Podcast 28 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 28: Burning logs (2008-06-13).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, filter, question, thought, metal, day, essay, write, kuwait, tall, rules, post, learned, met, library, read, music, idea, awesome, superpower

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00 and gentlemen, welcome to the Metafilter odd cast

mathowie 0:32 Welcome to Episode 28 of the Metafilter podcast this week features calls for members and that music you just heard was a mystery caller from Canada that just called up to noodle on the guitar

families residue previously Bob Jackson midnight not really a question it's a two or three minute plug for the metal filter music thing he

Unknown Speaker 1:28 Hi flapjacks at midnight here calling from sunny Tokyo. My question is, could you moderator types, you mods please do everything in your modelY powers to call attention to the fact that the metal filter oil music challenge is now open to all Mefi yours. Hell, even me fires are encouraged to give us musicians suggestions for the monthly metal filter music challenge. I know I made him metapost about this. But I figured not everybody sees those. And a lot of people listen to the podcast and they might be aware of this for the first time. So just wanted to ask if you all could give us a little plug there. And make sure that everybody knows your suggestions are welcome whether you're a musician or not. If you come up with any really an idea, fantastic idea for some lyric, or some some kind of musical idea, or some kind of crazy zany off the wall idea. We call that the wildcard challenge. So let it be known that the word go out far and wide. Everyone's suggestions are welcome and encouraged. You can send them to me flapjacks at midnight, your humble servant, you can use Mefi mail for that, that'll be the best or me mail as it's sometimes referred to send your suggestions. And if yours is chosen, you will be credited on the top bar of the Mefi music page. And you'll have the pleasure of seeing your idea realized by some of our wonderful Mefi musicians. So thanks so much for your attention. And I'll leave you now with a little bit of the Old Joe Hart.

Unknown Speaker 3:41 The. Builder huge challenge, please give us your ideas.

mathowie 4:04 What was the question? There's no question.

Jessamyn 4:07 The question was, will you tell people?

mathowie 4:10 Will you play the following two minute commercial?

Jessamyn 4:13 His voice is awesome. Now.

mathowie 4:15 I don't know what to say about that. Like, yeah, we have a metaphor for music challenge.

Jessamyn 4:19 And Jackson and I talking about the revitalized rejuvenated metal filter music challenge, which is up on the top of the Mi Phi Mu page and not only can you contribute whatever your awesome music is, but as well, you can contribute suggestions including lyric ideas and other things. So people should go over there and talk to flapjacks and help him get it all up and running. Yeah,

mathowie 4:43 that was cool. He didn't have to actually be a musician to participate, which is nice. Let's try never use baby shoes.

Jessamyn 4:51 Sounds great.

Unknown Speaker 4:53 Hi guys.

Unknown Speaker 4:54 It's never used baby shoes here. And just wanted to fold in with a couple of questions that I'm often asked. To answer in my work, and they are, in all of the years of doing that a filter what? What has been the one thing or the things that have come up and happen as a result of the website that you never would have anticipated when you started doing it? And then secondly, somewhat related? If you were able to go back now and start Metafilter, again, from day one, knowing everything you know, now, what, if anything, what you do differently,

Jessamyn 5:30 so that was never used baby shoes. And what I would like to say about the never used baby shoes. Handle is that I haven't been interpreting it completely wrong since the first time I saw it.

mathowie 5:42 It was a Hemingway reference.

Jessamyn 5:44 Yeah, yeah, like whatever the saddest story ever, or something like, you know, classified ad for baby shoes never used. But I always thought it was like some kind of macho, like blar guy never use baby shower. Blargh. And until I saw it explained in meta talk, so

mathowie 6:00 that was good, tender moment from a drunken writer who killed himself.

Jessamyn 6:05 I know when the Shopko Yes.

mathowie 6:09 We see what part of that question. Yeah, what's the weird? What's the thing you never thought of that metal filter? surprises you with?

Jessamyn 6:16 Did you ever think you'd have a job doing it? I never did. Oh, I

mathowie 6:19 kind of dreamed of it. The thing is, like a dream come true. I thought I heard this I thought of like design perspective things. The thing I never in a million years thought of because it was 1999 Was that everything you ever said would follow you around forever, because Google would get really good by the time by 2008. So I never anticipated you know, it's just like, just farting in the ether. For the first few years. You know, people are freely talking about whatever. And then we started getting email in the last year or two, maybe one a month or someone's just terrified, horrified of third.

Jessamyn 6:55 Getting a job. I'm getting married. Clarence

mathowie 7:00 graduated college, I'm going up to the FBI job. I've got to get every mention of my name off the internet of me just being natural and talking of me

Jessamyn 7:09 being like, eight years ago, stupid. Yeah. Because a lot of it's like, oh, my god Did you were 14. But like, nobody knows that, you know, they just read your shit. And they're like, are

mathowie 7:18 you think the president should be killed or whatever it is that they say delete those? Yeah. But you know, I never in a million years thought that like, yeah, and I feel bad. You know, right now, man for things. I was saying that 21 or 19, or 14 or 23. Even we're still online, Jesus Christ,

Jessamyn 7:38 I can find occasional things I posted to Usenet like in the mid late 90s. And I'm always like, Oh, my God, I was a child. And like, but you have to dig to find stuff on Usenet like that stuff doesn't surface to the same way. You know, because meta filters also got that like sweet PageRank, which makes it also Yeah,

mathowie 7:57 if I was born 10 years later, oh, you'd see my atheists manifestos from when I was nine. That was the most important thing in the world. Oh, my God.

