Podcast 33 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 33: Grains of rice (2008-10-31).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary keywords

people, post, filter, cumberland farms, great, tag, comments, awesome, question, thread, page, day, year, youtube, totally, oil, metal, dude, learning, cops

Transcript

mathowie 0:08 Welcome to the metal filter odd I'm definitely going to open the podcast with that one. That was like an awesome opener.

Jessamyn 0:42 Good. Well, that'll just encourage you to. Yeah, put or put it up quick, I guess.

mathowie 0:47 Yeah, there are. I know there's tons of awesome monthly challenge songs this month after No. Yeah,

Jessamyn 0:55 I know, which was good. Like last month was just kind of lackluster and I use the monthly challenge updater to add the challenge that's gonna go live. What tomorrow still

mathowie 1:05 the 30th Yeah, 31st Yeah, yeah. So

Jessamyn 1:08 it's all queued. And so as soon as flapjacks emailed to me, I can put it in the updater

mathowie 1:12 which Oh, cool, sweet. Yeah, it looks like we got about 1015 Spooky songs. I'll try to pick a few and try to get it online later this afternoon. So it makes sense. Hey, that would be awesome. Not that anyone listened to it on today. You know, it's it's kind of a don't work day and go home early to. Is it really? Yeah, you know, kids gotta go get candy.

Jessamyn 1:35 Oh, you people with kids? You mean? Yeah.

mathowie 1:42 We do jobs and projects? Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Do. You know anything? Library tech,

Jessamyn 1:48 a lot of time this year is like, oh, yeah, the haunted by Leonard Cohen. library technician job. Oh, in fact, there's two library jobs with the fighty haunted by Leonard Cohen person, which, interestingly, is not somebody that I have linked in my never met him. Well, he's not one of my add as a call add as a colleague, context. So there's that plutora Greasemonkey script? Yeah, it shows all the librarians with the little books next to them. And that person isn't somebody that I have? That I've linked to before but yeah, to library jobs, go go get library jobs on on metal filter jobs. And other than that, when's the last time?

mathowie 2:33 Last podcast I think was the end of September? So pretty much anything in October count?

Jessamyn 2:38 Yeah. And there's the Digital Library applications analyst at UNC Chapel Hill, which is cool. It's a web app developer for for UNC. Oh, three? Yeah. And UNC is? is cool. Yeah, it's another person who I don't know if they're a librarian or not know somebody who's a student.

mathowie 2:58 It's the right software. Right there and software instead of some horrible package thing?

Jessamyn 3:06 Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Basically, UNC and NC State both and kind of battle to like, have cool web apps for stuff. So yeah, I think a little you know,

mathowie 3:18 that's a rivalry I can get behind.

Jessamyn 3:22 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

mathowie 3:24 And projects, anything that came to mind that you liked in the last month,

Jessamyn 3:30 let me see projects is one of those things, I should really sort of subscribe to the RSS feed because I go back and I like dig around it and I'm like, This is awesome. Everything is awesome. And then I forget about it. And then well, there's the Portland Oregon Day of the Dead precession, which is coming up, which I hope you are.

mathowie 3:52 I like the money melt down are no eight. The oil one though, because a couple months ago, I was trying to do some calculations on fuels. I was trying to figure out how much a barrel of oil is going for at that moment. And it was actually hard. Took me like 45 minutes of googling to realize there's all these like oil barrel indexes that are estimates, but it's hard to figure out how much like an actual barrel of oil costs and

Jessamyn 4:19 how do you actually find it out?

mathowie 4:21 Where do you have to remember I went down like 25 million different, you know, paths before I even found, you know, a price for oil. I just thought it would be simple since it's this sort of standard that people throw around all the time

Jessamyn 4:34 when everybody talks about it on the on the on the Yeah, radio or whatever. Time

mathowie 4:39 Yeah, so God Burt made how much is oil.com It looks like how much soil when you read the URL, but how much is oil.com and it's just a giant like single page website. Like a yes no, just like $64 And here's some graphs.

Jessamyn 4:58 I was gonna highlight shit Twitter, but I can't actually load it.

mathowie 5:01 I've never gotten it to load. I was trying to load it a few minutes ago, too.

Jessamyn 5:06 And I also liked the Ajax Wikipedia search a lot. Oh, cool. Um, which is just like it's just a better way to search Wikipedia if you'd like Wikipedia, like I use Firefox. And so I've got kind of a wiki PDS smart key word. I've got it set up in the smart search in the upper corner. Oh, yeah. This is just like fast. Oh, I really? I really like

mathowie 5:27 something I always wished. Was it autocomplete? Oh, it just searches on the fly.

Jessamyn 5:34 Yeah. So I typed my name. And then there's all the specimens. For example.

mathowie 5:43 Don't get me until I put my entire name in. But cool.

Jessamyn 5:47 What? Yeah, just type you have to type your username. Yeah. Like Matt Mathowie or whatever.

mathowie 5:54 I relapses the page. Wow.

Jessamyn 5:57 That's not surprising.

mathowie 5:58 I had no idea. I had no idea. I wish that I wish the Wikipedia search on Wikipedia, like just did autocomplete like Google smarty pants way.

