gama. browse around the infinite hard drive to see what using a Mac in the mid 1990s was like,

Cortex 1:08:41 I totally missed this.

Jessamyn 1:08:42 Oh my god. It just basically, I mean, you can see it. It's like a little computer that basically goes through the steps of booting up. OS Mac OS nine.

Cortex 1:08:56 Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:08:57 You get you get a little cursor. It's slow as fuck. You watch a progress bar,

Cortex 1:09:06 like extension icons.

Jessamyn 1:09:09 Which I think is what for most of us in the Mac universe like is the modern OS. But like, you know, a lot of the rest of us were around back in the you know, back in the hippie days. Oh my god, it's still starting up

Cortex 1:09:21 Jesus Christ.

Jessamyn 1:09:22 I am having it's loading in it.

Cortex 1:09:24 Yeah, no, yeah. No, I started quicker so I'm there faster. But God damn, I'm having a tremendous wave of nostalgia. I really have not looked at OS nine in a long time. But this was like the high school computer era for me like we were

Jessamyn 1:09:40 at the college computer. Yeah. Jesus College even

Cortex 1:09:46 I'll come back and have a crisis about this after the crisis, buddy. No other good crisis like a feeling like that song that you haven't heard in 20 years and all the feelings that were attached to it's sort of like the the potency of the triggering of memories crisis ism

Jessamyn 1:10:03 and silly Wait, the person who made this has also made ones where you can also do system six, system seven, os eight and OS nine. And there's a whole bunch of blog posts that also kind of talks about it also.

Cortex 1:10:20 That's excellent. Yes. I wonder if they are someone else has done like Amiga 500 workbench stuff, because that was like my personal childhood that like is less relatable because no one had a fuck and

Jessamyn 1:10:30 fewer people had amigas but I mean,

Cortex 1:10:32 obviously some people did, but like it was it did not become the thing that the Commodore was hoping it would. Yes. Okay. Well, my other two quick ones. There is a movie coming out. That is a dramatic thriller adaptation of The Story of Tetris. Which is not the worst idea because it was a weird situation with like, no category of like, yeah, the story about like, you know, in the late 80s, the, the licensing of Tetris outside

Jessamyn 1:11:00 of I read the graphic novel about it, it was actually pretty interesting. Yeah. So

Cortex 1:11:05 there's, there's a movie coming out, I guess. And there's a trailer for it and a bunch of discussion about Tetris. And so that that I found enjoyable. I'm going to mention finally my own post, because it's a post about a resource of videos I love, which is there's a guy named Jim lil who, a year ago, I posted a thing that he did about, like, Where does an electric guitars tone come from? Where he basically decided it just comes from the pickup, because if you string six strings between a couple of tables and put a pickup in the right space, sounds just like you're playing an actual guitar. So maybe all that tone wood shit that everybody argues about on gear forums is okay, but since then, he's done a bunch more and, and so I've watched them all say, Oh, this is great. There's sort of like the six videos down, I'm gonna post rounding up all of them. And it's just really interesting. It's, it's interesting from just sort of like a music perspective, I think it's especially interesting if you've like, ever played electric guitar, because you have a little more context for both the sounds and the ship, people tell you about your electric guitar, almost all of which is ship. But there are fundamental principles. And he's just really like, what are the actual things that matter for all these different aspects about the amplifier, how its constructed, how the cabinet is put together, how the guitars made, you know, yeah, and it's really cool. And they're short, like, they're like, you know, 15 minutes apiece, and he's really funny. And he's just like a session musician. He knows his shit, but he's also not like, a luthier. So he's like, Hey, I just have to figure out how to, you know, sort this out from a naive perspective. And they're great. I really liked him. And I was glad there were so many more since I last looked. And I liked it. So there we go. That's my meta filter.

