Podcast 20 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 20: Call-in Show (2007-12-03).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, question, thread, filter, podcast, meta, page, meetups, jason, big, site, building, talk, matt, user, real, joke, hear, internet, years

Transcript

mathowie 0:00 and gentlemen, welcome to the Metafilter od you later alligator Yeah, Episode 20 of the medical tech podcast this will be Colin show. We've got like 93rd Colin show? I think so. Yeah. And I will try to get the sound levels right for so you can all hear it. I suffer. Last time we had this I was listening re listening to it in my car and yeah, I couldn't hear half the questions.

Jessamyn 1:04 Maybe we should call the podcast blind in one eye and deaf in one year. Because I can't hear really well. I don't want to my ears. Perfect. I think so.

Unknown Speaker 1:13 Now, this is McFarland I'm calling you from the champagne. And my question for you is what do you think makes an excellent question for the podcast? Thanks. Bye.

Jessamyn 1:25 You should that was neat bomb calling with his Jim Bay.

mathowie 1:29 Do Shindy do Shin Bay. Do deux Shin

Jessamyn 1:32 Bay. You want to get on Wikipedia while I

mathowie 1:35 was African, though, but he's in like Afghanistan or something?

Jessamyn 1:38 I think he's in Afghanistan. I'll do a little Wikipedia activity. What do you think makes a good question for the podcast? That'd be good. That'd be a little more meta.

mathowie 1:49 Yeah, meta joke. Questions. Great questions. Yeah, short and sweet is good.

Jessamyn 1:58 You know, I like I like the world wideness of the podcast, which because it kind of means that people from all over the country can be like, in one content space at the same time, you know, because otherwise, that's really difficult because half the people are asleep while the other half are awake.

mathowie 2:15 Yeah. Um, yes. Let's do the next one.

Unknown Speaker 2:18 Hi, Matt. Hi, Jessamyn. This is Sondra, also known as headspace on Metafilter. I was just wondering if you guys would ever consider giving up ask Metafilter to the truly goofy questions that we all have on one day, the year say April Fool's Day. Because sometimes you really do want to know who would win in a baby eating contest or trying to source Rex or a zombie. Thanks for all the hard work. Catch you guys later. Bye.

Jessamyn 2:45 I don't think that's a difficult question. I can answer that question right now.

mathowie 2:49 Repeat the question really quick. Let's face it's great. It's great to hear from like, really long time members to hear their voice and it makes them more human or something. Agreed. She's asking, can't we just let our hair down once a year and ask crazy questions on AskMe edit filter

Jessamyn 3:07 on April Fool's Day as a suggestion. Yeah. And I have no problem

mathowie 3:11 with that's pretty that's I have a problem with it either. I'm tempted except for people would ask stupid questions to be funny. And I'd actually want honest, sincere, stupid questions.

Jessamyn 3:27 Like, I don't even think it matters. Maybe you just have like a short window and you can ask whatever you want. And we do it. Like we did the last April Fool's, which is archive the page but we don't leave it there. You know,

mathowie 3:40 what do you do you see my like difference? Like because people would think

Jessamyn 3:45 Yeah, you'd want people to ask sincere questions, not just like, I mean,

mathowie 3:50 just waste everyone's time to be like, how many angels fit on the pin of a needle? Haha, isn't that funny? Because people always say that head of a pin, whatever. And like,

Jessamyn 4:00 Afghanistan, man. Exactly.

mathowie 4:04 Yeah, and it's just yeah, that will take the fun out of people weren't like sincere about if they're just trying to be jokey. And whenever we open the floodgates, people often go to jokey joke and stuff. But if we could delete, nonce me, we never know if someone's sincere or why. But I

Jessamyn 4:20 think it's a wonderful idea, though. And, you know, I also have to put in a plug for cortex is newest, this week's new web project, the big big question, specifically designed for chat filter type questions. So I would also like to mention headspace, you might want to try your question over there. Though, everybody knows that zombies have rotting gaping tooth stump holes and Tyrannosaurus rexes or, you know, the size of small buildings. So I think that one's a little obvious. Maybe you need a better hypothetical.

mathowie 4:49 Please move slowly through asaurus Rex, if it's warm out or cold blooded, they'll they'll tear through a lot so well. That's

Jessamyn 4:57 what I mean. They eat tons of babies. like that's an easy one. Right? If, what if it's cold? What if it's cold?

mathowie 5:05 I think some lizards can get around zombies like a lizard in the winter all the time. Zombies are cold blooded. No, they're just dead undead, whatever. Partially dead. They're just slow. I just saw Dad the other day.

Jessamyn 5:21 Oh my god, that movie is awesome. Yeah, I

mathowie 5:22 haven't seen it since it came out. And it was still didn't give me that movie.

Jessamyn 5:26 I thought you did. Yeah, I

mathowie 5:28 downloaded it. Yeah, read downloaded it and watch it again. Don't do that kids. Wow. So the first question on the big, big question side is, what are your body parts worth on the open market? Which is a great silly question that's sincere.

Jessamyn 5:43 You know why? It's because I talked him out of that. Ron Paul question.

mathowie 5:47 What was the first question he wanted? Oh, I

Jessamyn 5:49 don't know something about Ron Paul. That shouldn't say it or not? Well, it was basically like a fringe question like, What would a real fringe candidate have to do to be a viable presidential candidate in the US, but his example was Ron Paul, which as you know, all of those questions devolve into no you conversations. So I think this one is a better a better leaping off question.

Unknown Speaker 6:11 Hi, no question. Just wanted to say that I believe the flameouts over sexism. Were a good thing and generally productive. I'm sorry that people got so angry that they felt they had to leave over it. But still, I think for the site overall, it was a very good thing. And plus, it inspired me to become a member. And after all, ladies, I sure do love kind of legis

Jessamyn 6:39 self link selfless that's his. That's his username.

mathowie 6:43 Yeah. So this is new member ladies. I was it ladies I really do love.