Jessamyn 6:08 Yeah, yeah.

mathowie 6:12 The money meltdown was super popular. I haven't looked at it since the first few days of it. But I followed it for the first few days of this month, because it was, you know, in the news, and, you know, it's like one interesting, you know, financial thing a day I've never seen before. I think it's still good. Looks like it's mostly still going.

Jessamyn 6:32 Gosh, it's really, really well designed and easy to understand, too. Which is kind of awesome.

mathowie 6:36 Yeah, I think the left side is sort of background. The right side is the link to the day and it was always like some amazing thing I'll say hasn't been updated in a week. But

Jessamyn 6:44 oh, Helvetica you make everything look so much better. So friendly.

mathowie 6:47 It's true, though, right? Even as our financial world is crumbling down. Helvetica.

Jessamyn 6:56 We're still in the same place in Vermont. All the local banks are like, we don't have any subprime mortgages. What? Yeah, so I haven't. I haven't noticed it quite.

mathowie 7:07 A lot of my savings money is sitting in a Wells Fargo account and I was happy to hear Wells Fargo's of the national banks is probably the most secure because they haven't done anything dodgy. And I remember getting my first home loan at Wells Fargo. It was a royal pain in the butt. It was like, you know, crapload of work?

Jessamyn 7:30 Because they were basically like, every Yeah, actually care. Yeah. of credit.

mathowie 7:34 Yeah, they were like they made me track down every dollar from the previous years.

What's your favorite metaphor? They're posted. I guess we should have some token Halloween post.

Jessamyn 7:56 Well, my favorite token Halloween post was like, oh, gosh, not another cockeyed post. But oh, yeah. The question is did about the kids Halloween candy code? Yeah,

mathowie 8:05 I saw that original a favorited. The original Twitter post about it from cable saucer. guy who does panic software? Uh huh. He left a funny thing saying kids need a hobo code because he gives out full size candy bars. And yeah,

Jessamyn 8:23 I think I think at my friend's house here, I think I do too. Meanwhile, I was down at my landlady's helping her do some computer internet stuff today. And they're totally like making popcorn.

mathowie 8:35 Oh,

Jessamyn 8:36 they're in their 80s popcorns what'd you do? They actually sent me home this morning with like, a little bag of popcorn.

mathowie 8:43 Here you go. I would trust an eight year old lady with popcorn.

Jessamyn 8:48 Well, yeah, I mean, you trust everybody in Vermont with popcorn on actually. But I sort of liked this both because you know loquacious made the post and it's from koco.com and I think Rob is a metal filter member? Yeah, I

mathowie 9:00 think Cockerham has one. Yeah, I think it all started with cable given away full size candy bars and like he wanted the rest of the neighborhood to know about it. Like subtly because I think there's some leftovers. And so he jokingly said hey, they need a hobo code. So kids come running to his door. And then rob did it literally Reese's Pieces one is inspired there's lots of which one which one is that there's a no there's a candy at this house is produced with nuts and oils That's hilarious.

Jessamyn 9:31 Be scared here for extra candy portion.

mathowie 9:35 Money I guess I love the dentist It's of course a toothbrush. Well,

Jessamyn 9:39 that was what that was what loquacious used for the for the title dentist lives here and so I saw it in my like RSS reader and was like What? What? dentist will not believe the second bag is for your sick brother. Yeah, it's wonderful. Did you see the joke I get it.

mathowie 9:57 Did you see this? All the people the world this is something I found, I don't know somewhere else someone was linking to metal filter saying that this is a great thing to do just as one rice grain equals one human being as sort of like his gigantic art piece in some warehouse in the UK in London somewhere of just giant, visualisation kind of thing. Yeah. And so here's the population of the world, you know, takes up an entire floor. Here's, you know, the Beatles, here's four grains of rice on a piece of paper. There's an awesome, like, liquor gallery of all of them. I was just going through it last night. They're hilarious and also thought provoking. And because some of them are in the shape of things where it was the year was one where he sort of did, you'll get the idea. This is Martin Luther King addressing the crowd at the Washington Memorial in 1963. And they sort of shape it like the pond with one grain of rice at the speaking podium.

Jessamyn 11:02 Wow, that is awesome. And it's all these are great.

mathowie 11:05 Yeah. And it was like when I saw it only, like two or three people marked it as a favorite. And there was only 10 comments last night. It's, it's like incredible. This is like the best of metal filter period and something that I missed in between 25 posts about Sarah Palin

Jessamyn 11:21 and Barack Obama. Yeah. I blame you for that. What Barack Obama endorsed by the economy that

mathowie 11:30 was a major story was a major story. The only the only the only political posts I liked all month was The Al Smith dinner videos where they had like, let your hair down and be joke. I

Jessamyn 11:46 watched the Obama video I couldn't watch the McCain video because he just upsets me. He was still I find him distressing it reminded watch him

mathowie 11:54 reminded me of like the old McCain in 2000 Being on The Daily Show and being hilarious like he was. And he was actually sincere at the end of the how proud he was that, you know, we basically are going to elect a black man as president. That it's even possible. And this year is awesome. Like

Jessamyn 12:11 it was which is, which is a big deal. And everybody can be happy about Yeah, it was it was like,

mathowie 12:16 Oh, that's right. There's a human behind, you know, the evil, you know, the stupid junkie has been doing for the last month or two. Like he used to be like a I don't know party.

