Podcast 23 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 23: One Year Down (2008-03-02).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, filter, site, calls, metal, meta, thread, job, week, post, question, thought, users, feel, sctv, story, totally, language, missing, day

Transcript

mathowie 0:00 I'm Matt Howie Jessamyn. Welcome to the metal filter podcast. Welcome to Episode 23 of the metal filter podcast. This show features Colin questions from a few members and recaps from around Metafilter. This also marks the one year anniversary of the show. We hope it's been a good ride so far and hope to keep on improving. And lastly, any site or link mentioned on this podcast is available at podcast at meta filter.com. Just click on the number of this podcast in the title and you'll see a nice list of every link mentioned. And you can also leave questions for us so our May corrections.

Spin a million good music picks lately. I haven't picked whittled down my picks to a few I'll probably play three or four.

Jessamyn 0:58 I have the couple from last time. There's still

mathowie 1:01 there's like an RPM challenge going on. With the RPM challenges, right.

Jessamyn 1:09 Vaguely I mean, I know people who participate in epic

mathowie 1:13 looked at that site a long time. I think it's sort of like the write a novel in a month thing.

Jessamyn 1:17 It's like a record no Remo. Yeah,

mathowie 1:19 I think it's like, record album in an entire month or something. Yeah, I

Jessamyn 1:23 know. I've seen stuff that people have done cortex, I think has a little page for an album that he did for that. Yeah. And Miko to I think did a cool RPM challenge album A couple years ago.

mathowie 1:34 Yeah, it's just lately that we've been getting like two songs every two days. And now there's like five songs every single day. And I think it's people on RPM challenges.

Jessamyn 1:44 Well, and we don't have a we don't have a metal filter challenge this month.

mathowie 1:48 No worries.

Jessamyn 1:51 Well, one of the things that's going on is, you know, the metal filter info dump is now I believe, current like they have some sort of job set up so that the stuff on the info dump is actually updated somehow, regularly. I don't know how those guys did it. But

mathowie 2:11 oh, cool. It looks like it probably be weekly from now on. Yeah,

Jessamyn 2:15 I think so. So if people are looking for information from the info dump, and I don't remember who the guy is that does the like he's got an API for it.

mathowie 2:26 Yeah, you set up a sequel, a live sequel, sort of interface to all the data. So you can do anything you want. You don't even have to Yeah, you don't have to download the data, you can just go to Well, I have to put a link to it in this. Write up that. Yeah, didn't go select all users were favorites equal 10. And you'll get the output.

Jessamyn 2:47 And he's got some good examples that go down the side too. So you can get all the meta filter posts ordered by what's had the most comments. All the users ordered by the number of posts, they've done, et cetera, et cetera? We, yeah, yes.

mathowie 3:02 You want to do the calls first? Yeah,

Jessamyn 3:05 let's do the calls. First, I've got iTunes on just telling me what the name of the name of the file is with the length either way,

mathowie 3:12 you see the 719? One, I think that was the first one

Unknown Speaker 3:16 that I met Jessamyn M masculino. from Cincinnati. Not to be morbid, but I was wondering if there was any continuity plans in place for metaphor in case something horrible would happen to us or number one? And in a more broader context, essentially, since there's a librarian here, what's your thoughts on the permanent or long term viability of all this digital stuff that we create at sites like metaphor, to our descendants, several generations out have any chance of being able to read all the stuff that we create at sites like Minnesota? Thanks and keep up the good work by

Jessamyn 3:49 descendants? Hmm.

mathowie 3:50 Yeah. So that's the me hit by a bus thing, which we found, had been asked at least two times before in meta talk. The popular surprise,

Jessamyn 4:01 we haven't talked about it in I mean, when's the last time we talked about to submit a talk? Two years ago,

mathowie 4:08 the site has some stability now and multiple people so it's probably not a worry as much anymore.

Jessamyn 4:13 When it was just Matt and like, you know, you killed over with your finger poised over the button. And yeah, what would happen? Yeah, but now I think it would take us like a week to be like, Oh, hey, Matt around.

mathowie 4:32 Yeah, I don't think there'll be any downtime whatsoever. Just be one less person to ask if things should be deleted.

Jessamyn 4:38 Well, we probably have some fight for succession, I assume. Oh, yeah, there should be a bloodbath. And of course, PBS really the only person who knows how anything is we could lock or put together well, we could all lock each other out. That'd be good. It'd be one of those like, everybody shoots everybody else. And of whatever that ridiculous TV show

mathowie 4:57 was was a Mexican standoff. have three guns pointed at three people. Everyone shoots at once

Jessamyn 5:04 that like, Oh, what'd you say? What was that the OSI were like, there's some big shooting thing with the music. Do you remember?

mathowie 5:14 I don't know what the hell you're talking? No. No. So it turns out the phenomenon is called the Linus Torvalds. Bus factor. That's, people have been asking when he was sort of King of Linux, early, like in the 90s, people would constantly go at him as if he gets killed. Because Linux would die. You know, even though it's open source, he kind of controls the keys to the to the kernel.

Jessamyn 5:40 Is that true? What does that really mean? The keys to the kernel.

mathowie 5:43 He had like, you know, he sort of had this image, it was Linux, and anyone could submit a patch. But the people who there was like a small group, him and Alan Cox and a few people that guarded the kernel, like what goes into the absolute core of Linux? changes to that, like we're very slow have to go through him. Yeah. So there's, through the 90s. It was everyone constantly worried about this? If he's, if he dies, like those speeds and power struggle? The other half of that question was pretty valid, the the, like, what are we going to do about archival of all this stuff? And I think, yeah,

Jessamyn 6:21 I mean, it's gonna

mathowie 6:21 be nine years old in a few months. So like, I think we're doing a pretty good job already of keeping content around the archive can't, you know, archive.org, can't keep up with every thread and can't make a mirror of metadata, there's too much content.

Jessamyn 6:36 Oh, and that's what they were sort of saying is that it's just pretty impossible to like, we're now putting stuff on the web faster than you can archive it. So it's like our other people can archive it. So we've got the database. And the way it's represented through the sort of ColdFusion sticks and duct tape thing that is the metal filter engine. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting, as long as the internet doesn't go away, we're,

mathowie 7:01 everything's in Google cache. You know, if anything horrible happens, and probably a way to grab every thread ever from Google.