Jessamyn 1:12:39 Hey, good. I did not make any metal metal filter. I was I was, I'm still

forever. Well, I'm conceptualizing one in my head. But it's kind of a weird, tricky topic about like, a guy like originally, there's just like this guy that does. Sort of ASL news, right? News in the ASL community does it on YouTube videos in ASL, and like, sort of sign language stuff? Interesting. But then I was like, Oh, that's cool, I suppose at the Metafilter. And then it turns out, there's this big drama, about one of the sort of sort of big well known interpreters in the ASL world, who's suing the people who are doing the Lion King on Broadway, because he was scheduled to interpret for them was offered the gig, and then it was rescinded. And it's a little complicated, because I guess the director asked him to do it. But then the Broadway people wanted to have ASL interpreters that were people of color for the Lion King. And it's just a, it's it's a drama that I'm not sure I totally understand. And it involves the deaf community, and specifically, the deaf community of color that I don't know, I know a little bit about sort of the white deaf community. And so I didn't maybe want to stumble into it until I knew more about it. Even though the story itself is pretty interesting, but it may be one of those like you talking to me about baseball, and I'm like, I don't know, he's a little penguin playing. And like, that's all I can figure out, you know, and I don't want to disrespect people who are not Yeah, you know, who are who are deeply invested in the community. But if you look at the YouTube comments of this one, like news report about this guy, who's suing the people who offered him the job. It seems really split among like, white ASL interpreters and Black ASL interpreters. If you think this guy is right or wrong, which interesting in its own right. So yeah, I'm interested to see where that goes. And maybe I'll make a post about it. If I feel like I understand it better. This is my post by proxy. Tell you about it.

Cortex 1:14:50 All right. Yes. All right. Let's talk about us. Metafilter

Jessamyn 1:14:55 fantastic. This was my favorite You know, one of the things that's great about metal filters that there are a lot of people of a certain age, but also people of different ages. And so this was from Wow enthusiast, who is millennial always had the internet, and are interested in the idea of physical bulletin boards. And so, you know, quote, wondering if mefites have stories that might illuminate my imagination of these glory days, unquote, and talking about, you know, what is what is that like, and especially for people in rural areas, but in some other places as well, you know, people chime in, like, we still have them, like, I've got a bunch of bulletin boards in my town, you know, and a lot of people in rural areas have them, but you know, there's people in other different areas, but then also a lot of people just talking about what it was like in their, in their communities, and what you would use bulletin boards for and what was interesting about them, and I just, I liked the thread a lot. I like thinking about bulletin boards, just as a very democratic way of sharing information, but also listening to people talk about them different ways they can, they can go weirdly, right or weirdly wrong, or how people can goof on them in ways that are funny.

Cortex 1:16:11 Ya know, that's yeah, that's, that's that's a great question. Because like, I mean, I definitely like, I wasn't old enough to care about Bolton boards before the internet for very long, there's probably like, you know, a couple years in high school before Internet access was getting a little bit more ubiquitous. Yeah. And like, you know, a bulletin board was a necessary thing. And like, we probably had a bulletin board in high school that I'm not particularly remembering. But like, there's still bulletin boards in like coffee shops in my neighborhood, grocery store and whatnot. So like, it's never quite disappeared. It's just like, what people are using it for, you know, and how broadly they're bothering to use. It has definitely changed

Jessamyn 1:16:49 over Great. Well, one of the things Jim pointed out when I was talking to him about this is that, like, the bulletin board online system, like BBs is weren't democratic, because it was only people with computers and phones, and like very deeply nerdy people, it wasn't just kind of for everybody. And so even though I mean, it was technically for everybody, but it definitely wasn't used by everybody. And so even though those things were called bulletin board systems, they in some ways were antithetical

Cortex 1:17:23 it was not a bulletin board. It was you know, it was it was a weird proto internet,

Jessamyn 1:17:28 right, but B and B stands for bulletin and board. Yeah, yeah.

Cortex 1:17:33 Well, Airbnb, you know, when was last time you went to Airbnb that was a b&b. Like it's Yeah. But what just just like Airbnb aren't very much like the b&b experience that they tagged their bulletin and board. No, no, I'm just tacking like breakfast and board and bullet Bed Breakfast Bed and Breakfast, you know? Oh, I was the only thing in common

Jessamyn 1:17:55 I just like watching him struggle. Okay. Okay. Good.