Jessamyn 12:25 Right. Right. I used to like McCain. I just haven't liked the McCain on the I mean, yeah, he wouldn't be my God. But yeah, on the McCain trail on the campaign.

mathowie 12:34 This campaign is horrible, but he's seems like, okay, guy, and this remind me like, Oh, my God, I wish we you know, had an intelligent country or they could, like, allow people to have senses of humor and be jokey and

Jessamyn 12:47 write well, and that was the other thread that I liked the one that linked to sort of Neil's code switching conversation, even though I didn't really participate in it, I thought it was an interesting post of like, you know, the kind of meta mechanics of language and, and whatever. Yeah, let me see if I can.

mathowie 13:04 I thought that was interesting. Some people, people who I guess, you know, people that are huge Obama supporters that are on both sides of that, that were like, This is horseshit. Or this is absolutely, you know, awesome and, and exactly what's going on. And what

Jessamyn 13:22 I thought was really interesting about that whole thread is people were like, Dude, she's not that smart. Other people, like it's not smart. It's just about, like, it's not that she's really even doing it on purpose. It's just that that's the kind of thing that people do when they're trying to, you know, have these like secret messages. Like it's it's not that it's totally all intentional. It's just that's the way people who have that kind of agenda. You don't necessarily think and the people who are writing her speeches for her probably do have a lot more of a savvy. Yeah, sense of that kind of thing.

mathowie 13:55 I mean, you could be you can be I don't know how to put that nice. Yeah, you could be unintelligent about issues, but still be super savvy about setting off people's buttons. And I think that's what she's good at.

Jessamyn 14:08 Yeah, yeah. Well, and unrepentant about I didn't see Neil have a religious metaphor

mathowie 14:13 in the oil responded to it. I thought that was interesting comments in Neil's actual thread where someone was pointing out Pentecostal Bible scripture keywords in some of the things she says, like, sort of secret. I mean, supers like super duper examples of like, secret dog whistle he will you and

Jessamyn 14:33 I have talked about that a lot of metal filter, right that like there is this kind of hand wavy inside baseball set of, you know, words that people use to be like we're on the inside those people are on the outside even even if it's just kind of jokey acronyms or whatever, you know, you make some camera joke. You can never use the word camera on meta filter without certain people believing without certain people being like snarky, snarky, ya know You mean and other people being like, what?

mathowie 15:02 A joke from like, 2001 or something ridiculous.

Jessamyn 15:05 And it was stupid at the time, but it was, you know, but it it makes everybody feel this sense of belonging and so the way that I feel kind of, you know, fuzzy warm inside when I hear that, you know, I think that there must be people who have different beliefs and opinions and then me Yeah, like, like the, you know, the Palin supporters or whatever, who that's the same secret codeword stuff to them. Yeah. And I don't even think you know, when we do it on meta filter, it's necessarily on purpose. It's just sort of part of our part of our personal dialogue ever. You know what I mean?

mathowie 15:38 Yeah. Here's one last one I'll say is the wireless emergency aircraft landings on YouTube. Someone linking to 12345 Fresh fish planes that has comment,

Jessamyn 15:55 this post is better than sex, dude, we totally need somebody to jump in and instead of being like Matt Webb,

mathowie 16:03 veteran sex it's all like tense recordings of like live news casters covering oh my god, oh my god play coming down with like, no landing gear or broken landing gear. I you know, I personally witnessed one or two of these, you know, a few years ago. But I'm just so used to if you trawl YouTube, I mean, it takes like two videos away from you know, a Sesame Street video before you're seeing car crashes and plane crashes. I swear, you know, in the related movies, a call just right, right. So I'm gonna point something out. It could be political. It could be jokey. Lots of times. It's bicycles with me and I'm like watching some bike video and it's like, oh, bike crashes. Okay, I'll click on that. And then like bike crashing look over. It's like, oh, plane crashes. I'll click on that is is horrible. And I'm so used to seeing this horrid, like 300 people dying in a fireball. That scene like four or five emergency landings that are very buddies. Okay. Very tense, but they go perfectly, and they're absolutely perfect. And there's nothing but it's just like any clap. Yeah, I've seen so many plane crash videos on YouTube, just you know, not even really looking for them that I was like, pleasantly surprised and elated to see all these perfect landings.

Jessamyn 17:22 Well, and I was telling you the crazy YouTube phenomenon that I found last night like I've been like learning to make little movies with my computer and whatever. And I put up a movie that had the tag banking. Oh, yeah, cuz it's a story called complicated banking problem. It's got nothing to do with fucking banking. And yet I uploaded it and like 50 people saw it in the first 25 minutes. Because it's I assume, because I'm, you know, really not that popular. And I assume that it's because people are just subscribing to the banking tag. Yeah, just being like anything on banking that comes across YouTube. So it's nice to see like these little pockets and of course all the related things are like Alan Greenspan being like this was the other the other posts that I really liked that got like, a little bit of attention, but not sort of as awesome. It's about Whoa, these this guy's this guy's

mathowie 18:15 Holy crap. They did a cornea transplant 99 cornea

Jessamyn 18:19 transplant in 123 years ago, which possibly makes them the oldest living human tissue on record. And this was one of those great posts because it just starts out being like, whatever Reuters post and you're like, oh, but basically that transplanted cornea has been used for 123 years since before the Eiffel Tower because basically the the dude who they took it from had been born in 1885. So basically, it was like, an old man who died and they took his corneas and then transplanted them into somebody else's eyes. So the corneas still lived or whatever. Say.

mathowie 19:01 Can you imagine eye surgery in 1905? Like you're taking the whiskey and look at the ceiling and try not to cry? We

Jessamyn 19:11 strap your eyes the tape? Yeah, no, no, I can't I don't even like to I wish you change this.

mathowie 19:18 Even in 2008 It's bad. I can imagine 103 years ago Good.