Jessamyn 7:11 Google profile pages? Yeah,

mathowie 7:15 it was a shot for that as a service, like, download giant tarball of your entire site.

Jessamyn 7:21 Yeah, don't you think? So? I think that would be really cool. So yeah, as the as the librarian, I think, you know, unless something, I think people like to wave their hands a lot and be like, Oh, my God, it's the end of Sesame Street. It's the end of Metafilter, or whatever. But the way something can disappear from television is really different than the way something disappears from the web. Like you have to work actively to disappear something from the web. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 7:49 Hi, my name is Archie boy from India. And workforce for I just wanted to tell you that you guys went and repaid. And I've really been enjoying myself. And what I wanted to ask him that was I was going through the archives of Ni fi on wiki. And I stumbled upon a trade where he announced that he was going to give a real fatal failure of someone. I just want to know how many times has he said to himself that, you know, thank God, I haven't, or I didn't go through that. I guess that's it. Just wanted to say hi to all enemy fighters out there. Happy only one.

Jessamyn 8:39 All right. Valentine's Day was a while ago.

mathowie 8:41 Oh, that's what I was like. Yeah. What do you say at the end? Yeah. Yeah. So we took calls the first week of February, I guess most of these are from?

Jessamyn 8:49 Yes. And it's my whole fault that we're now recording this in the last week of Yeah,

mathowie 8:53 stupid snow shakes fist at clouds.

Jessamyn 8:58 Oh, and how'd you play said something about hearing my voice on the answering machine?

mathowie 9:02 Wow, no.

Jessamyn 9:04 Well, okay, that's what I thought.

mathowie 9:06 I think I left a message like, maybe maybe like, my daughter's in the background. Making noise, I don't know.

Jessamyn 9:14 led me to say like, your voice in my voice don't sound like Oh, we're so effective.

mathowie 9:23 I wish I could find these old threads on the wiki. Where's the wiki?

Jessamyn 9:27 mSv. What did he say specifically? I could only sort of hear what he

mathowie 9:33 said. So his question was he was looking through old stuff on the wiki and he found some stuff from I think 2000 to 2003 where I was talking about giving the site away or shutting it down or selling it or something. And I just remember 2002 or 2003 ish. Like, yeah, I was down in the dumps about metal filters. totally hate in it.

Jessamyn 10:02 And you're totally exhausted. And everybody was like, It's not the way I wanted to be. And you were like, You know

mathowie 10:06 what? To Yeah, I had a full time job, it's just a grind day in and day out to, to stay up half the night, doing all the admin stuff, like, all the editing, fixing, checking code, like dealing with everything in meta talk as is, you know, total one man show. Right? Having 5000 people, you know, kind of it was it was rough after years. And I mean, it's been three or four years into it. And yeah, I'd never really I think I made a little money in 2001 off the text ads when they launched, but hadn't really wasn't making it was sucking money and my will to live and your will to live. Yeah, I was definitely early 2003 is ready to like, just give it to someone else. But I could never find anyone that would keep the same sort of culture. I mean, I realized that it's, it's impossible to sell it, and I never will sell it now. I mean, really, like, there's no way like this, it would get ruined if anyone bought it?

Jessamyn 11:13 Well, and that's like, sort of the question, right? It's like, and then you sell it and get what, like, you have to either go get another job or sit around without a hobby, or, I mean,

mathowie 11:22 even if it was piles of money, it's just like, I know, the site would die under someone else's leadership, or you know why? Or took it over something just like just

Jessamyn 11:32 grab or have free beers, you know, in every major city in the world ever again.

mathowie 11:38 Yeah, that was also Yeah, that was, yeah, there'll be a lot of hatred for like the guy who ran off $5 million or something. And, you know, let this community die. Yeah,

Jessamyn 11:49 right. And you'd never be trusted in any web community work again. And

mathowie 11:54 yeah, I actually, I build communities and then flip them. Yeah, after 10 years. That's that's the business model. Wait 10 years and then sell? Yeah, I don't know. People might like me as an entrepreneur or something, which would be horrible, too. But

Jessamyn 12:11 like, yeah, the people who like you for an entrepreneur and the people you want to hang? No,

mathowie 12:15 no, I don't think anyone. Anyone should like anyone as an entrepreneur. Yeah, so yeah, I was down on it back then. I was all sorts of jokes going around, like, we could have an essay contest or something. I don't know. I got to give this site away. Yeah, I got through that. And, you know, started making a little money with PVR blog, and then eventually a little money with metal filter now, you know, sort of sustains itself. So yeah, this.

Jessamyn 12:44 Now we're a team of four people. I mean, I still meet people who are like, you have a job there. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I did a decent job, too. They're like, What? What?

mathowie 12:53 Yeah, that's the I found the employee thing is definitely the make or break on whether you're for real or not. People go, Hey, still run that goofball, snarky bitch fest called Metafilter. That Forum Board,

Jessamyn 13:09 like and you're like, Yeah, and I have a girl on staff to

mathowie 13:13 go, yeah, it's still going strong. Because there could sense it in some people's voices. It's like you're not doing anything new. Like you're still plodding along with that group. You have a job? Yeah. And I'll go like, Oh, actually, you know, I have like, three employees. And you know, it actually has income, I have to manage it. And it's a pain in the ass. And it's like a real business. Now, as soon as I say right, employees are like, really real. Yeah, like a real employees.

Jessamyn 13:40 Other people with skills, I mean, that that's true to just not a bunch of basement dwellers who just yeah.

Unknown Speaker 13:48 Hi, Matt. Hi, Jessamyn it was low calling from now they'll probably have to go back. And I'm calling because I want you to talk about your feelings. What I mean is I'm wondering what it's like to run Metacell tears, and specifically what it's like to deal with the negative aspects like when you work really hard on providing a feature. And when you announce it, the first thing that happens is people criticize it or ask you why you didn't do it this way or that way. Or what if, when you feel like your moderation decisions are never pleasing anybody? I asked this because I run a web form to it's only about a quarter sizes Metafilter but the one sometimes it's really discouraging. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I'm not getting paid any money for it. But sometimes when you when you put a lot of time and heart into something and and we feel like sometimes people are pretty negative about it. So um, yeah, I was wondering about that. And take care. Bye.

mathowie 14:55 Was it Lizzo

Unknown Speaker 14:56 Liezl. Oh, no,

Jessamyn 14:59 we're didn't have to use our user search and figure out dig dig. But her username was yet

mathowie 15:05 another downer.