Cortex 1:17:59 I see how it is. I see how it is. I'm just gonna get a job somewhere else. You just do that? Yeah. Yeah, look at it.

Jessamyn 1:18:13 Oh, here's it here's another one speaking of Jim because this is the thing he and I talk about all the time. Metafilter user Quintessence is stuck in a hotel room for mandated COVID isolation. I hope you feel better Quintessence and I hope you are okay. The room has an LG TV motion smoothing is turned on God I did is making their eyes hurt. How do you get around it without having full access to the TV settings. And so you can throw a brick at the screen? Not if you want to continue to watch it and the hot the hotel was like you can't do it. But black leotard front was like, hey, what's the model Quintessence links to the model, and black leotard front figures out the hack from the installation guide? I don't know if it's a hack. I guess it's not a hack. But basically a button you hold down a button for a certain number of seconds and then press the password that they probably never changed from the default and then you can get into turn it off.

Cortex 1:19:16 That is beautiful black leotard you are black leotard front You are a fucking superhero. So oh my god, that's

Jessamyn 1:19:24 so good. I have

Cortex 1:19:25 arch is just growing right now. It's swelling with pride and happiness and community.

Jessamyn 1:19:32 I mean, my TV has motion smoothing on and it drives me a little crazy. So this may inspire me to actually dig around and see if I can turn it on. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of kind of that TikTok thing, you know, it's like everybody looks like they're using the weird teenager filter.

Cortex 1:19:50 Yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah, it drives me It drives me fucking crazy. Like I have nothing interesting to say about I just hate it. It's it It's a bad default. There may be times when it's useful, but it's a bad thing to just do to all incoming fucking media makes where most of it was not designed for. Yeah, god dammit. Yeah. God damn it anyway.

Jessamyn 1:20:13 Yeah. Here's one that remains unopened unanswered. This is from queen city looking for an old fashion blow up sex doll, not one that has a realistic face on it. The crappy one with the grabby stripe of hair. And there's a link to a picture and what made me laugh was in the parentheses it says Linksys safe as we're gonna get with this question, folks. And it's for me, to be

Cortex 1:20:45 fair, if someone didn't know what they were looking at, they wouldn't know what they were looking at. I guess so. But yeah.

Jessamyn 1:20:51 Yeah. And and but but I don't know, if they found it. This was like the middle of worry. I don't know. I don't know.

Cortex 1:21:01 Yeah, that's an interesting question. Because, yeah. Like, would anybody still be making them? Like, I it seems like the sort of thing that you could see showing up at like a dumb college party sort of thing. Like, maybe you need to check in with like local fraternities. If they have a good source for like, shitty retro gay. You know, pranky party favors. But yeah, man. Yeah, that's interesting.

Jessamyn 1:21:28 Yes, exactly. So I was I was interested.

Cortex 1:21:30 I hope we have a listener who's like, actually, I happen to be a historian of like, you know, mid, late 20th century, sex prank paraphernalia, and I can tell you exactly. So if you're listening, please get get on it.

Jessamyn 1:21:48 You have more from last minute filter, I have a little bit more.

Cortex 1:21:51 I've got a couple of follow ups from things previously mentioned, one of which I think this is since our last podcast but was right on the cusp. I had mentioned probably a episode or two ago that Larry David syndrome was looking for advice on repairing a piece of stained glass that their father had made many years ago. And they followed up on the 11th. With Hey, it's fixed. And here's what I did and how it came out. And here's a picture and I was delighted by that it was nice to see follow up on it. And they even had a tip that I am genuinely going to consider. Next time I have to repair a stained glass piece, which is like using a separate strand of something to wick off the solder. You're melting off the piece that you're repairing. Oh, that's interesting, okay, because like the solder melts, and it just likes to blob where it is like it works really great for what it's

Jessamyn 1:22:38 supposed to do. You can make it blob onto something else. Yeah. Which is great.