Jessamyn 19:22 Well, your eyeballs are kind of one of those things. One of those parts of you. I mean, I think it's like you were talking earlier about like prostate cancer, right? Where people are just like, I just don't want you near it. Like I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're the best doctor in the world if you you know slip the I have no more eyeball. Horrible, horrible. Oh, and sorry, there was one more post that I really liked. But I can just mention it and people can go look at it. It's one of those like, you know, skills you need to know, learning how to do stuff like split firewood or solder a wire or how to land a plane so it's the it was the most popular of this month.

mathowie 19:58 I didn't look at it because I was Like, Oh, that sounds like a lot of work to go through 100 things and like, you know

Jessamyn 20:03 why you need to leave the suburbs? No, no.

mathowie 20:05 Is it like, I'm saying like, the website is probably oh, here's 10 at a time and you have to read

Jessamyn 20:12 three at a time. Oh, practice my would split a bit more

mathowie 20:16 ads. Hey, everyone, look at more ads. Like they wouldn't show 100 Right. Like, that would just be you know, too much of a time saver.

Jessamyn 20:25 Right? Yeah. No,

mathowie 20:27 it's 11 pages. Yes.

Jessamyn 20:30 Does it ever print version? Sorry, talking to the damn dog. And then there's

mathowie 20:35 a how do you stack up against the lead?

Jessamyn 20:40 Like Adam Savage celebs? Like,

mathowie 20:43 I have to do this. I have to go through 11 pages and I have to like, reference it with my, you know, personal What's your day job? I'm just saying I looked at that person was like, that's an hour of like, work to like, wade through 10 pages and then yeah,

Jessamyn 21:01 I just got to Happy Halloween text message from a total stranger.

mathowie 21:04 Oh, weird.

Jessamyn 21:05 What do you do when people message you and you Oh, who they are? Yeah,

mathowie 21:08 I get some guys. Still there number some guy thinks I'm Debbie. And he's like SMS. Once a week. It'd be like, Debbie, you're gonna be at the game. Or like, Debbie, let's do this thing with coffee or something. I message the guy back twice going, Dude, I'm not Debbie. Wrong. Brian, not the Debbie. You're looking. I made it clear. Like I'm another dude. probably sound like a guy hitting on a woman because I was just like, Dude, you got the wrong number dude. Like, though he knows I'm a dude.

Jessamyn 21:41 Somebody in Tennessee. Oh, I know who it is. Okay. i Oh, that's great. If I can limit it down to state I may actually be able to figure out oh, Tennessee. I have one friend.

mathowie 21:50 Is that one librarian there?

Jessamyn 21:53 No, no, but she's actually a metal filter person.

mathowie 21:55 I was kidding. What is your favorite? Let's move to AskMe Metafilter junk.

Jessamyn 22:02 I just generally felt like this is a good month to Can I just say like, except I've just really, like, well, except for the goddamn delicious over there.

mathowie 22:12 If you can ignore the election which is ignoring it.

Jessamyn 22:15 I mean, I'm not ignoring it. But like, you know, I'm sort of doing my doing my thing. But except for like, you know, election jump up and down stuff. I really do feel that stuff on the site is actually going fairly well. This is just people. Do I have a hard time finding my favorites? Again, my favorite.

mathowie 22:39 You just go to favorites and then pull the drop down?

Jessamyn 22:43 Oh, here it is. Here it is. I

mathowie 22:44 see this. I love the word the phrase. You kids get off my damn lawn come from. And just after, like 15 posts, and I mean, it's just untraceable. It's just something. It's just like a joke for old people. Dan Hartung pulled up plug in 1912 New York Times article, or someone talked about Get off my lawn, threatening a photographer. And he had all these Google Books. References.

Jessamyn 23:09 Oh my god. Yeah, Google Books is making my life so much easier. Oh, and they just did that settlement with the American Publishers Association to big deal. Big deal.

mathowie 23:18 Yeah. And then yeah, there was a 1986 mentioned in Google News, but he sort of figured out where it was. Well, that was like the cops

Jessamyn 23:26 doughnuts. Yeah, post that was that was today that some people were like, Oh, you just can't know or they make like her after Homer Simpson. jokes and then it turns out squeaky wheel this dog is just gonna be in the background. Okay. Yeah, just it's just she's just hanging out and oil the dog. I already I already took her out. Oh, maybe Yeah.

mathowie 23:52 What was the answer on the donuts? And

Jessamyn 23:55 it was just I don't know. Fucking tag it with doughnuts.

mathowie 23:58 Oh, the I think the last I looked at it. People said

Jessamyn 24:02 post tags with cops. So they tagged it with cops and not with doughnuts. Oh, you should add I can't believe that I'm adding the donut tag right? We'll see when when cortex comes.

mathowie 24:12 People said it was the only late night place open back in the day that there was no

Jessamyn 24:18 they said that. Yeah, that policeman basically were up late and it was open in the middle of the night and it was the only place it was open and so these people had money and so they were getting ripped off all Oh yeah. Because it was before like every 711 in Cumberland Farms was available for stealing from Yeah. And so

mathowie 24:35 what the hell is a Cumberland Farms?