Jessamyn 15:07 No talking about your feelings is not a downer.

mathowie 15:09 Oh no. What do you think of when people shit on the latest things we've built?

Jessamyn 15:15 But I don't think that's a downer because I think this is, you know, it's a wonderful opportunity to like, you know, power of positive thinking, right?

mathowie 15:23 A little bit of a downer, sometimes. It's me and Paul, we'll talk about stuff for like a week. And then we'll code it over a few days, and then we'll test it out internally for like another week. And we'll think we I mean, we can't foresee everything that might go wrong with something. But we put a lot of thought into, before we pull the trigger on anything. Like how's it going to affect the community? Is it going to change the way users behave? Is it going to give us like, something good out of it, are people that use this in bad ways. And sometimes when something has like, way more negative reaction, I thought, like, it's kind of disheartening. But I remember Paul PVS to get like, down in the dumps over it, like because he'd spend like, days coding something and everyone hated it, or something. And he's gotten

Jessamyn 16:14 to be fair, I feel like that happens. A lot less. Yeah, pretty rare. I mean, not only not only is there like a little bit of like beta testing, either, like there's, you know, a chunk of us, like all the admins test stuff, and occasionally we'll have other people, like, try stuff out, like, we'll announce it and metta talk or whatever, but I also feel like the stuff is, besides the social stuff, which I feel like it's been its own sort of tangent, a lot of the stuff has been, like, requested, and, you know, I'd really sort of like this. And, you know, I feel like we roll stuff out and then tweak it. And if people are gonna be like, Bly hate it, you're like, well, sorry. Like, there's very little stuff that we roll out. And it's like, Okay, here's the new thing. Everybody's gonna live with it. It's just like, Well, maybe you don't want to use the social tools. That's fine. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I really just don't take it. Personally, most of the time, you know, like, you guys probably do because you build it. But for me, who's more of like an intermediary with people? I'm like, Well, you know, this is our thought process. And I really believe we had sort of good faith, like everything you guys do, obviously, is meant to make something better, you know, like, it's not like we ever, like lock stuff down and be like, we have to do this horrible shit. Because we don't trust you like it, that almost never happened. Yeah. And so I feel like everything is like good faith, whatever. And people are generally decent about it. And I don't know about you, but I get like a lot of like, mail and instant messengers, like even when like, shady stuff like that happens and people are grouchy. That's like, Look, dude, I didn't want to get into that shitstorm meta talk, but like, I'm so psyched with what you're doing, or the new thing or whatever. Like, I feel like it balances, I get a lot of like, props from people. That's good. And you must also PB maybe doesn't get enough fan mail.

mathowie 18:06 I don't think I get much because people assume probably I get too much. I think the only thing I'm down on is when someone goes like, hey, it'd be great if we had this feature. And then maybe we say, Yeah, sounds good. I don't know if everyone need it. Six months later, somebody goes, Hey, be great. If we had that feature from someone mentioned six months ago, we go, okay, yeah, I can see how and then we build it. And someone's like, What the heck is this thing? Like, hate it? Get rid of it? I don't like it. Like, that's always like, there was demand. We talked about it for a while, like, you should. And it's a lot of things are easy to ignore, but

Jessamyn 18:41 Well, and that's the sort of biggish city thing, right? That like, it used to be that you could build a thing and most users would be like, Oh, that's better, because we all use the site for kind of the same thing. And now there's a lot of people that use the site for different things and so they get affected by changes differently. I mean, there's a lot of old school users that found the social tools really obnoxious and yet, so what like don't use it, you know, or like the XF n contact adder editor like right or somebody linked to me I don't understand and you're like, Okay, don't use it, you know, email everybody seems to love except for the fact that we haven't added some like our user attributes like people like it and people use it like I don't hear a lot of people bitching about the mail program

mathowie 19:26 Yeah, I get a lot of light hearted ribbing like you added mail to metal filter Oh yeah, boy.

Jessamyn 19:33 Yeah, but like that's just I mean, like planning about that they'd be complaining about too much mail on their sandwich Yeah, they're

mathowie 19:40 not No they're not they're just like goofing with me like you know, now I have like a seven site you know, to check you know, internal messages on like Flickr slash, you know, my delicious inbox slash,

Jessamyn 19:53 they are grocers. That's, that's my feeling. Did you figure out what that woman's actual name was? Oh, let's see Liz Lizza II Hazel, this aside, Liz bet she's she's Canadian. So this means because I know who our next caller is. This means that we have, I think four countries represented. Yeah. So like America or calls

mathowie 20:27 Canada. This is John, and Dutch. Hi,

Unknown Speaker 20:34 this is Jakob calling in from the Netherlands. I've got a question for you. I was idly wondering whether it would be possible to have Metafilter like community in the EU given that there is no shared language. So while I have no plans on my own, I was just curious what your take on the viability of a community like that would be. Thanks.

mathowie 21:06 Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like there's been a few Europa was that the meta filter you view ropa? View? ropa. That's right. That was sort of like the first. The thing we totally couldn't remember Oh, filter clone. There's been a few attempts at Euro filter clone at the problem is you need like, you know, one to five people super interested in building it and making it work and running it and then you need like 50 people, they're interested in being readers and participants.

Jessamyn 21:44 The big thing that yaka said was, what about the language thing, which is something that mercifully we just don't really have to deal with? Although we don't deal with we don't have to deal with it, because we enforce pretty much English on the site, including, like, you know, it's really hard to build a non English support for tags and everything else. Yeah, does limit who we can get on the site, because it's really primarily English speaking.

mathowie 22:09 But then you don't want to shield parts of the site in Japanese from, you know, English speakers that think they're missing out on stuff. I think everyone sort of picked a language and went with it. I've seen it work and like Latin America really well, because you know, everyone can kind of agree on Spanish.

