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Podcast 59 Transcript
A transcript for Episode 59: The Most Illegal Thing I've Seen in the History of Wrestling".
Pronoiac set up a Fanscribed page, and most of this transcript came from there.
Transcript
jingle: (theme music)
mathowie: (muttering) Starting back up.
jessamyn: (imitates a car failing to start up: "rerr rerr rerr")
cortex: Yup. (laughs, and Jessamyn stops imitating a car and joins in)
mathowie: So this is episode 59!
cortex and jessamyn: (continue cracking up) mathowie: You know what I realized yesterday?
cortex: What?
jessamyn: Herp?
mathowie: The first podcast ever was - last week made it four years ago.
cortex: Wow.
mathowie: That doesn't seem right. I thought it was two years, but, four years ago.
cortex: No, it was before I was a mod.
mathowie: Yes, you were a guest, I think.
jessamyn: How long have you been with us, Josh?
mathowie: Two years?
cortex: I'm going on, at the end of this month, four years since I first -
mathowie: Joined?
cortex: - modded a thing. I joined in 2001. Come on, man.
mathowie: Where's your -
jessamyn: Star?
mathowie: You were like, oh right, you were in the second episode! cortex interview.
cortex: Oh God, that's right.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: And that was four years ago... yesterday, I think. Wow.
jessamyn: Today, dude. Today's the 23rd.
mathowie: Let me see, today's the 23rd, and we posted on the 22nd of 2007. Whoa! There's a shitty audio [?} player that doesn't...
jessamyn: Wait, where do you say the 22nd? Oh, I show the 23rd because it's one in the morning.
cortex: Ah-ha!
jessamyn: Ha, hahahaha.
mathowie: Oho, there's your problem!
jessamyn: This isn't going any better, guys.
mathowie and cortex: (laugh)
mathowie: We learned a lot in four years.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: How to create boring-ass content.
cortex: So here we are in 2011!
mathowie: I was trying to explain how podcasting works to someone, and I was like, "Yeah, I've been doing this for two... three...," and I looked it up, "four years?! What the fuck. Geez." I should write it all down.
jessamyn: You did write it all down. It's on your blog. That's how I figured out where to do my call recorder.
mathowie: Well, I was like, how to physically record, but all the other stuff, like,
- you know, use FeedBurner to manage your feeds so you can use any podcast service, use this one podcast service that's super cheap to upload stuff to, et cetera. How to prepare, et cetera. Prepare.
jessamyn: Prepare!
mathowie: As if we... yeah. Okay. So!
jessamyn: What's this 'we', white man? I'm prepared. I have a list of links.
mathowie: So episode... it's episode 59. We haven't done a thing since the Awesome Post Contest, so basically anything from January or February counts.
jessamyn: Did everybody chime in to get their
- rewards for the Awesome Post Contest?
mathowie: Yeah. I gave money to... one person took the cash as, what do you call it, like an Amazon gift?
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: Two people... one person was from Australia, and I donated a hundred bucks to flood relief.
jessamyn: Oh, nice!
mathowie: And the other person wanted me to donate whatever... was it a hundred? Or was it like $250?
- Whatever the runner-ups were. I donated money to San Luis Obispo Reading Program, and giving like a hundred bucks to a very small United Way thing for a very specific project. It was like, the kids will have books for the next two years thanks to you, which was awesome.
jessamyn: Yayy! That's great. Okay. Happy story.
mathowie: And then I think the winner-winner took cash to buy a new iPad, which is supposed to come out... gosh, it's supposed to be announced like next week.
cortex: Ah.
jessamyn: Great!
mathowie: So yeah. It all worked out great. We had great posts, and...
jessamyn: I enjoyed that month very much, and there was a whole bunch of terrific posts, and yeah, that's all I wanted to say.
mathowie: Yeah. So actually, we haven't covered Ask Metafilter since November, I think. So. But I'm looking at just 2011 stuff for today.
jessamyn: Yeah, I think me too, pretty much.
mathowie: So much crap has happened! Jesus.
jessamyn: It has been! Where would you like to start?
mathowie: I don't know. I guess Projects. My favorite Projects.
jessamyn: There were a lot of great Projects. I mean, there always are. But sometimes you look at the Projects and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I just love every single one of these."
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: And sometimes you're like, "Well, my favorite one of what we have is blah."
mathowie: I think we'll both agree, I think all of us will agree on my... the two most popular in the last month I think will both be on everyone's list, which was Alan Taylor's new photoblog In Focus at the Atlantic instead of
- the Big Picture at the Boston Globe, the successor to it.
cortex: Right.
mathowie: With slightly bigger images, and then GameFilter.net, which is awesome.
cortex: GameFilter!
jessamyn: Yes!
mathowie: And both of these ended up on the front page.
cortex: I don't think GameFilter's actually been posted yet. I imagine it will be at some point, but...
mathowie: Oh wait, you put it in MetaTalk, you weirdo!
cortex: I put it in MetaTalk because it was like, it was sort of like stavros had just sort of unveiled it, and there was only some people from MeFightClub on it so far, so...
mathowie: And how is that MetaFilter-related?
cortex: Well, it just wasn't super... well, it's very
- Metafilter-related! Because it's like, you know, it's a explicitly sort of like a Metafilter-inspired unofficial spin-off community being, and I figured seeding it with some people who saw it there to help him get the bugs out and whatnot seemed like a good way to go.
mathowie: Whoa!
jessamyn: People flagged it in MetaTalk anyhow.
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: adrianhon owns GameFilter.com?
cortex: Yeah. Yeah, it turns out he had just registered that however long ago.
mathowie: Oh, it has an 's' on it, though, GamesFilter.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Whatever, though, that'll be fine.
- I thought that was really cool, and he was cheating [?] about it too.
mathowie: It's... I guess we didn't even describe what it was, though! So it's like a Metafilter about video games, and it's very cool.
cortex: Yeah, well, yeah! stavros has basically taken the Metafilter sort of model, as it were, and had a go with prettying up some WordPress and turned it into a... yeah, just sort of like a place to go and post about games, you know. Video games, but also, you know, other games are fine too, you know, if you want to talk about board games, there was a post about somebody's analog game blog recently for non-video stuff. But yeah. It's...
mathowie: And this is all in WordPress?
- Really? Can't tell.
cortex: I think so. stav's like a crazy... maybe it's not, maybe I'm misremembering, but he's hacked the shit out of WordPress at this point, so I kind of assume everything he does is in WordPress unless otherwise specified. And maybe he specified otherwise and I missed it, but.
mathowie: The text is a little small for me, but you can adjust it.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Oh, grandpa.
mathowie: I feel like an old man.
cortex: That's the first thing I did was turn it up, so.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: I don't understand what Go Spacechimp means.
cortex: (laughs) I don't exactly understand what it means either.
mathowie: Go Spacechimp... where does it say that?
jessamyn: At the top of the page!
cortex: But it's... it's one of the menu options.
mathowie: Oh, their fake... Mine says Gaming Shields. Gaming Swords.
cortex: Gaming Swords?
jessamyn: Wait, what? They say different stuff? Does yours have...?
mathowie: Yeah. I think it's... yeah. Yep. Gaming Full Glass, Gaming Empty Clip. It's like a randomizer if you just keep doing the front page.
cortex: Huh. I have not noticed that.
mathowie: Gaming Weasel, Gaming Poop... Oh, there's Go Spacechimp!
jessamyn: No, no, no! I'm talking about the button.
mathowie: Oh, yeah, where's it go?
cortex: I think it's a...
jessamyn: That's my question! (laughs)
mathowie: Is this Recent Activity?
cortex: I think it's sort of like a Recent Activity and maybe sort of a Twitter-y aggregation thing, too. I wasn't really sure. I haven't really looked very carefully.
mathowie: No, it looks like Facebook-style, like...
jessamyn: Like, what's been going on?
mathowie: Recent activity for everything everywhere.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: I thought somebody could just tell me what Spacechimp meant, but apparently not.
mathowie: (laughs) I asked you where it was and you didn't say, so I had to find it.
jessamyn: At the top! What, Control-F for God's sakes!
mathowie and cortex: (laugh)
mathowie: Look, I'm not one of your library patrons in their 70s.
jessamyn: (crotchety voice) Don't get me started about my library patrons!
mathowie: I like the Thanks! in the... Thanks are like, Jorah [??] thanked juvenal's blog post 20 hours 8 minutes ago.
cortex: Yeah. Which is sort of imported from over on MefightClub, where there's thanks instead of favorites.
jessamyn: They do thanks instead of favorites.
mathowie: Yeah, that's interesting.
cortex: The idea was to explicitly decouple them, you know. Not that having them covered by the same feature has been contentious anywhere in the past, but, you know, just, I guess...
jessamyn: (laughs) Or recently. Or today.
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: So what's next? Any other favorite Projects?
cortex: Oh, I've got a--
jessamyn: Well, the Big Picture thing is probably worth, you know, just--
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Mentioning, that the Atlantic kinda took, what, Alan and his stuff.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: And I haven't really looked at it that much, but it's similar though not exactly the same, right?
mathowie: Yeah, well, Alan's like a... I mean, if you followed the, I followed the Big Picture in RSS for whatever, two, three years he's been doing it since he launched it.
jessamyn: Sure.
mathowie: And it's like, you understand him as an editor, and when he stopped doing it maybe three weeks ago, and the picture galleries that come out are just drier and boringer and there's something about a guy selecting 25 photos out of 20,000 for some earthquake in Christchurch or something.