Jessamyn 24:38 You don't have Cumberland Farms?

mathowie 24:39 What is that? Like? Petrovitch farms. It's like elves and cookies.

Jessamyn 24:47 No, it's like a 711 Oh, we have they call it what's called the Cumberland Farms.

mathowie 24:52 Oh that's so gentle in and yeah,

Jessamyn 24:55 I live in New England. This is our this is our reality. was Cumberland Farms and it's funny if you you know if you know kids from New England who like grew up kind of suburban, they all have stories about like hanging out outside of the convenience store when you were 14 there was nothing else to do. And so you know, you'd ask like, well, well, we hit we hung out outside the lemon tree, which was where we hung out, like the lemon tree or the Cumberland Farms or whatever. And unless you know, because they all have these pseudo nature names. If you don't know that people are talking about 711 or a quickie, Bart, it sounds almost like you were convening with nature as a child, you know? Oh, we hung out around the lemon tree. Oh, nice. You got to London to New England.

mathowie 25:44 11 trees.

Jessamyn 25:47 Yes, yes, we do not have them. Here's the here's the

mathowie 25:50 Oh, I did want to add I never mentioned this on the donut thing. But once I watched a cop throw on his lights right behind my parents in the car and we all we all kind of freaked out. My dad started to pull over and the cop blew past everyone flooring it like going at down side streets in LA on the wrong side of the road, locked it up and slid into a parking lot of a windshields and then just got out like casually,

Jessamyn 26:18 like Yeah, which for those are international members is a donut, a

mathowie 26:21 popular doughnut chain. He basically like punched it up to 90 on the wrong side of the road, like and we saw him half a mile down the road just like skid into a donut shop and just casually walk out and go to the donut shop like it was so

Jessamyn 26:34 against. It's just like your dad's having a heart attack. And you're like, Oh, I

mathowie 26:41 was just like, this is disappointing when you see someone live out a cliche.

Jessamyn 26:46 Yes. Well, yeah, and I mean around here we have cops at speed all the time. And like I don't care if cops speed I just want them not to care if I speed. Yeah, you know, that's all but the troopers like bombing down the fast lane. But yeah, here was here's the, the one post that I just sort of thought was interesting, because it was like really, really easy and whatever. And it has a great picture. It's me fight user tube, who had a flashlight that he kept in the pocket of his pants, and he wrapped tape around it. And then his tape crept in this really bizarre. This really bizarre way. If you look at this picture, yeah. It was just totally weird. And he's like, I don't know what this is my my like, it's just been in my pocket. I didn't, it didn't do anything.

mathowie 27:40 It just moved. Right? Well, if

Jessamyn 27:43 you the adhesive isn't strong. And so it's a temperature change this week. And then, um, yeah, basically, they were like, don't wrap it tight, wrap it loose, and then it won't squeeze itself out.

mathowie 27:58 Wow. And then he did it loose. And it worked. Wow.

Jessamyn 28:02 Yes. So I just thought that was kind of neat. And the kind of thing that basically your librarian isn't going to help you with I mean, you know, I don't want to spend a lot of time being like, we're better than your library. But in some ways, we're better than your library.

mathowie 28:14 Yeah, wow. This is a I listened to a podcast the other day, this is something I would love to do with the metaphors podcast. And they did it in they kept it in that AAC format. So it basically only plays on an iPod or in iTunes. But okay, you can key images on time. Like you can turn the like album art into a slideshow. And like showing these Flickr photos would be awesome at this juncture of the podcast, like it would basically switch to that picture. Something to consider

Jessamyn 28:48 Oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah, you know, I just noticed that YouTube lets you do kind of like annotation.

mathowie 28:54 Yeah, it's kind of Yeah, it's kind of like that. It was a Stephen Fry has a podcast and like stuff changes.

Jessamyn 29:00 Stephen Fry, everybody. were we talking about this in the last podcast? Everybody is suddenly friends with him on Flickr, Twitter, and I'm just like, who is he? Oh, he's

mathowie 29:11 the greatest. Yeah, he's the greatest yet. You've you've seen the?

Jessamyn 29:16 Why don't I know about him? Is it because I don't have a television?

mathowie 29:20 No, he's it. He's a British dude, formerly of comedy. You know, with Hugh Laurie's stuff he did in college. But now he's basically the greatest Narrator ever. Like what I commented on Twitter the other day.

Jessamyn 29:35 You saw I saw you commenting, which is why I decided I would ask did you see

mathowie 29:39 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie? The actual Yeah, yeah. So he's the voice of the narrator. Like, you know, when they opened the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide and they had all this Yeah, it was Stephen fries voice. Just uh, it's like the epitome of perfectly nice You know, British helpful voice I think it's just sort of an iconic voice. I'm sure

Jessamyn 30:04 No, no, I totally now I totally know who he is. That's perfect. He was such a good answer.

mathowie 30:10 He is for Vendetta. I guess he was the guy who was trying to hide Natalie Portman. He was the like, gay television guy.