Jessamyn 22:26 Or Portuguese. What's Yeah. What's the orchid?

mathowie 22:31 Yeah, right, how

Jessamyn 22:32 orchid like got completely taken over by Brazil, South America, Brazilian people, but like Flickr has a lot of people who contribute in different languages. And I think it's because like they have something that's non language based to kind of interact with, like pictures. Yeah. And so you know, like, my mom belongs to a mom G group, like a Japanese maple group. And a lot of times, she'll put up pictures of Japanese maples and all the comments are in Japanese, you know, um,

mathowie 23:02 that's true. I never thought like, I don't think a Flickr has been a monolithic community, but they have billions of little sub communities from their, you know, their little community. But the photo does, you know, crosses language barriers. And if someone says is French, Spanish or Japanese, like, that is a lovely tree. Like, I don't even know what it says. But that's fine. I can see it's a lovely tree, and it still works. There's some commonality,

Jessamyn 23:27 if it's in at least like alphabets that we recognize, I mean, a lot of times you can kind of get the vibe of whether somebody's saying that's good, or that's ugly. But the problem with like, discussion forums is, I mean, we have enough time, a hard enough time understanding each other when we all speak English. Yeah. And I don't even mean like people who are speaking it as a second, third or fourth language, but like, native English speakers fight about word meaning on meta filter, every day. Yeah. And so I wonder how that would go. I mean, you know, on the other hand, like neat stuff that you find on the web, we've definitely had people linked to stuff that wasn't an English. Yeah. And that goes great. You know, so I think it depends whether you're focused on what you're looking at, or whether you're focused on discussion. You know, it's the age old metal filter issue. I mean, I'd love to see somebody tried just because I feel like I feel bad for people who aren't in kind of the US blip of like when people in the states are awake.

mathowie 24:24 Yeah. Yeah, it's very quiet. When I was in London, like metal filter is dead. It's basically the middle of the night.

Jessamyn 24:31 Basically, when I was in Dubai, it was like, Yeah, complete flip. Like I was on the website at the same time as the Australian. Some of them and but like, and like 15 People like in China or like meet bomb, like, you know me and meet bomb, we're on the same time. Like what

mathowie 24:49 becomes more asynchronous like, because it's totally I think I was active from midnight to 4am on, you know, California or West Coast time. And so He's like, I just sort of would respond to stuff. And I'll check it tomorrow to see if anyone said anything about it. Like, that was just the way it kind of had a run. Because yeah, it was off. But

Jessamyn 25:10 right, I'd wake up in the morning and have a ton of email, and then I'd reply to all of it. And then I wouldn't get an email back. Morning, practically or right before I went to bed. Yeah, right.

mathowie 25:19 That was everyone's wake up. Early on, I think in late 2000s, some, like the earliest sort of bloggers in Mexico had contacted me about doing like some sort of Central America kind of metal filter. And it was like Mexico and South of that. And I actually looked into it and ColdFusion as a whole bunch of language support, so I could redo the interface in Spanish pretty easy. You just sort of set like, I want the date in this language pack. And it's not that hard, but I realized I was like, okay, theoretically does that Yeah, yeah, it's not that hard, even in my horrible spaghetti code to make it work in another language. But I realized real quick, there's like, no way I could moderate the text that I can't read. Given the how hard it is with English. You know, as my native language, reading, moderating English language forms is hard enough as an English speaker. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, I would have to trust you, it'd be yours completely. And, you know, gosh, I really hope you know, God's very good at what you do and you know, wouldn't tarnish you know, whatever, that a filter. So we never ended up doing it and I think they built their own and had some moderate success. So that was all the calls for the week I'm gonna set up a grand central thing with like a nice big, you know, push this button to call me in Grand Central dumps out mp3 So Well, I think it'd be way more slick in the future. And I'm sure it'll be way easier because you can like click on a button so

Jessamyn 26:54 people like that. I like that. Yeah,

mathowie 26:57 I think it's gonna get better in the future. These are all very pretty well, these are all very meta filters central questions, but I guess we asked people to ask us questions about metal filter. Well, and

Jessamyn 27:09 there was the kind of don't fuck around warning put some put some people off even

mathowie 27:14 Rick rolled how many times like that's funny anymore. I guess you want to do metal filter recaps?

Jessamyn 27:24 Sure. There's Mikos posted a new awesome job. I don't know if you saw Yeah,

mathowie 27:29 yeah, I was gonna mention awesomeness jobs, I guess would be this gaspin Being a new media assistant at the Smithsonian is like so freaking awesome. Doesn't pay extremely well at 40 grand ish in DC ish area. But man, what an awesome like foot in the door for like getting a cool web job where it's not doesn't sound like you have a ton of like, things you have, to me sounds playful, like, you know, updating webpages, playing with video and codeine, you know, audio, you know, play with a little bit of coding here and there.

Jessamyn 28:07 Well, and it seems like the Smithsonian has really been making a push lately to like, get their content online accessible. I mean, because they've got so much stuff. Yeah, just got like basements of like the nation's crap. And like, the more you put it online, the more people are, like stoked about it, like the Library of Congress. It's true, though, like the Library of Congress just put a ton of their pictures on Flickr. And so people have been able to like CO, like, tag them and interact with them and comment on them. And I think it's really been, you know, a success for them. And I feel like if more of sort of our national entities do stuff like that, whatever it is, whatever their visualization is, you know, New York Public Library started a bunch of blogs and stuff. And it really points out, like, if you've got the cash to do this stuff, well, like you can really share some shit in a way that's really awesome. I mean, there's comments and notes on like, everything on the Library of Congress's Flickr.

mathowie 29:06 Yeah, I've tagged a bunch of photos about bicycles. I just sort of went into, you know, tag I knew about or subject and help tag stuff. I think all these sort of major players, they all have this, like core three or four really hip people that like know about blogs and coding and are cool. And given social media generally. Yeah. Like I know like one of the coolest designers in the world works at JPL. That's why all their stuff looks nice. At what the propulsion lab Yes, yeah. So like NASA and JPL stuff looks cool online like has like nice bloggie templates. And, you know, they have they do pretty good coverage on their launches and stuff. And the Smithsonian seems like they have some hit people. NYPL definitely. library Congress is completely getting blown out wide open now. It's just awesome. But this is yeah, totally this job. reminds me my first big web job working at the university and UCLA where we just got to play with everything build stuff for the school. It was like the best place in the world, best environment in the world.