Jessamyn 6:48 I sure do love cuddling, as he just said it.

mathowie 6:51 I couldn't remember the entire phrase. Which is like a joke on ethereal blys. But yeah, not a question. But just saying, generally the sexism things were good. It was kind of, I mean, now like, what were like a week or two after this, or a week? Yeah.

Jessamyn 7:10 We've had a bit it started beginning last week.

mathowie 7:12 Yeah. And I don't know. It's like it was a humongous release valve will definitely have to keep talking about this, I think through the other questions. And I think some people have mentioned this, in the tail ends of those threads that like, or maybe it was in the other thread about like, I missed the old metal filter, that thread, which was exasperating from an administrator perspective.

Jessamyn 7:36 But I think they're all sort of part and parcel of the same thing. Like the site's getting bigger. And it's getting different for a lot of people for whom it was really the same for a long time. Yeah, whatever that means. Whether that means it used to be this like total locker room, and now it's not or it wasn't a locker room, and now it is, or it was small, and now it's big. Are you new people? Or you didn't know you were king of the shit pile? And now you're not?

mathowie 7:58 Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's like a million adjustment. Yeah, a million small things. You know, whatever small things I had control over, you know, I tried to make sure they're as small as possible. But I think this is sort of a it's this, you know, the sexism threads being so ginormous. We're sort of like, oh, there's sort of a symptom of this, like, overall, like reckoning time of everyone just going, Hey, wait, what are we doing? Again? Where have we been? What are we going to do next? What is this?

Jessamyn 8:26 It's hard because the group history, it's really hard to do stuff like that in really long threads. Yeah, because the mechanism kind of breaks down, which means it gets clunky, where normally when we had shorter meta talk threads, literally with fewer participants. Sometimes that was easier to track because everybody who was a stakeholder could all talk at the same time. Yeah. Now, you know, a lot of people in the I miss meta filter thread were like, dude, by the time I wake up a meta talk threads got 150 comments what? And, you know, that's unusual, for my perspective, too great, but unusual, also, and a little clunky. Yeah,

mathowie 9:04 I guess we had two years there, where it was mostly closed memberships. And things are pretty stagnant. And for the last eight years, seven years, people have like, begged me to make changes and improve the site. And things took a while for the most part. And then the last year, I don't know everything sort of ramped up. We're way faster on getting things out. These are things

Jessamyn 9:29 up all the time. So you're not just working on uptime. Yeah, that was pretty much

mathowie 9:33 the principal thing, just eking along, like she's like trying to make a statue out of playdough. Just you know, every day trying to

Jessamyn 9:41 tweak, right, the sun beats down and it melts. Yeah, to rebuild.

mathowie 9:44 Yeah. So now it's like rock solid. We have tons of stability and processing power and we can do anything we want. Now it's Wildest Dreams time and Paul Peavy is helping out coding so you know, I have an extra set of hands So we're pumping out more features. Signups aren't you know, speeding up? It's really it's been like, last year, we've had signups open I think for two, three years. I think it's three years now. It's it's probably fairly steady, like five to 10 people a day, sometimes more if we get some weird press. But I didn't know, it just keeps stacking up, I guess the favorites, you know, has changed the culture in the last year or two. What else have we done? Like the photos that

Jessamyn 10:31 people see in pictures of people changes how people think about the site?

mathowie 10:34 Yeah. And I think Paul noticed it early on, you know, we were talking about this sexism stuff at the very beginning, which was when we made the page of all users, right photos, just a weird one off, like, whenever we do anything, hey, we added, you know, occupation to the page, here's a page with everyone's occupation, haha. And then it was everyone's face. And it was like, mostly white guys, because I think they're more open to uploading a photo in the first you know, 30 minutes, the thing is around, right. So, you know, whatever skew there was already in the member population, it was skewed even further towards, you know, men.

Jessamyn 11:17 And I think well, and it just reified. Like, this is the face of Metafilter.

mathowie 11:20 Yeah, that was kind of right. You know, like that, that same moment, those threads began, it was sort of like to get sort of like, it's just a weird, perfect storm of like, tiny little changes building up. It'd be like, what, you know, there are too many guys here. You know, maybe we have driven every woman away. cetera. But I also think that stuff touches on the A lot of people talked about how intimidating it was when people were talking about didn't think it was like a welcoming environment, sometimes, especially in metal filter, like political threads. Sure. They were talking about intimidation. And it's funny, I would, it was like the exact same conversation I've had with with Pb all Bausch and lots of other members. They're just like, I just don't wanna be shouted at ya. really intimidated. I never asked questions, or

Jessamyn 12:11 with people making their first posts like behind behind. And, you know, I don't want people to feel that way. Frankly, like, we talked about a little bit in meta talk. But that whole hazing idea, I, personally, in my heart of hearts don't want to feel like it's part of the site. And if lots of people feel like it is, well, there's some sort of correction that needs to, you know, work out culturally, whatever that is.

mathowie 12:34 Yeah, be nicer. It's hard. It's especially a meta topic when someone has like an honest, teeny little nit. And they're new, and they might clumsily ask it or something. That'd be like 2030, jokey, you know, mocking them or something? I mean, I've seen brand new members, make it post them at a talk and then never want to post ever again.

Jessamyn 12:58 I usually write them little notes. Don't mind those people.

mathowie 13:03 Those are just the yucca lakhs at the bake sale, making fun of whatever.

Jessamyn 13:08 The people who brought their x excellent pie.

mathowie 13:12 So yeah, I think overall, it was a good. Good to get these issues out. Talk about these things. In general, you know, I mean, my original thoughts on it were like, I thought things are generally better than they were before.