Jessamyn 30:17 So what's what's this? Like? You just said, oh, oh, it how do I ignore my ego?

mathowie 30:21 Yeah, this is lovely, lovely posted. I think it ties back into metal filter. Someone saw a comment on another post that said,

Jessamyn 30:31 every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self esteem. That is why young children before they're aware of their own self importance learn so easily. And this comes. So the saying goes, this comes

mathowie 30:42 back. Yeah. So it's great. Like as an adult, how can I just stop worrying about other people and, you know, try new things and fail miserably and not be embarrassed? And as if I were a kid, yeah, just be like, Oh, fuck it, whatever. And it's like an awesome quality to have. And I think this is sort of the fundamental, you know, life question for me as a 35, six year old now. This stuff, you know, stuff I think about all the time you're like, oh,

Jessamyn 31:09 yeah, happy birthday. By the way,

mathowie 31:10 I don't want to suck at something, you know, I'll look like an idiot. But you just have to just suck it up and look like an idiot.

Jessamyn 31:16 Well, and you don't want to be like a 40 year old or a 35 year old person who sucks at something. It's totally different. Being an 18 year old who sucks at something, you know what I mean? I think it's a flip off the diving board when you're 18. And when you're 40.

mathowie 31:31 I feel the same about it ever since I was born like I just period of just it's just feel like sucking at something period. Versus being you know, marginally decent at it.

Jessamyn 31:43 Do that's how I felt with this bicycle. Bicycle seriously at all since college comes

mathowie 31:48 back to meta stock and how people are always saying I'm afraid to fail on meta filter like they just talked about. Did you guys design it to be the most intimidating place in the world? And

Jessamyn 31:59 I'm afraid to self link I'm afraid to make a post to have my friends music. Yeah,

mathowie 32:03 make fun of it. I'm afraid to ask a dumb question be shouted down for it. to shame run metal filter. Was that a design choice? And I'm always like, I feel so bad. Because I hate those situations like that. You know, like, I think you know, anyone I know. Who can't dance who saw like, Dance Dance Revolution show up at you know, every arcade and every movie theater and every public place a few years ago. And I remember thinking like, first time you see it, there's like a 12 year old on it kicking ass and I'm going where did they learn to me? How many quarters to take the good at that. And then I'm an idiot. How would I ever in a million years in front of this crowd at the movie theater ever try that for the first time? That's crazy. Right? Right. And I feel bad that you know, any part of medicine makes people feel that way. But it's truly like, when I talked to people that were like, how do I make money blogging? Or how do I get started blogging? This is a big thing. And I'm like, I was lucky enough to be like one of the first people blogging when we were all failing together. And it was no big deal.

Jessamyn 33:08 Right, right. Well, yeah, me too. And like ignore knowing who to ignore and knowing who to pay attention to when people give you advice. I feel like we've made some changes at meta filter over the last couple of years, having more moderators and being more decent, that have actually made things slightly better. Our reasons for deletion are a lot less snarky, or mine are anyhow, when I put these big, like, I deleted a ton of comments, you know, comments and asked me to filter I usually say please, and thank you now and I think that makes a difference. But I mean, I think that kind of stuff. Like you set a tone, you know? Yeah.

mathowie 33:45 And I guess we gotta cut off people that are all, like mean and shouty or something

Jessamyn 33:52 not even mean and shouty but just like people who seem to like savage other people. I mean, even like deleting the first couple like this sucks comments from an otherwise, okay, meta filter posts can really set the tone totally differently, you know, and I think you me cortex and sort of old timers who who participate a lot on the site make it seem more, I mean, because none of us are like snarky jerk, or, you know,

mathowie 34:18 like, 4chan or something. Or something awful, or, you know, stuff where mocking users is something that comes from the top down kind of, I mean, a lot of this this stuff and this question comes back to you know, even you know, your own psychology. So, I mean, some people can fail and not think twice about it, and other people are just so hung up on what other people think.

Jessamyn 34:44 Yeah, I really liked you know, with Natalie's sort of comment that sort of was like you have to talk about what the ego blows are that you're trying to, that you're trying to deal with, you know, you avoid the ego blow of failure, you avoid the ego blow of learning something that's against what you currently think like all of those, you know, affects your sense of your identity, which is more sort of created when you're a teenager and in place when you're more of an adult. And so I don't know, that was my favorite response with 20 favorites, and grumble B had a good a good response, there was a lot of heavily favorited responses in that thread to which I thought,

mathowie 35:22 oh, we should talk about some of the epic sort of comments away from questions. I mean, we usually focus on our favorite posts and our favorite questions. But there was was it the AskMe Metafilter? Because the AskMe medical side pro line jumping it was like on the front page of

Jessamyn 35:37 reddit, you jumping? I borrowed it. Oh, yeah. Was it on Reddit?

mathowie 35:41 It was on Reddit and it got 60

Jessamyn 35:43 I did that.

mathowie 35:45 60,000 60,000 views

Jessamyn 35:48 like the queue jumping story. Just that I love the cute jumping story.

mathowie 35:53 Oh, people read it. That was bullshit. But we're Oh did it didn't actually happen? Because it's kind of so perfect. Well, it