Jessamyn 30:12 Right? Well, and that's what I always tell people like when they're in school. When I was at McGill, I was like, learn all the tech stuff, you can now because you're going to be like plunked down in a job. And people are going to tell you like, please tell us how to make this awesome. And if you don't kind of already know, you miss an opportunity to really help people move forward, because it's hard to learn that stuff on the job and a lot of jobs. Yeah, specially library jobs.

mathowie 30:36 Why you have no downtime,

Jessamyn 30:39 you have no downtime. Like you can't spend your time like fucking around and figuring out how you know how to implement this side of the other because people are like, TikTok website done yet. And you're like, Dude, I started it last week, this takes the other cause you have to pull a reference shift, or anything else, like cool

mathowie 30:58 job. The other cool job is that job at Disney. Like if you're farther into this, like doing multimedia sort of crunching of, you're an expert on digital media and like how to crunch video and do it in large scale. Right?

Jessamyn 31:10 You have an opening at the mouse related company where I work.

mathowie 31:15 Yeah, and it's pretty easy to tell where that is. And that's kind of like, wow, that's a probably the funnest place on earth to work at wacky things. So it's probably fun.

Jessamyn 31:26 I had a friend well funded,

mathowie 31:28 I hope Oh, god. Yeah, yeah. Um, I guess metal filter stuff.

Jessamyn 31:35 Sure. You know, it's really hard to like miss a week or two podcasting because it's like, there was a whole bunch of stuff that I like two weeks ago. And then there's like a whole bunch more stuff. You know, yeah.

mathowie 31:45 Anything in February is fair game here. But there's I already had four or five favorites. And there's been more I think the how to even say it the rush. That's probably the biggest popular metaphor posts. Is that the mystery of the missing Russian hikers,

Jessamyn 32:02 right by Henry C. Maybe use

mathowie 32:05 was that. I love

Jessamyn 32:09 the club. Yeah, I love the de la

mathowie 32:13 accent, which is awesome, crazy, weird, creepy story from 50 years ago of what?

Jessamyn 32:21 Something whole bunch of college students

mathowie 32:23 go on a snow camping trip might not have college students. Yeah. They might not have been too experienced. And then what they're missing. There's supposed to be gone for a week. And after two weeks, nobody hears from so they start looking for him. Then they find their tent, laying in the snow. And it's been cut, open, ripped open. Yeah. And then there's like two dead people in the tree. And then the whole bunch of dead people under a tree. were dead people up a tree were dead. I don't know. It's like, there's well, and

Jessamyn 32:57 that was people that were missing. And they found the people that were missing later. Yeah, four feet of snow. And like their skulls were

mathowie 33:04 crushed. And like, Oh, someone's tongue was missing. That was the weirdest someone's tongue

Jessamyn 33:08 was missing. So said it looked like they'd been in a car accident. Yeah, like the amount of injuries was not like they got beat up by somebody. It was like they got hit by something. Yeah. And this was like in Russia like prior, you know, Cold War, pre Cold War era. So none of this information got out and like relatives were like, their hair had gone gray. Their skin was tanned. Like they'd all gone blind. Yeah. So there was all these like weird sort of tantalizing parts of the story. But most of the documentation about it didn't get released until 1990. Yes. And in fact, the some of it's still missing. And, you know, and nobody basically really knows what happened. Yeah, why did and they they'd like left the tent like in their underwear. Some of them? Yeah, like in a big hurry.

mathowie 33:56 Well, that's sort of late stages of hypothermia. You think you're warm, right before you're dying, and you basically strip yourself down.

Jessamyn 34:04 So Well, that happens if you're like running around. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. If you like, get up and have to leave your tent. Like, I don't Yeah, their whole analysis was that they left in a hurry.

mathowie 34:14 So the threads awesome, where people are pontificating and what possibly like radio activeness but then also avalanche seems, and but then like a really big bear, but there wasn't any signs of it. But there's not a lot of evidence left over after you know, one visit 50 years ago by Pete bright and

Jessamyn 34:32 Avalanche blocked their tent door. But then how come blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And

mathowie 34:36 then what is with the missing tongue? Like, that's just like stuff out of the episode of lost or something.

Jessamyn 34:42 Although it might be one of those weird like, that was one of the people that they found later. And so it might be one of those things that like, oh, you know, animals ate it, or I mean, there's not a lot of soft tissue. Yeah. But everybody of course thinks of like the cow mutilation, mystery stuff from the stage at least I think that Do

mathowie 35:00 you know this UFO talk? It's fascinating. It's like just one of those fascinating super old, weirdo. Sort of stories sound

Jessamyn 35:09 like yeah, this soft tissue missing from like cows, but then other people were like, Yeah, but if you were, you know, eating some cow that you found exploded on the side of the road you would whatever, go for those things first.

mathowie 35:23 Yeah, and guess this today ended up in SF chronicle

Jessamyn 35:29 was no link back links back to Metafilter.

mathowie 35:31 But Mark more for Morford. Yeah, I did like a whole column explaining it. Just like there's this, you know, wacky mystery on the internet that, you know, I found on metal filter, and he sort of breaks it all down.

Jessamyn 35:48 Well, and he totally like plays it up for like, creep fact. Yeah. Which is, which is interesting. I read that article first.

mathowie 35:55 Yeah, right. Yeah, you can go nuts on the creepiness of like, why were they tanned? Why is their hair gray? And then why is there some people are beat up.

Jessamyn 36:07 But not like beat up like their chests were caved in? Yeah,

mathowie 36:11 but there's no sign of any struggles. That's just strange. I'm sure that today we could figure it out. But it's going through the fog of history. And also, you know, Russian or Yeah, Russian protected sort of history.

Jessamyn 36:27 Do we have Russian metal filter members? I mean, we must have some, but

mathowie 36:32 it's hard to tell because of the like meta fields or KML file if you forget, like a negative. And when I think like the Midwest, maps to like Kazakhstan or something like that. And there's like all these users there. They obviously just forgot a negative number and their

Jessamyn 36:47 actual court Cincinnati cause

mathowie 36:49 Yeah, you're like, yeah, that's not right at all. Like, yeah, I think I think the western US requires this like, negative in your location details. And, yeah, so it looks like we have an artificial high number of Russians. According to art, detail, our mapping, but it's not quite right.

Jessamyn 37:14 Got it? Well, this was the other thing that I liked, which of course is speaking of multiple languages. The I don't even know exactly what the title sit tune bow dish

mathowie 37:29 for something. Yeah, I don't know.