Jessamyn 13:32 That's how it feels to me. I mean, I know that, you know,

mathowie 13:36 yeah, I mean, it's still far from perfect. And we still have a lot of ways to go, but seemed a little bit better than it's been before. AskMe Metafilter. Seems like, I've never, you know, it's really rare when you see any sort of sexist comment and asked me to filter that lives, you know, that

Jessamyn 13:51 I was gonna say, where you do I see them often?

mathowie 13:55 Well, I mean, we do a good job of weeding them out. And, yeah, it's just, I mean, I see lots of questions asked and asked Metafilter that, maybe four years ago, there would have been more dumb ass like people laughing at the person asking a question or something. A lot of like, you know, I just had sex with first time, I think I might be pregnant, you know, stuff like that. And people are very gentle with the person, you know, when you read the page, I mean, I know there's probably two or three Dorcy

Jessamyn 14:28 it actually went really well.

mathowie 14:29 But those those types of things where people can be, you know, really vulnerable place, talking about something that, you know, a guy probably doesn't have much to say about

Jessamyn 14:39 well, and in a mixed company. There's lots of women's sites where women talk to women, but in a mixed company site so that other people can read that and be like, Oh, it never really occurred to me that blah, like, read on like menstrual cups and there was definitely like a couple guys that popped in and were like, none of this has ever occurred to me. You know what an interesting thread Add just cuz like, how would you know that sort of stuff? You know, that

mathowie 15:05 came up in the sexism thread when I said something like, you know, I think AskMe was was pretty amazing and like, there's not a lot of places you can ask questions I meant in a mixed company because someone said, there's plenty of like, women only communities are,

Jessamyn 15:20 right, mostly women.

mathowie 15:23 Get this weird mix of people that never talk about the same things in mixed company like this. Right? So the end result of all this stuff was we tweaked one of the flags to spell out sexism more. Of course, I wanted to put homophobia in there. That was like the next major thing.

Jessamyn 15:44 We're still working it out. But I would love to check in in like a month or two and just be like, how do people feel like did this make a difference? Like I see people using that flag. It would be good to check in and see Yeah, if people feel like it makes a difference, what they feel is still out there needing to be done, etc. Yeah, from

mathowie 16:01 an admin perspective, it seems to help. At least there's a way to identify the stuff quickly you can sort of scan a page and all the recent flags and find them

Jessamyn 16:12 and I feel like people feel a little bit more comfortable talking about it too. Yeah.

mathowie 16:17 And I guess we'll talk more about it and guidelines and stuff to spell it out. I'll have to cut that down because we just rambled and rambled and rambled.

Jessamyn 16:28 We You mean you in this case? Exactly. Hi, it's

Unknown Speaker 16:31 Carmen Carmen in beautiful Berkeley, California. I'm wondering if I spelled Mary Kwanzaa are on a t shirt for the secret santa should concert be filled qu o n s AR or k w a n t Sar. questions, answers appreciated. Thank you. Bye,

Jessamyn 16:50 Carmen. Carmen is going to be part of the Secret Santa thing and he wants to make a merry Kwanzaa t shirt and is curious about spelling. I will defer to the Christmas celebrators in the assembled company. Matt,

mathowie 17:03 what was that Kwanzaa our Quan SAR, Kwanzaa

Jessamyn 17:09 it's a play on words matte Kwanzaa. The African American holiday Quantz are and Kwanzaa are to. Quan Sar. homophone.

mathowie 17:19 Yeah, I thought that was a homophone joke. So they're going to do based on that thread, like, we don't have to build anything.

Jessamyn 17:28 Yes, cool. It's the case. I think that's that he wants to know how to spell quanta. Like the user that T

mathowie 17:34 shirt, the username, like which user we have to the one that starts with the Q, because he was there first.

Jessamyn 17:41 That would be my argument as well. I hope that helps partment H T. H.

Unknown Speaker 17:48 This is canola. And my question is, Matt, if you knew then what you know now, are there anything? Is there anything you would have done differently in the creation of this big beast we call meta filter. Anyway, what is my question and I have a great day and I'm actually going to have to lose to win the contest.

Jessamyn 18:12 She's so friendly.

mathowie 18:14 Yeah, but she doesn't even listen to podcast. She's interloper. Like am I listen to it if I'm on it. So go talk I couldn't understand what the username was. I listened to these earlier today and I could never make it out cannot feel right now. I was like, Oh my God. Yeah. What was your question?

Jessamyn 18:33 Are you on like amnesia drugs

mathowie 18:35 are second only keep like two things in my head at once.

Jessamyn 18:38 She said when you make the beast backs, man, what what did you forget to put in? Put in now? No. Is there something you would have built into metal filter originally? That you you

mathowie 18:51 know, I don't think has anything to do differently. There isn't any huge blind spot mistakes? Gigantic?

Jessamyn 19:01 I'm trying to think if I

mathowie 19:01 think we've evolved that properly. Maybe too fast sometimes, but there isn't like any like giant fuckup maybe the oldest like secure password stuff should have been done from day one.

Jessamyn 19:16 That's probably the best. Oh,

mathowie 19:18 I guess Yeah, I guess there's a shitload of infrastructure things I would have done differently.

Jessamyn 19:23 Sorry. No, Jay Ron. Blob would you build HP? Yeah, the 9099

mathowie 19:28 very, very, very first, sort of like yeah, one page test version of meta filter was in PHP, but I didn't even write it. I like had a friend write it. Then I realized who wrote it who wrote it. Oh, this guy Jason Schroeder is just sort of Oh, that's right. Now he's at Microsoft. Yeah, it was PHP had just gone to like version three or is it two used to be called like f L something like my co workers were using PHP and 97. Like before it was called PHP. So I was, yeah, I should have just done php. And I should have like, had a real CS degree. So I knew how to actually make like applications.