Cortex 1:22:43 Because the best solution I've had so far to getting solder off something is to like, solder it upside down and let it drip. And that's not a great plan, right? It's not terrible. But you know, like, I'm going to intentionally drop a spattering of like, lead tin alloy liquid onto my work surface, like, I mean, there's a reason you were fucking goggles when you're working with it at all. But that's really, so this I like this. I like this. And, and yeah, I was very glad to see it fixed. And yeah, a little bit of personal history repaired and a nice little bit of photo documentation. So fucking a Larry David syndrome. Nice work. And my other follow up is just there was a recent addition to a like two or three month old thread about books with sort of apples and oranges thematically for filling up a bookshelf. And there was just recently after a long absence of answers, a new one from Blue Horse suggesting several more titles. So about the orange and Apple bookshelf. There you go. There's a little bit more content.

Jessamyn 1:23:42 I have two more. This one was very sweet. This was from two Ken who was like, just in a situation, basically, like burned out not getting enough sleep would rather be in bed. But they agreed to make a birthday cake for a family member. They like it's got to be special. Just you know, like the spoons. What how? You know? Just couldn't. Yeah, and like, you know, a whole bunch of like, like, I can't just back out. I can't, you know, order from the bakery. Like, just please. And there's a lot of really kind, you know, answers of how to do a thing. That's nice. That's going to work out okay. I think cocoa girl wound up with one of the best answers, you know, blah, blah, blah, many things. There's a lot of best answers in here. They actually wound up making a crepe, like a layered crepe cake with like cream and raspberry jam and it seems nice and it worked out and they were just having a hard time and they I think were worried just about putting themselves through a harder time trying to make this cake work. And it actually wound up being so I'm saying that that worked out nice for them. Yes.

Cortex 1:25:03 Again, I'm scanning through the answers. It's a nice mix of here's a suggestion for a very doable cake. And also like, here's a suggestion for how to like, not kill yourself over like the stress you've introduced, you're just like, Yeah, take it easy. Just make a cake. You're fine.

Jessamyn 1:25:20 Right? What's special is that you made it in the UK kind of, yeah, but yeah, was very sweet. It worked out nice, and was nice to read. And then my last one kind of segues into the bulletin board thing, which was, wow, enthusiast. Again. I'm interested by personal ads of the pre internet times, you could probably tell me more about sort of what that's like. Now, I'm a little curious if they just have a blog. Like, like, where are they? Where are they? Is it the same person? And I didn't notice it until just now. But basically, what was it like, with like, personal ads in the newspaper? How did that work? How would you get ahold of somebody? Do you talk to them on the phone? How? Oh, yeah. And it's just, you know, there's a lot of people talking about how they met people, like, how, you know, they worked at a newspaper and how that handled. Brandon, his and his wife, Lisa, I believe who passed. But, you know, they they were together 20 years. And they met through a personal ad in the Baltimore City paper in the 90s. And it's just, it's just, it's neat. It's the

Cortex 1:26:41 Yeah, it's neat

Jessamyn 1:26:42 listening to people sort of, sort of talk about it. My only contribution is the presidents of the United States of America have a song called stranger show, which is all? I saw you. Because there were there were like, misconnections Kinda,

Cortex 1:27:01 yeah, I was gonna say misconnections jumps out is a big, sort of, like still sort of creeping along cultural reference. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:27:06 we have it in seven days, which is the sort of print alternative paper in Burlington. But the President's United States of America song is just all direct polls from the stranger, the alternative paper in Seattle.

Cortex 1:27:22 This this, honestly, as a sequence of questions, this reads to me, like as a genuine, I'm writing a novel sort of situation. I'm curious. Yeah. Like, it feels like, exactly. That's where like, I want to contextualize this stuff better. It reminds me Charile from metaphor talked about,

Jessamyn 1:27:38 Charles sent me some fucking snacks. Can I just say, Nice? Yes, I got, I got a couple of delicious candy bars and a little box of mini comics, or, you know, incredible Doom, like little small books of incredible doom in exchange for helping them with, you know, giving them some background or ideas for the next one. So I'm sorry.