- Like, his are just better. So I actually canceled my Big Picture RSS feed and just flipped it to the Atlantic one. And the Atlantic is like, it's a little nicer, the pictures go up to 1280 now? They're really big.
cortex: Nice.
jessamyn: Nice!
mathowie: You can switch it, there's like a little press thing in the upper right to switch it to even bigger. The default is one pixel bigger than the Big Picture, I think so they can say they're bigger. I don't know.
jessamyn: (laughs)
- Bigger Picture?
mathowie: Yeah, it's just... I don't know, it's cool! It's awesome! I mean, he's like a good programmer, he's killing himself doing this... like, this super-big money maker for the Boston Globe that netted them all these headlines is a side project, and I imagine he still had a full plate, and it didn't sound like he had very many... I mean, it seemed like features came out really slowly, and he was always apologizing, so I think he just had no resources at the Globe. So it was kind of cool for the Atlantic to pick him up.
jessamyn: Yeah, I'm hoping they can take advantage of everything that's terrific about him and--
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: --keep that going awesome. And he's also got, what? He's got a little Twitter, and he's got... the Twitter's just kinda "this is what's going on." But nice!
mathowie: Yeah, it's kind of his RSS feed. But, yeah, it's cool.
jessamyn: Nice! I actually had--I mean, it sounded like Josh was gonna say the thing, like... there were a lot of things on Projects that I really liked.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Some of which were super popular, and some of which were
- just kinda these sleeper projects, like this one. msbrauer, who's a longtime user, did this really cool post about talking to Chinese people about what their role in China's future is. And I think China's becoming kind of this default, like, "RRR, what's your's China plan?" or blah blah blah, you know, people make these stupid generalizations about a billion Chinese, and they don't really... or they know about
- Apple factory scandal stories or lead paint issues. But this is all about individual folks, and what what they think they have to do with what's going on in the future of China. And if you look at the website, which is really well laid out, it has these great pictures, and a lot of young people. It's just a great Project that kind of sort of snuck in, and I thought it was worth calling out and mentioning.
mathowie: Neat.
cortex: It is cool.
mathowie: I don't know about sideways scrolling, but
- it's pretty cool.
cortex: Gee, I [??]
jessamyn: Ugh, Grandpa!
cortex and mathowie: (chuckle) cortex: Boi-yo!
mathowie: Dude, I built Metafilter...
jessamyn: Yes. And GamesFilter has drop caption shadowing too, but we still love it!
mathowie: I built Metafilter, therefore it's deeply embedded in my pains--
jessamyn: (chuckles)
mathowie: --and I have to complain about great things.
jessamyn: About everything that's... yeah, right.
mathowie: "It's really awesome, but I hate this one tiny thing about it, so the whole thing sucks."
cortex: It's in your DNA.
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: Well, I've got like a skill-shot chain of
- little Project mentions here.
jessamyn: What is a skill-shot chain? What does it mean?
mathowie: [??]
cortex: douglbutt is an IRC bot that lives in the #mefi IRC channel on slashnet, and it's, you know, it's a bot. It's been tweaked a bunch over time, and it's actually pretty slick, that's from cellphone.
jessamyn: So what does that mean? You can talk to the bot to do stuff? It takes commands?
cortex: It does utility stuff--
jessamyn: Oh, okay.
cortex: You can use plug-ins to make it do sort of whatever you want,
- which is nice.
jessamyn: Will it make me a bacon sandwich?
cortex: No, but it will post stuff--
jessamyn: Well then I don't understand what it does!
cortex: --from or to Twitter, and it'll... it's okay. It'll be alright.
mathowie: sudo will it make her a bacon sandwich?
cortex: No.
jessamyn: (laughs)
cortex: But it'll post your bacon sandwich blog on Tumblr automatically, and it'll interact with Twitter about bacon-related stuff if you want, so. It's kinda neat. And it just got posted and I think that's cool. And then...
jessamyn: And cellphone, cellphone made it? cellphone built it?
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Nice!
cortex: And then user (parenthetic me)
- more recently posted a Markov chat bot, which, you know, I'm a sucker for anything Markov.
jessamyn: I saw that! That was really cool. And it showed up kinda right near your own Projects post, right?
cortex: Yeah, that was around the same time this month. So that's cool, and that's, you know, MegaHAL is sort of what introduced me to Markov in the first place, so that is a touchstone and the Project sort of makes sense. And then...
jessamyn: Can I play with this?
cortex: I haven't... yes, is the short answer, it might take a little bit of tweaking, depending on what's going on. I mean, it's designed--IRC bots are intended to function within IRC, so if you aren't using IRC already it may be sort of a non-starter.
jessamyn: Oh, okay, and that's what this is as well. I get it, I get it.
cortex: Yeah. So it sort of hangs on the channel interaction in that respect. And then yaymukund [ˈjeɪməkund]--is that how we say his name, yaymukund [ˈjeɪmə.kund]? Anyway...
jessamyn: I always say yakmund [ˈjæk.mʌnd], which it occurs to me is wrong.
cortex: (laughs) Probably not.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: Oh, yeah.
- Sorry.
cortex: Anyway, they built Twittov, which is a Markov-driven Twitter history
- nonsense generator, that, you know, you point it at your Twitter history, you know, just give it an account name, and...
jessamyn: Here we go! Alright.
cortex: --it'll suck that in and turn that into Markov-y stuff. So that's kinda sweet too, and that was fun to play with. And there was some good conversation in the thread about sorta how to get it to behave the way you'd expect, because it's a little bit unintuitive at first if you're used to playing with things that do Markov differently. (laughs) Yes.
mathowie: What?
jessamyn: It appears to have gotten my father's ZIP code somehow, and everything else is slightly confusing.
mathowie: Yeah, it's kind of garbage.
cortex: Well, it's doing--by default it does it at the letter level instead of the word level, so instead of trying to put together a string of novel letters based on the frequency with which letters appear next to each other in your Twitter history.
jessamyn: Oh, I get it, I get it, I get it!
cortex: Because Twitter histories are relatively... yeah. So that's why you've got all these weird words like 'impleasy'. So yeah.
jessamyn: So when I unchecked the 'split words' box I got something which sounded funnier.
cortex: Yeah. Because the thing is with Twitter, your Twitter history is relatively
- small as far as corpora goes, so doing word-based you may not get a whole lot of craziness compared to when you feed it a novel or something.
jessamyn: My corpora's pretty big.
cortex: Well, yeah, it's decent. It's just comparatively speaking. And then my Markov thing was the Previously, On The X-Files thing that I posted a little while ago.
jessamyn: (sing-song, ascending pitch) Clickety. Clickety! Clicketyy!
- That was pretty great!
cortex: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I need to do it for other shows. I need to do it for, like, Star Trek is next on my hit list, but
- I need to collect actual screenshots and text for that still, so.
mathowie: Original Star Trek?
cortex: I was thinking of starting with Next Generation, but I might also do original series, and maybe Deep Space Nine while I'm at it.
jessamyn: I think original series would... yeah, resonate with even more.
mathowie: I have never seen the original series as full episode in my life, I wonder if I actually have a... yeah, actually have like a, never.
cortex: Really? You've never? How did that happen?
mathowie: Aaah, it felt like, I kind of felt like episode 42 was always playing, and
- you had to watch episode 1 in order to understand everything going on, and it was such a big world.
cortex: It was not really a big continuity thing.
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: You can pretty safely pick up--
mathowie: I was a little kid!
cortex: Yeah, okay. Well, you're not a little kid anymore, so man the fuck up, and, you know, watch some Star Trek. Jesus.
mathowie: (laughs) And watch some shitty TV from the '60s.
cortex: Classic shitty TV, correct.
mathowie: Yes.
- I loved this Bad Job Interviews Tumblr blog (cortex chuckles) of just like the worst moments from interviews. And it's
- like, dumb things you've been asked, but sometimes it's like crazy shit that happened while someone was interviewing someone where they threw up in a trash can or something like that. Unfortunately there's some dumb oatmeal reference in it, but--
jessamyn: (chuckles) You hate the oatmeal.
mathowie: Yeah. Don't let that sour your...
jessamyn: "I once sat through an entire interview with a quarter sized piece of bacon in my shirt pocket."
mathowie and cortex: (chuckle) jessamyn: "I got the job."
mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)
jessamyn: It's pretty good, though. They do have other little clips and whatnot in there, and... whose is this? Whose... jca's! Cool! Man, jca is user 306, did you guys notice that?
cortex: Oh--
mathowie: Yeah, I--
jessamyn: He's like practically my neighbor.
mathowie: I'm trying to think who jca is.
jessamyn: My Internet neighbor. I don't know.
mathowie: I think it's someone I know, but...
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: I think it's Josh Allen, fireland? I don't know. Or is it
- different or--dude in New York, I can't remember his name... Seems like someone I know. Forget though.
cortex: Another thing I liked was the YouTube Comment Limericks, I don't know if you saw that, but.
mathowie: What? Wow.
cortex: rottytooth just goes into YouTube threads and pulls out individual little bits of comments--
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: --and turns them into limericks, and it's really fucking great.
mathowie: Just a giant... there's lots of fifteen-year-old humor.
cortex: Yep.
mathowie: So lots of "You are gay," and "Up your ass," and "Fuck this, fuck that."
jessamyn: "The frog died for sure, probably quick. Fuck the dirty Jews"... this is funny how? "Retarded post fail."
cortex: It's high concept funny. I mean, you're familiar with the substrate (jessamyn laughs) from which it's drawn, and then, you know, it's turned into something that resembles a more traditional artifact, and the juxtaposition of the high- and the
- low-brow creates a kind of frisson that I find pleasing.
mathowie: (chuckles) Well, the Lady Gaga one's awesome.
- "incredible talent & beauty
- wow that still image is funny.
- well that made my day
- FUCKYOU YOU'RE GAY
- those who dislike are green with envy!"
- That's just like a lovely little snapshot of the entire thread.
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: Does it rhyme?
mathowie: Sorta.
jessamyn: (laugh) No.
mathowie: It's close.
jessamyn: I liked the YayTM thing that'll give you a dollar if you dance well.
cortex: Oh, yeah! That's fantastic.
mathowie: What?!
jessamyn: Read it!!
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: I remembered that, did that work?
cortex: Well, define 'work', but, ah.
jessamyn: Somebody got a dollar!
mathowie: So when I approve these things, they're always like way new. So I think there might have been one submission on it, and I was like, "I don't know if that's gonna fly."
jessamyn: Oh, no, there's a ton of submissions on it now!
mathowie: I know, I know! Like, a lot has happened since it went off.
jessamyn: There is one very grouchy comment, which you can kind of understand, which is that these
- videos do get uploaded to YouTube with maybe not entirely clear, like, the End User Licensing Agreement may not be clear enough that it's actually uploading these people's videos to YouTube?
mathowie: Oh, it's a--
jessamyn: Like, you see the last comment in the thread?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: But it's, like, at somebody's school.
mathowie: It's ITP, which is Clay Shirky's program at NYU, so.