Jessamyn 20:08 I wonder sometimes if Metafilter would have been like a totally different animal if, like user girls had been regulated, like, not like sort of it's on, it's off, you got to know the secret backdoor, whatever. But like, if we had always let like a certain number of users in, even if that number scaled, so that there wasn't this weird sense of like waves like, like, yeah, like waves, not that I think it's bad. I think it's fascinating and actually really interesting. But you know, the whole like, $5 Noob, and the 17 Cares or whatever. And the 14 Cares, I often wonder if there had been something put in that allowed for steady growth instead of some of this kind of Benji purje stuff.

mathowie 20:50 Yeah, but sometimes. Lindsay Purdy Steph has group identity wrapped in it?

Jessamyn 20:55 Well, I'm not not. I'm just curious. I wonder if it would have obliterated some of that group identity or if it would have made it a sort of different so it's not like something I would have wanted to have seen different. But oh, maybe I'll send it over to big, big question. Let's talk about it.

mathowie 21:10 Yeah, we might not have had these huge influxes of confusion like, I don't know, I can't think of very many except for like

Jessamyn 21:17 the endless the endless September feature,

mathowie 21:20 the cam girl invasion that happened one day a long time ago. Like a lot of people joined after the Casey Nicole thing, or after I was in Brill's content, or, you know, whenever someone forgot about metal filter, if again, the New York Times it'd be like 200 new people one day. And, you know, clumsy things would happen. But in general, you know, we got a lot of longtime members out of those sorts of watershed events. Right, totally. I don't think it'd be the same beast without watershed events. You know, if you think of anything,

Jessamyn 21:53 right, right. Well, because that's how you form like group identity and culture, right? Like you have some common reference evolution or remember, remember that one time when

mathowie 22:03 evolution is punctuated? It's not this perfectly steady thing like things

Jessamyn 22:08 evolution by jerks, punctuated evolution. I tell that joke in library talks, and people are like, I've never heard it before.

mathowie 22:15 Library talk jokes like in the hopper. That's awesome. Well, no,

Jessamyn 22:18 yeah. Well, they liked the evolution by jerks.

mathowie 22:24 All right, so let's do the next one.

Unknown Speaker 22:26 Hey, y'all, this is federal Punk in Birmingham. I just want to know if mom's gonna be the next one far than I'd like to be the next week mom. Thanks and happy fucking Holidays everybody.

mathowie 22:38 swear jar $5 for the swear federal punk he's always defending the southern man and now I know he's sounds like a Southern man.

Jessamyn 22:46 Oh the Birmingham Alabama accents are so nice Don't you think? Pretty heavy it's I like it Alabama if I had to live in another state that wasn't Vermont I would live in Alabama real

mathowie 22:56 for real everyone I know leaves Alabama as fast as they can and

Jessamyn 23:02 whatever dude there's lots of nice houses for cheap that's true. But bitter all punks question now that Kwanzaa is gone is meat bomb going to be the next?

mathowie 23:14 We'll be back and then we got to shift hats again. I'd say no.

Jessamyn 23:19 I think maybe meat balm needs a an apprentice program because I don't think you can just step into being meatball. Too much air. I think it requires careful study and a lot of a lot of late nights. Doing a lot of self exploration I think is what he wants.

Unknown Speaker 23:37 Hello, sir Matthew. How are you sir? And Jessamyn This is Steve Goldberg, aka Ludwig then. My question for you this week is what is your favorite all time Christmas song? Pleased to answer that in the podcast. All right. Catch

Unknown Speaker 23:55 you on the flipside mother Legos.

Jessamyn 23:58 Is mother liquor a swear jar word?

mathowie 24:00 No. I think it's a new thing that kids are saying today. I have no idea.

Jessamyn 24:06 So Steve Goldberg, Ludwig van

mathowie 24:10 with songs is that a plug for Christmas song that's on Metafilter music she have a new Christmas has a new song on Metafilter music.

Unknown Speaker 24:49 Gather around the fireplace faces withdraw In gingerbread all three coming into lazed Christmas time for

mathowie 25:14 probably hitting a stick around or hoping we hit it out of the park like that. Yeah you should go oh my god my favorite song is Steve Goldberg's newest Christmas hit.

Jessamyn 25:24 No No because my favorite Christmas song liking as I do almost no Christmas songs really like I turn on the radio I hear Christmas songs I turn the radio right back off again. Is probably pink stainless tails jingle rock Bell, which I believe we have. Yeah, coming up.

Unknown Speaker 25:42 Rock barrel jingle jingle rock Bell Bell, Jingle Bell Rock Jingle bell, jingle rock bow. Dang rock bow bow. Dingle Bell Rock rocking about rock rock, Jingle bell. Happy holidays

Unknown Speaker 25:59 from the pink superhero.

Jessamyn 26:01 Okay, well, this is my favorite.

mathowie 26:03 That's a good song.

Jessamyn 26:06 I think it's great. It makes me happy every time I hear it.

Unknown Speaker 26:09 Hello, Matt and Jessamyn This is Argyle. My question is when are you going to have a witty tagline at the end of the pod? Thank you.

mathowie 26:19 That's been Mike's hobbyhorse for months now. We need a witty ending for the podcast

Jessamyn 26:28 I think we need a contest I'm not actually think we

mathowie 26:31 had like a meta talk thread like where he started it. Argyle saying like hey, you guys need it. Witty closer, and people said like this podcast is closed. Hahaha.

Jessamyn 26:43 I always like to remember when Oh, what was it the web is where you had to do like a five five word acceptance speech. And Jason cockys was See you in hell fuckers. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't the one he actually did but it was the one he wanted to do. And that's always like, when I think of like the best sign offs you know, I think of like having like the AT and T robot voice being like to you in hell. I always see I laugh like

mathowie 27:11 that podcast on a positive note to people. Well,

Jessamyn 27:15 that's I would be laughing but it seems like maybe it's somebody

mathowie 27:20 to help boxers is occupies a special place in my heart for like ever since Jason told that to me like that's the ultimate me to speech for anything ever. Like when you graduate try it when you get a promotion at work. Try it like anytime anyone says Speed Speed speech. Just like See you in hell fuck always have it. They're ready to go like, yeah, shake your award angrily at them like Oh, man.