Jessamyn 36:01 was a great question. Right? It was like, how does it how do lines work? Where do you live? How do people stand in line? Do people like stand in line differently? I mean, I remember when I was living in Egypt,

mathowie 36:11 like the cops are there at the right time and it just almost got punched and we just whipped by his nose. Everything sounds too perfect and funny. People on Reddit were skeptical. The truth of Garis is,

Jessamyn 36:26 please see previous comment. How do I not care about what? Well, who knows? Right? Because people do kind of make up make up stories. Yeah. Occasionally. Yeah. I mean, when I lived in Eastern Europe, the big deal with like getting in line was like if you see a if you see a line get in it because there's probably like meat or bread at the other end.

mathowie 36:47 The other super super famous comment those LinkedIn billion places was the thing about what was it trying to leave America and become a Canadian says and using the asylum in 2003. I

Jessamyn 37:00 sidebar that to human error story. That was a

mathowie 37:02 good, like major. One of the comments sort of takes on a life of its own kind of,

Jessamyn 37:09 yeah, yeah, those are fun. In fact, we should have like, we should do that as Colin show or something have people call in and either like read their favorite comments, or just point to their favorite comments if they're, yeah, I

mathowie 37:19 kinda was gonna ask Garis to read this, but it's pretty long and human hairs thing is even longer is really, really long. You know, it turned into a 10 minute script. Could be a bit much. But yeah, I was just trying to like remind us ourselves that we like need to mention these awesome comments that might otherwise be missed.

Jessamyn 37:39 No, I think I think that's a really good idea. I had a couple, just mostly like lists. Like asked Metafilter questions that I really liked. I liked this one. I want really good documentaries that are like a really good science book. Oh, yeah. weren't like a ton of comments. But basically anything that gets somebody to say James Burke connections, everything else that's in that thread I want to Yeah. And then this was the I like the Futurama song and it makes me dance around like an idiot. I need more music like that. Tang tang, tang, tang, tang, tang, tang, tang. No,

mathowie 38:19 there's this new video game. People are mentioning video game songs Katamari, this new video game, Little Big Planet, which is very much like Katamari

Jessamyn 38:28 here that you just got that. Yeah, we're gonna be offline all week as a result of it. I don't know anything about it. What is

mathowie 38:33 sort of this weird, cool, you know, you're just running around doing stuff and you can build your own levels. And you can go on the internet and play other people's levels is kind of the breakthrough. But you're like this little kid character who just sticks stickers on stuff. Like it's kind of like, not super competitive. But it's got great music, like everything is so upbeat, like listening to music all day. This is great.

Jessamyn 38:57 I think that kind of stuff is really important, especially when we're dealing with winter in these sort of spheres and

mathowie 39:04 election stress and fight Enos all around the world.

Jessamyn 39:08 Yeah, I've got I've got like a playlist on iTunes. It's just called Rock. That's just all this like Doot doot, doot Doot doot music and I got a lot of inspiration from this thread. Speaking of knitting, my last favorite AskMe Metafilter. One was middle of October, it was basically like, I make handmade gifts. Here are the things I know how to do. Give me good ideas for handmade presents for Chris.

mathowie 39:35 Oh, and it was also my family's getting kind of tired of my handmade output. I gotta like dazzle them with something new.

Jessamyn 39:42 Everybody's got a handprint from me. Like,

mathowie 39:46 you know, people just I have like an aunt who like gave every you know, gives everyone scarves or hats. She knits herself and they're awesome, which is great. And then everybody's got a scarf. Yeah, but then like uncles and aunts who don't appreciate the handiwork. They're just like, Oh, great. You didn't go to a store. Yeah, that's how they see it like they're kind of dicks about it. But yeah,

Jessamyn 40:03 but I got a lot of really good ideas like tube actually the guy who did the tape question had like, how to make things out of Tyvek I'm actually going to make myself a MacBook air sleeve yeah back I learned how to do it on YouTube. Yeah,

mathowie 40:15 and yeah, people like was IKEA bags. There's lots of like Tyvek is really popular for making like just bullet proof bags out of I use that

Jessamyn 40:24 IQ bag. I got an Ikea bag with some crap somebody brought me from IKEA and now I use it to take my recycling to the dump.

mathowie 40:31 So we use for recycling. Yeah, you can have like yeah, like Coke bottles are drippy and sticky like are fine inside that stuff. And it's

Jessamyn 40:41 waterproof. And then they don't make your car all drippy and sticky, but it stays inside the plastic

mathowie 40:45 bag. When you go to Ikea now they charge you a nickel for a like you know, one of the plastic bags you might get at this supermarket, or for like 40 cents, you get that bulletproof blue bag. So those are, every time I go often I'll forget to bring the blue bags, but I'll buy one or two every time and now like I have one or two and all in our cars and like in the garage and stuff and we just use them randomly.

Jessamyn 41:11 You should totally start giving them away to people is handmade.

mathowie 41:14 Oh yeah, there's like instructions online on how to make a diaper bag and how to make a backpack and how to make a laptop bag out of them.

Jessamyn 41:21 Yeah, pretty awesome, huh? Yeah. One of the things we shouldn't do you have other things from AskMe we've had

mathowie 41:27 Oh, we should have this is the my token. What the hell? Where'd it go? Copy Link. My toks my token Halloween post be this one. non obvious classical music. I can scare little girls coming to my door with like, not the stuff you've always heard like the same four or five pieces of classical music.