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: I mean, everyone does experimental Internet stuff, and you've gotta know that
- almost all of it's gonna end up on the web, since Clay Shirky's your mentor.
jessamyn: Right, and he's that guy.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: But yeah, no, there's what, one, two, three, six... one, two, three, four, five, six...
mathowie: There's a million.
jessamyn: Yeah, there's a ton of 'em on. And they're neat. I want the--
mathowie: So you dance in front of it and then it PayPals you a dollar or something?
cortex: No, no, it chucks a--
jessamyn: It spits out a dollar.
cortex: Yeah, it actually physically distributes a dollar to you if you manage to satisfy its--as far as I know, unstated--requirements for effective dancing. It's doing just basic
- sort of image processing, I think.
jessamyn: It's looking at your head. It's doing face recognition stuff and seeing how your face moves around, I think. That's my understanding.
mathowie: Neat.
jessamyn: Yeah. But it's fun! I don't know. I liked it, and I thought it was interesting, and it's kinda neat seeing Projects that are actually in the real physical world in addition to being cool web projects.
mathowie: Yeah. I've--
jessamyn: Alright, I have one more. Oh, sorry, go on?
mathowie: I was just going to say, all of my friends in New York say that ITP does an annual show, or biannual,
- I think, with each graduating senior class, kind of, every six months. I think it's like October and like April. They fucking love that. Like, that's like the best thing in the world. Go to the show where like twenty of these projects are basically shown off by the creators in one night. It's really cool.
jessamyn: This was the last thing that I saw, which was again a well-loved but not super heavily commented on Projects post by tmcw, another
- kinda long-time user, a thing called TileMill, which is an open-source map designing tool.
cortex: Huh.
mathowie: Oh yeah, yeah.
jessamyn: It's a little over my head in terms of exactly what it does, but the things that it provides are fairly awesome, and just they've got a team of people that are working on it. And I just thought it was really beautiful.
mathowie: Yeah, like I've looked at, oh, the stuff Staiman Design has been doing with open mapping stuff, but this
- is like, for the... I would say the minor-league coder could figure this out, it's just like CSS-style tweaking of a whole mapping system to customize. Which is kind of cool. So it presents... it's using a familiar language in a weird way, but it's like, if you could just CSS change applications at will. It's kind of cool.
jessamyn: Yeah.
mathowie: If they give you... every layer has an ID, like a CSS ID, you can just change the colors and the shapes and stuff using figures [?] and...
jessamyn: So you can do a lot of styling yourself without having a whole bunch of really technical knowledge.
mathowie: Yeah, yeah. You don't have to go into like C++ and change font sizes or something, you can just go whatever, all city names font size = 10px. And you're done, it's cool.
jessamyn: Pew pew! Yeah. That was my--
mathowie: The site is beautiful.
jessamyn: Yeah, the site is beautiful! Which always helps.
mathowie: Yeah. Alright!
jessamyn: Cool! That was it for Projects. I enjoyed Projects a great deal over the last couple months.
mathowie: Anything non-Projects to mention?
cortex: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Well, there is the Taxonomy Data Analyst position on Jobs!
mathowie: What? I don't remember seeing that. Taxonomy... taxonomy... data analyst... wow.
jessamyn: This company is "the world's leading provider of quality data solutions that transform disparate and dirty data into useful and valuable information." It's a real paying job, and it's in... dididideh (sing-song, rising pitch) bluhblehblah...
mathowie: Chicago [ʃɪˈkɑ.ɡoʊ]. Chicago [ʃɪˈkæ.ɡoʊ].
jessamyn: Chicago [ʃɪˈkɑ.ɡoʊ]. And it's the only post
- by, you know, a fairly new-ish user. But I thought it was actually kind of an interesting job.
mathowie: Neat.
jessamyn: And somebody having a library degree... are you listening, my librarian homies?
mathowie: Hey, are we gonna do a meetup--now that we're about to talk about IRL--are we going to do a meetup for Austin, like, Friday, Saturday night?
jessamyn: I hope so.
cortex: We totally should, yeah.
jessamyn: You know that my panel is during the stupid old timers ball, right?
cortex: Yeah, we're gonna...
mathowie: Yeah, well, it goes for an hour, two hours after. It's 5 to 8.
jessamyn: I wanna... and then we're like, "Well, we could switch it 'til Saturday," but
- one of my panelists is like, "Sorry, I kinda already bought my plane tickets."
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: And they're leaving on Saturday.
cortex: Oops.
jessamyn: So yeah, I've got a librarian meetup on Saturday, so Sunday would be best for me, but yeah.
mathowie: Oh, but I gotta get on a plane at like 5:00 or something to go home, or 3:00.
cortex: Maybe we should have a meetup on Friday night and...
mathowie: Post... yeah, post-
jessamyn: After the old timers ball?
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: Yeah, past old people.
cortex: That could work, like, yeah, do it like, I don't know.
mathowie: 8:00, 9:00.
cortex: It's... we're totally gonna, me and Angela are flying down on Friday, and we're going to fly into--flying into Austin was just like, we put it off too long and it was just fucked to try and get in there any time other than midnight. So we're flying to Dallas instead, and getting picked up at Dallas/Fort Worth by a MeFite who lives up there, and she's going to drive us down to Austin, and so it's like--
mathowie: Oh, Jesus.
jessamyn: Oh, cool! That's not actually a bad drive, I've done that drive.
mathowie: It's like three--is it like three hours or something?
jessamyn: Two and change, depending on how fast you go.
cortex: Yeah, yeah, she was saying about three hours, three and a half, yeah.
- Depending on traffic, too. But anyway, so the timing is just right that it's like a coin flip whether or not we're going to get to Jessamyn's panel. We're gonna try, cause...
jessamyn: Goddammit.
mathowie: (sighs)
cortex: We were going to fly in earlier, but the tickets went away. It was literally, I was trying to book a flight, and every time I clicked, "Okay, I want this flight," the site would be like, "Oh wait, I'm sorry, it expired, try another one!"
jessamyn: They were like, "No, can't have it!"
cortex: And it's like, I just went through in two minutes the process of picking off like four or five flights for the
- exact same slot from the same carrier, and there went two or three hundred dollars difference in the price in the process.
jessamyn: Ugh, ugh.
cortex: It was totally bullshit, so. So sorry. But yeah! We should get a meetup.
jessamyn: This is the first time that South by Southwest to me has seemed disorganized and screwy. I don't know if it's because my panel is weird, or they're finally overloaded, but like...
mathowie: Durrr!
jessamyn: They didn't tell me that the guy I had for my panel was also doing another panel, so I had to kinda scramble to get a last-minute panelist, and the schedule's been weird.
- It's weird. Like, normally I'm like, "Oh my God! They're the model for how to do it!" And this year has not felt that way.
mathowie: I think... I felt like they're pretty well... they're pretty organized, but everything's just so large. I think the rule last year--
jessamyn: Well, and maybe my liaison is just not on it, is possible too.
mathowie: Yeah. I think last year was the first year that they came up with this idea of
- ...moderators... of... I'm doing our meetup right now. (laughs)
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: I think last year was where you can only be on panel, so that means with... and there's also like 16 panels at once for five days.
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: So that means if something like... they have to manage something like, I don't know, 1800 speakers or something psycho.
jessamyn: Right.
mathowie: And everything is turned into, "You can respond to this by opening this Google Doc that is shared with all 1800 people."
jessamyn: Oh my God, and then the
- Google Doc URL they sent was wrong.
mathowie: Yeah, I know.
cortex: (chuckles)
jessamyn: So I e-mailed them and was like, "Hello? I just clicked it!" And they're like, "Oh, it's not done yet." And I'm like, "What? You e-mailed it to me!"
mathowie: I felt like interacting with them meant, it feels like I'm basically inputting into a database when I want to talk to somebody. (chuckles)
jessamyn: Right, right, right.
mathowie: Like, "Oh, let me just open that FileMaker Pro thing and tell you what I think." But they kind of have to.
jessamyn: Well, and I think people have a lot of documents that are like, "If we don't already have
- this information from you," and I'm like, "I think I sent it to you. Are you saying you don't have it, or..."
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Aaah! At any rate. I'm looking forward to my panel, but it's on Friday night, which is not so great, but then... yeah, it would be awesome to meet up afterwards.
- So, Matt's making an IRL post for people who would like to hang out at South by Southwest for Friday night, whatever that is, it's like two weeks from this Friday, right?
mathowie: I'll say maybe 9 pm, maybe 8 to 9.
jessamyn: That's good. Late is fine with me, the big trick is going to be figuring out a good place to do it that
- isn't mobbed. The place we went last time I thought was pretty good.
mathowie: Where'd we go?
jessamyn: I don't know. It was a place with the really long tables, like, we had just gotten, you had just gotten me from the airport.
cortex: Oh, yeah, that was... yeah.
mathowie: I have to remember the one like two years ago, it was sort of on the outskirts of town, and it was really nice, I can't remember.
- Alright, Josh, are you going to go to the Friday night Portland meetup?
cortex: When? Where? Which one? What are you talking about?
jessamyn: Not of general interest!
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: Oh, I can clip this out of the show.
jessamyn: You always say you're going to clip it, and then I say embarrassing things and you never clip it.
mathowie: Because they're funny when I go back, and I'm like, hey, people should see how the sausage gets made.
jessamyn: (laughs)
cortex: I don't even remember what we're talking about.
jessamyn: Portland, Oregon. You live there, and there's a meetup.
cortex: Yes. Somehow I missed this. And there totally is!
mathowie: iamabot, who's iamabot?
jessamyn: Somehow.
cortex: Oh, that's right, iamabot! Because, yeah, I was answering some questions about Portland--
mathowie: Where does he live normally?
cortex: --in IRC, actually. Because they're scoping. And I was like, "No, don't move to Gresham, don't move to
- Hillsboro."
mathowie: Haha, yeah.
cortex: That's like buying the album next to the awesome album you've heard a lot about. You know, it doesn't work that way.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: I have other friends who are moving to Portland, incidentally, my second set of librarian friends.
mathowie: Do they have jobs?
jessamyn: Yeah. She got a job at, I think OSU, being a librarian? Like, tenure-track librarian, job--
mathowie: OSU's down... nah, it can't be OSU, that's down in Corvallis.
jessamyn: Okay now, it's not OSU...
cortex: PSU?
jessamyn: Oregon State?
mathowie: PSU...
cortex: U of P?
mathowie: Oregon State's in...
cortex: No, Oregon State's in Eugene. Yeah, PSU's in downtown Portland...
jessamyn: I don't think it's... I think it has Oregon in the title.
mathowie: U of P?
jessamyn: U of O?
mathowie: UP. U of O's in Eugene. OSU is in Corvallis, Oregon State.
jessamyn: This is downtown, whatever it is. Maybe it's--
cortex: That's PSU, then.
mathowie: Yeah, PSU.
jessamyn: So yeah, they were out scoping for places, found an apartment, and they'll be moving out there in a month.
mathowie: Sweet!
jessamyn: Yeah, it's very exciting.
mathowie: Alright. I guess we should move on
- to Metafilter or Ask Metafilter and set three. Unless there's any Music news?
jessamyn: Josh?
cortex: I don't have direct Music news because--
mathowie and jessamyn: (laugh) cortex: I mean, I've not been paying any fucking--but, that actually reminds me of a Project that Pronoiac posted that's the--
jessamyn: Oh, right, right, right!
cortex: --'listening to every song ever posted to Music' thing.
mathowie: Oh, yeah!
cortex: And he, like, listens to a bunch every day and posts one of the recordings that he likes, and why can I not find this fucking project? But anyway, that's pretty fucking cool, and...
jessamyn: Because you can't spell his username.
cortex: Well, no, no, I just didn't try typing, I guess. Is that what you're trying to say? Are you trying to give me a hard time?
jessamyn: Are you serious?
cortex: I just didn't think to... I thought I'd find it!
mathowie: Where is it? I just approved it! Where is it?
cortex: It's there.
mathowie: There it is! Start to Finish.
cortex: Yes.
mathowie: A Metafilter Music Podcast.
cortex: So go Pronoiac! It's the kind of foolish completist thing that I can get behind.
mathowie: Yeah, this started with, he had a playlist of his favorites, this is--
jessamyn: Well, and he was part of making the giant tarball of all songs.
mathowie: Oh, cool!