Jessamyn 27:49 We'll have to rate this podcast SC for some custom.

mathowie 27:52 So I put the explicit tag.

Jessamyn 27:56 Right. We should remind people you can get this through iTunes. Also, in addition to all the other places you can get

Unknown Speaker 28:02 you Hi, this is the

Unknown Speaker 28:04 ex member Paris Paramus, located in downtown Brooklyn, New York. wanted to say hello to everyone and I was hoping you might let me back on but only as powers Paramus because I don't believe in sock puppets. Come on. Man. You election season is just around the corner. You need some some unique viewer Miller the call and unique whatever they're called you need you need pages. You need a page. Viewers, whatever they're called need, you need to open up an old term speak. So rep. Harris Paramus back on Minnesota. Thank you.

mathowie 28:42 Well, if he's that articulate, maybe we should know, I've had this talk with him. Like, I thought he was griefing everyone having fun with it Doosan everyone the side a little bit evenly promised not to he kept doing it. So yeah, eventually I had enough cut them off and said, If you ever want to come back, come back to someone else. There's so much bad baggage with your old self. Like, if you really are going to turn over a new leaf you should just be come on as someone else and he doesn't want to do that.

Jessamyn 29:12 I think he's a little confused on the like the idea of a sock puppet like a sock puppet is when you have an account and then you get another account. And you're pretending that that other account is not the same as your main account. Yeah, but if you have an account that's got some mystery name attached to it, and then you get another account with a different

mathowie 29:30 person. It's nobody big deal. And it's

Jessamyn 29:33 not a sock puppet as I understand the sock puppet.

mathowie 29:36 Yeah, it's like calling or anything astroturfing. You know, it's like it's got to be a certain way. It's supposed to be fake.

Jessamyn 29:43 Right, like fear, uncertainty and doubt. FUD. It has to be a certain way.

mathowie 29:47 Oh, yeah, sorry. parricide he sounds like a lovable guy. But he'll pop turds into contentious threads with amazing accuracy.

Jessamyn 29:58 And Well didn't you meet And I've met him before like a nice

mathowie 30:03 guy. I think he just like he's a little bit of a joke too much of a joker that like actually ends up being bad for metta filter. You know, when we're just talking about text people have don't really have a choice but to take things literally, you know, when you read something,

Jessamyn 30:17 or at least some people will take things literally all the time. Like if certain things are certain Yeah, even if you're pretty sure it's a joke and people who know you would know what to joke. Some people are gonna take it literally. And that's going to be a pro I was talking

mathowie 30:31 about for tax about Paleo history of metaphysics or the other day, and he was saying, I will say I was lucky in the first six months of medical term there was this like thread where everyone was freaking out over Dave Winer. It's like a big technology guy. He was, I know Dave Winer. Yeah, he's early member of the site. And there was this one thread where everyone was we and I can reread it today and go, Wow, we were really uptight about some minor thing that Dave popped in was like, come on, you guys. Relax. You guys are all full of shit. I'm full of shit. You know? That's how he said it. But he wrote, You guys are all full of shit. And like everyone freaked out because they read it as totally literally. Now that I know the man and he's nice guy. Like, he didn't mean it. Like literally he wasn't yelling at us. Well, but you can't tell on tats, so

Jessamyn 31:19 that's what Stevo said about saying fuck off, right? But it's really hard to tell if it's like, fuck off. Or like No, seriously, fuck off. Very hard to tell

Unknown Speaker 31:31 her no. DEOs in the house. longtime listener. first time caller. First. What's up, man? Second, where's this bitch headed? Where will decide the in five years? Shout out to my homies. Dog. And your first job. Jeff? Thanks for the postcard. I'd hang up and listen. Do Is

mathowie 32:00 that a robot voice of Dios? Or is that like an actual person? I can't tell.

Jessamyn 32:06 I'm fairly certain that that's not what he sounds like. Life and it certainly sounds like a rope

mathowie 32:13 started as a robot and ended as a robot but the middle sound like a person with a sort of, you know, Indian accent.

Jessamyn 32:20 Good question. I could you understand a word that robots

mathowie 32:24 robots? First off, shout out to Matt. And then the end. It was Jessamyn oh, what would what's medical is gonna be like in five years was the question I think?

Jessamyn 32:34 No, I think the question was, where is this bitch headed? Yeah,

mathowie 32:37 comma. Where do you see medical author five years? The exact same place going over the exact same thing?

Jessamyn 32:46 Yeah, I think so. In my dream world, exact same place the exact same things

mathowie 32:50 we should mildly mock Dios for punking out and not using his real voice. Because he is a real everyone else uses the real voice.

Jessamyn 33:00 He said thanks for the postcard. I sent him a postcard from

mathowie 33:05 Puerto Rico.

Jessamyn 33:07 Yeah, because he tried to solve i My dongle got stolen by TSA. Oh, yeah, he was gonna he was gonna FedEx me a dongle. But I didn't need it, after all, but it was very, very sweet of

mathowie 33:19 postcard time.

Unknown Speaker 33:20 Hi, there. This is Jason, you know me online as Jason's planet? I have a question for the moderators. What would your lives be like if the internet had not been invented? You've invested huge amounts of time and energy into this network. The web and the connections that you've made on the web have contributed a lot to who you guys are today. So how would your life be different without the web? I mean, what would you be doing in its absence? And that's my question. Happy Holidays and take care.