Jessamyn 41:48 I do like all the Mountain King. So yeah, but these are great.

mathowie 41:51 I've never even heard of half these composers. Listed doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Oh, it looks like other people are mentioning it like yeah, this is some pretty bleak and terrifying music you guys are mentioning so. Yeah, there's lots of downloading to be done reading this list.

Jessamyn 42:07 Danzig? Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And there was there was a whole bunch of Halloween costumes and questions and Halloween tag was one of the most popular tags.

mathowie 42:17 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was just looking at the meta filter Google Analytics statistics the other day. And like all the Halloween threads just pop up to like the most traffic things. Bang bang. Like how do I make a costume for you know, this is my you know, I'm in a dorm I don't have anything how do I make costume like that's probably like the one of the most popular? I guess it comes up number one in a Google search for like college student costumes are something oh, great, great. Great. And I noticed even my own personal like my pumpkin photos from every year are turning up. Like as the

Jessamyn 42:51 most liqueurs got the pumpkin carving tag it up in their Flickr blog never added

mathowie 42:56 that until yesterday. But like someone from the Ellen DeGeneres Show emailed me on Monday going we found your Mario pumpkin it was from two years ago like it's so great. Can you come to the show and carve pumpkins for us? I was like I'm not in LA and be I just use a stencil. Sorry,

Jessamyn 43:16 dude, you're not gonna go on Ellen. You need to send these opportunities to you should

mathowie 43:23 I sent the opera trying Clank stuff I sent the opportunity on to my my art carving cousin who does live in LA who carves awesome for a living and I told him Hey, Ellen might be interested in your work your handiwork. So, I don't know whatever happened with that, but, but like, just from

Jessamyn 43:41 television is just doing Google.

mathowie 43:45 Like they found a two year old and I looked at my Flickr stats and it was like my pumpkins from last year in the year before the most traffic thing because people are just looking at the pumpkin tag are the Halloween tag. Right. Weird.

Jessamyn 43:58 That's very funny. Well, and I just wanted to point out a couple of the other things that are going on sort of sitewide if anybody's on Etsy there's a an Etsy team being created that I think will make all of our kind of cool, you know, making making those lists for when we do our sort of shopping

mathowie 44:19 this leads at or do something or do we have to do I have to do anything?

Jessamyn 44:24 Can I just enjoy edit We'll edit that page?

mathowie 44:27 What can I just enjoy the Etsy you know?

Jessamyn 44:30 Yeah, I think anybody can join it. I don't think you have to have

mathowie 44:34 did they make one yet? Is there a URL?

Jessamyn 44:38 Um, they're putting it together. I don't know if that's actually happened or not? Yeah, like

mathowie 44:44 we ever get a medical their team wants to help someone. Yeah, I was like, yeah, go full steam ahead is what I was hoping for. And, and then we can

Jessamyn 44:51 go like, yeah, sell T shirts, stickers. Yeah, all sorts of stuff. I see. The other thing was that we now have that asked metal filter. No edification so that people can find their own posts.

mathowie 45:02 Well, any posts you make now it's, it was Oh, really anywhere on the site. If you make a project post, you'll get the message if you make a thing. And so people

Jessamyn 45:12 get a me mail from you, me. Yeah, that basically is like, Hey, I

mathowie 45:17 just posted something. A couple old timers have been emailing me back going. I don't like this. Can I turn it off? So there's an opt out, there's an opt in your contact preferences, we have opt out of me by mail reminders, and we're just using that as Oh, and we'll, every night at midnight, will we send out a mail to everyone? Who has a

Jessamyn 45:38 who's got a 30 day old? AskMe edit filter?

mathowie 45:40 Yeah, just saying, Hey, did you pick out some best answers? And hey, did you solve your problem, then go ahead and put resolved on it. And you know, might want to give us a recap. So it's fun.

Jessamyn 45:49 I think that's cool.

mathowie 45:50 I think that's very fun to watch the resolve tag and see the people popping in and go yeah, that turned out it did work for me.

Jessamyn 45:57 Yeah, subscribing to the resolve tag is cool, because you don't get a whole bunch of stuff.

mathowie 46:02 only like one or two today. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessamyn 46:05 But then you get like, I think mostly good stories. Yeah, of people solving their problems. And lastly, we've got tags on meta talk now. And we're doing a ambitious and hopefully final I think, back tagging project to get all 12,000 meta talk threads. Yeah. Titled and tagged. Yeah. And it's hard and it's taking forever. But yeah, I think it's pretty

mathowie 46:27 cool to frickin work when I was doing it a little bit just Oh, man. It's, it's a lot of work. You got to read the post and then you got to think about and synthesize it and then man's love mental work.

Jessamyn 46:40 It's hard. But you know, for the kind of gogo librarian team, it gives them interesting stuff to work about and we all get to think about metadata and at some point we'll open it up so that people can tag their old posts Yeah, that kind of thing. But I'm pretty happy with the product

mathowie 46:56 I think that's about it for this week, month,

Jessamyn 46:59 I think I think so

mathowie 47:00 too. Think she's gone Oh Thanks think she's gone