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: But he had sent it originally as a--this is how the sausage gets made--he originally submitted a post which was his playlist, and I was like, "That's too meta!"
cortex: (chuckles) That's not a Project!
mathowie: And he's like, "A lot of work went into it!" And I was like, "Well then, start a fricking blog of it!" Like, how hard is that?
jessamyn: (laughs) G-Y-O-F-B!!
mathowie: Well, because then he can add a sentence saying, "I really liked the blank about this," or something.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: And before it was just a playlist! And like, "Trust me on this playlist, it's just the good stuff."
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: So this is awesome.
jessamyn: I really liked the blank of this.
mathowie: And he made a podcast feed of it, so you can download them all at once. It's nice. And a little player.
cortex: Yeah. It's pretty slick.
jessamyn: That's great!
cortex: And you know... the Music Podcast keeps not happening, and I had a couple people express interest. I know...
jessamyn: I love your passive voice.
mathowie: (chuckles)
cortex: Well, it keeps not happening, you know.
mathowie: (goofy rising pitch) Keeps not happening!
cortex: No one else is going to do it, so it's not like, you know, not being happening is like--
mathowie: The future reverse tense?
jessamyn: Not being done by you.
cortex: --me taking action to stop it from happening, it's just me not being a person who's doing it. So anyway, the whole point is (jessamyn laughs), a couple of people did express
- interest in maybe doing it and I should really talk to them and see if we can get that going.
jessamyn: That sounds like a great idea!
cortex: Because something that doesn't require work for me is even better than something that does require work for me.
jessamyn: Management is work sometimes.
cortex: Yeah. Delegation. It's a... it's a good sort of -gation.
mathowie: (chuckles) All right. So what were your favorite Metafilter posts?
cortex: Oh, gosh. There were... some.
jessamyn: Well?
cortex: I don't use favorites enough. It's a problem. I should favorite more posts as bookmarks.
jessamyn: Did either of you guys prepare for this at all? Because if not, we're going to talk about what I want to talk about--
mathowie: I'm good!
cortex: I've got--
jessamyn: Which is the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger.
mathowie: Ohh, I saw that.
cortex: I deleted a double without ever actually seeing the original.
jessamyn: Which I'm only mentioning because this was my link, I found it, and then I sent it to Jim in the middle of the night when I had the flu!, and he posted it, and now it has 87 favorites. So I'm going to mention it in the podcast.
cortex: That guy is an asshole.
jessamyn: I know. He's the worst.
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: But it's one of those classic YouTube single-link posts that's actually kind of terrific, because it's just basically a nature documentary about a slightly weird animal with this guy doing a funny voiceover. That's it!
cortex: Beauty.
jessamyn: But it's really funny. The honey badger runs backwards, it eats a snake, it gets--
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: I'm sorry, I'm listening to it, it's so fucking funny! (laughs)
jessamyn: Exactly! It's kind of the perfect
- Platonic YouTube post. They eat larva. It gets bit by a cobra, and then he rolls over and passes out and then wakes up again and continues to eat the snake that it killed.
cortex: It's pretty sweet.
jessamyn: Yeah, it's nice. I just--
mathowie: The set-up didn't sound as funny as the actual... I mean, it's funnier than it sounds, it's way funnier than it sounds. Like, oh yeah, someone basically removes the David Attenborough and is just like, I don't know, they're saying
- funny shit.
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: Like, "Honey badger don't give a shit. Honey badger eats when it's hungry!" Like, "There's a poisonous snake! Honey badger doesn't care! There it is, eating it."
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: It's very funny. It's funnier than it sounds.
jessamyn: And the honey badger's kinda cute. But I'm just saying, priming the pump, that was a post that I enjoyed.
mathowie: (chuckles)
cortex: There was a post I enjoyed from last month about online corpora [ˌkɔɹˈpɔɹə], which is a vital online--
jessamyn: You don't say corpora [ˈkɔɹpəɹə].
cortex: I say corpora [ˌkɔɹˈpɔɹə], it's probably corpora [ˈkɔɹpəɹə], I don't know, I say everything wrong, so.
- But I say corpora [ˌkɔɹˈpɔɹə].
jessamyn: I met another person that says MeFi [mɛfaɪ], by the way.
cortex: Fuckin' A!
jessamyn: I'm just saying.
mathowie: Did you kill them on sight?
cortex: There can be only one!
jessamyn: It was a radio interview, and I was trying to make nice, so no.
mathowie: Hey, look, corpuses!
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: This is like what we were talking about before.
cortex: Yeah, exactly. And so yeah, it's...
mathowie: We're talking about developing a Metafilter corpus for some researchers, and yeah.
cortex: And there's an excellent comment from iamkimiam in the thread that's just a giant pile of corpora [ˌkɔɹˈpɔɹə] beyond what was in the post, so.
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: It's a super awesome reference, and I was like, "Yay! Corpus linguistics."
jessamyn: That's great!
cortex: So yeah.
jessamyn: I love it. I love it.
mathowie: There are people trying to use Twitter streams as corporuses is now...
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: Corpori?
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: Corporae, corporu...
jessamyn: Corporaeeee!!
mathowie: So people are sharing their corpus... are people sharing their code at all? Like, for analyzing this stuff?
jessamyn: They're rejects... [?]
cortex: Some... I mean yeah, I remember when we were talking at lunch the other day, you and me and Kay were talking about some of the tools, and some of this stuff is developed, as far as I can tell, open source, some of it's not so much. And I think it kinda... it's that complicated thing where on the one hand, maybe there's a profit motive, on the other hand--
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: --maybe there's just a, it's not done yet, I don't want to show you my shitty code motive.
mathowie: Yeah, just--
cortex: But there's definitely a mix of available tools for analyzing corpora.
mathowie: Just to bring Jessamyn and any listener up to speed, we were talking about--
jessamyn: I know what you're talking about!
mathowie: Well, I'll just re-explain it.
jessamyn and cortex: (laugh) mathowie: Doing cool stuff with like everything people
- have said, doing language analysis, but then like, it's weird that from the academic world, which is totally like open-sourcey, and everyone wants to repeat everyone's... this post is giving data away, there's every word ever said in TIME Magazine for fifty years, use that to describe human language and run tests against. But then when people develop code to, you know--
jessamyn: Actually do those tests.
mathowie: Yeah! They have these weird--and there are profit motives, but like
- professors get dollar signs in their eyes suddenly, and they forget the whole standing on the shoulders of giants mode of how academic research is done, and everyone keeps the code to themselves, and it's so strange to me.
cortex: Well, and there's also problems where there's domain-specific application development. I mean, with some of this stuff you have a very specific thing you want to do, and so you develop a piece of software--
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: --that does that specific thing, and then someone else is interested in doing something that's not really the same, and so on the one hand there's the profit motive thing, on the other hand there's
- the, "well, it's not really for that thing," and I can see people not wanting to muddy the water by having someone--
jessamyn: And "I don't want to be your tech support forever"...
cortex: Yeah. "I don't want to support you using my software to do something it wasn't meant to do," you know.
jessamyn: Story of my life.
cortex: Yeah. The whole thing seems weirdly complicated, but yeah, I think part of it is there's not necessarily enough resources to turn "I wrote some code to accomplish this task" into "I am providing software," you know. Unfortunately, free software isn't necessarily free to build and maintain, and so it gets tricky.
jessamyn: Free like in syphilis!
cortex: Yes, free like in syphilis.
mathowie: (chuckles)
cortex: (chuckles)
jessamyn: That's what I keep saying.
cortex: I don't know if I really--I probably didn't mention this last time we podcasted because we were doing the thing, but on this whole subject, I mean, part of what brought this up and why I was jabbering about language with Kay was the frequency table stuff that I did late last year, which was analyzing like 457,000,000 words of Metafilter comment text and creating frequency tables for different subsites and broken out by year and by month and
- so on. And my hope is to take this and turn it into some cool graph stuff that shows word frequency over time on the site, but I haven't gotten around to that part of it yet. But attention to two hardcore linguist nerds--
mathowie: Yeah, [??]
jessamyn: I'm excited for your eventual project culmination. Let us know when you've finished it.
cortex: (chuckles) Yeah. I will.
jessamyn: Thank you.
- (pause)
cortex: But yeah.
mathowie: Sweet.
cortex: What else?
jessamyn: What else of things that actually exist currently?
cortex: Oh, there's the Bibliotheca
- Corviniana--I think I'm pronouncing it right, or at least approximately right--post.
jessamyn: Also on my list.
cortex: Yeah?
jessamyn: That was a terrific post.
cortex: Yeah. So I guess it's just language post podcast this time, is what it's all about. But yeah. That was totally awesome and people should look at it. So there you go.
jessamyn: It's scam-scan-scammaged. (laughs)
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: Skimmaged! (descends into gibberish) It's a whole bunch of really, really old books that have
- been--it's the library of King Matthias I of Hungary--and scanned in a really useful way that people can see it by the something Academy... Hungarian... Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. And it's just kinda cool. You can link directly to stuff in it, you can link to high-resolution versions of some really, really antique books. And it's one of those links that goes to something that's not particularly in English and yet people can still
- click around and see a bunch of really interesting stuff. Not a lot of comments, tons of favorites, neat post by Paragon.
cortex: Yep.
jessamyn: Yep!