Jessamyn 8:07 That's awesome. Yeah, I think for me, I never believed that like, kind of q&a online stuff, like from my sort of library perspective, ever would have gotten like traction that people would have been interested in it that you could like that there could be a magical box on the internet where you could type a question in, and instead of just finding out that natural, natural language processing is a ways off, like you'd find sites where people had sort of discussed this kind of thing. I mean, it's interesting coming up with like, yahoo answers, answers, in addition to sort of ask Metafilter answers, but believing that there would be like, online techie, librarian, people that did sort of library stuff at the same time, as they did, you know, fucking around online stuff. And the value could come out of that always sort of surprises me. And I guess, you know, I always wanted to, like, work in a library so that I could move to the country. And it never occurred to me that I could move to the country and have like, work that was sort of on the internet. Like, for me personally, like you always kind of thought about it, like, same as you. Yeah. That you were like, yeah, what would that be about? Like some sort of horrible cam girl life? I would hate that. So. Yeah. And then metal filter. Like, it's interesting to have something that's got such a long history, so that so that it actually, you know, in internet years, it's like a million years old. And it's it's neat to be able to watch that progression within one community for me, not like I never thought it would happen. But it's one of those things that I sit back and I'm surprised by

mathowie 9:38 Yeah, and if I if I rebuilt Metafilter from the ground up starting today.

Jessamyn 9:43 I think we've answered this question before. I don't remember what you said, though.

mathowie 9:47 I don't remember.

Jessamyn 9:49 I use PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, probably easy to better ASP. ASP background.

mathowie 9:56 I'll use it better language I would probably I mean favorites were built in from day one. It probably look more like Digg you know, where people vote on things to get them to show up or something. I don't know. I'm so tired of squashing spammers, you know, that if that was already built in or spam was already filtered out, because people could obviously tell it sucked. That would be nice. That's a thorn in our side.

Jessamyn 10:19 A lot. What I think about that a lot like, like not having a way to vote things up and having a way to vote to hide things if I if I wasn't fairly certain people would use it against their enemies in addition to like, using them against, you know, just sort of bad men trying to SEO spam the front page. Yeah. You know, just like you know, something goes below a negative one rating and you can't see it anymore until Bark, bark bark. Back at Pentecost, it caught a spammer last night.

mathowie 10:49 Yeah, it was someone we knew is gonna be a spammer. Right? I hate to be the thought Crimes Unit and bust people before they've ever even done anything. But it was clear. I don't remember the gern asked let's do p gern.

Jessamyn 11:02 All right, to say why.

Unknown Speaker 11:04 And that's my Mrs. P gern. I like hanging out of metal filter, because I think everybody there is smarter than I am. Which may or may not be the case. But it really makes me makes me feel like I'm learning something every day that I'm there. I'm wondering what you guys have learned from the other users. That's notable and maybe changed your life a bit. Thanks. And keep up the great, great work. Bye bye.

mathowie 11:42 Well, something I learned, I learned. I learned what what after the jump comes from, you know, people in blogging or like more on this story after the jump, and you have to jump to the comment page to read the rest of the story that comes from newspapers with the like, you know, go to a 35 to read the rest of the story. It was called the jump.

Jessamyn 12:04 I did not know I thought it was just assumed it came from newspapers. What I assumed it came from newspapers. Yeah,

mathowie 12:11 it was a newspaper thing. I just thought it was like a website like after the jump or something. But wait, where's the live chat?

Jessamyn 12:21 And what else have you learned?

mathowie 12:23 That was that was this morning? That's it. That's this morning. I guess I've learned quite a bit. I mean, in general, that's made my life better stuff. I learn quite a bit about you know, people that are unlike me what their life is like from them.

Jessamyn 12:39 Totally what I same thing totally same.

mathowie 12:42 I had no I mean, like, I like growing up, I was around, you know, I think I had you know, more than 10% of my friends were Jewish. And I have family members that are sort of Jewish. So I'm sort of Jewish, but like, I had no idea what being Jewish was like, I've learned like, reams about that, you know,

Jessamyn 13:02 and sexism tax and I write I would

mathowie 13:05 say oh my god, I can just spot like embarrassing things said by man just in a second now, like when I'm watching TV or hanging out with friends, I'll just be like, I can't believe you just fucking said that you fucking