Jessamyn 33:53 Jason's planet with a fascinating question,

mathowie 33:55 what would we do if we weren't doing internet? If there was no internet? What would what would our lives have turned into without

Jessamyn 34:01 the web?

mathowie 34:02 But last time I answered this, I said, I'd probably just be designed T shirts, because that's the only thing I love to do in like high school. But I also worked in bike shops, and that was sort of the loser way out, I'd probably be working in a bike shop.

Jessamyn 34:13 Are you calling bike shop workers? Losers?

mathowie 34:15 No. If I didn't feel like going to college, I would have Oh, I see myself as a loser.

Jessamyn 34:20 Yeah, because the first time I ever saw the internet, or like computers that connected to each other was in high school. So like everything post high school has been informed by Internet availability, which, you know, was sort of why I decided to want to be a librarian. And so I'm not even sure if I would have wanted to do

mathowie 34:39 internet and network computers in high school like in late 80s or something

Jessamyn 34:44 in the mid 80s. Dude, I grew up

mathowie 34:48 in 1983, but it wasn't very interesting. Like I never had anyone we

Jessamyn 34:52 had. Haven't I told you this. We had a VAX at my high school. Oh cool, because I grew up in a town over from digital from Maynard, which is where Digital Equipment Corporation was. So they gave us a Vax. And so we had like a computer room. And so I was like, hanging out in the computer room dork in 1984. And like, you know, other dorks would teach me how to do stuff, send a little email or do whatever use ed for editing.

mathowie 35:22 In the mid 90s, I think the fax machine was still up until the 2000s.

Jessamyn 35:26 Oh, yeah, we had we had a fax when I went to college to Hampshire had a vac system. And so I learned how to type like I N percent email address to send email.

mathowie 35:35 And I love the Talk function when you found you could do like the finger or whatever, to see who's online right now checking their email on backs. And then you could talk I

Jessamyn 35:44 did my first like, my first like, serious out of college boyfriend. And I have like all of our talk transcripts. Yeah, how

mathowie 35:55 would you do you just be a librarian?

Jessamyn 35:58 I'd be working in a library, I think, or I'd be like a raspberry farmer somewhere. I mean, it's really hard to say right, like the amount of networking stuff. Yeah, I did. I did. Like I went to college in the same state I grew up in I mean, didn't Did you? Yeah, too, right. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I probably wouldn't have traveled nearly as far I definitely wouldn't admit as many people but like, I don't know, is email the web? Because I was using like, email and talk and all that stuff. But I guess that's internet. Yeah. He

mathowie 36:24 said, internet networking. Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

Jessamyn 36:27 I probably be working in a small library in Massachusetts, somewhere.

mathowie 36:30 I'd be pumping out bike shop T shirts.

Jessamyn 36:33 Company, I'd like to have t shirts. I think that's righteous work.

mathowie 36:36 Yes. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a living.

Unknown Speaker 36:41 Hey, what's up? This is Afro Blonko. I'm calling because I had this really great idea for a new restaurant. And I just I wanted to run it past you guys. So okay, so it's a brunch restaurant only serves brunch, only on Sundays, right? But but this is the deal. When you visit, there's a one in 1000 chance that they will let loose an actual bear into the restaurant. Now mind you, I mean, you won't necessarily get eaten by the bear. I mean, you could leave or you could feed it or you could fight it or whatever. But anyway, the name of the restaurant will be called bear attack. Right, you know, just kind of symbols to the point, that sort of thing. And then if it succeeds, I have like a bunch of other ideas. Like, my other idea was competing with sharks for food, which I don't know may not work as well. And it kind of depends on if we can find a country where, you know, the laws are a little looser about that sort of thing. Anyway, well, thanks a lot and have a good time.

Jessamyn 37:37 You know, I'm just curious what my 20s would have been like if the internet existed like it does now. Oh, man, cuz I think it would have been like Afro blancos. 20.

mathowie 37:48 Like, what if you're 13? And you had the internet? Oh, man.

Jessamyn 37:53 I can't even imagine. Go talk. Yeah,

mathowie 37:55 like, I think I've mentioned this online somewhere, like, porn used to be difficult to find when you were like a horny 14 year old, like, boy, totally

Jessamyn 38:03 tall, or girl, whatever. Poor was hard. It was harder if you were a girl because friends wouldn't like give it to you.

mathowie 38:11 It was secret porn in the woods. I mean, these things were treated like, you know, illuminated texts. You know, these example, monks and like, yeah, if I had the internet when I was 13, Jesus Christ,

Jessamyn 38:26 I don't know why you would never have met real girls. Yeah, right. I'd be trying

mathowie 38:29 to like, do something horrible too.

Jessamyn 38:33 So yeah, that was all for Blanca with his bear attack suggestion, but since it wasn't really a question, I don't really think it needs a response.

mathowie 38:42 No, not really. We could probably cut this all out.

Jessamyn 38:46 I sort of liked the bear attack thing. Actually. I think Jeremy sort of adorable.

mathowie 38:49 I think I heard that joke somewhere else though. I don't know. I can't tell if it's original. Or maybe I'm thinking Have you ever hear about the restaurant with the giant flood once a year? No. Yeah, someone had an idea for a restaurant a real restaurant in New York. That would just go as is pretty nice restaurant kind of expensive. Nice place. But one day a year. Just hear that?

Jessamyn 39:13 I just heard about this. Yeah, I don't know.

mathowie 39:15 Kottke. Somebody like retold this entire story where like, one day a year giant floodgates would open. Maybe it was like an meta talk. Someone wrote a big story. I definitely read. Yeah, so everyone gets drenched, Everything's ruined. They take everything away. They close the doors and lock them. But then you're gonna have the best meal of your life and you're gonna get new clothes or something.

Jessamyn 39:37 That sounds fine. I don't see any problem with it was basically

mathowie 39:39 a 365 chance of having the best meal your life. That was the point having

Jessamyn 39:45 an awesome weird experience. Yeah, you can blog about and be in the New York Times.

mathowie 39:49 Yeah, right. Yep. Yep.