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: Well, then there was the sort of interesting "let's watch as the news unfolds" post about Egypt.
cortex: Oh, yeah.
mathowie: Oh, Jesus.
jessamyn: I mean, there was a whole bunch of posts about Egypt, but it was--
cortex: But that was sort of like the granddaddy, the epic one. Back when we were still in five-digit post numbers.
jessamyn and mathowie: (laugh) jessamyn: Back in the hippie days.
mathowie: We were so much younger then.
jessamyn: But basically it was notion's post, back when Egypt was shutting down access to the Internet but before Mubarak had agreed to step down or whatever it was that he did, and it's a really, it's a 2700 comment post. There was a lot of stuff going on as the thing was happening, and
- you know, there were still people commenting in it up until a couple days ago.
mathowie: Wow! And this drove feature production. We added a AJAX-y "hey, a couple new comments have been posted--"
cortex: Oh, yeah. (chuckles)
mathowie: "--as you've been reading this," which was super handy in these psycho long threads, and I mean, it's like win-win-win-win-win.
jessamyn: Well, they--they meant that people can really participate in the threads without having to reload a 1.5 to 2 megabyte text file--
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: --just to see that there's two or three new comments.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: It means that people can--
cortex: And for people on phones they can actually
- reload content--
mathowie: Oh God, yeah.
cortex: --without having to scroll to the top, reload, scroll to the bottom, find their place.
jessamyn: Or purchase a new data plan, yeah, exactly.
- So yeah, we were really happy about it and I just thought that thread was fascinating. And generally went... well, I guess?
cortex: It went pretty well. I mean, you know, it was bumpy in the way everything is going to be bumpy sometimes, especially when there's contentious politics involved, but for all that, yeah, it seemed like it did a pretty good job of staying on track and people did an okay job of when something was sort of turning into "Why are we arguing
- about Obama's hair color," you know.
jessamyn: Right, right, right.
cortex: "What does this have to do with nerf guns? Let's maybe talk about Egypt." Those were made up, I can't remember the specific things.
mathowie: I think we also added, since the last podcast, in new feature world, Twitter/Facebook share links. I think that was probably--
jessamyn: Was that not before the--
mathowie: I don't think we mentioned it in the last podcast about general stuff. But I enjoy this Twitter search on
- mefi.us, and it's pretty cool to see what people are pointing at in the Twitter world.
jessamyn: Oh, neat! Yeah. Well, I'm just happy we got a way to have short links so that people can post about the stuff they're going to be posting about anyhow in Twitter. And yeah, it is neat to see what people are kinda sending around. And I feel like pb did--or you or whoever did this actual work--you know, did a lot of work to make the icons seem non-obtrusive and be turn-off-able and
- so it's like--
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: --a good feature for people who want it, for people who don't want it you can basically make it go away and not deal with it.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Which I think is terrific. I feel like we've had good success with feature rollout lately, and I feel like at least some of that is because we're finally learning how to do this stuff so that (cortex chuckles) people aren't like, "You did WHAT?! What?!" And yeah, so go team.
cortex: Knock on wood.
jessamyn: What?
mathowie: Sweet.
jessamyn: Oh, 'knock on wood'. Hahahahaha.
mathowie: (chuckles)
- My favorites included--which I actually posted to Twitter--someone made MRI machine music, which is awesome. That's [?] every time I'm in it--
cortex: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Hey! I never saw this!
mathowie: Every time I'm in it--go to their MySpace Music page, you can get to all their tracks, and it's like re-living an MRI all over again, but also fun and hilarious and has a beat and you can dance to it.
jessamyn: Well, you and I have definitely talked about this before.
mathowie: Yeah, yeah, right! Because it almost has a rhythm, and you're sitting there
- bored for 20 minutes to an hour, and it's like you're trying--your brain is trying to make a pattern out of random machine noise, and you're like, "Aww, this should be a song." So it's some one dude.
jessamyn: Yeah, well, and it's not totally random. Some of it goes cha-CHUNG cha-CHUNG cha-CHUNK, but then yeah, some of it's like buzza-buzza-buzza, whatever.
mathowie: Eeeee. Eeeee. (low-pitched vibration)
jessamyn: (medium-pitch blipping) Beep-beep-beep-beep.
mathowie: But it almost has, you know... you don't know what's coming next, I know, but it's almost musical, so someone went ahead and did that, which is awesome. I mean, it's awesome as
- a novelty item, I wouldn't actually put on my iPod or something.
jessamyn: Play it at the party.
mathowie: Did you see the 18 years of photographing someone dying of AIDS? Like, slowly?
jessamyn: Not even clicking. It'll depress me. Tell me more.
mathowie: (laughs) No, it's-- well, it's--
jessamyn: Tell me more about it!
mathowie: It's awesome and awful, but it's just someone who basically had a drug abuse problem, like a photographer sort of befriended this person, you know, whatever, 19--I don't know, maybe 1990 or something? They took photographs as a student photographer
- and then ran into this person like a year later, and then basically ran into them every year or two since then and published these photos. And it's crazy.
jessamyn: Oh, so it's not about themselves, it's about...
mathowie: Yeah, it's just a long-term photo project about this person who lived on the streets, you know, has babies, gets into drugs, gets out of drugs, gets back into drugs, has another baby, has another baby, the state takes them away, like, I guess she was HIV positive the whole time, and
- then she just--spoiler alert: she eventually dies, but it's like... I mean, they're not friends, but they're not... it's not exploitative, they have respect for each other, it's kind of a... because the woman would just call the photographer and say, "Hey, why don't you come over? It's been a couple years." And they live in a shithole in Alaska suddenly, from... they start in San Francisco. It's good, it's bad, it's hard, but it's an interesting photo project.
jessamyn: Yeah, no, I'm clicking through, I'm clicking through now. You're right: it is really, really interesting.
mathowie: As Kottke said, he wanted to grab his monitor and yell, "Quit having babies!" about halfway through it, but saw it through to the end and it's not as... it's not that bad. It's kind of cool.
- The only Flash game I've liked in many months of stuff being mentioned on Metafilter was this Baseball Club. It's a really weird, almost like one-button
- game where you just... it's a baseball game, you go through seasons and you have to train your batters and stuff, it's almost like high school baseball and you're the coach. And all you do is batting, there's no... and the fielding is, you don't have to do any of the fielding at all. The other team, when they're at bat, is just sort of in the background, like you click through, it tells you they scored a run or something. And all you do is click to hit the ball. It seems so stupid, but it's one of those things you can just eat a sandwich and click with one button for
- half an hour.
jessamyn: Angry Birds.
mathowie: Yeah, and you can get really into it where you're like, because you're developing these players, and they're getting stronger and stronger each year, and then they graduate high school and you lose them and you have to train in new freshmen, and... yeah. It's a really tough, like it's really hard, there's no home runs at all, as far as I can tell it's impossible to have a home run, so. It's like, it's one of those weird things where you're rewarded so slightly but just enough to keep you coming back.
- It's satisfying when you win a game, but it's fun.
cortex: It's from the guy who made DICEWARS, too. Sweet.
mathowie: Yeah.
cortex: I know what I'm doing this afternoon.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Haaaa.
cortex: It's basically--it's silly, it's like a one-button baseball game, and yeah, you just get--it's kind of addictive. That's all my favorite Metafilter posts.
jessamyn: I additionally enjoyed this kinda dopey post about Caspar Babypants.
cortex: Oh yeah.
mathowie: Oh yeah!
jessamyn: Which is basically Chris Ballew from The Presidents of the United States of America and The Tycoons and all sorts of other projects now does this kind of kid music for people who hate kids' music thing, or, as Weird Al Yankovic said, "one of the few children's recording artists I can listen to without wanting to stab myself in the eyes." And so the post itself is great, he's got kind of a nice fun website, but then I guess Slarty Bartfast dropped him a note, dropped Chris a note and said, "Hey! We're talking about you." And so he showed up in the thread!
- And was like, "Hey, I'm glad you guys are happy with it, that's really cool, blahblahblahblahblah." And actually shows up a couple times to answer comments or do that kind of stuff. I don't know. It was just nice. Like, for people who really like the music, super--PeterMcDermott made a joke, and he made Caspar Babypants laugh, and yeah. The whole thread is kind of delightful and nice, and it's a whole bunch of people enjoying something together along with the dude who made the thing, and it made me happy.
mathowie: Kids' music is weird. It's like, I find--I hate it too, and I long for this kind of stuff, like adult-ish kid music that I can enjoy too. rusty, from corrosion, he posts that that his kids hate kid music, like, they're bored by it when he puts on kid music, they want to hear like Soul Coughing and Modest Mouse. And they love Kanye, although he has to watch what he plays.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: It's weird. My daughter loves kid music, like real kiddie... I can't stand it. But I'll
- never play, there's this one genre of music I will never play.
jessamyn: The Wiggles?
mathowie: Many children singing any song.
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: They make whole albums--what it is called?
cortex: Oh, yeah. The Kidz Bop.
jessamyn: So nobody ployed the wall [?] ?
mathowie: So is it like--
mathowie and cortex: Kidz Bop. mathowie: --that's it.
cortex: Yeah. I would love to hear a Kidz Bop concept album cover.
mathowie: But like, it's nails on a chalkboard. (laughs)
cortex: Like, with the entire--
mathowie: A space opera?
jessamyn: Kids Bop, what are you saying?
mathowie: Yeah. Kidz Bop with a 'z' in the middle.
cortex: Yeah. Kidz. Bop! is the--
jessamyn: Oh, I'm sorry, with a 'z'.
cortex: It's a franchise, yes.
mathowie: So imagine
- a popular song from five years ago sung by about thirty kids at once. It's just the... it's like nails on a chalkboard.
jessamyn: Oh, let's hear them sing Firework by Katy Perry. Hold on, you can keep talking.
mathowie: Ohh, it's horrible stuff.
jessamyn: This is Journey!
cortex: I would seriously love to hear that done for an entire Floyd album, though. That would be amazing.