Jessamyn 13:20 Well, for me, I think part of it. Yeah, it's like, you've known people sort of in the sort of two dimensional world of, of like commenting and talking to each other and whatever. But, but like getting to sort of follow along with people who aren't like you, like, I find that you know, if you know a lot of people or if you live in one place, like you kind of decide that like, well, these are my friends because they're kind of like me, or these are my friends because we do the same things. And the people that aren't really like you are aren't really doing the same things you don't kind of gravitate towards or spend that much time with. And Metafilter to me is like this giant, kind of weird hangout living room place. That's not a bunch of kind of self selected. People. You know, it's kind of what I always imagined, like, like church, or like joining the Masons would be like, like, there's a bunch of people and you kind of decided to be with them for some reason. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have other things in common. And you have to kind of learn to get along with them and whatever. And I never had to do that in the same way in the sort of real life world as I feel like you do a metal filter that there's people who are going to be in your space interacting with you every day. I mean, if you're me, and they're different, and you get to not only know them, but understand Yeah, what the inside of their life is like, not just this like, oh, that's the guy who goes to NASCAR. And I don't care about NASCAR, so I don't hang out with him. Like there's, you know, NASCAR people or people that live in cities or rich people, poor people, people that don't parakeets, like all that kind of stuff. And you're like, Wow, I wonder what that's about? Who would own a bird and then you learn about it, you know what I mean? Yeah. Whereas especially to you get older, you don't necessarily get inside people's like how Isn't heads the same way? Yeah, who knows if my, like random acquaintances own birds or not? I don't know. Like, you know who I met a filter owns a bird because they're in there answering the bird questions, or the cat questions or the puppet show questions or that, you know, oh, and the other big thing I learned, which really surprised me is how many people can't manage their money at all? Like, it never would have occurred to me, but like, it gave me a little bit of perspective. Like, I'm always like, Oh, I'm pretty good with money, but blah, and like reading AskMe Metafilter. And people are like, oh, yeah, I never opened my mail, because I just don't want to deal ever. I just never would have known those people existed. And it's interesting to know what their life is like, because it's really different from mine.

mathowie 15:42 I always knew everyone was terrible with money, including myself just using myself as a guide.

Jessamyn 15:48 Well, maybe that's it, right? You assume like everybody's kind of like you. So I assumed everybody was kind of like me. And sure enough, they aren't. And everybody always thinks I'm taller than I am in real life. Wow. You know, the opposite? Well, because people are always when I meet people at meetups, they're like, you're kind of short. Oh, yeah, I don't. Do people think you're shorter? Because you're kind of tall. Yeah,

mathowie 16:10 I think there's like an ideal like on the radio. You assume everyone's every guy is tall, dark and handsome. That's what his voice sounds like. And then yeah, I remember being a kid and in seeing radio, people I'd heard for 10 years go like, that's like a little pipsqueak guy could beat up like what's up with that? He sounds like a dish. Do you think they're all gonna look like 60s James Bond or something? Shankar Yeah, so I think everyone on the web is supposed to be apparently 5725 10. Slightly portly, yes. And I'm way too tall and your T shirt.

Jessamyn 16:46 You think even the ladies are supposed to be five, seven? Yeah, I

mathowie 16:49 think why you're not that short. You're like 552? That's it? Oh, no, me? No, I don't think. Sure. I know, five foot tall. Lots of people on line or five feet tall women?

Jessamyn 17:05 Of course, but by the numbers. And you're like, what? 6164?

mathowie 17:10 Are you shooting? A K is five three. So I always assume that's normal.

Jessamyn 17:15 Well, it is Yeah. K and I are about the same height. So yeah, I didn't notice

mathowie 17:19 the you. I know you're slightly short or

Jessamyn 17:24 I'm the shortest mod I think it

mathowie 17:25 was maybe at a at the Boston meetup, the Cambridge one because it was a sea of people shoulder to shoulder and you were like a drain. If you look at the topography,

Jessamyn 17:36 Plutarch really tall and Eskimos really tall. There was a bunch of an ethnos girlfriend what hurt everyone was a bunch of really tall

mathowie 17:44 people. Yeah, everyone was super tall. And you were like in a in the middle in a pile? Like oh, there you are down there.

Jessamyn 17:54 That meetup Yeah, a little

mathowie 17:56 was the drain.

Jessamyn 17:59 I have never heard that.

mathowie 18:00 I don't know why that came to mind. I was just, I don't even understand. I was just looking out at the crowd. I remember walking in the bar. It was as if I was looking at a bathtub or something just weighed down. Everyone started the same height and suddenly there was a gap.

Jessamyn 18:16 I thought it was like people were like circling around you talking about

mathowie 18:21 this appearing? On display next.

Unknown Speaker 18:27 Oh, this question is for Matt Howie. This is not on display. And I was just curious as to how and where and when you came up with the idea for metal filter and the name metal filter itself. And thank you for the awesomeness by

mathowie 18:48 I think I've answered this online and text of zillion times. Had a filter, I was thinking of filtering the web. The original thought for

Jessamyn 18:57 filtering the web.com You mean

mathowie 19:00 my. My original thought was like I was just gonna do like Best of blogs. I was just gonna be it was gonna make a meta doesn't mean the first meta blog about other blogs because there was only like two dozen blogs. And I thought

Jessamyn 19:12 I mean pull out by them. No. Oh, but it wasn't about blogs. Exactly. No.

mathowie 19:16 Yeah. I mean, Paul kind of think did beat me. Yeah, it was about the same time. But I was like I was specifically every single posts come from other blogs. And it was and it was all gonna be like the blah, blah, blah. It was just sort of like best stuff. Then I realized that's kind of dumb. Like, I could just like be doing original stuff. Why would I just copy other people people might not like that. So the concept changed before it even hit the web, which is good. And yeah, it was supposed to be interesting stuff on the web. Where did you get that color from? The blue? It was 9099 and everything was white and if something was non white, it was cool and designing. So

Jessamyn 20:02 I have another example name another singular example of a non white blog. That was cool.

mathowie 20:08 Cam world was gray. Let me see. Kai is kind of like white Kottke was yellow at the time. I'm gonna see if the second birthday stuff is still online. Second earth

Jessamyn 20:25 you have a Clicky Keyboard.

mathowie 20:27 Fucking in Turkey stop working on Firefox. I think it's slash second birthday. Like to end the birthday. I have some mock ups my very first mockups. The blue came out of some weird cubist sort of attempt to me check the

Jessamyn 20:42 Cubist attempt. Oh, I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it.

mathowie 20:47 Oh, yeah, there's burning logs burning something blogs like burning through the blogs. The very first concept.