Cortex 1:27:59 Well, yeah. What was that? It's exactly that. It's like they're working on like the next incredible doom. And they're, yeah, like, I think that's right. They reached out to both of us via email about like, Hey, could you write because

Jessamyn 1:28:10 I was like, Don't put me on an email chain with Josh.

Cortex 1:28:15 We will just Yes. Go this will go in other directions for no good reason. Instead of getting you just, yeah, research. Yeah, that's fine. But yeah, you know, they're in the same sort of position of like, wanting to pull in like this detail and sort of, like, get a little bit more conceptual background on something because you want to write something that feels right, you want it to not be like, embarrassingly off the ball, and you want to sort of grounded in like, real world experiences outside of what any given person themselves, because it's so

Jessamyn 1:28:40 easy to imagine what that might have been like, if you didn't live through it, but it really has a different kind of, I don't know, freeze on or if you will, of actually living through it and having it be part of your day to day life. Like there wasn't like that was how one aspect of dating work. So if you were somebody who was dating in the, you know, 80s, or 90s, or whatever, that was an aspect you certainly knew about whether you used it or not different question, you know, it's like OKCupid, or nerve or whatever.

Cortex 1:29:13 Bumble is, it was it was, you know, it was the territory. It was the content. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:29:19 Yeah. So that was those were fun to read in tandem. And because I lived through both of those, but not but not at the beginning of them kind of like there were definitely people who were using, you know, personal ads. Well, well before I was even aware of them. And so it was interesting for me to hear their stories, which I didn't know about. Yeah. That's it for me for aspirin. Okay.

Cortex 1:29:45 Well, quick, quick fanfare and meta talk. Roundup if you've got anything.

Jessamyn 1:29:50 I have one fanfare, which is just the stupid show on Netflix, which I was talking to you about in pre roll but basically Kaleidoscope Mini Series. It's guy John Carlo Esposito, who I think most people like. And I just like him so much, I will see him in anything. And this is okay. But I had I had watched the first couple episodes and it's kind of it's basically like a six or eight episode, sort of heist mini series. And the sort of tweet aspect of it is, except for the actual heist all the seven episodes before it are all served to people on Netflix in random order. Hmm. Yeah, you seem to think it's funny, I find it deeply aggravating.

Cortex 1:30:35 I think I think that's great conceptual. Well, that'd be that was kind of what they're trying to do with. That was the original plan for like season four, I think of a rest of developed Yes, well, yes, exactly. Yeah. And I love I love that conceptually, like that's, it's a fantastic idea. And it's probably also kind of a hard sell.

Jessamyn 1:30:50 Well, and I think the idea, and just making sure all the episodes cue to the same storyline, and you notice the things you're supposed to notice. May may have overtaken the writing, you know what I mean? And so I had just been feeling weird about it, because I logged on Carlo Esposito, but I wasn't feeling the show super much. Like it doesn't suck, but it just, you know, it's very tight. And this seats not tight. But maybe it's because, like, there's something maybe there's a reveal, you know, but I don't know. And it was really nice to drop into this fanfare, which is for all the episodes, so if you don't want spoilers, stay out of it. Yeah, to drop in there and see a bunch of other mefites being like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah.

Cortex 1:31:40 That's enough of a warning to make me not politically prioritize it. But like, conceptually, it's the sort of thing that like, I would be inclined to prioritize a little bit just because that what they're trying to do, yeah, even if it doesn't totally land.

Jessamyn 1:31:51 I mean, it's, it's fine so far, and I'll see maybe by the end of it, I'll be like, Oh, it all makes sense. And yeah, I was wrong to have. Yeah,

Cortex 1:32:01 maybe it comes together. But like, if you cantilever out on hope, and then it is a dud, you're like, Why did I try?