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: That would be the best fucking thing ever.
mathowie: Or some Philip Glass or something, done by Kidz Bop.
cortex: David Bowie.
jessamyn: That was a Journey song. That wasn't Katy Perry at all.
mathowie: It's still horrible.
cortex: A whole first grade classroom singing Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. That'd be pretty sweet.
jessamyn: Right. You could have a little team of kids as an orchestra.
mathowie: Eugh, it's horrible sounds.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: There's lots of rock stars, lots and lots of rock stars are doing albums for their own kids now, like this... I've seen, it seems like it's a whole new genre. But the what-do-you-call-its, They Might Be Giants have been doing kids' albums for--
cortex: Oh, yeah, they've been doing that for a while.
mathowie: A while. They came out--
jessamyn: And they're terrific! Somebody could argue that all They Might Be Giants albums are actually kids' albums.
mathowie: (chuckles) It's crazy.
jessamyn: I sort of feel that way about Barenaked Ladies as well.
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: Yeah, yep, my daughter loves--
jessamyn: They sing about macaroni and cheese, for god's sakes.
mathowie and cortex: Yeah. jessamyn: That's for children.
cortex: Old Apartment's actually kind of dark as far as that goes.
mathowie: But that's a Canadian standard.
jessamyn: What did you say?
cortex: Old Apartment. That'd be kind of a weird kids' song.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Heh, heh, heh.
cortex: Well, I'm just saying! You know, it's like there's bitterness and angry--
jessamyn: No, I agree, I agree!
cortex: --and trying to move on and failed relationships and punching holes in walls. It's not really kid music, I mean,
- well, unless, you had a really shitty childhood.
jessamyn: But like, you guys don't listen to the lyrics of half the stuff you listen to either, I think.
mathowie: That's true.
cortex: I listen to the lyrics of all the stuff I listen to.
mathowie: I don't.
jessamyn: I do. I'm a lyrics person. Maybe you and I share that, Josh.
cortex: It's a... yeah.
mathowie: I am not a lyrics person.
jessamyn: But I've found that most people don't.
cortex: Well, I think it comes with being a songwriter, you kind of can't not. I remember, I had to sort of learn to like stupid rock music at one point. For a while I was like, there was this... I reviewed this album for the paper in college at one point, and I remember writing up this sort of semi-scathing review where I was like, "Okay, well,
- the guitars and the stuff are really pretty solid, it's pretty good to listen to, but man, the lyrics are so dumb, it's like what the fuck?" And eventually--
jessamyn: It's for monkeys!
cortex: Yeah, I was like, you know, sometimes maybe loud rock is a good thing. But I was not in that place at that time.
mathowie: Do you want to know my quintessential story of not paying attention to lyrics?
cortex: What's that?
jessamyn: Of course!
mathowie: I was telling someone--this was ten years ago, God, eleven years ago?--"Oh, that new album by Neutral Milk Hotel is great! It's really awesome man, I've just been listening on repeat for
- like five days," and the person's like, "Uh, dude, I'm Jewish, like half those songs are about fucking gas chambers, asshole."
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: I was like, "Really? I didn't even notice. Really?"
jessamyn: Wait, wait, what? Really?
mathowie: Yeah, he was walking me through the songs and like, oh God, yeah. I mean, geez, it's so obviously about, yeah.
jessamyn: Which album?
mathowie: You know, their big one!
jessamyn: In the Aeroplane Over The Sea?
mathowie: Yeah. Not all the songs, but I mean, there are obvious--
jessamyn: More than none.
mathowie: There's an Anne Frank song, I mean, it was right there
- on it. (typing) On the Ae-ro-plane Over The Sea.
jessamyn: In the Aeroplane.
mathowie: Where is the track listing?
cortex: "In the Navy"?
mathowie: I can't remember. (laughs) Oh, "Holland, 1945", that's the Anne Frank song.
- Hey look, they have song samples at Wikipedia? What the hell?
jessamyn: I always say Neutral Milk Motel instead of Neutral Milk Hotel.
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: It's a little cheaper, but save it.
cortex: Neutral Milk Hotel, Neutral Milk Motel, Neutral Milk Holiday Inn.
jessamyn: (laughs)
mathowie: Oh, man.
jessamyn: Communist Daughter?
mathowie: So, some--
jessamyn: Come on, which of these are about the gas chambers?
mathowie: Holland, 1945 is the Anne Frank song. (pause) Spoiler alert: I think she dies at the end.
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: (groans)
mathowie: (laughs) Sorry.
jessamyn: Is that a--
mathowie: Too soon?
jessamyn: (groans) (pause) Alright.
cortex: There was a post I'm just gonna mention--this is my 'mentioning it on principle' post of the podcast.
jessamyn: Wait, are you talking about the website again?
cortex: Yeah, no, sorry, I--
mathowie: Oh, yeah, what? Metafilter?
cortex: Not to derail, not to go off on a tangent, but on Metafilter there was a post I liked.
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: Or again, this is a post that I like in theory, I haven't actually read it, no one's actually read it thoroughly because it's got five million links, but it's a big old crazy math post branching off from a discussion of graph theory, and this is the sort of thing that
- amuses me.
jessamyn: By achmorrison [ˈax.mɔɹɪsən].
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: What do you know about achmorrison [ˈax.mɔɹɪsən] ?
cortex: Not much.
jessamyn: Me neither!
cortex: (chuckles) Seems like a good Jewish name, I...
jessamyn: Psh... aww!
mathowie: (chuckles) Oh, Jesus.
jessamyn: When is Morrison Jewish?
cortex: No, it's the 'Ach' [ax]. See, I like fricatives.
jessamyn: I like fricatives.
cortex: And yeah, 'chaim' [ħaɪm]. 'chaim' [ħaɪm] is a totally valid pronunciation. We had this argument on Twitter.
jessamyn: No it isn't!
cortex: It totally is!
- Andy linked to--
jessamyn: 'chaim' [ˈħaɪɛm]? 'chaim' [ˈħaɪɛm] rhymes with 'rhyme'?
cortex: 'chaim' [ħaɪm] rhymes with 'rhyme'.
jessamyn: 'chaim' [ħaɪm] isn't a word.
cortex: 'chaim' [ħaɪm], it totally is! Andy linked to actual audio evidence of people saying 'cheim' [ħaɪm]. It's...
jessamyn: Oh, Andy, your friend from Portland?
cortex: (laughs) He's not from Portland anymore, now he lives down in San Francisco or whatever the fuck.
jessamyn: Oh, I am sorry.
cortex: Or L.A. Where did he move to? Where did Andy move to? Somewhere down in stupid California?
mathowie: Oh, he's coming back.
cortex: Is he? Yay.
jessamyn: Right. He's coming back!
cortex: Not that I do a good job of hanging out with people ever anyway, but you know, I felt like we had just started to hang out a little bit and then he all moved.
jessamyn: By hang out, do you mean you saw each other in person, ever?
cortex: Yes. No, no, he bought me ice cream one time because I didn't have enough cash to buy myself ice cream. And it's the best ice cream, too!
jessamyn: Well, that's almost like a date!
mathowie: (laughs)
cortex: No, it was sort of a nerd date, I guess.
jessamyn: You went on a date with [??]!
cortex: We had a great time. He's very charming.
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: Okay, well, anybody listening to this podcast, C-H-A-I-M. Does it rhyme with the word 'rhyme'? Yes/No. Thank you.
cortex: That'll be a discussion point for the podcast thread.
jessamyn: It's important.
cortex: I'm just saying, it... you know, okay. Enough about our [??] about how to pronounce Jewish names, though.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Or anything. How to pronounce anything.
cortex: Yes.
jessamyn: So what is this post about? Math?
cortex: Math. Lots and lots of math.
mathowie: Oh, oh, I just... oh.
cortex: It's, yeah, it's nuts. Oh, are we looking at something else now?
mathowie: Oh no, I thought you said, "Matt, what's this post about?"
cortex and jessamyn: (laugh) cortex: "What's this post about, Matt?"
jessamyn: "Come back from Angry Birds!"
cortex: "Matthew, what is the frequency?" (sighs)
mathowie: (mutters) What's going on?
- (chuckles) So, can we move to Ask Metafilter?
cortex: Let's do it!
jessamyn: Wait!
cortex: No! Let's not do it!
mathowie: Yes! Move on!
jessamyn: I just want to point out this comment from mathowie which made me laugh yesterday.
mathowie: When? What?
jessamyn: Click your own link!
mathowie: Oh, yeah. (chuckles) I didn't know it was available for streaming.
cortex: (laughs)
jessamyn: It's on the Amazon buying Netflix and mathowie pointing out the Human Centipede angle that I think would otherwise remain unexplored.
mathowie: I was going through the titles, you know, you're going through the screen, they're all just boring, stupid...
jessamyn: I don't know anything about these things. I watch [??].
mathowie: That, that popped out. And I was like, "Oh my God, what? They're using that as a selling point on the front page?"
jessamyn: That's true. That is kinda crazy.
mathowie: Here's something funny: you just have to say the two words 'human centipede' in front of Paul Bausch and he'll go,
- "Whooa, geez, oh, God, what?!" It's really awesome.
cortex: I still haven't seen it. It's on my list to see at some point.
jessamyn: Jackie! Jackie in HR! You're harassing him, Matt, that's illegal.
mathowie: Eh, it's pretty funny, though.
cortex jessamyn and mathowie: (laugh) cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Leave my future at this company in jeopardy.
mathowie: Alright, so we're done with whatever, www...
cortex: Oh, let me horribly plug my other--
jessamyn: Oh, wait!
cortex: --thing that I made since we last podcasted, the Baseball Card Hall of Fame thing. There was a post about it.
mathowie: Oh, right, yeah.
cortex: Which was very nice, and I've been enjoying making it. [??]
jessamyn: You did good, Josh, that was really fun. But before I click this--
cortex: I showed it to some non-Internet friends and they thought it was funny. That's always a good sign.
jessamyn: --I'm going to try and guess when the most recent post was made.
mathowie: Three weeks ago.
jessamyn: Ahhh... February 4th? Ooh, seven hours ago!
cortex: You are guessing wrong!
mathowie: Seven hours ago, damn!
cortex: Yeah. This is like the best job I've ever done of keeping up a blog in eight years.
mathowie: Is it because a pro baseball player recently joined Metafilter and might have seen it?
cortex: No, but that's pretty neat too, you should definitely tell him.
jessamyn: Wait, did he join Metafilter? Or does he just like Metafilter?
mathowie: Yeah, he joined.