Jessamyn 37:34 I don't beautiful day in town. Beautiful shirt, chimp. I don't know.

mathowie 37:39 I will, language tool.

Jessamyn 37:41 It's, it's from not on display, who also did the wonderful solid gold dancer posts. But it's a it's a review of sort of YouTube and other stuff from Bob and Doug McKenzie, the SCTV and like the Canadian television, guys, sort of whole Russia starting from, you know, a whole bunch of like, really good. YouTube's of their skits. And then there's some videos and then there's stuff linking from their album. And then there's stuff talking about the TV show. And then there's them reviewing the movies and then there's them talking about whatever that animated short is a beautiful way to go,

mathowie 38:21 huh? Yeah, that's what Yeah. How's it go? Oh, it's how's it going? Hey, it's how's it going? A but like Frenchified and with bad Google translation of how to say like something a? That's, that's my guess. That's my guess.

Jessamyn 38:41 So yes, at favorites. Totally fun post. Another nostalgia trip. And, you know, it was another one those threads where people are just like, we love this. Like, there's nothing really, you know, you're not gonna be like, Oh, blah, like, you know, you can't even say anything negative about it. People just enjoy it. Yeah, this

mathowie 39:01 is right up there with the ultimate Peewee Herman post and the solid gold gold dancer post, which is just like, here's everything you've ever wanted to know about. Bob and Doug McKenzie, this comedy skit about Canadians on SCTV it's awesome. It's almost like exactly like Wikipedia, but you know, more enjoyable

Jessamyn 39:20 well, and there's a whole thread about people like sharing stuff that they like, I mean, I clicked on like a lot of those videos and I was like, Oh, right. Like I remember album on vinyl. I remember buying it in the records

mathowie 39:31 exposed all through like Dr. Demento on kalo s when I was a kid, yeah. And then I saw it on TV. And it's like, I didn't know anything about Canada. So I'm watching all this comedy making fun of Canadians. It was a little weird.

Jessamyn 39:45 Well, and that's the funny joke, right that like it's all hyper Canadian because of the weird Canadian content rules. Yeah. Like that's where it came from originally, or that's what the story goes that they're like SCTV you're in Canada, you have to have a certain amount of Canadian content. So they made up these guys to have like extra Canadian content for like whatever the legally mandated amount of time was. I imagine

mathowie 40:07 this must be like the my experience with Canada through that must have been like the experience Europeans people all over the world have with like cheap American television. It's just on every channel everywhere because it's exported very cheap, cheaply.

Jessamyn 40:24 So they all watch Dallas or Yeah,

mathowie 40:26 or whatever. Like I friend in Spain's dad who watched Martin like 24 hours a day in Spain and thought like, that's what all Americans are like. It's just a weird sort of view of you know. Weird. Um, what else? I thought the juicy the frozen fire building. Yes, that was, like beautiful and tragic and awesome. At the same time, I thought,

Jessamyn 40:57 like, basically, it was a building that caught on fire in the winter, and then they spread it. And then it became this busted up ice palace.

mathowie 41:04 Because the water is freezing. Yeah.

Jessamyn 41:09 Oh, and one of the things I really liked about it was that one of the users what honey X or something actually, like works really nearby there. And so they had a comment. You know, talking about watching the people putting out the fire. That was the subject of the link and I don't know, actually, it's right before

mathowie 41:27 your comment. Oh, yeah. Awesome.

Jessamyn 41:30 Yeah, so a bunch of really beautiful pictures of a building that caught on fire and then froze. Which actually, uh, since this happened, the dollar store up the road for me caught on fire. Ah, and it's wintertime here, but ah,

mathowie 41:45 it was over $34 in damage by the time the store

Jessamyn 41:51 but they didn't spray it with I don't know what happened. Like it didn't spray it with water and it didn't look beautiful. So I was kind of waiting. I was like all the dollar stores on fire. Ice Palace. No, we should probably

mathowie 42:02 talk about this. Um, there was an awesome comment. I was trying to pick up on really cool stories and comments lately. Astro zombie. There's this content

Jessamyn 42:13 on this sidebar, dude. Oh, yeah. There was this. I forgot. I put this on the sidebar. There's

mathowie 42:20 a contentious thread about a guy who, you know, graduates college and goes I'ma check. Shepard. Yeah, I'm gonna check on the American Dream by you know, taking three months off college and living homeless with what $25 And it took a year a year. That's right. Well, 10 months, the clothes on my back. I have $25 Emergency credit card on my pocket. And I always call mom and dad but I'm homeless. And in one year, I'm gonna try and get a car job and an apartment. And savings. Yeah, and some savings. And by the end of the year, he has something like five grand saved up and he's only making like seven bucks or 10 bucks an hour. Like as a moving company. Yeah. And he ends up buying an old truck and he gets an apartment, like, six months. There's a lot of like, people going like, this isn't for real. Because you know, he's coming right out of like a nice college. And he's doing this and he can. He's dependable. You're not homeless? Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's an interesting exercise. Not exactly the same. But Astro zombie wrote an amazing story about actually coming out west to LA to be a writer and just having nothing. Like he's right out of college, but he had this nothing and he ended up like in a shelter homeless shelter for three months while he was working housing with

Jessamyn 43:40 a bunch of like addict and yeah, and really hard, really hard luck people and

mathowie 43:46 what was like to watch them move on and which ones moved on which ones didn't and like what he had to do for you know, when he got hurt once in a while. And you know how we got an apartment and he didn't have a car for a long time? And how Where did he end up 10 years later? And stuff like that. It's just a fascinating sort of awesome story of the how he sort of really was homeless for a while.

Jessamyn 44:10 Well, and it fit into the thread really well where he's like, look, you can make fun of this kid all you want but realistically speaking for people that don't have anything Yeah, I just felt like it was really well put

mathowie 44:21 for a Bronco told his story as well. But yeah, that was a highlight of a thread that was like, kind of mad because I don't know, people were like, really didn't like the sort of college kid who's really smart and has all the resources in the world.