Jessamyn 20:54 Oh, I remember that. Look at you rounded corners in 1999.

mathowie 20:57 Yeah. I had no idea. That's all Photoshop. So I had no idea how I was going to do it.

Jessamyn 21:03 Right. You probably couldn't have actually done it. Let's see the distressed look. Oh, I like that one.

mathowie 21:09 Yeah, the pixely. One is the one that were the blue came in. I was just playing with weird colors. And that's the default palette. Like oh, it's like transparency. It's like how the hell was I going to do transparency? Could you do transparency? You could in like, just a Netscape four way and just an IE five way. Are our ugly stuff.

Jessamyn 21:34 Almost there. Yeah, this is great. I totally forgot about that page. Oh, I love your example. The LA Times and sexism in the workplace. Oh, no.

mathowie 21:43 What I don't know why I Yeah. I have no idea why that's the demo, I think. And the other demo forever was the what like LA Times Changed for like Austin Powers or something. They changed the entire website and like the people at what's that? Newspaper re journalism. Think Tank thing. romanesco works there. God Poynter Institute. They like flipped out like, I remember that. Yeah, like La times.com. Looks like a freakin Austin Powers ad like How the hell can you even have movie reviews and stuff? What's the next longest one? Picard? Let's just play it and you can see if we should even play it. I think it's kind of goofball but funny.

Unknown Speaker 22:33 Patrick Stewart, you may know me as Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise. Or perhaps you know me as Charles Xavier from the excellent. I like that movie. It is I have superpowers which enabled me to read minds, or to meet women undress before me. My question is the following. If you could have any superpower you want. But you could only use it in your moderation of metadata. What power would you have? And how would you use it?

mathowie 22:59 That's pretty good. Bacardi.

Jessamyn 23:02 I've never really seen. I don't know, was it? I think so. I don't want to out myself as a total non Star Trek person. But uh, I have no idea. Maybe?

mathowie 23:14 Did he ask anything or anything?

Jessamyn 23:16 Is he a user of metal filter? I don't care if Ann Coulter calls like she's not you know, she's not our target audience. We get together and I didn't hear the question because the mailman

mathowie 23:28 showed up. What was question? I don't know if there was a question. There was questions yet.

Jessamyn 23:32 It was some chatty blah blah, some sometimes we

mathowie 23:35 see like go to it again at the end. Oh, yeah. Well, if you had a superpower, what would you in moderation of metal filter? Just weird. I do have a superpower. A super who is? That would be handy.

Jessamyn 23:51 Super who is? I just want you know, I want those people like in the pre cog stuff. Yeah. You know, like, is this gonna be all I want to be able to do is look like 24 hours in the future along one user account to figure out if somebody's gonna fuck around with something before I wake up in the more you know what I mean? That's that's sort of it. Like I don't really I don't need to know what people are thinking. I don't need to know who's clicking on what. I don't even you know, I don't need to know what's in their heart of hearts. I just, you know, I would just like to know if they're gonna fuck something up while I'm asleep

mathowie 24:29 punching people in the next 24 hours. Yeah, punching people over TCP IP be good too. So we could put some pain on the SEO people.

Jessamyn 24:39 Do you really think that solves anything on that? No, it makes me feel better. And Ivor and I the questions okay, though. I would leave it it's fine. Yeah. Okay.

mathowie 24:53 Alison, neck.

Unknown Speaker 24:55 Hi. This is Alison longtime user. So I've heard that it's It seems to me that the metal filter changes the rules all the time. Are there anything that you guys used to allow in the past that you kind of cringe about allowing? Maybe something like politics filter? 2004? Just curious. Thanks.

mathowie 25:16 It's probably right.

Jessamyn 25:18 We change the rules all the time. What? What? No,

mathowie 25:21 everything evolves.

Jessamyn 25:24 That's a nice way of saying exactly the same thing. Well,

mathowie 25:27 I mean, nothing was set in stone from day one. So yeah, I mean, snowflakes are okay on day one, and then they had to be not okay. After people abused it. You could ask all the questions, you could

Jessamyn 25:37 ask, you can ask as many questions as you want. And that's how I met only wise because I had to drop them a male like, I know, you're really enthusiastic. But stop asking so many questions. Only wise, actually was like, oh, yeah, sorry. I'm just excited. It sounds like that's okay.

mathowie 25:50 Yeah, I don't know. What's the I guess politics and 2004? Was that the worst? I think it started in 2000. I