- He likes Metafilter, and I e-mailed him, what is this, low-end Cubs guy, what's his name?
cortex: Felix.
mathowie: Fernando Perez? Felix... I forget his name.
cortex: I don't remember his name because I don't know anybody's name.
mathowie: Yeah, baseball.
cortex: But I totally saw, I saw you contact him, and I was like, "Oh, hey, it must be that guy!"
jessamyn: I need to pronounce it wrong anyhow.
mathowie: He was using Metafilter to insult someone in a good way (cortex laughs), he was saying, like, "That stupid takedown you made of me, if it was any fucking good it would have shown up on this awesome
- site I read called Metafilter, and it wasn't, so it sucked."
jessamyn: Where I belong.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Fernando Perez.
mathowie: And then so I e-mailed him, so I'm like, "I can't find you in the database. Do you have an account? If you don't, I'll send you one so you don't have to stare at ads anymore." And he was like--
jessamyn: Does he have a secret account, or is it a pretty obvious this-is-him account?
mathowie: No, it matches his name, whatever he's called... outfielding, or out--he's on Twitter. And he's on Fac--
jessamyn: outfielding.
mathowie: Yeah. He's on Twitter and Tumblr, which is kind of cool as a pro baseball player.
- outfielding, and that's his account on Metafilter, too.
jessamyn: No it isn't. No it isn't.
mathowie: He doesn't do anything, he just has a...
jessamyn: There is no outfielding user on Metafilter. Try again?
mathowie: It's the same... outfielding? Is that his Tumblr?
jessamyn: Yeah, outfielding is his tumblr.
mathowie: And then he doesn't have that on Metafilter?
jessamyn: Correct.
mathowie: Let me see. (chuckles) I don't want to out him.
jessamyn: Just click! Click! Click your... oh, I see.
mathowie: I don't want to out him if he didn't want to be outed, but...
jessamyn: Well, his name is in his profile. Now I found him.
mathowie: outfieldrambler.
- outfieldrambler.
jessamyn: Yeah.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Yeah. And his name's in his profile, so that should be fine. But that's nice!
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Way to go. That's a great story.
mathowie: Hey, maybe we can interview him.
jessamyn: And congratulations, Josh, on your Baseball Card Hall of--we should, actually, you should get in touch with him and ask him, you know.
mathowie: Oh wait, he's in spring training, so he's like busy and shit.
cortex: Probably a little bit.
jessamyn: Maybe next winter.
sfx: (rattly metallic noise)
mathowie: What was that? The dog?
jessamyn: The dog shaking his shaker.
cortex: A tambourine... oh. Sounds like a tambourine.
jessamyn: He wants to go to the beach.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: We're going to go to the beach when I get
- done talking to you guys.
mathowie: You're not supposed to say the word. Doesn't he know what that means?
jessamyn: He's really stupid.
mathowie and cortex: (laugh) mathowie: What kind of dog is he, a stupid dog?
jessamyn: He's a white Lab.
mathowie: Oh, okay, yeah, they're pretty dumb.
jessamyn: I mean, he's so good-natured, but yeah. I'll send you a picture of him.
mathowie: Yes. We need it for the podcast visualization.
jessamyn: Tsssh. Well, what else, are we on to Ask Metafilter yet?
mathowie: Ask Metafilter!
- (pause)
- Oh. Dumb dog pitch?
jessamyn: Well. We could segue in from our Amazon thing, which is, okay, now that more and more people are looking on Netflix, Netflix has a pretty great user interface, but it's still kinda hard to look at it and be like, well, if you haven't used it a lot, what would I like? And so there was a very popular thread just about, like, "What are the good TV shows that I can find?"
mathowie: Oh, yeah.
jessamyn: And this was somebody saying, I liked this, but it was just kind of a long
- thread of a lot of people being like, these are the TV shows that I just kind of powered through that are available on Netflix.
mathowie: And TV shows are cool, because they're only about 22 minutes long for a half-hour show, instead of "Check out this movie, which is two and a half hours long," and...
jessamyn: Right. It's a time commitment! We just finished--
mathowie: But then if you like something, you watch eight in a row, which is like watching a long movie, and it's cool.
jessamyn: That's what we did this weekend. We finished watching Dollhouse, which I have to say,
- Josh was pretty much right about it, it was vaguely interesting but ultimately disappointing. But!
mathowie: (chuckle) Have you seen Downton Abbey?
jessamyn: What?
mathowie: You've seen it, right? You've seen the whole Downton Abbey series?
jessamyn: I don't even know what that word is you keep saying. What is it?
mathowie: Downt--Downton Abbey.
jessamyn: Downton?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Is that a name?
mathowie: It's like a city, a town in England, it's an Upstairs Downstairs show. You know this, right?
jessamyn: No!
mathowie: PBS.
cortex: I've heard vaguely what you're speaking of.
mathowie: It's basically 'downtown' without the 'n' in the middle of it.
- Downton Abbey.
jessamyn: And it's like Dollhouse?
mathowie: You're on our secret list, right? Where we were talking in glowing reviews of it.
jessamyn: Yeah, but I don't pay attention to you guys all the time.
mathowie: Oh my God! Download all seven episodes, it's great.
cortex: Is this your steering [?] list?
jessamyn: Alright. Shut up!
mathowie: Yeah, shut up. (laughs)
jessamyn: Yes, it's where we built things out of ideas [?].
cortex: Oh, yeah, that's a good list.
jessamyn: Shut up, Josh.
mathowie: It's an awesome show that's--it was new on the BBC last fall, and
- it was just being replayed on PBS here in the last month or two. Seven episodes is their season, they're an hour long each, and they're freaking awesome. And saying this as a guy, I went to see Gosford Park with my wife, who loved every minute of it, and I fell asleep for I think right after the start and woke up right before the end and had no idea what was going on in Gosford Park, and I hated it.
jessamyn: To be fair, everybody who watches Gosford Park feels that way, even if you're awake for the whole movie.
mathowie: (chuckles) Well, my wife was like, "That was the greatest movie ever," and I was like, "What just happened?
- Why did someone kill what?"
jessamyn: I just want something that's like Dollhouse but not quite so stupid. You know, it's like partway through I realized that LOST was gonna end the same way Dollhouse ended and gave up on it early and felt good about that? Maybe this--
mathowie: No, this is... like, Downton Abbey is up there with--I mean, it's not quite The Wire, it's probably like Deadwood good.
jessamyn: Okay.
mathowie: Like, it's so watchable, it's super freaking awesome.
jessamyn: Okay.
mathowie: And it's been out... (typing) Down-ton Abb-ey.
jessamyn: Yeah, no, I looked up.
mathowie: It's been renewed for
- a second season, so you'll like, just like the new Sherlock, you'll see it two years from now maybe on the BBC. (pause) Totally, totally watch it. It's super fucking good.
- I noticed that all my favorites on Ask Metafilter are--I think it's the January New Year's Resolution disease.
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: Like, everything's pract--like, all the--if you look at the top-rated things in the last month, everything's practical advice or tricks or "How do I
- change my brain into thinking about something?" or "How do I get..." Yeah. Like, there was this one which was good about, by Christ, what an asshole, about "How do I remind myself that things are great when I have a 'woe is me' moment?"
jessamyn: Oh, I saw that! I enjoyed that thread a lot better than I thought I was going to. Because I'm like, "Whatever, everyone deals with this, RAR RAR RAR RAR RAR."
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: But seeing the way other people manage the same stuff that I manage sometimes was actually...
mathowie: Yeah. There was... I saw a split of where half the people were like, "Well, there's so many people worse off than you, so be thankful." And other people were like, "Well, don't... that makes me feel like an elitist asshole, here's what I actually do to not feel good about not being awful, here's what I do instead."
jessamyn: Right. To be smug about being better than other people or whatever.
mathowie: Yeah. And then this related one asked, the anonymous one was really good about, "Whenever I've met a guy who was brilliant and I had all this creativity and confidence for like a year, and then the relationship was over
- and I went back in the doldrums, and like... I had it in me at one time, how do I make myself energetic and resourceful?"
jessamyn: That's the whole, "How do I write poetry without having my romantic muse and/or alcohol addiction to keep me creative?"
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting.
mathowie: And what was the last one? Oh. "What useful skills can you pick up in an hour or less?" That was just like, the Netflix version of improving yourself.
jessamyn: Oh yeah! By tomwheeler, who I got confused with all the other Toms.
mathowie: Yeah, we have a lot of Toms.
jessamyn: But I enjoyed it. There was a whole bunch of people who I have links to like, "Here's something that you can do pretty quickly and easily!" and other stuff that was fun and weird.
mathowie: Oh, and there was that condom spammer!
cortex: Oh, God. (laughs)
jessamyn: Well, you're looking at a deleted comment that no one's going to be able to see.
cortex: You mean condoms?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: The user named 'condom' who was...
mathowie: This awesome thread was marred for a brief time by a spammer who thought, yeah, plugging his store was a good idea.
jessamyn: Although, to be fair, you know, it's a link to how to put on a condom.
cortex: This is a free tip to the spammers out there.
jessamyn: Yeah. What?
cortex: I was just saying, free tip to spammers out there: don't name yourself after the product you're going to spam.
mathowie: Yeah, that's bad. (chuckles)
jessamyn: Now, I don't remember if... we posted this last time? I don't think so. This was kind of my favorite, like, thing Ask Metafilter does really, really well that I think people tend to underestimate and
- when people complain about relationship questions, they don't think about stuff like this. It's basically another anonymous thing, someone had a baby five weeks ago, and they're like, "I'm just kind of miserable, and I'm having a really hard time, and I'm really worried I'm not gonna love my baby."
mathowie: Awww.
jessamyn: And it's sad. I mean, obviously they're just having a really hard time, and they made a post about it, and they're kind of freaked out, you know? But also like, "How can I do better?" And it's a great thread full of
- mommies--and other people, but like, a lot of mommies being like, "This is normal. Here are some things you can do. Don't beat yourself up over it. This is normal." Not that everybody goes through this, but that going through this is actually fairly normal among new moms--
mathowie: Yep.
jessamyn: --because you're totally sleep-deprived, your whole life is... adjusting, and your baby isn't as interesting as your baby's gonna be, and so there's a lot of just having to do this stuff without understanding
- why you're doing this stuff. So it's a great thread to read because it's got lots of good advice, a lot of people being like, "I've totally been there." And it gave me kind of a look at something I don't really know that much about, and I don't know, I just thought it was kind of a great thread. It seemed like it was really, really helpful not just for that person but also for other new moms trying to figure out how to adjust and feeling bad for not being the right kind of mom.
mathowie: Yep. Yeah, and people never talk about the
- whole--having been through that junk, at least as a father--there's very little ink spilled on, like, yeah, periods of doubt or... yeah, so many people write about--
jessamyn: Horrible things your body does to you for a brief period of time, and--
mathowie: Yeah. People write about postpartum depression, I feel like people have a handle on that. But the whole, like, "I didn't connect"--I mean, some people admit, like, "For the first six months, I didn't even like the kid, kid didn't seem to like me." And you hear
- about that stuff like five years later, and they're like, you know--
jessamyn: And then of course, yeah. It went away.
mathowie: They're always like, "No one ever told me that was a problem, and I never spoke of it out loud because it was so treasonous, you know, to my own child, and I'm--"
jessamyn: Right. Because you feel maybe you're a sociopath or something.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: And that all your decisions to have children were wrong, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So I felt like this... the thread was really useful for just how many people had familiarity with this issue, either personally or with other people. And giving the person who asked the question,
- you know, "Try this, and try this, and try this, and make sure you do this, and this other thing, and don't worry about that," and I don't know. It was just...