Jessamyn 1:32:07 Well? No, I don't mind that. Because for me, like, I am often struggling to find stuff that fits my kind of narrow band, what I like, and this at least is narrow band what I like, even if it's not a great version of it, yeah. Whereas you know, it's like I just finished watching killjoys, finally, which was so good five seasons Canadian. One of the better sci fi Yeah, we talked about that last time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I finished it. You know, it was perfect is strong, but it was because last season mostly takes place on like, a prison ship. And I don't like the ethics of prisons. Yeah. But in general, like, it's so good with the female characters is so good with ideas about consent, and like, you know, dealing with issues of alien life forms and whatever, but it's sexy, while not being object devising. Like, it's just, it's cool in a lot of ways. And so I miss it. And I'm looking for other things. And, you know, casting about I may, I may posted they had asked me to filter about it, because I think me for me, if I was making can understand my, you know, I have specific specifics.

Cortex 1:33:13 Here are my weird parameters, like work within this. We just recently watch Angela and I, physical 100, which was a little bit of a phenomenon of Korean. Oh, vision,

Jessamyn 1:33:27 that's the one with all the like, super ripped kind of, yeah, it's

Cortex 1:33:31 100, like, small motherfuckers, but small in different ways, which is really interesting. And that sort of carries throughout the whole run of the season. Of like, you know, it's everything from like, you know, live mountain climbers to super super beefy fucking weightlifter types. Yeah. And all sorts of things in between. And yeah, they're just doing, you know, a series of physical tasks. And there's a little bit of like, you know, it's reality TV, it's not I'm not as allergic to it as I am to American partly because I know I find specifically the style and cuts of American rail to TV, especially bad. Like, I recognize some of those same things everywhere else. This is like sort of middle ground like, you know, it's kind of like watching American Ninja Warrior insofar as like, it's a lot of replays and drama over what could have be instead more just footage of the thing, but they're not terrible about it. And I liked it. And, and, yeah, so I would recommend it with a caveat that it's like, it's kind of dumb, but also, it's nice.

Jessamyn 1:34:37 Well, I've got my friend down the road, who's also like, kind of a schlocky TV fan like myself. Like he's the one who watched leverage and was like, it's dumb. Yeah. And it's also deeply entertaining. He's now becoming my go to guy for like, you know what dumb but deeply entertaining thing are you watching because you gave me some good advice one time and I suspect we liked the same stuff. So he's Guess it upload?

Cortex 1:35:02 Ah, we started watching that it's it is too dumb but entertaining. Let's I don't know. I mean because it's not great. Okay. There's it's got some interesting stuff and it's not great. It kind of reminds me of Did you ever watch Eureka?

Jessamyn 1:35:19 No, but I've heard of it and I know what it is. It's kind

Cortex 1:35:22 of the same territory for me were like, This is good enough that I like it. And good enough that I wish it was better. So I didn't have reservations about it. Yeah, like it's just like, it's you know, it's like it's it's a solid B. And I think if you really like it and enjoy it, like it's very watchable. And I do the same thing for free. Yeah, upload like it's they're doing a good job. They're turning into a story. It's like, I'm just I want a little bit more.

Jessamyn 1:35:46 Well, I mean, that's kind of how I feel about Kaleidoscope like you've got a great cast. Why are you putting these words in their mouths? These are not the right words. Yeah.

Cortex 1:35:55 I recently watched I rewatched. The ring, the Naomi Watts, American version of the Japanese film ring goo. And it's really good. And I watched the ring to which also had Naomi Watts and boy, it was not as good. Like it was just a much worse script. Yeah, it was like Naomi Watts is a really good actress. Why are you making her like read this? Really kind of pretty shitty mediocre like, right?

Jessamyn 1:36:18 Why are you doing this to her? Why? Yeah, it's

Cortex 1:36:20 bad. Yeah, it was. It's the first it's it's the first time in a while that I've watched such a disappointing Well, resource to sequel. You know, I'm used to watching shitty sequels to horror franchises that I like as like, well everyone who was this is gonna be shit. You had no budget and you filmed it in Romania. And like all of these people are soap opera actors. That's not a Romania problem. It's a cheap Americans flying to Romania,

Jessamyn 1:36:44 I get a problem.