Jessamyn 25:57 felt like that was okay. But I mean, politics in 2004 was like, I think you were still doing it almost on your own. Yeah. Maybe I was helping by them. But I don't think so. So, you know, a lot of the times, like you'd go to bed or like go eat a sandwich or something. And everyone be like, right, now it's time to fight about

mathowie 26:14 whatever. Yeah, pushing carry again. Yeah,

Jessamyn 26:17 or Swift boats with boats with boat. And I feel like just in general, having kind of a, a team of a bunch of people to kind of keep an eye on that means that the kind of rule ideas that we do have for the site, we can actually implement instead of having like the rules, but then realistically, you're one dude who can only do so much. And so we had to always find like a middle ground in between. We still have oversight and what

mathowie 26:41 you can do, we have the rules. And then the Sunday afternoon rules are way less relaxed. Because traditionally, I took Sunday kind of off or did family stuff and was never around. Right? But yeah, we're way, way, way more delete happy. You know, it may look like that from that perspective. But it's just like, because there's someone awake at different times.

Jessamyn 27:02 I feel like yeah, we're being a little bit more, a little bit more consistent. And there really aren't the kind of open, everyone's gone. clusterfuck 900. Comment? Yeah, threads, but it's not because those used to be the rules, and then they're not the rules. It's, I think that it's just that there's more people kind of kind of paying attention. Yeah, but I mean, AskMe edit filters definitely evolved over time, you know, in a lot of different ways, just because we've seen how people use it. And we've seen what needs to happen. You know, we tried to make the question distance longer and people flipped out. So we made it shorter again. I mean, it's a sort of a constant.

mathowie 27:43 Yeah, isn't it? Every site doesn't call solution, a beta or whatever.

Jessamyn 27:47 Yeah, but nothing. I don't know. I don't really feel like it's like, yeah, that used to be okay. But now will ban you for it. Like that's not Yeah, I mean, that's never been

mathowie 27:56 true. What do you call those things? The past people make in like a college the weird path. Peter, me always goes nuts for it.

Jessamyn 28:04 Yeah, grass fed grass pet called adaptive cats, you

mathowie 28:08 know, where they weigh pathing or something like there's a term for Yeah, like people that cut between two sidewalks. And then everyone does it. And then they eventually put down some and that's all we're doing. Basically, see which parts of ASP methods are getting too worn out, and then we just pave over it. Let's do hello, Jed.

Unknown Speaker 28:28 All right. Okay. Question is the system. What do you when they start a front page post, and theme was metal filter, like some sort of recursion joke, but they're like, Oh, look at this site. It's metal filter. It's an interesting science. Like when you delete it right away, or would you just keep it open? Just because of the sheer ball Enos of post? I don't know.

Jessamyn 28:57 Who is that? Hello, jet.

mathowie 28:59 I think username. Hello, Jed. That's what he put in his name when he was getting called.

Jessamyn 29:05 Oh, you typed it in? I don't know. I don't feel like fun recursion stuff.

mathowie 29:11 Ah, host No way.

Jessamyn 29:15 Yeah, do you know the only stunt posts that we usually let stand are the ones that are some sort of like, like, well, elephant day and

mathowie 29:24 Oh, yeah. Well, they're just like, as a blue funny. Honestly,

Jessamyn 29:28 some of the other ones. I remember elephant day. And I think there was like one or two more. Do you remember?

mathowie 29:34 Yeah, we'll have weird themed days on two in a row happened the third and a fourth and a fifth. But then someone got the six the one because it sucked because they just went to Google and searched elephants made a post. I seem to recall that. And I remember saying you gotta try a little Come on people.

Jessamyn 29:52 If it's about metal filter. It's supposed to be a metal talk.

mathowie 29:55 Yeah, right. Yeah, that's totally fine.

Jessamyn 29:59 I don't know I think you should find some random data just turn the front page into a wiki again the way you did on April Fool's so many years ago. Like first move the site to a totally different server. Yeah. And then and then videotape the whole thing with YouTube and then put it on your Yahoo

mathowie 30:20 let's try Fiji writer.

Jessamyn 30:23 What about good news for the day good

mathowie 30:24 news for them.

Unknown Speaker 30:25 Hi, this is Paul like a good news with the insane calling from the Netherlands. With all this talk about the US elections and iPhones and oil prices, I think it's time we started discussing more pressing matters such as this. I would like to ask just NMAT Who do you support in the European football championships? And why? Thanks, bye bye.

mathowie 30:51 Yeah. I don't even think that's like proteins. I think it's countries.

Jessamyn 30:57 Well, let me tell you one thing it's it's soccer.

mathowie 31:00 Yes. But I think it's a Euro top rate or something like the World Cup.

Jessamyn 31:05 Yeah, I don't know Poland. Usually. I usually support Poland.

mathowie 31:09 I'm trying to think who I actually like yeah, there is euro 2008 You EF a.com

Jessamyn 31:17 I mean, you know Croatia be Germany and that was kind of awesome. I'm always happy when like any of the Baltic states like kick like the totally big state to ask. But you know, I just I don't have a television and my internet time is kind of taken up with metal

mathowie 31:34 filter looks like it's gonna be over by the end of the month. I didn't even know it was really going right now. I guess I'm always an England fan. Not always Italy fan. I usually don't like Germany.