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Helpful, I thought.
- And that's not the same as...
mathowie: Josh, do you have any favorites?
cortex: I have nothing for AskMe recently. But that's so like me.
jessamyn: Oh, wait, this one... this one was kind of like what you were pointing to, Matt. So not just like, "What can I do an hour every day?" but, "If I do
- something a little bit of time over long periods of time, and it turns into a thing that's kind of cooler," like, you know, doing a little bit of music practice and turning into somebody who can play an instrument, or keeping a diary and then you have a record of everything you did.
mathowie: Yeah. Oh, this doesn't--
jessamyn: What?
mathowie: This doesn't have the comment I favorited in Google Reader and now I'll never be able to find it. But there was a comment somewhere on Metafilter where they built their own motivation machine, which was like this
- really ridiculous...
cortex: Oh--
mathowie: It was like an Excel spreadsheet that randomly...
jessamyn: Oh, yeah!
cortex: The guy with the armbands and the kung, or...
mathowie: Yeah. And it would randomly reward you in Excel, and it was like, it was random enough to, and it became this humongous motivator in life, and it was this crazy Excel thing with some macros. And he would fill in the spreadsheet.
jessamyn: Yeah. That was the Getting Things Done-ish thread.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Where the guy was like, "I do all this blahblahblahblah spreadsheets!" And other people were like, "Aaaah! That's a waffle!" And then other other people
- were like, "No, it's not, it's brilliant!"
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: Yeah, it was a motivation thing. Let me see if I can track it down.
- Well, I saw some other stuff that was great on Ask Metafilter, which I will mention while you guys are looking this stuff up. This one is sort of the perennial favorite type of Metafilter, Ask Metafilter post that we haven't really mentioned yet, "Help me hack my macaroni and cheese."
mathowie: Oh yeah, yeah. That's a very Canadian
- thing, too. Right?
sfx: (dog jingles and pants)
jessamyn: Right. Yes, yes. Buying the deef [?]--our friend. Because they call it Kraft Dinner, so it seems more like food and less like junk food.
mathowie: (chuckles)
jessamyn: But it's a whole bunch of people--now the dog is playing with the cat, now the cat is attacking the dog--
cortex: Gee.
mathowie: (chuckles) There it is! leotrotsky, I found it.
cortex: Oh, yeah!
mathowie: Habit Judo.
jessamyn: Ohhh, that guy.
cortex: Judo, that's about right. I was trying kung fu and wasn't getting anywhere.
mathowie: Habit Judo. There it is. Now I've got completion.
jessamyn: Oh, yeah, I thought that was awesome.
mathowie: Yeah.
sfx: (dog rattles, jingles, and clunks)
cortex and mathowie: (laugh) jessamyn: What are you laughing at?
mathowie: The dog. He seems happy.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: You should see him! He's going crazy.
mathowie: Oh dear.
cortex: Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?
mathowie: (laughs)
jessamyn: Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?
- What's fun is that he plays with the cat so well.
mathowie: Does it bite him?
jessamyn: It's kind of nice to have pets just for ten days, you know?
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: So for ten days I get up and ate and feed the crazy dog and take him for walks on the
- beach and all this stuff, and then I don't have to anymore.
sfx: (dog whine-barks)
mathowie: (imitating it) Whuehh.
jessamyn: (laughs)
cortex: Word. (laughs)
jessamyn: All right, well, we're wrapping up here anyhow. I had a couple more things that I thought were great, and did you guys miss this? I am sorry, because it was the best thing to cross Ask Metafilter probably in the last year. "I need to make a scientific presentation--"
cortex: Oh, yeah!
jessamyn: "--and make every possible mistake."
mathowie: What, terrible? Why?
jessamyn: Because they're doing a thing for class for a teacher on how not to do a presentation.
mathowie: Oh, nice.
jessamyn: And so they want to basically make a presentation that makes every possible error.
mathowie: Ohhh.
jessamyn: And so not only did people give tons and tons and tons of great advice, but the user [??]
mathowie: Did the person upload it?
jessamyn: Yes.
mathowie: Dauhh!
jessamyn: There's a video of the presentation, and slides, and the paper talking about how it went.
mathowie: (gasps in excitement) I know what I'm doing today. Ohhh.
jessamyn: So it's great. The thread was delightful
- and I learned a lot, because learning what not to do in your presentations is an important part of knowing how to do presentations.
mathowie: Wow! This is awesome. I'm downloading it.
jessamyn: Yes! It is the awesomest. I saved it for last.
cortex: I just remembered another awesome thing from the blue, too.
mathowie: Yeah...
cortex: Which is a post about professional wrestling, or specifically about a clip of professional wrestling that's a--
mathowie: The Most Illegal Thing I've Ever Seen!
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: What? What are you talking about?
cortex: It's... it's hard to...
mathowie: That's a catchphrase now.
cortex: It's professional wrestling and it's just awesome and you should watch it because it's fucking great. And it turned into a discussion of professional wrestling and people talking about what they like about professional wrestling, and so it was like one of those weird reversals where instead of people on the Internet being like, "Oh, it's so fucking fake," everybody's like, "Of course it's fake, it's so fucking awesome!" and yeah. So there's a certain amount of cultural tension in there when people were embracing the wrestling instead of mocking it and other people were like, "But it's crappy,"
- and it was kind of interesting. It turned into a whole discussion about professional wrestling as performance art.
jessamyn: Can you tell me, so I don't have to watch this, what actually is the most illegal thing in the history of wrestling?
cortex: Oh, the whole thing. You just have to watch it.
mathowie: The Egyptian brothers...
cortex: (laughs)
mathowie: The Egyptian brothers hypnotize their combatants, and then--
jessamyn: Uh-huh.
mathowie: And then the guys are hypnotized, and then they play I think what would be, maybe Sugarhill Gang comes on, and the dudes start--
jessamyn: Uh-huh.
cortex: There's a bunch of dancing.
mathowie: They're in a hypnotic state, and they start doing really bad breakdancing. It's amazing.
cortex: Yeah. It's, yeah, you just kind of have to watch it. But yeah, the text is just something that one of the announcers yells at one point. It's like, "That's the most illegal thing I've seen! In the history! Of wrestling!" And it's just... it's...
mathowie: And now that's like a catchphrase, it's so hilarious.
cortex: Yeah. It's pretty fucking great, so yeah, you should watch it [?].
jessamyn: That was some pretty good breakdancing! Alright, now I'm watching it.
cortex: Yeah.
jessamyn: Because I was afraid someone was going to get hit with a chair and do something [?] bad.
mathowie: Nahhh.
cortex: No, no no no no no. No, this is awesome wrestling, not the...
mathowie: This is pure awesome.
jessamyn: Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.
cortex: Yeah.
mathowie: Yeah.
jessamyn: Alright!
mathowie: My--wait! Last one! My favorite was the Ask Metafilter on unusual American history. Like, I haven't even--
jessamyn: Oh, that was my actual last one! I wanted to end on the other last one, but this is just as good.
mathowie: I haven't s--yeah, it's so many awesome stories. Like, I know I've heard about the, what was the, oh, Boston Molasses Flood, where people drowned in molasses in downtown Boston. But, like, you can spend--
jessamyn: And there's tons of photographs online at the Boston Public Library.
mathowie: Yeah. You can spend ten--dozens and dozens of hours just on every single
- comment in that thread, and they're all awesome. Stuff you, little-known stuff from history.
jessamyn: My favorite link that's actually on this long list of links is a link to the Memory Palace, which is kind of specifically for this kind of stuff--
mathowie: Oh, cool.
jessamyn: --like, weird forgotten history and future, I think jtron linked to it? I don't remember who linked to it. jon1270. There's a lot of really great websites that are linked there, but for people who are interested in this specifically, go
- subscribe to the Memory Palace and read read read read read.
cortex: Oh, neat!
jessamyn: Fascinating. Fascinating!
mathowie: Sweet.
cortex: Oh, I want to throw a quick shout-out--
jessamyn: (laughs)
cortex: --to piratebowling, for sending me this awesome fucking cross-stitch.
jessamyn: Oh, right!
cortex: I made a throwaway comment in a MetaTalk thread and then I got this in the mail, and it's just completely fucking awesome, so.
jessamyn: What is that a picture of? Is that from Oregon Trail?
cortex: Yeah, yeah, it's a wagon fording the river in Oregon Trail.
mathowie: That's what I thought.
jessamyn: Okay. That's what I thought, but I wasn't really sure. Yes. I thought that was delightful.
- Shout-out to piratebowling, you did good.
mathowie: Does piratebowling have like an Etsy store where you can order these things?
cortex: I do not know! That's a good question. We should research.
jessamyn: I don't know, but I would like to get piratebowling to make some stuff for me.
cortex: (chuckles)
mathowie: Yeah. (distorted and staticky) Commissions, he can start at that shit.
cortex: You've totally turned into a robot, so I guess we should probably stop.
mathowie: Ohhh. Alright, see ya.
jessamyn and cortex: (laugh) mathowie: I'm dancing like a robot right now, too, it's pretty cool.
jessamyn and cortex: (laugh)
mathowie: Doodah, doodah, I can't turn video on, bummer. Alright, alright, see ya.
cortex: 'Night!
jessamyn: Nice talking to you guys!
mathowie: Alright, bye.
Credits
- Pronoiac, 0:00 - 1:00
- PaulZ, 1:00 - 1:30
- beryllium, 1:00 - 77:00