Cortex 1:36:46 But yeah, this was like, you know, the ring to like, it looked like it had the same budget and the same resources in the same like, huge, like, excellent actress at the core as the first one. And then it was just like, just a shit script, just like really sort of like, why why did this? Why is this all you can come up with? Right? So that was disappointing. Well, now we're rambling about TV a bunch. I'm gonna mention four quick, meta talk threads.

Jessamyn 1:37:11 I have two. So we'll see if they're the same. But go ahead. And we'll we'll we'll do a speed run.

Cortex 1:37:16 Well, one, which is very pandering to me is because I've posted this kind of threads fiz posted a nice open gaming thread where he playing right now, you know, video games, board games, mobile games, etc. You know what's going on, and people talking about the games they're playing. And I always enjoy that because everyone's playing different things. And I always discover a couple new things I didn't know about. I'm also reminded of a couple things I had been meaning to get to. Sometimes I'm warned away from things that I was kind of thinking about. And it's like, oh, okay, that's crap. Great. I won't bother. I feel like all

Jessamyn 1:37:43 of my gaming time has been spent shoveling for the last month. So games, and I should I should rectify that.

Cortex 1:37:51 I've been gaming very little for the last three days. It turns out that having a job where you like, everything is new, and you're paying focused attention for eight hours straight. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. It's absolutely mean mind bending. It's so weird. Yeah. Like, I'm looking forward to settling in a little bit so that my brain can just relax a little bit check. Yeah, so I have not been doing the gaming I would normally do. I didn't even talk at length about sons of the forest. I'll save it for next time, I guess. But another metal talk. I want to mention Pronoiac wrote a post about hey, it's the 16th anniversary, the podcast has been spin has been going on for 16 years. And

Jessamyn 1:38:28 what what how are you? That old?

Cortex 1:38:31 I know, right? Yeah. Like I'm only 12 years old. What's going on? I

Jessamyn 1:38:34 know. Oh, my God. Yeah. And I just have to give like a serious shout out to Pronoiac, who has, you know, done the transcripts sort of stayed on top of things, hosts, the wiki, like really just pitches in in ways that I really appreciate. So thanks. I did not remember this anniversary, particularly. And, yeah, I appreciate the work he does. And that we have transcripts because it's base level accessibility. And still, it doesn't always mean it happens without people paying attention.

Cortex 1:39:08 Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate that. That's, that's one of the kind of dumb things that I got, like, perfect enemy that good about it in my head, like, well, I don't know if it's really like a great transcript. So I'll just not Yeah, do it. And then No, fuck it. Just do it. Yeah, do it and say it's not great, but it exists. That's better. That's a good way to go. That's a that's a wonderful thing about people's brains who are not mine. people's brains who are not to the possessive there. Anyway. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for now. You are rad and you continue to be

Jessamyn 1:39:37 fishy. You Oh, and running the master server, I believe, right? Yeah, I

Cortex 1:39:41 think so. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, that's, that's perfect. Yep. Which I continue to check in on. Okay, you do some metal talk, and we'll see

Jessamyn 1:39:50 if I wanted to say welcome Brandon to this moderation team. Right now Brandon is just sort of available to like fill in shifts and do a little bit of stuff here. Nair loops been doing some work, loops other jobs. So Brandon has been a little bit around as other people have been sort of covering shifts doing. And I just Brandon was a delight to work with on the transition team. I just appreciate his energy. Generally speaking, he's long time Metafilter person, good egg, nice person, thoughtful, extremely thoughtful lives in. Georgia, I believe as I'm saying this, I'm suddenly like, wait, wait. And I guess it's not on his profile. So skip that part. And yeah, just pleased to pleased to be working with him. And, you know, welcome to the team. I appreciate it.

Cortex 1:40:51 It's been it's been nice to see him around and doing stuff and kicking the tires and meta talk and doing moderation stuff. And yeah, that's rad. Yeah.