Jessamyn 44:43 I think JD Ross interviews him on his Yeah, yeah. And he likes to comment. There's a whole comment string on his website that's crazy like people like rah rah rah rah rah are fighting. But I mean, the interesting thing about the kid is like Like, he gives away copies of the PDF of his book for free, if you want to read it, and like he actually follows up when people critique his story, you know, like, I think the thing that I really took away from it is that he's a kid in a lot of ways, you know?

mathowie 45:15 Yeah, he Yeah, it's yeah, he doesn't want.

Jessamyn 45:19 Like, how many of us had our shit that straight when we were right out of college? Any? Yeah,

mathowie 45:22 I forgot that. He was like, don't buy the book, just email me. I'll send you the PDF of the whole book. And you can have it for free.

Jessamyn 45:29 Yeah, and he seems to like go around the web, finding people that review his book, and he comments in the comments like, Hey, thanks for your critique. So, you know, even though Yeah, I felt it was a little certainty. I also felt like he seems to be kind of a genuinely sincere individual, whether or not he sort of learned a hard lesson about whatever, who cares. Yeah.

mathowie 45:51 And I got it got compared to the nickel and dimed book, which was,

Jessamyn 45:55 well, favorably and unfavored. Yeah. I mean, I felt like a lot of people looked at what Barbara Ehrenreich was doing and were like, she's only doing this to write about it. And she kind of made up her own rules. And I think everybody does, right. If you want to like, like be downwardly mobile, you have to kind of make shit up and a lot of ways unless something really crappy happens to you.

mathowie 46:14 Yeah, so few people have done this. I think the nickel and dime bath are kind of, you know, they sort of, I think this Adam guy like wanted, he wanted it to work out. So he did everything I could to make it work out and it worked out. And yeah, and

Jessamyn 46:29 he was gonna be sort of back at home. Anyway, later anyhow.

mathowie 46:34 And then nickel and dime, she kind of want to show how hopeless it is and sort of went for that, you know,

Jessamyn 46:40 well, and she was also in a different situation. She wouldn't live in a shelter. Because she was female, which meant that she had to immediately spend a whole bunch of money on right. You know, which women have different options. Yeah. So yeah, they're both, I think, really interesting.

mathowie 46:57 Morgan Spurlock tried it on 30 days. It's like little mini supersize. Yeah, TV show. And I think that's what people said. It was like kind of cool and rough for like the first week or two. And then

Jessamyn 47:09 he brought his fiancee for a woman. She had to like, feed him back to life after she precise.

mathowie 47:17 They're still together. But like, after a week or two, we lucked into a good job. And I'm like, a lot of these stories I hear about it's like, well, yeah, I struggled. I struggled. I struggled and I lucked into this great thing. And it's like, well, I don't think you would have ever looked into it. If you weren't like if you didn't appear to be someone college educated. And normal. Yeah, normal. Decent T. Three kids. Yeah. Mentally, okay. Yeah, no kids at all. So you could be dependable and, you know, and yeah, they always look into something it's like 10 bucks an hour. It's like I would have killed for that, you know, when I was 20 or 18 had no money but right. It's hard to say. I mean, there's just so much noise in the signal. You can't really do the stuff in a vacuum and really test it out. Oh, let's do AskMe Metafilter stuff.

Jessamyn 48:05 A few looks good. Looks good. Ask Metafilter stuff.

Unknown Speaker 48:10 Ah

Jessamyn 48:12 Oh, my favorite. There was a couple things that I really liked one was like an old one which I think we just talked about briefly I don't think there's like tons to say about it but I missed it when it first came out. Was the those crazy box Apple Stores How do they keep all the heat in when they just have these doors in New York? Yeah, ailments all year.

mathowie 48:32 There's sort of an atrium there but I guess it could act as a chimney I went in there once I was in New York just to see what was like

Jessamyn 48:40 well in the whole store is kind of like underground Yeah, you walk into these open this open door and there's like this glass atrium up above and then you go like down some spiral staircase into like the basement

mathowie 48:52 I guess. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, it's like glass stairs. It's kind of

Jessamyn 48:56 but it's a pretty like normal question like okay, their doors are open all year round. How does that work? And it was just people talk my

mathowie 49:04 guess is they're using radiant floor heating which keeps the floors warm and the people down near the heat will rise but like if you just constantly have hot water rushing through the floor I think that would do that. There are a lot of these answers are like talking about hot air blowing around and how do you keep it from just blowing out the stack at the top but I think a lot of really big spaces are heated with from the floor and successfully and you don't

Jessamyn 49:34 have to as a result it's warm where the people are on the floor warmest Yeah, the skies warm or not. It doesn't I mean, the

mathowie 49:40 stealing of it is like 2030 feet high and like underground and it doesn't matter if it's cold in that top 10 feet or something because of the cold coming down from the top. But yeah, I think I pitches radiant floor heating.

Jessamyn 49:55 That's your secret. Yeah,

mathowie 49:56 I don't nobody said it. I guess I should drop out I guess in there but that's what I'm guessing.

Jessamyn 50:04 Okay, and then the one that I really liked which was more recent was the we're gonna go to the They Might Be Giants concert help us enjoy it and not stand out like dorks well see exactly it's that funny. I'm not many people favorited this but they had like 45 Answer that serious.

mathowie 50:22 Come on. Oh, they've never been a concert.

Jessamyn 50:27 It's an adorable question because for anybody who's been to They Might Be Giants concerts, it's like, dude, if you look like dorks, you're not gonna stand out. I don't know, I like all these questions about like, social awkwardness where the answer is, you're totally worried about the wrong things. You're gonna have a great time. Go have fun, you know?

mathowie 50:45 Yeah, that's, that's hilarious. I'm going to comic book convention. But I don't want to look like a nerd. I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. I don't I avoid that.

Jessamyn 50:54 And like Greg nod, typed out this completely awesome list of like, setlist or something? His list of favorites because they're like, also like, what should we listen to sort of get ready for the for the thing? Wow,

mathowie 51:08 that's really cool. And your concert preparing? I see this. humongous.

Jessamyn 51:15 Yeah, I don't think that oh, wait, let's see to the user. Their follow up? They say if the question still open after the concert, I'll post a review. But I don't think I don't know if it happened. But like, basically, their daughter had started enjoying them. So that's why they sort of got into them. So those were those were my main, the main two that I loved.

mathowie 51:38 That cracks me up just the idea of I mean, there's nothing but dorks. They Might Be Giants party.