Jessamyn 31:48 Well, and I also sort of support Romania just out of, you know, sort of sort of idiot loyalty because I used to live there and like the one of the awesome things to do when you live in Romania, and there's basically nothing to do except drink and you don't really drink is like go watch football all the time. Because every town has a team in every town plays and everybody's amazing. And, and it's really cool, but I don't think they always like it anymore.

mathowie 32:15 I've always liked the Netherlands cuz everyone shows up point orange and his way into it, but they always fail in the big games, which is Oh, looks like Greece. I guess I still like England. I don't think I see him. GBR DBR that what are they? They drop out they must not made it or something. Wow, Italy last.

Jessamyn 32:43 I really enjoyed that. AskMe Metafilter question about why the Italians are so into Native American.

mathowie 32:48 Oh, yeah. I saw that very. I had no idea. I didn't have like a I mean, I saw it like two hours after his ass. There wasn't much. There

Jessamyn 32:57 was just a couple answers where people were like, yeah, they totally are. And what's that about? So I hadn't read it since then. But yeah, so I don't know. Romania. What's your answer?

mathowie 33:06 I guess England. Okay. So all these people are like, Yeah, I see it too. I see it too. I see it to

Jessamyn 33:14 the house that I'm moving into huge Obama sign on the front yard. Oh, cool. I think so. It's fine. Those people won't screw your for your security deposit.

mathowie 33:26 Well, you could help not.

Jessamyn 33:30 Yeah,

mathowie 33:32 okay. Yeah. Fiji, writer. Okay. Hi, this

Unknown Speaker 33:36 is a writer from Central Mississippi where we're enjoying a nice heat and humidity was wondering if all the planes crashed and nothing was backed up with everyone do with their time with the family? Would you just be riding a bike all the time? Or would Jessamyn just get back into books and do nothing more and whatever happened to cortex and everybody else? Anyway, I love everything. Love all y'all and good luck with everything else everyone's doing.

Jessamyn 34:02 Can I just say how awesome everyone's voices? Yeah. Like he's got a great accent good. It's really insane. He has a great accent and he's got a great voice P Jones got a great voice. Alison's got this totally upbeat voice. Picard did this great accent. This is like my favorite part. I sometimes sit at home and don't talk to people all day long. So

mathowie 34:21 I was amazed that the good news for the insane coming from a phone call from the Netherlands sounded crystal clear like he was next door unbelievable sound better than my local phone calls.

Jessamyn 34:32 He's very talented.

mathowie 34:33 I don't know. I'm just saying the magic of telecom telecom or something. I don't know what made that possible. But yeah,

Jessamyn 34:39 I just think it's the Dutch What the heck could

mathowie 34:41 we do? It was it was what would we all do with our time like members also, or is it just us?

Jessamyn 34:47 Well, he wanted to know specifically, if you're going to just ride your bike all the time. I mean, I think you'd have to get a job right?

mathowie 34:55 Yeah, if I didn't have to work I'd probably just be like a Jeff L on metal filter is Crazy guy. He's in Maine right now. He started in Florida on his bike like two weeks ago or three weeks.

Jessamyn 35:06 Oh, yeah, he's gonna come visit me. Oh, awesome. I think he is.

mathowie 35:10 Yeah, he's already in Maine, he passed you. What he went from like Massachusetts,

Jessamyn 35:16 coming back down here to New York. Yeah. Because I wasn't sure where I was going to be living. So

mathowie 35:22 yeah, I can my carb load meal or something, I'd probably be doing what he's doing.

Jessamyn 35:27 I think I would Yeah, get like a card for my laptop so that I could get the internet anywhere and get some like, bio diesel automobile that I could sleep in the back of and go driving around

mathowie 35:39 solving mysteries at libraries from time to time.

Jessamyn 35:43 fighting crime. You know, I probably work in a public library locally, I think. And then I travel around talking about blah, blah, blah, 2.0 technology, blah, blah, libraries. I mean, that's what I do. Now. I have too many kids, a lot of people.

mathowie 35:56 What would you have? Like several cats? I don't have any cats. No. But if you had to settle down and be a total librarian, when did you have several cats

Jessamyn 36:04 see that a filter actually keeps me more settled down, then I would be if I didn't have metal filter. You know what I mean? Because I have to be kind of near a net connection. So I'm not like up the side of a mountain for a week in the top. You know, I'm going to Kuwait in April.

mathowie 36:18 Oh, that comes up later. Spoiler Oh, spoiler alert.

Jessamyn 36:23 Very exciting. But um, I probably work in public library or the thing that people don't know about cortex is he has another job. Yeah, right. He has a straight job in addition to his not straight job. You know, so I think he'd do more of that. And he'd probably be more productive on his other at websites. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, come on. He would be more famous. If he weren't. I met a filter. I think I often feel like sometimes we're draining away some of his essence that would make him go be awesome. someplace else

mathowie 36:53 holding him back.

Jessamyn 36:55 I think PB would do

mathowie 36:56 probably more of the same stupid little programming projects for companies he hates and writing books. hating every minute of it. He writes books. He's written a billion, like Google hacks, and yeah, Amazon. Yeah, those are, those are brutal. Like you have like a month to write 1000s of words. And you have a guy breathing down your neck. Those are brutal.

Jessamyn 37:21 That sounds bad. That sounds bad. Yeah, you know, I might go write, write a book. I went on, like two talks this weekend. And people had copies of my book from like, six years ago to autograph and that's

mathowie 37:32 awesome. Like the anarchists and LibraryThing.