Jessamyn 1:41:00 Yeah, as Glenn says, towards the end of that thread, I saw him do to do a moderation he did great.

Cortex 1:41:08 Oh, the other one I wanted to mention, because it's just like such an intersection of things is the the meta talk post about chat GPT which, oh, yes,

Jessamyn 1:41:18 we had a enthusiastic user who decided to run it by to ask Metafilter questions through chat GPT and post those answers in 20 different threads. And you know, appreciate appreciate the energy was maybe not the right thing. But then there was a nice metal talk thread, talking about,

Cortex 1:41:36 I feel like the discussion we had, I was very grumpy upfront and I will be straight. I am that grumpy about chatty.

Jessamyn 1:41:43 Oh, yeah. Fuck chats. There are people who want to talk to me about it, but like,

Cortex 1:41:48 to be clear, like, I think that sock puppet is what was yammering for a ban hammering. Like, I can totally see the like, you know, I had this idea and I thought it'd be interesting. Okay, that happens but but making a sock puppet the account the account that post chatty to be No, no, that's no, that's that one doesn't get a no fuck that. Let's not let's not despoil the fucking main thing that is nice about this site with the thing that's terrible. But everywhere else right now. So but yeah, it was it was it was a good it was a good interesting discussion about sort of people like, somewhat less stridently thinking through like the balance of things. Well, and I appreciate it.

Jessamyn 1:42:25 You know, traveling time was like, okay, you know, I've temporarily given this account, a timeout, let's just talk about how we feel about it, so that the community could weigh in. And it turns out, it's one of the few things we can all agree on. It's a pretty,

Cortex 1:42:39 pretty unanimous about whether or not unmarked GPT should ever show up, which is comforting to me as someone with a hardline opinion that I'm not like completely out on a limb there. But But yeah,

Jessamyn 1:42:52 and last thing is, um, steering committee elections coming up. The thread goes in a bunch of different directions.

Cortex 1:43:02 Read sure is a meta talk thread. Yeah. But but in any case, the steering committee is looking to bring on new members for another term.

Jessamyn 1:43:11 Yeah, a lot of people have had life intervening, they're stepping down, I think a certain amount of attrition and turnover is expected. And yeah, if you're interested in doing it, and especially if you're interested in doing it, but you're a little concerned about the time commitment, I think they tried to, you know, be realistic about the time commitment that the steering committee put in. At the same time, I think there were a whole bunch of weird, urgent crises that we're hoping we're not going to be having this time around. Yeah, so that's probably more flexible than Yeah,

Cortex 1:43:42 there was there was a tremendous amount of shovel work done by the first steering committee to deal with just like, the site situation in general. Yeah. And this is a, I feel like that's really normal to for like an inaugural, sort of committee or board is you end up with like, okay, with, there's some stuff we just have to do. And then like, the next set of things is going to be a little bit less frantic a little bit more, let's do incremental work based on that. And if you're interested in participating and helping out to some degree with the incremental work of helping Metafilter you know, sort of grow and mature organizationally and develop good community focused practices going forward. This is a this is a great thing to get involved in. So by all means, you know, apply or inquire. You know, if you're on the edge about it, you know, let them know and say, Hey, I'm not sure but I'm curious. And yeah, go from there.

Jessamyn 1:44:41 Yeah, I'll be I'll be looking into the legal things I said, I was looking into, you know, got a message out to my lawyers, but everything else. Yeah, it will be. It'll be nice to see some people stepping up and helping out to help do the work of running the site.

Cortex 1:44:58 Yeah. All right. Well, I think I think that's everything and then some that I've got creeping up on an hour and 45 years. So yeah, and but you know, hey, you know, it's a short man, it's the weekend. It's the it's the week between last week and next week. So, you know, we got to fill some time I kind of did it again, didn't I? Let's stop talking. It's been a joy speaking with you. I appreciate you. You are a good person. And, and thanks, everybody for listening and we'll be back in about a month.

Jessamyn 1:45:32 I'm gonna do a little bit more shuffling. All right, shuffle it up. All right, good talking to you.