Jessamyn 39:51 I think we should leave that one in there, attack. bear attack afro. Blonko.

mathowie 39:58 Somebody make it real. Okay, it's hard to keep a restaurant going in New York though. Whatever, whatever. Alright, so the next one.

Unknown Speaker 40:09 Hi, this is item it. I know, I'm about two and a half months too late. But I would love to take this opportunity to apologize for my actions on September 9 2007. My only call out ever other than I did receive an anonymous call out ever. On a call another question I had asked anonymously. But this is the only item call out ever, or was. And I've been sad about it ever since that day. And I just like to apologize to everyone that I offended about the guy crashing his plane or disappearing. I love most of you. And then you know, I don't want to. I know everyone's forgotten about it by now. And that's the thing, and I'm probably digging my own grave on a while. I love you guys, every one of you. I do. That's all. Also like to say thank you Metafilter for helping my significant other with some problems lately. You know who you are. She knows who she is. I know who she is. She sort of knows who I am. And she loves everyone to buy.

Jessamyn 41:33 Item is sorry. Yeah, for what he did. And there was the call out on September 9 that I have also totally forgot. Yeah,

mathowie 41:41 I'm like looking for it. September, I think some dude died was missing. And this happens a lot. There'll be some major news story or something horrible happens to someone somewhat famous, and someone will make some jokey thing about screw them. Die and housing.

Jessamyn 42:02 Everybody's resources. Yeah. And this time it was it was insane.

mathowie 42:07 I don't even see it. I'm looking at September 9. I don't see anything.

Jessamyn 42:10 It may have been the day after. We can track it down and blog it later. Yeah.

mathowie 42:15 So Well, sorry. This always this how often happens? People forgive you item. Yeah, I forgive you. You know, 12 hours after it happens.

Jessamyn 42:24 You forget about it. Three hours.

mathowie 42:26 People are getting most of these calls. I watch. People run into me at meetups and stuff. They're like, Oh, God, I'm so sorry, about two and a half years ago when I did this, but they'll describe like, I was such a jerk that day. You know, I thought I was gonna get fired that day. And I took it out on everyone. Metafilter

Jessamyn 42:43 you always said something nasty about your mom. Yeah. What? Really?

mathowie 42:47 I don't remember. But I'll be like, Oh, that's cool. Do you know you're forgetting and it's always good to hear some closure on these things that people realize, yeah, they were out of line.

Jessamyn 42:57 Well, and I feel like that makes people feel so much better. Because they've been worried about it. Yeah, like, oh, Matt's really mad at me for whatever. I'm like, Dude, I hate to break to you. But Matt has no idea who you are. Like, like, he's not mad. He's happy. Like, you know, send him a sticker in the mail. And you'll be friends forever. Like, yeah, that in general, all my memories, when I think about people on Metafilter with a very few exceptions are just like, oh, yeah, I had that good interaction with that person once. Almost always. Yeah. So the whole but I think like users, you know, various people worry. And so I'm always like, get it off your chest. Get it off your chest. You'll sleep better. And I think it does work. So item. You are totally forgiven. 100%

mathowie 43:42 Yeah, I was telling you a week or two ago that Yeah. Like a lot of people email me and think I have a grudge against them from things that happened long time ago. And I just there's no way I could keep 50,000 people separate much less remember the last thing each of them did to wrong me like this is not the way I operate.

Jessamyn 44:02 Yeah, me. Me neither. Yeah. So I have I have too much downtime around here to stew.

mathowie 44:09 So item, we're cool. Hey, it's

Unknown Speaker 44:12 Jason here in Denver. That's a Jay Z O N. My question is podcast is going really great. I'm enjoying hearing you and Jessamyn dependant on things. We've talked about opening it up to other guests podcasters bring in some people from the site maybe big contributors like Johnson or other folks and and see what they mark as best of the world as well. Could be interesting.

mathowie 44:32 I guess we never thought of that. That's Jays on asking if we would bring in other people but not as sort of guests to answer questions from us, but to give us their favorites of the week.

Jessamyn 44:45 I think that would be awesome. Yeah,

mathowie 44:47 we tried to get Johnson on once but he's squirrely.

Jessamyn 44:52 Yeah, for the record, we tried to get Johnson

mathowie 44:56 but in the future we should whenever we interview anyone, we should be like yeah, what was your favorite? Asked metaphors or post three links? One what's your favorite metaphor anathema for posts in the last week or two?

Jessamyn 45:09 I think that's a good idea. That

mathowie 45:09 would be a good task to give all our interviewees from now on

Jessamyn 45:14 good idea and I'd like to have cortex do a best of music sometimes too. Yeah, just because he's so damn charming.

mathowie 45:21 I guess there's there's a music podcast now done by is it LV?

Jessamyn 45:25 LV M percent. Our Canadian buddy.

mathowie 45:27 I wish he would put some voiceovers on that and like do some editorial. Like he picks out the best of what he doesn't talk. Yeah, tell us why like, Oh, we're like the drums this one play? You know? That's enough. Good idea. That

Jessamyn 45:43 yeah, I like it. Jason's got a nice voice to everybody's got such a nice voice.

Unknown Speaker 45:49 Hey, rock bell, jingle everybody. This is metal filters all the wonderful because nobody else would have me. First time caller longtime neophyte, and I have a question and a comment. First the question. You are healthy? No, no, wait a second. Did that slip past spam filter again? Okay, okay, all seriousness aside. Have you ever met Cory Doctorow in person? And does he really wear a cape? And that's not the question either. Sit seriously, seriously, folks. If meta filter were to experience dramatic exponential growth in its membership, readership and influence on the web ban, and I'm not talking about technical scaling issues here. At what point if any, would you worry that metal filter was getting too big? Anyway until and unless that happens us guys and gals are doing a terrific job and I blame you personally. For me not keeping up my own blog like I should. This would be where self promoting, mentioned when the wit.com But you know, I'm not like that at all right? But that's not really why I called you said using old talk radio trick to get even more airtime. What I really want to know is are you now or have you ever been that was a window.