Jessamyn 51:44 Right. He played like Halloween at Hampshire when I was in college. I've never actually seen all hats. I haven't seen them since college. And like that was a million years ago. So to me, it's kind of like oh my god, they're still around. made me very happy.

mathowie 52:01 Did you see me bomb got his laptop seized in Vancouver? What

Jessamyn 52:08 I'd heard about this, is this in AskMe?

mathowie 52:11 I've heard about it. Yes, I heard about and Canadian customs have been really nuts lately. And there's some article in New York Times about like some woman who lost her laptop like a year or two ago and still has no clue like the, you know, customs that Canada can't tell her where it is. You know,

Jessamyn 52:28 somebody was just talking a friend of mine who was up last week and was just talking about this, like, the guy for Modest Mouse had his laptop stolen? I mean, whatever. It's not Oh, right.

mathowie 52:38 Yeah, he made a big deal about it and got it back. Well, of course. Yeah. I think me bomb just has like us, like, lots of travel in his past or something.

Jessamyn 52:48 Well, he's encouraged to stand in Afghanistan. And I mean, basically, he teaches English and like war zones, basically.

mathowie 52:54 So he might look like he's rolling is going through terrorist types of places or something. It's so weird, because a lot of it's pedophilia, but then a lot of it's terrorism. And it's just because they looked at his passport.

Jessamyn 53:08 Yeah, and he's like, I mean, you know, if you know, his profile online, and I don't think he makes any big deal about like, changing. You know, he's not trying to sort of hide, but he's also a very sort of herb friendly kind of freaky, in in sort of the best sense of the word guy, which is the kind of stuff that matters in the States, but I don't think Canada gives shit about stuff like

mathowie 53:29 that. I don't know why. I think it was the New York Times article recently about customs, US and Canada Customs have totally stepped it up. And now they're losing laptops left and right, like actually seizing them and like downloading the entire hard drive and all these things that just seemed like huge privacy invasions. With like, so little, you know, there's got to be so much noise, you know, if to go through someone's entire hard drive, what are you possibly going to find? I mean, it would just take hours, and they're doing it's the hundreds and hundreds of people so it's just kind of mind boggling how much data they're taking in. And what are they getting out of it? You know, it's a meat bomb got snared.

Jessamyn 54:11 Yeah. And it's just horrible. Like, I think it's horrible. Like, why can you take somebody's

Unknown Speaker 54:18 laptop?

mathowie 54:19 Yeah. The most popular thing ever, like as the what are some sites like kottke.org? Just like what are interesting, neat sites, and there's just a monster list of cool sites I've seen, you know, almost all of them before, but it was great. We should

Jessamyn 54:37 probably get like the concatenations of things on the wiki. One of the really like, useful I think things would be like, what are some good sites like blah because we've had like, what are some good sites like arts and letters daily arts and letters daily? What are some good sites like? Cook's Illustrated what are some good sites? Oh, these are great. Hey, waxy Lee X. Did you know that wax he and I are doing? Our panels are at the same time? Southwest. Totally sucks.

mathowie 55:08 Um, you see what I liked everything on AskMe metal filter that I favorite is all like handy. Like recipes and stuff and weight loss and weight gain. There's an interesting how much could you possibly put how much weight can you possibly put on in a weekend?

Jessamyn 55:26 Oh, I love that one where it was like, Okay, I have 48 hours and nothing to do but this what is the fast the most weight? And so people are like, well, it depends do you mean waterway or? Yeah,

mathowie 55:41 calculations of eating lots of salt feedings? What how many pizzas eating an enormous amount of pizza like?

Jessamyn 55:49 Well, and I was wondering about

mathowie 55:51 or something? Couldn't you just like

Jessamyn 55:53 drank a lot too? Because like alcohol is like totally empty calories, but it doesn't fill you up. Yeah. Although there's some limitation because at some point you fall over and pass out and don't

mathowie 56:04 know that no matter how much of a bender the most you could possibly it looks like 1410 to 15 pounds looks like the most you could possibly put on

Jessamyn 56:13 although it's hard to get 10 to 15 pounds off. Yeah,

mathowie 56:15 like six months. Yeah.

Jessamyn 56:19 So that's not, but yeah, you're not gonna gain 40 pounds because?

mathowie 56:26 Yeah, it's just not possible. Is it?

Jessamyn 56:27 I'm trying to find out.

mathowie 56:29 There's all the math is there all the calories? 3500 calories equals a pound. So the 50 people come up with 50,000 calories you could consume in excess and

Jessamyn 56:40 a few days. Do you have a link to it? It's making me crazy. Yeah,

mathowie 56:43 I posted it in the window.

Jessamyn 56:47 Oh, it's not it's not hopping. Okay, what? unfilter? Oh, yeah, no. So that was a total favorite of mine. And of course, there are people who are like, Yeah, I've done this, you know, or whatever. Yeah, I put on 10 pounds in a week,

mathowie 57:00 people talked about five pounds. I put on five pounds in a week going to Hawaii. Like because I didn't exercise. My last favorite on a past meta filter was the spoiler alert the origin of there's always these fun threads about the origin of X, Y or Z and it's almost always some literary reference. But I felt like what was the was? Oh, right. What was the origin of the word of the term spoiler alert and because someone's saying like I've never in the 70s and 80s I never heard it mentioned in in like book reviews or movie reviews and now I actually do and it feels like something like from the internet only on the internet right? And is it something from the internet that got that's now in like written reviews of stuff people just use the phrase and yeah, people dig up the first reference ever is 1981 It sounds like it was

Jessamyn 57:51 in the SF lovers digest. Yeah, so it was like an

mathowie 57:56 Email Digest about some old mailing list or from ARPANET graphs. Yeah, so it's like very old The first reference is actually like referencing something else but so it's definitely from the internet in general from like the early early 80s 1980 1981 So yeah, that's about it. And I think we're done

Jessamyn 58:20 it for it for metal filter

Unknown Speaker 58:32 if you're listening you come as rain in the wind in the rain when skies doesn't fall above us you'll start to see

Unknown Speaker 58:46 Oh, it's so strange take chances maybe we can come together when the sun goes down still builds and breaks the world is blue the trees down in a high trestle fabulous, same level. Take a chance on this shelter. Maybe we can come together Hello

Unknown Speaker 1:00:22 take a chance on this shelter. Maybe we can come together when the sun goes