Jessamyn 37:36 It's called revolting, like, Oh, whatever. It is not this day.

mathowie 37:42 It's the same thing I was talking about was like a book about essays about 100 Kids in the library or something.

Jessamyn 37:48 It's Shiva, Shiva. Vi had nothing. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. He wrote the anarchist in the library, which is a very good book that's on my shelf somewhere. Yeah, I probably read more. I might get a suntan. Well, you you you wrote a post about this, where like, there was a year that you kind of stopped reading books were like, more of your content that you took in was digital than print. Yeah, like a couple years ago. This year is my year for that. i It's disturbing. I

mathowie 38:18 only started reading books again. Yeah. I think I

Jessamyn 38:23 work on planes now. Yeah, yeah. So Oh, yeah.

mathowie 38:27 That's that that was that was probably what pulled me back in to recreational reading was being on a plane you have to you know, you can't have electronics on. And books work. They work great work when you can't turn on anything. Let's try parman parman never know what you're gonna get with him. 123

Unknown Speaker 38:47 Hey, it's John, or parman parman. If the case maybe I'm calling because I'm really interested in PV, the guy you have who does all sorts of awesome tech stuff for you. How do you find these awesome people to take on like, PV? Maybe he was working for you, man. I don't know. But I love the story. Thanks. Bye. He doesn't

Jessamyn 39:08 know the backstory. Really? I know the backstory. Why don't you Sure? Oh, Paul,

mathowie 39:13 probably. I mean, you could dispute this or not like me the very very, very first blogger, the actual like code that moved some web blog posts to another server and then which became blogger.com. him an F did that and then they hired me sort of Paul's the first employee of pirate so I think of Paul's more senior than me in terms of instead of like a guy hired or something to you know, do my lawn or something. Yeah, I think with you and Josh. I just started notice that

Jessamyn 39:52 you at South by Southwest and we had some of the same friends. Yeah, but we were always like friends of friends.

mathowie 39:58 But when it makes tonight yeah, make the day isn't like hire someone or ask them to do more. It's like, wow, when I noticed people doing my job better than me like way better. Like, oh, you know, do you want to help out because you are way better at this than like cortex better and meta talk than I was he was like way

Jessamyn 40:17 better to talk than I am. Are you kidding? Yeah, it was like yeah, that isn't all of us. I

mathowie 40:22 was like, that's what I was meaning what he said that guy when I did that, like the time I had to tell ask him like, Hey, do you want to like I don't know man meta talk once in a while and be better than me at it.

Jessamyn 40:35 Now did you know cortex beforehand? Had you met him personally? Oh, I don't know. Like, never like, like not at a meet up or anything. Did you live in Portland? I forget when that all happened?

mathowie 40:46 He's only been on the payroll, I think for the last year and a half ish. No, I don't know, I might have met him better. No, I think I just sort of notice them and Mettaton just outdoing me consistently. It was like Yeah,

Jessamyn 41:03 cuz I met him for the first time like last summer at the eighth anniversary block Prague Prague thing

mathowie 41:09 I'm trying to think of, and then we go on to a meet up. I remember he was sort of enthusiastic in music right when it launched. You know, a couple years ago, I before all this, and just sort of like, you know, you might remember you didn't you might recognize three or four names from metadata music today, like flapjacks at midnight or something like, Oh, that's a guy that uploads a lot of good music himself.

Jessamyn 41:31 You know, I listen to all his stuff. Three, one D one is the one that I listened to all

mathowie 41:35 Oh, yeah. Music and choco cat, everyone. And so like, all sudden, that same person is also you know, explaining things amazingly and meta talk. So yeah, no, I hadn't met him. I just sort of pitched him an email.

Jessamyn 41:47 Had you met back up into? I mean, I met him last summer too. Oh,

mathowie 41:50 yeah. I actually met him at the Cisco meetup in 2001 or two. Oh, cool. Okay. 1002 I think the first meetups ever I think we're in April 2001. In Seattle. Right. I was probably at that one, probably at the very first one ever. And then yeah, 2002, I think but as by the time we actually had him in San Francisco. And he was at the very first one. And it was, it was nice. It was

Jessamyn 42:14 great. Cool. So great. So great.

mathowie 42:18 Let's see who's next. Misha.

Unknown Speaker 42:20 Hi, this is Misha. And this question is for Jess Jessamyn. I saw your tweet about going to Kuwait. What's that all about? What's the deal? Thanks.

Jessamyn 42:31 Good question. It's got nothing to do with medicine.

mathowie 42:34 I was dying to ask you holy crap. Kool Aid crazy. Didn't we invade it or something?