Jessamyn 47:12 Oh my god. Wendell is so weird.

mathowie 47:15 That was a window asking his real question in the middle there was when's metaphor three going to be considered too big.

Jessamyn 47:20 I think we stop at 100,000 users no matter what. Yeah, that'd be cool. And we stay that way until 2020

mathowie 47:28 That's not a bad idea. 2010 We'll probably get there. 2010

Jessamyn 47:31 Are you kidding?

mathowie 47:34 Yeah.

Jessamyn 47:36 Yeah, 5555 digit use your number.

mathowie 47:39 holy. Holy crap. This window have like the perfect old radio comedy voice? Of course. It sounds like he's been in the biz for like 50 years. Windows totally talented. That was ridiculously good. He should have a podcast.

Jessamyn 47:54 Maybe we should. You know, you need to give everybody like a two minute guest spot. Yeah, it's called call ask him with a tagline.

mathowie 48:03 Yeah, exactly. Well, might be kind of silly.

Jessamyn 48:09 Silly. Okay. I think

mathowie 48:11 yeah, that's true. Maybe he should support him doing the ending that we just play,

Jessamyn 48:17 Zach. That's what I'm saying. Like,

mathowie 48:22 Matt? Yeah.

Jessamyn 48:27 Exactly. Great idea.

mathowie 48:29 That's what I need to get him on that. Alright, let's do the next one.

Unknown Speaker 48:34 Hey, Matt, and Jeff. This is spider skull. I was wondering how long list is of new features that have been greenlighted, but not yet implemented? And what the next big site features going to be?

mathowie 48:49 Good question. From what was it spider skull, spider skull? What a green light lighted features that we haven't released yet? And what is the big new thing that's gonna come out?

Jessamyn 49:02 Well, the last big new thing was getting everybody's password secure behind a SSL layer, which was, you know, eight years and coming and very exciting. So I feel like mentioning it again.

mathowie 49:14 Oh, yeah. Oh, no. We're finally like, anything. Yeah. But it feels like we've had like three or four gigantic projects in the last few months. And I think right at this point, we're pretty much and this is a you know, I think this question comes from, you know, that like recent sort of semi user frustration with lots of things sort of happening overnight without there being consulted or something. Right, people being surprised by new capabilities, and then trying to figure out how to, you know, move around in social space with new capabilities and how they work in their normal routines. I don't think we're having anything huge on the plate, maybe travel definitely. Now all these pesky Eat giant things are done. could probably go back to finally finishing the travel site.

Jessamyn 50:08 travel site would be great. I mean, there was going to be a little shot metal filter page that you're going to put together just Yeah, Christmas. Yeah. And like it will be awesome. Yeah,

mathowie 50:15 little jobs. So yeah, just a bunch of tips from ASP. Net a filter for job seekers on the job page. There's something we could kind of spread to all parts of the site.

Jessamyn 50:27 There was some other cross pollination stuff

mathowie 50:30 or some other micro feature someone just I was like, oh, no, you

Jessamyn 50:33 and I were talking about surfacing, meetup photos now that we've got threads that are staying open longer.

mathowie 50:39 That's like we have to build a meet up photo indicator for meetups coming up. Someone asked me over emailed out. Are we going to put meetup upcoming meetups on the front page and meta filter as well as meta talk that what's your feeling on that? Oh, no, I was kind of hit on it first. Now. I'm like,

Jessamyn 50:58 I think we need widget widgets on the front page so that you can assemble your page. Yes, we totally do.

mathowie 51:06 When we're building like that we're building like I google ourselves and my Yahoo

Jessamyn 51:12 but certain people want me to put on the front page and certain people don't the same with social tools in the same Yeah, I mean, yeah, but three collapsible sidebars and people could decide which ones to collapse I

mathowie 51:23 feel like we're getting that's not where God like we're getting to the point where I'm building RSS readers for the world like how the people who use the recent activity you know, the recent activity the recent activity page has now become it's like own app and its own view of the world and people are using it as a new interface to medical they're constantly asking for really bizarre Yeah, people are asking for really bizarre features are specialized to just that view as you know, which is where are they asking these things? They're on my ear every day. Let me format let me follow any thread without commenting. Let me see more than 10 Let me collapse them freely and uncollapse them and let me

Jessamyn 52:05 just the recent activity Yeah, I thought you meant like that weird social activity page.

mathowie 52:10 Oh, no, no cares. The recent activity is like a different beast entirely. Right? It's like an RSS reader because you're not commenting in it you're

Jessamyn 52:18 just I use it as my main entry onto the site to tell you that God's honest truth Yeah, besides like to flagging queue and reading meta talk and ask me from the top down recent activity is the other like page that I'm on all right, and be able to remove stuff from my recent activity page. Oh, my God,

mathowie 52:36 I know if I'm saying there's like a dozen more than I know some point I've built Google Reader, you know, just for meta filter. It's kind of kooky.

Jessamyn 52:43 Well, then you can get a job anytime you want map. That that's the whole problem. Right? Like you're building it up and what are you going to do? Somebody's gonna buy it? Like, that's not better? Yeah, that's not an improvement. I think it's the hardest thing to explain to people. Yeah.

mathowie 53:01 Okay. I think that's about it.

Unknown Speaker 53:03 So it's weighing me down. Inside so it's why lean down? Ceilings break gla ss please birds. So it's why now? I was Burchell. So it's weighing me down. Ceiling sprinklers do your work. Stay very active D sharp. Really? Jameses Asha. Ces ces sit down shall Sam I was so it's all in me inside and so it's weighing me down this way