Jessamyn 42:40 Hush, hush think good thoughts? Yeah, um, well, I gave that talk on like library stuff in Dubai in December last year. And somebody who knew some of the people that were at, you know, I gave a talk at this information literacy Network Conference, it was their first conference ever, you know, kind of exciting. And so they're kind of like spreading the word like, Oh, hey, if we learn social tools, we can actually put content on the internet without having to go through our IT guy slash sensor people. Yeah. And, you know, that's exciting. And libraries are a good place to, you know, be poised for that. And so I got invited by some university in Kuwait, like, Hey, you want to come next April for three days and do it's like three days of like, nonstop workshops. And so I'm trying to decide whether to be like, I don't really want to start at eight in the morning. I want to start at 10 and I, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I think I'm gonna find somebody to, to bring with me, like another librarian, and quite one of those interesting countries because like, you can't have any alcohol at all in Kuwait. I mean, not like that's going to totally blow my ride. But it definitely like affects who I would invite. Because like in Dubai, you can buy alcohol at the airport, and you're allowed to have it. If you're a Westerner, but in Kuwait, you're not allowed to have any alcohol in whole country. So like, if you're one of those, like relax with a beer people, like forget it, like you'll be dead. So I'm like thinking about like, Oh, I wonder what that's like and whatever. So I've been asking people like, what's Kuwait? Like? And do you know this guy? And how's that gonna go? But if it all works out, I'll be there for a week in April. I figure out how to meet Bob. I assume he's been

mathowie 44:19 Blaze caulk pylons the last call?

Jessamyn 44:21 I've never heard his voice. Okay, let's

Unknown Speaker 44:24 plays cop pylon. Just curious if the metal filter scholarship will ever come to fruition. Thanks.

Jessamyn 44:33 Let's get on the stick and do the scholarship again. Yeah,

mathowie 44:36 didn't we talk about this once before? And then what happened?

Jessamyn 44:39 We did nothing. Right. It was a

mathowie 44:41 there was all this lawyer crap with contests and I can give I can give $1 less than $5,000 and basically avoid every lousy law in America.

Jessamyn 44:52 So yeah, I was going to do 4999 scholarship does it

mathowie 44:56 do a 4900 scholarship that I was gonna do it this spring, I guess get late, but there's still kids going to school in the fall. And it's not a weekend, it's not super, it's too much of a pain in the butt to get donations from everyone. The hard part is thinking of a filter, a way to have people apply to something and do a little bit of work to, that we can judge people on and have people vote.

Jessamyn 45:23 But I think you know, I'm sure we could like post something in meta talk, we could get some of our local academics to like write an essay thing, I would be happy to, like collect them all, and sort them all and send them to the judges. And it's an Excel spreadsheet, ultimately, and being able to deal with your email. Well, the

mathowie 45:37 first time, the first time out, I just came, some a friend came up with an awesome question like, what, what have you ever changed your mind about on metaphysics or something? I was like, Oh,

Jessamyn 45:47 holy shit, or that.

mathowie 45:48 I remember that. Yeah, I was like introspective, and you had to think about it. And he had to write this essay. And apparently, you know, all the English majors wanted, because they could write really well. And I put up something like 15 essays, and everyone could read them all, and then rank their top favorite three, or something like that, or give a zero to one for all 15. If you wanted, I can't remember how I did it.

Jessamyn 46:09 Maybe we should have a multimedia presentation where I have to do like a PowerPoint.

mathowie 46:15 I would be okay, with just coming up with a good question that requires a couple hours of thinking and writing. But it's kind of hard because I think the English majors have such an advantage because they know how to write and express themselves. So they win when you present essays and go what's the best essay? So yeah, I think the things that are holding me back is just the stupid contest law, but we sort of figured out but we had to come up with the perfect way to do the perfect question or task or something. That

Jessamyn 46:48 or haven't Yeah, had it be like a couple things. Like you'd be an essay plus something that wouldn't preference the English majors. Yeah, although I think you maybe you're overstating the English major thing. I think it may just be how many filter skews?

mathowie 47:00 Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's the internet. And then medical is mostly tech, so everyone can write a little bit. So I was just looking back at like, who won and who did terribly. It was like the people that couldn't write, they just had the sloppy but even when he can't write, if you're really passionate about something, and you can kind of push it through and make something good. That's not perfect, but still readable?

Jessamyn 47:22 Yeah, yeah. So content is decent.

mathowie 47:26 Yes, we need to change it. I guess we need to come up with the perfect question. Then we come up with some rules, because no Blaze COC is a grad student, I would guess grad students and undergrads probably both apply, then people always like I'm in culinary school in, you know, Belgium. Does that count? Then I guess that's fine, too. And, I mean, in the end, I just sent people check. So it's not like going to your school and having to go through all the official crap of that. I think that's about it. It's not even do recaps have already gone on for an hour and 10 minutes. So

Jessamyn 47:56 I like talking about, you know, I like yeah, there was I mean, there was a lot of

mathowie 48:02 some day we need to do like a stunt podcast where we don't even talk about metaphysics, or it just goes on for an hour or so. And we just eventually sound like we're gonna come around and metadata we just never do.

Jessamyn 48:15 That would be awesome. That would be totally awesome. But I think now that we're actually doing podcasts more regularly, the fact that we I mean, our next podcast should probably be an interview with somebody. Yeah, don't you thank

Unknown Speaker 48:33 space. It's cold and it's lonely. wish it wasn't the only guy in Spain. Oh, Spain. It's cold and it's lonely. Where's the word? The only guy in Spain whoa Spain

Unknown Speaker 48:57 cold and it's long I wish I was the only guy in space Spain it's cold and it's lonely. A wizard was the only guy in Spain. Oh spy

Unknown Speaker 49:48 guy in spades. Oh, space, space, space space. Space space space. What? A guy in space Hey, I'm lonely guy. And I'm in space, whereas it was the only lonely guy